For those with Sitzfleisch and some time to spare…

There are a very few internet platforms hosted by talented interviewers and interlocutors who give their guests an hour to discuss international relations and the present East-West crisis in and around Ukraine.  Nima R. Alkhorshid and his program Dialogue Works is an outstanding success in this domain. It now counts 149,000 subscribers and has brought ‘on air’ a steady stream of leading thinkers and actors in the Opposition to the Washington narrative.

For these reasons, I considered it an honor to be Mr. Alkhorshid’s guest last night and I offer to you links to the show:

  or

https://yandex.ru/video/preview/14821748208299941599

Full transcript below by a reader

Nima R Alkhorshid: 0:05
Let's get started with the current phase of the conflict in Ukraine. Orban is trying to do his best in order to bring NATO and Russia together to have some sort of negotiations, a political settlement. And what's your interpretation of the current phase and what's going on right now in the European Union, considering the conflict in Ukraine?

Gilbert Doctorow, PhD: 0:32
Well, I have been following this conflict in Ukraine from well before it became a war. And like many observers, I have been misled time and again over the last 20 years by the seeming closeness of a Russian victory, which, and by predictions as a matter of weeks before the end is in sight, only to discover that this was changed completely by a new escalation and new direction to the war that has been propelled by the West. So that Russia has responded, the nature of the war has changed, and the timing of its conclusion has moved like the horizon. And that has been, that's been the case. You have the Washington narrative, which is a pure propaganda narrative that is partly assisted by Kiev. Then you have the opposition or alternative media, of which I am a participant. And all too much of that has been cheerleading for Russia by people who very often know nothing about Russia and care still less about Russia, but see in this conflict a way of expressing their hatred for the United States and for its global abuse of power.

2:09
I understand their repugnance at the way the United States conducts itself across the world, but I am a specialist in Russian affairs, and I cannot link arms with people who don't give a damn about Russia, people who speak about the conflict as if this is a walk in the rose garden, and the only victims are Ukrainians. No, there are victims who are Russians, and there are-- but the numbers change, the estimates of how many losses there have been on the Ukrainian side have varied over time. Some people say it's 500,000. Whether that is a number of killed only or it's killed and mutilated or taken out of battle, out of combat because of their war injuries, nobody has a firm idea.

3:05
Then you have Mr. Putin, who acknowledged maybe three, four weeks ago that the kill ratio or the elimination from the battlefield is five to one in Russia's favor. But assuming that 300,000 have been killed or taken off the battlefield, there's still 60,000 Russians dead, 60,000 widows and orphans. It is a very painful experience for both sides, even if it's much greater loss for the Ukrainians. So, the people who are very often talking, commenting about this conflict, ignore this fact. They only look at the harm caused to Ukraine, how close it is to being annihilated, or whatever terms are dramatic and emotive that they use.

So it is a very good thing, a very good thing, without any qualification, that a person like Orban has immediately seized upon the opportunities that he sensed was there for him in days after taking the role of the rotating presidency of the European Council. I take my hat off to him. I've listened to his interview with Welt Woche, which was amazing. I know something about Hungary. I visited many times on business going back to the late 1980s, early 1990s. I've had business associates there, some of whom I stayed in contact with, even though they loathed Orbán because they were all pro-Soros types in Hungary.

4:49
Nonetheless, I had a feeling for Hungary and I know the man is not without his detractors and without some reasons for that. But there are no pure heroes in life. And I take my cue from who is doing the most good. And as of today, Mr. Orbán is doing a remarkable job, an intelligent job, of seeking peace, of showing up European bureaucrats for being just that, sterile individuals, hateful people-- and by that I mean particularly the top leaders like Charles Michel at the Council, or of course von der Leyen at the Commission, or Borrell at the Commission.

5:44
For these people to have reproached Orbán or his initiative is despicable. But I don't think that I have to add adjectives to descriptions of these people. I think it speaks for itself. And I think that it has to be mentioned as well, that Orbán is not only doing this shuttle diplomacy and going to the ends of the earth-- having been in Beijing yesterday, today, and probably on his way to Washington today or tomorrow for the NATO summit.

