For those whose first thoughts of Iran are formed by recollection of Ayatollahs, of alleged state support for terrorism and of power plays in the Middle East, allow me to give you a needed jolt.

Last night I had the pleasure of participating in a half-hour feature news program of Press TV, which broadcasts internationally in English and French.  The  subject of our “debate” or more properly speaking “discussion,” was  the U.S. diplomatic moves of the previous couple of days with respect to China (the Blinken delegation to Anchorage) and to Russia (President Biden’s designation of Vladimir Putin as a ‘killer’).

The producers had sagely invited for the interview an expert on China based in Budapest, Hungary and an expert on Russia, myself, based in Brussels.  I leave it to you to judge the quality of Iranian journalism that we see in the program. I will only remark that the choice of my counterpart was quite remarkable given that Iran was the host of our talk:  Mr. Szamuely very plainly is a strong supporter of Donald Trump, who had been fairly vicious in his treatment of Tehran during his four years in office. So be it.

In the USA, all politics is about one country only:  itself.  The Rest of the World is only a stage setting, a tableau against which American politicians posture and mud wrestle with one another.

The latest and perhaps most serious manifestation of this indifference to the fall-out of domestic political rhetoric on the world beyond US borders was President Biden’s response yesterday to a journalist’s question as to whether he considered Vladimir Putin to be a “killer.”  Without a moment’s hesitation, Biden said “yes.” He and the country at large may yet rue that pandering to his Democratic Party base and its Russophobe fantasies.

Our Western press did take note of that remark and looked for the Russian response, which was not long in coming.  The first shoe to drop was the decision of the Kremlin to recall its Ambassador in Washington to Moscow for consultations on how to proceed with bilateral relations, which appeared to be headed for the rocks. After all, the “killer” comment was only the unscripted part of an interview during which the President  said that Russia would soon be made to pay a price for alleged interference in the 2020 elections. All of this was duly picked up by our media. 

The second shoe to drop was the direct response by President Putin to the words of Biden. In a meeting with citizens in the Crimea, where he was joining local celebrations of the seventh anniversary of Crimea’s re-joining the Russian Federation, Putin said calmly and directly about the designation as “a killer”: “It takes one to know one.” He went on to magnanimously wish the American president “good health,” adding, “without any sense of irony.”

This is as much as your average reader of The Guardian or other mainstream press would know about the public spat between the White House and the Kremlin that Biden initiated gratuitously. That average Western reader would not be likely to watch domestic Russian state television to see how this whole affair is being played to the Russian public.  I do, and I use this opportunity to share with my readership what I saw there last night and today.

On one of the leading Russian political talk shows last night the subject was precisely the “killer” remark by Biden.  And the panelists were not just some lightweight commentators who chatter night after night on sundry subjects.  The panelist who was given the microphone most generously was none other than Petr Tolstoy, Deputy Chairman of the Russian State Duma and, since his election in 2020, Deputy Speaker in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, based in Strasbourg. Tolstoy denounced the Biden statement and discussed with the others how this would negatively impact on any chances for constructive joint work with the US administration in any domain whatsoever.

Today’s Russian news programs remain focused on the language used by Biden and what this means for future relations.  Russian news agencies are quoting other world leaders who have condemned Biden’s remarks as inappropriate as applied to a head of state. The most prominent leader to speak out so far is Turkey’s president Erdogan, who backed up his “colleague” Vladimir.

Biden’s vilification of Putin is just the latest and most damaging in a string of insults that go back to his time as Vice President under Barack Obama. Back then Biden had dared to call Putin “a thug.”  But he was only the Vice President and his boss, Barack, had also been pretty free in his personal attacks on the Russian leader, whom he described familiarly as behaving like a naughty boy at the back of the school room.

My point in closing is that this type of public insult directed against other world leaders is outrageous and demonstrates that Trump was not an aberration in his uncouth behavior towards Angela Merkel or Justin Trudeau, among others. Well-educated members of the US political class can be just as Ugly.  In their false sense of security as “untouchables,” American politicians are tempting fate. A less reserved and decent boss in the Kremlin might take off the gloves.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

Once again I am grateful to RT International for inviting me to do a live interview that forced me to put on my thinking cap and get my mind around a key development in international relations that might have not caught my attention were it not for their prompting me.

To be specific, I was invited to comment on Boris Johnson’s presentation to Parliament two days ago

of the 110 page paper entitled “Global Britain in a Competitive Age.”

That paper covers a lot of ground, but the Russian interest in it focused on one issue only: the designation of Russia as the UK’s chief security threat, while China, the other major power that otherwise has been characterized by the Collective West these past several years as being “revisionist” and “expansionist,” as well as a flagrant violator of our values, alongside Putin’s Russia, is designated in this paper merely as a “competitor.”

By their own report on the British foreign policy paper and by the nature of the questions tossed to me by the presenter, it was obvious that the policy line at RT is to hold Russia blameless and to deny that it is a security threat to the UK; to insist that Russia seeks only good relations with the UK and with the West generally.

I did not oblige, saying instead that I agreed with the British assessment regarding both Russia and China today.

