Great Post-Cold War American Thinkers on International Relations is the title of my first book of essays. Published in 2010, it has remarkable utility for understanding where we are in relations with Russia today, how and why a New World Order is now forming before our eyes, and where we are headed.

As an historian by education, I had long been unhappy with the way that American political scientists  were prospecting history for “lessons” to support their latest proposals for the country’s foreign policy. This practice was all the more in view during the 1990s in the period immediately following the collapse of Communist regimes across Central and Eastern Europe, reaching finally to the USSR. America’s best known, and also some aspiring less known academics produced works which were intended to inform a confused public, and also to guide policy makers in the highest offices of the land. They provided road maps for the new world which was now no longer split to the core by an ideological fissure and which was no longer bipolar, but instead appeared to be unipolar, with the USA as the sole remaining global superpower and hegemon.

I read some of their works, was scandalized by the shoddy workmanship and decided to take action as an historian calling fellow professionals in a related discipline to order.

Considering the results of my dissection of the 1990s and early new millennium writings of the established names in the field, some readers of my book decided that I was insincere in designating them as “great.” However, my yardstick was not the intrinsic value of their writings but the degree of influence they bore across the profession and in the foreign policy community at large. There was little to quibble over my choices. Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky were all well known to the public for several bookshelves of works that have enduring interest up to present.  The less well known names in my “big ten” were Joseph Nye, Stanley Hoffmann, G. John Ikenberry and Robert Kagan.  They were fillers to give my volume enough bulk. I make no apologies for including them because they were still inescapable in 2010 though their residual value today is often negligible.  With one exception, of course, Kagan. I would be remiss not to mention that he is the husband of Victoria Nuland, with whom he shared a Neoconservative world view that he helped to define.

The stronger of the authors in my list were complex thinkers, and it took all of my efforts to get my mind around them to produce a critical analysis, including where they “borrowed” many of their ideas from, what was wrong with the sources and what remained wrong in their reworks.

The most original of the lot was Francis Fukuyama. His End of History (1992) was seminal in the sense that the other “greats” wrote in response to his challenge, even if they never acknowledged his work by name. Fukuyama’s book set down the principles that were embedded in the Neoconservative movement. He argued that with Communism vanquished, all of humanity was now headed in the same direction towards liberal democracy and free markets.  This was a single set of rails, along which were stretched out all the nations on earth, some ahead by the locomotive, some behind. With the direction of history clearly delineated by Fukuyama it was a small step for the Neocons to urge the U.S. government to accelerate the historical processes by direct intervention.  When this ended in the ill-fated invasion of Iraq, Fukuyama jumped ship and quit the movement.  But he never went very far away, and he is called upon even today as an expert in international affairs to comment on the disaster awaiting Putin from his war on Ukraine. That was the main topic of his interview last week on the BBC’s Hard Talk show. Very clever people like Fukuyama walk away from train wrecks unscathed.

Zbigniew Brezinski is now long dead (2017) but his voice is still heard. In the past several weeks many of our news commentators cite the passage in Brzezinski’s best-selling book, Grand Chessboard (1997), in which he explains the decisive importance of Ukraine in Russia’s retaining or losing its standing as a European empire. Of course, there is a great deal more in that book than the two lines cited today. It encapsulated an entire world view that was deeply anti-Russian just as Brzezinski’s career had been when he moved from his university professorship to become Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor.

Brzezinski was the author of the plan to lure the Soviet Union into an invasion of Afghanistan in December1979 and then to provide U.S. support to the Islamic warriors fighting the USSR, which, in the long run wore down the Soviet state and contributed to its demise.  There are many in Washington who are hoping for similar results from American support to the Ukrainians in their war with Russia, another war which the USA largely engineered.

Brzezinski’s name was not mentioned in the many obituaries for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who died last week. However, he had been her mentor during her university studies and they remained in close contact when she rose to high office. Brzezinski accepted an assignment from Albright to assist plans to build oil and gas pipelines from Central Asia to Europe, skirting the territory of the Russian Federation, with intent to reduce Russian revenues from and control over global hydrocarbons.

It would be no exaggeration to say that Brzezinski’s anti-Russian views were imbibed with his mother’s milk. Though it is considered bad form in American political life to draw attention to birth, ethnicity, and the like, there were at the time of his appointment as National Security Adviser a number of serious professionals who questioned the wisdom of appointing a Polish patriot, son of a Polish diplomat, to participate in high level decision making involving policy towards Russia given the several centuries of bad blood between these countries and peoples.

Henry Kissinger’s writings were surely the most difficult to master.  He graduated from Harvard a summa cum laude and you feel it. When I was writing my analysis of his master work Diplomacy (1994)  I went to the amazon.com page for the book and looked over reader comments, seeking to capture the vox populi. One comment stood out:  “He writes very well for a war criminal.”

Indeed it was a widely held view in the past that Kissinger spent the second half of his life atoning for the sins of the first half. His role in prosecuting the ugly, criminal war in Viet Nam was the main sin of the past. From the 1990s on, it was assumed that Kissinger acted as one of the “sage men” giving perspective and insights to those making foreign policy, including presidents.  And when he is quoted today, it is common to point to his statements after 2008 advising against extending NATO membership to Ukraine.  However, this is to ignore what he did and said in the 1990s.  Kissinger and Brzezinski both testified on Capitol Hill in the 1994-1996 period when America reached a decision on NATO expansion and on relations with the Russian Federation going forward.  Back then Kissinger had been strongly opposed to including Russia in NATO, even opposed to including Russia in the very diluted Partnership for Peace program. NATO had to be sacrosanct. 

In 2008, when the United States and Russia edged towards war over Russia’s incursion into Georgia in August, Kissinger was a leading player in the group of senior statesmen who put together a paper on how to restart relations with Moscow.  The paper was delivered to Barack Obama’s campaign team and was implemented in early 2009 as the “Re-set.”  However, that plan in fact did not question the givens of U.S. global hegemony and only called for improved rhetoric when dealing with the Kremlin.  This scarcely qualifies Kissinger for credits to offset his past sins.