6:21
Not only that. He and his close associates have been organizing within Europe a new block of patriots that is attracting some very important partners, and which have a chance of giving a voice to the resistance to the clique around van der Leyen, who want to shut everyone up and want to dominate and monopolize power in Brussels and European institutions. He has brought in, most recently, yesterday or day before yesterday, Wilder's group in the ruling coalition in the Netherlands. He has the support even of the Czechs. The Czech Republic is a special case because of the division between executive and parliament over relations with Russia. Nevertheless, he has brought in parties in the Czech Republic. He certainly has the backing of Fico in Slovakia. And you begin to see-- and he's reaching out to Meloni.

7:36
You begin to see the shape, the contours of a group within the European Parliament that can put a stick in the mechanism that is leading us all on the path to Armageddon. For that, I have to salute the sagacity, not just the courage and the energy of Mr. Orbán.

Alkhorshid:
If you remember, before this conflict started, they were all demonizing Putin, they were [demonizing] Russia. And it all started with this concept in the West. Why do they really hate Russia? What's the reason behind this type of behavior on the part of the Western countries?

8:22
Well, the information war against Russia began with a vengeance in 2008, following Vladimir Putin's astonishing speech at the Munich Security Conference. And then you saw the American delegation at that conference was left speechless. They never could have imagined that they would be denounced for their bullying, for their brutal conduct of international affairs as they were directly and to their faces by Putin at that conference. Washington was speechless, had nothing to say for a month or two until it found its footing and began a massive campaign against Putin.

There were publications in "Foreign Affairs", there were denunciations of him. You had Yulia Tymoshenko coming out with an article there, which was intended to be a vicious attack on Putin. And that's where it started. And it's been accelerating ever since. So-- but I take 2008 as a starting point. Of course, this developed within the States. In 2012, you have the first transfer of this media hatred and vengeance into actions with the passage of the Magnitsky Act that was so promoted by William Browder, a full-time Russia hater, who enjoyed a lot of support in Congress.

And that was a start, so 2012, it was two years before the whole Crimea adventure, that there was a pretext for really vicious sanctions to be taken up by Europe as well. In 2012, the United States began it. And surrounding this, you don't just have these sanctions in isolation, they have to be supported by further information warfare. And then you have 2014, you know, let's say the takeover of Crimea, its reunification with Russia, which provided the context for yet another great escalation, widening and deepening the information war and the economic war waged against Russia. That took us more or less to where we are today.

10:57
Why do they hate it? Because Russia has had the least to lose among all the potential adversaries of the United States on the global stage. You have China, but China's economy has been until Mr. Trump began using his axe, his hatchet, against the tree of Chinese-United States economic bonds. Until the Trump campaign against China, China was doing very well in the States and globally as the world's factory. And China has so much to lose by saying its mind about the nature of American hegemony and economic domination, and parasitism or rent-collecting, as some people call it, globally.

12:01
But China didn't dare act on these convictions. There are other countries who were similarly comprehending of what America is doing and how it was dangerous for the world, but again, and they held their silence. By a combination of factors, Russia had very few economic bonds with the States. Oh, of course, we know that it has been a supplier of luxury goods and a supplier of uranium, enriched uranium, and at times of hydrocarbons, like xxxxx xxxx, petroleum products, which the United States was in one part of the country or another in need of.

12:43
But in general, the level of US-Russian trade has been very, very low. This goes back a long way in history. It didn't just happen yesterday. Because the two economies simply have little need of one another. Unlike the Europeans with Russia, which for them, Russia was a great source of raw materials. This is insulting to say out loud, but it didn't stop the French from saying that out loud that they looked upon Russia as strictly a source of necessary and cheap raw materials.

Then other countries had their own interests in Russia, in its arms, and having a diversity of arms suppliers not to be totally dependent on the United States. But generally speaking, the US-Russia trade was very low, and America and Russia both had very little to lose in economic terms by going at one another's throats. So when Russia had enough of this denigration that it was receiving at the hands of the United States, of this condescending and scornful rejection of Dmitry Medvedev's suggestion of revising the security architecture of Europe to bring Russia in from the cold, going back to 2008, rejected out of hand by the United States and also by Germany.

14:18
Russia then decided to say what it really thinks and to proceed with this alienation from the United States, which is proceeding today in front of our eyes in much more important material ways, not just information warfare. So, Russia has been the single biggest obstacle to the American unipolar world. And going back three, four, five years when the States were still speaking very disparagingly and insultingly about Russia's economy, going back to McCain and Russia being just a gas station parading as a nation. And Obama saying very much the same thing and adding insult to injury by pointing out that Russia was really just a regional power.