It is a remarkable feature of RT that I was nonetheless allowed to continue uninterrupted my prepared statement on the significance of the “Global Britain” for what must have been a total of six or eight minutes.  This serious openness to unexpected, possibly even unwelcome commentary from experts abroad who are given the microphone would never, ever happen on CNN, Fox News, the BBC or any of the famous defenders of freedom of speech and freedom of the press in the West. Never.  Indeed the occasion would not present itself, since interviews of this kind in Western media are almost always pre-recorded and cut to fit the desired position of the hosts or simply suppressed if not deemed suitable.

Now, why had I reached my conclusion about the nature of relative threat to British security posed by Russia and China respectively. Here is my reasoning:

China is at present and for the foreseeable future a regional, not a global power. It is expanding its military and political posture in Southeast Asia and is building its navy first to push back the United States naval presence.  A look at the map shows that China and the UK are at opposite ends of the globe and the UK today has no navy to compare with the US Pacific and Indian Ocean fleets.

As for Russia, although Barack Obama had once remarked that Russia is only a regional power in the same derogatory tone as he suggested that Russia made nothing that the world wants, Vladimir Putin had the presence of mind to ask “and in which region is Russia a regional power.”  Behind the clever retort was the reminder that Russia is the world’s largest land power which bridges two continents.  But let us put that rhetoric aside for the moment. If Russia is indeed just a regional military and political power, its region is Europe, which it shares with Britain.  And within that region, Russia is undisputedly the single greatest military power, far greater in men, equipment and technological prowess than any single European power  taken separately, and arguably, greater than all of them together as represented by NATO.  In this context, it is quite correct to identify Russia as the greatest security threat to the UK.

But, the RT presenter argued, Russia has no aggressive intentions directed against the UK. Russia wants only normal, civilized relations.

My response is that U.S. military thinking ever since 9/11 has been unmistakable:  it is capability and not intent that makes another power a threat to the US. This was built into the “Bush Doctrine” and its elements may be traced still further back to 1992 and the Defense Planning Guidance developed by Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz when the USA was still the unchallenged single super-power in the world.  We may assume that this same logic has guided the British determination today that Russia is a major threat to their security. Talk of incursions into UK territorial waters or air space is just a smoke screen for the real determining factors in the risk analysis.

In my little programmatic statement, I pointed out that the timing of the release of this new British foreign policy paper was set to underpin the hoped-for re-confirmation of Britain’s so-called “special relationship” with the United States.  It follows quickly upon the installation of the new Biden Administration and upon the finalization of Britain’s departure the European Union on New Year’s Day, which deprived Britain of its coveted status as America’s Trojan Horse within the EU.  “Global Britain” is an attempt to show to Washington just how useful Britain can be in defending common values and deterring autocratic powers like Russia that threaten us both. 

This new appeal to Washington is underpinned by another key point in the “Global Britain” paper – the decision to raise its nuclear warhead stockpile for its Trident submarine fleet by 40% in coming years.  A great deal of money will be poured into this strategic initiative which surely has the intent to remind the USA of Britain’s nearly exclusive position as a nuclear power supporting the US deterrence globally.  Apart from the less manageable French, no other NATO power can give the US a strategic helping hand.

It is worth noting that the increase in strategic spending will be partially offset by cutbacks in tactical support men and equipment. Britain will be shedding 10,000 troops and mothballing tanks and ships. This is not a stand-alone decision. It means that Britain’s value to NATO for power projection in the European and other theaters will decline proportionally.

The decision to turn its back on the recent decades of leadership in nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear arms reduction has been denounced by British peace-niks.  Their concern misses the point.  It is scarcely credible that the British investment in a warhead stockpile will hasten deployment, not to mention use of nuclear arms.  It is primarily a lever for maintaining the longstanding relationship in global affairs with Washington.

As regards, the characterizations assigned to Russia and China in the “Global Britain” paper, there is also another important guiding consideration.  Following the recent closure of the post-Brexit transition period, Britain is suffering great disruption to trade with its hitherto single greatest commercial partner, the European Union.  It can ill afford to see any worsening of relations with China, which will likely overtake the United States as the world’s biggest economy before the close of this decade.  Accordingly, whatever the UK Government may think of human rights violations in China or of the alleged violations to its agreements with the PRC over the status of Hong Kong, Britain cannot afford to paint China as an adversary.

However, Russia is a different case. British commercial interests in Russia are minimal. Russia can easily serve as a punching bag to show up Britain’s tough guy stance to a Washington audience.  In this sense, British and US interests are wholly aligned.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

After brickbats, the time has come for handing out bouquets…

Readers of my opinion essays in recent months will have noticed that my remarks about Belgium’s handling of the Corona virus pandemic have been largely critical and at times quite severe. 

In my speaking out, I am breaking with local traditions.  Journalists are no less informed than I am, know full well the failures of governance in this country, talk about them freely over a glass of wine or mug of beer behind closed doors, but almost never write or speak about them in public.  The public, for its part, largely ignores the political establishment in its day to day life, knowing that it is not answerable to the voters and suffers from undemocratic procedures of power sharing, the progressive sounding system that keeps this ethnically, linguistically divided country glued together.  Regrettably in times of crisis like the past year of the pandemic the glaring incompetence, corruption and nepotism in Belgian political life have shifted from mere excessive fiscal costs to excessive loss of life and have been harder for the public to ignore.

