US President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska Friday, in the first visit by the Russian leader to the United States since 2015.
Earlier in the day, Trump claimed that he was seeking a “ceasefire” in the US-Russia proxy war in Ukraine, declaring, “I want to see a ceasefire, I won’t be happy if it’s not today.” But neither a ceasefire nor any other concrete agreement was announced by the two men in the 12-minute remarks to the press after their summit.
Despite the lack of announcements, the summit marks a shift in the United States’ treatment of Russia. For years, Washington has sought to make Russia a pariah state as part of a campaign to shatter its military, overthrow its government and ultimately dissolve the country.
After three years of war, it is clear that this effort has so far failed. Russian forces are advancing all down the front, and Ukraine, facing a major manpower shortage, is facing a military catastrophe.
Under these conditions, the Financial Times commented that the summit marked “an emphatic end to years of western attempts to isolate” Russian President Vladimir Putin. The newspaper wrote that “Trump had greeted the Russian president with a red carpet rolled out by US military at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska. He then invited a smiling Putin into ‘The Beast,’ his armored vehicle, for the short ride to the summit’s venue.”
The Democrats, whose central difference with Trump is their accusation that he is insufficiently committed to war with Russia, condemned the summit. Arizona Senator Mark Kelly declared, “Treat a war criminal like royalty, hide the meeting, share nothing. Putin gets a headline and Ukraine gets what?”
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared, “My stomach turned when I heard the President of the United States characterize Vladimir Putin as his fabulously good friend. ... Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.”
Despite the show of civility Friday, Trump emphasized that significant differences remained between the Russian and US positions. Trump said, “A couple of big ones that we haven’t quite got there, but we’ve made some headway,” adding, “We didn’t get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”
In his remarks, Putin emphasized that “in order to make the settlement lasting and long-term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict, and we’ve said it multiple times, to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe and in the world on the whole.”
That, however, is the rub. The United States is the world’s foremost imperialist power, bent on global domination of the former colonial world and the territory of the Soviet Union. To the extent that factions of the US political establishment are seeking a thaw in relations with Russia, it is in an effort to concentrate all their forces in a conflict with China, which would itself be the prelude to the total imperialist carve-up of the whole world.
Within the Trump administration, there is a significant faction arguing for a US drawdown in the conflict with Russia in order to concentrate resources in the Pacific for a conflict with China. Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth explained, “Stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe. … The US is prioritizing deterring war with China in the Pacific, recognizing the reality of scarcity and making the resourcing tradeoffs.”
The root of the conflict, despite their evident attempts by Trump and Putin to come to some sort of agreement, is that the entire modus operandi of US imperialism, which seeks the total domination of the entire planet, cannot accept what Putin calls the “legitimate concerns of Russia,” i.e., the right of the Russian capitalists to exploit their mineral wealth undisturbed.
Any US agreement with Russia, were it to take place, would be broken the minute the United States found it convenient.