President Donald Trump may recently have called for Ukraine and Russia to skip a ceasefire and hammer out a comprehensive peace agreement. But the conditions for that kind of deal don’t exist yet — and they may not for decades.
That’s the view of Richard Haass, the veteran diplomat whose career has included negotiating over conflicts in Cyprus, the Middle East and South Asia. Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, also chaired multiparty talks that laid the foundation for the 2014 Stormont House Agreement, which promoted further stability in Northern Ireland. He has served under four presidents, including both Republicans named George Bush.
For all the discussion of bilateral and trilateral meetings or what security guarantees could work, Haass believes it’s critical to revive the idea of a ceasefire in Ukraine.
“I think it’s a big tactical error to rule out a ceasefire and go directly to final status [issues], because it’s most likely to prolong the war and make it difficult, if not impossible, to succeed,” he said in an interview with POLITICO Magazine.
The top priority should be to stop the fighting, he argued, with the broader disagreements fueling the battles to be resolved later. Ukrainians seem to understand this, but the trick is getting Russia to go along. That may require Trump to up the pressure on Moscow, Haass says.
Haass also talked about the critical ingredients for any negotiation to end a global conflict, and he noted that despite what Trump may think, his personal relationship with Putin may not matter much at all.
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
You've been involved in a number of efforts to resolve international disputes. What are the key conditions that need to be in place ahead of opening negotiations in any conflict?
More than anything, you need protagonists — the leaders of the two sides — who see either a ceasefire or a peace as preferable to the status quo. These leaders have to be in a position to act on that. They have to be strong enough to act. There has to be some kind of a formula that is potentially viable. There has to be a process that's acceptable. But that's essentially it.
I once wrote a book about “ripeness.” There's these preconditions that tend to be necessary, and a mediator, if he has them, then he or she can work with them. If he doesn't, then he has to try to bring them about.
President Trump has gone back and forth on whether a ceasefire is a necessary precondition for a settlement between Russia and Ukraine. Do you think a ceasefire is a necessary first step, or should Russia and Ukraine focus instead on a comprehensive peace agreement?
A ceasefire is the most desirable and realistic goal at this point. And a simple ceasefire, a clean ceasefire, essentially a cessation of hostilities, separation of forces — it could be done in a New York minute. To negotiate a formal peace could take months or years, because it involves all the most difficult issues that either side wants to bring up. And by definition, final status is just that, it's final. The stakes are enormous.
I think it's a big tactical error to rule out a ceasefire and go directly to final status [issues], because it's most likely to prolong the war and make it difficult, if not impossible, to succeed.
But is there any merit to the idea of skipping the ceasefire step?
It only makes sense if you believe all the prerequisites for a formal lasting peace are there. If you believe that, then yes, you should be ambitious. But I can't see why anybody would conclude here that the prerequisites are there. The gap between Russia and Ukraine, between Putin and Zelenskyy is enormous.
But you said that one of the things that was necessary was two leaders or protagonists wanting a deal, and Putin has pushed for one.
Putin doesn't want a deal — Putin doesn't want a deal that Ukraine can accept. Putin wants a deal where Ukraine would essentially, now or in the future, cease to be an independent, sovereign country with ties to the West. So, I am skeptical in the extreme that a lasting peace could be negotiated.
Also, Putin's made it clear that, at a minimum, he wants all sorts of territorial transfers. Well, it's one thing for Zelenskyy to recognize that Russia occupies Crimea and much of the Donbas. It's something very different for Zelenskyy to sign away Ukraine's title and rights to these areas.
The biggest difference then, between a ceasefire and a peace is that in a ceasefire you don't sign away your rights to anything. You simply agree to stop the war. In a permanent peace, you've got to sign away rights, potentially to territory, to populations, you name it.
Why do you think Putin is not willing to go for a ceasefire?
At the moment, he believes that more war favors him, that time is on his side. Particularly if he believes that Zelenskyy, rather than himself, would be blamed for the failure to reach peace.
At some point, Putin might be prepared to accept a ceasefire, if, for example, sanctions were increased against him, or if there was a clear U.S. commitment to help Ukraine militarily, then Putin might reluctantly conclude that more war wouldn't give him more results. I'm not ruling out that Putin might agree to a ceasefire, but we haven't put the pressure on him to get him to that point.
When Ukraine says it needs security guarantees, how likely is it that the West can provide such guarantees, short of NATO membership? What are the odds that that piece of it will come together?
It's really difficult. If you're ruling out an Article 5 NATO membership, then what are you ruling in? And Ukraine has been burned by security guarantees given the Budapest Memorandum in 1994. The best security assurance it can get is the United States and Europe would pledge to give it what it needs for its defense. That way, it controls its own fate. If it has to depend on others, then it's a chancier gamble for Ukraine.
Obviously, a European troop presence would add a lot of weight to the security assurance, because it would mean that Mr. Putin would then be going to war not just with Ukraine, but with Europe. But it would also raise the stakes.
