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November 10, 2024 - 5:00pm
The Russian establishment profoundly distrusts Donald Trump. Though usually forgotten in the West, it was his administration — not Barack Obama’s or Joe Biden’s – which began the supply of weapons to Ukraine in 2017. Trump also allowed US intelligence to build up the presence in Ukraine that played an important role in preventing Russian victory in the first months of 2022. In fact, apart from some complimentary remarks about Vladimir Putin, the US President-elect has done little to improve relations with Russia.
Following Trump’s election win this week, the Russian Foreign Ministry declared that it had “no illusions” about him, adding that America’s “ruling political elite adheres to anti-Russia principles and the policy of ‘containing Moscow’” no matter which party is in charge. While Putin himself is more sympathetic, on Thursday hailing Trump’s “desire to restore relations with Russia, to help end the Ukrainian crisis”, these comments can be attributed to a recognition that the Russian President needs to maintain good relations with his American counterpart.
When it comes to negotiations with the Trump administration to end the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin still has one big fear. This, according to members of the Russian establishment with whom I spoke this summer, is a repeat of Trump’s notorious initiative to negotiate a deal with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. In that instance, Trump launched into an exercise in personal diplomacy without preparation or any understanding of the other side — or seemingly of his own aims. When the talks failed, Trump responded with furious bluster and left US relations with Pyongyang in even worse shape than before.
Moscow worries that Trump may make Putin a peace offer which he genuinely thinks is a generous and viable one, but which fails to meet minimal Russian conditions, and that if Putin rejects it Trump will turn violently against Russia. There is also fear in the Kremlin that opponents of a deal in the State Department may deliberately set Trump up to fail in this way, and that the President-elect’s immediate team will not see it coming. That’s before factoring in a Ukrainian establishment which is likely to bitterly resist a compromise peace.
Trump’s own advisors are reported to be deeply divided on the subject of Ukraine. And, according to one former aide, “anyone — no matter how senior in Trump’s circle — who claims to have a different view or more detailed window into his plans on Ukraine simply doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.” More than that, in the words of the same aide, they don’t “understand that he makes his own calls on national-security issues, many times in the moment, particularly on an issue as central as this”.
To have a chance of success, formal negotiations will therefore have to be preceded by preparatory talks, preferably in secret. Each side can then explore which of the other’s conditions are basic and non-negotiable, and which are open to compromise. We do not yet know Trump’s choices for secretary of state and national security advisor, or what their attitudes to Russia and Ukraine will be. Yet sheer military reality has seemingly persuaded most of his team that Ukrainian recovery of all its lost territory is now impossible.
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SubscribeAn incisive article and Unherd probably one of the few spaces where the realpolitik can be published.
Several angles which look and feel genuinely insightful, expressed from what appears to be a neutral point of view. Refreshing.
It will be very interesting to see what Donald Trump does in Ukraine. At this point it’s hard to tell what can be done. As is quoted in this article, not even Donald Trump knows what any solution will be. Donald Trump’s style is not to go in with a plan that he imposes on both sides, but to start talking and see what happens. He is a salesman, not a litigator.
I like Donald Trump’s approach. When I worked at a big law firm, I was a business attorney, trying to get deals done for my clients. But I also worked a lot on litigation. It surprised me how well a willingness to negotiate worked even in litigation. A few times, litigators I had worked with in the past started to call me in to help them draft settlement agreements. They couldn’t do it themselves — they didn’t have the right mindset.
At the same time, the approach mentioned in this article doesn’t work well, and I’m glad Donald Trump doesn’t follow it. In one major deal I worked on the lead lawyer for the other side wanted to have different teams go to work at the same time: business, technical and legal. He said they had done that in negotiations between IBM and TI and it worked really well.
I told him I didn’t know about any deal between IBM and TI, and asked him when the deal was signed. He said there wasn’t any deal, the two sides had finally negotiated a deal but decided that the market had changed and there was no point in a tie-up. Really?, I said. How long this process take? Four years, he said. Oh.
This author Anatol Lieven says:
No, that’s not how deals are done. Not at all. Never. That’s the kind of negotiation that will last for months, if not years, and will end in a deal that is too late to matter, if a deal is reached at all.
Donald Trump won’t do it that way. He’ll do it like he did with Kim Jong Un. There the timetable did stretch over years but not to explore which conditions were non-negotiable and which were not. The two sides made proposals, and counterproposals, and when a deal was not reached, parted ways. That happens, and it’s not a bad outcome. Each side then went to their BATNA (negotiator’s jargon).
