Transcript submitted by a reader

Nima R. Alkhorshid: 0:05
Hi everybody, today is Friday January 10th, and our friend Gilbert Doctorow is back with us. Welcome back, Gilbert.

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Good to be with you.

Alkhorshid:
Let’s get started with the interview Elon Musk had with the AfD and in which he said– he was talking about the situation in Ukraine and he found it as Donald Trump was pointing out various times– he said that it was a stalemate in Ukraine for more than two years. How did you find this interview?

Doctorow: 0:46
The interview was interesting in a number of ways, particularly to judge Elon Musk’s possible contribution to the new incoming administration and what his superior intelligence-– and that is unquestioned, the man is one of the most brilliant men on earth, and he didn’t make us fortune by chance– what one of these most intelligent people on earth says and does when he moves outside his area of competence. And that is exactly what he did. I understand why he’s promoting Weidel, is completely in line with his taking over X, turning it X as a vehicle for promoting free speech. That is laudable and understandable.

However, when you have your free speech, you have to have something to say. And in this interview, it’s clear that he has nothing to say. Very sad because you think with all the time that I imagine he’s a quick reader and I imagine he has a very good memory. But it don’t seem to have been applied to the question that is uppermost in the minds of many people who have watched that. What is the future of Germany in NATO?

What is the view of this opposition, hard right opposition to Russia? Is it, does it hold the promise of a further split in European opinion regarding the current policies towards Russia, the sanctioning of Russia? This is the assistance in arms and money to Ukraine. Is there a change that we can expect, should Weidel and her party, the Alternative for Germany come to power? And listening to this and hearing, as you just said, his punchline, most important remark that Musk made in this whole interview that he sees this as a senseless war, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and produced nothing. And there’s a stalemate.

2:53
This shows that he is either just repeating for the sake of sounding aligned with Trump the empty propagandistic statements about the war that Trump has made following the intelligence briefings that he’s gotten from our deeply faulty American intelligence community in Washington, D.C. Or is this what Elon Musk believes on his own? I don’t dismiss entirely the possibility that he just did not want to contradict Trump. That exists.

3:31
But there’s also, just if you take his words at face value, he would appear to be completely under-informed and uncritical of intelligence that we know is deeply faulty and is basically propagandistic, repeating the empty claims and empty numbers that Kiev has produced over the last two years over the casualty rates and so forth. So this is a very big disappointment. At the same time, it is a refresher course in how everyone, including all the viewers to this program, should approach anything that anybody on this program says just as they approach critically what they hear on mainstream. You cannot expect to find in any of the experts a universal genius. That doesn’t exist in nature.

4:25
People who speak about Renaissance men, which is a word that was evoked yesterday with respect to Jimmy Carter at the, one of the eulogies from the speakers in the cathedral. There are no Renaissance men, or if they were, they were as faulty in their own ways as people who are said to be Renaissance men today are in fact. I hope that we’ll have a couple of minutes to speak about Carter. I understand I cannot violate the rule of not speaking ill of the dead, but nonetheless, that doesn’t mean that we have to be certified fools. And I do not share all of the praise and all of the bouquets put at his casket yesterday.

5:07
But that’s a separate issue, which maybe we have time for, maybe we don’t. And then the main point is that a person of the intelligence, of the wealth, of the success of Elon Musk, has a duty to the public in general to either shut up if he doesn’t know something or to learn something. So he has something genuine to say. That was not the case yesterday.

As regards the interview, it is very clear that Frau Weidel was playing up to him. She was saying anything possible to ingratiate herself with him for the obvious financial incentives that come from having him at her side. But I don’t think that that has so distorted her views that we cannot take and analyze what she said, because of the way it bears on the prospects for a change in NATO or an abolition of NATO that might come about in Europe quite separately from any reduced presence in NATO that Mr. Trump may intend to bring in with his administration.

6:18
So one of my most widely listened to and most authoritative fellow experts who is peers on many programs, including your own, that is Colonel Macgregor, said in the past week that he expects the Alternative for Deutschland to triumph at the polls in Germany on the 23rd of February and to take Germany out of NATO. Well, I ask and invite your audience to listen closely to the statements of Frau Weidel, the head of the Alternative for Deutschland, and see if you can find any reason to believe there would be the slightest change in Germany’s foreign policy if she comes to power, or she will not, when she takes office. Nothing.

7:17
They spoke about many things and many of the causes that she has espoused– and that Musk wanted the worldwide audience to see and hear about to give her respectability and her party respectability– these are many of our worldly causes, halt on illegal immigration, a reduction in taxes on the general German population, I assume on business as well, or business stripping away over-regulation that makes it very difficult to have initiative and to have innovative manufacturing in Germany. These are– free speech to ensure that there is no state censorship as now exists in Germany– these are all very worthwhile things and will improve the social climate in Germany if she and others were to bring that into play. Of course also to address what she denounces as the green policies that Chancellor Merkel introduced abolishing the nuclear power plants and so forth that have made German industry in such a disadvantaged position.

8:34
These are nice changes, but the things that interest your audience, the things that interest me, are changes in foreign policy. There was nothing in her statements to indicate a change of policy. In fact, she doubled down on Germany’s wrongheaded and unforgivable, unqualified backing for the state of Israel. She insisted that her party, the conservatives, are more solicitous, more promoting security for Jews in Germany than the other parties who are tinged with a leftist sympathy for Palestinians.

9:20
None of this is going to reflect well on a change in Germany’s policies to address the genocide in Palestine, in Gaza, and the rest of the atrocities that Israel is now perpetrating. There was, as I said, she agreed very calmly to Musk’s comments on the senselessness of the war, and she subscribed to his notion that Donald Trump can fix it quickly, can find a resolution to the war quickly. She asked him for details, and he very wisely said no, that’s not his role to play, that this is the prerogative of the incoming commander-in-chief, and he will not set out what specific measures Trump could or should take with respect to the war. But the idea, the basic idea, this basic fallacy in European policy is there, right in the middle of what she is saying, that the United States can end the war.

10:29
I’m sorry, officially the United States is not an uninterested, fair broker in this. It is effectively a co-belligerent. And it’s a co-belligerent on the losing side. How the losing side is going to settle a war, short of capitulation, is unfathomable. It may be that Mr. Musk has in mind capitulation as the outcome of this war, but he didn’t dare say it. And so we’re left to see that the Alternative for Dutchland is just going to follow in the wake of whatever America does. That is not very promising for our future.

Alkhorshid: 11:13
Do you understand the role of Elon Musk and how influential he is on Donald Trump in the coming administration. Can we get it, in your opinion?

Doctorow:
No, I don’t think we can. It is being intentionally left very vague. We know that he has moved into Mar-a-Lago, that he has a villa on the estate, on the Trump estate there, which he’s renting for $2,000 a night, which is of course small change for him. That gives him instant access to any important meetings that Trump may have with American politicos who come to visit him and bend the knee. But what exactly he’s contributing to this is not the least bit clear. I don’t know which way the information flow is going: from Trump and Trump’s advisors to Musk on how to characterize the present state of the war, or from Musk to Trump. It isn’t obvious. And it’s intentionally left unclear.

Alkhorshid: 12:23
You mentioned AfD and their policy. As I understand it and you’ve mentioned it, there is no drastic change in their foreign policy. It’s all about the domestic policy and how capable are they in implementing those domestic policies that they’re talking about?

Doctorow:
When you’re listening closely to her remarks, to her talking about how it was so essential to her since she doesn’t know all that much about everything, that she has competent aides, assistants, whom she allows to criticize herself daily and tell her what’s wrong. I’m sorry, that’s a very peculiar method of management. Musk didn’t come back to her on that. And he’s, “Oh, yes, we also, in our companies, we have feedback.” But generally speaking, in corporations, feedback means this 360-degree review, in which all people at various levels can tell the chief executive what they think about this or that.

13:27
You don’t do that every day. You cannot undermine the authority or suggest that the leader is rudderless on a daily basis. That’s not the way to manage anything. So that was not too good. She was kind of folksy. They were sharing laughs and jokes. It was all very conversational. The whole point was to put a human face on what otherwise looks like the Hitlerjugend, it looks like it’s a continuation of fascist Germany.

Instead, Musk wanted to show that these are just folks like we are, and they are interested in the same greater liberty, freedom of expression, chance to get rich by pulling back the very high German personal income taxes. That these were the causes that the American conservatives respect highly, are the basic agenda of the Alternative for Deutschland, as compared to what she’s calling the Uniparty, which means everybody else who are, if you listen to her, all a pack of socialists.

14:35
They’re socialists with the same agenda that the most progressive and I should say perverted forces in American political life are expressing, whether it’s the emphasis on gender issues or a leftist educational program, which is destroying the quality of German education in her view. These are the issues that Mr. Musk wanted the world to hear. And they did have a pushback to the criticism of this interview that Germany’s two main party leaders, that is the CDU and Merz and the socialists with Scholz, they were complaining loudly about Musk’s foreign interference in the election.

15:37
And she pushed back by saying, “Oh, okay, what about Mr. Merz’s disparaging remarks about Trump before the American elections? That wasn’t interference?” For that part, the Russians have also commented, what about Mr. Soros’ constant intervention in all European politics? It’s never denounced for what it is. It’s also foreign intervention. But that is celebrated by the EU institutions because it’s on the side of values driven policies. So these are the basic features of that discussion, on-air discussion, which I think really merits close examination.

Alkhorshid: 16:23
It’s so amazing to see that Elon Musk, who is so, he’s criticizing Soros and his attitude, but at the same time you see the same sort of behavior when you look at Venezuela right now in Europe. He tries to interfere in the domestic policies of these countries. Don’t you think that would be a game of two, like these two parties in the United States fighting each other, but at the end, we’re going to get the same result?

Doctorow:
Well, I think so. I was very positively oriented towards Musk, thinking that, all right, where is the adult in the room, which is what the kind of expression that was used about Trump in his first administration. I don’t think that Musk is the adult in the room. He’s a technical genius, but all of us have had plenty of experience with techies who try to set domestic and foreign policy, and usually those people are disasters. I’m afraid that Musk falls into that same category. I had hoped that he would help pull Trump out of extreme positions, but I think that was a false hope.

Alkhorshid: 17:44
Donald Trump was talking about Greenland and how important Greenland is for the security of the United States. Here is what he said. Let me play it.

Trump:
Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. I’ve been told that for a long time, long before I even ran. I mean, people have been talking about it for a long time. You have approximately 45,000 people there. People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up, because we need it for national security. That’s for the free world. I’m talking about protecting the free world. You look at you don’t even need binoculars. You look outside, you have China ships all over the place.

You have Russian ships all over the place. We’re not letting that happen. We’re not letting it happen. And if Denmark wants to get to a conclusion, but nobody knows if they even have any right title or interest. The people are going to probably vote for independence or to come into the United States. But if they did do that, then I would tariff Denmark at a very high level.

Reporter:
The US just have to draw a plan.

Alkhorshid: 18:54
Yeah. Because he says that, “I’ve been told that Greenland is so important for our security.” Who are these people, and what is happening in their mind?

Doctorow:
Well, this whole Greenland story has been handled extensively by mainstream media, and to a certain extent, in alternative media. But I think that most everyone I’ve read or heard has taken the wrong end of it. They’re all looking at the question, well, when the ice cap melts in 30 years time or whatever, these sea lanes will be very important. The control over the Arctic will be important. And so far it is really Russia because Russia’s geography is there and China in cooperation with Russia is trying to lay claims to Arctic wealth.

19:46
And so this is a bit of prudence. Other people are saying, “Ah, you can put missiles there in Greenland. That’ll be that much closer to Russia for deterrence purposes.” There are many of these arguments, many of them absolutely meretricious, which are dealing with the Greenland issue as an abstraction. I say it’s anything but an abstraction.

A man like Trump does not give a damn of what’s going to happen 30 years from now. This is part of his indifference to global warming. He won’t be around 30 years from now and he just doesn’t give a damn. The issue, I mean, there’s just no need to say that I support all the green measures, nothing of this. That’s not at all true.

