OpenMic

Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and real estate investor turned special envoy, is now helping redesign the security architecture of an entire continent. The arrogance would be funny if the stakes weren’t so deadly. Even the name gives it away. The “Shell Bay format” is named after Steve Witkoff’s golf club in Florida—the same club where the first draft of Trump’s Ukraine peace plan was developed with Putin’s envoy in the room. Europe’s future, brought to you by the 19th hole. Russia invaded Ukraine. It has spent years bombing Ukrainian cities, killing civilians and trying to erase Ukraine as a nation. Now Kushner wants a framework that addresses the “security concerns of all sides.” There is no moral equivalence between an aggressor’s concerns and the sovereignty of the country it invaded. Read the fine print. Russia and Ukraine get seats in Abu Dhabi. Europe gets consulted “on the sidelines,” with direct participation only “if progress is made.” And Kushner promises that “no country would have a veto.” Yet the Kremlin has already declared that Europeans will not be invited to the talks—and Washington has accepted the trilateral format. So much for sovereign choices. Trump is confusing appeasement with diplomacy, and Kushner is dressing it up in grand language. Ukraine is not a bargaining chip. Europe’s security is not a family business. And Putin does not get a veto over either.