Trump, Putin and the Anchorage summit at the end of the world

Countries which understand that our new multipolar world order involves living with a brazenly self-interested US may do best at adapting.

- Samir Puri

All eyes are fixed on Anchorage, Alaska and the putative summit between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The meeting will undoubtedly be an exercise in great power politics. On the table: the land grab from Russia's invasion of Ukraine, despite the latter's glaring omission from the summit.

Ukraine's future is the farthest from Mr Trump's mind. His key objective is more likely a move on the grandest of global chessboards - as he attempts to pry Russia away from its growing ties with China and India.

The Anchorage summit would have been show-stopping a decade ago but is now simply part of a routine stream of geopolitical drama. We are getting used to living in a world with an increasingly self-interested US, motivated in its foreign affairs primarily by the unilateral protection of its status and power. This motivation has been one of the few constants in the last six months of Mr Trump's otherwise erratic foreign policy.

Even so, Mr Trump's foreign policy performance is a very specific kind of reaction to wider forces in global affairs, specifically, the increasing multipolarisation of the international system.

Power is diffusing to China and, over time, to other rising powers, and Mr Trump is trying to resist this. The Western camp is also splitting apart. Key European powers and Canada are on different sides of several issues, evidenced by their varying stances over Ukraine; recognising a Palestinian state; bombing versus talking to Iran; and on trade policy towards China.

If the Europeans follow through with ambitious defence spending targets affirmed at the recent Nato summit, Europe will have stronger military capabilities and greater autonomy from the US.

THE EMERGING WORLD ORDER