The New Yorker profile of Jared Kushner reads less like a character study than an autopsy of American diplomacy under Trump, and the cause of death is not incompetence alone. It is the conviction that statecraft is a distressed asset you can flip.
The Operating System
Kushner says peace deals are like real estate deals. It is literal. In the Iran nuclear talks, there was no technical adviser in the room. A Department of Energy specialist was assigned to Witkoff, and they left him outside.
So when the Iranians put a proposal on the table, the American side could not tell whether it set the program back two months or two years. This refusal is clear. That is cosplay with nuclear consequences.
The Ukraine File
The same crew shuttles between centrifuges before lunch and Ukraine after lunch. They entered the Ukraine file believing Putin is a good guy and the Russian army is invincible. Their Florida peace plan was so aligned with Kremlin demands that even Rubio called it a Russian wish list: territory, no NATO, a smaller Ukrainian army.
Trump's people think money is the universal solvent. They see Putin as someone who can be bought with a pipeline or a hotel deal.
But Putin has his own funds. He owns the Russian treasury. He owns the people, the businesses, the courts, the corpses.
The Beggar Logic
The European intelligence report lists ten US-Russia projects ready to go the moment Trump delivers a peace deal:
- Nord Stream 2 revival
- ExxonMobil back on Sakhalin
- Okhotsk oil
- Unfrozen Russian assets
Diplomacy is the exact opposite of this. The pay is based on commissions. Kushner presents Project Sunrise for Gaza at 112 billion dollars, resorts in Albania, an investment fund in Saudi Arabia. In Kyiv he talked about win-win. Hours after he left, Putin bombed Ukraine again.
The Core Misread
Putin has already committed to his course. He is an imperial state project that consumes everything, including the negotiators who think they are buying influence. The Trump team looks like beggars with outstretched hands because they are.
They are asking a trillionaire warlord to accept a real estate commission in exchange for stopping a war he needs to survive politically. Ukraine is a sovereign nation whose territory must remain whole. Military defeat of the aggressor ends this war.