Stop Talking About Talks With Putin
The Ukrainians know he won’t give up anything
Yesterday thirty progressive American politicians wrote a strange letter to President Biden both urging him to promote talks with Putin and supporting Biden’s military aid to Ukraine.
It really reads as though they want things both ways.
I identify as progressive, as anyone who reads my stuff knows. But I am a pragmatic progressive, which means that I know that idealism has its limits. Vladimir Putin is a war criminal on a scale not seen since Pol Pot or Hitler. You do not negotiate with men like that, ever.
Why? Because there is a thing known as ‘Soviet style negotiation’ as described in the classic book on the topic titled Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury. A Soviet style negotiator lays down their position and never deviates from it. Not one concession, not one compromise.
It’s not negotiation at all, it is the appearance of negotiation while they continue to do bad things.
The NATO nations hold all the cards here and we have no reason to compromise with a brutal murderer. In fact we have an obligation to support Ukraine without conditions, and they do not want to talk to Putin. They know him too well.
