Members of President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration are undecided on how they bring an end to the proxy war in Ukraine, and US support for Ukraine is expected to continue after Trump’s inauguration on January 20, Financial Times reported Thursday, citing two European officials.
The report noted that Trump’s special envoy to the conflict, Keith Kellog, said in an interview this week that the goal is to bring the war to a close within the first 100 days of the administration.
“I would like to set a goal on a personal and professional level — I would set it at 100 days and move all the way back,” Kellog said. “And figure a way we can do this in the near term, to make sure the solution is solid and it’s sustainable and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage.”
Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have made clear that they’re both ready to talk with one another. At a press conference on Tuesday, Trump said he could understand one of Russia’s main gripes: NATO expansion and the promise of bringing Ukraine into the alliance.
“You know, a big part of the problem was Russia for many, many years, long before Putin said you could never have NATO involved with Ukraine. Now they’ve said … that’s been like written in stone,” Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago.
“Somewhere along the line, Biden said no, they should be able to join NATO. Well, then Russia has somebody right on their doorstep, and I could understand their feeling about that,” he added.
But it remains unclear what sort of proposals the Trump administration will make to Moscow. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed some ideas reportedly being discussed by the Trump team, which include sending European troops to Ukraine to oversee a ceasefire and Ukraine pledging not to join NATO for at least 20 years.
Stop funding the Ukraine war. Fund your own country which desperately needs help domestically. How intellectually difficult is that to understand?
They are thinking only about a possibility of redirecting their funds from Ukraine to Israel and Taiwan.
Trump and Trump's base definitely want all the funds to go to Israel instead of Ukraine.
The "Anti-War President" and anti-war base is more smoke and mirrors than actual commitment. When it comes to Israel all that peace stuff flies out the window and many want even more war by Israel and the US against the "unbelieving enemy".
Of course the Democrats switch this peace talk around. More war in the Ukraine and "cease fire" in the Middle East.
Nonsense, I am in Trump's base, I definitely do not want that. How often do you make up stuff?
Trump's first term, and his present words, indicate he wants peace. I will go with that over some nonsensical post.
So Rump swearing that he'll keep supplying all the weapons that Israel wants without restrictions and even considering putting American boots on the ground to help "finish the job" is your idea of peacemaking? I can see why you voted for him then.
If Trump does that it WILL be WW-3, we shall see. I trust Trump far more than Biden/Kamalala, rotten choices all around.
It will be a proxy variant of WW-3; no more than that.
Not all Trump supporters like him cozying up with Israel… On the other hand he is not worry about reelection, and may not give a damn about his supporters…! Only time would tell…!
Yes, with its new territories Israel is going to need exponentially more money and guns.
Lots. They don't think like we do but rather in terms of power-mongering. Peasants and proles will be sacrificed without a second thought… unless they get organized and rebel, of course.
It not that simple. The lesions of history tells one in not wise to ignore people like and assume they will stop at the current level of aggression.
It is simple that you never make any sense.
I suspect you dictated this post to Siri, it's pretty badly garbled.
Then he dictates a lot of his posts to Siri.
Timmy, you are always an ignorant and weak voice and easily brainwashed.
Do you think Putin should stop his war and use the funds to help the Russian people?
no critical thinking allowed
If the USA was in Russian position we would have already been at Nuclear war, USA is an evil F###! God help us or maybe the "Others" will.
The man made thousands of promises to all side. Have you tried that before?
Trump team to continue aiding the genocide in Palestine..
And he is making no secret of that. He is sure American people are supporting his policy.
Well his Evangelical base certainly is supporting more war in the Middle East 100%. The billionaires will support it for more real estate deals in that area. Remember Jared Kushner's vacation paradise in Gaza?
I an not evangelical and I am in the Trump base. You make up things again. This has nothing to do with Trump's son-in-law.
If I ever had to wonder what Stephen Miller does in his free time, when he is not sucking Trump's stick, I'd say he is posting on the antiwar blog under the name "The Prisoner" aka "The Gimp."
cmon think more
this is CLEARLY Dmitri "Attack Poodle" Medvedev
Evangelical base is about love, tolerance and peace; not about warmongering and genocide. Please don't confuse Christian teaching with "Judeo-Christianity" created by totalitarian regime of Catholic Vatican.
