Russian negotiations – United States: mafia art of the deal in Witkoff – L’Express sauce

On the eve of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, President George W. Bush was unaware of the Muslim world and Mesopotamia. The Texan had thus discovered, during a meeting at the White House, the difference between Sunnis and Shiites. “Ah well, I thought the Iraqis were all Muslims!” He said. Designated by Donald Trump to negotiate peace between Ukraine and Russia, the real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, for his part, told his two recent visits to Vladimir Putin with a disarming candor. On the journalist’s set – Trumpist and Poutinist – Tucker Carlson, he detailed the words exchanged with this “super intelligent type” that “we can believe in word”.

Thus, after the attempted assassination against Trump, “Putin went to pray for his friend [Trump] In his private chapel “, marveled Witkoff.” Putin also ordered a large Russian painter a portrait of Trump “to offer it to the White House. A” so great “attention, according to the American for whom the Kremlin Master is not a bad guy”. Finally, he adopted all the elements of Moscow to legitimize the invasion of Ukraine. Russia on the four occupied provinces – whose names he ignores – are “legitimate”.

Multimillionaire having made a fortune in real estate – like Trump -, Steve Witkoff is certainly a regular with difficult negotiations with the New York mafia – like Trump. But one thing is to master “the art of the deal” in the adulterated environment of New York real estate; Another is to conduct discussions with experienced negrony negotiators at the KGB school. Witkoff, like Bush before him about Islam, seems to discover the Russian world. The posture of the American administration against the Kremlin can thus be defined in three words: naivety, ignorance, arrogance. Naivety vis-à-vis a “tsar” hyperexperimated to power for twenty-five years. Ignorance of imperial history and the Russian psyche. Arrogance to proclaim yourself “peacemaker in twenty-four hours”.

You have to review The godfather by Francis Ford Coppola

However, there is another reading of the situation. Because, according to negotiation professionals, what Witkoff on television says has absolutely no importance. Real diplomatic work begins when the cameras are extinguished. To understand your posture, you may have to review The godfatherby Francis Ford Coppola. We see mafia leaders who, in public, kiss and congratulate themselves. It is a question that nobody loses their face. This does not prejudge what happens behind the scenes … According to this version, Steve Witkoff would be a skilled negotiator adapted to the circumstances. The first stage of any negotiation is indeed to understand the interests of the opposing party, to take into account its needs, to measure its ambitions and its red lines, possibly flattering it – at least granting it marks of respect. It does not matter whether the representative of the camp opposite, that is to say Vladimir Putin, either sympathetic or not.

Anyway, the war entered a new step. It is no longer only military and geopolitical but also diplomatic. “Each party wants to pay the lowest possible political price,” wrote George Friedman in GEOPOLITICAL FUTURES. “Russia wanted to recover Ukraine to have a buffer with the West. The United States did not want Russia to be NATO border. The war took place and it seems that Russia has already obtained its buffer area in eastern Ukraine, even if it is smaller than what it wanted. As for the United States, they want to end the war.” These are the terms of the discussion.

The difficulty is due to the “kick in the anthill” dear to Donald Trump implies that the American president wants rapid results. Faced with this, the approach of the Russians is contradictory: imprint of oriental patience, they think they have time with them and have no sense of urgency to save the lives of their own soldiers. Sacrifier still ten thousand, even a hundred thousand, does not cause any mood in Vladimir Putin. Negotiations are in their infancy and could last a long time. For the record, those of the Vietnam War, concluded by the Paris peace agreements in January 1973, had lasted … five years.