Note: In my opinion neither Putin nor Trump are engaged in “peace negotiations” for the purpose of ending the military conflict in Ukraine. Putin’s purpose is to use negotiations to achieve a Great Power Agreement, a New Yalta. Putin says the purpose of the negotiations is to solve the “root cause of the conflict,” which is the absence of a Great Power Agreement. For Trump the purpose is to withdraw US focus, money and weapons and to concentrate them on China, which is regarded as Washington’s more dangerous and powerful enemy.
It is amazing how difficult it is for the Western foreign policy community and media to recognize and acknowledge facts. Generally speaking, analysts who tell you the difference between the truth and the narrative are brushed aside. All sorts of dismissive names are applied to us few, and false narratives serving agendas prevail. Policymakers themselves end up believing the false narratives, and this raises the risks of dangerous miscalculations.
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For example, one of the most dangerous of the false narratives is that the slowness of Russia’s military advance against Ukraine is the consequence of Russian military weakness, high Russian battlefield casualties, the vulnerability of the Russian economy to US sanctions, and Putin’s unrealistic expectation to be regarded by Ukrainians as a liberator.
The truth is entirely different. Every time Putin endorses negotiations, he emphasizes that they must address the “root cause” of the conflict. The root cause is the absence of a Great Power Agreement. Putin is using a long drawn out war that the West tires of to initiate “peace negotiations” that Putin hopes to turn into a Great Power Agreement like the one he and his foreign minister failed to achieve in the winter of 2021-2022.
Washington policymakers have concluded that Russia’s weakness allows the US to withdraw from Ukraine and turn the war over to Europeans, while Washington gears up to deal with the more dangerous enemy–China. Failed Ukraine peace negotiations are the intended excuse for Trump washing his hands and walking away. What it signifies is Washington’s refocusing on China as the most dangerous adversary.
It is my opinion that China is not an adversary any more than Russia and Iran are, but the narrative demands that they are adversaries. The American military/security complex cannot exist without adversaries. That is the reason America has adversaries. Without adversaries what would the CIA, NSA, Defense Intelligence Agency, think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, university international studies departments, and publications such as Foreign Affairs do? The United States has massive vested interests in having adversaries, the more dangerous the better.
The question has arisen: How does the US deal with so many adversaries. Formerly, we were assured that we could defeat all adversaries simultaneously. Today it is recognized that we cannot. Wess Mitchell in a recent article in Foreign Affairs says it is the policy of the Trump administration to sequence its conflicts. As Washington regards Russia as the weaker of its two main “adversaries,” Washington is turning the Ukraine conflict over to its European puppets while Washington takes on China.
Wess Mitchell, a former Trump senior defense department official, wipes out the narratives and tells us the policy. And no one other than John Helper and myself have commented on it.
Here is Secretary of State Marco Rubio telling the US Senate yesterday what I have told you, what John Helmer has told you, and what Wess Mitchell has told you: The purpose of the Ukraine “peace negotiations” is for the US to exit the conflict and focus on China. Here are Rubio’s words:
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The war against China, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told a Senate committee hearing on Tuesday (May 20) – is now the strategic priority for the US. Implementing it requires sequencing Washington’s wars. “Every minute we spend, every dollar we spend on this conflict in Europe [Ukraine] is distracting both our focus and our resources away from a potential for a much more serious and much more cataclysmic confrontation in the Indo-Pacific…they are related but they’re related both ways — they’re related on the one hand by the precedent that it could set, but they’re also related by the fact that every minute that we spend on this [Ukraine] conflict that cannot be won by military means, every resource that’s expended into it [Ukraine] is money and time that’s not being spent on preventing a much more serious confrontation from a global perspective in the Indo-Pacific.” Rubio clearly states that the prime target is China.
You can watch and hear Rubio speak here, at the 53 minute 51 second mark.
In my judgment based on the knowledge I have at the present time, Putin and the Russian foreign policy commentators do not understand what is afoot. Putin is lost in hopes that peace negotiations can be turned into a Great Power Agreement, a new Yalta. That would be a greater achievement than merely winning a military conflict with Ukraine and, therefore, is worth the sacrifices of Russian troops in a conflict in which Putin prevents a victory, as a victory would prevent the negotiations that Putin imagines could become a Great Power Agreement.
If Putin had immediately smashed Ukraine, Russia would be regarded as a Great Power and would have obtained its Great Power Agreement. Instead, Putin created the image of a weak Russia that can be sidelined to Europe while Washington takes on China.