Oh really? Give us a good laugh, cite one thing which supports your post.
Shockingly the majority may be. Maybe the fires in Kalifornia are a message from God giving USA a taste of Gaza……………and what may soon come.
Indifference of western public to war crimes committed by their democratically elected governments is really remarkable.
Adelson agrees.
*** evil megalomaniac criminal laughter ***
Were you attempting to write a coherent sentence and be relevant??? Does making up stuff make you feel good?
Trump just hit Netanyahu hard 2 days ago, but we do not expect you to actually follow events.
ViVek has turned into a raging Zio, I no longer have any respect for him.
If you ever did have any respect for him, you got conned.
Thomas, no, Vek got “conned” by the “lobby”, just like 99% of the DC Ghouls and Fox news.
If you think that Israel is the only problem with Ramaswamy, that thing you’re doing that you think is thinking isn’t.
He got his wealth from pump and dump stocks. He is the con.
U are mistaken.
No, I’m not.
"Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have made clear that they're both ready to talk"
Every time when Putin was asked about negotiations, he answered Russia is and always was ready for negotiations with anyone. The point is, the negotiations should be about a new system of European security. So far neither Americans nor their European allies ever demonstrated any interest in serious negotiations. All NATO ideas about the negotiations were about achieving unilateral advantage. Last 35 years U.S. leadership consistently worked for achieving Full Spectrum Dominance. American involvement in Ukraine is a part of that.
Are Trump and his team ready to abandon the idea of unipolar world? Would MIC oligarchy allow them to do that? Obviously not. If Trump is planning to freeze the war in Ukraine in order to concentrate on Iran and China, it wouldn't work. In any new conflict Russia will stay with Iran and China. Even the freezing of Ukrainian war is impossible. It will end in defeat of one of the sides. And it is not Ukraine, it is NATO and American imperialists who are losing the war.
I certainly hope that Putin doesn't fall for yet another Minsk or yet another Astana again. He's such a diplomatic wimp!
If he does, it's a stick of dynamite posing as a lit candle.
"In any new conflict Russia will stay with Iran and China" Unlikely. Russia has no long term interest in Iran. China and Russia historically have not been allies.
Russia and Iran have had trade relations since long before there was a Russian nation and Iran was called Persia.
Trump has no plans for more wars.
You could have left the last three words off that sentence and it would still have been valid.
He may not have a plan for a war. But he certainly can sleep walk into one. This isn’t 2016.
It isn't 2016, but Trump seems to be making the same decisions on foreign policy.
Parts of LA look like Gaza but with humanitarian aid.
Trump would manage Ukraine from prison sentenced today…!
He’s supposedly going to be sentenced to “unconditional disharge” — no prison, no fine, no probation, just a “convicted felon” record.
Which, in New Jersey and maybe other states, means he’ll lose all of his golf courses’ liquor licenses.
Interesting…! Loss of income…! Hopefully that also applies to his hotels…! At least he is being punished in some ways…!
But more importantly he would be called convicted felon president for the next four (4) or more years…!
Keep up the valiant fight for the establishment. Also Jesus loves you!
Not me
Yes Jesus does love you, so does the universe.
I doubt that Trump Inc is a sole proprietorship. And lot's of convicted felons have run liquor business.
The liquor licenses aren’t held by “Trump Inc.” They’re held by a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary.
You act as if this is the first time this has ever happened. Nope. It’s a simple matter to put the licenses in other hands. I’ve held two licenses myself. When a transfer was made, the new holder has to go through a process. It isn’t all that difficult. Plus Trump can get an injunction while the case is appealed.
You act as though I'm acting as if this is the first time this has ever happened.
I'm not.
I'm just noting the facts.
His liquor licenses are in jeopardy.
Are there things he can do to solve that problem? Yes. I never said otherwise.
Is that what "convicted felon" means? I'm unfamiliar with English law terminology and also with its actual legal consequences, I'd rather think he'd have the right to appeal (and probably win).
Well, it can be fairly complicated.
