Trump Needs New Envoys to Russia

Time to Ditch Steve and Jared...

James W. Carden is the author of The Great Betrayal: How the Democrats Became the Party of War and co-host of Warrior Diplomacy Weekly with Col. Douglas Macgregor, premiering on Monday, September 14th at 11 AM.

A version of this piece ran on UnHerd last week and can be accessed here:

https://unherd.com/newsroom/its-time-for-trump-to-dump-kushner-and-witkoff/?edition=us

While few in Washington would claim that Marco Rubio’s State Department is bursting with talent, the era of the ‘missions to Moscow’ by Special Presidential Envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner needs to end — and soon.

After more than a year and a half, the duo has made little progress toward peace in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the war drags on, the death toll mounts, and the danger of the conflict entering an escalatory spiral that sucks in the rest of Europe remains all too real.

The Witkoff-Kushner gambit has been far too casual for the task it seeks to accomplish. In Washington, process is too often confused with progress, and slight or meaningless “deliverables” are too often touted as “game-changers.”

The Witkoff-Kushner tandem has not put a real process in place, and spit-balling is no substitute for real diplomacy. As the scholars Matt Waldman and Sam Charap note in a recent excellent piece in Foreign Affairs, mediating an end to a war is not for amateurs, noting that, “To even have a chance at overcoming such obstacles, mediation requires sustained and continuous efforts by a highly capable team. That means assembling a group of individuals whose primary job is ending the conflict and who have professional expertise and deep knowledge of its history and dynamics.” The Paris Peace talks to end the war in Vietnam took nearly 5 years; negotiations between the US and the Taliban lasted a decade, beginning with backchannel talks in Doha in 2010.

But diplomatic breakthroughs are also exercises in building trust (recall President Reagan’s mantra as he negotiated the groundbreaking 1987 INF Treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev: “Trust but verify”). And perhaps the most serious, insurmountable obstacle the duo faces, aside from their own inexperience, is that President Trump has sent them to Moscow as though they are trusted third-party intermediaries who only have (hand on their hearts) the best interests of both Russia and Ukraine at heart.

But the problem is that the US is most certainly not a third party to the war in Ukraine; it is, as it was in the wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, a belligerent. Without US intelligence, military, and financial support, Kyiv likely would have lost the war as quickly as it began. Indeed, US covert assistance to Ukraine began at least 8 years before the Russian invasion of February 2022. And, according to defense analyst Jennifer Kavanaugh, “ taxpayer-funded military aid to Ukraine that will add up to about $20 billion in aid over the 4 years of Trump’s term.” In other words, Kushner and Witkoff are negotiating from a position they do not occupy (that of a disinterested third party).

The Trump administration needs to drop the charade and enter into direct negotiations with Moscow as the principal belligerent in the conflict—the one that ultimately props up both the Ukrainian economy and the Ukrainian military. Kyiv would be obliged to toe the line because it has no choice; absent US support, the game is up, which gives Washington all the leverage it needs. The Biden administration’s mantra, “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” was self-defeating; it made Washington hostage to Zelensky’s whims.

And a change in stance should come with a change in personnel. For that, President Trump should call on both Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and the recently departed Deputy National Security Adviser, Andy Baker, to represent the US in serious peace talks. Each man would bring their own strengths and experience; Landau is a widely respected legal mind and diplomat, having previously served as US Ambassador to Mexico during the first Trump term. Baker, a longtime aide to Vice President JD Vance, was a career foreign service officer who holds a doctorate in international relations from Oxford.

Landau and Baker have the gravitas needed to negotiate directly with Moscow on behalf of Ukraine and issue much-needed directives to our out-of-control European “allies.”

With the midterms approaching, Trump’s room to maneuver is running out; it is time to sack the dilettantes and bring in the professionals.

The time to get serious is now.