Jeffrey Sachs is back to selling snake oil

Jeffrey Sachs is a magnificent orator. His speech in the European Parliament a couple of months ago denouncing the decades-long destructive behavior of the United States on the world stage was a tour de force. I take my hat off to him for that.

However, by professional training, he is an economist not an orator and it is my intention to address that side of his activities in this brief essay.

In the 1990s, Sachs was a key foreign adviser to Poland and Russia in their transition from Communist-led planned economies to market economies. In Poland, this transition was overly long but reasonably successful in the end as measured by growing prosperity if not by economic sovereignty as the country became a colony of Germany. I always considered that Poland’s success was due less to the sage advice of Sachs and other carpetbaggers from U.S. universities and more to the return to Poland of Western trained Polish business cadres from London, from the USA after the fall of Communism. It is they who took leading positions in the economy.

In Russia, Sachs’ advice on drastic reforms, taken up by Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar and his followers, resulted in catastrophic collapse of the economy, in generalized pauperization of the population while a very few foxes among the sheep became fabulously wealthy – those whom we in the West came to know as ‘oligarchs.’ The entire process gave democracy and free markets a dirty name in Russia that the population has still not outlived.

To be sure, Sachs at the time and ever since has said in exculpation that he had also advised the U.S. government at the time to extend massive financial assistance to Russia to see it through the painful period of transition. This Washington did not do, of course. Nice words, but they do nothing to mitigate the real damage, meaning the closing of most factories and production facilities caused by the shock therapy urged by Sachs and other Liberals. They came to Russia with an inflated sense of their own skills, ignoring the fact that no one, NO ONE in the 1990s had relevant experience to see any country the size of Russia through the shift to a market economy. In ordinary parlance, we call that hubris. Hubris is not just monopolized by the President and his entourage in Washington.

Let us now move forward to today. Jeffrey Sachs’ latest interviews, which are watched by vast audiences on youtube, persuade me that, as they say, the dog has returned to his vomit. He is selling highly partisan anti-Trump economics.

There are in this Community those who will object to my criticizing so sharply and publicly another upstanding member of the Opposition Movement to U.S. hegemonism. I ask that you hold your fire and hear me out. First, because Sachs himself is directing ad hominem attacks against others in public space.

The commentators in The Washington Post are ‘idiots’ he tells us. They may be wrong-headed. They may be paid well to lie. But I don’t think they are mentally deficient.

The analysts producing papers promoting ‘American primacy’ are not analysts at all, Sachs tells us. Really? Misguided, I would say. Dishonest, I would say. But that they are not analysts? Really, Mr. Sachs, do clean up your language if you expect others in the Movement like me to be more indulgent towards you.

*****

The interview which got my attention yesterday focused on U.S. relations with China, which, said Sachs, were splendid from the mid-1970s up to 2010 when America’s foreign policy elites decided that China was growing too fast and was threatening America’s national ambition to retain global ‘primacy.’ From that point on, the demonization of Beijing set in. Defense alliances were constructed to ‘contain’ China. Trade alliances were designed to isolate China. And so forth, and so on, taking us to the present day when the American foreign policy establishment is preparing the broad public for the idea of a military clash with China that will remove the threat to American global hegemony once and for all.

So, China was no threat to the American economy?

Says Sachs, it was all win-win. American companies prospered by manufacturing cheaply in China and participating in global distribution. California did stunningly well from the China trade, he tells us. OK, he concedes, sotto voce, the American Mid-West took a hit and industries there suffered, but the problem could have been addressed by assistance from Washington, if Washington had an industrial policy, which it stupidly (per Sachs) does not have.

Dear Mr. Sachs, I ask you to follow the current rules of transparency when you issue your sweeping commentary like the foregoing. You are wedded to globalization, which was, above all, an economic policy backed by the Democrats and has been their chief point of pride in economic policy. Think of al those multilateral free trade agreements that every Democratic president had to have on his CV.

No matter that the Dems are supposedly the party of the working class while globalization has and always will strip away well-paying manufacturing jobs that allowed working class people to live normal lives and to prepare their offspring for middle class professional jobs, if they so wished. Those manufacturing jobs have been replaced by part time work, gigs, delivery work for Uber Eats, at best jobs in McDonalds flipping burgers. All of this is not my personal discovery. It has been called out long ago by many, including by the incumbent Republican president.

I am not saying that imposition of crippling tariffs on Chinese exports is justified. Moderation always makes for better statesmanship. But directionally, the USA has to undo the excesses of outsourcing and to repeal the tax legislation that made production abroad more profitable for US corporations than production at home. Such carve-outs always provide greater advantages to certain industries and to certain companies within those industries than to the economy as a whole. While my peers all speak in unison about the bribery of Congress by the military industrial complex, so far I do not hear a word about the bribery of Congress by industries and by specific companies within those industries seeking or enjoying the terms of multilateral free trade pacts and the tax benefits of producing and retaining profits abroad.

Mr. Sachs, where are you on all of those issues? Or are they also just the tomfoolery of ‘idiots’?

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Transcript of ‘Judging Freedom,’ 30 July

Transcription submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1Bud26z87M

Napolitano: 0:34
Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, July 30th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be here with us in just a moment on “The European Union capitulates to Trump”. What’s behind it?

But first this. [commercial message]

2:01
Professor Doctorow, good day to you, my dear friend. Thank you very much for joining me today. Thanks for accommodating my schedule. What has been the general reaction amongst European leaders and European media to the announcement by Ursula von der Leyen and Donald Trump the other day about this agreement for 15% tariffs for everything the EU wants to sell in the US?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD:
I don’t know of anyone who was rejoicing on that here in Europe. On the contrary, the consensus is that this is a tragic moment for Europe, that this will cost them dearly in future investments in manufacturing, which will now be directed to the United States by their local manufacturers here, because it is the only way for them to save their market share in the States under the new regime of US duties. So jobs will move to the States, jobs will be lost here, and there is the understanding that the very low growth, or negative growth in some countries, that has prevailed in Europe for the last two to three years will continue indefinitely when this new system is applied. The question is how do you explain the capitulation?

3:33
I think most everyone understands that von der Leyen was kissing Trump’s ring, bending the knee, and that Europe was a supplicant and not an equal partner in negotiations.

Napolitano:
Some of your colleagues on this show have criticized the agreement, arguing as you did, but in addition, we can’t even read it because it’s not even been reduced to writing. Is that true? Have they just agreed on the 15% and nothing has been reduced to writing yet?

Doctorow:
There is nothing more than a handshake as far as we know. But that is sufficient for these purposes because there [is] a lot of detail work that has to be done. This is not assumed to be the comprehensive and complete agreement.

There will be some discussions at the margins. For example, over the fate of automobiles, will they be at the 25% or indeed at 15%, such as liquor, which was not a subject of agreement during that meeting in Scotland. So there are these little bits and pieces along the way, but the general understanding is a 15 percent blanket tariff on all European wares. That may be accepted as a solid fact, not as a speculation.

Napolitano:
Back to what you said a few minutes ago, I suppose you could manufacture a Mercedes-Benz automobile in Tennessee, but you can’t make French champagne in New Jersey. So some of the goods and products unique to Europe cannot be put together here. Impossible.

Doctorow: 5:21
Yes, that’s true. So they will forego some of their sales volume in products like champagne or fine wines. That is a given. And that is part of what some critics say is wrong with the European economy that has been very dependent on exports for future growth. This was precisely the line of critique in the leading Belgian French-speaking newspaper, Le Soir, a couple of days ago. They’re looking for explanations. How was it that we were so weak in these negotiations? Of course, that logic doesn’t hold up when you consider that China is another part of the world where exports have driven growth.

6:08
And they record five percent GDP annual growth, not 0.1 percent as the Europeans are now boasting about the first quarter results in 2025. So that is an excuse that this paper, that people like this paper, who are supporters of the status quo in Europe, are exploring to explain what went wrong. But in their discussion, there is a fact which really is evident when you look at it closely, and that is they capitulated to Trump on the trade agreement because they’re hoping to keep him in play. They’re hoping that they can agree with Trump on further support to Ukraine, which is the leading issue of all of the heads of state and prime ministers in Europe.

