Week signals: The tsars align
Plus: watch points for Bolivia, China, India, Iran, the Caucasus, and Mali.
Hello,
In this week’s edition of Week Signals:
IN REVIEW. A convergence of interests, a Miracle of the House of Putin, and a new concert of the Arctic.
UP AHEAD. Elections in Bolivia, meetings in Eurasia, and coup time in the Sahel.
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Week Signals is the Saturday note for clients of Geopolitical Strategy, also available to GD Professional subscribers on Geopolitical Dispatch.
The Week in Review: Prepping for another pivot
The week began with calls from Europe for Volodymyr Zelensky to attend a summit with Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. It ended with the meeting going ahead without him.
In a week that also saw a peace deal in the Caucasus, Trump was never going to let Ukraine’s president get in the way of his quest for a Nobel Prize, as ironic as that may seem. The meeting, which concluded several hours ago in Anchorage – far from Europe but “neighbourly” for the US and Russia – was never a sure thing. It would have almost certainly not gone ahead in a three-way format (as had also been offered earlier this year in Istanbul). The question now is whether a trilateral can occur as the next step.
The media has largely portrayed the summit as a failure. Trump “failed” to get a deal, after all. A lunch was apparently cancelled (perhaps due to talks going overtime). But a deal was never the intention, including by Trump’s reckoning. Likening it to the first move in a game of chess, the purpose was only to get to a second stage, and so forth.
Trump has continued to downplay expectations, including in his and Putin’s press conference. While Russia’s president suggested they had “agreement”, Trump said there was “no deal until there's a deal”.
We see this less a statement about the meeting’s success or otherwise – both said it was “very productive” – than an attempt for Trump to wriggle-out if stage-two fails (due, presumably, to Ukraine and/or Europe saying no). The mutual praise and body language suggested, if anything, close alignment. It was less an impression of two parties needing to arrive at deal than of needing to present to a third the deal what was agreed.
Putin’s quip, in English, about the next meeting being in Moscow, was batted away on account of what Trump calls the “Russia Russia Russia hoax” (i.e., claims of Kremlin election meddling in 2016), but it’s hard not to see the two “tremendous” friends getting together again soon. And in a Truth Social post ahead of the summit, a meeting with Belarus’s Aleksandr Lukashenko was even suggested as well.
Thus, while we may continue to see plenty of zigs and zags in the weeks ahead, including the threat of further sanctions, the meeting’s optics – including laughter and a shared limo ride – plus the Putin’s references to historic US-Russia cooperation – including centred on Alaska – suggest a convergence of interests, whether on Ukraine, the Arctic, trade, technology or space. And this is not just worrying for Kyiv, but Brussels, Beijing and beyond.
We can’t help but reflect on a similar convergence after another long war in 1762, when, upon his accession to the throne, Tsar Peter III of Russia switched sides in the Seven Years’ War. Peter, impressed and some say enamoured with Prussia’s Frederick the Great, wanted an end to hostilities, a break with his predecessor’s policies, and a recognition of Prussia’s place among the European powers. And while that place wouldn’t be fully settled until 1989 (some deny it’s still settled), it was nonetheless a momentous pivot. Some 260 years on, will 2025 be remembered in the same way?