By: George Friedman
When
the United States entered talks with North Vietnam near the end of the
Vietnam War, it hadn’t been militarily defeated, but it had failed in
its mission to destroy the Viet Cong. North Vietnam had not won the war
either, but the outcome of the conflict was clear: Neither side could
fully subdue the other. Geopolitically, South Vietnam was more important
to North Vietnam than it was to the United States. North Vietnam could
not capitulate. The U.S. could. The
Vietnam War was the product of geopolitical imperatives, and the
outcome was a result of the military reality. The war ended with
negotiations that lasted for a very long time. The peace talks were not
geopolitical in nature. Rather, they were a matter of engineering a
settlement that acknowledged a geopolitical reality in which both sides
had to take into account internal political circumstances. The U.S.
could not simply admit to total military failure, so it demanded “peace
with honor.” The North Vietnamese had to justify the cost of the war to
North Vietnam’s public as a heroic defeat of the imperialist power. The
initiation of the war was based on geopolitical necessity. North
Vietnam had to unite the entire country under a communist regime. The
U.S. had to stop it, not because Vietnam mattered geopolitically but
because Washington feared that early capitulation would cause allies to
lose confidence in the U.S.-based alliance systems. The stakes were high
for both sides, but North Vietnam had more skin in the game. The
reality of the negotiations was about what the end would look like and
the political image it generated. The
same is true for the Ukraine war. Each side wants to pay the lowest
political price for anything more than it won. Russia wanted to regain
Ukraine as a buffer against the West. The U.S. didn’t want Russia to
border NATO. The war has been fought, and it looks as though Russia
gained a buffer in east Ukraine, albeit a smaller one than it wanted.
The U.S. wants to end the war and has to be satisfied with the outcome.
Ukraine is now in the same position during the negotiations with Russia
as the South Vietnamese were in the Vietnam War. The
end of the war is inevitable, and articles are now appearing in the
media about the postwar reality. Some observers talk about how hedge
funds are eager to invest in Russia. Others say Russia will have a high
price to pay as it moves away from a wartime economy. Others still
speculate about the geopolitical effect of the war on Europe and China. The
outcome of the war is clear, and the problem now is no longer
geopolitical. The negotiations are an engineering process that may fail
and resume over an extended period of time, with or without the fighting
continuing. The negotiations are partly about the exact terms for the
war’s conclusion. But that is also a domestic political issue. Russia
cannot appear to have lost the war, and it will try to convince its
public that it won. The U.S. will try to convince its people that it
alone ended the war. Political positions inside both countries are at
stake for both leaders. Both
must also consider what the postwar world will look like. However it
ends, it will help to produce a geopolitical order that will stun the
world. (It was not obvious, after all, that a Cold War would emerge from
World War II.) The U.S. and Russia having common interests is a
stunning thought, indeed. But
all this can fail, and the end still could be a long way off.
Negotiations are based on geopolitical reality, but they are also based
on international and domestic political circumstances. We saw the first
official tiny step on Tuesday. It is an engineering project in which
both will seek peace with honor. And while the war will end in the form
the militaries created, the settlement will be a matter of statecraft,
as all political negotiations are. Bluff and bluster are the tools of
negotiations, though human factors – pride and shame – will play a part
too. The
war – and the forces that led to it – can be predicted. Its outcome can
be surmised, but the negotiation process is a human project that will
reach some conclusion long or short, filled with fear and hope. In the
end, it must confirm what is, perhaps with a gloss of mutual
satisfaction. |