The Art Of No Deal

This is the day after. The day after Trump sent his chosen Jewish Nationalist cronies, neither of whom has a clue about the real Russia—a real estate lawyer from Manhattan and his own son in law—to Moscow to do a deal with Vladimir Putin. OK, why do I note that Witkoff and Kushner are Jewish Nationalists? We know that they are because of their role in support of the genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and their interest in real estate deals both in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, using Trump’s leverage as POTUS. The relevance to Russia is that the war on Russia is fundamentally an Anglo-Zionist war of revenge—Money Matters—just as the US or Anglo-Zionist wars in the Middle East and elsewhere are fundamentally Jewish Nationalist wars. Here’s how Doug Macgregor put it yesterday, without using my chosen term, in conversation with Danny Davis:

So, someone needs to tell [the Euros], “Shut up. Sit down. Here’s the answer.” That is what President Trump should do. But he’s not doing it. Now, we can speculate on his donors, the people that really control him, and I think that Witkoff and Kushner are very representative of those donors and their desire to keep this war going with Russia.

But they’re not legally legitimately in charge. Hell, they don’t even hold appointments in the administration. They’re not part of the State Department. And if Trump and Rubio can’t come to an agreement, then he should fire Rubio and put somebody else over there that understands what the hell’s at stake. It is our relationship with Russia that counts.

Trump can either help manage this and control it and drive it in a positive direction, or he can do what he’s doing right now. Worry about the optical illusion that he wants to create. Send Witkoff and Kushner over there to help him create good optics for him.

Here’s Mac talking about how a mission to get Bin Laden turned into a 20 year war in Afghanistan. After naming the usual Neocon suspects like Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby ... Remember the seven regime change wars in five years that General Wesley Clark told us about? This is where it started. And then came Russia, the Big Enchilada. These people are insanely hubristic:

“The political leadership in Washington had gotten to W and convinced him, well, [Afghanistan] is a sideshow anyway, boss. We just need to keep the lid on there and we’ll go to Iraq next. I mean, you can’t make this stuff up. And in retrospect, I’m sure several historians will dissect this and you’ll eventually get something reasonably close to the truth and they’ll all say, “How could anyone have ever reached these conclusions?”

The history of post Cold War America is essentially the history of Neocons using America’s military for purposes that had little or nothing to do with US national interests. The Neocons were acting as agents of a foreign power, or for non-American interests. For those who don’t recall what Wesley Clark said:

In September 2007 Clark’s memoir A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor and Country. In the book Clark alleged that during a visit to the Pentagon in the autumn of 2001 after 9/11, a “senior general” told him that the Office of the Secretary of Defense had produced a confidential paper proposing a series of regime change operations in seven countries over a period of five years. He had made the allegation a number of times in public and media appearances in 2006 and 2007. The book also described a conversation Clark had with Paul Wolfowitz in May 1991 after the Gulf War, quoting Wolfowitz as lamenting the non-removal of Saddam Hussein, but also telling him that “...we did learn one thing that’s very important. With the end of the Cold War, we can now use our military with impunity. The Soviets won’t come in to block us. And we’ve got five, maybe 10, years to clean up these old Soviet surrogate regimes like Iraq and Syria before the next superpower emerges to challenge us...”.^[135]

I repeat all that because it’s the background to the mission to Moscow. The Russians—I guarantee you—are fully aware of that background, and much more. They know exactly who they’re dealing with and who Witkoff and Kushner represent. The easiest way to get at what transpired is to quote two short passages from a longer article by Larry Johnson (Negotiating in Moscow on the Negotiations):

The media is reporting that the core agenda was the updated U.S. peace framework, which emphasizes:

• A potential ceasefire and de facto border recognition, possibly involving Ukrainian concessions in the Donbas region to meet Russia’s territorial demands.

• Security guarantees for Ukraine, coordinated with European allies like France.

• Broader steps for implementation, including front-line adjustments and restrictions on Ukraine’s military capabilities.

