COMMENT AND AUTHOR'S RESPONSE to "REVISED AND UPDATED: Undisclosed White House back-channel conversations with Putin’s aides"
Definitive text, Comment, and Author's response
Note to teaders
The definitive version of the article referred to got kind of garbled in the various revisions. The final, definitive text of the article follows below. After the definitive version of the article, a reader’s comment and my response follow.
If you remember the article, you may wish to skip the final text of the article and go directly to the Comment and my response, which deals with what I think should be done next by the United States.
Please accept my apologies for the confusing succession of emails and texts. It is partly due to the fact that I am moving this week, and resorted to writing in the middle of the night to meet my own deadline for the article on Thursday.
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REVISED AND UPDATED: November 10, 2022
Note to readers
Sometimes there is not enough time to fully develop the arguments that support some of my conclusions. Nonetheless, when the issues are big enough and the timing is urgent enough, I will share my conclusions even when supported by only an adumbration of fuller arguments to be presented later.
My assertion that Jake Sullivan needs to be replaced rests on much more than the stunning revelation that he has been conducting secret back-channel discussions with Vladimir Putin’s aides.
Obviously, there is a need to leave some lines of communication open between Russia and the U.S. It is certainly important that we be engaged in conversations about extending the New Start Treaty.
These conversations, however, should be carried out only through established channels that guarantee that any communications with Russia or Russian officials represent the considered position of the U.S. Government. This generalization may not hold true in all cases, but it certainly does and is particularly true in the present situation involving an on-going armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which is strongly supported by the U.S. and NATO countries with military and economic aid.
Obviously, military-to-military channels should always be open in order to avoid accidental conflict and especially accidental nuclear war. These conversations, however, should definitely not include policy options or scenarios detailing how and when the U.S. or other NATO countries will react to certain military actions, such as the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine.
If warnings are to be delivered to Russia, this should not be done on a personal basis, but rather only pursuant to National Security Council procedures, with a readout of any such conversations being shared with relevant national security officials.
What must be avoided at all costs is a National Security Adviser, like Jake Sullivan, who has great influence over a president, like Joe Biden, going off and making secret policy with the president based on secret conversations with an adversary which are not shared with other key national security decision makers, and indeed with key NATO allies.
This appears to be precisely what Sullivan has done.
This is of critical importance in maintaining a viable coalition among Ukraine’s supporters in what is at the moment a near all-out economic war between Russia and the civilized nations in the world that support the U.S. and EU sanctions against Russia.
One should consider, moreover, what the impact might be on allied unity if national leaders and their aides are allowed to go off and have free-lance conversations with Putin’s aides. For example, if Emmanuel Macron’s aides are conducting secret back-channel conversations with Putin’s aides, Olaf Scholz’s aides are having similar conversations, and the aides of Turkish, British, Italian, and Hungarian leaders are having similar conversations, what would be the effect?
In my view, such uncoordinated conversations would simply help Putin discern how he can most effectively stoke and exploit divisions among the allied coalition’s members, while making a coherent unified allied policy (and military responses) nearly impossible.
There can be little doubt that such uncoordinated conversations, even if carried out by national leaders themselves, greatly strengthen Putin’s hand and greatly weaken the deterrence and bargaining power of the U.S., the EU, NATO countries, and other members of the allied coalition supporting Ukraine.
We need only recall how tightly controlled by JFK’s Executive Committee the decision making including was during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and how narrowly we escaped accidental nuclear war, to understand how critical coordinated control of communications and decision making needs to be to minimize the risks of accidental nuclear war.
As noted above, the judgment that Sullivan should be replaced rests on much more than the recent revelations about his conversations with Putin’s aides.
Both Sullivan and Blinken need to be replaced, in my view—which is the view of an expert who has been following the war very closely since the Russian invasion on February 24, and analyzing and writing about developments as they occurred, almost every day.
Among their failures have been the following:
1) Allowing Biden to make the catastrophic decision to withdraw all American troops and all U.S. contractors from Afghanistan—thereby guaranteeing that the government of Ashraf Ghani would fall to the Taliban. Without the U.S. contractors, the Afghan air force could not fly, and without the Afghan air force the Afghan army could not fight;
2) Allowing Buden to repeatedly broadcast to the world and to Putin that NATO would not respond with force if Russia invaded Ukraine;
3) Blinken, Sullivan, and Biden’s failed “rational actor fallacy” strategy of trying to deter Putin by finely graduated threats and sanctions that they thought would increase his “costs”; and
4)Their withholding of advanced weapons systems from Ukraine because of Biden’s fear of Putin and Putin’s nuclear threats.
