The Halifax International Security Forum always includes a sizable and bi-partisan group of United States Senators who were suddenly put on the spot: Did they think Ukraine should accept this ultimatum? By Saturday afternoon, several senators issued a joint statement condemning this plan.

Then something extraordinary happened. A couple hours after this joint statement was released, an even larger and more bi-partisan group of senators gave a press conference in which Republican Senator Mike Rounds said that he and two other senators had just got off the phone with Marco Rubio, who was en route to Geneva to meet with Ukrainian officials and European allies. According to Senator Rounds, Rubio said this stridently pro-Russian 28 point plan was not an American plan at all, but rather a Russian proposal that was improperly leaked to the press. But then, about two hours later, Rubio publicly disavowed that disavowal! He posted on Twitter that "The peace proposal was authored by the U.S."

So what the heck is going on here? I caught up with Toronto Star columnist and fellow Substacker Justin Ling to try to make sense of this bizarre turn of events. We kick off discussing the back and forth on this plan, but then have a deeper conversation about what this episode reveals about American global leadership and what the conversations in Halifax revealed about how America's traditional middle power allies, like Canada and Europe, are adjusting to a world order in which the United States is an unreliable ally and unstable international actor.