Opting out of global leadership

 Scenes from a world that is leaving post-America behind:

President Sheinbaum of Mexico and Prime Minister Takaichi of Japan strenghtened their countries' trade and investment ties when the two leaders met on April 20. One concrete step was Japan's agreement to import 1 billion barrels of Mexican oil, a resource which, as we know, is at a premium these days, what with the Iran war. 

Iran is making some cheddar with its control of the Strait of Hormuz:

Hamidreza Hajibabaei, the deputy speaker of Iran's parliament, claimed that Iran, not the United States, was now making demands after the first revenues for newly implemented tolls on shipping through the Strait of Hormuz were deposited into the state's central bank.

"We have control over this Strait," Hajibabaei said during a public gathering in the western city of Kuhdasht via ABC News.

"If the United States continues on its current course, no vessels will pass through the Strait of Hormuz," he added. "We are not engaged in negotiations -- rather, we are making demands."

The Very Stable Genius's attempt tp get back in Georgia Meloni's good graces after their falling out over the Pope is falling flat:

The suggestion that Iran should be replaced by Italy at this year’s World Cup drew a mix of embarrassment and apathy from Azzurri fans on Thursday, with Italian media reminding readers that the idea has a very familiar feel.

President Donald Trump’s U.S. special envoy Paolo Zampolli told the Financial Times that he made the suggestion to the U.S. president and FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

“I’m an Italian native and it would be a dream to see the Azzurri at a US-hosted tournament. With four titles, they have the pedigree to justify inclusion,” said Zampolli, an Italian-American who is Trump’s envoy for “Global Partnership” but has no official connection with the World Cup or Italian football.

. . . Italy’s main sports news websites have given the story only a passing reference.

Sports Minister Andrea Abodi told the Italian news agency La Press: “Firstly it is not possible, secondly it is not appropriate ... You qualify on the pitch.”

Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti went futher, saying the idea was “shameful.”

Leading Italian coach Gianni De Biasi told Reuters it was an unlikely proposal with any theoretical Iranian absence logically filled by the team behind them in their qualification group.

“Furthermore, I believe Italy doesn’t need Trump’s support on an issue like this. I think we can manage on our own,” he said.

The Navy Secretary is out, in the middle of the biggest US naval blockade since World War II.  

If the post-American government is going to go full-tilt socialist, why is it sinking its (our) dollars into Spirit Airline (to the tune of a 90 precent ownership stake), which has been a losing proposition for many years now?

Mark Carney isn't playing the VSG's games. And what the hell is an "entry fee?"

Canada is not just sitting back "taking notes" or instructions from the Americans on trade talks after White House officials complained publicly about irritants in the Canada-U.S. relationship, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Thursday.

The prime minister said he's focused on eliminating U.S. tariffs that are hurting key sectors such as steel and aluminum.

"You know what's an irritant? Fifty per cent tariff on steel, 50 per cent on aluminum, 25 per cent on automobiles, all the tariffs on forest products," Carney said during an exchange with reporters in Ottawa on Thursday.

"Those are more than irritants. Those are violations of our trade deal."

Carney also said he had never heard of an "entry fee" Canada would have to pay to start talks with the White House on renewing the continental free trade pact.

“I don’t know where the talk of an ‘entry fee’ is from," he said. "It's certainly not coming from me. It’s not language I’ve ever used, and it's not language I've never heard from the president of the United States."

The claim of a rigged election was the page open in the VSG's playbook in late 2020 into 21, is again with regard to Virginia's redistricting vote  (which is irony-rich since he was the one who stoked the whole redistrict-in-mid-decade push) and will surely be how he reacts to a lot of midterm races this November. 

Exit question: When all this is considered in sum, is American leadership something that could ever be restored? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meanwhile, in Ukraine

 Peruse the front page of any news aggregate or scholarly world-affairs journal these days and it's likely to be preoccupied with the latest Middle East developments.

Let us not forget, however, that Ukraine continues to be subject to this on a regular basis:

Russian missiles and drones destroyed homes, burned buildings, and killed civilians in Ukraine's major cities in a mass overnight strike on April 16, killing at least 17 and injuring over 100 in Kyiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. 

The overnight assault marks one of the deadliest Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians of 2026.

The Air Force later said Russia launched a total of 19 ballistic missiles, 25 cruise missiles, and 659 drones during the attack. 

Twelve missiles and 20 drones hit 26 locations across Ukraine, and debris from interceptions hit 25 locations.

In the first attack on Kyiv in over a month, at least four people — including a 12-year-old child — were killed and 48 others injured overnight in Kyiv, Ukraine's State Emergency Service reported. Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said 26 of the wounded were hospitalized, and that among the victims are emergency medics and children. 

Elsewhere in Ukraine, the overnight Russian attack killed at least nine people in the southern port city of Odesa and killed at least four people in the central-eastern city of Dnipro, the local authorities and the State Emergency Service reported.

This is a direct result of the West's moral compass being wobbly from the time Russia launched its assault in February 2022. The Biden administration was skittish about sending what was needed to repel the assault. Europe had not yet gotten a clue as to how it needed to step up, and rogue actors such as North Korea and Iran were all too happy to help Russia. Then along came the Very Stable Genius and that supremely shameful dressing down of Zelensky in the Oval Office, as well as the Alaska "summit" with Putin the following August.

But ironies abound. Yes, Ukraine is still subject to the kind of horror described above, but the shape of a new alliance structure is coming into view:

President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Rome on April 15 for talks with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, continuing his diplomatic tour across Europe.

During the visit, Zelensky underscored the need to strengthen Ukraine's air defenses and said that Kyiv and Rome are "working out the specifics" of an upcoming drone deal.

"Italy is very interested in developing joint production, especially in the drone sector, in which Ukraine has become a leading nation in recent years," Meloni said during a joint press conference with Zelensky after talks at the Chigi Palace.

Zelensky urged closer air defense cooperation among European partners, offering Ukraine's expertise in countering drones and missiles.

"We all need a truly effective defense system that can protect against any threats. War has changed," Zelensky said.

Meloni reiterated Italy's support for Ukraine and called for increased economic pressure on Russia, specifically through the EU's 20th sanctions package, currently blocked by Hungary.

The two leaders further discussed Kyiv's efforts to join the EU, the EU's 90-billion-euro ($105 billion) loan for Ukraine, the battlefield situation, and the U.S.-Iran conflict.

As part of his official visit, Zelensky also met Italian President Sergio Mattarella at the Quirinale Palace, who underscored the "deep friendship" between Italy and Ukraine, the Ansa news agency reported.

And that visit comes on the heels of a rift between Meloni and the Very Stable Genius:

 

For years, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy enjoyed leverage as the right-wing leader who could bridge the gap between Europe and President Trump.

This week, though, she seems to have decided that Mr. Trump is a bridge too far.

After suffering major political setbacks because of her association with Mr. Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Italy and seen as the cause of rising gas prices, Ms. Meloni seized on an opportunity to extricate herself from a relationship that had grown domestically and internationally poisonous. After Mr. Trump launched a broadside on Monday against Pope Leo XIV, Ms. Meloni rallied to the American pontiff’s defense, saying, “I find President Trump’s remarks about the Holy Father unacceptable.”

Mr. Trump, clearly jilted, lashed out at Ms. Meloni, saying in an interview with an Italian newspaper on Tuesday that he hadn’t talked to her “in a long time,” was vexed by her lack of participation in the war in Iran and was “shocked by her,” adding, “I thought she was brave, but I was wrong.” He responded to her “unacceptable” criticism by snapping, “She’s the one who’s unacceptable.” On Wednesday, he added in a television interview that with Italy, “we do not have the same relationship.”

 One hears a lot about how a newly motivated West, minus the United States, is still no match for the military and economic might of the US, but that kind of depends on properly sizing up that motivation. Carney, Starmer, Macron, Merz, Tusk et al know, as the Trumpists like to say, what time it is.

