Pay-as-you-mediate: Iran, Ukraine and Donald Trump's board of peace Titelbild

Pay-as-you-mediate: Iran, Ukraine and Donald Trump's board of peace

Pay-as-you-mediate: Iran, Ukraine and Donald Trump's board of peace

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 The inaugural meeting of Donald Trump’s board of peace in Washington on February 19 caps a busy week for US diplomacy — though not necessarily for the country’s professional diplomats, who have been largely excluded from the close-knit circle of the US president’s personal envoys: his former real-estate business partner Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner.Earlier in the week, Witkoff and Kushner attended two separate sets of negotiations in the Swiss city of Geneva. They first sat down for indirect talks with Iran, before then leading negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, and eventually dashing back to Washington to attend the board of peace meeting.At best, Witkoff and Kushner have a mixed track record of diplomatic success. Kushner was a key mediator in the Abraham accords during Trump’s first term in office. Designed to normalise ties between Israel and other states across the Middle East, the accords have failed to create sustainable momentum for regional peace and stability.So far, only the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan have established full diplomatic relations with Israel. Saudi Arabia — the most influential player in the Middle East by most measures — has not followed suit.Witkoff has been credited with playing a key role in mediating the January 2025 ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. He was also involved in the negotiations around the Gaza peace plan later that year, which, with endorsement from the UN security council, gave rise to Trump’s board of peace.Both men have also been at the centre of efforts to end Russia’s war against Ukraine. Witkoff has been involved from the start of Trump’s second term, with Kushner joining more recently at the end of 2025.Yet, neither Kushner’s addition to the team, nor a greater focus on a parallel track of negotiations between Washington and Moscow, focused on the mutual economic opportunities that peace between Russia and Ukraine would create, have brought the warring sides closer to a deal.Taken together, the outsized roles that Witkoff and Kushner are playing in US diplomacy — despite their limited success — expose a fundamental misunderstanding of what peace making involves. Peace deals are generally complex. To get one across the line requires mediators and support teams that are deeply knowledgeable about the conflict in which they are mediating and have a detailed understanding of how a plethora of issues can be resolved in a technical sense.Above all, mediators need to be aware of what has driven the parties to conflict and what might induce them to cooperate. While material incentives, such as the promise of economic development in exchange for peace, are important, warring parties often also have symbolic and psychological needs. These also need to be addressed to ensure the parties sign on the dotted line and will commit to peace in the long term.Having just two people with little prior experience of diplomacy and almost no expertise on either of the two conflicts they are currently mediating simultaneously is a recipe for failure. It is likely to lead to a deal being pushed that is simply unattainable in the short term because at least one party will not sign.And if a deal, against the odds, is agreed because of high pressure on one or both sides, it is unlikely to be sustainable in the long term because at least one of the parties will probably defect from it, and violence will resume. This is particularly likely if a deal lacks sufficient guarantees and enforcement mechanisms, because this lowers the threshold for defection for parties who are not negotiating in good faith.It is easy to see how such calculations apply in the context of the war against Ukraine. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has repeatedly made it clear that the Kremlin’s demands — especially Ukrainian withdrawal from territory in the east it has so far successfully defended against Russia’s aggression — are not something he will agree to.Even if he did, such a deal would almost certainly be rejected in a referendum. It will be psychologically close to impossible for Ukraine and Ukrainians to accept the humiliation of giving up something they have not lost, to reward Moscow’s aggression, and to be sold down the river by Washington in pursuit of an economic side-deal with Russia.Similarly, it is easy to see that Russia is not negotiating in good faith. Moscow is presenting Kyiv with an ultimatum, while destroying as much as possible of the country — both to weaken Ukraine’s will to resist and to undermine its future recovery. Add to that Russian resistance to credible security guarantees, and the true intent of Russia’s negotiation strategy turns out to be not the achievement of sustainable peace, but preparation for the next war.If and when negotiations on Iran or Ukraine break down, or if and when the agreements they might achieve collapse, supporting frameworks will need to be in place ...
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