Depth of a Salesman

Geopolitical Glengarry Glen Ross in Riyadh: Trump’s good-cop piques Russia’s ambitions, luring and looping Putin into a grand bargain—or a grand trap—ever deeper into the maze of the Grand Chessboard.

Still from The Seventh Seal: Death is undefeated, but the players still make their moves.

Cracking rumours emerge from the U.S.-Russia bilateral negotiations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The United States is reportedly offering to withdraw its military presence from former Soviet republics, dismantle missile sites in Poland and Romania, cancel all sanctions, and even tease the eventual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Europe.

After years of Cold War 2.0, proxy conflicts, and economic warfare, Washington suddenly seems to be handing Moscow geopolitical prizes on a silver platter. If this sounds too good to be true, that’s because it probably is—and that’s precisely the point.

Upon hearing this news, Russian President Vladimir Putin must have felt the chill of an unseen hand toppling the Grand Chessboard—geopolitical wizard Zbigniew Brzezinski’s vision of U.S. dominance over Eurasia.

In The Seventh Seal, a knight returns from war to find himself locked in a fateful game of chess with Death. He plays not to win—no man can—but to delay, to bargain for meaning in the face of inevitability. Every move is a desperate act of resistance against an outcome already written. Yet as the pieces fall, the illusion of control crumbles, and all that remains is the quiet realization: the game was always rigged.

The bargains will be Faustian. The blood, sealing the deals, will be Ukrainian.

Snap, Crackle, Pop

The first step in any successful manipulation is disruption—the trickster shattering the target’s familiar routines, unsettling their perception of reality. A sudden crack in the expected order forces the mind to recalibrate, searching for new footing. But disruption alone is not enough. A mind left in chaos will resist, grasping for stability. That’s where the real work begins: rewriting the script. To do that, the manipulator must project authority. Without it, he is merely a provocateur stirring confusion. With it, he becomes the architect of a new reality. And finally, urgency must be instilled—the deal must feel exclusive, fleeting, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The stock is limited. The offer won’t last. The target must act—now.

Body language expert and self-styled “psyop specialist” Chase Hughes describes this process as forcing the subject to "relinquish control over a previously held belief" and "get someone over their emotional ties to what they held." The key is bypassing rational thought and speaking directly to the mammalian brain—the part of the mind that governs instincts, identity, and survival. “If I can influence the mammalian part of the brain, I can get somebody to do just about anything.”

Hughes outlines three primary means to manipulating the mammalian brain: breaking mental routines, projecting authority, and creating urgency.

To illustrate, he offers a primal example: imagine a hunter 20,000 years ago, walking the same familiar path back to his tribe, as the sun sets, lost in thought. A stick suddenly snaps. Instantly, his brain shifts gears. This is the Reticular Activating System (RAS) at work—the network that filters sensory input, determining what demands immediate attention. Idle thoughts vanish. Every ounce of focus locks onto the source of the danger.

The snap shatters expectation. A crackle of electricity surges through the nervous system, jolting the RAS into hyper-focus. In that instant, the mind pops open—ready to be filled with new ideas, new realities, new deals.

With the RAS engaged, a skilled manipulator can implant new thoughts and ideas while the subject is in a state of heightened suggestibility—a process of micro-brainwashing, where reality is rewritten in real time before they even realize it. This is where authority becomes crucial. The power of authority to override independent thought is well-documented, most famously in Stanley Milgram’s obedience study in the 1960s. Milgram demonstrated that individuals—under the command of an authoritative figure—would administer what they believed were painful electric shocks to another person, even as the victim screamed in agony. Despite their initial moral objections, most participants continued simply because a man in a white lab coat told them to.

Now, imagine not a reticent scientist cloaked in sterile authority, but a salesman in a red power tie—a bad-cop closer who knows where to push and when to let the ground shift beneath you. The kind who doesn’t just demand compliance but makes you scramble for footing, only to find the only solid ground is the deal he’s offering.

Closing Time

If there’s a masterclass in breaking the script, establishing authority, and creating urgency, it’s Alec Baldwin’s infamous “Always Be Closing” speech in Glengarry Glen Ross. His character, Blake, doesn’t just lecture his audience—he shatters their psychological autopilot, yanking them out of normality with sheer force.

