Their paeans to peace are hot air but their intentions are clear:
Three powerful businessmen—two Americans and a Russian—hunched over a laptop in Miami Beach last month, ostensibly to draw up a plan to end Russia’s long and deadly war with Ukraine.
But the full scope of their project went much further, according to people familiar with the talks. They were privately charting a path to bring Russia’s $2 trillion economy in from the cold—with American businesses first in line to beat European competitors to the dividends.
At his waterfront estate, billionaire developer-turned-special envoy Steve Witkoff was hosting Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund and Vladimir Putin’s handpicked negotiator, who had largely shaped the document they were revising on the screen. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had arrived from his nearby home on an island known as the “Billionaire Bunker.”
Dmitriev was pushing a plan for U.S. companies to tap the roughly $300 billion of Russian central bank assets, frozen in Europe, for U.S.-Russian investment projects and a U.S.-led reconstruction of Ukraine. U.S. and Russian companies could join to exploit the vast mineral wealth in the Arctic. There were no limits to what two longtime adversaries could achieve, Dmitriev had argued for months: Their rival space industries, which raced one another during the Cold War, could even pursue a joint mission to Mars with Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.
Dmitriev, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, had found receptive partners in Witkoff—Trump’s longtime golfing partner—and Kushner, whose investment fund, Affinity Partners, drew billion-dollar investments from the Arab monarchies whose conflict with Israel he had helped mediate.
[…]
“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Witkoff told The Wall Street Journal, describing at length his hopes that Russia, Ukraine and America would all become business partners. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
I have no idea if Witkoff believes that drivel but it doesn’t matter. He’s going to get his, no matter what. The grift is unprecedented in world history and illustrates that we are now fully in the grip of a global oligarchy with a fascist political arm.
There’s more:
In the days after Alaska, a European intelligence agency distributed a hard-copy report in a manila envelope to some of the continent’s most senior national security officials, who were shocked by the contents: Inside were details of the commercial and economic plans the Trump administration had been pursuing with Russia, including jointly mining rare earths in the Arctic.
Witkoff has worked closely with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, former Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, has been all but frozen out of serious talks, and last week said he is leaving the government.
To understand the story behind the administration’s Russia negotiations, The Wall Street Journal spoke to dozens of officials, diplomats, and former and current intelligence officers from the U.S., Russia and Europe, and American lobbyists and investors close to the administration. The picture that emerges is a remarkable story of business leaders working outside the traditional lines of diplomacy to cement a peace agreement with business deals.
Don’t worry MAGA. I’m sure you’ll benefit from all this too. Maybe you’ll get to keep social security and Medicare, which is really generous. Kind of like Ukraine getting to keep Kiev.
Major energy investors are in on the deal, meeting with Russian state owned energy companies with quite a few Trump donors at the head of the line. Natch.
Puck’s Julia Ioffe goes into the last week or so’s chaotic 28-point plan talks, pointing out just how inept these Masters of the Universe actually are:
In Washington—at least among the bipartisan crowd that, like most Americans, still backs Ukraine—people are alarmed. One foreign-policy insider pointed out that Ukraine, which is now arguing over a 600,000-troop limit on its military, “has been forced to negotiate against itself and make preemptive concessions.”
Others are simply confused. “Has there been anything else since this morning?” said Rep. Don Bacon, Republican of Nebraska, given the sundry peace plan drafts in circulation. Still, Bacon told me, what he had read most recently was an improvement over the original leaked draft. “It’s disgraceful that the U.S. would submit a proposal to give up Ukrainian territory and give up Ukrainian sovereignty,” he said. “It angered me to no end. And it embarrasses me as a Republican.” Bacon viewed the original 28-point plan as “Witkoff run amok,” and was reassured that Rubio seemed to be caught off guard by it as well. “I trust him,” he said. “I don’t think he’d give away the store.”
Bacon believes that the U.S. isn’t effectively using its leverage. After all, Trump could be sending Ukraine more weapons and dialing up the sanctions on Russia, then pushing for bigger concessions from the Russians. In short, Bacon said, Trump could be telling Putin, “If you want territory, let them into NATO. If not, then leave Ukrainian territory. Tough, but that’s the choice!” And the United States could insist on it.
“I don’t want Neville Chamberlain’s name in the same sentence as the president’s in the history books,” Bacon continued. “That’s where we were headed Thursday. And I told that to the White House.” Asked how the White House responded, Bacon said, “They say it’s just negotiating.”
Speaking of Neville Chamberlain, at least he was genuinely idealistic, if cripplingly naive, about the need for peace at all costs. “Peace” is obviously just Trump’s schtick in order to get a prize he can display proudly down at Mar-a-lago with his various golf championships he “won” at his golf courses. The big score is all the money he’ll make for Javanka and the boys along with his good buddies like Lutnick and Witkoff.
Trump knows about nothing but his daddy’s real estate business and licensing deals for cheap ties and nasty perfume. The crypto stuff he’s into now is way beyond his Ken. Because of his personality defect, limited bandwidth and sociopathic tendencies he does not have the capacity to understand anything more complicated and this term his henchmen have validated his belief that he can run the entire world through this myopic little worldview. It’s unleashed this global oligarchy that is going to lead to catastrophe. Ioffe adds:
Why would that be???
I assume it could be stopped with a strong pushback from political actors, perhaps competition with other global actors, and the clear ineptitude of these people who believe they are much more intelligent and competent than they really are. But I don’t have a lot of faith that it will. This really feels like a runaway train right now and I have no idea where it ends up.
I think it might be a good idea to re-read “The March of Folly.” There’s also a movie on Netflix right now that’s pertinent, called “Munich, The Edge of War” with Jeremy Irons as Neville Chamberlain. As I said, at least he was genuinely idealistic. Trump is just a greedy moron surrounded by fascists and oligarchs. Sadly, I suspect the motives don’t much matter in the end. The people who seek world domination will use any advantage they have.