And Ukraine has remained strong enough through this ordeal to emerge as a sought-after vendor of drones, even in the Middle East. And these days Zelensky is forthrightly saying that Ukraine ought to be in NATO.

For all the sober analysis of the current state of all this. there's something to be said for being on the right side of the dynamics from a moral standpoint.

A lot of time and opportunity have been lost so far in the Ukraine situation, but there's a palpable push for those with the most at stake to do the right thing now.

That's to be encouraged.

 

A silly foreign policy in a deadly serious world

 So Vance, Kushner and Witkoff return empty-handed from Islamabad, the Very Stable Genius orders a US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz (and I'm not the first to point out the absurdity of the US closing the strait that is already closed by Iran, and which was open to all the ships of the world prior to the VSG starting the current war), Israel is on the same footing it went on prior to previous attacks on Iran,  polls in Hungary don't portend an Orban win, despite the blatant endorsements of Vance and Trump, and the VSG spent last night enjoying himself at a UFC fight. Marco Rubio was in attendance, too.

 For that matter, I don't think I've seen the VSG congratulate the Artemis II crew. If he has, he was low-key about it.

I came across a National Review article this morning that made a compelling case for widening one's scope beyond this panoply of developments:

There is a comfortable orthodoxy settling over editorial boards, university seminars, and policy conferences from Ottawa to Brussels. It goes something like this: Donald Trump broke the international order, the United States is an unreliable partner, and the remedy is diversification — toward China, toward the BRICS bloc of emerging economies (including players like Brazil, Russia, and India), toward anyone who is not Washington. This narrative is not merely incomplete, it is dangerously wrong, and the countries indulging in it are squandering what little time they have to prepare for a world that is about to change in ways that ...

The author, an expatriate American living and teaching in Japan, says the bigger dynamics we ought to consider include AI, and the sclerotic regulatory climate in Canada and Europe.

I respect his perspective, but, as is so often the case with a certain kind of sober-analysis piece I run across, it underestimates the impact of the VSG on post-American politics, the shaping up of new dynamics on the world stage, and the setting of precedents that future generations will take for granted at its own peril.

The guy is so clearly out of control, and his contempt for the rest of the West is getting increasingly egregious. His ha-ha-you-don't-know-whether-I'm-kidding-on-the-square-or-completely-serious style of posting on Truth Social or bloviating to reporters has the rest of the world, malign and good-faith alike, shaping events without waiting around for post-America.

Europe appears determined to sidestep the US in the effort to tailor its defense apparatus to 21st-century needs. Ukraine has already proven itself as a solid vendor of drones to several Mideast nations.

I pray, of course, about the current state of affairs. There are signs, such as the aforementioned polls in Hungary, that the good, right, and true can prevail over the bad, wrong and false, but I'm not counting on post-America to be a needle-mover, at least on the side of the former.

Dare to compare

 The Very Stable Genius's take on where things stand re: resolution to the Russian invasion of Ukraine:

President Trump jabbed at Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky Friday — blaming him for a lack of progress in peace talks to end Russia’s nearly four-year invasion.

“Zelensky is going to have to get moving,” Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for North Carolina.

“Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky is going to have to get moving. Otherwise, he’s going to miss a great opportunity.”

Russia's take:

 As the United States renews its diplomatic push to end Russia's war against Ukraine, Moscow is making something clear: its position has not changed.

While U.S., Ukrainian, and Russian officials met for trilateral talks in January and again in early February — with another round expected next week — the Kremlin has used the same period to restate its position.

As Washington speaks of momentum and narrowing gaps, Russia's most senior officials have publicly dismissed key elements of the proposed framework.

There would seem to be a gap in expectations.

 

Well, why not? It's still late in the day

 Hello, everybody. As you can see, I haven't posted here since March.

