‼️ Michael Hudson: Note 3 on the planned Alaska meeting

Alaska Breakdown Looming

It looks like Trump has just announced that the Alaska meeting will be hostile and he is rejecting all Russian demands. He has threatened to walk away in the first two minutes if Russia does not agree to a cease fire on Ukraine’s terms. His intention is to threaten Russia with more U.S. blustering that poses no real threat to Russia, but will (he hopes) solidify his support from the Donor Class, CIA and EU Russia-haters.

It is literally impossible for Trump to make any peace deal with Russia. First of all, he cannot control Europe, and Starmer, Macron and Merz have announced that they are going to fight Russia regardless of what Trump might want.

Second, Ukraine’s Azov battalion and related neo-Nazi nationalists insist that they will continue to fight – if not overtly, then by constant sabotage. Ditto the CIA alongside MI6.

And Trump’s neocon coterie is pressing the third rail: ny treaty settlement needs Congressional approval. Trump is no more in charge of Congress than the is of the CIA. It’s they that are running him.

So why is Putin attending, now that the original hints of reasonability by Trump has been summarily rejected, according to the Wednesday afternoon New York Times and WSJ reports of his statements? Trump has reverted to calling Russia the aggressor, as if it rather than Ukraine is bombing civilians. It is clear that he is incorrigible.

The last few days has seen Trump accelerate its military confrontation with Russia. The EU has announced a trillion-euro arms buildup against Russia’s threat to send 10 million troops to occupy it – as if countries still fought by armies occupying enemies instead of just bombing them.

The only way to salvage this meeting is not to talk about Ukraine at all, but about NATO/Russian relations and possible negotiation of a new atomic arms control treaty.

All that I can imagine Putin saying are two things. First of all, of course Russia wants Ukraine at the table to end the war. He hopes that by the end of the year his troops will establish a new Ukrainian government that will be able to sign the armistice, creating a New Ukraine with a new constitution. He’ll tell Trump that he is trying to end the war as quickly as possible.

Putin may bring up Armenia and Azerbaijan and ask the US to withdraw its intrusion, unless he wants a repeat of the Kennedy/Khruschev showdown with Russia putting atomic missiles in Cuba. The sphere-of-influence principle will come up – as it did in the Monroe Doctrine, which promised that the United States would not intervene in European affairs if European kingdoms stayed out of the Western Hemisphere.

Finally, Putin can say that in view of the fact that they can’t agree not to continue the US/NATO attack on Russia (and China and Iran and the entire rest of the world), at least they should agree that even in the absence of an arms treaty, they won’t bomb each other. The United States is free to sell all the arms and missiles it wants to Germany and other bellicose NATO countries. But once these arms are bought by Europe, Russia will treat any attack on its territory (including its extension into former Ukraine) as an attack by the country supplying the arms – and will feel free to bomb the hell out of it.

Putin can quip to Trump that this is the most peace-oriented thing that the United States can do: avoid a direct US/Russian exchange of bombs. “You can have Europe,” Putin can say. “It has nothing that we need or want.” Just leave us alone and stay out of our way, and you’ll have your US-Russia peace.”

It will be interesting to see how Trump depicts this as a great victory.