Napollitano:
I want to get into that in some depth with you, but before we do, one or two more questions about the Trump-Von der Leyen agreement. What’s the next step for the agreement? I mean, is this it, or do the French who’ve condemned it and the Germans who’ve condemned it have the ability to veto or modify or create carve-outs?

Doctorow:
Well, they do. This is not just on the say-so of von der Leyen that a treaty is agreed and is imposed on all the 27 member states. It has to go through parliament.

It requires a ratification. And that is going to take a lot of negotiation within Europe. Considering that the largest economy in Europe, Germany, headed by a defeatist leader in terms of the tarif war, but a bold leader in terms of the future war with Russia, considering his role, how he and his party, the Christian Democrats, are leaders of the European People’s Party, which is the most important party in the European Parliament. And he, Merz, has come out two days ago saying that this is, yes, it’s a black day for Europe, but, but, but … but this is the best that we could get. That assumes that the Germans will vote for the deal.

8:37
The French are going to put up a lot of resistance. Let’s remember that the major economies are the ones that are most interested in the nature of the agreement with the States because they have the biggest trade flows with the States. The smaller countries, the smaller economies here are, well, let’s say, bystanders. They are not going to have a decisive say. They will follow what they are told to do by the likes of Germany.

So the French are the single biggest points of resistance to the agreement that von der Leyen has set down, not just the the so-called far right of Marine Le Pen, who instantly came out condemning this, but even the centrist Bayrou, the prime minister installed by Macron to manage the difficulties he has with his parliament, he came out against it as well.

9:38
So the French are going to dig in their deals and they will certainly demand concessions, though I doubt that they will overturn the agreement that von der Leyen reached, because so many other countries will follow Germany’s lead.

Napolitano:
Is it a simple majority vote in the European Parliament? Is it country by country? Is it two-thirds? How does it work?

Doctorow:
No, to my knowledge it would be a majority vote.

Napolitano:
All right, and you’re of the view that not withstanding this disenchantment for other reasons, which we’ll get into presently, this will likely be ratified.

Doctorow:
I think it will be. There will be modifications.

Napolitano:
Is she popular, von der Leyen, or is she not popular? That’s an inartful question. Is she popular with the folks in the streets? Is she popular with elites?

Doctorow:
No, I think it’s with elites. And “popular” is not an adjective I would apply here. Respected, willing to accept her judgment. However, let’s remember from the last several weeks, she was under fierce challenge in the parliament, and this was covered in the daily news. So the broader public, and even among elites, they are aware that she has opposition for the way she has managed the parliament and the European institutions. So she doesn’t have a free ride any more. Her situation is more tenuous than it was before the challenge to the way she negotiated the covid vaccine contracts.

11:14
That has put her in some jeopardy. And I think the broad public is aware of that, though it has other problems to worry about and isn’t very concerned about Madame van der Leyen.

Napolitano:
I mean, let’s just suppose, this may be fantastical, but let’s just suppose Marie Le Pen becomes the President of France. What can she do, if anything, to get out of this?

Doctorow:
Well, let’s look first as what von der Leyen is doing to get us into this. She has appointed the commissioners, all of whom, or a large majority of the important or key positions, she’s assigned to the non-entity countries, the Baltics and other East European countries, which are under German sway. She has appointed people who are intellectually inferior in the expectation that she could dominate them, and that has turned out to be true. Now, if Marine Le Pen came in, all of these people would be thrown out, and you might have a chance of seeing competent people who represent the 450 million people, a population of the European Union, and not people like Kallas, who comes from a country with one million population, who are drawing Europe around by the nose for the sake of their anti-Russian positions. So everything could change in policies, because the policies now are made by those who are under the direct instruction and control of von der Leyen.

Anyone who replaces her will certainly not enjoy that position of strength to appoint all of the commissioners and to control the whole of European policy the way von der Leyen has in the last several years.

Napolitano: 13:04
Okay, got it. But if the agreement with Trump is reduced to writing and ratified, and if France rebels, there’s nothing much they could do about it, right? This is part of the treaty that created the EU. They’re subject to this, or am I wrong?

Doctorow:
No, you’re right. But again, there is something here that we have to call out. There are parts of this agreement which are utterly unenforceable and which are probably the most damaging to the European economy.

Napolitano:
What are they?

Doctorow:
Not the 15 percent tariff, but the obligation to buy 650 billion dollars of American energy. That is the single biggest factor weighing on the weak European economies, starting with the German economy.

This, the dependence on liquefied natural gas at world prices, which has been the case ever since the destruction of the North Stream pipelines and the decisions in Parliament to phase out as quickly as possible use of Russian energy supplies — that has been the destructive factor in European economies more than this 15 percent tariff can possibly be. And the obligation to buy this, well, an obligation. What kind of obligations did the Chinese have in previous agreements with the United States? They never were effected.

14:34
And I doubt that this one ever will be carried out because the people who have signed onto it will not be in office.

Napolitano:
Got it. I don’t want to put you out on a limb, but which is the greater threat to European economic stability? Russia or the United States?

Doctorow:
At this point it’s the United States. To anyone with eyes to see what Mr. Trump has just done, the complete humiliation of Europe, the imposition of tariffs and purchase obligations from the United States, that is destructive of the European economy. It is not the act of a friend. And in that context, you have to ask, well, why are they going along with this? And there you have to look for the small print.

15:26
And is I said, even in the “Soir” editorial, it was, if you looked closely at the text, you found the answer. The answer is to keep up relations with Trump. And why do they want to keep up relations with Trump? In order to rope him in to continue American support for the Ukrainians in the war with Russia. This is the big, idee fixe of von der Leyen and her colleagues in the European institutions.

And it is not an economic concern. They don’t give a damn about the welfare of the broad populations in European countries. Their concern is their own holding onto power, which is made possible by this war with Russia because it gives them reason.

Napolitano:
Is it a coincidence that while all this is going on, France has announced a recognition of the state of Palestine and Great Britain with a little bit of wiggle room has announced that it is likely to do so by September.

Doctorow: 16:39
These are acts of impotence. They are giving Mr. Trump the finger in their pocket, which is what, which is a very common–

Napolitano:
In other words, giving him the finger and he can’t see them doing it.

Doctorow:
Exactly right.

Napolitano:
There’s a case in New Jersey where a guy gave a finger to the police. Oh, the prosecution went on for years. The Supreme Court said it was protected speech, but it was not in his pocket.

Doctorow:
Well, this is a Russian expression, by the way. So you see, they do have a sense of humor. It is a sign of impotence. They cannot say this openly. They are defying Trump. That’s what this recognition of the Palestine state is all about. It will change nothing, but it is holding up Trump to general opprobrium and criticism.

Napolitano: 17:36
Is this Epstein saga resonating in Europe? I mean, I was there for the past week and a half and talking to all kinds of folks, academics, elites, professionals, longtime friends, cab drivers. It wasn’t what Tulsi Gabbard was revealing. It was Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. Is it the same in Northern Europe where you are?

Doctorow:
Oh yes, and that’s certainly the Epstein story, it’s on the front page every day, and Ghislaine Maxwell’s picture is in the newspapers.

But the emphasis, I think, is on one feature which is also covered in the States The aspect of it that is watched most closely in European papers is what this says about the … MAGA. Are they a genuine revolt? Is there some loss of strength, political strength by Trump? That is the angle that interests them most, not the details of pedophilia or whatever. That side of it is not in the front pages.

Napolitano:
How close to the end of his days in office is President Zelensky?

Doctorow: 18:57
I think it’s very close, and I think he’s being prepared for eviction by the United States. And I say that with reference to very specific events that I followed from an angle I don’t see other people covering, strange to say.

The events that persuade me that Zelensky is on the way out have been the demonstrations in Kiev and other major cities around Ukraine last week, and these were as many as 10,000 demonstrators out on the streets, against the newly-passed law that stripped the anti-corruption agencies of their independence. That, the fact that everyone speaks about this having happened is if it were a natural thing. It’s not the least bit natural. Everyone is ignoring the authoritarian, dictatorial exercise of power by Zelensky and his immediate followers that [has] made it impossible to protest without getting your skull broken or getting yourself killed in a prison cell. No, there have not been demonstrations, not because the Ukrainian public was satisfied with Zelensky, because nobody dared.

