Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump may have had discussions about ending the conflict in Ukraine, but it seems like there is already a bit of a standoff.
Russia’s stated objectives of holding on to five regions of Ukraine ( including Crimea ), as well as ensuring Ukraine’s permanent neutrality, is unlikely to be acceptable to Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky. However, Zelensky and Trump had a very common falling away, with the US president calling Zelensky a “dictator”.
Now that the two parties appear to have reached an agreement allowing the US to jointly produce Ukraine’s material resources, this seems to have been fairly resolved. However, whether the key people may trust each other and whether Zelensky believes what Putin and Trump have to say is credible will determine whether there will be serious negotiations to end the war.
In general, trust and its development between leaders provide a possible means of resolving global conflict and facilitating diplomatic agreement. However, a minimum level of trust is needed to allow states to job together.
How the relation between US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev developed as an example of this.
Possibly, it was regular , face-to-face interactions , between Gorbachev and Reagan ( four conferences in really over three decades ), which allowed them to create a level of understanding and improve confidence, allowing them to reduce , atomic weapons supplies. However, it also took time to develop their confidence and this remained unstable.
How is faith fought?
Trust is a crucial component of effective negotiations, and it can affect how they turn out and determine whether peace talks are powerful. In every historical context, there is evidence of the value of respect in a dialogue.
Even if confidence has probably developed between leaders, if another individual decision-makers, such as martial leaders, do not communicate that trust, it can severely damage negotiations. The Sultanate peace approach between India and Pakistan in 1999 was hampered by Muslim military action as an example of this.
General Pervez Musharraf, mind of the armed forces, conducted a military invasion into the Jammu and Kashmir place, violating the agreement between the two states and leading to a breakdown in confidence, undermining the peace deal signed before that year between the Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and his American counterpart, Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Who do you trust?
In international relations terms the key factors that create trust are considered by scholars to be capacity, peaceful intention, integrity and predictability. Trump’s desire for peace comes naturally to Putin’s conviction that he is a trustworthy negotiating partner. This view is not shared by Zelensky, who questions Putin’s sincerity, intentions and integrity.
Zelensky suggests that Putin’s past actions ( including leading a full-scale invasion of Ukraine ) point toward his future untrustworthiness. This may be highlighted by Russia’s rejection of the 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements, which were used to reach a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine but were never properly implemented. Instead of pursuing implementation, Russia chose further military action against Ukraine in 2022.
To advance with the talks, Zelensky will need to be persuaded that Putin is serious about his intentions and ready to act honestly. The Ukrainian leader will also need to be persuaded that Trump is trustworthy and that he can rely on the US to ensure that Putin adheres to any agreements.
Trump will need to address this lack of trust if he wants to put an end to the war. There may be temptations to simply outstay Zelensky from face-to-face meetings ( to completely avoid the problem ), but there are also the potential risks of leaders not speaking with their opponents.
The then-Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, regretted not meeting the PLO chairman, Yasser Arafat, before coming to terms with them on the framework for the Oslo Accords because he would have better understood how Arafat saw the negotiations. Rabin might have done things differently if he had been more aware of Arafat.
Alternately, Trump might use his own relationship with Putin to “encourage” the Russian leader to act in ways that demonstrate to Zelensky that he is a trustworthy negotiating partner. Putin will need to demonstrate his sincerity and seriousness in the face of fruitful discussions and a peaceful resolution. The key might be found in the gestures of reconciliation.
An example of this is when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat traveled to Jerusalem in 1978, becoming the first Arab leader to address the Israeli parliament. This was deemed necessary for peace negotiations between the two nations, which led to the 1979 Camp David Accords.
Putin and Zelensky could have face-to-face conversations with the Ukrainian leader to calm him down. However, much more is needed to demonstrate that a person or even a state is trustworthy than not.
People believe that a good person will never do anything wrong, while a bad person may occasionally do good deeds as well as bad ones, according to Deborah Larson, a professor of political science at the University of California. As a result, just one misdeed indicates that an actor is immoral, whereas one good act does not demonstrate much”.
A much lower level and higher-level negotiation would be a better place to start Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, or at least in parallel to higher-level ones. Working out how to bridge the gaps between the various leaders, individuals who represent the key decision-makers could create their own interpersonal relationships.
In the end, those two states and their leaders will have the final say in any negotiations to put an end to the war. Any agreement almost impossible because of interpersonal relationships and a lack of trust between the two parties who will sign off on any agreement.
David J Wilcox is part-time teaching fellow, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Birmingham
This article was republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.