Trump and Putin Agree to Russia’s Terms in Ukraine
Hey Siri: What Happened in Munich in 1938?
There’s much hand wringing over the promise of negotiations by President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin on ending the Ukraine-Russia war. Left out of an initial discussion were representatives of the Ukraine and assorted NATO nations with skin in the game.
Trump had a long phone call with Putin on Wednesday and they agreed to “start negotiations immediately” on ending Russia’s war with Ukraine. In a later call with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, Trump was told that Putin was pretending to want negotiates because he is “afraid of you.”
Between Trump and his Secretary of Defense, they’ve already conceded negotiating points, keeping Ukraine out of NATO, and not demanding battlefield concessions from Russia. This is a power move for both leaders, since it saves time, Trump gains stature as a peacemaker, and Putin pauses a war that is economically disastrous for his country.
European political leaders are comparing the outcome of this phone call up to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s disastrous pre WWII Munich summit with Hitler, where Czechoslovakia (in absentia) was forced to give up territory to Germany in exchange for peace.
The arrogance of recently anointed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth (accompanied by right wing nutjob Jack Posobiec) at this week’s NATO meeting was sight to behold:
"We can talk all we want about values. Values are important. But you can't shoot values."
So now there will be a ‘peace’ summit in Saudi Arabia. Somehow I suspect that more than the conflict in eastern Europe will be discussed. Maybe Trump can scare up some investment in his Mar-a-Gaza resort.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “Companies have directed about $80 million to members of the Trump family and the Trump presidential library so far.” The quoted number “doesn’t include potential gains from crypto pursuits.” So yes, ‘show me the money’ is already a successful element in negotiations during the first three weeks of his term.
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The latest news has been greeted with cheers in Russia.
Via the New York Times:
In Moscow, news of the long-awaited call ushered in a wave of barely contained glee. Commentators claimed that the American-led three-year effort to isolate Russia had emphatically ended. They celebrated Mr. Trump’s glowing social media post after the call about “the Great History of Our Nations” and noted that the American president had spoken to Mr. Putin before he had called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine.
One Russian lawmaker said that Mr. Putin’s call with Mr. Trump “broke the West’s blockade.” Another said that Europeans were surely reading Mr. Trump’s post about it “with horror and cannot believe their eyes.” A third said it was a “day of good news.”
Via The Guardian:
Russian state TV propagandists celebrated Donald Trump's announcement that he would be working with Vladimir Putin to bring about the end to the Ukraine war on Wednesday, by saying that Trump had effectively taken a saw to NATO and the western world by siding with Russia.
Putin media mouthpieces Evgeny Popov and Sergey Luzyanin were discussing Pete Hegseth's appearance at the Ramstein Summit in Germany to discuss global policy, when they joked about the apparent "three no's" of Pete Hegseth's policies for the Defense Department: no American weapons to Ukraine, no meeting with the Ukrainian delegation at Ramstein, and no to American escalation of the war.
The reality is that this conflict has been fought to a standstill. It’s probable that Russia will get to keep its ill-gotten territorial gains and some sort of monitoring force (not including the U.S.) will be in place. There will be no peace, just an unsatisfying cease-fire while the Russians can rebuild their military. I doubt there will be any reparations, even the return of thousands of Ukrainian children forcibly relocated to Russia.
This deal will prove yet again that Donald Trump’s worldview extends to what’s good for him. And the way this all ends amounts to a divorce between the US and NATO. The upcoming bullying that will accompany the imposition of tariffs and anger at the tech sector will undermine what’s left of the European Union.
Whoopie! They’ll all get to suffer through the Brexit experience.
It is a deeply ironic development given that, in 2008, it was a Republican president (Bush) who insisted on a NATO invitation for Ukraine to join over the objections of Western Europe. Putin would tell you that gesture threatened the sovereignty of Russia.
Now, a new Republican president will force Europe to rescind that invitation.
Nobody in their right mind wants war. That said, once humans acquire a certain amount of real or imagined importance, it’s common to see a messianic point of view develop. Mix in some science and science fiction, a lot of money and the acquiescence of the wealthy, the levers of political and social control, you’ll get a techbro-driven dictatorship.
This is where the USA is currently headed. The struggle to negate or co-opt institutional checks and balances isn’t quite over, but wanting to restore the old order as a defense against political chaos isn’t proving to be an easy sell, nor should it be. We’re never going back to democracy’s golden era; it’s been crushed by the boots of trickle down and authoritarian ambition.
Trump V.2 foreign policy will be defined through the disruption he’ll cause of the global order established at the end of World War Two. Those monetary, defense, and optimistic globalist institutions are frayed and faded. It’s easy to see the world entering a period of disorder, and, as every entrepreneur knows, the riskier the road, the greater the profit. (Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #62, for Star Trek fans.)
Don’t get me wrong here. I have no great love for much of what evolved postwar. I just can’t see anything good coming out of wanton destruction. And, as much as I am critical of the intelligence industrial sector, I see nothing good coming from putting another brand of paranoia at the helm.
The United State has cut ties with as many potential avenues for cooperation as possible. The Paris Climate Accords, the “Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Global Tax Deal,” the World Health Organization (US was the biggest funder), the UN Human Rights Council, and more have been cast aside.
