Diplomacy is not ‘The Apprentice’, Donald

If Donald Trump had only been interested in history, he might have approached the future of Ukraine quite differently. 

Take the history of Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler, whose negotiations eight decades ago are very similar to what is happening now. 

After Hitler incorporated Austria into Germany in 1938, he began to covet the Sudetenland, a part of Czechoslovakia, where many German speakers lived.  

Chamberlain met with French president Édouard Daladier on April 28 1938 and convinced him that the only option was for Prague to cede land to Germany to prevent war. 

He went to meet Hitler in Germany, but then Hitler demanded all of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain arranged a summit with Daladier, Hitler and Benito Mussolini, where the Italian dictator presented a plan secretly prepared by the Germans, according to which the Sudetenland was to be handed over to Germany – known as the Munich Agreement of 1938. (Czechoslovakia was not invited to the summit.) 

Chamberlain and Hitler then signed an agreement that differences should be resolved through negotiations to avoid war. 

Chamberlain believed and trusted Hitler, just as Trump trusts Russian President Vladimir Putin today. 

Back in London, Chamberlain proudly declared to his citizens that he had achieved “peace with honour”: “I believe it is peace for our time.” 

Winston Churchill reacted immediately: “You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.” 

Hitler then occupied all of Czechoslovakia and, soon after, Poland; the trigger for the devastating Second World War. 

Working to normalise relations

In the Cold War that followed, the first crack between the US and Russia came when Richard Nixon visited China in 1972 and met with Mao Zedong. The result was the Shanghai Communiqué, where the US accepted the One China Doctrine (recognising Taiwan as part of China) and the two countries’ ties and trade were normalised. 

This breakthrough was actually the work of Nixon’s security adviser, Henry Kissinger, who had secretly visited China in 1971 and negotiated behind the scenes for months. 

Behind the scenes, Donald – not on television or with loud rhetoric, and with very, very confidential footwork and back channels beforehand. 

China and the US restored full diplomatic ties in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president. The balance of power of the Cold War shifted and the Soviet Union’s position was weakened. 

The same Carter was president when Egypt’s Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords in September 1978. The negotiations lasted 13 days and repeatedly stalled, but Carter moved back and forth between the two sides, pleading, threatening, promising and praising, and finally the two leaders signed. 

Under the agreement, Egypt recognised Israel as a sovereign state and Israel pledged to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula. The two countries exchanged ambassadors and signed trade deals. 

But this is the Middle East, so the peace didn’t last. In 1993, when Bill Clinton was president, three senior Norwegian diplomats brought Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) together in Oslo. Terje Rod-Larsen ran the back channels between the two sides, Johan Jorgen Holst, who was also foreign minister, managed the official negotiations, and Mona Juul kept communication and trust between the opponents going. 

The historic compromise, the Oslo I Accord, was signed on September 13 1993 by PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, assisted by Shimon Peres. 

An even more successful diplomatic exercise was the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that restored peace in Northern Ireland. It had been years in the making. Clinton, his envoy George Mitchell, British prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams, and the leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party, John Hume, were the key figures who had to defuse generations of prejudice and bitterness. 

Closer to home

Here on home soil, Pik Botha’s diplomacy around Namibia’s independence stands out. The toughest part was getting Cuba to agree to withdraw from Angola, a condition set by Pretoria. 

The jovial Botha, assisted by a small group of experienced diplomats, cultivated a personal relationship with Cuban chief negotiator Jorge Risquet and his team. It is no secret that the alcohol flowed freely during the meetings in Geneva, Brazzaville and New York, and personal relationships and trust were thus cultivated. They were like brothers, a Cuban diplomat later said. 

The outcome was the New York Accord of 1998, in which Cuba undertook to withdraw from Angola, and South Africa finally agreed to the independence of Namibia. 

But Africa’s super-diplomat lived more than a century and a half before Botha: King Moshoeshoe of the Basotho. 

Being a leader who chose peace in the very rough neighbourhood of the Difaqane of the 1830s, he refined a diplomatic approach to share with chiefs from his own region and those of the Zulu, Xhosa and Tswana. 

The lititimi’s task was to foster ties with clans in the area of ​​today’s Free State and Lesotho. They not only had to deliver messages; they had to compose lithiko, praise poems, and recite them to chiefs. 

The magosa were full-fledged ambassadors of the king who dealt with other, mostly hostile, groups and knew these groups’ languages ​​and cultures well. 

Moshoeshoe established the principle of diplomatic immunity in Southern Africa according to the principle Legosa la morena ha le na molato, molato ke oa khaloli – the king’s envoy is not to blame, only the one who sent him. Read more about it here.

Moshoeshoe played a fine game of appeasement, compliment and manipulation. For example, when his biggest rival in his region, Sekonyela, bothered him, he punished the Batlokoa chief and took away all his cattle, only to return them later and ask for harmony. 

When the powerful Mzilikazi of the Ndebele attacked Moshoeshoe’s stronghold, Thaba Bosiu, and was defeated, he sent a herd of cattle as food for the fleeing warriors. When the British withdrew after a failed attack on Thaba Bosiu, he sent a personal message to the senior officer, asking him to convey the Basotho king’s greetings and good wishes to Queen Victoria. 

Moshoeshoe knew that his own army was no match for that of King Shaka. He informed Shaka of his and his people’s high regard for the king of the mighty Zulus and told Shaka he was being prevented from sending more gifts.  (A bit like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer in Washington last week.) He regularly had gifts delivered to Shaka: goat skins, caracal skins, soft dassie skins that Shaka apparently loved and especially crane feathers, of which Shaka could not get enough. 

When chief Matiwane of the Ngwane began to harass Moshoeshoe, he sent word to Shaka to prevent Matiwane from sending gifts to Zululand any longer. Shaka sent his warriors and made short work of Matiwane, without the Basotho needing to saddle a horse. Moshoeshoe also played Shaka and Mzilikazi off against each other without them noticing. 

In the 1850s, the French head of state, Napoleon III, presented Moshoeshoe with two silver pistols in recognition of his pioneering work with diplomacy in Africa. 

Diplomacy and peacemaking is different from reality television, Mr Trump. It requires subtlety, deep thought, hard negotiations and fine footwork.