20:20
Now, what changed? How is it that these demonstrations could take place? How is it that instructions were given to the Ukrainian army not to take part in the demonstrations wearing their uniforms? This is incredible.

I say that there was an outside intervention. Some organization imposed on the powers that be in Ukraine not to dare to fire on the demonstrators.

Napolitano:
Well, there’s only two organizations that could do that, I think: CIA and MI6.

Doctorow:
Well, I originally came down on the side of MI6, but received some very interesting comments from readers who pointed me in the other direction. MI6, after all, they have been the providers of security for Zelensky. They are his bodyguards. It is less than likely that they would be behind acts which are going to bring him down.

The United States and the CIA is a different story. Here it fits in perfectly with everything that Mr. Trump is doing, not with what he’s saying, of course not, but what he’s doing.

De facto, arms are being shipped [to a] much lesser extent and of much lesser use to Ukraine than his words would have indicated. The famous Patriots are going to take eight months to get there, if they get there at all. So on the side of Trump, who is by his actions, by his deeds, not by his words, in fact, been abandoning Zelensky, this would fit in perfectly to get him out over his violation of rule of law, which has been picked up by Western newspapers. Even the very anti-Russian “Financial Times”, day after day, is speaking about Zelensky having lost credibility because of this authoritarian behavior to neuter the agencies against corruption. So the way– the public is being prepared for his removal, because the guy is no longer a saint; he’s turning out to be a devil. And I believe that the Americans are behind this. [But that someone would agree.]

Napolitano:
If you’re correct, and you make a compelling case, Professor, you truly do, then the Americans would choose his successor.

Doctorow:
Yes. But of course, this is the thing that people immediately object to. “Well, it’s more of the same.”

Why do they assume that? There are, you have to look closely, but there are some people in Kiev who are not neo-Nazis and who are not of the same mindset as the present rulers. And I think of Mr. Umerov, the one who is the head of the Ukrainian delegation to the peace talks in Istanbul, as a possible candidate. There are others.

And the Americans certainly would know about it. Umerov–

Napolitano:
How about the fellow that’s the, I forget the name, Ukrainian ambassador to London.

Doctorow: 23:37
Zaluzhny. That’s also possible. There’s a lot of talk about it. That’s why he’s in London and not in Kiev, because Zelensky understood that the Americans were winking at Zaluzhny, because Zaluzhny told the truth about the real state of the military efforts, that they were losing badly, and it was time to get him out of the way. Now Mr. Umerov is another candidate. The interesting thing about him is his pure civilian background, a man who spent a year in the States living with a family while he was in secondary school, and so he’s fluent in English and knows American situation, and who has become very frankly wealthy by dint of his wits in high tech, and wealthy enough to have established fellowships in Stanford University.

24:33
So the man had an interest in the States. It would fit in nicely with the kind of leaders that Americans think–

Napolitano:
He will be the CIA’s type of guy. Professor Doctorow, thank you very much. A fascinating, as always, a fascinating conversation. I missed you in the past two weeks. I’m glad we’re all back together. Thank you for your time. We’ll look forward to seeing you next week.

Doctorow:
Very good.

Napolitano:
Thank you. And coming up later today, I’ve missed everybody, including all of you. At 11 o’clock this morning, Colonel Douglas Macgregor. At one this afternoon, Professor Glenn Diesen; at two this afternoon, Max Blumenthal; at three this afternoon, Phil Giroldi.

25:12
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

‘Judging Freedom,’ 30 July: EU Capitulates to Trump

‘

Today’s session with Judge Andrew Napolitano centered on the von der Leyen – Trump agreement in Scotland on a 15% tariff for European exports to the USA, which was in effect a humiliating defeat for the EU. Bad as that sounds, the far worse point agreed was for the EU to greatly expand its LNG and oil imports from the USA, with the figure 650 billion euros specifically named. Of course, this obligation will likely never be met, just as similar obligations on China to import US agricultural products at certain target levels never were met. But the principle, if actually applied, will condemn European manufacturing to excessive costs, meaning to uncompetitive export prices and loss of markets abroad.

As I have noted elsewhere, the capitulation on tariffs was clearly motivated by the hopes of von der Leyen and of those European leaders supporting her that this concession will keep open relations with Washington and, in particular, lead to continuation of the common Euro-Atlantic stand on giving Ukraine the financial and flow of military equipment it needs to continue the war with Russia. What I did not say in the interview but should be mentioned here is that the expectation of further U.S. assistance to Ukraine is delusional. Trump wants out of the war and there is no way that Europe can so ingratiate itself with him as to change his mind on that cardinal point of U.S. foreign policy.

Our brief discussion of the Epstein scandal that currently fascinates Washington, of the decision by Britain and France to recognize the Palestine state in September and of likely CIA hand in the anti Zelensky demonstrations that swept Ukraine last week may also interest viewers.

Transcript of ‘Judging Freedom,’ 18 June edition

Transcript submitted by a reader

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jl2vwsQ1_k

Napolitano: 0:32
Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for “Judging Freedom”. Today is Wednesday, June 18th, 2025. Professor Gilbert Doctorow will be with us in just a moment. And here’s the question for him: What does the Kremlin think of Donald Trump after the events of the past week? But first this.

[commercial]

02:21
Professor Doctorow, good day to you. And welcome here, my friend. Does, how does the Kremlin view President Trump’s speech in Saudi Arabia last month, in light of recent developments between Israel and Iran? Do you think that this was a grand, do you think the Kremlin thinks the speech was a grand deception orchestrated by [Trump?], or a momentary lapse by Trump, or he keeps changing his mind? Or are we putting too much emphasis on what Trump thinks?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 2:58
I think we’re putting too much emphasis on what Trump says. The Kremlin, I think, has its own inertia, its own course, and that can be modified if they believe that Mr. Trump is genuine, which I think they do, and it can be modified the other way, if they think that he is losing the battle domestically and internationally to control policy, which I think also is true.

So the Kremlin, will be happy for any benefits to come out of the favorable predisposition of Mr. Trump, but they’re not counting on it, and they’re going their own way.

Napolitano: 3:43
Well, what does the Kremlin think of Trump? Do they believe what he says? When President Putin speaks to President Trump on the phone and they get off the phone, what do they do? Say, “my God, he’s crazy? Who the hell knows whether or not to believe him?” Or do they take copious notes and analyze his every word?

Doctorow:
The one thing they don’t think is that he’s crazy. They have thought the American leadership was crazy, insane in the medical sense of the word under Biden. And that made them extremely cautious in proceeding with the conduct of war, because they didn’t know what could trigger a totally irrational and deadly response from the United States. In the case of Mr. Trump, that question does not exist.

They believe he is rational. They believe he is a dealmaker as he– would-be dealmaker, as he says of himself. But they also are perfectly cognizant of all of the difficulties that he has in steering policy, given the heavy hand of the opposition, which is Lindsey Graham allied with the Europeans headed by Mr. Macron. So knowing about all this, they have to be very cautious with Trump, but not because they doubt his commitment or have some doubts about his rationality.

Napolitano: 5:17
I want to play a clip for you. Chris, I’m pretty sure we have this– I don’t know the number; bear with me a minute– of President Trump on Air Force One on Sunday night, where he was asked about Tulsi Gabbard. Okay, we have it.

She of course, and we’ll run this clip as well– Chris has interspersed one inside the other– told a congressional committee under oath that the IC, as she calls it, the intelligence community uniformly agree that Iran is not developing and is not close to a nuclear weapon and hasn’t been since 2003. And then a reporter asked him what he thought about this. I’d like your views on this. Chris?
—————-

Reporter:
People always said that you don’t believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon. But how close do you personally think that they were to getting one? Because Tulsi Gabbard testified in March that the intelligence community said Iran wasn’t building a nuclear weapon.

Gabbard:
The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.

Trump:
I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having it.
—————-

Napolitano: 6:34
Under federal law, she is the principal and sole briefer of the President of the United States on intelligence matters. And he says publicly, knowing it’s going to be aired internationally, “I don’t care what she says.” How does the Kremlin view that?

