A week in flux

Political and Power Dynamics Week 48, 2025

The past week has felt like a pivot point—not just in the ongoing Ukraine conflict, but in the broader architecture of international relations. As American diplomacy reshuffles, European unity fractures, and the Global South navigates impossible choices, the old order of the post-Cold War era seems to be dissolving before our eyes.

The most consequential development has been the reactivation of Ukraine peace negotiations, but not in the way Kiev might have hoped. The story reveals something more important than territorial concessions or military hardware: it shows how decisively American pragmatism is displacing both European idealism and Ukrainian agency.

Last week, we saw a shift in the American delegation negotiating Ukraine’s future. Marco Rubio, Trump’s hawkish Secretary of State, found himself sidelined. His replacement? A duo that represents something closer to Wall Street realpolitik: Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. These are men who speak the language of deals, not doctrine. Bannon, from New Jersey, and Kushner, the president’s son-in-law from his first term, represent a fundamentally different approach to statecraft—one grounded in transactional interests rather than ideological commitments.

This shift is more than personnel change. It signals what Trump’s Ukraine strategy will actually be: not regime change or total victory, but a negotiated settlement that creates profitable opportunities for American capital while preventing Russian dominance. The 28-point plan has become a 21-point framework, and with each iteration, it becomes more about what can be agreed upon than what was theoretically ideal.