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Some Thoughts On The Upcoming Summit
After reading some 20+ pieces about the upcoming Trump-Putin talks I still have no idea of what the outcome might be. Trump's uttering about the talks and Ukraine are, as usually, all over the place.
There seems to be some agreements already between the parties. If it were not so there would be no summit.
The Russian side is aiming at much more than Ukraine. The size and high ranks of its delegation is otherwise unexplained:
The Kremlin aide noted the very high level of the Russian delegation, which he said would include Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Ushakov himself, Defense Minister Andrey Belousov, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, and Special Presidential Representative for Investment and Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries Kirill Dmitriev, who has been a key figure in the Ukraine settlement process.
“In addition to the presidents, five members from each delegation will participate in the negotiations,” he said, adding that “of course, a group of experts will also be nearby.”
There are nuclear weapon agreements that need an update and renewal. There are development opportunities in the Arctic and other economic aspects where both sides could win.
In fact, I suspect that there will be no decisions about the war in Ukraine.
The U.S. side knows that the war is a lost cause. Russia holds, as Trump has said, all the cards in that game. Whatever Trump does or says the war will be won on the ground by Russian forces. The best for him is to pull the U.S. out of the conflict and to leave the problem for the European vassals to solve.
For Russia the summit will be a big win even if there were no outcome. It has proven to global majority that it is reasonable and willing to go the extra mile to meet Trump even on U.S. territory. After this there will be no more pressure from China or India to stop the war.
@NemesisCalling | Thu, 14 Aug 2025 22:40:00 GMT | 141
From my studies, the origin of the term “Deep State” appears in the centuries of Ottoman Rule in the MENA and has everything to do with the perpetuation of the established classes, including the Janissaries into perpetuity.
This is mostly an exercise in futility, but I’ll try again. So you are taking a term in Turkish, used to define the court machinations centuries ago in an Islamic autocracy, and extrapolating it to a modern-day Western-based capitalistic democracy. You don’t see the issues in that? Are Wikipedia links your idea of “deep research”?
Yes, a foreign policy bureaucracy exists in the US. This is because it takes specialized training to “do” foreign policy. You need advanced foreign language skills, advanced knowledge of econometrics, trade and finance, advanced knowledge of international politics, advanced knowledge of regional political, economic and social trends, advanced knowledge of modern international history, and advanced writing skills to be effective at foreign policy analysis. Joe Blow off the street can’t do it, that’s for sure.
All of these subjects are taught at universities, some of them elite Ivy League schools, but certainly not exclusively. In fact, there are more non-Ivy League grads in State, DoD, and CIA, then there are Ivy Leaguers. And it is not all controlled by “elite families”, not anymore. To be honest, there are more Mormons in the intelligence world (per capita and in total) then Jews, or WASPs even. (Mormons have nice clean backgrounds and language skills due to their mission work).
Additionally, the military serves as a conduit for civilian work in DOD, DOS, and the intelligence agencies. The military is of course open to all citizens, not just elites. The cream sometimes rises to the top in the bureaucracy – harder workers, who are better organized, and exhibit leadership traits may get leadership roles. That’s natural in any organization, nothing nefarious about it.
However, there is also a short shelf-life for bureaucrats in the US. The bureaucracy turns over every four or five years, making it difficult to embed a singular Deep State. Also, the foreign policy buracracy is not ideologically monolithic. It tilts to the left, but not exclusively so. What does distinguish it, besides its specialization, is its loyalty to the US, which of course is a necessity.
These two factors – specialization and loyalty, are what lead many people to attribute the bureaucracy to a “Deep State”. This is done out of jealously, resentment, ignorance, or even anti-Americanism (both domestic and foreign), and hence spawns conspiracy theories.
Anyway, that’s enough futile exercising for today. I’m sure my words will have no impact on you. You’ll just double-down, over and over again, raging against everything and solving nothing.
Posted by: James M. | Aug 15 2025 1:02 utc | 180
@Tom Pfotzer | Fri, 15 Aug 2025 01:32:00 GMT | 188
As you can see, I “paid attention”, and it seems I did a better job of it than you.
You really don’t understand what I’m trying to say, do you? All right, I’ll take it slow. Let’s start with the ABM treaty. When was that signed – 1972, between Nixon and Brezhnev, right, in the Cold War. So far, are you with me? Okay, so that treaty was considered a cornerstone of arms control during the Cold War, until it was abrogated (that means terminated) by the US.
When did that happen you might ask? Why, I’ll tell you. In 2002, soon after George W Bush became president (in an election no less), on an issue he campaigned on – expanding missile defense. Now, his opponent didn’t want to leave the ABM treaty, so if he had been elected then the US would not have left the treaty.
That treaty lasted for thirty years, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, and it seems likely, if the election had gone one way, then the treaty would still be enforced. Hence the election led directly to a policy change (Shocked Face). Amazing how that works.
The same could be said for US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. The plan, by the Bush administration, was to keep them there indefinitely, with permanent bases. But Obama, who became president through an election, had a different plan. He decided to withdraw troops from Iraq at their deadline, instead of renegotiate the deal with Iraq, which is what the Republican candidate (John McCain) would have done.
So an election affected another change. Wowsers, amazing how that works. But Obama wanted to keep troops in Afghanistan still, uh oh. But then another election happened and the new president, Trump, said let’s make a peace deal with the Taliban, and get out of there. Trump couldn’t finish the job, because another election happened and Biden became president. But he said, I’ll finish the job and get troops out. That’s called an overlapping policy, it sometimes happens. But electing Trump in 2016 lead greatly to the policy change of ending the Afghan war.
If we go back in time to the 1980 election there was a real debate on whether the US should engage with the Soviets (detente) or confront them more directly (Reganism). That election changed a lot of policies, both foreign and domestic. Remember what the top marginal tax rate was in 1980? You know what it is today in the US? That’s a policy change impacted by an election.
Now, where you probably get confused is the fact that not all a president’s policies can be implemented after their election. Because, there’s this thing called the opposition party, and they don’t want the policies to be implemented. So they fight back, and sometimes they have the legislative majority, or a sizable minority. In these cases then sometimes compromise is in order. The thinking is, it’s better to implement half or some your policies then none at all.
This of course angers some portion of the president’s followers, because he “sold out”. Then they rail on the Interwebs to strangers about how elections don’t matter.
In conclusion, then, yes elections can change policies and personnel, they can change the tenor and tone of a government, change its direction and influence, and therefore the elections have agency, a purpose. Hopefully, that explains things a little better for the uninitiated here.
Posted by: James M. | Aug 15 2025 2:16 utc | 198
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