Kissinger has been blessed with longevity.  Next month he will be a featured speaker at a big public event hosted by The Financial Times.  We may expect him to hold forth on the Ukraine crisis.  For readers of my Great Post-Cold War American Thinkers, it will be hard to hold back the jeers.

Finally, I wish to mention here Samuel Huntington, a political scientist who is less remembered today than the first three above, but whose vision of the present and the future set out in his Clash of Civilizations (1996) had a great influence on the thinking about the world in a whole generation of Americans and others around the globe.

Huntington’s book became a best seller after the September 11^th bombing of the World Trade Center. The author appeared to foresee the titanic struggle between the West and Islamic terror, and everyone was keen to read him.  But the book was not limited to the conflict with Islam. Huntington had a full set of “civilizations” that were supposedly jostling for position. Among them, we find Eastern Orthodoxy, of which Russia is the outstanding case. In this regard, the work remains relevant to today.

That said, Clash of Civilizations was a rather shoddy work which owed a great deal to Arnold Toynbee’s Study of History for the overall concept and to Huntington’s young research assistants for the many scenarios that make up the bulk of the book.

I recalled the half-baked ideas of those young researchers who lacked any worldly experience when I exchanged emails this morning with my good friend Ray McGovern and he asked for my thoughts on a recent interview given by MIT professor emeritus Ted Postol. Postol was lambasting the young “punks” who seem to populate the ranks of advisers to Joe Biden.  What Postol missed is that exactly kids like these were always doing the grunt work in political science.  Lots of creativity, zero competence. They were surely the kind of folks who said in 2008 to let Lehman go under, because it would have a salutary effect on risk-taking by speculators. They were ignorant of the disasters that lay ahead then, just as those formulating the sanctions policy against Russia today are ignorant of the blowback to come.

Of course, no nation has a monopoly on stupidity and ignorance of economics. The European Union “leadership” is doing its best to hold up its end in this regard. If three days from now the EU member states follow the stern instructions of Gauleiter vonder Leyen and reject the Russian demand to pay for their gas in rubles purchased on the domestic Russian market, then economic mayhem will follow. That damned fool, a gynecologist by education, is telling the whole EU what to do in a vital area of commerce. Her position amounts to an unbelievable usurpation of powers by a warmonger.

The West is pointed straight down, like that Boeing 737 that crashed in China last week. Straight down and accelerating.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Dear Sir:

I assume that even in these very eventful days you had the time to remark the prisoner exchange newly agreed between the Ukrainian and Russian authorities.  If these mortal enemies were able to summon up the courage and humane feelings required to do the right thing on behalf of their own and the enemy’s soldiers, what I am about to propose to you will be both less onerous for you and far more rewarding for humanity in general than what is transpiring in the Ukrainian-Russian exchange.

My suggestion to you is to offer to exchange Julian Assange for Alexei Navalny. Such an exchange would support your political views, win you new supporters at home and abroad and add a dollop of humanity to our war crazed world. In Europe, in the Americas you alone have within your grasp a political prisoner of the international renown sufficient to entice the Kremlin to agree to part with Mr. Navalny.

You are by far the leading warrior in Europe against the “Putin regime.”  For years now you have fought by all means fair and foul to achieve regime change and remove Vladimir Putin from power.  I am appealing to your better side to act fairly in pursuit of your political objectives.

By achieving the release of Navalny, you will give hope to those who support his cause inside and outside of Russia.  The simultaneous release of Assange will remove from the U.K. a source of embarrassment and an unnecessary headache.  Let him enjoy his freedom on Red Square and share a cappuccino with Edward Snowde n.

Putting aside for a moment your self-interest in following my recommendation, your noble act will save two tortured souls from serving out years of imprisonment that are vastly disproportionate to their alleged misdeeds.  It is high time to relegate Iron Mask justice to its historic place in the distant past and to show humane mercy that corresponds to our occasionally enlightened age.

Respectfully,

Gilbert Doctorow

P.S. – I urge all readers who share my thinking on this issue to petition Mr. Johnson in their own name directly.

Directly confrontational U.S. and Russian narratives on the threat of weapons of mass destruction being deployed in Ukraine

One of the main issues on the agenda of NATO’s urgent summit yesterday in Brussels called by U.S. President Joe Biden was the threat that Russia will use weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine out of frustration with its stalled assault on the country for lack of manpower and sufficient conventional armaments.

 In his speech, which was partially aired on European television, Biden directed particular attention to the risk of chemical attack in Ukraine, which he said would elicit a response ‘in kind,’ without elaborating. Meanwhile, today’s Financial Times quotes NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg as follows:  the Alliance had now activated its chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear defense elements.  Per the FT:

“We are taking measures both to support Ukraine and to defend ourselves,” [Stoltenberg] told reporters at the summit in Brussels on Thursday, adding that Nato was concerned by Russia’s rhetoric regarding chemical and nuclear weapons and its history of using chemical agents against its enemies, as well as its support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, where chemical weapons had been used.”

These are very serious allegations and merit a minute or two of semantic and factual parsing before we proceed.

First, there is today no Russian ‘rhetoric’ at all regarding its own planned use of chemical and nuclear weapons in the Ukrainian theater.  They have mentioned chemical weapons only with respect to an expected ‘false flag’ operation which the Ukrainian nationalists may carry out by releasing into the atmosphere toxic chemicals stored in one or another Ukrainian factory so as to blame advancing Russian forces for an “attack.” One such incident was already reported on Russian news in the past week, though the ammonia leaks were quickly repaired and there was no harm to nearby Ukrainian villagers.

With respect to Russia’s supposed “history of using chemical agents against its enemies,” we can well imagine that the author had in mind the Novichok poisoning of the Skripals and of Alexei Navalny or the polonium poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko several years ago.  These cases were proven only in the court of public opinion thanks to heavy pressure on the media from the British government.  There is good reason to suppose that they were all MI6 operations intended to discredit the Russian government, not actual Russian attacks. Similarly the supposed chemical attacks on his opponents by al-Assad were very likely ‘false flag’ operations by one or another Jihadi group aided by Western intelligence operatives.