Broadly but not comprehensively speaking, a “convicted felon” would be anyone who has either pleaded guilty, or been found guilty, of one or more crimes considered “felonies” within the jurisdiction where the case takes place. I say not comprehensively, because in some cases with plea deals, a guilty plea is not entered as a “conviction” in the official record.
Trump was convicted of 34 such “felonies” by a New York jury.
The sentencing enters that conviction in the public record.
So he is a “convicted felon.”
In New Jersey, a felony conviction is automatically deemed conviction of a crime involving “moral turpitude,” and conviction on such crimes is a disqualification for having a liquor license.
Could the conviction be overturned on appeal? Sure. But until and unless it is, he’s a “convicted felon.”
Was the prosecution politically motivated? Absolutely.
Did he commit the actions for which he was charged with felonies? The evidence seems to support the claim.
Should those actions be considered crimes at all, let alone felonies? That’s definitely debatable.
Would losing the liquor licenses hurt him badly? Probably not, even if they constituted a major portion of his income, which seems unlikely. The courses are owned, and the liquor licenses are held, by a trust of which he is sole beneficiary. He could probably get around the matter in any number of ways, including just leasing the drinking facilities to some other person or company at a profit.
Wow, you just revealed a low IQ and poor analytical/ethical skills.
Trump wants peace, your hero Crook Biden does not, that is the story here, not you folks babbling gossip.
Wow, you just revealed an amazing capacity for replying to someone else’s post as if it was mine.
How about the actual subject, no comment from you? Of course not!!!
Well…
– First he announced in his campaign that he would end the Ukraine war in 24 hours…!
– Now his special envoy says within 100 day…!
When 100 days is over… then it would be extended to one year and on and on… I hope I am wrong but it's a delay tactic…!
Besides Trump loves the showmanship more than its outcome… Like meeting Kim Jong and nothing happened afterwards…!
Is that enough of subject for u…?!
If you want to read how the war is going to end, here's an excellent analysis of Ukraine's current state of military forces (not good).
https://bigserge.substack.com/p/total-kievan-debellation
Big Serge is one of the better-known military analysists who has been following the conflict from the beginning, and has a large following among the fact-based community.
Meh. In order to impose her demands, Russia needs to decisively and totally defeat Ukraine (or alternatively get the Ukrainian army or people to topple their own government, what seems very unlikely). "Debellation" means nothing as long as Ukraine holds most of its historical territory, and it does.
Sure: Ukraine is exhausted but not at all sufficiently defeated yet, and Russia would need still several years, even at this accelerated pace of advance, in order to capture what would force Ukraine's hand: Kiev, Lvov (and of course Kharkov and Odessa previously).
Russia's plan is to not take Ukraine. Read the plan. Russia has no interest in whatever plan you dream up. It was Russia that voluntarily made Ukraine independent, it does not want the trouble of running Ukraine.
You are off script. Do you even read Russian state controlled news?
i doubt he reads much of anything
Russia’s goal is to “denazify” Ukraine, i.e. remove the NATOist deep state imposed by Maidan (Gladio). It’s not my goal, it’s theirs and it makes all sense because much more dangerous for Russia than Crimea and Donetsk are Chernigov and Sumy, which are very close to Moscow. How can Russia tolerate NATO troops and missiles anywhere in Ukraine but very especially in its Northeast?
"It was Russia that voluntarily made Ukraine independent"
Not exactly. In referendum March 1991 organized by Gorbachev, over 70% (both in Russia and Ukraine) voted for living in one united post-Soviet state. The result of the referendum was ignored by communist and nationalist elites. At the time it wasn't so easy to distinguish between them. For example, the chief communist ideologist in Ukraine Kravchuk very quick became radical Ukrainian nationalist.
In order to defend her security Russia needs to totally defeat Ukraine. FTFY
So you think that with rapidly increasing casualties, cascading captures of reinforced locations, skyrocketing rates of desertion, a plummeting rate of conscription, and NATO’s weapons stocks being almost depleted that Ukraine is still going to be able to hold the Russians to the current rate of advance? Interesting viewpoint, what is it based on?