I have stayed busy over at my Substack, Precipice, which has a fair number of subscribers and is where I post longer essays that tend to be about a wider range of topics.

I started Late in the Day a few years earlier (LITD, 2012; Precipice, 2019), and the intent has been to invite the public to fully grasp what has happened to this formerly recognizable thing called the West. I do a fair amount of that at Precipice as well, but LITD has always been a bit more topical and the posts more link-rich.

I guess what prompted me to wade back in over here is that I'd like a place to less formally gather my thoughts in response to each - or at least many - of the developments comprising the torrent of abrupt history-making whenever the mood strikes me. A place to feel my way toward inspiration for other projects.

Let's see; the last post I did here had to do with the Jeddah talks regarding Ukraine. 

What a ten months it's been since then. Putin still has no interest in any kind of peace settlement. In fact, he's upped the savagery level of his missile and drone attacks. 

There's the related issue currently on our plate of the Very Stable Genius's blathering about Greenland with random capitalizations and uses of quotation marks and the thank-you-for-your-attention-to-this-matter sign-off that characterize his social media posts. It’s yet another example of this ha-ha-am-I-kidding-on-the-square-or-deadly-serious “presidential” style that we’re saddled with. But it definitely has Denmark, and Europe generally, alarmed and discussing various what-if scenarios.

The bottom line in that arena is that the post-1945 international order is no more. We're back to spheres of influence. Brute force. (Hell, Stephen Miller says so.) 

Venezuela? Sure, as an isolated development, it's great that Maduro has been captured and deposed. But let us consider that newly sworn in president Delcy Rodriguez is a Chavista through and through. As is interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who wields a blunt instrument, literally, in the country's government.  And collectivos are boarding public buses and demanding that passengers hand over their phones so they can check for signs of support for Maduro's ouster. Then there's the VSG's clear indication that oil is his first priority. That's how Vance is thinking of it, too. 

There's the situation with ICE in Minneapolis. I've watched some of the video. It does look to me like Renee Good was steering her car to the right, away from the agents. From what I can tell, they had options other than shooting her in the face. Is it true that she was a cause-y lefty with an edgy lifestyle? Sure. But she was an American citizen and her life is as precious as that of any other of God's children. And now both sides have dug in their heels, have glommed onto hard and fast positions that will brook no nuance.

So things will probably get increasingly confrontational between ICE and people on the streets of post-America's cities. And not only will the question of how to humanely address the situations of long-time residents from elsewhere who have lived productive lives in the US continue to get sidelined, more actual citizens will surely get caught up in the ugliness. 

Anyway, I think I'll start chiming in here again with some degree of frequency. 

I've been kind of missing the place. 

 

So the Jeddah talks have begun

 So post-America has finally deigned to meet a Ukrainian delegation, after sending unmistakable signals to the world that it cares not whether that nation continues to exist as a sovereign entity, and that, in its view, Russia has the more sensible view of how to proceed.

The meeting is being hosted by Saudi Arabia:

Ukrainian and U.S. delegates are starting their talks in Jeddah on March 11 in a meeting that will likely have a major impact on Washington's future support for Kyiv and any effort to end the Russia-Ukraine war.

"The meeting with the U.S. team started very constructively; we are working towards a just and lasting peace," said President Volodymyr Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.

The Ukrainian delegation is said to include Yermak, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, and Zelensky's Deputy Chief of Staff Pavlo Palisa.

The U.S. delegation is led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and National Security Advisor Mike Waltz.

The stakes are high:

Kyiv is entering the talks with a weak hand but is prepared to do what it needs to to get the U.S. back on its side.

"We're ready," a source in the President's Office told the Kyiv Independent when asked about the prospect of signing the mineral deal.

In an effort to convince the U.S. that Ukraine is serious about peace and in the hope that Washington will resume military aid and intelligence sharing, Kyiv is also reportedlyproposing a partial ceasefire covering long-range drone and missile strikes, as well as hostilities in the Black Sea.

The U.S., however, may now want to extort more from a weakened Ukraine.