But let us put these contentious issues aside for a moment and ask whether the Russians have any reason whatsoever to resort to weapons that violate all international conventions for the sake of victory in their Ukraine campaign. On the basis of available information about the state of the fighting, rumored losses of personnel and depletion of conventional weapons, there are no reasons for such action by the Russians.  All evidence suggests that the Russian campaign has been conducted so far with a view to reducing civilian deaths to a minimum.  The UN agency responsible for monitoring such things has reported a little over 2,000 deaths in the first month of the Russian military operation. This is absolutely miniscule for a campaign of this magnitude. U.S. forces inflicted hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths in their own operations in Iraq in 2003 at this stage in the fighting. Moreover, the recent slowdown in the Russian offensive may be little more than a regrouping for continued assault when fresh reserves and equipment arrive.  The heaviest fighting, in Mariupol, appears to be headed for total Russian victory in a matter of days, despite the city having been held by the fanatical nationalist Azov battalion in addition to substantial regular army units. Chechen forces deployed in Mariupol yesterday claimed to have taken the municipal government buildings and to control a large part of the city. Once Mariupol is secure, the large Russian contingent besieging the city will likely be moved north to facilitate encirclement and destruction of the main Ukrainian military force encamped west of the line of demarcation with Donbas.

One further sign that supposed Russian setbacks of a scale that would give rise to drastic change in their conduct of the war is nothing more than a bare-faced lie was the remark by Biden in answer to a journalist’s question at yesterday’s press conference in NATO headquarters.  Would the United States agree to Ukraine’s making territorial concessions to Russia for the sake of a cease-fire and peace?  Said Biden, that decision is entirely up to the Kiev authorities.  The remark is as good as confirmation that Ukraine is losing the war and will have to sue for peace.

If I am correct and there is no factual or logical basis to assume that the Russians will deploy internationally prohibited weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine, then why all the noise about it? To answer that question, you have to turn to Russian media. 

Yesterday’s Russian television broadcasts give you the answer. Programming was filled with one dominant issue:  the documentary evidence that Russian military investigators have found in their seizure of biological laboratories in Ukraine financed by the Pentagon and curated by Americans.  The Russians are asserting that these labs were being used to conduct internationally prohibited development of biological weapons.  They provide details on the various toxins produced there and on human experiments, including on Ukrainian soldiers, resulting in multiple fatalities and hospitalizations. The documents and other evidence were shown on the screen quickly, but I have no doubt that they will be properly published in the days ahead. 

Perhaps most damaging in the present U.S. – Russian confrontation which has become so personalized on the two presidents is that the Russians are publicizing documents showing that Joe’s son Hunter was directly involved in the work of the criminal biological labs through a company of his that operated in Ukraine during the presidency of Barack Obama.

If true, then the Biden family is up to its neck in criminal activity and yesterday’s Public Relations push against Russia over weapons of mass destruction is just a smoke screen to conceal the real culprits.

By the way, the second featured item on Russian television yesterday was ceremonies in Belgrade to mark the anniversary of the two month NATO aerial bombardment of the Serbian capital that began on this day in 1999 and resulted in over 4,000 civilian deaths, including from use of uranium based bombs, and the destruction of most of the civil infrastructure of the city. Russian television showed a video of Biden, then a U.S. Senator, calling for this massive attack, which the Russians, alongside the Serbs, consider to have been a war crime.

I have in recent weeks spoken of the Russian and Western media reporting on the Ukraine war as ‘parallel worlds.’  Regrettably, I was wrong. They are, in fact, converging lines and when they meet there will be hell to pay.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Three days ago I wrote about the remarkable “Statement- Ukraine” that the world renowned Queen Elisabeth Musical Competition posted on its website recently.  I praised the directors of the Competition for their courage and eloquence in defending humanistic values against the rampant Russophobia that has shown its ugly face at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, at the Munich Symphony Orchestra, to name the two institutions which were among the first to fire Russian artists in a show of self-righteous indignation at Russian foreign policy. Meanwhile, the same mass hypnosis seems to have deprived leaders of the Parisian cultural world of their wits as well.  

With regard to the Queen Elisabeth Competition, I pointed to its royal patronage as a factor in its holding true to its values and resistance to the volatility of mass politics.  For that very reason, the extraordinary decisions taken now on repertoire and the explanation of its choices by the management of the Brussels opera, the 300 year old Théâtre de la Monnaie, merit our very close attention.  After all, the opera house is a federal institution and everything that it rolled out in its press briefing yesterday could not have happened without the tacit or more likely explicit approval of the respective ministry that funds the opera.

The statement read out to journalists yesterday by the Monnaie’s Intendant Peter De Caluwe is a bit over 1,000 words long.  My first thought was to provide excerpts here. But then upon re-reading  the piece, it was clear that it is so logically interwoven that taking separate phrases will not do justice to the logic of the author.

Although the briefing for the “musical press” of Belgium was conducted, as is the custom, in alternating French and Flemish segments, Mr. De Caluwe chose to deliver his statement on the new season’s rationale in English, making it perfectly accessible to the world at large without any intermediary translations.

Readers will note that the speaker denounces several times the Russian military intervention or invasion of Ukraine.  That is not a judgment I share. However, opinions can differ on such matters, and the opera, as a federal institution has to be aligned with the government on that issue, which I would call here a ‘subsidiary issue.’  The overriding issue is the purpose of music and of the arts in our society. This is a subject that was always foremost in the thinking of the Intendant  during his long tenure. Year after year he has gone hat in hand to the government for funding and had to justify the social utility of the institution and not merely declare ‘art for art’s sake.’   In his statement explaining the repertoire choices of the new season, Mr. De Caluwe is exemplary.  I can only wish that his words reach the broadest possible audience across the world. This is a message of sanity in our insane times.

