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By Gordon G. Chang
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The clear winner of the recent Anchorage summit was not the United States or Russia. Nor was it the European Union, NATO, or Ukraine, all directly affected by the war in Eastern Europe.
The big winner, at least for the moment, is the People's Republic of China. And China's only military ally, North Korea, did not do too badly either.
Both Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin at their post-meeting press conference tried to create the impression of momentum toward ending the three-year-old conflict in Ukraine. Putin used the word "agreement" and Trump mentioned "great progress."
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Nonetheless, it was clear that the summit was a disappointment for the American side. There was, for instance, no ceasefire, which Trump publicly said he wanted.
"There's no deal until there's a deal," an uncharacteristically somber Trump said after the shorter-than-expected face-to-face with Putin. "We didn't get there."
No, they didn't. And no deal is precisely what China was looking for.
Beijing, from all indications, hopes that the war in Ukraine will continue indefinitely. Hong Kong's South China Morning Post reported that Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Kaja Kallas, the EU foreign policy chief, on July 2 that China does not want Russia to lose because then the U.S. would focus on China.
In addition to the continuation of the conflict, the Chinese leadership got something else on Friday. "For Beijing, the Alaska summit confirmed its core belief: The world is a stage for great-power bargains over spheres of influence," Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told Newsweek.
China's regime, which has a top-down concept of the world, likes the idea of big countries, by themselves, settling the world's problems. "Now, there is a crucial precedent for a future summit between Trump and the Chinese leadership, where China would press for major concessions in East Asia," Burton said.
One of those concessions would be American diplomatic recognition of North Korea, noted Burton, who was a Canadian diplomat in Beijing.
The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, China's only formal military ally, also has an interest in the continuation of the war in Ukraine.
"The Kim regime is likely content to see the United States diplomatically engaged on other fronts," Greg Scarlatoiu, president and CEO of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, told Newsweek. "That will buy Kim Jong Un more time to continue his for-profit exportation of instability, violence, and tools of death."
Kim has filled regime coffers via the sales of artillery shells and short-range ballistic missiles to Putin—28,000 containers of weapons according to one recent count.
Kim also sent soldiers, up to 12,800 troops, to the Russian-Ukrainian battlefield late last year. Moreover, the North is dispatching perhaps 30,000 more of them now. That will be on top of combat engineers and miscellaneous workers. Russia, according to South Korean intelligence, is paying Kim $2,000 per month per trooper.
Russia is reportedly transferring weapons tech to the North as well. Whatever Putin is paying or bartering, the Ukraine war has been a bonanza for the Kim regime.
Yet a proverb from ancient China reminds us, "No feast lasts forever."
Trump can end the Chinese banquet quickly if he imposes costs on Russia and its enablers. He will, for instance, have to hit China hard to cut off its flow of cash to Moscow. No cash for Putin means no war in Ukraine.
On August 6, Trump by executive order imposed a 25 percent additional tariff on India for buying Russian oil, but he did not tariff China, which purchases even more of that commodity from Russia.
Trump last Friday said he did not think he had to tariff China at this time. In a conversation with Fox News' Sean Hannity immediately after his meeting with Putin, the president said, "I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something. But we don't have to think about that right now. I think, you know, the meeting went very well."
Whether the meeting with Putin went well or not—we will know only later—Trump cannot entice bad actors with reason alone; he needs to give them incentives to stop doing what they're doing.
For the moment, Russia and supporters are trying Trump's patience, seeing how far they can push him. As a result, the American leader is taking heat for what looks like weak diplomacy. My sense is that Trump is trying to be generous.
There is, however, only so much generosity in global politics. Trump could end his indulgent policies soon, especially if Putin continues to be intransigent.
"Trump is losing patience," said Burton, the former diplomat. "The Russians, Chinese, and friends should watch out. When Trump decides it's time to hit them, he is going to hit them really hard."
Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China's Project to Destroy America and The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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