分析报道由斯蒂芬·科林森撰写，2小时前发布，发表于2026年2月18日，美国东部时间凌晨12:00
史蒂夫·维特科夫和贾里德·库什纳。
这听起来像一家精英律师事务所、一部70年代的警匪剧，甚至像是两位有远见的建筑师的组合——因为他们希望将战场变成未来主义的城市景观。
但史蒂夫·维特科夫（Steve Witkoff）和贾里德·库什纳（Jared Kushner）正在执掌唐纳德·特朗普总统的“自由式”维和事业，全球稳定、无数生命以及他们老板能否获得那个难以捉摸的诺贝尔和平奖，都取决于这项事业。
周二，这两人深陷外交漩涡，在日内瓦经历了非凡的“双管齐下”式外交日，与俄罗斯、乌克兰和伊朗官员举行了闭门会谈。他们预计本周返回华盛顿，参加“和平委员会”的会议——这是特朗普个人主导的大型美元私人全球外交网络。
这两位超级富豪、人脉广泛的美国交易商肩负着结束一场残酷战争并阻止一场可能即将爆发的战争的使命。无论哪一项任务成功，都是巨大成就，但这两个目标似乎都难以解决。
特朗普在集结庞大舰队逼近伊朗的同时，希望与伊朗达成协议，但周二的谈判进展缓慢。伊朗方面吹捧在“指导原则”上达成了共识，但副总统JD·万斯（JD Vance）告诉福克斯新闻，尽管某些方面“进展顺利”，但德黑兰不会承认特朗普提出的某些“红线”要求。
乌克兰与俄罗斯两天会谈中的第一天也凸显了一个巨大的潜在障碍：莫斯科是否真的想结束战斗，或者只是为了战场上获胜而假意进行外交周旋。
尽管如此，谈判仍在进行。考虑到全球对达成协议的前景以及对维特科夫和库什纳“双人组合”的怀疑，这种谈判本身就是一项成就，也是特朗普致力于和平事业的标志。
三大全球争端，影响日益深远
维特科夫和库什纳的最新努力正值世界处于危险时刻，同时特朗普的总统任期也面临政治上的脆弱局面。
► 他们迄今为止最大的胜利——加沙停火协议——在战火重燃后显得脆弱不堪。哈马斯解除武装的过渡进程似乎仍是一个遥不可及的梦想。全面战争可能重新爆发，这将加剧巴勒斯坦平民的苦难，并再次威胁以色列的安全。
► 与此同时，乌克兰战争在又一个冬天中艰难推进，战场伤亡惨重，俄罗斯对手无寸铁的平民发动攻击。战争持续时间越长，其溢出到北约与俄罗斯冲突的风险就越大。或许没有人能结束这场战争，但特朗普可能比任何人都更有机会。
► 与此同时，总统正不可避免地被推向与伊朗开战的边缘，他可能不得不为了挽回颜面和保护自身可信度而战。但民调显示，美国人并不希望与伊朗开战。
每一次单独的谈判都面临同样的“砖墙”——各方拒绝在他们视为关乎国家生存或荣誉的问题上妥协。对于总统普京来说，这意味着至少要继续战斗，直到他夺取他已为此付出数万名俄罗斯人生命的乌克兰东部顿巴斯地区的剩余部分。基辅政府不能像特朗普政府显然希望的那样割让该地区，因为那里有大量的伤亡，并且它是保卫首都的重要防御工事。
伊朗也有其潜在的“破坏协议”因素。尽管伊朗准备就核项目作出让步，但该项目已在去年美国的攻击中遭到重创，德黑兰拒绝讨价还价其弹道导弹计划和地区代理网络，因为这些被视为伊斯兰革命政权生存的关键。
特朗普有时似乎愿意接受任何协议来庆祝达成。但如果他签署一项允许伊朗获得制裁减免、看起来像他废除的奥巴马时代核协议的协议，他将颜面尽失。他上周五表示，政权更迭“将是最可能发生的事情”。但如果他试图强行推进，可能会引发他无法预测和控制的地区、政治和经济后果。
“如果各方想要一个有限且可实现的协议，他们就会达成协议，”国际危机组织伊朗项目主任阿里·瓦埃兹（Ali Vaez）周一告诉CNN的贝基·安德森（Becky Anderson）。“如果他们想要过度扩张，就会引发战争。”
双人组合可能如何运作
维特科夫和库什纳的做法可能非常规，但他们拥有每个成功和平谈判者都需要的必备资质——获得总统的授权。特别代表维特科夫是一位富有的房地产开发商，与特朗普是数十年的朋友。库什纳没有政府正式职务，但他是特朗普女儿伊万卡的丈夫，因此是“自家人”。两人似乎都没有在提升特朗普遗产之外的政治野心。
每个人都体现了特朗普独特的外交政策风格。他们是蔑视正式外交和政府结构的商业大亨，似乎将每一场全球冲突都视为潜在的房地产交易。两人在中东和其他地区都有巨大的商业利益，这引起了批评者的担忧，他们认为特朗普没有区分自己的利益和国家利益。
“我们不能像关注事实那样花费时间在‘形象’上，”库什纳在10月与搭档一起接受哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）“60分钟”采访时表示。“我们来这里是为了做好事。这些是不可能完成的任务。”
