Photo: DIMITAR DILKOFF/AFP via Getty Images
Last week President Zelensky of Ukraine traveled to Bürgenstock, Switzerland, where he was joined by representatives from over 100 nations and institutions for the first “Summit on Peace in Ukraine.” The summit began “a wide-ranging dialogue on peace in Ukraine” and facilitated agreement upon a peace plan, a “living document” that has so far been signed by over 80 nations—the widest international endorsement yet of principles to end the war.
But the summit failed to make headway toward a just peace on the ground. This was mainly because the group was negotiating with itself. Russia, the main protagonist and aggressor, was not present. According to the Swiss summit hosts, “Russia indicated many times that it had no interest in participating.” Yet Russia’s president Vladimir Putin was keenly aware of the summit, using the occasion to restate Russia’s demands for Ukraine to give up chunks of territory, parts of which are now under tenuous Russian control. Hence Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, referred to Putin’s plan as suggesting that Ukraine “must withdraw from Ukraine.”
President Zelensky knew the talks would not produce results on their own. Leading up to the summit, he called for “tangible coercion of Russia to peace by all means,” urging his allies in the West to “force Russia to make peace” (as one headline put it).
Although most conflicts end in talks—others end in outright victory or loss, or just grind to a halt—these rarely happen in a vacuum. Each side tries to tilt the field in its favor through various means, both on and off the battlefield.
Zelensky’s point was that the West has plenty of leverage over Russia—it has far superior economic power, diplomatic heft, and military might—which it could use to tilt the negotiating table in Ukraine’s favor. So why hasn’t it been able to?
In one sense the West has applied its leverage over Russia. Armed by Western defense industries, Ukrainian forces have been able to fight Russia to a stalemate on the ground and defend against some of its civilian bombing campaigns. Meanwhile, Western sanctions and diplomatic isolation have forced Russia onto a desperate war footing. Its economy now relies on government military spending for growth and on China, Iran, and North Korea for vital military components (in return for cheap Russian gas and military technology). Domestically, the Kremlin has increased political and media repression while mobilizing civilians to fight a long war.
This brute force application of economic and industrial power has put Russia on the back foot. But it is not the “tangible coercion” Zelensky is calling for.
Thomas Schelling, in his book Arms and Influence, distinguished between brute force and coercion as the difference “between action and threats.” In this sense the West’s strategy has been all action and no threats.
This is because Western assistance is not linked to any specific demand on Russia to moderate its violence or pull back its forces. In contrast, Putin does this all the time: look at his latest threat to arm North Korea if South Korea provides further support to Ukraine.
Neither has the West sought to induce Russia to comply through inducements or concessions—the strategy is all stick and no carrot.
Schelling’s lesser-known contemporary Alexander George took his ideas further. George’s concept of coercive diplomacy—described in his 1991 book, Forceful Persuasion: Coercive Diplomacy as an Alternative to War—combines carrots and sticks to achieve outcomes short of intervention on the battlefield. In these terms, Western strategy has been all coercion and no diplomacy.
In theory, the West could shift its approach to make specific demands of Russia, tied to threats or inducements. In practice this will be very difficult. Examining this prospect using George’s framework shows why coercive diplomacy was not on the table two years ago. Contrary to Zelensky’s hopes, this remains the case today.
The war in Ukraine amounts to George’s worst-case scenario for coercive diplomacy: a fait accompli invasion “that quickly overruns and occupies a neighboring country” and “a zero-sum conflict in which one either wins or loses.” Moreover, few of the historical variables which favor coercive diplomacy are present in Ukraine.
A critical challenge is Russia’s advantage in motivation, sense of urgency, and escalation tolerance. Putin’s gamble reflected a profound sense of urgency on his part to act, which has proven difficult to match in the West. His willingness to resort to nuclear threats against NATO is in stark contrast to Kyiv’s allies, who have made clear from the outset that they “will not fight the third World War in Ukraine.”
Another challenge is the lack of specific goals and deadlines for ending or reducing the conflict. Mantras like “as long as it takes” are necessary to demonstrate commitment but remain vague—as long as what takes?—and ambitious given the depth of Russia’s commitment to the conflict. It will be difficult for Kyiv and the West to justify any limited settlement with a regime responsible for naked aggression and war crimes. Yet without being specific about what terms might be acceptable, coercive diplomacy stands no chance.
Yet even if more specific goals can be agreed upon, it would not solve perhaps the greatest challenge to coercive diplomacy in Ukraine: mutual mistrust.
As Dan Reiter, author of the book How Wars End, puts it: “a fundamental problem causing wars to endure is belligerents’ deep distrust that the adversary will respect a war-ending peace deal.” For example, Moscow is unlikely to believe that the United States would ease sanctions or stay out of Ukraine when the fighting ends. Equally, Ukraine will find it difficult to trust Russia not to regroup and resume hostilities down the road—as it did several times over the years following the original Minsk agreement in 2014, culminating in the 2022 invasion. This is one reason Ukraine is so keen to join NATO, like many of its eastern European neighbors who have experienced invasion and subjugation by Russia before.
The deep conflicts of interest involved between Russia and Ukraine, and between Russia and the West, tend toward a zero-sum mentality. This is exacerbated by distinct traditions of statecraft: the West seeks stable and secure neighbors, while Russia values unstable and insecure ones.
The prospects for forcing Russia to make peace through coercive diplomacy were slim two years ago and have not improved since—as the peace summit showed.
However, if George’s framework shows us why the prospects for coercive diplomacy are bad, it also suggests how to improve them. Here are three steps Ukraine and the West can take to improve their chances as they work toward the next peace summit.
The first is to adopt a small-step approach to ending the conflict. According to George, the most crucial factor in setting diplomatic goals is “that the strength of the opponent’s motivation not to comply is highly dependent on what is demanded of him.” In other words, the greater the demand, the lower the chances the adversary may comply.
President Zelensky’s goal of restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity remains the right one—anything less would be an admission that might makes right. But it remains ambitious for now given the extent of Russian occupation and the political capital Putin has invested in the war. Starting with smaller steps—such as local ceasefires, humanitarian corridors, demilitarized zones, exchanging prisoners of war, or local, regional settlements—could open the door to larger talks on tougher issues. Any discussion is better than no discussion.
The second is to exploit Russia’s losing hand to persuade it to engage with these small-step goals. This will require keeping the pressure on through the threat of new military aid, sanctions, and diplomatic measures to contain Russia in Ukraine. But this pressure must be used fruitfully by linking new threats to compliance with goals and deadlines. This will require credible assurances that such threats will be held back on compliance. It will also require offering carrots alongside sticks, through inducements such as lifting existing punitive measures.
The third is to temper the intensity of the Russia-West rivalry. This would make it easier to persuade Moscow, while minimizing the chances of a severe miscalculation. Doing so will require treating strategic stability with Russia as an end in itself. Reestablishing badly needed dialogue on conventional and nuclear arms control, Europe’s security architecture, and cooperation in areas of mutual interest (e.g., terrorism, food security, climate change) would help moderate the zero-sum dynamic which currently dominates relations. This approach led to the emergence of dialogue even at the height of Cold War tensions.
However, Russia’s brutal war in Ukraine today is unlike any situation Western leaders faced back then. The question of how to end it is one of the defining, and most difficult, questions of our era. President Zelensky may find himself back in Switzerland many more times before it is solved.
Sean Monaghan is a visiting fellow in the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
