Transcript of 'Coffee and a Mike,' 13 December 2024

Michael Farris

Gilbert, I appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. Lots of things happening. And just right before I got on, I'm seeing Russia launch a massive-- Zero-hedge-- they launched a massive attack on Ukrainian critical fuel and energy infrastructure. So I don't know, I know you haven't had a chance to look at it, but a little bit that I've just described to you, what are your thoughts?

Gilbert Doctorow

I think it's premature to say what this is. I think the Russians have a number of things going on in their minds right now. It depends on how you understand what they're responding to, retaliating over. We're talking about the attempt, about the strike of six ATACMS missiles launched by Ukraine a couple of days ago against Taganrog. Taganrog is a city on the Sea of Azov, in the south of Russia. We are told that the Ukrainians were attacking a military air base. That's one story. Another story is that they were attacking a factory that is adjacent to the military air base and the factory that produces specialized aircraft, planes that are the Russian equivalent to the American AWACS. That's to say they are early warning radar stations in the air that are controlling all air traffic in, well, it could be for several hundred kilometers.

Now the question you have to ask is why would the Ukrainians attack that? I read it as follows, that this falls in line with the Ukraine attack using drones about six months ago on a couple of early warning radar stations in the south of Russia. The question that was asked then is what sense did this make for the Ukrainians? Because those early warning stations have nothing to do with the Ukraine war. They have a lot to do with the United States' interest in destroying Russia's ability to detect incoming missiles from the south, for example, from American submarines based in the Persian Gulf or Eastern Med.

These were part of Russia's early warning system against missile attack. would say quite possibly the AWACS planes were also part of such a system and that the attack had nothing whatever do with Ukrainian interests, which Zelensky has alleged and which all of our tame Western media have repeated to the general public: that he needed these missiles from the States in order to disarm Russian attack potential on his country. These AWACS probably had nothing to do with his country and a lot to do with general defense of Russia against US missile attacks. If I am correct, I'm not a military expert, and I could be wrong about the actual purposes of the AWACS planes, but if I am correct, then for Russia to respond to that attack, the issue here is not whether it failed or succeeded, but what was the intent of those who launched those missiles? The Russian response to this attack in Taganrog would be far more serious than limited to Ukraine and to its energy infrastructure.

They've been busy destroying that for most of the past year, and they've taken down about 80 percent of Ukraine's electricity generation from normal power plants. There is a residual energy production within Ukraine from its nuclear plants and from renewables. So Russia cannot take 100 percent of Ukraine's energy out, but it can take out all of those conventional power generating plants and distribution facilities. Still, as I say, this in no way would be a proper retaliation if the United States were using these ATACMS coming from Ukraine to prepare the way for a decapitation strike against Russia with missiles based on its ships and submarines in the Middle East. What I would look for instead is a Russian attack on U.S. military assets, either in Romania or Poland. I had put this at a low on probability because of the risks it has for escalation. But that was before this incident in Taganrog. And as a sign that this is a possible ultimate response was the remarkable appearance a day ago by Mr. Lavrov's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, who went on television warning Russians that during this holiday season the government advises against their traveling in Western Europe or North America because of the worsening relations.

Well, that's pretty tough stuff that Russians should not travel to Europe or America. And the explanation was the risk of their being arrested and shipped to America to face various assorted charges of criminal activity by the US government. That explanation does not sound convincing to me. I believe that that statement was made because Russia is planning, considering making a strike on NATO.

Farris:

You know, with what's occurred in Syria, and I still haven't gotten confirmation. Are they still occupying, Are Russians still occupying their military bases there?

Doctorow:

Yes, they are, with a certain qualification. The bases are in Russian hands. Nobody's challenging that. But as regards the naval base of Tartus, the Russians immediately after the demise of the Assad government, it's clear, they sent their ships out to sea beyond range of artillery, meaning more than eight kilometers out to sea. So, they were taking no chances against the... Who would attack them from Syrian soil? Difficult to say, but they were taking up chances just as Israel supposedly is taking no chances and preparing for every contingency by capturing the buffer zone and moving its tanks within close striking range of Damascus. If the Israelis can do that without explaining exactly whom they thought would attack them, then the Russians could do the same with their naval assets on the Syrian coast.

