MOSCOW BLOG: Imperialism is back
The Geneva peace talks on ending the war in Ukraine broke up yesterday with no concrete results. There were no announcements nor any readout of what was discussed. However, US envoy Steve Witkoff released an upbeat post on social media saying the talks were “positive”. A report by the Russian news agency TASS contradicted that and said the talks were “very tense.”
Both sides have left to report back to their respective leaders, and the negotiations are expected to resume in the coming days or possibly in the next week or two.
Reading between the lines, my takeout is that these talks are actually going forward and the reason why they are more difficult is because now they're digging into the details of a final agreement.
For me the significant change was that the head of the Russian delegation has been replaced and Vladimir they didn't ski has returned as the head of the Russian delegation. He was the one that thrashed out a final agreement in the 2022 failed Istanbul peace deal. He was also head of delegation at when these talks kicked off in Riyadh in February last year.
The last meeting the Abu Dhabi meeting in January was much more tightly focused on security issues and the delegations on both sides were headed by military figures. Medinsky's return suggests that the brief has been broadened to include everything to fight try and find the final agreements.
Course that's going to be very difficult but that's where we are.
What makes me say this is that the talks are becoming increasingly concrete. For example one of the items in the 27-point peace plan (27PPP) thrashed out at the Moscow meeting on December 3 was a call for presidential elections. In the last month a law has been passed by the Rada in order to allow those elections to happen in wartime dash something that is technically banned by the constitution. And according to reports coming out of Kiev preparations for those elections have begun. At the same time the Kremlin said last week that it would unilaterally suspend all attacks should the Ukrainians go to the polls.
The Abu Dhabi meeting also apparently focused on security issues and there too real progress seems to have been made. Those talks were lead for the first time by Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s former HUR spy master and now the head of the presidential administration, and while we got the same “positive talks” feedback, that time there were believable reports from sources in the Russian side saying they were impressed by Budanov, who they found much easier to deal with and those talks were very “pragmatic.” This was coming from the Russian side, not the US sources, who tend to be very downbeat on progress on most of their comments on the nature and mood of these meetings.
The White House is also being more specific. Last month trump demanded that a deal be reached by June - to give him time to celebrate ahead of the midterm elections, which would obviously be a feather in his cap.
Since then another deadline has been added that both the presidential elections and the referendum on giving up territory - something banned by the Ukrainian constitution - should be held by May 15th. We now have an agenda with concrete deadlines to meet and each of these steps clear the way for a final ceasefire agreement.
Another new data point has surfaced is that yesterday Zelenskiy suggested he meet with Putin in Geneva to talk face-to-face about the territories issue.
This is actually a repeat of the Istanbul deal format where most of the points were agreed however the key issue of territory - at that time who controls and owns Crimea – be put off for a face-to-face meeting between the two presidents.
Now the same thing is being suggested again and this offer to meet face-to-face appears to be serious, insomuch it is the traditional venue for Russo-Western meetings. Putin met former US president Joe Biden in Geneva to sign off on the New START renewal deal in 2021.
There's been some fencing in the last month over a possible presidents meeting. Putin invited Zelenskiy to Moscow – a nonstarter - and Zelenskiy countered with an invitation to Putin to come to Kyiv - also a nonstarter. But now Geneva is being suggested as the venue and that's a serious offer that could happen. (Imagine the media circus that will come with a meeting like that!)
Finally, I take encouragement for the fact that the Abu Dhabi meeting was the first trilateral meeting since the war began, and Trump said that he would not get involved in talks unless it was “very close” to a conclusion.
As an aside, where were the Europeans? They reportedly asked about being included in the Geneva talks, but were politely told to talk to the hand.
Iran US peace talks in Geneva kick off
In parallel to the Ukraine Russia talks, the two US envoys were also in talks with Iran and the White House on averting another war in the Middle East. Busy day.
