Transcript of the first debate in the Russian presidential election, 2018

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

Introduction

I commend the document below for the perusal, and hopefully the close attention, of all those who could be interested in hearing the political views of seven of the eight candidates for President in the current electoral campaign that ends on 18 March. Given the nearly hysterical focus of US media on things Russian these days, it may be useful to hear what the Russians actually say for themselves and in particular what they think and say about foreign affairs which were the topic for this first of several televised debates.

These seven represent a very broad cross section of thinking of Russians from the political class straight down to your Everyman. They are invaluable as evidence on the degree of freedom of speech in the Russian Federation today. In an analytical article which I will publish in the coming two days, I will attempt to provide the context for their respective parties and positions. Here I invite the reader to draw his or her own conclusions without direction from an intermediary.

The eighth candidate who was not present or represented in the debates was the incumbent president, who made his campaign speech today by way of his Address to the Federal Assembly, the joint session of Russia’s bicameral legislature. That was a two-hour political statement that truly stands apart. It will be receiving enormous media attention, as it justly deserves, for being as significant as Vladimir Putin’s February 2007 speech in Munich that shook up the American political establishment by its boldness and open challenge to American global hegemony. The speech today was a declaration of Russia’s full strategic parity with the United States. At worst it will set off all the alarm bells in Washington. At best, it will have a sobering effect on the world, precipitate new arms control negotiations covering a very widely expanded range of offensive and defensive weapons systems. It may also powerfully reinforce the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in that it opened a Russian nuclear umbrella over all those countries that enter into “partnership” with the Russian Federation. I will develop these and other analytical points in a separate article on Putin’s speech in the coming day or two.

I took down the transcript below directly from one of the several youtube.com postings of the debates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUmwgLa0HLQ I estimate that I wrote down about 80% of the statements made by the participants which I then translated from Russian into English. I believe that I captured the most essential remarks even if I have left out the cross banter that violated the rules of the debate hosts and some of the slang used by one or another candidate.

The debate was hosted by Pervy Kanal, one of the two leading Russian state television channels with national coverage. The moderator is one of that channel’s better known talk show presenters who is associated with the daytime talk show Time will Tell. With his broad experience keeping boisterous and often rude Russian talk show guests in check, he was well prepared for some of the uncivil behavior of the candidates, in particular Ksenia Sobchak and Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Indeed as Russian speakers will be aware, other tapes of the debates which somehow made it to the internet include some fairly ugly exchange of compliments between those two which were excised from the final version broadcast by the Pervy Kanal. In fact, most Russian talk shows go out taped rather than live precisely to prevent abuse of air time by unruly Russians.

The single biggest disruption to the proceedings appearing in the final broadcast version was the objection stated loudly by Sobchak but backed up by others that the format of the show and more particularly the broadcast time were chosen in such a way as to minimize the impact of the participants, meaning their interaction with one another, and the available audience. Indeed, the debate was taped the night of the 27^th and broadcast at 8am Moscow time on the 28th.

In her complaint, Sobchak is only partly justified. The presenter insisted that 8 am is considered Prime Time morning on Russian television and advertisers pay accordingly. The bigger issue is that the vast country with 11 time zones presents necessary choices if a show goes out nationally “live.” Namely, 8am Moscow is 3pm in Vladivostok, in the Far East. If it were broadcast at 8pm Moscow, then it will show at 3am in Vladivostok. Of course, these shows are then available on the internet where they will capture millions of additional viewers at whatever hour is convenient to them.

The format issue is also a legitimate matter of concern. Each contestant has the microphone 3 times. The order of speaking was determined alphabetically by surnames. The first time at the microphone was given to them to make an opening statement of two minutes duration. Second, to respond to a specific question pitched to them by the presenter during 2 minutes 15 seconds. And third, to make a closing statement of two minutes.

As will be clear from the transcript, several but not all of the participants used their second or third opportunity to speak so as to respond to (meaning attack) the positions of other candidates. In this sense only was it a debate.

Finally, by way of introduction, please note the following party affiliations of the 7 participants in the debate:

Sergei Baburin, Russian All-People’s Union

Pavel Grudinin, Communist Party

Vladimir Zhirinovsky, LDPR party (nationalist)

Ksenia Sobchak (Civic Iniative party, liberal)

Maxim Suraikin, Communists of Russia (Stalinist)

Valery Solovey (representing candidate Boris Titov), Party of Growth

Grigory Yavlinsky, Yabloko party (liberal).

Transcript of the debate broadcast on Pervy Kanal morning of 28 February

Opening statements:

Baburin – I voted against break up of the Soviet Union. The question of our further existence is here and now. We must restore the Union to be strong and successful. We must correct the crime of 1992. Eurasian integration as path to bringing back together a single country.
A strong foreign policy is possible only if we have a strong State. I just got back from Krasnodar. No one had questions there about foreign policy. They had questions such as how will we combat poverty. How do we ensure free education, free medical care? How do we ensure that young specialists get decent housing, a decent first job? How to ensure that on your television channel we are not collecting money for sick kids, but that this money is paid by the government. All of these questions come down to one: what is a strong state? A strong state is when debates on Pervy Kanal are shown at an hour when the audience is at home to watch. To ensure that everyone is able to watch – and not taped like now for 8am showing. And if you start talking about domestic issues on your channel that is also a sign of a strong state. A strong state has a strong press and media. Before we change our foreign policy we have to ensure that we are a country to be reckoned with. We have to work on our domestic policy. The question today is whether we continue with the policies of the past 18 years or change over to policies building a strong state. We in our party want to ensure that it is good to live here not for oligarchs and officials but for the simple people. That will give us a strong foreign policy.
Zhirinovsky – I want to say that I and others of us are not satisfied with the format. These are not debates, they are like a school lesson. Each of us will have a say and then we are shown out the door. Now, as for foreign policy: The people standing here around me don’t have a clue. They are not specialists. They are good people, but that’s it. They never were engaged in this. I have been involved in international relations for 50 years. The threats we face are from the Near East. But Yavlinsky says we should get out of there. Sobchak says we should get out. These people pursue an anti-state line. For this we shot people in Moscow at the outbreak of WWII. Now with NATO approaching, the Middle East in turmoil : we are in a situation where war can break out at any moment.

We need to put order in our Western borders. All these Communists here tonight, they were all for the Soviet Union, but not for the Russian people. There were big mistakes in foreign policy. Now we have done the right thing getting into Syria, but there are those here tonight who are impeding us in pursuing our correct foreign policy. The main task of the President of Russia is foreign policy and rightly so.

Sobchak – the main problem with our foreign policy is our domestic policy. My main question about foreign policy is why we lead in trade only in arms and hydrocarbons. Why do we pursue hybrid wars which we do not acknowledge. Why do our soldiers die in Syria? Why doesn’t Putin show his respect for us by taking part in debates. Why is it Pervy Kanal is taping these debates, which violates our rights? Why doesn’t Pervy Kanal respect the voters? Why are you showing this at 8am, when people are going to work or taking kids to school? I demand that these debates take place in prime time when the maximum number of people can see us. I think everyone here agrees with this, right? [everyone agrees] I call upon Pervy Kanal to show these debates Live and at 8 pm. And I want to debate not with these people here today who are very convenient to Putin, but with Putin himself. I want to understand why Russia pursues an aggressive foreign policy. Why do we forget we are a European country. We must return to good neighborly relations and friendship with the European countries, to civilized society.

ANSWER of the presenter: the show is in Live tape format. You have to consider the scale of our country and time zones. We are showing this in what is called Morning Prime Time. This is what is known in the trade and advertisers pay accordingly. The taped show is broadcast without any cuts.

