How did the recent spat between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy, happen? It was relationship conflict in the raw. Our Joint Managing Director, Family Lawyer and experienced mediator Norman Hartnell offers a mediator’s perspective.
One of the tasks of a mediator is to help each party understand where the other is coming from because when they do so the blocks which normally result in circular arguments and increasing tensions can dissipate.
You couldn’t have a clearer example of miscommunication and of the disastrous consequences of an increase in conflict than the recent spat between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy.
From my mediator‘s perspective, this is what I saw and heard, it was conflict in the raw.
Trump was trying to insist that the peace process is a staged process starting with a ceasefire with no preconditions. The trouble was he and Vance didn’t say so, rather they increasingly asked Zelenskyy to humble himself before them demanding thanks, when they had contributed money, in contrast to him / Ukraine having contributed lives and land.
Trump did not expressly say that there would be a second stage or third where detailed conditions would be examined and agreed.
For his part president Zelenskyy was saying that a ceasefire in itself was not enough, Putin could not be trusted, he had broken ceasefires before and a ceasefire would only give him the opportunity of rebuilding regrouping and attacking again as he was not to be trusted. He wanted securities as part of the ceasefire.
So what was needed?
A mediator would have said to both parties that your positions and interests are not incompatible. What Trump would’ve needed to say to Zelensky was that there would be guarantees for security in the 2nd/3rd stages but that he was focusing on the first step of stopping the fighting now.
Zelensky would have been able to understand with help and Trump would have been able to say, with help, that Trump‘s approach was to use economics as a means of overcoming the conflict by agreeing the economic deal of placing Americans in the front line which could provide a different type of security would be the least confrontational way of providing it on the basis that if Americans were based there long term, then if Putin then attacked the Americans , Putin would know that this would draw American military support in, without having to express it so openly. They would be fully supporting their own people.
They needed a mediator to help them move away from their individual starting positions in which they reiterated the positions ever louder (like the Englishman making himself understood abroad) such that the spectacle appeared one of Trump and Vance verbally bullying Zelensky, demanding subservience, an obvious imbalance of power. So what did they end up with? No agreement. No minerals deal. No ceasefire. No security.
What could have been said to Trump to help him help Zelenskyy understand his approach?
In a few words in answer to the question how do you defeat your enemy? Trump’s answer is “make them your friends” (that doesn’t mean you have to like or trust them, it means creating an economic relationship). Ultimately, it’s that which provides the security without threats because a security which is based on the threat of force only brings about a defensive response.
That is a disaster for the Western world. That sounds like I am supporting Trump‘s position, but I recoiled at the verbal bullying I saw which demonstrated that shouting and humiliating does not impart understanding. Rather arrogance creates its own barrier to listening.
What is needed now is a mediator to help each of them understand that their interests are compatible mutual and need to be approached in a more respectful, “listening to understand” way, getting and working with each other perspective and explore them to reach that conclusion, the same applies in most relationship conflicts whether between husband and wife, employer employee or between nations.
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