Putin Will Get What He Wants in Alaska. His Long Game.

President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet on Friday in Anchorage, Alaska. (BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

About the author: Edward Price teaches at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and served at the British Consulate.

Why is Russian President Vladimir Putin being invited to Alaska?

President Donald Trump’s decision to meet with Putin on Friday—within the borders of the U.S., instead of on neutral ground—isn’t just an olive branch. It is an entire olive tree. Putin is, in effect, being offered an alliance with the U.S. This will resemble a slow-moving geopolitical realignment rather than the immediate signing of some new pact. But the upshot is clear. Despite war, despite annexations, Putin is getting what he wants.

For one, Putin’s illegal act of aggression in invading Ukraine is being forgotten, perhaps even forgiven. Putin gains some immunity from international law, in the U.S. at least. Certainly, he won’t be arrested; the U.S. never joined the International Criminal Court, the body that has issued a warrant for Putin. Nor will any other jurisdiction get a chance to arrest him. Putin won’t go anywhere else. He barely travels.

But it is obvious why Putin wants this U.S. visit. He is a strong leader in charge of a weak country. Arriving in America is a flex. The better question is what does Trump gain? He is, by contrast, a weak leader in charge of a strong country. Why host someone far less powerful than you?

There are two reasons MAGA-minded Americans might want to be closer with Russia. The first is domestic, the second foreign.

On the domestic side, the ascendant wing of the American right is fixated on orthodox Russia. Peter Thiel, Vice President JD Vance, and many more have said they see Russia as a post-democratic model for America. Rust-belt populism is really just a path to securing long-term political power.

In this spirit, an alliance between Russia and the U.S., perhaps with Europe along for the ride, would encircle the north. It would bring all the best places to be during climate change under the heel of, in essence, Rome and its heirs.

And the foreign reason? Rising concern about the People’s Republic of China. The U.S. isn’t necessarily moving to a war footing against China, but it is certainly getting onto footing capable of war. The arms race in artificial intelligence is crucial to that posture. Applications of AI and automation in the civilian economy are being eyed for their value in war. So is trade policy writ large.

If Eurasia is unified under a Sino-Russian alliance, neither persuasion nor assault will disrupt their plans. The landmass is too big, the population too great. The great-power game would, in effect, be over. Uncle Sam cannot allow so much of the world’s economy to be brought under a rival system. Otherwise, what was the point of intervention in the two World Wars? We might as well have left the Continent to the Kaiser. Or Stalin.

Throughout history, the essence of international statecraft is to avoid anyone else becoming too strong to oppose.

Another way to think of it is as follows. At any given time, the U.S. must be friendly with either China or Russia at the expense of the other. In decades past, Russia was strong and China was weak. Therefore, the U.S. under President Richard Nixon made a fuss of befriending the Chinese in the 1970s. Today, that power relationship is reversed. Russia is weak and China strong. China may one day be as strong as America, if not stronger. And so, the American president is wooing Russia.

China would prefer the Americans and Russians not talk and continue to weaken each other. Indeed, the Chinese probably view the war in Ukraine as a sort of western civil war, which is a win-win for Beijing. China gains if Russia wins in Ukraine, but only a little. Beijing would appreciate the ready-made example of revanchism working in practice, applicable to Taiwan. But if Russia is crushed in Ukraine, China gains a lot. A weaker Kremlin opens the path for long-term Chinese annexations of Siberia. China may not have said it wants Russian land, but a leaked Russian intelligence assessment certainly thinks that is the Chinese plan.

And, if China really did dominate Eurasia and the Pacific, the U.S. and Russia—newly paranoid Great Powers—would have more in common than ever.

I don’t expect a Russo-American treaty on Friday, or this decade, for that matter. But the logic of trying for such an alliance is clear. Putin’s road to Alaska runs through not Kyiv, but Beijing. Whether Trump has thought all this over, or thought anything over, is a mystery. But you can bet your bottom dollar Putin has. Simply by coming to the U.S., Friday’s visit will be his gain.

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