Putin Meeting Trump at the Alaska Summit is a Very Good Thing

Evading diplomacy is a Western folly that Russia has no reason to imitate

The problem with the future is that it is both unpredictable and inescapable. You can never know with certainty what tomorrow will bring, but you must prepare for it nonetheless. This may seem trivial. And yet it remains a great challenge. Consider, for instance, current international reactions to the scheduled summit between Russian president Vladimir Putin and US president Donald Trump.

The announcement of the meeting, later specified to take place in Alaska on 15 August, was a surprise and yet again, not so much: Viewed against the background of Trump’s longstanding signaling of respect for Russia as well as an interest in normalizing the relationship between Moscow and Washington, it was, actually, the culmination of a sometimes messy but real trend.

But within the short-term context of a recent American turn against Russia, it was yet another proof that Trump can be hard to predict so that trends may tell you only so much. While some observers believed that latest American zig to be the last, others – full disclosure: this one included – argued (and, frankly, hoped) that another zag is always possible.

And here we are. It is true that RT director Margarita Simonyan dares not predict the summit’s outcome or even whether it will really take place. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has warned that we are still far from a new Détente. Yet there is no denying that, at least for now, we are not where we were during America’s preceding Biden administration either, namely in a hopeless dead end of an escalating yet failing Western proxy war, flanked by a literal anti-diplomacy, that is, an obstinate refusal to communicate that was perversely elevated to the rank of policy.

For now, it is impossible to predict where we will go from here. Once – and if – the summit in Alaska takes place, and hopefully a follow-up meeting in Russia as well, will we finally have left the bloody and dangerous stagnation that has been produced by, first, the West permitting Kiev to sabotage the 2015 Minsk II Agreement, then the stonewalling of Moscow’s last-chance negotiation offer of late 2021, and finally the West’s nixing of an almost-peace in April 2022? Or will we be disappointed and face more of the same – that is, an ongoing Western Proxy war against Russia through Ukraine, or even worse?

One thing is clear, however: an end to the fighting and a halfway decent settlement would be very good news not only for Ukraine but also for the rest of the world, including a NATO-EU Europe that currently is, or at least pretends to be, ready to spoil a quick end to the slaughter next door.

Ukrainian and Russian lives would be saved for a, hopefully, better future. The still real – if, by comparison with peak Biden, already reduced – danger of escalation into a regional or even global war would be further diminished. Indeed, the catastrophically dilapidated system of agreements on nuclear weapons - of various types - could finally (and at the very last minute, too) be up for repair and - dare we hope? - perhaps even a substantial upgrade.

Finally, since this has also been a very costly (and stupid) Western sanctions war, there would be substantial economic benefits. Ukraine in particular, of course, would have the opportunity to rebuild, especially if its domestic politics took a postwar turn for the better, leaving the ultra-corrupt, authoritarian, and maniacal Zelensky regime behind.

Against this background, it is counterintuitive and depressing but not really surprising that many Western “friends of Ukraine” are greatly disturbed if not positively panicked by such prospects. A Ukraine where men are no longer hunted down by forced-mobilization squads to die or be traumatized – physically and mentally – in a militarily pointless war provoked by a failed Western strategy of using Ukraine to take Russia down a notch? A Ukraine that could actually recover from this devastating if perfectly avoidable catastrophe of hubris and badly misplaced trust?

Many of Ukraine’s friends-from-hell, especially in NATO-EU Europe, seem to still find it hard to accept such a possibility. Instead of seriously and honestly exploring not only the now inevitable costs of peace but also its enormous benefits or facing the immense additional human costs of fighting on, they can’t stop issuing stale warnings about the obvious fact that those who lose a war – that is, the West and, tragically, Ukraine – cannot expect quite the same outcome as those who win it.

Would it not, perhaps, then have been best to avoid that war altogether? What was the reason, for instance, for not closing that famous “open door” into NATO that has no basis in the NATO treaty and through which Ukraine would never have walked anyway? But that, of course, are questions that precisely those who did their worst to miss one exit ramp after the other while others bled will never candidly ask themselves. That would be far too painful for the heroes of Western pop Russophobia and Cold War re-enacting.

And then there are the many whose perma-grudge against Russia and Putin personally is only rivalled by their bitter resentment at having to live in a Trump 2.0 world, when they expected to set the Centrist tone forever. They find their sad refuge in endlessly warmed-over and mind-numbingly unoriginal carping about how they are sure the American president will be duped by his Russian equivalent.

That’s funny, actually, especially from Europeans: It’s after all their very own Ursula von der Leyen wo has just delivered a gala performance in being, as Hungary’s Viktor Orban put it, “eaten for breakfast” at the negotiating table. By, as it happens, that same American president.

Even after Trump’s once impossible electoral comeback, his full-spectrum domination of NATO clients reduced to saying “daddy,” and his complete humiliation of the EU, for some, it seems, there is no cure for underestimating Trump the politician. They will only have themselves to blame if he and Putin pull off what they can’t imagine once again: as decent an end to this war as is still possible, despite much of Europe and the Zelensky regime’s obstruction.

