Please Stop Breathlessly Reporting Every Unofficial U.S. Interaction with Russia, Please

An NBC News story pumps up the volume way too damn much.

Photo by Tetiana SHYSHKINA on Unsplash, so no one can say Ukrainians were not included in this post.

NBC News’ Josh Lederman has an exclusive story with a headline — “Former U.S. officials have held secret Ukraine talks with prominent Russians” — that makes it sound way more important than it actually is. Here’s Lederman’s lede:

A group of former senior U.S. national security officials have held secret talks with prominent Russians believed to be close to the Kremlin — and, in at least one case, with the country’s top diplomat — with the aim of laying the groundwork for potential negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, half a dozen people briefed on the discussions told NBC News. 

In a high-level example of the back-channel diplomacy taking place behind the scenes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met with members of the group for several hours in April in New York, four former officials and two current officials told NBC News. 

On the agenda of the April meeting were some of the thorniest issues in the war in Ukraine, like the fate of Russian-held territory that Ukraine may never be able to liberate, and the search for an elusive diplomatic off-ramp that could be tolerable to both sides. 

Sitting down with Lavrov were Richard Haass, a former diplomat and the outgoing president of the Council on Foreign Relations, current and former officials said. The group was joined by Europe expert Charles Kupchan and Russia expert Thomas Graham, both former White House and State Department officials who are Council on Foreign Relations fellows. 

Lederman provides additional details in the story, including the name of another participant (former U.S. assistant defense secretary Mary Beth Long), that “at least one former U.S. official has traveled to Russia for discussions involving the Ukraine war,” and that there are a bunch of foreign policy folks ready, eager, and willing to express their doubts and concerns to Lederman on the entire Track II enterprise:

• Former Senate aide and current Foundation for the Defense of Democracies think-tanker Bradley Bowman: “I worry about what messages might be conveyed with that and the implicit signal that we’re desperate for a deal.”

• Former U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul: “If you’re having Track Two negotiations about how to end the war, Ukrainians have to be there.”

• Former NSC Director Matt Dimmick: “Ukraine doesn’t need and want intermediaries to start coming in and crafting cease-fire solutions and then enticing Europe and the U.S. to elbow Ukraine in that direction. Ukraine realizes their path to a secure future is driving right through Russian defenses and leaving Russia no choice but to come up with their own way out of Ukraine.”

Once the story broke, a lot of folks either hyped up the story or damned the efforts taken by Haass and others. Financial Times reporter Polina Ivanova tweeted, “A group of former senior US officials have held secret talks with people close to the Kremlin — and with its top diplomat — with the aim of laying the groundwork for negotiations to end the war.” Yahoo News reporter Michael Weiss thundered, “So the outgoing president of a think tank that takes money from Len Blavatnik and the former managing director of Kissinger Associates are meeting with a Russian war criminal to decide the fate of Ukraine. How's that for American exceptionalism?” Melinda Haring demanded the Biden administration completely disavow the talks. A former Estonian official suggested, “If it had been disclosed that former Estonian officials had met and negotiated with (sanctioned) Russian officials, they would be behind bars now, and anyone who enabled this would be disgraced, fired, and awaiting trial.”

Now is the moment in Drezner’s World where I tell everyone cited or quoted above to calm the fuck down.

First, let’s dispense with the absurd premise that former U.S. officials meeting with a variety of Russians somehow signals U.S. weakness. If anything, the opposite is true. There was no official reach-out to the Russians here. Lavrov is the only government official on either side that is mentioned. That he was willing to meet with Haass and others suggests an asymmetrically greater Russian interest in cutting a deal than anything else.¹

Second, an unstated assumption in Lederman’s story — and in the reaction to it by others — is that Haass, Kupchan et al are in tight with the Biden administration. I have my doubts here. Graham, Long, and Haass are Republicans who have served in GOP administrations; Kupchan is an academic. We are not talking about inner-circle Bidenistas here. Bill Kristol is even more disparaging about the folks named in the NBC story: “They didn't get jobs in the Biden Administration, they're not particularly well-disposed to the Biden Administration, and they're not very well thought of by senior officials in the Biden Administration.” The idea that these talks would automatically lead to similar talks with the Biden administration is nuts.

Third, Track II and Track 1.5 talks are simply not worth this level of hyperbole or vitriol. Most of these initiatives go nowhere.² At their best, they offer a chance for participants to float ideas that would be risky for their official counterparts to even say out loud. Once in a while Track II progress can lead to a jumpstarting of Track I. The usual outcome, however, is a dead end. That does not mean they are useless, but the NBC News headline vastly inflates their importance. It goes without saying that any ideas floated in these talks would have to be run by the Ukrainians for there to be any real progress towards a negotiated end to the war.

Finally — and I cannot stress this enough — it is altogether good and appropriate to have Track II and Track 1.5 conversations with Russians about how the war might end. That statement holds even if Ukrainians are not in the room. As Lederman writes in his story, these Track 1.5 and Track II negotiations “come as formal, high-level diplomatic engagements between the U.S. and Russian governments over Ukraine have been few and far between.” I may be just a small-town political scientist, but I reckon it is destabilizing for large, nuclear-armed states to lack channels of communication with each other.

Talking with Russia, particularly when they are vulnerable, is an eminently sensible idea, so long as the Ukrainians are kept in the loop on matters pertaining to Ukraine. This is one reason why there have been so many stories about U.S. officials reassuring Russian officials that they had nothing to do with the Prigozhin Follies. Even when Track II conversations go nowhere, it can be useful to learn what those on the other side are telling themselves about the present and the future.

So to sum up: a few formers talked with some Russians, including their foreign minister, a few months ago. It appears that nothing fruitful came from these talks. What transpired is something way less than what NBC suggested in its headline. And Track II conversations are perfectly fine.

Everyone please stop hyperventilating.

UPDATE: Click here to see Haass’ take on the meeting and the coverage of the meeting.

1. To be clear, I don’t think that is what this sit-down signals. But if you want to go by the blinkered logic that talking with counterparts is a sign of weakness, then Lavrov’s presence matters.

2. Remember, NBC’s story is about a conversation that took place three months ago with minimal follow-up.