British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain Signing Munich Agreement, Munich, Germany, September 30, 1938. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Negotiating a peace deal with Vladimir Putin isn’t the same as negotiating a real estate deal in Manhattan.
Governments, especially democratic ones, are prone to making two major foreign policy mistakes: miscalculating the motives of the opposing parties in negotiations and overestimating the importance of economics in how such states determine their diplomatic and military strategies. We may see this graphically and tragically play out in the talks to try to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
President Trump and U.S. officials are hoping that Vladimir Putin can be enticed into an agreement by the prospect of multibillion-dollar deals for extracting oil and gas, mining minerals and constructing hotels, office buildings, resorts, high-tech parks and so much else. They believe similarly dazzling prospects will also soften up Ukraine into making compromises as well.
The dream is that so much commerce will guarantee a durable peace between the two countries. Who knows what may emerge from these efforts? But no one should have any illusions about Putin. He’ll only sign on to a deal that he feels will enable his rapid takeover of Ukraine. The prospect of a nice Trump-constructed tower in Red Square named after the Russian dictator—perhaps Putin Place—won’t deter him one bit from his ultimate aims.
Sure, Putin would love to make agreements that will help Russia’s troubled economy. But immediate economics count for next to nothing against his imperial ambitions. And those ambitions don’t stop with Ukraine, as Russia’s neighbors Poland, Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Norway, Finland and nearby Sweden can attest. A worried Germany is undertaking a major, multiyear rearmament program.
The blunt truth is that the only way the Kremlin will go for a deal that genuinely guarantees a truly independent Ukraine is if Kyiv is given the necessary armaments and freedom of action to push back the Russian invaders. Otherwise, Putin will remain convinced he will win this war, either on the battlefield through his ghastly attrition tactics or at the negotiating table with the U.S. betraying Ukraine the way Britain and France betrayed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in Munich in 1938.
The illusion that economics can be a substitute for power dies hard, however. Before WWII, for example, Britain and France consoled themselves that Nazi Germany’s serious economic problems would deter a conflict. What they failed to grasp is that while by traditional civilian standards, the German economy was a mess, the Nazi regime was readying a war economy, a very different standard indeed. The hoped-for German economic collapse, of course, never came.
Before WWI, many thought a conflict couldn’t happen—or if it did, it would be very short-lived—because the economies of Europe were so intricately tied together that there would be a general collapse if trade was stopped. When the war came, very serious dislocations occurred, but countries adjusted and four years of horrific fighting ensued.
The other illusion, closely related to the economic one, is miscalculating the other side’s motives. President Obama and his misguided team thought that Iran’s mullahs were truly interested in the well-bring of their people, that they could be coaxed into giving up their terroristic, revolutionary goals and nuclear ambitions through relief from sanctions and the prospect of prosperity-creating trade and foreign investment activities.
Iran’s mullahs are revolutionaries. Hitler was a revolutionary. Putin is a revolutionary. Such rulers don’t operate by traditional standards.
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/12/03/what-trump-must-understand-to-achieve-a-peace-deal-with-putin/