20:33
But the arguments that Trump would care about Greenland because of what comes, is totally false. It is, I don’t know that’s intentionally misleading, it probably is, but it is taking us away from what’s really happening. What’s really happening is that Trump is considering throwing Ukraine under the bus. He can do it very simply. He doesn’t provide any further aid.

The Ukraine army, armed forces, will not survive more than a few weeks without American assistance. Europe cannot fill the gap. Therefore, if Trump does nothing to assist Ukraine, there’ll be a capitulation. The problem is the Ukraine regime will take the first plane out if they’re lucky, or they’ll be lined up and shot if they’re unlucky. And everyone will speak about who lost Ukraine.

21:25
First of all, Democrats preparing their argument for the next congressional elections. And there will be a very sore point for Mr. Trump. Well, how do you distract attention from that? Not only distract attention, how do you demonstrate that you really are macho and much tougher? And if you’re letting Ukraine go, it’s because you have much bigger fish to fry, much more important things on your agenda that are of higher value to American prosperity and security, and which frankly speaking cost the United States nothing.

It’s all low-hanging fruit. The Greenland issue is low-hanging fruit. Mr. Trump showed his teeth. He said he’s ready to use military force or economic pressure to get the agreement of Denmark to ceding ownership, possession of Greenland to the United States.

22:25
That was the first step. Second step, almost followed immediately, is a statement by the Prime Minister of Denmark that there’s no reason for us to have a conflict over this. There’s no reason for us to create a scandal within NATO by the United States itself, breeching all, she didn’t say this, but the essence is the United States breeching international law on sanctity of boundaries, borders by forcing the takeover of Greenland. No, none of it. She said the Greenlanders should decide themselves.

Well, that sounds in abstract political terms, it’s all very politically correct. She’s emphasizing that it’s a free world and these are free people. However, in reality, what she’s saying is, Mr. Trump, go ahead and take it. Because there are only 56, 57,000 Greenlanders on the world’s biggest non-continental Island, which is Greenland.

23:34
And you can imagine how little it would take in millions to each of those 57,000 inhabitants to buy them up. America’s expansion in the 19th century was very largely, or in many cases, where there wasn’t a war as such, in many cases, it was done without military force by buying up the given property. Well, you go back to Manhattan and the first Indian settlements and trading trinkets for land. That policy, in much bigger money terms, was used elsewhere, whether Hawaii or elsewhere, to take possession of islands or territories that became quote independent and then voted independently to join the United States. That’s what he has in mind.

24:26
It’s entirely feasible. I think he’ll get away with it. What this changes, as many people have written and commenting in my writings on this, is almost nothing, because the United States is virtually the only country that has serious military outposts in Greenland today. The advantages, supposed security advantages relative to Russia are nil. The Alaska is much closer to Russia. It’s, I don’t know, 50, 100 miles away, I forget, on the Pacific, than Greenland is, to anything Russian, going over the pole. So that is an absolutely empty argument.

25:07
Therefore, I say it comes down to Trump’s taking a page out of the playbook of Ronald Reagan, who I’m sure his assistants, some of them, have pointed out what Reagan did in a situation of embarrassment when in October 23rd of 1983, the American marines, more than 140 of them, were in barracks together with French soldiers in a peacekeeping mission so-called in Lebanon, and they were attacked by a bomb attack from Hezbollah, which killed them all. This was a terrible embarrassment. The United States, after that, pulled out of Lebanon completely. And how do you cover that up? Well, Reagan did it very effectively.

25:57
Two days later, on 25th October, 1933, he invaded Granada, and that took over all the front pages of all the newspapers, in which he looked macho, he was saving some American students, I forget what the pretext was for the invasion, but it was completely trumped up, phony, and and it served the purpose. Everyone quickly forgot about the disaster in Lebanon, and they moved on to our brilliant leader. The “Financial Times”, by the way, in its first coverage of these remarks by Trump, said, “My goodness, and we all thought that he was an isolationist. It looks like he’s an expansionist.” Hint, hint, bravo, bravo.

26:32
So they were very happy with that. And they were uncomfortable with what he said later in the same press conference that he quote, “understands” Putin relative to the expansion of NATO into Ukraine. Of course, our newspapers changed the word “understand” to “sympathize with, which is not the same thing as “understand”, except if you’re in Germany where the Putin stooges are all Putin versteher. They’re people who understand. But aside from that linguistic quirk of the Germans, an English “understand” does not mean “sympathize”.

Alkhorshid: 27:15
How about the funeral of Jimmy Carter? It was so amazing to see Donald Trump talking to Obama and while Kamala Harris was just not comfortable with the situation.

Doctorow:
I think we all enjoyed that. That wonderful coverage which was on many different news channels. Surprisingly, the biggest number on YouTube are Indian outlets that are rebroadcasted.

I followed that also. I enjoyed seeing, it’s peculiar in this funeral service to see Obama sitting next to Trump and sharing a joke. The two of them are on camera laughing at something. Next to them, completely rigid, looking only at the ceiling, was George W. Bush.

In front of them was Harris, who was so happy to have her husband there, so she didn’t have to look at anybody else. But aside from this body language, the thing that interested me, and there was a wonderful eulogy, the best eulogy was the first one, I think. This was by Gerald Ford’s son. It was the eulogy that Ford had promised to deliver when the two, when he and Carter, who had become fast friends, had made a vow that they would each read an eulogy at the other’s funeral so that the eulogy then written by Ford was read by his son. That was very good, very effective, very human.

28:53
The least human was of course the last one by Joe Biden, which was a very stilted and empty politics. But in between there were, everyone had bouquets to lay at the beer of Carter. And I understand that the man was revered by many people and had, particularly in his post-presidential years, of which there were many, had done a great many humanitarian things through his foundation that are well worth the praise.

However, looking at Carter and without being, violating too severely the old recommendation that you say nothing ill about the dead, departed, I have no particular affection for Mr. Carter. He ruined my business. It was the, I had a consulting business for American corporations that were doing, that were setting up large activities in Russia, particularly food processing from 1975 on. And after the Russians, the Soviets moved into Afghanistan, thanks to Mr. Brzezinski, Carter imposed very deep sanctions and my business activities suffered. I had to close down my company as a result.

So I have a personal, to be totally transparent about this, I have a personal axe to grind against Mr. Carter. But more importantly, having Brzezinski as his security advisor was disastrous. It came from the wrong sources. Carter took the wrong advice in appointing him. People who have some brain said, “Why would you ever appoint a Pole to direct policies which are mostly dealing with Russia?” So the United States got what it deserved, unfortunately. And the world got what it deserved very unfortunately, the promotion of the Islamic fundamentalists in Afghanistan to attack Russians, which lived on after the Russian evacuation of Afghanistan and gave us 9-11. All of these things are interlinked and they come back to one man and his personal decisions.

31:10
And that one man is Jimmy Carter. I have the highest respect, there’s something still bigger, which I want to mention. And of course, nobody in mainstream would ever touch this issue. They touch it, when they touch it, they touch it in a most flattering way. But he put, this came out in some eulogies, that he made human rights the most important aspect of his activity.

Yes, he did. And I do not praise the man for that. A lot of the problems that we’ve had ever since come out of that very emphasis on a values-driven foreign policy. It’s disastrous. And the opposite of values-driven foreign policy is an interest-based national policy, which isn’t cuddly. The general public doesn’t like the idea, but it avoids wars.

32:03
And the interventionism, all of the right to, or the obligation to save vulnerable people in various countries, which was the gateway to American military intervention and to disastrous loss of life and creation of failed states that go on for decades — all that goes back to Mr. Carter’s policies. So no, I do not revere the man. I respect him for his good intentions. But as we all know, the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

Alkhorshid: 32:40
As Joe Biden is on his way to leave Washington, we know that the last aid from the United States goes to Ukraine. It’s $500 million. And on the other hand, we have Fico and Orban talking about the way that Ukraine is behaving and their not letting the Russian gas going to these countries. They’re not happy with the situation. They’re going to be tough with Zelensky in Ukraine. How do you see these European countries, the response coming from these European countries to Ukraine, as we know Washington is supporting Ukraine as we talk right now?

Doctorow: 33:29
There are two factors going forward. Neither of them is in Europe. There is the Washington factor and the Moscow factor. And everything else will follow in the wake, depending on which of these two factors are decisive in the weeks and months ahead.

I would put my money on the Russian factor. I think that Mr. Trump is not looking to enter a new war, is certainly not looking to escalate to a nuclear war. And therefore, when he sees the Russian advance to the Dnieper– which is going to come in the next weeks, certainly no more than several months from now, when he sees the game is up– then he will meet with Putin yet again. I assume they’ll have a meeting before then, to put an end to this and possibly to talk about the security architecture in Europe, which is where the war started.

34:29
The Europeans have sacrificed any say in the way this goes. So frankly, I don’t care whether AFD gets 34% of the electorate or gets 51%, it’s not going to change anything. Europe is, as Madam Weidel says, in the center, they have lost their way. And all the elites that have managed to run the European institutions here in Brussels are disposable. They cannot carry forward and do the changes needed. So where do you look? You look at those two capitals, Moscow and Washington, to see how this war ends and how peace may or may not come to Europe.

Alkhorshid: 35:20
Yeah. Here is Donald Trump talking about Putin wants to meet with him. Here is what they said about them.
—————-

Questioner:
Putin — is that a day-one or week-one–

Trump:
He wants to he wants to meet, and we’re setting it up. President Xi, we’ve had a lot of communication and we have a lot of meetings set up with a lot of people. Some have come, but I’d rather wait till after the 20th.

Questioner:
And when you say meet with Putin or meet with Xi, do you guys want to have some kind of a summit, or are they going to come here?

Trump:
To be determined. But President Putin wants to meet. He’s said that even publicly. And we have to get that war over with. That’s a bloody mess.
—————-

Alkhorshid: 36:04
The positive point in this talk in this response is he’s talking about we have to put an end to the conflict. I think this is very positive. At the same time, he’s talking about Putin wants to meet him. Your take, Gilbert.

Doctorow;
Well, I believe that Putin does want to meet him, but he hasn’t said it. Certainly hasn’t said it publicly. And the reason why he wants to meet him is because of several things, specific things that Trump said, which resonated in Moscow.

Going back, it’s almost two weeks, when Trump first said that he thinks that the decision by Biden to allow, just allow the use of American, high-precision, long-distance missiles to attack Russian Federation territory, that this was foolish and highly dangerous. That caught the Russians’ attention. And of course, in the last couple of days, Mr. Trump has come and said specifically that he does not see Ukraine ever joining NATO. That, of course, is music to Russian ears.

37:17
And so that sets the stage for serious talks between Moscow and Washington. And in that sense, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and say there probably are feelers at a lower level going on between Washington and Moscow as to how to arrange, where to arrange, who the parties will be in the first meetings. I don’t believe that they’re going to take–

The Russians would not want to meet at the summit without the assistants doing all of the legwork, doing all of the Sherpa work, as they call it, preparing the way to climb the mount. So I don’t expect a meeting to take place anytime soon at the highest level, but would Kellogg and somebody else tagging along for a little delegation go to Moscow and be received? Well, of course they will be.

38:12
And will they be talking about possibilities for meeting at the top? Of course they will be. So … look, I don’t want to join, used to be in the first term of Trump, these Pinocchio counters, how many lies he’s told today. But of course this is a lie, what he was saying.

Alkhorshid: 38:33
Just the wrap of this session, on January 1st, Indonesia was one of those countries that Russia announced they’re going to be BRICS partners. And on January 8th, we’ve learned that Indonesia is full member of BRICS. And BRICS is just expanding and getting growing stronger.

On the other hand, Donald Trump is coming to power. Do you see the United States under Donald Trump would make this world, this type of conflicts that we are witnessing right now in the Middle East, in Far East, in Ukraine, are we going to be more divided under Donald Trump or Donald Trump is going to manage as he talks in his response to this reporter, he wants to put an end to the conflict in Ukraine, that could bring some sort of changes, I would say some sort of drastic changes in terms of Europe, the United States and Russia.