                                                                                ****

                                                      Peter de Caluwe

Two years ago, we presented the BREX-IN season, which emphasized links with British culture. In a similar vein, are now proposing a totally unplanned-for season in which Russian titles feature more prominently than ever. We are aware that this programming might well raise questions and perhaps even trigger discussion or dismay. We have nevertheless decided to run with what was planned, or rather, what has become a cluster of Russian titles to be performed in one and the same season as a result of the COVID pandemic preventing us from performing them according to the original schedule. So while the cluster was not intentional, it provides us with an unexpected opportunity to endorse our intrinsic mission: to unite, federate and build bridges between people.

I consider our house to be an anti-war and pro-peace institution, as borne out by our position in the heart of the capital of Europe, by our purpose, our programming, our leadership style and our way of working. Our model is one of harmony, not conflict. This constitutes our moral base and there is a greater need than ever to defend it. We are therefore taking a clear stand on this matter: strong towards those who are responsible, supportive towards those who are suffering, empathic towards those who are caught in the middle.

WE ARE HERE TO MAKE ART, NOT WAR.

La Monnaie strongly condemns the devastating aggression of Ukraine by the Russian regime and expresses its solidarity with the populations who are suffering the terrible consequences of this unnecessary war: first and foremost, the Ukrainian people and Ukraine’s artists. It is our responsibility as citizens to do everything within our power to help bring about a peaceful future based on the humanist values at the core of our European societies.

We also express our support for those artists who are committed to peace and who oppose, each in their own way and with great courage, this unacceptable aggression. We subscribe to the statement of Opera Europa and its members in that we “believe that there are many artists and institutions within Russia that are experiencing profound concern, disapproval and shame at what is happening, but dare not speak out for fear of savage retaliation…. We endorse the words published by Ukrainian artists and cultural activists: ‘Art has always been at the forefront of humanitarian values. We strongly believe that art cannot be subservient to political propaganda; instead it should be utilized to develop critical thinking and promote dialogue.’”

Though we cannot emphasize enough that we do not understand the motivations of the aggressors, we do believe that Russian culture is part of our shared heritage. European arts, literature, cinema and music will always be connected to Russian culture, which has inspired some of the most eloquent works on our shared continent. We cannot erase history. Indeed, great and immortal artworks confront us with ourselves>bring us face to face with ourselves? and with our own time. With our mistakes, too, and how to avoid them. It is clear to us, therefore, that the Russian repertoire should not be banned and that we must continue to perform it.

So the current conflict has not tempted us to make changes to our programming. Especially as the two composers, whose operatic and symphonic work is at the core of our season, have been victims of previous Russian regimes. We cannot contemplate punishing them again for their opinions, which defended the same values we are trying to protect now.

DURING OUR NEXT SEASON, RUSSIAN AND UKRAINIAN ARTISTS WILL BE WORKING TOGETHER, ALONGSIDE MANY OTHER NATIONALITIES.

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was often accused of being too Westernized, and therefore not Russian enough. Yet in his two operas we are presenting next season, he provides insight into the poetic Slavic soul which, combined with Pushkin’s libretti, is so reminiscent of our European literature… Dmitri Shostakovich suffered greatly under the Communist regime. He was constantly being told how he should function as an artist. He reacted by closing himself off from the world and wrote music permeated with subtlety and criticism of the system from which he could not escape. Hence his tortured decision later on in his career to join the Community party. Neither composer turned his back on his country but tried to walk the fine line between acknowledging the regime and rejecting it. They were Russians, but they were first and foremost humanists. They themselves suffered enough under the political conditions of their time. Their works should not be banned once more just because a dictator has lost his senses.

Throughout its history, La Monnaie has been a stronghold of encounters and openness through the shared experience of music and theatre. Artists from all backgrounds have been able to meet here in a welcoming and creative atmosphere. I do not believe that banning Russian artists from our theatres will bring us any closer to peace. The aggression against Ukraine by a violent regime should not hinder nor put a stop to our collaboration with an artistic community that is committed to peace and to the shared European values.

Culture and the arts remain some of the best recipes for creating solidarity, understanding and harmony between people, regardless of nationality. Of course, artists and institutions that openly support Vladimir Putin’s actions will not be welcome at La Monnaie. We expect artists performing in our house to defend our shared values. At the same time, we cannot force Russian artists who oppose their culpable leadership to make statements that might endanger their safety and security or that of their families. This would not be an act of solidarity. The answer to war should be cultural cooperation, not cultural exclusion.

Even more importantly, I have always defended opera as the best example of collaborative work: so many male and female artists, technicians, artisans, etc. from every corner of the world working side by side on a production. No fewer than thirty-eight nationalities have permanent jobs at La Monnaie. Add to that the large number of international guest artists and it is clear that we play the card of multinational and multicultural cohabitation and collaboration.

During our next season, Russian and Ukrainian artists will be working alongside many other nationalities. It is the responsibility of our institutions to continue to engage collaborators and artists regardless of nationality so as to show the world just what can be achieved by bringing together people, communities, generations and cultures. Art is and remains the domain of freedom, exchange, understanding and humanism.

We are here to make art, not war.

Peter de Caluwe

https://www.lamonnaiedemunt.be/en/mmm-online/2363-a-russian-season

I had not given much thought to the verdict handed down yesterday on Alexei Navalny following his conviction for large scale financial fraud relating to the 2018 presidential elections.  As I understand the case, Navalny was accused of continuing to solicit and receive public contributions to his electoral campaign for President well after his candidacy had been disqualified by the authorities.  Presumably he diverted the incoming funds to his own pocket or reassigned them to his various political activities.

The trial has, of course, been condemned in the West as a sham, as one more high visibility indication of the ongoing domestic repression practiced by the Putin regime, a repression of all opposition figures in the context  of an unpopular war in Ukraine to maintain political stability at all costs.

Let me say up front that I have never found Navalny a worthy cause for freedom fighters. He is an obnoxious character who has in the past espoused racist and ultra-nationalist views which would place him more appropriately among the backers of the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev than in the Russian Federation. At the same time, I see disproportionality between the financial crimes for which he has been tried and the latest sentence of 9 years of further imprisonment under conditions that are more harsh than what he has been serving for defrauding the French manufacturer Yves Rocher. The net effect will be to cut him off from the outside world and ensure he is properly silenced.

