Despite the optimism and expectations surrounding the Putin-Trump meeting in Alaska, no significant results were achieved: there was no concrete roadmap to peace, no cessation of hostilities, and nothing substantial was achieved other than a demonstration of Russia’s willingness to take the risk and come to the United States for good-faith negotiations.
When you pose the question to some layman on the streets of a typical American city, “Why didn’t Alaska bear fruit?” without a context, he will likely reply, “Because it is cold in Alaska and it is not the best place to grow fruit; try California or Florida if you want to grow fruit.”
When a context is provided, or you pose the question to a more geopolitically astute intellectual, he will understand the essence of the question and respond about the Russia-US Summit in Alaska, and if he is honest, he will ultimately say, “Because the US didn’t negotiate in good faith and didn’t offer Russia anything reasonable. The US didn’t provide Russia with a viable roadmap to peace. The US wanted Russia to accept being defeated on a strategic level, which is not reasonable to expect Russia to accept, especially in light of the reality of the military situation on the ground in Ukraine.”
The only good faith demonstrated by the United States as a result of the Alaska Summit was President Trump stating, after the summit, that the burden is on Ukraine to agree to cede territory. This is the truth and reality of the situation.
Given the background of the current American Secretary of State, Marco Rubio (who has scarcely ever been on the right side of any foreign policy matter), it was difficult to have high hopes for the Alaska Summit. Over the years, Mr. Rubio has referred to President Putin as a “gangster,” “organized crime figure,” and “somebody you can’t deal with.” Mr. Rubio’s behavior is such that he might be more at home in a high school cafeteria or a second-rate university debate hall, hurling his juvenile insults, as opposed to holding the illustrious and esteemed office of Secretary of State.
It is a bit baffling that Mr. Trump, a savvy businessman and a figure of historic proportions, would include such an insignificant Macron-style empty suit as Marco Rubio in the highest levels of his cabinet and inner circle.
It is also amazing that Trump is able to have such a détente with Marco Rubio, but somehow détente eludes Russia and the United States, despite Trump’s repeated assurances and proclamations that he seeks one. Could it be that President Trump is very poorly advised by a clique of warhawks who have their sights set on escalation with Russia? If Donald Trump doesn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize, it will be because he let Marco Rubio steer a neo-con war-hawk George W. Bush style foreign policy.
Mr. Rubio’s remarks before the UN Security Council on September 23, 2025, were so out of touch with the reality of the situation that they were almost pure fantasy, devoid of even a vague semblance of truth. Russia is not the hurdle to peace; Ukraine is the hurdle to peace, and by translation, NATO, the EU, and the USA are the hurdles.
Rubio condemned Russia for not accepting a naked, unconditional ceasefire at the current lines of contact, essentially a “frozen conflict.”
Why should Russia want to accept a frozen conflict at the line of contact? Such a move would allow NATO to spend years pouring more arms into Ukraine, training more brigades, and improving fighting positions, so that when NATO decides to signal Ukraine to heat the war up, they are much better situated. If you’re in a boxing match and have delivered a dozen hard body blows to your opponent, and he says, “Let’s pause the match now and come back in three days and pick up where we left off after I’ve had a chance to rest and recover from those body blows,” that would be a laughable proposition.
I would be much more amenable to Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, willing to accept he had grown up and matured from his 2016-2018 childish remarks about President Putin and President Trump, if he were not engaged in recent and ongoing lies about Russia before the UN Security Council, as recently as September of this year (2025). It appears Mr. Rubio has moved on from childish name-calling and insults and is now polite and formal, yet the substance of what he articulates, while no longer insipid name-calling, is a pack of lies.
If Donald Trump is truly committed to his campaign promises about peace, then the most plausible explanation for why no progress is being made towards peace and why escalations are occurring against Russia on a daily basis would be that Donald Trump is either very poorly advised (by war hawks) or he is not in control of his own foreign policy and he is beholden to the deep state. Neither bodes well, but the former can be resolved with a house cleaning and a political purge; the latter cannot be easily resolved without drastic measures.