Doctorow: 6:56
It might be scandalized. I don’t think the Kremlin would say, but I’m about to say now, that she should resign.

Napolitano:
I absolutely agree with you.. Scott Rittera said it. Our colleagues on this show have said it. If he says, “I don’t care what she says”, and she comes in with a briefing book three inches thick, he’s only interested in the top two pages, she should resign if he doesn’t trust her. What is his source of information if it’s superior to hers? She has supposedly the best intel sources in the world, the Five Eyes and their collaboration with Mossad. She comes to a conclusion and he says, “I don’t care”?!

Doctorow: 7:36
Judge, I wouldn’t read too much into this. I wouldn’t look for the source of his latest statement. I wouldn’t necessarily say, “Oh yes, Netanyahu or Netanyahu’s minions whispered this in his ear.” I don’t think that’s what’s going on.

I just– it’s inconvenient for him to hear this when he sees the opportunity to strike gold by joining Israel in a victorious attack on Iran. My colleagues have said various things about Trump’s personality, that he’s weak or that he’s stupid or he has no strategy. I don’t agree with these remarks, not because I think that he is a saint or a genius, nothing of the sort. I think he has another problem. And the problem is opportunism.

8:24
Now that may sound– opportunism taken by itself in general cultural or intellectual discussion is considered a negative. I’ve had experience with opportunism, people who’ve hired me and who made my career possible only because they were opportunists. And so I am personally predisposed towards opportunists. Opportunists generally are not corporate people. They are people like Donald Trump, who is an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurs have their own belly feel for people who come in and make all kinds of crazy or brilliant proposals for investments and so forth. And they use their nose for opportunity to back or to decline these proposals. Trump is that kind of a person. So by itself, his leaning to opportunism is not necessarily a big discredit to him, but in the given case, it certainly is. The question is, is he right?

9:30
I mean, he could be right. As I’ve written today, judging by what the talk shows in Moscow were saying last night, the Kremlin thinks that Iran will get bashed, bashed if the Americans join the fight. And that is obviously the reading of the situation that Donald Trump has. And he would like to cash in by being on the winning side, not only because that is good by itself, but it’s important in keeping onside and behind him all the political forces on Capitol Hill.

Napolitano: 10:07
Is the Kremlin, can the Kremlin do anything to resist or temper the effect of that bashing?

Doctorow:
It is again, reading the, listening to the remarks of the expert panelists on Vladimir Solovyov’s show, they are not the Kremlin, they are not Mr. Putin speaking, but they give you a sense of what insiders are thinking. They believe that Russia will not intervene and they believe, sad to say, because this runs counter to what I and many of my colleagues thought, they do not believe that China will intervene. They are placing their bets on Pakistan intervening, which to my knowledge, nobody much is talking about. Apparently Islamabad has come out saying that it will blast Israel to bits with its nuclear missiles if this proceeds.

11:09
And that is believable. So I think the Kremlin is hoping maybe they have backtrack, they have back channels to Islamabad to know what’s going on. I think that would be a safe guess

Napolitano:
What is the Kremlin’s view of Benjamin Netanyahu? Do they think he’s a madman?

Doctorow:
I imagine so. I’m not sure that there are professional psychologists who are advising Mr. Putin on what he should say or do. But they do not believe he’s rational, that’s correct.

Napolitano:
Do they believe that Mossad– or they, the officials around President Putin in the Kremlin– was responsible in any way for the drone attacks on four Russian air bases and two or three Russian civilian targets a few weeks ago?

Doctorow:
Well, when I heard this, it must have been a week ago or so, expressed as a possibility by Alistair Crook, I thought, no, this cannot be. It seemed improbable to me. But now I have to take back my words. Again, on last night’s program, experts in Middle Eastern affairs were saying that it looks like the hands of Mossad were all over the Ukrainian attack on those bases. And the logic for this is what happened, the way that the attack by Israel was carried out. Part of it was drone attacks on the air defenses, knocking them out.

And those attacks were by drones prepositioned near these defense installations, very similar to the way the attack was carried out on the Russian air bases. So it would not have been possible to make this conclusion until the Israelis carried it out. And I said another thing. We go back to the same time period. It was said on the show that these drones were pre-positioned or the whole program was put into effect at virtually the same time as Spiderweb in Ukraine, that is to say 18 months ago. This was not done last week.

Therefore, the involvement– and why would Mossad get into it? Well, here’s where I disagree with Alastair. He was saying, “Oh, but the Russians always have been villains for the Jewish people going back to Tsarist times.”

13:47
That’s a very nice generalization. I won’t take it, I won’t begin to dispute it, though I think I can. The issue is not that. The issue is: the Russians were playing footsie with Iran over a comprehensive cooperation agreement which at various times in his discussion appeared to have– this goes back more than a year– appeared to have a defense alliance within it. What they actually signed does not have any alliance or common defense in it. Nonetheless, it could have touched off alarm bells in Israel that the Russians and Tehran were an alliance. And therefore they decided they are strategic enemy and they would act on its strategic assets. That is all credible.

Napolitano: 14:39
I’m going to jump in on this a little deeper in a minute, but first I want everyone to know that we’re running a chat room poll. So all of the thousands of people that chat, that text us during your show are being asked to vote on the following. Can President Trump be trusted to negotiate in good faith? Yes, no, undecided. We’ll have those results before we finish.

Is Netanyahu out of his mind that he would dispatch the Mossad against Russia?

Doctorow: 15:14
He is a desperate man, and there you have it. He’s a cornered rat. And cornered rats do things which are rational for the rat but are quite irrational for everyone depending on the rat. That’s to say the whole Israeli people are held hostage by this cornered rat who happens to have the name Netanyahu.

Napolitano:
Is there any military or political significance– and maybe this hasn’t happened; I thought it did– to the transfer of the name, the nomenclature of the conflagration in Ukraine from “special military operation” to “war on terror” or “war against terrorists”? Can you explain that to us, please?

Doctorow: 16:08
Well, a lot has been made of that in the last 10 days or so, with the reason that obviously a change such as that would mean that Mr. Putin is assuming far greater powers of control over the military, where it is acting and indeed who is acting, than he enjoys presently under the Duma-approved edict giving him a special military operation. As you know, he cannot move Russian conscripts out of the borders of the Russian Federation under the powers he enjoys now. This is one example, one small example of the ability he would enjoy to have virtual free hand in conducting the war in and against Ukraine if it were changed in designation from a special military operation, which is very circumscribed activity, to a war on terror, which has an international, is an international concept widely shared. When you’re speaking about acting against a terrorist state, all bets are off. You can do whatever you want, you can assassinate anybody you want, and so forth.

17:25
The problem with this change is: I don’t believe it ever took place. It was hinted at. Mr. Putin was suggesting that this is where we could go, but he’s not going there.

Napolitano:
This change, even though to the West it just sounds like nomenclature, obviously it triggers a lot of things legally. I would imagine, and correct me if I’m wrong, this change can only be done by the Duma, the Russian legislature.

Doctorow:
Exactly right. When the special military operation was initiated, it was with the specific voted approval of the lower house of parliament, the state Duma, ratified of course by other authorities. The point is that no such bill has been introduced into the Duma.

Napolitano: 18:13
Is the Duma basically controlled by one political party, which is headed by Vladimir Putin? I mean stated differently, if he wanted this, even though there are some legislative hoops through which he’d have to jump, couldn’t he get it just by asking for it?

Doctorow:
He could get it just by asking for it, but not because there are no opposition parties in the Duma. Their opposition parties are opposition basically on domestic policy. As regards foreign policy, all of the several parties in the Duma are aligned totally with the governing party, United Russia.

Now, having said that, as a matter of fact, the legislation, enacting legislation, which made possible Russia to stand behind the Donbas independence, the declarations of independence, and to treat them as sovereign states and to conclude treaties with them for mutual defense — all of that was initiated by the Communist Party, not by– there were two bills before the state Duma. And-

Napolitano: 19:24
Let me just copy it. There still is a Communist Party in Russia? Forgive my ignorance.

