by Claudiu Secara

The latest events in the saga of peace, no peace: Is the escalation of the war and of the sanctions in the cards, or are we witnessing the start of going back to the status quo ante?

It looks less complicated once we connect a few dots. One is the public explanations by Wes Mitchell and Eldridge Colby in Foreign Affairs. And that, in a nutshell, is “sequencing”. One war at a time.

Both of the former superpowers have exhausted themselves and are facing economic disaster, while China is growing at the springy pace of 5.5% a year, far outpacing the obsolescent economies of the combatants. Trump (and Putin), in other words the elites of the two countries, maneuvering behind the public relations puppets, see the signs of impending disaster converging quite rapidly upon both of them.

The US especially is far overextended, going back the last 30-40 years. Russia could tighten its belt as always, on a short term basis, but the cost to its wellbeing is increasing by the day. Russian sources are making a big deal about the victory in the Kursk region and the “liberation” of the last settlements there, but in fact this should be seen as a total embarrassment for the mighty Russian army. Instead of capturing Kiev in two weeks, it took it almost 9 month to fight back a small expeditionary army of Ukrainians. The economy is choking despite all the bragging about modest growth, all of which is related to deficit spending by the government for its military industry while the civilian economy faces high inflation, low wages, lack of development.

On the other side, the US, with its model of hand-to-mouth working class, is just a few months away from running out of the last reserves. An imminent demise of the system is a real likelihood.

So, Trump is talking about saving Russian and Ukrainian lives, as if that’s what keeps him awake at night, when in fact it is the imminent perspective of riots on the streets in the US itself. The Trumpists are talking about fighting one war at a time, meaning settle the war in Ukraine in order to start the war against China. What? The US should be glad if they can negotiate with China a controlled loss of global hegemony. There is no remote possibility that it can challenge China militarily on its own territory. Just watch the million or so drones ballet in the air, perfectly orchestrated by software only the Chinese have.

On the other side, again, Russia has finally admitted through is chief of staff Commander Gerasimov that it was able to take back Kursk only with the help of North Korean troops. He thanked them publicly for that; although Russia had strongly denied it until now. In truth, the Russian army needed the N Korean army to defend its own territory? Hard to believe.

So is there a sequencing, or what? Yes, but of a different kind. What is next in the sequence is not a confrontation with China. That confrontation was already lost. What follows is a confrontation with the irreversible demotion of the US Empire and the need to present defeat as a victory to the world and to the Americans. Takeover of Canada or Greenland?! No way. Even Panama is showing that it doesn’t accept an American takeover of its sovereignty over the Panama canal.

In addition, this is a good time for Europe to emerge from the claws of the US. Sequencing or not, Europe has woken up and realized that it encompasses an almost 500,000 million strong population, an economy unencumbered by a military burden (even at 2 percent of its GDP it is way below what the US and Russia are wasting of their national resources), Europe stands to win big. The Eastern Europeans smell the sweet aroma of freedom from the menacing Russian boots on the ground. Even tiny Moldova has stood up and confronted Russia’s outstretched arm in Transnistria to the utter disbelief of Lavrov and Co. They were very focused throughout the mass media on the events in Moldova and keen to overturn the win by the Romanian electorate, including Moldova‘s decision to further blockade the Russian 5th column in Găgăuz as well as the pro-Moscow Orthodox Metropolitan. That alone stupefied the weak Russia, as they’d forgotten that the Eastern “Moldova” adopted Christianity in around the year 300 (that’s 700 years before Kievan Rus’) and was an integral part of Moldova, read “the Romanian nation,” with a Latin population alien to the Slavic neighbors, who showed up at the shores of Danube Delta two thousand years later.

In sequencing the next developments in Europe, the one entity that no one considered viable, that is the EU, could very well reclaim the continent’s historic heritage, which is Greco-Roman, and restore the balance of power in the multipolar new world with a white European constituency.

