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Russian President Vladimir Putin has thrown Donald Trump a bone that’s so big and juicy, Trump must feel sorely tempted to chase it—but it’s laced with so much poison that even Trump might calm himself and resist.
The bone, according to the Wall Street Journal, is the proposal of a tripartite summit—just Putin, Trump, and Chinese President Xi Jinping—to plot an ending to the Russia–Ukraine war.
Clearly the idea appeals to Trump’s idealized view of the world: great powers carving their spheres, calling the shots, collecting the spoils, and Donald J. Trump taking his seat—recognized by all—as one of those great powers. No small or medium-size democracies need apply—thus no other pesky Europeans, and certainly no Ukrainians, need take part in determining their fates.
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The view is of a piece with Trump’s adoration and envy of men holding absolute power. He basks in their reciprocated respect (whether feigned or genuine), feels his own power elevated, and yearns for more. During the first year of his first term as president, Trump spoke in awe of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un: “He speaks and people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”
He was similarly enamored by the red carpet and sword dance at his first meeting with the Saudi royal family. These were people who ruled a country, the heirs to generations of rulers. By comparison, meeting with elected elites, whose fleeting power depends on the whims of the populace, reminds him all too much of his own limitations.
So a summit of the era’s three great men—Putin, Xi, and Trump! That’s the stuff of history: like Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt at Yalta, or Metternich, Talleyrand, and Tsar Alexander at the Congress of Vienna.
But any such comparisons are mere self-glorifying fantasy, for several reasons but two in particular. First, and most obvious, Trump is no Roosevelt or Talleyrand (nor, it should be noted, does either of his collaborators resemble Churchill or Metternich). Second, and equally problematic, Trump would enter such a game not merely outmatched but holding (to borrow one of his own metaphors) no cards.
The 19th-century statesmen gathered at Vienna to stabilize Europe in the aftermath of Napoleon’s ravaging. The three main Allied victors of World War II met at Yalta in 1945 to carve new European borders after the Nazis’ defeat.
The great-powers summit that Putin proposes is a very different thing. Putin started the war against Ukraine and continues to wage it relentlessly. Xi isn’t quite an ally—he isn’t assisting Putin with troops or weapons—but he is providing Russia with technology and economic support. Trump could exert some leverage by threatening to send Ukraine tons of missiles, planes, and drones—or upping sanctions against Russia—if Putin continues the war. But as everyone plainly sees, Trump has cut off aid to Ukraine and waived the sanctions that Congress passed by a strong bipartisan majority.
Trump’s leanings toward Putin have long been clear, as has his hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But neither sentiment has been unambiguous—he has helped Ukraine with arms and intelligence, and he has punished Russia with sanctions—until now. As has been noted even by Zelensky, who has gone out of his way not to appear confrontational with the ultrasensitive American president, Trump has now declared himself a Russian ally in the war on Ukraine.
And so, if this Putin–Trump–Xi summit actually happens, it will likely be a forum for sketching out the precise terms of Ukraine’s surrender. Putin has stated that the goal of his war is to eliminate Ukraine as a sovereign nation, which he views as illegitimate. The point of the summit would be to codify that view—and to take the first steps toward enacting it.
This ambition is not implausible. Zelensky recently admitted that if Trump proceeds on this course, if the United States officially allies with Russia in this war, Ukraine cannot possibly win. And all this—Putin’s proposal for a summit, Trump’s waiver of anti-Russia sanctions, and (not to be left out of the equation) the severe limiting of Elon Musk’s satellite feeds to Ukraine—comes at a time when Ukraine had been making some headway in the war and Russia had been suffering enormous setbacks.
As for Xi, it isn’t clear whether the Chinese president had any advance knowledge of Putin’s proposal, but a summit would serve his interests as well. Xi doesn’t care much about Ukraine’s fate, or whether the war goes on for years or stops tomorrow. But he is keen to see the United States’ influence dwindle, and Trump’s abandonment of Ukraine would accelerate that trend. Europe, which still depends on America’s leadership of NATO for its defense, would seek to make separate deals for trade and security—as would much of Asia, which would view Trump’s retreat from Europe as a prelude to the scotching of alliances in general.
And so the question at the moment is this: Will Trump actually agree to attend this summit? He said on Monday that he’d be open to meeting with Putin and Xi about “denuclearization,” but that evades whether he’d meet with them about Ukraine. It’s worth noting that, according to the Wall Street Journal article, Putin proposed it in the same conversation where he offered to sell the U.S. massive quantities of diesel fuel. Trump took that deal, in hopes that it would lower gasoline prices and thus boost the chance that the Republican Party retains its House and Senate majorities in the upcoming midterm elections.
Is it significant that, even as he publicized the diesel deal, Trump said nothing about the summit—alluring as it must have been, and continue to be, in his quest for a peacemaker’s legacy (whatever the cost of “peace”). Most of his top aides would probably advise against the notion. Then again, those same aides advised against the war on Iran, and many of them weren’t even canvassed about the fuel deal.
The lambasting that Trump has received for his diesel-fuel deal and his waiver of Russian sanctions—not only from almost all Democrats but from many Republicans—may have surprised him, and given him a taste of the outrage he’d incite by taking another step toward full appeasement of Putin.
We can hope, but, as the saying goes, hope is not a strategy—nor can it offer any insight into how Trump might weigh his desperation for recognition as a powerful leader against the consequences of abandoning Ukraine, or even whether he understands those consequences.
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