但他们的“双人组合”也引起了美国盟友和前美国官员的担忧。部分原因是经验不足。例如，维特科夫似乎在与俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京的会面后，唱起了克里姆林宫强人（普京）的调子。“我不认为普京是个坏人，”他去年这样评价一个发动非法、无端入侵并屠杀数千乌克兰人的男人。
彭博社去年审查并转录的一段电话记录显示，维特科夫在指导一名俄罗斯高级官员如何与特朗普交谈，这一事件加剧了人们的担忧。他去年制定的一份28点和平计划，内容似乎像是莫斯科写的。经过包括国务卿马尔科·卢比奥（Marco Rubio）在内的数周外交斡旋，该计划才被用作谈判基础。
尽管如此，尽管外界对这一准官方合作能否绕过传统美国外交政策规范来掌握外交游戏存在巨大怀疑，维特科夫和库什纳还是取得了特朗普第二任期内最重大的外交政策成功之一：加沙停火协议。
他们在该地区的低调外交和人脉网络——包括以色列和海湾国家（这些国家将被要求资助重建）——基于一份20点和平计划，确保了冲突的正式结束。该计划包括从加沙返回活着和已故的以色列人质，以换取大量巴勒斯坦囚犯的释放和人道主义援助大量进入被摧毁的地带。
但协议的第一阶段——尽管困难重重——是容易的部分。第二阶段涉及哈马斯解除武装、国际稳定部队进入以支持过渡性技术官僚政府，以及启动重建计划（由和平委员会监督）。特朗普周日表示，委员会成员已承诺提供50亿美元用于重建，并派遣数千名士兵组成稳定部队。“和平委员会将被证明是历史上最具影响力的国际机构，”他在社交媒体上表示。
但该计划的第二阶段目前看来像是“无法启动”。各国几乎没有可能向战区派遣军队，而且据路透社报道，上周末以色列空袭造成至少11人死亡。以色列和哈马斯经常互相指责对方破坏停火协议。
“和平委员会不调解冲突，调解人调解冲突。总统知道这一点，”前美国中东和平谈判代表亚伦·戴维·米勒（Aaron David Miller）上周告诉CNN的理查德·奎斯特（Richard Quest）。“他进行调解，这与他所有的前任不同（并且）对本杰明·内塔尼亚胡施加了巨大压力，使其完成第一阶段，他还让他的女婿和最好的朋友之一史蒂夫·维特科夫调解或试图调解与伊朗和俄乌冲突的‘冲突降级’问题。”
但米勒认为解除武装仍然是“渺茫希望”。“哈马斯在以色列撤军前放弃武器，或者坦率地说，在哈马斯有机会接管巴勒斯坦民族运动（这是他们想要的）之前放弃武器的想法，几乎不可能实现。很遗憾地说，对于加沙的200万巴勒斯坦人和以色列平民来说，希望已经渺茫。”
这一现实凸显了维特科夫-库什纳方法的主要缺陷。中东和乌克兰的冲突表面上看似是土地争端，但远比棘手的商业问题复杂得多。对于卷入冲突的各方来说，这片土地不仅仅是未来的建筑工地，它承载着象征意义，凝聚着历史、身份和生存的意义。
特朗普为了遗产，正施加巨大压力
特朗普的急躁也意味着维特科夫和库什纳承受着可能导致“表面化”处理问题的压力。成功的美国和平努力通常需要艰苦细致的外交。卡特总统时期的《戴维营协议》是一整个任期筹备工作的成果。结束前南斯拉夫战争的《代顿协议》是数月大胆的战时外交和理查德·霍尔布鲁克（Richard Holbrooke，美国一代最具才华的外交官）无情施压的结果。
美国还在英国政府解决北爱尔兰问题的过程中发挥了关键作用——这一进程耗时数年，才实现爱尔兰共和军武器的解除和最终和平。
尽管如此，历史也表明，利用政府官方结构之外的非官方特使可能有效。
二战期间，富兰克林·罗斯福总统维持着多层个人特使，以智取政府中的其他权力中心，并确保他是唯一全面了解冲突的美国人。理查德·尼克松和他的国家安全顾问亨利·基辛格建立了一个平行的外交政策运作体系，以绕过国务院——这与特朗普的做法类似——并开启了与共产主义中国的历史性沟通渠道。
但特朗普对国务院的“削弱”剥夺了他的政府机构记忆和专业知识，这些本可以建立在库什纳和维特科夫的任何突破之上。
最终，突破性进展可能需要超越日内瓦的“路过式峰会”。美国的业余和平缔造者可能有特朗普的支持，但他们尚未证明自己能与马基雅维利式的普京、像以色列总理内塔尼亚胡这样的操纵性政治幸存者，以及哈马斯的神权法西斯主义并驾齐驱，跻身地缘政治大联盟。
America’s outsider peace duo faces biggest test in trio of hotspots
Analysis by Stephen Collinson, 2 hr ago, PUBLISHED Feb 18, 2026, 12:00 AM ET
Witkoff and Kushner.
