Appeasement in Alaska?

Vladimir Putin’s visit as Donald Trump’s guest in the U.S. state of Alaska did not, according to the first assessments (Yle, MTV3, HS, Uutissuomalainen), bring an end to the war in Ukraine. Instead, it postponed the U.S. tariff increases on countries buying oil from Russia by at least a couple of weeks. In other words, the meeting certainly did not make the aggressor’s war effort more difficult.

In practice, the main outcome of the meeting was to demonstrate that European states are not capable of being a significant party even in a war being fought on their own continent. And of course, the continuation of Ukraine’s tragedy and the suffering of its people.

After the negotiations, Pekka Kallioniemi, who comments on the war in Ukraine, drew an illustration showing the dynamics of the relationship between Putin and Trump.

According to it, Trump sets a deadline for Russia to continue the war → that deadline is crossed → Putin proposes pointless negotiations → the negotiations lead nowhere, since Russia’s demands are impossible. And then the cycle begins again. In this way, the war can continue for as long as Russia’s dictator wishes.

Donald Trump’s actions closely resemble those of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the Western European powers before the Second World War, when Adolf Hitler annexed one territory after another into the Third Reich. The result was the strengthening of Nazi Germany militarily, the growing arrogance of the Führer, and ultimately the outbreak of World War II.

The silver lining in the current situation is that Russia does not have the capacity to rise into a true great power threatening the rest of the world. Instead, after the end of the war in Ukraine, it will retain the ability to militarily threaten its small neighboring states, such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Their security depends above all on how NATO’s Article 5 is interpreted in the alliance’s major member states. In other words, whether it is seen as obligating them to provide full-scale support to the victim of aggression, or whether even in such a case the logic of Kallioniemi’s illustration would be followed.

If the latter proves to be the case, Russia also becomes a threat to Finland, and possibly even to Poland. At the same time, our NATO membership would lose its meaning just as effectively as the support promised by Western powers to Poland—and also to Finland against Stalin’s Soviet Union—lost its meaning at the beginning of the Second World War.

Previous thoughts on the same topic:
Donald Trump’s Meeting With Vladimir Putin: The Advice He Needs
Border Residents Concerned Over NATO’s Article 5 Interpretation
Oily Trap for Putin