John P. Henninger

[Almut Rochowanski @rochowanski]

Our discourse about peace deals is so inane. Supposedly serious people pretend that war-ending diplomacy is side A drawing up a settlement, showing it to side B, B rejects it, no deal, back to war. As if actual peace deals didn't take months and years of hard, collaborative work.

[Matt Stoller @matthewstoller]

The corruption of black elite politics mirrors the corruption of other ethnic grievance political organizing structures. Here the National Urban League is serving as an Amazon lobbyist, pretending that their work is about 'black and brown New Yorkers.' https://t.co/gQiP57o1OV

[Josh Barro @jbarro]

She worked for Crockett? This makes so much sense now

[Sami Gold @souljagoyteller]

This is like a minstrel show rendition of working class identity lol

[Volodymyr Ishchenko @Volod_Ishchenko]

This investigation of the failed back-channel attempt in 2022-2023 to reach a peaceful settlement on terms highly favorable to Ukraine exposes as flawed some of the “unquestioned truths” in the discussion of the war.

For example, the idea that Putin has been bluffing about nuclear strikes. Or that all negotiations and compromise proposals have been a sham, because Putin would never accept anything but Ukraine’s capitulation. Or “Russian imperialism” as the primary explanation of the war. In a weaker position after the painful setbacks of fall 2022, Putin drew his red lines, which are, surprise, surprise, Ukraine’s neutrality and Crimea. In 2025, at the peak of Russia’s accelerating advances, he was satisfied with the “Anchorage” terms, which are basically the Istanbul demands plus territory, used as a punishment and a means of pressing for their acceptance. They are still miles away from anything that could be called Ukraine’s capitulation, the elimination of its separate identity, the destruction of the independent Ukrainian state, and so on.

That these and similar dangerous and absurd ideas dominated the expert field is a sign of a deep intellectual crisis.

[Iuliia Mendel @IuliiaMendel]

Let’s go through the peace deals Zelenskyy rejected.

• Istanbul agreement, 2022

Ukraine needed to refuse NATO accession, reduce the army, Russia would withdraw from the Kyiv reg., possibly from the Kharkiv, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions. At that point the scale of destruction was still limited and the number of dead was far lower. In April 2022 Zelenskyy declined the deal.

• End of 2022

Russian forces withdrew from part of the Kherson region. Zelenskyy traveled to meet Biden and, acc. to my sources, later confirmed by Mr. Blinken in the New York Times, persuaded the WH to continue the war. The precise terms of any proposed deal remain unknown, but sources indicate there was readiness to declare at least a ceasefire.

• Beginning of 2023

Through unofficial channels between the United States and Russia, an understanding took shape: Putin agreed to withdraw to the borders that existed before the full-scale invasion—freeing nearly everything conquered that year—in exchange for Ukraine’s refusal of NATO accession and recognition of Crimea as Russian. Zelenskyy and Yermak refused. Since then nearly a million people have been killed or wounded, several million have become refugees, parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, and Dnipropetrovsk regions have been occupied, more of Zaporizhzhia has been taken, Kherson lies in ruins, the Chernihiv and Sumy regions face constant shelling, Kyiv itself has become almost a front-line city, the energy system has been destroyed, businesses cannot operate, exports have stalled, and the country is degrading.

• July 2024

An arrangement that began with an energy ceasefire, modeled on the Istanbul understandings and mediated through the Middle East. While negotiations were under way, Zelenskyy also planned the Kursk operation, which ultimately disrupted all the arrangements.

• March 2025

After the Oval Office clash between Trump and Zelenskyy, European leaders gathered in London in early March. The British government stated that a number of options were on the table and that Ukraine had to choose. As always, nothing came of it.

Whether Putin was prepared each time to implement any agreements remains unknown, yet on several occasions he carried out what he had promised. Does this remove his responsibility for the deaths, the horrors, and the destruction in Ukraine? No.

But the country is degrading, the state apparatus is degrading, and corruption finishes what Putin’s missiles, drones, and bombs did not destroy. Inhumanity has effectively become a state strategy and a national ideology promoted at every turn.

Ukraine simply cannot win this way—there are neither economic, nor demographic, nor any other grounds for it. Therefore, if Zelenskyy does not agree to a deal with realistic terms now, Ukraine will be forced to capitulate. And that is deeply alarming, because it can actually cost the country its independence and sovereignty.

[Financial Times @FT]

An American lawyer, a banker and a former spy hatched a plan to prevent nuclear Armageddon. They just needed to tell the Russian president https://t.co/t5aTvVLVPR

[Candidly Tiff @tify330]

The talking point clearly went out 🤣 It’s almost like you weirdos have never been to a Cheesecake factory.

[ferald gord @ferald_gord]

I'm sure he does, but also every American is aware that the Cheesecake Factory has a comically ostentatious decor style. It's a joke that literally everyone in America is in on, apparently except you.

[Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins @daniel_dsj2110]

FT: "The term Glorious Revolution has gone out of fashion. Was it even a revolution, historians ask." https://t.co/VV1RwVDxmB The Last Invasion of England — the Dutch armada that built British stability

[John P. Henninger @jphenninger]

@JamesSurowiecki This is actually bad for Republicans, they usually have a heavy lead in early voting.

[Sean @demsocsean]

It's actually looking down on working class blue collar Americans to think they view the Cheesecake Factory as some paragon of fine dining. The pricing is barely any different from Chilis or Outback.

[John P. Henninger @jphenninger]

Most working class people eat at the local BBQ joints in KC. (My parents are from KC.)

[Evan Barker @evanwch]

Does Obama not understand that to most Americans the Cheesecake Factory is a very nice and fancy restaurant?

[Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins @daniel_dsj2110]

Edward Said: “I don't believe in the politics of identity….I'm talking from a universalistic, if you like cosmopolitan point of view…I realise the damage that identities have done.”
(interview with Michaël Zeeman, Leven en Werken, Dutch television): https://t.co/pL4avAv7xx

[John P. Henninger @jphenninger]

I guess we know where Alex P.Keating gets his politics from.

[Sakpo @sakpo00007_]

American gun culture explained in one single 3 minutes video clip

[Leonid Ragozin @leonidragozin]

TT Whatever misery we have dragged Ukraine into, defence industry must remain the main beneficiary of this conflict, along with our frenemy Putin.

[derek guy @dieworkwear]

This is actually a condescending view of working-class people. I grew up in a working-class immigrant family and we ate at Red Lobster and The Cheesecake Factory for "fancy nights out." But even we understood that the White House should not look like the inside of a Red Lobster. Working-class people are not culturally illiterate just because their experiences are shaped by their limited means.

[Matt Duss @mattduss]

The Bernie team tried to get this into the Democratic platform in 2016, the Clinton team blocked it.

We tried again in 2020, the Biden team blocked it.

Glad folks are coming around but it’s absurd that it’s taken this long on what should be a noncontroversial point of fact.

[Moshik Temkin @moshik_temkin]

Glucksmann’s entire program is speaking obsessively about Mélenchon, painting him as a danger to the country and thus participating in the ongoing normalization of the far right. Other than hating Mélenchon, he doesn’t seem to be proposing anything new.

[Sam Haselby @samhaselby]

Claiming Zionism has nothing to do with the Holocaust because Protestants imagined it a long time ago is to fall, badly, for the genealogical fallacy. Europeans came up with American exceptionalism long before the United States existed. That doesn't mean that American...