The US has built up a massive naval Armada in the gulf and is threatening to bomb the crap out of Iran if it doesn't concede to the White House's various demands - led by a denuclearization of the country.
But like the Ukrainian talks, which are coming into an end game, these talks are right at the beginning. However, it's encouraging that they're meeting at all, even if the meeting was dramatic: both sides arrived and put both carrots and sticks on the table.
After the meeting Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi was very upbeat about the progress made, although he admitted they hadn't got further than agreeing on the rules of engagement rather than talking about anything substantial.
At the same time the agenda was very narrow and dealt entirely with Ukraine Iran's 440 kilos of 60% enriched uranium - something that Trump claimed to have bombed to “obliteration” last year when.
The agenda is much more extensive. The US is demanding a long shopping list of must-haves that includes Tehran ending its funding for the various terror groups operating in neighboring countries as well as caps on the number of missiles that Iran has and a 300km limit to their range. Tehran has already made it clear that it's not prepared to put any of that on the table. It's clearly going to be a sticking point.
The direction of these talks are entirely unclear and it remains unclear to what extent Trump will resort to his military threats in order to get his more maximalist demands.
He's under enormous pressure from his Arab allies in the region who are all living in fear of a wider Middle East war breaking out should America attack Iran, as the ayatollahs have threatened to unleash Armageddon on all US military assets throughout the region - and there are multiple US bases in multiple countries. To get an idea of just how bad a conflict might be, our military analyst Patricia Marins took a look at the US-Iran military capabilities and it turns out the two sides are a lot more evenly matched than you would assume. If it comes to blows this would not last weeks, but months, or more.
While the foreign minister was upbeat, the ayatollahs also put a stick on the table and ordered live-fire exercises in the Straits of Hormuz just to make it crystal clear to everyone who wasn't sure what will happen if the US fires a rocket at Iran. As bne IntelliNews reported, Tehran could shut down the straits for months simply by laying a single mine in the main channel. For its part, Trump ordered a second aircraft carrier group into the Gulf.
One ray of hope is that Iran seems to have taken a page out of Putin's playbook and is offering the US significant business deals as part of the settlement talks. It has copious amounts of oil but also minerals and other business deals in aviation and so on. Basically it has a very similar profile to Russia's and therefore will seriously interest the Trump administration
Get used to this because it's the new way of doing business and if you want to deal with the White House then you need to have something really sexy to offer. But if you do then Trump is willing to bargain.
If we go down this road then a settlement seems more likely than not because any business deals that Tehran strikes with the White House necessarily comes with sanction relief and Tehran has made it crystal clear for years that is its number one priority interestingly it would be prepared to sacrifice its burgeoning relationship with Russia should it get significant sanctions release and would shift over to a better relationship with the US.
Imperialism back
Stepping back and 2026 has started with dealing with two major conflicts – one underway and the other about to start – in which the US is playing a central role.
When Biden took over he said: “diplomacy is back.” Now we are into a year of the Trump administration, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made it clear in his Munich Security Conference (MSC) speech last week: “Imperialism is back.”
While he dressed this up in much more consolatory language than JD US Vice President JD Vance did a year earlier at the same venue, if anything Rubio’s message was even more extreme – and unlike the shock and resentment Vance got, Rubio got a standing ovation.
Rubio basically threw the international order out of the window and openly praised the pre-WWII imperialist world order where the West was in charge and invited Europe to “participate” in rebuilding a US-led empire that controls the world. Think I'm being too extreme? Read through Rubio’s 22-minute speech to the Munich Security Conference on St Valentine’s Day again.
This is more than a radical departure from the rules-based international order we have been trying to build for 80 years. I won’t go into detail here, but I'm planning a series of pieces on this topic. The world just took a radical left turn and everyone is scrambling to catch up with what it means.
This article originally appeared in Editor’s Picks, a free daily email digest of bne IntelliNews’ best stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up for free here.
https://to989.infusionsoft.com/app/form/editors-picks-subscribers
No comments:
Post a Comment