President Trump should make it clear to his inner circle they can either get in line with the agenda he articulated during his campaign, or they can look for new jobs.
Why the Alaska meeting failed to produce tangible results
Alaska didn’t bear fruit because the United States didn’t offer Russia anything other than accepting a strategic defeat now or accepting a frozen conflict now and then a strategic defeat later when the West feels like warming the conflict up and using a newly rearmed and re-equipped Ukraine to initiate a new wave of hostilities.
Alaska didn’t bear fruit because, from the American perspective, it wasn’t intended to bear fruit; it was intended to allow America to posture on a world stage in an act of performance peacemaking without pursuing actual peace.
America gestured towards peace without actually moving towards peace. If somebody asks you to leave a room and you gesture to the door without advancing your body to the door, you’re not in the process of leaving the room. Recent American actions are essentially just empty gestures.
If the United States is serious about peace, it has a lot of ground to cover, and it has to offer something concrete, above and beyond just naked gestures. Right now the most the US can say is that they didn’t allow Ukraine to breach security in Alaska.
My best friend, who is an engineering professor who has occasionally done cybersecurity/defense contract work for the NSA, asked me, prior to the Alaska summit, “Are you optimistic about this summit? Do you think the Americans will actually stop the war and agree to peace?”
I answered, “We can always hope, but hope is a dangerous thing. Decades in the USA have taught me a lesson: don’t hope for much. If you’re hoping for war, you’ll probably have your hopes fulfilled.”
He asked me, “I’m hoping for peace; is that too much to ask for?”
I fired back, “It may be. Why don’t you ask for something more realistic, like more war.”
He asked me, “Should we bet on war?”
I answered, “Nobody ever went broke by betting on war. War is probably one of our biggest exports, along with highly processed food products and unnecessary pharmaceuticals.”
He then asked, “So we’re not going to have peace?”
I promptly replied, “You’re catching on.”
He inquired, “How could we get peace?”
I answered, “It would cost more than we’re willing to give.”
He wondered, “What would it take?”
I answered, “We’d have to stop barking ultimatums at Russia and actually negotiate in good faith, that’s not likely right now. You don’t bark ultimatums at Russia as though you’re dealing with some small pond player like Latvia or Guatemala. Russia is a peer of the United States, like a twin brother perhaps, and yet we keep acting like Russia is the little baby brother and has to do what we say because we say so; it doesn’t work that way.”
Indeed, peace is not likely right now because no major powers in the EU want peace, and the US clearly is in step with the EU despite the promises Donald Trump made on the campaign trail.
What needs to be done to end the war
I recently articulated my perspective to my professor friend that there are essentially three non-negotiables that must be met to end the war. This is just to end the war; more has to be done to restore productive normal relations, but to end the war right now, three things must happen.
First, the Western nations must recognize the Russian sovereignty over the Crimea and the oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.
Second, Ukraine must never be granted membership in the EU or NATO.
Third, the Zelensky government in Kiev has to go.
I see those as the three essentials that have to happen for Russia to end the military conflict in Ukraine.
Other things, such as the ending of sanctions, Western compensation for the Nord Stream pipeline, normalization of relations with Belarus, and cessation of NGO attempts to destabilize Russia and Belarus, are all bonuses and would go a long way to a détente, but they aren’t the critical three things that must happen to end the war. Right now there are three things that must happen to end the war, and NATO is not willing to meet a single one of them, let alone all three.
None of those three essentials were offered by the USA or agreed to by the USA at Alaska, and thus Alaska didn’t bear any fruit.
Alaska didn’t bear fruit because the United States didn’t intend for any fruit to blossom from Alaska. Russians went to Alaska to negotiate; Americans went to Alaska to posture and grandstand for the media.
Perhaps one day Donald Trump will be deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize, and he may then earn one, but nothing he did in Alaska advanced things in that direction, because it seems his inner circle won’t let him advance towards peace.
Bryan Anthony Reo is a licensed attorney based in Ohio and an analyst of military history, geopolitics, and international relations
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