Kissinger Recalibrates

Henry Kissinger, 99, has been making occasional public remarks since the start of the Russo-Ukraine War, and there's little question that at his age, he's sharper than President Biden, almost 20 years his junior, although he was certainly sharper 50 years ago as well. In July, as I've noted here, he backtracked on his May assessment that Ukraine would need to give up land for peace. Just last week, he gave a new assessment about China:

After watching China’s “no limits” partnership with Russian President Vladimir Putin fall well short of expectations, the stage is set for President Xi Jinping to tilt at least modestly toward the United States after the 20th party congress, former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger said on Monday.

“Xi gave a rather blank check to Putin,” Kissinger said at the Asia Society in New York. “He must have thought the invasion would succeed. He must need to recalibrate.”

. . . Xi almost certainly expected Putin to be successful after Russia’s February 24 invasion of Ukraine – an offensive that has revealed deep weaknesses in the Russian military – and wants to avoid seeing a wall of Western opposition against China develop in the way it has against Russia, potentially raising questions at home, Kissinger said.

Well, it wasn't just President Xi who expected Putin to be successful, was it? I would say that just about everyone but President Zelensky and his inner circle expected the same thing, and that would have to include Sec Kissinger. And it isn't just Xi who's having to recalibrate; by changing his position on Ukraine's prospects for success between May and July, Kissinger has done the same thing.

But let's consider that Kissinger was the executor of Nixon's China policy, which was that China needed to develop as a counterbalance to the Soviet threat. The Soviet threat was in turn the dominant theme of Cold War politics and diplomacy. The Kissinger-Nixon solution would be a three-poled balance of world power that would avert Soviet domination by producing a second near-peer to the US in the form of China.

On one hand, Reagan departed from this policy with his view that the West could successfully compete both economically and militarily with the Soviet Union, and that view was vindicated in Gorbachev's reported remark that the Chernobyl accident "bankrupted" the Soviet Union and led to its collapse. Nevertheless, Western diplomatic and military policy has continued to view the balance as being essentially three-poled, with the US, NATO, and the Pacific allies having only slight superiority to near-peers Russia and China.

But let's consider the implications of only one recent public assessment of the actual military state of affairs, that of Gen Petraeus. (I assume his remarks were at least tacitly cleared with Secs Blinken and Austin; the White House -- 'Jake' -- would have been irrelevant):

Retired Gen. David Petraeus predicted Sunday that the U.S., along with NATO allies, would “take out” Russian forces if Russian President Vladimir Putin decided to use nuclear weapons in his war against neighboring Ukraine.

. . . “And what would happen?” [interviewer Jonathan] Karl asked.

“Well, again, I have deliberately not talked to Jake about this. I mean, just to give you a hypothetical, we would respond by leading a NATO, a collective effort, that would take out every Russian conventional force that we can see and identify on the battlefield in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea,” Petraeus replied.

The implication here is hard to avoid: what has taken Ukraine seven months to accomplish so far, with secondhand former Warsaw Pact weapons comparable to those Russia has been using, plus second-tier US weapons like HIMARS, would likely be finished within days by NATO with first-tier weapons and air power; that is, Russia would be driven out of Ukraine's pre-2014 borders and rendered militarily innocuous, without resorting to nuclear weapons.

Given US battlefield success in the First and Second Gulf Wars, plus proven Russian failure in Ukraine, this is simply a foregone conclusion. Not only that, but the end state Gen Petraeus proposes is inevitable, but there are only two scenarios: if the job is left to Ukraine as a proxy for NATO, it will take months, though likely less than a year. If NATO steps in directly, it will take days.

But that's just an interim end stage. The problem for Kissinger and the shades of Nixon is what next -- there is no longer a three-pole balance of world power. If Kissinger isn't thinking about this, I assume Blinken is, or at least he should be.

Elon Musk Solves Ukraine!

For a smart guy, Elon is sometimes pretty dumb. Not only did he date Amber Heard, but he apparently froze embryos with her, whatever that was about. But just yesterday he got lots of attention when he solved Ukraine, whatever that was about:

Ukraine-Russia Peace:

- Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people.

- Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake).

- Water supply to Crimea assured.

