Where’s the stick?
If you just have a carrot, does diplomacy die?
Just before Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Anchorage two weeks ago, our analyst, Soviet-born Alexander Smukler of Montclair, said that the eventual outcome of the war Putin started when he invaded Ukraine more than three years ago was less important to both aging rulers than their legacy. He predicted that they both hoped — more or less coherently, given their intellectual differences — to be part of a Yalta 2, an Olympian-level summit, with China’s Xi Jinping, where they divided the world’s spheres of influence for the next very many years.
Overwhelmingly, most observers — 95 percent of them, Mr. Smukler estimated — had negative views of the way that Trump, who had called for the meeting and hosted it — had orchestrated it, and Mr. Smukler agreed. Looking at the fighter jets that streaked across the sky to welcome the Russian warlord, and the way U.S. soldiers kneeled to unroll a red carpet for him to stride down as the American president applauded him. “Most western commentators agree that Trump lost, and gave Putin the chance to shield himself,” Mr. Smukler said. “Not to present himself as a dictator and an aggressor and a war criminal, but as the most important figure in the world.”
Mr. Smukler also noted that Putin was accompanied by three planeloads of people who were supposed to participate in the meetings in what was meant to be a three-day summit. None of that happened — even the lunch to follow the principals’ meeting was canceled, after a press conference where Putin spoke first and neither man took questions — but the people on the plane all were sanctioned. None normally would be allowed in the United States, or anywhere else in the Western world.
Mr. Smukler also pointed out, as he had before the meeting, that one of the advantages of having the meeting in Anchorage is that Putin, a war criminal according to the International Criminal Court, did not have to fly over any countries in which he could be arrested. Such a trip could have been arranged, but it takes time. This meeting was organized very quickly.
Although Mr. Smukler does not disagree with the idea that Trump lost face and Putin gained it, “when I saw the video of Putin’s arrival and Trump applauding him, it reminded me of the video of Trump arriving in Qatar and Saudi Arabia,” he said. “As far as I understand protocol, it seemed that Trump’s people decided to mirror it almost exactly, except without the camels.
“It means that Trump and his people are ready to treat Putin as a kind of Eastern potentate.” It is also Trump’s style — gawdy, sparkling, overlaid with gilt, as reflected in the way he’s decorated the Oval Office. (Many other commentators — not Mr. Smukler here! — have described the presidential sanctum as looking like Liberace threw up in it.)
Mr. Smukler thinks that the entire meeting was based on a mistake. “Trump really does want to stop the war” — it would pave his path toward Yalta 2, and toward the Nobel peace prize he’s made clear he yearns for — and he “was completely misled by Steve Witkoff.” That’s the president’s Jewish real estate friend from Long Island who’s become his all-around envoy and negotiator in Russia and the Middle East.
“This summit demonstrated that this guy does not understand what he’s doing,” Mr. Smukler said. “He came back to the White House after his famous breakfast in Moscow” — that was when he ate, with (metaphoric) relish, at a fancy restaurant before going on to the Kremlin to meet with Putin, without the backing of all the State Department staff who normally would be at such a meeting — “with what obviously was the wrong message.
“This summit was organized in a mind-blowingly short period. It is almost impossible to think of any example of such a high-level summit organized so quickly, just in days. So everybody thought that there would be an extremely important result reached at the summit. Trump thought that he would shake hands on a deal with Putin at the summit.
“But as we know, nothing happened in Anchorage.”
Of course, Mr. Smukler added, it is entirely possible that Witkoff received and transmitted exactly the message he was given in Moscow, and that either Putin chose to mislead him or Trump chose to act as if he’d been misled.
“It might have been more important for the Russians to orchestrate the summit, for internal reasons, than it was to reach a peace agreement,” he said. “And for both presidents, it was more important to speak about the future, about the way to Yalta 2, than it was to reach a peace agreement.”
Still, Mr. Smukler said, despite the lack of agreement, “after the summit, I was shocked to learn that Putin’s position had changed.” It had softened. “He was the aggressor, he started the war for no reason. Now his demands are completely different than they had been.”
