What Are Trump and Putin Up to in Alaska?

It makes no sense as statecraft. But that's because it isn't.

Donald Trump holding a “peace summit” with Vladimir Putin in Alaska this week makes no sense, for the should-be-obvious reason that the United States and Russia are not at war. Ukrainians, not Americans, are under Russian attack and fighting to defend their home, but Trump is (as of this writing) excluding Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from the summit and talking of territorial concessions, as if Ukrainian land were his to trade away.

That recalls nineteenth-century imperial powers settling spheres of influence. Or the twentieth century’s Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, when Moscow cut a deal to divvy up an Eastern European country with a Western ex-democracy that backslid into fascism under a convicted criminal with a cult of personality.

Except the United States isn’t about to invade Ukraine from the west, so that doesn’t fit.

Trump cutting Zelensky out of talks recalls his first-term choice to negotiate with the Taliban, cutting out the U.S.-backed Afghan government. That, and releasing thousands of Taliban fighters from prison, contributed to the Afghan government’s quick collapse.

Except the United States was a primary combatant in Afghanistan, while it doesn’t have troops fighting in Ukraine. The Ukrainians have held off Russia’s invasion for almost three and a half years (and counting), causing over 1 million Russian casualties, of which about a quarter are deaths. For comparison, the United States took 22,500 casualties in twenty years in Afghanistan, with only about 10 percent killed. While the United States supplies Ukraine with valuable military equipment, so does Europe, and Ukraine makes a lot of equipment domestically, in particular a drone industry that’s now world class. The American president can’t order them to surrender.

What Trump can do is…

Read the full thing for free in The Bulwark here:

The Real Reason for the Alaska Summit