The word “anomaly” can be defined as “something that deviates from what is standard, normal, or expected.” In a whole range of fields, from theoretical physics to finance, noticing an anomaly, and exploring what accounts for it, can be highly illuminating.
A recent event that struck me as anomalous was the five-hour meeting Putin held on Dec. 2 with Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. The meeting took place just prior to Putin’s trip to India to meet with India’s President Modi. Its putative purpose was to discuss a U.S. proposal to end the war with Ukraine. The meeting drew relatively scant media attention and ended with a brief, routine summary of Russia’s willingness to end the war diplomatically assuming that Putin’s terms could be met.
But it struck me as odd—as anomalous. After all, why would Putin, on the eve of a major summit with a critical geopolitical partner, devote five hours to meeting with two U.S. emissaries who know more about making money in real estate than high-level diplomacy? It seemed to cry out for an explanation. One salient point seemed to be that both Kushner and Witkoff both have a close personal relationship with Trump and are men the president trusts.
I’ve argued in previous blogs that President Trump, his bluster notwithstanding, has considerably less agency than many of his predecessors. That’s largely because the U.S. has devolved into a twisted version of the deep state, one in which oligarchs wield unprecedented power. In the words of Bob Dylan, money doesn’t talk it swears. And these oligarchs aren’t merely insanely wealthy. They also are for all practical purposes insane, or to be more precise, delusional—the delusion being that they believe that the U.S. remains the world’s No. 1 power. It has resulted in today’s unholy reality in which the occupant of the Oval Office along with a large number of congressmen and senators take their marching orders from a delusional donor class.
I don’t believe that Trump himself is deluded. He may love money and power, but—at least since his mid-August Alaska meeting with Putin—he knows that America is no longer No. 1. Check out my article: “A NEW WORLD ORDER: WHAT’S AT STAKE FOR AMERICA?” Also see: “TRUMP, PUTIN, AND THE FUTURE OF GLOBAL RELATIONS”. At that meeting, Putin presented him with a carrot and a stick. The carrot was an opportunity for U.S. businesses to participate in developing trillions of dollars in Russian resources, likely along with assurances that a cooperative America also would gain massive business opportunities in China. The stick was laying out for Trump the unpleasant reality that an uncooperative America would confront massively superior Russian and Chinese technologies in areas ranging from the military to quantum physics. That was a brutal wake-up call for the president.
Trump, in other words, knows that to proceed as if we are still the world’s undisputed hegemon risks bringing on economic catastrophe or even an outright war that we’d have no chance of winning. But he knows, too, that the deluded donor class also needs to grasp the folly, bordering on psychosis, of a confrontation with China and Russia.
I’m guessing that Trump told Putin that the U.S. president, however unfettered his powers might appear, was subject to a delusional group of oligarchs. To force them to change their tune and understand today’s reality, the two leaders understood that it was essential to present them with a clear demonstration that it would be all over for America if we continue along the path of confrontation.
An intricate ballet
Putin (and Xi, too) is likely aware of something else: that the world, including Russia, is better off with the U.S. than without it. What likely followed the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska has been an intricate ballet in which the two have striven to show the American plutocrats that if they persist with their delusions, it will lead to catastrophe. Xi has likely contributed to this effort, given that Chinese media have been featuring articles that promote the benefits of cooperating with the U.S.
With this as background, returning to the Dec. 2 five-hour meeting Putin had with Trump’s two trusted emissaries, I think its purpose was to provide an update of events since Alaska and to discuss potential business ventures between the U.S. and the two major powers of the Global South. This interpretation is consistent with the absence of Rubio and his Russian counterpart Lavrov. Neither the two Americans nor the two aides who sat with Putin, one a long-term aide and the other a businessperson with a long and close relationship with Putin, had the knowledge to engage in meaningful negotiations concerning Ukraine, the putative reason for the session. Rather, Putin’s objective was to outline the current geopolitical situation from the standpoint of the Global South.
What topics would Putin have covered? For starters, the situation in Ukraine, where Russia has dramatically stepped up the pace of its special military operation (SMO), advancing at a far faster rate than at any previous time. Moreover, Russia has implicitly included Odessa, Kharkiv, and possibly even Kyiv as cities it plans to seize. Weapons from drones to hypersonic missiles along with unprecedented production rates for basic armaments have shattered Ukrainian resistance. Even U.S. media have stopped referring to a stalemate and are starting to acknowledge that Russia has made mincemeat out of everything the West has thrown at it.
The recent list that the U.S. presented as a basis for negotiations was a sophomoric effort. It included demands totally unacceptable to one side or the other, along with some utterly unrelated items like whether Russia would engage in START negotiations. On a best-case basis—and I mean very best-case—it might lead to negotiations that would require at least six to 12 months to complete. By then Ukraine would have been reduced to nothing more than a rump state likely divvied up among neighboring states such as Hungary, Romania, and Poland. In other words, Putin would have affirmed that the U.S. list of some 20-plus points for negotiations virtually ensures that the Ukraine SMO will end with Ukraine losing its sovereignty. This ending would allow Trump to say he did his best to effect peace, while Putin could say he had no choice because Ukraine wouldn’t negotiate, or at least not quickly enough or in good faith.