Doctorow:
There is, it’s the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Mr. Zhuganov is a 20, 25 years leader of it. If it were– but for the historical record and all of the old timers who constitute a large part of the membership and who hold very dearly a memory of the old Communist Party. If it weren’t for that, Mr. Zyganov would do– what he should do, is rename it the Social Democratic Party of Russia, because in all respects, it is like a West European social democratic party. It fights for workers, it fights for unions, it fights for social justice.

Napolitano: 20:11
OK. And where is it on the war with Ukraine? It’s aligned with President Putin.

Doctorow:
It is, but sometimes it’s one or two steps ahead of him. It is more patriotic and more aggressive, I would say, regarding Ukraine than Mr. Putin and his United Russia party.

Napolitano:
You mentioned something earlier, and I don’t want to nitpick on words that under the special military operation, President Putin is unable to send conscripts, people who have been drafted into the military outside the geographic area of the Russian Federation. Is there a Russian manpower shortage in the military as we speak, Professor Doctorow?

Doctorow:
Oh, not at all. They’ve been running 50-60,000 new recruits. Now, these are not drafted people. These are volunteers who are signing up for a service in the area of the Special Military Operation and receive 8,000, 10,000 euros upon signing, maybe more, because I’m speaking now of the federal allotment. But each region where these people are resident has its own additional allotment. So it could be 30,000 euros that you get on signing up. It’s a very big incentive for people who don’t see more than 10,000 euros a year at their jobs. And so they have, this is an incentive, it is not the incentive to sign up, be patriotic, do your service and look after your children and grandchildren.

21:51
The signees are not 20 to 25. When you look at them, they’re more like 40 to 50. And they’re even people who are older, because not every job requires perfect physical fitness. You can send up a drone very nicely when you’re 80. So the point is that he has no problem filling the ranks of the– And additionally, they’ve gotten a bonus in the last week by Mr.
Shoigu’s visits to Pyongyang, where he met with the Supreme Leader Kim. And he agreed on 1,000 North Korean soldiers who are specialists in mine detection and disarmament, and 5,000 construction worker soldiers from North Korea to come to Korsk province and rebuild it. So that also frees up several thousand Russian combatants to do fighting.

Napolitano: 22:53
Understood, understood.

On the poll, can President Trump be trusted to negotiate in good faith? There are about 8,200 people watching us now, 1,600 have voted in the vote. Can President Trump be trusted to negotiate in good faith? No 93% Yes 6%. I guess there’s 1% in there: Not sure. That’s the … tenor over here in the US, if I can put my finger on the pulse. I haven’t seen any official polls. Even the MAGA people are, a lot of them are very dismayed about all this.

One last thing, my longtime friend and former Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson has an interview coming out later today. It was taped either yesterday or the day before, and he sent us a small clip with Senator Ted Cruz, who’s in the Lindsey Graham, Richard Blumenthal, bombed them into the Stone Age camp, meaning Iran, in the Senate.

And Tucker begins by saying, what’s the pop– to Ted Cruz, Senator Cruz, what’s the population of Iran? –
-I don’t know.

How big is it?
–I don’t know. It’s a big country.

What’s their ethnic makeup?
–I don’t know.

You want to kill these people and you don’t even know who they are?

And they go back and forth and back and forth. This is just the beginning. I’m sure there’s a lot more fireworks. Are you surprised if that is typical, a typical level of ignorance of those calling for the destruction of Iran? They don’t even have the faintest idea of the amount of human suffering and death that their calls if enacted on would produce.

Doctorow: 24:43
I can agree with you completely about our opponents. I’ve spoken of the world leaders in the West as being depraved and I don’t take back those words. They are jackals. At the same time, I urge all of our fellow thinkers to look in the mirror, not because we’re depraved, but because we are sometimes a little too liberal, a little too limited in our own perspectives and horizons.

When I studied, when I dealt with Russian dissidents– these are not active dissidents but just people in intellectual circles who are very critical, hypercritical of their government and all of its failures and corruption, and they go on and on– the unique thing about them is that they don’t think about the rest of the world, and they don’t want to hear about the rest of the world. Their concerned only to focus, they are razor-focused on the flaws they see around them, that it’s not a perfect world around them, that it’s quite an ugly world. I say the same thing to us. You have to consider that Mr. Trump is working in a world of depraved fellow leaders.

25:54
When he was at the G7, he was a minority of one with six warmongers. That is the world we live in. And before you make any judgment about Mr. Trump and whether he is trustworthy or not trustworthy, you have to consider where he is operating.

Napollitano:
It’s hard for me to accept the exact use of your phrase, he was with six warmongers. He’s not a man of peace, even though he claims he is. He’s threatening to drop 30,000 pound bombs on Tehran.

Doctorow:
We’ll see if he does that. But there is around him, there is around all of us, a controlling political elite in our country, in every European country except Hungary and Slovakia. The people in control are ugly people, ugly people, not physically, morally ugly people. They are, they all should stand before courts for their warmongering.

Napolitano: 27:09
On that I agree with you fully, but Donald Trump is migrating toward them. He’s funding a genocide in Gaza, he’s funding Joe Biden’s useless war in Ukraine, and now he’s threatening to destroy Tehran. This is a man of peace?

Doctorow:
In the middle of that, you slipped in Ukraine. The reports are that he stopped all supplies and military equipment to Ukraine. So let’s give him a break on something.

Napolitano:
Oh my goodness, if he did that, I would applaud him. It would also be front-page news. This must be, I know you wrote about it, but this must be either unknown to the West or of such recent vintage we haven’t seen it here.

Doctorow:
It is not broadcast on the “Financial Times” or the BBC. They are still hopeful, though they’re wrong, that they can bring him around. And he leaves open that possibility. Why did he sign this ridiculous trade agreement with Keir Starmer, giving them a benefit? To shut Starmer up and to let him also know that it hasn’t been completed, and he can still revise the tariffs on British steel and so forth, to keep him on the hook.

28:21
This man is more tricky than any of his critics in the liberal camp, liberal I mean, our camp, not the neoliberal camp, than we give him credit for. But he is working in a vile environment.

Napolitano:
Your analysis is so astute and so nuanced, Professor Doctorow, and I’m deeply grateful as are the viewers, now that you are sharing it with us. Thank you very much. Continue to send your notes to us. We may have to call on you if something dramatic happens in the Middle East and we need your analysis. Short of that, we’ll look forward to seeing you next week.

Doctorow:
Well, thanks so much.

Napolitano: 29:02
Thank you. Great analysis, very smart, nicely nuanced, very helpful.

Coming up later today, we’re going to call and wake him up, at 11 o’clock this morning, Max Blumenthal, and Max is my dear friend and he loves to be teased. And I’m sure he’s been up since the crack of dawn.

At three o’clock, Phil Giraldi, just back from vacation and filled with vinegar, so to speak. And at four o’clock, I’m not sure where he is, but at four o’clock, Pepe Escobar.

29:35
Judge Napolitano for “Judging Freedom”.

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 18 June: What the Kremlin Thinks of Trump

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 18 June: What the Kremlin Thinks of Trump

Today’s chat opened with the title question, what the Kremlin thinks of Trump.

I am always a bit embarrassed by questions of this nature because, of course, I am not a member of Putin’s inner circle, nor do I have direct access to such people. My reading of the Kremlin views on any given subject comes from my watching the leading talk shows like Vladimir Solovyov’s in which the panelists include chairmen of Duma committees like Defense, as well as experts in Middle Eastern affairs and professors of political science at Moscow State University or MGIMO, the university which trains the diplomatic corps.

Does the Kremlin believe that Trump is rational? I believe so, and this stands in stark contrast to their reading of Joe Biden and his ‘puppet masters,’ nominal assistants Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken, whom Putin and Kremlin insiders considered to be insane and therefore very dangerous.

Does the Kremlin trust Trump? I think not. But not because he is a liar or a card cheat. No, because so much is beyond his control given the very strong opposition his policies face from leading figures in Congress and in the European Union, who are united against him.

Our conversation then moved in many different directions, often building on points I have made in recent essays published here.

One point that I was especially happy to elaborate on was my view that Trump is opportunistic. I qualified this by noting that I, for one, have respect for opportunism, which is a common trait in entrepreneurs, because my own start up the career ladder in the business world in 1975 was made possible precisely by opportunistic entrepreneurial employers. Of course, his opportunism can get Trump into trouble, as for example his latest jumping on the Vanquish Iran bandwagon in the belief, yet to be validated, that the Israelis truly have dealt Teheran severe blows from which their war effort cannot recover. The fact is that we don’t really know at present who will win this war.

