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Judge Napolitano
CHATS WITH
Gilbert Doctorow
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The discussion –between Judge Nap and his guest Gilbert Doctorow–centers around the political future of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the evolving geopolitical tensions between Russia, the West, and Europe amidst the Ukraine war. Doctorow argues that Putin may soon voluntarily relinquish power due to his declining ability to respond effectively to Western threats and maintain deterrence. Despite Putin’s long tenure of 25 years, there is a growing perception within Russia’s political elite that a generational change is necessary, with capable successors like Prime Minister Mishustin, Moscow Mayor Sobyanin, and Foreign Minister Lavrov’s potential replacement, Yermakov, being visible. However, these discussions are largely covert, not publicly acknowledged, and the general Russian population still shows high approval for Putin, driven by economic improvements in certain sectors since the war began.
The conversation also highlights the strategic missteps of Putin, particularly his reliance on Donald Trump’s potential return to power as a geopolitical safeguard, which is seen as naïve given ongoing Western escalations, including sanctions and arms deliveries to Ukraine. Doctorow foresees the West, especially the EU, preparing to confiscate substantial Russian state assets as collateral for Ukraine’s war financing, a move tantamount to economic warfare that Russia may interpret as an act of war. There is growing concern about Europe’s ramped-up militarization, especially Germany’s rearmament plans, and the geopolitical ambitions of European leaders who seek to transform the EU into a geopolitical, rather than purely economic, entity by opposing Russia.
Doctorow perceives a risk of prolonged conflict fueled by Western financial and military support to Ukraine, potentially serving as a “bridging loan” until a broader confrontation with Russia is deemed feasible. This scenario is complicated by internal European divisions and skepticism toward war policies among some member states. Doctorow concludes that Putin faces a critical choice: either to assert Russia’s red lines firmly or step down, as continued hesitation and ambiguity weaken his position and Russia’s strategic posture.
Key Insights
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Putin’s Political Viability is Eroding Internally: Despite his public popularity, Putin’s ability to maintain deterrence and respond effectively to Western pressures is weakening. This internal erosion is more acute among Russia’s political elite than the general populace, signaling potential shifts in power dynamics that are not yet openly acknowledged but simmer beneath the surface. The presence of capable successors indicates an emerging transition, albeit a cautious and controlled one given the risks of instability.
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The Taboo of Discussing Putin’s Departure: The political class in Russia does not openly debate Putin’s potential exit due to the regime’s closed nature and fear of destabilizing narratives. However, private conversations and the expert’s analysis suggest this is a real and pressing concern. This secrecy reflects the authoritarian context where public discourse is tightly controlled, but private dissent and strategic planning continue.
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Putin’s Strategic Miscalculation on US Politics: Doctorow criticizes Putin for placing unrealistic hope in Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency as a way to mitigate Western hostility. This misplaced reliance has blinded Moscow to the accelerating Western measures, including sanctions and arms supplies to Ukraine, exacerbating Russia’s strategic vulnerabilities. It highlights the dangers of tying national security strategy to unpredictable foreign political developments.
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Economic Warfare as a New Front: The EU’s move to seize Russian state assets and use them to fund Ukraine’s war effort marks a novel and aggressive approach to economic warfare. This tactic skirts around direct asset confiscation by framing funds as collateral for loans, but effectively acts as resource denial to Russia. Such economic measures risk escalating tensions into outright conflict, as Russia may interpret these as acts of war, potentially justifying military responses.
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⚙️ Europe’s Geopolitical Transformation and Militarization: The EU is shifting from a primarily economic union to a geopolitical actor, driven by leaders seeking to assert Europe’s global role, often through military empowerment. Germany, in particular, is reactivating its military-industrial capacity, signaling a significant rearmament phase. This strategic pivot is as much about internal political survival for European leaders as it is about countering Russia, indicating a complex interplay between domestic politics and international security.
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⏳ Prolonged Conflict as a Strategic Tool: Financial support to Ukraine is viewed as a “bridging loan” to sustain the war effort until European powers are prepared for a potential direct confrontation with Russia. This suggests that the Ukraine war is not just a regional conflict but part of a longer-term geo-strategic calculation involving preparation for a future broader conflict. It underscores the risks of escalation and the difficulty of achieving a timely resolution.
