All posts by natyliesb

China’s Security Minister Advises Xi That Risk of Direct War Between US & China Highest Since 1989; US Flies Sorties Over South China Sea

U.S. Military Bases Surrounding China, 2017
Foreign Policy Journal

Amid continued sensationalist media reporting on Covid-19 and China, tensions mounted as the US flew sorties over the South China Sea late last week. According to reporting from Air Force Technology.com:

US Indo-Pacific Command has confirmed that two airforce bombers have conducted a 32- hour round-trip sortie over the South China Sea.

The operation included two US Air Force B-1B Lancers from the 28th Bomb Wing, Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota.

The sortie was undertaken as part of a joint US Indo-Pacific Command and US Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) Bomber Task Force (BTF) mission, to reaffirm US Air Force presence in this contested region and reassure its allies.

In a statement, US Indo-Pacific Command said: “This operation demonstrates the US Air Force’s dynamic force employment model in line with the National Defense Strategy’s objectives of strategic predictability with persistent bomber presence, assuring allies and partners.”

This exercise followed a similar bomber run conducted jointly the week before with Japan. Antiwar.com noted that provocative US military actions in the South China Sea have tended to come from the Navy and that the use of air bombers appears to represent an escalation:

With the US Navy constantly strained, the use of planes might be a more convenient option for the US. At the same time, US planes flying deep into Chinese territory to challenge China creates an even bigger risk of a confrontation in the area.

Officials are presenting these as “deterrence missions” as a way to justify them. The US military almost certainly wouldn’t consider comparable operations from China over US territory a “deterrence,” however, and if anything these are deliberately provocative.

These escalations are occurring a month after Chinese president Xi Jinping was reportedly presented with a report from his security minister warning that, amid the barrage of anti-China rhetoric coming from the US media and political class regarding the coronavirus – now including calls for an international commission to investigate China and WHO, the risk of conflict between the two countries was higher than at any time since the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. According to Reuters, which originally reported on the existence of the warning to Xi:

BEIJING (Reuters) – An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar with the paper told Reuters.

The report, presented early last month by the Ministry of State Security to top Beijing leaders including President Xi Jinping, concluded that global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the sources said.

As a result, Beijing faces a wave of anti-China sentiment led by the United States in the aftermath of the pandemic and needs to be prepared in a worst-case scenario for armed confrontation between the two global powers, according to people familiar with the report’s content, who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

Read the full article here.

Reporting yesterday in the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post confirmed that the Chinese political class has now accepted that both countries are in the midst of a new Cold War.

“The United States and China are actually in the era of a new Cold War,” said Shi Yinhong, an international relations professor at China’s Renmin University and an adviser to China’s State Council, effectively the country’s cabinet.

“Different from the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, the new Cold War between the US and China features full competition and a rapid decoupling. The US-China relationship is no longer the same as that of a few years ago, not even the same as that of a few months ago.”

….Yu Wanli, deputy director at the Lian An Academy think tank in Beijing, agreed that US-China relations were at their lowest point since the Tiananmen crackdown.

“I had always been optimistic about the US-China relationship until recently. In the past, you could always find pro-China voices on the US political spectrum, but there is no such voice in the Trump administration,” Yu said, pointing to a recent Pew poll of 1,000 Americans which found that 66 per cent of respondents held an unfavourable view of China.

Read the full article here.

“The View from Moscow: Understanding Russia and U.S.-Russia Relations” Now Available on Amazon Kindle

Now available for purchase at Amazon Kindle. The soft cover print edition will be available in the coming weeks. At that time, I will send out another post and an official press release Here is the book description:

Russia is the world’s other nuclear superpower – the only country that has the ability to wipe the United States off the map within 30 minutes.

With Russia and the U.S. currently having 1,700 nuclear weapons pointed at each other on hair trigger alert, our relationship with Russia is one of the most critical, requiring a rational policy.

In order to conduct a rational foreign policy, we must understand the other country’s point of view. That doesn’t mean one must agree with it, but we must know how Russia perceives its own interests so we can determine what they may be willing to risk or sacrifice on behalf of those perceived interests. It’s also essential to determine areas of common cause and cooperation. Understanding the Russian viewpoint means understanding Russia’s history, geography and culture. The western corporate media – and even some of our alternative media – has a very poor track record in providing this crucial service with respect to many of the nations with whom we’ve already gone to war. The so-called experts they consult often have conflicts of interest, nefarious agendas, and lack an objective understanding of the nation they are speaking about. This has certainly been the case when it comes to reporting on Russia, a country with which the stakes are potentially much higher for the entire world.

