The European press are having a big stroppy sad following the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska

For a whole week after 8 August, the Alaska summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin loomed over the European commentariat like an appointment with the oncologist.

“There is a high risk that Donald Trump could betray Ukraine on Friday,” Steffen Lüdke warned in Der Spiegel, as his colleague Ann-Dorit Boy desperately outlined “How Zelensky is resisting a Trump-Putin agreement.” The Süddeutsche Zeitung screamed that “Two horrorclowns are meeting,” while deploying in another piece a bizarre maritime metaphor likening “diplomacy in the era of Donald Trump” to a leaking boat from which “one must constantly bail large amounts of water” because “one of the captains” may be “deliberately drilling holes in the hull.” Only by continually presenting a united front of unwavering resolve, they wrote, could Europe hope to scoop all off the water out of our Trump-sabotaged vessel, because by “speaking to Trump’s conscience” in this way we might avoid that most catastrophic of outcomes, namely any kind of peace deal.

European elites believe that it is not the ability to project power that determines geopolitical outcomes, but rather the repeated liturgical rehearsal of the highest-minded principles after elaborate public assurances of mutual solidarity. If we just believe the right things and say them loud enough all together one more time, we’ll get what we want.

For some reason, these futile exercises frequently culminate in numbered lists of The Way Things Should Be, even though none of our governments are in any position to make things be that way. Thus as the clock ticked down on Friday’s meeting, Friedrich Merz outlined on behalf of the entire Continent “five points that he considered the most important” – foremost among them that “Ukraine must be at the table as soon as follow-up meetings take place.” In the second place, Merz demanded a cease-fire; in the third place, he insisted “that borders cannot be changed by force” and bafflingly at the same time conceded “that Ukraine is prepared to negotiate on territorial issues”; in the fourth place, he called for “robust security guarantees”; and in the fifth place he dreamed “of a joint transatlantic strategy.” Then Merz gave all five of his points the kiss of death by assuring everyone that “President Trump is aware of this position and shares it ‘very broadly.’”

What makes European elites meaningless in matters like these is not only their total provincial subjugation to the American empire, but also their completely naive geopolitical conceptions. Ukraine is losing the war, which is why the Ukrainians want a cease-fire. As long as the Russians are advancing on the battlefield, they have no reason to cede to Merz’s or anybody else’s demands, and the Americans have no real leverage over them anyway. Lofty demands will only condemn Ukraine to a worse deal in the end, as the Russians take ever more territory by force and the Ukrainians lose ever more of what they have to give.

Yesterday’s summit therefore accomplished very little, beyond yet again humiliating the silly children who run the European Union. Trump has now abandoned his prior insistence on “a mere Ceasefire Agreement” in favour of a comprehensive “Peace Agreement,” in this way aligning himself with the Russian position – not that it matters very much.

At the press conference afterwards, Trump explained that “there’s no deal until there’s a deal,” after speaking of “a very productive meeting” with “many, many points” of agreement, despite “a couple of big ones” where he and Putin have merely “made some headway.” Putin, meanwhile, delivered remarks about the Lend-Lease Program and Russian toponyms in Alaska, before cleverly trolling the Trump-critical American press by confirming that he is “quite sure” and “can confirm” the forty-seventh president’s thesis that, had Trump been president in 2022, there would have been no war in Ukraine.

Today, European opinion-makers are having their preprepared and totally inconsequential sad:

As expected, the US-Russian summit in Alaska didn’t make any real progress toward peace in Ukraine. But that doesn’t mean it was a total bust – quite the opposite. From this unusual meeting far from the war zone … there’s a clear winner: Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Putin’s honourable reception in the United States, 18 years after his last comparable visit, is a huge prestige victory for him. The handshake in Alaska is the latest proof that the West’s attempt to diplomatically isolate Russia has failed. What’s more, U.S. President Donald Trump is fulfilling one of the Kremlin’s greatest wishes, namely that Putin be treated as the leader of a major power on an equal footing. “We are number one and they are number two in the world,” Trump said afterwards …

… The sight of the leader of the free world smiling and applauding the greatest war criminal of our time as he walked down the red carpet rolled out for him was a moment of shame …

Putin is … returning home with a clear signal that the Americans do not intend to stop him on his warpath. There is certainly no longer any talk of the “serious consequences” that Trump had threatened in advance if Putin continued to refuse a ceasefire. The White House chief even said explicitly in Anchorage that he would not consider sanctions in the coming weeks. Instead, he increased pressure on Ukraine, saying that it was now up to Zelensky to agree to a deal …

This development is a fiasco for the Europeans and their very different policy toward Ukraine … The American president has now abruptly swung into line with Russia … Trump is going his own way, regardless of all European advice, and is thus preparing a triumph for Putin.

This is from the NZZ, but I’ve seen nearly identical pieces in all the major papers. What unites them all is the absence of any strategic vision specifically and a near-total withdrawal from reality in general. They want to humiliate Putler and isolate Russia, and they’re very angry that Trump is not doing either of these things. Otherwise they have things that they want but no conceivable path towards achieving those things, and so Ukraine will just continue to lose the war, and Russia will continue to win it, until the fighting has solved what diplomacy cannot.