15:21
This is a phrase which didn't just come out of the air. This is a phrase that goes back to 1997 and Brzezinski's "Grand Chessboard", the notion that Russia is just a European state. It's another country that fits in a little box in Europe and is out of the way and doesn't cause any nuisance. And when Russia did present itself and its claims for security on the stage, the Americans dismissed it as being just a troublemaker that is on its way down.

And I'd like to point out, without intending to detract from the expertise or importance of some of our major scholars like John Mearsheimer, this notion of Russia as a country on its way down was widely held by some of our senior academicians who otherwise are quite reasonable and informative and useful experts. When it came to Russia, they weren't saying anything more insightful than you've had from the worst propagandists in Washington. Power in the world, even by the realist school, was being defined in terms of GNP, and that was equated to be the same as military power. And since Russia only accounts or counted, well, still accounts for 3% of global GNP, the notion that it could be a major player on the international stage and a major power, a superpower was considered to be laughable as recently as three or four years ago.

17:18
The Special Military Operation has changed that. Three or four years ago, we heard about the United States as being the world's leading military power, and the second and fast-rising power is China. You don't hear much about China as the fast-rising power, except if they're talking about how many naval vessels it has compared to the United States. In overall military strength, there are no fools who are saying that any more, that Russia is just a laggard and that China's number two. Most anybody who has his head turned on, screwed on right is saying the facts. The facts are that Russia is the world's second most powerful military force in the world. And in some areas, it's the first most powerful. And certainly in a traditional ground warfare, artillery production and implementation availability, nobody has any doubts today that Russia is the world's biggest power.

18:24
So, this is where the military operation in Ukraine has changed the American and global perception. It's not a strange thing to say or discover to say that countries looking for allies or for partners look to winners, and they don't want to be associated with losers. And I think that we see, we saw a week ago, at the Astana meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, that the central Asian countries are solidly with Russia, and of course with China. China is the economic power, has much more to offer them economically; but for military security issues, there's no question that they are solidly allied with Russia.

Mr. Turkayev, the remarkable president of Kazakhstan, who is a fluent speaker of Russian, a fluent speaker of Mongolian, it's not that bad. He's just the president. He's not an academician. And he was wobbling this way and that way when the American diplomats came through his region. He's not wobbling any more. Mr. Blinken can pass through and they'll treat him to tea, but he is not making any progress in hopes of winning the minds and hearts of Kazakhs. The same is true of David Cameron's swing through this area less than a month ago. He came back with nothing.

20:19
And why did this happen? I have not a moment's hesitation in saying: because these countries perceived that Russia is the winner in the contest against NATO. Countries like to be with winners.

Alkhorshid:
How far is the West willing to risk Ukraine and the future of Ukraine in order to inflate suffering on Russia?

Doctorow:
Well, I'm a very big admirer of Jacques Baudin, the Swiss military analyst, whose view of the war is very much the terms that you just phrased it. The West has no interest in the fate of Ukraine. Its only interest is in using Ukraine as a tool to weaken Russia. What the objectives are of weakening Russia, well, different analysts have different views. Some will say that it is to lessen the attractiveness of Russia to China, to help break Russia and China apart. Perhaps that's the reason. I think a much simpler reason is that by eliminating Russia, they prepare the way to attack and isolate China, which makes China much more vulnerable. So the reasoning here is, I think, pretty obvious.

Alkhorshid: 21:47
Can we consider the conflict in Ukraine as a watershed moment in which that the face of the world has changed. And the way that we are witnessing the events in the Middle East, in Europe, in Africa, is everything seems that it's changing and it's changing so fast.

Doctorow:
Well, there used to be a song about the head bone's connected to the neck bone, the neck bone's connected to the backbone and so on. Or as the BBC says in its promotional advertisements for BBC business news, "Everything's connected". Indeed, all of these things that you mentioned are not disparate. They're all connected and certain key players or actors are involved in all of them. And Russia is one of those key players. When you speak about the changing scene in Africa, particularly French Africa, the departure or kick out of the French colonial forces, and the deconstruction of the French economic colonialism in these countries, Russia is present as a major factor, just as China is, to provide a sense that you can win the war against these former colonial powers, but you will not be economically destroyed by them.

23:12
If Russia has been able to survive and even prosper in the face of the sanctions from hell that Victoria Nuland and her fellow conspirators devised in the State Department, then these countries also, if they have friends, friends like Russia and China, have a very good opportunity to get out from under the heel of their former colonial masters. That's for Africa.

