Angela Merkel’s Ultimatum

It is both remarkable and terribly disappointing that the 28 heads of state and government of the EU have adopted the same approach to crisis resolution through ultimatums that launched the greatest cataclysm of European civilization of the 20th century. Read on…

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An Open Letter to Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger

Now, when precisely gravitas and depth of analysis is needed on campus as an antidote to the war hysteria that is sweeping the mass media and pressing upon the President, Columbia is just another weak reed, contributing its pitiful bit to the hysteria. And that is intolerable. It makes a mockery of higher education as a pillar of pluralism in our society. Read on…

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‘Foreign Affairs’ magazine, May-June 2014 issue: The false debate over “The Return of Geopolitics”

Amidst the confrontation between the West and Russia over Ukraine, the world is edging towards the precipice. At this fateful moment, Foreign Affairs magazine has chosen to feature an exchange of views between two of its house philosophers over the angel count on a pinhead. Read more…

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Latvia’s failed U.S.-inspired policies towards Russia and Russians

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Let us look at whom the US promoted/promotes in countries aspiring to escape the Russian orbit of influence as Latvia did after the fall of the Berlin Wall and as Ukraine, or at least its Western half, is aspiring to do today. The American policies have cleaved the local elites from their natural interests. They failed in Latvia and they are doomed to fail elsewhere… Read on

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The uncivil war being waged in America’s East Coast-based, liberal magazines of commentary

The ultimate victim of name calling and diatribes as a substitute for reasoned argumentation is the quality of policy being formulated. The claqueurs who rule over our magazines of political commentary written by and for the educated classes are pointing the country and the world in its grip towards disaster. Read on…

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Sexual Orientations in European Politics and the Crisis in Ukraine

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Sexual Orientations in European Politics and the Crisis in Ukraine

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

Over the past three decades, we have become used to sexual minorities dominating the arts, dance in particular, to the point where performances cease to be art and are instead political statements on behalf of the LGBT cause. Viewing this unmistakable shift of modern art to political posturing, there is no reason to be surprised by a reverse phenomenon: international politics is now becoming high drama driven by the sexual (dis)orientation of our leaders.

Political Correctness or no, a lot of sniggering goes on in the broad, largely straight public over rumored gender preferences of our political elites. Since the issue at hand is the crisis in and over Ukraine, I limit our list of confirmed and alleged gays and lesbians in the spotlight to those who have gotten us into the present serious confrontation with Russia. They include Nato Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, Ukraine’s acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, President of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaitė, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany Guido Westerwelle and…..let’s hazard the guess, Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Some came out of the closet long ago and flaunt it. Others are quiet about their sexual orientations. Proof that they are gay is not available and would, in the nature of things, never be available except to ‘special services.’ But among the chattering classes in Western Europe, everyone knows the score and the fact that one or another in my list is married and/or has children changes nothing.

All of this has bearing on the European policy of sanctions against Russia in several key respects. First, there is the unbalanced, at times hysterical turn of mind that shows through the policy. Mental balance is all the more relevant to our discussion given the way the Russophobe Western media have cast doubt on the rationality of Vladimir Putin’s behavior, citing Angela Merkel’s remark that the Russian President has lost touch with reality. I insist that the cool, Judo black belt master in the Kremlin has no problems upstairs whereas the bitchiness, the vitriolic side of Western policy should set off alarm bells.

Bitchiness translates into an utterly impractical, non-results oriented prosecution of punishment. As opposed to a virile, male military option, we get here a kind of sadistic escalation of pin pricks directed against Russia which in the end can amount to a full blown economic war that is just one step short of all-out war.

The gender problem of our Western leaders finds expression in their visceral dislike, indeed contempt of Putin as an alpha type male or macho. I have seen and heard this firsthand when LGBT freedom fighters spoke about Putin and the Pussy Riot in what were nominally academic conferences. And in the same context I witnessed the complicity among all participants, a kind of 21^st century Masonic bond that insulated the sanctions advocates from unfriendly questions and serious argumentation.

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Given that so many influential, top positions in European politics are held by the sexual minorities, Russia’s passage of its ‘anti-gay propaganda law’ a year ago could not fail to stir up a hornet’s nest of criticism. And Vladimir Putin’s State of the Nation address to the Federal Assembly last December threw more oil on the flames by rolling out a conservative values based ideology for the Russian Federation which puts family life and religion among the top priorities of the state. The stage was well set for the spasm of Russophobia that we seetoday in Western Europe ostensibly over Ukraine’s civilizational future.

Finally, the issue of sexual orientation is relevant because of the way it exposes the deviants to blackmail. And the way that Chancellor Merkel has taken the lead in sanctions within the EU can only be understood in terms of blackmail. After all, she is not merely overturning the decades long Ostpolitik of her predecessors in office, but she is going directly against the vital interests of Germany’s business community, the essential supporters of her right-of-center party. Who would be better placed to blackmail her than those who have been eavesdropping on her personal mobile phone for the past decade?

Although there has been a high level of bitchiness in American policy towards Russia over the Ukrainian crisis, I leave it to others to identify who is who in the gender game within the Obama administration and its friendly advisers in the foreign policy community.

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G. Doctorow is an occasional guest lecturer at St. Petersburg State University. His latest book, Stepping Out of Line: Collected (Nonconformist) Essays on Russian-American Relations, 2008-12, is available in paperback and e-book from Amazon.com and affiliated websites worldwide. Also on sale in Sterling and Waterstone’s booksellers, Brussels.

What your cleaning lady can explain to you about the Ukrainian crisis

Western ‘truth’ about the crisis in and about Ukraine is very superficial if not maliciously concocted by Thought Central. Regrettably, your average American has neither the book knowledge nor the life experience to know what is truth and what is propaganda, whereas your average Russian does. Read on…

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Creation of U.S. and European Chapters of a Committee on East-West Accord: A call to men and women of good will and common sense

Proposal for a collective and authoritative platform to respond to the massive anti-Russian propaganda of the foreign policy establishments in the USA and in Europe. Read on…

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4th Africa-EU Summit and the Ukrainian Crisis: gossip in the corridors

One take-away from talking to those close to the Summit is that there is lively enthusiasm over the resurrection of a bipolar if not multipolar world on the Black Continent and Putin’s reputation is riding high. Read on….

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Further lessons in Realpolitik: last chance to engage with Russia

We are at an inflection point. Free will is still operative. The main actors still can make a choice where to go next. However, at any moment, by the action or inaction of any side, the situation may spin out of their control and determinism may set in, putting us on a collision course in a hot crisis with no obvious denouement and large parts of the globe sucked in as proxy players. Read on…

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