French President Emmanuel Macron is seeking China’s help to figure out a way to bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
The report cited unnamed people familiar with the plan who said Macron tasked his diplomatic advisor, Emmanuel Bonne, to discuss the idea with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi.
China has emerged as a potential mediator between Russia and Ukraine after Beijing released a 12-point peace plan for the conflict, although Chinese President Xi Jinping has yet to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Unlike President Biden, who immediately rejected the idea of China’s peace initiative, Macron has publicly expressed support for Beijjing’s efforts. During a visit to China last week, Macron said he could “count on” Xi to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table.
While France has followed the EU and NATO in its sanctions against Russia and military support for Kyiv, Macron has repeatedly called for negotiations to end the war. He previously warned against “humiliating” Russia and has said Moscow’s security concerns must be taken into account in a future peace deal.
The sources told Bloomberg that any future negotiations would hinge on a successful Ukrainian counteroffensive, but that appears increasingly unlikely. Some of the leaked Pentagon documents that have surfaced online revealed the US doesn’t think Kyiv can gain any significant territory. European officials have said “dangerously high expectations” have been placed on a potential Ukrainian counteroffensive.
The US is throwing in the towel and that leaves a wide opening for others to navigate toward peaceful resolutions…. I want PEACE any way I/we can get it. Good on Macron!
Macron seems to be ignoring the red, white and blue elephant in the room.
Good. Somebody has to kick the old man in the nuts.
You always know when to say the right things OB1…
Bring on the Ball Smashers!
He might be “ignoring” inconvenient reality, because that is his personal style. It is amazing how he has gotten away with this in so many things for so long.
However, for France and really for the whole EU, it has become an inconvenience, the US has made NATO membership a problem rather than a solution, and a problem that is embracing now Chinese relations too.
So Macron might be a weathervane, and still indicate a shift in the wind.
What a guy, right after he robs the working class, he’s making world peace.
I suspect the imposition of limits on the retirement system via age bracketing have more to do with future availability of funds to support that same program, than it has to do with turning the screws on the working stiffs.
Europe and China (and the US to an extent) all have this issue with an aging population entering an underfunded retirement system. Especailly in socialist countries that allow early retirement. Personally, I beleive this is why they unleashed Covid 19 to reduce the older population. China makes sense too, seeing they are entering a crisis period where their death rates are exceeding their birth rates as India is poised to dominate future manufacturing in Asia with a greater and growing population.
Bingo.
In 1945, there were 41.9 people working (and paying into the Social Security Ponzi) for each retiree drawing benefits. Today that ratio is about 2.5 workers to each retiree.
Even at Social Security’s abysmally bad rate of return on forced “investment,” you can’t keep paying more and more money out to more and more people while taking in less and less money from fewer and fewer people forever. Something has to give. The tax rate has to be raised, or the benefit rate lowered, or another income stream drawn on to make up the difference, or whatever.
I’m neither a Republican in general or a Chris Christie fan specifically, but he was the last “major party” politician I noticed putting out anything like a plausible plan to “save” Social Security. That plan means-tested benefits — no Social Security checks for those making more than $200k per year — and raised the retirement age by one month each year (average US lifespan was less than 70 in 1945 ansd is nearly 80 now — people are living longer and thus drawing benefits longer).
I’d rather see them phase the program out over a long period of time (20-40 years). Just admit it was a bad idea in the first place (a pipe dream, I know). Blame it all on FDR. Most young people don’t ever expect to see any social security anyway. They have time to prepare themselves. But I agree with the means testing, if only so that the present generation of beneficiaries shares in the cost. And, very important, remove all limits on retirement contributions. Those contribution limits are so stupid.
“And, very important, remove all limits on retirement contributions. Those contribution limits are so stupid.”
They’re not “contributions.” They’re “confiscations.” Especially if they’re unlimited on that end but have a maximum benefit on the other.
Not sure what you mean, Thomas. I’m talking about tax deferred retirement contributions such as contributions to an IRA account. Sorry if I wasn’t clear about that.
Ah, OK — I thought you were referring to the Social Security/FICA taxes that the regime tries to pretend are “contributions.”
Do you have any idea how stupid we look to the rest of the world right now.
No, US decision makers, pundits, and mainstream media are blatantly oblivious to this. It is a radical blindness.
Uncle Sugar is only interested in enforcing our economic interests with force (and the threats of it)
China does the same but they also have a huge purse of money that they tend to focus on in these situations unlike us.
Once the Ukrainians understand they can get rich just easy with Chinese money as they can embezzling from us, they will be ready for a ceasefire.
I expected this when we saw China avoiding contact with the US about Ukraine. It also explains why they won’t contact Zelinsky as long as he is acting as a US-policy neocon mouthpiece. (He has at other times said other things, but not lately.)
China is trying to split the EU from the US, in the same way as Russia is trying to break up NATO. This becomes a common Russia-China larger interest in breaking up NATO, as the US seeks to draw NATO into the Pacific balance against China.
