NBC News reported this morning that a group of former U.S. government officials have held secret talks with “prominent Russians” here in the United States in order to lay “the groundwork for potential negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.”
The group included former diplomat and outgoing Council on Foreign Relations president Richard Haass, as well as former officials Thomas Graham and Charles Kupchan, who has written for Responsible Statecraft on the importance of diplomacy in the Ukraine conflict.
According to NBC, which was quoting “people briefed on the discussions,” the group met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for several hours in New York in April.
This is a welcome step, even though there are no indications that the White House endorsed what I would call Track 1.5 diplomacy between the former U.S. officials and the Russians.
Still, it benefits the US and Ukraine in several ways. There are many misconceptions about diplomacy, which is often viewed as merely a give-and-take. Even worse, negotiations in the context of Ukraine have been erroneously treated as the start of a cease-fire.
This is opposed by many since Russia still illegally occupies large parts of Ukraine. A cease-fire under these circumstances, the argument goes, would give Moscow undue leverage in talks and an opportunity to regroup and take more Ukrainian territory.
But negotiations are not the beginning of a cease-fire. In most wars, fighting and talking goes on simultaneously. Instead, talks are needed — particularly Track II diplomacy — because they serve several purposes.
First, Track-II is intelligence gathering. As the fighting goes on, talks are needed to assess how the other side reacts to changing realities on the ground. Is their resolve weakening? Are they overconfident? What are they seeing that we are missing?
And how will they react to future hypothetical scenarios on the battlefield? Second, if we want to end the war, Track-II is needed to explore possible pathways to real negotiations and a lasting solution.
When real talks start, you don't want to go flying blind; you want to know as much as possible to maximize your chances of success. Track-II talks can prove crucial to that end.
In fact, even when official negotiations are ongoing, a back-channel is often needed to, in a more risk-free environment, test ideas and proposals. This is what happened in the diplomacy that led to the Iran deal, as I describe in detail in my book, "Losing an Enemy: Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy." While official talks where ongoing between Iran and the P5+1 (the U.S., Germany, the UK, France, Russia and China), the U.S. still opened a back-channel to Iran in Oman to quietly address the most politically sensitive issues of the nuclear talks.
Third, you want to quietly signal potential openings on your end in order to encourage voices on the other side to push for greater flexibility on their end — which they likely won't if they believe it's a lost cause. But there has to be a there-there to justify such a risk.
But isn't this going behind the back of Ukraine? Not at all. First of all, Track II negotiators are not authorized to decide anything. They aren't negotiating. They are exploring ideas and gathering intel.
Second, the information they gather is of tremendous value to the Ukrainians — particularly if the Ukrainians aren't themselves in a position to engage in such talks right now. Ukraine benefits from more, not less, info.
If anything, the most valid critique is not that these talks are happening, but why they haven't happened earlier. Because all of the points listed here were equally valid a year ago.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)
