Alastair Crooke On The Neocon Ban On Negotiations

All reasonable, humane people would like to see a negotiated settlement to America’s war on Russia. Then there are the Neocons, whose ambitions for geopolitical supremacy are being played out through the unconscionable feeding of Ukraine’s young me into a meat grinder of a war that holds no benefit for Ukraine. A key to the Neocon strategy is to keep this war going, and one way of doing that is to effectively ban on efforts—even to ban proposals—to initiate negotiations. We saw that with the Minsk accords between Russia and Ukraine, which the collective West has openly admitted were simply a pack of lies on their part—a delaying tactic to prepare their war with Russia. We saw it again with the US/UK sabotage of the accords reached in Istanbul between Russia and Ukraine. War—in all its horror—is the only option for the Neocons who drive US policy, without regard for the human carnage.

Alastair Crooke is a retired British diplomat who spent much of his career facilitating negotiations among various factions in the Middle East. He has written a brilliant piece that examines the dynamics of negotiations—what are the factors that can bring warring parties together to talk over their differences and, on the other hand, how can malign actors structure public rhetoric to prevent a reasonable outcome through negotiations:

The Negotiator’s Nightmare

The entire article is well worth the time spent reading it. What I want to highlight are the beginning and ending passages that sketch out where this Neocon ban may lead. These are edited excerpts, but for the sake of continuity I’ve omitted lacunae. Pay close attention to the first sentence. Putin explicitly recognizes the reality of the situation, and has done so on several occasions. He recognizes that Ukraine is not a player any longer, if it ever really was. America is the country that is responsible for the war on Russia. But for America, no war on Russia would be thinkable or even possible. Therefore, a negotiated settlement can only come about through negotiations between Russia and America:

President Putin has said that he is open, at any time, to talks with an American interlocutor.

Why then, has no [interlocutor] come forward? Why, when there is growing anxiety amongst the American public that the war in Ukraine seems locked into forever escalation ...

Putin’s talk of negotiations is officially ignored for the most part by the American regime. Instead, the talk among Neocons is of preparing for a "long war". More carnage, as long as there is one Ukrainian young man left to charge into the maw of the Russian defenses. This commitment to endless horror is also what the war on Trump is about--cf. Pence in Kiev, excommunicating any Republican who would suggest a peaceful conclusion to the conflict: "There is no room in our party for apologists for Putin.” That’s a formula for political excommunication.

The western public has not been 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 being presented on their TVs with the ‘horrors’ of the Russian ‘invasion’.

In short and in essence, the Western public has been subjected to a propaganda campaign that has preemptively nuked any prospects for genuine peace negotiations, while hiding the ball—the reality of the conflicts origins, America’s role in fomenting war—from the American public. Putin Bad. Orange Man Bad. It’s all of a piece.

Now, we jump to the concluding paragraphs. Crooke, writing from a European perspective, lays out the situation in all its starkness—the fecklessness of the European ruling elite and their lack of any real agency.

The prospect for any Minsk-type of resolution was destroyed. If this story ends with only a ‘rump-state Ukraine’ remaining, the Europeans have only to look to themselves for responsibility.

...

... They bet all of Europe’s future prosperity on a U.S.-led neo-con project to bring-down Russia – and lost. Moscow is not interested now even to talk with the EU political class: they have no ‘agency’ anyway; the agency that matters resides in Washington.

Any U.S. interlocutor will find all this – – a hard ‘sell’ at home. A stronger Russia, a truncated rump-Ukraine, will get no thanks from the power-élites in the U.S. – only poisonous barbs directed at the messenger. But a key success should not be lost to sight.

Our putative U.S. interlocutor can focus on finding how an (inevitably diminished) West can exist, in security, with a thriving and politically expanding Eurasian Heartland. Not easy. Some in the U.S. will ‘go wild’ at the very thought, and will try to undermine it; but the great majority of the world will thank handsomely whomsoever can achieve this essential task.

Which takes us to the last point – timing. Do the dominant U.S. power-élites even want an ‘off-ramp’ at this point?

The Washington Post reported on 15 June:

“As Ukraine launches its long-awaited counteroffensive against entrenched Russian occupiers, both Kyiv and its backers are hoping for a rapid retaking of strategically significant territory. Anything less will present the United States and its allies with uncomfortable questions they are not yet prepared to answer … As he heads into next year’s re-election campaign, Biden needs a major battlefield victory to show that his unqualified support for Ukraine has burnished U.S. global leadership, reinvigorated a strong foreign policy with bipartisan support and demonstrated the prudent use of American military strength abroad” [emphasis added].