Suraikin- In the 90s we were told to love America and the West. What happened? We saw Iraq, Libya and now Syria. They have moved their forces to our borders. They don’t attack us only because we have nuclear weapons. And here we have a 5^th Look at Titov – going to London where he has his buddies and kids. Ksenia is constantly in Washington holding negotiations. Grudinin has children and property in Europe and bank accounts there. What will happen if these people become President? What does it mean to have your kids and property in NATO countries! Only real Communists, only a return to the Soviet system can guaranty the future of our country. We can ensure Soviet industry, a Soviet army and a powerful foreign policy. We have no alternative to Stalinism.
Solovey (Titov rep) – Foreign policy should be a path to prosperity. We need to increase the number of our friends and partisans, and win over some of our detractors and adversaries. We should avoid unnecessary conflicts at the perimeter of the Russian Federation. We should defend the interests of our economy and our business. Only a country with a strong economy and healthy society can have a strong foreign policy. No one wants to introduce sanctions against China. Why? Because they have a strong economy and everyone wants to cultivate good neighborly relations with it. Russia should follow the same path. The goal of our foreign policy should be to maintain good relations with all for purpose of developing our economy.
Yavlinsky – All policies, including foreign policy, should be directed at raising the living standards in our country. That is the first goal of foreign policy. The second goal is peace, stability and security. Russia is a country which should take part in all major world decisions. It is a great problem of our foreign policy today that we were thrown out of the G8. The fourth goal is to become an attractive country. Attractive by its culture, people, history, quality of life – to attract investments. I will do everything to ensure our people can travel the world without visas, so that in every country of the world RF citizens will feel protected. And the main thing – that Russians will not give up their lives for unnecessary, foreign interests.

Direct questions to each:

Baburin – Q -what is wrong with our current foreign policy? Answer: it is not sufficiently consistent. The same Neo-Liberals who destroyed the country in the 90s have now clustered and attack our government policies for being patriotic. We need to create a country without poor, without thieves in government. We need to get rid of oligarchs. Then we will have a worthy foreign policy.
Grudinin – Q -what do you think about plans to reform the UN and in particular the UN Security Council? How should Russia relate to BRICS, the G-20, the Shanghai Treaty Organization? Answer: As I said, the world only respects the strong. These platforms – Shanghai, BRICS, etc. have not met our expectations. Other members of these groups have much faster growing GDP than we do. Only when we address our domestic requirements can we be more weighty on the international arena. Our people think not as you show on Pervy Kanal – they have other concerns: how to feed their kids. Money is going to oligarchs which should go to the state so it has the means to finance programs. It is not right to hear constantly there is no money for this and that.
Zhirinovsky Q- how do you plan to respond to the attacks of the West on Russia? Answer: These attacks are not something new. They have been going on for a thousand years. We are the biggest country in the world. Europe is small. They look to move East. Germans even have the expression Drang nach Osten. They have been saying this for hundreds of years. For these reasons, we need a strong army. You say we should be friends. With whom are we supposed to be friends? With the NATO forces in the Baltics who are just 5 minutes flying time from St P and 7 minutes to Moscow? They are a real enemy. They have military plans to destroy our country. And you are just talking about Schengen and the economy. What good is your economy if they strike tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. If we have a strong army then we can resolve our domestic problems. And you, who would capitulate, you say let’s fix up everything domestically and then people will respect us.

But they need our resources, our territory. So many need drinking water. Everyone looks at Russia and wishes we did not exist. You cannot understand this. You are just blind. Go abroad. You who have property and accounts abroad. They will try to exert influence through you. Yavlinsky of Yabloko is tied to Germany. Where did Sobchak go? To America. Why? To get advice? To get money? Their blessing? Titov is wandering around England. We have to purge the country of this 5^th Column.

Q – As a possible future president what do you think about relations with the Shanghai Treaty Organization and ASEAN? Answer: Our hopes for the Shanghai Treaty Organization have not been justified. We thought we would work with Kirghizia, Turkmenistan…But there the main role is played by China. China has its own bilateral relations. To compete against China, the world’s second largest economy is not possible. Russia doesn’t play the role there that it hoped to play. The same is true of ASEAN. There is nothing wrong that we cooperate with these countries, But we should cooperate with both Asia and Europe. We should return to those principles which were said by Putin himself back in 2002 – have an association with NATO. We should not fear NATO will attack us. We should cooperate. We should work out a road map on how we will enter all these institutions of security, and European security institutions. Why not? These are the priorities we should set in Russia.

What have we achieved in ASEAN – signed papers upon papers. Cooperation with Europe is held back by one thing – that our Minister of Foreign Affairs uses four letter words. That people from the LDPR party, Slutsky, pinches the ass of a young female journalist. With people like this representing us in the international arena, it is clear why relations are what they are.

Q -How do we follow the policy you suggest and not find ourselves in isolation? Answer: Our 5^th column speaks of our being isolated. But the Soviet Union had more allies and covered more of the world than the USA and Western Europe, which were busy exploiting the Third World. First we have to restore socialism in our own country. We have to nationalize all extractive industries, drivers of the economy , metallurgical industry.. This will double the federal budget and enable us to double pensions, double the military spending. Then we start with Belarus and others including Ukraine will rejoin us, followed by dozens of other countries joining us in a great political and military bloc which will isolate our enemies.
Solovey (Titov) Q – First we get strong and then we have a strong foreign policy. How much time do we need for our development to get strong? Twenty years? And what about international relations in the meantime? Answer: to realize the program of growth we need 10 to 12 years. While we are concentrated on our internal affairs, there will be many who want to help and invest in our country. Not just to buy our raw materials but to produce here a lot of things. We can be friends with those who are not our enemies, meaning most everyone. We should pull out of Donbas. That is enough.

Yavlinsky – Q – How do we deal with the Euro-Atlantic world, with NATO? Answer: In order to behave like a super power, you have to be one. Today Russia’s share of the world economy is only 2% In these conditions the country cannot carry on an effective foreign policy. Foreign policy is a great art. I don’t see it. In the last few years Russia wrote off debts of 165 billion dollars. 9 trillion rubles were forgiven other countries. For this money, we could have built thousands of schools etc. this is a huge sum. Three trillion is the whole defense budget for a year. Same for education and for medicine. This is the current foreign policy that has led to sanctions. A situation where any small country like Albania can declare sanctions on Russia – that is a disaster of foreign policy.

Closing remarks from each

Baburin – the NeoLiberals capitulated in the 90s. and here they are again. We have the right to consider ourselves a great power. Because that is defined not only by an Army, by an economy, but is determined by the spirit of the nation. And Russians will never capitulate however much our Liberals try to achieve that. What is Russia’s Choice? You have to love kids. Look after the family. Defend the motherland. And forever keep pure your immortal soul.

Yes, fraternity of the peoples. But the backbone of our country is the Russian people with its Orthodox faith.

Grudinin – Of course this is not a debate. It is separate slogans and appearances. Each says his own thing. Everyone understands that only when we are strong will everyone want to be our friend. You cannot force people. The Soviet Union will be created only when we have a just society, when you ensure that life here for pensioners, children, workers , peasants is so good that outsiders want to get in. So far we have created a society to which no one wants to come, because our courts have no justice, our officials steal, our mass media lie, where oligarchs set the policies for the whole country. For this reason we have to concentrate on domestic policy.

Then we can introduce labor visas for migrants to make a work force available when we need it. We need to have salaries we can be proud of. We want a Russia to which people come for medical treatment, as was the case before, not where our people including Pervy Kanal sends children abroad for treatment. Where you go into a pharmacy and buy medicine without having to think how you are going to live till your next pension payment.. If we do this then we will be a strong power with which everyone will have to reckon. But at present, what we are doing at the state level is selling our fighter aircraft abroad and taking back palm oil. And after that our dairy farmers don’t know where to sell their milk.

We are following a policy which made our country weak.

Russia has no friends, Russia has interests. Our number one interest is to have a prosperous population.