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⚖️ Internal European Divisions and Risks: Despite the push for militarization and confrontation with Russia, Europe faces significant internal divisions, with countries like Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic expressing Euroskepticism and resistance to war policies. These divisions complicate the EU’s unified geopolitical ambitions and could undermine the sustainability of its confrontational stance, adding unpredictability to the evolving security landscape.
Overall, the expert’s analysis presents a nuanced and sobering view of Russia’s internal political challenges, the strategic missteps of its leadership, and the complex and escalating geopolitical contest unfolding in Europe and beyond. The discussion emphasizes the interplay between domestic politics, international strategy, and the risks of miscalculation in a volatile environment.
SELECT COMMENTS
| Comrades, Well, I’ve been living in Yalta for nearly six years now, and been coming here since 2016, so I think I know a little something about how Russians see President Putin. His favorability rating has been over 80% since the Special Military Operation! Dramatic improvements have been since he was elected in 2000, and since I’ve been living here, they have accelerated. Construction is booming everywhere, new highways and roads; new hospitals and schools; a dramatic increase in the quality of living, wages are rising; unemployment is at 2%, and inflation is under control. There are more women with baby carriages and a toddler lagging behind than I can count! There is no such thing as crime, much less violent crime. Wherever one goes, large cities or small towns, people are safe. Young kids 7-10 yrs are walking home along and taking public transport…alone! The economy is stable in spite of massive US sanctions. The only ones hurt by them are all of us expats! No mail, no credit cards working. An Irish economist and analyst who has been working in Russia for 20 some years told a group I was with that if Putin ever lost the support of the Russian people he was finished! He explained that Putin’s main task was to balance two opposite poles. On the one hand there are powerful intellectuals and oligarchs who are western-leaning liberals and capitalists. On the other are equally powerful intellectuals and oligarchs who are patriotic Russians, like Putin. Every Russian I know from ordinary people to journalists and academics believes that this war will go on for another “few” years, and they are supporting the troops and the government in many civic and volunteer ways. There is no political chaos here. 180 or so different ethnic groups live peacefully together. Different religions live side by side with no difficulties. There is a very large Muslim community scattered across Russia. There are many Jews, and even Catholics and Protestants. Russians have strong family values. In fact, strong families is one of the things that hold this society together. Finally, Russians do not want war. Russia has never attacked Finland or Sweden, France, Germany, Italy or England. Ask anyone, and they will all tell you that Russia is a peaceful country that only wants to live in peace and harmony with all peoples. Russia was provoked to enter Ukraine! The “core” issues go back to 1991 when Clinton broke the agreement made to Gorbachev that NATO would not advance one inch Eastward. Now NATO has surrounded Russia and was intending to make Ukraine a NATO country. The coup in 2014 was organized, funded, and directed by Joe Biden, Victoria Nuland, John McCain, Lindsey Graham and others, and it has been the USA that has funded the war in the Donbas Republics for these past 11 years! Russia had no choice but to intervene to prevent Ukraine from entering NATO, and to protect large numbers of ethnic Russians, and Orthodox Christians. Russia is fighting this war to defend the Motherland, and for no other reason. I see no hope for a peaceful resolution to this conflict, nor to any other conflict the USA is waging militarily or with the use of soft power around the world. The empire will end when it collapses on its own, and the conflict in Ukraine will end when Ukraine raises the white flag and surrenders. Russia will dictate the terms, and no one else. Regis Regis Tremblay |
| Companeros,
I think Doctorow’s theory is wrong, but it’s important to have this discussion. |
| THE FOLLOWING FROM OUR DISTINGUISHED COLLABORATOR AMARYNTH FLOWER:
There are complexities here so this is a short summary of thought all of which is supported in the detail.
