Author: Gilbert Doctorow

The world’s media have paid close attention to the gathering of 15 world leaders in Samarkand, Uzbekistan these past two days with particular emphasis on the ‘summit’ held by Presidents Putin of Russia and Xi of China on the sidelines of this general meeting.

Observers noted that the visit to Samarkand is the first foreign trip by XI since before the onset of the Covid pandemic and it was being undertaken precisely for the sake of face-to-face meetings with Putin, with whom he met last during the Winter Olympics in Beijing, just weeks prior to the launch of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine.

Continue reading “Shanghai Cooperation Organization Meeting in Samarkand: First Conclusions”

When I received a call this morning from Turkish public television TRT asking that I comment on the death of Mikhail Gorbachev in a live broadcast, the first thought which came to mind was the ironic remark of Soviet intellectuals on the place of leading personalities in history: “there is nothing as changeable and unpredictable as the past.”

Of course, this notion is applicable everywhere, not just to Soviet history and personalities. Indeed, history is always being reinterpreted in light of current developments. As I commented in my interview, the achievements and failures of Gorbachev in power must now be reevaluated in light of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which is the largest and most dangerous military conflict on the European continent since 1945.

Continue reading “Gilbert Doctorow on Remembering Gorbachev”

Over the course of the past few months I have alluded both in writing and in various televised interviews to the ‘ship of fools’ composition of the German coalition government under Chancellor Scholz. This falls in line with my repeated emphasis over the years on the undemocratic results of seemingly progressive political processes across the European Continent guided by proportional representation as opposed to the Anglo-Saxon rule of ‘first past the post.’ I say undemocratic, because as is now commonly the case, no single party in such elections favoring minority groupings enjoys a majority in parliament and governments are cobbled together behind closed doors whereby the public has no say in the outcome. Ministerial portfolios are allocated following political haggling among party bosses and most often competence or prior experience with the given dossier of responsibilities plays no role.

In the German case today, though the Chancellor himself often seems clueless about international affairs, he is brilliant when compared to two of the ministers from the Greens Party whom he installed in his cabinet in positions which weigh heavily today on the most critical issue facing Germany and Europe generally, the sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The ministers in question are responsible for Foreign Affairs (Annalena Baerbock) and The Economy and Environmental Affairs (Robert Habeck).

Continue reading “The German Greens and Unprincipled Lust for Power”

When I received an invitation from Elliot Resnick, former editor-in-chief of the Brooklyn, New York-based Jewish Press to record a podcast devoted to the Ukraine-Russia war, I was delighted to have an opportunity to address an audience that, until his untimely death eighteen months ago, my comrade-in-arms and fellow expert on Russia professor Stephen Cohen had been talking to in his weekly radio broadcasts. Of course, Cohen’s radio programs were listened to by a far wider audience than the core Orthodox community reached by The Jewish Press: they numbered in the millions. But getting a foothold in New York was desirable for me since most alternative media outlets in the U.S. reposting my essays seem to be on the West Coast.

Here is the link to the newly released podcast by Resnick:

Live interviews like this are always a challenge. Inevitably you do not get across every argument you prepared in advance. In my mental review of our chat, I have one regret. Though I had requested to be asked about how the Kiev regime can be fascist when its president, Zelensky, is a Jew, I did not give the most relevant answer to that question when we spoke: namely the celebration of the SS-collaborator Bandera by the ultra-nationalists running the show through Zelensky as their front man.

Continue reading “Reaching the Greater New York Audience With Common Sense on Ukraine”

The elites of the European Union who are running the show seem to have a contemptuous view of their fellow citizens. Russian media must be banned from the air waves lest the poor simpletons who call themselves Europeans be led astray by the Kremlin!

I submit that the people could not care less about the entire fuss over Ukraine at the ideological level of democracy versus autocracy, or civilization over barbarism. They care about their fuel bills, about rising costs at the supermarket check-out. Full stop.

This indifference to the military and economic warfare being led from Brussels is sad, though it may yet be reversed and shift towards street protests in the coming months. Not because of Russian propaganda, which is surely now nipped in the bud, but because the pain being inflicted on the population by the economic kamikaze political leadership through sanctions on Russia becomes unbearable here.

Continue reading “Just Half a Functioning Brain Will Suffice To See Through Propaganda”

I have taken my time preparing a commentary on Putin’s speech to the Plenary Session of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum last Friday, and I am well satisfied that this was the right decision. Others have written about the content and delivery of the speech. Still others have written about the Forum itself in its twenty-fifth anniversary, with a particular emphasis placed on the absence of foreign government leaders and of high level contingents of Western businessmen.

What I intend to do here is to go beyond these narrow constraints and to put the event in the broader context of several other important international developments that have occurred in the past few days, many of which are interrelated. They have barely received the attention they deserve in global media and I intend to make amends here.

The slogan of this year’s Forum was “A New World. New Possibilities.” Put another way, in terms well familiar to the Western business community, the logic here is not to let a good crisis go to waste but to react in a constructive manner that takes the economy and standard of living to new heights previously unattainable through import substitution, which is just another name for reindustrialization.

Continue reading “Right Between the Eyes: Putin to the West at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum”