By Anatol Lieven, Foreign Policy, 12/16/24
The incoming Trump administration seems genuinely committed to finding peace in Ukraine. Whether it’s capable of the extremely complicated diplomacy required is a very different question. One issue that will have to be decided at the very start of the process is at what stage, and on what issues, Ukraine should be involved in the process. The issue is more fraught than has generally been acknowledged.
The first and most fundamental goal of the talks (as in all such negotiations) will be for each side to clearly establish, on the one hand, its vital interests and absolute and nonnegotiable conditions and, on the other hand, what points it is prepared, in principle, to compromise on. It may be, of course, that the nonnegotiable positions of the three sides are fundamentally opposed and incompatible. If so, peace negotiations will inevitably fail, but we will not know this until these issues have been explored.
The three parties involved are Ukraine, Russia and the United States. The initial stages of the negotiations, however, should be between the United States and Russia. It goes without saying that certain aspects of an eventual agreement will require Ukraine’s full assent, and that without this assent a settlement isn’t possible. These aspects include the terms of a ceasefire, the nature and extent of any demilitarized zones, and any constitutional amendments guaranteeing the linguistic and cultural rights of Russians and Russian-speakers in Ukraine. U.S. negotiators will have to be fully cognizant and respectful of Kyiv’s views on Ukraine’s vital interests.
Given certain categorical—and entirely legitimate—Ukrainian positions, a number of key issues seem to be a priori off the table, and if Russia insists on them, no agreement will be possible. The most important initial task of Gen. Kellogg and his team will therefore be to discover whether the Russian government regards these conditions as nonnegotiable, or whether Moscow is prepared to compromise on them if the Trump administration is prepared to compromise on wider issues.
The first nonnegotiable issue from Ukraine’s and the U.S.’ point of view is Ukrainian and Western legal recognition of Russia’s claimed annexations, as opposed to an acceptance of the fact (already accepted in public by President Zelenskyy) that Ukraine cannot recover these territories on the battlefield and therefore has to accept the reality of Russian possession, pending future negotiations.
Russian experts have suggested to me that Moscow will not, in fact, insist on this in talks, because in addition to Ukraine and the West, China, India, and other key Russian partners would also refuse the very suggestion. They said that Moscow hopes for a situation like that on the island of Cyprus, where no country but Turkey has recognized the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, but talks have lasted 50 years with no result.
The second nonnegotiable issue is Putin’s demand that Ukraine withdraw from the territory it still holds in the four provinces of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed. This is absolutely unacceptable to Kyiv, and should be to Washington, too. Ukraine should not be encouraged and helped by Washington to batter itself to pieces in a hopeless effort to drive Russia from the territory it controls, but it cannot be asked by Washington to give up more territory without a fight. The Ukrainian government will doubtless make this clear to the Trump administration, and its view must be accepted as definitive by the United States as well.
However, certain other basic questions are not up to Ukraine to decide. They are chiefly up to the United States, and it is the U.S. administration that will have to negotiate them. Central Russian proposals in the ultimatum issued before the war were for new agreements with the United States and NATO not relating to Ukraine.
Today, key aspects of the Russian demand for limits on the Ukrainian armed forces depend on the United States, since it is only the United States that can provide Ukraine with long-range missiles and the intelligence to guide them. The question of which Western sanctions to lift or suspend as part of a deal with Moscow is also up to the United States and EU.
Ukraine can, of course, ask to join NATO, but the decision of whether to accept a new member lies not with that country but with the existing members—and each of them has a veto on the issue. A U.S. administration could take the lead, but it will be up to Washington to decide how much influence to use with, and pressure to put on, other members, and it cannot simply override the likely vetoes of Hungary and Turkey—or perhaps of France, if Marine Le Pen is the next president.
The question of what Western security guarantees can and should be given to Ukraine as part of a settlement is also not up to Ukraine to answer. President Zelenskyy has suggested the deployment of troops from European NATO members, which has been echoed by certain Western officials and commentators and is reportedly being discussed between President Macron of France and the Polish government.
However, everything that I have heard from Russians tells me that this is just as unacceptable to Moscow as NATO membership itself and would therefore make agreement impossible. Moreover, European countries would agree to send their troops only if they had an ironclad guarantee from Washington that the United States would intervene if they were attacked. This, in effect, punts the decision back to Washington—not Kyiv, and not Brussels, Warsaw or Paris.
Above all, Russia’s motives for launching this war extend beyond Ukraine to the whole security relationship between Russia and the West, led by the United States. They include the demand for military force restrictions (which would have to be reciprocated on the Russian side) and some form of European security architecture in which vital Russian interests would be taken into account and future clashes avoided.
It may be that either the Putin administration or the Trump administration—or both—will refuse to compromise and that talks will accordingly collapse. Testing this, however, will be an extremely complex and difficult process, requiring patience and diplomatic sophistication on both sides. It would be extremely foolish to expect either Russia or the United States to put all their cards on the table at once.
