‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 14 January 2026

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‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 14 January 2026

This discussion centers on the issues of the method in Trump’s seeming madness on the world stage, which can be found in his first words on taking office:  ‘drill baby drill.’  As I have noted in my most recent essays on Substack, Trump understands that control of global trading in oil and gas is critical for refurbishing and maintaining the dollar as the global reserve currency, which in turn provides the financial strength for America to assume massive debt at little cost to itself and thus afford the world’s biggest military budget.

Trump’s strongest asset is his courage and readiness to assume calculated risks to further American national interests.  He looks for ‘low hanging fruit,’ for adding to American territory and control of events without getting bogged down in ‘boots on the ground’ wars.  He will only venture where a quick victory is within reach.

The open question is whether the Teheran leaders can respond with sufficient decisiveness and timely risk-taking to fend off the Trump offensive.  Since it is absolutely clear that Trump is preparing to attack Iran’s strategic infrastructure so that paid fighters can overthrow the government without hindrance, Teheran should now make a preemptive strike on Israel and on the US bases in the region if it wishes to survive.  I do not see Chinese or Russian intervention to save Iran.

I am uncertain whether Presidents Xi and Putin appreciate that they too should be acting preemptively right now if they wish to share global power with the United States in a kind of Yalta-2 arrangement.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

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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.

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