Today I am happy to take a different course and to hand out bouquets.

This is the part of the world where French intellectual traditions are still inculcated more than two centuries after French dominion passed from the stage. That tradition holds common sense in low esteem. The old joke holds true and one still comes across reasoning that says:  your solution works in practice, but how good is it in theory?

This past week has seen that reasoning turned on its head, as it rightly should be.  Belgium has stood firm in defending the continued use of the Astra Zeneca vaccine despite the cave-in to what can be charitably called ‘an excess of caution’ by its larger neighbors, Germany and France, as well as Italy and states in the always prudent Scandinavian north, all of whom have temporarily suspended administration of the vaccine while cases of thrombosis and deaths among those vaccinated are being investigated.  

Three cheers for the De Croo government for spurning the EU-wide mentality of ‘go along and get along’ and for pursuing common sense logic, which tells us clearly that risks of severe illness and death from not taking the vaccine vastly outweigh whatever dangers of side effects may have been reported.  Happily the Belgian public also has not panicked, and the no-shows at vaccination centers administering the AZ vaccines yesterday were reportedly negligible.  The daily vaccination rates in Belgium have been steadily climbing of late for all vaccine types taken together

That being said, the question of safety of the Astra Zeneca vaccine is being distorted in a PR war in which the company is an active and possibly a malicious participant.  Not just by the spin it is putting on the very low reported incidence of grave illness and death following vaccinations in the EU, but by possible suppression of information. I am told by friends in Brussels who have relatives in Warsaw that nursing staff in at least one hospital there witnessed many instances of serious side effects from the vaccine but were told by their managers to just shut up about this lest they be fired.  It would be appropriate if this aspect of AZ’s public relations efforts were also investigated.

But, returning to the good deeds of the De Croo government, I call attention to the sensitive, intelligent and, yes, common sense approach it has shown in decreeing lockdown to deal with the second wave of Covid 19 that struck in October 2020 and is still with us.  Schools have been partially opened, nearly all retailers are open, personal care businesses such as hair styling salons are open. Meanwhile, the “bubbles” for socializing are being gradually expanded, and there is the promise of further relaxations at the start of May which will affect sports clubs.  Horeca remains closed, as well it should be.  Cultural institutions are also still on temporary hold, though this may be a case of exaggerated caution. 

All of the measures of confinement presently in place in Belgium were passed over the vociferous objections of defenders of our liberties and over commercial interests of those sectors which remain closed. I say “well done” to the De Croo government for staying the course and resisting the libertarians. The country is holding off the resurgent infection rate coming from the spread of the British variant here as elsewhere on the Continent.  It is on a high plateau, but a plateau nonetheless. Figures of hospitalizations and ICU occupancy have been rising over the past month to a level approximately double where we were in early February.  But the increased infection rate is not increasing geometrically. The medical infrastructure is not under siege. In past days, Belgium has even taken in patients requiring ICU beds from neighboring France, where the health system is being overrun by Covid.  This is all to the good and shows the practical effects of the ongoing partial lockdown here.

                                                                           *****

I have spoken above about French intellectual traditions here.  Now I revert to my more usual frame of reference as an avowed “Russianist.” I will speak briefly about the Russian mentality and its relevance to what I see around me in Belgium today.

For as long as I remember, the usual response of anyone in authority in Russia to any request whatsoever from the public is “nyet.”  This corresponds to the famously “bearish” predisposition of Russians at all levels. After some discussion and explanation of the personal situation of the applicant, this most often changes to “da.”   Meanwhile, in countries with a Pollyannish predisposition, which I will not name here, the facile initial “yes” at the start of a request process very easily turns to “no” at the conclusion.

It was for me quite remarkable to discover in the past two weeks that the Russian pattern of authorities’ responding to requests for assistance also holds true in Belgium.  I have in mind precisely my experience with the vaccination process here.

My problem for resolution arose when I acted on the email invitation I received to register for my Covid-19 vaccination.  I went to the website indicated and took on face value the statement that we all would have the right to choose the vaccine. I then passed directly to the selection of vaccination center, choosing the one closest to my home address.  That took me to the web page of the given center, which informed me that they administer only Astra Zeneca and offering that I choose my date and hour for administration of both jabs, the second one to follow the first by 12 weeks instead of the 4 weeks applied to vaccinations with Pfizer and Moderna due to supply problems with the AZ vaccine.

Then came the unpleasant surprise when the system informed me that there was no way back to selection of vaccination center, that the choice of center once made was irreversible.  I then phoned the federal information center and was assured that a change could be made by my generalist doctor or by my health insurer.

Regrettably, calls to the health insurer revealed they only are involved in the vaccination process to provide the federal authorities with lists of their clients sorted by age and priority for vaccination. About vaccines, they can do nothing.  My generalist doctor gave me a letter instructing me to get vaccinated only with Pfizer or Moderna, but could do nothing to change my vaccination center.

