{"id":355808,"date":"2025-08-19T03:41:24","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T03:41:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/355808\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T03:41:24","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T03:41:24","slug":"alaska-summit-and-its-afterlife-provides-a-glimpse-into-what-peace-looks-like-to-putin-and-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/355808\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska summit and its afterlife provides a glimpse into what peace looks like to Putin and Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

For all the pomp and staged drama of the summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin<\/a> in Alaska, the substantive part of the spectacle \u2013 that is, the negotiations between two great powers over the grinding war in Ukraine \u2013 did not at first appear to yield much. There was no deal and little detail on purported areas of progress. <\/p>\n

The post-Alaska analysis, however, suggested the U.S. had shifted away from Ukraine\u2019s position. Trump, it was reported, essentially agreed to Putin\u2019s call for territorial concessions by Ukraine<\/a> and for efforts toward a conclusive peace agreement over an immediate ceasefire<\/a> \u2013 the latter opposed by Putin as Russia makes gains on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

Those apparent concessions were enough to prompt alarm in the capitals of Europe. A hastily arranged follow-up meeting between Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy \u2013 and assorted European Union allies \u2013 and Trump in the White House on Aug. 18 yielded vague promises of security guarantees<\/a> for Ukraine. <\/p>\n

This is all very frustrating for those looking for some concrete foundations of a peace deal. <\/p>\n

Yet, as a longtime scholar of Russian and Soviet history<\/a>, I believe that the diplomatic whirl has revealed glimpses of what a future peace deal may look like. Or, more precisely, what it looks like for Putin and Trump. <\/p>\n

It may be a bitter pill for Ukraine to swallow, but what it all suggests is a meeting of minds between the leaders of the two great powers involved: Russia and the United States. After all, as Trump told Fox News<\/a> following the Alaska summit: \u201cIt\u2019s good when two big powers get along, especially when they\u2019re nuclear powers. We\u2019re No. 1 and they\u2019re No. 2 in the world.\u201d <\/p>\n

Known knowns and unknowns<\/p>\n

Some of what we already knew remains unchanged. First, the European powers \u2013 notably Germany, France and the U.K. \u2013 remain fully supportive<\/a> of Ukraine and are prepared to back Kyiv in resisting the Russian invasion and occupation.<\/p>\n

Second, Zelenskyy opposes concessions to Russia<\/a>, at least publicly. Rather, Ukraine\u2019s leader seemingly believes that with Western \u2013 and most importantly, American \u2013 arms, Ukraine can effectively resist Russia and secure a better end to the conflict than is evident at this moment. Meeting Trump again in the Oval Office after being ambushed by Trump and Vice President JD Vance<\/a> in February, Zelenskyy was as deferential and grateful to the U.S. president as his more formal dress indicated. <\/p>\n

\"Microphone<\/p>\n

All eyes were on Presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office on Aug. 18, 2025.
\n Anna Moneymaker\/Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

In contrast to Zelenskyy and the European powers, the aims and positions of the United States under Trump appear to be fluid. And while Putin talks of the need to address the \u201cprimary causes<\/a>\u201d of the Ukraine conflict and publicly pushes a maximalist position, it isn\u2019t entirely clear what he will actually settle for in regard to the security and land arrangements he says he needs.<\/p>\n

The imperial mindset<\/p>\n

I would argue that there are two ways of interpreting the aims of both the United States and Russia: \u201cimperial\u201d and \u201chegemonic.\u201d The former stems from an understanding of those countries\u2019 long experience as empires<\/a>. Countries that have descended from empires have memories of former greatness that many wish to repeat in the present<\/a>.
\nAnd while there is nothing fatalistic about such imperial fantasies that translate the past into the present, they often echo in the repertoire of the influential and powerful.<\/p>\n

There are signs in the rhetoric of both Trump and Putin of such grandiose imperial impulses. Both have talked of returning their country to a \u201cgreat\u201d past and have harbored desires of annexing<\/a> or dominating other countries. <\/p>\n

And many Western analysts of Russia are convinced that Putin dreams of becoming another Peter the Great<\/a>, who expanded his empire into the Baltic region, or Catherine the Great<\/a>, who sent her armies south into \u201cNew Russia\u201d \u2013 that is, what is today Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Hegemonic thinking<\/p>\n

But there is also another way, short of empire, that explains how great powers act in the world: as hegemons<\/a>, either regionally or globally. <\/p>\n

Instead of the colonizing of other territories and peoples, hegemons act to dominate other countries economically and militarily \u2013 and perhaps ideologically and politically, as well. They do so without taking over the smaller country. <\/p>\n

