Whatever you think about Donald Trump, he’s impossible to ignore and boy doesn’t he get a ton of press. In the past few weeks, we have continued to see his negotiation position being one of, I’ll try to take what I want and will display a total disregard for the other party’s needs.
The recent announcements on Ukraine are a case in point and regardless of where you are on Trump’s politics the way he operates goes way beyond anything that would be considered realistic and constructive, let alone from someone seeking to understand his thinking as a negotiator. In the past week or so we have seen him meet with President Putin in an attempt to start a dialogue to stop the war in Ukraine, then followed by a meeting with President Zelenskyy. Without any more context, this order does suggest who Trump thinks is his closest ally.
Negotiation is underpinned by a framework, which seeks to determine an order to the journey and this giving a negotiator of where they are and what they should do next. Whilst we will never know what planning takes place within Trump’s team, there is a sense that most of what he does is off the cuff and originates in his own head. The announcement on Gaza is an example of this. In planning we should seek to understand what concessions we have that can be used in the negotiation to get us things that are of greater importance to us. That after the meeting with Putin, Trump would publicly state that it was unlikely that Ukraine would be able to recover the territory captured by Russia in this (almost to the day) 3-year-old conflict, is a significant unilateral concession shifting the power in the favour of Russia and has caused huge consternation amongst Ukrainians both within and outside the country. Concessions are typically low-cost to you, which is certainly not the case for the Ukrainian people.
Trump has also branded Zelenskyy as a ‘dictator without elections’ and stated that he has done a ‘terrible job’. I’ll leave you to decide whether this is language more suitable to the Russian leader than the Ukrainian’. And all this before we get to his demand of taking 50% (estimated at $400bn) of Ukraine’s reserves from natural resources, ports and infrastructure in perpetuity, which has caused consternation and panic in Kyiv. An interesting contrast to the Marshall Plan investment of $13.3bn in Europe signed off by President Truman in 1948, which is the equivalent of £170 TRILLION in today’s money.
In other but related news, Trump has recently posted on social media calling himself ‘king’ in his administration’s decision to rescind New York City’s congestion pricing programme.
One of the things that are often overlooked by negotiators is the balance of power. Trump’s decision-making suggests that he thinks he has ultimate power, an assessment of US diplomacy over the years suggests that this is unlikely to be the case. The UK’s Kier Starmer has sought to address the current power imbalance by offering to deploy British troops in Ukraine to help enforce a peace deal, whilst still recognising that a US ‘backstop’ is needed to ensure that Russia does not invade in the future.
Certainly, challenging times ahead…