First, he shatters the script with calculated aggression. “Put that coffee down!” he barks, breaking the unspoken rule that grown men can sip their evening brew in peace. It’s a sudden jolt, a shot across the bow. But he doesn’t stop there. Moments later, he escalates: “You think I’m fucking with you? I am not fucking with you.” Then comes the real bombshell—"You're fired." In an instant, their sense of security is obliterated. They are no longer salesmen with steady jobs; they are men teetering on the edge of the abyss. And just as quickly, he extends a lifeline: “Good news is—you’re all saved.” But the damage is done. Their reality is scrambled, mental autopilot overridden, the script broken. Now, they are trapped inside his framework, caught in his loop, with every word tightening the snare.

Then, he establishes authority with a dazzling display of dominance. He’s not just another manager—he’s a closer, an emissary from on high. “I’m here from Mitch & Murray, And I'm here on a mission of mercy.” he declares, invoking the unseen bosses who control their fates. By placing himself as their direct representative, he positions himself as the arbiter of their success or failure. And to drive the point home, he flexes his wealth. “You see this watch? That watch costs more than your car.” He brags about making $970,000 last year—more than any of them ever will. His sheer presence in the room radiates superiority. They are nobodies, and he is the gatekeeper to something bigger.

Finally, he creates urgency, forcing action. The leads, the lifeblood of their business, aren’t a birth right—they’re a privilege, and they’re running out. “First prize: Cadillac El Dorado. Second prize: a set of steak knives. Third prize: You’re fired.” The ticking clock is now inside their heads. Time is no longer open-ended—act now, or lose everything.

And it works. By the end, these once-proud, cynical salesmen are reduced to silent, desperate wrecks. The technique is so brutal, so effective, that even the audience feels it. I remember leaving the cinema moved but oddly relieved—comforted by the fact that I’d never endure such torment. I’m terrible at sales; no one would ever hire me for the job.

From Stills to Loops

To fully grasp how Baldwin’s speech mirrors strategic manoeuvring, we need to focus on a particular section where he lays out the AIDA framework—his rapid-fire breakdown of the sales process. In the middle of his monologue, Baldwin’s character shifts from insults and intimidation to an almost mechanical drill:

“Always be closing. AIDA. Attention. Interest. Decision. Action.
Attention. Do I have your attention?
Interest. Are you interested? I know you are 'cause it’s fuck or walk. You close or you hit the bricks.
Decision. Have you made your decision for Christ?
And Action. AIDA. Get out there.”

This isn’t just sales—it’s psychological warfare. The principles Baldwin spits out with ruthless efficiency aren’t confined to desperate salesmen in a dingy office; they echo the thinking of one of America’s most brilliant yet fiercely contrarian strategists. A man whose genius was matched only by his disdain for those who climbed the ranks not through insight or boldness, but by meekly submitting to bureaucratic inertia. His ideas have quietly reshaped not just modern military strategy, but also business, sales, competitive sports, and even political campaigning.

John Boyd was a maverick who waged war both in the skies and in the corridors of power. As an Air Force colonel, he revolutionized aerial combat with the Energy-Maneuverability theory, which led to the development of the F-16—a fighter jet designed for agility and dogfighting. Yet, for all the hype surrounding its delivery, and despite its complete lack of stealth, F-16’s remain conspicuously absent from the skies of Ukraine.

Later, he took on an even bigger enemy: the Pentagon itself. His "Patterns of Conflict" briefing and relentless push for lean, effective military planning helped reform defense strategy, prefiguring the creative disruption seen in Elon Musk’s drive for reform. I explored Boyd’s innovative ideas in more depth back in 2023: John Boyd: The Subversive Strategist.

John Boyd’s OODA loop—Observe, Orient, Decide, Act—is one of the most influential concepts in military strategy. Originally developed for air combat, the OODA loop explains how decision-makers operate in dynamic, high-stakes environments. The faster one cycles through the loop, the more effectively they can disrupt an opponent’s ability to respond. The goal is simple: get inside the enemy’s OODA loop, force them into reactive mode, and dictate the pace of engagement.

The four stages work as follows:

1. Observe – Gather information about the environment.

2. Orient – Analyze and contextualize the information within previous experiences and biases.

3. Decide – Choose a course of action.

4. Act – Execute the decision, then re-enter the loop as new information emerges.

At first glance, AIDA might seem like a rigid sales formula, but in reality, it’s a freeze-frame version of Boyd’s fluid OODA loop. Where OODA feels like the flickering frames of a film, AIDA is a snapshot—a portrait of a single sale. Both methods aim to hijack decision-making by applying relentless time pressure, forcing the mark to leap from Observe to Act with minimal conscious thought. This is the key to victory: entering, dominating, and ultimately owning your adversary’s OODA-loop.