Another point we discussed was how flawed American foreign policy is right now under Trump. The problem with this is that it all sounds like what I heard years ago from dissidents in Russia about the Putin ‘regime’ and life in their country: all their complaints may have had some validity but they were unwilling to hear that the corruption and other ills they named were no greater and often less than what goes on in other countries around the world. My colleagues in the Opposition to American foreign policy do not want to consider the world as it is and whom Trump has to deal with – namely elites whom I call jackals and depraved individuals. This goes for all of the leaders in Europe with a couple of exceptions, Hungary and Slovakia. Not to mention the war mongers who dominate Congress in both parties. It is a mean world and that has to be taken into account when passing any judgment on Trump.

Trump’s attack on elite American universities: just punishment but for wrongly identified offenses

There is considerable discussion among the chattering classes in the United States about the war front that the Trump administration has opened on elite universities. Harvard and Columbia are daily in the news for paying big present and prospective financial penalties. As an alumnus of both institutions, I take a special interest in what is happening and have an insider’s knowledge of the justness or not of the ongoing federal attack which I intend to share with the community in what follows.

The single issue that is brought against these universities as grounds for suspending federal contracts and grants has been allegations of antisemitic policies that allegedly put the lives and welfare of their Jewish students at risk. This was the basis for suspending $400 million in grants to Columbia in March. Ultimately, the university agreed to actions that Washington said were necessary to deal with antisemitism. Shortly thereafter, the university’s president Katrina Armstrong resigned. Commentators in the press have criticized the university’s cave-in to the federal demands, calling out what they see as failure to respect due process and threats to academic independence and freedom of speech.

The news yesterday is that Harvard may face a freeze of up to $9 billion in federal funding, also in regard to alleged antisemitic discrimination on campus. The education secretary Linda McMahon further accused the university of ‘promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry…’

Then there are non-specific motives for Team Trump’s announced plans to impose taxes on the endowment funds of universities. Harvard has the country’s richest endowment and so is also the first in line to suffer from any such new taxation.

But for the moment, let us stay with the antisemitic track because, I believe, it yields a better understanding of how Donald Trump is conducting politics on The Hill to get his various wrecking ball policy initiatives approved or at least tolerated by legislators.

*****

Readers of these pages will be aware that I have directly linked Donald Trump’s backing for the renewal of Israel’s genocidal bombing in Gaza with his initiative to re-establish normal state-to-state relations with Russia, of which achieving peace in Ukraine is only one part. They are linked insofar as Trump needs leverage on Capitol Hill to neutralize opposition within both his own Republican party and among Democrats for his rapprochement with Russia and abandonment of Ukraine. The Israeli lobby gives him that essential leverage when he backs Netanyahu 150% as he is presently doing.

Similarly, in order to shut up the bleeding hearts for academic freedom in the country at large and in Washington in particular, the antisemitism issue provides Trump with essential leverage.

What is the essence of the antisemitism allegations? Namely, it is the tolerance on campus for student demonstrators who support the Palestinian cause and who condemn the murderous policies of Israel in Gaza and the West Bank that are enabled by Washington.

I agree fully with the many commentators who decry the crackdown on free speech on campus over the phony issue of antisemitism. At the same time, I declare here that the universities themselves have for many years themselves denied free speech to students and faculty in other domains, and so they well deserve their comeuppance today.

Allow me to explain myself.

Note that I am talking about the political and social sciences, not about mathematics, chemistry and the other hard sciences, although I leave open the possibility that other seemingly hard sciences like medicine may be as susceptible to ‘liberal progressive’ ideological trends as the political and social sciences.

Anyone who has heard about the big disputes raging in Europe over rewriting history, over who defeated Hitler’s forces and who freed the concentration camp survivors, anyone who has considered the impact of ‘woke’ in the United States on school curriculums and the dismantling of long-standing statues in our public squares knows that history, the leading ‘social science,’ is a moving object.

This is all the more applicable to ‘political science.’ To my understanding, political science is mostly the personal politics of the faculty, with an admixture of methodology (statistics) and maybe a dollop of substantive facts. That will be clear to anyone who reads my 2010 study of the most prominent political scientists in the country during the 1990s, Great Post Cold War American Thinkers on International Relations.

From my personal experience going back to my year as a visiting scholar at the Harriman Institute in Columbia University, 2010-2011, I saw firsthand how what had been the oldest and best-grounded area studies program in the country was eviscerated by believers in values-based foreign policy, for whom country knowledge was largely irrelevant since people are the same everywhere. Language courses were dropped, history studies were curtailed. Instead, future M.A. diploma holders were given instruction in statistics and other numerical skills useful to find jobs with international banks or NGOs.

That was true not only of Russian and East European studies. From others, I received confirmation that exactly the same emptiness applied to Latin American area studies. The graduates were only prepared for work in human rights NGOs upon graduation since they only had studied the human rights abuses in one LA country or another.

From time to time in the past 15 years I have written directly to the presidents of Harvard and Columbia to complain that their departments teaching Russian and East European studies had descended from higher education to kindergarten level. Of course, no answers came back. As I also discovered in my year at Columbia, all student and public events were disseminating anti-Putin, anti-Russian propaganda and if anyone in the hall dared to pose a question to the speakers or panelists that showed skepticism, that person was immediately denounced by others for being a ‘Putin stooge.’

In the past three years, the situation at Columbia degraded still further, so that the Harriman Institute which was, along with Harvard’s Davis Center (former Russian Research Center) the founding center of U.S. Russian studies as from 1949, has become a center for Ukrainian studies where the slogan of the day is to ‘de-colonize Russia,’ meaning to favor study of one or another of the hundred plus smaller ethnic groups rather than the Russians who actually run the country. From my regular correspondence with Professor Francis Boyle, who followed events at Harvard’s Davis Center closely, I understood that exactly the same degradation was proceeding apace there. And I wondered who, when this Ukraine war is over and Kiev slips from our memory, who will know anything about that fourth biggest economy on earth, about the territorially largest country on earth, about our principal rival at the level of global governance? Very few people indeed.

*****

However, what is motivating Team Trump has nothing to do with my parochial concerns in Russia and East European studies, just as it has very little to do with possible antisemitism on campuses. It surely has everything to do with Harvard, Columbia, Yale and other elite universities having been the cradle of social engineering at least since the time when I was an undergraduate there. They have been the inventers and promoters of Progressive Democratic ideology that Joe Biden & Co. personified and that Trump is trying to crush in his return to ‘common sense’ thinking about gender, merit as the sole basis for hiring and promotion and much more.

Team Trump’s present bullying of the most prominent private universities clearly is working. Putin or the Supreme Leader in Iran may be hard nuts to crack, but academics and university presidents are not made of the same stuff: they come crawling or they slink away when faced with threats of losing their grants.

Today’s Financial Times has a splendid feature article on those slinking away: “American academics seek exile as Trump attacks universities.” They name names, which is a delight to read.

The preferred places of ‘exile’ of those slinking away appear to be Canada and Europe. We are told that European universities are keen to recruit professors from the USA, especially those who happen to be Europeans who had settled on the other side of the pond. However, true blooded Americans are also sought after. The only problem is shortage of funds to add new staff.

For some American professors the cash is found. Thus, we read that Yale’s well-known historian Timothy Snyder is headed for the University of Toronto. If you go towards the bottom of the article, you learn that his appointment was made possible ‘thanks to fresh support from the Temerty and Myhal families, two long-standing donors of the university.’ Google tells us that both families have come to Canada from Ukraine during the 1950s or still more recently. This is most relevant given that Snyder has since 2014 been one of the most outspoken defenders of Ukraine and detractors or simply haters of Russia in the U.S. academic world. He was publishing his diatribes almost weekly in The New York Review of Books.

I find it striking that right at the start of the Trump administration Snyder has decided that he will do better in the close company of fellow Ukraine-boosters, of whom there are plenty in Canada.