Doctorow: 39:48
If there’s a drastic change in Europe, it will not be from this alone. It will be by Trump’s also cutting back on American financing and equipping NATO forces. I think this will force a lot of rethinking. But the only rethinking that will count is for the European leaderships to come to the recognition that they live on the same continent as Russia. And they have to have some kind of a modus vivendi with their Eastern neighbor, and not only look at the transatlantic connection as their salvation.

So I’m hoping that the brutality that Trump and his assistants, including Elon Musk, may show with reference to the leading authorities in Europe, will parallel the brutality that he has shown to Justin Trudeau in Canada, with similar results. That is, I hope it will not be an empty hope, but I think it has some justification. And that is one of the points that I rely on for a change in Europe, brutality coming from Washington.

Alkhorshid: 41:10
Yeah. Thank you so much, Gilbert, for being with us today. Great pleasure as always.

Doctorow:
Well thanks for having me.

Alkhorshid:
Goodbye.

In the days immediately ahead of the chat on his social medium X that Elon Musk had scheduled with Alice Weidel, co-chairwoman of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD), Germany’s leading politicians, Olaf Scholz for the Social Democrats and Friedrich Merz for the Christian Democrats, both condemned what they called Musk’s ‘interference’ in the forthcoming German elections.

To be sure, in recent years when their own standing with voters has been sinking due to widespread dissatisfaction with zero economic growth, deindustrialization and weariness with the large flows of illegal immigrants that have entered the country since 2015, placing a heavy burden on social services and leading to heightened crime rates, the centrist parties in Germany have been especially keen to protect themselves against what they call the ‘far right’ populists, who make electoral hay out of the policy failures of those who have been in charge for decades.

Accordingly, the CDU and SPD seek to marginalize the AfD and to keep it out of any future coalition governments, via the so-called cordon sanitaire.  In this context, Elon Musk’s recent public expressions of support for the AfD as the only party capable of saving Germany from its downward economic and social spiral are viewed with fear and anger by the country’s rulers. In particular, Musk’s plan to feature on X the AfD nominee for chancellor, Alice Weidel, touched a sensitive nerve.

In the past couple of weeks, we also heard from spokesmen for the European Institutions that Brussels would be watching the interview program very closely to ascertain whether X was in breach of regulations prohibiting ‘fake news’ and ‘disinformation’ on the internet.

Now that the much hyped live one hour and fifteen-minute conversation between Musk and Weidel has taken place, what did we learn from it about the two discussants and about the changes that an AfD led government in Germany might bring, assuming that voters will come out for Weidel in much greater numbers in February than present polls suggest (19% of the popular vote versus 32% for the Christian Democrats)? In particular of interest to readers of these pages:  would an AfD in power do what the widely watched American political commentator Colonel Douglas Macgregor has been saying, namely take Germany out of NATO?

                                                                        *****

Let me be perfectly frank: neither Musk nor Weidel emerged from their online discussion looking strong and persuasive.

Musk was keen to present Weidel as a friendly, folksy reformer who stands for common sense solutions to Germany’s domestic malaise. She obliged by setting out the party’s policy of restoring a good balance in the energy mix on which Germany’s industrial economy depends, namely nuclear and gas generated electricity, with no disproportionate reliance on renewables such as the ‘green’ chancellor Angela Merkel introduced. Weidel rightly condemned Merkel’s shutdown of nuclear power, in particular just when Russian gas supplies were being reduced to nil.  But at this moment when it would have paid to raise the question of the loss of Nord Stream 1 and to ask who was behind that sabotage to the German economy, she had not a word to say.

 The party also would overturn the current Leftist agenda in the educational system which has sharply brought down the quality of schooling and ill-prepared students for the labor market. They would reduce income taxes to better allow Germans to get rich and prosper. They would lift censorship and encourage freedom of expression.

Eager to dispel any confusion in the German public over the democratic credentials of the AfD, Musk asked her directly what is their view of Hitler and the country’s Nazi past.  She rose to the occasion and assured the audience that Hitler was in reality not a genuine conservative, as her party is.  Hitler nationalized German businesses and was a closet Communist, per Frau Weidel. 

Moreover, the AfD strongly supports the right of the state of Israel to exist and to defend itself, whereas the Leftist leaning ‘uniparty,’ meaning all of the nominally centrist parties of Germany, has too much tolerance for Muslims.

But let us go a bit deeper and quote their exchange on the question of Israel directly:

Musk: What are your views on Israel?  

Answer:  very complicated. The more I read on the Middle East and the situation in Israel, the more I see it is complicated. I don’t see a solution. Maybe Israel has to find some alliance with the Sunni states.  To be honest, from my perspective, it is a very complicated situation.   I don’t know how to solve the conflict at this point in time.   

Question: Do you unequivocally support the existence of the state of Israel? 

Answer: Yes, of course. We need to protect the existence of Israel.  I think Benjamin Netanyahu has made many mistakes in the past.  But in Germany we have to take action to protect Jewish persons in our country. They are exposed to Muslim crime. They are not safe here anymore.  See all the demonstrations of the Palestinians here in Berlin.   There is huge potential of anti-Semitic crimes here.  To be very frank, the AfD is the only protector of the Jewish people in Germany, because all other parties did all the opposite. They let millions of people in into our country and do crimes on our streets.

Musk: The AfD is being massively misrepresented in Western media.

Answer: I very much support the state of Israel but we have to be mindful of deaths of civilians.  There is no choice but to eliminate those who want to eliminate the State of Israel, Hamas, and then to fix the education system so that children are not taught to hate Israel. The third step is to make the Palestinian land prosperous. You have to help rebuild and to bring prosperity.

The mention of unqualified support for Israel was one of only two international affairs issues that came up in the interview.  The other was the Russia-Ukraine war, over which both Musk and Weidel were in agreement that it has been in stalemate mode for two years, with a great many deaths on both sides serving no purpose whatsoever.

If indeed Musk meant what he said about the Russia-Ukraine war, then he is as badly informed as Donald Trump. Of course, it is possible that his remarks were intended to be aligned with Trump and with Trump’s designated envoy General Kellogg, i.e., not to rock the boat at home, but I fear that his ignorant position on the matter genuinely reflects his thinking.

On the same subject, Musk said that he expects Trump to end the war in Ukraine very quickly, though he declined to give to Weidel any indication of what measures might be taken to achieve peace, saying that is the sole prerogative of the commander in chief, Trump.

As for Weidel, she recognized that the Ukraine-Russia war has the potential to escalate to nuclear exchange. She sees that in Europe there is no strategy to end this.  However, if she has any thoughts on what Germany may do to provide for its own defense and to get out from under full dependence on the US, we did not hear about it. Does any of this point in the direction of some future withdrawal from NATO? Not really.

In the remainder of the interview, Weidel and Musk traded places and she asked him about his plans for Space X missions to Mars to colonize the planet and to guaranty the future of humanity against any possible self-destruction on planet Earth through nuclear war or destruction from natural causes like a collision with some celestial object. Musk was delighted with the attention and basked in her admiration.

                                                                        *****

The sad truth is that Musk demonstrated in this interview that there are no universal geniuses, and that brilliance in the several business and technical domains which he rightly claims does not extend to international affairs. He obviously will not be the ‘adult in the room’ that so many people have hoped would be there to exert a restraining force on the compulsive Mr. Trump.

As for Frau Weidel, it is a safe bet that she concurred with Musk on so many issues to curry favor and shake out some hefty campaign contributions from the world’s richest man. She came across as being a notch or two above the dismal level in the Scholz cabinet, but she is not really prepared for high office. At a minimum we may say that she lacks experience to lead.  She freely admits to not knowing much and to relying on the team of assistants she has assembled whom she invites to tell her daily what they think she has done wrong.

In conclusion, the fears of Messrs. Scholz and Merz about this interview were greatly exaggerated. And our hopes for Germany leading Europe out from under U.S. domination and participation in the ‘forever wars’ were dashed.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/

11. Januar 2025

Elon Musk im Interview mit AfD-Chefin Alice Weidel: eine Übung in gegenseitiger Bewunderung

In den Tagen unmittelbar vor dem Chat auf seinem sozialen Medium X, den Elon Musk mit Alice Weidel, der Co-Vorsitzenden der Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), geplant hatte, verurteilten die führenden Politiker Deutschlands, Olaf Scholz für die Sozialdemokraten und Friedrich Merz für die Christdemokraten, beide das, was sie als Musks „Einmischung“ in die bevorstehenden deutschen Wahlen bezeichneten.

In den letzten Jahren, in denen ihr Ansehen bei den Wählern aufgrund der weit verbreiteten Unzufriedenheit mit dem Nullwachstum, der Deindustrialisierung und der Ermüdung durch die großen Ströme illegaler Einwanderer, die seit 2015 ins Land gekommen sind, gesunken ist, was eine schwere Belastung für die Sozialdienste und zu einer erhöhten Kriminalitätsrate führen, waren die Parteien der Mitte in Deutschland besonders darauf bedacht, sich vor den sogenannten „rechtsextremen“ Populisten zu schützen, die aus den politischen Fehlern der seit Jahrzehnten Verantwortlichen Kapital für ihre Wahlkampagne schlagen.

Dementsprechend versuchen CDU und SPD, die AfD zu marginalisieren und sie durch den sogenannten Cordon sanitaire aus künftigen Koalitionsregierungen herauszuhalten. In diesem Zusammenhang betrachten die Machthaber des Landes Elon Musks jüngste öffentliche Bekundungen der Unterstützung für die AfD als einzige Partei, die Deutschland vor seiner wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Abwärtsspirale retten kann, mit Angst und Wut. Insbesondere Musks Plan, die AfD-Kanzlerkandidatin Alice Weidel in X zu präsentieren, traf einen empfindlichen Nerv.

In den letzten Wochen haben wir auch von Sprechern der europäischen Institutionen gehört, dass Brüssel das Interviewprogramm sehr genau beobachten werde, um festzustellen, ob X gegen die Vorschriften verstößt, die „Fake News“ und „Desinformation“ im Internet verbieten.

Was haben wir nun aus dem vielbeschworenen Live-Gespräch von einer Stunde und fünfzehn Minuten zwischen Musk und Weidel über die beiden Diskutanten und über die Veränderungen gelernt, die eine von der AfD geführte Regierung in Deutschland mit sich bringen könnte, vorausgesetzt, dass die Wähler im Februar in viel größerer Zahl für Weidel stimmen werden, als die aktuellen Umfragen vermuten lassen (19 % der Stimmen gegenüber 32 % für die Christdemokraten)? Für die Leser dieser Seiten besonders interessant: Würde eine an der Macht befindliche AfD das tun, was der viel beachtete amerikanische Politikkommentator Colonel Douglas Macgregor sagt, nämlich Deutschland aus der NATO herausnehmen?

                                                                        *****

Ich will ganz ehrlich sein: Weder Musk noch Weidel gingen aus ihrer Online-Diskussion als starke und überzeugende Persönlichkeiten hervor.

Musk wollte Weidel unbedingt als freundliche, volksnahe Reformerin präsentieren, die für vernünftige Lösungen für die innenpolitische Malaise in Deutschland steht. Sie kam ihm entgegen, indem sie die Politik der Partei darlegte, ein ausgewogenes Verhältnis im Energiemix wiederherzustellen, von dem die deutsche Industrie abhängig ist, nämlich Strom aus Kernkraft und Gas, ohne übermäßige Abhängigkeit von erneuerbaren Energien, wie sie die „grüne“ Kanzlerin Angela Merkel eingeführt hat. Weidel verurteilte zu Recht Merkels Abschaltung der Kernkraft, insbesondere zu einem Zeitpunkt, als die russischen Gaslieferungen auf Null reduziert wurden. Aber in diesem Moment, in dem es sich gelohnt hätte, die Frage nach dem Verlust von Nord Stream 1 aufzuwerfen und zu fragen, wer hinter dieser Sabotage der deutschen Wirtschaft steckt, hatte sie kein Wort zu sagen.

Die Partei würde auch die derzeitige linke Agenda im Bildungssystem umstürzen, die die Qualität der Schulbildung stark beeinträchtigt und die Schüler schlecht auf den Arbeitsmarkt vorbereitet hat. Sie würden die Einkommenssteuern senken, damit die Deutschen besser reich werden und gedeihen können. Sie würden die Zensur aufheben und die Meinungsfreiheit fördern.