Everyone here is saying the same thing: first a rich country, first focus on domestic issues. They don’t understand anything. We hear about the Russian Choice (Baburin). What is that? We have hundreds of other nationalities. Baburin only thinks about Russians. Then tomorrow we will have a civil war here. Grudinin is just the same: what is your wealth, it is expensive Moscow suburban land. 100 km away there is poverty, and you are renting out your land, you are doing nothing. And this young lady [барышня – Sobchak] – for 10 years you were doing those television reality programs, complete debauchery. Here she is talking about who pinched whom some time ago [Slutsky]. You should be in an insane asylum Sobchak, not here. Then Yavlinski says we forgave 160 billion dollars. That wasn’t money, Yavlinsky. It was help to our friends, it was arms. And our storehouses are full of arms. We can give away another 100 billion, and another 100 billion. This brought us no harm There was a privatization program – 500 days. It was a deception. You cannot achieve it in 5000 days. Privatization in general was criminal. We should have developed our powerful state sector. Then we have Titov who is strolling around somewhere. And our candidate who wants to restore Stalinism. No we won’t go back to the stone age. But we will help you and your Communist forces get rid of the Fifth Column, so that Sobchak wouldn’t be here, Yavlinsky wouldn’t be here. And Grudinin and Baburin. Russians? Yes. But just remember that in 1991 I stood alone on Manezh square but you in the Supreme Soviet betrayed everyone.
Dear television viewers, I want to say one thing. Just look at the faces of those who surround me here in the studio. None believes they will win the election. This is just a crowd scene of old clowns and others sent here with the objective of your seeing them in a broadcast, if you succeed in watching while preparing to take the kids to school or going to work and say: No, there is only one President in our country, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. That is why this was all set up. Don’t listen to what they are saying about Neo-Liberals, about the 90s. For the last 18 years our country has been run by one person. And what has happened in our foreign policy in these 18 years: they have succeeded in our waging two hybrid wars, one in Ukraine and the other in Syria. Our soldiers are dying there but for what. What goal are we pursuing in our war in Syria? What goal are we pursuing when we have quarreled with our most fraternal people, with Ukraine? What is the objective in these wars? Why are our Russian people dying there? Give these questions to Vladimir Putin, who is not here today. Not the Liberals of the 90s, but he has been ruling our country for 18 years. What has happened in our foreign policy that our only friends are North Korea, Venezuela, Afghanistan? There are our friends. Instead of European countries, instead of the USA, with which we had good relations till not long ago. Now we are conducting a policy of isolationism. Now they threaten us, saying we live in a circle of enemies. That is not so. Now our task is to return to normal, civilized relations, that we remember that we are a European country and our place by right is within European civilization

Suraikin – What do we hear from the “democrats” – the same that we heard at the end of the 80s from Gorbachev and others.. You are forgetting how the countries of Europe came down on us at the end of the 80s. the countries of the Baltics do not extract one kilogram of metal but in the 90s took number one position as biggest merchants of metals because for 20 years they robbed our country. Of course now they don’t like that Russia has risen. But look at our major metallurgical and energy industries. What are they doing – wealth sitting in offshore companies. And the western companies. Where is the profit going? To the West. And the profit from these companies which were built thanks to the labor of the Soviet Union for us, for the future generations….These companies, Lipetsk LPK…they have hundreds of billions of dollars of profits, stolen profits and they go to the West. In the 90s foreigners bought into our military industrial complex and destroyed it. We were never in isolation. How they have loved us… as slaves. But we are not slaves. That is why our grandfathers fought. This is why we should go to the elections and elect real Communists, make our socialist choice. We will restore industry, socialist economy and great power. Military-political bloc. We must restore the Soviet Union. We can start with the union with Belarus…
Solovey (Titov). Dear television viewers, as you have seen there are two ways to discuss foreign policy – one is hysterical, the other is realistic is based on fact. Facts are that we are a European state. Secondly, national pride: return of Crimea was an act of national reconfirmation. That is unconditionally true. But you cannot take pride only in that if you have poor education, poor medicine, and a weak economy.

Thirdly, armed forces. You cannot spend a third of the national budget on the armed forces. If you want to have strong armed forces, you must have a strong economy.

Fact number four: from where do we get modern technology? We have bought it from the West. Asia could not and cannot provide this to us. Moreover, where did we get long term credits for industrial development? From the West. From all of this it follows that Russia is interested in restoring good relations with the West. This does not exclude good relations with the East. We must develop relations with all of Asia later.

This is what Titov has been saying constantly: if you don’t have a strong economy and developed social sphere no one will take you into account. This is an unconditional medical fact.

Happily Stalin is left in the past, but our discussion today is about the future. keep that in mind.

Yavlinsky – Most important is to name 5, 6, 7 concrete steps for our foreign policy to work for the prosperity of our citizens, and its future, its development and decent living.

First, end the bloodshed in Donbas

Second, settle the problem of the status of Crimea

Remove troops from Syria as quickly as possible

Remove Russia from its isolation

Achieve peace with our neighbors and firstly with Ukraine

Achieve an end to sanctions

Achieve mutually beneficial trade and economic relations with Europe and the whole world

Strictly observe the international obligations we assumed

Stop lying endlessly about our situation in foreign policy, as well as in all else

Stop looking at the world as an adversary.

Seek mutually advantageous cooperation with all.

Peace, respect for our fellow citizens, professional foreign policy – this is what is of vital importance for our country. This assumes the election of a different policy. The present policies unfortunately are leading Russia to a dangerous boundary which is ruinous

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Gilbert Doctorow is an independent political analyst based in Brussels. His latest book, Does the United States Have a Future? was published on 12 October 2017. Both paperback and e-book versions are available for purchase on http://www.amazon.com and all affiliated Amazon websites worldwide. See the recent professional review http://theduran.com/does-the-united-states-have-a-future-a-new-book-by-gilbert-doctorow-review/ For a video of the book presentation made at the National Press Club, Washington, D.C. on 7 December 2017 see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciW4yod8upg

Russia’s Presidential Election, 2018: first impressions

This is the first of three election reports which the author will publish in the coming month culminating in his findings as an officially invited international observer to the 18 March elections.

Continue reading “Russia’s Presidential Election, 2018: first impressions” →

The Munich Security Conference, 2018: Mutually Assured Contempt

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

The annual Munich Security Conference is to geopolitics what Davos is to global economics: a forum for public discussion of challenges and trends, as well as a venue for side meetings off the official schedule by Very Important People that are at times even more intriguing than the formal events. By the latter I have in mind, for example, the tête-à-tête behind closed doors between former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the Russian ambassador to Germany that set tongues wagging back in Kiev and Moscow, even if it was passed up in the Euronews coverage.

The very biggest names in global politics make their appearances at Munich and occasionally catch the imagination of all with substantive as opposed to merely clever remarks. No one familiar with the venue can forget Vladimir Putin’s speech there of February 2007. It set in motion the open challenge to US global mastery that has evolved into the deep cracks in the world order which were the main theme of Munich a year ago, and which presented themselves again for consideration in the latest, 2018 edition.

Last year the biggest name in Munich was Chinese President Xi, who did not disappoint and stole the show by his robust defense of free trade, global cooperation to combat climate change and other leading issues of the day from which Donald Trump’s America seemed to be retreating. This year there was no one leader who commanded the attention of the audience and media. What special meaning the gathering had could be found in the Report of the organizers, which highlights the issues and guided the discussion in the various sessions over three days.

Parsing an 88-page text like the Report might be a step too far. But a word about its style is in order since that takes us directly to analysis of its content.

The Munich Security Conference takes place in Germany. Its website and promotional literature are bilingual, German-English. However, the Report is in English, and in very special English at that. No British spelling or turns of speech here, unlike so many documents of think tanks generated on the Continent. No this is the American English of the U.S establishment in the self-satisfied and coy style of Foreign Affairs magazine. Where else would you find section headings entitled “Russia: Bearly Strong?” or “United States: Home Alone?”