The United States, through its dominant position in NATO, is a hegemon whose sway is paramount among the members of the alliance \u2013 which can hardly operate effectively without the agreement of Washington. <\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s interests, I would contend, are short of fully imperial \u2013 which would require complete control of Ukraine\u2019s domestic and foreign policy. But they are flagrantly hegemonic. In this reading, Putin may well be satisfied to get what the Soviets achieved in Finland<\/a> during the Cold War: a compliant state that did not threaten Moscow, but remained independent in other ways. <\/p>\n

Putin has such an arrangement with Belarus and might be satisfied with a Ukraine that\u2019s not fully sovereign, militarily weak and outside of NATO. At the Alaska summit, Putin not only mentioned Ukraine as a \u201cbrotherly nation,\u201d but also emphasized<\/a> that \u201cthe situation in Ukraine has to do with fundamental threats to Russian security.\u201d <\/p>\n

One can read Putin\u2019s words in many ways, but his public comments in Alaska framed the Ukraine conflict in Russian security terms, rather than in imperialist language.<\/p>\n

Are negotiations possible?<\/p>\n

The problem for Putin is that Russia does not have the economic and military power, or the reputational soft power<\/a> attraction, to become a stable, influential hegemon in its neighborhood. Because it cannot achieve what the U.S. has accomplished through a mix of hard and soft power since the fall of the Soviet Union \u2013 that is, global hegemony \u2013 it has turned to physical force. That move has proved disastrous in terms of casualties, domestic economic distress, the mass migration of hundreds of thousands of Russians opposed to the war<\/a>, and isolation from the global capitalist economy.<\/p>\n

What Putin desires is something that shows to his people that the war was worth the sacrifices. And that may mean territorial expansion in the annexation of four contested provinces<\/a> of Ukraine \u2013 Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson \u2013 as well as Crimea, taken in 2014. That goal certainly seems imperial. <\/p>\n

And while the distinctions between an imperial foreign policy and a hegemonic one may seem semantic or academic, they are crucial when looking at the prospects of peace. Imperialism is always about conquest and total subordination of one regime to another.<\/p>\n

If indeed Putin is an imperialist who wants full control of Ukraine \u2013 or, as is often claimed, its elimination as a sovereign state and the recreation of a polity akin to the Soviet Union \u2013 then negotiation and compromise with Russia become impossible.<\/p>\n

My sense is that to solidify his relations with Trump and his territorial gains in Ukraine, Putin will be satisfied with accepting the rest of Ukraine as a nation-state that remains outside of NATO and is neither a base for Western powers nor a perceived military threat to Russia.<\/p>\n

The problem here, of course, is that such a solution may be unacceptable to Zelenskyy and would have to be imposed on Kyiv. That would be anathema to the major European powers, though not necessarily for Trump.<\/p>\n

And here we find another obstacle to peace in Ukraine: Europe and the U.S. do not have a united position on the final solution to the war. Even if both accept the view that Russia\u2019s aims are primarily about its own idea of security rather than conquest or elimination of Ukraine, would Europe accept Putin\u2019s demands for a major overhaul of the military balance in east-central Europe.<\/p>\n

Trump appears less concerned about the prospect of a truncated Ukraine subordinated to Russia. His major concerns seem to lie elsewhere, perhaps in the Nobel Peace Prize he covets<\/a>. But the United States may have to guarantee the security of Ukraine against future Russian attacks, something that Trump has hinted at, even as he abhors the idea of sending American troops into foreign conflicts.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

While leaders talk peace, Russian drone strikes continue in Ukraine.
\n Serhii Masin\/Anadolu via Getty Images<\/a><\/p>\n

Realism at odds with a just peace<\/p>\n

Wars have consequences, both for the victorious and the defeated. And the longer this war goes on, the more likely the grinding advance of Russia further into Ukraine becomes, given the military might of Russia and Trump\u2019s ambivalent support of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

With those realities in mind, the solution to the Russia-Ukraine war appears to be closer to what Russia is willing to accept than Ukraine. Ukraine, as Trump so brutally put it, does not have cards<\/a> to play in this tragic game where great powers decide the fate of other countries.<\/p>\n

We are back to Thucydides, the ancient Greek founder of political science, who wrote: \u201cRight, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, this is what international relations theorists call \u201crealism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For all the pomp and staged drama of the summit between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355809,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[49,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-355808","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-united-states","9":"tag-us","10":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115053362218815933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}