Soft Close

Can Alec Baldwin’s sales techniques be just as effective—without the theatrics? Diplomacy, after all, isn’t supposed to be a shouting match. For three years, the West has taken the Baldwin approach with Russia, hammering it with military, economic, and propaganda offensives. Yet, far from breaking, Russia has not only endured but thrived. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. Sanity means changing the game.

What if, instead of barking orders, you whispered sweet promises? Instead of humiliation, you offered redemption? Instead of steak knives and pink slips, you dangled the grandest prize of all?

That’s exactly what’s happening in Riyadh. The script is being shattered, authority asserted, urgency imposed—but this time, the bad cop is nowhere in sight. Instead, the master manipulator wears a smile, a soft blue tie, and the allure of a deal too tempting to resist.

General Kellogg’s Hollow Crunch

After taking power on January 20th, Trump made a grand performance of appointing the 80-year-old Keith Kellogg as his Ukraine envoy. Kellogg, a relic of the Cold War, had spent the past year advocating for escalating pressure on Russia—more weapons, more sanctions, more hard-line rhetoric. To the casual observer, this appointment seemed like a signal that Trump was doubling down on Biden’s red-tie approach. Trump’s infamous Truth Social post—blustering about crushing Russia—felt strangely anachronistic, as if it belonged to a previous era, the dying echoes of Biden’s bad-cop diplomacy rather than a bold new strategy.

While Kellogg toured Kiev and European capitals, pinning down “allies” in their habitual patterns of thinking—reinforcing their bias toward confrontation—he was also playing a crucial role at home. Like Alec Baldwin’s character Blake, he projected authority and strength, feeding Trump’s audience the image of an America back in command.

But behind closed doors, Trump sent his real agent of persuasion—not a general, but a real estate developer.

Enter Steve Witkoff, the blue-tied good cop. While Kellogg laid down a barrage of rhetorical flak, drawing attention with his fire-breathing theatrics, Witkoff slipped quietly into Moscow to begin the real negotiations. And the moment his mission was revealed, the game became obvious. Kellogg’s act had been a head fake, a hollow storm—a tale “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Riyadh: Breaking Russia’s Script

What’s unfolding in Riyadh is not just diplomacy; it’s a psychological operation crafted at the highest level of statecraft. First, break Russia’s negotiation script with unexpected concessions. Then, establish U.S. authority as the sole power capable of delivering a grand bargain. Finally, apply relentless urgency—because the only way to win the prize is to “sign on the line that is dotted” now.

To grasp the significance of this moment, we need to apply the three levels of military operations—strategic, operational, and tactical—to geopolitics. At the strategic level, where global power balances shift, any true realignment would require China’s participation—meaning a modern-day Yalta with Washington, Moscow, and Beijing at the table. Without President Xi, these meetings in Riyadh are not strategic.

Instead, these are operational negotiations, with the theatre under discussion being Eastern Europe: the Western flank of Eurasia.

On paper, the U.S. is making grand offers about its future posture in Europe. If the rumours are correct, then these are staggering concessions—the kind of geopolitical windfall Russia has dreamed of for years. But that’s exactly why they’re so effective as a psychological weapon. For over a decade, Russia has been on the defensive, locked into a pattern of resisting Western encroachments, sanctions, and NATO expansion. Suddenly, the U.S. is flipping the script—dangling everything Russia wants in a way that forces Moscow into unfamiliar mental territory.

In negotiations, an untethered mind is a vulnerable one. If Russia truly believes the U.S. is offering to roll back NATO’s presence, its entire defensive posture shifts—from resisting to reaching, lunging for the bait America has so carefully dangled.

Out of the Loop

If there’s one figure in modern politics who understands persuasion, disruption, and theatrical dominance, it’s Donald J. Trump. But if Riyadh is a stage, his crack sales team is merely the cast. From afar, Trump isn’t just the star performer—he’s the director, ensuring every role serves the script. And in this production, the stagehands are put in their place: not in the limelight, but in the shadows.

This is why Europe and Ukraine have been deliberately excluded from the negotiations. Their absence isn’t an oversight—it’s the strategy.