Um jegliche Verwirrung in der deutschen Öffentlichkeit über die demokratische Glaubwürdigkeit der AfD auszuräumen, fragte Musk sie direkt, wie sie zu Hitler und der nationalsozialistischen Vergangenheit des Landes stehe. Sie meisterte die Situation und versicherte dem Publikum, dass Hitler in Wirklichkeit kein echter Konservativer war, wie ihre Partei. Hitler verstaatlichte deutsche Unternehmen und war laut Frau Weidel ein verkappter Kommunist.

Darüber hinaus unterstützt die AfD nachdrücklich das Existenzrecht und das Recht des Staates Israel, sich selbst zu verteidigen, während die linksgerichtete „Einheitspartei“, d.h. alle nominell zentristischen Parteien Deutschlands, zu viel Toleranz gegenüber Muslimen zeige.

Aber lassen Sie uns etwas tiefer gehen und ihren Austausch zur Frage Israel direkt zitieren:

Musk: Was halten Sie von Israel?

Antwort: Sehr kompliziert. Je mehr ich über den Nahen Osten und die Situation in Israel lese, desto komplizierter wird es für mich. Ich sehe keine Lösung. Vielleicht muss Israel eine Allianz mit den sunnitischen Staaten eingehen. Um ehrlich zu sein, ist es aus meiner Sicht eine sehr komplizierte Situation. Ich weiß derzeit nicht, wie man den Konflikt lösen kann.

Frage: Unterstützen Sie die Existenz des Staates Israel uneingeschränkt?

Antwort: Ja, natürlich. Wir müssen die Existenz Israels schützen. Ich denke, Benjamin Netanjahu hat in der Vergangenheit viele Fehler gemacht. Aber in Deutschland müssen wir Maßnahmen ergreifen, um jüdische Menschen in unserem Land zu schützen. Sie sind muslimischer Kriminalität ausgesetzt. Sie sind hier nicht mehr sicher. Sehen Sie sich all die Demonstrationen der Palästinenser hier in Berlin an. Hier besteht ein enormes Potenzial für antisemitische Verbrechen. Um ganz ehrlich zu sein, ist die AfD der einzige Beschützer der jüdischen Bevölkerung in Deutschland, weil alle anderen Parteien das Gegenteil getan haben. Sie haben Millionen von Menschen in unser Land gelassen und lassen zu, dass auf unseren Straßen Verbrechen begangen werden.

Musk: Die AfD wird in den westlichen Medien massiv falsch dargestellt.

Antwort: Ich unterstütze den Staat Israel sehr, aber wir müssen uns des Todes von Zivilisten bewusst sein. Es bleibt keine andere Wahl, als diejenigen zu eliminieren, die den Staat Israel eliminieren wollen, die Hamas, und dann das Bildungssystem so zu reformieren, dass Kindern nicht beigebracht wird, Israel zu hassen. Der dritte Schritt besteht darin, das palästinensische Land wohlhabend zu machen. Man muss beim Wiederaufbau helfen und Wohlstand schaffen.

Die Erwähnung uneingeschränkter Unterstützung für Israel war eines von nur zwei Themen zu internationalen Angelegenheiten, die im Interview zur Sprache kamen. Das andere war der Krieg zwischen Russland und der Ukraine, bei dem sich Musk und Weidel einig waren, dass er seit zwei Jahren in einer Sackgasse stecke und auf beiden Seiten zahlreiche Tote zu beklagen seien, die keinerlei Zweck dienen.

Wenn Musk tatsächlich meinte, was er über den Russland-Ukraine-Krieg sagte, dann ist er genauso schlecht informiert wie Donald Trump. Natürlich ist es möglich, dass seine Äußerungen darauf abzielten, sich Trump und Trumps designiertem Gesandten General Kellogg anzuschließen, d.h. zu Hause keinen Ärger zu machen, aber ich fürchte, dass seine ignorante Position in dieser Angelegenheit wirklich seine Denkweise widerspiegelt.

Zum gleichen Thema sagte Musk, dass er erwarte, dass Trump den Krieg in der Ukraine sehr schnell beenden werde, lehnte es jedoch ab, Weidel Hinweise darauf zu geben, welche Maßnahmen ergriffen werden könnten, um Frieden zu erreichen, und sagte, dies sei das alleinige Vorrecht des Oberbefehlshabers Trump.

Weidel räumte ein, dass der Krieg zwischen der Ukraine und Russland das Potenzial hat, zu einem nuklearen Schlagabtausch zu eskalieren. Sie sieht, dass es in Europa keine Strategie gibt, um dem ein Ende zu setzen. Wenn sie jedoch eine Idee hat, was Deutschland tun könnte, um für seine eigene Verteidigung zu sorgen und aus der vollständigen Abhängigkeit von den USA herauszukommen, haben wir nichts davon gehört. Weist irgendetwas davon auf einen zukünftigen Austritt aus der NATO hin? Nicht wirklich.

Im weiteren Verlauf des Interviews tauschten Weidel und Musk die Plätze und sie fragte ihn nach seinen Plänen für Space-X-Missionen zum Mars, um den Planeten zu kolonisieren und die Zukunft der Menschheit gegen jede mögliche Selbstzerstörung auf dem Planeten Erde durch einen Atomkrieg oder eine Zerstörung durch natürliche Ursachen wie eine Kollision mit einem Himmelsobjekt zu sichern. Musk war begeistert von der Aufmerksamkeit und sonnte sich in ihrer Bewunderung.

                                                                        *****

Die traurige Wahrheit ist, dass Musk in diesem Interview gezeigt hat, dass es keine Universalgenies gibt und dass sich die Brillanz in den verschiedenen geschäftlichen und technischen Bereichen, die er zu Recht für sich beansprucht, nicht auf internationale Angelegenheiten erstreckt. Er wird offensichtlich nicht der „Erwachsene im Raum“ sein, von dem so viele Menschen gehofft haben, dass er da ist, um den zwanghaften Herrn Trump zu zügeln.

Was Frau Weidel betrifft, so ist es sicher, dass sie in so vielen Fragen mit Musk übereinstimmte, um sich einzuschmeicheln und einige saftige Wahlkampfspenden vom reichsten Mann der Welt zu erhalten. Sie wirkte zwar um einiges besser als das trostlose Niveau im Scholz-Kabinett, aber sie ist nicht wirklich auf ein hohes Amt vorbereitet. Zumindest kann man sagen, dass ihr die Erfahrung fehlt, um zu führen. Sie gibt offen zu, dass sie nicht viel weiß und sich auf das Team von Assistenten verlässt, das sie zusammengestellt hat und das sie einlädt, ihr täglich zu sagen, was sie ihrer Meinung nach falsch gemacht hat.

Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass die Befürchtungen der Herren Scholz und Merz bezüglich dieses Interviews stark übertrieben waren. Und unsere Hoffnungen, dass Deutschland Europa aus der US-Vorherrschaft herausführen und sich nicht an den „Kriegen für immer“ beteiligen würde, wurden enttäuscht.

From time to time Russian social media re-publish my interviews on Judging Freedom with a Russian language voice-over on the Russian answer to youtube: rutube.ru This usually occurs some time after the initial release by Judge Napolitano’s youtube channel.

However, yesterday’s discussion of the logic for Trump’s sudden wish to seize Greenland obviously caught the fancy of Russian elites and four hours ago it already was posted on the Russian net.

It has been given the title: “Trump has lost his mind. How will Russia react?”

One Comment has already posted: “Russia won’t react any which way. It never laid claims to Greenland. And the United States should first give some thought to its fleet of icebreakers.” Note, the United States apparently has just one functioning ice breaker. The Russians are closing in on having 100.

https://rutube.ru/video/0523f3097dcb7699aba231016d8a39fb/?ysclid=m5qvlzjmze442366106

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Ein Geschenk an russischsprachige Menschen: „Judging Freedom“ von gestern mit russischem Voice-over

Von Zeit zu Zeit veröffentlichen russische soziale Medien meine Interviews zu „Judging Freedom“ mit russischem Voice-Over auf der russischen Antwort auf YouTube: rutube.ru. Dies geschieht in der Regel einige Zeit nach der Erstveröffentlichung durch den YouTube-Kanal von Judge Napolitano.

Die gestrige Diskussion über die Logik hinter Trumps plötzlichem Wunsch, Grönland zu erobern, hat jedoch offensichtlich das Interesse der russischen Eliten geweckt und wurde bereits vor vier Stunden im russischen Netz veröffentlicht.

Es wurde mit dem Titel versehen: „Trump hat den Verstand verloren. Wie wird Russland reagieren?“

Ein Kommentar wurde bereits gepostet: ‚Russland wird in keiner Weise reagieren. Es hat nie Ansprüche auf Grönland erhoben. Und die Vereinigten Staaten sollten sich zunächst Gedanken über ihre Flotte von Eisbrechern machen.‘ Beachten Sie, dass die Vereinigten Staaten offenbar nur einen einzigen funktionierenden Eisbrecher besitzen. Die Russen nähern sich der Zahl von 100.

‘Dialogue Works,’ edition of 10 January: Elon Musk and Alice Weidel (AfD) Ignite Controversial Discussion on X!

Yesterday’s two-hour long on-air chat between Elon Musk and the chief of the so-called hard right opposition party in Germany, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) was the principal point for discussion today with ‘Dialogue Works’ host Nima Alkhorshid.  This broadcast provided rich material for analysis of various issues, first among them what influence Musk will be exerting on the incoming Trump administration. I regrettably submit that this influence will be ill-informed and still less poorly considered. The sad truth is that Musk demonstrated that there are no universal geniuses, and that brilliance in the several business and technical domains which he rightly claims does not extend to international affairs.  He obviously will not be the ‘adult in the room’ that so many people have hoped would be there to exert a restraining force on the compulsive Mr. Trump.

For her part, Frau Weidel showed herself to be interested primarily in domestic policy in Germany and to have nothing of importance to say about the two most critical conflicts in the world today, the Israeli rampage in its neighborhood including the genocide in Gaza, and the Russia-Ukraine war. Those who tell us that her possible victory at the polls on 23 February will signal a German withdrawal from NATO, as the widely watched Colonel Douglas Macgregor has done earlier this week, are drawing their analysis from thin air.

In addition to what viewers will find in this video, I will be publishing an essay on the Musk-Weidel online chat later today.

I am grateful to my host to have been given the opportunity to talk at some length about the legacy of Jimmy Carter and about what was said about him in eulogies at his funeral service in Washington.

I expect viewers will find considerable food for thought in this 45-minute-long youtube entry:

Transcript submitted by a reader

Napolitano: 0:32
Hi there, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, January 9th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow joins us now. Professor Doctorow, thank you for your time. Thank you for all of your time in 2024. It’s all very, very helpful. And it’s a privilege for me to be able to pick your brain. And thank you, of course, for joining us today. And I hope we can continue our weekly get-togethers like this in 2025.

You have written an interesting piece on, for better or for worse, President-elect Trump’s musings about expanding the size of the United States. Not going to ask you about the Panama Canal or the Gulf of Mexico or Canada, but I will ask you about Greenland. How do you suppose the Kremlin would react if the United States moved seriously, either by economic or military or some political means, to acquire an enormous piece of real estate that is not that far from the Russian mainland?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 1:45
I don’t think the Russians are going to be too surprised or excited. I don’t think they’re going to take any change in policy with respect to the States. Frankly, it’s difficult to judge what the opinion of the Kremlin is or of the chattering classes in Russia, because Russia is in the midst of the two-week winter break which runs from December 31st, our New Year’s, to January 13th, their New Year’s, what they call the old New Year’s, according to the Russian Orthodox Church calendar. And during this time, all commentators, most of the hosts of the premier news programs, they’re all on vacation. Therefore, as to the regular news briefs, they have limited their commentary to what we say, what is being said on Western media, the kind of shock that a news organization like CNN expressed when they were reviewing Trump’s latest remarks.

Napolitano: 2:51
Well, you have a handle on the Kremlin’s thinking, more so than almost any American that I know of. How do you think they would react if we wake up some morning and find out, and I’m going to expand the question, that the US has taken control by force of the Panama Canal and by some other means of Greenland? I’m mainly concerned about Greenland, because if you look at the North Pole, you will see the proximity between Greenland and Russia.