The Russians quoted in this article think Donald Trump did a poor job negotiating with Kim Jong Un but I think they are wrong. He conducted a master class in how to negotiate. Sure, he made mistakes. Sure, he didn’t reach a deal. But his process was practically perfect. As good as I’ve seen.
As president Joe Biden has been weak in a lot of ways, but his biggest failure has been in foreign policy. Donald Trump was engaged around the world in reacting to and anticipating events. Who can forget when he went to Europe in 2018 and warned Germany that Russia was not its friend and that it was putting its neck in Russia’s noose by relying on Russian gas and oil, and then repeated that at the UN only to be laughed at by the German delegation? Who can forget that Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and then tried to get others to let him back in the G8, an effort to open up relations with Russia?
Lots of people seem to forget both those efforts, but they look pretty prescient now. Joe Biden wasted his four years in office, dozing away his days with the White House as his assisted living center. He did try from time to time, but his efforts were too enfeebled, too weakened by age and apathy to be effective. His team, without a strong leader, did little. Kamala Harris, in particular, did nothing, something she would have continued to do if president.
But now we have a president-elect who has already swung into action. Donald Trump, personally, with the power of the presidency, may not be able to do a deal that everyone will like. Indeed, he may not be able to do a deal at all. But at least we have a skilled, experienced dealmaker working to drive a deal to completion. Someone who took a bullet, fell to the ground, and came up pumping his fist. Someone who can sell a deal, with confidence, who listens as much as he speaks.
Not someone who showed in a debate in front of the whole world that he does not have the ability to complete a thought, or listen well enough to have a serious conversation. Not someone who had to be helped by his wife to negotiate a six-inch step down off a stage after a debate, and who stumbled to the ground over a small sandbag that no one else had noticed, and then stayed down until he was helped up.
Not one knows what is the best solution that can be reached for Ukraine, for Russia, for the United States, and for the rest of the world. But at least now we will find out.
Very insightful comment.
Give it a rest. Biden is retiring and the campaign is over. Trump is not up against Biden, but against Putin. Plus reality, of course.
Yes, we understand. Trump makes you go all moist between the legs. I would not dream of challenging your preferences, but they do make your arguments look much less convincing to anyone who does not share them.
Orange Man Bad!!!
“But at least we have a skilled, experienced dealmaker working to drive a deal to completion. Someone who took a bullet, fell to the ground, and came up pumping his fist“. In other words, someone with an ego the size of a small galaxy.
Name one succesful leader throughout history who didn’t have an oversized ego.
Jesus Christ.
What, the “I am the way, the life, the only path to salvation is through me.” That guy?
But Russia most certainly did want friendship with Germany. And Germany wanted friendship with Russia. It has been Germany’s dream since it unified in 1870; access to cheap commodities…energy, minerals and grain plus a market to sell its products.
Indeed Germany fought two wars to get precisely that. Military means failed so diplomacy was tried, and was successful.
It is the USA which disliked the friendship. Germany, and thus Europe could become independent of the USA…not what the USA wants.
The Ukraine war has thus tried to isolate Russia (failed…probably disastrously) and force Germany/Europe back into the fold…and make big profits from it.
There is a leaked Rand Corporation paper on precisely this. Disputed as being, guess what, Russian “disinformation”…but if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…it’s a duck. The paper is almost certainly genuine. It certainly complies with the principles of the Project for a New American Century.
You are right about the history, but I am not sure that “green” Germany is a country to be taken seriously.
Rather, the opposite is true: a short-term respite based on Russian resources will allow Germany to finally drown in the “green” swamp.
I agree that a “green” Germany can’t be taken seriously. However I suspect the green phase will be short.
Both the BSW and AfD are sceptics, as, I think majority German opinion is becoming. Certainly both parties want the Ukraine war ended…probably the first step to normalising relations with Russia.
Yes it’ll take fifteen to twenty years but Germany will be back as a major economy.
The UK should take advantage in the meantime but it too is currently saddled with green ideologues in both main parties. A pity…I’d like my country to be prosperous and at peace…
Islam is the religion of peace. Keep saying that and fears for the future will drop away.
There looks like there is a bit of work to be done to keep Germany split from Russia then. There was a time when Germany was a much vaunted military power. It needs to regain that position.
It can’t…and it won’t. The people of the former DDR could, but their sympathies lie more with Russia, as is shown by the rise of the AfD there.
