Diplomacy's delicate dance took centre stage in Alaska as Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin held a high-stakes summit, but the outcome was telling - warm words and friendly gestures couldn't mask the reality of an unyielding impasse on Ukraine.
The meeting, more than a display of personal rapport, exposed the complexities of geopolitical negotiations, where Trump’s maximalist expectations appeared to have met some restrained realities.
Trump's signature bravado was tempered by Putin's steady stance, leaving the war in Ukraine an unresolved puzzle, raising a critical question: did Trump end up conceding too much at a summit that promised too much, but delivered too little for Washington.
Here’s a low down of the P&L at Anchorage
No deal: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Trump said. This is a concession that Trump would not have expected in the lead up to the summit. The US President’s signature maximalist tactics in geo-strategics negotiations received a sobering reality. If this war has to end it has gone far beyond headline hunting bombast and pomp.
American legitimacy: In many ways, Trump may have walked out of Anchorage, Alaska by giving US diplomatic legitimacy to Putin-led Russia’s territorial expansionism in Ukraine. The very fact that Trump will now talk to Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders can be deduced differently on the diplomatic chess board. There is a strand of thought that after the Alaska summit, Washington, far from getting Moscow to ink a peace pact, is now going to end up briefing world leaders carrying messages from Putin. This isn’t a nice augury for Trump.
Domestic politics: Putin managed to draw Trump to his annoying zone of domestic politics. Putin’s remark that this war wouldn’t have taken place if Trump was the US President in 2022, was pregnant with strategic connotation. The key question now would be how this plays out in US domestic politics. Is this (the reference to domestic politics) a trade-off that Trump could have avoided? In the process, has Trump conceded much more to Putin in terms of tactical leverage by shifting the blame and focus to his predecessor Joe Biden?
Tariffs and trade: Trump has deployed high tariffs as a no-holds-barred tool to make Russia fall in line and stop the war. India is an example, which faces 50 per cent tariffs for its goods entering India, purportedly because India buys oil from Russia. After the summit at Alaska, the question is: what now? The signal coming out from Anchorage is that tariffs will not yield much. The imposition of tariffs by the US has, undoubtedly, created a stir amid rising risks of India’s export competitiveness. But, it doesn’t look like helping in ending the war anytime soon.
Red lines: The red lines that Putin has been talking about in the war with Ukraine now carries the chance of getting more voice. Putin’s purported allusion to the root causes of war, means that Trump could unwittingly end up indirectly legitimising these. What are key briefing points that Trump will communicate to European leaders and Zelensky? The Kremlin has pencilled no NATO and European Union membership for Ukraine. This opens up a potential dilemma for Trump, fraught with the risk that he could end up doing Moscow’s bidding in his zeal to achieve a diplomatic breakthrough.
Putin wins the PR round: Ever since the war started, in February 2022, the Western press has treated Putin and Moscow as an outcast. The summit at Anchorage seemed to have turned the tides, at least for now. The frenetic presence of the world press corps at the summit and the accompanying breathless coverage, aided by Putin’s carefully crafted soundbites, has yielded the suitable phraseology in the Western commentariat, much to Moscow’s comfort.
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