After Alaska, whose court is the ball in? And will the world be any safer?

After Alaska, whose court is the ball in? And will the world be any safer?

Against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Trump is relying on an extremely high-risk “game of chicken,” where negotiators compete to see who can edge closest to the brink without falling in. Accordingly, he uses threats and deception to signal his political resolve Once again, the “magician” Trump pulls from his jacket sleeve the rabbit of his ardor for Putin. It’s a new round in an old love story.

Against the backdrop of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Trump is relying on an ultra-risky “game of chicken,” where negotiators compete to see who can edge closest to the brink without falling in. Accordingly, he uses threats and deception to showcase his political resolve.

Trump’s narrative to the world was that peace is near and that power works, and that “the world must make way for America.” His message to Putin: “Work with me and you’ll get more from me than you got from Biden.” To Ukraine: “Your stance is not necessary for peace.” To Americans: “Only I can end this war.” And to Europeans: “You must comply, because you are the weaker side. Trump believes that a strategy of “verbal threats” guarantees him dominance without costly commitments. But “verbal threats” in high-risk strategic games often lead to chaos, erode credibility, amplify risks, and cause miscalculation.

By sidelining Ukraine from the negotiations, Trump turns a multilateral game into a simplified bilateral one, ignoring the objective need for other parties to ensure a stable peace.

Trump repeatedly framed his policy: “Only I can end the war,” that “Putin respects strength,” and that he is determined to entrench dominance—in a game where credibility outweighs consistency.

This game, in turn, could collapse for many reasons: if Ukraine refuses to comply, if Europe holds together and sticks to its strategic course, or if Putin refuses to offer concessions even after achieving a symbolic victory.

Russia scored a narrative win when it exposed the lack of credibility behind Trump’s sanctions threats, and it secured a diplomatic opening at no cost.

Yet as it moves toward a long war of attrition, it continues escalating aerial and artillery strikes to break Ukraine’s will and sow European doubts about Kyiv’s staying power—aimed at convincing Trump that “a prolonged war carries a heavy political cost.”

Putin’s strategy at Alaska lay in cooperating with Trump just enough to neutralize him, without ever changing Russia’s actual objectives. Thus, Russia retains Crimea and Donbas, hoping to freeze Western military aid and ease sanctions, exploiting Trump’s preference for bilateralism and the difficulty of coordinating Western positions.

Putin appears confident that he is advancing toward a decisive victory by the end of 2026, enabling him to impose final political dominance over Ukraine. He demands that the current government be deemed illegitimate, that Ukraine remain demilitarized and outside the EU and NATO, and even that it be left with diminished sovereignty over its own territory.

In that case, Putin’s Russia could project its power across much of Central Europe—Poland, Romania, and beyond—just as the Soviet Union once dominated them through a series of coups that brought communists to power. And in a game where Trump casts himself as the referee, Putin wants to accuse Ukraine and Europe of not being serious about fulfilling Trump’s fervent desire to be a “hero of peace.”

Putin entered the summit from a position of dominance. After having been diplomatically isolated, economically strained, and facing a sanctions regime of rising probability, his current strategic move rests on prolonging the game without changing the board, and on halting the threat of U.S. sanctions. While signaling flexibility, he offers no concessions, in order to test Trump’s resolve and political motives.

It is a classic delaying tactic in a wide-scale game whose core is buying time on the battlefield by creating noise and chaos on the diplomatic track, with Russia’s wager being to inject uncertainty into the West’s long-term strategic posture.

For its part, Europe is relying on its ability to change the United States’ risk calculations. It wants to buy time for several reasons: first, to complete the elements of its on-the-ground deterrence; second, to strengthen Europe’s nuclear deterrent capabilities; and third, to bolster Ukraine’s military and human resilience.

After NATO expanded to control the Baltic Sea and to close off the Black Sea, Sweden and Germany—with their vast human, military, and industrial capacity—are preparing to join France and Britain in reinforcing the emerging European strategic spearhead. Europe continues to manage a complex game of “herd containment” to ensure optimal unity, while increasing its assistance and political coordination with Ukraine, and warning Trump’s team that deals made without Kyiv will fail.

Excluding Ukraine from the Alaska table raises a classic negotiating problem: Ukraine cannot be bound to any settlement without its participation. It is betting on the continuation of European solidarity.

Putin is wagering that if “Trump goes rogue from the West,” some European countries may split off, causing European influence to unravel.

By contrast, the key to Ukraine’s interactive game is to alter Trump’s payoff calculus so that sidelining Europe or Ukraine becomes politically and strategically costly for America. But Ukraine’s fundamental challenge is that it does not control the strategic interaction between the United States and Russia.

Ukraine responds with a two-level game: while it maneuvers and pays the price for others’ decisions, it continues its unprecedented deep strategic strikes inside Russia during the Alaska negotiations, in an effort to strengthen its European alliances and to preempt the diplomatic trap by rejecting land-for-peace deals.

Ukraine is intent on convincing both allies and adversaries of its capacity and will to continue fighting regardless of diplomatic developments. Its message to Russia: “We can inflict pain even without full Western support”; to Trump: “We will not passively accept a deal struck without us”; and to Europe: “Supporting us remains a viable strategic investment.”

In these signaling games, unlike verbal threats, Ukraine’s costly signals carry high credibility—especially when Ukraine bears the risks of those signals—thereby increasing doubt about any settlement that excludes it.

The danger awaiting us from Alaska is not just a bad deal, but the normalization of warlord diplomacy: rewarding force with land, stripping the international system of its multilateral legitimacy, and accepting temporary calm in exchange for permanent instability.

The Alaska summit was not an isolated step; it represents the latest round in an American strategic game aimed at normalizing the erasure of sovereignty in the name of “quick peace.”

In any case, there is a slight hope that the Alaska summit could achieve a temporary ceasefire. But it will not prevent the emergence of a long-term “iron curtain” in the middle of Europe, where cooling the war becomes a means of sustaining the conflict.