And while the texts in the Report allude to interviews in the press by former German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier, and a side column quotes from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s speech to the Conference last year, there is more than a sprinkling of references to leading personalities in America’s Council on Foreign Relations, starting with its president, Richard Haass. And what is surely the most remarkable quote in the Report (see below) comes from Council member and long-time book reviewer for Foreign Affairs, Princeton University professor G. John Ikenberry.

To cut to the quick, the American input to the agenda and posture of the Munich Security Conference is of decisive weight when you look at the recommended reading (“Food for Thought”) and special reports sections at the back. In the Acknowledgements section at the very end, we find the heavyweights RAND Corporation, North Atlantic Treaty Organization and NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence listed together with the lightweight but very voluble Freedom House.

This Establishment is Atlanticist, a promoter of the liberal institutional order that it helped to create over the past 60 plus years in the knowledge that the biggest financial and political beneficiary of an order based on rules written in Washington has been the United States. To a man, they are anti-Trump.

Indeed, the text of the Munich Report reeks of anti-Trump venom and a good dose of despair over the ongoing triumph of the anti-Christ who is now the U.S. President.

The introductory chapter of the Report bears the ominous title: “Present at the Erosion: International Order on the Brink?” The most striking remark on its first page is by G. John Ikenberry: “the world’s most powerful state has begun to sabotage the order it created. A hostile revisionist power has indeed arrived on the scene, but it sits in the Oval Office, the beating heart of the free world.”

Let us remember that over the course of his career Ikenberry has been a penetrating and at times courageous analyst. Back in 1992, he co-authored with Daniel Deudney a splendid article entitled “Who Won the Cold War” (Foreign Policy) explaining why it was a draw, ended by mutual agreement. He thereby went directly against the rising tide of Neoconservatism and American hubris built on falsification of modern history.

American Establishment biases, willful ignorance of realities and fake news are given free rein in the page of the 2018 Report devoted to Russia. Here we read about the Kremlin’s “disinformation campaign” during the French presidential election of 2017 and about the “efforts to influence the US presidential election in 2016” that have “paid dividends.” Unproven allegations of meddling and illogical conclusions about dividends, considering the track record of the Trump administration in its first year in office: the dispatch of lethal military equipment to Ukraine that even Obama hesitated to approve, the extension of sanctions and a number of other measures raising the tensions with Russia in the Baltics and in Syria.

Here we find the stubborn refusal to accept the true scale and breadth of Russia’s might. We are reminded that the country’s GDP is the size of Spain, a proposition that is distorted and misleading depending as it does on exchange rates rather than purchasing power parity At last report, Spain was not supplying one-third of all the natural gas consumed in Europe; Russia was. At last report, Spain did not have a military industrial complex that is second only to the United States; Russia has.

Yet, the Munich Security Conference differs in an important way from the American establishment, which is today not very welcoming of “adversaries” or “competitors” who may conceptualize the world order in their own way. Whatever its home grounds philosophically, the Munich Security Conference does try to be inclusive and brings even troublemaker countries and personalities into the tent. Moreover, the Security Conference, like Davos, has substantial continuity in the attendees. You heard from the Iranian Foreign Minister last year, and you will hear from him again this year, and probably next year as well. This does not smooth out all the rough edges in these encounters, but it keeps them somewhat in check.

One of the “regulars,” and perhaps the most remarkable performer at the 2018 Munich Security Conference was Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. I call him remarkable because of his ability to rise above his detractors in the hall through superior command of the facts, wit and daring.

At last year’s Munich Conference, a number of Lavrov’s pronouncements were met by derisive laughter from the Americans in the front rows, picked up by other Western diplomats and politicians. Yet, Lavrov took it in stride, remarking acidly that he had also found some statements by representatives of other countries to be laughable but had shown greater restraint than members of his audience.

Heckling also took place during Lavrov’s speech this year, though on a markedly lower scale. And once again, Lavrov took the upper hand, chided his detractors for their incivility and joked that it did not matter: “after all, they say laughter helps us live longer.”

Lavrov’s speech itself was a masterpiece of argumentation against the exclusion of Russia from the common European home, the descent of a divisive “we/they” thinking in Western Europe to justify the New Cold War. He specifically called out for condemnation the ongoing rewriting of history in the Baltic States, in Poland, in Ukraine that airbrushes Russia out of the victory over Hitlerite Germany, encourages destruction of monuments to Soviet liberators and makes heroes of home-grown fascist movements as in Ukraine.

It bears mention that back home in Moscow, there are voices of strident nationalists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky who explain on national television day after day why it is time for Lavrov to go, because he is too soft, too easy going with the nation’s enemies in the West.

However, the skill at debate, nerves of steel and icy reserve that Lavrov displayed in Munich show yet again that he is the right man in the right place to defend Putin’s Russia.

The problem that comes out of the Report and the body language we saw in the conference proceedings is the following: whether the opposing sides of East and West were more or less restrained in their gestures and words, there lies on each side a poisonous contempt for the other that could lead to miscalculations and rash actions in the event of some incident, some mishap between our respective armed forces in any of the theaters where they are now operating in close proximity in support of opposing sides.

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An Open Letter to Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Senator,

I cannot understand why you are leading the Senate Democrats on a confrontational position with respect to the Kremlin Report and are calling for further ratcheting up of sanctions on Russia. Why are you taking the unproven allegations about Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections to be God’s own facts?

These irresponsible positions are leading us along the path to a nuclear exchange with Russia. The only outcome can be the end of civilization on earth.

Did you not read Vladimir Putin’s response to the Kremlin Report two days ago? Namely that if new sanctions were indeed promulgated he was/is prepared to cut US-Russian relations down to zero? Do you know what that means? It is telegraphed message that war is coming if we, the United States, do not sober up.

Why do you persist in arrogantly viewing Russia as just a “regional bully” to quote Obama, a gasoline station masquerading as a country, to quote Senator John McCain, or the sick man of Europe that poses no real military threat as it indeed was in the mid-1990s, but most definitely is not today. Russia today embodies the principle of our state of Vermont: “Don’t tread on me!” And yet that is precisely what the Congressional consensus to which you are a major contributor is doing.

I am an expatriate, living in Belgium, but by law New York is my federal voting state and you are my Senator.

I am fully at your disposal and at the disposal of your staff to give any assistance by fleshing out the arguments I make above. And as a Russian affairs specialist, holder of a doctorate in this field from Columbia University (1975), I know what I am talking and writing about. I refer you to my latest book “Does the United States Have a Future?”, available on Amazon.com It will help you to get the gist. I believe I invited members of your staff to my presentation of that book in The National Press Club, Washington, D.C. on December 7th just as I invited my Harvard classmate Senator Richard Blumenthal. Neither your staff nor his was there. Alas… That event is available for viewing on youtube in case a staffer can find the time for it.

As a down payment on the analysis I am prepared to offer your staff, I refer you to my overview of the release of the Kremlin Report as it was covered by Russian and American media and where it heads us: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/01/31/treasurys-kremlin-report-seen-as-targeting-russian-economy/ 

Respectfully

Gilbert Doctorow

* * * * *

US policy on Russia: is the US Administration or Congress calling the shots? And where are sanctions leading?

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

For reasons that I will explain below, Russia media were in a countdown to “D-Day,” 29 January, for weeks in advance, awaiting what they believed could mark a critical change for the worse in relations with the United States. In this they pitched their coverage to the country’s elites, who were under the Sword of Damocles of new U.S. sanctions that might be directed against them, but also to the general Russian public, who watched with curiosity and ominous concern lest there be a secondary impact of sanctions on the economy, on their livelihood and living standards.