Doctorow:
I would rather move, back away, from the way the Greenland issue is being covered by our media, And that is all media, mainstream and alternative. The attention has been to what is in Greenland. It’s been to what Greenland will mean 30 years from now, when the polar ice cap melts, and what this means for American activity, future activity in the Arctic region, what threats it poses or doesn’t to Russian navigation. These are the issues that we see discussed in our newspapers.

3:53
It’s all very fine, but I think it has nothing whatever to do with what President Trump is doing now. I don’t think this man is terribly concerned about anything that could or would happen 30 years from now. His mind is much more focused on what’s going to happen in his lifespan and during his time in power. And for that, we have to take a step back and say that this man– who was generally viewed by mainstream people, by his opponents, as being superficial, transactional, unable to deal with foreign policy issues in a mature way– he is putting something forward which is not the least bit frivolous for today and tomorrow, not for 30 years perspective.

4:43
And what I mean is: he has been advised clearly at what President Reagan did in a similar situation to what he is facing now with the Ukraine war. In October 1983, President Reagan was faced with a very unpleasant fact of 140 plus American soldiers having been blown to bits in Lebanon by a Hezbollah attack on the barracks where they and French soldiers were based in a peacekeeping mission. Two days later, he invaded Granada.

5:15
That is the message from the Reagan administration that Mr. Trump is employing now. He is preparing to throw Ukraine under the bus, and he doesn’t want to be held accountable for it, because he wants the whole thing to diminish in importance compared to the American takeover of Greenland.

Napolitano:
Okay. So is the compensation for throwing Ukraine under the bus the acquisition of Greenland, the acquisition of the Panama Canal, or an invasion of Iran? Something must be done because of the mentality of the people in Washington, D.C. to compensate for and remove the public attention from what will be a humiliating loss in Ukraine. I think you agree with that.

Doctorow:
That is summing it up very precisely. That is what’s going on right now.

Napolitano:
And what do you think he’ll do? Colonel Macgregor thinks it’s the invasion of Ukraine. You’re suggesting something a little bit more benign and probably not military, but who knows, with respect to Greenland and Panama.

Doctorow: 6:25
I don’t see any need for him to use military muscle on Greenland. If you pay attention closely to what the Danish prime minister said yesterday when asked about this whole case in the press, she said, well, it is up, Greenland’s future is up to Greenlanders. Now, that’s as much as saying that she’s given up. She has no intention of facing down Trump and the United States over this or creating a scandal within NATO. When you consider who exactly are the Greenlanders, They are 56,000 people in that vast territory. Don’t you think it would be quite easy to buy them all off?

Napolitano:
I’m sure it would be, and that’s probably a mirror of Trump’s thinking, but how would Putin react to the ability of Trump to put offensive weaponry as cold as it is up there, and maybe cold is an understatement, it’s inside the Arctic Circle, aimed at Russia?

Doctorow:
I don’t see any basis for Putin to complain. It’s been discussed openly in Russian media that they are prepared to make the so-called medium-range Oreshnik an intercontinental ballistic missile. They will simply position it in the Russian Far East. So that would be nothing more– so if Mr. Trump wants to take, wants to eventually place missiles in northern Greenland, it is only, would be a counter move to what the Russians can achieve in the next few months if they want to.

Napolitano: 8:10
When do you think the Kremlin expects the special military operation in Ukraine to be over? And it will end either when President Zelensky leaves or the Ukrainian military collapses or President Putin says “We’ve achieved our goals.” I mean, I don’t know how it’s going to end, but when do you think the Kremlin expects it to end?

Doctorow:
Well, during 19, during 2025, that’s for sure. Whether it will reach a critical stage before the inauguration is the only open question. We have very little time remaining, and the Russians still are several weeks away from capturing Pokrovsk, which is discussed as the major logistics hub supporting the whole Ukrainian front in Donbas. Once they capture Pokrovsk, then it will be really a straight line to the Dnieper River, and possibly it could be so overwhelming for the Ukrainian forces that they capitulate.

That is a possibility, I wouldn’t call it a probability, but a possibility. Failing that, now that Mr. Trump has moved his timeline from a 24-hour solution to a six-month solution, it’s entirely thinkable that the Russians will devastate the Ukrainian army and solve the problem for Mr. Trump.

Napolitano: 9:37
You mentioned the winter break. I mean, is this like World War I where they just stopped fighting at Christmas time? Have both sides stopped for the two weeks or is the fighting going on as we speak?

Doctorow:
Well, the fighting’s going on. The only thing that stopped is the newscasters are all on vacation and many Russian companies shut down, but that’s all.

Napolitano:
These shows that you monitor, particularly the one on which both you and I have appeared called “The Great Game”, it’s not on television any more.

Doctorow:
Well, it’s not on television because the hosts are on vacation. It will be back on the 14th of January, along with all regular programming on Russian television. All they’re showing now are classic films from the Soviet era and some very new blockbusters, something called Spokatyr, which is a Russian folk hero from the Middle Ages. These are for the kids and for the family to enjoy themselves and to get a little break from all the war news.

Napolitano: 10:45
Okay. Secretary of State Blinken has been giving a series of, for lack of a better phrase, farewell interviews. He gave a very long one to the “New York Times”. Even though it was the “New York Times”, it was videoed. I’m going to play a short clip from you, for you and ask you what you think. And I ask you to concentrate on his and Joe Biden’s favorite phrase, which to me is totally unrealistic, but I invite your comments: “Putin has failed.” Chris, cut number two.

Interviewer: 11:19
Do you feel like you’ve left Ukraine in the strongest position that you could have? Or were there things that you could have done differently?

Blinken:
Well, first, what we’ve left is Ukraine, which was not self-evident because Putin’s ambition was to erase it from the map. We stopped that. Putin has failed, his strategic objective in regaining Ukraine has failed and will not succeed. Ukraine is standing, and I believe it also has extraordinary potential not only to survive, but actually to thrive going forward. And that does depend on decisions that future administrations and many other countries will make.

Napolitano: 11:57
This guy’s in another world. Is there any evidence whatsoever that Putin’s goal was to– I know what the answer is going to be, but I want to hear your response– Putin’s goal was to erase Ukraine from the map? I’m quoting him literally.

Doctorow:
That’s total nonsense. But then as you say, he’s living in a different world. He’s in a pure propaganda. He is one of the authors of that propaganda, and he seems perhaps to have swallowed himself, which is the worst possible thing for any manufacturer of propaganda. Fool everybody else, but you certainly shouldn’t fool yourself. He seems to be fooled. The problem is with these interviews, and I’ve read, and you’re showing one that was videotaped, I read the extensive one taken by the “Financial Times”, this was about a week ago, they were giving this man a halo.

Napolitano:
I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you, They were giving him what?

Doctorow:
A halo, an angelic halo. He should be wearing satanic horns, which would be more appropriate to his moral content.

Napolitano:
Watch this one, because in this one, which is a little bit longer, it’s 90 seconds, it’s the same interview but a different cut. He actually boasts, quote, “We put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership.” I mean, it’s as if he has no awareness or memory of what happened in the past two and a half years. This will raise your blood pressure, Professor, so with my apologies. Chris, cut number one.

Blinken::
Where the line is drawn on the map, at this point, I don’t think is fundamentally going to change very much. The real question is, can we make sure that Ukraine is in a position to move forward strongly?

Interviewer:
You mean that the areas that Russia controls, you feel will have to be ceded?

Blinken:
Ceded is not the question. The question is: the line as a practical matter in the foreseeable future is unlikely to move very much. Ukraine’s claim on that territory will always be there. And the question is, will they find ways, with the support of others, to re-gain territory that’s been lost? I think the critical thing now going forward is this: if there is going to be a resolution, or at least a near-term resolution, because it’s unlikely that Putin will give up on his ambitions.

14:09
If there’s a ceasefire, then in Putin’s mind, the ceasefire is likely to give him time to rest, to refit, to re-attack at some point in the future. So what’s going to be critical to make sure that any ceasefire that comes about is actually enduring is to make sure that Ukraine has the capacity going forward to deter further aggression. And that can come in many forms. It could come through NATO, and we put Ukraine on a path to NATO membership. It could come through security assurances, commitments, guarantees by different countries to make sure that Russia knows that if it reattacks, it’s going to have a big problem. That, I think is going to be critical to making sure that any deal that’s negotiated actually endures and then allows Ukraine the space, the time to grow strong as a country.

Napolitano: 14:53
I mean, this is another world in which he lives if he really thinks that in the past two and a half years, we, the US and the West, NATO, put Ukraine on the path to a NATO membership.

Doctorow:
I think this is his bid for a professorship at Columbia University.

Napolitano:
Oh, Jeff Sachs is going to love that, to have Blinken and Mrs. Clinton and Victoria Nuland as colleagues.

Doctorow:
Well, Columbia has taken over the role that the Hoover Institute once upon a time took in the Cold War. And it seems to be a graveyard for people like Blinken, who would like to have the comfort of a prestigious calling card, and who are looking for the opportunity to remain in the public eye. But what he is saying is utter rubbish, and I don’t believe there are too many people, serious people, even in Washington, D.C., who would take what he’s saying seriously.

As for the rest of the world, of course nobody takes it seriously. Yesterday I had a very interesting interview on a rising star in Indian public broadcasting in English. And there was an active diplomat, Indian diplomat, who was firmly believing that the war in Ukraine is just a proxy war of NATO and the United States against Russia, and was expecting Russian victory. I think that people like that in the global south don’t take anything that Mr. Blinken says seriously. And so it’s not just you and me and the alternative media in the States, which has a big audience, who understand this. But I think in this global South, there are a lot of people, even in positions of power, who understand it as well.

Napolitano: 16:44
How stable would NATO be if, as Trump has threatened, the US leaves or if, as Colonel Macgregor believes, after an election, of course, the outcome of which no one yet can know, Germany leaves?

Doctorow:
Well, I’ve paid attention to Colonel Macgregor’s remarks on Germany, and I understand where he’s coming from. He is following now the work that Elon Musk is doing to raise the chances of electoral victory for the Alternative for Deutschland, so-called hard-right party, that would seek to change the relationship between Germany and NATO, and Germany and the United States. Though it’s not entirely clear whether Germany, even under an AfD government, would seek to withdraw from NATO. That’s not 100 percent clear.

17:42
Nonetheless, the likelihood of there being a big change in the political composition of the ruling coalition that takes power sometime this spring in Germany, I don’t believe that the Alternative for Deutchland will have a commanding position. They may do, this may be the single largest party in results possible and not highly likely, but possible, but none of– it will certainly be way below the percent needed to form a government without a coalition partner. And as things are today, the other parties maintain their cordon sanitaire around this party. So it’s difficult for me to agree with Colonel Macgregor that there’ll be a change of policy on NATO in the [near future].

Napolitano: 18:31
Is it difficult for you to accept that the US might leave NATO or radically diminish its role, say removing a lot of troops, no longer commanding all of NATO and European militaries?

Doctorow:
I think I share your second assessment. For the United States to leave NATO, that becomes a congressional decision. There are legal hurdles for Trump to do that, and I don’t know that he would want to waste his political capital on an uncertain outcome.

19:04
On the other hand, he just has to do nothing. Doing nothing means to stop financing, to stop participating in things. That’s within his power. So that he could remove effectively the United States contribution to NATO, which is critical to NATO’s remaining in place. The fact of the matter is that whether European countries devote 2% or 3% or even 5% of their GDP to armaments, to defense, that does nothing to ensure that there is a unified European military force capable of foreign expeditions or even capable of defending Europe without the United States participation. So … yeah.

Napolitano: 19:48
The elites in Europe seem to have fallen in line in the past two years, not necessarily with cash, but certainly with their words behind Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken on Ukraine. Is there an attitude of deference on the part of the elites towards the US or stated differently, are they going to change their minds when Donald Trump’s in the White House and he says we’re getting the hell out of Ukraine?