*****

We all know that for more than a hundred years there have been alternating waves of anti-intellectualism versus intellectuals on a pedestal. The ‘pedestal’ part came during Kennedy’s Camelot in the form of the ‘best and the brightest,’ and again under Richard Nixon in the person of Henry Kissinger.

When I was still in high school, we all read a very fine text on just this subject by the American historian Richard Hofstadter. We are now witnessing the onset of the ‘anti’ phase. You can blame the hypocrites among the presently righteous in power, but the best and the brightest of the 1960s and more recently of the 2000s have only led us into forever wars. It was the intellectuals who dictated our mores these past several decades both in the USA and in Europe. They took the swing of the pendulum to the point of ‘civilizational suicide,’ as J.D. Vance has commented. The present humiliation of academics at the hands of Donald Trump is well deserved.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Translation below into German (Andreas Mylaeus)

Trumps Angriff auf amerikanische Eliteuniversitäten: gerechte Strafe, aber für falsch identifizierte Vergehen

In den Vereinigten Staaten wird in den gehobenen Kreisen heftig über den Krieg diskutiert, den die Trump-Regierung gegen Eliteuniversitäten eröffnet hat. Harvard und Columbia sind täglich in den Nachrichten, weil sie hohe Geldstrafen zahlen und mit Geldstrafen rechnen müssen. Als ehemaliger Student beider Institutionen interessiere ich mich besonders für das, was passiert, und verfüge über Insiderwissen darüber, ob der anhaltende Angriff des Bundes gerechtfertigt ist oder nicht, das ich im Folgenden mit der Community teilen möchte.

Der einzige Vorwurf, der gegen diese Universitäten als Begründung für die Aussetzung von Bundesverträgen und -zuschüssen vorgebracht wird, sind Vorwürfe antisemitischer Praktiken, die angeblich das Leben und Wohlergehen ihrer jüdischen Studenten gefährden. Dies war die Grundlage für die Aussetzung von Zuschüssen in Höhe von 400 Millionen US-Dollar an die Columbia University im März. Letztlich stimmte die Universität Maßnahmen zu, die Washington als notwendig erachtete, um mit dem Antisemitismus fertig zu werden. Kurz darauf trat die Präsidentin der Universität, Katrina Armstrong, zurück. Pressekommentatoren kritisierten, dass die Universität den Forderungen des Bundes nachgegeben hat, und wiesen darauf hin, dass ihrer Meinung nach ein ordnungsgemäßes Verfahren nicht eingehalten wurde und die akademische Unabhängigkeit und die Meinungsfreiheit gefährdet sind.

Gestern wurde bekannt, dass Harvard möglicherweise mit einer Einfrierung von bis zu 9 Milliarden US-Dollar an Bundesmitteln rechnen muss, auch im Zusammenhang mit angeblicher antisemitischer Diskriminierung auf dem Campus. Die Bildungsministerin Linda McMahon warf der Universität außerdem vor, „spaltende Ideologien gegenüber freier Forschung zu fördern …“

Dann gibt es noch unspezifische Motive für die angekündigten Pläne des Trump-Teams, Steuern auf die Stiftungsfonds von Universitäten zu erheben. Harvard hat die reichste Stiftung des Landes und wäre daher auch das erste Opfer einer solchen neuen Besteuerung.

Aber bleiben wir vorerst beim antisemitischen Thema, denn ich glaube, es hilft uns zu verstehen, wie Donald Trump auf dem Capitol Hill Politik macht, um seine verschiedenen radikalen politischen Initiativen von den Parlamentariern genehmigen oder zumindest tolerieren zu lassen.

*****

Den Lesern dieser Seiten wird bekannt sein, dass ich Donald Trumps Unterstützung für die Wiederaufnahme der völkermörderischen Bombardierung Israels in Gaza direkt mit seiner Initiative zur Wiederherstellung normaler zwischenstaatlicher Beziehungen mit Russland in Verbindung gebracht habe, wobei die Erreichung von Frieden in der Ukraine nur ein Teil davon ist. Diese Themen sind insofern miteinander verbunden, als Trump Druckmittel auf dem Capitol Hill benötigt, um den Widerstand sowohl innerhalb seiner eigenen republikanischen Partei als auch unter den Demokraten gegen seine Annäherung an Russland und die Aufgabe der Ukraine zu neutralisieren. Die israelische Lobby gibt ihm dieses entscheidende Druckmittel, wenn er Netanjahu zu 150 % unterstützt, wie er es derzeit tut.

Ebenso bietet die Antisemitismus-Frage Trump ein wichtiges Druckmittel, um die Befürworter der akademischen Freiheit im Land im Allgemeinen und in Washington im Besonderen zum Schweigen zu bringen.

Was ist der Kern der Antisemitismusvorwürfe? Es geht um die Toleranz auf dem Campus gegenüber studentischen Demonstranten, die die palästinensische Sache unterstützen und die von Washington ermöglichte mörderische Politik Israels in Gaza und im Westjordanland verurteilen.

Ich stimme den vielen Kommentatoren voll und ganz zu, die das harte Durchgreifen gegen die Redefreiheit auf dem Campus unter dem Vorwand des Antisemitismus verurteilen. Gleichzeitig erkläre ich hier, dass die Universitäten selbst seit vielen Jahren den Studenten und Dozenten in anderen Bereichen die Redefreiheit verweigern und sie daher heute ihre gerechte Strafe verdienen.

Lassen Sie mich das näher erläutern.

Ich spreche hier von den Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften, nicht von Mathematik, Chemie und den anderen harten Wissenschaften, obwohl ich die Möglichkeit offenlasse, dass andere scheinbar harte Wissenschaften wie die Medizin genauso anfällig für „liberale progressive“ ideologische Trends sein könnten wie die Politik- und Sozialwissenschaften.

Jeder, der von den großen Auseinandersetzungen in Europa über die Umschreibung der Geschichte gehört hat, darüber, wer Hitlers Streitkräfte besiegt und wer die Überlebenden der Konzentrationslager befreit hat, jeder, der über die Auswirkungen von „woke“ in den Vereinigten Staaten auf die Lehrpläne und die Demontage von langjährigen Statuen auf unseren öffentlichen Plätzen nachgedacht hat, weiß, dass die Geschichte, die führende „Sozialwissenschaft“, ein bewegliches Objekt ist.

Dies gilt umso mehr für die „Politikwissenschaft“. Meines Erachtens ist Politikwissenschaft hauptsächlich die persönliche Politik der Fakultät, mit einer Prise Methodik (Statistik) und vielleicht einer Handvoll substanzieller Fakten. Das wird jedem klar sein, der meine Studie aus dem Jahr 2010 über die prominentesten Politikwissenschaftler des Landes in den 1990er Jahren, Great Post Cold War American Thinkers on International Relations, liest.

Aus meiner persönlichen Erfahrung, die bis in mein Jahr als Gastwissenschaftler am Harriman Institute der Columbia University 2010–2011 zurückreicht, weiß ich aus erster Hand, wie das ehemals älteste und fundierteste Programm für Regionalstudien des Landes von Anhängern einer wertebasierten Außenpolitik ausgehöhlt wurde, für die Landeskenntnisse weitgehend irrelevant waren, da die Menschen überall gleich seien. Sprachkurse wurden gestrichen, Geschichtsstudien gekürzt. Stattdessen erhielten zukünftige M.A.-Absolventen Unterricht in Statistik und anderen numerischen Fähigkeiten, die nützlich sind, um bei internationalen Banken oder NGOs Arbeit zu finden.

Das galt nicht nur für die russischen und osteuropäischen Studien. Von anderen erhielt ich die Bestätigung, dass genau dieselbe Leere auch für die lateinamerikanischen Regionalstudien galt. Die Absolventen waren erst nach ihrem Abschluss auf die Arbeit in Menschenrechts-NGOs vorbereitet, da sie sich nur mit den Menschenrechtsverletzungen in dem einen oder anderen lateinamerikanischen Land befasst hatten.

