War And Peace

Trump continues his now familiar tactics of baffling one and all—playing humanitarian in Ukraine, threatening “hell” against Palestinians and expressing zero sympathy for the genocide they’ve suffered. Threatening countries adjoining Palestine to bully them into complicity in ethnic cleansing. Is it some sort of artful dealing, is it serious? One thing is for sure. The longer either situation continues without resolution, the more certainly Trump assumes ownership of the results. The American public, judging as best we can by the polling, appears to like the Good Trump but is not at all crazy about the Bad or Crazy Trump. This is across the board—there is no actual good news in the polling at this point. Americans are sick and tired of war and threats of war.

Trump 'Committed To Buying & Owning Gaza' As Poll Shows Little Support Among US Public

There appears to be zero chance that American troops will actually be sent to Gaza, but there are disquieting rumors of new weaponry being provided to Israel that verge on being weapons of mass destruction—certainly of indiscriminate death and destruction. Most recently, Hamas has suspended the return of Israeli prisoners amid reports of Israeli ceasefire violations and Trumpian insistence on treating Gaza as a R/E development project—beginning with threats of ethnic cleansing. Trump’s response? Mediation? Not so much—an ultimatum instead:

He said the Palestinian militant group should release all the hostages it still holds by midday on Saturday or he would propose cancelling the ceasefire and "let hell break out."

Again, Trump is insisting that he totally owns whatever happens. You can’t really walk that back—for good or ill. It all looks tremendously destabilizing—and the degree of US leverage is far from certain—but beneficial to Russian, Chinese, and Iranian influence in the region. The Arab countries reflexively seek to minimize conflict with the US, but they do have alternatives. And the America public is decidedly skeptical. A renewal of genocide—this time openly embraced by a POTUS—would be a bad look to Americans and the world.

Turning to Russia, while there have been promising signs that Trump may be getting a handle on just how little leverage he has over what was supposed to be his signature foreign policy achievement—peace in Ukraine in 24 hours or 100 days or bust—the signals coming out of Moscow suggest otherwise. That could all be negotiating ploys in the media, but the Russian signals have been entirely consistent for three years now. Moreover, Russia knows that it holds the trump cards—in a manner of speaking:

US Must Recognize 'New Realities' If Serious About Peace In Ukraine, Kremlin Tells Trump

As usual, Trump exudes supreme confidence in his artful dealmaking—so confident that he has surrounded himself with clownish supporting actors (Kellogg, Waltz,, etc.), as if to show that he can overcome any adversity. But it seems doubtful that any past life experience has prepared Trump for deal making with Vladimir Putin and his highly professional support staff. This follows reports over the last few days that Trump has spoken directly with Putin. In typical Trumpian fashion, he has insisted that he wants to stop the deaths of all the “handsome soldiers”, apparently thinking that this offers leverage over Putin, or public support in America. Such rhetoric has failed to sway American public opinion over Gaza and seems unlikely to change the widespread view among the public that American should just get out:

"I do believe we're making progress," Trump had told reporters, adding that he expects there to be more communications to come. "We want to stop the Ukraine-Russia war."

But as of Monday the Kremlin still says it has yet to be presented with any concrete offer that it would be enticed by. Moscow has received nothing to get it to the negotiating table with Ukraine, at a moment it has the clear battlefield momentum.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin expressed this to RIA state news agency

"It is important that words be backed up by practical steps that take into account Russia's legitimate interests, demonstrating a readiness to eradicate the root causes of the crisis and recognize the new realities."

"Concrete proposals of this nature have not yet been received," he emphasized.

Those words reflect the consistent position of the Kremlin since Putin advanced his two draft treaties in December, 2021. Russia has consistently insisted—to the point of putting it in writing—that it must have “enforceable” security guarantees in written form. Those security guarantees require a thorough overhaul of NATO’s posture—meaning, the American posture—toward Russia. That’s something that Trump has only once hinted at—a willingness to consider Russia’s point of view. Otherwise, Trump and his clown support staff have consistently espoused a Neocon - Ukro-Nazi position: a ceasefire in preparation for a renewed assault on Russia.

But even as the White House signals progress and positive contacts with Moscow, a very different message is coming out of Russian state media on Monday. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov at a news conference has said Moscow-Washington relations are on the brink of complete rupture. Here's a summary of the remarks in TASS:

Relations between Moscow and Washington are balancing on the verge of rupture.

The administration of former US President Joe Biden "focused on hybrid warfare, introduced into its documents and imposed on allies in various alliances and configurations the idea of the possibility of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia." As a result, the "antagonistic content" of Russian-US relations intensified and has become "very critical" today.

Washington's attempts to give Moscow demands or to demonstrate the alleged doing "a great favor" in exchange for unacceptable US demands are bound to failure in the dialogue with Russia.

Specifically Russia sees an unwillingness to deal seriously and fairly on the nuclear front, after in the last half-decade several post-Cold War era treaties have collapsed:

The policy pursued by Washington "poses a significant challenge to global nuclear non-proliferation" and control over nuclear weapons is deteriorating.

Russia has not yet seen any manifestations of common sense or political will on the part of the West to overcome the crisis in the arms control system.

The situation around Russia-US dialogue on strategic stability, including the post-New START Treaty period, does not look optimistic.

Such dramatic statements suggesting a total break in formal relations from the Russian side could just be more diplomatic maneuvering and posturing to maintain leverage at the future negotiating table.

What I find interesting and possibly hopeful in those “dramatic” comments from Ryabkov is this. I have long maintained that any deal is basically impossible—all else being equal. As CTH has recently, Trump has nothing to offer Putin. At least not as matters now stand. However, Russia would still prefer a deal, precisely because the US has a lot of strategic nukes. The difficulty is that Trump needs to save face, to present some plausible impression that he isn’t simply caving—for rhetorical purposes directed at the American public that wants out of this war on Russia. That suggests that an American (NATO) climbdown could be negotiated—if the deal contains a generous side helping of arms control.

It doesn’t matter that Trump himself torpedoed arms control during Trump 1.0. That was then, this is now—and most Americans have short memories as long as things seem to work out in the end. Trump himself has acknowledged Putin’s arms control concerns as a possible common ground, although the Western media has not paid much attention to that. Now Ryabkov is putting those Russian concerns front and center in the context of making a deal with America. That still seems to me the possible way forward, but it will need to be accompanied with other security guarantees.