23:44
For the Middle East, the fact that the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia were brought into BRICS forming a Middle Eastern core nations that have joined an organization whose mission is to establish a parallel world order. Not to overthrow the existing world order, but in the expectation that the existing American-dominated world order will crumble when a viable alternative that is more democratic in the way it's governed presents itself.

24:29
And that is what they're doing as [more have joined], and that gives them a lot of confidence. A perfect example, one that I follow rather closely because I've been a frequent guest on Iran's PressTV. So I paid more attention to what's going on there than I otherwise would have. And what I see there is that there's much greater moderation. The victory of this so-called, so-designated reformist candidate in the election a day ago in Iran is just another sign of it, but the man he's replaced after this tragic death of Raisi in the helicopter crash was, I think, an incarnation of dignity. And dignity comes from self-confidence, and self-confidence comes from having powerful and well-meaning friends.

25:26
And those two friends, in the case of Iran, are China and Russia. What I see here as an important element in the changing world is the approach of BRICS and of Russia and China to the whole question of: what do you do with difficult states? The American view is simple. You turn them into pariah states. You cut off economic ties, you cut off diplomatic ties, you isolate them, shame them, and try regime change in order to get them to submit to your will, and to be "good and upstanding members" of the international community, in quotation marks.

26:11
The Russian and Chinese method is-- in a way, it's very close to what was used in Germany in its relations to Russia in the period of the 80s and 90s and up into the period of Merkel. This whole Ostpolitik of Germany-- it goes back to Willy Brandt-- had as an underlying logic or justification, or explanation in any case, to the German public and to European public, that by drawing closer, you can have more influence and moderate the behavior of the country that you are in rapprochement with.

27:00
I think that is a very good model. Of course, the United States has denounced this sort of approach. It has gone crying out to the world how it was misled by such thoughts when it gave privileged access to its market to China and allowed China to become its major supplier of so many manufactured goods. But China, to the great disappointment of the United States, didn't become just like us. It didn't renounce its sovereignty, didn't kneel before the altar of the American Republic.

27:46
But I hold a different view. I think that what the Russians are now trying to do with Taliban in Afghanistan to drop all listing of the Taliban as a terrorist organization, to try to establish normal diplomatic, cultural, political, and economic ties to Afghanistan and its Taliban government. This is another instance where the policy is to normalize relations in the hope and expectation that you will moderate the behavior of the country you're approaching, rather than the [counter-voltage] in a very severe and destructive behavior that America practices.

Alkhorshid: 28:36
When we look at Russia today, a country, when Putin came to power in 1999 and 2000, he was trying to get closer to the West, to the European Union, to the United States, but every [time] he was trying to do that, he was rejected; they were not willing to cooperate with Russia. Right now, with this conflict in Ukraine, it seems that Russia totally perceived that there is no way forward for Russia together with the United States and European Union. And they're doing everything right now. They're talking about BRICS right now. When we talk about BRICS everybody's talking about China.

29:20
China is the biggest, but it seems that Russia is the backbone of BRICS right now. Because the way that they're leading in BRICS politically and militarily they're having good relationship with Iran, with China, with India, many of these countries don't have-- with Pakistan, and the way that they're managing right now within BRICS is so amazing to see, and how they're trying to do their best in order to bring all of these countries together.

Doctorow: 29:54
I think this is a very big compliment you're making to Russian diplomacy, and I agree completely that Russian diplomacy is highly professional and very skillful in dealing with these very difficult countries and relationships that they have with one another, and not getting and caught in the middle of their disputes.

I want to add though, that the Russian diplomacy and Mr. Lavrov for all of his experiences as the doyen of major power diplomats in the world-- longest serving and most professional, hardest working-- they are not their own men. What they're doing, what Lavrov does, is implement what his boss tells him to do. So, the master plan that Russian diplomacy implements is coming from the office of Vladimir Putin. I don't mean to suggest that Putin himself is the author of everything that bears his signature, of course not. He's remarkably hard-working and so on, but he's not superhuman. He also has his limitations in time and space.

31:20
But what I see in Putin is unusual, and I have various ways of measuring this and justifying what I'm about to say, is that he has been not just an intellectual leader, although that didn't come quickly. He was a follower, as you were suggesting a minute ago, by particularly early in his presidency, continuing the Iraq raprochment, the drawing closer, the hopeful expectations that we Russians and Americans can be great friends. He continued that. It took a while before he found his own position, particularly after 2008 when he had no choice but to find a new position.

