Navigating the Vortex

By: Lucy P. Marcus & Stefan Wolff
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  • Summary

  • We live in a complex and ever-changing world. To navigate the vortex we must adapt to change quickly, think critically, and make sound decisions. Lucy Marcus & Stefan Wolff talk about business, politics, society, culture, and what it all means.

    www.navigatingthevortex.com
    Lucy P. Marcus & Stefan Wolff
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Economics Political Science Politics & Government
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Episodes
  • As Europe releases proposals for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump is falling into the trap of Munich 1938

    As Europe releases proposals for a ceasefire in Ukraine, Trump is falling into the trap of Munich 1938
    Apr 26 2025
    After a second consecutive night of deadly Russian air attacks – against the capital Kyiv on April 23 and the eastern Ukrainian city of Pavlohrad on April 24 – a ceasefire in Ukraine seems as unrealistic as ever.With Russian commitment to a deal clearly lacking, the situation is not helped by US president Donald Trump. He can’t quite seem to decide who he will ultimately blame if his efforts to agree a ceasefire fall apart.Before the strikes on Kyiv, Trump blamed Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for holding up a deal by refusing to recognise Crimea as Russian. The following day, he chided Vladimir Putin for the attacks, calling them “not necessary, and very bad timing” and imploring Putin to stop.The main hurdle on the path to a ceasefire is what a final peace agreement might look like and what concessions Kyiv – and its European allies – will accept. Ukraine’s and Europe’s position on this is unequivocal: no recognition of the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea or of permanent Russian control of currently occupied territories in Donbas. This position is also backed by opinion polls in Ukraine, which indicate only limited support for some temporary concessions to Russia. Along similar lines, the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko, also suggested that temporarily giving up territory “can be a solution”.The deal that Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff apparently negotiated over three rounds of talks in Russia was roundly rejected by Ukraine and Britain, France, and Germany, who lead the “coalition of the willing” of countries pledging support for Ukraine.This prompted Witkoff and US secretary of state Marco Rubio to pull out of follow-up talks in London on April 24. The talks went ahead regardless, involving mostly lower-ranking officials. They ended with a fairly vacuous statement about a commitment to continuing “close coordination and … further talks soon”.And even this now appears as quite a stretch. Coinciding with Witkoff’s fourth trip to see Putin on April 25, European and Ukrainian counterproposals were released that reject most of the terms offered by Trump or at least defer their negotiation until after a ceasefire is in place.The impasse is unsurprising. Washington’s proposal included a US commitment to recognise Crimea as Russian, a promise that Ukraine would not join Nato and an acceptance of Moscow’s control of the territories in eastern Ukraine that it currently illegally occupies. It also suggested lifting all sanctions against Russia.Ukraine would give up large parts of territory and receive no security guarantees, while Russia is rewarded with reintegration into the global economy.It is the territorial concessions asked of Kyiv which are especially problematic. Quite apart from the fact that they are in fundamental breach of basic principles of international law – the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states – they are unlikely to provide solid foundations for a durable peace.Much like the idea of Trump’s Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, to divide Ukraine like Berlin after the second world war, it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what, and who, drives this war.Kellogg later clarified that he was not suggesting a partition of Ukraine, but his proposal would have exactly the same effect as Trump’s most recent offer.Both proposals accept the permanent loss to Ukraine of territory that Russia currently controls. Where they differ is that Kellogg wants to introduce a European-led reassurance force west of the river Dnipro, while leaving the defence of remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory to Kyiv’s armed forces.If accepted by Russia – unlikely as this is, given Russia’s repeated and unequivocal rejection of European peacekeeping troops in Ukraine – it would provide at best a minimal security guarantee and only for a part of Ukrainian territory.What it would almost inevitably mean, however, is a repeat of the permanent ceasefire violations along the disengagement zone in eastern Ukraine where Russian and Ukrainian forces would continue to face each other.This is what happened after the ill-fated Minsk accords of 2014 and 2015, which were meant to settle the conflict after Russia’s invasion of Donbas in 2014. A further Russian invasion could be just around the corner once the Kremlin felt that it had sufficiently recovered from the current war.The lack of a credible deterrent is one key difference between the situation in Ukraine as envisaged by Washington and other historical and contemporary parallels, including Korea and Cyprus.Korea was partitioned in 1945 and has been protected by a large US military presence since the Korean war in 1953. After the Turkish invasion of 1974, Cyprus was divided between Greek and Turkish Cypriots along a partition line secured by an armed UN peacekeeping mission.Trump has ruled out any US troop commitment as part of securing a ceasefire in Ukraine. And the idea of a UN force in Ukraine, ...
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    8 mins
  • Trump is still the only one with a chance of getting Ukraine and Russia to the table