But as for long range prospects of the Russian bases, both the air force base, and the naval base, both on the coast of Syria in the territory that was the basic core constituency of Bashar al-Assad, that is, the Alawite region of northwest Syria. This seems to be stable. We don't know what will happen next, but the Russians are prepared for every eventuality, and those in the West who were saying that this is a black eye to Putin who is going to lose his invaluable assets if he doesn't see it yet. They are just disseminating propaganda written by Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken.

The Russians have many options. It was very convenient, and certainly they'd like to keep their 70-year lease on these bases. But if they feel that they have to leave, if they cannot reach agreement with the new administration in Damascus, they have options. One of the most obvious ones is to move their assets to Iran. Iran now being under considerable pressure, pressure and threats from the United States and Israel, I think would warmly welcome Russian bases as an additional safeguard for their own security. Of course, it's possible that Iran will now shift to try to strike an accommodation with the Trump administration. And so that possibility may be illusory, but the Russians also have possibilities of moving their bases to Egypt or to Algeria, to give two examples of North African states which are now hopping mad over what the United States and Israel are doing in the Middle East and would warmly welcome Russian military presence.

Farris:

There's just so much going on right now, Gilbert? There's a lot going on.

Doctorow:

I don't think it's the end of the world scenario in front of us. I think that the Russians have the upper hand and our fate, your fate, in the middle of the State, and my fate here in Brussels just 20 kilometers from the NATO headquarters, is very much in the hands of one man. That one man is not Joe Biden, and it's not Donald Trump. It's Vladimir Putin.

Unlike Mr. Biden, who is senile, who is being managed by his nominal subordinates, unlike Donald Trump, who has yet to demonstrate that he is capable of genuinely fighting the Deep State when he appoints a whole slew of security and military advisors who are so combative.

Mr. Putin is rock solid and he is not emotional. He is highly rational and keeps his cool, his sangue froid, and he is probably our best safeguard against the present situation deteriorating into a nuclear war.

Farris:

Do you anticipate though with the, continuing needling, Ukraine firing those ATACMS on Wednesday that at some point Putin is just going to say enough is enough?

Doctorow:

It's possible, but what will the end result be? Although I hold out the possibility of retaliation against US assets in Romania or Poland, it is also entirely possible that the next step, next Russian retaliatory step, would be a decapitation strike on the Zelensky regime. This was already warned by Putin ten days ago that the new Oreshnik missile could be used to strike against the decision-making centers and the command and control centers of Ukraine. To translate that into simple English, it means they're going to kill Zelensky and everybody around him.

Farris:

With that, you know, I had Paul Craig Roberts on a couple of days ago, and I heard your interview on Dialogue Works, you discussing some of the things that Paul was saying the day before and it was just different, something that I had not heard before in terms of the neo cons continuing to push Putin to the brink to where it's either push the red button or lose. What are your thoughts when you hear that type of scenario?

Doctorow:

Paul Craig Roberts is a man who is widely respected for his service, public service, in the United States government, who had some of the most responsible positions in the US government and as an economist is widely regarded in a very positive way. But having said that, let's discuss the issue at hand, in which he is no expert whatsoever.

And I believe that he is drawing his information largely from John Helmer, who may or may not still be in Moscow. I don't know. Some people say that he's actually in Australia. Now, I don't know. But he spent 30 years as the longest-serving, and may still be the long-serving, foreign journalist in Moscow.

Helmer is very extravagant in his criticism, I'd say open attacks on Putin for being too soft. And Helmer speaks on behalf of unidentified, high military sources within the General Staff, as he says, who believe that Putin has been making terrible mistakes and has the wrong people in charge of the military, that Gerasimov should go. These are seditious statements if you are in Russia. I'm surprised Helmet has not been expelled from the country or arrested for sedition. This is the man, I believe, whom Paul Craig Roberts is listening to, because Roberts himself is not a specialist in Russia and has, to my knowledge, no personal points of information.

