Posturing for peace talks in Ukraine

Stopping the war in Ukraine in a sensible enough way that a pause in fighting will last at least a couple of weeks longer than an Israeli “ceasefire” will be a complicated business. And Trump will want to make whatever deal he should manage to get done sound like it was the result of chest-beating and tough talk on his own part.

Mehdi Hasan interviews Anatol Lieven and Evelyn Farkas on the current situation¹:

Farkas makes a comparison of Putin to Hitler. Since World War II, the US only goes to war against “Hitler.”

Trump’s advisers are floating some ideas on what might be contained in a deal:

Trump's advisers would try forcing Moscow and Kyiv into negotiations with carrots and sticks, including halting military aid to Kyiv unless it agrees to talk but boosting assistance if Russian President Vladimir Putin refuses.

Trump repeatedly pledged during his election campaign to end the nearly three-year-old conflict within 24 hours of his Jan. 20 inauguration, if not before then, but has yet to say how. …

A Trump representative did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about whether the president-elect still plans to resolve the conflict within a day of taking office.²

Everyone but MAGA true believers can see that brag about peace in 24 hours is nothing but hot air. But it’s also worth remembering that Trump promised to do that.

That version of “carrots and sticks” – halting arms provision or boosting them – isn’t exactly a bold and innovative idea. One adviser, retired Army general Keith Kellogg, mentioned “taking NATO membership for Ukraine off the table” would be an option. But Reuters also notes:

But Trump may find Putin unwilling to engage, analysts and former U.S. officials said, as he has the Ukrainians on the back foot and may have more to gain by pursuing further land grabs.

"Putin is in no hurry," said Eugene Rumer, a former top U.S. intelligence analyst on Russia now with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank.

The Russian leader, he said, shows no readiness to drop his conditions for a truce and talks, including Ukraine abandoning its NATO quest and surrendering the four provinces Putin claims as part of Russia but does not fully control, a demand rejected by Kyiv.

The Russians are winning the war. I know that the Ukraine hawks keep saying that Russia’s goal in the war is to conquer all of Ukraine and then start grabbing more of, what, Poland? Lithuania? Finland? Other than very expansive readings of some of Vladimir Putin’s statements about the common historical heritage of Russia and Ukraine, evidence supporting that reading of his intentions seems to be scarce. But for neocons and other chronic hawks, it’s always 1938 and Neville Chamberlain is always on the verge of allowing to let Germany invade Czechoslovakia. Rose Gottemoeller also argues that Putin’s “main strategic goal” at the beginning of the war in 2022 was “destroying Ukraine as an independent state and transforming it into a vassal of Russia.”³

Über-Realist John Mearsheimer, who is annoyingly often right about such things, describes a more plausible assumption: Russia wants to hold the territory in the east that it has seized, and wants to make it impossible for Ukraine to join NATO. He also expects that Putin is not much interested in controlling all of central Ukraine and even less interested in eastern parts, not least because they would have to deal with serious partisan warfare in that area. He expects that Putin prefers to leave rest-Ukraine as a struggling entity, more-or-less a failed state, to send a message to other countries in its “near abroad” that they shouldn’t play footsies with NATO.

If there is going to be a near-term peace agreement with any kind of stability, Ukraine and NATO will have to come up with some kind of agreement that Ukraine will not be joining NATO in any near-term future. That in itself shouldn’t be hard to do. Because unless NATO really decides to go directly to war against Russia, Ukraine will have no realistic prospects of joining NATO. NATO almost certainly will not openly declare that its formal statement in 2008 that Georgia and Ukraine will one day become NATO members was a dumb mistake. But they can find some slippery way to say they’re backing off that spectacularly ill-considered statement without actually saying that’s what they are doing.

Of course, we need to also see what Trump’s actual position on NATO will be this time around. It’s not unthinkable that he might just decide to pull out of it. I’m not sure how his fans will spin that as both a tough-guy stance and a pacifist commitment to avoid wars. But the Trumpistas aren’t that worried about petty consistency like that.

Ukrainian President Volodymr Zalensky is publicly holding out the possibility that Ukraine would agree to allow Russia to hold their captured territory for the foreseeable future without actually conceding they are now part of Russia.

As recently as October, Zelensky continued to insist that Ukraine would not cede any of its territory to Russia.

But, as Russian troops break through heavily fortified Ukrainian defenses on their increasingly rapid march west, the crumbling Ukrainian lines may be causing a new reality to dawn in Kyiv.

On November 21, Zelensky was asked by Fox News if he had “accepted that under any sort of cease-fire agreement or peace deal that some Ukrainian territory may remain in Russian hands?" His answer differed subtly, but significantly, from his earlier statements.