“America First” means using economic and military force (or the threat of) to push around other nations deemed weaker than the United States. Canada as the 51st state, Greenland redefined as a red, white, and blue protectorate, Panama’s canal restored to being a US special zone (by military force if necessary) and plans for Mar a Gaza resorts are all the visions of a man who would be King.
Deeming the body of water off our southern coast as the Gulf of America heralded the arrival of his royal highness and projected a message of fear to other nations in the western hemisphere. It’s all bluster and bullshit now, with a heaping side of corruption.
The ‘soft side’ element in US diplomacy is gone, pushed out by people living by the judgements of who was good and who was bad. I can’t help thinking of a USAID family on vacation we met while traveling in Japan; here were genuinely good human beings dedicated to improving life in Nepal. Now they have been cast aside, portrayed as participants in an international scheme of corruption and traitorous politics.
There is a ghastly story making the rounds about USAID staff and their families abandoned in the Congo amid riots and general disorder. They paid out of their own pockets to make their way down a river in small boats, and were dumped off in Washington with no guidance or assistance. (Details at CNN)
“The most important thing is that people understand we’re not criminals,” the official said, appearing to refer to Elon Musk’s characterization of the agency as “a criminal organization.”
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Given that North Korea has condemned Trump for boasting about wanting to take over Gaza, we’re at a point where it can be argued that Kim Jong Un appears more stable and normal than our Dear Leader.
Climate activist Bill McKibben has pointed out a protection racket being run by the Trump administration in Asia; buy our Liquid Natural Gas or face brutal tariffs. Japan, Taiwan, India, South Korea, and South Vietnam have all stepped up to the plate in recent days with promises to buy more of the stuff.
This particular protection racket makes no sense for America at large. Forget, for a moment, that LNG is a huge driver of the climate change driving fire and flood (by the time you’ve shipped it overseas it’s far worse even than coal); exporting it in huge quantities also obviously drives up the price for Americans still reliant on fracked gas for heating and cooking. The Energy Information Administration just predicted that natural gas prices will rise 21 percent in the year ahead.
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“Team Canada” is the name of the game with our neighbors to the north. President Trump’s targeting of Canada has forged a rare consensus among Canadians and among politicians who, until recently, were squabbling with each other amid one of the country’s most fraught political periods in recent history.
Now the Liberal Party, once thought to be doomed in upcoming elections, has seen a remarkable resurgence. Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre has joined with Justin Trudeau in denouncing threats emanating out of Washington DC, but his party’s overlap with MAGA talking points has hurt him, as Canadians begin getting used to an unfamiliar emotion: anger.
Public opinion surveys reflect the Canadian public mood: 91% percent of those asked recently said they wanted a reduction in the country’s reliance on the United States.
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I’d love to get into tariffs here, but the uncertain nature of what, where, and when imports will be impacted makes it impossible to provide a viewpoint. Suffice it to say they’ll be used to bend other nations to Trump’s will.
Mexico, Central America, South America, the Mid East, Africa, and China are all worthy of future essays, and I’ll be researching/sharing those analyses as best I can in the coming months.
FACT FOCUS: FEMA funding to New York City to assist migrants is misrepresented Via Cedar Attanasio and Melissa Goldin at The Associated Press
The Shelter and Services Program, also known as SSP, is administered by FEMA in partnership with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023. Congress appropriated $650,000,000 for the program in fiscal year 2024 to provide financial support to nonfederal entities. Of that, $640.9 million was “to support sheltering and related activities provided by non-Federal entities, in support of relieving overcrowding in short-term holding facilities of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.” The remaining $9.1 million was for FEMA’s administrative costs.
According to the American Immigration Council, the Shelter and Services Program provided reimbursements to state and local governments and nonprofits in 35 different communities in fiscal years 2023 and 2024.
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Pentagon schools suspend library books for ‘compliance review’ under Trump orders by Ed Pilkington at The Guardian
The purge of library books will affect up to 67,000 children being taught in Pentagon schools worldwide. The Guardian understands that all 160 schools, located in seven US states and 11 countries, are subject to the censorship.
The Guardian has obtained a list of books that have been caught up in the blanket evaluation. They include No Truth Without Ruth, a picture book for four-to-eight-year-olds about the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to sit on the US supreme court.
The book, by the award-winning writer Kathleen Krull, describes the sexist discrimination Ginsburg had to overcome in her rise to becoming a supreme court justice.
Other titles that have been caught up in the review include a book by the American Oscar-winning actor Julianne Moore. Freckleface Strawberry, also for four-to-eight year olds, features a young girl coming to terms with her freckles.
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Order to Drop Adams Case Prompts Resignations in New York and Washington by William K. Rashbaum, Benjamin Weiser, Jonah E. Bromwich, and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times
Manhattan’s U.S. attorney on Thursday resigned rather than obey an order from a top Justice Department official to drop the corruption case against New York City’s mayor, Eric Adams.
Then, when Justice Department officials transferred the case to the public integrity section in Washington, which oversees corruption prosecutions, the two men who led that unit also resigned, according to five people with knowledge of the matter.
Several hours later, three other lawyers in the unit also resigned, according to people familiar with the developments. The serial resignations represent the most high-profile public resistance so far to President Trump’s tightening control over the Justice Department. They were a stunning repudiation of the administration’s attempt to force the dismissal of the charges against Mr. Adams.