But yes, one big victory for Trump should be noted. He managed to change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America on Google Maps. So, it is not all going down in defeat for Trump and the Trumpists

Here is what Russian “nationalists” are really saying. Their outspoken voice, Igor Strelkov, tells us: 

They want to “deceive” us again: pretend that they are stepping aside, but at the same time continue to supply Ukraine with weapons. And England, France, Italy and others will fight against us, sending their troops to Ukraine – aviation, air defense, anti-missile and missile systems. And Trump will wait a year until we finally run out of steam, and then he will interfere again with the next initiatives.
This is a long game – of exhaustion and weariness, which is extremely disadvantageous to us. 

Read more on our Telegram:

 

byJohn Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with via John Helmer

Excerpts

[ . . . ]

The politico-military strategy driving the US negotiators and prompting Trump’s tweets, is not a peace deal with Russia, nor even US withdrawal from the war in Europe. It is a strategy of sequencing one war at a time – the war in Europe to continue in the Ukraine with rearmed Germany, Poland and France in the lead, supported by Trump; and the US war against China in Asia.

Sequencing these wars so as not to fight both enemies simultaneously – that’s the formula devised for Trump by Wess Mitchell, a former State Department appointee in the first Trump Administration, and his business partner Elbridge Colby, now the third-ranking Pentagon official as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. “The essence of diplomacy in strategy”, Mitchell has just declaimed in Foreign Affairs, “is to rearrange power in space and time so that countries avoid tests of strength beyond their ability. There is no magic formula for how to get this right, and there is no guarantee that Trump’s approach will succeed. But the alternative—attempting to overpower everybody—is not viable, and a good deal riskier.”

Mitchell and Colby have convinced Trump and his negotiators that Russia has been badly damaged by the Ukrainian war which the Obama and Biden Administration have fought. Russian weakness, especially the perception that President Putin is both politically vulnerable and personally susceptible to US business inducements, is Trump’s strong card, and he should play it now.

“Washington can start by reducing tensions with the weaker of its main rivals in order to concentrate on the stronger. That is what Kissinger and his boss, U.S. President Richard Nixon, did when they warmed ties with Beijing so the United States could better focus on Moscow in the early 1970s. Today, the weaker rival is Russia. This has become all too obvious as Ukraine has chewed through Moscow’s military resources. The United States should thus aim to use Russia’s depleted state to its advantage, seeking a détente with Moscow that disadvantages Beijing. The goal should be not to remove the sources of conflict with Russia but to place constraints on its ability to harm U.S. interests.”

“This process should begin by bringing the war in Ukraine to an end in a way that is favorable to the United States. That means that when all is said and done, Kyiv must be strong enough to impede Russia’s westward advances. To achieve this end, the American officials negotiating a peace agreement should learn from the failure of the 2022 Istanbul talks between Kyiv and Moscow, which treated a political settlement as the goal and worked backward toward a cease-fire. Doing that enabled Russia to make its political demands—neutering the Ukrainian state through caps on the size of its army and changing its constitution—a precondition to peace. A better model would be 1950s Korea: to prioritize an armistice and push questions about a wider settlement into a separate process that could take years to bear fruit, if it ever does. Washington should still be willing to push the Ukrainians to cede territory when doing so is necessary. But it should make Ukrainian sovereignty a precondition for talks and use U.S. sanctions, military assistance, and seized Russian assets to bring Moscow around.”

This is the same war against Russia which has been US strategy since 1945, but with a trillion-dollar premium to be paid to the US by the Ukrainians and the European and other US allies for Trump’s grand extortion.

According to Mitchell’s (right) paper, “[the Trump Administration] signed a mineral deal with Ukraine that increases the connection between the two countries without making Washington responsible for Kyiv’s defense. And its sterner tone toward Europe has prompted the continent’s largest increase in defense spending in generations: nearly $1 trillion. Trump’s opening tariffs have roiled the Europeans but could also restart talks about a new transatlantic grand bargain in trade for the first time in a decade. All this may well lead to better outcomes for the United States, provided that Washington keeps its eyes on the prize—which is not disruption itself, but disruption in service of strategic renovation.”

