Appeasement doesn't work. Tyrants will want more and more until there's nothing left to take. We have NO BUSINESS telling Ukraine how to make peace with Russia. Ukraine is a sovereign country and the fact that they let Russia dictate their level of armaments in the 1990s has a lot to do with why Russia invaded in 2014 and 2022. Under no circumstances do I think the current administration will negotiate anything in good faith. If the deal isn't good for Ukraine, then it isn't good for anyone except the idiot that started this mess. Even if a deal started out good for the US, it would eventual turn because you can't appease tyrants. France/England, WWII?
Trump's bid for a Nobel Prize hopelessly is vain- in many ways. A malignant narcissist has an over-expressed vanity gene, and Trump is the poster-boy for malignant narcissism. But Donald has significant psychopathy. He has evidence of paranoia which he reacts to with a sadistic desire to hurt others. So, how pathetic can he or anyone be that proposes Trump for a peace prize. The only "peace" prize that Trump has even shown interest in is a piece of ass.
If you want a psychiatric discussion of Trump then listen to:
The above YouTube also points out Trump's signs of dementia. Yes, we have a demented POTUS. It's not just that the Emperor wears no clothes, but the emperor also falls asleep during ceremonies (in Japan), he's flatulent in courtroom hearings, and his vocabulary, never great, is surpassed now by most fourth graders.
I fly a Ukrainian flag in front of my house. I wanted to use my medical skills in Ukraine, but with my age 83 and some serious medical issues, I decided this would be foolish. With another POTUS, we would not have abandoned Ukraine. With another POTUS, we would not have wined and dined, had a red carpet rolled out, and likely $3-8 million dollars spent to entertain Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - known for his murder of Jamal Khashoggi. A declassified U.S. intelligence report released in 2021 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) concluded that MBS approved the operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. The ODNI stated that such an operation could not have occurred without the Crown Prince's direct authorization.
In November 2017, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) initiated a sweeping anti-corruption purge that involved the detention of hundreds of wealthy princes, government officials, and business leaders at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. The New York Times and Human Rights Watch described the detentions as forced disappearances and alleged that some detainees were physically abused, tortured, and forced to relinquish billions of dollars in assets before their release. Critics viewed this as a politically motivated power grab to neutralize rivals and consolidate MBS’s financial control.
So we have Donald yearning for the Nobel Peace Prize while he entertains MBS, lauds dictators and talks about love letters from them, murders people on ships in the Caribbean and Pacific with no disclosure regarding who they are and what was on the ship; is an accomplice to bodily harm and apparently to murder of people in the US (some citizens, some without criminal records) all without due process.
The American Public went along with the Senate's dismissal of Al Franken for sexual misconduct from eight different women involving unwanted kissing or touching, but is not screaming from the highest hills about Trump's murders, imprisonments without due process and his entertaining a murderer like the Crown Prince.
What we have here, folks, is a USDA Grade A Shit show. And, we are eating it. America is sleeping. I personally do not think it knows the difference between woke and woken.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson
"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." -President Ulysses S. Grant
And there are a lot more reasons that Trump, no way in hell, deserves any peace prize. The Trump Administration provided the military aid to Israel that allowed mad-dog Netanyahu to murder thousands with the excuse of collateral damage. My people, the Jewish people, of whom I am one, and who I am generally proud of, allowed their head of state to become a forme fruste of Adolf.
I bet that those on this forum could add at least 15 more examples of why a peace prize for Trump would be mockery. How about no ban on military assault weapons for sale in the US? How about the mortality to citizens when they cannot afford their ACA premiums? Just 13 more to go.
"the bully will just be hungry again tomorrow" My brother broke a school door with one back in the 70's. Dad said this to the V. Principle while he gladly wrote out a check. 🙂 End of the trouble.
I have to disagree that this is just about Trump's narcissism. It's in part about that, no doubt; if this so-called "peace" deal goes through, he will crow about having done it, just as Chamberlain declared "peace in our time". (Of course, in Chamberlain's case, it was because the public at large desperately did not want another war, remembering all too well the horrors of the Great War; Churchill, by contrast, was right about Hitler, but he was largely ignored because he spoke about Hitler using the same language with which he spoke about Gandhi.)
This "peace" deal has a much baser motivation. It will establish, as you noted, that more powerful countries can invade less powerful ones and, should the less powerful one fail to drive out the aggressor entirely, claim spoils in territory (including territory never brought under military control) and population and military restrictions that will leave the victim weak and unable to resist the next time--and there will be a next time.
But remember what Trump said in his second inaugural address: that the United States will expand its territory. Remember that he chose to restore the federal name of Denali (still the name Alaska recognises) to Mt. McKinley. McKinley was, arguably, the last truly imperial US President. Under his watch the Spanish-American War ultimately resulted in the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico coming under US control and Cuba becoming a US puppet state.
Trump has made no secret of his own imperial ambitions. He refused to rule out the use of military force to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone. He even escalated from ruling out said force in taking Canada (only "economic force") to saying it was merely "unlikely" (perhaps "very unlikely" or "highly unlikely"; please forgive me that I cannot recall the precise verbiage) that he would do so. That is the true motivation behind this demand that Ukraine capitulate to Russia.
If the United States invades Panama, almost certainly that country will not be able to drive it out, and the US will demand the cession of the Panama Canal Zone as the price of "peace".
If the United States invades Greenland, almost certainly that territory, nor Denmark as a whole, even upon invoking Article 5, will be unable to drive it out, and given Greenland's population distribution the entire island will functionally be ceded to the United States in the resultant "peace".
And if the United States invades Canada, almost all of our major population centres will be captured rapidly, and if we try to resist we know all too well what the US does to civilians who fight back against unlawful occupation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr). The price of "peace" will be, in effect, the total annexation of Canada to the United States; those population centres not swiftly captured cannot on their own remain viable as an independent country.
