Dear Donald,

     I hope you don’t mind us being on a first name basis. Since we are all equal in America, you don’t need to call me Dr. Adler and I don’t need to call you Mr. President. Just Peter and Donald, having a chat. I have been wanting to talk with you about your mediation work with Ukraine and Russia and the other seven wars you said you ended. I know you want to button down your Nobel Prize, but what you are doing isn’t good mediation.

     I have been watching your work closely to see if I could learn something new and make my past thirty years of intervening in disputes more effective. Truthfully, I haven’t found much. Why? Most of the work my peers and I do adheres to certain standards and aims at transformative solutions. One of my colleagues calls it “horizon level work” that effectively changes old, tired, and repetitious stories into new possibilities that the parties themselves shape with a little assistance. In the legal world, this is called tertium quid.

     I’m the first to admit we don’t always get there and sometimes we just depressurize some stubborn situation that is at a high boil. But always, the intent is something bigger than the daily dramas you are staging with Vladimir Putin, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and some of our friends in Europe.

     Unlike you, we mediators are invited by the parties and come in as “independents.” We don’t have vested interests in the dispute or its outcomes, monetary or otherwise. We establish ground rules, promise combatants that we will stay non-aligned, and let them call us out if they think we are straying from that commitment.

     We absolutely never extract goodies from one side or the other for ourselves as you did on Ukraine’s minerals. We do most of our work in private and not with daily press conferences. We know that a shut mouth gathers no foot so we are trusted to keep confidences. We also don’t boast or brag. I know styles have a right to differ, but normally, it’s the parties that talk. We mediators tend to stay in the background unless the parties want us to speak for them.

     We also do a lot of things to take everyone’s big demands and underlying interests and make them practical. How? We help them discover similar aspirations, common enemies, and new procedures. We develop frameworks and principles at the start, and help them achieve face-saving retreats from red lines they may have drawn in the sand. Basically, we want to help them scratch their short term itches but also insulate later fights with processes they agree to now.

     Without seeming immodest, I could point you to a lot of good examples of conflicts my colleagues and I have helped sort out. One of my peers reduced killings in South America, Nepal, and Africa. Another assisted disputants with diametrically opposed political philosophies in preparing a new constitution for a young country. And several us have worked out compensations for thousands of people whose food security systems were destroyed by one of the world’s worst environmental mine contaminations.

     Since you are especially focused on securing a Nobel Prize, you might find this story of special interest. On February 6, 1905, a simmering cold war between Russia and Japan for control of Manchuria and Korea came to a head. Heihachiro Togo launched a surprise torpedo attack on Russian ships at Port Arthur on the Liaodong Peninsula in Manchuria, a precursor of Pearl Harbor three decades later.

     The battle for Port Arthur was the opening salvo in the Russo-Japanese war, a brief and bloody dispute that became the first large, modern confrontation between Asian and European superpowers and a prelude to coming world wars. In a later phase of that war, 750,000 Japanese and Russian soldiers would engage in a three-week battle that left 100,000 dead or injured.

     In that brief, furious war, Russia suffered embarrassing defeats. Faced with escalating unrest from the Bolsheviks at home, the country needed a graceful exit as did a financially and militarily overextended Japan. Enter Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican like you. Impulsive, tough, and more accustomed to wielding authority than attenuating it, Roosevelt quietly offered the services of the U.S. as a go-between.

     The U.S. had no immediate stake in the conflict and was a reasonable choice. Roosevelt could use his good offices to explore a settlement that might end the dispute and save face for the Japanese and Russians. After preliminary arrangements were put in place, Roosevelt invited delegations from both countries to the U.S. and asked them to join him for lunch on his yacht at Oyster Bay. He then had them delivered to the meeting on separate American warships.

     During the ensuing roundtable discussions, he treated both sides with dignity, composure, and even-handedness. More than a performative host, Roosevelt stayed firmly involved in the proceedings. He lowered each side’s expectations, remained uncharacteristically patient with the diplomatic nit picking, and issued quiet pleas to the rulers of both countries to end the fight.

     It worked and peace was secured. The Treaty of Portsmouth solved certain problems but created others, continuing proof that most solutions have unforeseen consequences. Signed in September 1905, the treaty marked the emergence of Japan as a superpower but, in hindsight, it also launched a chain of events that would prove to be at issue in World War II. For his interventions, Teddy Roosevelt was awarded the first Nobel Prize for peacemaking.

     Maybe it was a form of mediation, or maybe something more akin to your brand of frenetic diplomacy. Whatever he did, it was “horizon level” and it worked. For myself, I think mediation is a form of effective political and business leadership. Good leaders have a knack for studying the situation, asking smart questions, and then shutting up and letting people talk. Like mediators, they look around corners to examine alternatives and know that imposed solutions most often fail in the long term. That’s why voluntary solutions that stick have to be cultivated and grown.

     We also know a lot about the science of negotiation and we have been schooled about the way positions, interests, and satisfactions come into play. We have procedures with core and contingent moves. We know how to use “BATNAs” (Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement) to specifically help consider settlements and we know a lot about real deadlines, not made-up ones. And yes, we understand risk, power, and how carrots and sticks work and how those can converge at the right moment, but not at the start when parties are sniffing each other out.

     Personally, I’ve always liked how William Simkin, a highly regarded Canadian labor mediator, described some of the qualities of an effective mediator. Among others, he said they need the patience of Job, the personality probing characteristics of a good psychiatrist, the confidence‑retaining characteristics of a mute, and the hide of a rhinoceros. Effective leaders need those too.

     If you want to succeed in your assisted negotiation with Russia and Ukraine, you have a lot of resources. Read Bill Ury’s old book, Getting Past No, and his new one, Possible. Have a look at Bargaining with the Devil: When to Negotiate, When to Fight by Robert Mnookin. Take in Amanda Ripley’s High Conflict and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals even though you probably dislike him.

     If you get curious and want some help, I will introduce you to some of my colleagues. One of them brokers agreements between tribes, states, and your feds. Another specializes in high profile business fights that seem to suck everyone into an abyss. Three others I know specialize in moving especially divisive community conversations about race, gender, and abortion to extraordinarily productive outcomes.

     There are many more who could help and you might actually want to invite some of them down to Mar-a-Lago for a big think on how the Ukraine-Russia negotiations might be better choreographed and the way the U.S. could help move matters forward.

     Cheers and best of luck for your Nobel Prize!

     Peter S. Adler, PhD

     Honolulu, Hawaii

Former President and CEO of The Keystone Center, author of Calming the Storm: A Leader’s Handbook for Managing Unproductive Conflicts (2024, Rowman & Littlefield) and The Duck Springs Defiance: A Novel of the Next Civil War (2026, All Night Books)