Backdoor Negotiations Over Ukraine Would Be a Disaster

Skyrocketing costs for fuel and food in the global south due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are spurring mediation offers between Kyiv and Moscow from China, the African Union, and even Saudi Arabia. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has welcomed these initiatives, both to woo support from countries that have not condemned Russia and because the Biden administration seems to genuinely believe the oft-repeated but untrue cliché that all wars end in negotiation. The White House keeps saying the United States will not negotiate over Ukraine’s head—but encouraging mediation risks repeating the mistake of Trump and Biden policy in Afghanistan: delegitimizing a government the United States is supposed to be supporting.

The U.S. desire to abandon Afghanistan led to a bad deal with the Taliban over the heads of the Afghan government that the United States spent more than 20 years and $2 trillion fostering. Wanting an end to U.S. involvement, the Trump administration negotiated directly with the Taliban—a terrorist organization—agreeing that U.S. forces would withdraw within 14 months in return for the Taliban “preventing terrorism” and not attacking U.S. troops. Both the Trump and Biden administrations continued with the abandonment of Afghanistan despite the Taliban not honoring the terms of the agreement, leaving the Kabul government further delegitimized and fighting a politically and militarily revived Taliban without U.S. support.

Today, there is a justifiable fear among Ukrainians and the United States’ European allies that the cost of supporting Ukraine, the political effort required to sustain congressional and public support (of which the administration has put in far too little), and the risk of escalation with Russia may cause Washington to abandon Kyiv to an ill-judged peace effort that threatens Ukraine’s long-term stability.

None of these three actors—China, the AU, or Saudi Arabia—is a reliable partner in a peace effort. China claims that it is a neutral party because it never joined the Western sanctions against Russia or publicly provided military aid to either nation. Yet, from the start of the war, Chinese media and official statements have been heavily anti-NATO and uncritically accepting of Russian narratives. Beijing portrays Kyiv as a naive victim of Western manipulation.

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The Chinese leadership’s actions have backed this up. In March, Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Moscow to reaffirm China and Russia’s “no limits” partnership. According to Russian intelligence intercepted by the United States, Beijing approved sending covert shipments of lethal aid to Russia, and China is now the world’s largest purchaser of Russian oil.

When China makes overtures, they may be serving Russian purposes—hoping to clench a mediated peace that would leave Russia in control of Ukrainian territory and impose harsh conditions on Kyiv. In May, China’s special envoy for the Ukraine war, Li Hui, visited Ukraine to promote Chinese peace mediation. During the visit, Russia began a series of missile bombardments targeting Kyiv, which may have been an effort to push Ukraine to the negotiating table with Chinese mediation. However, the campaign only highlighted Ukraine’s strength after Ukrainian forces shot down every Russian missile approaching Kyiv.

China also wants to play a “constructive role” in Ukrainian postwar reconstruction; create some distance between Beijing and Moscow; position itself as a peace broker in contrast to a bellicose West; showcase its construction expertise and cash on hand; and create fissures between the United States and Europe. Given the record of China’s Belt and Road projects, the opacity of Chinese involvement would be disastrous for anti-corruption efforts so important to Ukraine’s future.

While China put forward a specific 12-point plan, the AU and Saudi Arabia have offered generic support for peace. The Chinese plan includes immediate benefits for the Russian government and disregards Ukraine’s basic demands for peace. The plan calls for “respecting the sovereignty of all countries” without demanding the removal of Russian troops from Ukraine; “abandoning the Cold War mentality” in a direct rebuke of NATO expansionism; and “stopping [the] unilateral sanctions” that have effectively isolated the Russian economy.

The neutrality of the AU countries is compromised by South Africa’s support for Russia, which includes naval exercises together with Russia and China, and its refusal to honor the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Pretoria also sees a unique opportunity in Ukraine to upend the United States’ position as the guarantor of global stability by promoting the AU and BRICS countries as suitable alternatives.

The Saudi government has usefully negotiated some Ukrainian-Russian prisoner releases and is working for the return of Ukrainian children forcibly taken by Russia. However, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s justification of his country’s refusal to comply with efforts to sanction Russia reveal it, too, to be an interested party. Saudi animus toward the United States has been on the rise since the Trump administration faltered at retaliating for Iranian attacks on Saudi oil facilities in 2019, but it has burgeoned in the Biden administration. The Saudis now are not only propping up the price of oil beneficially for Russia (and over White House objections), but they are allowing China to pay for its oil imports in renminbi and are threatening the Biden administration with Chinese bases on Saudi territory.

More problematic than the proclivities of potential mediators is the simple fact that the Ukrainian people do not want this war to end in a negotiated settlement. Polling in early February found that 97 percent of Ukrainians believe they will defeat Russia, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has emphasized that any settlement must include a “withdrawal of Russian troops from our entire independent land,” including Crimea. Ukrainians understand that territorial integrity is the basis of state sovereignty. Sacrificing any Ukrainian land in a settlement would be a resounding Russian victory. Yet U.S. officials have pressed Zelensky to profess openness to negotiation on the argument that refusing advantages Russia diplomatically. They conflate negotiation with war termination.

As political scientist Roy Licklider has noted, 85 percent of civil wars end with a military victory, not a negotiated political settlement. Large data modeling of conflict by the late Lincoln Bloomfield at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirms the findings. Historian Geoffrey Blainey conclusively debunks the notion in his seminal The Causes of War, demonstrating that moderate treaties—that is, negotiated settlements to end wars—increase the likelihood of future wars. He concludes that “a severe treaty of peace was more likely to prolong the peace; and there is a powerful reason why that should appear to be so. A harsh treaty was mostly the outcome of a war which ended in a decisive victory. And, it will be suggested later, a decisive victory tends to promote a more enduring peace.”

In a regular conflict, refusing negotiation might seem truculent. But amid an invasion by a country committing wholesale war crimes and threatening a potential genocide, it’s simply realistic. Pressing Ukraine to support negotiations or accept mediation offers condones aggression by requiring the victim to compromise with the perpetrator. A better answer would be to insist that negotiations penalize Russia for aggression, war crimes, destruction of the Ukrainian economy, and damage to international agreements on freedom of navigation. That approach would strengthen the international order that the Biden administration so often claims to be upholding. Even if Russia refused to provide compensation, making use of the $300 billion in Russian state funds frozen in Western central banks would provide a solid start.

Ceding the mediator’s role is contrary to both U.S. and Ukrainian interests. Russia seems to consider itself a great power like the United States, and to have a less powerful country as mediator would likely result in Russia being less likely to make concessions. It would be a mistake to cede diplomatic space to U.S. adversaries rather than allow the inevitable Ukrainian victors to dictate how this war ends. The failures from the Doha Agreement began when the United States decided to abandon Afghanistan. Forcing Kyiv into peace negotiations mediated by the Chinese, the AU, or the Saudis, rather than give it the support it needs to defeat Russia, risks winning the war and losing the peace.