Meanwhile we are gaslit with a so-called "ambassador" who claims he does not know why we are angry about the "51st state" remarks, says we are "nasty" for economically boycotting American goods, and says that collective punishment is now official US policy in that all of Canada must suffer US economic retaliation for the ad run by the Government of Ontario featuring the words of Ronald Reagan speaking against tariffs. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/us-ambassador-trade-9.6985050 "I'm sorry, we don't go through that slicing and dicing." That is collective punishment.)
Perhaps the ambassador, and all the realists you talk about, think that a battered wife should not defend herself against her abusive husband--of course, Trump would know a lot about abusive husbands, likely being one himself ("a rapist in the noncriminal sense" is what Ivana said of him, from what I have heard).
This is about whether the United States itself can be a militaristic, aggressive, imperial power in its own neighbourhood and whether Trump will be able to give the orders to make it so again without the international community having even a moral leg to stand on after having accepted Ukraine's capitulation.
It's Trump's motivation for wanting the deal. Other people have other motivations. In the social sciences, we call these things "convergent interests". In such arrangements, many things are true at the same time.
Except that Trump has explicitly stated his desire to expand US territory. I don't deny that part of his motivation is wanting a "peace prize", whether it's from the Nobel committee or from Infantino or whoever else (maybe we'll get the Mohammed bin Salman Peace Prize in Memory of Jamal Khashoggi), without actually having achieved any sort of peace, but it also serves the purpose of giving him cover to be an imperialist himself.
This isn't other people having other motivations which are also served by this deal, or it isn't just that; this is Trump himself having multiple motivations which are all served by this deal.
EDIT: For that matter we can see the same with the change to how the US State Department will issue its human rights report, where countries with DEI policies or that allow abortion (or other things) will be flagged as human rights violators: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx24200d7y9o This is in part being done to appeal to that part of the MAGA base which hates all of these things, but it also gives Trump cover to declare that his retaliatory measures, like tariffs and, if possible, invasion (to "liberate" people from oppressive human-rights-abusing regimes) are justified because the US shouldn't be doing business with countries that violate human rights (isn't that what the left is always saying about Israel and Saudi Arabia!) and should go topple governments which violate human rights, especially if they happen to be right next door to the US (and there's no way Canada won't be flagged as a human rights violator under these new standards).
Same man, multiple interests--not different people, different interests.
Funny - if you're right, then Trump will be trotting out all Hitler's old "humanitarian intervention" speeches! Except Hitler's arguments were at least based on self-determination - effectively underlying Wilson's Fourteen Points, as consistently denied by the USA and Entente after 1918 despite being a primary basis on which the Central Powers eventually surrendered...
You're spot on about Chamberlain's *real* reason for declaring peace in our time!
"Churchill, by contrast, was right about Hitler"
Only sometimes. For example, Churchill supported Hitler in the first Anschluss of Austria. Ironically, only Italy was willing to send troops and thus stop Hitler, which is exactly what Mussolini did.
As for Munich, after nearly a century this is still overblown. Poland was the real problem, because it blocked Russia from sending troops to Czechoslovakia's aid and nobody (including of course Churchill) was keen on that! While Chamberlain, contrary to his later Churchill-fabricated reputation, was derided by his political enemies as "the Great Rearmer" even before 1938. It was Chamberlain that consistently fought all those enemies to modernize the RAF in time for 1940, and the RN in time to win the "real" Battle of Britain - in Narvikfjord while Chamberlain was still in office.
Especially, it was Chamberlain that masterminded the secret protocol and thus the fake guarantee that mouse-trapped Germany and their ally Poland (who the UK and France hated even more than Germany) into fighting each other. After Poland had seized more Cech land than had been agreed with Hitler and refused to give it back. See for example Hitchens' book "Phony Victory". And so Chamberlain successfully played everyone, in manipulating the UK's entrance into a "defensive" war. Pity about France's collapse, but the best laid plans etc...
The only downside of the fake guarantee is that it worked too well - Stalin couldn't take it seriously either, which is partly why the 1939 UK-Soviet alliance negotiations collapsed. Stalin found Nazi Germany's offer not only far more practically useful (especially continued oil for trucks etc), but more credible and trustworthy than the UK. Of course he was half-wrong, the Nazis couldn't be trusted either, but at the time the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was an entirely rational decision.
All this seems to be forgotten (in fairness, the secret protocol remained secret for decades). But, as Churchill himself said, "History will be kind to me - for I will write it". And so he did! :)
"Knuckling under to superior force" is just knuckling under to superior money, a reflection on the moral value of moneyed people. So, as noted, talking "realism" is totally phony and cowardly. It's good for us to be reminded of how the wealthy depict themselves. They are accomplished liars. Let's take money out of politics and lobbying, democratize the economy, bust the trusts, insist on actual competition and end propertied privilege.
I don't think Russia is the threat people think it is. Unlike Germany 1933, Russia has plenty of land and resources and a stable economy. It actually has way too much land for its population. It has no need to expand and frankly its performance in Ukraine casts doubt on its ability to conquer much territory.
“So when they counsel Ukraine to surrender, understand what they’re really saying: that America’s founding was a mistake, that every resistance to tyranny was irrational, that the proper human response to evil with power is accommodation”
Any narrative that begins with Good vs Evil is usually false. Not that I am a Putin fan but Russia had legitimate security concerns following the US enabled coup of a Democratically elected Ukraine government and its move to join NATO. Imagine Mexico entering into a Military alliance with China and the PLA arming and training Mexico troops. Zelensky added fuel to the fire by threatening to renege on the Budapest Memorandum and go nuclear to improve security.
Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019 on a platform that included promises to seek peace in the ongoing conflict with Russia and to improve relations between the two countries. He cancelled elections as a result of the war
Ukraine as a nation was actually an invention of Lenin and Khrushchev then added Crimea to Ukraine as a gift to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the unification of Russia and territory called Ukraine. It has large ethnic Russian speaking population in the South and East and up to 30% speak Russian
How many Ukrainians have been killed or left Ukraine since the war is difficult to say but conservative estimates are about 100,000 killed with over 5 million leaving Ukraine. I suspect both are significant undercounts. There has also been significant internal displacements (~4 million) and up to 400,000 soldiers injured, many of whom are permanently disabled. With little hope of recovering lost territory even with US aid , ending the war seems to be in Ukraines best interests.
