Anchorage: When Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Anchorage on Friday, they will step into a long line of history-making encounters between leaders of the two global powers. For more than eight decades, such summits have marked turning points, forging wartime alliances, defusing Cold War crises, and testing the limits of cooperation amid deep rivalry. This latest meeting comes against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Ukraine, unprecedented Western sanctions on Russia, and a geopolitical climate more tense than at any time since the 1980s. Observers say the Alaska summit could be an opportunity to manage confrontation, or another missed chance that entrenches divisions.
According to Anadolu Agency, the tradition of US-Russia summits began during World War II, when unlikely allies joined forces to defeat Nazi Germany. In November 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt traveled to Tehran for the first face-to-face meeting with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Alongside British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the 'Big Three' committed to the D-Day invasion of Normandy. In February 1945 at Yalta, with victory in Europe near, Roosevelt and Stalin agreed on the post-war occupation of Germany and laid the groundwork for the UN. However, their deals over Eastern Europe's future sowed the seeds of the Cold War. By July 1945 at Potsdam, the mood had shifted, as new US President Harry Truman informed Stalin about the atomic bomb.
Following an eight-year gap after Stalin's death, summitry resumed amid the nuclear arms race. In 1955, President Dwight Eisenhower met Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin in Geneva, launching the 'Spirit of Geneva.' Khrushchev's 1959 US visit ended at Camp David with a temporary easing of Berlin tensions. However, the goodwill evaporated in May 1960 when a planned Paris summit collapsed due to the U-2 incident. President John F. Kennedy's tense 1961 Vienna meeting with Khrushchev produced no breakthroughs and foreshadowed the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The 1970s saw an easing of Cold War tensions known as detente. In May 1972, Richard Nixon made a landmark trip to Moscow, signing the ABM Treaty and SALT I with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. President Gerald Ford's 1974 Vladivostok meeting with Brezhnev set the stage for SALT II, signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1979. However, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan halted ratification. Presidents Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev transformed relations with the 1985 Geneva summit, where they declared that 'a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.' Their Reykjavik summit nearly agreed to eliminate nuclear weapons, leading to the 1987 INF Treaty.
In December 1989, President George H.W. Bush and Gorbachev met off Malta, declaring the Cold War over. The final US-Soviet summit in July 1991 produced START I, cutting strategic arsenals before the Soviet Union dissolved. Early post-Cold War meetings were marked by optimism, with Bush and Boris Yeltsin declaring the two countries no longer viewed each other as adversaries in 1992. President Bill Clinton and Yeltsin met frequently, agreeing in 1994 to stop targeting each other's missiles.
The dynamic shifted with Putin's rise. President George W. Bush's first meeting with Putin in 2001 began warmly, leading to the 2002 SORT, but relations cooled over the Iraq war. President Barack Obama's 'reset' with Dmitry Medvedev began in 2009, with the New START Treaty signed in 2010. However, the reset faded after Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, amid tensions over Syria and Ukraine.
Trump's 2018 Helsinki summit with Putin was politically controversial but yielded no major agreements. In 2021, President Joe Biden met Putin in Geneva to establish 'predictability and stability,' launching a new Strategic Stability Dialogue. Relations deteriorated sharply following the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022, shutting the door for any more presidential summits until this Friday's high-stakes talks in Alaska.