- Ukraine remains neutral.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 3, 2022

If he was just trying to get attention, well, maybe he accomplished something, but at least as far as Ukraine is concerned, I'm still left with the question my co-worker used to blurt out in meetings, "What problem are we trying to solve?"

Recognize that even as of this past May, when Henry Kissinger made an equivalent proposal, he was thought even then to be behind the times, and by July, he'd reversed himself. To judge from yesterday's tweet, Elon still buys into last year's conventional wisdom that a balance of power must be maintained between NATO and Russia, and that balance hinges entirely on an uneasy ongoing game of appeasing Putin in Ukraine -- otherwise we "start World War III".

One reason I follow the Russo-Ukraine War with such interest is that it feeds my instinctive contrarian nature; conventional wisdom blows up there as frequently as the turrets fly off Russian tanks. Musk's views, and the views of the US right that still agrees with him, have been overtaken by events. Even so, as of this morninig, Tyler Durden continues to argue,

Bloomberg has observed that Musk's tweets are "drawing the wrath of Ukrainians" for his proposing a negotiated solution which would involve ceding Crimea for good, and for suggesting that citizens in occupied areas should "decide if they want to live in Russia or Ukraine," per the report.

Just the evening prior, journalist Michael Tracey pointed out the following, which is aptly demonstrated in Monday's Elon Musk Ukraine Twitter controversy...

"The media should do a much better job explaining to Americans that the reason they're at heightened nuclear risk right now is because the US government **knowingly chose to put them at heightened nuclear risk**," Tracey said. "Pro-war ideological zealots deliberately imposed this risk on them."

There are two issues here. One is that a referendum on Ukrainian independence was held in 1991, in which 92.3% of voters approved the parliament's declaration of independence from Russia. The voters in occupied areas after 2014 had approved independence in 1991 as well. You don't re-litigate such plebiscites every decade or two; there'd be chaos.

The second issue goes to the heart of the "start World War III" question. Durden's position is that Americans have been put at "heightened nuclear risk" due to US policies of arming Ukraine, which it is doing simply because Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to defeat Russia on the battlefield on one hand, but on the other, the conflict has illustrated Russian military weakness and incompetence at a level Western policymakers can't ignore.

The difficulty for the right's position is that World War III has already started, at least in the sense that there is now a near-direct live-fire confrontation between NATO and Russia, with Ukraine government spokesmen pointing out that Ukraine and NATO are in a de facto alliance. Indeed, Russian domestic propaganda is already explaining its battlefield defeats by claiming they're fighting NATO, not Ukraine.

But whether the conflict will ever become nuclear and thus officially "World War III" is currently an open question. The retired generals, who'd apparently been advised to stay quiet for several months, are back again on the talk shows indicating that Russia has been warned that any use of tactical weapons, which would be the first step in nuclear escalation, would be met by the US directly wiping out all Russian ground forces in Ukraine, as well as the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Realistically speaking, given the proven Russian battlefield weakness up to now, this would mean a complete military defeat for Russia that would render it innocuous as a geopolitical force. In fact, the retired generals are saying this will be the inevitable consequence of the current war, either in the short term if Russia goes nuclear, or in the longer term if it doesn't. Defense and diplomatic policymakers would be derelict not to recognize this completely new state of affairs.

In fact, to ignore this now would be to ignore the increasing evidence of mass civilian deaths in places like Mariupol, where current totals apparently exceed 100,000, with smaller but significant numbers everywhere in areas from which Russia has withdrawn. There seems to be general agreement that ignoring atrocities at such near-genocidal levels in return for "peace" is immoral.

Elon in particular, as far as I can see, isn't paying attention and has long since been overtaken by events.

Yet Again, What Is The End State?

It isn't hard to search the web and find speculative maps that have been created over decades purporting to show an eventual partition of Russia -- the one above is just one such. What surprises me is that as far as I can tell, nobody at all has put anything like this up in light of developments arising from the current Russo-Ukraine War. Indeed, news reports yesterday indicated that Ukraine's application to join NATO caught the Biden administration off guard. Isn't that peculiar?