Maybe they should all move to Russia then.
Which country would that be – Russia?
Have you ever seen the film A Few Good Men? Possibly you recall the import of its most quoted line…
Often those who can’t resort to personal attacks.
Yeah, but Nordstream blew up, and all that is over.
I am sure Nordstream can be repaired.
It can be blown up again quicker than it can be repaired. Germany needs to realise that its future has no Russian gas in it.
What do you think should happen with the gas pipeline that takes Russian gas through Ukraine to Germany? Unless Ukraine agrees to renew the contract, that flow will end on December 31. That’s next month.
A fine job, Carlos. I look forward to your memoir and the passages about Huma Abedin.
“The Russians quoted in this article think Donald Trump did a poor job negotiating with Kim Jong Un but I think they are wrong“. I read somewhere that Trump actually proposed to Kim Jong Un that he could help him do some luxury developments on the North Korean coast. I assume that even Trump realised how absurd this was, and was merely having a joke at Kim’s expense.
This is well observed. Trump was always very frustrated with Germany on NS2, which was hardly a pro-Russian position.
If Putin thinks he will lose the war should be continue it, he will accept Ukraine’s terms (backed of course by Trump). This might even result in him withdrawing from some captured ground.
But Trump and his camp have made different noises on Ukraine, so we’ll just have to see.
Russia will not “lose the war”. It will recover the Kursk territory and hold what it has already taken at the very least. Quite simply it cannot agree anything less.
It may agree a DMZ but this cannot be patrolled by NATO troops as Ukraine is then effectively in NATO…which is unacceptable to Russia.
If NATO becomes more directly involved, and Russia suffers setbacks, then the use of nuclear weapons is extremely likely, with escalation a certainty.
One can only hope Trump is more savvy than he was with North Korea.
Some good points. But nukes are extremely unlikely. Russia wants you to think otherwise, of course. It knows that it could be defeated if NATO so chose (via support for Ukraine) so the threat is necessary, but it isn’t necessarily real at all. Putin respects strength alone and his assumptions can be challenged by action, forcing a rethink. This is quite unlikely but Trump is unpredictable so we’ll see.
I sincerely hope nukes are extremely unlikely…but I don’t agree.
If Russia is “losing” (which it won’t against only Ukraine) my view remains that it will consider that an existential threat, justifying any and all means of response.
No doubt the start would be a “small” tactical nuke. NATO, actually the USA, would have to consider how to respond, then Russia ie the classical escalation ending with the use of strategic weapons.
The least damaging scenario would be a nuclear exchange confined to Europe…but who knows…
Putin is rational…any successor may not be. Trump is impulsive and believes in strong retaliation to any and every attack or even slight.
Therefore the identity, and persuaviseness of Trump’s advisers is crucial. If they are of the Neocon variety, as last time, the future is unpredictable…or in fact all too predictable.
Russia knows full well that losing in Ukraine isn’t an ‘existential’ threat. We know this becuase Putin often tells domestic audiences that its nukes prevent Russia being invaded (which would be such a threat). He can’t seriously invade his neighbour and declare it ‘Russia’ and extend the same thinking to it when it is still contessted.
He’s threatened nukes form the start of the Ukrainian invasion in 2022, initially got repelled, lost a vast amount of men, and hasn’t resorted to them. Those with pro-Russian instincts tend to emphasise the nuke angle because it’s the ultimate answer in the debate: don’t resist Putin, he’ll nuke you! Which just means Russian propoganda has worked.
The logic of this fear is Putin could roll out the USSR, force NATO to cut lose its eastern members and heck, even divide Berlin again, and we’ll say, ah nukes…every step of the way.
I’m curious — what do you think Donald Trump did that was not savvy with North Korea? I thought that was textbook-worthy negotiating.
As I recall he wanted North Korea to give up nuclear weapons…rather the point of the thing.
However history proves that any country which gives up WMDs then gets stomped on by “the West”.
North Korea has actually gone down the only rational path open to it. It has increased its WMDs thereby ensuring any attackers will suffer extreme damage…even the USA would suffer considerable…and intolerable, damage which no President dare risk.
The Russians are winning, they won’t give back one inch of ground
Currently they are. But that is a function of Western support. Russian thinking is based on assumptions which can change.
