Alaska Summit: A Strategic Triumph for Russia and China

Wang Xiangsui and Charriot Zhai, The China Academy, August 19, 2028 —

After the Alaska summit, Trump seemed determined to cede Ukrainian territory in order to deliver on his promise of “peace.” Chinese strategist Prof. Wang Xiangsui points out that Russia’s victory is already a foregone conclusion, but Trump still holds a crucial card—one that could decide if Russia’s triumph will be smooth or soaked in blood.

On 15 August, after nearly three hours of discussions, Vladimir Putin departed Alaska for Moscow. Western media outlets, including the BBC, swiftly highlighted the absence of formal agreements and the lack of tangible outcomes from the talks. However, Chinese strategist Professor Wang Xiangsui identifies two pivotal signals from the talks indicating that Russia and BRICS nations, particularly China, have solidified their long-term geopolitical advantages.

Russia’s strategic Win: America backs down on NATO expansion

On Sunday, Donald Trump made a striking declaration, saying Ukraine should give up hopes of regaining Crimea, controlled by Russia in 2014, or of joining NATO. These demands mirror precisely the war aims Russia articulated in 2022.

Former US secretary of state Antony Blinken once observed that “if you’re not at the table in the international system, you’re going to be on the menu.” For decades, Washington and its European allies have viewed post-Soviet Russia as vulnerable prey, methodically encircling it via NATO’s eastward expansion. Now, however, Trump seems to be inviting Moscow to the table—while positioning Ukraine as the entrée.

Trump’s reportedly planning to press Zelensky to surrender the entirety of the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in return for Russia freezing the rest of the front line. Despite swift rejections from both Kyiv and Brussels on 17 August, such resistance appears increasingly futile. The timeless axiom of diplomacy holds: You can’t claim at the negotiating table what you haven’t won on the battlefield. If Ukraine and the EU refuse to swallow Trump’s proposals, they’ll have no choice but to mobilize for war and, leveraging sheer strength, flip over that Alaska negotiating table that designed for just two chairs.

However, for the EU, military confrontation without American backing would prove catastrophic. European forces have been structurally dependent on US military leadership since the cold war began. America provides 68.7% of Nato’s defence spending and maintains 1.33 million active personnel – 39% of the alliance’s total military strength. Perhaps more critically, only the US possesses the comprehensive intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities that modern warfare demands.

A Ukrainian soldier sets up a Starlink terminal.

American technological supremacy’s strategic edge was laid bare in September 2022, when Elon Musk directed Starlink to disable service over Kherson amid a pivotal Ukrainian counteroffensive. Ukrainian reconnaissance drones immediately failed, artillery systems lost their targeting capabilities, and the planned assault on the Russian stronghold of Beryslav collapsed entirely.

Earlier this year, following a tense White House meeting with Zelenskyy, Trump temporarily suspended intelligence sharing with Ukraine. The immediate impact was devastating: HIMARS missile systems lost accuracy, early warning systems for Russian missile attacks failed, and Ukrainian operations in Kursk ground to a halt. Intelligence flows resumed only after Kyiv agreed to return to ceasefire negotiations – a clear demonstration of America’s leverage over Ukraine and EU.

In truth, Donetsk and Luhansk represent a Gordian knot for Russia: too expensive to relinquish, yet too challenging to fully control. Although referendums have formally incorporated disputed territories into Russia’s constitutional framework, substantial areas remain outside effective Russian control. For a nation that has sustained enormous casualties, accepting peace while “legitimate” territories remain contested would be politically untenable. Ukraine, meanwhile, has transformed these regions into formidable defensive positions. Beyond Slovyansk and Kramatorsk, the middle of Ukraine lies open terrain offering little natural protection. If Ukraine wants to fight for more dignified surrender terms, the only opportunity is to make Russian forces pay a higher price here.

This dynamic grants Trump considerable influence over the nature of Russia’s eventual victory. His control over Starlink and other intelligence systems means he can effectively determine whether Moscow’s triumph comes easily or at devastating cost.

Therefore, although Russia has already forced the United States to halt NATO’s eastward expansion—achieving a victory in terms of its overall strategic objective—this does not mean that the U.S. has suffered a total defeat. On the contrary, Trump holds this very limited yet absolute leverage. However, Trump understands that if he were to fully wield this lever, he might simultaneously offend the U.S. military-industrial complex, the oil and gas sector, and the financial elite. As a result, he can only brandish it briefly.

China’s Win: The West Can No Longer Play the “Russia Card”

Beyond Russia’s battlefield gains, the summit’s ripples extend to the global economic order, where China emerges as the ultimate beneficiary.

Before the Alaska talks, Trump threatened China, India and Brazil with secondary sanctions should they continue purchasing Russian energy. Yet following the summit, such threats have notably subsided. Trump appears to have grasped a fundamental limitation: America cannot “solve” the Russia problem without BRICS cooperation.

From kicking Russia out of the SWIFT system to imposing over 20,000 sanctions, all the US and Europe have done is isolate Russia from the Western world. But they forgot that as of 2024, BRICS+ members’ GDP accounts for approximately 40% of the global total, 10% higher than the G7, and far exceeds the G7 group in population and resources. Therefore, these sanctions not only failed to collapse Russia’s economy but instead helped people realize that the US dollar is not the only currency in the world that can buy oil. Under enormous external pressure, previously shelved China-Russia cooperation projects, such as the China-Russia eastern gas pipeline and railway projects through the five Central Asian countries, have all made rapid progress.

But actually, urging both Russia and Ukraine to cease fire and stop fighting is more in line with China’s national interests. Over the past three years, China has consistently adhered to the principle of neutrality. Even though it has strictly limited the export of dual-use items, it has still been pushed toward opposition by the West for maintaining trade relations with Russia. Being labeled at the UN as “providing assistance to Russia’s war economy” has been extremely bothersome for Chinese officials.

On August 17, at the negotiating table with only the US and Russia present, Putin proactively proposed that China could serve as a guarantor of Ukraine’s security, which is identical to the peaceful solution Russia proposed in Istanbul in April 2022. This shows that today’s Russia no longer trusts Western promises, but continues to choose to trust China as always. In Alaska, that double-headed eagle that has long straddled the Eurasian heartland, caught between looking east and west, has finally found a partner it can trust to guard its back.

As an ancient Chinese proverb states: ‘A tripod stands firm on three legs.’ Against the backdrop of America’s war-ravaged unipolar hegemony and the terrifying nuclear standoff that defined the US-Soviet bipolar era, the triangular balance emerging between China, America, and Russia offers something far more stable, a genuine foundation for multipolarity. When the dynamics of turning swords into ploughshares extend beyond Western hands alone, Eastern wisdom, refined through a millennium of statecraft, may forge a more stable and equitable foundation for global order.