Until very recently, everyone from Henry Kissinger to Donald Trump seems to have taken it for granted that there was a Russian-NATO balance of power secured by, among other things, a vague understanding that Ukraine would remain a neutral buffer, except that Russia occupied the Donbas and Crimea in violation of previous security guarantees, except this made it an even surer deal or something. If we talk about starting World War III, thinking this sort of complacent castle in the air would guarantee world peace ranks with the idea that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the deeply unpopular heir apparent to the Austrian throne, by a bunch of fringe Serbian nationalists, could hardly upset the European balance and start World War I.

Current statements from the Kyiv government suggest the application to join NATO should not have been a surprise:

In the defense sector, Ukraine is already cooperating with NATO more deeply than some of the Alliance’s members.

That’s according to Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov, Ukrinform reports referring to his Facebook posting.

"From the moment of my appointment to the post of Minister of Defense of Ukraine, I have repeatedly emphasized across various platforms the priority of my work – to implement integration into NATO de facto. So that at the moment when a political consensus of 30 countries is formed, the integration will take place de jure," Reznikov noted.

. . . "The historic decision to submit an application to join the Alliance is to continue integration. We will go through this path step by step. Today we have a large arsenal of Western weapons with which we are successfully beating Russian invaders. 11 months ago, when I asked to provide Ukraine with Stingers, in response I heard that it was impossible. Now everything has changed. The Ukrainian people, Ukrainian defenders, and authorities have made the impossible possible. Everything will work out for us," Reznikov stressed.

This suggests to me that Ukraine is at least well ahead of US policymakers in thinking about their overall objectives in the war. In the story I linked at the top of this post,

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, when asked whether she supports Ukraine's accession to NATO, avoided a direct answer, Politico said. Instead, she reaffirmed her support for “security guarantees” for Kyiv.

“We are deeply committed to promoting democracy in Ukraine. Let's win this battle. However, I would prefer they have the security guarantees,” Pelosi said.

The "security guarantees" she refers to appear to be the 1994 Budapest Memorandum that established Ukraine would give up the former Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory in return for guarantees from both the West and Russia that its territorial integrity would be maintained. But Putin violated this by taking over Crimea and the Donbas in 2014; the West did nothing. How does Speaker Pelosi expect this to work any better in the future than it did then?

President Zelensky's goals for Ukraine are pretty simple, a return to the pre-2014 borders, plus war crimes trials for Russia, plus war reparations, plus the condition that any negotiations will be conducted with a Russian leader other than Putin. These strike me as reasonable, but the reality of the matter is that a mere Russian withdrawal to pre-2014 borders under a renewed Budapest Memorandum won't work unless a radically different Russia without an expansionist agenda is involved -- and this leaves out Nuremberg style trials, reparations, and the departure of Putin.

Ukraine can and will militarily push Russia back to the pre-2014 borders, but NATO and the West will need to enforce any resulting agreement. There's no question that a minimum condition to make this workable will be for Ukraine to join NATO. After all, historically neutral Sweden and Finland have grasped the same reality; why shouldn't Ukraine? Why, after seven months of war, is this such a surprise to the West, especially in light of the existing de facto cooperation?

Note in the hypothetical map at the top of this post, a rump Russia is shown as "occupied". Occupied by whom? Frankly, I think something like this will need to happen in the wake of an initial cease fire in the war -- how else can there be guarantees of war crimes trials, or for that matter reparations? It's a little disturbing that nobody is thinking about this.

On the other hand, I suspect Zelensky is a couple of moves ahead of even that plan.

The Lizard People Look Toward 2024

I'm starting to see signs that the lizard people are losing patience. As I noted yesterday, the YouTube psychologist Dr Todd Grande, who with his audience sees himself as at least a step up from Dr Phil, has come out and said, "It's hard to imagine how [Biden] is fit to be president under these circumstances." I've been of the position that individual gaffes, ranging just last week from "Where's Jackie?" to the latest instance of Dr Jill giving him orders in public as he wanders around the stage, don't necessarily indicate a medical condition, but whatever they are, they've become a problem.

Thus people like Bill Maher are starting to float tentative strategies:

The liberal comedian and host of the eponymous Real Time With Bill Maher told his audience Friday night that although he considered President Joe Biden’s place on the Democratic ticket for the president in 2024 to be a done deal, he could “see” dumping Vice President Kamala Harris. The audience erupted in applause, showing that even the Left doesn’t think she has what it takes.

