Yesterday evening’s discussion opened with a brief report from Press TV’s Brussels correspondent Jerome Hughes on the overall reaction in the European Institutions to Trump’s threat to impose new tariffs on those countries that have resisted his plans for Greenland. My fellow panelist was Paolo Raffone, founder and director of the Italian Center for International Perspectives (CIPI), a research and consultancy nonprofit corporation on European and global economic and strategic scenarios based in Brussels. As usual the Spotlight show was moderated by Marzieh Hashemi.
I am pleased that I was given every opportunity to set out my argument that the principal if not only reason for Trump’s pursuit of Greenland is to use the annexation as a tool to wreck NATO from within and, still , to break up the European Union or at least see 25 of the 27 prime ministers of the European Member States sent off to early retirement. Trump’s open declaration of a Might Makes Right foreign policy leaves the Europeans flabbergasted and humiliated, which is precisely what Trump intends.
I note with interest how the Russian chattering classes as represented on Vladimir Solovyov’s evening talk show appear to appreciate Trump’s moves on Greenland as I do. To any EU censors reading these lines, please do pay attention: the Kremlin appears to be picking up my line of interpretation, not vice versa.
In my last item posted here, I mentioned the delay that sometimes comes in my receiving links to my interviews with News X World. Happily, I have just received and can now share the links to my appearances this morning and again this afternoon.
The first two links below are from the morning. Regrettably there appears to have been some technical problem and there are cuts in what I say at several points, though I think the videos are worthwhile nonetheless.
The third link is from this afternoon’s discussion of the Trump’s Greenland adventure, and this one is perfectly intelligible.
The talk show on Belarus television about which I alerted the Community last week as a coming attraction was duly broadcast last night and the links are now available.
Complete hour-long show posted on youtube:
Separate text of my key statement on the show: in Russian but easily translatable if you copy and paste onto Google
Today’s “Big Debate” on Indian global broadcaster News X was a pleasure for me as one of four panelists and I am hopeful that the Community will find it worth a listen. Our task was primarily to make sense of Trump’s conflict with Europe over his planned takeover of Greenland.
My fellow panelists were a mixed group in terms of political perspectives, indicating that the producers knew very well what they were doing in bringing us together.
The view of the U.S. Deep State was well represented by an American professor of political science at Macalaster College, Andrew Latham, though I do wonder what benefit his students will gain from expertise in international security and strategic studies coming from a prof who says, as Latham does in his response to my remarks on the coming implosion of NATO, that Europe will do just fine as it puts together its own defenses. He seems to overlook the small detail of how much time it will take Europe to regroup and arm itself. De facto, if NATO implodes now, in 2026, then Europe will be utterly defenseless against the Russian bear it has been taunting and provoking for the past several years while feeling secure in hiding behind Daddy Sam. Heaven forbid, they might feel compelled to find that new ‘balance’ of interests with the Big Neighbor to the East that Chancellor Merz said is on the agenda. By the way, the good Chancellor has just recalled his 13 officers and soldiers from Greenland, probably in a late effort to have his country removed from Trump’s latest tariffs.
Indian panelist Keith Vaz was a conventional as can be in his own way. Vas is a respected representative of the Indian contingent in the Labour Party of Britain. He has clearly been well integrated into the power hierarchy of the U.K. Wikipedia tells us this about him: “Nigel Keith Anthony Standish Vaz is a British politician who served as the Labour Party Member of Parliament for Leicester East for 32 years, from 1987 to 2019. He is the UK Parliament’s longest-serving British Asian MP. Vaz served as the Minister for Europe between October 1999 and June 2001.” As one could imagine, he thinks Keir Starmer is a swell guy who has been very diplomatic in dealing with Trump.
And then there is a rather unconventional Indian panelist Sumit Peer. His LinkedIn entry says this about him: “…a renowned Geo-Political Commentator, visionary Columnist, Business Advisor, and a concerned citizen with a mission of contributing towards nation building.”
I am appreciative that the host allowed me to take my disruptive discourse to its logical conclusion as I explained that Trump’s main objective in his Greenland adventure is to so rough up the Europeans by his violation of sovereignty and national borders that they vote to leave NATO. This would enable Trump to proceed with his normalization of relations with Russia over the semiconscious and prone body of Rump Ukraine.
Today’s interview with the Indian global broadcaster NewsX World was in two parts. I appear in minute 3.17
The first segment dealt with the Kremlin’s positive evaluation of latest statements by several European leaders that it is time to initiate direct talks with Putin. The second part dealt with Viktor Orban’s decision to distribute a ‘petition’ among Hungarian voters calling for refusal to participate in any further EU funding for Ukraine.
As I point out, in the past few days French President Macron, Italian Prime Minister Meloni and German Chancellor Merz have all said that direct contact should be made with Vladimir Putin. In the case of Macron, who is ever playing the chameleon and changing his political stance on Russia from warm to cold and back again, these latest statements are meaningless. Meloni is also not a particularly serious person at the international level. But Merz’s decision to reach out to Putin is entirely another matter and worthy of attention. A day ago, the Chancellor remarked that Russia is part of Europe and relations with Russia should be recalibrated. So, apparently, he has finally consulted a map!
