The Great Game’s other principal presenter: Dmitry Simes
As I noted on these pages more than a year ago, Dmitry Simes, the former adviser and traveling companion of Richard Nixon in his post-presidential years, later, following the president’s death, head of the Nixon Center think tank, which was eventually renamed The Center for the National Interest, this Dmitry Simes picked up stakes and moved back to his native Russia in the days immediately following the start of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine. He took this decision because it had become clear to him that his fair-minded, fact-based approach to Russian affairs had become untenable in present American political conditions of nearly hysterical Russophobia. Upon moving, Simes received a prestigious and well-paying appointment as one of the three presenters on Russia’s most authoritative political talk show, The Great Game.
In fact, when he was still head of the Washington think tank and responsible for its widely read publications, Simes already accumulated years of experience working with the founder and chief moderator of Russia’s leading talk show, the highly visible United Russia politician and statesman, Vyacheslav Nikonov. Simes was then the Washington anchor for the show’s ‘tele-bridge’ broadcasts during which he mostly presented his observations on latest developments in American political life and interviewed many outstanding public figures, in English, of course, with Russian simultaneous translation.
Simes’ new employment following his move to Moscow did not pass unnoticed by the powers that be in Washington, and several months ago the FBI entered the home he left behind in Virginia, confiscated his papers and other possessions. Charges were subsequently brought against Simes for financial crimes of ‘money laundering’ (meaning investing his spare cash in paintings and other antiques kept in his house) and for violating the standing prohibition on working for what are called Russian state propaganda broadcasters.
Despite these legal problems in the States, Simes performs his duties on The Great Game with his characteristic professionalism. I regret that I do not regularly watch his segment of the nearly 3 hours that this news wrap and panel discussion show appears on Pervy Kanal each weekday, but there are limits to how long one can sit in front of the tube and still have time to engage with the real world and to write. All three segments can be viewed as podcasts on www.rutube.ru
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This morning, I decided to see what Simes is up to and I was not disappointed. He had his own panel of guests, different from those who appeared on the first segment with Nikonov. These guests included the Chairman of the Duma committee on defense, Andrei Kartapolov, and Andrei Sushentsov, the dean of international affairs in MGIMO University, an institution which is best known for training the vast majority of Russia’s senior diplomats including its long-time Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergei Lavrov.
The lead subjects of Simes’ segment were the very same items that you could find on the 20.00 o’clock prime time Vesti news wrap-up on Rossiya 1 yesterday but they were dealt with more profoundly by these and the other panelists who are insiders with hands-on responsibility, as opposed to journalists or the usual contingent of political scientists.
Kartapolov opened with some remarks on a matter in which he is directly involved at present: seeing the agreement on strategic cooperation with North Korea, which includes provisions for mutual defense, through the ratification process in the State Duma. He then moved on to a more tantalizing subject, namely the ongoing state visit of Russia’s Defense Minister Belousov in Beijing, observing how both Russians and Chinese projected self-confidence: “both parties are ready to defend their shared political, economic and military interests and objectives with military force.” The mention of military force here was not casual and slotted perfectly into what Sushentov had to say on behalf of MGIMO.
Dean Sushentsov and one other representative of MGIMO, neither of whom is a regular guest on talk shows, were present yesterday to mark the 80th anniversary of the founding of MGIMO by the Communist leader Molotov.
Molotov just happens to be the grandfather of the principal host of The Great Game, Vyacheslav Nikonov, which might explain the special interest the institution attracted on this show yesterday. But then again, MGIMO just happens to be the alma mater of a broad array of present-day leading statesmen in Russia and abroad. Several photos of such statesmen were put up on the screen, including one of the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and the president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev.
Returning to Sushentsov, it is noteworthy that he is just 41 and clearly a rising star in the Russian academic and foreign policy world. Within the field, he has specialized in American studies. He is the author of a textbook entitled “Megatrends: the basic trajectories in the evolution of the world order in the 21st century.” The titles of all his scholarly works are highly attractive, none more so than “Keeping Sane in a Crumbling World.”
Sushentsov used his turn at the microphone to mention that MGIMO has been awarded the state Order of Alexander Nevsky, the significance of which he explained. In a word, Grand Prince Alexander Nevsky of Novgorod was a 13th century warrior-diplomat who was eventually admitted to sainthood by the Church. He was victorious over the Livonian (German – Swedish) Order as military commander in a famous battle on the ice of Lake Chudskoye. He was also the diplomat who found a modus vivendi with the Mongol Horde that had taken possession of all of European Russia. In the context of MGIMO, this award confirms that diplomacy must be based on strength. This meshed with Duma member Kartapolov’s statement earlier in the show that both Russia and China have the strength to deal with the West, “which only understands force.”
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As regards relations with China, Kartapolov and Simes agreed that the closeness in military relations between the two today was something utterly unforeseeable just five years ago. For this, of course, they have to be thankful to Washington for its utterly mad decision to encircle, contain and threaten both great powers simultaneously.
I close today’s edition with a remark on a very interesting exchange with respect to the visit in Beijing of Defense Minister Belousov that took place in the first segment of The Great Game moderated by Nikonov. He and a Chinese specialist in his 30s who is a frequent guest on the show discussed the timing of the Minister’s visit, which happens to coincide with the unprecedented Chinese ‘naval exercises’ that have closed the Taiwan Strait and encircled the island of Taiwan in a sort of dress rehearsal for its forced integration into the PRC. The specialist insisted that the timing of the naval blockade was unforeseen, triggered by a speech avowing independence by the President in Taiwan last Thursday. Meanwhile, the visit of Belousov had been planned well in advance to follow and share conclusions about the recently concluded joint naval exercises in the Pacific and elsewhere by some 400 Chinese and Russian ships. Nonetheless, this fortuitous coincidence was welcomed by both the Chinese and Russian sides as a timely opportunity to exchange notes on the overall security situation in East Asia, in West Asia at a time of high global tensions.
The video images of Belousov and his Chinese counterpart at their concluding statements to the press shows both sides to be relaxed and the atmosphere to be cordial. This would suggest that if the Chinese are coaxing the Russians to restrain Iran in its growing confrontation with Israel, they are doing so in friendly and trusting manner.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024