Washington is up to its old tricks with Russia and Iran, trying to use talks as an exercise in coercion. The US trying to act as a peacemaker to conflicts it is party to might be thought of as clever in DC circles, but it’s producing predictable results. Perhaps if Washington possessed escalation dominance it would be able to strong-arm its way through talks and achieve its stated goals, but it does not, and Russia and Iran are not backing down. [1]
Yet, US think tanks like RAND have long understood that American hard power is limited, especially in fights against what it labels as two of the three main adversaries: Iran and Russia (the third, of course, being China, which is considered the most challenging case of all). So RAND instead argues for going all in on US coercive power. The goal isn’t military confrontation nor is it a deal that accepts these countries’ security concerns; it’s destabilization through various points of pressure, including increasing divisions within a target country, which “talks” can help achieve.
If we take a more macro-level view of the US approach to talks like the one presented by RAND, it not only precludes an agreement from being reached, but instead points to the likelihood of more terrorist attacks from US-sponsored states and groups.
Before turning to that, let’s briefly assess the situation. US proxies continue to wage terrorism and genocide despite public displays of US disaproval but private support. There has been so much media attention on spats with Zelenskey and Netanyahu, and yet nothing much changes policy wise. Similar to Biden (and even Obama), Trump reportedly has disagreements with Netanyahu and yet support continues flowing to Israel, despite years of media reports that changes are afoot.
The latest is that Trump is once again turning on Ukraine, is replacing Israel-first personnel with America-firsters so that a deal with Iran can get done. They then turn around and offer no sanctions relief in return for Iran stopping enrichment. Through two years of genocide, gimmicks like the humanitarian pier and the new aid new scheme only serve to advance Israeli extermination efforts.
On the Iran front, we keep getting the crazy-cop and eschatological-genocidal-maniac-cop routine:
As Trump Seeks Iran Deal, Israel Again Raises Possible Strikes on Nuclear Sites New York Times
Trump confirms he told Netanyahu not to act against Iran in private talks Jerusalem Post
A similar dynamic plays out with Ukraine, and the attacks on Russia’s nuclear-capable bombers. So the administration either can’t control Ukraine, it can’t control the “Deep State” (wasn’t Tulsi supposed to be on top of that?), and it can’t control Netanyahu and Israel.
Or Washington is using the neo-Nazi and Zionist terrorist states as negotiation attack dogs, which of course think tanks like RAND advocate for because it increases US coercive power. We know that the most effective way for the US to bring Israel and Ukraine to heel would be to cut off support, yet it doesn’t happen. At the same, the Trump administration remains obstinate in talks — to the point deals are impossible.
So why is the US engaging in negotiations at all? The pattern so far consists of semi-rational positions from the US side followed by threats, proxy terrorism, and more economic warfare. And the US track record speaks for itself—has the US ever ceased a destabilization campaign and reached a lasting agreement on mutual security? I’m struggling to think of one.
With that in mind, talks appear to be little more than a piece propaganda as part of the longstanding US goal of destabilizing the governments in Moscow and Tehran.
Expect More US-Backed Terrorism
The fact that the ruling uniparty in the US holds elections allows them to call their system a democracy for PR purposes; it has also in the past had the added benefit of throwing “enemies” off balance. We see this time and again with resets that produce little in real policy changes but do often see tactics of violence and regime change take on new forms. A fine example was former President Barack Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech. That was the one where he promised that the US was seeking “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.” It was only six months into his presidency when we could still lie to ourselves that the Bush years were a just particularly abhorrent aberration. There were shifts underway back in 2009 although they certainly didn’t have anything to do with mutual interest and respect. As Obama delivered his lies in Cairo, the Obamaians were just gassing up the drones to rain death from the sky. Slave markets in Libya and the beginning of Al Qaeda’s rise to power in Syria, among other travesties, were soon to follow. Trump 2.0 arrived in office promising a new approach to Russia and has pursued a maximum pressure deal with Iran and an agent of chaos image that may or may not be at odds with elements of the Blob (it seems to change by the week).
A little more than 130 days into Trump’s second go-round, what can we say for certain? The US pleads ignorance/innocence and argues for calm at the same time its proxies and own intelligence agencies ramp up terrorist activity. Operation Spiderweb and the attempt on Putin’s helicopter are just the latest, most reckless example against Russia. More should be expected.
The Grayzone reported earlier this year on secret terror blueprints for the US National Security Council to help Ukraine “resist”:
…a shady transatlantic collective of academics and military-intelligence operatives conceived schemes which would lead to the US “helping Ukraine resist,” to “prolong” the proxy war “by virtually any means short of American and NATO forces deploying to Ukraine or attacking Russia.”
The operatives assembled their war plans immediately in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and delivered them directly to the highest-ranking relevant US National Security Council official in the Biden administration.
Proposed operations ranged from covert military options to jihadist-style psychological operations against Russian civilians, with the authors insisting, “we need to take a page from ISIS’ playbook.”
ISIS was not the only militant outfit upheld as a model for Ukraine’s military. The intelligence cabal also proposed modernizing IEDs, like those staged by Iraqi insurgents against occupying US troops, for a potential stay-behind guerrilla army in Russia, which would attack rail lines, power plants and other civilian targets.
While this exact pitch might not have been adopted by the US, there were no doubt many such strategies floating around DC and London, and we’re beginning to see them put into action. They will likely continue for as long as they can — from Ukraine or elsewhere. I’m beginning to think that a bonkers viewpoint expressed in Foreign Affairs last year is widely held in US power circles. Former senior CIA analyst and Principal Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council Peter Schroeder, wrote that the US just needs to keep up the pressure on Moscow until…Putin dies:
If Putin is unwilling to halt his assault on Ukraine, then the war can end in only one of two ways: either because Russia has lost the ability to continue its campaign or because Putin is no longer in power….what is certain is that, at some point, he will die.
It sounds ridiculous, but also fits with the US track record. Syria faced a decades-long destabilization campaign before Washington and friends finally got the Al Qaeda government they craved. Iran has been a target for going on half a century. The USSR/Russia for even longer if we omit the brief period of friendly Western looting in the 1990s.
Iran will likely see more “accidents” like the April explosion at its busiest commercial port and the helicopter crash that killed the nation’s president last year. Israeli and Western media blamed the port explosion and ensuing fire on Chinese missile fuel. Well, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Iran just ordered material from China for hundreds of ballistic missiles, so look out. In recent months there have also been the following:
A fire at the Montazer Ghaem Thermal Power Plant in northern Iran.
A fire at an alleged missile production facility in Tehran; A fire in an industrial zone in Natanz.
A fire at a motorcycle factory in Mashhad that allegedly has links to the country’s missile program.
Another fire at the Mahmoudabad Industrial Zone in Qom, which allegedly houses an underground uranium enrichment facility.
A fire at an underground IRGC ammunition warehouse near Shiraz, southern Iran.
US apparatchiks have long pressed for evermore covert activity in Iran that would bring about a “better deal” or destabilize the government and help bring about regime change. American think tanks also refer to Washington’s power to coerce (P2C as RAND acronymizes it). Contrary to a lot of popular opinion, the report shows the US is fully aware of the limitations of force. That’s why it must pursue further economic warfare, covert ops—which typically includes backing terrorists— and any other means of hammering at cracks in foreign “regimes.”
The Power to Coerce
The Trump administration’s negotiation strategy looks like it’s ripped straight from a 2016 RAND report entitled “The Power to Coerce: Countering Adversaries Without Going to War.” Here are some key chunks:
Coercive power, as well as statecraft employing it, may include economic sanctions, punitive political measures, cyber operations, covert intelligence operations, military aid, propaganda, the constriction or manipulation of trade, the interdiction of goods and people, and support for political opposition, among other measures. These instruments
have in common the potential to bend the policies, break the will, or loosen the hold on power of states at the receiving end.
…coercive power does not physically impose compliance with U.S. aims. Because the adversary is left to choose, the outcome is not ensured. Success depends on how capable the coercer is and how vulnerable its target is.
