Oddly, even Russia-sympathetic commentators seem loath to take Putin and other top Russia officials at their word with respect to Ukraine. Russia’s demand for no NATO, no way, no how, ever in Ukraine means a very fast impasse for any Trump negotiation attempts. As we will explain, Trump can’t deliver NATO nor can he deliver Ukraine. Having Ukraine renounce NATO is one of Putin’s preconditions to negotiations and a pause in hostilities. The “nyet means nyet” of now CIA Director Bill Burns famed 2008 memo on Russian opposition to Ukraine in NATO is as firm as ever. Yet it has still not been accepted by Team West.
Russia nevertheless has incentives to some negotiation-like activities. Putin has repeatedly maintained he is willing to negotiate, and it would behoove the Russian side to go though the motions a bit, even if that means broken-recording what they have already said, if nothing else to keep the good will of key economic partners like China and India. They are not comfortable with Russia slowly gobbling up a neighbor, even with Putin’s repeated explanations as to why the West has turned Ukraine into an existential threat to Russia. The Western media may give Russia an unexpected helping hand. Since most mainstream media outlets are predisposed to treat willingness to discuss positions as an admission of Russian weakness, the press is likely to hype any exchanges as amounting to more than they really do.
So expect a bit of talking theater to try to minimize embarrassment for the Trump side. As Alexander Mercouris has pointed out, for US officials to exit the Biden cone of silence with respect to Russia would be a marked step forward.
But even before getting to the elephant in the room, that Putin has set what for Ukraine, the US and NATO is an impossibly high bar for commencing “talks”: that Ukraine formally drop its plans for joining NATO and withdraw all its troops from the four oblasts that Russia has designated as part of Russia. That means their original administrative boundaries, which was beyond what Russia then and even now occupies. Only then would Russia halt combat operations.1
And in the context of that June 14 speech,2 “talks” means negotiations, as in horse trading over bargaining positions with the objective of coming to a resolution. It is hardly uncommon for two parties to have no overlap in what they deem acceptable, as attested by the number of divorces and commercial disputes that wind up in court. So there is no reason, as many observers weirdly seem to assume that there is any deal to be had, now or any time soon.
But not all talks are created equal. For broader political purposes, Russia can be expected to indulge in some sessions of Trump officials and Russian officials “talking” past each other to get through to the Trump team that Putin really means what he has repeatedly said.
Putin is unusually transparent for a world leader in setting forth his positions and explaining why Russia regards them as necessary.
Remember that early in the Special Military Operation, Putin had also warned that the longer the war went on, “the more difficult it will be for them to negotiate with us.” This pointed to the reality that as Russia made progress on the battlefield, it would increase its demands in light of its improved bargaining position. Putin and others in top roles have reiterated this notion in a coded manner, that any negotiations must reflect realities on the ground,
So what does Trump do when he can no longer hide the fact that his repeated and loud pledges that he could quickly and easily end the war in Ukraine have all come to naught? Will he go the Richard Nixon “peace with honor” route, and try to spin abandonment of Ukraine as a win for the US? That might be colorable in light of Ukraine intransigence, as in blame can be shifted to them for the negotiation failure.
But Trump is a lot like Biden in that he often lashes out at and tries to punish opponents. Will he realize that Russia, ex nukes, is an immovable object? Will he go all in for the Russian frozen asset heist? Will he not oppose the expected move of the probable replacement for German’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Friedrich Merz, of launching German Taurus missiles into Russia? Recall the Taurus has a longer range than the US ATACMS.
Why Trump Cannot Deliver a Settlement
Trump has two insurmountable problems: Ukraine and NATO.
With Ukraine, Zelensky is ferociously opposed to negotiations. He has rejected ideas from the Trump side that fall well short of what Russia deems to be its bare minimum. He lambasted the idea of a freeze on the current line of conflict, which throws cold water on the latest Trump scheme.3
In a further intended poke in the eye to Russia, Zelensky today said he would not agree to limit Ukraine’s armaments even if Ukraine were invited to join NATO. In fact, any NATO future for Ukraine is a non-starter for Russia, so Zelensky is just over-egging the pudding. But here, he is going out of his way to repudiate the preliminary Istanbul peace terms of March-April 2022. Ukraine had inked an outline that committed Ukraine to staying out of NATO. As Victoria Nuland later whinged, it also contained a big annex over Ukraine’s arms limits. There was a big bid-asked spread between what Ukraine and Russia wanted, but they apparently had gotten as far as listing weapons categories and putting numbers to each.