32:07
But not just as an intellectual leader, but as a man-manager. I think that he has remarkable talent in this area, which nobody talks about. What you get is the usual flipant or ignorant statements about how he was a KGB operative. This is-- much more important to watch his conduct is how he was a graduate of St. Petersburg Law School because he's very legalistic- minded.

But he is a man-manager. For that, he obviously has an innate talent because he was a rank-and-file intelligence analyst in Germany. He wasn't managing tens and tens of people. I wonder if he even had a secretary to manage. The point is that he quickly learned. And what do I find outstanding here? I don't think I'm the only one who compares him and his 24 years in power as a Peter the Great of our age. And there's a certain specific similarity that I want to bring up because nobody talks about it. and it bears on my stating now that he is a man-manager of extreme conpetence.

33:26
Peter the Great had around him opportunists, liars, thieves, cheats, people who were raised from rags to riches, which is-- very often arrived at in a thief-like way. And he kept them on, and he promoted them to get the best out of them for Russia's benefit. And that is exactly how Mr. Putin has conducted himself. He has been surrounded by thieves and liars. Chubais was a perfect example of it. He stole billions, if not just millions, from the Russian state, but he has kept by his side people whom he thought could make major contributions to the welfare of the country, and he has used them for Russia's benefit, knowing for certain all of their personal drawbacks and their vices.

34:37
He kept Prigozhin on when he had proven himself less than loyal, I mean, before the mutiny, after this big public fight that he had with Putin's senior military. It was out in public, they were being denounced by Prigozhin, and Putin kept him on and tolerated him so long as he could perform and do things that were valuable to Russia, which he did. And this is a distinguishing feature that I think has to be brought up in any discussion.

Alkhorshid: 35:25
When you look at Europe today, considering your article, your recent article, In your opinion, what's going on in Europe? I've seen an interview of Marine Le Pen with CNN, with Christiane Amanpour on CNN. Christiane Amanpour was calling her a far-right candidate and she said that, no, we are not far-right, we are a center-right party. But it seems that Le Pen is totally in my opinion is totally correct when she says she's center-right. We don't see far right, far left right now in the European Union, because the outcome of Meloni, for example, in Italy was the same outcome as we see in Germany and other countries. [It] doesn't seem that they have any sort of difference when it comes to their policy in Ukraine, for example. What's your understanding of this?

Doctorow: 36:31
Well, we'll get to the question of how these various movements or parties see Ukraine, but I'd like to come back to adjectives, which are very important because they are like these dog whistles. They are sending out messages that are instantly perceived and understood without the one blowing the whistle having to say much.

And that is misleading, seriously misleading. To speak in terms-- as we open this discussion, to speak in terms of centrist right, extreme right. Extreme already is an adjective that tells you that the speaker doesn't like these people. Who likes extremes? By definition, a normal-headed person wouldn't. They are inaccurate. They are not telling you what's going on, just like if you listen to particularly American politicians who are talking about identity politics or talking about inclusiveness by bringing in LGBT and Lord knows what else. This is meant to be misleading.

38:00
So let's go to the essence of what people really are talking about. In the latter case, when I talk inclusiveness or these identity politics are intended to distract the audience from what politics are all about, always have been, and someday in the near future will revert to [be], which is about how you divide up the economic pie and who gets what from the economy. That's what politics are supposed to be about.

And when you talk identity politics and minority politics, it's intentionally distracting the voter on what politics are all about. But let's go back to the extreme right, far right, whatever the adjective they put here. That's not what her party stands for. It's not what Orban stands for. It's not to a lesser extent what Meloni stands for. What we're talking about here, and particularly well-defined now in the group of patriots that Orbán is putting together, it is, first of all, less EU. And what does that mean by less EU?

39:14
It is a declaration of nationalism. Nationalism is by definition in the lexicon of the authoritarian left, and it is meant to be misleading. The-- nationalism is said to be a cause of wars. The European adventure, the creation of the EU was supposed to be about preventing wars. And so, logically, you should be throttling, strangling nationalism. But there's more to it than that. When you deny people their national identity, you are denying them their identity, and you're preparing the way for fascism and for dictatorship. If people do not have an identity, religious, ethnic, otherwise, they have nothing to fall back upon. They are atomized in front of an authoritarian state. So all of these people professing liberal values, that is all completely phony and intentionally misleading.

