Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcl4ULCIcPU

Farris: 0:06
Gilbert, thanks for coming back so quickly. I, you know, we are … in a bizarre world. I feel like, you know, look at the events over the weekend. And I think to myself, is this country, is the geopolitical, are we in a pro wrestling era now? Because everything is just like, things are happening, but yet nothing happens. I keep saying that but that’s the first feeling I get. What do you think?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Yeah, well, Donald Trump is the Haystack Calhoun of our day. He was quite a performer, Haystack Calhoun. So I take up your reference. Look, it’s only over when it’s over, and then we’ll all be gone.

0:50
The– things are changing, and I have made some statements. I’ve claimed victory in my forecast of what Trump was up to. It ended in a ceasefire, which is now in force. But I say, “ended in”, we don’t know when it can emerge from that into new fighting. I think it’s very doubtful.

Though I do look around me and I see people who are quite reputable and quite serious who are saying, “Ah, the United States is now arming Israel to the teeth, and they’ll go back into–“. I don’t believe that, but that’s my belief against their belief, and we all can be, each of us can be wrong in his own way. Nonetheless, as I have said in several essays in the last day or two. My difference with peers amounts to two elements.

One is that I believe I’m more open-minded than they are. Everyone knows that Donald Trump is a buffoon, that Donald Trump is a narcissist. Everyone thinks they know a lot, but they really don’t. And their unwillingness to look at anything that he does without prejudice works against them. So that’s one thing I have going for me, I had going for me, in my prediction about his seemingly bizarre and seemingly unconstitutional and very vicious attack on Iran this past weekend was going to end badly. I said it would end all right. And I think so far my prediction has held.

2:36
But there’s a second reason, which I’ve mentioned today in my writings, and that’s methodology. And I think– I want to say this to the audience, because it’s something that I don’t think anybody much thinks about. They all have these experts and they all, and they mostly they agree, and then there are a few people who don’t agree, as if this is arbitrary and just personal whim. It isn’t.

Regrettably, most of the people who are on the airwaves are not following the principle of objectivity. By objectivity, I mean something very specific that comes from Marxist thinking, something I was introduced to when I was a college student, and it’s called the difference between objective analysis and subjective analysis. And almost everything that we read in commentary on political leaders is based on subjective analysis. Now, what does that mean? It means that you’re trying to express what the motive, intention of the actors can be or was.

3:54
And it assumes you can get into their head. It assumes– when I get questions from some interviewers, “Oh, what does the Kremlin think about this?” If I answer the question, because I don’t answer it, I won’t be invited back. But I’ll tell you right now, I don’t have any respect for the question. The question assumes that I have a microphone under the pillow of Mr. Putin, which is nonsense. We don’t know what he thinks, and I’m telling you, I don’t care what he thinks. I care what he does. And that’s the same thing with respect to Donald Trump. But even with Donald Trump, it’s multiplied many times, because if you listen to him consecutively day after day, he’s saying everything contradictory.

4:36
On day two, he’s contradicting most of what he’s done on day one. Therefore, you’re left in total confusion, and you think the man is a muddle. He isn’t. But I say that to try to follow any politician’s spoken words or to try to imagine judging by their biography, their past, what their personality is like — is a big mistake.

All the famous well-known biographies of Mr. Putin, KGB, and power. I’m sorry, this is all rubbish. This is precisely subjective analysis, looking at the man’s past, trying to get into his mind, trying to pretend as a layman that you’re a psychoanalyst who can make sense out of a man and then explain what his next moves will be on the political chessboard. Wrong.

5:33
Even professional psychologists tell you that analysis by remote, without having the person sitting on a couch in front of them, is virtually worthless. And it is still less valuable when it’s done by laymen who really don’t know what analysis is all about. Therefore, for this reason, so many of my colleagues are making either hysterical statements about the present in the future. They’re hyperventilating. And they are not making predictions that can help the public understand where we are and where we’re going.

