Gilbert Doctorow

For the first twenty years of the new millennium, it was obvious that Vladimir Putin and his team in the Kremlin were reactive, rather than proactive in nearly all dealings with the Collective West. Of course, I mean to say that was obvious to the substantial minority of professionals who trade in facts and follow … Continue reading “Meet the New Proactive Russia: The Kremlin Moves on to Plan B”

As the day of the US-Russian talks in Geneva over revising the security architecture in Europe approaches, analysts on both continents are publishing their prognoses of the outcome. Among them are great optimists that the ongoing acute confrontation can be scaled back, and also pessimists who see a clash of arms as inevitable with the … Continue reading “How Far Can Diplomacy Go? Awaiting the US-Russian Talks in Geneva on January 10”

The release a couple of days ago on the RF Ministry of Foreign Affairs website of its draft treaties to totally revise the European security architecture has been picked up by our leading mainstream media. The New York Times lost no time posting an article by its most experienced journalists covering Russia, Andrew Kramer and … Continue reading “A Surprise Russian Ultimatum: New Draft Treaties To Roll Back NATO”

It is now the morning after the widely anticipated video conference tête-à-tête between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and it is time to put our Kremlinology skills to work. By that I mean to say there is very little today in the public domain to provide clear answers to what may … Continue reading “Biden-Putin Summit: Who Won the Match of Wills?”

In my intense, nearly daily exchange of emails with the late Professor Steve Cohen in 2015 before and during our incorporation of The American Committee for East-West Accord, Steve often expressed his deep regret that American political dialogue on policy towards Russia had become so consolidated and closed to dissenting views, which were now vilified … Continue reading “Then and Now: Dissenters From American Foreign Policy on Russia in the 1980s and Today”

Thursday, shortly after the White House issued its four-page Fact Sheet on the sanctions about to be imposed on Russia (“Imposing Costs for Harmful Foreign Activities by the Russian Government”), I was invited by RT International in Moscow to be a “first responder” and provide an analytical comment at the top of their 16.00 news … Continue reading “Bombast From Washington: Joe Biden’s Russia Sanctions”

In recent months it has not been just Covid that raised the temperature in Europe’s hotheads: Cold War fever has set in among the Brussels leadership, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel rallying the troops against public enemy number one, the Russian Federation. In the United States, … Continue reading “Cold War Fever in Brussels”

In the USA, all politics is about one country only: itself. The Rest of the World is only a stage setting, a tableau against which American politicians posture and mud wrestle with one another. The latest and perhaps most serious manifestation of this indifference to the fallout of domestic political rhetoric on the world beyond … Continue reading “Biden on ‘Killer’ Putin”

The three months from elections in the USA at the start of November through the first couple of weeks of the Biden presidency in February have been very turbulent, with dramatic changes in the balance of political forces virtually from week to week. Some of these contests have taken place in the courts or in … Continue reading “The Post-Trump American Political Landscape”

When last week Antony Blinken emerged as the candidate likely to be tapped by Joe Biden to be his nominee for either National Security Advisor or Secretary of State, those of us in the camp dissenting from the ‘bash Russia’ policies on Capitol Hill during the Trump years groaned at the thought of the same … Continue reading “Will Antony Blinken’s Past Catch Up With Him?”