It sounds like an elite law firm, a 1970s cop show or even a duo of visionary architects, since they hope to turn battlefields into futuristic cityscapes.
But Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are running President Donald Trump’s freelance peacekeeping franchise, on which global stability, countless lives and their boss’s best hope of that elusive Nobel Peace Prize depend.
The pair were in the thick of it Tuesday, on an extraordinary double-barreled day of diplomacy in Geneva, huddling with Russian, Ukrainian and Iranian officials. They’re expected back in Washington this week for a meeting of the Board of Peace — Trump’s personal big-dollar private global diplomacy network.
The two super-rich, well-connected American dealmakers are charged with ending one vicious war and preventing one that might be about to erupt. Success in either case would be a huge achievement, but both goals seem intractable.
Trump’s hopes for a deal with Iran, as he masses a vast armada within shooting distance, only crawled forward Tuesday. The Iranians touted an understanding on “guiding principles.” But Vice President JD Vance told Fox News that while things “went well” in some ways, Tehran won’t acknowledge some of Trump’s red lines.
The first of two days of talks between Ukraine and Russia also highlighted a big potential roadblock: the question of whether Moscow really wants to end the fighting or is only playing at diplomacy to buy time for battlefield wins.
Still, talks are taking place. Given global skepticism about the prospects for agreements and of the Witkoff and Kushner double act, this is an achievement in itself and a mark of Trump’s desire to work for peace.
Three global disputes with deepening implications
Witkoff and Kushner’s latest efforts come at a perilous moment for the world and a politically tenuous one for Trump’s presidency.
► Their biggest win so far — the ceasefire in Gaza — is fragile amid renewed fighting. The transition to the disarmament of Hamas still seems like a pipe dream. A possible renewal of full-scale war would worsen the misery of Palestinian civilians and again threaten Israeli security.
► At the same time, the Ukraine war is grinding through another winter, amid battlefield carnage and Russian attacks on defenseless civilians. The longer the war goes on, the greater the risk that it spills over into a NATO-Russia conflict. Maybe no one can end the war. But Trump probably has a better chance than anyone.
► The president, meanwhile, is getting inexorably dragged closer to a war with Iran that he may have to fight to save face and protect his own credibility. But polls show Americans don’t want it.
Each separate negotiation risks running into the same brick wall — the parties’ refusal to compromise on issues they see as existential to national survival or honor. For President Vladimir Putin, this means fighting on at least until he seizes the reminder of the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region on which he’s already spent tens of thousands of Russian lives. The government in Kyiv cannot cede the region — as the Trump administration apparently wants — because of its own massive casualties and because it forms fortifications vital to the defense of the capital.
Iran has its own potential deal-breakers. While it’s ready to discuss concessions on a nuclear program already shattered by US attacks last year, Tehran is refusing to bargain away its ballistic missile program and regional proxy networks, which it views as crucial to the survival of the Islamic revolutionary regime.
Trump sometimes appears willing to take any deal to celebrate clinching it. But he’d lose face if he inks an agreement that offers Tehran sanctions relief and looks like the Obama-era nuclear pact he destroyed.He said on Friday that regime change “would be the best thing that could happen.” But if he tries to force it, he may unleash regional, political and economic consequences he can neither predict nor control.
“If the parties want a limited and achievable agreement, they’re going to have a deal,” Ali Vaez, director of the Iran Project at the International Crisis Group, told CNN’s Becky Anderson on Monday. “If they want to go for overreach, they’re going to have a war.”
How the double act might work
Witkoff and Kushner might be unorthodox. But they have the indispensable credential every successful peace negotiator needs — empowerment by the president.Special envoy Witkoff, a wealthy real estate developer, has been a Trump friend for decades.Kushner has no official government role. But he’s the husband of Trump’s daughter Ivanka, and therefore family. Neither appears to have any political ambition outside polishing Trump’s legacy.
