Doctorow Believes Putin Will Accept Nothing Less than a New Security Architecture

Jan. 20, 2022 (EIRNS)—Gilbert Doctorow, a co-founder of the American Committee for East-West Accord with the late Stephen Cohen, expressed his view that Russian President Vladimir Putin will accept nothing less than what he has stated: a “new strategic architecture,” essentially to replace NATO—a sentiment shared with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Doctorow expressed his admiration for Ray McGovern’s courage and tenacity for telling truth to power, but, in response to McGovern’s report on the Jan. 15 LaRouche Organization forum, which described the agreement between Putin and President Biden to discuss the restoration of some form of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF—signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev in 1987 and discarded by the Trump Administration) as a major achievement, Doctorow dissented.

Doctorow said that Gorbachev has been criticized for negotiating the INF Treaty, since the U.S.S.R. proceeded to destroy its intermediate-range missiles in exchange for a U.S. withdrawal of its missiles from Europe, but “the Americans acted in bad faith by deploying cruise missiles with a range falling within the INF ban, but placed on surface navy ships rather than based on land.” Also, he went on, the U.S. developed submarine-based missiles of the same sort, which patrolled around Russia’s borders, which were “in conformity with the letter of the treaty but in flagrant violation of the spirit of the treaty.” Doctorow concluded: “And in all events the nature of relations between Russia and the U.S.A. would not change by one iota if all that came about was a new INF. The Russians’ belligerence right now is genuinely to change the architecture of security to bring themselves in from the cold.”

Doctorow also pointed to the Jan. 15 an article published in the National Interest by David T. Pyne, a former Army officer who is now the Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a Congressional Advisory Board. Pyne offers several variations of potential agreements Biden could reach with Putin that would facilitate a new security architecture meeting Putin’s demand for security guarantees. Doctorow believes that such an article in a prestigious journal indicates serious consideration for such ideas, and expresses optimism that the current dangerous global crisis can be resolved.