How to Negotiate With Russia (Putin) on the Problem of Ukraine & Crimea
Russia, as it always seems, is in the recent news cycle and this time, it’s about its threats towards Ukraine and Crimea. This blog will try to analyze the standoff from an academic standpoint, in particular, how the west can counter Russia’s demands through negotiation using tricks from the East and West.
Let’s take a look at the history and current situation in Crimea. Russia has always viewed Crimea as one of its own territories due to a large presence of Russian-speaking natives, not to mention that as recently as 1954, Crimea actually belonged to the U.S.S.R “legally”, when it gave Crimea away to Ukraine. To gain back control of Crimea, Russia sent armed forces into Crimea forcefully in 2014, making a bet that the west wouldn’t strongly react against it. The problem for the west is, Russia was right – the west didn’t do anything significant other than verbal condemnation and imposing economic sanctions.
As of now, the current situation is worsening from the west’s point of view – Russia is threatening to further invade Ukraine and is demanding formal recognition of Crimea from the West. The west on the other hand, in my point of view, still doesn’t know how to formulate a coordinated response.
Before talking about how the West can negotiate with Russia, let’s analyze what the West and Russia each want.
The West, most importantly, would like Russia to stop interfering with Ukrainian politics, namely giving back Crimea to Ukrainian rule, and removing its troops near the Russia-Ukraine border. In essence, the West would like to go back in time before the 2014 Crimea Annexation, and demand Russia leave Ukraine as it was prior to 2014. The way things look however, with Biden being viewed as one of the weakest US presidents in history, it seems that the West would not get what it wants. Let’s dive deeper later into how the West can strategically get themselves out of this “hole”.
Russia, obviously, would like formal recognition of Crimea from the West, but more importantly, is making a list of demands to NATO related to Russia’s security by extension. Since Russia is located right next to Ukraine, Russia has strong motivations to protect its own safety by forcing NATO to agree to a list of security guarantees regarding Ukraine. For example, Russia has demanded a ban on Ukraine entering NATO, as well as a minimum distance between Russia and where the frontline of NATO’s troops can be at in relation to Russia. Russia also makes an aggressive demand, whereby NATO cannot hold drills without previous agreement from Russia to Ukraine. The underlying reasons are quite clear as to why Russia is making these demands, which is based on the principle of securing Russia’s safety. However, Russia views that it has to increase its sphere of influence into nearby countries so as to guarantee its safety. The west unfortunately, from Russia’s point of view, views this as an aggressive act of annexation. Another reason why Russia is occupying Crimea, is because Crimea has a ton of natural resources, including more than 2.5 million tons of crude oil.
Based on this current situation, neither party seems willing to take a step backwards, hence this deadlock. In my opinion, the West must tighten up its line to takes and create leverage, so as to force Russia to adopt a more lenient approach. The problem for the West is that Russia is not afraid of the economic sanctions – it must realize that increasing economic sanctions may have very little effect on deterring Russia’s aggressive actions. To negotiate with countries like Russia that are tactically astute, the West has no choice but to increase or create more leverage. One way for the West to do so is to look at and indirectly tell Russia the range of military options they have. That Russia does not think the US would ever use its military force against Russia is one of the main reasons why Russia has the audacity to annex Crimea. This does not have to be a full scale military invasion but perhaps attacks on Russia’s natural reserves. The bottom line, the West must not be deterred by Russia’s retaliations, since in my judgment, Russia will not be deterred by simple threats. They view the West’s leadership as weak and incompetent, and one of Russia’s leverages over the US, albeit psychological only, is that it has very little moral accountability by invading Ukraine, whereas the US claims it is the leader of the free world.
Secondly, the US should stand firm on its believes. Before negotiating with its adversary, they should have a strong think about what values they represent, which is to maintain world order and not let rogue countries believe that there are no consequences in invasions. The implications of failure to deter Russia’s invasion could be huge, since this may send out a message to other countries that they couldn’t count on the US for help. Russia is cleverly using this as leverage against the US. The US has its world’s leadership position at stake here, and the bottom line is, if it does not take sufficient action to protect Ukraine from Russia, it may lose its remaining moral high ground in the world. In negotiations, upholding one’s own values do matter, otherwise, what are you negotiating for? This may be the belief that the US is lacking, which Russia is taking advantage of.
Thirdly, threats do work in negotiations. On the other hand, being too gentlemanly does not work most of the time in negotiations. At the end of the day, negotiation is not just about who has objective leverage and power, but who can win the battle of the minds. Negotiation is part of psychological warfare, which countries like Russia and China are very good at. Russia feels very little pressure from the west despite the economic sanctions imposed, which poses great food of thought for the west. What actually is needed to get Russia to retreat? Again, the option of military threats and follow-up actions to carry out these threats must be looked at. The funny thing is, even if the US is objectively the world’s largest military power, it somehow doesn’t have the ability to bring Russia to accept its demands. Therefore, my conclusion is that the West is not identifying and hitting Russia’s main pain points, hence Russia does not feel threatened and is allowing Russia to gain the upper hand in psychological warfare.
In my opinion, Russia has every chance to invade Ukraine at this moment in time, and frankly, I would be surprised if it doesn’t. The reason is because the US is not showing enough strength, and is currently busy dealing with multiple other threats at the same time, such as China. What the US needs to do is to focus on winning over the psychological battle with Russia first – making Russia understand that the US is not “all talk no action”. Sometimes, fists, not words are needed, and the US must be mentally prepared for an escalation before calming things down.
To sum up, our recommendation for the West is to reflect on years of failed deterrence and simply, man up. They have allowed Russia to dictate things far too long, and economic sanctions do not seem enough. Military threats and actions to follow up on such threats must be done to stop the situation from escalating. From Russia’s point of view, it is full of confidence that they can further annex parts of Ukraine, which spells trouble for the West – when your enemy is full of confidence, you may have lost the psychological battle already without knowing. Even if you win in the end, the consequences you may have to suffer may be a lot bigger than had you realized the early signs of danger.
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