History shows summits rarely change the world – but this one might prevent disaster
By Timofey Bordachev, Program Director of the Valdai Club
The meeting between the presidents of Russia and the United States in Alaska is not an end point, but the beginning of a long journey. It will not resolve the turbulence that has gripped humanity – but it matters to everyone.
In international politics, there have been few moments when meetings between the leaders of major powers have decided questions of universal importance. This is partly because situations requiring attention at such a level are rare. We are living through one now: since the start of Russia’s military operation against Ukraine, Washington has declared its aim to be the “strategic defeat” of Russia, while Moscow has challenged the West’s monopoly over world affairs.
Another reason is practical. Leaders of the world’s most powerful states do not waste time on problems that can be solved by subordinates. And history shows that even when top-level meetings do occur, they rarely change the overall course of international politics.
It is no surprise, then, that the Alaska meeting has been compared to famous encounters from the past – notably the 1807 meeting between the Russian and French emperors on a raft in the Neman River. That summit did not prevent Napoleon from attacking Russia five years later – an act that ultimately brought about his own downfall.
Later, at the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Russia was the only power represented by its ruler on a regular basis. Tsar Alexander I insisted on presenting his personal vision for Europe’s political structure. It failed to win over the other great powers, who, as Henry Kissinger once noted, preferred to discuss interests rather than ideals.
History is full of high-level talks that preceded war rather than preventing it. European monarchs would meet, fail to agree, and then march their armies. Once the fighting ended, their envoys would sit down to negotiate. Everyone understood that “eternal peace” was usually just a pause before the next conflict.
The 2021 Geneva summit between Russia and the US may well be remembered in this way – as a meeting that took place on the eve of confrontation. Both sides left convinced their disputes could not be resolved at the time. In its aftermath, Kiev was armed, sanctions were readied, and Moscow accelerated military-technical preparations.
Russia’s own history offers parallels. The most famous “summit” of ancient Rus was the 971 meeting between Prince Svyatoslav and Byzantine Emperor John Tzimiskes, following a peace treaty. According to historian Nikolay Karamzin, they “parted as friends” – but that did not stop the Byzantines from unleashing the Pechenegs against Svyatoslav on his journey home.
In Asia, traditions were different. The status of Chinese and Japanese emperors did not permit meetings with equals; such encounters were legally and culturally impossible.
When the modern European “world order” was created – most famously in the 1648 Peace of Westphalia – it was not through grand encounters of rulers but through years of negotiations among hundreds of envoys. By then, after 30 years of war, all sides were too exhausted to continue fighting. That exhaustion made it possible to agree on a comprehensive set of rules for relations between states.
Seen in this historical light, top-level summits are exceedingly rare, and those that produce fundamental change are rarer still. The tradition of two leaders speaking on behalf of the entire global system is a product of the Cold War, when Moscow and Washington alone had the ability to destroy or save the world.
Even if Roman and Chinese emperors had met in the third century, it would not have transformed the fate of the world. The great empires of antiquity could not conquer the planet in a single war with each other. Russia – as the USSR before it – and the United States can. In the last three years, they have often stood on the brink of a path from which there would be no return. This is why Alaska matters, even if it does not yield a breakthrough.
Summits of this kind are a creation of the nuclear age. They cannot be treated as just another bilateral meeting between important states. The very fact of direct negotiations is a measure of how close or far we are from catastrophe.
The United States will arrive at the summit as the leader of a Western bloc whose members – even nuclear powers such as Britain and France – defer to Washington on strategic questions. Russia, for its part, will be watched closely by what is often called the “global majority”: dozens of states across Asia, Africa, and Latin America that resent Western dominance but cannot overturn it alone. These countries know that US mediation in local conflicts will not change the fact that the structure of that dominance remains unjust.
Could Alaska lay the foundation for a new international order? Probably not. The very concept of a fixed “order” is fading. Any order requires an enforcing power – and none exists today. The world is moving toward greater fluidity, to the frustration of those who crave neat arrangements and predictable futures.
Even if a new balance of power emerges, it will not come from one meeting. The wartime summits of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin are not a fair comparison. Those were preceded by the most destructive battles in human history.
Fortunately, we are not in that situation now. The likely outcome in Alaska is the start of a long and difficult process, rather than an immediate settlement. But it is still of fundamental importance. In today’s world, only two states possess vast nuclear arsenals capable of ending human civilization.
This alone means that the leaders of Russia and the United States have no more important duty than to speak directly to one another – especially when they are, for now, the only invincible powers at the edge of the world.
This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and was translated and edited by the RT team.
