Backchannels, Conquest, and the Collapse of Strategic Reason

Why Rewarding Aggression Has Always Failed — and Is Failing Again.

Anne Applebaum said yesterday that Trump's US non-government Russian/Ukrainian war "negotiators" are acting very, "Russian", and THAT is NOT a good thing. They are acting like their efforts are there to personally profit them and Donald Trump, but not America, not Europe and NOT Ukraine.

Anne Applebaum said yesterday that the Trump team’s non-government, unofficial Russia/Ukraine-war “negotiators” — especially Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — are behaving in a way that looks “very Russian”: personalized, deal-driven, and oriented toward private benefit and side business rather than a rules-based settlement that protects Ukraine, Europe, or U.S. strategic interests.

In Applebaum’s framing, the “Russian” part is that Witkoff’s channel intersects with Kremlin-linked financial actors like Kirill Dmitriev (head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund), where “peace” talk and business talk blur the way they often do in kleptocratic systems.

(Other figures reported as part of Trump’s unconventional circle around these efforts include Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, alongside formal officials like Marco Rubio.)

In moments of global crisis, history rarely turns on good intentions. It turns on whether leaders understand how power actually works over time. The war in Ukraine has become one such moment — not only because of Russian aggression, but because of how some Western political actors propose responding to it.

A growing argument claims that peace can be achieved by sidelining institutions, bypassing formal diplomacy, and offering inducements to end the war — even if that means legitimizing territorial conquest. This argument presents itself as pragmatic, anti-war, and financially rational.

History, economics, and security analysis say otherwise.

---

1. The Nature of the War: What Is Actually Being Tested

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not a border dispute or a misunderstanding. It is a revisionist war of conquest — an attempt to erase a sovereign state’s autonomy and redraw borders by force.

This places Vladimir Putin in a familiar historical category:

• A leader claiming historical grievance

• Rejecting post-war borders and treaties

• Framing aggression as defensive necessity

• Treating sovereignty as conditional

This is not unique to Russia, nor is it ideological. It is a power strategy that depends on one thing above all else: whether conquest pays.

---

2. Backchannel Diplomacy: When States Become Personal Projects

One of the most troubling features of recent proposals is the use — or advocacy — of non-government intermediaries to negotiate with Russia over Ukraine’s future.

This matters because it shifts diplomacy:

• from constitutional authority to personal influence

• from enforceable commitments to informal assurances

• from state responsibility to plausible deniability

In democratic systems, diplomacy is institutional for a reason. Institutions create:

• continuity across administrations

• accountability to law and allies

• predictability for deterrence

Personalized diplomacy does the opposite. It tells adversaries that:

• institutions can be bypassed

• commitments depend on personalities

• pressure should be applied privately, not publicly

That is not realism. It is state hollowing.

---

3. The “Deal” Fallacy: Why the Numbers Don’t Add Up

A recurring claim is that Ukraine could or should be induced to concede territory in exchange for enormous financial compensation — sometimes framed in figures so large they exceed any plausible enforcement mechanism.

This collapses under basic scrutiny.

Russia lacks the capacity to fund such outcomes

Russia is:

• under long-term sanctions

• operating a war-strained economy

• depleting reserves to sustain the conflict

Promises of vast payments are not leverage against Russia. They are pressure on Ukraine, disguised as arithmetic.

There is no enforcement mechanism

Authoritarian regimes do not reliably honor post-concession obligations. History shows that once territorial objectives are secured, compliance drops sharply — especially when enforcement would require renewed confrontation.

A deal without enforcement is not diplomacy. It is surrender with paperwork.

---

4. Why Conquest Cannot Be “Priced In”

The core strategic error behind these proposals is the belief that conquest can be neutralized by compensation.

It cannot.

When territorial aggression succeeds:

• future aggression becomes cheaper

• deterrence becomes more expensive

• borders everywhere become provisional

This is not a moral claim. It is a cost-curve reality. Every time conquest is rewarded, the price of stopping the next invasion increases.

This was demonstrated repeatedly in the 20th century, most catastrophically during World War II, when early concessions did not prevent war — they expanded it.