And even though Zelensky is refusing to budge long after his term has expired, it’s not as if a replacement would be any more willing to negotiate. The Banderites are still the power behind the throne. They are as motivated as the US neocons and their EU/NATO allies to fight to the last Ukrainian. Russia has promised war crimes trials. There seem to be more than enough snuff videos Ukrainians happily took of Russian soldiers’ deliberately brutal killings to make charges stick.
Remember, Trump has no negotiating leverage here. He played the money card prematurely by saying no more serious funding of Ukraine. Even if Trump were to attempt a flip-flop, Republicans in Congress, who recognize Ukraine has become a losing cause in their districts, are not certain to follow. If anyone in Ukraine is in contact with reality, they also know US weapons stocks are low and the US has competing priorities in terms of what theater to supply.
So nothing will change with Ukraine until there is a Russian-forced regime change, say by military/political collapse that leads to a puppet-like government or Russia imposing terms (we previously pointed to the Allies’ post-WWII control of German territory and its lengthy return to sovereignity as a possible model).
But the NATO and EU are just as intractable. EU leaders (save the renegade and marginalized Viktor Orban of Hungary and his new confrere, Robert Fico of Slovakia, and interestingly, just recently, Georgia Meloni of Italy4) top to bottom have loathed and vilified Trump starting with his first term. Recall how they would childishly diss him at gatherings by refusing to talk to him. The antipathy has been mutual and has only gotten worse as Trump threatened to cut NATO funding and looks set to deliver.
The EU has been putting uber-Russia-hawks into key positions. Ursula von der Leyen has managed to maneuver her way into asserting more authority as president of the European Commission than she has on paper and continues to try to do everything she can to punish Russia, even though her sanctions package and fierce speeches lack any punch. Mark Rutte as new NATO chief, has managed to outdo his predecessor Jens Stoltenberg in anti-Russia choler. Kaja Kallas, who has has taken Josep Borrell’s post as the EU’s foreign minister equivalent, has taken to egging Zelensky on in his opposition to Trump. From an interview today in the Financial Times, Stop pushing Zelenskyy into peace talks, warns EU’s top diplomat:
Western capitals should stop suggesting peace talks to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and instead ensure their promises of security guarantees to Kyiv are not “empty”, the EU’s chief diplomat has warned….
The former Estonian prime minister spoke to the Financial Times ahead of an EU leaders’ summit on Thursday set to discuss how Europe can adapt its support to Kyiv after Donald Trump returns to the White House….
On Wednesday evening Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte hosted talks with Zelenskyy and a small group of senior EU leaders including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to discuss potential options for the future of European support to Ukraine.
Speaking ahead of that meeting, Rutte said talk of a peace deal only helped Putin. “If we now start to discuss amongst ourselves what a peace deal could look like, we make it so easy for the Russians,” he said.
“I think we would be very wise to put some lid on this and focus on the business at hand . . . to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevent Putin from winning.”
If you have been following the various “security guarantees” formulas the Europeans have been discussing among themselves, they are all 100% not acceptable to Russia, like deferred entry into NATO or a 100,000 ish “ceasefire” force from various NATO states, which Russia correctly regards as no different than moving NATO into Ukraine.
Anti-Spiegel (hat tip Micael T) makes it even more clear that Rutte is trying to put the kibosh on even airing the possibility of peace discussions. The article’s sub-head, via machine translation:
NATO Secretary General Rutte has said that public discussions about a possible peace solution must be brought “under control” and that the focus must instead be on how to supply Ukraine with more weapons in order to “secure Ukraine’s victory”.
As for Rutte, he is resorting to the tired, empty ruse of pretending that somehow Ukraine can improve its position even as Ukraine is losing more ground, literally and figuratively, every day. Putin has already won. The only question is by how much. Having the West be the difficult party and extent the conflict is only to Russia’s advantage.
As for NATO, Trump could not deliver NATO even if most of its leaders stopped hating him, say by virtue of getting lobotomies. We’ve pointed out how weak NATO’s governance is. For instance, it’s vaunted Article 5 commitments amount to almost nothing. They translate as, “If a NATO member is in trouble, we will formally consider whether to do anything.” Aurelien, in a piece I have referred to several times, NATO’s Phantom Armies, gave a worked example of how hard it would be to get NATO to Do Something.
