by Alastair Crooke, The Unz Review:
The Witkoff negotiation enterprise is distancing Russia from its security imperatives.
It is not a glitch (that nothing gets resolved). It’s a feature. For it opens rather, a path for ‘Business’ to be done – for ‘stakeholder’ deals to be cut, and for billions to be shared out in payoffs. This is Trump’s geo-political transactional model: Business displaces traditional negotiation (at least while the money flows); Money is the politics.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Trump, Witkoff and Kushner are said to be confident that they can construct a financial reward system for western debt-holders, investors and politicians (and the Zelensky entourage, in the case of Ukraine) that succeeds in “retaining the financial rewards of war – without the ancillary ingredient of bloodshed”.
Once payments are apportioned – from the Trump-Witkoff perspective – the “territorial issues, security guarantees, EU membership status and the position of NATO are downstream details once the larger payment system is organized. Put another way, they are down to the stuff that really matters, the money”.
With this worldview, negotiations between the U.S. and Russia are being pursued by two New York real-estate ‘gurus’ (Witkoff and Kushner), together with Josh Gruenbaum, who has also been appointed as secretary to Trump’s ‘Gaza Peace Board’. Gruenbaum’s previous work experience has been with the KKR fund, which, although not strictly a ‘vulture fund’, is specialist in aggressive distressed-debt investing.
Where are the experienced professionals from Russia’s foreign service in these talks? They are notably absent. Foreign Minister Lavrov does not attend.
Why? Because the Trump-Witkoff hypothesis is that the Ukraine conflict can be “solved by a system where the opportunity for financial benefit continues. That is – that those who have had a financial benefit in the Ukraine war – the ‘stakeholders’ – continue to enjoy financial benefit. Put more cynically, ‘The Prosperity Agenda to Support Ukraine’s Reconstruction’ is codespeak for the U.S. Senate and EU to retain a financial mechanism to exploit for personal benefit”.
Essentially, this is the Trump-New York real-estate experience transferred to a real-life conflict – in which ‘blood’ usually represents the true currency invested in a conflict. This approach underlines the West’s degradation into a nihilism that views sacrifices made by men and women in support of their country as a trifle to be bought out.
Look at the Witkoff team — on the one hand, there is Blackrock and its CEO Larry Fink, who are commissioned by Witkoff to raise the reconstruction funds for Ukraine. Larry Fink also liaises closely with the Witkoff team on divvying out the potential re-construction ‘opportunities’ (but is not directly involved in the Moscow talks with President Putin).