“The United States should pursue a defense relationship with Ukraine akin to the one it maintains with Israel: not a formal alliance, but an agreement to sell, lend, or give Kyiv what it needs to defend itself. But it should not grant Ukraine NATO membership. Instead, the United States should push European states to take responsibility for Ukraine—and for the security of their continent more generally.”

In this strategy, these American officials believe they are capitalizing on Putin’s special relationship with the Russian oligarchs and duping Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s negotiator with Witkoff, into pressing the Kremlin to accept a short-term military armistice which stops well short of the demilitarization and denazification goals of the Special Military Operation.

There is a faction in Moscow which believes the General Staff can also be persuaded to accept this because they need time to rebuild the Russian military forces. “Don’t give too much credit to [General Valery] Gerasimov and the General Staff. Putin for reasons unknown does have his foot on the brake; Russia was not ready for a full war. It might be in a few years but Putin might yet not be. Although his warnings to the Germans are now stark, Putin still wants a deal. If Trump does not withdraw any of the major sanctions, this is still favourable to Russia. [Putin will concede to Trump] some small deals and Witkoff will successfully lobby to favour his own US oligarchs and some of Putin’s. Musk and Boeing will benefit. The Europeans will obviously hold out on SWIFT and Open Skies. At the same time though, a few Russian national companies will benefit.”

Less susceptible than Dmitriev, sources in Moscow point out they are not as weak as the Americans believe. Nor, they say, are they as rattled as the faction-fighting betweeen US oligarchs reveals as their placemen in the Trump ministries compete for the money to be earned from the enrichment schemes of Witkoff and other Trump appointees — Stephen Feinberg at the Pentagon, Scott Bessent at Treasury, and Howard Lutnick at Commerce.

Read the whole article here.

by Pyotr Kozlov via The Moscow Times
kremlin.ru

As Moscow prepares for possible negotiations with Washington aimed at ending its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is seeking a far more ambitious outcome than a mere ceasefire: a global reordering of spheres of influence.

In the Kremlin’s view, such an agreement would effectively mean U.S. recognition of Russian dominance in the post-Soviet space — including Ukraine — and, to some extent, an acknowledgment of its influence in Europe.

To secure that goal, the Kremlin is now scouring for incentives it believes can catch and hold President Donald Trump’s attention, ranging from rare earths deals and geopolitical leverage in Iran and North Korea to a long-dreamed-of Trump Tower in Moscow.

Five current Russian government officials, including two diplomats, three sources close to the Kremlin and employees of three major state-owned companies confirmed this to The Moscow Times, all speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

“The main thing is that they [the Americans] don’t interfere in our affairs and don’t tell us how to live,” said a senior Russian official familiar with the Kremlin’s negotiating logic. “That they don’t hinder us in doing what we are doing.”

Some in Moscow also envision symbolic gestures of recognition as part of a potential agreement, such as President Vladimir Putin visiting Washington and meeting Trump in the White House.

“If our boss [Putin] occasionally comes to Washington to meet with Trump — that would also be nice,” a current government official said.

Still, officials acknowledge that the era of major summits like those during the Cold War or the early post-Soviet years is over.

“It’s hard to count on that now,” the government official said.

Searching for leverage

The Kremlin, recognizing the limitations of its negotiating position, has tasked officials and experts with analyzing and identifying all possible incentives that could grab Trump’s interest and keep the talks from narrowing to a limited agenda.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff and President Vladimir Putin meet in St. Petersburg.kremlin.ru

Following Trump’s election victory in November, the Kremlin ordered major corporations to prepare detailed proposals for economic cooperation with Washington.

“Work was in full swing in the government, ministries and major corporations, including at night and on weekends: proposals were being prepared across key economic sectors,” a current government official told The Moscow Times.