Having to offer so much to the U.S. before peace talks with Russia can begin in earnest is being keenly felt in Kyiv.

When asked what Ukraine was expecting at the talks in Jeddah, the source in the President's Office replied: "Finally hearing what the Americans want from the negotiations."

Deciphering that level of inscrutability is a daunting task. The Very Stable Genius's signals are anything but encouraging:

"So many of the things that Trump has said in the last two or three days give you the impression that he thinks Ukraine was going to lose regardless, that the Biden administration wasted a lot of money prolonging (the war), and we just have to get that over with," Volker said.

Nothing that has come out of the White House in recent weeks suggests Trump has any interest in reaching a peace agreement that is in Ukraine's interests.

After Polish President Andrzej Duda said that Ukraine would not survive without U.S. support, Trump was asked in an interview on March 9 if he was "comfortable" with the thought of his actions potentially leading to the destruction of the country.

"Well, it may not survive anyway," Trump said.

His assessment of Ukraine's future came around a month after he flippantly suggested the country "may be Russian someday" in comments that made clear his main interest lay in Kyiv's mineral wealth and the ability to pay back U.S. military aid.

Trump's transactional approach to negotiations that appear to have little regard for Ukrainian lives, territory, or sovereignty is a major source of concern in Kyiv, and the country as a whole.

"The expectations (of the Jeddah meeting) are alarming," Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, lawmaker from the Holos party, chairman of the parliamentary committee on freedom of speech, told the Kyiv Independent.

"Because recently the U.S. administration has demonstrated a desire not for just peace, but for the fastest possible reconciliation between the victim and the aggressor, without taking into account the interests of the victim."

Yurchyshyn acknowledged that an "optimistic" outcome for the talks would simply be to get relations back on track and for the U.S. to "take into account the interests of Ukraine in the future negotiation process."

But another unavoidable fact of the U.S.-led peace negotiations so far is that Washington has not yet had to truly negotiate with Russia.

The much-vaunted first round of talks between Washington and Moscow on Feb. 18 produced little of actual substance — restoring embassy staffing for further diplomatic missions, appointing representatives to further the negotiation process, and creating the necessary conditions for restarting U.S.-Russia relations.

While repeatedly strong-arming Ukraine into proving it is serious about peace, the White House has said nothing so far about how it plans to make Russian President Vladimir Putin order his armed forces to put down their guns.

There's going to be a lot of talk about "difficult choices" and "the realm of what's possible." That crap pales in comparison to the central issue: what's right and wrong. The Putin regime forcibly annexed Crimea in 2014 and assaulted mainland Ukraine in March 2022 with missiles, drones and ground troops. Children have watched their mothers raped by Putin's thugs. Other children - thousands of them - have been kidnapped and taken to re-education camps inside Russia. Hospitals and schools have been destroyed.  Russian government officials and television commentators have regularly bandied about the possible use of nuclear weapons.

And in the last month the Very Stable Genius and his geldings have re-conferred "legitimacy" on the Putin regime.

It's obvious why. The VSG things the world's dictators sit at the cool kids' table. They're the kind of leader who gets things done, who command deference just by walking in a room.

Consequently, the VSG is engaging in outright evil. The Oval Office humiliation of Zelensky, the "pausing" of intelligence-sharing and aid, Rubio's opening bid at this Jeddah meeting.

It's evil, but it may well prevail.

 

The worthlessness of ceasefires

 LITD posts have lately mostly been of a world-affairs nature, haven't they? That's because, for all post-America's other vexations - the utter silliness of both political parties, rampant loneliness, the resistance of the woke apparatus to being dismantled, the debt that is on track to crowd out all other government expenditures in a few short years, not replenishing the country's population, an utter disregard for the transcendent - foreign policy incoherence is the one most likely to take the first bite out of our safety and comfort and the reliability off our institutions.

