OPINION / EXPERT PERSPECTIVE – As talks move forward between the U.S. and Russia with the intention of an agreement to end Moscow’s war in Ukraine – with or without Ukraine’s involvement in those talks – there are very basic fundamentals of negotiating with Russian President Vladimir Putin that the U.S. would be wise to keep in mind.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a 90-minute conversation on February 12 that President Trump characterized as “lengthy and highly productive.” In a later comment, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he had spoken with President Trump about a “lasting, reliable peace.” Unfortunately, the Trump-Putin call was preceded by comments to NATO members from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that it was unlikely that Ukraine would join NATO, a position apparently supported by the U.S. President.
The reports of the Trump-Putin conversation were greeted with near jubilation by Russia’s state-controlled media and the prospect of sanctions-removal was reflected by a significant rise in the Russian stock market.
In Ukraine and in many European capitals, the news was met with surprise and disappointment by leaders who had not been consulted and in Ukraine’s case, that were not a part of these critical conversations. Collaborating on a country’s fate without the involvement of that country could and will be considered by many to be a step toward infamy. That’s the word that President Franklin Roosevelt used in his speech to Congress after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But in this case, infamy and the path to appeasement can be avoided.
The U.S. President is not being served well by his advisors and national security team if they are not objecting to his rushing into a conversation with Putin before adequate preparations had been made. President Trump’s timetable is of his own making and likely connected to his campaign promise to end the war quickly after taking office. And while the desire to end the war quickly is commendable, the means to end the war must not set the stage for a future conflict in the region or worse yet, a global conflict.
Haste in this matter is ill-advised.
If Putin achieves a “peace agreement” with U.S. assistance that allows him to achieve two of his objectives for the war: the occupation of Ukrainian terrain and the “neutralization” of Ukraine, this will be for Putin a major victory and he will portray it that way. It’s not difficult to see how this will set the stage for a future aggressive action by Russia just as the U.S. and Western lack of effective reaction to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 set the stage for the current conflict.
Inaction will be remembered by history with infamy and the path taken as appeasement.
A useful reminder of what “Chamberlain’s peace” can bring is to remember the Munich Agreement of 1938, which Chamberlain hailed as the achievement of “peace in our time.” Shortly afterward, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Agreement was signed. This treaty essentially partitioned Poland and divided Eastern Europe between the two totalitarian states of Germany and the Soviet Union. This was the beginning of World War II in Europe. The lesson here is that history is relevant and appeasement leads to war.
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President Putin correctly assessed the character of former U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 and decided it was safe for him to invade and annex Crimea. The U.S. and Western response was as feeble as he anticipated.
In 2022, with former President Joe Biden in the Oval Office, Putin assessed that the U.S. would respond in a similarly feeble manner and he launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine by launching paratroopers into the capital with orders to gun down civilians who happened to be in the way. While we seem to have forgotten the brutality of this unjustified invasion, let us not also forget that Putin’s assessment of U.S. leadership was accurate. The Biden Administration for all its rhetorical support of Ukraine, slow-rolled the actual support and that is the principal reason why Ukraine was armed enough not to lose – but not armed to win.
And the current Administration has in its haste, has either ignored or forgotten some basic principles of negotiating with an adversary like Putin. The first of those principals is to understand your adversary. One wonders if any of President Trump’s team have articulated to him the level of enmity that Putin has for the United States and the West (and even the free world). Putin loathes to the depth of his being everything the U.S. and the West and free world represent. He makes no secret of this. Putin understands the free world is the biggest threat to his kleptocracy. It is the proximity of western principles to Russia’s border – not military power – that is the threat Putin fears most from the eastward expansion of NATO.
In addition to the contempt Putin has for the West, Putin surely has the same level of contempt for the current President. Whatever information Putin’s intelligence services will have fed him about President Trump as a man, husband, and businessman—whether factual or not—will have certainly reinforced Putin’s view that this man has character flaws that can be exploited.
Putin will be aware of President Trump’s reputed unwillingness to prepare by listening to the expertise of members of his team. But Putin’s own training as a KGB officer will have embedded in him the importance of that preparation and attention to detail. Patience, not haste, is a key attribute of a successful operations officer. Putin will use his experience and training to manipulate the U.S. President (and perhaps already has).
More importantly, someone on President Trump’s team should have stressed to him some of the key attributes his opponent will have had indoctrinated into him from his KGB training: 1) the ends justify the means, 2) all compromise is tactical, 3) the truth is relative and only relevant to the achievement of state goals. Translated, those principles indoctrination mean you cannot trust anything the man says or to which he agrees.
The Ukrainians understand this better than most. Churchill understood this about Hitler. Churchill avoided infamy. President Trump can as well if he deals with Putin from a position of strength and doesn’t treat Putin as an equal.
Listen to Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital Management as he tells Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian how European leaders could be using seized Russian assets in ‘Dispatches from Munich’ only on The Cipher Brief’s digital channel.
President Trump’s team should also keep in mind the basic principles of negotiating with Russia that have been true from the establishment of the Soviet regime in 1919, if not before. 1) Never let Russia believe it is negotiating from a position of strength. 2) Never concede any of your opponent’s key negotiating objectives before negotiations have even started. 3) Make apparent before negotiations begin the cost of failed negotiations to your opponent. There is an old Russian adage about negotiations: what is ours is ours, what is yours is negotiable.
Unfortunately, President Trump’s team has undermined him on several of these key points in recent days to Putin’s delight. Vice President JD Vance has offered some remediation but probably not enough. It’s important to remember that Russia is not negotiating from a position of strength. Russia is by far economically and militarily weaker than the U.S. and the West in aggregate, and Russia has not proven itself superior militarily to even Ukraine.
It was a tactical negotiating error to concede the unlikelihood of NATO membership for Ukraine before negotiations even began. Even if this might be a true statement, it should never have been articulated by a senior administration official. A better course would have been to tell Putin that U.S. support will continue and will be increased beyond the level provided under the Biden Administration. Moscow should be told that Ukraine will be given the tools – now and in the future – to defend itself from Russian aggression and will be given guarantees by treaty if necessary. President Trump was on the right path a few weeks ago, when he reportedly threatened to destroy Russia’s economy.
I can understand and applaud President Trump’s desire to see this unnecessary war end as soon as practicable. The war Putin started was brutal, unnecessary and was the result of his imperial ambitions. It has brought death, injury and destruction at a scale the world has not seen since 1945. It needs to end, but not in a way that sets the stage for a future war.
Putin revealed the scale of his ambition to rebuild his interpretation of Imperial Russia in his infamous July 2021 essay which should be mandatory reading for everyone in the new administration. Negotiations or a ceasefire should not be undertaken or concluded without the realization that Putin cannot be allowed to walk away claiming victory. Infamy can be avoided but it takes preparation, resolve, unity of purpose and allies.
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