Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘Decades from now historians will be debating why this war started, as we debate the origins of all great conflicts.

Those future scholars will have a difficult time, because there will be little written evidence. What passes for American foreign policy is largely carried out by private emissaries who are often unaccompanied by note-takers and who do not benefit from the institutional competence or area expertise of government departments.

One trace is left by the exhaust fumes of private jets which speed, tellingly, to some capitals but not to others. Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have been involved in three sets of negotiations which touch the parties concerned by this war. They were Trump’s negotiators with Iran, where in their impatience (to put it mildly) they took a position that leaned towards that of Israel and Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf States. They were among Trump’s negotiators with Israel over Gaza, where I think it can be said without glaring injustice that their position tilted towards that of Tel Aviv. And they are Trump’s negotiators with Russia and Ukraine, where Witkoff’s stance is ostentatiously pro-Kremlin.

These men do have a place in Trump’s mind. His friend and his son-in-law are his chosen emissaries, and he talks to them. They connect him to countries concerned by this war: Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia (and other Gulf States), Russia, Ukraine. Witkoff and Kushner have favorites. Kushner has a plan to turn Gaza into a giant resort. In the case of the Gulf States, the two men benefit from (known and documented) financial transactions of unusual flexibility and generosity. There is no known financial connection between Kushner or Witkoff and the Kremlin, but it would be untrue to say that the possibility of such an arrangement does not intrude upon the imaginations of of regional experts.

America itself is outside the oligarchical corridor. We see three individual Americans — Witkoff, Kushner, and Trump — who share that cozy passage, an informational and emotional environment with interested and often extravagantly wealthy individuals from other countries. The conventional inputs from the American public and the American government being obviously irrelevant, and any threat to American safety or any account of American interests being just as conspicuously absent, we are justified to attend to the corridor.

In addition to asking about inputs — what goes into the corridor–, we can consider outputs — what comes out. Who benefits from this war? The United States certainly does not. No national interest is being served, and no real effort is even being expended to try to define one. We are shedding credibility, and we are shedding allies, we are exposing weaknesses in our practice of war, and we are burning munitions that might have been needed elsewhere.

And so who does benefit? ‘ (from his Substack)