The Western press calls the trial and sentencing a sham.  Sham it may be, but that is beside the point. Navalny is paying the price not for the given financial frauds but for the much bigger crime of sedition, for which he was never punished properly going back to the clearest evidence of his call for overthrow of the government during the December 2011 big demonstrations in Moscow over alleged irregularities in the Duma elections.  Specifically he called upon the masses before him to march to the Kremlin and put “the people” in power.

The revolutionary moment passed with the new year 2012 and Navalny pursued his wrecking operation more discretely but always with the same purpose:  to shatter the aura of respectability around the government leadership and to try to prove by real or fake videos and other documentation that Putin and everyone around him were crooks.  The logic of such defamation is always the same: overturning the legitimately elected authorities by mass action, or, if nothing better is available, by voter turnout of irate (if misled) citizens.

The legal treatment or mistreatment of Navalny in his trials for financial fraud are the Russian version of the most widespread procedure in the United States for putting Mafioso behind bars.  They are almost never tried for murder, causing physical harm in shakedowns or similar activities which they, of course, practice with abandon.  Jury trials for such crimes would face enormous obstacles of evidence gathering from the omerta, the sworn silence within and around the criminal world.  Instead, mafia figures are put away for years if not decades on charges of perjury or of tax evasion which are much easier for the federal authorities to document beyond any reasonable doubt.

Navalny’s sentencing comes against the background of an evident government crackdown on the more diffuse sedition that has just been denounced by the President as Fifth Column activities. Yes, part of this crackdown has been the long-awaited closing down of radio station Ekho Moskvy and television (internet) broadcaster Dozhd. These stations had been deeply resented by patriotic Russian elites for their editorial lines discrediting the country and its leadership at every turn. Ekho Moskvy had been financed by a Gazprom subsidiary for the sake of giving the Liberal loudmouths a place to let off steam. But that policy was no longer tenable under conditions of the present life-or-death struggle of Russia versus the U.S.-led Collective West which has the name of the Russia-Ukraine War.   Meanwhile, the opposition print outlet Novaya Gazeta has been issued with a formal warning by the media monitor. Nobel Prize in the pocket of its editor or no, that newspaper may very well be forced to shut down in the weeks ahead.

Does the crackdown on free speech mean that Russia is on the path to Soviet style totalitarianism? Of course, the answer is “no.” The state broadcasters still air divergent views on panel discussions. Nearly all global news providers are accessible throughout Russia via satellite or cable subscriptions. And by general agreement, the internet remains largely open to the world. The exceptions, bans on social networks like Facebook, have been brought down on their heads by the flagrant challenges to Russian sensibilities of their top management by allowing messages calling for the death of Russians to be posted on their platforms.

Navalny was treated with great indulgence back in 2011 when he openly engaged in sedition. That was still a time when Russia tried hard to adhere to rules of Liberal Democracy which states in the West were often disregarding without “consequences.”  Remember that in virtually the same time frame, Occupy Wall Street, a seditious movement in the United States, was brutally crushed by police measures. Demonstrators in New York who were swept up and taken to prison for interrogation were threatened with years of deprivation of liberty for their very minor infractions of civic order. You needed a good lawyer to get out of this trap, as I heard at the time from some relatives living in New York who fell into police hands.

Today is a different day in Russia from 2011, and the limitations placed on the personal liberties of Russians result directly from the enormous pressure being applied on Russia economically, politically and militarily by the U.S.-led West. Personal freedoms everywhere in the world do well in conditions of peace and prosperity; they wilt in conditions of war and belt-tightening. ©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

My harvest of impressions from the past 48 hours of monitoring Russian political talk shows and news bulletins of Russian state television is filled to the brim with both highly interesting and at times frightening and off-putting developments. 

The most momentous is perhaps what I just saw 15 minutes ago on the latest edition of Время покажет (Time Will Tell), a talk show I know from the inside having twice been a panelist there in 2016-2017. The program opened with mention of the forthcoming European visit of Joe Biden which has two cities on its itinerary:  Brussels for the next regular G7 and NATO gatherings, and….Warsaw.

Why Warsaw? The presenter notes that this meeting with the Polish leadership might be linked with the planned visit of President Duda to Washington next week. But then she moves on to link it was another announcement made yesterday by the US envoy to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. In the video recording of Thomas-Greenfield projected onto the screen, the envoy tells us that while the United States has no intention of sending any military personnel to Ukraine, any member country of NATO has the right to do so on its own.

This matches up nicely with the latest Polish government thoughts aloud to the effect that it might just move some troops across the Ukrainian border to secure its own eastern flank. In this way, the Poles would be doing no more than the Turks have done in Syria, where they still are parked in the predominantly Kurdish sector of the country in violation of international law.

 Meanwhile, per the talk show presenter, Hungary has already said it will not consider any clash with Russia resulting from forces sent by any NATO member state to Ukraine as justifying action under the famous NATO Alliance clause 5 of “all for one and one for all.” In other words, per the management of Time Will Tell, a little and probably very short lived Russo-Polish war will follow. Complete defeat of Warsaw is foreseen, even if it would take longer than the 2 days projected by the Polish army command itself not long ago; longer because so much Russian armed strength is presently committed to holding down Ukraine. As the presenter joked, this might mean the end of Polish statehood…

A bit earlier today, the latest edition of Большая игра (The Great Game) hosted by Vyacheslav Nikonov also was full of interesting commentary.  Over the past several years, Nikonov proved his talent for leading public discussions of the most serious topics in US-Russian relations with some of the best minds in Russia. His program today was one more demonstration that The Great Game has moved ahead to rank above Vladimir Solovyov’s talk show in terms of intellectual content.  Like the above mentioned Time Will Tell, The Great Game uses video clips of Biden and other U.S. and Western leaders as the starting point for discussions.  I mention this by way of answer to the several readers of my essays who could not imagine that Russian state television disseminates more than the official Kremlin point of view.  In fact, the views of the foreign adversary are given extensive airing before they are demolished by Russian experts.

