by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
In the State Department’s readout of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s telephone call to NATO Secretary-General, Mark Rutte, Rubio said: “while our nation has been committed to helping end the war, if a clear path to peace does not emerge soon, the United States will step back from efforts to broker peace.” That was last Friday, April 18.
Rubio was repeating what he had said in Paris two days before, following his talks on what he has called “specific outlines of what it might take to end the war”. In his brief press conference at Le Bourget Airport, Rubio repeated himself five times in as many minutes.
“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not, which is why we’re engaging both sides…So we came here yesterday to…try to figure out very soon – and I’m talking about a matter of days, not a matter of weeks – whether or not this is a war that can be ended. If it can, we’re prepared to do whatever we can to facilitate that and make sure that it happens, that it ends in a durable and just way. If it’s not possible – if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen – then I think the President’s probably at a point where he’s going to say, well, we’re done. We’ll do what we can on the margins. We’ll be ready to help whenever you’re ready to have peace. But we’re not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end.”
Again: “there’s no – no one’s saying this can be done in 12 hours. But we want to see how far apart it is and whether those differences are – can even be narrowed, if it’s even possible to get movement within the period of time we have in mind.”
And again: “we need to figure out here now, within a matter of days, whether this is doable in the short term. Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on, from our perspective. The President feels very strongly about that. He has dedicated a lot of time and energy to this, and there are a lot of things going on in the world right now that we need to be focused on. So, this is important, but there are a lot of other really important things going on that deserve just as much if not more attention.”
And yet again: “we need to figure out whether it’s even possible within the short term. I can tell you this: This war has no military solution to it. It really doesn’t. It’s not going to be decided with – neither side has some strategic capability to end this war quickly…If it’s not going to happen, then we’re just going to move on. We’re going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important in some ways to the United States.”
And for the fifth time: “now we’ve reached the point where we have other things we have to focus on. We’re prepared to be engaged in this as long as it takes, but not indefinitely, not without progress. If this is not possible, we’re going to need to move on… But if it’s not going to happen, we need to know now because we have other things we have to deal with.”
Trump then repeated Rubio’s repeats. “If for some reason one of the parties makes it very difficult, we’re just gonna say you’re foolish, you’re fools, you’re horrible people, and we’re just gonna take a pass. Hopefully, we won’t have to do that…And Marco’s right in saying we’re getting – we want to see it end.”
This is nothing if not orchestration.
The interpretation it prompts is that there is a US default position which Trump and his men have already discussed and to which they have decided they will revert. Alternatively, they haven’t agreed yet on what to do, and the repetitions of Rubio and Trump are a negotiating bluff to press for more concessions from Kiev, Moscow, and the European capitals.
In fact, the default is both – a Trump bluff which Rubio has been told to repeat; and a plan for warfighting against both Russia and China, though not at the same intensity at the same time.
This default scheme was spelled out some time ago by Wess Mitchell, a senior State Department official in Trump’s first term and business partner of Elbridge Colby, now the Pentagon’s chief strategist. Mitchell’s default, to cite the headlines of two of his papers, is “To prevent China grabbing Taiwan, stop Russia in Ukraine” and “Strategic Sequencing, Revisited”
That’s the objective. The means are to reorient the bulk of US forces to warfighting against China; avoid a two-front war with Russia and China simultaneously; and increase the capacities of the European states to continue the fight against Russia in Ukraine while retaining, even reinforcing the troop, missile, and nuclear weapon reserves of US firepower in Europe.
“Sequencing is a strategy,” Mitchell declaimed last October, “for gaining an early advantage in that competition—not a solvent for the underlying fact of competition. The whole point is to manage time wisely by using the proxy wars that are underway in Ukraine and Israel to increase our own capacity to wage war, so that a larger and more consequential war may yet be avoided due to our enhanced strength. If a sequencing strategy fails in its immediate aims but nevertheless delivers a significant plus-up in the West’s collective capabilities, it will still leave us better off than we would otherwise have been for fighting a future war in the Indo-Pacific when it comes.”
The Trump default in the present “peace negotiations” with Russia is the Mitchell-Colby war against both Russia and China, but not simultaneously – it’s the military strategy of the 18th century homily, the stitch in time to save nine.
Practical evidence that this is what is happening at the moment is at the Polish border with the Ukraine, where the recent evidence reveals the US Army is withdrawing its military stores, men, missiles, and transport base at Rzeszow.
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