By the way, to avoid any misunderstanding, my primary concern was to shorten the time for complete vaccination in order to make some unavoidable trips outside the European Union.  I was ready to submit to the AZ vaccine as being by far the better alternative to no vaccine.  Moreover, it must be borne in mind that the number one priority population here in Belgium, residents and workers in old age homes had been vaccinated precisely by Pfizer and Moderna vaccines since AZ was not yet in circulation, and the federal authorities had recommended against delaying the time between vaccinations for seniors.

The situation looked chaotic, out of control.  The computer system put in place by federal authorities allowed of no exceptions, was geared only to maximizing the rate of vaccination of the population. If you didn’t like the result you had only one option – not to get vaccinated at all.

In the face of this very big NYET, I summoned the courage to visit one of the vaccination centers which offers the vaccine I preferred and which, by the limited spacing of the two jabs, would ensure completion of the entire process within one month.  I requested to speak to an administrator and was sent to one of the offices, where I was instructed to send an email to their attention describing my situation and nature of my request.

At the start of the following week, having received no email in return and finding that no one picks up the phone at the vaccination center, I again went there in person with a copy of my email in hand.  This time I was put together with a decision-maker who instantly told me to come a couple of days later at a given time. They were waiting for more deliveries of the Moderna vaccine and could make no promises that I would be served, but would do their best.

Indeed, yesterday they did their best and I got both first jab and a confirmed date for jab number two in one month.

To the very kind people at that vaccination center, I say “many thanks” for your show of human warmth and…of common sense by overriding the computerized system and giving me the jab:  one more vaccinated Belgian is one less threat to the ICU occupancy.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

I am delighted to share with readers the first “review” of my latest book which appeared on its www.amazon.com web page within days of the book’s release:

Top review from the United States

Russialist

5.0 out of 5 stars Read this book!

Reviewed in the United States on February 20, 2021

Fascinating firsthand account of work, politics, and life in Russia in the 1990s. You should read it! Very relevant to today.

End of quotation

For those unfamiliar with “Russialist,” this is the pen name of David Johnson, editor-publisher of Johnson’s Russia List (JRL), a daily digest of news and commentary about Russia which has more than 500 subscribers among international affairs experts at universities across the United States and at think tanks in Washington, D.C.

Otherwise, in related developments Professor Thane Gustafson of Georgetown University informs me that he will be “adding this book to the reading for his Georgetown course on Russia.”  Hopefully, some of you holding rank of professor who are regular readers of my website and LinkedIn accounts will do the same.

This book is fated to become a standard reference work from among primary sources on Russia in the late 20^th century both because of my diary entries and because of my extensive quotations from print media of the period, both the “underground” weekly newspapers serving the expat community in Moscow and St Petersburg and the international mainstream dailies.

I use this opportunity to announce that on 24 April I will be delivering a presentation talk on this book to the Centre culturel et scientifique de Russie en Belgique. The talk, followed by questions and answers from registered participants, will conducted in three languages – Russian, French and English – with simultaneous translation facility in Zoom. All those wishing to register are invited to contact the Centre culturel or myself via my website www.gilbertdoctorow.com

I also point out that while I am concentrating promotional efforts on volume II of the Memoirs for the obvious reason that the period in question, the 1990s, holds greatest interest for the general reader, volume I of the Memoirs, subtitled “From the Ground up,” going back to my childhood, education and professional life to 1993 has its own very specific merits beyond setting out the experiential and mental baggage that the author of volume II brought with him to his expatriate existence in Russia in the 1990s.

The author had a high point in his career in 1978 when he was one of 150 corporate chairmen from the United States seated at a banquet in the Kremlin to honor Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev’s birthday. That was also a time when my personal fate was interlinked with the fates of my Soviet counterparts: we all were creatures of Nixon’s and Brezhnev’s détente policy and were dependent on normal, civilized relations between the two superpowers which came crashing down with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979. I firmly believe that volume I sets out insights that have enduring value for today.  

Good reading to all!

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

I take pleasure in announcing the release by U.S. publishers Author House of the Russian language edition of my Memoirs of a Russianist, Volume II: Russia in the Roaring 1990s.    In Russian:   Гилберт Докторов, «Воспоминания Русиста, том II:  Россия в бурные 1990е годы»

The link to this book on the website of the publisher is:

https://www.authorhouse.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/825538-%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F-%D1%80%D1%83%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0-%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BC-ii

This is a paperback format. They will put on sale an e-book version at $4.99 within several weeks.

Before the end of this week, the Russian edition will likely appear on sale as a paperback on all the Amazon websites.

Amazon will not carry the Russian e-book for technical reasons. However, other online retailers will offer the Russian e-book, again within a time line of several weeks from today.

I use this opportunity to explain the peculiarities of this Russian edition, what are its positive and negative sides, and where it fits into my overall-publication plans so that potential readers can see the big picture.

The task of translating into Russian a book which numbered 788 pages in its English language edition is daunting, as anyone familiar with the translation process will surely agree. It would be normal for a professional English-Russian translator to take three or four months for such an assignment and the price would be prohibitive.

Accordingly, I performed the translation myself, relying on machine translation tools available for free on the internet.