"It actually has way too much land for its population."
How much of that land is actually reasonably habitable by humans, though? Most of it is extremely inhospitable.
Also, the discovery of substantial reserves of natural gas off the coast of Ukraine (especially off the coast of the Crimean peninsula) threatened Russian dominance of Europe's energy market, and hence threatened Russia's financial viability. It is no accident that Russia moved to control Crimea once Ukraine invited Western companies to explore extraction in the area.
"He cancelled elections as a result of the war"
Zelenskyy did nothing of the sort. The Constitution of Ukraine, which obviously predates his presidency, forbids elections in wartime. You may think that is a bad policy, but in not holding elections Ukraine is simply following its own fundamental law--holding elections would be illegal.
"Zelensky added fuel to the fire by threatening to renege on the Budapest Memorandum and go nuclear to improve security."
Russia abrogated the Budapest Memorandum when it effected a de facto annexation of Crimea, again before Zelenskyy.
"Ukraine as a nation was actually an invention of Lenin and Khrushchev then added Crimea to Ukraine as a gift to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the unification of Russia and territory called Ukraine."
The modern state of Ukraine may have emerged around the Soviet era (but an independent Ukrainian People's Republic emerged before Soviet unification) but Ukraine in some form existed long before that, even if it was often chopped up and subjugated by more powerful neighbours.
"With little hope of recovering lost territory even with US aid , ending the war seems to be in Ukraines best interests."
Except that it would be illegal for Ukraine to accept the proposed terms, since the Constitution of Ukraine forbids territorial cessions.
EDIT: Your claim to dislike Putin would be much more believable if you weren't conceding and defending every claim he has made about and against Ukraine.
• 2019 (strategic objective of NATO / EU membership) 
• Also a change in 2020 to remove parliamentary immunity.
Ukraine as a sovereign country can of course decide its own fate. I think the US should just stay out of it at this point except to sell arms (cash and carry).
"Any narrative that begins with Good vs Evil is usually false. "
Well said. Amen to that. And it echoes Orwell's description of good/evil discussions using words like democracy: "conscious dishonesty", "swindles", and "perversions" - see his "Politics and the English Language" (downloadable free on the web).
I find it especially amusing not only that Kiev was the first Russian city, but also that it happened the century before England came into existence...
" Zelensky added fuel to the fire by threatening to renege on the Budapest Memorandum and go nuclear to improve security."
On the Budapest Memorandum, iirc the USA had already denounced it as non-binding re its Belarus coup attempt?
And on nuclear, it's curious that Ze's first high-profile revenge-assassination of a Russian general was actually a scientist who happened to have dismantled Ukraine's nuclear weapons program in 2022. Ukraine had indicated its intent in 2014 (although Ze can't be blamed for this), when a Ukrainian mech brigade, commanded by a brilliant Fort-Benning-trained officer whose idol was Jeb Stuart, invaded Russia and seized a nuclear weapons depot, which turned out to be empty (another tragic US intelligence failure).
OT, I bookmarked the web references circa 2017. Unfortunately the weapons-depot-specific details mysteriously disappeared ten years later (almost to the day) before the Kursk counter-offensive - in which the Kursk nuclear weapons depot (not just the reactor) just happened to be on the way to Kursk. If they'd taken it, I guess the Russians would have been forced to conduct a hasty unannounced nuclear "test" on their own territory. :)
With respect, you don’t seem to understand realism. I suggest reading The Tragedy of great power politics. Realists don’t universally advocate surrender, rather the response is framed in terms of balance of power. They would NOT have negotiated with hitler, because a regional hegemony, to realists, is to be prevented at all costs. It is the same reason why even today, Mearsheimer is hawkish on China even as he is dovish on Ukraine.
Russia is not a regional hegemone, and whether or not it takes some percentage of Ukraine will not significantly alter the balance of power in Europe. That is why realists oppose the war.
Realists have a much better track record than the internationalist foreign policy blob, who have advocated for 50 years of disastrous and unnecessary wars and interventions. They are not pacifist or isolationist, they are just selective about when and where to fight.
When you say “Russia isn’t a regional hegemon, and taking part of Ukraine won’t alter the balance of power, therefore realists oppose the war,” you’re admitting that realism only counts what happens to great powers. Everything that happens to Ukraine itself—its sovereignty, its democracy, its right to align with the West, its capacity for self-defense, its territorial integrity, its culture, its citizens—gets treated as strategically irrelevant.
That’s not a misunderstanding of realism. That is realism. It centers the preferences of empires and treats smaller nations as negotiable space on a board. It defines “what matters” in a way that erases the moral and political agency of the people being invaded. And it’s exactly why realist prescriptions so often collapse into a doctrine of submission: if a country isn’t powerful enough to disrupt the balance, its suffering simply doesn’t register.
You’re not refuting my point—you’re illustrating it. A worldview that says “this doesn’t affect the balance of power, therefore Ukraine should concede” is precisely the logic I’m criticizing. If the only lives and rights that count are those of great powers, then yes, realism will always recommend surrender for smaller democracies. But that’s not wisdom. It’s just geopolitics stripped of any moral horizon.
That may be realism.
But let’s not pretend it’s justice, prudence, or anything morally admirable.
The problem with defining justice as helping smaller powers from being bullied is it leads to ill conceived foreign adventures that result in balance on a less just world and more and more war. We “saved” Iraq from Sadaam. But at what cost? Are they really better off now after millions of deaths and decades of conflict?
Realist see the world in terms of tragic tradeoffs. Not intervening is usually better for most people than intervening.
If it is our responsibility to intervene with every injustice that would lead to endless conflict. Do the people of Gaza deserve to be liberated? How about Sudan? Yemen? Congo? Rohingyas I Myanmar? Uighers? What principle are you using to distinguish all these places from Ukraine?
