Davos, that high-altitude petri dish of ego where the air is as thin as the moral fiber of its attendees, has once again proven itself to be the premier destination for performative futility. This week, the spectacle reached a new nadir of absurdity. Steven Witkoff, a man whose career has been dedicated to the noble pursuit of squeezing profit out of New York’s vertical concrete, is now the United States’ designated envoy to the apocalypse. He is scheduled to meet with Vladimir Putin, a man who has spent the last few years turning Ukraine into a fixer-upper, all while a gargantuan $800 billion reconstruction plan is tossed into the ‘maybe later’ pile. It is a masterclass in necro-capitalism, a dance of vultures over a carcass that hasn't even stopped twitching.

The postponement of the reconstruction deal is the most honest thing to happen in Switzerland since the invention of the secret bank account. Why sign a treaty to rebuild a nation when the demolition crew is still billing by the hour? The $800 billion figure is, of course, entirely fictional—a number so bloated it exists only in the realm of theoretical physics and the wet dreams of defense contractors. By putting the deal on hold, the global elite are simply acknowledging that the current stage of the grift requires more destruction before the construction phase can yield the necessary ROI. It is the ultimate rain check on human misery, issued by people who view geopolitics as a particularly aggressive form of urban renewal.

Witkoff’s presence is the chef’s kiss on this disaster. The American strategy, apparently, is to treat a scorched-earth conflict like a stalled condo development in Midtown. If we cannot find a diplomat with a soul, we shall send a man who understands the value of air rights and lobby marble. It signals to the world that the United States has finally dropped the pretense of spreading democracy and is now openly focusing on the far more traditional American value of being the general contractor for the graveyard. On the other side, we have the Kremlin confirming the meeting with the kind of bored, menacing nonchalance usually reserved for Bond villains or landlords explaining why the heat doesn't work. The fact that the meeting is happening at all is a testament to the shared language of these ghouls: the language of leverage.

The Left will, naturally, wring their hands and weep about the missed opportunity for peace, ignoring the fact that their own brand of institutional paralysis helped pave the way for this corporate-military circus. They crave the optics of ‘aid’ while being terrified of the messy reality of power. The Right, meanwhile, will grunt about ‘the deal,’ viewing the postponement not as a tragedy of human displacement, but as a savvy negotiation tactic. To them, $800 billion is just a opening bid in a game where the chips are human lives and the house always wins. Neither side cares about the actual reconstruction; they care about who gets the sub-contracts for the rubble removal. It is a bipartisan race to the bottom of an empty wallet.

Consider the geography of this farce. Davos, a place where the world’s wealthiest people fly private jets to discuss the carbon footprint of the poor, provides the perfect backdrop for a meeting about a war-torn country’s future. In the comfort of the Swiss Alps, reconstruction is just another PowerPoint slide, a line item to be ‘optimized.’ The postponement isn't a failure of diplomacy; it's a strategic pause in the marketing cycle. The world is being told to wait while the principals figure out the branding. Will the new Ukraine be a ‘sovereign democratic partner’ or a ‘wholly-owned subsidiary of BlackRock’? These are the questions that keep the envoys awake in their five-star suites.

Ultimately, the Witkoff-Putin summit is a mirror held up to our collective stupidity. We watch these people move across the board like they are playing a grand game of chess, when in reality, they are just playing three-card monte with the world's tax dollars. The $800 billion deal being put on hold is a reminder that in the eyes of the elite, peace is a low-yield investment compared to the perpetual motion machine of managed conflict. We are expected to wait with bated breath for the outcome of a meeting between a real estate mogul and an autocrat, as if the result will be anything other than a more efficient way to monetize the ruins. It is a exhausting, predictable, and thoroughly disgusting display of what happens when the world’s leaders realize that there is more money to be made in the waiting room than in the operating theater.