This book fills the void left by much of our media in understanding the Russian point of view, which can help us formulate a reasoned policy toward the world’s other nuclear superpower.

PM Mishustin Tests Positive for Covid 19, Deputy PM Belousov to Take Over Duties for Now; Putin Oversees Government Meeting on Economic Response

As the number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 surpassed 100,000 yesterday with 1073 deaths, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin was reported to have tested positive for the virus and will go into quarantine. RT reported the following:

It appears Mishustin – who replaced Dmitry Medvedev as Prime Minister in January – received the result of his test while at work. Earlier in the day, he headed a governmental session, conducted remotely. His diagnosis makes him the second major world leader known to have contracted the infection – after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. 

“It just became known that the tests that I’ve passed for coronavirus gave a positive result,” Mishustin told the president “In this regard, and in accordance with the requirements of Rospotrebnadzor [the national health watchdog], I must self-isolate and comply with the instructions of doctors: I have to do this to protect my colleagues.”

“What’s happening to you now could happen to anyone,” Putin replied. The President assured Mishustin that no major decisions would be taken without his input while he battles the infection.

In the meantime, First Deputy Prime Minister, Andrey Belousov will take over his duties:

Putin subsequently signed a decree making Belousov interim head of government. Belousov is a Moscow-native, like Mishustin, and has served in various positions, under both Putin and Medevedev, over the past two decades. Since 2013, he has been an economic advisor at the Kremlin. 

Belousov has a very different economic view than many of the political class that has held sway in Russia who are generally economic liberals (Alexei Kudrin, Dmitry Medvedev, Anton Siluanov, et al.). Belousov, who is close to Putin, is considered a statist who believes in the government investing in robust economic programs to help the population. He is playing a large role in the implementation of Putin’s national infrastructure projects. Mishustin did some shuffling when he came to power in January so that the liberal Finance Minister (Siluanov) wouldn’t have to report directly to Belousov as he normally would have, but directly to Mishustin. Now Siluanov will be reporting to Belousov. If Mishustin recovers and returns in a week or two, then this likely will have little impact on Russian policy, but if Mishustin becomes very ill and is out of commission for a long stretch of time, things could get interesting in terms of how to steer the post-pandemic economy.

Putin presides over a government meeting by video conference, April 2020. Photo courtesy of the Kremlin

Putin, who has extended the paid lockdown until May 11th, presided over a meeting the yesterday in connection with the economic impacts of the pandemic. Here is the Kremlin’s transcript of the meeting that you can read for yourself to determine if Putin is just sitting on his duff in an undisclosed location contemplating his navel as much of the western press would have us believe:

Taking part in the meeting were Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Alexei Gromov, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, Presidential Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov, Presidential Aides Dmitry Kalimulin and Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of Labour and Social Protection Anton Kotyakov, Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov, Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov, Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov, Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin and Head of the Federal Tax Service Daniil Yegorov.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, good afternoon.

Welcome to all. Let us get down to work.

This week, during a meeting with heads of regions, I instructed the Government to develop a national action plan to normalise business life and restore the economy, employment and people’s incomes.

Let me stress, we must not just stablise the situation. We know the world is changing. The crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic is affecting key markets and the system of cooperation ties.

Companies, including Russian companies, are searching for and quickly adopting completely new business models based on digital and other advanced solutions. The importance of scientific and technological development is growing dramatically; and many countries that have such potential are developing it.

Let me repeat that, when planning a long-term strategy, we must consider all these factors and this new reality.

In addition, I have asked the Government to draft another package of urgent support measures for people and the economy. I am referring to decisions that must come into force very soon.

Colleagues, you know that the situation that people and companies daily face is complicated and requires new steps, actions and prompt response.

Relevant specific proposals are being drafted. I know that the Government, the Presidential Executive Office and all of us will work on this. Today let us discuss these in more detail.

But before we get started, I would like to say, or to be more precise, repeat the following.

It is important to not simply adopt the decisions that are being proposed. They must be implemented with tangible results for the people, business and the economy. This is the basis, the essence of all our work.