Putin used to talk about the need for denazification in Ukraine. “Nobody talks about that anymore,” Mr. Smukler said. “That’s completely out.” (It never was a real thing anyway; nobody thought that the government run by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, was Nazi in any way.) “So is talk about demilitarization.”
Far more surprisingly, Mr. Smukler continued, “is that Putin isn’t talking about taking Kherson or Zaporizhzhia any more either.” Those are two major industrial cities in Ukraine and provincial capitals; Putin wanted them so badly that he had the Russian constitution changed to declare them as part of Russia. “I was shocked that Putin dropped the demand for those cities,” Mr. Smukler said.
Instead, he’s demanding two other cities, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. “They are the only two large cities left unoccupied in the Donetsk region, fortresses, and they are the most important strategic points in Ukraine’s defense line.
“Now Putin is requesting that the Ukrainian army withdraw its troops from the area and give it to Russia. That would complete the Russian occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk.
“It would mean that Ukraine would give Russia 20 to 22 percent of its territory, and lose one of its most industrial parts forever.”
“In return, Putin would agree to freeze the frontline and sign a peace treaty with Ukraine.
On the question of a security guarantee for Ukraine, Putin’s position has modified slightly, Mr. Smukler said. “He is not demanding to demilitarize the state. He accepts that Ukraine will have an army, and he is willing to participate in providing it, together with European partners and the United States.
“To me, this reflects a huge change in Putin’s position. And although I am not 100 percent sure of this — everyone is interpreting this differently — it seems to me that Putin is giving up on the idea that Ukraine will be under Russian supervision, and he is admitting that he lost Ukraine for what Russians call the Russian world.”
Beyond that, though, Mr. Smukler agrees with the consensus that “Trump gave Putin the opportunity to walk out of the corner he put himself into.
“Trump gave Putin a huge carrot. He is saying that if you find a way to stop the war, I will help you get a pardon for the huge mistake you made.”
It’s all about carrots as opposed to sticks, Mr. Smukler said; it’s the two classic ways to get a donkey to move. Trump is offering Putin carrots; Putin offers Trump some too. But in this case, Putin is donkey, because the move has to come from him.
“I’m not talking about the thousands of people dying on the front lines,” Mr. Smukler said. “Or the citizens being bombed at night. Or all the suffering that’s going on.”
He’s talking about the carrots — “the chance to get out of international isolation and feel himself equal to the most powerful leaders in the world, and be treated like a king.”
“Trump didn’t find any weakness in Putin,” Mr. Smukler said. “Putin is not weak. But he found something that Putin will swallow.
“Remember, Putin is turning 73, and his internal problems are growing rapidly. He understands that the unlimited cannon fodder he was sending into the war” — the criminals and the people from rural areas enticed by signing bonuses and the North Koreans and everyone else who had been lured or tricked or ordered into the line of fire — “isn’t unlimited any more, and volunteer recruitment is down, and he’s not paying what he said he would, because he can’t. So he is seriously thinking about how on the one hand he can announce victory in his war against the organized West for internal purposes, and to sit on the political version of Olympus with Trump and Xi.
“I think that is a huge accomplishment of Trump’s advisors although I am not sure Trump planned it or understood it.” The accomplishment is to cause Putin to soften his position, albeit mildly.
But, Mr. Smukler continued, “Trump keeps feeding Putin with lots of carrots, because it now is totally clear that he has no sticks. He has no power to force Putin to stop.
When we think of the meeting that Trump had with Zelensky and seven other European leaders in the White House three days later, we should remember how unusual that was. “People don’t necessarily understand what it means for those leaders to express such support for Zelensky that they decided to fly to Washington to go to the White House at such short notice,” Mr. Smukler said. “I have not come across any other instance of that.
“All of them” — these were the heads of Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, Finland, NATO, and the European Commission— “have lives that are scheduled in minutes. And they canceled everything to go to the White House to support Zelensky. They do not want to leave him alone with the Trump administration, so they jump on a plane. It’s absolutely unheard of, and I have to give them huge amounts of credit.