So as I say, when I differ from my colleagues on evaluation of given events, like what happened this past weekend, I don’t take credit for being smarter than anybody else, but I do take credit for using a methodology which I think is more valuable than what they are using. I use objective analytical frame. Now, what does that mean? It means I look at what they have done, not what they have said, and what is the consequence of their actions.

6:48
In the case of Mr. Trump this past weekend, it was clear to me that what he just did– in his bombing and making this bragging statement that the United States had obliterated the nuclear program of Iran, which was contradicted by many experts minutes after he made it– he was doing something very specific. He was shutting up Mr. Netanyahu. Netanyahu could not come back and say, “Oh no, they still have–“. He couldn’t, because then he would be humiliating Trump and their relationship would be finished, meaning that Israel would be cut off from its major supplier of all armaments.

Therefore, Mr. Netanyahu had to bite his tongue. He had lost the reason for waging the war on Iran, and the consequence was that they stopped fighting, that they agreed to a ceasefire, which was not in the nature of Mr. Netanyahu. Now that’s why I say that this analysis, without prejudice, looking at concretely what would flow from what just happened, I think is a more valuable approach to current events.

8:15
[commercial message]

Farris: 8:46
When that was occurring on Saturday, how long did it take you to come to the conclusion of what you just shared with me?

Doctorow:
Five minutes. It was obvious as day. Either the man is completely mad, in which case go look for the nearest shelter, or there was some spark of intelligence in what he was doing. Not because Mr. Trump is necessarily brilliant, but people in power are surrounded by brilliant people. So they’re surrounded by some scoundrels and surrounded by a lot of people, just as he was when he was a real estate developer.

When you’re wealthy, you have people lined up outside your door to make proposals to you. Your value in the whole situation is to have enough common sense to sort out what is trash and what is potentially great value. And since he’s been in business for a very long time, and he didn’t go bankrupt although admittedly there were some close shaves, I assumed that he has enough judgment to sort out the advice from would-be advisors that is good, from advice that is dangerous or trash. And that is what I give him credit for. Just as he doesn’t write his own speeches, and when he goes extemporaneous, It’s pretty awful.

There’s no reason to expect him to write his own speeches. There’s no reason for us to expect our president to be a universal genius. And the people who don’t understand that, as President Obama did not understand that, and who are flattered and who are vain and who answer every idiotic question that the public puts to them, they are fools. None of us is a universal genius. But it’s so easy to be flattered and to consider yourself as obliged to answer questions that you know nothing about.

So let’s leave it with Mr. Trump. I understood very quickly there had to be some sense in what he was doing. And as soon as he, he said, when did I realize this? After he made his speech, not during the event.

11:01
During the event, during the bombing, it wasn’t clear what’s going on. But when he made his speech to the nation, and there are a couple of things that were in there. There were markers. And I’m amazed that my peers, my colleagues haven’t paid attention to those markers.

Marker number one, his whole litany of grievances against Iran, justifying America taking action now. Israel wasn’t in that pool at all. That told me he was going back to 1980 and the shock and horror in the States over the taking of hostages from the US embassy. That is the start of America’s hatred for Iran, and for the leadership of Iran, for the Ayatollahs. And he went on to the present, “Oh, they’ve killed a lot of our soldiers.” Yeah, well, of course. Of course they’ve killed them, because you’ve killed them. There’s been this whole litany of grievances, but strictly American grievances. There was no Israel in that equation. That should have been a signal to everybody that America is waving the Israeli tail.

And as opposed to Mr. Mearsheimer’s well-known proposal, proposition accepted by, which almost cost him his academic position in 2007 when he set it out in the book, but today is universally accepted that the Israel lobby dictates American foreign policy. Well, there it was, shredded, shredded by Mr. Trump himself. And what I took this to mean is that he was in control of the relationship with Netanyahu, not the other way around.

12:55
And he was saving Israel from Netanyahu, because Israel’s losing the war. So there you have it. That’s where I realized that it’s not what it looks like.

Farris::
And then Iran’s response by military base in Qatar?

