AUGUST 16, 2025<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds \/ AFP \/ Getty<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Donald Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. He allowed the Pentagon twice to halt prearranged military shipments to Ukraine. He promised that when the current tranche of armaments runs out, there will be no more. He has cut or threatened to cut the U.S. funds that previously supported independent Russian-language media and opposition. His administration is slowly, quietly easing sanctions on Russia, ending \u201cbasic sanctions and export control actions that had maintained and increased U.S. pressure,\u201d according to a\u00a0Senate-minority report<\/a>. \u201cEvery month he\u2019s spent in office without action has strengthened Putin\u2019s hand, weakened ours and undermined Ukraine\u2019s own efforts to bring an end to the war,\u201d Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren wrote in a joint statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of these changes have gone almost unremarked on in the United States. But they are widely known in Russia. The administration\u2019s attacks on Zelensky, Europeans, and Voice of America have been celebrated on Russian television. Of course Vladimir Putin knows about the slow lifting of sanctions. As a result, the Russian president has clearly made a calculation: Trump, to use the language he once hurled at Zelensky, has no cards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump does say that he wants to end the war in Ukraine, and sometimes he also says that he is angry that Putin doesn\u2019t. But if the U.S. is not willing to use any economic, military, or political tools to help Ukraine, if Trump will not put any diplomatic pressure on Putin or any new sanctions on Russian resources, then the U.S. president\u2019s fond wish to be seen as a peacemaker can be safely ignored. No wonder all of Trump\u2019s negotiating deadlines for Russia have passed, to no effect, and no wonder the invitation to Anchorage produced no result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read: Well, what did you think would happen?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n There is not much else to say about yesterday\u2019s Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska, other than to observe the intertwining elements of tragedy and farce. It was embarrassing for Americans to welcome a notorious wanted war criminal on their territory. It was humiliating to watch an American president act like a happy puppy upon encountering the dictator of a much poorer, much less important state, treating him as a superior. It\u2019s excruciating to imagine how badly Trump\u2019s diplomatic envoy, Steve Witkoff, an amateur out of his depth, misunderstood his last meeting with Putin in Moscow if he thought that the Alaska summit was going to be successful. It\u2019s ominous that Trump now says he doesn\u2019t want to push for a cease-fire but instead for peace negotiations, because the latter formula gives Putin time to keep killing Ukrainians. It\u2019s strange that Russian reports of the meeting focused on business cooperation. \u201cRussian-American business and investment partnership has huge potential,\u201d Putin said today<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I appreciate that many Ukrainians, Europeans, and of course Americans are relieved that Trump didn\u2019t announce something worse. He didn\u2019t call for Ukrainian capitulation, or for Ukraine to cede territory. Unless there are secret protocols, perhaps some business deals, that we haven\u2019t yet learned about, Anchorage will probably not be remembered as one of history\u2019s crime scenes, a new Munich Conference, or a Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. But that\u2019s a very low bar to reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The better way to understand Anchorage is not as the start of something new, but as the culmination of a longer process. As the U.S. dismantles its foreign-policy tools, as this administration fires the people who know how to use them, our ability to act with any agility will diminish. From the Treasury Department to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, from the State Department to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, agency after agency is being undermined, deliberately or accidentally, by political appointees who are unqualified, craven, or hostile to their own mission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/thumbor\/JWsECT32nNSuaHlX4ebveFehils=\/0x0:2000x1125\/960x540\/media\/img\/mt\/2025\/08\/2025_8_16_Trump_Has_No_Cards\/original.jpg\")
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