Not even Trump's negotiators can agree on Ukraine plan

By Andreas Kluth / Bloomberg Opinion

When the captain has no compass, the crew starts fighting over nautical charts and the rudder. So it is with the United States, which now has several foreign policies rather than one, as factions inside Donald Trump’s White House wrestle over how to deal with Russia and Ukraine, as well as Venezuela and much else. The primary victim is Ukraine, which must fear for not only its sovereignty but its “dignity.” The collateral damage is the world.

The rudderlessness and infighting became clear again with the emergence last week of what was billed as an American “28-point peace plan” for Ukraine (since reduced to 19 items), but instead became 28 points of embarrassment.

As my colleague Marc Champion pointed out, the plan is “shameless” in regurgitating positions that President Vladimir Putin has peddled all along, parameters that would condemn Kyiv — if it accepted them, which it cannot — to de facto capitulation and Europe to perennial precarity.

That assessment was shared by swathes of America’s Congress on both sides of the aisle. Republicans such as Michael McCaul in the House, a former chair of its foreign-affairs committee, advised Kyiv not to sign the proposal. “In the war between Ukraine and Russia, the first to surrender was America,” posted another Republican Congressman, Don Bacon.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-not-even-trumps-negotiators-can-agree-on-ukraine-plan/