For anyone who experimented with machine translation tools in the past, the achievements of this domain over the past couple of years are stunning.  Brand and company names are no longer “translated” but inserted into the text as is.  Figures of speech in one language are often rendered by comparable though not word for word figures of speech in the other language.  Quotations from Shakespeare are already stocked in the computer memory. And the general translation inventory of words and expressions is greater than the inventory in my head, and I am fairly accomplished in this domain.

However, idiotic or meaningless “translations” also appear in the output of the machine translation tool when it misses the context of a given word. The problem is aggravated when translating texts that were written in a kind of shorthand and with extensive use of idiomatic speech, as is common in diaries as opposed to normal expository style. So what is needed is a good editor to catch and remove these failures and to keep the overall text credible. This is what I provided for the book I am now launching as best I could.  In this way, I was able to perform the translation of 788 pages in three weeks at nil cost. Quite remarkable in and of itself.

However, I am not a native Russian speaker and I freely admit that there remain errors of style, grammar and word choice in the finished text as it went to press.  I ask the reader’s indulgence and hope he or she will agree that the drawbacks are largely outweighed by the book’s being made accessible to the Russian speaking world, who surely will find in what I have provided discoveries justifying the effort.

I identify the ‘Russian speaking world’ as one key target audience, because the book provides a window to a world within their world which few would have had during the period under review.  I think in particular of my inclusion of citations from the 1990s English language press in Moscow and Petersburg directed at the expatriate community, titles like “The Exile” which set out views on Russian politics and politicians, and on us, the expats, which Russians today will surely find invaluable to understanding their own past.

The edition now being released in the United States has both paperback and e-book formats. I do not expect there to be much demand for the paperback in the United States and my wager on this edition is directed at the e-book which by nature has a global audience since it can be downloaded instantaneously anywhere on the globe.  I have intentionally set the price at the lowest level for e-books to ensure that cost is no impediment to it being purchased in the regions of Russia and not just in the capitals.

This U.S. publication is not the end of the story.  In fact, a second Russian edition is now being prepared by a traditional publishing house in St Petersburg, Liki Rossii, who will produce a paperback at prices well below those in the U.S. and who have distribution possibilities across Russia. At the same time Liki Rossii cannot produce an e-book.

The edition being prepared in Russia will take the manuscript on which the U.S. edition is based and pass it through professional native editors to yield a final text that, very likely, removes all the stylistic and grammatical errors and sounds more like native Russian. At the same time, the edition being produced in Russia incorporates the narrative chapters from the English edition’s Volume I and a selection of the most interesting diary entries from Volume I. The combined texts are 100 pages longer than what is now being published in the United States as Volume II.  This new book comes with a new title in Russian designed to avoid any confusion between editions: “Diaries of a Russianist: Russia in the Roaring 1990s.” 

I am hopeful that each of these editions will find its readers, who are looking for different things in my cache of memoirs / diaries. 

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

Though we generally have a dim view of Russians as genetically “bearish” and morose, those of us who know the bears somewhat better realize that Russians taken one by one often have a superb sense of humor. Not British understatement. Not scatological like German folk humor. Distinctly their own and often family oriented. But there is more to it than jokes at the expense of your mother-in-law.

I invoke this observation when I look at the awful administration of the Covid-19 vaccines here in Belgium, and in particular, in the Region where I happen to live – the Brussels-Capital Region.

But before getting serious, let us consider the Russian “anecdote”:

A funeral is going on in a cemetery and a throng of those paying their respect stands by the graveside. Two passersby ask someone at the edge of the crowd what the deceased died of.  The mourner points to the words on wreaths that have been deposited before the coffin:  “from his beloved wife,” “from his brothers.”

Indeed, here in Belgium we are being killed, or to be more correct, we are not being saved thanks to the actions and inactions of people in authority who surely, taken one by one are quite decent and well-meaning.  The only problem is that they are grossly incompetent and answerable to no one. They pay no price for their blunders, not even criticism from the newspapers who disseminate their interviews replete with very contentious and dubious logic.

I have in mind something very specific which occurred here in Belgium over the weekend. The French-language daily newspaper La Libre Belgique published, as it does every few days, statistics on the progress of the Covid infection: number of tests administered daily, number of positives, number of daily hospitalizations, number of those presently in hospital, number in ICUs. To this in the past couple of weeks they have added new updated statistics on the numbers of those who have been vaccinated, both once and twice.  And on Saturday, in what is truly rare, they broke down the numbers of vaccinations by the country’s three regions:  Wallonia, Flanders and Brussels-Capital Region. 

To any reader, it immediately became clear why this information is not usually given out. It is too shocking for words.  About 3.5% of the total population already vaccinated, nearly all in old age or other long term care institutions and their staff, have been vaccinated nationwide. This is roughly in line with the dismal results of the EU-27 vaccination program, kept low because of the incompetent administration of procurement led by European Commission President von der Leyen, whom I have previously criticized in preceding essays on this subject.

However, looking within Belgium to its three Regions, the situation becomes more dire and points to the reasons why well educated, sophisticated and caring Belgium is on the high road to hell because of the gross over-politicization of everything and anything and the widespread incompetence of those in power.