And if the battlefield victory is not forthcoming? Well, perhaps the answer will be that this lacuna will be disguised by promising more weapons and more money, so as to keep some glimmer of a Ukrainian prospect alive, through the 2024 U.S. elections. Unless, of course, the Kiev centre ‘fails to hold’, and suddenly implodes (maybe quicker than many expect). Don’t bet on a long war: the Kiev ‘camp’ is, as an abandoned Chrysalis shell with the caterpillar out, searching forage – in new directions.

Don’t bet on a long war. That’s what more and more commentators are suggesting. I remain open on that. There are good reasons for Russia to get this over with, but there are good reasons to let it continue. There’s always the issue of casualties—Russia remains committed to keeping casualties as low as possible, which will depend on circumstances that are still developing. There’s also the looming financial chaos in the West amid electoral chaos in several countries, including the US. If war is an extension of politics by non-political means, then those factors could also play into Russia’s decision.

However, I turn now to a conversation that Crooke had on these and other topics with Judge Napolitano: U.S. or NATO Changed Strategy since the Russian Rebellion? I’ve done a transcript of the remarks from the 17 minute mark to the end, which expand on Crooke’s article. However I’ve embedded the cued up video, because it introduces this concluding segment with a video of Blinken speaking on CNN. Note two things. Crooke laughs at the mere mention of Blinken’s name. Next, every statement Blinken makes is a patent lie, and yet the CNN host never once challenges Blinken’s lying narrative.

Following that disgraceful performance, in response to the question, How could you get Blinken to the negotiating table? Crooke launches—in what follows I’ve cleaned up the oral presentation, including substituting words and rearranging sentences to a degree. You have the video above to check my work against:

I don't think he has any interest in getting to a negotiating table at all, because all of his language is designed to present a Manichean you're-with-us-or-against-us narrative, and to isolate the whole Ukrainian problem by stripping it of its context, strip it of its historical origins, strip it of any real sense of what caused it, leaving it isolated as a single event: Russia invaded Ukraine without cause, illegally, and this must be punished, and we can do nothing more. This language STOPS negotiations.

Q: Will there be a negotiated settlement or will there be a battlefield resolution?

A: There was an important statement last night which has largely been missed, but which I think is a key signal of what is coming next. Putin himself said, This war will be over when there are no Ukrainian forces left on the battlefield and when no NATO weapons remain. When that is gone, then the war is over. That statement by Putin was followed shortly afterward by a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs which said, There is no legal entity such as Ukraine. The treaties of reconciliation that would have resolved the legal status of Ukraine vis a vis the Russian Federation were reject by [?] and Zelensky and therefore Ukraine has no legal status. Now, I don't wanna say whether that was a just or right interpretation of international law. The point is the signal that's been given. This statement says, We're not gonna negotiate with Ukraine, we're gonna go on until we've achieved [our stated goals]. And I think one of the outcomes from this event with Prigozhin is that these statements reflect the comments and complaints of soldiers that the military command is being too soft. The West just drives a cart and horse through Russia's redlines without paying any consequences and we need to be much tougher. I think that's a wider sentiment and probably will be reflected [in coming events]. I wonder whether this was a signal of what's coming, when Putin said, The war comes to an end when there are no Ukrainian forces on the field.

Q: So if the CIA and MI6 were behind this event that LOOKED LIKE A COUP in its early stages, their actions will have come back at them like a boomerang if the ultimate result is a much more aggressive Russian military, willing to push all the way west through Ukraine to the Polish border.

A: No military unit, no political leader, no governor supported Prigozhin's insurgency. Everyone gave their support to Putin--it was a cohesive statement of support for the Russian state and for President Putin. He emerges much stronger. I disregard all the noise emanating out of the European MSM. Putin is not threatened. He has established that he is in charge and he enjoys the support of all of Russia.

Putin has also stated that the longer the war continues the tougher Russia’s terms will be. Forget about Minsk—it no longer offers any basis for agreement after Russia’s experience with Western duplicity. Alexander Mercouris today states that Russia has also signaled that the Istanbul agreement—signed by Ukraine but then repudiated at the demand of the Anglosphere—will not serve as the basis for any resolution. The terms will be much tougher and far less palatable.