The main document to be released was the so-called “Kremlin Report.” In its public version this report would contain lists of Russian government personnel and “oligarchs” alleged to be close to Putin for possible sanctions which the Trump Administration was required to file with Congress no later than on 29 January under the terms of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act. CAATSA was passed overwhelmingly by Congress and signed into law by President Trump on 2 August 2017, notwithstanding the Act’s directly contradicting his expressed desire to normalize relations with Russia. His signature was forced, in the recognition that his possible veto would be instantly overridden and further embitter his relations with Congress at a time when his Administration had still no legislative achievements to its record.

In anticipation of breaking developments of great importance to the nation, Russian media spared no expense to ensure their coverage on the ground in the U.S. at the time of the release of reports relating to sanctions would be appropriate to the suspense at home. The top-rated Russian state news channel, Rossiya-1 sent its principal talk show presenter Yevgeni Popov to Washington to head up a panel of local experts that would get extensive broadcast time back home. Among the American panelists chosen to speak about the Kremlin Report were the credible and well known commentators Paul Sanders of The National Interest and David Filipov, until recently the Moscow bureau chief of The Washington Post. Their live coverage began at mid-day Moscow time which turned out to be almost 20 hours before the Report about which they were expected to comment was actually released. No matter, talk shows often dwell on speculation and so the medium did not disappoint.

By contrast, American and European media reacted with variable speed to the release of the Kremlin Report by the Treasury Department after the fact. Part of the lag in timing and variable extent of coverage among Western media on two continents may be explained by the 6 hour time difference between North America and Europe: the report was released just before midnight on the 29^th. This was an inconvenient hour for reporters, columnists and editorial boards on both sides of the Atlantic. Partly the differences in coverage may be explained by the level of prioritization the various players in the media give to Russian affairs.

In any case, be it known that notwithstanding the midnight hour of release, the European newspapers The Financial Times (UK) and Le Monde were right there in their morning online editions with excellent news coverage of the reports that remained factual and did little or no editorializing. This set them apart from other mainstream print media on the Continent who had zero coverage even in the middle of the business day on the 30^th. I think in particular of The Guardian (UK), Le Figaro (France), Die Zeit or Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Germany).

Tuesday morning in the United States found no coverage of the Kremlin Report in mainstream print media including The New York Times and The Washington Post. Typically on major developments relating to Russia that somehow take an unexpected turn, as was surely the case with the Kremlin Report as I explain below, the editorial boards take their time, sniff the air to see which way the wind is blowing, and only then commit themselves to an editorial position that directs their journalistic reporting. And so it was not before mid-afternoon that the online edition of The New York Times took a stand on the Report. And it was an equivocal and arm’s length stand, telling us that the Trump Administration had issued a report that managed to offend both sides to the issue: the Russians and the American Congressmen, both sides being outraged at the lists and how they were compiled.

U.S. electronic media were faster off the mark and gave much more extensive coverage to the issue of the Kremlin Report and Russia sanctions. None entered the fray with greater zest for the scent of blood than CNN, the longstanding bête noire of the Trump Administration. CNN reporter and guest experts rounded on the President for defying the will of Congress and not immediately ratcheting up the sanctions on Russia to punish them for their meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and to prevent continued meddling in the 2018 midterm elections as CIA director Pompeo had warned might happen just the day before.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s online article on the sanctions was factual if brief, while their opinion writer specializing in Russian affairs, Leonid Bershidsky, smelled a rat in the way the lists of officials and in particular “oligarchs” had been compiled. As one-time chief editor of the Russian edition of Forbes, the rather embittered anti-Putin émigré Bershidsky used his space less for objective analysis and more for editorializing on how the lists really should have been drawn up and on how sanctions should have been imposed now.

* * * *

Russian concerns over what exactly the Trump Administration would issue had been fed by statements to the media from several advisers to the sanctions list project, all of whom have well established reputations as Russia-bashers. I make reference to the authors of an article entitled “How to Identify the Kremlin Ruling Elite and its Agents. Criteria for the US Administration’s Kremlin Report” published by the Atlantic Council on 13 November 2017.(http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/how-to-identify-the-kremlin-ruling-elite-and-its-agents) These are Anders Aslund, Daniel Fried, Andrei Illarianov and Andrei Piontkovsky. The idea they wished to see realized was an exposé of Putin and his “cronies,” tracing their alleged illicit gains through corruption and abuse of power. Their view follows directly on the principles that guided the first American sanctions on Russia, the Magnitsky Act of 2012. In the days just before the 29^th, Russian television carried a short video of several of the authors. One, Aslund, boasted that the coming sanctions would be “smart,” i.e. targeted against the malefactors running things in Russia while doing no harm to the general population.

For more than a week in advance of what they called “Judgment Day,” Russian media had featured warnings that the Kremlin Report could spell sharply stepped up sanctions. In Davos last week, Andrei Kostin, CEO of VTB Bank, one of the country’s largest state-owned financial institutions decried the expected new sanctions as all-out economic warfare which would get a very harsh response from the Kremlin.

Against the background of threats by American Neocons and Russian fears and warnings in response, US Ambassador in Moscow Jon Huntsman had, in the meanwhile, been issuing statements to the press insisting that the sanctions would not be a serious impediment to relations,, that he sought dialogue with Russia just as his counterpart, the Russian Ambassador in Washington, was doing, and that there remain prospects for cooperation in areas of common interest notwithstanding the disagreements making the news.

So we must ask yet again, which voice on Russia policy coming from Washington is authoritative? Who has the upper hand: Congress or the Administration? And within the Administration, the President or his cabinet, and in particular his Secretary of State, who has in recent months become an intellectual hostage to the same Neocons who ran the Obama foreign policy and before that the foreign policy of George W. Bush?

The “Kremlin Report” mandated by U.S. law was released to the public by the Treasury at the same time as a longer secret redaction was delivered to Congress. The time of delivery and more importantly the content of the report suggest that the Trump Administration was responding punctiliously to the letter of a law that the President had opposed but could not veto given its fulsome support in the legislature. I will go a step further: the Administration dragged its feet and produced at the very last moment a report that could have been compiled in a couple of hours if it so desired. And the public version of the report itself is so patently absurd in content as to bring ridicule on the Congress that ordered it.

To wit, as the few Russians who were amused by this cynical anti-Russian exercise commented, the authors of the Kremlin Report lists of 200 plus Russians eligible for future sanctions just took the telephone directory of the Russian cabinet of ministers, presidential administration, and parastatal institutions and copied down the names of the top officers. The only high official omitted was Vladimir Putin himself. As for the “oligarchs,” they were arbitrarily defined as persons with net worth of more than $1 billion, as shown in the Forbes ranking of the 100 richest persons in Russia.

If there was any exposé, any dirt on Russia’s government and business elite in the secret version of the report, one can be sure that would have been leaked by now, given past behavior of the US authorities in anti-Russian operations. Nothing at all has surfaced so far.

This, of course, did not prevent the Russian authorities from hyperventilating over the sanctions report when asked to comment by local and international media today. For his part,while attending a campaign gathering, Vladimir Putin explained his views on the Kremlin Report when he answered a question from the floor as to why he alone in the Government was not on the sanctions list. Said Putin, the Report named individuals and office-holders behind which stood whole sectors of the economy and strata of the population, In that sense the sanctions lists embraced the entire Russian nation of 146 million people. He noted that things could have been worse, and that he had been prepared, if necessary, to cut all ties with the United States down to zero. Nonetheless, he deemed the release of the Kremlin Report to be a hostile act that would contribute only to further deterioration of relations with the United States. For the moment, there would be no Russiancounter-measures, but his Government would adopt a wait-and-see posture.

Indeed, while the Kremlin Report did not introduce new personal sanctions and only identified those who would be the first to feel them if the situation justifying sanctions changed, that situation itself is very much under the control of American authorities and their proxies in Ukraine, in the Baltics, in Syria. The possibility is ever present that some miscalculation or some provocation would once again bring opprobrium upon the Russian Federation and prompt imposition of severe sanctions that were averted now.