And Roberts has been spreading, unfortunately, this notion that we face the crisis we are in today with Russia because Putin wasn't tough back in 2014, missed the opportunity to solve the problem with Ukraine back in 2014, and has been letting the Americans cross all of his red lines and turning the other cheek, which is interpreted as weakness and inability to act by the hubristic and very aggressive American political and military leadership. I don't agree at all with that. I don't agree that the Russians could have taken Ukraine out in 2014. That is, I think, dead wrong. I think Putin did the right thing back then, by stepping back and contenting himself with the annexation of Crimea, and didn't dare to overrun the Ukrainian army, which he could have done in 2014, because Russia was utterly unprepared for economic warfare with the United States.

The United States, if it imposed anything like the sanctions it has imposed on Russia today, would have indeed put Russia on its knees. They didn't have any work-around for expulsion from SWIFT. They had no reserves, financial reserves. They had no support within the country for direct confrontation with the West as they finally have today. And the most important factor in the decision was they had no confidence that in a free and fair vote, the majority of people in the Donbass would vote for joining Russia.

The fact is that Crimea was 98% not just Russian speaking, but ethnic Russian. The Donbass was a majority Russian speaking, but not ethnic Russian or sympathetic to Russia. It was really arguable that it could be a disaster to have a referendum in the Donbass in 2014. And the Russians did not risk it, very wisely. Paul Craig Roberts knows nothing about this and therefore the statements that he was making coming from Helmer are invalid.

Now everyone speaks about Putin as a chump. He was taken in by Merkel and Sarkozy, sorry, by Merkel and Hollande in the Minsk agreements. That these were used cynically by France, France and Germany and Washington to gain time, to arm Ukraine and to prepare it for a victorious war against Russia. I disagree.

I believe that the Russians were not hoodwinked. They knew very well what was going on. They had very good intelligence. And they did not act because they weren't ready to act. They didn't have the preponderance in latest strategic weapons that they gained only in 2018 and afterwards, when Mr. Putin rolled out his new weapons, including hypersonic missiles that we hear so much about today. Russia was not ready. It needed this time to prepare itself financially, to have workarounds to any economic sanctions that the United States would impose, and it needed to strengthen its army, which it did. So, Russia used the time to prepare itself for war the same way that Ukraine did. And this is a fact that, or a reality that is not reflected in Russian public statements, but that doesn't make it any less a reality. When people

criticize Putin for being weak, for being too good a Christian, they are simply missing these points. And so I don't accept their verdict on Putin's guilt or innocence in bringing us to this confrontation that we're up to today.

Farris:

Well, the other thing is I, as I've reflected on my conversation with Paul in regards to if Russia would have marched right through Ukraine the second time around, what kind of panic would that have set in with the media, with the Western media? Because they would have said, "Oh, he's going to march into Poland, Oh, he's going to continue on, he wants to conquer Europe." I mean, you would have heard a lot of, I feel like you would have heard a lot of that type of misinformation.

Doctorow:

Well, what differences does it make? I'm sorry. This information is good for brainwashing the Americans and the Europeans, but I don't see it as having much relevance to politics. As I said, I have no intention of being a detractor for the well-earned reputation that Craig Roberts has. But, horses for courses, as they say. There's some expertise that one should have when talking about these things, and he doesn't have it.

Farris:

So as we sit here, as the Trump administration gets set to take office here in, what do we have, about four weeks now, roughly, Is Putin, what do you see as the initial conversations? Do you think those are taking place now with Trump and Putin?

Doctorow:

Possibly, but I doubt it. I think that Trump has been very careful to avoid crossing the lines, constitutionally defined lines, of what a private person in the States can do in the realm of foreign policy. That was something that was a point that he missed after his election in 2016 and cost some of the people around him dearly when they were charged with violating this policy. The United States only has one government at a time.

Nor would it make much difference. I think that Trump has admitted in the last few days that he cannot solve the problem in 24 hours, that this will take some effort. And therefore, the notion that he can fix it all up before he gets elected, and on day two, announce that there's a ceasefire. I think that notion has evaporated in the Trump camp.

What will the conversation be like when they eventually have it?

Mr. Putin is very polite. Mr. Lavrov, his foreign minister, is even more polite and diplomatic in everything he does, where possible. And they will sit with General Kellogg and/or whomever else Trump sends to Moscow to discuss the ceasefire and the eventual peace agreement. They will hear him out.

But there will be no agreement whatsoever, because the American side is pretending that Russia is a losing party, when in fact it's the winning party. And you cannot impose on the winning party terms that you can impose on the loser. The whole approach to this issue is upside down.

