When the leaders of the United States, Russia, Ukraine and several European nations met in a series of summits over the past week, their stated objective was to find a way to bring an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. But the meetings in Alaska and at the White House played out against a larger, arguably more consequential backdrop.
The search for a solution to that war is also a struggle over the future of the global order, as how the conflict ends will have lasting consequences for the geopolitical balance of power.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022 had goals beyond the annexation of a sovereign nation that Moscow used to rule. When he sought to take over Ukraine, Putin was trying to increase Russia’s relative global power, which meant diminishing the dominance of the U.S. and the trans-Atlantic alliance. It marked another step toward reestablishing Russia’s sphere of influence, which he would like to see encompass the former territories of the defunct Soviet Union, and perhaps even the Russian Empire.