---

5. The Strategic Payoff of Supporting Ukraine

From a strictly national-interest perspective, U.S. and allied support for Ukraine has produced unusual leverage:

• A major adversary’s military capability degraded

• No U.S. combat troops engaged

• Alliance credibility reinforced

• Treaty-based order preserved

This is not altruism. It is asymmetric strategy.

Abandoning Ukraine would reverse those gains:

• signaling that borders are negotiable

• encouraging coercion elsewhere

• forcing future conflicts to be fought at higher cost

There is no scenario in which that is cheaper.

---

6. Why Authoritarian “Peace Deals” Fail Structurally

Authoritarian systems negotiate differently than democracies.

They tend to treat agreements as:

• tactical pauses

• pressure-management tools

• instruments to divide opponents

This is why “strongman deals” often produce:

• temporary quiet

• followed by renewed aggression

• under worse conditions

Peace is not the absence of fighting. It is the absence of incentive to fight again.

Rewarding conquest preserves the incentive.

---

7. The Domestic Consequences of Foreign Policy Shortcuts

There is a final risk that is often ignored.

When leaders normalize:

• bypassing institutions abroad

• outsourcing state authority to personal channels

• treating law as optional when inconvenient

They normalize the same behavior at home.

Foreign policy conducted outside constitutional structures does not stay foreign. It reshapes expectations of governance itself.

---

8. A Minimum Standard for Any Serious Peace Proposal

Any proposal claiming to end the war responsibly must meet five criteria:

1. Ukrainian consent without coercion

2. No legitimization of territorial conquest

3. Enforceable security guarantees

4. Reduction — not deferral — of future invasion incentives

5. Constitutional, accountable diplomatic process

Plans that fail these tests do not end wars. They schedule the next one.

---

Conclusion? Power Is Durable or It Isn’t

The belief that stability can be purchased by discarding rules has always been seductive — and always been wrong.

The international system does not collapse because leaders are cruel. It collapses when leaders misunderstand how power persists. Durable power comes from making aggression fail, not from bargaining with it.

If current proposals discredit themselves under scrutiny, it is not because they are controversial. It is because they are strategically incoherent — economically unsound, historically refuted, and structurally incapable of producing lasting peace.

History does not punish idealism.
It punishes short-term thinking disguised as realism.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Backchannels, “Deals,” and the Price of Rewarding Conquest

The most dangerous idea in moments like these is the belief that you can purchase stability by sacrificing the rules that create stability. You can’t.

The most dangerous idea in moments like these is the belief that you can purchase stability by sacrificing the rules that create stability. You can’t.

When a powerful country faces a war of territorial conquest, it has two broad choices. It can treat borders, sovereignty, and treaties as real constraints—or it can treat them as negotiable, like line items in a deal. The second approach often markets itself as “pragmatic” or “anti-war.” In practice, it is one of the most reliable ways to make future wars more likely and more expensive.

That’s because conquest is not just a military act. It’s a test of whether the international system is governed by rules or by force. When force is rewarded, it becomes a business model. And when a business model is profitable, it scales.

The Backchannel Problem: When Diplomacy Becomes Personal, Not Constitutional

In a democratic system, foreign policy has structure for a reason. Formal diplomacy—through accountable offices, legal mandates, documented agreements, and treaty frameworks—creates durability. It’s enforceable, legible to allies, and constrained by law.

“Backchannel diplomacy” is something else. It means unofficial intermediaries, private conversations, and personalized negotiations that can bypass normal oversight. Sometimes backchannels exist even in healthy states, but the danger is when they become the main channel—when they are used to avoid accountability and weaken institutional foreign policy.

That shift matters because it turns national strategy into a personal project. It makes outcomes dependent on loyalty, leverage, and optics rather than law, alliances, or long-term stability. And it signals to adversaries that institutions can be bypassed—meaning they can be manipulated.

The Seductive Pitch: “Just Make a Deal”

The public-facing argument for deal-first diplomacy is familiar:

• “Stop the killing.”

• “We’re wasting money.”

• “It’s not our problem.”

• “Let’s be realistic.”