It not a function of western support, they are slowly destroying the Ukrainian army, the Ukrainians are unable to replace their dead and injured, and the men they send to the front are dragged off the streets. At the same time the Russian army is growing in size and strength, they are creating new combat power every week
If the West actually cared about Ukrainians they would try to stop the war ASAP
The West doesn’t care about Ukrainians. It cares about the capital it has invested in Ukraine which Ukrainians must fight to preserve.
Of course, this is the fall-back position. The real goal was to provoke Russia to attack Ukraine, then economic sanctions were supposed to ensure a collapse of Russia allowing it to be pillaged by US capital. That didn’t happen. Russia instead got stronger, but beholden to China…definitely not the plan at all.
Indeed wiser Western geopolitics experts had always tried to prevent an alliance between Eurasia and EastAsia; Oceania is now “at war” with both. No doubt shortly we’ll be told it always was…
The west recognises the risks of a revanchist Russia now it is in full flow.
A lot of Russian soldiers have died in Ukraine. That is in my view an entirely good thing.
Russia is now aligned with China, probably the most powerful economy on the planet (views vary), that is an entirely bad thing…for the West. It was also entirely foreseeable and avoidable. However the hubris of being sole hegemon took hold in the USA. As is historically the case, the supremacy was short lived.
China’s economy is not the most powerful in the world. It is, in reality, a near basket case.
You’d best put money on that bet then…the rest of us, probably not…
The problems of the Chinese economy are obvious (clue: the derive from state control, and a long collapsed credit multiplier)
They are dragging some men off the streets, that is true. But it is a small number of the men under arms. The poor general state of the Russian army is well known. They use mass as a weapon and hurl lives at weakpoints in the enemy’s defence.
None of what you say answers the case that with sufficient supplies Ukraine can halt the Russian advance. It just needs more. This it may not get, but we’ll see.
No, stop believing MSM BS, the Russians are destroying Ukrainian positions with massive glide bombs, if the West gives the Ukrainians F-15s to stop the glide bombs the Russians will just shoot them down
The MSM is lying to you about the state of the Russian army, they have been lying from the start
As Putin has often said, Western conventional capacity far exceeds that of Russia.
If Russia were that superior to Ukraine it would already have taken Kyiv. We all saw the mess at the start and the stupidly ‘mass’ tactics since then. These have put it ahead due to shortfalls in UKraine’s capacity. Some of this is numbers, but it also reflects supplies.
Ukraine’s performance in the war (besides heroic) is a function of Western support.
The Orange Man Bad school still rules the media. Trump has thought all this out and talks are already underway with the people in Russia and elsewhere who count. America is no longer the world’s policeman and other countries will have to make the best of the new order.
Russia is a danger to absolutely everybody though, including America. It can either be dealt with now, or next year, or the year after.
For those interested there is an excellent article by Andrew Korybko on the Zerohedge website about the various scenarios for the Ukraine situation.
The Trump/Republican position on Ukraine has consolidated much more anti-Putin over the last year. Johnson’s approval of aid package through the House after a visit to Mar a Lago indicative. Trump/Republicans have come to view Putin/Xi/Iran aggressions as all interconnected and of course N Korea now adding even more obvious alignment examples.
Ukraine knew a land trade was coming and hence took the region in Kursk. Crimea has a Russian majority so it knows taking that back would result in managing an on-going insurgency. What it needs is security guarantees esp in the Black sea that make who holds Crimea less critical.
Repeatedly this conflict echoes that 70 years ago in Korean peninsula. An armistice line still exists there and it was almost 2 years after a war of manoeuvre ended that this line became settled. Syngman Rhee implored the US and UN to continue the fight and take the whole peninsula, but that was resisted and instead security guarantees provided that still exist. At the time the S Korean regime had little to behold it, but given time it has become one of the most thriving western economies. That is what Ukraine can become and in fact will be starting from an imperfect yet higher base that the original case in S Korea. Trump helps secure this opportunity and he will have done something worthy of his Office.
Ukraine could have been a thriving, prosperous country by now had its rulers not been so corrupt and amenable to US dollars. The comparison is Austria, but it didn’t have Ukraine’s massive natural resources and therefore little to steal easily.
It seems to me the “danger” to Russia comes from its friends. As Brazil and India have shown, it is their pressure on Russia to negotiate that is worrying Russia, and it is only thanks to the combined intransigence of Ukraine, the US, and Europe that Russia can deflect that pressure.
If the US were to signal a willingness to negotiate on Russia’s terms (not in the sense of accepting Russia’s terms, but not going into negotiations with stated objectives that are unacceptable to Russia), the pressure on Russia from BRICS etc. could become irresistible.
