Timothy Snyder on Ukraine: Common Sense About Negotiations

Neither Trump, Vance, nor their negotiating team would even bother to read, much less understand, a single thing Timothy Snyder says about negotiating.

https://archive.ph/I8hIB

Common Sense about Negotiations
Timothy Snyder
August 17, 2025

1. Outsiders should be aware of their information deficit. Americans tend to think that we know everything. This is never the case, and such a belief is especially harmful when we are outsiders to a horrendous war. Both Ukrainians and Russians know things that we either do not know or tend to forget. The Russians work put our knowledge gaps to good use....

2. Outsiders should be aware of their emotional deficit. The fact that Americans might prefer that the war end does not mean that they have access to the emotions that made war possible. On the one side, Vladimir Putin is fighting a war of choice...On the other side, on the Ukrainian side, people are fighting a war of necessity. They are fighting for their lives, and for a way of life. We use such language so often ourselves that we trivialize it or make it cinematic, and so we may not recognize an actual existential situation when it is before our eyes. There is no oligarchical whimsy at play here, unlike in the Kremlin. Unlike Putin, Ukraine’s President Zelens’kyi is not fighting a war of choice...

3. Outsiders should be aware of their linguistic deficit. Russians and Ukrainians know English, but Americans do not know Russian or Ukrainian (generally). When compounded with the informational and emotional deficits, this can create a situation in which Americans, as outsiders, repeat the language that they have been given, usually to the advantage of the aggressor, Russia. The country defending itself, Ukraine, can generally only explain how things are. If Americans are hungry for a quick solution, we may not listen, because the facts on the ground demand attention and then policy. The aggressor is generally practiced at abusing language because the aggression itself begins with a lie: in this case genocidal lies about Ukraine not really existing, not really having a culture, or whatever...

4, 5, 6. In effective negotiations, concessions are not made in advance, not made in exchange for nothing, and not made in the name of other people without their agreement. I am putting three principles in together here, because Americans are violating all three together on major issues, and thereby making the continuation of the war much more likely...

7. In negotiating the end of a war, it is important to be aware of the traditional means of dealing with aggression and deterring further attacks. This need not involve a moral judgement; it is simply practical politics. Traditionally, the country that illegally invades another country and carries out war crimes is held responsible legally and financially for these actions...

8. In negotiating the end of a war, it is important to remember that a war is going on. This is not a game. Words in themselves do not much matter...to lead to structures of incentive and structures of enforcement that directly influence present and future actions. This begins from knowledge of the battlefield...




Snyder's entire essay is an education for all Americans who've lived nowhere near war zones.
Highly recommended.