Doctorow:
I think that this requires a little bit of subtlety here. It is too easy to assume that everything that Europe does is aligning itself with Washington’s dictat, that they are totally subservient and have no self-respect. I think that is erroneous. I think it’s missing the point that Europe developed its own neoconservative globalist thinkers. It doesn’t just adopt what Robert Kagan wrote, they had their own people. This was the wave of the times coming out of the monopolar world, the unipolar world of the 1990s. And the Europeans have a little bit of intellectual contribution to all these horrible mistakes.

21:07
So it is today, they are not only lackeys to the United States, they are willing lackeys because they support the overriding principles of a values-driven foreign policy. And that values-driven foreign policy is to defend the democracy, a young democracy, a vibrant democracy in Ukraine, which is the theory, of course. There’s absolutely no correspondence to reality. Nonetheless, what I’m saying is that Europeans have fallen into traps that they’ve made for themselves, not only traps that have been set by Washington for them.

Napolitano:
Professor Doctorow, thank you very much, my dear friend. Always a pleasure. Your insight is unique and valuable and much appreciated by those of us that watch it and by I who get to interrogate you. All the best. We’ll see you next week.

Doctorow:
Well, thanks for having me.

Napolitano:
Of course. Coming up later today at 12 noon, Max Blumenthal; at one o’clock, Ambassador Ian Proud; at two o’clock, Professor John Mearsheimer; at three o’clock, Colonel Lawrence Macgregor,

22:15
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

Transcripti submitted by reader

NewsX: 0:00
We are joined by Dr Sergei Dvorinov, Director, Communication of BRICS Culture Media Forum; Gilbert Doctorow, Russian affairs expert located in Brussels; Ambassador Bhaswati Mukherjee, former diplomat. Thank you for joining us on this discussion. Sergei, I wanted to come to you first. There is a lot of talk about this town of Kurakove. Russia says that it has claimed it. Ukraine does not, has not confirmed this. What can you tell me about the importance of this territory?

Dvorinov: 0:34
Yes. Good evening. Namaste. Namaskar. Like you already mentioned, that is very close to the logistic hub, Pokrovsk. And I just want to remind that eastern part of Ukraine, Donetsk region, is originally was a Russian territory and Russian land. And during USSR time, Mr. Khrushchev gave this, joined this land to Ukraine. It was his own choice and his decision and that’s why we have such kind of problems that our national leader Vladimir Putin should protect that population which is mostly Russian-speaking population with all traditional values of Russian civilization.

1:23
And right now it’s very significant after Christmas, Orthodox Christmas, which was yesterday, we achieve– it’s very significant not only tell about some military achievement, we should tell that right now we can see Ukraine army, they lost already the spirit of win, spirit of fighting, because they completely recognized and understand and realized as well that Mr. Zelensky, who is not legal president of Ukraine, you know this very well, He was not re-elected. During his election, by the time he promised to his nation that he will bring peace to Ukraine. And in history, everybody will tell the name of Zelensky, they will tell it was the president who completely cheat his nation and bring war, not peace, but war to the country, unfortunately.

2:27
And Mr. Zelensky was not invited to Donald Trump inauguration, which is a very important signal. And right now it’s not only loss of Ukrainian army, it’s also like kind of demoralization of all the nation where Everybody only just keep in mind one question. Who will be after Zelensky? Who will be next president responsible and honest and even not belong to some entertainment or show?

Because the mind and life experience of Mr. Zelensky is only before, it was only like a show. He’s a comedian. He is not related to any politics, no any, like, skills in this field. That’s why we can see that it’s a big strategy, but for us, for Russia, again, it’s according to the systematical plan of our national leader, Vladimir Putin.

NewsX: 3:30
Gilbert Doctorow, I wanted to move on to you next. Ukraine has launched new attacks in the Kursk region, or so it says. It has not released any information about these attacks, this offensive. How is Russia handling this? What does it aim to achieve with this?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
Well, Russia has stymied the counter-attacks according to the latest information from their sources. But I think it is important that you bring up this question of Kursk, because the general public doesn’t know this town or that town. Kurokhove or Pokrovsk doesn’t tell the general audience for this program very much. Let me insist that this is the largest war in Europe since World War II. And those who think of Ukraine as a third-world country are missing the point entirely. Ukraine was at the start of this war, probably the strongest army in Europe, second to Russia.

4:30
It had been prepared by NATO instructors. It had been stuffed to the gills with NATO arms. It was prepared for a devastating attack on the Donbass. This is what precipitated the Russian attack in February to prevent a genocide of the Russian-speaking population in Donbass by that very massive and well-armed Ukrainian army.

So what we’re seeing now– despite all of the progress that Russia has made in beating back Ukraine, in moving beyond the fortifications that Ukraine had created in the neighborhood of the capital of Donetsk province in the eight years that they were being trained and armed by NATO countries– Russia has pushed way beyond that. It has now approached and passed the middle point geographically in the Donbas, particularly in the Donetsk oblast, region.

5:39
This is– they have now, when they approach Pokrovsk, which they will rename Krasnoyarsk, they are beyond 60 percent and they have a free road to the Dnieper River, which divides Ukraine in two. I say that because the activities of the Russian army have been to give the– relentless attacks, which give the Ukrainians no chance to fall back and create new defensive positions. So the Russians have opposed any ceasefire and will, since they are moving constantly, advancing and preventing the Ukrainians from creating strong defensive positions.

6:20
The war is approaching its conclusive phase. The Russian population is aware of that and anticipates victory. There is nothing that the incoming Trump administration can do to influence or change the policies of Moscow, which are that of the victorious side in a conflict which was, at the wish of the European Union and United States, to be decided on the field of battle. It is being decided on the field of battle.

6:51
But it’s a very tough fight, and that has to be emphasized. The Russians have a very high advantage in artillery shells, artillery pieces, missiles, compared to Ukraine. They have a very big advantage in manpower on the front, compared to Ukraine. But the Ukrainians are fighting. Despite all the stories that we know of desertions, The fact that 1,700 Ukrainian soldiers trained in France came back as a brigade and disappeared into the population to avoid going to the front. We know those facts, but we also know the facts of the reality of the counterattacks that you described at the start of this program.

And as I say, this is a vicious battle, a vicious war, and no one should underestimate the extreme passions on both sides. Russia is now the strongest military force in Europe and possibly in the world, given everything that it has learned in the nearly three years of war in which the latest technologies of all science have been brought to bear in the battlefield.

NewsX: 8:00
I just wanted to, I’m sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to bring in Ambassador Baswati Makkadi just because we are running out of time. Where did you see the war heading in the next few months? We are obviously approaching a Trump 2.0 administration. Is there any chance of a stable peace soon, peace agreement soon?

Bhaswati Mukherjee:
Thank you. I’d first like to begin by saying that looking at it from India’s perspective in Delhi, we look at the war in Ukraine as a proxy war fought by NATO with Russia. That’s the way we look at it. From that perspective, it hasn’t exactly gone the way NATO wanted it, because when they kept on provoking President Putin by saying that Ukraine will become a NATO member, it was very clear to everyone that at that point of time, Ukraine did not have the necessary qualification either to join the European Union or NATO, but it was just a question of pulling, pushing or pulling or whatever way you want to put it, the bear’s tail as hard as they could, the way we refer to the Chinese as the dragon.

9:10
So here you’re pulling the tail of the bear maybe a little too hard and the conflict started and it didn’t go the way NATO wanted. It went to a certain extent. They were able to use Ukrainians as a proxy to test their weapons, to see how far they could go, to see how far they could provoke a nuclear weapons state with a non-nuclear weapons state, etc. As my Russian colleague has said, the territories that have been captured by the Russian army are traditional Russian territories which go into the very heart of Russian civilization, of Russian literature, of Russian poetry. They were handed over to Ukraine, it was a strategic error.

9:49
Moreover, when the former USSR was disbanded, it was on the basis of the Minsk agreement; there were certain red lines drawn up which the West and the Russians were supposed to respect; that was not done. Now the question is, in India, how do we look at the prospects? We see the prospect of Ukraine as a defeated country, holding on to a little bit of Russian territory for compensation, because it is clear that when there will be a peace agreement, unfortunately, Ukraine will have to live with territory that has parted with, possibly, in a war which NATO could not win for them. In the process, as my colleague in Brussels has rightly pointed out, the Russian army has experienced how a modern war is fought. We all have, actually.

10:40
So has India. We have watched very closely the role that drones play, etc. This has actually been the age of dispelling innocence of how new wars are to be fought in the 21st century. It’s been an educative experience for all countries including India which have hostile neighbors on their territory, on their borders. I see this war coming to a rapid conclusion, I agree with my Belgian colleagues.

I see that the Ukrainians naturally from their perspective trying to hold on to whatever little Russian territory they’ve been able to capture as a bargaining chip. That’s quite normal too. I don’t see this war continuing. I agree with my Belgian colleagues. But I don’t see it as a victory either for NATO or for Ukraine.

11:25
But yes, like the so-called WMDs in Iraq of Saddam Hussein, it gave the West an opportunity to test out their latest weapons. They always like to do that. It gave a boom to their armaments industry. That’s what capitalism is all about. I think now we are all tired of this war, and I personally would welcome it to come to an end, because as a result of this war people are forgetting what is happening in Gaza which is unfortunate. If the Ukraine conflict would come to an end, we could then focus on ending also the conflict in Gaza and the distressing images that come every day of women and children dying in Gaza.

NewsX:
Thank you very much. We’ve run out of time, unfortunately.

12:08
Thank you to all our guests for joining us.

The discussion today centered on Donald Trump’s latest demands on Denmark and on Panama that they cede to the United States Greenland and the Canal respectively.  We appear to agree that these macho plans serve one overriding purpose:  to distract public attention from what Trump is planning to do to Ukraine, namely to walk away from it and allow the Russians to impose their terms on Kiev.

Blackrock may lose its vast expanses of rich black soil farmland in Ukraine that it has acquired in the past several years for next to nothing, but other rapacious U.S. concerns will surely find offsetting benefits in exploiting the mineral riches said to exist in Greenland. The American juggernaut can proceed merrily on its way, without remorse or regret for the million Ukrainians who have died or been horribly mutilated on the battlefield in a hopeless war on Russia that Washington ignited and promoted.

We also spent some time dissecting Tony Binken’s latest video taped interview with The New York Times. Blinken lives in an alternative universe, as Judge Napolitano sees it.  As I see it, Blinken is setting out in these interviews his claim to a professorship at Columbia University, which is the modern day successor to The Hoover Institution in California as the graveyard of failed politicians.

See  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQx3pg0AyiE

Translation below into German (Andreass Mylaeus)

„Judging Freedom“-Ausgabe vom 9. Januar: Wird Trump die USA erweitern?

Die heutige Diskussion drehte sich um Donald Trumps jüngste Forderungen an Dänemark und Panama, Grönland bzw. den Panamakanal an die Vereinigten Staaten abzutreten. Wir scheinen uns einig zu sein, dass diese Macho-Pläne einem übergeordneten Zweck dienen: die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit von dem abzulenken, was Trump mit der Ukraine vorhat, nämlich sich von ihr abzuwenden und den Russen zu erlauben, Kiew ihre Bedingungen aufzuzwingen.

Blackrock mag seine riesigen Flächen an fruchtbarem Ackerland mit schwarzem Boden in der Ukraine verlieren, die es in den letzten Jahren für so gut wie nichts erworben hatte, aber andere habgierige US-Konzerne werden sicherlich einen Ausgleich in der Ausbeutung der Bodenschätze finden, die es angeblich in Grönland gibt. Der amerikanische Moloch kann fröhlich seinen Weg fortsetzen, ohne Reue oder Bedauern für die Millionen Ukrainer, die auf dem Schlachtfeld in einem hoffnungslosen Krieg gegen Russland, den Washington entfacht und gefördert hat, gestorben oder auf schreckliche Weise verstümmelt worden sind.

Wir haben auch einige Zeit damit verbracht, Tony Blinkens jüngstes Videointerview mit The New York Times zu analysieren. Blinken lebt in einem alternativen Universum, wie es Judge Napolitano sieht. Meiner Meinung nach erhebt Blinken in diesen Interviews Anspruch auf eine Professur an der Columbia University, die als moderner Nachfolger der Hoover Institution in Kalifornien als Friedhof gescheiterter Politiker gilt.