Mr. Putin has made it clear from the very beginning that there were a number of issues that brought Russia to war.

For public consumption, for the Russian public, the issues were all defending Russian speakers and their brethren in Donbas from ethnic cleansing and physical destruction by a Ukrainian army formation that was prepared to pounce on them in early 2022. That resonates well with the broad public. The broad public everywhere - in the United States, in Western Europe- the broad public does not want to hear about Realpolitik and national interests. You don't send your husband, your son, your father off to war to fight for national interests.

You send them to fight for your brethren, your land, as is the case now where Russian land was occupied by Ukraine in Kursk. For others, the reason for the war is at a different level completely. It's precisely national interest, national security. And in that regard, the Russians set their terms in December 2021, when the terms were written by Mr Sergei Ryabkov, the deputy minister, the deputy to Lavrov, who is very hard-line, not as flexible and weak, if you want to call it that, as Mr Lavrov is in his public statements. And Ryabkov demanded a rollback of NATO.

And they started the rollback in Ukraine. They will not tolerate Ukraine becoming part of NATO or of NATO countries having military missions, having bases and supplying Ukraine's army to be used against them. Russia will not tolerate that. “And if you do not agree to negotiate this with us, we will push you back by force,” which they did a few weeks later when they launched the special military operation.

Mr. Putin has not forgotten that. Mr. Putin on June 13th stated these terms as the basis for ending the war. That is, to reiterate, he said that “we will in a moment stop our hostilities once Ukraine withdraws its armed forces from the four regions, from Donetsk, Lugansk and the two New Russia regions. And then we will agree to peace talks. The peace talks will follow the document that we and the Ukrainians initialed in March, April of 2022, essentially limiting the size of the Ukrainian armed forces of every kind, prohibiting foreign troops, foreign experts, foreign bases on Ukrainian territory, and providing for even-handed treatment Russian speaking citizens within what remains of the Ukrainian state.” Less than 10 days ago, Mr. Putin's press secretary, Peskov, reiterated those terms. And Mr. Trump's advisors had better read them carefully before they open their mouths again.

Farris:

You're talking about Sebastian Gorka when he went on media and was saying, the support we'll give to Ukraine. I couldn't believe he said that.

Doctorow:

Well, it's hideous. It is very objectionable. I was like others, I was surprised and disappointed that Trump could ever appoint such an obnoxious character to such an influential position in this incoming administration.

Farris:

What's more, what's the greater likelihood, escalation or a ceasefire as we sit here today?

Doctorow:

Neither. It depends on how the Russians actually respond to the Taganrog attack. If my hunches are right and they see this as a direct United States effort to destroy the early-warning systems in preparing the way for a preemptive nuclear strike on Russia, then the Russian response will be far greater and will be indeed escalatory, as I said, attacking one or another American asset in NATO countries.

But if my hunch is wrong, or if, yes, they do not believe that there was such an ambition in this attack, and they can be satisfied that their retaliation is appropriate to the threat that they perceive to themselves, then we will neither see escalation nor we will see a ceasefire. We will see the continuation of the Russian offensive in the Donbas until they reach the Dnieper River, at least. In the expectation that the Ukrainian army will crack and the Ukrainian general staff will sue for peace on the basis of capitulation.

Farris:

Why would Anthony Blinken and the Biden administration push this now, knowing that they're leaving in a month?

Doctorow:

Because they are completely immoral people. They have no respect for the American people. They have no respect for the 53% of American voters who voted for Donald over Kamala. And they should be doing prison time for their violation of the trust of American people and in the case of the Blinken for his complicity in Israeli war crimes.

So that is why I think of these gentlemen. I do not have a high opinion of them. I think they are war criminals in the case of Blinken. He could be, before a court of justice, found guilty of war crimes. He also has no judgment. But the broader issue is not these two gentlemen. The broader issue is that American foreign policy is flying blind.