In den letzten 15 Jahren habe ich mich gelegentlich direkt an die Präsidenten von Harvard und Columbia gewandt, um mich darüber zu beschweren, dass ihre Abteilungen für Russisch und Osteuropastudien von der Hochschulbildung auf das Kindergarten-Niveau abgesunken seien. Natürlich habe ich keine Antwort erhalten. Wie ich in meinem Jahr an der Columbia auch herausgefunden habe, wurde bei allen studentischen und öffentlichen Veranstaltungen anti-Putin- und anti-russische Propaganda verbreitet, und wenn jemand im Saal es wagte, eine Frage an die Redner oder Diskussionsteilnehmer zu stellen, die Skepsis zeigte, wurde diese Person sofort von anderen als „Putin-Marionette“ denunziert.

In den letzten drei Jahren hat sich die Situation an der Columbia noch weiter verschlechtert, sodass das Harriman Institute, das zusammen mit dem Harvard’s Davis Center (ehemaliges Russian Research Center) das ab 1949 zum Gründungszentrum der US-amerikanischen Russlandstudien wurde, zu einem Zentrum für Ukrainistik geworden ist, wo das Motto des Tages lautet: „Russland entkolonialisieren“, was bedeutet, dass man lieber die eine oder andere der über hundert kleineren ethnischen Gruppen untersucht als die Russen, die das Land tatsächlich regieren. Aus meinem regelmäßigen Schriftverkehr mit Professor Francis Boyle, der die Ereignisse im Davis Center der Harvard University genau verfolgt hat, ging hervor, dass dort genau die gleiche Degradierung vor sich ging. Und ich fragte mich, wer, wenn dieser Ukraine-Krieg vorbei ist und Kiew aus unserem Gedächtnis verschwindet, etwas über die viertgrößte Volkswirtschaft der Welt, über das flächenmäßig größte Land der Welt, über unseren Hauptkonkurrenten auf der Ebene der globalen Regierungsführung wissen wird? Sehr wenige Menschen in der Tat.

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Was das Team Trump jedoch motiviert, hat nichts mit meinen provinzlerischen Bedenken in Bezug auf Russland und Osteuropastudien zu tun, ebenso wenig wie mit möglichem Antisemitismus an den Universitäten. Es hat sicherlich alles mit Harvard, Columbia, Yale und anderen Eliteuniversitäten zu tun, die zumindest seit meiner Zeit als Student dort die Wiege des Social Engineering sind. Sie waren die Erfinder und Förderer der progressiv-demokratischen Ideologie, die Joe Biden & Co. verkörperten und die Trump bei seiner Rückkehr zum „gesunden Menschenverstand“ in Bezug auf Geschlecht, Leistung als alleinige Grundlage für Einstellungen und Beförderungen und vieles mehr zu zerschlagen versucht.

Das derzeitige Mobbing des Teams Trump gegenüber den bekanntesten Privatuniversitäten zeigt eindeutig Wirkung. Putin oder der Oberste Führer im Iran mögen zwar harte Nüsse sein, aber Akademiker und Universitätspräsidenten sind nicht aus demselben Holz geschnitzt: Sie kommen angekrochen oder sie schleichen davon, wenn ihnen der Verlust ihrer Stipendien droht.

Die heutige Ausgabe der Financial Times enthält einen großartigen Leitartikel über diese Schleichenden: „Amerikanische Akademiker suchen das Exil, da Trump Universitäten angreift.“ Sie nennen Namen, was eine Freude zu lesen ist.

Die bevorzugten „Exil“-Orte dieser Abtrünnigen scheinen Kanada und Europa zu sein. Uns wurde berichtet, dass europäische Universitäten gerne Professoren aus den USA einstellen, insbesondere solche, die zufällig Europäer sind und sich auf der anderen Seite des Teichs niedergelassen hatten. Allerdings sind auch waschechte Amerikaner gefragt. Das einzige Problem ist der Mangel an Mitteln, um neues Personal einzustellen.

Für einige amerikanische Professoren ist das Geld vorhanden. So lesen wir, dass der bekannte Historiker Timothy Snyder von Yale an die Universität von Toronto berufen wurde. Wenn man den Artikel weiter unten liest, erfährt man, dass seine Ernennung „dank der erneuten Unterstützung der Familien Temerty und Myhal, zwei langjährigen Spendern der Universität“, ermöglicht wurde. Google sagt uns, dass beide Familien in den 1950er Jahren oder noch später aus der Ukraine nach Kanada gekommen sind. Dies ist von großer Bedeutung, da Snyder seit 2014 einer der schärfsten Verteidiger der Ukraine und Kritiker oder einfach Hasser Russlands in der akademischen Welt der USA ist. Er veröffentlichte seine Schmähreden fast wöchentlich in The New York Review of Books.

Ich finde es bemerkenswert, dass Snyder gleich zu Beginn der Trump-Regierung beschlossen hat, dass er in enger Gesellschaft von anderen Befürwortern der Ukraine, von denen es in Kanada viele gibt, besser abschneiden wird.

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Wir alle wissen, dass es seit mehr als hundert Jahren abwechselnd Wellen von Anti-Intellektualismus und Intellektuellen auf einem Podest gibt. Der Teil mit dem „Podest“ kam während Kennedys Camelot in Form der „Besten und Klügsten“ und erneut unter Richard Nixon in der Person von Henry Kissinger.

Als ich noch zur Schule ging, lasen wir alle einen sehr guten Text zu diesem Thema von dem amerikanischen Historiker Richard Hofstadter. Wir erleben jetzt den Beginn der „Anti“-Phase. Man kann den Heuchlern unter den derzeit an der Macht befindlichen Gerechten die Schuld geben, aber die Besten und Klügsten der 1960er Jahre und in jüngerer Zeit der 2000er Jahre haben uns nur in ewige Kriege geführt. Es waren die Intellektuellen, die in den letzten Jahrzehnten sowohl in den USA als auch in Europa unsere Sitten diktiert haben. Sie haben das Pendel so weit in Richtung „zivilisatorischer Selbstmord“ ausgeschlagen, wie J.D. Vance es ausdrückte. Die gegenwärtige Demütigung dieser Akademiker durch Donald Trump ist wohlverdient.

‘Dialogue Works’ edition of 7 November 2024: Trump Wins! But Huge Challenges Await in Ukraine & Israel!

In fact the greater part of this interview was devoted to news about the candidates Donald Trump is said to be considering for the key positions of Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State. These include Mike Pompeo, Richard Grenell and several other ugly personalities who, during Trump’s first term, not only tried to implement the worst of Neocon policies, in defiance of the stated objectives of their boss; but who swaggered on the world stage and treated all their counterparties with contempt.

If this is indeed a signal on how Trump intends to lead the country in the coming four years, then he is in for a rude shock just after his inauguration, because the world has changed significantly in the four years since he left office. American global hegemony is on the way out. Apart from Europe; where the collective leadership seems to be suffering from incurable subservience to the States and a sort of masochism that notches well into Trump’s customary aggressiveness and disdain for ‘losers,’ the Rest of the World is in revolt against American domination and hubris. Moreover, the objective factors of respective military might and geopolitical heft of the Russian-Chinese alliance today vis-à-vis the United States make it virtually impossible for Trump to end the war in Ukraine by fiat without due regard for Russian interests or to enable Netanyahu to destroy Iran and subjugate its neighborhood in West Asia. The seeming restraint of Joe Biden with respect to Russia and to Iran was due not to his being soft in the head or lacking force of will, as Trump seems to believe. No, it was because folks at the Pentagon told him firmly that ‘you cannot do that boss’ without risking America’s assets abroad if not nuclear attack on the Continental USA. This is the advice these career officers will likely administer on Trump as well, if they do not simply subvert or overrule his orders, as General Mark Milley once did in Trump’s first term. We go into a detailed discussion of these matters in the interview, and I trust that viewers will find this to be of value.

Global politics are now moving along very quickly. It appears that the German federal government has just collapsed as ministers are abandoning ship without waiting for some long delayed vote of confidence in the Bundestag. And, notwithstanding my remark in this interview that Vladimir Putin is in no rush to congratulate Trump on his victory since the countries are de facto if not de jure in a state of war, at his talks during the session of the annual Valdai Club gathering in Sochi last night Putin did just that and made a fairly conciliatory outreach to Trump. As the Russians are now fond of saying, the ball is now in Trump’s court.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgZt-uJS-Mg