Doctorow: 13:17
This was more political theater. And it has a tradition. It didn’t just come from nowhere. But what we’re speaking about in the relationship here is a duel. Trump dishonored Iran by moving this very sophisticated, heavy bombers, the B-2, with their 15-ton bunker busters, and attacked Iran. That was a humiliation for the country, not just an act of war.

And Iran, being a proud nation of 5,000 years of civilization, had to respond. But duels are not what we think about. Duels don’t always end in death. In the 19th century, They very often did not end in one side trying to murder the other. On the contrary, you as a gentleman were obliged to pick up the glove that had been cast at your feet.

14:19
That is the humiliation that your opponent was delivering to you. You had to respond by choosing your seconds, by discussing with them, having them discuss which weapons were used, pistols or swords, or Lord knows what, and you would have to have a duel. But you were not obliged to kill him. You were obliged to react, to take part in the duel. And it was perfectly respectable and admirable if instead of taking aim at his heart, you shot your pistol in the air.

And that is what Iran did. They avenged their insult by attacking the most important American base in the Gulf region, the coordinating center in Qatar. But they sent older, less advanced six missiles against Qatar, missiles which they knew could be shot down. And they gave advance warning to the Americans that this was coming. And they chose Qatar, because Qatar, aside from being so important, they knew it was an empty shell, the same as their own Fordow and other two nuclear sites were empty shells when the Americans attacked.

The American soldiers had largely been withdrawn from Qatar. So in these circumstances, I say this was political theater. They knew that this could end the conflict with the States. And Donald Trump knew that. And he virtually, minutes after it happened, said that.

16:10
He even publicly thanked the Iranians for having given America advance warning. There you have it, political theater. So this is the way I read it. No, I don’t pretend that this is the way it’s all going to end. And I don’t pretend that Scott Ritter is wrong when he says that the Americans are arming Israel to the teeth and they go back into the fighting. Anything is possible, though I’m very skeptical.

Farris:
That was going to be my next question to you. Not that you’re forecasting, but will this hold? I mean, it’s holding for now.

Doctorow:
I think so. The question is, what is the meaning of this for Israel’s war on Gaza continuing? I believe that Mr. Trump now has leverage over Netanyahu to end that as well. If I were Trump, which I’m not, I would speak to my Zionist donors, who my peers believe are dictating his policy. I don’t agree with that, but that’s what they think, and they have a reason to say that.

17:24
And I would say, “Gentlemen and ladies,” because the biggest donor was a woman, “I have just saved the neck of Israel, because Mr. Netanyahu was taking it down. If the war continued, Israel would be destroyed. The state would cease to be viable economically.” It already has lost more than 250,000 Israelis who fled from the start of this 12-day war.

At the start of the war, they took pleasure boats and they went out into the sea off of Gaza to watch the fireworks as their Iron Dome brought down the Iranian missiles. Well, six, seven days into the war, they were using the same pleasure boats to flee to Cyprus. So those who had the money to get out, got out, 250,000 of them, that’s about, probably a low estimate. The country is going to rack and ruin. Haifa port has been largely incapacitated either by destruction of port facilities or by the unwillingness of any merchant vessel to go near it for fear of being bombed by the Iranians.

18:46
The country cannot go on like that. And I would tell them, “Gentlemen, Ladies, let’s get it over with Gaza as well. And let’s get rid of Mr. Netanyahu.”

That’s, I can’t say that the scenario that I just painted now is actually happening. Nobody can say that. But I don’t exclude that as a possibility to explain when Israel stops its genocide in Gaza.

Farris:
So for now it appears that that chapter is closed but by no means did the book finish on this.

Doctorow:
No it isn’t, and you have vile personalities like Macron who was one of the first to come out, rushed to the press and said “Oh, we didn’t, the … Americans didn’t really finish off the nuclear capabilities of Iran. Oh, we have to go back to war.”

