Home ground
NEGOTIATING on home ground yields a tactical advantage. Recent history offers some examples.
Take the pre-World War II war meetings between Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938. Hitler ensured that the talks were held in Germany — in his mountain eyrie of Berchtesgaden, at Bad Godesberg on the Rhine, and in Munich. Chamberlain returned from Munich, clutching what he thought was an agreement. Hitler repudiated it as ‘a piece of paper’. In March 1939, Hitler annexed the whole of Czechoslovakia. Great Britain lost the peace and then went to war over Hitler’s next mouthful — Poland.
In 1972, Mrs Indira Gandhi invited Pakistan’s president, Z.A. Bhutto, to the Raj Bhavan in Shimla. Bhutto had to fly to India. He did not have the choice Field Marshal Ayub Khan was offered (following the 1965 war with India) of Tashkent for the Soviet-brokered peace talks. Tashkent proved fatal for both leaders: Prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died there; Ayub Khan, like Chamberlain, returned home politically damaged.
In 2001, an underprepared Gen Musharraf decided to gamble against PM A.B. Vajpayee. Their encounter took place in Agra. Their talks might have led to an agreement — a capstone to the 1999 Lahore Declaration, signed by PM Vajpayee and PM Nawaz Sharif in Lahore — had hubris not overtaken Musharraf. He thought he would present Pakistan’s case before a press conference of dispassionate Indian journalists. (Is there such a species?) He antagonised the Indians further by meeting the Kashmiri leadership represented by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. They, like the Czechs, had not been invited to the talks on their future.
History warns against leaping into ill-prepared summits.
Vajpayee did not disguise his mistrust of Musharraf. He had seen his bus yatra run off the road by Kargil. So, he took the matter before his cabinet colleagues L.K. Advani and Sushma Swaraj who waited in the wings. They sabotaged any possibility of a deal.
No Indian leader since Nehru has been comfortable negotiating with a Pakistani whose constituency wears a uniform. In 2015, PM Modi took the initiative in his front-door diplomacy by visiting PM Nawaz Sharif in Raiwind, outside Lahore. It was a step too far. Sharif fell casualty to this well-meant but provocative gesture. Modi has now practically upended all Indo-Pak agreements, since and including the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. He has made clear that to him, as to Hitler, such agreements are merely the paving stones to war.
History warns leaders against leaping into ill-prepared summits, even on home ground. US President Trump, for his recent meeting with Russian President Putin on Aug 15, chose a US military base in Anchorage, Alaska.
In a carefully synchronised spectacle, both leaders disembarked simultaneously and as they stood on the platform, United States Air Force fighter planes and a B-2 bomber flew overhead. Unfazed by this ham-handed salute, Putin accepted Trump’s offer of a lift in Trump’s limousine (known as The Beast). CBS has reported that they were not accompanied by any aides or interpreters.
Putin watchers know that he speaks English passably well, enough to correct his interpreters when they make a mistake. It is not inconceivable that substantive decisions in Anchorage took place in the privacy of that car ride. The rest of the formal discussions spread over almost three hours were, one suspects, pure theatre — a Kabuki performance, without Japanese actors.
The summit ended inconclusively. Putin (speaking in English) invited Trump to visit Moscow for round two. Trump ungraciously cancelled the working lunch with Putin and flew home, with-out a piece of paper.
The one performer who expected to be given a part — even a walk-on one — was the former Ukrainian entertainer president V. Zelensky. He should have remembered that in 1938, Czechoslovakia (the victim of German aggression) was not invited to Munich. Czechoslovakia lost first its territory of Sudetenland to Hitler, and then its entire country.
Trump assuaged Zelensky’s ego by inviting him to the White House on Aug 18. Supporting the diminutive Ukrainian came a cohort of European leaders, including France’s Macron, Britain’s Starmer, and Germany’s Merz. They pressed Trump to provide a security guarantee similar to Nato’s Article 5, ie, that an attack on Ukraine would be considered an attack on all Nato countries. In effect, Ukraine would be given Nato’s protection, short of actual membership.
Trump interrupted his session with the European leaders to call Putin. Afterwards, Trump took Zelensky and the European leaders into the Oval Office to describe his discussion with Putin. Trump is clear. He does not want a direct war with Putin. He wants Zelensky and his European sponsors to decide which part of Ukraine should be amputated and fed to the Russian bear.
The writer is an author.
Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2025