The meeting between US President Trump and Russian President Putin in Alaska on Aug. 15, aimed at initiating peace negotiations with Ukraine, was one of the strangest in US diplomatic history. Kyiv Post spoke to Russia-expert Donald N. Jensen about how he assessed the anomalies of the summit.
Jensen has worked as a professor of Russian Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University and serves as fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington, DC. He used to work as a diplomat at the US Embassy in Moscow and a staffer for the US-Soviet arms control negotiations.
Kyiv Post: What was your first impression of how the meeting between the two leaders of two countries historically antagonistic during the Cold War unfolded?
Donald Jensen: The first thing to keep in mind when assessing Friday’s meeting between Presidents Trump and Putin is that the United States and Russia have markedly different views of the purpose of negotiations and how they should be conducted. In the West, we seek compromise and “win-win” outcomes satisfactory to all parties. The Kremlin is quite different. Moscow usually sees its goal as “Russia wins, the other side loses.”
Russian leaders see negotiations as a tool to advance their foreign policy interests. In Putin’s case, to wage war by non-kinetic means. Russia has a well-developed method of orchestrating the politics of negotiations – often successfully – and training its diplomats and intelligence officers how to behave once they are at the table.
This is the so-called Kremlin School. It includes bullying, lying, manipulating, and making outrageous and sometimes contradictory statements to get what Moscow wants. These techniques have been very much on display in the past few weeks.
Stalin once wrote it clearly: “A diplomat’s words must contradict his deeds; otherwise, what sort of a diplomat is he? Words are one thing, deeds something entirely different. Fine words are a mask to cover shady deeds. A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.”
Finally, Russian diplomats, as we saw last week, speak English fluently and have many years of experience dealing with the United States (Lavrov’s daughter lives in the US. Dmitriev went to university here). Unfortunately, there was no comparable experience on the US side.
“A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.” – Stalin
Some analysts attributed to Trump the plan to organize a conference like the one in Yalta, Crimea (1945), when Franklin D. Roosevelt, Stalin, and Winston Churchill drew spheres of influence after the Second World War. Others suggested instead the precedent of the Portsmouth, New Hampshire, conference (1905), where Theodore Roosevelt forced the Russians and Japanese to make peace, and received the Nobel Peace Prize for it. What did the Alaska Summit lack to resemble one of these two important events?
Well, I do not know what President Trump’s plan was. I think those comparisons are not particularly appropriate, especially with Yalta, when Roosevelt had his major partner Churchill with him to bargain with the Soviets. Trump had no foreign partner with him on Friday. Perhaps last week’s meeting resembled the Portsmouth Conference in some ways. A more appropriate comparison might be the Munich Catastrophe in 1938, when the UK and France acquiesced to Hitler’s demands for territory in Czechoslovakia. Those examples had concrete results, if tragic ones, in the case of Yalta and Munich. We are only at the beginning of a process here – indeed, we do not yet know if there will be a serious process or any results at all.
In what ways did the Alaska summit differ from other meetings between a US president and foreign heads of state?
I think the significant difference that I saw was the brief time the sides had to prepare. [Other] summits were scheduled well ahead of time. Waves of Washington advance teams would come to Moscow to make sure planning was thorough. All events, including backup activities, were thoroughly choreographed, with many backups for backup events. Even with such attention to detail, mistakes inevitably happen, as we saw on Friday, somebody on the US side left a copy of the summit blueprint in a copy machine. This is careless.
The optics suggested that “Russia is back” – despite its bloody misbehavior, global efforts to undermine the West, and human rights abuses.
Compared to summits with European or Asian leaders, what stood out in terms of tone, setting, or balance of power?
What surprised me was the warm attitude on the US side toward Putin. Here is someone who invaded a neighbor, caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, and cannot land in many European countries because he is accused of committing war crimes. Yet, we literally rolled out the red carpet for him, President Trump’s greeting seemed quite cordial and Putin rode to the venue for the meeting in President Trump’s limousine.
President Zelensky, whose country is the victim of the invasion, was treated much more roughly when he visited the United States earlier this year.
These things are important because the optics suggested that “Russia is back” – despite its bloody misbehavior, global efforts to undermine the West, and human rights abuses. Indeed, before the meeting between the two leaders even began, the state-controlled media was crowing about the country’s escape from isolation and return to the ranks of great powers.
Thus, the fact of the meeting was almost as important to the Russian leader as the actual agenda (Foreign Minister Lavrov seemed to swagger when he wore a sweatshirt which said in Cyrillic, “USSR” and the Russian visitors were said to have dined on Chicken Kyiv during their flight).
My response would be, “Not so fast!”
What details of Trump’s behavior and rhetoric stood out to you in contrast to Putin’s? Do you think that the excessively friendly reception by the Trump’s team was a deliberate political signal or more the result of improvisation?
It is hard to say what was in the minds of Trump or his team. I would guess both, plus lack of experience.
In contrast to Trump, Putin was much more reserved, though still friendly. The Russians spend a lot of time studying Trump’s behavior, according to their press. I am sure Putin’s behavior was calculated to reach some broader goal – to get what they wanted by establishing a rapport with Trump even as they took care of business.
What impact can we expect on the peace process in Ukraine from the press statements and behavior of the two leaders after the Summit?
The statements after the meeting suggest that President Trump seems to have accepted that the first step should be setting the framework for a settlement, which Moscow favors, rather than a ceasefire, which till Friday Trump had preferred. But they are far apart on some questions and do not seem to have considered other issues at all, such as reparations to Ukraine and the fate of those Ukrainian children kidnapped and shipped off to Russia.
The US position on a settlement has shifted a lot since the beginning of the year. Moscow has not budged from its initial goal in 2022 of subjugating Ukraine, despite some tactical flexibility. The visit of Zelensky and major European leaders to Washington on Aug. 18 could well shape how the peace process evolves but it is unlikely there will be a lasting settlement anytime soon.