Western leaders have said that any settlement that granted Russia control over territory that previously belonged to Ukraine would just reward Russian aggression. But it's also unlikely Putin will give back all the land he’s seized. So how would you advise President Zelenskyy to approach a territorial settlement? What are his options?
I wouldn't advocate as a tactic going for a territorial settlement or permanent peace at the time for precisely those reasons. You don't want to set the precedent that territory can be acquired by force. You don't want to reward Putin for aggression, but Putin may demand that for a permanent peace. So again, I keep coming back to a ceasefire. It doesn't prejudice Ukraine's title to territory. It doesn't prejudice Putin's dreams of a renewed Russian Empire. All I want to do is stop the fighting.
Ceasefires in places like Cyprus and Korea have lasted for more than half a century. Ceasefires aren't perfect, but they're a hell of a lot better than continued warfare. Ceasefires can be formal or informal. It can be called an armistice, a cessation of hostilities. It's pretty much the same, though, that countries have not settled the fundamental issues that divide them. They've not necessarily even signed an agreement. What they've done is formally, or informally, stopped shooting at one another.
You're saying this is the most realistic solution to end the war right now.
You accept reality as reality. You don't accept it legally. You might declare that you are not going to seek what is rightfully yours through military means — you will seek it through diplomacy. I would keep sanctions in place because you'd want to hold out the reduction of sanctions as a reward for Russia compromising.
My guess is, if we got a ceasefire now, final status or peace talks probably wouldn't succeed for not just years, but conceivably decades — under Putin's successor or his successor's successor. And they'd be very complicated, involving populations, involving autonomous areas, involving territory, security assurances, any number of things, reparations, war crimes. All that’s too much for now.
Ukraine has come around to a ceasefire reluctantly. Ukraine is uncomfortable with this, because they worry that what is temporary could become de facto permanent. To accept a ceasefire is for Ukraine to swallow hard. This is not easy, but they are willing to do it. And the question is whether Russia is, and we'll have a real test of Russian intentions.
What previous peace negotiations do you think hold the most relevant lessons for the conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
Well, I already mentioned two de facto ceasefires — Cyprus and the Korean peninsula. And in neither one of those have you resolved final status issues. Israel and Syria have mostly had a de facto ceasefire since the 1973 war. They haven't established peace. They haven't normalized relations. But they've largely managed the situation fairly well.
Final status is brutally — I mean, you had final status succeed in the Middle East, say, between Israel and Egypt, and Israel and Jordan, but it required, in the case of Israel and Egypt, a massive territorial transfer. In this case, Israel, which gained the territory in the Six Day War, the ‘67 war, was willing to give it back. That's the opposite of what we see here, because Russia has gained the territory and it's not willing to give it back.
You have very few peace agreements that deal with final status issues, absent a total war with a one-sided outcome, things like World War II. Most of the time, you have ambiguous situations that don't lend themselves to final status issues.
What is more important, the personalities of the people at the table or the situation on the battlefield?
The answer’s both, and I don't mean to cop out.
Ultimately, negotiating tables reflect battlefield realities and dynamics, so people don't opt for compromise at a negotiating table if they think six more months or six more years of fighting will give them what they want at an acceptable cost.
The most important thing is that people, whether it's enthusiastically or reluctantly, conclude that compromise at the negotiating table is preferable to continuing war. You've got to bring them to that point, and then you need political leaders who are in a position to both agree to that and make it stick. It's not so much personalities. It's really the political calculations of the leaders of the various sides.
But don't you think that when it comes to Putin, he is unusually fixated on Ukraine, and maybe not as susceptible to some of the battlefield and even economic realities. Isn't there something a bit different about this guy?
I wouldn't say it's different, but it's characteristic. If you go back to the summer of 2021 and Putin's so-called essay or op-ed, he obviously sees Ukraine as central to Russia's future. It's part of the Russian Empire identity and central to his own legacy, which makes it extraordinarily difficult for him to agree, in a permanent way, that Ukraine will be separate and different from Russia. So yes, it makes it very hard for Putin to agree to a final status or a permanent agreement that doesn't give him a great deal. It ought not to rule out a ceasefire, because then he could say, this is simply a tactical pause.
I think for Putin, a ceasefire would be preferable to a final status agreement that didn't give him enough to justify the war. He could defend a ceasefire by saying, Russia is going to regroup and look at all of its options and so forth. Ukraine could use a ceasefire to regroup and again grow stronger so Russia wouldn't be tempted to restart the war.
What exactly counts as a peace agreement in the first place? The reason I ask is because Trump is already claiming to have ended at least six wars, and I'm wondering if he's just defining words differently than I am.
He is. The phrase “peace agreement” or “peace treaty” implies a degree of formality, permanence. What President Trump may have played a role in — this dispute, say, between India and Pakistan recently, whatever else it was, it was not a peace agreement. He essentially encouraged both sides to stand down, to encourage, essentially, a cessation of hostilities. But nothing was decided about the fate of Kashmir or anything else.