The newspaper in the same issue published an interview with the Minister for Health of the Brussels Region, Alain Maron.  Well not just Health – and there by itself is a key to the problem.  Mr. Maron is also responsible for “Climate Transition, Environment, Energy, Participative Democracy, and Social Action.” I have just enumerated the points in his title.  “Health” follows “Social Action” in last place.

In last place! In the midst of the worst contagion the country is passing through in a hundred years that has placed the country among the worst performers in the world as regards mortality. In a situation of economic devastation from which only the fastest vaccinations to reach herd immunity can save us.

And when I name the party affiliation of this Minister, everything becomes clear:  he is a “Green”  party man, known in the French community as “Ecolo.”   His qualifications to administer “Health” are surely nil.

Now for the punch line:  whereas the Flemish and French Regions of Belgium presently have a vaccination rate of over 3.6% to population, the rate in the Brussels-Capital Region is 2% as the newspaper account in Saturday’s La Libre informed us.  

Why is this so?  That was one of the questions raised by the reporter during the interview.  M. Alain Maron had a ready answer:  because here in Brussels a lot of the support staff in the old age homes and long term care homes are commuters coming into the city from the suburbs, which happen to be situated in the Flemish Region. They are prioritized along with the old and infirm living in these institutions.

The reporter did not pursue this question further.  I will.

This logic of the Minister is rubbing salt in our wounds.  Anyone familiar with the budget of Belgium knows that the Brussels-Capital Region is always chastised for being unable to meet its financial obligations and going to the federal government with a begging bowl.  They also know the reason why:  apart from embassies and international institutions like NATO, like the EU Parliament and Commission, whose employees pay nothing into the Brussels Treasury, while requiring security, mobility and other services from the city, the commuters from Flanders are a big reason of the Brussels deficits.  They use the transportation and other services of the city but contribute nothing to taxes because in Belgium you pay taxes where you live, not where you work.

Accordingly, it would have been very appropriate for the La Libre reporter to have asked why these commuters to the old age homes are not being immunized where they live and are instead taking vaccine that otherwise would go to those living and paying taxes in Brussels.   I ask that question now!

This seemingly small issue is part of the very big reason why Belgium and Europe as presently governed are responding so poorly not only to the challenges of the Pandemic but to most all other global challenges.  The people in power are surely well-meaning but their value system is cock-eyed and directs actions which are dysfunctional.  Here the sophisticates in power are the very embodiment of Davos culture. They stand for inclusionary policies. They stand for proportional representation.  The only thing they do not stand for is MERIT.

I rest my case

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

My publisher and online retailers are working wonders.  The official release date of my new volume II of the Memoirs of a Russianist was two days ago, 12 February, and today, Sunday, Amazon has already put up a web page and is accepting orders on its global websites, including amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.de, amazon.nl, amazon.fr

To find this page on any of the amazon websites, just type into the search box “Doctorow, Memoirs of a Russianist, Volume II”. Once on the page select hardbound or paperback.

In the days ahead they will add functions to this page such as the browsing function “Look Inside” and a tab to show enlarged screen of front and back covers. But the main thing is there:  the option to order the book in either paperback or hard bound.  An e-book format will be added within a couple of weeks.

As you see from the technical description, the book is immense, 788 pages. 

I was not trying to outdo Kissinger and his several 1100 page books of memoirs. Indeed the only commonality with his works is that books this size are meant to be consulted, to be sampled according to the interests of the reader.  

In fact, the book is 80% diary entries because I wanted to allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions about Russia in the 1990s and not to spoon feed the reader with my/our views in 2021.   

Not every diary entry in this book will interest every reader, but I hope you will find enough of them to give you pleasure and satisfaction with the purchase.

The quote from the book now on the Amazon page is in fact the text I chose to put on the back cover – to whet appetites.  Judging by the comments I have received from various correspondents, I think this works well.  If you like this text, then you will like a lot of what is inside the book.

Please do let me know your thoughts as you make your way into this work.  I am planning to do a revised edition in a year or so combining the narrative part of Volume I and some diary entries from there with the entire text of Volume II.  Such is the solution I am using for the Russian edition of this book that will be published in St Petersburg later in the spring. Many thanks for your interest in this book.

“If you want peace, prepare for war!”  Sergei Lavrov, 11 February 2021 speaking on cutting relations with the EU

In a televised interview on Russian state television yesterday, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov made this declaration  together with the threat to cut relations with the EU if Russia’s vital economic interests were put in danger by any further sanctions they might consider imposing. His remarks were clearly calculated to turn on a light in the thick skulls of EU Parliamentarians, of the EU Commission run by former German Defense Minister von der Leyen, and of her deputy for external relations Borrell.

“Prepare for war” is an old bit of wisdom that we have heard from time to time coming from the Kremlin together with related folk wisdom such as :  if you do not finance properly your own army, you will be financing someone else’s army; and if you cannot deal with Lavrov, then you will have to deal with Shoigu (Russian Defense Minister). 

I mention these last few remarks, because they all have one source, and that is Vladimir Putin.

Make no mistake about it, the new hard line from Lavrov has been set personally by his boss, who never minces words and means what he says.