I observe the rate of advance in video-mapping every other day, I follow the war very closely, not just since 2022 but since 2014 even. In order to achieve the declared goal of liberating Donbass, they will still need some months, maybe a year. But that is not enough: Ukraine is very large and Russia can’t afford a NATO-aligned Ukraine, one deploying hostile troops and missiles almost at the gates of Moscow. At least Russia needs to control or otherwise neutralize everything east of the Dniepr river. That’s a couple of years more probably.
A couple of years is possible, though it seems increasingly unlikely unless Ukraine comes up with some amazingly effective military leadership. Most of the more authoritative writers I’ve seen, on both sides, estimate 18 months or less. In either case Russia is prepared for the long slog and has been since the beginning, which Western commentators seemed to have a hard time believing but are now coming to accept.
We’ll see but I can’t fathom how Russia can truly force the hand of Ukraine, especially if this one keeps getting NATO weapons and ammo, without expanding the SMO to total war. There’s no automatic tipping point that is not conquering/liberating all Ukraine. The failure of Russia to make an “Ukrainian liberation army” and their total reliance on their own regular military is a clear limitation. Compared with the CIA, the Russian spies look like simpletons.
The local militias of the Donbass have been active in this fight since 2014, and are fully integrated into the Russian military. I’m not sure what difference a separate “Ukrainian Liberation Army” would look like or accomplish, unless you’re proposing a 5th column inside Ukraine and they have thousands of ethnic Russians scattered throughout the country already supplying them intel so there doesn’t seem to be a need for a terrorist force.
NATO ammunition stocks are pretty much depleted, in many cases beyond their stated minimum levels allowable, already. We don’t have many long range missiles or air defense ammunition to give them and they’ve been crying about the lack of artillery for over a year already.
The Donbass militias were clearly winning in 2015, about to march onto Mariupol and Slavyansk, while the Ukrainian conscript army, not yet brainwashed into "Maidanism" was totally crumbling. And just at that moment of clear antifascist victory… Putin forced a disgraceful freezing of the conflict (Minsk accords) instead of bringing it to some sort of natural conclusion, at least full de facto independence of the Donbass federation in their whole extension.
Anyway, what I mean is that in order to depose a regime (Maidan/NATO dictatorship) you need a counter-power of similar nature. Lenin understood that and did not invade Ukraine as such but backed Bolshevik Ukraine with capital at Kharkov against reactionary (proto-fascist) "white" Ukraine with capital in Kiev and a very unstable alliance with irredentist Poland (there were also some quite interesting anarchists in Donbass and Zaporozhie, with machine guns on carts resembling the pick-up wars of more recent times, but let's keep things simple). That's how Bolshevik Russia won the very first Ukraine War and thus inaugurated the USSR with a third party called Belarus, also involved in this war once it became a war against newborn but very imperialist Poland.
By comparison Putin's neo-white Russia has no plan whatsoever, no strategy and very few useful allies. They could have fostered them, especially in the days of the Maidan putsch a decade ago, but they failed: the CIA won and Russia was gaslighted by feeding their own irredentist ambitions but also their oil-igarchist capitalist greed. Yanukovich had massive support inside Ukraine (landslide electoral victory in 2012) but Putin denounced him and tried to talk with the NATO goons instead. 7 years wasted for Russia and Donbass, 7 years of brutal repression for the Ukrainian democratic forces, 7 years of total brainwashing of a generation who does not remember anymore what happened a decade ago.
You're surely right about the awful logistics of NATO, product of the total mafiaization ("consolidation") of late useless Capitalism, which suckles the governments instead of entrepreneuring or whatever capitalists are suppossed to do, are suppossed to be paid for, but there's always a "North Korea" (Turkey probably in NATO's case) willing to produce those shells and drones instead of wasted USA and Germany. Ammo is not that difficult to produce and US dollars are not that difficult to print at whim, everybody loves those green coupons: they can be exchanged for crude oil barrels in Saudia and Kuwait, you know.
The real problem of Ukraine is another: infrastructural collapse and even population loss. Ammo and fighting teens they can find, they haven't even mobilized women yet, go figure!
PS (edit): also corruption, when half of what you buy goes to the black market and half the salaries of your troops are pocketed by commanders… that's very bad for the war effort.
Of course Russia is so much bigger than Ukraine and thus Ukraine can not win if Russia keeps it up. The question has always been just how dumb are the average Russians to allow their sons to be killed just to keep Putin happy? So far the Russians look pretty stupid.