In this context, I would like to ask you to prepare and present detailed reports on the implementation of the extraordinary measures that we adopted in March and April, including the following specific decisions. I will remind you of them.

First, the organization of additional federal compensation to doctors, paramedics, nurses, junior medical personnel, and ambulance crews that are directly working with coronavirus patients. These decisions have been adopted. The main point now is when exactly they will receive the money.

Second, what about the special insurance for the specialists that are now helping these patients, risking their lives and health? We agreed on introducing a system similar to the insurance system for Armed Forces personnel. Has the necessary documentation been prepared?

Third, what about the additional monthly payments of 5,000 rubles for a child up to 3 years old to families that are entitled to maternity capital? Let me remind you that these payments are due for April, May and June.

Fourth, those who lost their jobs after March 1 will receive the highest unemployment benefit of 12,130 rubles, in April, May and June. Families with children where the parents are currently unemployed will be issued an additional payment of 3,000 rubles per underage child a month. I would like you to report on the implementation of these measures and whether this aid is perceptible for the people.

Fifth, it has been decided that low-income families will receive payments per each child aged between three and seven not from July 1 as planned, but from June 1. Moreover, the income of a given family will be calculated based on the current situation. I expect you to provide detailed information on whether these payments can be made strictly on time.

Sixth, starting on May 18, small and medium-sized companies in the affected industries that have preserved their personnel must receive financial assistance to pay April and May salaries to their staff. The payments will amount to one minimum wage per employee. Please report on the streamlining of this support mechanism and whether it is clear and convenient for the businesses.

I expect you to report on these and other matters by May 6. I would like to remind everyone that by May 5 the Government and Rospotrebnadzor, working together with the working group of the State Council, are to submit their recommendations on the gradual easing of the self-isolation rules after the May holidays.

Together, these reports and recommendations will be used to assess the effectiveness of the measures taken and to determine the further steps to be carried out by the federal and regional authorities.

Now let us get back to discussing the decisions we are to implement in the near future. Let us hear our colleagues from the Government.

A View of Russia from the Heart of the EU: An Interview with Gilbert Doctorow

The following is a written interview conducted with Gilbert Doctorow by email over the past two weeks. Doctorow is an American based in Brussels, Belgium who is an analyst of international affairs with a focus on Russia. He is a fluent Russian speaker and has experience in international business, including in Russia and Eastern Europe. Many of the questions are based on his recently published book of essays, A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs. He blogs at https://gilbertdoctorow.com/.

Natylie Baldwin: In one of your essays, “Russia-China Strategic Partnership,” you discuss how you see common characterizations of Russia as the “junior partner” as erroneous.  Can you explain why you think so?

Gilbert Doctorow: The designation of Russia as a ‘junior partner’ in the relationship of near-ally that it holds with China is a designation applied by Russia’s detractors in the West who insist that the great inequality of the two parties in terms of population, GDP, and other material metrics means instability in the relationship. In a word, they are telling us that the Russians will find the “junior’ status demeaning and will want out. The implication for policy made in the West is that the Russians can be drawn away from China if we propose the right “carrots.” This is precisely the message that Henry Kissinger was giving to candidate Donald Trump in 2016 and then to the newly inaugurated President in early 2017. That was the whole logic of Trump’s offer to find an accommodation with Vladimir Putin, a policy which the Democrats seized upon to wreck his presidency.

But returning to the question you posed, what would be those carrots that the U.S. was prepared to offer to the Russians:  surely they were no more than withdrawal of the sanctions imposed on Russia by the USA and by the EU in 2014. That would, in the view of Kissinger, in the view of most analysts, constitute a return to “normal.” 

However, this Western thinking is blinkered.  A return to pre-2014, pre-Crimean annexation relations does not amount to “normal” from the Russian perspective. In effect, relations between Russia and the West have not been normal ever since President George W. Bush cancelled the missile-defense [ABM] treaty in 2002 and then launched his war on Iraq the following year. The Russians emerged as leading objectors to that war, together with France, Germany and Belgium, depriving the U.S. of cover for its aggression in the United Nations. For that, the Russians would have to pay a price and they did in terms of all their commercial, diplomatic and military interests. Thus, “normal” relations ended already in 2003, but I have not heard anyone suggest that the clock might be turned back that far.  After that came the U.S.-led Information War and defamation of Putin from 2007 following his speech at the Munich Security Conference denouncing U.S. policy towards his country.  And then in 2012 came the passage of the Magnitsky Act in the USA which had as its objective to position Russia as a pariah state.  There is absolutely nothing normal about relations from that point on. If we put aside the policy implications driving Western characterization of Russia as the ‘junior partner’ in its relationship with China, we find that Russia is far less a dependent and pliant partner with China than the European Union, or more precisely, the NATO member states, are in their relationship with the U.S.  All of the elements of military, trade, diplomatic cooperation between Russia and China show clear mutual interest and benefit, with neither side dominating.