Finally, let us consider the second report delivered by the Trump Administration to Congress last night under the terms of the CAATSA: the report on advisability of further sectoral sanctions on Russian companies. This was still more brief and will surely be questioned by the Russia-bashers in Congress. The Administration reported that the existing sectoral sanctions on Russia’s Military Industrial Complex and on those who do business with it domestically in Russia and abroad were working effectively, so that no further sectoral actions were required. Specifically, it was claimed that thanks to the sanctions in place, Russia had been denied sales of arms worth several billion dollars.

That claim may be hard to verify, but 29 January was also the effective date for application of previously enacted sanctions on companies anywhere in the world doing business with prescribed Russian defense manufacturers and sales or import entities. The ultimate objective of these sanctions is to attack Russia’s arms sales abroad which amounted to more than $14 billion in 2017, making it one of the largest suppliers worldwide. Major customers for Russian arms were India, China, Algeria, Vietnam, Iraq and Egypt as reported by the news agency RBC quoting Jane’s for 2016.

Theoretically the US can punish companies violating this ban on dealings with the Russian military industrial complex by applying any of 5 different sanctions including restricting their access to credits from American banks, a prohibition on carrying out transactions in dollars, barring their officers from entering the United States.

However, in practice these sales can be shifted from private companies to Ministries of Defense, and then the feasibility of attaching sanctions becomes doubtful. The recent efforts of the US to persuade the Turkish authorities to abandon their $2.5 billion contract with Russia for procurement of its S-400 air defense system failed miserably. In these open trials of strength with the objective of punishing Russia, the United States exposes itself to failure and humiliation.

To summarize, should the United States resolve one day to impose sanctions on the whole Russian government listed in the Kremlin Report of 29 January, it will create a barrier that will quickly be broken by kinetic action, meaning a hot war with Russia. If it implements the possibilities it theoretically enjoys against Russian industrial sectors, and in particular against the military industrial complex, then it is likely to suffer humiliation as other nations refuse to be bullied. For the United States in relation to Russia, the whole sanctions game amounts to a “heads you win, tails I lose” proposition.

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‘Total War’ Led by the U.S. and Russia’s Predicament over How to Respond

If we are to understand the policy options being considered by Russian elites, including by the occupant of the Kremlin, we must understand in depth the contempt and derision with which they speak of the U.S. today in media directed at the home audience

Continue reading “‘Total War’ Led by the U.S. and Russia’s Predicament over How to Respond” →

The coming Russia-Ukraine War: update and analysis

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

While the United States and a good many countries around the world this weekend have been reflecting on the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s move into the Oval Office, drawing up balance sheets of his promises and achievements, Russia has had a rather different issue on the front-burner: the coming war with Ukraine.

The situation in Donbass (South-Eastern Ukraine) has been an intermittent feature of Russia’s political talk shows for the past couple of years, along with the military campaign in Syria and more recently the stages in the preparation for presidential elections on 18 March.

To be sure, minds became focused on Donbass in the closing weeks of 2017 as military action on the front lines separating the forces of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk enjoying Russian support from Ukrainian militias and armed forces reached an intensity not seen for more than a year. This, despite the heralded exchange of military prisoners by both sides before New Year’s under talks supervised by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Kirill.

Then, this past Thursday there came a wholly new development. Readers in the United States and Europe may be forgiven for knowing nothing about it as yet. Only the Russians have placed it under the microscope and have been seeking to give it meaning. I am speaking about a draft law passed that day by the Ukrainian Parliament (Supreme Rada) which the Russians believe amounts to a declaration of war.

As usual, the most comprehensive interpretation of this emotion-charged development has been delivered by the head of all Russian television and radio news services, Dmitri Kiselyov on his Sunday evening news wrap-up.

Dmitri Kiselyov, News of the Week, Sunday, 21 January 2018

According to Kiselyov, the new law, which awaits Poroshenko’s signature, ends Kiev’s participation in the Minsk Accords and prepares for war. The mission in Donbass is no longer described as an “anti-terrorist operation.” The mission now is to send armed forces against “military formations of the Russian Federation” in Donbass. A military HQ is created to coordinate the military operation to be waged in Donbass. Whereas till now the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Lugansk were under the Minsk Accords considered as negotiating parties, there are henceforth only “occupation administrations” of the Russian Federation on these territories. Russia is identified as an “aggressor.” Says Kiselyov, “This makes it all the more convenient for Ukraine to start a war.” In this way, Poroshenko has prepared the way not to pay the country’s foreign debts. In this way he has prepared to stay in power forever.

The report then switches over to the Vesti reporter on the ground in Donetsk. Local residents confirm that the law means war. They see the current moment on the front line as “calm before the storm.” Donetsk soldiers at their trenches say they are fully ready to engage with the enemy.

Kiselyov draws back a bit, wondering whether he is not overstating the dangers. Perhaps the draft law, which Poroshenko still has to sign, will not be implemented, like so much else passed by the Rada. But it is not the law itself that is the issue. It is the mood in favor of war in Kiev. The facts speak for themselves, he tells us: Poroshenko has done nothing to implement the Minsk Accords. Not one cease fire along the lines of contact has been observed. There are attacks and deaths every day. Only counter force has pushed back recent Ukrainian attempts to gain territory. Kiev has written off the population of the two republics. It has cut off all transport and telecoms links. It does not pay pensions and assistance to the needy. It closed the banking system and there are no commercial ties. Kiev does not recognize the population of Donbass. For Kiev the two provinces are merely territory to take back from the occupiers.

Other circumstantial evidence that war at this moment is in the interests of Kiev comes from the economic front. The EU has refused to extend 600 million euros of credits to Ukraine due to corruption. The IMF recently refused a tranche of $800 million over failure to introduce reforms. Meanwhile, in 2019 Ukraine has to start repaying earlier loans. This will come to 14 billion dollars a year, which amounts to one-half the state budget of Ukraine. Due to the dire economic conditions, Poroshenko, Grossman and all the other government officials in Kiev have become utterly unpopular, They have no chance of winning any elections.

Apart from Kiev, who else wants a big war in Ukraine? .For its part, Europe is fed up with Ukraine. Macron and Merkel no longer are keen to continue the Normandy format of negotiations.

However, the United States stands out as a backer of war. Washington has started delivering lethal weapons including the Javelin anti-tank missile system free of charge to Kiev. Trainers are now on location. The US has budgeted $350 million for the war in Ukraine.

And what does Russia say to all this. Per Kiselyov, for Russia, the best would be to stay with Minsk. But it seems there is no way back.

Analysis and Forecast

The Maidan demonstrations which culminated in the coup d’etat of 22 February 2014 in Kiev overthrowing the government of nominally pro-Russian Premier Yanukovich have been seen by some analysts as an operation of the Neocon dominated U.S. State Department under Barack Obama to take revenge for their humiliation a year earlier when Obama reneged on his declaration of “red lines” in Syria over chemical weapons attacks. To the surprise and dismay of the Deep State, Obama agreed to a Russian proposal that they oversee the destruction of Assad’s chemical arsenal instead of ordering an air attack on Damascus with the objective of overthrowing the Syrian dictator.

Now that the United States has been again and still more decisively humiliated in Syria by the nearly complete military victory of Assad forces with substantial Russian air assistance, the Deep State once again is looking to Ukraine to wreak its vengeance on Russia.

It is clear that the Kremlin has very little to gain and a great deal to lose economically, diplomatically from a campaign now against Kiev. If successful, as likely would be the case given the vast disparity in military potential of the two sides, it could easily become a Pyrrhic victory. But notwithstanding Kiselyov’s calming words, it may well be that Moscow feels it has no choice. Kiev must be neutered now and very quickly, a new provisional government must be installed now and very quickly lest the United States and its NATO allies have the time to intervene militarily, creating the conditions for the outbreak of WWIII.