At its best, P2C can offer the effect of victory without violence. Yet it can do more than coerce: For example, at the upper end, it can bring down a belligerent regime rather than just pressure it into moderating its behavior.
Indeed, coercive measures are more likely to work when the adversary has reason to believe that force will be used if they do not. In the case of Iran, for instance, the combination of financial sanctions and threats of military attack appear to have induced Iran to negotiate curbs on its nuclear program.
Thus, when force is an option, P2C could be used as the penultimate rung on an escalation ladder. But when not reinforced by the threat of force, coercive measures need to be all the more severe.
P2C measures may also be able to weaken a target state materially and politically, leaving it less able to threaten others, more conscious of its own mortality, less adventurous, and vulnerable to being replaced.
An alternative approach, depending on circumstances, could be to impose sanctions above the threshold of tolerable pain from the outset and then ratchet downward in response to concessions, causing economic shock and hardship and thus weakening political support for the regime and its policies.
Talks can also be viewed as a bid to increase divisions among elites in a target country where neoliberal oligarchs may want to jump at US offers in exchange for sanction relief while the government has wider concerns. As the RAND report states:
If the regime is given no incentive to alter its behavior, the United States has no coercive leverage…Iran is the most vulnerable to internal dissent yet probably has the
least compunction about cracking down with brutality.
The report concludes:
On the whole, the United States has significant powers of coercion, against which at least two potential adversaries, Iran and Russia, have weak antibodies.
Now the report is a bit dated, and it’s easy to write it off as more magical thinking from Washington, but for the sake of argument, let’s briefly explore.
I’m not an expert in the internal politics of Iran or Russia, so hopefully readers can offer more insight, but there have been reports that the opening of talks with Tehran created new dividing lines. Iranian officials are also playing their own domestic game, but you can see the potential for problems. From the New Arab:
“The Leader of the Islamic Republic wants to resolve the sanctions issue while keeping an anti-American stance,” Iranian analyst Alijani said at the time.
“This rhetoric bolsters support from extremists and security forces loyal to the regime, namely Khamenei and his allies, enabling them to suppress political opponents and activists,” he added.
This is not to say any of this will work; it is likely to fail as governments have wised up to the empire’s game, but damned if the US is going to stop trying—especially after the taste of success in Syria. Just prior to CIA-Mossad-Turkish-backed terrorist offensive, the US and UAE were discussing sanctions relief with Syria in return for more daylight between Damascus and Tehran. In hindsight, that entire process appears to have been a ruse intended to help lay the groundwork for the toppling of the government. Syria might have been a much weaker state than either Iran or Russia, but a reminder not to underestimate the empire. It will persist in its attempt to topple governments in Tehran and Moscow or likely die trying.
Iran and Russia, however, were of course warning Assad against going that route, and they also no doubt learned even more from the experience. In the past a change of government in the US followed by talks might have momentarily caused foreign governments to believe a new course with the US was possible. Indeed, Russia was guilty of this naivete at least a few times, but that has not been the case this go-round. They are at least maintaining dialogue with the US, which we should all be thankful for. As Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov puts it, “I believe that under all circumstances, it is always better to have a communication channel.”
It would be in character for the US to hope that talks mixed with terrorist attacks from Ukraine and ongoing sanctions could produce instability in Moscow. Indeed much of the Project Ukraine strategy revolved around the expectation of upheaval in Russia. Instead Moscow seems almost baffled at the transparency and incompetence of their opponents. Here’s Putin at a June 4 government meeting:
What authority can the leaders of a thoroughly rotten and completely corrupt regime have? This is being talked about all over the world. What competence can be proud of those who caused the armed forces of Ukraine, for example, to suffer absolutely senseless, huge losses in the Kursk region and today suffer one defeat after another on the battlefield?
Apparently, we are dealing with people who not only do not have any significant competence in anything, but also have an elementary political culture, if they allow themselves to make certain statements and even direct insults to those with whom they are trying to agree on something.