19:43
Yes, I know, these vile personalities. And there are a few of them in the States as well. But generally speaking, Trump has succeeded in shutting everybody up and having them be silenced by what we all know. That Iran still has its enriched uranium. Iran still has a lot of centrifuges. And Iran, if it wants to, can go back to where it was before the attack.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of really wild speculation that’s being presented as solid facts in whatever you will touch when you open up YouTube and tap on the international subjects at the top of the screen. And this is really, “Oh, and Trump is shipping, sorry, Putin is shipping nuclear warheads to Tehran for use on their missiles.” This is totally irresponsible. Unfortunately, the fake news, particularly this is true of some of these Indian outfits, Times of India who were reporting a week ago that Netanyahu’s son had been killed and his wife was hospitalized.

All of this rubbish fills what any one of the viewers will find when they click on YouTube. And so if you don’t look at responsible presenters like yourself and a few others, you will be left with your hair standing on end. I think that the value of this program is precisely to let people smooth their hair down without [xxxxx] and relax a little bit. Things are not that horrible.

Farris: 21:40
Yeah, I was reading someone’s blog this morning and saying, you know, this is not 1939. There’s not going to be a draft. Not going to be a draft. There’s not going to be a nuclear holocaust. It’s not on the horizon. So everybody can just calm down.

Doctorow:
Well, I wouldn’t calm down excessively, because I’m sitting here in Brussels and just nearby, in The Hague they had a just concluding summit of all the NATO prime ministers and presidents. And if the policies that they have approved actually are implemented, which I don’t believe they can. But if they were to be implemented, then I would worry about the end of the world, but not next week. Let’s say five years from now.

Farris: 22:33
So you were writing about that, and I had a chance to look at it before we started. Talk about what they’re proposing in terms of increasing the budget for the NATO members.

Doctorow:
Well, I would like to address that in general terms and very specific terms, for the country I live in, because I read the Belgian newspapers, and there is relevant information about this country, which I think is relevant to countries even like Germany, to explain what the possibilities are to implement what was just approved unanimously, they say, at the summit in the Hague. The main achievement of that summit was the agreement, how it was finessed, Lord knows, because in fact Spain objected to it.

But reportedly the unanimous agreement that the NATO member states will raise their contributions, raise their military spending as a percent of GDP from the 2% that was mandated several years ago to 5% or practically speaking to 3.5% because the 5% includes 1.5% that could be called accounting, let’s call it subterfuge, accounting tricks. The one and a half percent, taking from three and a half percent to 5 percent, is permitted to be expenses for infrastructure, which is not really military spending.

24:20
Nonetheless, let’s say it goes to 3.5 percent. It can’t be done. My point is that they all agree to something that many of them know is utterly impossible politically. And why do I say that? Let’s look at Belgium.

Belgium now is, we know it’s the home of NATO. And at the same time, it is one of the countries that spend the least on military. With the percent of GDP, Belgium only spends 1.3 percent. The prime minister, Bart de Wever, conservative, an Atlanticist, of course, has pledged to meet the 2 percent before year’s end. But when you look at the details, the way of doing that is largely financial chicanery, budgetary manipulation, putting in the reconstruction of bridges and improvement of roads as having a military significance for NATO because it facilitates the movement of NATO troops that could be landed by plane or boat on Belgian shores.

25:38
It facilitates their movement eastward towards the beginning of Russia. Well, that’s a very nice trick. The problem is you can’t continue that trick into 2026. And where do you find the money? And here you have the frank admission that you can’t.

Belgium is highly indebted. Belgium has one of the highest tax rates on the working population. And I stress that, working population, not on capital, not on residences, but on working population, in the world. And so you can’t raise that rate of taxation. So what you can do to free up money to raise the military budget is to cut other elements of the federal budget.

And that, what does that mean? It means cutting social benefits. And that is political suicide. Belgium has a coalition government, which includes right and left, and center; and the left will walk out. It took nine months to form a government here, because there are a lot of little parties and everybody’s got their own favorite policy line, which has to be accommodated in the new coalition.

27:07
It took them nine months to form a government. If the prime minister pushes ahead with the obligation to raise the spending on military substantially, then the liberals will leave his government; his government falls. It’ll take at least nine months to replace it with a new government. In the meantime, we have a caretaker government, which cannot do anything.