Watch this space in the coming days.

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Once Catholic Belgium heads for cultural self-destruction

A people without a past is a people without a future

Continue reading “Once Catholic Belgium heads for cultural self-destruction” →

Celebrating Russian Christmas in Brussels. High Politics and High Society Meet in the Grand Dining Room

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

I will be very discreet in this essay and name no names, not even the venue of our gathering last night. There was no imposition of Chatham House Rules by the President of the club where it took place, but there is no point in ruffling feathers when what counts here is the overall ambiance, plus the bits and pieces of anonymous chit-chat, not the identity of the individuals who spoke freely and in confidence.

Suffice it to say that this was a gala, black-tie dinner in honor of Russian Christmas, which under the Julian Calendar observed by the Orthodox Church, fell this past Sunday on 7 January. It was held in the most prestigious gentlemen’s club of French-speaking Belgium.

The club has the word “Royal” in the middle of its name, and it should come as no surprise that more than a sprinkling of the 162 participants who were seated at the tables are members of Belgian nobility, the diplomatic service (retired) and others close to the monarchy. The rest are business people and patented members of local high society.

This being a Russia-themed event, there were a certain number of sons and daughters of the illustrious Russian noble families who settled in Belgium after the Revolution of 1917. Indeed, the entire undertaking was initiated by a representative of the most illustrious of these princely families. However, most participants were purely Belgian and with no particular experience of Russia other than, possibly as tourists over the years. They came to have a good time, to enjoy an unusual cuisine for a house that is otherwise very French and to hear 19^th century Russian romances performed by a group of Kuban Cossacks who had great skills in a capella singing and produced extraordinary effects from tiny and from oversized balalaikas.

Why take your time with this unremarkable event populated by the well-to-do in their dinner jackets and long gowns? Because what was said about relations with Russia in the lounges before and after, at the tables during dinner by those with whom I came into contact, and by the body language of most everyone else in the room contradicts entirely what one might have expected in attitudes towards Russia given the fraught state-to-state relations between the EU and the big neighbor to the East.

To be specific, my well-educated and successful Belgian interlocutors from last night’s soirée associate Russia with the best of European culture, whether music, literature or the performing arts. They see it as a dynamic country immensely rich in natural resources from which they do not want to be cut off. They view it as another European power having a long common history with their own. They accept that Russia may have a less than perfect democratic government, but they know only too well how imperfect democracy is in their own country, where there is an hereditary caste of ministers and government leaders rife with nepotism and hubris, kept in power by the fragmentation of the electorate among too many parties that the very progressive proportional representation system encourages. Like many other Continental countries, Belgian cabinets are the product of unprincipled coalitions distributing and redistributing ministerial portfolios to their own convenience to patch together majorities of deputies without regard to competence or the expressed will of the electorate. Why then throw stones at the Putin regime?

They view with disdain and embarrassment the vassalage of their political elites before the United States, the sacrifice of national interest and the people’s welfare to keep the Americans happy. And they view NATO not as a common defense but as a mechanism by which the United States maintains the upper hand on the Continent and bullies their government officials.

I remind the reader that this is not my interpretation of how things should be seen by the Belgians. It is the Belgians themselves speaking confidentially.

I saw hints of such views in the past especially before and immediately after George W. Bush’s disastrous invasion of Iraq but never in people of such high social standing and expressed in such explicit terms. If I had to find a reason for this, it would surely be the Trump factor: the rolling back of the ideological camouflage of democracy promotion and its replacement by the language of raw power that Trump and his administration project unashamedly under the slogan of America First. Trump has freed minds here in Belgium from their earlier reserve in speaking about the United States.

The only question now is when finally one or another Belgian political party will understand that there is a potential groundswell of support among elites with money and social influence, not just among the hoi polloi if they call for a new foreign policy based on co-existence with Russia.

To properly understand what I have just witnessed, I must go back in time to the 1980s when I first came into contact with Belgium’s high society thanks to a club that I will name here: the Harvard Club of Belgium. Though most of the Club members back then were unremarkable lawyers and accountants who had some Harvard schooling, there were ties to an older generation then in their 60s who had been sent by their parents to Harvard and other prestige universities in the United States in the years immediately following the end of WWII to go and understand how the new ruler of the world operated, to go and make friends who might well be useful later in life. Indeed, they came home to Belgium and made fabulous careers in business, in government, in the European Institutions which the country hosted. One of the most successful among them who gave generously of his time to the Harvard Club and helped organize very special events exclusively for Club members was Count Etienne (Stevie) Davignon. These representatives of the elites were pro-American to a man.

The change from then to what I saw last night is unmistakable and suggestive of important things to come in trans-Atlantic relations, possibly also in relations with Russia.

As I have recently become aware, among the several possible scenarios which the Kremlin envisions for the evolution of international relations is wooing Europe away from the embrace of Washington, so as to form a third force in the world alongside and separate from China and the United States: a Russian-European alliance. When I first heard about this, it seemed to me to be pure illusion. However, in light of the views I heard last night, I see some merit to this ambition.

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Over the past several years, I have rocked back and forth on the issue of which side of the Atlantic would be first to reject U.S. global hegemony, end sanctions on Russia and usher in a new world order that is inclusive and shares out seats at the board of directors in a more rational fashion than today.

I initially put my money on Europe, because the voting arithmetic here on Russia-bashing resolutions that are also an indicator of adherence to US dictates, were far more favorable to change than in the USA. Fully one-third of the 751 legislators in the European Parliament abstain or vote against such measures. That compares to the less than one percent who stand up to the thundering stampede of the Russia-bashers in the U.S. Congress.

A year into the sanctions, by the summer of 2015, it appeared that Europe might indeed crack. There were voices among politicians in Italy in France, in the Czech Republic, in Greece and elsewhere who spoke publicly against the herd instinct for survival and blind obedience to Washington. They pointed to the zero effectiveness of sanctions in changing Russian behavior, and to the serious economic harm they were doing to EU countries. But the six-monthly votes in the EU on sanctions renewal came and went repeatedly without any breaking of the ranks. Whether thanks to high-powered visits to Europe by Joe Biden or to the effective threats of Angela Merkel, all the ducks lined up one way when it came time to be counted. Accordingly, I gave up hope that Europeans would find their backbone and free themselves from their American overlords.

Then along came Trump in 2016 and it seemed that the United States would be the first to turn away from the path of ever escalating confrontation with Russia. Embedded in his electoral platform was the notion that there is nothing wrong with having good relations with Putin. However, this new start did not get very far. Within months of Trump’s inauguration, General Flynn, one of his most resolute supporters on this issue was forced out of office, the jackals were nipping at Trump’s heels over allegations of collusion with the Russians, and he made no further efforts to turn around the ship of state, while his assistants loudly continued all the verbal assaults on Russia with which the Obama administration closed its tenure.

Now as he enters his second year in office, there are no signs that this particular promise to his electorate can be fulfilled. It appears unlikely that the United States will be a first mover.

Let us hope, based on last night’s sampling of Belgian high society, that Europe may yet come to the rescue of itself and of mankind by repudiating the American global hegemony and recognizing Washington as just one more global competitor that happens to fight dirty.

Time will tell…

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Patriarch Kirill’s interview with Dmitri Kiselyov, 7 Jan 2018: Further thoughts

by Gilbert Doctorow, Ph.D.

I prepared my essay on the Christmas Day interview of Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in great haste, to be sure that this “scoop” would be mine. As it turns out, I need not have rushed, since the topic was subsequently left untouched by all other political analysts having an interest in Russia both in country and abroad. And while I remain persuaded that the remarks on Russia’s uniqueness by the Patriarch are of great importance to all those following the trajectory of the country’s rise on the world stage, with the benefit of time for reflection, I am not surprised they have been overlooked.

