Olaf Scholz keeps calling Vladimir Putin to tell him how isolated he is. In psychology, this is called paradoxical communication: what you do refutes what you say.
Two weeks ago, Olaf Scholz called Vladimir Putin again. The conversation lasted 80 minutes. French President Emmanuel Macron was also involved. New edition of the Normandy format, with which Frank-Walter Steinmeier wanted to convince the Russians of peace – this time as a team meeting.
How do you talk to a war criminal? Do you go through the course of the front together? Are you briefing him on the latest arms shipments so he doesn’t only find out about them from the TV? Do you switch to small talk when the flow of the conversation threatens to falter? 80 minutes is a long time. Many couples don’t talk to each other that much in a week.
Always informed: The course of the war in Ukraine in the ticker – Russia uses 50-year-old Soviet tanks in southern Ukraine: “Shows their lack”
The Kremlin then published a summary of the most important points for the Russian side. After that, Putin took the opportunity to throw new threats at his two interlocutors. In the meantime he has a certain amount of practice in threatening. Unless the West lifts sanctions, Russia will block all grain shipments. Hunger as a weapon already existed under Stalin. At that time, four million people lost their lives. The good news from a German perspective: Unlike the atomic bomb, a grain boycott only affects the Third World.
Now save articles for later in “Pocket”.
It is said that as long as you are talking to each other, you will not be shot. Putin shows that both can easily be done at the same time. While he is talking to Scholz and Macron, he has his soldiers murder, rape and burn. It might even spur him on that they keep calling him. There are said to be people who feel a perverse attraction to demonstrating their power to others while simultaneously exchanging pleasantries.
SPD leader Lars Klingbeil delivered a remarkable explanation for telephone diplomacy a few days ago. The talks served to make it clear to Putin how isolated he was. A good deal of progress has been made in the meantime. Klingbeil therefore rates the phone calls as a success.
That’s a rationale worth pondering. So the German chancellor regularly seeks contact with a man who has broken all ties under international law in order to tell him that no one wants anything to do with him anymore? In psychology, this is called paradoxical communication: what you do refutes what you say.
With young children, the surest way is to drive them into psychosis. This behavior can also trigger behavioral disorders in adults. I suspect, however, that Putin is past the point where he can be psychologically cornered. Anyone who has gone through Kremlin diplomacy can survive 80 minutes with the Scholzomat. That’s one of the perks of growing up in the KGB.
Putin thinks the West is too soft, too decadent, too spoiled. According to a report in the Washington Post, which cites sources in the Russian power apparatus, the Kremlin boss is convinced that time is working for him. He calculates that the longer the war drags on, the greater the chance of turning the tide of war in Russia’s favour.
Democratic societies have a structural disadvantage compared to dictatorships: they have to take public opinion into account. And the public is fickle. That was the case in Vietnam. It was repeated in Afghanistan. It could also happen in Ukraine.
The readers love him or hate him, Jan Fleischhauer is indifferent to the least. You only have to look at the comments on his columns to get an idea of how much people are moved by what he writes. He was at SPIEGEL for 30 years, and at the beginning of August 2019 he switched to FOCUS as a columnist.
Fleischhauer himself sees his task as giving voice to a world view that he believes is underrepresented in the German media. So when in doubt, against the herd instinct, commonplaces and stereotypes. His texts are always amusing – perhaps it is this fact that provokes his opponents the most.
You can write to our author: By email to j.fleischhauer@focus-magazin.de or on Twitter @janfleischhauer.
It is said that the window for negotiations must be kept open. In the end, the conflict can only be resolved through diplomatic channels. Or as SPD leader Lars Klingbeil says: “The war will be decided at the negotiating table.”
Sounds great. Who is against diplomacy? However, there is one problem that cannot be solved even with the most patient, constant phone call: all diplomatic efforts presuppose that the person with whom you are negotiating feels bound by the outcome of the negotiation. If Vladimir Putin has taught the world anything, it is that he does not consider any agreement binding, even one bearing his own signature. Any contract he signs is only worth something as long as he thinks it will benefit him.
There is no guesswork as to what Putin intends to do if he succeeds in subjugating Ukraine. At the beginning of April, the state news agency “Ria Novosti” published a text entitled “What Russia should do with Ukraine”. In it, the program for the time after the final victory is laid out in detail. There is talk of ethnic cleansing, deportations and mass shootings. It’s not just the ruling class in Moscow that is considered a Nazi breed that needs to be eliminated, but all Ukrainians who have taken up arms.
Anyone who thinks that Putin only used the wrong words when he talked about destroying enemies of the people like flies also believes in little Häwelmann. “The opponents of the letter Z must understand that they will not be spared. It’s serious: concentration camps, re-education, sterilization,” says Kremlin propagandist Karen Georgievich Shakhnazarov during prime time on state television. The host of a popular talk show prefers the idea of displaying captured Ukrainians in marketplaces, where you can do “whatever you want” with them.
One must offer Putin a face-saving way out, says Emmanuel Macron. But what should it look like? The Russian side would use any ceasefire to reorganize itself enough to be able to complete what it started with renewed vigour. The American approach of weakening Russia to such an extent that it will not be able to attack a neighbor for the next four or five years seems more realistic to me. However, that would be exactly the humiliation that the French President is keen to avoid.
There’s a reason why psychologists advise cutting off all contact with a violent offender at a certain point. Anyone who continues to reach out, despite the most shocking violations of limits, shows that they are not really serious about the announced penalties. But maybe that’s exactly what it’s all about: signaling to Putin that an agreement will somehow be reached when he returns to the negotiating table.
I remember one sentence from the Federal Chancellor. “Wherever Putin seeks conflict, he comes up against our consensus,” he declared in the Bundestag in April. “Consensus” has several meanings, the most common being “agreement”, “accommodating”. It was probably not meant that way, but sometimes the wish is revealed in the slip of the tongue.