NB: You also said that you see this Russian-Chinese partnership as comparable to the French-German partnership that has helped to “steer” the EU.  Can you elaborate more on that comparison?

Doctorow: From its very inception the peace mission known as the European Economic Community, then later the European Union has been led by the countries whose rivalry spawned two world wars, France and Germany.  However comparable these two economies may have been in the beginning, over time it has been obvious to all neutral observers that Germany pulled far ahead of France in its development. This dis-balance was further enlarged when the Federal Republic merged with the GDR, that is, East Germany in October 1990, adding substantially to its population mass and territory. And yet no one speaks of a senior partner or junior partner in this duo.  The French balance the equation in other areas, primarily by providing the political weight and respectability which Germany, given its disastrous past under Hitler, cannot do without. However much the Alternativ fuer Deutschland may shout that it is time for Germany to be free from the sins of its past, reality and the consciousness of the rest of the world says otherwise. 

Something similar may be said of the Russian contribution to their political and diplomatic partnership with China.  Russia has what may be the world’s most sophisticated and experienced diplomatic service in the world.  It was the co-determiner of the world’s fate with the USA for the forty odd years of the Cold War and established close ties with a large part of what was then called the Developing Countries, now called the Emerging Markets.  To be sure, the Chinese have made great strides in establishing their world presence via the One Belt, One Road initiative. But the Russians have one other dimension, one equalizer that few point to: it shares with the United States the position as lead nuclear weapons power in the world, with approximately 43% of all nuclear warheads in its armory, the same as Washington. China, by past decisions, remains a minor nuclear power even today.

NB: You have said that Henry Kissinger is one of the more capable geo-strategic thinkers but that he has – by choice – not had a good understanding of Russia.  Can you explain what you mean by that?  Do you still believe him to be influential on Trump’s foreign policy thinking and actions? 

Doctorow: Allow me to reverse the order of my response and start with your second part, which is the easier part.  Henry Kissinger enjoyed a certain rapport with Trump into the spring of 2017 when he fell out of favor. Why? Because Kissinger’s recommendation of an outreach to Russia for the sake of a grand geopolitical realignment, prying the Kremlin away from Beijing, failed very quickly on two counts, discrediting his personal utility to Trump.

Firstly, there was the flat ‘nyet’ which came back from Putin, for whom loyalty to longstanding friends, in this case, President Xi of China, excluded entirely the possibility of the kind of cynical betrayal Kissinger had in mind. This was not merely personal chemistry but a considerable number of joint commercial projects binding the economic interests of the two countries for decades to come. Secondly, because the very hint of an outreach to the Kremlin threw oil on the fires of anti-Russian hysteria that the Democrats were developing in their ‘we was robbed’ explanation of their electoral defeat in November 2016 and threatened the further functioning of the federal government.  That being said, in the more general sense, Kissinger as the greatest living exponent of the Realist School in International Relations, has remained to this day an influence on policy under Trump, who rejects flatly the Wilsonian Idealism, the whole ideology of universal values that underpin the Democrats and Liberalism in their political creed. 

As regards Kissinger’s poor understanding of Russia, this is something that I wrote about extensively in my 2010 book entitled “Great Post-Cold War American Thinkers on International Relations.” In that book I examined in particular Kissinger’s master work “Diplomacy” published in 1994 wherein he set out his expectations on how the road ahead would be towards a multipolar world in which interests and not ideology decided the ever-shifting alignments of nations under ‘balance of power’ principles.  From Kissinger’s writings about Russia in that major opus as well as in his later books I concluded that he had no feel for the country and that he probably had read little or nothing about Russia since his undergraduate days at Harvard, other than the writings of fellow Realist George Kennan – another great name whose understanding of Russia was often based on smoke and mirrors, on his reading of Russian literature rather than Russian history or on detailed knowledge of present circumstances in Russia.  That is a point which I developed at length in an essay entitled “George Kennan and the Russian Soul” published by the Harriman Institute of Columbia University in 2011.