“Rosatom and Rosneft presented their initiatives, and [gold producer] Polyus sent fresh intelligence on gold deposits to the Kremlin. Rusal and other entities joined in,” the official said, adding that deputy head of the presidential administration Maxim Oreshkin and Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev were among those coordinating these efforts.

Employees at three major state-owned companies and a source close to the Kremlin confirmed this.

This new approach reflects the collapse of the previous model of U.S.-Russia relations.

During the Cold War, the superpowers practiced “linkage,” in which seemingly unrelated issues became concessions within a larger negotiating framework.

“You give us grain, we’ll give you fewer radicals in Latin America. You give me aspirin, I give you Valocordin,” said a senior Russian diplomat.

If you have a wide range of issues on the table, it is easier to find trade-offs and balance asymmetries, the diplomat noted.

But unlike the Cold War era, Russia now holds far fewer cards. Strategic arms control treaties that once structured dialogue, from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty to New START, are unraveling. With New START set to expire in February 2026, talks on its extension have not even begun.

“We used to hold summits, sign treaties — first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT), then the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). A whole ecosystem of consultations and joint mechanisms was built around that,” recalls a current Russian diplomat. “This launched mechanisms of cooperation between Moscow and Washington across various fields.”

Today, this architecture no longer exists, and arms control only interests Trump in the context of his competition with China. As a result, Moscow and Washington increasingly see each other as rivals rather than partners.

“We compete in hydrocarbon markets in Europe, food markets and arms sales. And this confrontation will only intensify,” said a Russian government official.

Ukraine as a bargaining chip

With few remaining levers, Moscow sees the war in Ukraine as its most potent bargaining chip, and officials hope to take advantage of Trump’s eagerness to secure a ceasefire.

“We need to milk Trump as much as possible, dangling the possibility of a ceasefire like a carrot before him,” one participant in the discussions said.

There is little illusion about the fragility of this opportunity.

“The window may slam shut. Trump could lose interest or, worse, bear a grudge,” diplomats and officials who spoke to The Moscow Times agreed.

However, many in the Foreign Ministry and the Kremlin hold a different view.

“We are on the right track. The priority is to recalibrate relations with the United States — a task that is anything but simple — while keeping dialogue on Ukraine alive,” one Russian diplomat said. “From there, the situation on the ground will dictate the next moves. Ultimately, it’s all about time, patience and staying the course.”

Formally, the Kremlin has signaled a willingness to make concessions.

Following a call with Trump in March, Putin said he agreed to observe a 30-day moratorium on strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure. While Ukraine said separately that it would back the ceasefire, no formal agreement between the two sides was ever signed. Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow of violating the pause multiple times since.

“Under these circumstances, talking about a ceasefire at this stage is simply unrealistic,” Vasily Nebenzya, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, said in early April.

Officials see two main scenarios. The first is to agree to a Trump-brokered ceasefire in exchange for concessions like limitations on U.S. weapons deliveries to Ukraine.

“Though this doesn’t mean weapons won’t still come in via Europe,” one Russian diplomat cautioned.

The second: if talks collapse, blame Kyiv.

“If Russia refuses a ceasefire, we must be ready to once again face a united Western front, and in an even less favorable configuration for us,” another official warned.

Setting the bait

Many ideas have been floated as possible incentives to lure Trump into a deal, from mediating U.S.-China negotiations to joint missions to Mars. But the Kremlin has few real trump cards.

Economic proposals look weak. Even in their best years, U.S.-Russia trade barely reached $45 billion. In 2024, it plunged to just $3.5 billion, its lowest level since 1992.

Today, Moscow can offer only a few commodities the U.S. still needs: titanium for aircraft manufacturing, uranium for nuclear energy and heavy crude oil for refineries along the Gulf Coast. But as one official put it, these “won’t save the American trade balance, and thus have no value for Trump.”

Russia is a major supplier of rare earth metals like scandium, yttrium and lanthanum, essential for electronics and defense systems. But these, too, are seen as insufficient to unlock major political concessions.