    Trump is still the only one with a chance of getting Ukraine and Russia to the table
    Apr 25 2025
    United States President Donald Trump is finding the reality of negotiations to bring about a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine yet again less easy than he imagined on the campaign trail before returning to the White House for a second term. Having boasted about ending the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, he now finds himself close to the 100-day mark of his second term oscillating between threatening to walk away from ceasefire negotiations and promising that a deal was “very close”.Neither is a realistic outcome at this moment.Ministerial-level talks between the US, Ukraine, and the European coalition of the willing led by the UK, France, and Germany, to discuss ending the war fell through on Wednesday (April 23) after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio cancelled his participation, prompting British, French and German counterparts to pull out as well and releasing their own proposals for a deal on April 25.For Mr Trump, Ukraine is an important puzzle piece in his reconfiguration of US-Russia relations which are critical to his focus on China.The US president is keen to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing. This strategy is often referred to as a “reverse Kissinger”, in reference to the late American grand strategist’s success of capitalising on the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s and normalising US relations with communist China. That Mr Trump and his advisers lack the strategic acumen of Henry Kissinger and that there is no Russia-China split on the horizon to capitalise on does not mean that rapprochement between the US and Russia is impossible.On the contrary, if the terms were right, both Mr Trump and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, might yet seal a deal to serve their interests – but such a deal will unlikely bring an end to the war against Ukraine.The US is still the only player in the complex dynamics of negotiations with even a remote chance of getting a deal done — because of the leverage the Trump administration has over Russia and Ukraine. Past initiatives to end the war against Ukraine, including those by China, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican, never got any traction. Their sponsors generally lacked the ability or, in China’s case, the will, to bring Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiation table.Mr Trump has so far focused on incentives in his dealings with Russia. He can offer Mr Putin much of what the Kremlin wants. Washington’s current peace plan includes the recognition of Moscow’s territorial gains in Ukraine, the lifting of all US sanctions and ruling out future NATO membership for Kyiv.If Trump forges ahead with such a deal, the consequential weakening of the transatlantic alliance would also ensure, in the Kremlin’s eyes, a reordering of European security for the benefit of Russia. It would include US withdrawal from Europe and put limits on the size and capabilities of Ukraine’s armed forces.It is not clear, however, what, if anything, Russia has offered in return — apart from relinquishing claims to territory that Moscow does not yet control.By contrast, the US president has concentrated on pressure when it comes to the relationship with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Mr Trump has been unequivocal that he will suspend military aid and intelligence sharing as leverage. This has made sure that Kyiv keeps engaged in negotiations and accepts giving the US privileged access to Ukraine’s mineral and energy resources and infrastructure.The limits of such leverage, however, are clear: Mr Zelenskyy ruled out a recognition of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, proposed in the US peace deal. Mr Trump’s response was to lash out on Truth Social, blaming Zelenskyy for prolonging the “killing field”.The gap between what the US has put on the table and what Ukraine and its European partners will accept remains wide.If, in light of these difficulties, he did abandon talks, Mr Trump could still cut a deal with Mr Putin in an effort to pry him away from China. But such a deal — on Russia’s terms — would almost inevitably deal another major, and potentially fatal, blow to the American alliance system in Europe and further increase doubt about the dependability of the US as a partner among its Asian allies.Both outcomes would be detrimental to US interests in its rivalry with China and are unlikely to be offset by vague hopes of the Kremlin realigning with the White House.Alternatively, Mr Trump could turn against Mr Putin for failing to agree to a ceasefire and finally implement his earlier threat to impose large-scale sanctions on Russia. Unlikely as it is at the moment, this would preserve what is left of the transatlantic alliance, at least for the time being. It would also allow Mr Trump to conclude his coveted minerals deal with Ukraine. If it means the continuation of US military support and intelligence sharing, such an outcome would clearly be problematic for Mr Putin.This appears to be a reality that the Kremlin...
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    8 mins
  • The path to peace in Ukraine narrows down further — even if Trump secures a ceasefire