The United States isn’t just asserting dominance; it’s showcasing an almost god-like ability to upend geopolitical stalemates. By keeping its so-called allies in the dark, Washington sends an unmistakable message: only one voice matters. Europe and Ukraine are not decision-makers; they are spectators, waiting to be informed of their fate. Power isn’t just about control—it’s about the performance of control. Alec Baldwin didn’t share the stage with his underlings. And nothing cements hierarchy quite like forcing the lesser players to watch, powerless, as their future is decided without them.

There’s also an element of deliberate humiliation at play—especially for Europe. After three years of unquestioning obedience, sacrificing economic stability and strategic autonomy to follow Washington’s lead on Ukraine, it now finds itself locked out of the most critical negotiations on the very war it has helped bankroll. The message from the U.S. is brutal: your loyalty, your suffering, your financial ruin—none of it earns you a seat at the table. And yet, Washington knows that once the deal is struck, Europe will come crawling back, eager to fall in line. Nothing cements subservience quite like public humiliation followed by willing submission—just look at the Nord Stream incident.

Coffee is for closers. And seats across from the Russians? Those are for Americans.

But more than anything, Europe and Ukraine’s very presence would shatter the psychological disruption Washington is deploying against Moscow. This negotiation isn’t about pressure—it’s about breaking Russia’s predictable defensive mindset, throwing it off balance with unexpected concessions. Europe and Ukraine, however, remain trapped in the old narrative—the one where Russia must be relentlessly pressured, isolated, and cornered.

Seating the EU at the Riyadh conference table would be as jarring as a man showing up at a pickup game in mini 1980s-era NBA shorts after the fashion flipped to long and loose. Their anachronistic tough-guy posturing would clash with the illusion Trump is constructing.

A magician can’t sell the trick if a heckler keeps pointing out the sleight of hand. Ukraine and Europe are the hecklers. They don’t realize Trump isn’t playing the old game anymore—he’s rewriting the script. Apparently, Europe didn’t get the memo.

Pushed, Then Swayed

Western strategists have spent years trying to pressure Russia, believing that sheer compressive force—economic sanctions, military encroachment, diplomatic isolation—could break the Kremlin’s resolve. But this was a fundamental miscalculation. Russia, like masonry, is exceptionally strong under compression. Push it, and it only grows denser, more unified, more unyielding.

Tensile forces—those that stretch and pull rather than crush and push—operate differently. Seismic shifts are so destructive because they combine both: compression and tension. Masonry alone crumbles under strain, but steel rebar embedded in concrete absorbs and distributes stress, making structures flexible rather than brittle. Geopolitics follows the same principle—direct pressure breeds resistance, but the right kind of pull, applied at the right moment, can create deep internal fractures.

The real trick is knowing when to push and when to pull, when to tighten the noose and when to let the rope go slack. That’s why Kellogg blazes in with a red-tie storm, while Witkoff manoeuvres quietly in blue. One destabilizes. The other reassures. And between them, the targeted statesman—unmoored, unbalanced—drifts exactly where they want him: toward the dotted line, pen in hand.

And if there’s one thing Donald Trump understands, it’s how to blend turbulence with finesse—shaking the ground under his adversaries while keeping his own footing steady. Not through brute force alone, but through a calculated instinct for disruption that compels others to react rather than plan.

The abrupt shift in Riyadh—from a full-spectrum cauldron to chill détente—risks triggering dangerous mental turbulence, sending Russia’s OODA loop into a tailspin of disorientation.

Deal Us Not Into Temptation

While the U.S. is offering Moscow geopolitical riches at the operational level (Eastern Europe), the real price is being extracted at the tactical level—Ukraine. The U.S. isn’t making these offers out of generosity; it’s using them as leverage. If Washington can throw Russia off balance, it can extract painful concessions on the battlefield, pushing Moscow into agreements that it wouldn’t have considered under normal conditions.

This is a classic Trump move—the art of the deal at the operational level. You overload the other party with an irresistible, high-value offer, knowing that the sheer magnitude of it will disrupt their cognitive equilibrium. The goal is not just to negotiate but to create a state of confusion, urgency, and cognitive dissonance—where the other party feels compelled to act before fully processing the consequences.

Washington has dangled a geopolitical temptation—whispering promises of reshaping Eastern Europe in Russia’s favor. This move is especially effective because it exploits a deep Russian grievance. For years, Moscow has insisted that the true battle is not over Ukraine itself, but over the entire security architecture of Eastern Europe—one it has long sought to renegotiate on its own terms.

In the lead-up to the Ukraine war, Putin issued a set of demands, calling for legally binding security guarantees from NATO and the United States. Among them were:

• A halt to NATO expansion, particularly into Ukraine and Georgia.