And to think that we need not have been where we are now!
A good, sober analysis of the predicament the second Trump administration is inheriting. One possibility not mentioned but I think eminently possible is that Trump will demand concessions and contributions from the EU member states and NATO in exchange for continuing the supply of weapons. Trump has openly taken a transactional approach to international relations. If the US is doing something for someone, he expects some kind of return on his investment. I don’t see why it couldn’t happen to Ukraine. He could demand the EU adopt a more unified trade policy with the US against China. He could demand greater contributions to NATO from member states. He could just straight up demand the EU pay for what we’re sending to Ukraine. If the EU agrees, you can assume Trump will also crow about it and wave it in the faces of the media regardless of the political position this puts the EU in.
If you think Trump will face political backlash for such a move, think again. There’s a strong sentiment, particularly among his supporters, that the EU are free riding on US defense spending, which is paid by US taxpayers. The only backlash will come from the foreign policy establishment, the Pentagon, and the MIC, all of whom backed the losers Biden/Harris. I expect Trump to clean house in terms of the military leadership almost immediately upon taking office anyway. He has the constitutional authority to do so and a longstanding feud with Mark Milley, who was in charge most of Biden’s administration. Even the voters who did vote for Harris most likely didn’t have foreign policy high on their list of priorities. Americans are inward looking, and so is Trump. Whatever Democrats emerge in the next four years are likely to be focused on domestic policy as well in order to defeat Vance or whoever becomes Trump’s successor. Whatever happens in Ukraine, I believe the days of Uncle Sam stepping in to solve the world’s problems are well and truly over.
As usual, the Unheard comment section is saturated with pro-Rusian Putinistas.
globohomo delenda est
Otherwise known as realists…
Speaking for myself, as an American, I don’t think I’m a “pro-Rusian [sic] Putinista”. My hope is that we can get away from abstract ideas like who likes who and focus on solving problems. Too many politicians try to put policies into place that sound great but have little to no chance of working.
We live in the real world. We have constraints. We have to obey the laws of nature, including human nature, when we try to do things like end a war. We have to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.
(To comically make that point, in an episode of the animated television series The Simpsons, Homer Simpson’s brilliant 8-year-old daughter Lisa invents a perpetual motion machine. Homer will have none of it, and calls her into his bedroom. “In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!”, he thunders. As if they had a choice.)
I wish Russia had not invaded Ukraine in 2022 and turned a war that had been smoldering for 8 years into a full-blown conflagration. But they did. I wish Ukraine was winning the war and pushing Russia out of their country. But they aren’t. I wish the United States had lots of money to spare and could fund Ukraine as they fight for their freedom. But we don’t and we can’t.
So what do we (the United States) do? We negotiate. We try to find the best compromise we can. And part of that means acknowledging that Russia has their reasons for invading and, if we want a lasting peace between two countries who will share a border as long as they both exist, trying to satisfy those reasons while giving up as little as we can.
If that makes me a pro-Russian Putin-admirer, then yes, I guess I am.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry declared that it had “no illusions” about him, adding that America’s “ruling political elite adheres to anti-Russia principles and the policy of ‘containing Moscow’” no matter which party is in charge“. If true, that is an entirely good thing. Russia is simply not to be trusted.
It’s funny how Russia’s apparant paranoia is revealed time and again as an entitlement to crush the countries around it.
What the ‘multipolar’ ‘anti-globalist’ (and pro-Russia even if they won’t admit it) camp fail to understand is that Trump’s worldview is entirely based on the US being the most powerful country in the world. He believes that allows him to dominate any relationship and he dislikes being bounded by supranational rules or prior treaty commitments. That leads him to his hatred of the EU, of course. But he also dislikes any entity that can stand up to him and will work to undermine it: this includes the axis of authoritarian powers.
Very good article, yes, dispassionate and insightful. And without taking sides or pretending you know everything – unlike most commentators here 😉 .
It is also insightful for that it says about Trump.
So @CarlosDanger, is this your brilliant foreing policy negotiator:
Yes, I think Donald Trump is a brilliant foreign policy negotiator, though it is certainly true that he did fail to reach a deal with Kim Jong Un. As I wrote in my lengthy comment, I disagree with this author Anatol Lieven, and I think he is promoting a style of negotiation that doesn’t work.