It cannot touch the budget, it cannot introduce new legislation. Therefore, in no way would the planned rise in military be realized. And I don’t think Belgium’s a unique case. Looking at the neighbors, Germany, Mr. Merz is very, very, very enthusiastic about raising Germany’s military spending.

Maybe Germany has more room, more budgetary tricks it can play because it has a much bigger economy and much better credit, shall we say, on financial markets. But they don’t have people. And the latest remarks by Mr. Pistorius, the minister of defense, although he is a socialist, a member of former Chancellor Scholz’s cabinet, for introducing a draft will be the end of that coalition government, because the socialists reject it. Therefore, I think a number of countries, major countries and minor countries in the European Union, the idea of raising the military spending to meet what was just approved at the NATO summit is political theatrics.

29:07
It is not realizable. Now, I’d like to finish this remark on the summit by the second point. And if it were realizable, the only achievement would be to destroy European security, not to improve it. It amazes me that nobody is talking about this in their analysis of this meeting. Point is that for the last 30 or 40 years, there has been a shifting back and forth between Russia, well, Soviet Union, Russia, and Western Europe, NATO, between reliance on conventional forces and reliance on nuclear forces.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, before Mr. Gorbachev and the collapse, the slide into disaster of the Russian Soviet economy, the Russians looked at NATO. They saw massive armies. After all, the German army was three times what it is today. And they saw that army was well equipped.

30:21
And the other countries also in NATO had presentable armies and a lot of men. And the Russians added it all up. They came to whopping numbers of troops available to NATO, which outmanned them many times over. And they drew conclusions. The conclusion was, if we get into a fight with NATO, we will use nuclear weapons.

Now, what’s happened since? As we know, under Mr. Putin, the Russian armies have reconstituted themselves. They are now the strongest army in Europe, and maybe in the world, the best equipped with modern tanks, with modern drones, with everything you need on the battlefield, as we see daily in the results in Ukraine. They now produce four times the artillery shells that the United States and Europe together produce.

31:29
Russia is doing just fine in a conventional war against, essentially against NATO. The German army is in miserable shape, as everybody knows. Not because I’m saying that, because the Germans themselves are saying that. They don’t have equipment, they don’t have men, they don’t have anything, really. Europe as a whole has almost no air defense.

Almost none. Under these circumstances, the Russians are very happy to use their big advantage in conventional warfare and to keep it clean. They only are using conventional weapons, although they have the world’s biggest arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons of every size and variety for use in every possible eventuality.

But, but, big but, when Mr. Starmer and Mr. Macron started speaking about moving a 50,000-man force, armed force of coalition of the willing into Ukraine to protect them during a ceasefire and Lord knows what else. The Russians said very plainly, we will blow it up with nuclear weapons. We are not going to go into trench warfare with you guys. We won’t stand for it. We’re not going to lose our men because you are crazy. So get ready. We will blast you all away at once.

33:04
Well, there you have it. That’s what’s going to happen if Europe spends trillions of dollars, trillions of euros to rearm, as NATO is now suggesting. The war mode in Russia will go from conventional back to nuclear.


Now, why [ are they] not considering that? But why should they consider it? Because everything else they’re talking about is equal nonsense. How can Mr. Rutte make a speech as he did yesterday, which included a large segment on building a European air defense? How can they even begin to talk about that, when they see what’s just happened to Israel’s four-layer defense, the best in the world, American-equipped, American-designed. It failed completely.

33:57
When I said earlier that Israel’s being destroyed, it’s because the Iranians first depleted the interceptors and then, on the Israeli side, and then they moved in their most advanced missiles, particularly both cruise missiles and the hypersonic missiles, which cannot be stopped, and they’re destroying at will anything in Israel. If you look at that, I don’t see how Mr. Rutte or Mr. Trump with his famous Golden Dome for 150 billion dollars, I don’t see how they can open their mouths and talk about this … claptrap, this absolute nonsense of air defense. No.

