I genuinely have no clue what he's up to. I'm not even sure that he does himself.

But that only means that right now is yet another perfect moment to realign our inner anarchist compass by re-reading Anatomy of the State (available for free).

he's distracting us from the fact that he can't actually negotiate peace in this region because both sides are too far with sunk costs

I don't know, but I'd bet that something is.