How to Understand Trump’s Russia Strategy

September 2, 2025

The recent hardening of Russian president Vladimir Putin’s position on Ukraine has led some critics to claim that the Trump meeting in Anchorage was a waste of time. A few have gone further and alleged that Trump effectively capitulated to Putin in the meeting, drawing the obligatory comparisons to Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler at Munich in 1938. This is bad history and poor analysis.


The National Interest
Image Courtesy of Shutterstock

Dr. A. Wess Mitchell is co-founder and principal at The Marathon Initiative, a policy initiative focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition.