Tools of negotiation

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday, the 16th of October.

This is WORD Radio and we thank you for joining us today! Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

First up on The World and Everything in It…Weapons and diplomacy.

REPORTER: [Greeting in Dutch]

Yesterday, leaders of NATO met in Brussels to talk about supplying Ukraine with more drones to resist Russian attacks.

Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans:

BREKELMANS: Putin now feels that he gains with every day of continuing the Russian aggression in Ukraine. And we need to make sure that the costs for Putin go up.

REICHARD: Some of that NATO money will buy weapons for Ukraine from the United States. And there’s more than drones on the table.

Here’s President Trump on Air Force One on his way to the Middle East on Sunday…talking about weapons for defense and offense.

TRUMP: They need Patriots very badly. They'd like to have Tomahawks. That's a step up.

BROWN: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet with Trump on Friday.

How might long-range weapons change the game for Ukraine?

Joining us now to talk about it is George Barros…lead Russia analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. He’s also a former adviser to the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Russia and Ukraine.

REICHARD: George, good morning.

GEORGE BARROS: Good morning. Thanks so much for having me.

REICHARD: Well, we’re so glad you’re here. George, can you tell us a bit about the Tomahawk missiles Trump is considering sending to Ukraine?

BARROS: Yeah, absolutely so the Tomahawk missile is a very capable piece of kit. It's a cruise missile with a longer range, longer than anything that the U.S. has given Ukraine so far. But crucially, and this is the crucial characteristic of this weapon system, is that it has a large payload, has a payload of 1000 kilograms, which really, really matters, especially when it comes to destroying hardened and specialized military facilities, the likes of which the Ukrainians can strike in terms of the range, but cannot deliver a very large payload.

REICHARD: Perhaps the President is floating the possibility of sending Tomahawks in order to gauge Russia’s response. George, what do you think will be the deciding factors to in fact send Tomahawk missiles to Kyiv?

BARROS: I think the deciding factors are going to be the extent to which the President assesses that negotiations with Russia has reached a dead end. Because fundamentally, what we've been looking at over the last nine months has been Moscow stringing the president along, stringing along administration members who have gone to Moscow and and Turkey and all over to try to meet with the Russians. And the conclusion, through discovery and brute force, has been that actually the Russians say all these things about how they're willing to negotiate and sit down and end the war, but in reality, they actually have intensified their war efforts. They're not willing to make any kinds of concessions acceptable to U.S. interests, and therefore they're not going to sit down at the table. So they must be sat down at the table, and the tomahawks are one of those tools that can increase the likelihood of forcing them to the table.

REICHARD: You know, sometimes backchannel diplomacy can play a role. I’m curious to hear your take on First Lady Melania Trump’s announcement last week…about Ukrainian children taken to Russia.

MELANIA TRUMP: President Putin and I have had an open channel of communication regarding the welfare of these children.

She announced that 8 children were released back to their families…and that’s just a fraction of the estimated tens of thousands still missing. But do you think this kind of diplomacy will affect the larger conflict?

BARROS: I mean, these sorts of things always happen in statecraft and in wars. And you know, it's really tragic what the Russian state have done to these Ukrainian children. And I'm glad that the First Lady's efforts have managed to save some of them, and hopefully it will do many more. But the Kremlin's objectives in Ukraine are so big, and the objectives to subordinate an entire another country is so grand, and the Kremlin has made no indication that it's actually willing to make any meaningful concessions on that agenda. It means that really these back channel diplomacy can only go so far, because when you've had the direct diplomacy and the back channel diplomacy and the Russians are still not willing to budge, it really does force your hand to either walk away entirely and cede or double down and try to bring your adversary to a concession.

REICHARD: Before we go, I’m curious how the Gaza ceasefire deal factors in to all of this. President Zelenskyy says there’s momentum from the Middle East to do a similar deal in Ukraine…what’s your assessment?

BARROS: So President Trump, since taking office back in January, has settled a number of actual, no kidding, wars. I mean, yes, there's the Hamas, Israel ceasefire. There was also the India, Pakistan and other conflicts. And President Trump has actually seen what it means to facilitate a negotiation, broker a deal, and bring two parties, despite their opposing opinions and opposing objectives, together, to the table, and what that actually looks like. And I think President Trump in that same time period has also conversely learned what it looks like when the belligerents are not willing to negotiate and want to keep fighting. And I think, look with the Russians continued insistence on striking Ukrainian cities and the various other things that Moscow has done, they've made themselves very clear in their own actions that they're not willing to negotiate, which is why the administration is pivoting and leaning into alternative tools to try to bring them to the table, if not just direct negotiations.

REICHARD: George, is there anything else that you think the public needs to know about this or that is underreported?

BARROS: Yeah, I think the one big thing here is to understand that the potential introduction of tomahawks to this war is not going to be a major escalation of the war. It is a fact that the Russians have been using comparable cruise missiles since day one of this war, back in 2022 almost every single day against Ukraine, they use the KH 101 missile. They use Kalibr sea launch missiles. They use Kinzhal hypersonic cruise missiles. And even last year and last November, they used an intermediate range ballistic missile. So to give the Ukrainians the Tomahawk, this would really be evening the playing field and allowing the Ukrainians to fly and use similar weapons, not an escalation. The Russians have already upped the ante in the escalation of the missile domain.

REICHARD: George Barros is Russia team and Geospatial Intelligence Team Lead for the Institute for the Study of war. George, thanks so much!

BARROS: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's always a pleasure.

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