Because each has been going on for a few years now, we have become inured to the severity of Russia's attack on a sovereign nation, and the savagery Iran, through its proxies, has inflicted on Israel. We assume that, with regard to the over-arching association of rogue players, each with its own ideology and internal agendas, that is bound together by a common intention to end the US-dominated international order that's been in place since 1945, sharp minds are on the case and will see that nothing gets too out of hand. 

Thus, we have clowns in the current administration, and the one coming in in January, coming up with "solutions" to the above-mentioned conflagrations based on an "end wars" mindset.

That's a really stupid way to approach the current situation. There are risks attendant to a goal of the attacked nation-states in each case winning their wars, but they're small compared to the consequences of appeasing the aggressors.

Tell you what. I'm going to quote Seth Mandel's latest column at Commentary in its entirety, because there'd be no point in trying to improve upon its incisiveness:

Buried in a New York Times explainer on the ICC’s issuance of an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu is this helpful nugget: “Gaza has been controlled by Hamas since 2007 and the militant group does not recognize its subjugation to a Palestine state.”

And why? Because Hamas is essentially a hostile occupying force on behalf of Iran. And who else falls into that category? Hezbollah in Lebanon. And for good measure, let’s add one more: Arguably the most troublesome pocket in the West Bank centers on Jenin, and the troublemakers in Jenin are proxies of Iran as well. For all intents and purposes, the city is foreign territory.

Here’s the point: Israel is not in conflict with any of the “host countries,” however generously we use that term, with whom it is supposedly negotiating.

It’s fun to pretend, but it’s not productive. Foolish faith in ceasefire agreements with entities that do not recognize the sovereignty of their own territory is how we got here. Oct. 6, 2023 was the last time a ceasefire’s false sense of security governed Israel’s understanding of the status quo. Oct. 7, 2023 was the result.

Let’s look at the ceasefire deal with Hezbollah announced yesterday.

The deal halts the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah for 60 days. Both the IDF and Hezbollah are to clear their forces from Lebanese territory south of the Litani River tout de suite. Filling the vacuum will be the Lebanese army and UN peacekeepers—both of which are compromised by their deference to, and fear of, Hezbollah. A complaint board that will determine compliance with the agreement and adjudicate claims of violations will be under the supervision of the United States.

Yesterday, President Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron crowed that, “after many weeks of tireless diplomacy, Israel and Lebanon have accepted a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.”

Between Israel and Lebanon? Have there been hostilities between Israel and Lebanon? Because it would be very silly to have Lebanese troops patrol the buffer zone if the buffer zone is meant to separate the IDF from Lebanese troops.

It’s wonderful that “Israel and Lebanon have accepted a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Lebanon.” Whoever this “Lebanon” guy is, he sounds nice. But I have no idea what he’s doing here.

Last week, men almost surely hired by Iran murdered in cold blood a Jerusalem-born Chabad rabbi in Dubai. Are Biden and Macron working on a “ceasefire” between Israel and the United Arab Emirates? Of course not, and no one is even suggesting such a thing, because it would be patently ridiculous on its face and arguably a mockery of the victim.

So that’s the conceptual absurdity of this ceasefire. What about its practicality?

“Eight vehicles and a motorcycle carrying Hezbollah personnel arrived at the ruins of Kfar Kila near Matula,” Israel’s Kann News reported this morning. “The IDF force that was on the spot drove them away with warning shots.”

Metula is an Israeli town on the border with Lebanon. Hezbollah had begun the ceasefire by advancing on Israel. Wrong direction, guys! Like legendary Vikings defensive end Jim Marshall recovering that fumble against the 49ers in 1964 and then running 65 yards into the wrong end zone—except on purpose.

And Israel’s response was to fire warning shots, because anything more aggressive—anything actually appropriate to the threat, in other words—would have triggered condemnation from the very allies that negotiated this ceasefire.

The Lebanese Armed Forces cannot enforce this ceasefire. If they could, they would have already cleared the area of Hezbollah, which has been operating with impunity for four decades. And the UN peacekeepers are Hezbollah’s trusted allies—that may sound harsh but it is just plain fact.

