Who isn't invited to the Putin-Trump summit in Anchorage today?

It would be easy to dismiss the exclusion of not just president Vlodomyr Zelensky but also EU leaders from Friday's (15 August) summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin as simply part of Donald Trump’s modus operandi — relying on personalised deal-making rather than formal negotiations that might restrict his room for creative maneuver.

And indeed, we have no idea what will happen in Alaska, since one aspect of Trumpian ‘creative geopolitics’ is also its total unpredictability.

Earlier this week, Trump was already changing his description of the summit as simply a “feel-out meeting” to “see what he [Putin] has in mind” regarding a potential deal to stop the war.

Commentators in US newspapers desperately tried to make sense of the shifting narrative — "maybe this is strategic ambiguity" commented the Washington Post (though the general assessment was that ‘no one understands what’s going on’.)

But besides Trump’s unique ‘geopolitical style’, there are much deeper issues at play here: an understanding of international affairs where only certain powerful actors ‘naturally’ posesses the right to take powerful decisions, such as deciding the fate of peoples and territories.

The history of classical geopolitics provides ample examples, and it is this historical vision that Trump shares fully with Putin.

In such an understanding of the world, there is simply no place for minor players, but neither for an ‘unidentified international object’ such as the EU. 

What is more, from such a perspective, the right to speak has nothing to do with the EU’s actual capacities: whether in terms of a single diplomatic voice, or even common defence capabilities.

In this understanding, the EU, by its very non-state nature, will never be able to act as a geopolitical player that counts — no matter the boost in military spending. 

This geopolitical prejudice was already firmly rooted with the Obama and Biden administrations, as much as both pressed the EU to take a stronger role in foreign policy, at least in its immediate neighbourhoods. But we have witnessed a quantum leap with the Trump administration.

So where does that leave the EU?

Since the announcement of the Anchorage get-together, a flurry of EU consultations took place.

In the communique issued by the ‘coalition of the willing’ and subsequently in the joint statement by all EU leaders, there is a direct appeal to the principles of territorial integrity and the inviolability of borders, and the affirmation of the right of Ukrainians themselves to determine any just peace, along with the insistence that any discussions cannot take place without president Zelensky. 

Is appealing to international norms and their respect the only thing that the EU can do in this moment, along with "expressing hope" — as EU leaders have done following the call with Trump on Wednesday — that there is a general unity of intent?

Hope stranded in Alaska?

Such hope risks crashing on the Alaskan shores, and it is important that EU leaders — and even more so, European publics — realise that the role assigned to them is not one of equal interlocutors. 

As often, the bluntest dismissal came from US vice-president JD Vance in his interview on Fox News the day after the statement by the EU ‘coalition of the willing’: 

"We're done with the funding of the Ukraine war business […] if the Europeans want to step up and actually buy the weapons from American producers, we’re OK with that, but we’re not going to fund it ourselves anymore”

It is a framing that appears to hand over geopolitical agency to the EU as at least a ‘regional power’ that should take care of their neighbourhood by virtue of their geography: 

“What we said to Europeans is simply, first of all, this is in your neck of the woods, this is in your back door, you guys have got to step up and take a bigger role in this thing, and if you care so much about this conflict you should be willing to play a more direct and a more substantial way in funding this war yourself.” 

But Vance’s seeming ‘hand-over’ is in no way a confirmation of the EU’s geopolitical role. It is simply a call for a levelling of accounts — Americans are sick of paying for Europeans’ problems and Europe needs to step up.

It is a critique that has been Vance’s battle-cry all through the electoral campaign in 2024, and in all his public appearances since, from the Munich Security Forum in February 2025 to the Nato Summit in June 2025.

Economic power is certainly the EU’s greatest clout.

And certainly, the EU and member state leaders can do more, much much more, to support Ukraine both financially and militarily. They can also do much much more to ensure the EU’s own security and defence.

But they need to do so under the conditions of their own choosing – not by the geopolitical terms set by others. 

And the EU’s geopolitical role in the negotiations is not simply a factor of geographical proximity, another geopolitical determinism to be refuted.

The EU has the right — indeed, the duty — to claim full geopolitical voice in this moment in order to honour the founding principles that make us who we claim to be.

This year, we turn 25 and are looking for 2,500 new supporting members to take their stake in EU democracy. A functioning EU relies on a well-informed public – you.