Ukraine is willing to fight without American blood. They simply seek sustenance in food, medicine and materiel. The tragic consequences you would have me fear is that this might anger the man in Kremlin such that he might decide to commit nuclear genocide. To that, I would call you a tragic victim of tyrannical blackmail.
I strongly recommend the late Daniel Ellsberg's last book "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner", in which he explains that command delegation to initiate "nuclear genocide" is decentralized all the way down to O3 rank in the USA, and O1 in Russia (or at least for the Perimeter system during the Cold War).
It is submitted that we need to de-escalate by returning to Cold War politics, which was much safer and rational than now.
So say, if a "little country" that "doesn't matter much", like New Zealand or Australia, gets invaded, say by China, we should just roll over and let them tickle our bellies because a) people might get hurt, b) too small (economically) to matter, c) money - let's not piss off a big trading partner?
No absolutely not. China is a peer competitor at risk of becoming regional hegemony. Realism requires containment of China. This means fighting back on Taiwan, South China Sea, and anywhere else China might attempt to expand
But it's different if it's the US or Russia. They're allowed to invade other countries because... ? Most of us have grown up with the idea that the US is the "good guy", the world police, galloping to the rescue when the "communist" or "terrorist threat" (oil and other economic interests) were on the line. But that didn't exactly go swimmingly well in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Now America has this deranged orange tyrant in charge, you'll have to excuse some of us if we're starting to think maybe China isn't the worst option for the world's most powerful nation. I hasten to add, this isn't actually my opinion, I'm playing devil's advocate, I admire the Constitution. But look at China's current record; massive clean energy investment, they haven't bombed or invaded anyone recently, they make cheap stuff and we love it, they're not doing public deals with countries that harbour terrorists, and they don't let a mad man-child embarrass them in international forums. Right now they're looking like a rational choice compared to a country that spits in their neighbour's faces, imposed utterly irrational tariffs that have buggered the world economy, unleashes the army on its own people, accepts multi-billion dollar 'gifts' from countries known to support Hamas etc, let said countries build military bases ON US SOIL... I could go on, but I'm sure you get my point.
As Mike says in his post, and above, you're saying realism and 'rationality' only apply to 'great powers' like the US and now Russia because Trump admires Putin. As someone from a smaller country, I'm not sure I subscribe to this. It sets a disturbing principle. Random example I know, but it's like when one of your citizens is abducted or murdered by another country (KSA I'm looking at you). Yeah it's only one person, but it's also ALL your people. Ukraine isn't just some comparatively poor Slovakian country nobody's heard of or cares about, it's all countries. You can't let a bully nation like Russia get away with invading them.
I completely disagree. Russia he made no secret about their objectives to take Europe. If balance of power is important (and I think it is), then having a western ally in Ukraine is just as important as Israel in a hostile Middle East and Australia in Chino-Indonesia.
It's been discovered now, per Aaron Parnas, that the so called Peace Plan had nothing to do with Trump or America at all. It was Putin's wish list that was leaked and presented as our delapidated President's plan. The Ukrainians are an admirable people. Picture them victorious. I literally imagine bringing an entire family of them into my room with me every night staying warm and finally being able to sleep. Bless them. I don't think Zelenskyy will buy this BS for a minute. The USA must, simply must, call this what it is-another Putin trick. Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava.
Yep, this is pretty much the same surrender package Trump has been peddling since the get-go so he can claim he negotiated an end to the war (on day 1 according to his election promise) and continue to be pals with Putin, who he admires for his Authoritarian ways, and maybe fears a little - like he's looking up to a stern father figure. The US has exactly no business here. The fact that they've held negotiations and come up with 'peace plans' entirely independent of the Ukraine shows how much they don't give a shit, beyond being able to go back to business as usual with Russia. Any peace plans should be being hammered out with Europe and Nato seeing as it's their backyard. Nato should be ashamed at leaving Ukraine to fend for themselves. They should have been made part of the alliance when they asked for help, and certainly once invaded. Nato and European countries should have 100% insisted on Russia pissing off back to their own country, taking nothing but their shame - and giving Crimea back too. But of course, nobody wants to anger the bully, loose cannon Putin.
Don't worry about the current proposals, they'll go nowhere.
- Nobody wants them except Trump - certainly not Russia or Ukraine.
- Nobody even knows what they are (given the differences between them, all but one necessarily must be forgeries).
- They were drafted by amateurs, obviously without input from a single lawyer or diplomat or even competent negotiator.
- And the Europeans won't end the war even if the USA wants to - kind of like WW1 in reverse but worse (USA refused to accept Central Powers surrender until after the mid-terms, so an extra 100k deaths).
Anyway, peace talks will take at least 1-2 years, so Trump might well get his Saigon / Kabul moment he's so desperate to avoid?
Agreed. This is the same nonsense Trump has pushing all along. Remember this is the same guy who said Ukraine "started it..." by being invaded? And it's all their fault for carrying on a war "they can't win".
Appeasement doesn't work. Tyrants will want more and more until there's nothing left to take. We have NO BUSINESS telling Ukraine how to make peace with Russia. Ukraine is a sovereign country and the fact that they let Russia dictate their level of armaments in the 1990s has a lot to do with why Russia invaded in 2014 and 2022. Under no circumstances do I think the current administration will negotiate anything in good faith. If the deal isn't good for Ukraine, then it isn't good for anyone except the idiot that started this mess. Even if a deal started out good for the US, it would eventual turn because you can't appease tyrants. France/England, WWII?
Another outstanding commentary.
Trump's bid for a Nobel Prize hopelessly is vain- in many ways. A malignant narcissist has an over-expressed vanity gene, and Trump is the poster-boy for malignant narcissism. But Donald has significant psychopathy. He has evidence of paranoia which he reacts to with a sadistic desire to hurt others. So, how pathetic can he or anyone be that proposes Trump for a peace prize. The only "peace" prize that Trump has even shown interest in is a piece of ass.