Each man personifies Trump’s unique brand of foreign policy. They’re business tycoons who disdain formal diplomatic and governmental structures and seem to see every global conflict as a potential real estate deal. Each also has huge commercial interests in the Middle East and elsewhere, a concern for critics who believe Trump makes no distinction between his own interests and the nation’s.
“We can’t spend our time focused on perception as much as we have to focus on the facts,” Kushner told CBS’ “60 Minutes” in a joint interview with his partner in October. “We’re here to do good. These are impossible tasks.”
But their double act also stirs concern among US allies and former US officials. Part of it is down to inexperience. Witkoff, for example, seems to emerge from meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin singing the Kremlin strongman’s tune. “I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy,” he said last year, of a man who launched an illegal, unprovoked invasion and has massacred thousands of Ukrainians.
Concern grew over a transcript of a phone call reviewed and transcribed by Bloomberg last year that showed Witkoff coaching a top Russian official on how to talk to Trump. And a 28-point peace plan he drew up last year could have been written by Moscow. It took weeks of diplomatic sanding down, including by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, before it could serve as the basis for talks.
Still, despite huge skepticism that their quasi-official partnership could master the diplomatic game while bypassing traditional US foreign policy norms, Witkoff and Kushner are responsible for one of the most significant foreign policy successes of Trump’s second term: the Gaza ceasefire deal.
Their quiet diplomacy and networks in the region — both in Israel and the Gulf states that will be asked to finance rebuilding — secured an official end to the fighting based on 20-point peace plan. This included the return of living and deceased Israeli hostages from Gaza in return for significant releases of Palestinian prisoners and large quantities of humanitarian aid entering the devastated strip.
But the first stage of the deal — as difficult as it was — is the easy part. The second stage involves the disarming of Hamas, the entry of an international stabilization force to bolster a transitional technocratic government and the initiation of a reconstruction plan to be monitored by the Board of Peace. Trump said Sunday that members had pledged $5 billion toward rebuilding and thousands of troops to the stabilization force. “The Board of Peace will prove to be the most consequential International Body in History,” he said on social media.
But Phase 2 of the plan seems, for now, like a nonstarter. There’s little chance nations will put their troops into a war zone, and at least 11 people died in Israeli airstrikes over the weekend, Reuters reported. And both Israel and Hamas regularly accuse the other of sabotaging the ceasefire agreement.
“Boards of Peace don’t mediate conflicts. Mediators mediate conflicts. The president knows this,” former US Middle East peace negotiator Aaron David Miller told CNN’s Richard Quest last week. “He mediated, unlike all of his predecessors (and) brought (an) extraordinarily a degree of pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu to do phase one, and he has got his son-in-law and one of his best friends, Steven Witkoff, mediating or trying to mediate deconfliction with Iran and Russia-Ukraine.”
But Miller argued that arms decommissioning was still a long shot. “The notion that Hamas is going to give up its guns before the Israelis withdraw, or frankly, before Hamas gets an opportunity to take over the Palestinian National Movement, which is what they want, is slim to none. And I am sorry to say, for the sake of the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and Israeli civilians, slim already left town.”
This reality points to a major liability of the Witkoff-Kushner approach. Conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine can superficially seem like land disputes, but they are far more complex than a knotty business problem. For those involved, the land is more than a future construction site. It’s alive with symbolism and encapsulates history, identity and survival.
Trump is piling on pressure as he eyes his legacy
Trump’s impatience also means Witkoff and Kushner are under the kind of pressure that can lead to superficiality. Successful US peace efforts usually followed painstaking and intricate diplomacy. The Camp David Accords in the Carter presidency were the culmination of an entire term of preparatory work. The Dayton Accords that ended the war in the former Yugoslavia followed months of daring wartime diplomacy and relentless US duress on the parties led by Richard Holbrooke, the most talented American diplomat of his generation.
The US also played a key role in the British government’s Northern Ireland efforts — which took years to deliver the decommissioning of the IRA’s weapons and eventual peace.
Still, history also shows that using unofficial envoys outside the government’s official structures can work.
President Franklin Roosevelt maintained layers of personal emissaries in World War II to outwit other power centers in the government and to ensure he was the sole American with a full overview of the conflict. President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger set up a parallel foreign policy operation to cut out the State Department — much as Trump has done — and they opened a historic channel to communist China.
But Trump’s evisceration of the department has deprived his administration of institutional memory and expertise that might have built on any breakthroughs by Kushner and Witkoff.
Ultimately, breakthroughs may require more than drive-by summits in Geneva. And America’s amateur peacemakers may have Trump’s ear, but they have yet to prove they belong in the geopolitical big leagues alongside a Machiavellian Putin, a manipulative political survivor like Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the theocratic fascism of Hamas.