The context for Lavrov’s remarks  yesterday in an interview with the leading public and governmental affairs television presenter Vladimir Soloviev was the remark earlier in the day by Borrell that he and his colleagues were now weighing imposition of further sanctions on Russia. This follows the perceived humiliation of Borrell at the hands of Lavrov the preceding week during their day-long meetings, which precipitated an outcry from Members of the European Parliament and heads of state. That humiliation was inflicted on Borrell because he carried to Moscow words of chastisement over the imprisonment of the now infamous blogger Alexei Navalny whose supposed poisoning was supposedly ordered by Putin.

Indeed, there is widespread perception among Russian elites that the whole Navalny affair was allowed to run freely for much too long. He should have been imprisoned and the key thrown away a long time ago. Regime change promoters in Washington, in London, in Berlin were given hopes by this inaction from the Kremlin that this time the “regime” in the Kremlin was frightened, was confused and could be shattered – something which had not come about from the long series of operations to discredit and destabilize Russia that we can easily trace back to the period just after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, when Russia stood up to US aggression, alongside France, Germany and Belgium. Those NATO objectors to the pending invasion of Iraq just got a tap on the wrist. The Russians got much rougher treatment that just does not end.. The most salient of these operations were the MH17 shoot-down laid at the Kremlin’s door without proof and the supposed poisoning of the Skripals in Salisbury, also based on “most likely” reasoning to which I would respond in very British terms “you would say that, wouldn’t you!”

To anyone with a bit of discernment and neutrality, it is patently obvious that Navalny, who is an ugly, aggressive nationalist peddling tampered ‘fake news’ videos to anti-elite masses would be a threat to world peace if he ever made it to power in the Kremlin. He is nothing more than today’s instrument, a battering ram being used by the USA, the UK, Germany, not to mention the jackals running Poland and the Baltic States to smash the Russian government and apply their knee to the neck of the Russian people, if I may use popular present-day images.  Similarly insane policy makers in Washington overdid their support for the Jihadists in Afghanistan in the ‘80s for the sake of pushing out the Soviets, thereby creating what later came back to haunt the United States and Europe in global Islamic terrorism.

Of late, the collective West has become utterly outrageous, obnoxious in its behavior towards the Others.  The latest tit for tat with China over news stations is just one other manifestation of this wild behavior that is begging for the slap in the face that Lavrov just administered. 

Today’s BBC was busy denouncing China for its cutting itself off from the world by ordering the closure of BBC World transmissions within the PRC.  There was barely mention of the announcement by the BBC in preceding days that it was closing the Chinese global news broadcaster in the UK for, as they said, being controlled by the Chinese Communist Party. Regrettably, the Brits are behind what is now mutual excommunication and their underlying mentality is what always was best expressed by another bit of folk wisdom:  “Fog in the Channel,  Continent cut off.”

I cannot say whether Lavrov’s warning will sober minds in Europe, in the USA.  But it was made with all due seriousness and life will become pretty miserable for us all if Brussels does not back down and cease its threats and sanctions on Russia over made to order scandals having their authors in Washington.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021

The three months from elections in the USA at the start of November through the first couple of weeks of the Biden presidency in February have been very turbulent, with dramatic changes in the balance of political forces virtually from week to week. Some of these contests have taken place in the courts or in Congress, others in the streets of Washington and in state capitals.

Even in the days just preceding the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46^th President, the storming of the Capitol building by Trump sympathizers left uncertainty over the country’s stability and over the primacy of law. Although the pending impeachment proceedings against Trump mean that the country has yet to turn the page and move on, a return to normality may be approaching, as much as normality is possible in any respect during the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

I propose in this brief essay to consider first the most important issue which Donald Trump raised before, during and after the elections, the issue which gave rise to the insurgency in the capital, the issue which he by design does not want to go away:  the legitimacy of the November 4^th elections and thus the legitimacy of Biden’s holding power today. There are tactical and strategic sides to this issue.

The tactical dimension is very straightforward:  from even before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, the Democrats did everything possible, both legal and illegal, both reasonable and insane, to wreck his coming presidency by calling into question his legitimacy. This line of attack was initiated by the Hilary Clinton campaign team, who had already in the summer of 2016 put out the message that Trump was a puppet of Putin. Immediately after the November election, the message of the Democrats changed to alleging an unholy collusion with the Kremlin leader to steal the election in November by hacking into the Democratic National Committee’s computers and feeding to the press dirt on Hilary and her allies. The whole “Russiagate” conspiracy theory, illogical and unproven as it may have been, was launched and expanded upon in January 2017 by release of the equally insane and unproven “Steele Report” that was intended not only to titillate the public by exposing Trump’s alleged sexual adventures in Moscow on earlier business visits but to insinuate that the incoming president would be subject to manipulation by the Kremlin, that he was subject to blackmail as a result of his past misconduct in their back yard.

This campaign to destroy the Trump presidency reached its culmination in the impeachment hearings in Congress of 2019. Trump was impeached but not removed by decision of the Senate. However, he remained under a cloud of suspicion to the end of his stay in office.

What Trump has been doing by his campaign to discredit the 4 November 2020 elections over allegations of voter fraud has been nothing more than paying back the Democrats for their past injuries to himself and his cause.