It’s not stupidity, it’s a collective action problem.
Like the old Soviet regime (and many existing regimes), the current Russian regime is very good at suppressing any collective action it doesn’t like. From the individual point of view, the situation is basically a choice of going along or going to the gulag.
That is quite an inversion. Ukraine is run by a brutal dictator, who shut down opposition in the media and government, cancelled elections, closed churches, and pulls men off the street to force them into war. Millions have fled Ukraine, no one is fleeing Russia.
“Millions have fled Ukraine, no one is fleeing Russia.”
There have been three waves of mass emigration from Russia since the war started, each of several hundred thousand.
Ukraine and Russia are both run “by brutal dictators” — or, rather, by oligarchic cliques using those “brutal dictators” as figureheads.
i give a half upvote because you said theyre both run by brutal dictators
Include USA in that Thomas,,put USA first. DC Ghouls must go.
Why would I include a third regime in a comparison of two regimes?
Well, OK, fine. But USA wouldn’t come first in any list of brutal authoritarian regimes — I’d go alphabetically, “U” is near the end of the alphabet, and there are nearly 200 to count.
"There have been three waves of mass emigration from Russia since the war started, each of several hundred thousand."
Yes. Nicely done indeed! Russia got rid of these people at no cost.
Are you that crazy Kharkov soviet guy?
NOBODY HAS FLED RUSSIA???
BOLLOCKS
All Russian soliders in Ukraine are volunteers, and they have a wait list.
Highly unlikely. Even as early as March of 2022, the Russian regime admitted to “mistakenly” sending conscripts to Ukraine.
Yes, it was a mistake, conscripts are only supposed to fight in defense of the Russian homeland. Kursk is a valid battlefield for them (and they are fighting there), Ukraine was not.
An yet, while I do tend to distrust western/mainstream media, I’ve seen a number of video interviews with alleged Russian conscripts captured in Ukraine since long after that first “oops, you caught us, here’s a story” moment.
The important thing to remember is that the Russian regime is exactly as reliable, when it comes to being truthful or obeying its own laws, as the US regime. Which is to say not at all.
Indeed. Baghdad Bob would have been comfortable working for either of the combatants.
US more reliable than Russia
The policies for Ukraine will be set by the likes of Blackrock: Ukrainians will own nothing and be unhappy…. and no one in the West will care.
"Tend" to distrust? Holy shit.
Thomas, I say Russia is the better of the two. USA is finished and hell is a coming.
The US and Russian empires are both in terminal decline, and it’s anyone’s guess which one will completely collapse first.
Thomas, If Russia has an “Empire”, (they do not IMHO), it is like a speck of sand on a beach compared to the USA. 🙂
When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russian empire took a pretty big hit. But it didn’t disappear. Belarus to this day is one of its imperial satrapies. Ukraine was until 2014. Chechnya seceded, but after two wars of imperial conquest, the Russian regime was able to conquer, occupy, annex and install a quisling regime there. Several of the “stans” remain imperial satellites, while others are in flux.
Bs on Chechnya. It was a civil war.
Key word "alleged". And Western media is government media. And so, professional liars.
ukraine is doing to russia what russia did to them
without the war crimes and genocide
You are mistaken, Russia is defending it's very existence under attack by NATO and mainly the USA. Russia will win or we ALL die!
Yes, but for all the wrong reasons that will come back to bite Putin in the ass. Well, it's already happening with all the deaths.
Supporting war veterans, their families plus deaths compensations is a very expensive program.
Russia cannot even pay their retired workforce pensions and now they'll have to deal their hundred of thousands of wounded and dead soldiers, increase in crime and many other post war social and economic ramifications.
I think you are talking about the present state of the USA for the last 55 years…yes?
Actually it's Ukraine that can't pay for it's pensioners. Or it's government workers….. or pretty much anything else. That's all coming from the USA and the EU. Not to worry though. Ukrainians at the top of the food chain are raking off billions of dollars and euros. Those, of course, have bug out bags packed when the loot stops flowing…
Dumb means the inability to speak, You got that wrong too. You have an inability to write sensibly.