My exposé of Kissinger no doubt will confound many observers, because the general view of the man is that he is a voracious reader.  Moreover, Kissinger has always received an especially warm welcome in the Kremlin and is believed by Council of Foreign Relations members to be a polymath. I will not dare question the intellectual powers of the summa cum laude graduate of Harvard that Kissinger was. The brilliance of his writing style is undeniable. However, style and content are different metrics.

To my understanding, Kissinger was entirely satisfied with the insights into the Russian psyche that he got as an undergraduate at Harvard from the leading professor of Russian history of that period, Michael Karpovich, who incidentally also strongly influenced the views of Kissinger’s fellow students – Zbigniew Brzezinski and Richard Pipes.

This triad under Karpovich’s sway in turn set the tone for American foreign policy towards Russia during the Cold War. At the very least, one can say that they justified policy decisions which were made for other reasons, namely power politics.  And what we are talking about here is the tradition of Russian historiography that began with the 19th century historian Vasily Kliuchevsky and passed through A.A. Kizevetter and the great Liberal politician, historian Pavel Miliukov. Karpovich was the continuator.  This was the Liberal school of historiography which was Anglophile and anti-tsarist. It is from this school that Kissinger arrived at the absurd conclusion that the Russian Empire was fragile and had to expand geographically by wars of conquest lest it collapse.  This notion of Russian expansionism as part of the national DNA and as something unrelated to the colonialism and imperialism that all of the European powers had practiced has remained with Kissinger ever since and to all appearances was never reconsidered. The same might be said of his never ending repetition that Russia had always been apart from Europe, since it never participated in the Reformation, in the Age of Discovery, in the Enlightenment, etc. These are smug platitudes that are easily contested if you do your homework.

NB: Do you still see the world as shaping up to be a bi-polar order with the US and Europe on one side and China-Russia on the other?  How do you see other countries aligning?

Doctorow: Ever since America’s unipolar moment began to unravel during the presidency of George W. Bush, it has been fashionable to speak of a multipolar world. We were told that power in the world has been redistributed among many players so that it is diffuse and that with the advent of Al Qaeda non-state actors have also taken on an important share. However, I believe this is an illusion and it is not unrelated to the illusion that nearly all of our policy establishment share about economic might spelling Hard Power might.  Yes, economic power is far more broadly distributed today among nations than it was just twenty years ago, not to mention in the times of the Cold War.  But Hard Power and precisely the ability to project military force outside a given nation’s neighborhood is not distributed in the same way.  On the contrary, there are only two – three countries in the world that have sufficiently advanced military capabilities on a global scale.

The United States is far and away the most powerful in this regard.  But Russia is not so far behind if we speak of cutting edge strategic weapon systems, not military bases. And China, by its own policy choices, remains a distant third today, focusing as it does on its immediate neighborhood. 

There is not a single European country, nor all of the European countries taken together which can do what Russia did alone in Syria. To match that, they depend on the missing parts of equipment, satellite guided intelligence, etc. that they receive from the USA. There is not a single European country which has the specialized military anti-biological warfare equipment and procedures which the Russians demonstrated in their recent ‘mercy mission’ to Lombardy to combat the coronavirus. For all of these reasons, I insist we live in a bipolar world, with the United States and Europe on one side and Russia and China on the other.  As for the other countries, they are only rarely compelled to take sides, and then they try their best to appease both blocs, as we see, for example in the cases where the S-400 defensive missile systems and other Russian arms are purchased over and against U.S. objections and threats.

NB: You suggested that Russia may have a moderating influence on China as the latter’s power increases.  Why?  Do you think this is likely to be the case after Putin leaves office?

Doctorow: Thus far, China has been reasonably restrained in the face of U.S. challenges to its influence in its home region – as, for example, the South China Sea – without any need for Russian advice. The reason was, until Trump unleashed his tariff wars, that the United States market was immense and profitable for China, so that it could not bark – let alone bite – the Americans.

Going forward I would say that the military and diplomatic partnership with Russia surely gives Beijing greater confidence in its own security and in this very qualified way helps to keep it on a steady course in the face of U.S. encirclement and other provocations.