He said: “We cannot legally acknowledge any occupied territory of Ukraine as Russian. That is about those territories … occupied by Putin before the full-scale invasion, since 2014. Legally, we are not acknowledging that, we are not adopting that.”⁴

But if Trump is hoping that Putin will make things easy for him to get a deal he can sell domestically as the result of tough-guy posturing, he’s very likely to be disappointed. But Ukraine is not the only issue involving Russia and the US. As Gottemoeller explains:

Trump may seek a deal, but he most certainly won’t want a deal that leaves him appearing to be a loser. Putin, in turn, wants a continuing partner in Trump because he has several goals he needs to accomplish—such as getting out from under the crushing sanctions that the United States and its allies have imposed on Russia. Putin cannot afford to force Trump into a losing position, which means he cannot crush the Ukrainians. They too must come out of the war achieving a good measure of their objectives.

The negotiating dynamics are changing, and the tricky business of crafting a win-win-win solution is upon us. [my emphasis]

And the hardliners will be warning him not to look like a Loser:

Amid rising expectations of a negotiated end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladmir Putin declared last week that “nothing has changed.” He reiterated his maximalist demands for a peace deal: Ukraine must cede additional territories to Russia, abandon all hope of joining NATO, demilitarize, and “denazify”—Kremlin code for replacing the current government. These demands, which are unacceptable to Kyiv, suggest that Putin is confident that the war is trending in his favor.

If U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is to succeed in brokering a peace deal, he must change Putin’s perspective that he has the upper hand, or Trump’s diplomacy will backfire. To go into talks with a strong hand, Trump will need to bolster U.S. and Ukrainian leverage. And he must do so quickly, without the torturous delays and self-imposed red lines that have characterized President Joe Biden’s support for Ukraine over the last three years. The Trump administration should therefore formulate a maximum pressure campaign to convince Moscow to accept a good and lasting peace deal. By keeping his promise to restore “peace through strength,” Trump can give himself the best possible chance of stopping the bloodshed for good.⁵ [my emphasis]

Any deal that ends the war for now will not wind up with Ukraine in full control of its legal territory as it was at the beginning of 2014.

There is a concept that was much discussed in the post-Vietnam preoccupation with “war termination” and what was known as the Weinberger Doctrine, later rechristened as the Powell Doctrine. It said that the only justification for war was to achieve a better peace. But how the various players can turn any near-term settlement in Ukraine into a “better peace” than pre-2022 or pre-2014 (Russian seizure of Crimea).

Benjamin Jense and Jose Macias also make this very relevant observation:

[W]ars aren’t just about the battlefield. War weariness, domestic politics, and intelligence estimates play a critical role in shaping how each side develops a strategy for the end game.

It also implies that signaling a willingness to reduce support to Ukraine risks strengthening Russia’s bargaining position and complicating negotiations. Elites around Putin need to know that Ukraine will have the international backing it needs to fight next campaign season, without restrictions, and that the Russian economy may never recover if the Kremlin doesn’t sit down to negotiate. Second, future expectations shape present day strategy. Moscow and Ukraine need to be confident that both European and U.S. support for Ukraine will continue for at least a decade. That doesn’t mean the United States pays the lion’s share, but it does mean U.S. leadership brokers a long-term funding and reconstruction strategy that supports any negotiation.⁶

This is not going to be an easy agreement and it’s not likely to come together in a couple of weeks, much less in 24 hours. As Gottemoeller further observes, “The negotiating dynamics are changing, and the tricky business of crafting a win-win-win solution is upon us.”

And: “Ukraine, the United States, NATO, and Russia each must come away from the negotiations with something of value—regarding security, economics, and the oh-so-important political coin, saving face.”

Nothing in Trump’s first term showed that he had anything like the ability to navigate a negotiating dilemma like this one successfully .

1. 'Time Is Not on Ukraine’s Side': Experts Discuss How the War in Ukraine Could End. Zeteo YouTube channel 12/02/2024. (Accessed: 2024-04-12).

2. Slattery, Gram & Landay, Jonathan (2024): Trump's plan for Ukraine comes into focus: NATO off the table and concessions on territory. Reuters 12/04/2024. <https://www.reuters.com/world/trumps-plan-ukraine-comes-into-focus-territorial-concessions-nato-off-table-2024-12-04/> (Accessed: 2024-04-12).

3. Gottemoeller, Rose (2024): A table for five: What to expect from each player at Ukraine peace talks. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12/02/2024. <https://thebulletin.org/2024/12/a-table-for-five-what-to-expect-from-each-player-at-ukraine-peace-talks/> (Accessed: 2024-04-12).

4. Petro, Nicolai & Snider, Ted (2024): Is Zelensky softening his tone on territorial concessions? Responsible Statecraft 12/04/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-concessions/> (Accessed: 2024-04-12).

5. Montgomery, Mark & Hardie, John (2024): Trump Should Make Putin Wince Before They Sit Down to Talk. Foreign Policy 12/04/2024. <https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/12/04/trump-putin-peace-deal-ukraine-russia-war-maximum-pressure/> (Accessed: 2024-04-12).

6. Jansen, Benjamin & Macias III, Jose (2024): Peace, Ceasefire, or Stalemate? How Wars End and the Road Ahead for Ukraine. Center for Strategic and International Studies 11/08/2024. <https://www.csis.org/analysis/peace-ceasefire-or-stalemate-how-wars-end-and-road-ahead-ukraine> (Accessed: 2024-04-12).