Appeasement Cloaked As Negotiation

It will be an arch humiliation for the U.S. President to lend his signature to a document such as is being “negotiated” by male ingenue and envoy-in-training Steve Witkoff.

Witkoff is being masterfully played in his meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He seems not to have the vaguest notion of what he is being drawn into or how splendidly he plays the fool in his repeated endorsements of Putin as really just a good guy of whom he is personally fond. And in the unlikely event that Mr. Witkoff has given any thought as to how he will be remembered in history’s accounts of these fateful days, he would realize that he has scummed whatever shred of a personal legacy he thinks he is building. And of course if Witkoff is aware that he is perpetrating a fraud in the name his president’s foreign policy but continues the charade, his offence is far greater.

The broad outlines of Mr. Trump’s persistent faithlessness to his office continue to be filled in, day after day, with the worst kind of gory details such as these. And the repetitive examples of his very public subservience to Putin’s wishes have been observed and commented on by other leading figures of state. The combination is disgracing U.S. foreign policy in ways that will endure for the rest of the Century.

What is being done to Ukraine, first and still by the Russians and now by the president of the United States, is sinful, worthy of history’s lasting condemnation. Along with the sovereignty of Ukraine it is increasingly costing us the trust and confidence of our former allies and friends throughout Europe, Canada and Asia, not to mention the many others who are watching.

Bill Piekney served 4 years in the US Navy, 30 years with the CIA retiring as a Senior Operations Executive, and 5 years as a Senior Consultant at ODNI, International Consultant in Intelligence and National Security. He is a member of The Steady State, an organization of former National security officials