Russia invaded Ukraine because all other options were expended. The multiple violations of the neutrality agreements by the West provoked the war. I know that is too complicated and honest for you.
Russia has accomplished its stated goals, with some mop up underway in the east, Russia won. Putin is much more popular in Russia that Crook Biden, who opposed negotiations,
So far you write really stupid. How long are the Americans going to allow billions to be wasted to make your precious NWO happy?
You know, you can go West and defect?
Then you can write without delusions.
You won't even have to make Christmas commercials with Santa Claus getting shot out of the sky while delivering toys for kids on Christmas Eve.
Russians really love shooting down airliners and sleighs.
https://youtu.be/NOVni9TaF4s?si=O9S2Is6F31k4cNx-
Can we say USA loves war and genocide? SURE as hell looks like it does and that saddens me greatly. Game over.
i hate that us europeans have to share an alliance with you guys
Then don't. End NATO and form your own alliance.
i was thinking we’d kick you guys out and call it a day
Simple: putsch Zelensky and the nazi deep state.
He won't.
Give us a laugh, how is that so simple? Defunding would help.
If NATO could putsch Yanukovich I don’t see why Russia can’t putsch Zelensky, especially now that they got experience in the Sahel.
It’s a matter of life and death for Russia, just another front for the USA.
Time is running out. Trump said he will end that war in 24 hours. He now has 11 days to keep his promise.
Nonsense is all you are capable of offering.
Trump is the only leader working and advocating peace, He will act quickly. He does not work based on whatever schedule you dream up. He cannot act until he is president.
Your hero Crook Biden caused the war and opposed negotiations. He is 4 years late in taking any action for peace.
Hey "You are a propagandist" is back.
biden is the cutest most grandpa like crook in the world
He already ran out. He is on record/video saying that within 24 hours after being elected, he will talk to Zelensky and the other idiot and get a ceasefire.
Good for you. You said the "other idiot". You're finally admitting that both Putin and Zelensky suck.
Trump can end the war in 24 hours. Just ask Russia what it wants and agree. War over! Otherwise you play around until Russia takes all of Ukraine. Then Trump is popular and can plan his unprovoked invasions of Panama and Greenland.
They've been saying what they want since the beginning.
1) Ukrainian neutrality
2) Demilitarization
3) De-Nazification
Rump might agree with the first, but almost certainly not the other two.
The first was never an option — the choices are “US/EU/NATO imperial satrapy” or “Russian imperial satrapy.”
The latter two would require, at an absolute bare minimum, regime change (and that probably wouldn’t be enough to prevent it from turning into a 10-year Afghanistan Redux).
if i could choose us/eu/neto imperial satrapy versus russian imperial satrapy I would choose us/eu/nato before you could say "think"
So?
russia comes with the unique perk of being dominated by an authoritatian state
As does Ukraine. So?
everything
As for the reality of Ukrainian neutrality: the examples of Finland (until its joining NATO) and Austria belie your claim with respect to the Russians.
Call the circus clown in Kiev and tell him he's fired.
This is a classic American Indian treaty method. Worked so many, many times before. Sign anything, promise Russia anything, cross your heart, and when Russia
accepts, plan imediately how to take advantage of the situation.
Always to benefit the empire. Like a shark, empire must move at all the times, permanent revolution — I mean chaos — or die.
Ukraine war is for the existence of the empire. Europe has already been tossed under the bus, the trans-Atllantic love-fest exposed for what it is.
For Russia, it is not only about Ukraine. It is about European security architecture. Russia included.
Russia cannot end up being tied to European decaying corpse, a region without prospects. Europe has in the name of NATO alliance sacrificed everything. Its energy, industry, its exports, its badly needed infrastructure develooment, and freedom to trade sccross ITS OWN vast Eurasian continent. Quite a sacrifice.
What for? For its fundamentally supremacist concept of being superior? Superior to the unwashed others — call them autoritarian, teocratic, tribal, communist, paganist, etc. Eurasian space. Yet, amazingly, that space today produces everything — and more — than those superiors?
How can it be? They must have stolen it from us. And then when the same inferiors pull ahead scientifically and technologically in some areas — totally disorienting . Deny it happened.