• “Offer incentives and everyone goes home.”

It sounds clean. It also dodges the core question: what kind of peace is being purchased, and who pays for it later?

A peace that rewards conquest does not end the logic of war. It validates it.

The “Pay Ukraine to Surrender” Idea Isn’t Realism — It’s Fantasy

One version of the deal-first pitch goes like this: Ukraine should concede territory, and then some massive economic settlement will compensate them—sometimes framed as payments Russia “owes,” sometimes framed as huge reconstruction money, sometimes floated in numbers so large they aren’t even tethered to budgets.

This fails on basics:

1) There’s no credible mechanism to extract “trillions”

Russia does not have the liquid capacity to fund vast reparations on demand, and even if it did, authoritarian regimes do not reliably pay after they get what they want. If someone proposes giant numbers without enforcement, what they’re really doing is using fantasy arithmetic to sell surrender as “reasonable.”

2) It treats the victim state as a bargaining chip

Ukraine is not a subsidiary. It is a sovereign country with citizens, elections, a national identity, and the right to exist. Any “deal” that assumes Ukraine must trade land for quiet is not neutral peace-making. It’s great-power bargaining over smaller nations—exactly the logic that fueled many of the 20th century’s disasters.

3) It guarantees the next war

If conquest produces territory at a discount, it becomes a repeatable strategy. That doesn’t just endanger Ukraine; it destabilizes every border region where an autocrat believes force can succeed.

The real question is not “Is peace good?” Of course peace is good. The question is: is this peace a ceasefire that locks in conquest, or a settlement that removes the incentive to invade again?

Rewarding conquest removes nothing. It advertises incentives.

Why Authoritarian “Deals” Break: Power Systems Don’t Negotiate Like Democracies

Democratic negotiation assumes:

• agreements matter,

• institutions enforce them,

• reputational costs exist,

• leaders change but the state remains.

Authoritarian negotiation often assumes:

• agreements are tactical pauses,

• enforcement is weakness,

• reputational costs are manageable through propaganda,

• power is personal and continuous.

That mismatch is why “strongman deals” are so fragile. They are often not designed to end a conflict; they are designed to manage pressure while preserving the ability to continue coercion later.

The Appeasement Trap Isn’t a Moral Story — It’s a Cost Curve

People argue about the word “appeasement” because it sounds like an insult. Forget the label. Focus on the cost curve.

When an aggressor learns that violence works, they:

• expand their demands,

• test new red lines,

• probe other neighbors,

• raise the price of future deterrence.

When defenders show that conquest fails, the aggressor’s options narrow, internal political costs rise, and future invasions become harder to sell domestically.

This is why resisting conquest earlier is often cheaper than stopping it later. It isn’t because defenders are virtuous. It’s because deterrence is an economic asset.

The Strategic Reality for the United States

For the U.S., support for Ukraine (through allies and lawful channels) has been a high-leverage strategy:

• It degrades a major adversary’s military capacity without U.S. troops fighting.

• It strengthens alliances and credibility.

• It reinforces a world where trade routes, borders, and treaty obligations remain meaningful.

A shift toward informal, personality-based “deal-making” does the opposite:

• It weakens alliances by making U.S. commitments look conditional and personal.

• It encourages adversaries to wait out institutions and court individuals.

• It makes future conflicts more likely by normalizing “land for peace.”

If you want fewer wars, the logic is simple:
make wars of conquest unprofitable.

The Civilizational Stakes: Rule-of-Law vs. Rule-by-Force

This isn’t abstract. Rule-by-force politics doesn’t stay abroad. When leaders normalize bypassing institutions to cut deals overseas, they normalize bypassing institutions at home.

Backchannels, loyalty systems, and contempt for constraint are not isolated tactics. They are how democracies get hollowed out—gradually, then suddenly.

A Clear Standard for Any “Peace Plan”

Any proposal worth taking seriously should meet these minimum tests:

1. Ukraine’s sovereignty must be respected (Ukraine must consent freely, not under coerced abandonment).

2. Territorial conquest cannot be legitimized as a reward.

3. Security guarantees must be enforceable (not vibes, not promises).

4. The plan must reduce future invasion incentives, not entrench them.

5. The process must be constitutional and accountable (no private freelancing as national policy).

If a “deal” fails those tests, it’s not peace. It’s a pause that makes the next war likelier.