Farris: 34:47
Yeah, that was going to be my next question to you, because you know Trump has been talking about this Golden Dome and you know, when we look back at what’s occurred between Israel and Iran over the last 12 days how effective is the Iron Dome?

Doctorow: 35:04
It isn’t, I don’t want to say that, against Hamas– it was developed, the Iron Dome was developed for nearby neighbors. The additional air defenses, which were largely engineered by the United States, were designed to stop the intercontinental ballistic missiles or just ballistic missiles. But none of them is capable of stopping hypersonic missiles. Nobody on Earth has such a capability now. And it is improbable that anyone will have, because these offensive weapons will be upgraded in sync with the upgrading of defensive systems.

And so the whole thing will be an impossible chase. And the losing side is the defense side, because as Israel has demonstrated, you have to send up four missiles to try to stop one incoming missile. And those missiles they’ve been sending up are $13 million a piece. The economics of this are unsustainable. The whole proposition is simply fantasy.

Farris: 36:25
I know I’m running out of time here with you, but what is your assessment of Donald Trump up to this point?

Doctorow:
Disappointment. Look, in his first administration, I was rather quickly ready to say, impeach the guy. I’m not ready to say that now, although he’s done and said some things which are quite strange to obnoxious. I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt with respect to the horrors of Gaza and his continuing support to Israel, which has enabled them to perform this genocide.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt in the argument, a cynical argument, but that’s what politics is very often, the cynical argument that he had to keep the Zionists on board and backing him if he was to have any chance of succeeding in his sought-after rapprochement with Russia and in his very contentious domestic policies, both on immigration and on the tariffs and on his tax relief or tax program. All these things are highly contentious. And he needed as much support in Congress as imaginable. And the pro-Zionist, the pro-Israeli members of Congress on both sides of the house, were essential for him to ride to victory in these policies that he holds dear. So I gave him the benefit of doubt in supporting Israel in its ghastly operations in Gaza.

38:26
But if I am wrong about the ceasefire in Iran and Israel, and this is, as some people like Scott Ritter are suggesting, yet another attempt to deceive us all, then of course I’ll revise my opinions. I’m not an apologist for the man, But neither am I ready to condemn him without looking closely at what he’s doing.

Farris: 38:58
What is, as we move forward here with the summit and then beyond that, what is your primary focus then in your work and your analysis?

Doctorow:
Well, my primary focus, of course, is Russia and its relations. But when Obama said Russia is just a regional power and Vladimir Putin responded, and which region? Because we’re all over the place. We are an Asian country and so forth. So Russia is involved in many things. I didn’t expect to say or write anything about the NATO summit today.

But of course, Russia is central to that summit. And so I was obliged to look closely at what they’re saying and doing, and to bring in, as I’ve just done, a material that is very close to me that would not be known to an outer world audience, and especially in the United States, what goes on in Little Belgium, which is actually just symptomatic of what’s going on in many separate European countries who have signed on to this NATO declaration, when they obviously have no intention or ability to realize it.

40:18
So my interests will be focused that way, with Russia at the center, but other countries necessarily coming in, because Russia has relations with them, either friendly or hostile.

Farris:
You know, Gilbert, I thank you for coming back on here. And you know, it’s– and I fall victim to fall victim to this as well, where I try to be better and then I find myself. I’m like, “Oh I got sucked into it again”, where you think you’re on the brink of the abyss, and then you realize like as we’ve moved beyond that, it’s, we’re not. We’re not going into the abyss this time. Maybe at some point, but not yet.

Doctorow: 41:01
Well, the advantage is, whatever you can think about Mr. … Trump, he is not Mr. Biden, in the sense that he is not mentally infirm. He still has his wits about him, and he is not being managed by his nominal assistants like Tony Blinken or Jake Sullivan.

He is responsible. He is running the show whether you like it or not. But don’t pay too much attention to his personality quirks, to his narcissism or his being a braggart or other personality defects. And just look at the significance, the consequences of what he is doing, whether negative or, as I think in many cases, positive.

