Two men, Steve Witkoff and Kirill Dmitriev, come up with a peace plan, but they are two men who know a lot about financial deals and clearly not much about peace negotiation.
From The Atlantic, 22 November 2025, written by Anne Applebaum
'Why is the Trump White House pushing Ukraine to accept a Russian plan
that paves the way for another war? The document offers some hints,
declaring that the U.S. would also somehow take charge of the $100
billion in frozen Russian assets, for example, supposedly to invest this
money in Ukraine and receive “50% of the profits from this venture.”
Europeans, whose banks actually hold most of these assets, would receive
nothing. European taxpayers, who currently provide almost all of the
military and humanitarian support to Ukraine, are nevertheless expected
to contribute $100 billion to Ukraine’s reconstruction.
Meanwhile, the United States and Russia would “enter into a long-term
economic cooperation agreement for mutual development in the areas of
energy, natural resources, infrastructure, artificial intelligence, data
centers, rare earth metal extraction projects in the Arctic, and other
mutually beneficial corporate opportunities,” according to the plan.
This is no surprise: Putin has spoken of “several companies” positioning themselves to resume business ties between his country and the United States.
In March, the Financial Times reported on one of these
negotiations. Mattias Warnig—a German businessman and former Russian spy
who has close links to Putin and is under U.S. sanctions—has been
seeking a back channel to the Trump administration through U.S.
investors who want to reopen the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline,
part of which was blown up by Ukrainian saboteurs early in the war. One
American familiar with the plan told the Financial Times that the U.S. investors were essentially being offered “money for nothing,” which is, obviously, an attractive prospect.
Other
details of the business negotiations carried out by Witkoff and
Dmitriev remain secret. Ukrainians and Europeans, who would pay the
military and economic price for this plan, deserve to know them. Above
all, American citizens should be asking for the details of any business
negotiations now under way. This plan has been proposed, in our name, as
a part of U.S. foreign policy. But it would not serve our economic or
security interests. So whose interests would it serve? Which U.S.
companies and which oligarchs would benefit? Are Trump’s family members
and political supporters among them? The arrangements on offer should be
public knowledge before any kind of deal is signed.
For
a decade, Russia has been seeking to divide Europe and America, to
undermine NATO and weaken the transatlantic alliance. This peace plan,
if accepted, will achieve that goal. There is a long tradition of great
powers in Europe making deals over the heads of smaller countries,
leading to terrible suffering. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact,
with its secret protocols, brought us World War II. The Yalta agreement
gave us the Cold War. The Witkoff-Dmitriev pact, if it holds, will fit
right into that tradition.'
The President, 'This is insanity.' 'No sir, this is reality,' General Brady, Stratcom commander.
The President to Lieutenant Commander Reeves, strike adviser: 'I always thought that having you following me around with that book of plans, for weapons like that, just being ready is the point, right? Keep people in check. Keeps the world straight. If they see how prepared we are, no one starts a nuclear war, right?'
'It's
like we all built a house filled with dynamite. Making all these bombs
and all these plans, and the walls are just ready to blow. But we kept
living in it.'
A House of Dynamite directed by Kathryn Bigelow, written by Noah Oppenheim.
The 2025 film depicts a nuclear attack scenario. Notably everyone, even though they are facing a potentially catastrophic situation, behaves rationally and follows protocols, keeping their emotions in check as much as is humanly possible. So, one can't help but wonder whether with this current administration and president, such a situation might play out more like Stanley Kubrick's satirical Dr Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, who sets in motion a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, is obsessed with purity and conspiracies about fluoridation, hilariously resembling current U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr, while Dr Strangelove and his Nazi salutes made by his out of control hand, resembles Elon Musk.
There was a response to Bigelow's film from the Pentagon. An internal government memo that was obtained by Bloomberg, in which it was claimed that contrary to the portrayal in the film, current missile defence systems have a 100 per cent success rate. Which is why, if any such situation were to occur at present it would be Dr Strangelovish without the comedy. 'Principals need hard facts, not speculation,' staff were reminded by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs in A House of Dynamite. With a president and administration readily propagating lies and disinclined to understand that lies are not facts, the Doomsday Clock currently sits at about 23 seconds to midnight.
Brigelow was pleased to get a reaction though, for as she said, 'culture has the potential to drive policy.' And, indeed, there is a very relevant example of that. During Reagan's presidency he watched the 1983 film WarGames while he was at Camp David. It is about a teenager who unintentionally hacks into the computer of the North American
Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and nearly sets off World War III. Reagan asked Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, if something like that could really happen. The General looked into it and a week later, told Reagan, 'the problem is much worse than you think.'A classified national security decision directive, NSDD-145, titled 'National Policy on Telecommunications and Automated Information Systems Security' was signed 15 months later.
Meanwhile Trump entertains delusions of a Golden Dome, like back in the eighties when Reagan had dreamed of lasers in space shooting down Soviet missiles. However, back then, a citizens’ campaign came together behind the idea of a
verifiable, bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons development, deployment,
and testing.More than 200 city councils and nine state
legislatures passed resolutions endorsing the freeze and voters in nine out of 10 states passed freeze referenda. Although it was
sharply criticized by the White House, growing congressional and
popular support for the freeze proposal helped put public pressure on
the Reagan administration to initiate strategic arms talks with the
Soviets.
'At the end of the cold war global powers reached the consensus that the world would be better off with fewer nuclear weapons. That era is now over.' A House of Dynamite
'If a "nuclear deterrent" destroys all life on Earth, it is hard to say what exactly has been deterred.' Dr Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