Yes, Israel is hoping to run out the clock on the Biden administration and have freer range of action once Donald Trump takes office. But Hezbollah knows Biden is on his way out, too, and that Trump is on his way in. And the enemy always gets a vote. Sometimes that vote is expressed by a nine-vehicle Hezbollah convoy encroaching on Israel’s sovereign border, in contemptuous contravention of a ceasefire signed by “Lebanon.”

And now, let us look at Keith Kellogg, the Very Stable Genius's choice for a guy to impose defeat on Ukraine: 

Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, President elect-Trump's pick for special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, has pushed a proposal to end the war between the two countries through Ukraine ceding land to Russia.

Why it matters: Trump named Kellogg as his choice for special envoy on Wednesday, months after Reuters reported on Kellogg's policy plan in June. The plan for a ceasefire signals U.S. support for the war effort would be scaled back.

• It also would mark a shift from the Biden administration's stance on the war and could be met with pushback from European allies.

Zoom in: Kellogg, who served as national security adviser to former Vice President Mike Pence, co-authored a research report detailing his Ukraine policy proposal with former NSA chief of staff Fred Fleitz.

• "The United States would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement," Kellogg and Fleitz state in the plan.
• But future U.S. military aid will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia, according to the report.
• To convince Russian President Vladimir Putin to join peace talks, "President Biden and other NATO leaders should offer to put off NATO membership for Ukraine for an extended period in exchange for a comprehensive and verifiable peace deal with security guarantees," the pair wrote.

The big picture: Trump has vowed to end the war in Ukraine using his personal relationship with Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to get a peace deal.

Here's how the VSG thinks about such things:

On the campaign trail, Trump promised to end Russia's war with Ukraine if elected, saying in September that he would negotiate a deal "that's good for both sides." He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin and questioned further U.S. assistance to Ukraine.

"Good for both sides." What the hell kind of formulation is that? Russia is the aggressor in this situation. The West has no business dangling a nice outcome before Putin. The only way to speak of Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine is in terms of defeat.

All the F-16s, ATACMs, mines and Storm Shadows should have been provided no later that March 2022. Yes, it's great that they're arriving now, but their ability to be game-changers is badly diminished.

Trump, of course, views the whole thing transactionally. He wants to wind this up with minimal bad effect on what he perceives to be Putin's high regard of him. 

Ceasefires are nothing but a tamping-down of wrongs that will come back in another manifestation at some point. Fifteen years after the 1953 armistice that stopped fighting between North and South Korea, the crew of the USS Pueblo spent a year in captivity in the Kim dynasty's worker's paradise. Nixon's "peace with honor" in Vietnam led to the April 1975 crashing through the gates of the presidential palace in Saigon by tanks from the North, and the still-repugnant scene of desperate Vietnamese trying to hang on to the runners of the last helicopter to take off from the US embassy roof. 

If Ukraine and Israel don't achieve total victory over Russia and Iran respectively, we will have abandoned the world stage to Dodge City status. 

Post-America has decided it  has no use for moral clarity. Bad things will result. 

The lightning rod that is Ukraine

 The world waits with bated breath to see how the incoming Trump administration is going to handle Russia's continuing savaging of Ukraine.

At the recent Halifax security conference, representatives of various nations searched for signs of continuity between Biden's policy and Trump's, but one participant says it had more the feel of a therapy session. 

I don't know a whole lot about Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD), but I'm impressed by the priorities and fealty to the Constitution that seems to be guiding him on this matter:

South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds has dismissed calls for a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, suggesting Russian President Vladimir Putin could not be trusted to honor such an agreement.

"As much as I would like to believe we can negotiate with a tyrant, I suspect we may be deceiving ourselves," Rounds said in reference to Putin at the Halifax Security Forum on Friday.

"Do you believe that this tyrant, if you offer him a part of a free country, do you think he's gonna stop?" Rounds said.