The number of people, or the people in high places who have some actual knowledge of the adversary, or what you can call the enemy, are negligible. American studies, professional studies of Russia have gone to hell. American intelligence assets since 2003, with respect to Russia, have gone to hell. Why do I say that? In 2003, Dick Cheney, he really had control. Bush was just a frontman. And Cheney gutted American intelligence. All of the people who were Eastern Europe and Russia experts, they were thrown into the street because America needed guidance for the War on Terror. And so two things happened. The professionals within the American intelligence services who knew something about Russia were either forced out, retired, or they left because of their disgust with the manipulation of intelligence that led us into the Iraq War.

These people left, they were only partly replaced by experts on the Middle East, and much of American intelligence work was in the spirit of Dick Cheney, the way we conducted the military operations in Iraq, were farmed out commercially. That is, intelligence was outsourced the same way as the procurement of transportation, the vehicles, the tanks and everything else for the American war effort was outsourced. It was no longer in the hands of the Deep State, surprisingly to say this. It was not in professional career servants of the state. It was outsourced to commercial organizations who were, as you might expect, saying what the pay master wanted to hear.

Therefore, there was a tremendous corruption of American intelligence, which has not changed. American intelligence, I think that Mr. Trump's people, when they go into this, when Tulsi Gabbard gets into the nitty-gritty, will discover that there are vast empty spaces in America's knowledge and capability of dealing with his number one and number two adversaries, whether it's China, but particularly with respect to Russia.

Farris:

Last question. What do you think of President Trump and the new administration, both for the United States and globally as they set to take office here in a month?

Doctorow:

Well, as regards what the Russians call the power ministers, everything concerned with military defense, his choices were terrible. I don't know why. Whether he wanted to gather them all in one place so he could beat them up every day. I don't know. I assume there's some kind of logic to it, because it runs in the face of what he was saying about his selection of his deputies and his administration in his first presidency.

I don't understand the need to bring on board the obnoxious people that I've just described. Nor do I understand what he's doing and saying now. What is the value of having Tulsi Gabbard as his side to provide him with genuine reality-based intelligence when he's going shooting his mouth off about the Russian economy being in tough shape and so forth. This is rubbish. I'll give him the credit that there may be some ulterior motive.

As I said just a moment ago, maybe he's gathering the scoundrels in one place so he can beat them all up at once. I don't know. When you have people like Rubio that he's brought in, who's a hawk on China, for example. What is the sense of Trump's appointing this man? One factor is that Rubio is not independently wealthy, that Rubio gave up a government post for which he would be re-elected and re-elected till he dies.

And he's taken on a position of complete dependency on the goodwill of one Donald Trump who is known as a chap who likes to fire people. So in taking on Rubio, is he becoming subject to Rubio's thinking where it conflicts directly with his own planned peace-like foreign policy? Or is he taking control of Rubio to take control of Rubio? We will see. It is too early to say.

I will give Trump the benefit of the doubt that he's not a fool. The only thing I can say about his personality is he is an extremely brave man. I look at some of his appointees, particularly Patel for the FBI. Some of these choices indicate an intention to strike directly against the Deep State, an intention that has been life threatening in the past. It cost John Kennedy his life and that almost cost him his life during the electoral campaign in two assassination attempts.

So he's an enormously brave person and I'd like to find something admirable otherwise in his personality.

Farris:

Gilbert, where can people find you?

Well, I prefer if they find me on my substack.com web platform. People can subscribe to that for free. It's not difficult.

Nobody's obliged to make contributions. I'd be very happy to see these numbers grow in the free subscriptions as well as paid. And they can find me pretty soon, once this war takes a definitive direction and ends, I will be publishing, republishing articles that I've written since before the war began in two volumes. And I hope people will find that a useful guide, not a history of the war, but of impressions coming from a person in the alternative media as I am, and recording my impressions of the way this war has twisted this way and that way as the United States and NATO have upped the ante and gone into ever more risky confrontation with Russia that we never anticipated.

Farris:

And what is your substack for people that are going to look for it?

Well, it's my first and last name glued together, gilbertdoctorow.substock.com and the name of it, - every one of these sub stacks has a name, - It's the "Armageddon Newsletter". I hope it's not prophetic. News from hell.

Farris:

Gilbert, Thank you so much for making time to speak with me. Have a great rest of your year. I'd love to have you back on as more conversations ahead and look forward to continuing to follow your work.

Doctorow:

Well, thanks for the invitation. I enjoyed this and I hope your viewers also enjoyed it.