NPR’s Steve Inskeep talks to Dan Baer of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace about U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff’s approach to foreign conflicts.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Just to keep track, Steve Witkoff had a meeting on Gaza yesterday. He is expected to hold a meeting on Iran late this week. And in between those meetings, the president’s envoy is supposed to make progress in this meeting on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Wow. We’ve called an observer, Dan Baer, who is director of the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Good morning.
DAN BAER: Good morning.
INSKEEP: I want to talk about the person who’s conducting these negotiations first. Do you feel you have come to understand Steve Witkoff’s approach to meetings like this over the past year?
BAER: I mean, we are looking at a highly personalized foreign policy in that President Trump seems to control everything. There’s very little in our agency coordination for the foreign policy and an unorthodox use of a trusted associate from the real estate world, who has no prior diplomatic experience or regional expertise as kind of the chief diplomat. And he seems to be a transactions guy, and that seems to be his approach. He’s juggling, as you said, three precarious problems this week, and that would be a high-stakes really hard ask of anybody.
INSKEEP: I’m holding on to that word, transactions, that you just used because when I have followed past rounds of negotiations, Witkoff seems to have been very open about what he thinks the transaction is. Russia gets some territory from Ukraine, and everybody walks away happy. That’s the way Witkoff is said to describe it, although Ukraine, of course, really struggles with that formula, and Russia never seems interested. Can he bring anything more to the transaction this time?
BAER: I think it’s going to be incredibly difficult. As Eleanor made clear, the Ukrainians are unwilling to give up additional territory, and that’s not just because of some kind of emotional attachment to that territory. It’s because the territory – the lines exist where they are for a reason. It’s because they are defensible lines, and giving up more territory would make the new lines indefensible, and that would be a real threat to Ukraine. And the real problem is that the challenge that Witkoff is trying to solve can’t be solved right now at the negotiating table because the real challenge is that Vladimir Putin is not ready for peace. And so the real problem is in Moscow. And I think that what’s going to need to happen before Putin is ready for peace is for President Trump to realize that he needs incentives to come to the table in good faith. Those incentives might look like more sanctions on Russia, more support for Ukraine to raise the costs on Russia on the battlefield. But right now, Moscow’s not ready for peace, and he’s happier – Putin is happy to play for time as he continues this war.
INSKEEP: Because you mentioned sanctions, I’m wanting to review some history here. Of course, under Biden, the United States put a lot of sanctions on Russia. There was a lot of congressional support for that. President Trump has periodically, over the past year, talked about sanctions, threatened sanctions, maybe even announced sanctions, but has not really added any pressure on Moscow in the end. Do I have that right?
BAER: That’s my assessment, yeah.
INSKEEP: OK. So what is realistic then to expect out of these talks, if anything?
BAER: Like I said, Steve, unfortunately – I wish I were more optimistic, but unfortunately, I think until Moscow is ready, until Putin is ready to come to the table and actually has recognized that the war is costing him more than it’s giving him – and we should note that he has retooled the entire Russian economy around this war. The Russian economy’s under enormous strain already, but he’s retooled it around this war. And in some sense, then he’s addicted to it because the war is what’s propping up his regime.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
BAER: Until we change the calculus for him, it’s going to be difficult to make any progress at the negotiating table. As Eleanor said, he hasn’t accepted the idea that Ukraine should have security guarantees as we saw this week when President Trump asked him for a sign of good faith to hold off on attacks. On Monday night, they launched one of the largest attacks in recent memory overnight. So…
INSKEEP: Yeah.
BAER: …He’s not sending signs that he’s ready.
INSKEEP: Let me ask about this next meeting that Witkoff is supposed to attend in Istanbul or maybe Oman. There’s a lot of confusion about exactly where it’s going to be, who’s going to attend. But the idea is for the United States to talk with Iran and find possibly some way out of the threatened U.S. strike on Iran over its nuclear program, protests and other issues. Do you see some basis on which the two countries could stand down?
BAER: I guess there’s a possibility there, and it’s hard to know. You know, this latest episode was brought to a head by the protest that started on December 28, where what – the latest reports are that 30,000 people were killed, and it’s hard to tell. He’s set the theater now, and so there is a credible middle – military threat, and that’s an advantage for Witkoff as he goes into these negotiations. But Iran and the U.S. remain very far apart on the nuclear program and on Iran’s nefarious behavior in the region. And so it will be a difficult thing for – to close that gap in one meeting.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
BAER: And the credible threat of military threat remains, and we know that there are people around President Trump who are probably encouraging military action on the back of the – what they see as successful military action last year.
INSKEEP: And I guess we should note, there are many different casualty estimates. Dan Baer, thanks so much.
BAER: Thanks for having me.
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