In fact the vast majority of my confrères write almost exclusively about the headline issues like the candidates for Russia’s 18 March presidential election or about the Russia-Gate controversy, that is to say they focus on the same issues that are covered by The New York Times or the Washington Post, even if their political positions are 180 degrees at variance with those of this mainstream press. I offer that as an observation of the real situation, not necessarily as a criticism, for there are among them many who will justify skipping an item like the views of the Russian Patriarch as an exercise in intellectual history that is marginal to real world events. Their mind-set is as cynical as Stalin’s, encapsulated in the riposte attributed to him: “And how many divisions does the Pope have?”

Moreover, the Russian Orthodox Church is not a subject that attracts much interest among our secularist journalists and readership on both sides of the ideological divide over President Trump. Those who have looked to find influences on Russian state policy and on Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin have looked in entirely other directions. I think for example of the long fascination of so many of our pundits and even area specialists with the exotic Eurasianist theories, and of one of its most colorful exponents, professor Alexander Dugin. Until he was fired from Moscow State University, and even after that there were those who found his very existence congenial, because his quackery and seeming closeness to power could be presented as a modern day Rasputin in the Kremlin.

By contrast, the leading Orthodox clergy who are close to Putin and the Kremlin are world class theologians and diplomats, charismatic television personalities, composers of widely respected religious music, and persons of much higher intellectual merit than your average journalist or pundit. Kirill is first among them. Hence, the disinterest of our media. As for our specialist community, I imagine they will eventually get around to Kirill and he will yet be the subject of a doctoral dissertation or two, if only for his leadership of the traditionalist alliance with the Catholic Church against global liberalism.

Then there is another prejudice working against any suggestion that the Orthodox Church might be influencing state policy, and not just be an instrument used by an authoritarian state to consolidate its shaky power. The possibility that the Church might have its own power base in the population making it an ally rather than a servant of the state is not something that Russia’s detractors care to entertain.

No sooner had I published my essay on Kirill’s interview last Sunday than I realized I had only scratched the surface. Most of my article was a summary and/or my own verbatim translation of the Patriarch’s statements that I construe as constituting a new Russian messianism. The analysis portion of the essay missed some obvious and essential points. I became even more aware of how much there remained to say about the interview when, a few hours later, the Moscow Patriarchate put up on the web its official Russian language transcript of the interview. Reading it through, I found in the late portions of the interview, which I had not had time to transcribe myself from the youtube video, there are some further connections between the Patriarch’s views and ongoing Russian foreign policy in the Middle East.

For all of these reasons, I return to the interview here with the following further thoughts.

* * * *

First and most pressing, we have to consider closely the three historical examples that Kirill cited to demonstrate how Russians have very often put the inner voice of conscience, that is, moral values, alongside and even above pragmatism in foreign affairs. These examples were protection of Orthodox Christians in the Holy Land which got Nicholas I’s Russia embroiled in the Crimean War, the Russian campaigns in the Balkans in the 1870s under Alexander II on behalf of their Orthodox Slavic brethren and against their Ottoman oppressors, and Nicholas II’s decisions in favor of the Orthodox Serbs in 1914 that took Russia into World War I.

It is stunning that Kirill has chosen precisely these examples, because each of them was a disaster for the Russian state, none greater than the final one, which brought down the dynasty, with all the horrors that followed.

It is noteworthy that in at least the last two examples society imposed the course taken by the State, that is to say there were essentially bottom-up social movements that forced the hand of the Government, a scenario that runs directly counter to the commonly held notions of how Autocracy was supposed to work. But this is a cavil which does not contradict the Patriarch’s overarching idea that men can be motivated to fight and die for causes that speak to their heart, and not in defense of geopolitical objectives. That has validity across many countries and continents. In the United States, it was a key point raised by Henry Kissinger in his 1994 work Diplomacy, when he explained why the Realist Theodore Roosevelt was unable to take the United States into WWI, though he very much wanted to do so, whereas his successor, the Idealist Woodrow Wilson was able to thanks to his call “to make the world safe for democracy.”

As we see later in the interview, there is a direct connection between the examples which Kirill took from the pre-revolutionary Russian past and his vision of present day issues amounting to the Cross for Russia to bear. The commonality is Russia’s role as protector of Orthodoxy in the East, that is in the Holy Sites of Palestine and in the cradle of Orthodox Christianity, what is now Syria and Iraq.

Half-way through the Christmas Day interview, Kirill delivers a fascinating account of the issues and of his personal involvement, as well as how they were brought to the attention of Vladimir Putin well before Russia intervened in Syria.

Vladimir Putin has consistently presented the need to strike at the Islamic State in Syria and deal a death blow to radical Islam before it could move on Russia. Patriarch Kirill took the same line in the past and most particularly in his January 2016 interview with Dmitri Kiselev. However, he tells us here that Russia’s military intervention in Syria also had as motivation to save what was left of the Christian community in Syria.

As we read these lines, we must bear in mind the long ties between Russia and this part of the world, something that is hardly ever evoked in Western media coverage of the war in Syria. As I noted in my report last year on the Mariinsky Orchestra concert in liberated Palmyra, St. Petersburg intellectual society had a self-image as a twin city of Syrian Palmyra throughout the 19^th century for reasons going back to their own Catherine the Great and a female ruler of ancient Palmyra. Oriental studies and themes for the arts may have been widespread in 19^th century Europe, particularly France with its proximity to North Africa which it was then colonizing, but Russia was physically closer to the Christian East and Russian society directed its gaze there. The Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society was founded in the last quarter of the century to assist the substantial flows of pilgrims and scholars. These ties that bind must not be ignored.

Patriarch Kirill:

“Already in 2014, it was clear that conflicts on the territory of Syria were being incited by radical forces which, if they came to power, would begin by liquidating the Christian presence in this country. That is precisely why the Christians actively supported Assad and his government, – because in the country a certain balance of forces was secured and that is very important. People felt they were being protected. In 2014, notwithstanding warnings about the danger, I nonetheless decided to travel to Syria. I was in Damascus and led a church service there, and I saw what enthusiasm there was among the people. In conversations both with Muslims and with Christians, meeting with politicians, I understood that if the Islamic radicals come to power in Syria, the first ones who would suffer would be the Christians. As already happened in Iraq, where 85% of the Christians were either killed or driven out of the country. I visited Iraq still under the regime of Hussein, including in the northern regions, in Mosul. I visited the ancient Christian monasteries. I saw the piety of the people and was overjoyed that in Muslim surroundings the Christian churches existed in peace. Now practically nothing of this remains – the monasteries have been destroyed, the churches were blown up. The same could happen in Syria. Therefore the participation of Russia was connected not only with solving questions about which I do not have full competence and about which I do not consider it possible to speak, relating to the stabilization of the situation, and not to allow…..military threats, not to allow power to be seized by the terrorists. There was a very important idea – to defend the Christian minority. Back in 2013, when Moscow was celebrating the 1025^th anniversary of the Christian baptism of Rus’, the heads of the Orthodox Churches arrived. When they met with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, one of the strongest messages concerned precisely the request that Russia take part in the defense of Christians in the Near East. And I am happy that this happened. Thanks to the participation of Russia a genocide of Christians was averted.

“Now there arises the question of restoring peace in this country, justice, security, solving a huge number of economic issues. And, what is especially close to us, – the restoration of churches, monasteries, monuments, including Muslim and ancient monuments. Our Church is participating in rendering humanitarian assistance. We are working both in our own name, and in addition we have a bilateral agreement with the Catholic Church to jointly provide humanitarian assistance. In other words, we are acting in various areas, – I hope they will make their contribution to real assistance to those who are still suffering in Syria.”

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For the complete transcription (in Russian) of the interview, see http://www.patriarchia.ru/db/text/5095439.html

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