    The path to peace in Ukraine narrows down further — even if Trump secures a ceasefire
    Apr 22 2025
    After more than three years of war, the prospects of peace for Ukraine remain slim. There is no obvious, credible pathway even to a ceasefire, given Russia's refusal to extend a brief and shaky truce over Easter — despite the US, UK and Ukraine all signalling their support for this idea. And even if the considerable hurdles impeding a ceasefire deal could be overcome, a more fundamental problem would remain: none of the key players in the conflict appear to have a plan for an agreement that is likely to be acceptable to both Kyiv and Moscow.Less than a year ago, there were at least seven different third-party peace proposals.At one level this is surprising. Less than a year ago, there were at least seven different third-party peace proposals. Among them, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the Vatican had their distinct visions for how to achieve peace. In addition, there was a multilateral proposal by a group of African states, led by South Africa, and a joint proposal by China and Brazil.The best that could be said about these plans last autumn was that several of their sponsors had converged around the principles of the China-Brazil proposal by forming a Chinese-led "Friends of Peace" group in the margins of the UN General Assembly in September 2024. Remarkably — because it was in clear contravention of the western opposition to a ceasefire at the time — EU and NATO members Hungary and Slovakia also joined the group, alongside South Africa, Egypt, Indonesia, Türkiye, and other countries from the global south. By the end of 2024, this initiative, however, clearly had run its course and arrived at a dead end, as indicated in a short press release after the only other meeting the group held at the level of their countries' permanent representatives to the UN. A statement on what Beijing calls the Ukraine crisis by China's foreign minister, Wang Yi, on March 7, 2025, made no mention of the group. More importantly, that statement also seemed to indicate that China was no longer pursuing an active role in mediation, limiting its involvement to simply welcoming and supporting "all efforts for peace".What these plans had in common was their primary focus on a ceasefire as a stepping stone to negotiations about an actual peace agreement. They were all light on detail of what a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine would entail but were nonetheless roundly rejected by Ukraine and its western allies as favouring Russia. Given that a ceasefire would simply freeze the front lines and very likely make them permanent with or without a subsequent peace agreement, this was not an unreasonable position. Except that what Ukraine proposed instead — and what its western allies backed, at least rhetorically — was hardly more viable. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's 2022 peace plan was already on life support at the time of the first "Summit on Peace in Ukraine” in Switzerland in June 2024. And when merely 84 of the 100 delegations attending the summit (out of 160 invited) supported a watered-down version of Zelensky's plan in their final communique without agreement on a follow-up meeting, Ukraine's peace plan was dead in the water. Its 'replacement' — Ukraine's internal resilience plan — with its focus on ensuring that the country can survive a long war of attrition with Russia is anything but a peace plan.Among its European allies, the absence of a peace plan is similarly glaring, albeit for different reasons. Europe remains committed to supporting Kyiv, but the Russian war against Ukraine is only one — though clearly the most important — security priority for an emerging coalition of the willing among western backers of Ukraine. For them, it is important to keep Ukraine in the fight while they build up their own defences in a new international order in which the world might well be carved up into American, Russian and Chinese spheres of influence.Such a carve-up is at the heart of efforts by US president Donald Trump who seeks to secure a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, as well as a deal that would give the US privileged access to Ukrainian resources, partly as a repayment for US support in the war to date. The latter appears to be relatively close to conclusion after it initially fell apart during an extraordinarily acrimonious press conference in the White House on February 28.The ceasefire deal Trump appears to envisage would divide Ukraine itself into spheres of influence…The ceasefire deal Trump appears to envisage would divide Ukraine itself into spheres of influence — as recently suggested by Trump's special envoy for Ukraine, retired general Keith Kellogg. Yet even such a pro-Moscow arrangement that would offer Putin control of 20% of Ukraine continues to elude negotiators, primarily because Russian president Vladimir Putin has few incentives to settle for less than Russia’s maximum demands and stop a war that he thinks he is still able to win on the battlefield,...
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    8 mins
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