Maher is a comic, not a political strategist, but he's a comic with an edge, and he's at least got some clue of what's happening. He goes on,

“What I could see is replacing the vice president,” Maher said. “Because she’s just not very popular anywhere. And it didn’t seem to work out. And, I don’t know, that’s been done before on a ticket….”

“I just think she’s a bad politician, I think she’s a very bright person, but I don’t know—I can see them doing that because a lot of the problem with ‘Biden being old’ is—oh, if he dies, then you’re going to get this person.”

So, what are the alternatives? Former Clinton confidant Dick Morris thinks Hillary may be an option:

Democrats plan to “dump” President Biden and call on Hillary Clinton to run for a third time in 2024 out of fear that a more radical left-wing candidate could end up on the ticket, veteran political consultant Dick Morris said in a new interview.

. . . “Once Biden pulls out, the polling will show that the Democrats are leaning toward some crazy radical like Gavin Newson, Bernie Sanders. Maybe even AOC herself,” Morris opined.

“That’s going to drive the Democratic Party leaders to go to Hillary and say, ‘Hey look. Please run again. We need you to save us from the crazy left,” he continued. “Otherwise we’ll have Sanders as our candidate. We’ll lose Congress by a ton. And we’ll get wiped out in the presidential race.'”

Well, received opinion has it that the lizard people (Morris's "Democratic Party leaders") chose Biden as the most viable foil to Sanders in 2020 for just that reason, with Kamala as vice president as a credible but reliably feckless consolation prize for the left. That formula worked in 2020, but it was understood from the start, I think, that it wouldn't work even in 2022, much less 2024. But of course, just as Biden, Pelosi, and Sanders are all well past their sell-by dates, so is Hillary. My guess is even Dick Morris understands this. As well try to convince Al Gore to run again.

Over the past week, it dawned on me that Antony Blinken, Secretary of State and the generational public face of the Blinken fortune, is a lizard person, i.e., someone who is actually running things. It's plain that the globalist elites support President Zelensky, and his policy proposals are typically adopted within weeks of his initial announcements. He wants EU membership for Ukraine, there's some pro forma dither, but several weeks later, it's under way. He wants secondhand Migs, there's pro forma dither, but a few weeks later, it happens. Now he wants NATO membership -- as happened with the Migs, Jake Sullivan leads the pro forma dither:

Ukraine’s announcement has not met with much enthusiasm in Washington: In response to Kyiv's fast-track application for NATO membership, Jake Sullivan, the U.S. President's National Security Advisor, said that it was “not the right time” for Ukraine’s admission to the alliance. He said he believes the best way to help Ukraine is to provide practical assistance “on the ground.”

It'll take a few weeks, but it's going to happen. Now, I don't disagree with this. Frankly, I think if the lizard people could promote Zelensky to US president, they'd do it, and that would probably be a good idea -- certainly better than Biden.

But here's the rub. I've reflected on Trump's remark, which he's repeated several times, that Putin's invasion of Ukraine "never would have happened" if he'd been president in 2021. That's because the precipitating event for Putin's invasion was Biden's sudden exit from Afghanistan and its inevitable echoes of the US retreat from Saigon. Trump would almost certainly have maintained a balance of power with Putin that would have tacitly continued to grant him Crimea and the Donbas, but nothing more. Putin saw Biden's weakness as an opening to invade the rest of Ukraine.

From the point of view of Blinken and the global elites that he certainly represents, this was a fortunate fall. Completely unplanned and a surprise even to Western intelligence, the ability of Ukraine's third-rate army to fight the Russians to a standstill in the early days and weeks proved the weakness of Russia as a geopolitical power. This has been an opportunity too good to miss, and the elites are going to do everything they can to open Russia fully to Western capital and take the territory away from Putin and the oligarchs.

Thus we have Henry Kissinger, the Antony Blinken of prior generations, remarkably changing his mind on just this issue.

During an interview with him on German channel ZDF, and in response to one of the questions, Kissinger said: “giving up Ukrainian territory should not be one of the conditions we can accept”.

On May 23, two months before the above statement, and while attending the Davos conference, Kissinger said: “Ukraine should give up part of its territory to Russia to help end the invasion”. So, what happened and why did was there a shift from one extreme to the other?