Farris: 41:59
Where can people find you, Gilbert?

Doctorow:
I’m on Substack.com. That is, I have two web platforms. One is on WordPress. I used to publish essays there. Now I no longer publish essays there, though I do post there my interviews and transcripts of my interviews, but my essays which I invest a good deal of my thinking into– and of course, in written form, it’s easier to be more consistent and more logical than it is in any on-air discussion– they are published on gilbertdoctorow.substack.com.

Otherwise, I hope people will just look me up in Amazon in the search space and see what I published, which is eight books now. In some of these books, like my 2010 book on the great American post-Cold War thinkers on international affairs, they’re still selling. Because I think there is a long life to my books.

I’m still selling books. “Does Russia Have a Future?” “Does the United States Have a Future?” that date from 2015 to 2017. And my book is still, I think it was 2012, 2013, “Stepping Out of Line”, that is setting out the whole story of the pipeline wars between the United States and Russia for gas and oil.

That also has an audience, one copy just bought today in Germany. These are not, I don’t have big sales, but I think I have enthusiastic and serious readers, which heartens me. Sometimes I get comments back from them.

Farris: 44:14
Gilbert, as always, thank you so much. I look forward to continuing to follow your work and more conversations ahead.

Doctorow:
Well, thanks for having me.

‘Judging Freedom’: How Weak Is NATO?

Today’s discussion with Judge Andrew Napolitano went into the reasons why the commitment of all NATO member states yesterday to raise their military budgets to 5% of GDP from the present 2% was political theater as much as the fawning of Secretary General Rutte over Donald Trump was theater.

However, this theater was not staged for our amusement. It had business to achieve, which was to prepare an exit ramp from NATO for Mr Trump and the USA.  Of course, the American president cannot take the country out of NATO in the legal sense, since that would require a two-thirds vote of Congress which he cannot expect to receive. But he can sharply curtail American contributions to the NATO budget and reduce US military forces on the continent now.

I compared this to the political theater that Trump directed just a few days later when he sent B2 bombers and cruise missiles to attack Iranian nuclear bases from which everything of value had already been removed and then declared that he had destroyed the Iranian nuclear program.  That too was a very serious piece of business.  He thereby deprived prime minister Netanyahu of all reason to continue his war on Iran and a cease fire followed almost immediately.

The overriding message I was making is that we should pay attention not to the words of Trump and his associates, which are largely double-talk intended to confuse the journalists, whom Trump despises. We should follow the direct consequences of his actions, which, for the moment, are making a very considerable positive contribution to international relations.

Last night’s interview on the widely watched interview program ‘Redacted’ provided a fine opportunity to explain why the NATO summit held earlier in the day in The Hague, Netherlands was a piece of political theater stage managed by Donald J. Trump. By forcing the acceptance of the NATO Member States of a new minimum contribution to defense of 5% of GDP, Trump was building an exit ramp for the USA to reduce its contribution while still remaining within NATO as US law requires

Earlier this evening I spent 45 minutes with Michael Farris talking about Trump’s use of political theater – in his recent bombing raid in Iran for the purpose of giving Netanyahu an exit ramp from his war on Iran and in today’s NATO summit, where adoption of the 5% of GDP spending guideline by all Member States provides Trump with an exit ramp from America’s massive financial support of the alliance

Here is a foretaste of that video just posted by Farris:

In the minutes before I was given the microphone, another interviewee on this RT program was delivering an account of the human suffering in the present Middle East crisis which appeared to me to be oddly pro-Israeli.  Accordingly, I am pleased that I was allowed to tell a very different story to the RT audience.

I am each day impressed by the well-prepared questions posed by NewsX television presenters, as was the case in the video recorded this morning.

Was the latest Russian attack on the city of Sumy in northeast Ukraine a message from Moscow to the leaders of NATO Member States assembling in The Hague today?

May we expect the assembled NATO members to approve new military assistance to Ukraine?

Can the Russia-Ukraine war become still more destructive of civilians on both sides given today’s level of strikes and counter-strikes?

And much more…