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Low expectations, high anxieties

Low expectations, high anxieties

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 What happens when a convicted felon and a man under indictment for alleged war crimes get together?This sounds like the opening line of a great joke, but sadly, describes what will most likely be the defining meeting of the second term of Donald Trump as US president. As with any meetings involving the current incumbent of the White House, expectations are low and anxieties are high in the run-up to the US-Russia summit in Alaska on August 15.The White House, and Trump himself, have played down expectations of an imminent breakthrough towards peace in Ukraine, claiming that this would be “a feel-out meeting” to determine whether a ceasefire is possible. In typical hyperbole, the US president added that he was confident that it would probably only take him two minutes to know whether a deal is possible. His subsequent threat that “there will be very severe consequences” if Putin does not agree to stop the fighting appears somewhat hollow now given that the reward for Putin ignoring Trump’s last deadline was an invitation to the US.While framed almost solely as a meeting about the Russian war against Ukraine, it would be naive to assume that this is all that is on Trump’s agenda. There are two possible deals Trump could try to make: a deal with Putin on a ceasefire for Ukraine and a deal resetting relations between Russia and the US. Trump is interested in both, and he does not see them as mutually exclusive or mutually constitutive.Trump has long talked about a ceasefire, and is probably genuinely keen for the fighting to stop. The US president likely also sees an instrumental value in a ceasefire agreement in his quest for the Nobel Peace Prize.There have been serious and justified misgivings in Ukraine and among Kyiv’s European allies that the meeting between Putin and Trump is just that — a bilateral get-together by the two presidents without any Ukrainian or European participation. This has prompted a flurry of diplomatic activity within Europe and across the Atlantic. As part of this, Ukrainian red lines have been clearly set out and fully backed by European leaders. Neither will accept full legal recognition of the kinds of land swaps that both Trump and his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, have suggested. Security guarantees and Russian reparations for the damage done to Ukraine in three-and-a-half years of war are likely other stumbling blocs.If there is a deal on a ceasefire, this will probably take the form of a broad and ambiguous framework that all sides would subsequently interpret differently. Part of such a framework would likely be a timeline and conditions for a Trump-Putin-Zelensky summit, most likely again without European participation. This would be another gift for the Russian president, and potentially put Zelensky into a position where both Trump and Putin would pressure him to accept an unfavourable deal or lose all US support.By contrast, a US-Russia reset would be a more straightforward business deal — primarily with US economic interests in mind, but with significant geopolitical implications. There are few signs that Trump has given up on his agenda to “un-unite” Russia and China as he put it in an interview with Tucker Carlson during his presidential campaign last year. But, importantly, this is less about new American alliances and more about Trump’s ideas of re-ordering the world into American, Russian and Chinese spheres of influence — something that is easier done for the White House after a reset with the Kremlin and when Moscow and Beijing are no longer the strategic partners they claim to be right now.As an outcome of the Alaska summit, such a reset of US-Russia relations is also most likely to materialise as a framework that simply identifies areas for future deals between the two sides. Any process to implement such a bilateral agreement between Moscow and Washington could begin immediately and run in parallel to any Ukraine negotiations. This, too, would be a big bonus for Moscow: with the Kremlin hoping that the further along things move on the US-Russia reset track, the more likely Trump will back Putin in negotiations with Ukraine.Putin is clearly more interested in improving bilateral relations with the US than he is in a ceasefire. He has, for now, skilfully avoided Trump’s threats of sanctions while his forces have achieved what looks like an important breakthrough on the battlefield. This is not necessarily a game changer in the war overall, but it certainly strengthens Putin’s hand ahead of his meeting with Trump.His troops’ battlefield success also decreases the urgency with which the Russian president is likely to approach negotiations — in the absence of Trump following through on his recent ultimatum threats, and with Ukraine and its European allies shut out of their meeting, Putin has every incentive, and opportunity, to play for more time and to push his current advantage on the battlefield as much as ...
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