The link, to the organ of the Syrian Marxist-Lenninst People's Will Party, offers an insight into the Ukraine war from that perspective, viz, that it represents a failed attempt to make an overall deal with Putin:

At the time, we essentially said that the man [Kissinger] is proposing with his words a deal to the Russians, in the name of the global elite, the purpose of which was to lure Russia with some of Ukraine’s territory, with a reasonable position within the current world system. However, that was with one main condition: Russia stops its joint war with China, not on Ukraine, but on the global financial system.

Kissinger, in this view, had maintained his posiion on the deal for several months after it had become clear, with Putin's invasion of Ukraine, that the deal had fallen through. Trump had also supported this deal and appears to have felt that Putin was on board with it. Biden, by his disorganized retreat from Afghanistan, caused Putin to miscalculate, and the whole idea of a balance of power on which the putative deal was made went out the window. Since then, the key strategist has been Volodymyr Zelensky, who is de facto running NATO and indeed the US State and Defense Departments.

I'm not joking, either. This is the outcome of the total surprise that Russia's military collapse represents -- nobody else in any Western diplomatic, military, or intelligence establishment anticipated anything like this, and Zelensky has proposed the only workable strategy. There are simply Old Testament echoes here.

I would say that this is the state of affairs that is going to drive the strategy, as yet inchoate, of the lizard people going forward for 2024. They will likely either need to find a Democrat hawk on Russia and Ukraine who can distance himself from a woke platform in his party to get elected, or they will need to find a Republican who can make Kissinger's move, which I would say is a better bet.

Dr Todd Grande On Biden

I often follow the popular YouTube psychologist Dr Todd Grande, in part because he gives insightful presentations on well-known criminal cases. Like many professionals in various fields who make regular YouTube commentaries, though, I suspect he makes more money from YouTube than from his day job, and I take that into account. Nevertheless, beyond his often entertaining analysis of con artists and celebrities, he's also given several discussions about Joe Biden and his leadership qualifications. The most recent, linked above, is from yesterday, in which, after enumerating a list of gaffes Biden has made since assuming the presidency, he concludes, "It's hard to imagine how he is fit to be president under these circumstances."

At about 5:30, he explains,

In my opinion, the age of a president does not matter as much as the condition that they are in. I've seen people in their 90s that are sharp as a tack, and I've seen people in their 30s who were frequently confused. There is definitely such a thing as highway miles versus city miles when it comes to human lifestyles. Certain experiences will age people prematurely and dramatically, like alcohol and drug consumption, spending time in prison, and watching the Kardashians. Again, I don't think that age is a big deal, which means we have to look specifically at Joe Biden's condition to answer the question. There are three main concerns with somebody serving as president as they grow older. The first is mortality -- that is, will they continue to live? The second is physical performance -- like, can they keep up with all the activity? And the third is mental acuity -- are they cognitively able to do the job? . . . This is the one that is of concern to many people. I'm not aware of anything majorly wrong with Joe Biden. Some people have talked about dementia, but there's not a lot of evidence to support that conclusion. Joe appears to have some reasoning and memory limitations that are consistent with his age. Of all the Joe Biden mistakes, the ones that are the most worrisome involve his aggressiveness with reporters and how he is easily confused. It's clear that his performance in the areas of reasoning and memory are [sic] impaired. It's hard to imagine how he is fit to be president under these circumstances.

On August 28, 2021, he posted the episode below, "Is Joe Biden a Failed President?"

In it, he focuses on character and leadership issues, rather than questions of cognitive ability, which I actually think are closer to the mark. At about 1:30:

I don't think it's the withdrawal of military forces is what is making people so upset with Joe Biden, rather, it's really about how he handled the withdrawal. The strategy of having people running to the airport in danger of losing their lives did not seem to be well thought out. This brings me to the question, was Joe Biden demonstrating leadership? There are a few items that speak to leadership that I will review here. One, in spite of taking ownership of the problem, Biden has blamed just about everyone else. He said his advisers did not warn him of the situation, when in fact they did, although it may be true that there was some disagreement among the advisers; Biden blamed the president of Afghanistan for fleeing; Biden portrayed the Afghan security forces as incompetent' one could argue that he implied they were cowards; Biden seemed more fascinated with blaming tghe people of Afghanistan than helping them. He abandoned people who had helped the United States' he basically is telling them "tough luck". A key part of leadership is accepting responsibility. It is the only way to instill confidence. Biden simply can't view himself as the problem. He believes no one has the right to doubt his superior leadership qualities.

