As senior Russian officials prepare for talks on European security with Western counterparts, three aspects of the latest crisis around Ukraine point to its seeming intractability, but also lay bare an elemental factor that must be addressed if a way out of the impasse is to be found. First, the crisis underscores the scale of the challenge when the clash is over competing rights, not merely conflicting interests. Second, any solution depends on incentives favoring it, but when these are missing and disincentives prevail, little progress can be expected. Third, the absence of trust between the two sides is the elemental factor that creates a prior and fundamental obstacle to any movement forward and needs to be addressed separately. Together they undergird the danger with which leaders are struggling.
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