Doctorow: 5th Column nonsense. I listened to the Doctorow video with the judge, and this was my commentary in our Hearty Salon. Doctorow is a twat. He is another Paul Craig Roberts. (Paul Craig Roberts wants Putin to fight on behalf of Paul Craig Roberts and gets very worried if Putin does not do what Paul Craig Roberts wants Putin to do. He wants Putin to make him feel better about his administrations. This has now been for years, and about 7 years ago, my boss at the time and I made a joint decision to not even post his work, or pay attention to him in relation to Russia). Now for Doctorow, treating Putin as if Putin is stupid and always but always pretending knowledge from a ‘higher class’ that nobody knows about. Of course, people talk about when Putin will go — and they talk about who will take over. That is normal. If nobody heard it yet, Putin serves the Russian people and with China, the world. He will go when they want him to go, or when he cannot continue or when he feels he is slowing down. And he will leave Russia in excellent hands. Mr Lavrov looks tired these days, but there are a number of people who can take over from him. Not with the same flair, except for one or two that have flair but a little differently. Ryabkov? A very clever person, of course, but he is a little dumpling. I think the comments from Doctorow are 5th column work, and thumbs up and thumbs down on a video, according to Doctorow, is not a reliable metric except for quantity. One certainly cannot derive quality or meaning from it. And if he gives an anti-Putin speech, just imagine how many ‘Putin Must Go’ westerners will turn up. The following is what this is all about and what the kickback is all about. The types of Doctorow are all over the media, trying to cancel this message. It is behind a pay wall and we can only see a little. We will probably find it with a bit of searching. Of course Seymour Hersh reports “what his contacts say”. IS TRUMP IN COGNITIVE DECLINE? The view from inside is that the president has been slipping Perseveration is a medical term used in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and speech-language pathology to describe a particular response such as a phrase that is repeated or a gesture that is inappropriate. It’s a symptom most commonly seen in patients who have PTSD, autism, traumatic brain injury, or dementia. I thought of the term, which I heard many times over several years when a close relative was experiencing the degeneration of dementia, while viewing President Donald Trump’s seventy-one minute speech to an estimated eight hundred US military leaders who were assembled, for reasons still not clear, at the order of Pete Hegseth, the Army National Guard reserve major who is now the secretary of war, at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia, on September 30. After a rah-rah opening speech by Hegseth, the president delivered his usual mixture of personalized history and complaints—most notably, he has repeatedly claimed credit for solving international crises that he did not solve—that some of his close aides in the White House understand to be yet another sign of his increasing mental disorganisation and inability to focus at high-level meetings. Most significantly, I was told, Trump, always masterful in dealing with crowds, large or small, is no longer able to “read the room”—quickly size up the audience and let his instincts as a showman take over and get the audience engaged. It would have been refreshing, and perhaps unprecedented, for Trump to outline his views on foreign policy and give the assembled generals and admirals a chance to ask questions of their president. Instead, they got a reprise of Trump’s greatest triumphs. The president returned to one of his most misguided views—that of himself as a settler of wars. “I have settled so many wars since we’re here,” he said. “I’ve settled seven and yesterday we might have settled the biggest of them all,” referring to ongoing talks between Israel and Hamas. “Although,” Trump added, “I don’t know. Pakistan, India, was very big, both nuclear powers. I settled that.” There have been many newspaper reports from around the world disputing Trump’s accounts of the issues at hand, as well as his definition of what it means to “settle” a conflict… — Yeah, I distrust Gilbert…, even if they’re sincere, their class pretensions or affiliations seem false. The old IWW used to say that the employing class and the working class have nothing in common. I’m skeptical about unequivocal statements like that, but they do have a point. Academies exist, in measure, to capture and bring to heel otherwise dangerous intellectuals… and so I tend to distrust westzone academics…There are “rogue” intellectuals, however…and they never get tenure, and seldom even get hired….they find work in other areas… There is no talk of extending the New START Treaty – Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov He noted that Russia will manage without a response from the US if they are not interested in the New START initiative. My comments: The US or the EU or NATO never wanted a settlement. They wanted Russia to bend and the circus was set up. They want this war as a perpetual war. We need to understand now that Trump is only the circus master in his entirety. In terms of the so-called Gaza peace plan, we need to again understand now that Trump is only the circus master – the fellow who reads out with much fanfare, the next act – a part of the crew. Let the US Americans think deeply on this, and reconsider what exactly is happening with fear-pumping groups such as ICE. The State Duma of the Russian Federation has just denounced the intergovernmental agreement with the United States on the disposal of weapons-grade plutonium. The Russian government submitted the bill on denunciation. In addition to the agreement, it is proposed to denounce all accompanying documents. In particular, this concerns protocols regulating financing and civil liability for damage, as well as agreements on the disposal of plutonium covered by the agreement through irradiation in nuclear reactors. So, we have decoupling going on here. |
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