If you want a psychiatric discussion of Trump then listen to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OtO-cypKmY
The above YouTube also points out Trump's signs of dementia. Yes, we have a demented POTUS. It's not just that the Emperor wears no clothes, but the emperor also falls asleep during ceremonies (in Japan), he's flatulent in courtroom hearings, and his vocabulary, never great, is surpassed now by most fourth graders.
I fly a Ukrainian flag in front of my house. I wanted to use my medical skills in Ukraine, but with my age 83 and some serious medical issues, I decided this would be foolish. With another POTUS, we would not have abandoned Ukraine. With another POTUS, we would not have wined and dined, had a red carpet rolled out, and likely $3-8 million dollars spent to entertain Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman - known for his murder of Jamal Khashoggi. A declassified U.S. intelligence report released in 2021 by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) concluded that MBS approved the operation to capture or kill Khashoggi. The ODNI stated that such an operation could not have occurred without the Crown Prince's direct authorization.
In November 2017, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) initiated a sweeping anti-corruption purge that involved the detention of hundreds of wealthy princes, government officials, and business leaders at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. The New York Times and Human Rights Watch described the detentions as forced disappearances and alleged that some detainees were physically abused, tortured, and forced to relinquish billions of dollars in assets before their release. Critics viewed this as a politically motivated power grab to neutralize rivals and consolidate MBS’s financial control.
So we have Donald yearning for the Nobel Peace Prize while he entertains MBS, lauds dictators and talks about love letters from them, murders people on ships in the Caribbean and Pacific with no disclosure regarding who they are and what was on the ship; is an accomplice to bodily harm and apparently to murder of people in the US (some citizens, some without criminal records) all without due process.
The American Public went along with the Senate's dismissal of Al Franken for sexual misconduct from eight different women involving unwanted kissing or touching, but is not screaming from the highest hills about Trump's murders, imprisonments without due process and his entertaining a murderer like the Crown Prince.
What we have here, folks, is a USDA Grade A Shit show. And, we are eating it. America is sleeping. I personally do not think it knows the difference between woke and woken.
“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” Thomas Jefferson
"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on one side and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." -President Ulysses S. Grant
Hear, hear!
And there are a lot more reasons that Trump, no way in hell, deserves any peace prize. The Trump Administration provided the military aid to Israel that allowed mad-dog Netanyahu to murder thousands with the excuse of collateral damage. My people, the Jewish people, of whom I am one, and who I am generally proud of, allowed their head of state to become a forme fruste of Adolf.
I bet that those on this forum could add at least 15 more examples of why a peace prize for Trump would be mockery. How about no ban on military assault weapons for sale in the US? How about the mortality to citizens when they cannot afford their ACA premiums? Just 13 more to go.
Reward aggressors and they’ll keep aggressing! Rewards are an aggressor’s aphrodisiac!
"the bully will just be hungry again tomorrow" My brother broke a school door with one back in the 70's. Dad said this to the V. Principle while he gladly wrote out a check. 🙂 End of the trouble.
Curtiss Yarvin is a BULL-SHITTER, and provocateur!
Best to ignore him till he goes away!
Anyone seriously arguing against democracy is corrupt!
Magnificent, Mike. Your words are an inspiration.
I have to disagree that this is just about Trump's narcissism. It's in part about that, no doubt; if this so-called "peace" deal goes through, he will crow about having done it, just as Chamberlain declared "peace in our time". (Of course, in Chamberlain's case, it was because the public at large desperately did not want another war, remembering all too well the horrors of the Great War; Churchill, by contrast, was right about Hitler, but he was largely ignored because he spoke about Hitler using the same language with which he spoke about Gandhi.)
This "peace" deal has a much baser motivation. It will establish, as you noted, that more powerful countries can invade less powerful ones and, should the less powerful one fail to drive out the aggressor entirely, claim spoils in territory (including territory never brought under military control) and population and military restrictions that will leave the victim weak and unable to resist the next time--and there will be a next time.
But remember what Trump said in his second inaugural address: that the United States will expand its territory. Remember that he chose to restore the federal name of Denali (still the name Alaska recognises) to Mt. McKinley. McKinley was, arguably, the last truly imperial US President. Under his watch the Spanish-American War ultimately resulted in the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico coming under US control and Cuba becoming a US puppet state.
Trump has made no secret of his own imperial ambitions. He refused to rule out the use of military force to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone. He even escalated from ruling out said force in taking Canada (only "economic force") to saying it was merely "unlikely" (perhaps "very unlikely" or "highly unlikely"; please forgive me that I cannot recall the precise verbiage) that he would do so. That is the true motivation behind this demand that Ukraine capitulate to Russia.
If the United States invades Panama, almost certainly that country will not be able to drive it out, and the US will demand the cession of the Panama Canal Zone as the price of "peace".
If the United States invades Greenland, almost certainly that territory, nor Denmark as a whole, even upon invoking Article 5, will be unable to drive it out, and given Greenland's population distribution the entire island will functionally be ceded to the United States in the resultant "peace".
And if the United States invades Canada, almost all of our major population centres will be captured rapidly, and if we try to resist we know all too well what the US does to civilians who fight back against unlawful occupation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khadr). The price of "peace" will be, in effect, the total annexation of Canada to the United States; those population centres not swiftly captured cannot on their own remain viable as an independent country.
Meanwhile we are gaslit with a so-called "ambassador" who claims he does not know why we are angry about the "51st state" remarks, says we are "nasty" for economically boycotting American goods, and says that collective punishment is now official US policy in that all of Canada must suffer US economic retaliation for the ad run by the Government of Ontario featuring the words of Ronald Reagan speaking against tariffs. (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/us-ambassador-trade-9.6985050 "I'm sorry, we don't go through that slicing and dicing." That is collective punishment.)
Perhaps the ambassador, and all the realists you talk about, think that a battered wife should not defend herself against her abusive husband--of course, Trump would know a lot about abusive husbands, likely being one himself ("a rapist in the noncriminal sense" is what Ivana said of him, from what I have heard).