40:41
Nationalism is one thing, but that's not the whole story at all. Let's take a less emotive word. A word that has been used a lot by Mr. Putin, and now is being used by other people. The word here is "sovereignty". Mr. Orban is talking about Hungarian sovereignty. Wilders is talking about sovereignty. Even Meloni, weak reed that she is, is talking about Italian sovereignty -- as opposed to globalism, which is denying national distinction, because national distinction is bad, and replacing it with this amorphous, empty designation, like Citizen, Citizeness of the French revolution. They are denying people their birthright for the sake of stealing their power.

42:00
it is all-- i mean i said that politics is about economics and dividing the pie-- the politics on a personal level of those who are practicing it is about power. And they are using these various word games to seize power and to hold power against the popular will and against the interests of their own people.

Alkhorshid: 42:29
Do you have any hope for the European Union, with the current situation, considering the current situation of the Union, to be a powerhouse? Everybody, I think, the European Union needs to be a powerhouse, just independent of Russia, China and the United States. Just deciding, considering their benefits. I'm talking about each and every of these countries, or even together.

Doctorow:
For it to be a powerhouse, it has to change its thinking entirely about what makes for power. The present conformist vassals of the United States who occupy the positions of power in the European Union have a mantra. And the mantra is: "Unity gives us strength". I contest that. Unity in pursuit of delusional objectives gives you weakness. And all I see around me is weakness that thinks it is strength, because all 27 people, or countries, are saying the same thing. But 27 times "wrong" is still wrong, with just bigger letters.

43:48
And what they're saying is dead wrong, but their understanding of so many factors in their neighborhood, starting with Russia, of course, is dead wrong. So, Europe cannot be a superpower if all of its thinking is founded on a fallacy, that Europe cannot be a superpower if it denies the civilizational values that it pretends to promote, starting with freedom of speech.

There is very little freedom of speech in Europe, much less than in the United States. And why is that? It's not as if the United States hasn't had its fit of McCarthyism, not just going back in the early days of the Cold War, but 10 years ago. When I was in-- I was in a visiting fellow at Columbia in 2010, 2011, and what I saw around me was the aftereffect of the general paranoia that hit America after 9-11, when Americans willingly traded freedom for security.

45:09
Our journalists in newspapers like the "Financial Times" pretend to be very intellectual. They like to speak about Russians who trade "a chicken in every pot" for security and let the government do what it wishes. Well, that isn't very true; not at all, from my experience; but that's a separate issue. The main issue is: that's exactly what Americans have done. They traded after 9-11 a hope for security against any say in how they're governed. And that psychology, that is destructive of freedom, and destructive of the values that that our leaders pretend to honor in Europe.

46:08
Now, that was the case before Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump came along. I don't like Mr. Trump particularly. I don't like him as a personality. I don't like his boastfulness, his arrogance, his ignorance, and whatever else. There are many things you can [cite] against him, including lying, of course. I'm more tolerant of lying, because it comes with the job. You cannot be perfectly frank and honest if you are a president. That's a separate issue of taking us back to Machiavelli and "The Prince".

The question is about what Mr. Trump did for all of us, wittingly, unwittingly, let's say unwittingly. By saying what he did in the 2016 campaign, by putting in question NATO, by putting in question the value of hostility with Russia, he freed us all. I can tell you right now, I mean, take a publication that was widespread, widely subscribed to among American academics, "Johnson's Russia List". "Johnson's Russia List" was, and still is, a daily digest of articles about Russia, about Ukraine, by professionals, for professionals.

47:36
In the period before Mr. Trump got his campaign going well, you could just die bored of reading it because all of the entries were by the slavish scribes and propaganda disseminators of the State Department. Nobody dared to say something different, because they didn't want to lose their tenured positions, or they didn't want to lose the respect of their colleagues. Mr. Trump opened his mouth and started saying things that if we ordinary mortals had said, we would have had the FBI at our door. He said it, they could not touch him; then he's kept on saying it when he was president.

48:24
He gave us freedom, and those who say, "How horrible, he's divided us", what is politics about if not division? If politics is everyone singing from the same songbook, you don't need elections. It is-- you only get to the truth and you only get to good or better policies if they are questioned, if there are debates and if there is serious difference of opinion. Unfortunately, Europeans have forgotten these things, and they keep on saying how horrible it is for anyone to divide us. The Russians are trying to divide us, but they don't tolerate any dissent or any other thinking.