Because this process will be so difficult, the sad but unavoidable truth may be that if Ukraine takes part in the talks from the start, progress toward a settlement will become completely impossible. Every prospective compromise will immediately be leaked and will cause a firestorm of protest in Europe, in Ukraine, in the U.S. Congress, in the U.S. media, and perhaps even from Russian hardliners.
The United States has been the essential and irreplaceable supporter of Ukraine in this war, not only because of the aid that it has given but because European countries would not have given their aid without U.S. encouragement and backing. American citizens have, in consequence, been faced with great costs and considerable risks, and wider U.S. interests have been endangered. This gives U.S. citizens the right to expect their government to take the lead in trying to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war—especially since it is the only government that can.
The question that begs to be answered in this article is ‘who’ speaks for Ukraine. Russia makes the potent argument not addressed is that Zalinsky is, per the Ukrainian constitution no longer the legitimate leader…..On December 29 RT had an excellent article on what exactly is Russia’s positions to quote the header, “The conflict must be settled through legally binding agreements that eliminate its root causes……” Based upon military advantages, gains, etc., etc. Lieven would do well to better understand the Russian pov which is well backed by leverage that they already have and have gained since the start of the smo.
That first sentence, “The incoming Trump administration seems genuinely committed to finding peace in Ukraine”, is quite a leap of faith and seems to be answered in the second sentence which states peace requires “extremely complicated diplomacy.” Well that pretty much eliminates a dipolmacic solution considering Trump’s cabinet of misfits. It is important to recognize that US Presidents are figureheads for a National Security bureaucracy intent on maintaining hegemony. And right now that bureaucracy is intent on maintaining the Ukraine proxy war to maintain US hegemony over the EU.
In fact, national security managers are incapable of such diplomacy: “To solve a political problem non-violently requires extraordinary patience, understanding, and objectivity. The national security manager is lacking in all three … contemptuous of the specialist who gets bogged down in facts … religious faith in technology, believed that managerial talent was a substitute for understanding … people at the top knew virtually nothing about the reality … neither the time nor the energy to change theories … cannot afford to compromise his ideology with uncongenial facts, for his power rests on his reputation for being able to manipulate events in accordance with a theory, … filtering out anything that contradicts official wisdom … They saw no need to understand foreign societies they thought they knew how to manage …” [Richard Barnet, “Roots of War”]
The national security bureaucracy is doing everything in its power to lock in this Ukraine war before Biden exits. And just like Obama, who claimed a desire to end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Trump is even less reliable in keeping his campaign promise to “have that done in 24 hours.” The reality is that any effort to upset the grand chessboard controled by the deep state would probaby result in a more accurate shooter. And Trump knows this despite his bravado. Trump is motivated by self-interest and will not attempt to challenge the deep state. So get ready to watch him make excuses and blame the continuation of the war on Russia.
Lieven, a deep state operative [Wikispooks], has already laid the blame for diplomatic failure squarely on Russia in his fourth paragraph. And the fact that Lieven ignores what Russia has been saying for 3 years (“if Russia insists on them”), shows that this article is just part of the propaganda setup to let Trump off the hook. The real reason the proxy war will continue is that Russia’s negotiating position, a neutral disarmed Ukraine, is incompatible with the US negotiating position — weakening Russia at all costs via the proxy war and preventing economic integration between the EU and Russia. Lieven’s statement that “eventual agreement will require Ukraine’s full assent” shows the deceitful nature of this article since Ukraine is helpless without US backing. The US and Russia are the only real players at the table.
Russia holds all the cards, and the US is acting like it believes that by raising the stakes Russia will eventually fold — which is nonsense. This war is existential for Russia, not the West. The US achieved its primary goals when it got Russia to invade so it could invoke the “Munich Analogy” to strike fear in Europe and get them to go along with the proxy war. The US then blew up Nord Stream to prevent backtracking based on economic self-interest. And now the US/EU are resorting to invalidating elections that don’t go the way the US wants (as in Romania) to assure the war continues.
We should not confuse Trump’s campaign rhetoric with neocon realpolitik. Trump will do what is best for Trump – which means going along with neocon plan – or else. Trump was allowed to win because he is a harbinger of chaos. US instigated chaos in the world (via proxy wars, coups, sanctions and corruption) is the only real tool left in the US bag of tricks to maintain its hegemony. It will continue to be used to maintain fear in the Sardines of the Shark [Arevalo, “Shark and the Sardines”].
It seems the US negotiation position fall back, for public consumption, is just stalling. Lieven makes sh*t up in the 6th paragraph claiming Russia hopes for a stalemate. Russia wants a permanent solution – and that won’t happen when the US can’t be trusted to keep its side of the bargain. So the war will continue until Ukraine completely collapses. At that point the US will likely fall back to its “Syria strategy” of funding terrorism in Ukraine in order to continue to weaken Russia.
The second half of this article just repeats neocon “blame-Russia” rhetoric, ending with a paragraph of US exceptionalism (“essential and irreplaceable”, “the only government that can”) and is not worth the bother. However, the article does offer the reader the opportunity to polish up decoding neocon rhetoric and nonsense – probably the only useful aspect of reading the propagandist Lieven.