NB: In another essay you discuss the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS), which was put out in December of 2017.  The focus of that NSS was on great power competition with Russia and China rather than a struggle between good and evil.  You said that the language of this NSS reflected a return to realism/pragmatism and the concept of a “balance of power” in international relations.  Can you go into this more?

Doctorow: As I explained in the article – and as I developed further in a follow-up article in which I addressed objections to my argumentation on the NSS which appeared in the Comments section of several portals that re-posted my original article – the 2017 National Security Strategy was a major step in the right direction for the thinking guiding U.S. foreign policy, stripping away 25 years of universal values claptrap and getting at the substance of challenges to U.S. global hegemony. Words count, ideas count even if the actions of this President during his first year in office contradicted the words and ideas of the NSS, partly because of the constraints imposed on Trump by Congress, partly by the actions, such as the Tomahawk attack on a Syrian air base, that were intended to chase away the circling buzzards of impeachment – and effectively did just that.

In the same article, I noted that the NSS has intellectual inconsistencies due to mixed authorship – partly written by the holdover federal government experts with their ‘idealist’ biases who by their job description had to be put to work on it and then its being extensively edited by people around Trump who gave it the predominantly ‘realist’ cast that sets it apart from anything we have seen in decades.  I do hope that readers will enjoy my textual analysis used to elucidate these conflicting strands in the NSS document. The method I employed comes from traditional historical research and I believe I have used it to great advantage to make sense of other key documents in the public space, as for example, to uncover obvious forgeries promoted by the New York Times or by The German Marshall Fund.

NB: You also said in your essay on this NSS that “a foreign policy based on universal values can only lead to war.”  You seem to be saying that the insistence on adherence to universal values leaves no room for compromise and diplomacy.   What are the implications for the concept of pluralism versus universalism in the U.S.’s outlook on international relations as reflected in Trump’s NSS?

Doctorow: You have to look closely at the language used in the NSS to appreciate how and why it takes us away from potential conflict and even war that the idealist school encouraged. The entire moralistic rhetoric of an ‘axis of evil’ is totally absent from the NSS.  The personalization of politics and demonization of the leaders of Russia, China and other key ‘competitors’ to U.S. global leadership is gone entirely. Indeed, these countries are precisely competitors and not ‘adversaries’ let alone flat-out enemies. We are in competition with the whole world, meaning with our nominal allies as well as with the likes of Russia and China. Those two just happen to pose an existential threat if we are careless in how we deal with them. At the same time, the NSS dispenses entirely with the legalistic argumentation about ‘violations of international law’ that dominated American rhetoric during the Cold War.  Since the thrust of the NSS, as a basically realist school document, is defense of national interests rather than values, diplomacy and the art of compromise are foremost.  You can and should make compromises that serve your interests. By [the idealist] definition, you are loath to compromise on values and have nothing to negotiate there.

NB: How do you think the Trump administration has lived up to this NSS?

Doctorow: As I have mentioned earlier, the Trump administration has not done a very good job of implementing the NSS principles for reasons outside its control – namely the vicious war being waged on it by the Democrats ever since the inauguration.  This destructive partisanship is unlikely to end if, as now seems improbable, Trump wins a second term.

NB: In the January/February 2018 issue of Foreign Affairs, Joe Biden published a 14-page article called “How to Stand Up to the Kremlin:  Defending Democracy Against its Enemies.”  In this article, Biden repeats every caricature and negative myth about contemporary Russia, vilifying Putin, etc.  Give us an overview of your critique of Biden’s article and its assumptions. What do you think it portends in terms of foreign policy under a Biden administration?

Doctorow: I stand by my remarks on Joe Biden’s piece in “Foreign Affairs” as having been a propaganda exercise in denigration of Russia that falls into line with the Democratic Party’s allegations of a Trump-Putin collusion to thwart the will of the American people. The interesting question is not so much why Biden wrote his article as why “Foreign Affairs” magazine welcomed it when otherwise the magazine’s editorial position was already moving away from complacency that, post-Trump, the United States would snap back quickly to its traditional leading position in the Free World. 

