The Alaska Illusion

Trump’s dalliance with Putin unsettles allies, irks India and leaves Ukraine in the cold.

For India, Donald Trump has always been a political roulette wheel - occasionally rewarding, mostly exasperating, and almost always unpredictable. His latest move, the imposition of a 25 percent tariff and a further 25 percent ‘punitive tariff’ on Indian goods in retaliation for Delhi’s continued purchase of discounted Russian oil, is another spin of the wheel. Washington couches the measures as ‘sanctions’ while arguing that India is underwriting Vladimir Putin’s war machine. The accusation smacks of hypocrisy.

America has poured tens of billions of dollars into arming Ukraine, while simultaneously reserving the right to punish a supposed partner in the Indo-Pacific for keeping its energy lifeline intact. By now, India has become adept at weathering Trump’s tantrums.

Successive governments in Delhi have learned that the path to strategic autonomy often requires an iron stomach. What puzzles policymakers, however, is why America would choose to antagonise one of its most reliable partners in keeping China’s hegemonic ambitions in check. This sense of disquiet grew sharper after Trump’s much-trumpeted meeting with Mr Putin in Anchorage, Alaska.

The encounter, anticipated as a breakthrough in the Ukraine conflict, ended in almost comical ambiguity. After three hours of closed-door discussions, the two men emerged to deliver a cryptic joint statement without taking questions. “There’s no deal until there’s a deal,” declared Trump, a phrase as empty as it was evasive. The Alaska dialogue produced neither ceasefire nor roadmap, only disappointment. The main beneficiary, it seemed, was Putin.

A tilted table

The Russian president used the stage shrewdly. He pressed for recognition of Moscow’s sovereignty over Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson; demanded Ukraine’s demilitarisation and neutrality and called for new elections shorn of Western influence. He offered no firm commitments in return. Mr Putin enjoyed the optics of dominance: the red-carpet welcome, the suggestion of renewed American investment, and the possibility of ExxonMobil regaining a foothold in Russia’s Sakhalin-1 oil project. He gleefully reminded his hosts that under Trump, US-Russia trade had in fact risen by 20 percent (despite sanctions) highlighting Washington’s double standards.

For Europe and Ukraine, the outcome was more than a disappointment: it was alarming. Within days, seven European leaders and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky rushed to Washington in a show of collective unease. Their mission was to prevent a repeat of earlier fiascos, when Zelensky’s encounters with Trump had left Kyiv politically bruised. This time they sought to dissuade the American president from pressing Ukraine to surrender territory in return for a fragile peace, and to secure binding guarantees of Western support.

However, they returned empty-handed. Trump offered vague reassurances about continuing weapons sales to Europe, with Ukraine as the eventual recipient but dashed Kyiv’s hopes of early NATO membership, the very aspiration that has animated and inflamed the conflict. For Zelensky, it was a double blow: no ceasefire, no alliance, just another reminder that Ukraine remains a pawn in larger games.

A Nobel-coloured peace

What, then, does Trump want? To allies it appears the former president is angling less for strategic stability than for a laurel wreath. A quick-fix peace would burnish his credentials as a global deal-maker and perhaps, in his mind, secure a Nobel Peace Prize. This calculation has little to do with Europe’s security anxieties or Ukraine’s sovereignty, and everything to do with Trump’s personal narrative of triumph.

India watched the Alaska spectacle with a mix of scepticism and irritation. Once again, its interests were overlooked. Yet Moscow, ever keen to nurture Delhi’s goodwill, moved swiftly. Putin telephoned Narendra Modi to brief him personally on the talks, a gesture welcomed in South Block. Russia’s embassy in Delhi was less diplomatic: it condemned the American tariffs as unjustified and hypocritical, while inviting Indian exporters to divert goods from America’s market to Russia’s.

The episode underscores a broader dilemma. India has spent the past two decades cultivating closer ties with America while retaining its historic relationship with Russia. The logic is straightforward: America offers technology, capital and a strategic counterweight to China; Russia supplies energy, weapons and diplomatic support. Yet the Alaska talks have thrown the asymmetry into sharp relief. Washington’s behaviour is fickle, transactional, often condescending. Moscow, by contrast, though weakened and opportunistic, is at least predictable.

India’s policymakers are unlikely to choose between them. Instead, they will continue to balance, hedge and diversify in a modern echo of the teachings of Chanakya who counselled rulers to pick friends carefully, avoid the unreliable, and beware the self-serving. Trump’s latest round of tariffs, coupled with his half-baked flirtation with Putin, serves as a reminder of the dangerous capriciousness of the Americans, if any were needed in the first place.

As for India, it must strive to safeguard its national interest, expand partnerships beyond a mercurial Washington, and resist being drawn into other people’s wars. If there is a lesson from Alaska, it is that great-power pageantry often conceals great-power duplicity.

(The author is a retired Naval Aviation officer and defence and geopolitical analyst. Views personal.)