Some Western commentators argue that Russia is fighting a full-fledged war and that calling it an SMO is a ham-handed euphemism. False. Had Russia truly declared war, it would be employing far more powerful missiles, such as the Oreshnik, and it would show much less regard for civilian lives. Putin made this point when a reporter asked him about Europe’s calls for rearmament with the goal of being prepared to fight a war against Russia. He left no doubt that a full-fledged war with Europe would leave the continent decimated. Russia’s tactical weaponry—the Oreshnik and missiles rumored to be even more powerful—plus the world’s best ground forces likely would decide the outcome within a month. Keep in mind that Russia has at least a five-year lead in missile technology over anything in the U.S. or Europe.
Let’s switch to other hot spots that were likely discussed in the five-hour meeting. In the Middle East, the most significant event was a speech, carried by Indian news sites, by Iran’s supreme leader, Khamenei. He affirmed what until then had just been rumors: that Iran had directly struck Mossad headquarters, killing a large number of agents. He declared that Iran had defeated both Israel and the U.S. in the 12-day war and was fully prepared if either country struck Iran again. This is not bluster: The previous war had demonstrated that neither the U.S. nor Israel can defend against Iran’s hypersonic missiles.
The Venezuelan attacks
In the Western hemisphere, the U.S. now has a major naval presence near Venezuela along with a large number of ground forces. Trump has accused Venezuela of drug trafficking, and the U.S. has been attacking small boats it claims are carrying drugs. While the legality of these attacks is clearly questionable, another question is why the U.S. is spending so much to seemingly accomplish so little. It’s another anomaly that makes sense only if you view it as a deliberate way to demonstrate to those pulling so many of America’s political strings that we can’t even defend our presumed interests in our own hemisphere. Or as history buffs might put it, Venezuela is a demonstration that the long-standing Monroe Doctrine is “history.”
While the U.S. would love to control Venezuela’s massive resource base, it should be clear that any attempt to seize those resources would be disastrous. Venezuela has strong relationships with both China and Russia, with the Russian relationship including military support. Since the U.S. began its military build-up in the Caribbean, Russia has sent Venezuela a wide array of weaponry, some ground troops, and experts in hybrid wars. A well-respected Russian website stated that the weaponry included an Oreshnik missile. Even without the Oreshnik, Venezuela very likely has the weaponry to sink America’s largest aircraft carrier, the Ford, which sits at the center of the U.S. presence off Venezuelan shores. The presence of Oleg Makarevich, a high-ranking Russian general, is another sign of Russia’s seriousness in protecting its ally. Russia’s quick response to our threatening Venezuela sends, and is designed to send, a message to those powerful Americans champing at the bit for war in hopes of gaining control of Venezuela’s abundant resources.
Other significant military events since the Alaska meeting include the introduction of two new strategic Russian missiles, the Burevestnik and the Poseidon. In a previous blog we have discussed the major leap these missiles represent: “RUSSIA’S GAME-CHANGING MISSILES: A NEW THREAT TO THE WEST”. They make it clear that an all-out war with the Global South has only two possible outcomes. One is that the South triumphs and the U.S. is demolished. The other and less likely—given the South’s vastly superior defensive capabilities—is that all or most of humanity perishes.
There’s more. Beyond facing massive military pressures across the globe, the U.S. also is facing Chinese technology that may be on the verge of a generational leap. This leap, which involves both photonics and quantum technologies, could leave America’s AI in the dust. One particular example (there are many more, which we’ll discuss in future blogs) deserves mention here. Pan Jianwei is likely the world’s leading figure in quantum research, including quantum computation and communications. Pan was the lead author in a recently published paper in “Physical Review Letters,” widely regarded as the most prestigious journal in physics. It set off shockwaves and demonstrated the lead the Chinese have in next-generation technologies. (For those interested in more details, the article is available on the website of Physical Review Letters.)
I mention the article not just to illustrate Chinese gains in critical technologies but to note how important cooperation is. In defining humanity’s potential in future decades and indeed centuries, quantum technologies will likely be at the forefront. The following quote comes from Pan in a general article published in Nature earlier this year: “…international cooperation and exchange among researchers is crucial. The development of quantum mechanics relied on academic discussions. For instance, in the 1920s, Satyendra Nath Bose in India and Albert Einstein in Switzerland jointly predicted, through correspondence, the existence of Bose-Einstein condensates…” In other words, scientific cooperation has the potential to accelerate the well-being of the entire human race.
And Pan’s call for cooperation in the sphere of science is deeply relevant to today’s geopolitical turmoil. The current twisted politics of America’s elites virtually preclude cooperation. This is the main battle that Trump is fighting. You might ask how Trump will gain agency if and when the beliefs of the elite crumble under the undeniable shows of superiority on the part of Russia and China. Very simply, whatever issues you may have with Trump, he is the only person who can represent the U.S. in discussions with Putin and Xi. Their recent actions—including Putin’s talks with Trump’s emissaries and Xi’s receptivity to scheduling a summit with Trump—indicate they see Trump as a person with whom they can fruitfully discuss laying the foundation for what hopefully will be a world that pulls together, benefiting humanity at large.
One final point: Readers who have issues with Trump might question whether it’s realistic to think he has the temperament and/or ability to help engineer this new path for America. On that point, I would refer readers to a previous blog, “ONE MAN VS. THE DEEP STATE: AMERICA’S LONG BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE ODDS”. In it, I cite a book, “Psychologically Sound: The Mind of Donald Trump” (2019) by Sheldon Roth. Roth, who spent most of his career in various positions at Harvard Medical School, is among the world’s most highly regarded psychiatrists. The book was brought to my attention by a close friend of more than 50 years, an eminent psychiatrist whose insights I value, and I think it makes a compelling case that offers a ray of much-needed hope.
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