There are, as of yet, no sign of mutiny in the ranks in Moscow. And as many have stated, if there was, it would likely be hardliners looking for more forceful action against the West. We should hope not. Despite calls for Russian attacks on NATO facilities in Europe, would that really suddenly instill a sense of reason in the cult of Western decision makers? Or would it, as has been noted about attacks on countries like Russia and Iran, cause the wider population—which increasingly opposes “support” for Ukraine— to rally around the flag? While Moscow enjoys advantages in firepower, industrial capacity, and critical thinking, thankfully for us all it refuses to take the bait and get into an escalation that would see Europe — and potentially much more — destroyed.
Other Explanations and End Game
There are other potential possibilities and contributing factors for Washington’s position on talks, which have received ample attention and shouldn’t be forgotten:
Trump’s ego.
That the Israeli and Ukrainian tails are wagging the dog. The Zionists in Tel Aviv and Kiev no doubt possess their own agency and are interested in getting Americans to fight and die for them. Israel like all other American ‘partners’ has been used by the U.S. for its own ends but long ago woke up to this fact, and turned the tables on America. Perhaps Ukraine is as well. But they are reliant on the US for aid, military support, and international cover with US intelligence deeply embedded in both countries. The U.S. has the option to wake up to its usurpative interfering behaviors and concede that concessions are required for ‘life’ on the planet to continue? Let’s also remember that Ukraine and Israel are just one part of a multi-pronged pressure campaign against the respective US targets of Russia and Iran. And it’s not as though the US has stepped back from those efforts and simply can’t control the monsters it helped create. Russia also faces economic isolation efforts, pressure in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Baltic, the Black Sea, against BRICS nations and the worldwide effort against nations it is friendly with.Iranian influence across West Asia has come under attack during the US-Israel rampage of the past two years. Tehran has suffered major setbacks in Syria and Lebanon, and also faces pressure to its north in the South Caucasus, as well as the economic maximum pressure.
That Trump really can’t control factions of the Blob. Yet, if this is the case, he made the same mistake as in his first administration—one we were assured wasn’t going to happen again. Tulsi and friends were supposed to be clamping down this go-round. Yet even if these rogue factions have eluded them, that doesn’t explain why Trump would just now be looking to switch out Israel-first appointees or why he tied himself to Ukraine or why all his big talk on the US exiting NATO in the end amounts to Hegseth skipping a few meetings and getting Europe to spend more, i.e., strengthen NATO (in theory).
The fight over global public opinion. Yves detailed this aspect here. It does allow Washington to say they are working for peace and run with nonsense like this when Russia retaliates:
Trump administration finally responds to large-scale Russian attacks on Ukraine Ukrainska Pravda. Keith Kellogg trots out the 1977 Geneva Peace Protocols.
Trump blasts Russian leader: ‘I’m not happy with what Putin is doing’ The Hill
5. Trump’s talks with Russia also helped European governments sell EU “rearmament”, which will produce a windfall for American arms companies and, considering the level of delusion in European high places, is quickly leading to the Ukrainization of Europe. The US keeps pressuring Europe to spend, spend, spend, and a ludicrous, society-wrecking five percent of GDP is now gaining acceptance. Meaning that while Russia has the upper hand militarily, it has the unenviable task of subduing a continent of elite lunatics.
These five points also do not lead to an increased likelihood of the momentous shift required in US elite thinking that would be required to get deals done that treat the other side’s security concerns seriously nor do they point to a new division of the world into spheres of influence.
Instead they show that the empire’s commitment to global domination is one of the few givens. The great question — and likely fear in Moscow and Tehran — is what the US resorts to when its “P2C” fails to achieve its desired results, and ultimately collapses NATO, Israel, and itself.
In the near future, we’re likely looking at many more Operation Spiderwebs, but it might be the West that is getting wrapped up in silk.
Maybe that’s our best hope—that US “adversaries” led by the economic might of China can successfully flip the RAND script with a sustained and coordinated effort to keep giving the US just enough rope to hang itself, and then hope that rewards for good behavior will get Washington to finally accept that it needs to play by the rules.
Notes
While there isn’t currently a hot war directly with Iran, the wider violence in West Asia can be viewed as targeting Tehran. There is also the ongoing economic war against the country, which has only intensified during talks, as well as constant destabilization efforts.