In today’s show, the American views to be demolished were those of the President and of the Pentagon commenting on Russia’s use this past week of its hypersonic missile Kinzhal to attack a military target in Ukraine.  President Biden was quoted as saying that he saw nothing special about the Kinzhal other than speed, that its warheads were the common variety.  The Pentagon was quoted as saying that the Russians “appear” to have fired their Kinzhal in Ukraine, which would be a wasted effort for the given target.

 Nikonov’s guests pointed out that the target of the first Kinzhal strike was a “nuclear attack hardened” structure 60 meters underground and protected by reinforced concrete dating from Soviet days. Inside this bunker were Ukrainian missiles and other munitions of high value.  In other words, thanks to the incredible energy of mass and speed, the Kinzhal using what they characterized as one of its weaker potential conventional, as opposed to tactical nuclear charges could destroy a target otherwise considered protected against a nuclear armed ICBM.  Nothing special about this weapon system, eh?

Meanwhile, some of the Russian state programming these days is awful in the thesaurus meaning of ‘extremely disturbing or repellant.’  The latest edition of 60 Минут  (Sixty Minutes) with Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva took a strong stomach to sit through. To be sure, the repellant material on the screen is coming from Ukrainian state television and includes the following: first, the televised statements of a Ukrainian government representative addressed to the wives and fiancées of Russian airmen, warning them that they will soon be widows, that Ukrainian forces will follow them to the ends of the earth to take revenge for their role in the current war, that they will be killed while vacationing on the beaches of Turkey, etc., and second, the televised address of the head of a Ukrainian medical institution telling the doctors under him to castrate any Russian prisoners of war who come their way, because they are not people but cockroaches.  Add to this the testimony of escapees from Mariupol who describe the methods of torture and disfiguration inflicted on them by the Nazi battalions in the city.  The source material is full of hate, and the airing on Russian state television also is not innocent: it has the clear purpose of inciting hatred for Ukrainians among the television viewers and so to prepare them for the much more cruel conduct of the war that Russia is likely about to implement, given that its human resources are insufficient to further prosecute the war quickly under the gentlemanly rules observed up till now.  To be specific, the Russians may switch over to the “American Way of War” out of necessity, meaning use of carpet bombing to ‘neutralize’ the Ukrainian forces, both regular army and nationalist battalions just to the west of the line of demarcation. 

The objective of a new and vicious though completely ‘legal’ attack on the Ukrainian troop concentrations will be in line with the recommendations of Clausewitz, who obviously enjoys great respect in the Kremlin: namely to win a war by destruction of armies, not by capturing cities.  Thus, it is very likely that Kiev will never be conquered, that the regime will capitulate because it has no more fighters in the field to resist the Russian presence.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

Today’s New York Times “Morning Briefing” distributed by email opens with:

Mariupol refuses to surrender

Residents of Mariupol, Ukraine, braced for renewed attacks after the Ukrainian government rejected Russia’s ultimatum to surrender the besieged and ravaged southern port city. Efforts to reach hundreds of thousands of people trapped there remained fraught with danger

Let us note the contradiction between the headline and the body of the report. It was not the city that refused to surrender but the government of Zelensky in Kiev that did so, even knowing the consequence will be continued suffering and death of the civilian population in the time it takes the Russian forces to “neutralize” the kamikaze Ukrainian militants entrenched in secure hide-outs they have built up over the past eight years. These include underground passages in the city’s many heavy industry manufacturing sites. The militants are still holding more than 100,000 residents hostage and shooting anyone trying to use the humanitarian corridors opened to them by the Russians. This we know from Russian television interviews with arriving refugees from Mariupol who managed to evade their Ukrainian captors by car or on foot. The mopping-up operation is likely to go on for more than a week to come, according to the Donbas military command, which is in charge of the task.

Further down the “Morning Briefing” we find the following:

Kyiv: A missile strike — one of the most powerful explosions to hit the Ukrainian capital since the invasion began — turned a once-bustling shopping mall into a smoldering ruin. Russian forces are aiming artillery, rockets and bombs at civilian as well as military targets, after failing to quickly seize control of Ukraine’s major cities.

Note:  “once bustling shopping mall”.  Here the attentive reader can smell a rat. The propagandist author is speaking about the complex’s function as a commercial hub in the past tense, because he/she knows that it had ceased to be commercial and became a military operations center in time present, and was therefore perfectly acceptable as a target for Russian attack.  All of this is confirmed by the death toll that other mainstream media attribute to the Russian strike:  8 dead.

It is most interesting that this morning’s broadcast of BBC World News presents footage of the proofs from the Russian military command which the official spokesman General Igor Konashenkov showed yesterday on Russian state television:  a reconnaissance drone capturing the arrival and departure of a Ukrainian military vehicle at the shopping center. Today’s BBC report directly acknowledges sotto voce that the center was being used for military purposes.

Lest the reader think that the BBC news writers have just become “agents of Putin,” the fact remains that BBC and other Western reporting retains its absolute blackout on a major feature of current Russian news reporting: the daily devastation and deaths in the Donbas republics of Donetsk and Lugansk caused by Ukrainian artillery and missile strikes from across the line of demarcation. The scenes of artillery strikes on hospitals and residential buildings in Donbas are a mirror image of what we are shown on the BBC and similar in Kiev and other major Ukrainian cities.  Just as in Mariupol, the Ukrainian combatants adjacent to the Donbas are in well fortified positions that they have created over the past eight years in anticipation of this show-down and it may take carpet bombing to destroy them. But that is the subject of another essay I will issue later today.

Nor, to my knowledge, has the BBC or any other mainstream media outlet shown other proofs on Russian television that the supposed bombing damage of the theater in downtown Mariupol was a ‘false flag’ operation prepared by Ukrainian propagandists who had herded the civilians into the bomb shelter basement before blowing up the superstructure and laying the blame at the Russian attackers.