What these statements suggest is that Trump has finally broken the solidarity in Europe behind foolish and self-destructive policies vis-à-vis Russia. Probably the biggest factor is their realization that NATO may well collapse if Trump proceeds to annex Greenland by force, which is entirely possible and could happen at any moment. If NATO collapses, then Europe will be entirely defenseless against the Russian bear whom they have been poking and provoking ceaselessly for three years and more. Under those circumstances, it is prudent to establish lines of communication here and now beforehand. It is also no longer clear in Berlin, Rome and Paris who is the more fearsome big bad wolf: Washington or Moscow.
The decision by Viktor Orban to solicit the opinion of Hungarian voters on whether to continue or to stop funding to the Kiev regime is a rare instance when real, meaning ‘direct’ democracy is put into practice by an EU Member State. In general, all that we have is ‘representative democracy,’ which, as we know, exists in the particular context of electoral laws that reserve seats in parliament for parties or movements backed by tiny minorities of the population and so deprive the most popular parties of a majority in parliament. All of that progressive electoral engineering results in most European countries having power-sharing coalition governments that are answerable to no one.
Virtually the only country in Europe that regularly practices direct democracy is Switzerland. And so, I salute Orban for asking Hungarian citizens to sign a petition on this key question of war or peace. If only other Member States would do the same, funding for the Zelensky regime would stop forthwith and this damned war would be over.
That being said, I note that there may be some quirks when they tally the ‘petitions’ in Budapest. This afternoon I had a chat with one of the receptionists at my sports club who happens to be a dual national – Belgian and Hungarian. I asked if he knew about Orban’s referendum and he sure did: he told me that Budapest is distributing the petitions by email and he already received three. He sent all three of these ballots back with his signature! As they say in the USA: vote early and vote often.
This discussion centers on the issues of the method in Trump’s seeming madness on the world stage, which can be found in his first words on taking office: ‘drill baby drill.’ As I have noted in my most recent essays on Substack, Trump understands that control of global trading in oil and gas is critical for refurbishing and maintaining the dollar as the global reserve currency, which in turn provides the financial strength for America to assume massive debt at little cost to itself and thus afford the world’s biggest military budget.
Trump’s strongest asset is his courage and readiness to assume calculated risks to further American national interests. He looks for ‘low hanging fruit,’ for adding to American territory and control of events without getting bogged down in ‘boots on the ground’ wars. He will only venture where a quick victory is within reach.
The open question is whether the Teheran leaders can respond with sufficient decisiveness and timely risk-taking to fend off the Trump offensive. Since it is absolutely clear that Trump is preparing to attack Iran’s strategic infrastructure so that paid fighters can overthrow the government without hindrance, Teheran should now make a preemptive strike on Israel and on the US bases in the region if it wishes to survive. I do not see Chinese or Russian intervention to save Iran.
I am uncertain whether Presidents Xi and Putin appreciate that they too should be acting preemptively right now if they wish to share global power with the United States in a kind of Yalta-2 arrangement.
NewsX World hourly morning news wrap-up, 13 January
In this morning’s news bulletin, I come on for two segments beginning at minute 14. These deal firstly with the latest Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, where further destruction to the energy infrastructure has been inflicted. As I say here, repeating what the Russians themselves are saying about these attacks: the destruction of energy production and distribution is taking a page from the American playbook of their 1999 bombing campaign against Belgrade, though here the Russians have an ulterior objective of driving the population to flee to Europe, thereby reducing Ukraine’s economy while overwhelming social services in Germany and elsewhere by the refugee influx so that Europe sues for peace. Secondly, we spoke about the massive demonstration of French farmers in Paris protesting the terms of the Mercosur trade deal that has been concluded with the EU over objections from European farmers who claim there will be unfair trading that undercuts their markets. The problem is not unfair trading but the much greater efficiency and production costs in a very large market like Brazil versus France. I expect the treaty will be ratified and come into effect nonetheless, though with added provisions for review and modification of certain terms relating to agriculture after a year or two to avoid doing excessive harm to European farmers.
For those who may think that the almost daily commentary that this broadcaster requests of me puts them in the Alternative News category, I urge that you listen to the interview just prior to my appearance, where you will hear an account of the brutal repression of demonstrators by the Iranian authorities that could just as easily be shown on the BBC or Euronews. For the truth about Iran, you would do well to go to Glenn Diesen’s interview yesterday with Iranian professor Seyed Marandi – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRO4bXzEQw&t=696s
This morning’s NewsX World hourly round-up: Trump cancels ‘international law’
I appear in this multi-segment broadcast at minute 19.26
The issue that I highlight in the title above is one of two or three highly topical issues which are widely discussed in media today but as I insist here are devoid of substance. The relevance of international law to allegations of Russian aggression in initiating its invasion of Ukraine is nil. The notion of double standards in applying international law to the case of Russia’s supposed aggression in Ukraine when it is not applied to the American invasion of Venezuela is also empty now that Donald Trump publicly canceling international law as a restraint in an interview with The New York Times a couple of days ago.
