Why Trump and Putin's Alaskan Lovefest Threatens Ukraine
For now, no deal was agreed to. But Trump broke with Kyiv's idea of how the conflict should end -- and won't be putting any pressure on Putin.
Karl Marx quipped that “history repeats itself first by tragedy, second by farce." The Munich Agreement of 1938 -- where Western powers appeased Hitler by giving him a piece of Czechoslovakia in a failed bid to avert a wider war -- was a tragedy, while the August 15 summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska was a farce.
At Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, the American president and Russian leader talked for about 2 1/2 hours with two advisors each in tow. The meeting ended earlier than expected with no ceasefire for the war in Ukraine, and the leaders held a press event after which they took no questions. Like Czechoslovakia in Munich, Ukraine was not at the table in Anchorage, so it was on the menu. But this time, it wasn't served up by a Western power for the aggressor.
Nevertheless, the lovefest between Trump and Putin should worry Ukraine. After the meeting, Trump endorsed the Kremlin's position that a "Peace Agreement" was preferable to the Ukrainian and European position that an interim ceasefire is necessary before negotiations begin. (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy subsequently announced that he would travel to Washington to meet Trump on August 18.) In Anchorage, Trump flattered the Russian leader at every turn. On the tarmac, U.S. soldiers rolled out a red carpet for Putin, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes against Ukraine. (The U.S. is not a member of the body.) The two leaders had a private chat in Trump's limousine en route to the summit venue, with Putin sporting a shit-eating grin. (Russian state media said that Putin's car had been available.)
Trump got his ego gratified. After the talks, Putin told the press that he agreed with Trump's counterfactual talking point that the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine would not have started had Trump been president. In a post-summit interview with Fox News, Trump said that Putin had told him that the Russian leader agreed with his lie that the 2020 election was "rigged" because of mail-in voting. In turn, Trump complimented Putin, calling him "strong" and saying their meeting was "very warm."
Putin got his photo-op. The Russian leader had been an international pariah since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and got to appear on equal footing with the U.S. president for nothing. Trump's red-carpet flattery didn't soften Putin's hardline stance on Ukraine. At the press event, the Russian leader repeated that a ceasefire must deal with the "root causes" of the war, Putin's code for his labyrinthine grievances about Ukraine and the West. Seemingly pleased, the Kremlin released a video of American F-22s escorting Putin's plane to the Russian border.
The love-in renewed speculation that Putin holds compromising material over Trump (as if he could be embarrassed over anything), but the truth is simpler: they both see themselves as messianic leaders. Putin and Trump, particularly following his assassination attempt last year, think they have a special role in guiding their countries to greatness. Putin launched the full-scale invasion to force a sovereign, independent European country back into Moscow's fold, hoping to create a neo-Soviet empire with neighboring Belarus. Trump sees himself as delivering global peace and stability by the U.S. acting as a colonial power, shaking down smaller allies and making common cause with the big imperial powers of China and Russia. For executing his vision, he feels that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. (Trump cold-called Norwegian Finance Minister Jens Stoltenberg last month to ask about the prize.)
In the Greek myth of Narcissus, the handsome young man falls in love with the image of himself, not himself. Similarly, Putin and Trump are both enamored with their grandiose visions of the world, but not the world as it is. For Putin, implementing this vision means sacrificing over a million Russian soldiers and bombing Ukrainian civilians until Kyiv submits and turns into his vision of a Russian vassal. For Trump, it means making common cause with Putin to pursue the Nobel, while never imposing any meaningful consequences on him.
Yet, reality lies beyond these fantasies. Ukraine has fought off Russian forces since 2014 with only intermittent help from the West. While it probably cannot win the war without more consistent and advanced Western weapons, its armed forces and innovative homegrown defense-industrial capacity has kept it from losing quickly. While European leaders have their own fictions -- like a peacekeeping force that will enforce a Ukraine ceasefire -- Germany has massively expanded its budgetary capacity for defense spending (planning to spend nearly 650 billion Euros in five years) and countries like Denmark, Sweden, and Finland are quietly sending new tranches of materiel to Ukraine. For now, Ukraine (and Europe) can breathe a sigh of relief that nothing was agreed to without them in faraway Anchorage. Yet, they should worry that Putin and Trump appear far away from reality, trapped in their own narcissistic visions.
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