With Alaska chosen as its venue, the upcoming summit between Russia and the United States is expected to signal the start of a new round in the geopolitical game which came to be known as great power diplomacy. This stage can also signal the advent of a new world described as post-American, post-Soviet, post-European, and finally, post-Ukrainian too. This means that the usual constituent elements of our worldview are depreciating and becoming irrelevant, even if to varying degrees and at their own pace, and these processes now define not only the tenets and developments which took shape after the Cold War and the USSR’s dissolution, but over the past two centuries, Deputy Director General of Rossiya Segodnya International Media Group Alexander Yakovenko wrote in his article.

Strategic stability and arms control, globalization and ideological confrontation – all these notions have been discarded. NATO is also becoming increasingly irrelevant, while the European Union found itself of the verge of dissociating as it sinks deeper into a collective Weimar Republic-style frenzy with what Arnold Toynbee designated as suicidal public administration when describing militarism. Cultural and civilizational multipolarity and the resulting renewed global environment with greater competition and diversity in terms of both values and development models – this is what is set to replace Atlantic policies and the West as we know it. The Middle East offers a vivid example of these changes considering the growing radicalization within the Israeli society. Most people there come from non-European regions and are now thinking about building a Third Temple and instituting a Halakha-inspired national framework, much like Muslim countries rely on Shariah law for guiding their affairs. Only recently, the re-emergence of these ideas, which are rooted in the Old Testament and the fact that the so-called Christian Zionists in the United States have been supporting these aspirations, was hard to imagine.

Russia’s victory in an undeclared arms race, both in terms of strategic and conventional weapons, and now on the special military operations battlefields in Ukraine, have had a major bearing on Russia’s standing in international relations and its status in terms of power politics. In fact, Moscow is about to re-write the rules governing power politics and impose them on the West. Therefore, we can hardly expect a missile crisis to break out in Europe again over the development of Oreshnik missiles or the withdrawal from the moratorium on deploying intermediate and shorter-range missiles. Being able to monetize resources, i.e., by legalizing stablecoins with a dollar peg in the United States, is becoming more important than these considerations, and opens a new stage since the termination of the gold standard.

All this brings us back into the 18th century and Catherine the Great’s rule, even if, unfortunately, we know very little about this time. What happened during this era cannot be reduced to cabinet wars in a pre-nation era (before Napoleon built his empire and Germany’s unification). In fact, the proxy war in Ukraine belongs in this category. But there was also the Independence War in the United States, with France helping the Americans only to trigger a revolution within its own borders, while Russia honed the armed neutrality policy. But the key takeaway from this era was that this was a time when the Russian Empire as conceived by Peter the Great reached the peak of its power and authority, expanded to the south and west and started taking part in European politics by leveraging its might on equal terms with all other key actors.

But then everything changed. When Russian troops marched into Paris in March 1814, Western powers embarked on a lengthy push to contain Russia one way or another, be it by waging the Crimean War or creating the Entente Cordiale, just as Henry Kissinger would later recognize. Today we know that the refusal by Nicholas II to accept Lord Milner’s ultimatum amounted to signing a death sentence for himself and his family, since the British never forgave the Russian Emperor and refused to accept him and his family when Alexander Kerensky sent them a request to this effect in May 1917. In addition, we know that the February Revolution of 1917 was carried out by anglophile MPs and could be described as the first “color revolution” in our history with its unpredictable consequences for the country and the West in general.

There were quite a few misguided decisions over the past two centuries resulting from a failure to seize the way the Western anti-Russian policy undermines the West and de facto poses an existential threat for it. There was a decision to include the Kingdom of Poland in Russia, as well as Finland’s autonomy and Lenin’s ethnic policies. Pyotr Durnovo wrote a brief for the Tsar in February 1914 in which he described Galicia’s/Western Ukraine’s inclusion in Russia as a mistake. Even if this document was a fake forged by Russian proto fascists in German emigration, the argument still holds in terms of demonstrating that this toxic Vienna legacy lives on and we have to grapple with it. In this regard, Karin Kneissl’s words on Austria’s role in the Nazi project were spot on.

It is only now, after over two centuries and having had to dispel so many illusions regarding the West and its values, that we finally have an opportunity to build positive equal relations with other great powers, primarily the United States and China. That said, we must stick to a comprehensive and assertive foreign policy with a focus on promoting the national development agenda, just like before. This, I believe, is Russia’s key foreign policy challenge.

Against this backdrop, the effort to settle the war in Ukraine can be relegated to the background, since the West has long since lost this confrontation, in the context of a broader US-Russia relationship. In fact, Ukraine has become an obstacle for bringing these relations back to normal – something that will have to be addressed by working together. While trying to anticipate what the two leaders will agree upon in Alaska seems premature, one thing is clear. A ceasefire in Ukraine will come at a cost of signing a peace treaty recognizing the new borders, and it will have to be signed quickly. There will be no economic recovery for Ukraine without solid peace, which offers the United States a lot of leverage for promoting positive change in terms of Ukrainian statehood, while refusing hatred or to deal with proactive radicals. Kiev has lost hope of getting any reparations and will not get its hands on our frozen assets. We will get them back as a means to retaining Russia within the dollar economy. We will get our assets back, and the sanctions will be lifted to facilitate access to our economy, including through mega funds, which already tightened their grip around Europe’s neck by placing their champion Friedrich Merz in the position of German Chancellor.

Federalization/decentralization is likely to be a crucial element of the plan that Moscow and Washington will submit to Vladimir Zelensky (whom the Americans are leaving in his post for this purpose). It entitles regions to develop ties, including historical ones, with Russia, given that Ukraine can exist (if not survive) economically only in cooperation with Russia, as was admitted even by Zbigniew Brzezinski himself.

Piling debts on debts to rearm, the EU will have no money for Ukraine’s reconstruction. In addition, the EU, even to a greater extent than China, has become dependent on exports to and imports from China, something that only exacerbates its crisis. (According to The Telegraph, this is an additional factor that adumbrates the “end of Europe.”)  Oddly enough, Washington and Moscow have actually joined hands to ruin Europe, from which debacle it is unlikely to recover in the foreseeable future as it heads towards a “civilizational suicide” (JD Vance). This is why it will have no say in the Alaska talks.

In the Ukraine issue, the negotiators, moreover, will focus on the material guarantees of peace on the continent and Russia’s security. Optics will project the developments as a delayed post-Cold-War settlement in Europe: no one has won or lost (a peace without winners, as it were), while the war in Ukraine is a normal and legitimate conflict that has happened due to the negligence of the Biden administration and the European capitals, with much of the blame going to Kiev itself (why did it decide that it could defeat Russia?!).  Further explanations are even simpler: the long-term settlement in Europe has awaited Trump for the past 30 years, considering that the Kremlin lacked its negotiating peers in the West.      

The specific features of the United States as a nation have some relation to material guarantees of Russia’s victory. Ukrainian political philosopher Pavel Shchelin, now based in the United States, notes that America is not a state in the accepted sense of the term, to wit, an entity with a centralized system of decision-making and continuity from one administration to the next. This observation is illustrated by moves undertaken by Donald Trump himself, whose first presidential term was marked by his withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Treaty on Open Skies.  But the situation is even more complicated: the important thing, apart from the Congress-White House dichotomy and elections every two years, is that the US establishment is represented by different groups of interests, each of which believes that it “owns America.”   Lobbying solves part of the problem, but this is ruled out where Moscow is concerned, because Russia is a special case for the Western elites as a whole (until recently, it was possible to lobby for China’s interests, but it is in this connection that Donald Trump’s supporters are accusing Joe Biden of having betrayed the US national interests).

Russia first encountered this phenomenon during the August 2008 Caucasus crisis, when Matthew Bryza, who was then the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, appeared to authorize the use of force by the Saakashvili regime against South Ossetia and our peacekeepers. In subsequent public debates, American experts argued that their upper bureaucratic echelon – comprising two to three thousand highly politicized positions that shift with each administration, with unclear allegiances – held “greater authority” than the governance systems of other nations. The result is a polyphonic, almost postmodern dynamic, akin to multipolarity as a “terrestrial postmodernity” (as articulated by Alexander Dugin).

Negotiating with every stakeholder is unrealistic, especially since not all interests are transparently represented in public politics. The situation is far more complex than the simplistic “real sector versus banking” dichotomy dominated by the Federal Reserve, or the polycentrism among IT giants racing to develop artificial intelligence – a potential equivalent of the atomic bomb for future global development. We must not forget that the US global empire is the successor to the British Empire, which, as the conservative historian Niall Ferguson bluntly noted in his controversial Empire (2003), acted with unparalleled treachery and ruthlessness. Notably, Ferguson now advocates détente with China, akin to the détente that cost us our country. It is hard to ignore that China can no longer be contained: the dialogue has already begun.

Regardless, envisioning Russia’s participation in America’s China containment strategy is difficult. An alternative – Donald Trump’s interest in a strong Russia as a counterbalance to Beijing – changes much but does not alter our role in BRICS. Beijing prudently banned cryptocurrencies; Trump recognizes that their rejection by BRICS nations would collapse the dollar system today. Nor is he inclined to let BRICS exit the Federal Reserve’s macro-regulatory sphere (though it is clear he may himself dismantle the Fed’s independence, easing pressure on others).

Yet I would view the future of Russian-American relations – should Alaska become a focal point – through the lens of shared Arctic interests. If Trump consolidates control over Greenland and Canada (with British support), the Arctic will unite rather than divide us (into Eastern and Western hemispheres). In the 19th century, we thrived peacefully across the zero meridian, even selling Alaska to preserve geographic harmony. Today, Arctic challenges – including climate change – demand collective action.

The Arctic could mark the dawn of a new era in our relations, which saw cooperation in the 19th and 20th centuries (during the US Civil War and World War II) and convergent moments like America’s social-market economy. Yet negative trends prevailed. Now, we have a chance to reverse this – requiring a clearer recalibration of our policy under the March 2023 Foreign Policy Concept, emphasizing consolidation across the Global South, East, and a transforming America. As for Europe, it remains, more than ever, what Dostoevsky called “dear to us as stones and the dead.”

Managing these dual priorities transcends conventional diplomacy and force; it demands developmental tools and competencies. When the Bretton Woods system – now on life support – was forged in 1944, war exhaustion and ideological dogma hindered our participation. Over the past two decades, we have learned to impose alternatives with like-minded partners, adopting transactional rigor akin to Catherine the Great’s era. Otherwise, we risk losing the peace after winning the war.