"I wish I could say there's an easy way out, there's not."

The Republican's sentiments stand in contrast with those of President-Elect Trump, who has previously claimed he could end the conflict in one day.

Rounds also bemoaned the restriction placed on Kyiv in its response to Russia's full-scale invasion.

"I just feel so frustrated that we have not been able to provide them all of the equipment that they need, and all of the weapons systems that they need, in order to respond to the absolute tyranny coming from Russia," said Rounds, who did reportedly stress that his views were not those of the incoming administration.

(As a side note, I also dig his recent introduction of legislation  to dismantle the Department of Education. Progressives are going to use this to conflate actual conservative policy with Trumpist yay-hoo-ism. And the Trumpists will say, "This is conservatism now." This is why I write my occasional "wheat from chaff scoreboard" posts over at Precipice. )

I have to imagine that he's going to get upbraided by the drool-besotted throne sniffers for showing an  independent streak. In fact, that's already started. The disgusting Laura Ingraham tweeted that Rounds was "already undermining" the Very Stable Genius. Sorry, toots, but the legislative branch is independent of the executive.

We. of course, have no idea what the VSG would actually do to achieve this peace in 24 hours he speaks of. Presumably, he's confident that his personal charm would be the deciding factor in a sit-down with Mad Vlad and President Zelensky. You know, like the way the summits and beautiful letters changed North Korea into a legitimate member of the international community.

The Trumpist excuses for not seeing that the Ukraine and Israel situations are morally identical range from "America First" isolationism to the argument that we need to focus all our world-threat attention on the way China is breathing down Taiwan's neck. Another argument is that support for Ukraine drains resources from the effort to seal the southern US border. (The actual truth is that, given our $36 million debt, we don't have the money for anything. But for the world's only superpower ostensibly committed to a stable, Western-oriented world order, expenditures must be made anyway.)

There's also the "start World War III" argument, articulated recently by Joe Rogan  and Donald Trump, Jr. who, for good measure, trotted out the hackneyed term "military industrial complex." As if it's okay not to do the right thing because there's some attendant risk.

There's a more sinister line of argument that tries to let Putin off the hook for the 2014 seizure of Crimea and the more general war against Ukraine he commenced in February 2022. 

That matters a great deal at present, given the VSG's nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to the DNI director position.

Let's have a look at her track record on this subject:

n the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.

Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them.

“How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.

It was a revealing insight into Gabbard’s conspiratorial views of the conflict, and it shocked Moustafa to silence. He knew, as even the young children did, that Isis did not have jets to launch airstrikes. It was such an absurd question that he chose not to translate it because he didn’t want to upset the girls, the eldest of whom was 12.

“From that point on, I’m sorry to say I was inaccurate in my translations of anything she said,” Moustafa told The Independent. “It was more like: How do I get these girls away from this devil?”

Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.

In almost every foreign conflict in which Russia had a hand, Gabbard backed Moscow and railed against the US. Her past promotion of Kremlin propaganda has provoked significant opposition on both sides of the aisle to her nomination.

Her journey from anti-war Democrat to Moscow-friendly Maga warrior began in Syria. The devastating conflict was sparked by pro-democracy uprisings in 2011, which were brutally crushed by the Assad regime. It descended into a complex web of factions that drew extremist Islamists from around the world and global powers into the fray.

You will note that peacenik lefties, libertarians and Trumpists all have in common this emphasis on the ickiness of war, untethered to moral considerations. 

Within Europe, there's less than a unified stance on the matter. So far in the war, Romania has proven a stalwart supporter of Ukraine, but that looks to change with the probable election of isolationist Calin Georgescu as Romania's president.

Something else to consider: the war in Ukraine is ratcheting up, and eye-opening developments could well occur between now and January 20. That could change some players' calculus.

In any event, let's be clear-eyed about the fact that not everyone wants to see the acceptable outcome - Ukraine's total defeat of Russia - take place. 

Lotta variables in a very volatile situation.