‘Daniel Davis Deep Dive’ conversation of 24 October: Putin’s Cowardice

Uncategorized 1 Minute

‘Daniel Davis Deep Dive’ conversation of 24 October: Putin’s Cowardice

The title which DDDD executive producer and co-host Gary Villapiano gave to our conversation this evening will surely attract attention. It defies reason that the classic Alpha Male Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin could even at the threshold of old age find himself condemned for cowardice. However, it is self-evident from the video segments provided by DDDD of Putin’s latest public statements on how diplomacy is preferable to confrontation that he is on the back foot in relation to the number two man in his own Ministry of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabko over the continued viability of diplomacy and also in relation to such eminent members of the Russian state deliberative bodies for foreign and military policy as Dmitry Trenin and Dmitry Simes. Putin’s remarks place him in the sad company of Chamberlain and his the ‘Peace in our Time’ speech following his return from talks with Hitler over the fate of the Sudetenland. The handwriting is on the wall. I wait for recalcitrant colleagues to put on their eyeglasses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-0AI0iDvJo

Unknown's avatar

Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

Published

2 thoughts on “‘Daniel Davis Deep Dive’ conversation of 24 October: Putin’s Cowardice”

  1. The “cowardice” stance reminds me of the judgment a certain kind of person enjoys passing on another kind of person, relating to the latter doing all they can to avoid “confrontation” with the former type. We are talking of the sinewy and cocky, and the physically frail and timid respectively — and when the first type seeks “confrontation” with the second, and the second goes to great lengths to avoid it, we know on what side cowardice does actually lie.

    Back to Putin and his “special operation” management. Isn’t the most reasonable explanation for it the same for the behaviour, and attitude of the frail and timid when they are forced to deal with the “brave” sinewy and cocky? These “brave” people will call the timid person a coward for going to any length to avoid a showdown; however, don’t they want to avoid the showdown at all costs because they can easily anticipate what kind of beating they are going to take if it happens?

    If the Nord Stream 2 undoing was let pass, and the Dniepr bridge not disabled, (let us add the hostile, foreign conquest of Syria to the list), nothing of what has followed, and will probably follow, should have any member of the thinking class taken aback, should it? And why should a member of the thinking class, well, think China hasn’t seized Taiwan? Isn’t the only possible cause for their not doing what they would obviously prefer to the dread of a confrontation with the same power Putin, and his softliners, have gone to every length to avoid confrontation with?

    So, yes: this weaker side’s attitude “gives the wrong signals”. But if the signals were changed from wrong to those right for you (and the hardliners), would that ultimately alter the course of events? If decisional centres with the will and power to determine the whole West’s policy, and war stance, decide that the unified (unified under their direction, that is) West must engage Russia in World War 3 unless Russia folds and agrees to be partitioned and lose sovereignty (like everyone else has already), World War 3 will take place, regardless of the signals given off by Russia’s President and government being the wrong or the right kind.

    You’d say they weren’t too worried of World War 3 breaking out, already when they decided to incapacitate Nord Stream 2. Same when they struck part of Russia’s nuclear deterrent air force. I was impressed by your connection between the dialled-up sanctions and Japan having its economy chocked leading to Pearl Harbour. But if you are, as I think you are, a careful-enough reader (of books, and not only), you know Pearl Harbour was the sought-for outcome by those who decided the economic chocking. So, all the obvious escalation that is being both pursued and threatened now: what tells a member of the thinking thin slice of humankind that the purpose isn’t the same as it was then with Japan? Putin and the softliner government may be wiser than the Japanese were then; however, if they hold a losing hand and the actual rulers of the Western world (who by no means are the spokespersons we call “Presidents” and “leaders”, as you are aware) can fight a sort of World War 3 with calculated high chances of the outcome being Russia sharing the fate of Libya, Syria, and all the countries they have willed dismantled, while their side comes out of it relatively unharmed, and they have decided they are going to do it, well, they are going to do it, no matter the hardliners or softliners are in charge. Or are they not? I can’t envision any scenario where World War 3 happens because of a softliner attitude, and it doesn’t happen if there is instead a hardliner attitude on Russia’s part.

    It has already been decided, and what has been decided will happen no matter what; I think World War 3 has been decided — and I think the only brake on their resolve is that they are not sure that China will stand by the side, as a spectator or Russia’s dismantling, and that they are not sure things would go to plan if China decided to go all-in with Russia (which China may do, if they have an understanding that, once Russia were conquered, they too would, and the only serious chances to fight back in a global, no-holds-barred clash with the USA are for Russia and China together; but they may also not do, succumbing to caution and “optimism” about what would come later for them).

    I am hoping I am mistaken on most of this, Mr. Doctorow, but I am not betting on the same.

    Like

    1. I rather like your reasoning.

      I remember back to 1991 when the US “won” the Cold War and the Soviet Union dissolved — I had believed in Uncle Sam’s “democracy”, only to find my preconceptions dashed as a feeding frenzy was unleashed on the remains of the Soviet empire. I wasn’t surprised to discover that oligarchs arose in Russia from various local power centres that we weren’t well aware of here, but the complete lack of intellectual sympathy on the part of the US and the West in general startled me. Yes, I was a naif. I had bought the propaganda that we in the West were all for freedom and democracy and truth, honesty and light, blah, blah, blah.

      But I soon became the cynical bastard that I remain to his day, realizing gradually as I read more and more, that the phat boys who have ruled mankind down through the ages were not a mere figment of socialistic and communistic writings by philosophical authors: such writers were only too well aware of what was and always had been going on. And I had never stopped to really think — oh, I thought I had, but I hadn’t really. History itself as a school/university subject isn’t about the common man but the greedy movers and shakers who looked upon the masses wth disdain. Rulers who made the common man do their bidding and fight the other rulers’ common man. So simple to say it now as to appear trite and banal, but one had to wade through layer upon layer of utter BS to reach the real surface in those days. I was indoctrinated into the way things were, or supposedly are in our Western “democracies” and that we were the good guys, no question. Still today, the average chest beater in the West hates Russia but cannot tell you why in any rational way. Same with China. And they pooh pooh as piffle any opinion to the contrary. Iran, I personally remain on the fence about..

      So, yes, in all likelihood and to be specific, whether the leader of Russia is a pussycat or a tiger, if the rich people and bureaucracy of the West have decided to break up Russia and/or China, they will cause a war one way or the other. Mao tried in his Little Red Book to minimize the dangers of nuclear war, and apparently “leaders” in the West are equally as stupid these days. Perhaps they think living in an underground cavern will ensure their own survival, but have paid no attention as to why any of their paid servants would still kowtow to them afterwards, when money has zero significance among the ruins, and a can of beans becomes important.

      But sociopaths and psychopaths and pure dumb ideologues pay zero attention to tomorrow, living only in the present. So we are all likely screwed.

      Like

Comments are closed.