Yesterday’s panel discussion hosted by broadcaster News X (ITV India) demonstrates that the producers of this news program are in the process of finding their unique place in Indian media. They are now presenting experts holding contradictory positions on the nature of the Russia-Ukraine war and on its likely outcome. 

Readers of these pages will not be surprised by my on-air observations. However, I strongly recommend that they also watch the Indian diplomat who spoke just after me. Her thinking is refreshing and offers hope that India will come down off the fence and be more wholeheartedly dedicated to BRICS.

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

NewsX World (Indien): Russische Truppen überrennen Kurakhove

Die gestrige Podiumsdiskussion des Senders News X (ITV India) zeigt, dass die Produzenten dieser Nachrichtensendung dabei sind, ihren einzigartigen Platz in den indischen Medien zu finden. Sie präsentieren nun Experten, die widersprüchliche Positionen zur Natur des Russland-Ukraine-Krieges und zu seinem wahrscheinlichen Ausgang vertreten.

Die Leser dieser Seiten werden von meinen Beobachtungen während der Sendung nicht überrascht sein. Ich empfehle ihnen jedoch dringend, sich auch die indische Diplomatin anzusehen, die direkt nach mir gesprochen hat. Ihre Denkweise ist erfrischend und lässt hoffen, dass Indien sich nicht mehr unschlüssig verhält, sondern sich voll und ganz der BRICS-Gruppe widmet.

How long can an EU member state survive without a government?

In recent weeks there has been a lot of speculation among U.S.-based pundits over the imagined fragility of the European Union. After all, the traditional ‘locomotives’ of the EU, Germany and France, have both been experiencing domestic political turbulence. 

The government of Olaf Scholz in Germany recently lost a no-confidence vote in the Bundestag after internal disputes in his coalition deprived him of a parliamentary majority. Due to declining popularity of the centrist Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, who have dominated German politics for decades, it is possible that following the elections scheduled for 23 February the formation of a new governing coalition in Germany will take some time. In the meantime, Scholz is acting in the very limited capacity as caretaker.

There are those, for example the widely watched military and political analyst Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who tell us that the next German government will likely take the country out of NATO. This, he says, would put an end to the alliance in a manner not dependent on the whims and political capital of Donald J. Trump.  Obviously, Colonel Macgregor is counting on an electoral victory by the hard right opposition party, Alternativ fuer Deutschland (AfD) across the whole Bundesrepublik and not just in those states, mostly in the East, which have been the bases of the party’s support. However, I believe such an outcome is highly unlikely. What is more likely is a new grand coalition of the centrist parties which may even include Olaf Scholz in some ministerial post where he can do no harm. And if the CDU boss Friedrich Merz should become chancellor, we can expect ever closer German support for NATO and still more equipment and financial aid to Ukraine.

For its part, Emanuel Macron’s France has similar woes that were imposed on it when the president called a snap election in July which he subsequently lost. The premier he then installed was unable to pass a budget through parliament and his government eventually lost a no-confidence vote, the first such instance in many decades.  Macron’s latest choice for premier may very possibly experience the same fate, and the political instability, the mounting debt crisis may bring down Macron himself. In these conditions of uncertainty and unsustainable negative budgets, the interest payable on French state bonds recently rose above those of Greece. If this continues, Macron will be forced out of office by the bankers, not by the people, who mostly loathe him but can do little about it. Should this happen, then there will have to be new presidential elections and one cannot exclude the possibility that Marine Le Pen’s hard right Rassemblement National party will take power. That would challenge the geopolitical orientation of the Union, but by itself might not yet sober up Europe. And yet, I would not place a firm bet on Le Pen: ever since 2012, the CIA has effectively stage managed French presidential elections to eliminate the powerful candidates who were outside the U.S. orbit and to ensure a succession of pitiful incompetents taking possession of the Élysée Palace.

Please note that neither of the aforementioned EU states has faced a government crisis rivaling that of Belgium about which no one seems to take notice, either among European press or American media. To be sure, Belgium is not a powerhouse driving the EU, but it is the place where most of the European Institutions are concentrated and you might think that journalists would consider what it means for a Member State to have only caretakers sitting in ministerial posts for very lengthy periods.

In fact, the last parliamentary elections in Belgium which were held in June 2024 resulted in no ready coalitions possessing the votes to command a majority in parliament. The king has since then invited leaders of the largest numbers of deputies in parliament to attempt to form a governing coalition. But none has succeeded till now and the latest formateur, Bart de Wever, head of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA, has until the end of this month to break the deadlock and assume the reins of power. There are many who expect him to fail.

This situation is not new. In fact, Belgium is the all-time worldwide winner for length of time without a fully functional government. They made the record back in 2018-2020, when there was no proper government for 652 days. Another very lengthy period of caretaker cabinets occurred in 2010-2011 and lasted for 589 days.

Did the end of the world come in Belgium?  Of course not.  Taxes were collected. Government programs were financed. But many ministries operated to rules and people who awaited administrative decisions such as naturalization cases, faced unusually long delays in their applications being processed. Moreover, no reforms or other initiatives could be undertaken.

The lesson to be learned from the Belgian experience is that it will take a much more profound crisis to bring the European Union to collapse, or just to sweep aside the awful elites who are in power in 25 of the Member States (I exclude Slovakia and Hungary).  Even a total collapse of Ukraine under pressure from Russian armed forces may not do the trick; the Europeans may perversely just double down on their subservience to Washington and reliance on NATO for their defense.

Perhaps by their ‘tough love’ Donald Trump and Elon Musk can sufficiently traumatize the European elites to bring about the needed change of direction away from globalism and towards healthy assertion of the national interests of European Member States. Time will tell. But left to their own devices, I do not foresee a return to sanity in Europe in the coming weeks and months, though others, like Douglas Macgregor, may disagree with me.  

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Wie lange kann ein EU-Mitgliedstaat ohne Regierung überleben?

In den letzten Wochen wurde in den USA viel über die vermeintliche Fragilität der Europäischen Union spekuliert. Schließlich haben die traditionellen „Zugpferde“ der EU, Deutschland und Frankreich, beide mit innenpolitischen Turbulenzen zu kämpfen.

Die Regierung von Olaf Scholz in Deutschland hat kürzlich ein Misstrauensvotum im Bundestag verloren, nachdem interne Streitigkeiten in seiner Koalition ihm die parlamentarische Mehrheit entzogen hatten. Aufgrund der sinkenden Popularität der gemäßigten Christdemokraten und Sozialdemokraten, die die deutsche Politik seit Jahrzehnten dominieren, ist es möglich, dass die Bildung einer neuen Regierungskoalition in Deutschland nach den für den 23. Februar geplanten Wahlen einige Zeit in Anspruch nehmen wird. In der Zwischenzeit fungiert Scholz in der sehr begrenzten Funktion als Übergangsregierung.

Es gibt Stimmen, wie beispielsweise die des weithin beachteten Militär- und Politikanalysten Colonel Douglas Macgregor, die uns sagen, dass die nächste deutsche Regierung das Land wahrscheinlich aus der NATO herausführen wird. Dies würde das Ende des Bündnisses bedeuten, und zwar unabhängig von den Launen und dem politischen Kapital von Donald J. Trump. Colonel Macgregor rechnet offensichtlich mit einem Wahlsieg der hart-rechten Oppositionspartei Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in der gesamten Bundesrepublik und nicht nur in den Bundesländern, vor allem im Osten, die bisher die Basis der Unterstützung für die Partei bildeten. Ich halte ein solches Ergebnis jedoch für höchst unwahrscheinlich. Wahrscheinlicher ist eine neue große Koalition der Mitte-Parteien, in der Olaf Scholz vielleicht sogar einen Ministerposten erhält, in dem er keinen Schaden anrichten kann. Und wenn der CDU-Vorsitzende Friedrich Merz Bundeskanzler werden sollte, können wir mit einer noch engeren Unterstützung Deutschlands für die NATO und noch mehr Ausrüstung und Finanzhilfen für die Ukraine rechnen.

Das Frankreich von Emanuel Macron hat seinerseits mit ähnlichen Problemen zu kämpfen, die ihm auferlegt wurden, als der Präsident im Juli vorgezogene Wahlen ausrief, die er anschließend verlor. Der von ihm eingesetzte Premierminister war nicht in der Lage, einen Haushalt durch das Parlament zu bringen, und seine Regierung verlor schließlich ein Misstrauensvotum, das erste derartige Beispiel seit vielen Jahrzehnten. Macrons jüngste Wahl für den Premierminister könnte sehr wahrscheinlich das gleiche Schicksal ereilen, und die politische Instabilität und die zunehmende Schuldenkrise könnten Macron selbst zu Fall bringen. Unter diesen Bedingungen der Unsicherheit und der untragbaren negativen Haushalte stiegen die Zinsen für französische Staatsanleihen kürzlich über die Zinsen für griechische Staatsanleihen. Wenn das so weitergeht, wird Macron von den Bankern aus dem Amt gedrängt werden, nicht vom Volk, das ihn größtenteils verabscheut, aber wenig dagegen tun kann. Sollte dies geschehen, wird es neue Präsidentschaftswahlen geben müssen, und man kann nicht ausschließen, dass Marine Le Pens rechte Partei Rassemblement National die Macht übernimmt. Das würde die geopolitische Ausrichtung der Union in Frage stellen, aber allein dadurch würde Europa vielleicht noch nicht nüchtern werden. Und dennoch würde ich nicht fest auf Le Pen setzen: Seit 2012 hat die CIA die französischen Präsidentschaftswahlen effektiv inszeniert, um die mächtigen Kandidaten, die außerhalb des US-amerikanischen Einflussbereichs standen, auszuschalten und sicherzustellen, dass eine Reihe erbärmlicher Inkompetenter den Élysée-Palast in Besitz nimmt.

Bitte beachten Sie, dass keiner der oben genannten EU-Staaten mit einer Regierungskrise konfrontiert war, die mit der in Belgien vergleichbar wäre, von der jedoch weder die europäische Presse noch die amerikanischen Medien Notiz zu nehmen scheinen. Belgien ist sicherlich kein Zugpferd der EU, aber es ist der Ort, an dem die meisten europäischen Institutionen konzentriert sind, und man könnte meinen, dass Journalisten darüber nachdenken würden, was es für einen Mitgliedstaat bedeutet, wenn auf Ministerposten über sehr lange Zeiträume nur Verwalter sitzen.

Tatsächlich führten die letzten Parlamentswahlen in Belgien, die im Juni 2024 stattfanden, dazu, dass keine der Koalitionen über die Stimmen verfügte, um eine Mehrheit im Parlament zu erreichen. Der König hat seitdem die Vorsitzenden der größten Anzahl von Abgeordneten im Parlament eingeladen, um zu versuchen, eine Regierungskoalition zu bilden. Bisher ist es jedoch niemandem gelungen, und der jüngste Formateur, Bart de Wever, Vorsitzender der flämischen nationalistischen Partei N-VA, hat bis Ende dieses Monats Zeit, um den Stillstand zu überwinden und die Macht zu übernehmen. Viele erwarten, dass er scheitern wird.

Diese Situation ist nicht neu. Tatsächlich ist Belgien der weltweite Rekordhalter für die längste Zeit ohne voll funktionsfähige Regierung. Den Rekord stellte das Land in den Jahren 2018–2020 auf, als es 652 Tage lang keine ordnungsgemäße Regierung gab. Eine weitere sehr lange Periode von geschäftsführenden Kabinetten gab es in den Jahren 2010–2011, die 589 Tage dauerte.

Ist in Belgien etwa das Ende der Welt gekommen? Natürlich nicht. Steuern wurden eingezogen. Regierungsprogramme wurden finanziert. Aber viele Ministerien arbeiteten nach Regeln und Menschen, die auf Verwaltungsentscheidungen warteten, wie z.B. Einbürgerungsfälle, mussten ungewöhnlich lange Verzögerungen bei der Bearbeitung ihrer Anträge hinnehmen. Darüber hinaus konnten keine Reformen oder andere Initiativen durchgeführt werden.

