Judging Freedom: Discussing Vladimir Putin’s latest moves on a 3-dimensional chessboard
The diplomatic feats of the Russian Foreign Service in the past week are stunning. One thinks immediately of the way they neutralized the Zelensky-Jake Sullivan-Tony Blinken would be propaganda blitz in Switzerland. But the feats of the Commander in Chief sitting in the Kremlin are still more dazzling.
Putin has outmaneuvered his critics on the Right by his conclusion of a treaty of mutual assistance, aka a military alliance with North Korea. And he has the Left, by which I mean the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, eating out of his hand now that he has brought back the glory days of Russia in Asia, now that he has described the colonialist parasitic West, and the USA in particular, in his Pyongyang speech in terms that could have come straight out of Pravda in the 1970s.
No one has commented on the broad smiles on the faces of Russian Communist deputies in the Duma upon the conclusion of the deal with Pyongyang. I do that here. After all, in the darkest days of the 1990s when the Yeltsin government abandoned all the hangers-on who profited from the USSR foreign policy, Russia’s Communist Party maintained close personal ties with the comrades abroad. Now they can raise their vodka shot glasses to the toast of “we told you so.”
All of this must warm the heart of the leader of the Communist Party of the RF Gennady Zyuganov, whose 80th birthday is being presently celebrated on Russian television with the release of a documentary film dedicated to his life and achievements, with testimonials from the highest ranks of the ruling United Russia Party.
However, I digress. My purpose in this essay is to present the link to today’s half-hour interview with Judge Napolitano in his widely watched program Judging Freedom. The discussion turned on two issues: was Putin’s peace offer made on the eve of the Swiss gathering a genuine offer of negotiations or an ultimatum to surrender; and what did Putin achieve in his visit to Pyongyang.
I hope that viewers will agree that these topics bear heavily on our chances for surviving the present confrontation between Russia and the Collective West in and around Ukraine.
Dr. Gilbert Doctorow : Putin’s Peace Plan Panned
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024