Regional initiatives are also limited. Washington would like Russia to halt its arms shipments to North Korea and comply with UN sanctions. But Moscow, having invested in a growing alliance with Pyongyang, has no intention of rolling back its cooperation.

Iran has also been floated as a possible channel for engagement, given Russia’s role in managing Tehran’s spent nuclear fuel and support for its peaceful nuclear program.

“There is a belief that Trump has a certain reverence for Putin. And that Putin’s word could influence an American decision [on Iran],” said a Russian government official.

But even Russian diplomats admit that Moscow’s role in U.S.-Iran talks would be marginal at best.

“Tehran has always wanted to talk directly to the Americans and has also feared being ‘sold out’ by us in a grand bargain,” said one Russian diplomat.

More realistic proposals involve energy coordination and symbolic gestures. One suggestion: a humanitarian mission in Gaza leveraging Russian-built infrastructure in Syria. Another would see informal cooperation on oil markets involving the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia.

“Here, three great statesmen could take the stage: the leaders of the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia,” noted one Russian diplomat.

And then there’s the idea of a Trump Tower in Moscow. Officials have brainstormed building a 150-story Trump Tower in Moscow City, the capital’s business district. The project could be quickly launched, and Trump himself could participate in the groundbreaking.

“Speed, impact and showiness: those are things Trump intuitively values,” said a source close to the Kremlin. This all the more so given that Trump’s team and Russian officials had discussed this project in the past, he added.

Africa, long peripheral to U.S. foreign policy, is seen as unlikely to capture Trump’s interest. Nor is a joint Mars mission considered realistic.

Across all of these proposals, the Kremlin is guided by a single axiom: initiatives must be personally tailored to Trump, achievable within a single term and offer strong media appeal.

“Without that,” said a senior Russian official, “it’s naive to expect any progress.”

by Any Fallas via New Arab

In-depth: Salvadorans of Palestinian descent have had an enormous influence in shaping the Central American country’s political landscape.

Although Latin America is home to several prominent politicians of Arab descent, perhaps no country in the region has had as many of Palestinian ancestry play such a key role in national politics as El Salvador.

Salvadorans of multigenerational Palestinian descent have been tremendously influential in shaping the post-civil war political landscape of the small Central American country since 1992.

Some key figures include Schafik Handal, who headed the Legislative Assembly from 1997 to 2006, Tony Saca who served as president from 2004-2009, and now Nayib Bukele who is looking at a second term as president after a controversial but decisive election in early February.

“Palestinians, mainly from Bethlehem and Jerusalem, arrived in El Salvador during the early waves of Middle Eastern migration to the Western Hemisphere during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries”

All three men trace their family origins to Bethlehem. Their ancestors arrived in El Salvador during the early waves of Middle Eastern migrationto the Western Hemisphere during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

And even though many of the estimated 1.2 million migrants during this period hailed from Lebanon and Syria, those who eventually settled in the Salvadoran provinces of San Salvador, San Miguel, Santa Ana, and La Unión were primarily from the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Although all three men trace their ancestry to Palestine – their similarities diverge from there. Handal was a central figure in shaping the Salvadoran left as the leader of the country’s Communist Party from the 1970s to 1994, a guerrilla commander with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) during the 1980s, and a politician who facilitated the FMLN’s transition from armed resistance to electoral politics following the Chapultepec Peace Accords.

Meanwhile, Tony Saca has become synonymous with the country’s right-wing politics. He defeated Handal in the 2004 presidential election on the conservative National Republican Alliance (ARENA) ticket and embraced neoliberal and pro-US policies during his term. He even deployed Salvadoran soldiers to the war in Iraq.

Today, Saca is serving a 10-year prison sentence for embezzlement and money laundering of over 300 million dollars of public funds.