Die Lehre, die aus den Erfahrungen in Belgien gezogen werden kann, ist, dass es einer viel tieferen Krise bedarf, um die Europäische Union zum Einsturz zu bringen oder einfach nur die schrecklichen Eliten, die in 25 der Mitgliedstaaten an der Macht sind (ich schließe die Slowakei und Ungarn aus), hinwegzufegen. Selbst ein totaler Zusammenbruch der Ukraine unter dem Druck der russischen Streitkräfte könnte nicht ausreichen; die Europäer könnten sich auf perverse Weise nur noch mehr in ihre Unterwürfigkeit gegenüber Washington und ihr Vertrauen in die NATO für ihre Verteidigung steigern.

Vielleicht können Donald Trump und Elon Musk die europäischen Eliten durch ihre „liebevolle Strenge“ ausreichend traumatisieren, um den notwendigen Richtungswechsel weg vom Globalismus und hin zur gesunden Durchsetzung der nationalen Interessen der europäischen Mitgliedstaaten herbeizuführen. Die Zeit wird es zeigen. Aber wenn man sie sich selbst überlässt, sehe ich in den kommenden Wochen und Monaten keine Rückkehr zur Vernunft in Europa, auch wenn andere, wie Douglas Macgregor, mir da vielleicht widersprechen.

Last night’s and this morning’s lead stories on the BBC and CNN focused on the latest public statement by Donald Trump that he does not exclude use of military force or economic pressure to take back American control of the Panama Canal and to take possession of Greenland over objections from fellow NATO member Denmark, to whom the world’s biggest island belongs. He claimed that both acquisitions were necessary to further American economic security.

A moment later in these same broadcasts, we are told about Trump’s expressing his ‘understanding’ of Russian concerns over expansion of NATO to Ukraine going back to 2008 and his rebuke to Joe Biden for having restored the issue of NATO membership during his presidency and pursued it to spite Moscow. The news presenters also point to Trump’s revised timetable for ending the conflict in Ukraine from the 24 hours he claimed during his electoral campaign to a period of six months set out today.

The two broadcasters do not link these seemingly unrelated declarations of guiding policy for the incoming Trump administration. As for interpretation, their best effort is to say that Trump, after all, is not the isolationist they had feared him to be. No, he is an expansionist, after all. Meanwhile, by contrast, Trump’s attempt to understand Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine is said to show continuity given his supposed sympathy for the Russian dictator that goes back to his first term in office.

Let us try to make sense of it all, if we assume that strategic logic is to be found in the thinking processes of Donald Trump. I freely admit that this assumption is risky.

This exercise must be viewed in the context of the general confusion both in mainstream and in alternative media over Trump’s nominations to fill the top defense, intelligence and foreign policy posts in his administration. Pre-election Trump was, as before the 2016 election, the man who would purge the government of the Neocons who were in control of policy for two decades. The result in 2017 and throughout his first term in office was instead a further entrenchment of Deep State policies that undid all of Trump’s pre-electoral promises. The departure of Victoria Nuland from the State Department, which occurred before he took office four years ago, proved to be only temporary, while her policies in defense of American global hegemony were perpetuated by others in the interim.  Today, looking over the names of most Trump nominees for Senate confirmation, we find that nearly all are promoters of America, the world policeman, which is precisely what 52% of Americans voted against on 5 November 2024.

How can the circle be squared?  I have given the task my best effort by suggesting that Trump is practicing the old rule ‘keep your enemies closest to yourself.’  Some of my colleagues suggest that there still will be many visible opponents to downsizing America’s global footprint who remain outside of Trump’s control and who may create problems implementing his intended policies of withdrawing the country from ‘forever wars.’ I only can say that we must sit and wait to see what were his intentions behind his appointments and whether his logic prevails.

So it is with his latest statements about Greenland and the Panama Canal, on the one hand, and about the Russia-Ukraine war on the other. The logic I see is that a bellicose stand on produced-to-order conflicts that can be solved at little cost to Washington, the proverbial kicking ass that Ronald Reagan practiced to great effect, is intended to provide cover for what otherwise would look like a humiliating defeat for Washington should it cut military aid to Kiev and stand by passively while the Kremlin imposes capitulation on the Zelensky regime.

Indeed, from the statement in response to Trump issued by the Prime Minister of Denmark, it would appear that he has already won that contest without having to send an aircraft carrier detachment to the Jutland coast: she said that it is up to the people of Greenland to decide their future. Up to the 56,000 inhabitants to decide their own future, given that Trump can offer them riches beyond their imagination to get their consent at the ballot box?

In closing, I note that one reader of these pages has written to me asking what the Russian talk shows are saying about Trump’s plans for Greenland and for the Panama Canal. To this I respond that Russia is ‘out to lunch.’ 

The fact is that Russians celebrate two New Years today as they always did: both on 31 December by the Gregorian calendar used in the West and in most of the world and on 13 January per the Julian calendar still used by the Russian Orthodox Church. During these two weeks, all of the leading television news presenters and talk shows are on holiday and Russian state broadcasters offer instead vintage Soviet films or newly released blockbuster films and the like for family entertainment.  When regular news programming returns next week, I have little doubt that the expert panelists on air will be talking at length about the latest peculiar policy declarations of Donald J. Trump, and I will try to bring to your attention what sense they make of it all in Moscow.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Die geheimnisvollen Wege von Donald J. Trump

Die Hauptnachrichten von gestern Abend und heute Morgen auf BBC und CNN konzentrierten sich auf die jüngste öffentliche Erklärung von Donald Trump, dass er den Einsatz militärischer Gewalt oder wirtschaftlichen Drucks nicht ausschließt, um die Kontrolle über den Panamakanal zurückzugewinnen und Grönland in Besitz zu nehmen, trotz der Einwände des NATO-Mitglieds Dänemark, dem die größte Insel der Welt gehört. Er behauptete, dass beide Akquisitionen notwendig seien, um die wirtschaftliche Sicherheit Amerikas zu fördern.

Einen Moment später wird in denselben Sendungen berichtet, dass Trump sein „Verständnis“ für die russischen Bedenken hinsichtlich der NATO-Erweiterung auf die Ukraine zum Ausdruck gebracht hat, die bis ins Jahr 2008 zurückreichen, und dass er Joe Biden zurechtgewiesen hat, weil dieser das Thema der NATO-Mitgliedschaft während seiner Präsidentschaft wieder aufgegriffen und weiterverfolgt hat, um Moskau zu ärgern. Die Nachrichtensprecher weisen auch auf Trumps überarbeiteten Zeitplan für die Beendigung des Konflikts in der Ukraine hin, der von den 24 Stunden, die er während seines Wahlkampfs angegeben hatte, auf einen Zeitraum von sechs Monaten, der heute festgelegt wurde, geändert wurde.

Die beiden Sender stellen keine Verbindung zwischen diesen scheinbar unzusammenhängenden Erklärungen der Leitprinzipien für die kommende Trump-Regierung her. Was die Interpretation betrifft, so bemühen sie sich nach Kräften zu sagen, dass Trump schließlich nicht der Isolationist ist, den sie befürchtet hatten. Nein, er ist schließlich ein Expansionist. Im Gegensatz dazu soll Trumps Versuch, Putins Entscheidung, in die Ukraine einzumarschieren, zu verstehen, Kontinuität zeigen, da er angeblich schon seit seiner ersten Amtszeit Sympathien für den russischen Diktator hegt.

Versuchen wir, das alles zu verstehen, wenn wir davon ausgehen, dass sich in den Denkprozessen von Donald Trump eine strategische Logik verbirgt. Ich gebe gerne zu, dass diese Annahme riskant ist.

Diese Übung muss im Kontext der allgemeinen Verwirrung sowohl in den Mainstream- als auch in den alternativen Medien über Trumps Nominierungen zur Besetzung der obersten Posten in den Bereichen Verteidigung, Geheimdienste und Außenpolitik in seiner Regierung betrachtet werden. Vor der Wahl war Trump, wie vor der Wahl 2016, der Mann, der die Regierung von den Neokonservativen säubern würde, die zwei Jahrzehnte lang die Politik kontrollierten. Das Ergebnis im Jahr 2017 und während seiner gesamten ersten Amtszeit war stattdessen eine weitere Verfestigung der Politik des „Tiefen Staates“, die alle Versprechen Trumps vor der Wahl zunichte machte. Der Abgang von Victoria Nuland aus dem Außenministerium, der vor seinem Amtsantritt vor vier Jahren erfolgte, erwies sich als nur vorübergehend, während ihre Politik zur Verteidigung der globalen Hegemonie Amerikas in der Zwischenzeit von anderen fortgesetzt wurde. Wenn wir uns heute die Namen der meisten von Trump für den Senat nominierten Kandidaten ansehen, stellen wir fest, dass fast alle Befürworter Amerikas als Weltpolizist sind, was genau das ist, wogegen 52 % der Amerikaner am 5. November 2024 gestimmt haben.

Wie kann man die Quadratur des Kreises erreichen? Ich habe mich nach besten Kräften bemüht, indem ich vorgeschlagen habe, dass Trump die alte Regel „Halte deine Feinde am nächsten bei dir“ praktiziert. Einige meiner Kollegen sind der Meinung, dass es immer noch viele sichtbare Gegner der Verkleinerung des globalen Fußabdrucks Amerikas geben wird, die außerhalb der Kontrolle Trumps bleiben und die Probleme bei der Umsetzung seiner beabsichtigten Politik des Rückzugs des Landes aus „ewigen Kriegen“ verursachen könnten. Ich kann nur sagen, dass wir abwarten müssen, welche Absichten hinter seinen Ernennungen stehen und ob sich seine Logik durchsetzt.

So verhält es sich auch mit seinen jüngsten Äußerungen zu Grönland und dem Panamakanal einerseits und zum Russland-Ukraine-Krieg andererseits. Die Logik, die ich dahinter sehe, ist, dass eine kriegerische Haltung gegenüber Konflikten, die auf Bestellung produziert werden und mit geringen Kosten für Washington ausgelöst werden können, die sprichwörtliche harte Hand, die Ronald Reagan mit großer Wirkung praktizierte, als Deckmantel für das dienen soll, was sonst wie eine demütigende Niederlage für Washington aussehen würde, sollte es die Militärhilfe für Kiew kürzen und passiv zusehen, während der Kreml dem Regime von Selensky die Kapitulation aufzwingt.

Tatsächlich scheint es, dass die dänische Ministerpräsidentin den Wettstreit bereits gewonnen hat, ohne eine Flugzeugträger-Einheit an die Küste Jütlands schicken zu müssen: Sie sagte, dass es an den Menschen in Grönland sei, über ihre Zukunft zu entscheiden. Es liegt also an den 56.000 Einwohnern, über ihre eigene Zukunft zu entscheiden, da Trump ihnen Reichtümer jenseits ihrer Vorstellungskraft bieten kann, um ihre Zustimmung an der Wahlurne zu erhalten?

Abschließend möchte ich noch erwähnen, dass mich ein Leser dieser Seiten gefragt hat, was die russischen Talkshows über Trumps Pläne für Grönland und den Panamakanal sagen. Darauf antworte ich, Russland „hat den Kopf woanders“.

Tatsache ist, dass die Russen heute wie immer zwei Neujahrsfeiern begehen: sowohl am 31. Dezember nach dem im Westen und in den meisten Teilen der Welt verwendeten gregorianischen Kalender als auch am 13. Januar nach dem julianischen Kalender, der noch immer von der russisch-orthodoxen Kirche verwendet wird. Während dieser zwei Wochen sind alle führenden Nachrichtensprecher und Talkshow-Moderatoren im Urlaub und die staatlichen russischen Sender bieten stattdessen alte sowjetische Filme oder neu erschienene Blockbuster und Ähnliches zur Unterhaltung der Familie an. Wenn nächste Woche die regulären Nachrichtensendungen wieder ausgestrahlt werden, zweifle ich kaum daran, dass die Experten in der Sendung ausführlich über die jüngsten seltsamen politischen Erklärungen von Donald J. Trump sprechen werden, und ich werde versuchen, Ihnen zu vermitteln, wie sie das Ganze in Moskau einschätzen.