Phone call that could stop the war: the leaders’ arithmetic

The leaders of the two largest powers in the war’s diplomacy were reported, in the second week of July, to be preparing for the direct conversation that the summer’s negotiations have been building toward, and the expectation of the call carried the hopes and the fears that the war’s three years have accumulated. The conversation, scheduled through the channels that the two governments maintain, would be the first direct exchange between the two leaders in the new phase of the war’s diplomacy, and the expectation of it has concentrated the attention of the capitals, the markets and the armies; the call, when it happens, will be the moment when the war’s settlement either begins or recedes, and the moment’s preparation is the story of the week.

The context of the call is the part that explains its timing. The war has settled into the attrition that the third year has made familiar, the fronts static, the casualties accumulating, the economies bearing the costs, and the diplomacy has moved through the spring’s negotiations without the breakthrough that the terms require; the two leaders’ direct exchange has been the missing piece, the conversation that the intermediaries could not conduct and the settlement would require. The preparation of the call is the recognition, on both sides, that the war’s continuation has reached the point where the leaders’ own arithmetic must be tested, and the testing is the call’s purpose.

The expectations around the call are the ones that the war’s parties have been managing with the care that the stakes command. The Ukrainian government has insisted, through the statements, that the settlement must be just, that the territory and the security must be addressed, and that the conversations cannot be conducted over its head; the European capitals have pressed for the inclusion that their contributions have earned; and the markets have begun to price the settlement’s possibility, the currencies and the bonds moving with the war’s headlines. The expectations are the load that the call will carry, and the load’s weight is the measure of the war’s weariness.

The substance that the call will address is the part that the negotiators have been preparing through the spring. The ceasefire, the first step that the settlement requires, has been sketched in the drafts that the channels have exchanged, and the call’s purpose, by the reports, is the fixing of the terms that the drafts could not settle: the lines, the monitors, the timelines; the wider settlement, the security guarantees, the sanctions, the reconstruction, will follow, if the ceasefire holds, through the negotiations that the call will open. The call’s substance is the beginning, and the beginning’s shape will determine the settlement’s possibility.

The call’s outcome will be measured in the days and the weeks after it, and the measuring will be conducted in the war’s own registers: the front’s activity, the capitals’ statements, the markets’ prices. The ceasefire that the call could produce would be the war’s first real pause, the pause that the settlements are built from; the failure that the call could produce would return the war to its attrition with the added weight of the missed opportunity. The phone call that could stop the war is scheduled for the summer’s weeks, and the scheduling has given the war’s diplomacy its most consequential moment since the conflict began; the call will be made, the words will be exchanged, and the war’s next phase will be determined by the exchange’s outcome, which is the most that any phone call can carry.