****

 We see the same kind of miniscule death toll from destruction of multistory apartment buildings in Ukrainian cities. In those cases, too, it attests to the fact that the civilian functions of the structures had been replaced by purely military use, meaning for embedding artillery and other strike weapons to attack Russian forces.  All of this belies President Biden’s characterization of Russian military conduct as amounting to “war crimes” by its indiscriminate attack on civilian targets. Indeed, to my knowledge, such use of civilian structures to embed combatant units is itself an egregious war crime under the rubric ‘use of human shields.’

Finally, I note that the American ambassador in Moscow was yesterday called to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to receive written warning that Russia will sever diplomatic relations with the United States if Biden does not retract his words.  The threat is very likely to be implemented, though only after the President’s visit to Brussels ends later this week.  Surely the Russians do not want their cutting diplomatic ties with the United States to result in simultaneous, knee-jerk reaction of European leaders, resulting in severance of ties with all of Europe.  However, that cannot be excluded at this point, when Europe is plotting to stop taking delivery of all Russian hydrocarbons, suicidal as this may be for the economies of the Old Continent.

The old saying that “those whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad” is coming to pass in the capitals of Europe. Anyone who questions my judgment would be wise to watch the video of a high quality analysis of the economic disaster to come as a result of the incompetence of European decision makers with regard to the sanctions they are imposing: “Charles Gave magistral sur les sanctions contre la Russie : ‘C’est l’Europe qui va s’effondrer!’”    –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4fvsFnzg4A&feature=youtu.be

 (received courtesy of Eric Dissy on my LinkedIn account).

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

The other day I read a remarkable article detailing the cowardly and despicable actions taken by many of the world’s leading houses of symphonic music and opera to remove Russian artists and even Russian composers from their repertoire as indignant protest to the Russian military action in Ukraine.

We all have heard how Peter Gelb at The Metropolitan Opera fired soprano Anna Netrebko for refusing to sign a denunciation of Putin and the war.  We all have heard how the Munich Philharmonic fired its principal guest conductor Valery Gergiev on the same grounds. However, few among us have heard or read about the widespread exclusion of Russian musicians, including great talents who have newly arrived on the concert circuit. This blight is especially common in the USA and Canada, though it appears elsewhere as far afield as Australia.  Moreover, concert programs are being modified to suppress Tchaikowsky and substitute for him works by Mussorgsky which for some trivial reason would seem to pass the political correctness test. In fact, as the author of this article explains in a master stroke of musicology, the substitutions only reveal the music-historical ignorance of the given philharmonic society administrators.

To understand the current Russophobia in the music world in its full dimensions, I enthusiastically recommend “Denounce Putin, or Be Blacklisted” by Heather Mac Donald. See https://www.city-journal.org/classical-music-cancels-russians

Against this grim background, I am delighted to share some good news:  not everyone in the cultural world has lost his way morally. In some places, values hold the line against mass hysteria.  I am still more pleased to say that little Belgium leads the way in this happy development.

I direct your attention to the “Statement – Ukraine” page on the website of the Queen Elisabeth Musical Competition:   https://concoursreineelisabeth.be/fr/actualites/statement-ukraine/

In the middle of the screen are two paragraphs which merit translation in full:

“From its origins, the statutes of the Competition state clearly that ‘no ideological, linguistic, political, religious or racial motive can justify the rejection of a candidacy.’ All young artists will thus be welcome, whatever their nationality.

“In these troubled times, when some people do not hesitate to use the arts and culture for nationalist and warlike purposes, we believe on the contrary that the arts must continue to rally humanity around universal values such as peace, justice and liberty.”

I cannot think of a more eloquent tribute to the humane legacy of the Queen Elisabeth competition, in keeping with the character of its royal founder Elisabeth of Bavaria, Queen of the Belgians. Apart from her lifelong devotion to music, which I will elaborate on in a moment, Queen Elisabeth is remembered for using her German connections to rescue hundreds of Jewish children from deportation by the Nazis. In this regard, she was later awarded the title Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli government (Wikipedia entry).

Regarding music, the Queen began as an amateur performer, but principally found expression of her artistic inclinations in promoting Belgium’s virtuoso violinist of the day, composer and conductor Eugène-Auguste Ysaye. Following his death, in 1936 she founded what was initially called a memorial competition in his honor; this later was renamed and given the name by which we know the competition today.

From its very founding, the Queen Elisabeth Musical Competition has had a close relationship with the Russian school of music making.  In 1937, the first year of the violin competition, the top prize went to David Oistrakh.  Later first prize winners in violin from the Soviet Union/Russia who made worldwide careers include Leonid Kogan (1951), Philippe Hirschhorn (1967) and Vadim Repin (1989). 

In piano, the top prize went to Emil Gilels during the first year of the competition (1938). Later Russian winners include Vladimir Ashkenazy (1956), Evgeny Mogilevsky (1964) and Andrei Nikolsky (1987).

Of course, with the passage of time, and especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991, deep depression in Russia during the 1990s and globalization of music studies and concertizing ever since, the Russian school is now just one of several major currents that we see on the stage of the Competition.

I wish to stress that the royal patronage of the Competition has been continued from the death of Queen Elisabeth in 1965 up to the present day, when Queen Mathilde is the lead personality from the monarchy whom we see in the royal box during performances in the final rounds, often accompanied by her children. More to the point, as we consider why and how the Competition’s administration could make the remarkable statement I cited above, the royal family has been involved in this Competition in an intensely personal manner, not just in a formal, protocol sense.

For several decades, King Baudouin’s spouse and then widow Fabiola brought her personality and commitment to the Competition.  She was especially moved by the genius of the Russian-Latvian-Jewish laureate of 1967, Philippe Hirschhorn, and remained a family friend until his untimely death at age 50, then continued to invite his widow to the palace from time to time until her own passing. I know of her generosity and solicitude first hand, since Philippe was also a close friend of our family in the 1990s.

My point in sharing these details is the following:  royal patronage sets the Queen Elisabeth Musical Competition apart from the likes of the Metropolitan Opera or the Munich Philharmonic. It is much better insulated from day to day politics than other cultural institutions in Belgium as well, dependent as they are on state funds to survive.