The Bottom Line

Again: The most dangerous idea in moments like these is the belief that you can purchase stability by sacrificing the rules that create stability. You can’t.

When conquest is rewarded, it spreads. When institutions are bypassed, they weaken. When diplomacy becomes personal rather than constitutional, national strategy becomes a private transaction—and private transactions are easy for authoritarians to exploit.

Peace is not a slogan. It’s a structure. And the structure that prevents future wars is the one that makes aggression fail—politically, economically, and militarily.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

Why I Skip Most of These Video-First Posts (and Prefer Text)

There’s a growing assumption online—especially on platforms like Substack—that if you want to share ideas, you should do it on video. Talking heads. Long runtimes. “Just watch.”

I'm not saying all videos are bad, or even that they're bad at all, it's more about the reasoning and accessibility to that information...

I don’t have the time for that. And more importantly, I don’t think it’s respectful of the reader.

This isn’t about hating video. It’s about how information is being delivered, and who that delivery actually serves.

Video flatters the creator, not the audience

Video feels productive. You hit record, talk through your thoughts, upload, and you’re done. There’s no forced discipline. No ruthless editing. No moment where you have to ask, “What is my actual point?”

Text doesn’t allow that escape.

Writing demands clarity. It exposes gaps in thinking. It forces prioritization. And that’s uncomfortable. So many people default to video not because it communicates better, but because it protects them from rigor.

Platforms reward time spent, not insight

Algorithms don’t care whether your point lands in 90 seconds or 12 minutes. They care about retention. Watch time. Engagement curves.

So we end up with long videos where only a fraction is useful, but the platform still treats them as a win. Meanwhile, a tight 800-word essay that delivers the full argument in four minutes is quietly penalized.

That’s not an accident. It’s an incentive structure.

Speaking is easier than writing

Talking is associative. You can circle back, repeat yourself, hedge, and keep moving. Writing is linear. Every sentence sits there, exposed.

Weak thinking survives conversation. It does not survive text.

That’s why so much video content feels like “thinking out loud” instead of making a case. Often, it is.

The parasocial shift

Video also creates presence. Not just information, but connection. Eye contact. Voice. Familiarity.

That’s powerful—but it changes the goal. The focus drifts from “What am I saying?” to “Are they still watching?”

At that point, the medium isn’t about ideas anymore. It’s about maintaining attention.

The accessibility myth

Video is often defended as “more accessible.” In practice, it’s the opposite.

Text:

• Can be scanned

• Can be quoted

• Can be searched

• Can be translated

• Works with screen readers

• Respects variable time and focus levels

Video locks information behind a play button and a time commitment. If there’s no transcript, no summary, no timestamps, the burden is entirely on the audience.

That’s not accessibility. That’s convenience—for the creator.

Why this bothers me

I’m not looking for vibes. I’m looking for signal.

I want arguments I can interrogate, revisit, and reuse. I want ideas that respect my time and attention. Video forces passive consumption. Text enables active thought.

When I see a post that says “just watch,” with no written structure, what I hear is: I didn’t do the work—now you do it.

My personal filter

So here’s how I decide what to read (or skip):

• Video-only with no transcript? Skip.

• No clear thesis in a few sentences? Skip.

• “You’ll have to watch to understand”? Skip.

I prioritize creators who:

• Lead with text

• Use video as optional context

• Provide summaries, structure, and clarity

The bottom line

This isn’t nostalgia or technophobia.

It’s about editorial discipline.

Text respects the reader’s time.
Video often respects the creator’s comfort.

If you want to share ideas, write them down.
If you want to be watched, make a video.

Just don’t pretend they’re the same thing.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT

The Four Branches of American Power — and How Compromised They Are

We are taught that the United States has three branches of government. 

Out checks and balances to protect the people. To protect democracy. To protect the nation.

In practice, it has always had four.