49:09
When you have no dissent, you have inferior intellectual ... roadmaps. You have to have dissent, you have to have differences of opinion, publicly expressed and defended, if you're going to arrive at anything resembling workable policies and good policies, as opposed to intellectually inferior policies. Here in Europe, they just don't get it, and they keep on clambering for unity, when what we need is division.

Alkhorshid: 49:44
You know, it seems that the conflict in Ukraine is approaching to the final stages, but at the same time we're witnessing that the United States is forcing Europe and to move them toward China to be more aggressive toward China. And the question would be, we know that Europe was totally in line with the United States foreign policy in Russia, in sanctioning Russia, but when it comes to China, how capable is Europe to do that and how damaging that would be for Europe?

Doctorow: 50:22
Well, there won't be much left of the European economy. The economy is limping along. You have to keep in mind that the destruction of the economy does not occur from one day to the next. It's a slow process. Back in the 1980s, I worked for a company called ITT, International Telephone and Telegraph, which was the world's biggest conglomerate put together by a business genius, a financial genius called Harold Geneen, and operating in all kinds of different industries.

And I knew soon after I joined, "This ship is going down." It had new management. It didn't under... And it was a victim of the business wisdom "horses for courses". The business model that Mr. Geneen created did not long survive him as a viable model in a new business and interest environment. Interest is a key word. It's always a major factor in viability of businesses.

Well, that kind of issue is what we see today. Here in Europe, the economy is sinking, but not in the way that you can see, "Ah, there are people that are going to drown tomorrow." No, but it's heading in that direction. When I walk down the street here in Brussels, the major commercial street, elegant, center of elegance, since its creation in the turn of the 20th century, there are so many shops that are vacant. When I hear the Belgian authorities say we have 2 percent inflation-- yeah, maybe year on year, but we have like 40 percent inflation going back two years.

52:27
When you go to a restaurant and you see prices that are 40 percent higher than they were the last time you looked, I don't want to hear about two percent inflation. It's nonsense. And so it is about the state of the economy here. You just have to keep your eyes open. They tell you much more valuable things than what you can read in "Le soir" or "Echos de la Bourse" about the state of the economy. You see those empty shops, it tells you the real state of the economy, not good.

52:58
And in Germany, it's a lot worse. Here in Belgium, we have a lot of protections put in place to prevent popular disturbances, namely inflation adjustments to shut up the labor unions and to counteract the worst effects of inflation. They're much less practiced in Germany. Although Mr. Scholz tries various times to take the pain out of the soaring energy costs to households, in general, the protection of the German consumer is less solid there. The state of the German economy is deteriorating sharply. The biggest export industries are the worst hit, ever since the start of this economic war with Russia.

53:51
I have in mind particularly the automobile industry, where you speak to people who have friends who are working in the major German car producers. They know that this or that product line is down 30 percent, not 1 to 2 percent. So, the decline of the European economy, given that it's so big and so rich, it takes time for the poverty and underlying weakness to become evident to everyone. But its trajectory is clear. Europe is in serious decline. And the people who are in charge, like Mr. Scholz, he doesn't, he's not capable of seeing, appreciating, let alone responding to these facts that are obvious to anybody who has a bit of sense in finance and business.

Alkhorshid: 54:50
Just to wrap up this session, do you see a future for European Union together with Russia when this conflict comes to an end and everybody want to know what would be the new face of Europe, what would be the future of Europe without Russia. Is that possible in your opinion?

Doctorow: 55:11
Well, how this war ends and how the European elites survive this will determine the outcome that you are asking me about. If NATO crumbles, if it faces the fact that it has not lived up to the reason of its foundation, which was to keep Russia down and out, and it turns out that Russia is resurgent, far more powerful, far more rational, and much better led than the NATO member countries, and these people are chased out, then what can come about is, as you say, a reconciliation, an acceptance of basic economic facts of life, which is that Russia is the best and most accessible source of critical materials for the European economy, and then logic will prevail, economic logic.

56:13
But if the present elites manage to hold on to their vestiges of power, and deny power to those who have better understood the situation and are better prepared to find a way out of the crisis, then I'm afraid Europe will not rise to the challenge and extricate itself from the present downward course that I have just described a moment ago.