As a born American, I was till my arrival in Belgium instinctively unsympathetic to hereditary aristocracies and to monarchs. However, when the cause of the anciens régimes was set against bourgeois democracies in the 18^th century, defenders of monarchies argued the case of the hereditary head of state standing above day to day politics and not swayed by mob rule, not subject to the venality of the money changers in the temple.  Regrettably, those arguments comes back to haunt us today.

As one further remark on the enduring value of this monarchy in contemporary life of Belgium, I point to another institution which has the designation “royal” in its name:  Le Cercle Royal Gaulois Artistique & Littéraire of which I am proudly a member. I say “proudly” not so much because of the social prestige of this 175 year old establishment, but because this gentlemen’s club is an oasis of tolerance, free speech and free thinking in our modern age of polarization and dumbing-down. Surely it is not beside the point that so many of the members are in fact loyal monarchists, while a good many are actually in the service of the ruling house.  The Cercle may be situated just across the street from the Belgian parliament, and the deputies may be lunchtime guests of the club’s restaurant, but in terms of tolerance and broad thinking these institutions are worlds apart.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

In the past several weeks, I have been a guest panelist on television debates devoted to the war in Ukraine produced by what I would have considered in the past to be “exotic” broadcasters, including Iran, Turkey, India and Belarus. The technical level of these English language services addressing the world community are generally high. The style of these shows varies, from the very serious (Iran, Turkey) to the overdramatized and fever pitch (India). But these programs all have in common a commitment to delivering to their audiences a variety of opinions on the Russia-Ukraine war coming from experts based on several continents. In this regard they are a very welcome counterpoint to the cheerleading, fully consensual anti-Russian panels presented on British, American and other pioneers of the global news genre.

India  –  17 March 2022 – India Today TV

“Russia-Ukraine War: Is Putin A War Criminal?  Rajdeep Sardesai Speaks To Foreign Experts To Find Out”

 “Rajdeep Sardesai is joined by several experts from across the world to discuss the current situation of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. They also discuss if Russian President Vladimir Putin is a War criminal? “

“India Today TV is India’s leading English News Channel.” – 5.8 million subscribers

Note: as of yesterday evening, the show had 12,758 views.  One might conclude that the war is not at the top of interest for domestic subscribers and foreign visitors.

Although this video is interesting from start to finish, my turn at the microphone is at minute 17.26 – 21.30  and 24.06 – 25.03

Iran – 19 March 2022 – Press TV

“Russia, China demand answer from US on Ukraine’s biolabs”

www.urmedium.com/c/presstv/1066584

Notwithstanding the title of the program, the 10 minutes of discussion went in various directions. My virtual ‘partner’ as expert panelist was Vladimir Golstein, professor of Russian literature at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.

Those of you who followed the link on my essay of yesterday and watched the 10 minute interview with Kiev mayor Vitali Klitschko on TRT World’s “Newsmakers” program will surely agree that this high visibility Ukrainian politician is leading the remaining residents of the country’s capital and the broader population of Ukraine straight to disaster in the name of patriotic self-defense.

 I will not waste time here on Klitschko’s vicious lies about the Russian invaders, about their intentions, their deeds and so forth. In my own time at the microphone in the show, I argued that Klitschko’s rejection of any imposed return to the Soviet empire under Russian diktat is total nonsense. Russia has had enough of empire and control of Ukraine would only be an interminable drag on the Russian economy and political focus. The Russian motivation is just to rid Ukraine of NATO formations presently embedded, of NATO membership still projected by the Alliance, and of the neo-Nazi radicals who since 2014 have been the force behind the throne in the Kiev regime.

 My point here is to highlight the consequences of the determination of Klitschko and others in the Ukrainian government not to seek any compromises to end the fighting and to save what is left of their country at this point, before the Russians pursue their demolition work to its logical conclusion. If Kiev fails to raise the white flag, fails to negotiate a peace in good faith, the war will end with the civil and military infrastructure of Ukraine totally shattered, with the permanent mass emigration of millions, including the most able-bodied segments of the population, and with a decade or more of destitution for those unfortunate enough to remain.

Last night I received a note from one reader of my essays, who said that the war will not end with a treaty on Russia’s terms. Instead, aided and abetted by the United States and Europe, the Kiev leadership will launch an insurgency against the ‘occupiers’ and this will grow and become as painful and costly for Russia as anything the United States experienced in Afghanistan.

I do not deny that a Ukrainian insurgency is a plausible next phase to the war, especially given the irrational position on ‘compromises’ that we see in Klitschko’s interview. However, there are obvious ways for the Kremlin to respond so as to contain the risks to themselves.  To begin with, they can realize the threat Putin issued before the war began: to deprive Ukraine of its statehood.  Not entirely, but to deprive them of the state in the configuration that has existed since 1991.  This means to partition Ukraine, to hive off the territories west of Kiev and the Dnieper River, forming a land-locked rump state with its capital logically in Lviv, near the Polish frontier.

To use the language of the banking community, Russia would thereby create a ‘bad bank,’ containing the poisonous assets of Ukrainian radicalism, very few industrial or other major economic assets, and removed to a distance no longer threatening to Russia.   The ‘good bank’ would be central Ukraine, the territories east of the Dniepr River, which have a considerably larger population of Russian speakers, who should respond to Russia’s call to defend their own interests in the public life of the country and come out from the bullying they were subjected to by the nationalists over the past 8 years. This central Ukraine would receive back the Black Sea coast now occupied by the Russians and would enjoy the agricultural and other major economic assets that always defined Ukrainian prosperity. Presumably the Donbas republics would remain independent as the third part of a divided Ukraine. However, if central Ukraine is properly reconstituted with all due protection for minorities and with properly working federalism, there is no reason to exclude the possibility of the Donbas returning to the fold in the Ukraine east of the Dniepr. Their inclusion would greatly assist the balancing of language communities in the entire recombined state.

The aforementioned denouement is, of course, only one of many that may be floated in the weeks ahead as the Russians close their stranglehold on Ukraine’s main cities and bring closer the moment of truth, when the Ukrainian leadership has to decide whether or not to sue for peace on the victor’s terms.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022