Eight years ago, Thomas Friedman, renowned commentator of The New York Times, a column with the provocative headline: ‘Go ahead, Vladimir, make my day’. At the time I translated that as: ‘Well, Vladimir, bring it on.’
The war in Ukraine had just begun in 2014, and Friedman snidely argued something like this: Come on, Putin, if you want to turn off the gas, go ahead. The faster the better. Remember, moron, that the 1983 Arab oil embargo gave a huge boost to the search for alternative fuels. That will now happen again, but on a much larger scale. It won’t be long, Vladimir, before we don’t need that stupid gas of yours and your pipelines will rot in the sea.
The column Friedman wrote for the NYT a few days ago was very different in tone. “How do we deal with a superpower led by a war criminal?” read the headline. The bottom line is that he doesn’t know the answer either. Friedman hopes the once-proud Russian army will rise up against its leader, but for now there are no signs of that.
Putin has done just about everything Friedman challenged him to do at the time. From ‘bad boy’, as Friedman calls him, who tampers with national borders to show the world that he counts, Putin has turned into a war criminal who smashes hospitals, destroys cities and to whom a few thousand civilian deaths mean nothing. No one knows how we can bring that guy and his clique back to reason. “A ceasefire is not planned,” his foreign minister Lavrov said.
In the beginning you heard, especially on Dutch television and much less on CNN, that the West should not throw oil on the fire. De Volkskrant yesterday listed eight more recommendations for entering into talks with the Russians. One of the most important: “Be strategically empathetic.” Unfortunately, empathy has brought us very little so far. Every night we see new deaths and destruction. Empathic sensitivity does not seem to be Putin’s greatest strength. Ukraine will soon be destroyed and Europe will be left with millions of refugees, while our governments beg empathetically for negotiations.
I noticed that none of those recommendations were anything like tit for tat, is often a successful strategy in conflicts. In its simplest form it comes down to this: start working together and then do exactly what your opponent does. So be nice at first, but as soon as your opponent starts to be annoying, you immediately retaliate. If he gives a slap, you give a slap back, until he is nice again. Then forget the past and start working together again. Tit for tat has no memory and no rancor. Thus, tit for tat forces even the biggest egotist to yield.
As far as the theory.
Such a strategy takes courage, especially when nuclear weapons are involved. In practice, President Obama drew a red line in Syria in case chemical weapons were used. When that did happen, the red line quickly faded, much to the delight of Putin who still benefits from it. In China they know better how to apply tit for tat. When Huawei boss Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada, the Chinese in China immediately detained a few innocent Canadians. That’s how you do it in an autocratic country. On the other hand, tit for tat did not participate in the murder of the Saudi journalist Khashoggi, with the result that the eventual trial will soon be conducted in Saudi Arabia itself, with of course a laughable outcome.
What does tit for tat mean in the current situation?
If the West really wants to bring Putin to the negotiating table, you have to give him straight away, otherwise it makes no sense. According to Bessel Kok, the former CEO of Swift, a half boycott of the Russian banks is of no use. You have to close them all. Furthermore, with every city that the Russians throw into rubble, drastically increase military efforts and not just threaten a no-fly zone. Also important: as long as the Russians do not want to come to the negotiating table, do not ask for it. The Austrian Chancellor’s initiative to go to Moscow was all wrong. In contrast, President Biden’s remark about calling Putin a war criminal was a very good one, not only because it is, but also to make it clear that the hard moral card of The Evil Empire – the criminal Empire – is being played out. In the long run, he also has to work for the Russian army. Let’s hope Friedman is right about that.