At about 7:30, he concludes,

With all these factors in mind, what are my thoughts on Joe Biden's leadership ability? I can appreciate that Joe Biden has trouble adjusting to being president. He doesn't like questions from reporters, probably because he doesn't have good answers, he doesn't like being held accountable; foreign and domestic policy are more complicated than he originally imagined. Even still, he promoted himself as a leader. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't support his assertion. . . . I think the reality is simply that Joe Biden is the person who is in charge. That's different than being the leader.

It does seem as though episodes of Biden's on-stage confusion are becoming more frequent. Yesterday, for instance, as reported by Nick Arama at the Red State blog

During an event at the White House on Friday for Rosh Hoshanah, . . . I . . . found it intriguing that they are putting a mark on the floor for him to know where to stand. You can see him looking for it on the ground . . . . after Joe Biden finished his remarks, he seemed confused and delayed leaving the stage. Jill looked testy when he asked her something, and she said, “No.” Then reporters began shouting questions and Biden seemed to point at something. That’s when Jill looked worried — perhaps not wanting him to answer any questions– and started pushing him off the stage. You could also see both Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff looking like they didn’t know what to do with Joe. Emhoff pointed off stage for Joe to know which way to go.

We’ve seen how much he seems to be deteriorating. But you know it’s getting worse when the handlers like Jill seem to be fraying at the edges now as well. She doesn’t look at all happy in her position. Even Kamala and her husband looked uneasy here. Everyone knows there’s an issue. Imagine how wearying it must be to wonder, “What will Joe do next?” and how they might have to head it off. But they’re the ones who put us all in this position of having someone in this condition in office.

Dr Grande seems to be of the opinion that Biden doesn't have serious cognitive issues, but on a day-to-day basis, his public appearances are becoming hard to manage. I would think this is partly a question of character -- he simply doesn't like being told what to say, where to stand, or where to go -- and partly an issue of bad habits carried into old age, but not a question of full dementia.

But I can't disagree with Dr Grande that maybe this isn't what we want right now. I would slightly disagree with him on the point that he's in charge, but not a leader. I'd say it's more likely he's neither. My guess is there's a good angel whispering in one ear -- Secretary Blinken -- and some bad angels whispering in the other, including Speaker Pelosi. But I'm inclined to invoke Stein's Law: That which cannot continue must stop.

Looking More Closely At Blinken

I've become more interested in Antony Blinken over the past several months, since he appears to be an independent policy actor within the Biden administration. In early March, less than two weeks after Putin invaded Ukraine, the White House and the Pentagon publicly contradicted Blinken over a plan to send secondhand Polish Migs to Ukraine:

But the proposal isn’t as simple as it seems and apparently caught US diplomats off guard when Poland announced the plan Tuesday. Previously, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had indicated that Poland sending jets to Ukraine would get “the green light” from the Biden administration, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, also supported the plan in an appearance on ABC’s This Week last Sunday.

However, the report said, "Biden administration concerns about escalating US involvement in the conflict appear to have stalled the deal." According to Politico,

[S]keptics inside the Biden administration pushed back on the idea of green-lighting the transfer of Poland’s MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine, and President Joe Biden sided with those skeptics, three U.S. officials said.

But by mid-April, Ukraine was nevertheless receiving "Mig parts" of unspecified provenance, while at the same time, the March fiasco with the White House fostering public internecine disagreements on Ukraine policy hasn't been repeated.

US Defense Department spokesman John Kirby, without wanting to go into details about the type of aircraft supplied to Ukraine or their operational status, commented as follows; "They have more fighter aircraft at their disposal today than they did two weeks ago. Without going into details about what other countries are supplying, I would say they have received additional aircraft and spare parts to augment their fleet," he then added.

My sixth sense tells me somebody got spanked, and Blinken emerged the eventual winner. Why? Let's to to Wikipedia. The first observation to make is that the Blinken family has been a member of the US upper class for generations. Consider Antony's father, Donald Blinken (1925-2022):

Blinken was born on November 11, 1925, in Yonkers, New York, the son of Maurice Blinken and his wife, Ethel (Horowitz). His father and mother were of Jewish descent and his father was originally from Kyiv (now the capital of Ukraine). His grandfather was author Meir Blinken. Blinken had two brothers, Alan and Robert.