“I also have to give huge amounts of credit to Zelensky, who is winning the diplomatic game. This second meeting was an enormous victory for Zelensky, and he demonstrated not only leadership but also how smart and flexible he is. He’s like a cat, who always lands on all four feet. Not only on the military front, where he has kept going against one of the world’s strongest armies for four years, but he also is able to mobilize such a distinguished group of supporters on the diplomatic front.
“Zelensky and the other leaders obviously explained to Trump that it’s good that he’s feeding Putin carrots. To protect his legacy, they have to discuss details. Probably Ukraine already agreed that it will not become a part of NATO.
“That would be easy, because Trump will be in power for three more years, and during that time the United States would never approve Ukraine for NATO membership.”
AI-generated, but it’s the image they want to show. (Screenshot)
Mr. Smukler thinks that the territorial disputes eventually will be resolved, and probably to Russia’s benefit, but the longer the war goes on, the less likely it is that either country will end up with anything but rubble where the cities used to stand.
The major point is Ukraine’s security guarantees, and that will have to be negotiated, Mr. Smukler said. To be obvious, it’s not an easy problem; Ukraine is right next to Russia. “That’s what the European leaders and Zelensky were trying to explain to Trump.”
Back in Russia, Putin has been riding high on his evident success with Trump. “Russian news sources say that he won an enormous battle,” Mr. Smukler said. “Putin is enjoying internal glorification, because Trump gave him the chance to do it. That’s the huge carrot Trump gave him.
“But the war will continue, and people are dying, and Zelensky is reluctant to give up Sloviansk and Kramatorsk. I have no idea how it will be resolved, because Trump really used up all his resources.” Trump is all out of carrots, “and now it’s time for the stick, but Trump has no stick.”
But Trump can hold back Ukraine — and in a way that’s not clearly visible.
“Several important sources say that Trump has agreed to send long-range missiles to Ukraine,” Mr. Smukler said. “I think of them as more medium range; they can go about 450 miles, similar to the Storm Shadows the Brits provide. They should arrive in six to eight weeks.
“But this is not going to work, because although Trump gave permission to send them, since June the Department of Defense has not allowed them to be used without getting permission from Hegseth.” That’s Pete Hegseth, the former Fox weekend news host whom Donald Trump named and the Senate confirmed as head of the DoD. “Hegseth does not allow them.
“It’s very interesting that the Trump administration very quietly created this extremely bureaucratic system to extend the kill chain.” That’s the military process that goes from identifying a target to destroying it. “It’s been extended by extraordinary lengths. So if the Ukrainians have identified a target, and can use U.S.-supplied ATACM missiles, they have to ask the Pentagon for permission. They have to ask Hegseth.
“Several very knowledgeable sources say that Hegseth never gave permission. That is changing Ukrainian cooperation with the United States.
“Before, there was an agreement that after the United States supplies the weaponry, the Ukrainian general staff can decide when to use it. The Ukrainians were working hard to decrease the length of the kill chain, but the Trump administration was quietly, secretly working to increase it. And that makes the long-range missiles worthless.”
The result of all of this is that now, Trump has no sticks. Just carrots. He wants to end the war so he can get his Nobel peace prize, his validation, his elevation.
There’s yet another problem that Trump faces in dealing with the war in Ukraine. “During the last two weeks, Trump realized that whatever he’s trying to accomplish with Putin did not increase his popularity or his rating in the Unted States,” Mr. Smukler said. “That tells me that very soon, Trump will lose interest in the negotiations.” The war in Ukraine is not of primary importance to him, except as it affects him. But it is overwhelmingly important to Putin.
Remember those three planeloads of people flown to Alaska, Mr. Smukler said. “They were chosen to show how powerful Putin is. It’s to show how he’s violating all the sanctions. These people weren’t supposed to be in the U.S. They couldn’t get visas to get here. They would be arrested.
“But Putin wanted to demonstrate once again that sanctions are nothing. Smoke and mirrors. When the leaders want to lift the sanctions, they can do that.
Sanctions are not going to end a bloody war.
“Trump’s threats about secondary sanctions are bull,” Mr. Smukler said. “Putin already understands that. We are watching international diplomacy done with carrots. We have no idea how this will work out. History will show us.”
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