This is not about whether Russia will be rewarded for invading Ukraine and Ukraine punished for being unable to drive them off. This is not even about whether Trump will get a Nobel Peace Prize (or Gianni Infantino's "FIFA Peace Prize": https://inside.fifa.com/organisation/media-releases/peace-prize-award-football-unites-the-world-infantino) and be remembered as the President who brokered "peace" in Ukraine.
This is about whether the United States itself can be a militaristic, aggressive, imperial power in its own neighbourhood and whether Trump will be able to give the orders to make it so again without the international community having even a moral leg to stand on after having accepted Ukraine's capitulation.
It's Trump's motivation for wanting the deal. Other people have other motivations. In the social sciences, we call these things "convergent interests". In such arrangements, many things are true at the same time.
Except that Trump has explicitly stated his desire to expand US territory. I don't deny that part of his motivation is wanting a "peace prize", whether it's from the Nobel committee or from Infantino or whoever else (maybe we'll get the Mohammed bin Salman Peace Prize in Memory of Jamal Khashoggi), without actually having achieved any sort of peace, but it also serves the purpose of giving him cover to be an imperialist himself.
This isn't other people having other motivations which are also served by this deal, or it isn't just that; this is Trump himself having multiple motivations which are all served by this deal.
And meanwhile JD is saying that we're just hitting ourselves (classic domestic abuser language) https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/vance-standard-living-stagnant-immigration-blame-9.6987929 and MAGA types (and hey, since the US standard is collective blame and punishment, then we can do that too, so I could say all Americans! Except I won't, because I'm not a blithering simpleton like Pete Hoekstra, whom we should have kicked out of our country months ago) sound like this: https://www.reddit.com/user/Pizzacakecomic/comments/1p35nw1/usa/
EDIT: For that matter we can see the same with the change to how the US State Department will issue its human rights report, where countries with DEI policies or that allow abortion (or other things) will be flagged as human rights violators: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx24200d7y9o This is in part being done to appeal to that part of the MAGA base which hates all of these things, but it also gives Trump cover to declare that his retaliatory measures, like tariffs and, if possible, invasion (to "liberate" people from oppressive human-rights-abusing regimes) are justified because the US shouldn't be doing business with countries that violate human rights (isn't that what the left is always saying about Israel and Saudi Arabia!) and should go topple governments which violate human rights, especially if they happen to be right next door to the US (and there's no way Canada won't be flagged as a human rights violator under these new standards).
Same man, multiple interests--not different people, different interests.
Funny - if you're right, then Trump will be trotting out all Hitler's old "humanitarian intervention" speeches! Except Hitler's arguments were at least based on self-determination - effectively underlying Wilson's Fourteen Points, as consistently denied by the USA and Entente after 1918 despite being a primary basis on which the Central Powers eventually surrendered...
You're spot on about Chamberlain's *real* reason for declaring peace in our time!
"Churchill, by contrast, was right about Hitler"
Only sometimes. For example, Churchill supported Hitler in the first Anschluss of Austria. Ironically, only Italy was willing to send troops and thus stop Hitler, which is exactly what Mussolini did.
As for Munich, after nearly a century this is still overblown. Poland was the real problem, because it blocked Russia from sending troops to Czechoslovakia's aid and nobody (including of course Churchill) was keen on that! While Chamberlain, contrary to his later Churchill-fabricated reputation, was derided by his political enemies as "the Great Rearmer" even before 1938. It was Chamberlain that consistently fought all those enemies to modernize the RAF in time for 1940, and the RN in time to win the "real" Battle of Britain - in Narvikfjord while Chamberlain was still in office.
Especially, it was Chamberlain that masterminded the secret protocol and thus the fake guarantee that mouse-trapped Germany and their ally Poland (who the UK and France hated even more than Germany) into fighting each other. After Poland had seized more Cech land than had been agreed with Hitler and refused to give it back. See for example Hitchens' book "Phony Victory". And so Chamberlain successfully played everyone, in manipulating the UK's entrance into a "defensive" war. Pity about France's collapse, but the best laid plans etc...
The only downside of the fake guarantee is that it worked too well - Stalin couldn't take it seriously either, which is partly why the 1939 UK-Soviet alliance negotiations collapsed. Stalin found Nazi Germany's offer not only far more practically useful (especially continued oil for trucks etc), but more credible and trustworthy than the UK. Of course he was half-wrong, the Nazis couldn't be trusted either, but at the time the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact was an entirely rational decision.
All this seems to be forgotten (in fairness, the secret protocol remained secret for decades). But, as Churchill himself said, "History will be kind to me - for I will write it". And so he did! :)
"Knuckling under to superior force" is just knuckling under to superior money, a reflection on the moral value of moneyed people. So, as noted, talking "realism" is totally phony and cowardly. It's good for us to be reminded of how the wealthy depict themselves. They are accomplished liars. Let's take money out of politics and lobbying, democratize the economy, bust the trusts, insist on actual competition and end propertied privilege.
Peace deal, aka: appeasement.
I don't think Russia is the threat people think it is. Unlike Germany 1933, Russia has plenty of land and resources and a stable economy. It actually has way too much land for its population. It has no need to expand and frankly its performance in Ukraine casts doubt on its ability to conquer much territory.
“So when they counsel Ukraine to surrender, understand what they’re really saying: that America’s founding was a mistake, that every resistance to tyranny was irrational, that the proper human response to evil with power is accommodation”
Any narrative that begins with Good vs Evil is usually false. Not that I am a Putin fan but Russia had legitimate security concerns following the US enabled coup of a Democratically elected Ukraine government and its move to join NATO. Imagine Mexico entering into a Military alliance with China and the PLA arming and training Mexico troops. Zelensky added fuel to the fire by threatening to renege on the Budapest Memorandum and go nuclear to improve security.
Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019 on a platform that included promises to seek peace in the ongoing conflict with Russia and to improve relations between the two countries. He cancelled elections as a result of the war
Ukraine as a nation was actually an invention of Lenin and Khrushchev then added Crimea to Ukraine as a gift to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the unification of Russia and territory called Ukraine. It has large ethnic Russian speaking population in the South and East and up to 30% speak Russian
How many Ukrainians have been killed or left Ukraine since the war is difficult to say but conservative estimates are about 100,000 killed with over 5 million leaving Ukraine. I suspect both are significant undercounts. There has also been significant internal displacements (~4 million) and up to 400,000 soldiers injured, many of whom are permanently disabled. With little hope of recovering lost territory even with US aid , ending the war seems to be in Ukraines best interests.
"It actually has way too much land for its population."
How much of that land is actually reasonably habitable by humans, though? Most of it is extremely inhospitable.
Also, the discovery of substantial reserves of natural gas off the coast of Ukraine (especially off the coast of the Crimean peninsula) threatened Russian dominance of Europe's energy market, and hence threatened Russia's financial viability. It is no accident that Russia moved to control Crimea once Ukraine invited Western companies to explore extraction in the area.
"He cancelled elections as a result of the war"
Zelenskyy did nothing of the sort. The Constitution of Ukraine, which obviously predates his presidency, forbids elections in wartime. You may think that is a bad policy, but in not holding elections Ukraine is simply following its own fundamental law--holding elections would be illegal.
"Zelensky added fuel to the fire by threatening to renege on the Budapest Memorandum and go nuclear to improve security."
Russia abrogated the Budapest Memorandum when it effected a de facto annexation of Crimea, again before Zelenskyy.
"Ukraine as a nation was actually an invention of Lenin and Khrushchev then added Crimea to Ukraine as a gift to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the unification of Russia and territory called Ukraine."
The modern state of Ukraine may have emerged around the Soviet era (but an independent Ukrainian People's Republic emerged before Soviet unification) but Ukraine in some form existed long before that, even if it was often chopped up and subjugated by more powerful neighbours.
"With little hope of recovering lost territory even with US aid , ending the war seems to be in Ukraines best interests."
Except that it would be illegal for Ukraine to accept the proposed terms, since the Constitution of Ukraine forbids territorial cessions.
EDIT: Your claim to dislike Putin would be much more believable if you weren't conceding and defending every claim he has made about and against Ukraine.
Well, I dislike Trump immensely (just look at my substack) but I actually agree with him on ending the war. Constitutions can be amended.
Major amendment points include:
• 2004 (Law No. 2222-IV) 
• 2011, 2013, 2014 (restoring earlier amendments) 
• 2016 (judicial reform) 
• 2019 (strategic objective of NATO / EU membership) 
• Also a change in 2020 to remove parliamentary immunity.
Ukraine as a sovereign country can of course decide its own fate. I think the US should just stay out of it at this point except to sell arms (cash and carry).
"Any narrative that begins with Good vs Evil is usually false. "
Well said. Amen to that. And it echoes Orwell's description of good/evil discussions using words like democracy: "conscious dishonesty", "swindles", and "perversions" - see his "Politics and the English Language" (downloadable free on the web).
I find it especially amusing not only that Kiev was the first Russian city, but also that it happened the century before England came into existence...
" Zelensky added fuel to the fire by threatening to renege on the Budapest Memorandum and go nuclear to improve security."
On the Budapest Memorandum, iirc the USA had already denounced it as non-binding re its Belarus coup attempt?
And on nuclear, it's curious that Ze's first high-profile revenge-assassination of a Russian general was actually a scientist who happened to have dismantled Ukraine's nuclear weapons program in 2022. Ukraine had indicated its intent in 2014 (although Ze can't be blamed for this), when a Ukrainian mech brigade, commanded by a brilliant Fort-Benning-trained officer whose idol was Jeb Stuart, invaded Russia and seized a nuclear weapons depot, which turned out to be empty (another tragic US intelligence failure).
OT, I bookmarked the web references circa 2017. Unfortunately the weapons-depot-specific details mysteriously disappeared ten years later (almost to the day) before the Kursk counter-offensive - in which the Kursk nuclear weapons depot (not just the reactor) just happened to be on the way to Kursk. If they'd taken it, I guess the Russians would have been forced to conduct a hasty unannounced nuclear "test" on their own territory. :)
With respect, you don’t seem to understand realism. I suggest reading The Tragedy of great power politics. Realists don’t universally advocate surrender, rather the response is framed in terms of balance of power. They would NOT have negotiated with hitler, because a regional hegemony, to realists, is to be prevented at all costs. It is the same reason why even today, Mearsheimer is hawkish on China even as he is dovish on Ukraine.
Russia is not a regional hegemone, and whether or not it takes some percentage of Ukraine will not significantly alter the balance of power in Europe. That is why realists oppose the war.
Realists have a much better track record than the internationalist foreign policy blob, who have advocated for 50 years of disastrous and unnecessary wars and interventions. They are not pacifist or isolationist, they are just selective about when and where to fight.
You’ve actually conceded my entire argument.
When you say “Russia isn’t a regional hegemon, and taking part of Ukraine won’t alter the balance of power, therefore realists oppose the war,” you’re admitting that realism only counts what happens to great powers. Everything that happens to Ukraine itself—its sovereignty, its democracy, its right to align with the West, its capacity for self-defense, its territorial integrity, its culture, its citizens—gets treated as strategically irrelevant.
That’s not a misunderstanding of realism. That is realism. It centers the preferences of empires and treats smaller nations as negotiable space on a board. It defines “what matters” in a way that erases the moral and political agency of the people being invaded. And it’s exactly why realist prescriptions so often collapse into a doctrine of submission: if a country isn’t powerful enough to disrupt the balance, its suffering simply doesn’t register.
You’re not refuting my point—you’re illustrating it. A worldview that says “this doesn’t affect the balance of power, therefore Ukraine should concede” is precisely the logic I’m criticizing. If the only lives and rights that count are those of great powers, then yes, realism will always recommend surrender for smaller democracies. But that’s not wisdom. It’s just geopolitics stripped of any moral horizon.