If Handal and Saca’s political careers weren’t colourful enough, Nayib Bukele arguably outdoes them both. His meteoric rise in national politics began through his successful mayoral runs in Nuevo Cuscatlán in 2012 and then in the capital San Salvador in 2015. Known as the ‘millennial mayor’, his youthful and anti-establishment platform gradually earned him broad-based support that enabled his presidential run and electoral victory in 2019 at just 37.

His first presidential term was characterised by an erratic series of policies – such as investing public funds into cryptocurrency and promoting bitcoin beach tourism – and ended with a wide-scale campaign to address gang violence by curtailing civil liberties through intimidation by militarised force, a state of exception, and the highest incarceration rate in the world.

Has this prominence of Salvadoran-Palestinian politicians translated into a more pro-Palestine position in Salvadoran foreign relations? Not necessarily.

“Salvadorans of multigenerational Palestinian descent have been tremendously influential in shaping the post-civil war political landscape of the small Central American country since 1992”

The political stance on Palestine has largely followed ideological linesrather than patrimonial allegiances. The most active figure was undoubtedly Handal who nurtured transnational ties with the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) during the national and leftist resistance movements of the 1980s.

While the Washington Post reported in 1982 that these ties were enhanced by the “Palestinian origins of some Salvadoran insurgent leaders,” they primarily found common cause in challenging the United States and Israel’s funding, supplying, and training of counterinsurgents and right-wing governments in the Middle East and Central America.

Tony Saca held a more centrist position on Israel-Palestine but embarked on enhanced diplomatic engagement with Palestinian leaders. On one hand, he made the symbolic decision to move the Salvadoran embassy from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv but on the other continued to uphold the Israeli status quo.

Saca also referenced his Palestinian and multi-religious background to frame his approach to the peace process: “I have a Christian grandfather, a Muslim grandfather and I am Salvadoran and that is why I say that Israel, Palestine and the Arab States must become brothers”.

President Bukele has been the most mercurial, avoidant even, about his stance on Palestine. He has been reluctant to comment publicly during crucial moments such as the global Sheikh Jarrah demonstrations that protested the expulsion of Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem in 2021.

A main reason for his position is his effort to maintain favourable relations with Israelis on whom he hopes to continue partnerships in business and technology – not to mention funds for military and police forces.

“Has this prominence of Salvadoran-Palestinian politicians translated into a more pro-Palestine position in Salvadoran foreign relations? Not necessarily”

A rare instance and exception to his quietism occurred in the aftermath of 7 October in which he compared the Hamas attacks to gang violence in El Salvador.

“As a Salvadoran with Palestinian ancestry, I’m sure the best thing that could happen to the Palestinian people is for Hamas to completely disappear…It would be like if Salvadorans would have sided with MS13 terrorists, just because we share ancestors or nationality…The best thing that happened to us as a nation was to get rid of those rapists and murderers.”

He has yet to issue any statement or comment on the death toll of over 28,000 Palestinians, including more than 12,000 children, in Israel’s war on Gaza.

But this position might put him on the margins of regional relations as the Latin American ‘pink tide’ grows more critical of Israel the longer its unrestrained assault on Gaza continues. It has certainly put him at odds with the Salvadoran-Palestinian community in El Salvador which has been an active base of support for Palestinian causes.

In 2021, the President of the Salvadoran-Palestinian Association had hoped for a more outspoken role for the president: “Given his roots, Bukele can go further and not just defend our people but also denounce Israeli crimes”.

Yet the current moment is particularly critical as Bukele’s second term comes on the heels of a renewed authoritarian turn in El Salvador and as Israel’s war unfolds in Gaza with minimal clarity as to the short and long-term trajectory for both.

What is clear is that Palestinian roots won’t be a deciding factor in taking a moral stand on Palestine for the world’s ‘coolest dictator’.

Amy Fallas is a Salvadoran-Costa Rican writer, editor, and historian. She received her MA in History from Yale and is a PhD Candidate in History at UC Santa Barbara. She is an Interdisciplinary Humanities Council Fellow for 2023-2024 and an adjunct Professor of History at Santa Barbara City College.