on international affairs, but I think he gives the administration - and Trump especially - far more credit than it's due for competence and ability to formulate and execute the sort of strategy OBrien's suggesting. I've noticed that OBrien does frequently attribute more guile to Trump than I believe he's capable of.
I think we're looking more at agents of chaos than masterminds of some grand long-term scheme, and Trump is famously impulsive and prone to jarring reversals of course.
The rollout of this "plan" has been shambolic, the timing of its revelation was forced by manipulation of journalists at Axios by Kirill Dmitriev, who'd been given the bum's rush by Scott Bessent, who dismissed him as a "propagandist", before he found a more receptive audience in witless Witkoff, with whom he rekindled a "plan" that had been put on the back burner after most of its key points were rejected all round earlier in the year.
For something allegedly so long in the preparation, the plan is an utterly shoddy piece of work which shows clear evidence of key sections being unprofessionally translated from Russian and was sprung on the US's supposed allies without any attempt at paving the way for it or counteracting some of the troublesome leaks and rumours. Even as a draft - which supposedly Zelensky absolutely must sign off on (or at least produce some sort of response that will meet with Trump's approval - even Trump's not clear about that) by Thanksgiving, it's incoherent, hand-wavingly vague on a number of critical points, such as securing the agreement of the European allies to vast commitments they're expected to make, and it doesn't look like Russia will approve of it anyway despite how heavily stacked it is in its favour.
This reinforces the idea that the famously ambitious and conceited Dmitriev (who's not an insider in the Kremlin's foreign affairs scene and reputedly is hated by Lavrov) decided to try to salvage at least something from his fruitless trip to the US, which had been a bit of a disaster up to then, by cooking a scheme up with Witkoff and few other miscreants.
The idea that Trump's attention span is capable of attending to, let alone approving meaningfully in detail, 28 points about anything is laughable. The idea he could hold such a scheme together as long as OBrien suggests seems improbable.
More likely, given that the plan had gained momentum thanks to various media outlets being manipulated by Dmitriev's leaks, Trump - who's been short of wins recently, maybe even a bit bored, and certainly keen for any distraction from the Epstein revelations - gave the go-ahead in general terms, and the opportunity was seized on by Vance and opportunistic others in the anti-Ukraine crowd in the administration as a chance to capitalize on a perceived weak period in Ukraine's leadership and at least make life a lot harder for them even if the plan comes to nothing.
So far the fallout for Trump hasn't been great. His party in Congress was already showing signs of fracturing, and there's bipartisan support for Ukraine both in Congress (increasingly vocally) and among the general US population. Foreign policy has been one of the few areas where Trump's approval ratings haven't been awful, but with this and the possibility of ugly things on the horizon in South America, along with the Israeli ceasefire holding in name only, he could find his ratings plunging.
Some are reminding us of the fuss around Trump's blessed mineral deal, which sucked up a whole lot of energy, caused a lot of angst, was trailed with bloodcurdling predictions of what it would involve, but in the end turned out not utterly terrible. I'm not quite that optimistic, but I wouldn't be surprised if this episode fizzles out in due course, not least because I don't think Putin's interested in stopping his war at present.
If any good comes out of it, maybe it will spur Ukraine and its allies to be even more wary of relying on Trump and the US in future. He's an oxygen thief, and a waste of sorely needed energy.
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