Historically, Europe never stopped feuding amongst themselves, and American first goal was to provide an architecture (EU, NATO) to insure it never gets involved again in another European mess.
Yet, US could not resist the temptation first in Balkans then in Ukraraine. Only this time Europe is not a proud co-belligerent but an obedient vassal. With the exception of UK.
What does Russia want? To control part of Europe? Another imperial control?
Only total blindness to BRICS would come to this conclusion. There IS going to be a life on this planet past the imperial design. There are other ways of cohabitation on this planet. The sole control of the planet — fee simple — is impossible. And something more akin to condo ownership is emerging.
This millenia old system of constant strife, to control or being controlled — has exausted itself. Billions of worl’s neglected and exploited want a better life. Neocolonialism managed by World Bank and IMF failed. But Trump wants to rescue the Empire. He cannot help it. Peace through strength. Translate — Empire can be generous if Russia kisses the ring.
To paraphrase an Italian writer, the old system has not yet died, and the new one not fully born.
This is the time when monsters emerge,
Russian FM Lavrov last week dismissed Team Trump’s floated peace proposals for Ukraine as unsatisfactory. Essentially, the Russian view is that the calls for a frozen conflict precisely miss the point: From the Russian perspective, such ideas – frozen conflicts, ceasefires and peacekeepers – do not begin to qualify as the type of treaty-based, ‘Big Picture’ deal the Russians have been advocating since 2021.
Without a sustainable, permanent end to conflict, the Russians will prefer to rely on a battlefield outcome –even at the high risk of their refusal bringing continuing escalatory – even nuclear – U.S. brinkmanship.
The question rather is: Sustained peace between the U.S. and Russia – Is it even possible?
The death of former President Jimmy Carter recalls to us that the turbulent 1970s policy ‘revolution’ which became encapsulated in the writings of Zbig Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Adviser – a revolution that bedevils U.S.-Russia relations from then, until today.
The Carter era saw a major inflection point with Brzezinski’s invention of weaponised identitarian conflict, and his espousal of the same identitarian tools – as applied more widely – in order to bring western societies under the control of a technocratic élite “[practicing] continuous surveillance over every citizen … [together with élite] manipulation of the behaviour and intellectual functioning of all people …”.
Brzezinski’s seminal books, in short, advocated a managed cosmopolitan identitarian sphere, that would swap out communal culture – i.e. national values. It is in the hostile reaction to this technocratic ‘control’ vision that we can root today’s trouble breaking out everywhere, on all global fronts.
Put plainly, current events are in many ways a replay of the turbulent 1970s. Today’s march toward anti-democratic norms began with the Trilateral Commission’s seminal The Crisis of Democracy (1975) – the fore-runner to WEF(‘Davos’) and Bilderberg – with, (in Brzezinski’s words), international banks and multinational corporations being crowned as the principal creative force in the place of the “the nation-state as the fundamental unit of man’s organised life”.
Brzezinski’s jaundiced perception of Russia was nothing new. Rather, it reaches back to the Hudson Institute in the 1970s and to Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, twice a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the 1972 and 1976 Presidential elections. Jackson (of Norwegian descent) simply hated communism; he hated Russians, and he had had a lot of support within the Democratic Party.
Brzezinski, Polish by origin, shared Scoop Jackson’s Russophobia. He persuaded President Carter (in 1979) to insert a radicalised, jihadist identity-culture into Afghanistan to attrite the secular socialist culture of Kabul, which Moscow was supporting. The Afghan war outcome subsequently was portrayed as a huge American victory (which it wasn’t).
Yet – and this is the point – the victory claim nonetheless underpinned the notion of Islamic insurgents being the ideal ‘solvents’ in regime change projects (and still is, as we witness in Syria today).
But Brzezinski had yet more advice to give President Carter. In his 1997 Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski argued that America and Kiev might potentially leverage ancient cultural and linguistic complexities (as was done in Afghanistan) to form the hinge around which heartland power could be dissolved by denying Russia control of Ukraine:
“Absent Ukraine, Russia would never become the heartland power; but with Ukraine, Russia can and would [be a Heartland power]”, he insisted. Russia needed to be enmeshed in a similar Ukrainian cultural-identity quagmire, he advocated.
