U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker says that Ukraine and Russia are ‘closer than ever’ to reach a peace deal

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Another News X World interview for the amusement as well as edification of their global audience

This afternoon’s interview has just been posted on youtube and I offer it to the Community because we discussed several new developments in the war and the peace negotiations while lightening this heavy going with some justified levity.

I think in particular of the foolish remarks of the U.S. Ambassador Matthew Whitaker on the state of play during the ongoing talks in Miami.  As I comment here, Whitaker’s claim that Russia and Ukraine are closer than ever to peace sounds as persuasive as the comment by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the end of September 2023 that he had never before seen the Middle East so peaceful.

My speculation that Whitaker was a career diplomat from before the Trump administration was misplaced. No, he was a lawyer with private and public practice.  But perhaps this information about him in his US Mission web page tells us something highly relevant to his latest observations:

“A graduate of the University of Iowa, Whitaker earned a Master of Business Administration, Juris Doctor, and Bachelor of Arts. During his time at Iowa, he was a three-year letterman on the football team, contributing to a Big Ten Championship and playing in the 1991 Rose Bowl. He was also awarded the prestigious Big Ten Medal of Honor for his academic and athletic achievements.”

Playing in the Rose Bowl can carry you just so far…

Otherwise in my News X World interview this afternoon, we also discussed how drone warfare is a great leveler. But I consider the most important part of our discussion was about the latest edition of the US national security strategy that came out yesterday. Judging by the overview published in the Financial Times online edition today, this is a document that should be required reading for every subscriber to this Substack account. It is a continuation and expansion of what J.D. Vance said at the Munich Security Conference in February.

Reading between the lines, we see here that Trump has a clearly defined foreign policy which is to end the Ukraine-Russia war, to normalize relations with Russia, to continue the US pivot to the Pacific region, and to bring down the leadership of the European Institutions in Brussels and the governments in 24 of the 27 EU Member States because they are destroying European civilization and destroying traditional Christian values. These ‘allies’ did what they could to prevent Trump’s election to the presidency in 2016 and again in 2024. They are ideological enemies and he is unforgiving in seeking to unseat them.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

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Published by gilbertdoctorow

Gilbert Doctorow's latest book, "War Diaries. The Russia-Ukraine War, 2022-2023" is a unique contribution to literature on the war thanks to the author's reports on the Russian home front written during his periodic visits to St Petersburg at a time when Russia no longer issued visas and nearly all Western journalists had left the country. Doctorow's two-volume "Memoirs of a Russianist" published in 2020 also constitutes a category of its own, consisting largely of diary entries rather than reminiscences written decades later.. Volume 2 focuses on the community of 50,000 expatriate managers working and living in Moscow during the 1990s, about which none of his peers has yet to write. Gilbert Doctorow is a professional Russia watcher and actor in Russian affairs going back to 1965. He is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College (1967), a past Fulbright scholar, and holder of a Ph.D. with honors in history from Columbia University (1975). After completing his studies, Mr. Doctorow pursued a business career focused on the USSR and Eastern Europe. For twenty-five years he worked for US and European multinationals in marketing and general management with regional responsibility. From 1998-2002, Doctorow served as the Chairman of the Russian Booker Literary Prize in Moscow. During the 2010-2011 academic year, he was a Visiting scholar of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Mr. Doctorow is a long-time resident of Brussels.

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