• The removal of U.S. missile installations from Poland and Romania (specifically the Aegis Ashore systems, which Russia suspects can house nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles).

• A rollback of NATO military infrastructure to pre-1997 levels, meaning the withdrawal of forces and bases from Eastern Europe.

• Assurances that Ukraine would never be admitted into NATO.

At the time, the West dismissed these demands outright. Now, under Trump’s direction, the U.S. is suddenly entertaining a discussion on these very points—teasing the possibility of massive concessions.

Trump is toying with Putin’s deepest vanity, dangling the one prize that has always eluded him. For years, Putin has been forced to reconcile with the bitter truth that his trust in the West—especially after 2014—was a catastrophic miscalculation. He has spent the last decade making excuses for the humiliating blunders of Minsk 2, for the billions wasted on Nord Stream 2.

Putin cuts a pathetic figure as he whines about being 'naïve,' 'surprised,' 'tricked,' and 'deceived' by the West—admissions that sound less like a master strategist and more like a dupe. No wonder some of Russia’s harder men may whisper the unthinkable: was he ever really one of us?

Why would a stone-cold realist like Putin ever present the pathos of an idealist? Can the hard man of the Kremlin, with centuries of geopolitical realism forged on the most gruesome battlefields of human history, really have been duped by lightweights such as Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande? If so, that is good news for Trump, ever the master trickster.

But this quandary is easily resolved. Putin never truly believed Minsk II was a viable settlement; what he did grasp was that Russia was not yet prepared to face massive U.S. sanctions alone. So he waited, refusing to be rushed, bidding his time until the conditions were right. When he finally struck, he not only endured the sanctions—he thrived under them. And now, with the battlefield stabilized and the West's unity fraying, the moment Putin has waited for may finally be at hand.

Meanwhile, Trump dangles a tantalizing offer—a chance to rewrite history, to redeem what some saw as Putin’s miscalculation, to prove that Russia was always destined to be a respected pillar of Europe. How tempting it must be to imagine that when the dust settles and the final deal is struck, Putin’s pro-Western orientation will be vindicated after all.

This is not merely a political maneuver; it’s an emotional one. Trump is playing on a deep-seated Russian longing—the historical oscillation between Slavic identity and European destiny. Like a lover who abandoned her, the West scorned Russia, yet here is Trump, whispering that it was all a misunderstanding, that everything can be made right again. And between them, broken and bleeding, lies Ukraine—the tragic offspring of their endless struggle, sacrificed so that old flames might rekindle.

Between East and West, where old empires whisper and new ones scheme, Ukraine bleeds into the earth—its sacrifice unheeded, its fate a footnote. The wind rattles through shattered towns, stirring the dust of promises made and unmade, while the cold soil swallows the future, one grave at a time.

But history does not weep; it calculates. Beneath the ruins, amid the broken pacts and shifting frontlines, a new order is being written. And at its center, one man stands on the edge of a defining moment. This is the price paid to place President Putin one negotiation away from claiming the greatest geopolitical prize since the fall of the Soviet Union: an American retreat from Europe.

Temporal Vicissitudes

History moves on two clocks. One ticks in the realm of events—wars, elections, treaties—loud and chaotic, shaping the headlines but often forgotten in the next cycle. The other moves in deep time, the longue durée, where civilizations rise and fall, where power structures shift not in days or years, but in centuries. The mistake of most politicians is believing that history is written in the first, when in truth, it is dictated by the second.

Washington plays the short game—disruption, pressure, dominance—forcing reactions, keeping adversaries disoriented, always on the back foot. Moscow, by contrast, has often favoured the long game, surviving invasions, blockades, and collapses by letting time itself wear down its enemies. The question now is: which clock is Trump playing by? Is this a momentary gambit, a magician’s trick designed to dazzle and destabilize? Or is something deeper at work—an attempt to reset the board for a new era?

Still from Last Year at Marienblad: Step by step, the past crumbles into the present.

In Last Year at Marienbad, time is neither past nor future, but a looping construct where reality is rewritten with each retelling. The protagonist insists a decision has already been made, that events are inevitable, that the outcome is already written—if only the other would accept it. The longer the game is played, the more memory bends, the more resistance fades, until, at last, there is nothing left to do but follow the script.

Perhaps that is the real art of negotiation—not to fight over the future, but to persuade your opponent that the final move was never theirs to make.