Though Biden’s article was backward rather than forward looking with respect to Russia policy, it would be an error to assume that his attacks on the ‘Putin regime’ will guide what comes in a Biden administration. If Trump is dumped in November, the Democrats can step back from Russia-bashing which has reached hysterical proportions, become a sort of mass hypnosis defying any common sense understanding of the way the world works. Thus, paradoxically, a Biden victory could be the prelude to a new ‘re-set’ in relations with Russia, though always within the narrow constraints we saw under the Obama administration. That is to say, without ever addressing Russian concerns over the security architecture in Europe that underlie the Kremlin’s over-all behavior.

NB: In your essay, “Rex Tillerson in the New York Times: Pride and Prejudice,” you offer an intriguing insight about Trump and his ex-Secretary of State Tillerson, that is derived from your early years of working with executives in the world of big business.  You point out that, though they may be reasonably intelligent in terms of an IQ test, their experience as executives in the western business world has led them to learn the wrong lessons since major businesses at the top of their industry are typically cushioned from the consequences of bad or risky decisions.  Can you talk more about that and what the ramifications are of trying to apply that mindset to governance and foreign affairs?

Doctorow: The ‘cushion’ that CEO’s of market leaders enjoy, the cushion that protects them against the consequences of bad business decisions is monopoly profit margins, so that in the end the consumer – not the shareholder – pays for their mistakes. Such companies can enter new markets and make all the wrong choices of local partners due to sloppy research or reliance on the gut instincts of the chief executive rather than the recommendations researched by middle management with their MBAs or by outside consultants – a role I also practiced between corporate executive positions. These mistakes are eventually corrected after much unnecessary red ink, but the corporation and the public only sees the end result when the numbers are positive and that reinforces confidence in the system. I am speaking now on the basis of my personal experience within several major international corporations as regards their start-up of operations in Russia and Eastern Europe. My position was never higher than middle management, but given the high expectations from the Russian market in particular, I accompanied and worked closely with our respective Vice President, International and the Board, to plan and implement strategy in Russia so I saw the figures and heard the thinking at the top level directly.  Transferring this to government, and to foreign policy formulation what we find is hubris in the US ‘power ministries’ leads us into one quagmire after another for which no one pays the bill.

NB: In another essay, you write about your conversations with several influential people with whom you attended an Orthodox Christmas dinner in the French-speaking area of Belgium in 2017.  What were their views of Russia?  How did they see the European and Belgian relationship with the U.S.? 

Doctorow: My observations drawn from participation in Russian Christmas themed gala dinners at French-speaking Belgium’s most prestigious, ‘royal’ gentlemen’s club in 2019 and 2020 [also] bear on the contradictions between the country’s political and social elites over policy towards Russia, the value of NATO and American global leadership. By social elites I mean members of Belgian aristocracy, people serving the monarch and his extended family, and also high level entrepreneurs in finance, insurance and the like, not corporate executives who tend to be more cautious in expressing their views. At the champagne cocktails before dinner, at the dinner table, and in the bar taking coffee afterwards, these people and their wives spoke to me admiringly of Russia and its culture. They gustily joined in the cries of ‘bottoms up’ (пей до дна! in Russian) when waiters carried shot glasses of vodka to the VIPs seated in our midst. In his opening remarks to the dinner, the club’s president recalled the three hundred years of good relations with Russia dating back to the visit by Tsar Peter the Great to the Belgian curative springs of Spa. Russian culture, its classical literature, its museums, its opera houses and concert halls were the first associations mentioned by my interlocutors from among the 175 dinner participants. They deplored the present confrontations with Putin’s Russia led by the USA and NATO, with the unfailing support of the Belgian Government. To be specific, they deplore what they see as Belgian subservience to America that works directly against the national interest. Regrettably these views by the social elite, which correspond precisely to the views I encounter in the street among workaday Belgians, are not reflected in the print and broadcast media which remain obsequious to NATO and the USA even if they are Trump-skeptic.

NB: In January of this year, Putin announced a set of proposed constitutional amendments, which have now been approved by the Russian parliament and are set to be voted on in the future by the Russian public.  Many knowledgeable Russia analysts, including you and I, thought that this signified that Putin did in fact intend to step down in 2024 and was beginning the process of shepherding a transition.  However, in March, another amendment was proposed in parliament and deemed constitutional by the court, which would set the clock to zero in terms of the presidency.  This would allow Putin to run for two more terms in 2024.  Putin has accepted the validity of this amendment.  You wrote an article criticizing this amendment.  Can you explain the reasons for your concerns?  How does the Covid-19 crisis affect your critique, if at all?