It turns out NATO governance is even worse than I imagined. From the NATO website:
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A decision reached by consensus is an agreement reached by common consent.
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When a “NATO decision” is announced, it is therefore the expression of the collective will of all the sovereign states that are members of the Alliance.
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This principle of consensus is applied at every committee level, which means that all NATO decisions are collective decisions made by its member countries.
Consensus decision-making is a fundamental principle. It has been accepted as the sole basis for decision-making in NATO since the creation of the Alliance in 1949.
Consensus decision-making means that there is no voting at NATO. Consultations take place until a decision that is acceptable to all is reached. Sometimes member countries agree to disagree on an issue. In general, this negotiation process is rapid, since members consult each other on a regular basis and therefore often know and understand each other’s positions in advance.
Facilitating the process of consultation and consensus decision-making is one of the NATO Secretary General’s main tasks.
The principle of consensus decision-making applies throughout NATO – from the North Atlantic Council, the Alliance’s principal political decision-making body, all the way down through its subordinate committees and structures.
This lack of formal processs and votes goes a long way to explaining the bizarre protracted public negotiations among NATO members. The supposed consensual process historically no doubt significantly depended on the “Some animals are more equal than others” position of the US as the big funder of and significant arms supplier to NATO. And NATO hasn’t had to face bigger decisions than whether to participate in US-led campaigns against men in sandals with shoulder-mounted rocket launchers.5
But NATO was caught out when the US/EU shock and awe sanctions did not quickly prostrate Russia. They gained undue hope from Russia quickly seeking negotiations, and tried to press their advantage. When that did not pan out and they found themselves literally outgunned by Russia, and the US unable to live up to its image and generously supply Ukraine with arms, they were forced to make decisions on a national basis. The consensus fiction has been frayed. Decision-making will become even more difficult with the Trump Administration not in the business of knocking heads together.
Let us put it another way: there are only two settings in which I have seen consensus at work. One is in Japan, and their process does not translate to anywhere else. First, it is not at all nice. Power dynamics and who has what to offer matters a great deal. Second, Japan as a society and Japanese companies even more so have strongly held norms, so there is a well-shared understanding of how things should work and what generally good outcomes look like. This is pretty much never a given when working cross cultures.
The other place I have seen consensus decision-making at work is Occupy Wall Street. It was exhaustively time consuming and seldom produced good outcomes.
This may also explain why the EU is making noises about becoming more of a military alliance. The EU has much more sensible decision processes, staring with voting with certain levels required to move forward.
Let’s return to NATO decision-making and Ukraine. Again recall that in 2008, at the Bucharest Summit, NATO decided that Ukraine “will become a member of NATO.” That decision was reaffirmed in a 2009 Declaration to Complement the Charter.
I have no idea what the formal status of this Declaration is. But irrespective of its legal standing, it has become iconic within NATO if nothing else by dint of repetition and high visibility. It is impossible to see how NATO could retreat from it, given its “consensus” practices and the fact that some NATO members will always oppose Russia.
So this is a long way of saying that Russia’s pre-election assessment is being proven correct. It is not going to matter in the end who is President, save perhaps the crucial difference that Trump might be a smidge less likely to risk nuclear war. But Trump being less predictable will make for a wilder-seeming ride.
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1 Note that Putin is demanding a cessation of fighting before any deal of any sort, including a ceasefire, is inked.
2 Russian officials top to bottom have maintained that Russia’s objectives for the Special Military Operation will all be met. But those aims had been stated at a high level of abstraction, like “demilitarization.” So it had been fair to wonder what the Russia side would deem to be minimally acceptable. This speech was the first time Putin enumerated his preconditions to negotiations.
3 Do not forget that this falls short of the cheeky Russian requirement that Ukraine ceding additional territory in the four Russian-claimed oblasts along with withdrawing as a condition for Russia to stop fighting and only then start negotiating.
4 Italy for some time has been trying to distance itself from Project Ukraine without going into open opposition like Orban. Italy refused to send weapons, saying it did not even remotely want to be construed as waging war against Russia. Recall that after Germany, Italy was the second-biggest European customer for Russian gas, so it seems a wee bit more cognizant as to where its national interests lie.
5 Wellie, and Kosovo, but that was not a large commitment.