Of course US overreach makes it vulnerable to this move, much like a martial art in which a successful move is predicated on the opponent’s initial move that set up vulnerability. This is as much Biden/Blinken blundering as it is great cleverness among the Chinese.
Bloomberg went further psycho actually, step 1 Ukraine takes back a little land, step 2 the west sends even vastly more arms than they can, step 3 Ukraine might actually negotiate some year in the future.
More likely, step 1 Russia takes a bit more land, step 2 western arms keep drying up, step 3 Ukraine keeps losing and keeps refusing to negotiate from a position of increasing weakness.
Looks right.
This pattern has only two possible ends.
One is that Ukraine goes the way of the US puppet regime in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The other was just outlined in a new Foreign Affairs article, in which one of our neocons revives the regime change idea of breaking up the Russian Federation, and completing the task seen as left incomplete during the western opportunity of the Yeltsin years. This expressly imagines the vast resources of the Russian hinterland being bought up by Western interests. See: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/17/the-west-is-preparing-for-russias-disintegration/
This article would if representative of US State Dept thinking prove that Putin is correct about a hostile West that is an existential threat to Russia. I think it is. Putin thus had to draw a line against this, as soon as he felt able to do so. This means that Ukraine was a good choice, provided he survives the regime change efforts it brings to a boil.
Intermediate outcomes of peaceful compromise are simply impossible with the current American administration, and any likely next one.
Interesting.
Personally, I think the first one is more likely.
Russia – supposedly – threw a ton into this ‘winter offensive’. And they barely gained anything.
Plus, their economy has contracted 3 quarters in a row.
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/gdp-growth-annual
The Russian people are not going to put up with their sons dying AND a failing economy (due to the embargos) forever. Not to fight a war in Ukraine. Let alone one with an ambiguous goal.
Also, the West keeps sending ever-more sophisticated weapons to Ukraine. Next step seems to be sending solid, NATO tanks and aircraft.
Whilst Russia digs deeper into their storage parks for older and older weapons systems. They now appear to be updating, obsolete T-62’s for Ukraine.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2023/02/25/russias-tank-plan-take-a-60-year-old-t-62-install-new-optics-send-it-to-ukraine-to-get-blown-up/?sh=27f090de3f2b
Unless China starts directly helping Russia – substantially? Or the western voters tire of NATO support for the war?
It seems inevitable that Russia will eventually lose and/or have to negotiate from a position of weakness.
Russia simply does not have the military resources to win a protracted war against NATO-backed Ukraine.
There are endless breathless announcements in western media of 10 more tanks, 2 more old migs, a trickle to egg on Ukraine to keep on fighting but never win. A little nice hardware they can hardly maintain much less use well. A couple more western air defense systems won’t help much in a month or so when Ukraine runs out of ammo for their Russian built systems, most of what they have. The US will have to spend like we haven’t even started spending yet just to hold onto this stalemate. I’m not sure even the US government is quite that stupid.
I think you will find that what America and the UK has given Ukraine is a tad more than a ‘trickle’.
https://www.cfr.org/article/how-much-aid-has-us-sent-ukraine-here-are-six-charts
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/what-military-aid-has-britain-given-to-ukraine/
And Ukraine running out of ex-Soviet military ammunition is probably exaggerated for ‘pity’ effect.
And even if it were true? The faster Ukraine re-equips itself with NATO weapons systems? The better off it will be.
Besides, if Russia is having to drag out obsolete T-62’s, refit them and send them off to Ukraine? They must be getting rather desperate themselves.
US UK arms giveaways are vast and huge and costly, but only a trickle relative to what would be needed for Ukraine to seize much territory now or soon. Ukraine won’t be any better off with NATO systems even if the US gave away everything with no limits. Shells and compatible missiles don’t get conjured magically out of money. The supply chains and capacity has to be built over a long time. We CANNOT, not just will not give Ukraine what they would need to win. The faster Ukraine wisens up about that, the better off they’ll be.
The Russian MOD is fighting a very successful war of attrition disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March 2022), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense. Russia now will fight NATO to the last European.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
411 Aircraft, 228 helicopters, 3766 UAV’s, 415 Anti Aircraft systems, 8732 tanks inc. APC’s, 1089 multiple rocket launchers, 4619 rocket launchers and 9617 military automotive equipment.
What the empire looses in the Ukraine, they loose for the final Russian attack on NATO. Remember Russia attacked Ukraine just as NATO was about to unleash in the Donbass. Russia has shown they will pre-emptively attack to defend the Motherland when the time is dictated by events on the ground.
That’s a very fair assessment DS, though troubling to say the least. Confrontation would not bode well for any of us…
Poland will be the trigger for WW3. As they were in previous world wars. Russia has no interest in occupying Poland they will just nuke it.
WW2 Battle For Caen LEGO Stop-motion