Another empty bit of ‘breaking news’ that we discussed is the invitation extended by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Bessent to India and Australia to attend the upcoming G7 meeting for talk about finding new sources of rare earth metals outside of China. This is a PR exercise and nothing more, because any increase in mining and processing of these metals will come years from now and the crisis is here and now, when China has full leverage over the rest of the world in the growing confrontation with the West.
Similarly one does not have to spend more a minute considering how the U.S. seizure of a Russian tanker will affect the peace negotiations over Ukraine. The answer is very simple: there will be no peace negotiations or if they take place the guarantied outcome will be zero, and the war will continue until Russia gets what it wants, leaving Ukraine as a failed state.
I do not mean to suggest that there is no news worth reading or watching today. Such news, of course, exists, but it is not being covered by Mainstream while they fill their on air minutes and their news columns with the irrelevancies cited above.
This afternoon’s chat with Professor Diesen presented our best efforts to make sense of the torrent of breaking news this past seven days. Much of this news was generated by Donald Trump and related to his attack on Venezuela, his threats to take Greenland by force and American piracy on the high seas involving the capture of a Russian-flagged oil tanker traveling just south of Iceland. But in the last 24 hours, Vladimir Putin stole Trump’s thunder by a dramatic strike on critical energy infrastructure of Ukraine, reportedly the country’s largest gas storage facility, using its Oreshnik hypersonic missile. Not only did Russia destroy a facility representing half of Ukraine’s natural gas storage but this was done in the neighborhood of Lvov, in the very West of the country, just 70 km from the Polish border, thereby sending an unmistakable message to NATO countries about their vulnerability to this unstoppable Russian armament.
The conversation moved from this essentially new development to the long-standing issues o where the war is headed, what kind of outcome may we expect and in what time period, whether there will be any further Trump brokered peace talks and much more.
Throughout I insisted on Trump’s inscrutability and use of prevarication to keep us all confounded. And I took note of Putin’s long-awaited decisive action to put the fear of God into Europeans by demonstrating that Russia has not only the wherewithal but also the will to defend its interests.
Trump Greenlights ‘Russia Sanctions Bill’ | More Tariff Trouble For India?
I was honored yesterday evening to participate in a very Indian panel discussion which opens with Indian advertising that you will certainly not find on BBC, CNN or other global broadcasters. As for the discussion itself, note that I appear to be the only non-Indian expert.
The topic was one of great concern to the Indian government and business community, namely the bill presently before the U.S. Senate granting the President the powers to impose secondary tariffs of up to 500% on countries which continue to buy Russian oil. This bill enjoys bipartisan support and is sponsored by the viciously anti-Russian Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and his Democratic peer and fellow Russia-hater Senator Richard Blumenthal from Connecticut. I add parenthetically that I take special interest in these sponsors because Blumenthal just happens to be a classmate of mine from Harvard College, 1967.
We each had just a few minutes to make present our evaluations of the likely fall-out from the 500% tariffs when the bill comes into law, as it inevitably will given that 82 of the Senators have previously expressed their support, making it veto-proof. The subject became news when President Trump came out yesterday saying he will sign the bill, which is a concession to the realities of politics on The Hill.
You will see that all the Indian experts were figuring the angles for India and for the USA coming out of the new tariffs: how this would add greatly to inflation for American consumers on the one hand and how it would harm Indian exports in areas until now not affected by Trump’s tariffs like pharmaceuticals. Regrettably, I limited my remarks to how the new tariffs would founder on the rocks of Chinese opposition. After all, Trump’s early attempts to impose 150% tariffs on China months ago fell through when the Chinese struck back and said they would freeze all sales of rare earth metals to the USA, in effect bringing US industrial production, especially in electronics and military hardware to an abrupt halt. Trump backed down and the imposition of high tariffs on China so far is in a suspended state, which is where it will likely remain to the end of Trump’s term in office.
Regrettably, what I did not broach is the question of how such tariffs would affect Russia and change dramatically how the war in Ukraine is being conducted.
If indeed, Washington succeeds in forcing Russia’s major export markets to stop buying Russian oil and does great harm to Russia’s economy, we will not have to wait to see this damage impair the war effort. On the contrary, we may anticipate that Russia will proceed to do in Ukraine what some argue it should have done a couple of years ago, namely to smash Kiev and Lvov to bits, putting a dramatic end to the statehood of Ukraine and ending the war here and now. I can add based on today’s latest news, which I discussed with News X World this morning, that the message of such an escalatory path has just been given by Moscow to Kiev, London, Paris, Berlin and Washington by the use of an Oreshnik hypersonic missile in a midnight attack on Kiev. I await further news on this very important development to see what destruction actually resulted from the Oreshnik attack, which is only the second use of this missile in the Ukrainian campaign after an initial experimental strike on a hardened underground military production site in Dnipro in 2024.
Gilbert Doctorow 