Russia has launched a war of aggression against a European democracy, and the president of the United States of America is on Moscow’s side: All pretense and political window-dressing to one side, that’s how it is. Trump means to give Putin what Putin wants. Fortunately for the cause of the Free World, Donald Trump does not run U.S. foreign policy. Unfortunately, some combination of Marco Rubio, J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner does—freedom is in the greasy paws of a quadrumvirate of self-serving grifters, phonies, cowards, and imbeciles.
(You guys know which is which.)
Someone connected to the Trump administration’s scheming, possibly a Russian contact, leaked a 28-point plan for helping the Kremlin achieve its near-term goals in Ukraine—do not call it a “peace plan,” except in that it would mean requiescat in pace for Ukraine as a sovereign nation. Not only does the document read as though it were originally written in Russian, it seems to be the case that parts of it were literally originally written in Russian, part of a Kremlin wish list. (NB: Christmas is supposed to come late in Russia, not early.) The Trump administration has since been on every conceivable side of the plan, which either is or is not its opening bid, depending on where the big hand is on the clock when you ask. Witkoff had been consulting with Putin advisers Yuri Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, and it shows. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the 28-point plan was cooked up by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and go-to errand boy, following secret meetings with a Russian collaborator in Miami. Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, apparently had no idea what was going on until he read about it in the newspaper. The proposal was “fleshed out in Miami over cocktails,” according to the Los Angeles Times, and, as stripper and coke dealer in south Florida knows, starting off with a good buzz in Miami always leads to smart ideas. Rubio, after learning what these idiots were up to, engaged in what the pundits like to call a “frenzy of diplomacy,” during which he insisted—simultaneously—that the plan was and was not a U.S.-authored proposal. Rubio’s current plan, it seems, is to be somewhere else when the diplomacy hits the fan, planning to skip out on a NATO meeting where he had been expected. I hear Cuba is nice this time of year. Or, at least, that was the consensus the last time I was dreaming up big plans over cocktails in Miami.
“NATO is an American-founded and American-led organization—there is a reason the chief military commander in NATO is, and always has been, an American military officer. NATO, led by the United States, decides who will and will not join NATO.”
What is Trump’s own position? Trump is a weathervane, blown by the shifting winds in turn toward each of the four cardinal points on the schmuck compass: Vance, Rubio, Witkoff, Kushner. Vance is the guy with the clearest policy outlook: “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another,” in his own words. Rubio has the clearest agenda: He thinks he can be president in 2029 if he keeps the MAGA element on board while he tries to remind people of what the Republican Party used to look like back when it was just stupid and lazy instead of stupid, lazy, and morally corrupt. Witkoff is the guy who gets paid by the Trump administration to advise Putin while snuffling around like a truffle-hunting hog for ways to enrich his family. Kushner—the son of a felon pardoned by Trump and currently serving as U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco—is a Saudi-funded private-equity nepo-schmuck who swans around talking about the grandly named “Abraham Accords,” a Middle East … peace program or something … that has been ratified by no major power in the Arab world other than the United Arab Emirates, if you can call that air-conditioned authoritarian shopping mall a major power. Kushner’s father-in-law thinks it was a big deal, but, then, his father-in-law is an idiot.
Vance, Rubio, Witkoff, Kushner: This coalition of the shilling produced a proposal that includes some ridiculous and indefensible stuff, i.e., handing over to Putin a sprawling selection of Ukrainian territory that the Russian army has, so far, not been able to win in battle in spite of conducting a ruthless campaign of torture, murder, and rape. But incredible as it is to write, that is not the worst part, at least from the point of view of U.S. interests—which, as I keep trying to remind people, is the consideration that should be guiding U.S. policy here.
The Trump proposal would formally obligate NATO to abandon any thought of someday taking in Ukraine as a member. Further, it would take NATO expansion off the board categorically. It would also forbid the presence of NATO troops in Ukraine after the war to enforce the Russian promise to forgo another brutal invasion and occupation of Ukraine. One way of looking at that is that it gives Moscow a veto over Ukraine’s foreign policy—but that is the wrong way to look at it: Much more to the point, the provision would give Moscow a veto over American foreign policy.
NATO is an American-founded and American-led organization—there is a reason the chief military commander in NATO is, and always has been, an American military officer. NATO, led by the United States, decides who will and will not join NATO. NATO, led by the United States, sets the terms of its own defensive alliances and obligations. NATO, led by the United States, decides for itself how to go about securing the collective security of its members. To give that power to Moscow is to lop off the right hand of American sovereignty and hand it to Putin with the left hand. It is an act of sabotage. It is a direct attack on the sovereignty of the United States—an attack being conducted not by the Russian president but by the American one and by the gaggle of sycophants and chiselers that make up his administration.
The Europeans were apparently entirely cut out of all these developments—again. The Trump administration wanted to avoid the problem of having “too many cooks,” according to Daniel P. Driscoll, secretary of the army. I suppose the four who are working on this particular stew are quite enough.
Vance, Rubio, Witkoff, Kushner: Of course U.S. policy toward Russia is incoherent, corrupted by private financial interests, and instinctively favorable toward the authoritarian regime rather than the liberal-democratic one. Of course Donald Trump, who knows nothing and believes nothing, is still playing the part of Lord Feather-Pillow, always bearing the imprint of the last ass to have sat on him. History gave Washington a rare opportunity, a free and clear shot at a major national goal, when Putin marched into Ukraine without understanding that it was a war he could not win at an acceptable cost. If the United States had had halfway competent leadership under Trump or Biden—it is worth remembering that Russia began (re-)escalating its aggression toward Ukraine in earnest in 2018, during the first Trump administration, with the Kerch Strait incident—it could have laid Russia low in a matter of a few months rather than diddle along with half-measures while permitting our rudderless European allies to simultaneously shriek at Russian aggression and subsidize it with their fuel purchases. Instead, we’ve got Vance, Rubio, Witkoff, Kushner—the Mount Rushmore of schmucks—each trying to go his own way for his own advantage while that doddering, senescent clown in the orange makeup practices his Mussolini face in the Oval Office’s new gilt mirrors.
A note from Kevin D. Williamson: Happy Thanksgiving to all. Wanderland will return to its usual format next week.