The brothers grew up both in New York City and Yonkers. They attended the Horace Mann School. Blinken graduated magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in economics from Harvard University in 1948, after serving in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II in 1944.

Although Jewish, considering Donald's father was able to send his sons to an exclusive prep school -- a clearer class marker than even an Ivy degree -- and then send Donald to Harvard at a time when Harvard still had a Jewish quota, it seems plain that the Blinkens were "Episcopalian Jews", who had been admitted to New York society since at least the turn of the 20th century. Wikipedia doesn't go into the source of the family's wealth or standing, but it certainly seems to have given Donald a head start:

Blinken met Mark Rothko in 1956 and became an art collector. He was president of the Mark Rothko Foundation from 1976 to 1989. In 1984, the foundation distributed 1,000 art pieces to museums, including to the National Gallery of Art.

In 1966, Blinken co-founded E. M. Warburg Pincus & Company, an investment bank in New York. He served as a director for Warburg Pincus, and served as chairman of the board of directors. From 1970 to 1976, Blinken was president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He was appointed to the board of trustees for the State University of New York by Governor Hugh Carey in September 1976 and was appointed the board's chairman in 1978. The board clashed with Governor Mario Cuomo as Cuomo wanted the board to cut spending. Blinken announced his resignation from the board in October 1989, which took effect with the confirmation of his successor in 1990.

During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Blinken served on a special nomination panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals. In 1994, President Bill Clinton nominated Blinken to be the United States Ambassador to Hungary. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate and served in the role until 1997. From 2000 to 2004, Blinken was the secretary-general of the World Federation of United Nations Associations.

We may assume that his nomination as Ambassador to Hungary was on the same basis as other ambassadorships to major countries, typically awarded to highly wealthy and influential political donors. In fact, his brother Alan Blinken , a Harvard alum as well, was also Ambassador to Belgium during the Clinton administration. While Donald was not a career diplomat, he nevertheless was in a position to further his son Antony's career:

Antony John Blinken (born April 16, 1962) is an American government official and diplomat serving as the 71st United States secretary of state since January 26, 2021. He previously served as deputy national security advisor from 2013 to 2015 and deputy secretary of state from 2015 to 2017 under President Barack Obama.

During the Clinton administration, Blinken served in the State Department and in senior positions on the National Security Council from 1994 to 2001. He was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies from 2001 to 2002. He advocated for the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as the Democratic staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2002 to 2008. He was a foreign policy advisor for Joe Biden's 2008 presidential campaign, before advising the Obama–Biden presidential transition.

From 2009 to 2013, Blinken served as deputy assistant to the president and national security advisor to the vice president. During his tenure in the Obama administration, he helped craft U.S. policy on Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the nuclear program of Iran. After leaving government service, Blinken moved into the private sector, co-founding WestExec Advisors, a consulting firm.

There can be little question that the Blinken family is a locus of power in US political and financial circles and has been, apparently since at least the 1930s. In the period after 2017 and before 2020, he

co-founded WestExec Advisors, a political strategy advising firm, with Michèle Flournoy, Sergio Aguirre, and Nitin Chadda. WestExec's clients have included Google's Jigsaw, Israeli artificial-intelligence company Windward, surveillance drone manufacturer Shield AI, which signed a $7.2 million contract with the Air Force, and "Fortune 100 types". According to Foreign Policy, the firm's clientele includes "the defense industry, private equity firms, and hedge funds". Blinken received almost $1.2 million in compensation from WestExec.

In an interview with The Intercept, Flournoy described WestExec's role as facilitating relationships between Silicon Valley firms and the Department of Defense and law enforcement; Flournoy and others compared WestExec to Kissinger Associates.

But also,

Blinken, as well as other Biden transition team members Michele Flournoy, former Pentagon advisor, and Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Defense, are partners of private equity firm Pine Island Capital Partners, a strategic partner of WestExec. Pine Island's chairman is John Thain, the final chairman of Merrill Lynch before its sale to Bank of America. Blinken went on leave from Pine Island in August 2020 to join the Biden campaign as a senior foreign policy advisor. He said he would divest himself of his equity stake in Pine Island if confirmed for a position in the Biden administration.