Yet there is another kind of pessimism about the upcoming summit that is in some ways more puzzling. It usually comes from observers who are well-informed and if not sympathetic to Russia, then at least not blinded by Western propaganda. Its essence is a radical distrust of the US, and its ultimate conclusion is that Moscow, ideally, should not even try to negotiate with Washington.

What makes this line of thinking more realistic than the endless complaints of the Russophobes is the fact that the US really has a long and rich record of breaking agreements and, even worse, of deliberately using negotiations and promises to prepare foul play. Indeed, perhaps the deepest root of the war in Ukraine is precisely such a policy of deception, namely America’s breaking of the perfectly real promise not to expand NATO, made repeatedly between 1990 and 1994.

Against that background, these pessimists argue, any agreement with the US will be just another trap: If the conflict should end up merely frozen, they warn, then so as to restart it later, while using the interval to attack other targets, most of all Russia’s partner China. If Trump seems to be different from his predecessors, they caution, then that is either merely for show or irrelevant because ultimately the long-term strategies of the US political establishment – consistently hostile toward Russia – will prevail. And if the US should end up abandoning direct participation in its Ukrainian proxy war, they fear, then only to keep it going indirectly, namely through its belligerent European clients.

This approach certainly does not lack intellectual substance or empirical evidence. In fact, its arguments amount to excellent due diligence for anyone entering into negotiations with the US. But the real question is what practical conclusions should be drawn from these warnings?

Can the correct answer to that question be to avoid negotiations? But then Moscow would replicate the West’s absurd mutism as it prevailed before Trump. Yet if sensible observers agree that communication and diplomacy are always better than silence, why should Russia follow the West’s silly precedent of anti-diplomacy? Especially in view of the fact that there is one thing Moscow does not have to worry about: Unlike in some Western countries, such as Germany, Britain, and France, Russia does have a topnotch set of foreign policy professionals and institutions. Diplomacy, therefore, is not only principally good but also plays to Moscow’s strength.

The current Russian leadership, moreover, has not only been explicit, repeatedly, about its unforgiving realism concerning the whole West. Only recently, for instance, Putin has reiterated his view of the war in Ukraine as reflecting an existential Western threat to Russia. Moscow also has an empirically verifiable record of healthy skepticism in action: If its policy were one of easily accommodating the West, then we would not be where we are at all. If Moscow’s policy were one of easily accommodating specifically the new administration under Trump, then it would long have agreed to a disadvantageous agreement.

But it has not. In reality, the upcoming summit may mark the point at which both relevant sides, the US and Russia, understand that only serious negotiations based on the realities on the ground and detached from superficial ideological mantras can possibly succeed. And if that should not be the case, then they will fail and the war will continue.

Finally, there is a fundamental difference between caution and fear: Caution enables, fear paralyzes. Precisely because the traditional challenges of negotiating with the US are so clear, there is no reason to shy away from contact. The challenge is to transform caution into practically applicable conditions: Will the US, for instance, continue to share intelligence with Ukraine, directly or indirectly (through its European clients)? What about US officers – whether through NATO or otherwise – and their participation in the war against Russia? And the spies? Can and will Trump tell the CIA to drop its Ukrainian cut-outs and stop contributing to attacks on and inside Russia? If the US really intends to keep selling weapons to Europe so that they can then be handed on to Ukraine, how can that be squared with trying to bring about peace?

It is possible that once tested by such questions (and a lot of them), the American side will expose its lack of commitment. Yet no one can rule out that a more useful outcome might ensue. In fact, the summit plan itself may be a sign that some of these issues have been broached already. In such a situation, the rational approach is to try, while keeping up one’s guard. Given its post-Soviet experiences and how it has processed them (among other things by striking back militarily), there is no reason to believe that the Russian leadership is not capable of pursuing such a strategy.

Those eager to see Russia hold its own against the West and in particular the US should consider that it must, in the end, be Moscow that defines Russian national interest. And depending on a concrete analysis of specific circumstances at this or a future moment, even an imperfect agreement made with a US that cannot be trusted may serve these interests.

Those, moreover, who rightly favor multipolarity should recall a very important fact: Russia’s resources, not least of patriotism and highly effective governance, have – fortunately – surprised its enemies in the West. Blinded by their own prejudices, based on a mix of complacency, historical ignorance, and very lazy thinking, they have completely failed to gauge Russia’s resilience, power, and, indeed, popularity in most of the world (excluding the increasingly desperate minority of mostly struggling states called the West).

Yet even Russia’s resources remain finite and are needed not only at home but also in many other places in the world, not only the war in Ukraine. If Moscow has to keep fighting there, in an open-ended conflict handed over to the European US vassals for endless, if self-ruinous financing, then Russia will have less capacity to play a very needed international role elsewhere. We have seen this happen already, namely in Syria, Iran, and Armenia. It is the most basic arithmetic of power and no one can escape it. If you want to see those arrogant enough to try, look at the West in its hubris and decline.