An important multi-subject interview with News X World (India) this afternoon

Uncategorized 2 Minutes

This unhurried interview covered several major news items of the day relating to the Ukraine war and also to the newly issued U.S. National Security Strategy.

As regards the NSS, Moscow has commented favorably on it as if this represents a wholly new direction in U.S. foreign policy. However, in fact, as I describe in detail in today’s essay on Substack, the new NSS pick up where Trump’s first NSS in December 2017 left off. It enshrines an interest-driven foreign policy as opposed to a values driven foreign policy. It anticipates an early end to the Russia-Ukraine war so that Washington can proceed with the reintegration of Russia into normal commercial, diplomatic, cultural relations not only with the USA but also with the European Union. Indeed, if you look closely, the NSS intimates that Europe should resume importation of Russian pipeline gas:  the document notes that German industry is leaving the country for China, where it can have access to cheap Russian gas!

We also discuss the widely quoted remark of General Keith Kellogg that peace in Ukraine is now within reach, that the sides have just the last 10 meters to reach it.  As I note, the old folk wisdom of ‘missed by a meter, missed by a mile’ is relevant here: either you have reached the successful conclusion of a peace or you have not and the daily missile and drone attacks continue unabated. I insist that Kellogg does not speak for the administration, that he was just window dressing for Trump to mislead his enemies into thinking that he sided with Kellogg’s pro-Ukrainian stance.

The massive Russian overnight strike on the Ukrainian city of Kremenchuk is brought up, and I say that this success is an impressive show of technical capabilities of the Kinzhal hypersonic missile and other Russian Wunderwaffen, but it does not bring the end of the war one day closer.  The rule of ‘whack a mole’ has to be invoked: you smack down a molehill and the mole emerges somewhere else.  Military victory is not won by aerial strikes but by feet on the ground. This war has gone on for much too long and could have been vastly shorter and less deadly if the Russians had from the beginning mobilized the necessary attack force to get the job done.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

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

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.