It’s like the “waterfall” style of development compared to the “agile” style. One proceeds according to a plan, imposed from the top down and frozen early on with little ability to change. The other proceeds based on a looser set of principles and works from the bottom up, testing out ideas, seeing how others respond, pivoting when necessary and quickly reacting to events. It’s like a command-and-control economy compared to a market economy.
Talk to successful people in Silicon Valley and you will find out which approach works best.
The author isn’t promoting any such thing, he’s simply suggesting what may be a way forward… one amongst several ways forward.
To be frank, i’d have more respect for your views if you weren’t trying to big yourself up in the process. It’s unnecessary. Just tell us what you think.
Yea, my comments do have a smell of self-promotion, don’t they. Take them for what they are worth. I’m just banging out some thoughts on a keyboard on a Sunday afternoon when I’m supposed to working on something else. And I don’t mean to be too critical of the author Anatol Lieven. I disagree with a lot of what he says, but he is thoughtful and informed.
Fair enough. I suspect everyone who contributes, whether Unherd writers or those who comment, have a story to tell. It’s just a personal preference, but it just seems better to put forward what we have to say without feeling the need to ‘justify’ or assume ‘special knowledge’.
Forget the spicy Huma revelations, Carlos, this is first rate stuff.
It’s like the “waterfall” style of development compared to the “agile” style.”. Yes, software engineering processes.
It’s true that software engineering processes are perhaps the classic case of “waterfall” versus “agile”. But the concepts apply across all kinds of disciplines.
Take space, for example. NASA follows a waterfall-type process for developing rockets. Careful and lengthy designs and elaborate planning at each stage, with a focus on safety, testing, and risk-avoidance at every stage. Nothing is left to chance. And NASA has spent way over budget and has yet to launch a new rocket even though it is years behind schedule.
SpaceX follows an agile-type process. SpaceX doesn’t skimp on design and planning, but it moves much more quickly to real-world testing where problems and failures are expected rather than avoided. And SpaceX’s achievements have been stunning, with costs kept low and progress quick. Last year SpaceX sent 80% of the tonnage that went into space, with China sending 12% and the rest of the world only 8%.
Take the military, for another example. The US military has evolved from a more traditional, hierarchical command structure to a more agile, decentralized approach. Historically, the military operated with a clear chain of command where orders were issued from the top and flowed down the ranks. This waterfall style of command ensured discipline and control but could sometimes be slow and inflexible.
In recent years, the military has adopted a more agile approach, sometimes called mission command, empowering lower-ranking officers with greater autonomy. This shift allows for quicker decision-making and more adaptive responses on the ground. The focus is on giving those who are directly involved in operations the authority to make critical decisions, which can be crucial in dynamic and rapidly changing situations that can’t be planned for.
The concept of mission command evolved from a German military strategy during World War II, the Auftragstaktik that made the Biltzkrieg work so well. The German military, especially under the influence of the Prussian military tradition, emphasized decentralized decision-making and the empowerment of lower-ranking officers to make tactical decisions on the ground. This approach allowed for rapid and flexible responses to changing battlefield conditions and overwhelmed the well-planned French defenses.
UnHerd contributor Edward Luttwak talks about many of these concepts in his excellent book The Art of Military Innovation: Lessons from the Israeli Defense Forces. I don’t remember him talking about waterfall versus agile specifically, but the principles of agile development — flexibility, rapid iteration, and decentralized decision-making — align with the modern, adaptive approaches to military strategy and operations that Edward Luttwak advocates.
Stated simply, the difference in approaches is that waterfall always flows from the top, making it top-down. Agile has design flowing from the top but it also feedback flowing from the bottom up, giving us both top-down and bottom-up. As the world gets more complex, the bottom-up gets more and more important because that is where the creativity and innovation comes from. In everything, government included, we need to rely less on top-down expertise and more on bottom-up experimentation to give us agility and adaptability in complex environments.
Not convincing when it comes to international diplomacy. The flexibility and adapting (*after* the design and planning) is surely what would be happening in those secret lower-level talks that you think are unnecessary. Sending the big man to meet the North Koreans straight away sounds more like building a prototype, putting the astronauts in, and trusting to luck. Once the first summit has failed, or resulted in a bad deal, they cannot run five more to try to improve on the procedure.
I’d read through your posts and try to argue in more detail – but it is hardly worth the trouble. Your obvious admiration for the manly strength of Donald Trump means that everything else you write sounds more like a rationalisation.
Certainly, the more formal and visible negotiations are the more likely pride of authorship will make them fail.