Why was this policy decision so damaging to the prospects of ultimate peace between the U.S. and Russia? It was because Kiev, egged on by the CIA, promoted the entirely false identitarian claim that ‘Europe ends at Ukraine’ – and that beyond it, lie ‘the Slavs’’.
This manipulation alone allowed Kiev to morph into an icon for total cultural-identity war on Russia, despite the fact that the Ukrainian language (correctly known as Ruthenian) is not a Germanic language. Nor is there any Viking (Germanic) DNA to be found among modern-day western Ukrainians.
In its desire to support Kiev and to please Biden, the EU jumped at this Ukrainian strategic revisionism: ‘Ukraine’ crafted as ‘European values’ defending against ‘Russian’ (Asian) values. It was a pole, albeit a false one, around which European unity could be forged at a time when the reality was that of EU unity dissipating.
So, is ‘sustainable peace’ with Russia possible? Were it to be attempted in terms of seeking to sustain a rump Ukraine as a bellicose isthmus of ‘Europe and its values’ ranged against the ‘regressive Slav sphere’, then peace is not possible. For its underpinning premise would be wholly fake and would assuredly lead to renewed conflict in the future. Moscow almost certainly would reject such a deal.
Yet, there is growing anxiety amongst the American public that the war in Ukraine seems locked into forever escalation, with palpable public fears that Biden and the ‘hawks’ in Congress are taking the U.S. towards a ‘nuclear holocaust’.
Are we – humanity – to continue teetering at the brink of annihilation if a Trump ‘deal’ – narrowly confined to Ukraine – is refused in Moscow? The urgency to halt the slide towards escalation is clear; yet the space for political manoeuvre continuously shrinks, as the compulsion of the Washington-Brussels hawks to land a fatal strike on Russia is not spent.
But seen from the perspective of Team Trump, the task of negotiating with Putin is anything but straight forward. The western public simply has never been psychologically conditioned to expect the possibility of a stronger Russia emerging. On the contrary, they have endured western ‘experts’ sneering at the Russian military; denigrating the Russian leadership as incompetent; and its leadership being presented on their TVs as purely evil.
Bearing in mind Brzezinski’s seminal contribution on democracy, and its later ‘concentrate’ in an élite techno-managed ‘identarian sphere’, it is not difficult to see how a country as fragmented as America finds itself back footed as the world slips towards a culturally-based multi-polarity.
Of course, it’s not exactly true to say that America has no communal culture, given the wide diversity of immigrant cultures in the U.S. But it is true that what is seen as traditional culture has been under siege. This, after all, was at the crux of the recent Presidential election – and of elections in many other nations.
The notion that once the Trump envoys have been initially to Moscow, and gone away empty-handed, that Trump will sweep in to conclude an Ukraine deal, does not reflect what Moscow has been endlessly highlighting. What is required is a ‘Big Picture’ treaty-based deal that settles the security architecture and frontiers between Heartland and the Rimland security interests.
But will such a deal be seen by many Americans as ‘weakness’; as conceding U.S. ‘leadership’ and ‘Greatness’? Of course, it will be perceived that way – because Trump would be effectively sealing America’s defeat and repositioning the U.S. as one state amongst equals in a new Concert of Powers – i.e. in a multipolar world.
It is a big ‘ask’. Can Trump do it – swallow American pride? One viable way forward would be to return to the original Gordian Knot, and to untie it: i.e. to untie the knot of there being no post-WW2 written treaty delimiting NATO’s ever-forward movement, and by so doing, ending the pretence that NATO’s displacement to wheresoever it choses is no one’s business but its own.
Unfortunately, the other possible way to ‘balance’ the appearance of American and NATO defeat over Ukraine, might be seen by Trump’s hawkish advisers to be to pulverise Iran – as a signal of American ‘virility’.
Negotiations, in the final instance, are about interests, and the nous to solve the riddle of two parties perceiving how ‘the other’ sees itself being perceived – as weakness or as strength. Trump, if stumped in a literal impasse over Ukraine, might simply escalate the metaphysical staircase to simply say that he alone has the vision to save America from WW3. To save America from itself.
Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture
Former British diplomat, founder and director of the Beirut-based Conflicts Forum.
Some rational common sense politics on the USA/NATO side would help.