The strategic dimension, which will be put in play only if Trump passes the currently pending Senate vote on his impeachment and retains his political viability, will be to re-capture Congress in midterm elections of 2022 and possibly to recapture the presidency in 2024 using the argument that Biden and the Democrats are an illegitimate “regime” that came to power on the basis of fraudulent elections.

Is there any truth to Trump’s allegations that the Democrats “stole” the November 2020 elections?

Let me be perfectly clear:  Trump is correct in general but dead wrong on specifics.  He was never a towering intellect and certainly is not such today. His thinking is cloudy, not precise, just as his command of the English language has always been weak.

Trump has insisted that there were procedural violations relating to the mail-in ballots that handed the elections to his opponents. He cited ballots being given out to long dead citizens, the trashing of ballot boxes and other wrong-doing that cost him victory in a number of key states.  These charges were presented to the respective state and federal courts and were all rejected as unfounded.

However, in general, Trump is right that the election was handed to the Democrats when mail-in voting was made universal in the 2020 balloting on the basis of the Covid-19 pandemic entailing confinement and social distancing that would hamper operations at polling stations.  Given that registered Democrats nationally far exceed in numbers registered Republicans, the procedure of automatic dispatch of mail-in ballots to all registered voters meant necessarily a bias in favor of a Democratic victory.

Mail-in voting is a long tradition in the United States, but state by state, it has always been restricted to those who request it and justify their request by specific reasons such as being on out of state travel during election day or having some disability.  The 2020 mail-in ballots were issued without the voter having to raise a finger, meaning that voting was made easier, required less civic engagement than ever before.  This could only favor the majority party, namely the Democrats.  In this sense, yes, victory in the 2020 elections was virtually handed to the Democrats on a silver platter. If such voting procedures are used in 2022 and later, then the United States runs the risk of becoming a one-party state, akin to countries in Central Africa.

The Democrats have from 2016 tried to characterize Donald Trump as a psychologically unbalanced person, as an ugly, self-centered and infantile personality. They have willfully dismissed the merits of the political causes Trump championed as the populist candidate rebelling against the rule of elites in both parties who have during the past 40 years superintended over the sharp concentration of wealth in the hands of the very few and the generalized decline and fall of the American middle class and of unionized labor. Trump argued that the deindustrialization accompanying globalization, the credo of the elites, has brought about national disaster. In his own chaotic way, he earnestly addressed all of these issues in his four years in office. He created great destruction in the federal government and in foreign policy. In fact, this real estate tycoon from Manhattan acted as a revolutionary in power.

It is no wonder then that the Biden presidency represents a Restoration of traditional rule and values. The new president has made every effort to stress that “America is back” both in foreign and domestic policies to where it was before Trump.  But that is no longer possible and the continuing attempts of the Democrats to destroy Trump through impeachment make any return to the pre-2016 bipartisanship impossible. In his favor, thanks to bi-elections for Senate seats in the state of Georgia in early January, Biden enjoys Democratic control of both houses of Congress. But the majority is very slim in both houses and the more contentious Left-leaning legislative initiatives that Biden has in mind will likely not become law due to the failure of Democrats to maintain perfect unity.

We may expect that the new Administration will have greater success in setting a New-Old course in foreign policy, that is taking foreign policy back from “America First” to close collaboration with traditional allies in Europe and Asia.  Europeans have been mildly responsive to the new outreach from Washington. But the genie is out of the bottle: Europeans are turning away from total reliance on the United States for their military security and that trend will not change.

Otherwise, there is full consensus in Congress over the two main competitors/adversaries to the United States in global management, Russia and China. This means that the new Administration will only be changing the conduct of foreign policy towards both at the margins, mostly in terms of atmospherics, with a return to Cold War ideological and “values-led” actions.  

With respect to Russia, the United States under Biden is once again standing on the soap box and speaking in the name of the “Free World” against the supposedly autocratic and expansionist Kremlin. 

What lies ahead with respect to US policy on Russia?

A return to personal vilification of the Russian leader. A return to regime change operations of which the Navalny case is the foremost example as it is now being pressed by US and friendly European diplomacy in a manner reminiscent of the Maidan appearances of Nuland and others to encourage demonstrators to come out onto the streets and to disrupt the daily work of the Russian state. Engines of “orange revolutions” like Freedom House will surely see their budgets and authority in public raised by Biden.

We already see the beginning of a propaganda barrage with the highlighting of the old iconic personalities who are sworn enemies of the Russian state. For the first time in many years Gary Kasparov is being given the microphone for long rants on television against President Putin, against corruption and supposed theft of national wealth.  There will be a lot of such poisoning of the atmosphere.  Sanctions will be focused on individuals said to be supporting the Putin regime, from his trusted collaborators in major domestic projects like Rothenberg to simply successful and very wealthy Russians who have interests abroad.

Meanwhile, we may expect some very constructive and much-needed steps to restore mutual confidence between Russia and the West in the domain of strategic and particularly nuclear weapons. The decision to unconditionally extend for five years the expiring New START treaty is indicative in this regard.  For that small step forward to sanity in global relations we may be thankful.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2021