The Frame When President Trump declared from the Oval Office that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an “energy ceasefire” — immediate, comprehensive, and yet entirely devoid of coordinates, timelines, verification mechanisms, or confirmation from Moscow or Kyiv — the financial markets yawned. Brent crude moved eight cents. European gas futures barely flickered. The silence of the markets was the most honest assessment: they have learned to price in the difference between a treaty and a press release. But the market’s indifference masks a structural rupture. This was not a failed negotiation. It was a demonstration that the verification architecture undergirding the post-1945 security order — the inspectors, the monitoring missions, the technical protocols that transform words into enforceable commitments — has been allowed to atrophy into ceremonial theater. The ceasefire announcement did not fail to produce details. It revealed that details no longer matter to the principal architects of the...