• The Executive, 
• the Legislature, 
• the Judiciary, and 
• the Fourth Estate

—Journalism—form a system of checks and balances meant to prevent exactly what we are now living through.

Under Donald Trump, that system has not merely been stressed. It has been deliberately compromised.

What follows is not a poll or a projection. 

These are judgment-based estimates—a way to make visible what otherwise feels abstract, normalized, or deliberately obscured.

---

Executive Branch — 90–95% Compromised

The executive branch is now the most damaged institution in American governance.

Trump has never treated the presidency as a constitutional office. He has treated it as a personal instrument. Loyalty is rewarded. Dissent is punished. Accountability is framed as persecution.

The United States Department of Justice, though nominally independent, has been pressured, hollowed out, or bypassed whenever it threatened personal consequence.

What integrity remains survives not because of leadership, but because of inertia—career professionals, internal processes, and laws not yet fully dismantled.

At 90–95% compromised, the executive still functions—but no longer reliably in service of the Constitution.

---

Congress — 80–85% Compromised

Congress did not lose its power overnight.
It abdicated it.

For decades, the United States Congress refused to reclaim authority ceded to the executive: war powers, emergency declarations, enforcement discretion, and meaningful oversight.

Under Trump, abdication hardened into submission. Oversight became performance. Accountability became conditional on party loyalty rather than constitutional duty.

At 80–85% compromised, Congress still convenes, votes, and speaks—but no longer consistently restrains executive abuse.

A branch that will not check power becomes complicit in its expansion.

---

Judiciary — 65–70% Compromised (and Uneven)

The judiciary is the most complex case—and the most misunderstood.

At the top, the Supreme Court of the United States has expanded executive immunity, weakened accountability, and narrowed the avenues through which presidential misconduct can be challenged.

Those decisions have shifted the presidency toward something dangerously close to untouchable.

But below that apex, the system has largely held.

Local courts. State courts. Lower federal courts. Judges applying evidence, procedure, and constitutional limits without regard to intimidation or spectacle.

That is why the judiciary is 65–70% compromised overall—badly damaged at the top, but still functioning as a democratic firewall at its foundation.

That distinction matters more than most people realize.

This Didn’t Start With Trump: A GOP Timeline

This is not a claim of a secret plot or single mastermind. It’s a retrospective timeline showing how a series of strategic choices, incentives, and norm-breaking decisions inside the GOP, beginning in the 1990s, steadily lowered guardrails and made an autocratic administration not only possible, but viable.

The GOP’s evolution setting conditions (whether intentionally or inadvertently) for an autocratic administration.

No analysis, no prose. Just Facts.

1994 — The Republican Revolution - Newt Gingrich begins lying to the American people on C-SPAN late at night to appear like he’s talking to a full Congress, in an empty room, setting the stage for imitating old Soviet Disinformation tactics that the GOP eventually takes on… with gusto.

1995–1999 — Permanent Opposition: Politics, to wit: “We look too much alike and must differentiate ourselves from the Democratic Party, at any or all costs, to any or all others, as long as it’s not the GOP.”

2000 — The Disputed Election Normalized: Questionable election win in a state where the winning presidential candidate’s brother is Governor. Did Democrats or the losing candidate serve up an insurrection? NO. Americans do not do that. Grace and decency rather than autocracy and immaturity.

2001–2008 — Security State Expansion: Fear drives America to trade freedom for security:“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”— exactly as Benjamin Franklin warned us.in 1755.

2009 — The Tea Party Insurgency: Conspiracy politics goes mainstream—QAnon before the branding.

2010 — Minority Rule via Structural Power

2012 — Radicalization After Electoral Loss

2014 — Media Ecosystem Capture

2015 — Strongman Candidate Emerges

2016 — Populism Overtakes the Party, Autocracy tests the waters.

2017 — Executive Power Stress Test

2018 — Institutional Loyalty Over Norms

2019 — Impunity as Precedent

2020 — Election Legitimacy Rejected

2021 — Coup Attempt Without Consequences

2022 — Normalization of Illiberalism

2023 — Party Subordination to One Man, one very, very defective man.

