hotel-rwanda.com

Chapter 143: Presidential Briefing I: The Russia Problem

The chapter is presented as a single, stark document, a "Top Secret/Sensitive" briefing being delivered to a new President in the secure confines of the White House Situation Room. The tone is that of an intelligence chief or a national security advisor giving their unvarnished, cleared-of-all-euphemism assessment.

"Mr./Madam President, good morning. Let us dispense with the pleasantries and get directly to the unvarnished truth, because for too long, American policy has been based on a series of comforting but demonstrably false illusions. The subject of this briefing is the Russian Federation.

First, and most critically, Russia is not a traditional great power competitor. It is not a modern version of the Soviet Union. It is a rogue, nuclear-armed petrostate run by an intelligence service, masquerading as a country. Its economy is smaller than that of Italy, with the extractive, non-innovative model of a developing nation. Its demographic trajectory is a death spiral. Its primary exports, we have concluded, are not oil and gas, but chaos, corruption, and violence.

Its grand strategy is not to build a better world order, but to burn down the current one to a level of anarchic chaos where it can compete. To achieve this, it has fully integrated the tools of the criminal underworld and the intelligence agency into its standard, day-to-day statecraft. It uses mercenary armies to conduct foreign policy in Africa. It uses energy blackmail and the weaponization of famine as instruments of global leverage. It uses targeted assassinations and terror campaigns against civilians not as a last resort, but as a preferred, initial tactic.

We have assessed, with the highest possible confidence, that the current leadership in the Kremlin views the entire international legal framework—the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, arms control treaties—not as a set of rules to be respected, but as a collection of quaint, liberal weaknesses in its adversaries, to be exploited for strategic gain. They view diplomacy not as a tool for conflict resolution, but as a tactic to delay, to deceive, and to divide their opponents.

The central, and most difficult, conclusion of our analysis is this, sir/madam: You cannot deter a nihilist whose primary goal is disruption itself. You cannot offer a credible 'off-ramp' to a regime that views all concessions as a sign of weakness and an invitation for further aggression. You cannot 'avoid humiliating' a leader whose entire ideology is predicated on a sense of self-inflicted humiliation.

Any American policy going forward that is based on the hope of finding a cooperative, good-faith partner in the current Kremlin is doomed to catastrophic failure. It is a catastrophic misreading of the adversary. Our past policies, which sought to 'reset' relations or to 'manage' this conflict, were based on a projection of our own values onto a regime that fundamentally does not share them. That era of illusion must now end."

The Discourse 143: A Doctrine of Defeat

"Mr./Madam President, based on this unvarnished assessment of the adversary, the following Action Plan is recommended as the foundation of a new American grand strategy towards the Russian Federation. This is a doctrine of 'Strategic Defeat,' rooted in the principle that the only path to a stable, lasting peace is through the unambiguous military and economic failure of the Kremlin's revanchist project.

Action Item 1: Strategic Defeat in Ukraine is Paramount. We must cease to view the war in Ukraine as a regional conflict to be 'managed.' It is the crucible where the 21st-century model of revanchist aggression will either succeed, providing a green light for future conquests, or decisively fail, re-establishing deterrence for a generation. The American policy must therefore shift immediately, publicly, and unambiguously from one of 'helping Ukraine survive' to one of 'ensuring Russian defeat.' Operationally, this means the immediate removal of all artificial, politically-imposed restrictions on the use of Western-provided weaponry. We must untie Ukraine's hands. Concurrently, we must launch the "Arsenal of Democracy" initiative on an emergency, war-footing, using the Defense Production Act and multi-year allied contracts to generate an overwhelming and sustainable flow of munitions that will guarantee Ukraine's material superiority on the battlefield.

Action Item 2: Institute "Sanctions 2.0" – The Doctrine of Overwhelming Economic Force. The current sanctions regime has failed to cripple the Russian war machine. It is a leaky, incremental, and hesitant system that gave Moscow years to adapt. We must immediately shift to the doctrine of "Day 1 Maximum Pressure," centered on the automatic and ruthless application of comprehensive secondary sanctions against any and all third-party entities that facilitate Russian sanctions evasion. This will primarily target banks and corporations in Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Central Asia, and, most critically, in China. This will be a unilateral American action, executed through our control of the US dollar clearing system. We will concurrently build the "Economic NATO," a coalition of the willing, to act in concert and amplify the effect.

Action Item 3: Seize the Assets – The Aggressor Must Pay. The legal and political debate over the $300 billion in frozen Russian sovereign assets must end. The political decision has been made. The assets will be confiscated in their entirety and transferred to a new, internationally managed Ukraine Reconstruction and Reparations Trust. There will be no negotiating this point. It is non-negotiable. The legal framework will be built on the established precedent of post-war reparations and the principle that the aggressor must pay for his destruction. This is not just an act of justice for Ukraine; it is the ultimate economic deterrent. It establishes a new, hard rule in international affairs: if you launch a war of conquest and lose, you will pay for it not with a peace treaty, but with your own national treasure.

Action Item 4: Isolate and Prosecute. We will cease to treat the leadership in the Kremlin as legitimate international actors. We will lead a global coalition to create and fully fund the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine. We will provide our full intelligence and law enforcement support to the International Criminal Court in its prosecution of Russian war crimes. We will diplomatically isolate any nation that opposes these initiatives. Our public posture will be simple and unwavering: we will not normalize relations with a regime led by indicted war criminals. We will treat the regime in Moscow like the mafia state it is, not the great power it pretends to be."