As we Expected, the Meeting Between Trump and Putin in Alaska Ended in Nothing.
Of course, this conclusion was drawn without taking into account the image losses of the current US President Donald Trump.
How else could these negotiations have ended if it was clear from the very beginning that both sides had different interests? It was also obvious that Putin had set unrealistic demands in advance, stating the need for the complete withdrawal of Ukrainian troops from the territories of Southern and Eastern regions of Ukraine included in the Russian Constitution.
I wonder how the Americans, and Trump and Vitkoff in particular, would have perceived the decision of the State Duma to include Alaska in the Russian Constitution? Obviously, their answer to this question would have been unequivocal. But then why does the Trump administration take Putin’s whims so seriously and put pressure on the President of Ukraine to make him agree to voluntarily give up part of Ukraine’s territories? Senior US officials seem to think in terms of the Middle Ages, when public lands belonged to monarchs and were redistributed as a result of military conquests or commercial agreements. At the time, this logic was quite acceptable and understandable because the sovereign was the sole owner of the territory in question and could dispose of it at his or her own discretion. But in the 21st century, democratic countries have a completely different legal regime for public lands. The President of Ukraine is not the owner of Ukraine’s lands and therefore cannot dispose of them alone. He is not endowed with this right either at the level of national legislation or at the level of international law. It seems that the current US President Donald Trump does not understand this, and this is probably why he is trying to put pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and demand that he do something that he cannot do in principle. Surprisingly, for some reason, the current US President is not behaving like a head of state, but like an ordinary businessman, and no one dares to explain to him the absurdity and futility of his claims against the President of Ukraine. Are there not enough lawyers in the United States who could explain to Donald Trump that the decision of the Russian State Duma to incorporate Ukrainian territories into Russia was null and void and illegal from the very beginning, as would, by the way, be a hypothetical decision of the Russian State Duma to incorporate Alaska into Russia. Moreover, it seems that Donald Trump does not understand that we are not even talking about territories here, but about international law, about the need to restore its basic principles and foundations. If we assume that the United States and the entire international community recognize Russia’s right to the territories of Ukraine that it occupies, this would mean that all territorial disputes can now be resolved by force of arms. It is not difficult to guess that then a war of all against all would begin, where only the law of force and the law of the jungle would prevail.
Most likely, this scenario will not suit the vast majority of leaders of the world’s leading states, including the EU, and therefore, in the near future, we should expect a tougher reaction to Russian aggression from Germany, the UK, Italy, and France. Given the way Americans met Putin in Alaska, where public opinion was clearly on the side of Ukraine, we should expect Donald Trump’s position to weaken in America as well. That is why any current backroom agreements between Trump and Putin, if they existed, have no prospects in the future, especially after the parliamentary elections, which the US Republican Party, led by Trump, is at great risk of losing.
Today, Trump and Putin may think that they are omnipotent and powerful, but even they will not be able to change the natural process of socio-political development and turn the wheel of history back to the days when all political decisions were based on the private interests of the world’s most influential monarchs. Today, the situation has changed and the rules of the game in international politics are different, where political leaders cannot ignore public opinion with impunity. Eventually, authoritarian Russia will definitely lose this war and will not be saved by any backroom agreements between Trump and Putin, and the real socio-economic demands of the time and the political and moral and ethical attitudes of the vast majority of citizens of the United States and all democratic countries of the world will play a decisive role here.
Oleh Bereziuk,
Institute for Global Politics
(Image generated by neural network)
