Peace Over a Piece of Pie

When loyalty replaces expertise, you don’t get diplomacy; you get a Miami-made surrender plan that shocks allies, delights Putin, and proves Trump’s team can’t negotiate their way out of a salad.

Guest article by Michael Cohen. Remember to follow him on Substack for more by clicking here. Michael is also racing to 500K followers on YouTube! Subscribe today for free here.

Vladimir Putin spoke with U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff during a meeting in Moscow for three hours in August

There’s a special kind of madness that happens when you let amateurs play diplomat. You know the type: guys who think a peace plan is just a real-estate term with extra syllables, who believe foreign policy begins and ends with a yacht, a donor dinner, and a half-baked AI PowerPoint put together between cocktails. And yet, in Trump’s America, this is exactly who’s sitting at the grown-ups’ table, carving up global stability like it’s a cheesecake at Prime 112.

Let me put it plainly: this is what happens when you replace competence with cronies and let self-interested acolytes cosplay as statesmen. You don’t get diplomacy. You don’t get strategy. You don’t even get common sense.

No, what you get is a surrender plan so lopsided, so humiliating, so cosmically stupid that even Zelenskyy—a man fighting for the literal survival of his country—had to politely pretend not to bang his head against the nearest wall.

Because the first draft of Trump’s “peace plan”—and I swear to you, I could not make this shit up if I tried—wasn’t forged in a West Wing war room or the State Department’s secure suite.

It was hashed out over dinners in Miami.

Miami.

As in: shorts, cigars, the faint smell of salt water and spray tan. The birthplace of America’s least-impressive geopolitical brainstorm.

And who were the midwives of this diplomatic miracle?

Steve Witkoff, real-estate mogul turned “special envoy,” and Jared Kushner, freshly back from brokering a “peace agreement” between Israel and Hamas after picking up another billion-dollar check from Mohammed Bin Salman.

These two geniuses sat down with Kirill Dmitriev, one of Putin’s guys, for what The Wall Street Journal delicately called “three days of intensive discussions.” Translation: expensive dinners where a Kremlin insider told them exactly what Moscow wanted, and they—shock of shocks—nodded along helpfully like interns praying for a good Yelp review.

The result?

A 28-point “peace plan” that read less like American diplomacy and more like Putin’s Christmas wish list.

Ukraine must give up territory?
Check.
Cap its military?
Check.
Swear off NATO forever?
Double check.

And what does Russia give up?

Wait… here it comes.

Russia gives up absolutely nothing. Not even the dignity of pretending to negotiate.

You’d think the Secretary of State would have been involved, right? You’d assume Marco Rubio—America’s top diplomat, allegedly—would be briefed on the plan that could reshape Europe.

You’d be wrong.

Rubio only learned the “full scope” of the plan the day it leaked. Not from a briefing. Not from his staff. Not from the President.

From the news. From Substack. From X.

Imagine walking into the office on a Monday and discovering that two guys who shouldn’t be trusted to negotiate a brunch reservation just redrew the borders of Eastern Europe behind your back. And they did it while you were busy shaking hands with Saudi leadership.

Rubio was reportedly handed a copy of the plan at the White House like it was a menu someone forgot to send earlier. “Here, Marco, take a look; don’t mind the ketchup stains, that’s just Jared.”

This is the part where I pause and say:
I’ve worked for Trump.
I know this playbook.

It is the same sloppy, ad-hoc, diner-napkin idiocy that fueled everything from Trump Tower Moscow to Sharpie-gate. But this time, instead of storm paths and real-estate facades, the stakes were life, death, sovereignty, and the future of Europe.

But when you staff a government with loyalists instead of experts, this is the inevitable result: foreign policy by group text.

Witkoff and Kushner even invited Zelenskyy’s national security adviser to Miami, because nothing says “serious diplomacy” like flying to Florida to be told that your country should surrender. Rustem Umerov didn’t mince words when he said, “the plan was better for Moscow than Kyiv.”

No kidding.

And here’s the dark punchline: Most of the provisions were drafted before Ukraine’s team even arrived.

That’s not negotiation.
That’s a sales pitch.
A timeshare presentation with nuclear stakes.

Supporters of Ukraine in Congress were floored when the plan leaked. Shocked. Outraged. Some genuinely couldn’t tell if it was satire.

Let me assure them: it’s not satire.

It just looks like satire because the people running the process aren’t qualified for anything more complex than a ribbon-cutting at a strip mall.

Since then, the “plan” has been revised to 19 points—trimmed, softened, spun, resold. The most offensive bits, like Ukraine giving up territory and abandoning NATO, were removed once Rubio realized he was expected to sell this flaming trash pile of stupidity to a world that still has functioning brain cells.

Rubio now calls the document a “living, breathing” thing.
Sure. So is a fungus.

Meanwhile, Putin says the original version “could form the basis” for a final settlement. Of course he does. The first draft might as well have been printed on Russian letterhead.

Let me leave you with this:

When incompetence becomes policy, when loyalty replaces expertise, when major geopolitical decisions are made in Miami dining rooms instead of briefing rooms, you don’t get peace.

You get chaos wrapped in delusion, sold as strategy, and served with a side of pie.

And Zelenskyy, rightfully, sent it back to the kitchen.

Because Ukraine wants peace.

But it deserves peace made by professionals, not a surrender plan drafted between appetizers.

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