That may be realism.
But let’s not pretend it’s justice, prudence, or anything morally admirable.
The problem with defining justice as helping smaller powers from being bullied is it leads to ill conceived foreign adventures that result in balance on a less just world and more and more war. We “saved” Iraq from Sadaam. But at what cost? Are they really better off now after millions of deaths and decades of conflict?
Realist see the world in terms of tragic tradeoffs. Not intervening is usually better for most people than intervening.
If it is our responsibility to intervene with every injustice that would lead to endless conflict. Do the people of Gaza deserve to be liberated? How about Sudan? Yemen? Congo? Rohingyas I Myanmar? Uighers? What principle are you using to distinguish all these places from Ukraine?
Ukraine is willing to fight without American blood. They simply seek sustenance in food, medicine and materiel. The tragic consequences you would have me fear is that this might anger the man in Kremlin such that he might decide to commit nuclear genocide. To that, I would call you a tragic victim of tyrannical blackmail.
I strongly recommend the late Daniel Ellsberg's last book "The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner", in which he explains that command delegation to initiate "nuclear genocide" is decentralized all the way down to O3 rank in the USA, and O1 in Russia (or at least for the Perimeter system during the Cold War).
It is submitted that we need to de-escalate by returning to Cold War politics, which was much safer and rational than now.
So say, if a "little country" that "doesn't matter much", like New Zealand or Australia, gets invaded, say by China, we should just roll over and let them tickle our bellies because a) people might get hurt, b) too small (economically) to matter, c) money - let's not piss off a big trading partner?
No absolutely not. China is a peer competitor at risk of becoming regional hegemony. Realism requires containment of China. This means fighting back on Taiwan, South China Sea, and anywhere else China might attempt to expand
But it's different if it's the US or Russia. They're allowed to invade other countries because... ? Most of us have grown up with the idea that the US is the "good guy", the world police, galloping to the rescue when the "communist" or "terrorist threat" (oil and other economic interests) were on the line. But that didn't exactly go swimmingly well in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq etc. Now America has this deranged orange tyrant in charge, you'll have to excuse some of us if we're starting to think maybe China isn't the worst option for the world's most powerful nation. I hasten to add, this isn't actually my opinion, I'm playing devil's advocate, I admire the Constitution. But look at China's current record; massive clean energy investment, they haven't bombed or invaded anyone recently, they make cheap stuff and we love it, they're not doing public deals with countries that harbour terrorists, and they don't let a mad man-child embarrass them in international forums. Right now they're looking like a rational choice compared to a country that spits in their neighbour's faces, imposed utterly irrational tariffs that have buggered the world economy, unleashes the army on its own people, accepts multi-billion dollar 'gifts' from countries known to support Hamas etc, let said countries build military bases ON US SOIL... I could go on, but I'm sure you get my point.
As Mike says in his post, and above, you're saying realism and 'rationality' only apply to 'great powers' like the US and now Russia because Trump admires Putin. As someone from a smaller country, I'm not sure I subscribe to this. It sets a disturbing principle. Random example I know, but it's like when one of your citizens is abducted or murdered by another country (KSA I'm looking at you). Yeah it's only one person, but it's also ALL your people. Ukraine isn't just some comparatively poor Slovakian country nobody's heard of or cares about, it's all countries. You can't let a bully nation like Russia get away with invading them.
I completely disagree. Russia he made no secret about their objectives to take Europe. If balance of power is important (and I think it is), then having a western ally in Ukraine is just as important as Israel in a hostile Middle East and Australia in Chino-Indonesia.
That’s not there objective and if it was then it would trigger natos article 5 and realist position on Russia would change accordingly
I have nothing to respond to that except we obviously exist in different information spheres.
It's been discovered now, per Aaron Parnas, that the so called Peace Plan had nothing to do with Trump or America at all. It was Putin's wish list that was leaked and presented as our delapidated President's plan. The Ukrainians are an admirable people. Picture them victorious. I literally imagine bringing an entire family of them into my room with me every night staying warm and finally being able to sleep. Bless them. I don't think Zelenskyy will buy this BS for a minute. The USA must, simply must, call this what it is-another Putin trick. Slava Ukraini, heroyam slava.
Yep, this is pretty much the same surrender package Trump has been peddling since the get-go so he can claim he negotiated an end to the war (on day 1 according to his election promise) and continue to be pals with Putin, who he admires for his Authoritarian ways, and maybe fears a little - like he's looking up to a stern father figure. The US has exactly no business here. The fact that they've held negotiations and come up with 'peace plans' entirely independent of the Ukraine shows how much they don't give a shit, beyond being able to go back to business as usual with Russia. Any peace plans should be being hammered out with Europe and Nato seeing as it's their backyard. Nato should be ashamed at leaving Ukraine to fend for themselves. They should have been made part of the alliance when they asked for help, and certainly once invaded. Nato and European countries should have 100% insisted on Russia pissing off back to their own country, taking nothing but their shame - and giving Crimea back too. But of course, nobody wants to anger the bully, loose cannon Putin.
Of course an administration full of Nazis is looking for Chamberlains.
Don't worry about the current proposals, they'll go nowhere.
- Nobody wants them except Trump - certainly not Russia or Ukraine.
- Nobody even knows what they are (given the differences between them, all but one necessarily must be forgeries).
- They were drafted by amateurs, obviously without input from a single lawyer or diplomat or even competent negotiator.
- And the Europeans won't end the war even if the USA wants to - kind of like WW1 in reverse but worse (USA refused to accept Central Powers surrender until after the mid-terms, so an extra 100k deaths).
Anyway, peace talks will take at least 1-2 years, so Trump might well get his Saigon / Kabul moment he's so desperate to avoid?
Agreed. This is the same nonsense Trump has pushing all along. Remember this is the same guy who said Ukraine "started it..." by being invaded? And it's all their fault for carrying on a war "they can't win".
That would be a win for Donald now, wouldn't it - maybe even a peace prize ...