My preliminary estimate is that if anyone is in a position to spank Joe Biden, it's Antony Blinken. Blinken in fact strikes me as someone who may well determine Biden's eventual fate.

Biden, Trump, And Blinken

There was a big news pseudo-event yesterday when President Brandon, in yet another gaffe, asked during a speech at a White House conference, “Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” He was referring to the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), who passed away this past August in an auto accident. The explanation appears to be that apparently, his notes (or the teleprompter) told him to make sure to honor the late representative, but weren't specific enough. Thus

In fact, Biden’s teleprompter was cueing him to speak about Walorski specifically because she is deceased. The man in possession of our nuclear football did not know the woman he was calling out for is dead, did not know he was supposed to be honoring her memory – because she is dead – and likely did not know what was supposed to happen after that moment.

Apparently, a memorial video was supposed to play, but the White House aides shut down the President and never played the video in a desperate attempt to erase his doddering cluelessness.

But as I've been saying all along, Biden isn't really "doddering", which is "moving in a feeble or unsteady way, especially because of old age". He's been this way all his life, and Barack Obama's handlers were acutely aware of this. The bottom line is that he is, and always has been, both dumb and lazy, but consistent with the Dunning-Kruger effect, he doesn't think he needs to be told anything. So if his notes tell him be sure to mention Rep Walorski, he knows exactly what to do. Period.

This is nothing new, as even the conservative blogs now point out. The question for me is why his highest-ranking handlers -- Susan Rice in this case -- are constantly in reactive mode. He makes another gaffe, and yet again Rice, Ron Klain, or Ms Jean-Pierre has to clean things up.

But there's a dog that isn't barking. The one guy who never seems to have to run out with a mop and bucket is Sec Blinken, and that seems to be because somehow a basic ground rule has been set up that says Biden is not to make freelance utterances about Ukraine. This may have something to do with former Pentagon spokesman John Kirby's move to the White House press office, and there may also be an understanding that his handlers are simply not to allow any situation where the president is even able to make any but the most rigorously circumscribed remarks on the conflict.

Certainly this is not how the White House operates day to day, and I'm still really curious how this has come about. All I can say for now is that Sec Blinken has been rising in my estimation. But this brings up another problem, Donald Trump.

In a remarkable turn of events, former President Donald J. Trump offered to “head up [a] group” of peace negotiators between Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday morning, cautioning that the United States must act prudently in the wake of the suspected sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

. . . Only Trump is demanding that the war end through negotiations.

“The Russia/Ukraine catastrophe should NEVER have happened, and would definitely not have happened if I were President,” Trump added on his Truth Social platform. “Do not make matters worse with the pipeline blowup. Be strategic, be smart (brilliant!), get a negotiated deal done NOW. Both sides need and want it. The entire World is at stake. I will head up group???”

The biggest obstacle to any sort of negotiations over Ukraine for now is President Zelensky.

There will be no peace talks between Ukraine and Russia as long as Vladimir Putin remains Russian leader, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday night.

. . . Zelenskyy said Russia’s attempts to annex new Ukrainian territories were a “Crimea scenario,” referring to the Moscow-initiated referendum on the peninsula joining Russia in 2014, which has never been recognized by Kyiv or its Western backers.

“Russia’s implementation of the so-called Crimean scenario and another attempt to annex Ukrainian territory will mean that there is nothing to talk about with this President of Russia,” he said.

. . . According to Zelenskyy, the West should meet Putin’s escalation with defense, financial and sanctions support for Ukraine.

As an amateur strategist, I don't think it's difficult to conclude that Putin, or any likely successor, will simply negotiate in bad faith, use whatever cease-fire or partial withdrawal is achieved in negotiations as an opportunity to rearm, and resume his effort to occupy the whole of Ukraine at the first opportunity. For now, Sec Blinken is the one with a clear understanding of the situation, and on this issue, Trump has got it wrong.

I'm hoping Trump can clarify what his objectives would be if he had the opportunity to negotiate, but for now, the best case is Biden has been kept from interfering in Ukraine, Trump is out of power, and Blinken is in charge where it matters.