With Israel and Iran, the president claims peace there. Well, no, there's no peace between Israel and Iran. At most there’s a temporary ceasefire, but I don't know anyone who thinks it's going to last. I expect that Iran is going to try to rebuild its nuclear program. Israel will feel compelled at some point to attack it, and I expect, at some point, Iran's proxies will do what proxies do, and attack civilian targets. These aren't peace agreements. Peace agreements are what Israel and Egypt have, or Israel and Jordan, where you put to rest all the issues that have divided you, and you do so formally.
It's kind of depressing. You're talking about Israel and Egypt and Israel and Jordan. Yeah, they're not at war, but they're not exactly best friends.
Yeah, peace agreements don't have to mean warmth. They could be out of calculation. Countries can make peace not because of what they're attracted by. They make a calculation that, on balance, they're better off if certain issues are put to rest. By and large, you can't legislate or write into law friendship and affection or cooperation. That has to simply arise naturally. What you can do in agreements is keep armies separate or rule out the use of force, or agree on territorial or population dispositions. You can settle negatives, but you can't achieve positives by treaty.
They're peace agreements, not peace, love and harmony agreements, I guess.
Exactly. To play on your theme, you can settle matters of the head but not the heart.
If you're Kyiv, what points of leverage do you have over Moscow right now? And if you're Moscow, what points of leverage do you have over Kyiv aside from your ability to keep up strikes on the battlefield?
Left to their own devices, Russia has more leverage over Ukraine than vice versa. That's because Russia is more self-sufficient, it has three-and-a-half times the population, has a larger arms industry, and it has a fairly large capacity to pay a price for the war and very few avenues for protest. It's not a level playing field. They're not evenly matched.
Kyiv has the leverage that comes from having mounted a robust — stunningly robust — defense for the last three and a half years, but it needs help. The leverage it has is leverage that it gains from the Europeans and, above all, from the United States.
The biggest question is what in particular the United States will do to level the playing field? Because Russia has structural advantages, and Ukraine, left to its own devices, can't match them. Europe can help Ukraine. But again, even Europe plus Ukraine may not be enough. The real question is what the United States is prepared to do to see, not that Ukraine wins, not that Ukraine liberates its territory by force, but that Ukraine doesn't lose. And that's well within our capacity.
How much do personal relationships matter in these talks, especially if the ultimate decision-makers are people like Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Putin doesn't even like to say Zelenskyy’s name.
Personal relations matter very little — they matter at the margins. Persons matter, though. Putin matters, Trump matters, Zelenskyy matters, but their relationships with one another don't matter a whole lot. Putin has his goals. Trump has his calculations. Particularly in top-heavy systems, the person matters the most, because he or she is pretty free then to design and carry out policy as they see fit.
Virtually every [U.S.] president exaggerates the impact or the importance of personal relationships. FDR did it with Stalin. George W. Bush and others have done it with Putin. Biden often said foreign policy was about personal relationships. In my experience, no. Foreign policy is much more about what countries and leaders see as their national interest and what they're willing and able to do in pursuit of that. The personal relationship thing is badly exaggerated.
What about this idea of how much time you have? Putin is in charge basically indefinitely, whereas Trump, in theory, is going to be out of office in a few years. How does that affect things?
It's a factor. All leaders think about what they can accomplish on their watch. Putin is thinking about what he has to do to get Ukraine under Russia's thumb on his watch. [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping is thinking about what he has to do to bring Taiwan into the fold on his watch. Donald Trump is thinking about his legacy as a peacemaker and so forth. Everybody has a timeline. It can lead to either patience or impatience, depending upon how many years somebody thinks he has.
Aside from going for a ceasefire, if you had a chance to offer some advice to President Trump as he tries to end this conflict, especially drawing on your experience from the past, what would you tell him?
I would tell President Trump his goal of bringing about peace is a good goal. His going-in position that success cannot be defined by Ukraine militarily liberating its territory was the right approach. Where he's gone wrong — he’s in danger of sabotaging his own policy by not doing enough to help Ukraine. He has got to change Putin's calculations, and the best way to do it is by open-ended American military and intelligence support for Ukraine, possibly paired with some sanctions against Russia. He’s got to change Putin's calculus, and if he does that, he can get the peace that he so clearly wants, and that Europe so clearly needs.
The most depressing thing about this conversation is this idea that a real peace could be decades away. If you're a young person in Russia and Ukraine, how do you feel about that?
Let me challenge that that's depressing. Just as easy as a takeaway: We could get a ceasefire quite quickly, without prejudicing any long-term goals. Both Ukraine and Russia could thrive if they had a ceasefire and could go about a lot of life normally.
Ideally, the day will come again — it might be decades off — when all the final status issues could be resolved. But if the war stopped, sanctions against Russia were reduced and so forth, both societies, both countries, could have an incomparably better future than the one they're facing right now.
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