The Alaska Summit Showed the World that Trump is a Weak Leader

In any negotiation, it is always a bad sign when your adversary’s team is high-fiving each other as they leave the negotiation table. That was certainty the case after the disastrous summit on Ukraine last week. As the Guardian reports, “Russia’s reaction to Donald Trump’s summit in Alaska has been nothing short of jubilant, with Moscow celebrating the fact that the Russian leader met his US counterpart without making concessions and now faces no sanctions despite rejecting Trump’s ceasefire demands.” Russia made no concessions. Trump, on the other hand, dropped his insistence on a ceasefire during negotiations and dropped any threat of additional sanctions.

To add insult to injury, Putin was literally given red carpet treatment upon his arrival, together with military honors and a warm welcome by Trump. Contrast that to how he will treat President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he arrives in the United States this week.

All indications are that Trump intends to force Europe and Ukraine to reward Russia with all the territory that it has gained in the war—and perhaps even more territory as well.

We need to remind ourselves why this would be bad for U.S. national interests. While counties engaging in wars for territory was par for the course in the 19th Century, following World War II, this was no longer acceptable under international law. Indeed, it was expressly banned by the U.N. Charter. This new norm was enforced. When North Korea invaded South Korea, a United Nations military force led by the U.S. came to the defense of South Korea. When Iraq invaded Kuwait, President Bush declared “This will no stand” and organized a coalition of the willing to give Kuwait back its sovereignty.

To say that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine violated these norms would be an understatement. The invasion had the express purpose of eliminating Ukraine as a sovereign country. In this respect, it was as bad as Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. It was for this reason that the United States and its European allies once again declared “This will not stand” and came to the aid of Ukraine.

The larger context of Putin’s ambitions is important to understand. He views the loss of the USSR to be a geopolitical tragedy that he wants to undo. He views Ukraine as a part of Russia. He has the same view of other former Soviet Republics as well—including the Baltic states—all of whom are our NATO allies. In a 2007 speech at the Munich Security Conference, he went even further, and asserted that Russia was owed dominance over Eastern Europe (to include many of our new NATO allies) and Central Asia. If we give Putin a negotiated victory in Ukraine, we will embolden his willingness to take on Poland or the Baltic States, which could lead to a third World War.

The lesson of history is that failure to confront an aggressive power is always a mistake. Democracies don’t like war and can sometimes be impatient for peace—even for a “peace” that will result in an even worse future conflict. In 1938, European democracies caved to Hitler over Sudetenland, and thereby emboldened Hitler to invade Russia. We ignored Russian aggression against both Georgia and Ukraine, emboldening Putin to do a full scale invasion of Ukraine. Caving in again will be a tragic mistake.

Putin’s commitment to his vision for a return to the Soviet zone of power has been remarkable—according to the British Ministry of Defence, there have been more than one million Russian troops killed or wounded since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Ukraine’s casualties, of course have been high as well—approaching 400,000. Given this commitment, many doubt that Putin really intends for there to be a peace agreement—he simply wants to use “peace negotiations” as a way to convince Trump to stop our support for Ukraine, leaving Europe and Ukraine to fight him alone.

Until Trump became President, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was clearly a huge strategic error. It resulted in the enlargement of NATO to include both Sweden and Finland—both of which have very capable militaries. It resulted in an historic increase in defense spending by our NATO allies and a promise by most of these allies to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP. While the effect of sanctions on Russia was initially over-promised, they have had an adverse effect on the Russian economy, with Russia facing high inflation, high interest rates and a move toward recession. And until the Alaska summit, Putin was diplomatically isolated and Russia was justly treated as a pariah.

Even worse for Putin’s objectives, while his forces are making some gains on the battlefield, the war has largely been stagnant, with only insignificant territorial gains in the last year at greater cost to the Russian forces than the Ukrainian defenders. And Russia’s huge commitment to the Ukrainian war meant that its military was not available to threaten other European countries.

So what is the endgame here? Russia is a nuclear power so there are limits to the Western response. Ukraine has put up a strong fight, but its ability to continue the fight is wanning due largely to manpower shortages. As a result, some negotiated end to the war that might include some loss of territory might be inevitable. Critical to any deal, however, is that the surviving part of Ukraine must be able to defend it self against future Russian aggression and true sovereignty. This means that its military should not be limited, its territory must be defensible, it must be allowed to join the EU, and there must be robust security guarantees akin too Article 5 of the NATO charter by the US and EU nations. It may also mean only de facto recognition of the territorial concessions without formal recognition.

Even with this reality, however, a strong U.S. President would not start negotiations by making all of these concessions upfront without any Russian concessions—which it appears that Trump has indeed done. This is especially the case because Putin continues to insist that “root causes” must be addressed, by which he means regime change in Ukraine, limits on the size of the Ukrainian military, and no EU membership. There should be no unilateral concessions on territory if Russia won’t drop these impossible conditions.

So what would a strong leader have done? A strong leader would start from a position of strength: demand a ceasefire and impose even more crippling sanctions (with a focus on Russia’s oil and gas revenues) if Putin refuses a ceasefire, increase military assistance to Ukraine, and continue building a common strategy with our European allies. A strong leader would make clear to Putin that the U.S. and Europe cannot be manipulated into division. Finally, a strong leader would understand that the U.S. has no interest in an emboldened Russia.

Sadly, this strategy may well continue to mean that the tragic war continues, but Russia’s military capabilities and its economy will continue to deteriorate and Ukraine will remain sovereign. While the war continues, Russia won’t be a threat to our allies. As time passes, the increased defense spending by our NATO allies will pay dividends and will ensure they have the capability to defend themselves—and more critically deter—against any future Russian aggression. It will also ensure that negotiations only occur if Putin makes a concrete step toward peace by agreeing to a ceasefire. And it will ensure that any peace will be a lasting one, and not the preclude to an even larger conflict.