Putin reportedly agreed with some elements of the proposal but reiterated Russia’s non-negotiable positions, …

…

… Putin indicated that the negotiation process is being conducted through professional channels, explicitly pointing to Lavrov and the Foreign Ministry as those leading the work on possible peace arrangements. He stressed that he is regularly briefed by Lavrov on these discussions, including on US-drafted peace ideas that Moscow says draw heavily on earlier Russian proposals.

While Putin was meeting with Witkoff and Kushner, Sergei Lavrov held warm bilateral talks with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi. Lavrov’s absence from the Witkoff/Kushner meeting was a clear signal from Russia that the foundation for actual negotiations was still not in place. Putin’s goal was to explain — politely and firmly — what Russia’s fundamental positions are with respect to settling the war in Ukraine.

Read that carefully. I haven’t the least doubt that Witkoff was hoping to be able to do some general sort of “deal” with Putin. It was the same “deal” that has been offered to Russia before, this time in slightly altered wrapping, but just as unacceptable to Russia. The Anglo-Zionist plan for a “ceasefire” and only “de facto recognition” of the new realities in the Russian zone are a transparent subterfuge for not really ending the war. It’s a “deal” that is only temporary and would be easily broken. What it is not is a legally binding treaty, which is at the top of the list of Putin’s demands.

I also don’t doubt that Witkoff once again attempted to present carrots to Putin, to sweeten a deal that Putin doesn’t want. The primary carrot is, of course, “sanctions relief”. The Anglo-Zionists are trying to extract concessions from Russia—Russia should accept a temporary cessation of hostilities that only strengthens its enemies, and renounce any binding settlement—in exchange for the withdrawal of illegal and ineffective sanctions. Putin has already made his position on sanctions clear: The sanctions are illegal. America is welcome to do the morally and legally right thing by scrapping its sanctions regime, but Russia can live with the sanctions and will certainly not give up anything of value in return for America returning to the rule of international law. To do so would be to implicitly grant a degree of legitimacy to America’s lawless hegemoniacal actions, and that is unacceptable to Russia, because Russia knows America is quite capable of returning to its sanctions. Russia demands to be treated as a sovereign equal in the light of international law. Nothing less.

But even more fundamentally, Putin made it clear that he isn’t interested in any sort of “deal”. He wants a fully spelled out and legally binding treaty settlement. Recall the two draft treaties that Putin presented to the Anglo-Zionist West in December, 2021. Deals may be done between power brokers, unofficial cronies of the sort Trump sends around the world. Putin and the rest of the world has seen what American “deals” are worth. In fact, in the case of Taiwan, he has seen how the US has repeatedly flouted its own One China policy. Putin is demanding—and by citing Lavrov’s role he makes this totally clear—that any settlement with Anglo-Zionist America be arrived at through official channels in a defined process of negotiations and embodied in signed documents. Witkoff and Kushner came to Moscow hoping for a deal, but Putin told them: No “deals.” If you want to negotiate a treaty, I have foreign minister who can oblige. If America can’t go down that path, Russia will know how to react.

I have argued that Trump himself doesn’t actually want a treaty—only a deal that would allow him to extricate himself from a losing situation and refocus elsewhere. It’s clear that Trump is under increasing pressure and is increasingly desperate to end the war with Russia. From Putin’s perspective that’s Trump’s personal problem. Putin isn’t in any hurry and feels no pressure from his constituency—the Russian nation—to rush into any “deal”, or even into a treaty. Remember—Putin is looking for a new and formally agreed upon security architecture in Europe. That will require agreement on a wide range of details, starting with US bases, force deployments, mechanisms for resolving disputes, etc.

Waving the promise of “sanctions relief” in exchange for a “ceasefire” and “de facto” arrangements on the ground in Ukraine won’t get Russia to where Putin wants to go. Putin has pretty much the full support of Russians for these positions. The same can probably not be said for Trump. Yes, of course, most Americans want an end to wars. But America’s political class is largely owned by Jewish Nationalists. Trump knows this, and he knows that a treaty with Russia that resembles anything that would be acceptable to Putin and most Russians would likely be rejected in the Senate. So, even if Trump wants to do the right thing for the right reasons—which I continue to doubt—pursuing that course would require a degree of personal courage on Trump’s part that probably isn’t warranted.

All this is happening against a background of a looming economic crisis. Interesting times.