2024 — Return Campaign on Retribution, Vengeance and the demise of the US Constitution.

2025 — Autocratic Governance Phase I

2026 — Authoritarian Consolidation Phase: AKA, Executive Power Normalized. Democracy by Permission. The Autocratic State Stabilizes. Rule by Loyalty, Not Law. Autocracy Without the Coup.

Read. Then look again. This is the stupid, stupid regime logic we’re being saturated with today—as nonsense feels ever more normal:

1. It Can’t Happen Here Authoritarianism via American populism. Elections, rallies, flags, courts…no tanks required.

2. 1984 State power, loyalty enforcement, reality distortion. Criminalizing dissent and redefining truth.

3. WeThe blueprint. Total transparency, worship of efficiency, individuality treated as pathology.

4. The Handmaid’s Tale Theocratic authoritarianism. Rights removed “temporarily,” morality weaponized as governance.

5. Animal Farm Revolution captured by elites. Language shifts, history rewritten, hierarchy returns instantly.

6. Parable of the Sower Collapse through inequality, climate stress, and private power. Feels less like fiction every year.

7. Brave New World Control through distraction and pleasure. Pacification beats repression when people cooperate.

8. Fahrenheit 451 Censorship by apathy. Books vanish because attention spans and curiosity collapse.

9. Oryx and Crake Corporate dominance and engineered catastrophe. Ethics outsourced to profit.

10. The Iron Heel Oligarchy and crushed labor. Corporate power fused with state violence.

11. Never Let Me Go Compliance through politeness. Atrocity survives because no one wants to be “difficult.”

12. The Man in the High Castle Normalization after the fall. Fascism isn’t loud once it’s won…it’s administrative.

These books don’t contradict each other…they describe different phases of the same disease. Anyone citing them while advocating the systems inside them either didn’t read them, or read them as instructions instead of warnings.

---

The Fourth Estate (Journalism) — 35–45% Compromised

Journalism is not a formal branch of government, but it is a functional one. Without it, no other check operates in daylight.

Trump’s strategy toward the press has never been control. It has been delegitimization: flood the zone, exhaust the public, convince citizens that nothing is true and no one is trustworthy.

That strategy has worked—partially.

Corporate consolidation, collapsing local newsrooms, algorithm-driven outrage, and false equivalence have weakened journalism at precisely the moment it was most needed.

And yet, at 35–45% compromised, the Fourth Estate remains the least captured of the four.

Investigative reporting continues. Corruption is still exposed. Courts and citizens still rely on journalists to surface facts that power would rather bury.

Wounded, yes. Captured, no.

Which is why it remains under constant attack.

---

The Reality the Percentages Reveal

• The executive has been personalized (90–95%).

• Congress has surrendered its role (80–85%).

• The Supreme Court has enabled executive overreach, while lower courts resist (65–70% overall).

• Journalism remains the most intact check (35–45%), despite relentless pressure.

The two institutions that have most consistently slowed the slide toward autocracy are not the most powerful ones.

They are local and lower courts, and the Fourth Estate.

If those fail, there is no remaining mechanism to stop what follows.

Percentages make this unavoidable:

We are no longer arguing about direction. We are arguing about how much has already been lost.

The Final Variable: The Citizen

There is one factor these percentages do not capture, because it does not belong to any branch of government.

The public.

Citizens are waking up. They are organizing. They are protesting. And—quietly but measurably—it is working.

Trump has been pushed back. Not by deference, not by decorum, but by visible resistance. Congress, slow and reluctant, is beginning to stir—not out of principle, but out of pressure. That distinction matters, but so does the result.

What is most damning is not that citizens are acting. It is that they had to.

It should never require mass protest for a government to behave like a government. The institutions we enable, fund, and legitimize are meant to protect the public—not demand protection from it.

And yet here we are.

If there is a narrow hope in this moment, it is this: the Constitution ultimately rests not in buildings or robes or chambers, but in an engaged citizenry willing to insist that power answer to law.

That is not how a healthy system should function.

But it is how this one is being forced to remember itself.

Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!

Compiled with aid of ChatGPT