These judgments are not based on partisan considerations. Rather, they proceed from the assumption that constructive criticism of Biden’s foreign policy is important in order for him and the United States to be as successful as possible in confronting Putin and Russia.
These articles may sometimes be provocative. They are often designed to provoke, and to generate comments and criticisms that can lead to further development of the argument, or correction of its defects when these become apparent.
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Original Article: Adapted from The Trenchant Observer, November 6, 2022.
Dispatches
1) Vivian Salama and Michael R. Gordon, “Senior White House Official Involved in Undisclosed Talks With Top Putin Aides; Jake Sullivan has had confidential discussions with Russian counterparts amid concerns over escalation and nuclear threat,” Wall Street Journal, November 6, 2022 (updated at 4:57 pm ET);
2) “US won't give Ukraine advanced drones to avoid escalation (2:41am),” in Jessica Abrahams, “Live Ukraine war latest: Ukraine closes in on Kherson as Russia retreats,” The Telegraph, November 10, 2022 (11:28 am).
Analysis
We have spoken at length about the incompetence of President Biden’s foreign policy team, both here and in the The Trenchant Observer. Democratic leaders should meet soon to demand the resignation of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and also that of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
This is the team that gave us the Afghanistan withdrawal decision, and who allowed Biden to broadcast that NATO would not use force if Russia invaded Ukraine.
The Biden administration has broken trust with its NATO partners and all the other members of the broad international coalition that is supporting Ukraine’s self-defense against Russian aggression and barbarism.
There will be time for more analysis later. What is absolutely clear already, however,, is that Sullivan and Blinken should resign immediately or be fired.
Sullivan has betrayed all the other countries that support Ukraine.
We should all be ouside screaming at Biden, Sullivan, and Blinken in rage.
Democrats knew these guys were incompetent. Still, the incompetence they have just demonstrated should move us all to intense outrage.
The Telegraph reports:
The Biden administration won’t give Ukraine advanced drones despite pleas from Kyiv and a bipartisan group of Congressmen, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The Pentagon declined the request based on concerns that providing the Gray Eagle MQ-1C drones could escalate the conflict and signal to Moscow that the US was providing weapons that could target positions inside Russia, US officials and other people familiar with the decision said.
Now we know Jake Sullivan is talking to Putin’s aides in unreported secret back-channel conversations. It is not difficult to imagine those aides are telling Sullivan which weapon systems NATO can’t supply to Ukraine withour crossing Putin’s “red lines” and then , “One, Two, Three, World War III”,
Sullivan appears to be indirectly durectingU.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine by leading Joe Biden where he wants him to go. Biden thinks Sullivan has a “once in a generation” brilliant mind.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan should be replaced.
Immediately.
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READER’S COMMENT
(Michael)
All fair points made in this article. It seems, as you have reported previously, that several countries are talking to Putin or his minions through "back channels". This leads to distrust and a truly non-unified approach to real negotiations that are lawful and effective.
So Putin can continue the war with little worry that this weak coalition will get stronger. That said, Putin is also playing the long game and he may win but at what cost?
South Korea is now said to agree to supply artillery shells to Ukraine that I think the US is paying.
But shelling will not end the war in Ukraine's favor I think, and it seems the UN is powerless to step in.
What next?
AUTHOR’RESPONSE
(James Rowles))
Thank you, Michael, for your comment.
You're right, the UN Security Council, the body responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security under the U.N. Charter, is paralyzed because of the Russian veto.
Still, the UN has been useful. Secretary General Antonio Guterres with Turkey has been able to broker the grain export deal that is allowing Ukrainian grain shipments. The U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agenvy (IAEA) has played a critical role in defusing, to some extent, the critical situation at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which Russia has occupied and has been shelling from time to time.
What next?
Today we can celebrate the Russian withdrawal from Kherson and the withdrawal of Russian forces from the West bank of the Dnipo (Dnieper) River. The Ukrainian liberation of Kherson is a real cause for celebration. It represents a very important strategic victory for Ukraine.
What should the U.S. and NATO do now?