Doctorow: Your mention of Covid-19 in this connection is highly relevant, because many commentators make this association and see the changes in the proposed constitutional amendments from their first announcement in mid-January to their final formulation for purposes of a referendum in March as falling within the influence of Covid-19 on Russian politics.  I disagree. I believe the response of the Russian government to Covid-19 is to be found in another set of questions, namely the delegation of responsibility for initiating and implementing the fight against the virus to Moscow city mayor Sobyanin and other regional authorities, with the President and his administration taking more of an observer posture. This is being presented to us by ‘all the usual suspects’ in the Russophobic American foreign policy community as a demonstration of the President’s avoiding taking direct responsibility for highly unpopular lock-down measures. No, it is just good common sense to allow devolution of power in health matters that differ very much from one geographic location to another in the vast country that is Russia. Meanwhile, the constitutional reform has undergone change from launch to final proposition on a separate trajectory, I believe. It’s being loaded with overwhelmingly popular provisions enshrining the values of the Putin governance, namely the mixed social economy, protection of the living standards of the broad population and indexation of pensions, defense of every inch of national territory, defense of the central role of motherhood and the family – all of this was introduced to sugar coat the bitter pill of lifelong rule by Putin that comes about from the last-minute introduction of what we may call the Tereshkova amendment, after the female astronaut turned parliamentarian who placed before the Duma a resolution on setting the clock back to zero on Putin’s service in the presidency.  I see this as a crude attempt by the ruling United Russia [party] to seize control of the national political agenda and squeeze out entirely the Duma opposition parties, which is to say, to overturn the plans of Putin set out on January 15. This sets the stage for a very bitter parliamentary election next year and, if election rigging once again appears as it did in 2011, for mass demonstrations against the regime that will have unforeseeable consequences. I very much regret that Putin’s hint at greater power sharing with all parliamentary parties was nipped in the bud.

NB: So you think that Putin staying in power past 2024 is not necessarily what Putin wants – that his original announcement on January 15th reflected more of what he really wanted to see going forward?

Doctorow: I am certain that Putin does not want to stay in power beyond 2024.  To anyone listening attentively, he said precisely that a couple of months ago in a televised exchange with someone from the crowd during one of his meetings with the general public on the road. When asked about remaining in office he made reference to the bad old days of [Soviet leader] Leonid Brezhnev, saying he did not want to become another ‘mumbling’ dotard running the Kremlin. In his initial proposal of constitutional reform set out in his speech to the Duma and Federation Council, Putin spoke not abstractly like a law professor but in personal terms about his impressions from meeting regularly with all the Duma parties, namely that they are all patriotic. That I assume to mean that Just Russia, the LDPR and Communists are all deserving of a share of power as the balance between executive, legislature and judiciary is re-juggled to confer more power and responsibility on the legislature. Yes, Putin’s proposal was imprecise, approximate. This is another indication that it came from his own pen, not from someone in the presidential administration – and it pointed in the direction of greater parliamentarism not stasis as we may expect from the Tereshkova amendment.

NB: You seem to also have some concerns about the degree to which Putin is still serving as the ultimate arbiter of interests in Russia. What kinds of jockeying for power and influence might already be occurring?  Do you have any thoughts on how it may ultimately play out?

Doctorow: As for unruly jockeying for power within the Kremlin these past few months, there is no reason for surprise. The key issues before Russia, namely the oil price and supply war with Saudi Arabia and the USA, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the question of how best to tackle the coronavirus epidemic, striking a balance between securing public health and securing the economy – such issues are highly divisive among elites everywhere, so why should Russia be any different?  They are compounded in Russia by the absence of an established order of succession and the prospect of heading into unknown territory following Putin’s possible departure from office at the end of his present mandate in 2024. Has the “Liberal,” pro-Western faction of Dmitry Medvedev and Alexei Kudrin really been knocked out? It is too early to say. And what exactly does the present ascendancy of the technocrats, the quintessential “хозяйственники” (effective managers as opposed to politicians) Sobyanin and the new prime minister Mishustin mean for Russia’s political future? Moreover, who stands behind the now heavily promoted chairman of the State Duma, United Russia champion, Viacheslav Volodin?  These questions merit much more attention than I see in the writings of our peers, who focus almost exclusively on Putin and ignore the context of power fights around him.