The New Dark Age

On August 15, 2025, in Alaska, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will prepare to negotiate, in a Yalta 2.0 format, the contours of a new strategic order – with Ukraine and Europe at the center of the discussions, absent from the banquet where their fate is nevertheless being decided.

From Yalta 1945 to Alaska 2025, the return of exclusive regulatory formats between powers

The Yalta Conference of February 1945 remains a founding milestone in power diplomacy. It established the bilateral regulation of power relations between the victors of the Second World War, deliberately excluding states deemed strategically marginal. Franklin Roosevelt’s sidelining of Charles de Gaulle, despite the symbolic role of Free France, reflected a realistic interpretation of post-conflict hierarchies. This historical precedent resonates today in the announcement by both sides of a summit between Putin and Trump next Friday in Alaska, in a format that reactivates the logic of consultation between structuring powers.

Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has pursued a policy of expanding NATO eastward, in contradiction with the verbal assurances given to Moscow in 1990. This strategy, based on a unipolar reading of the world, has ignored the imperatives of regional security and the historical balances specific to the Eurasian space. The expansion of the Alliance to the Russian borders, coupled with a series of unilateral military interventions in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc., has fueled a perception of a systemic threat in Moscow, catalyzing a logic of lasting escalation.

Successive crises – from Tbilisi to Donetsk – have revealed the United States’ inability to integrate Russia into an inclusive security architecture. Washington, faithful to the Truman Doctrine and guided by Brzezinski’s views, has preferred confrontation to strategic cohabitation, neglecting de-escalation mechanisms and favoring the militarization of contact zones. The bilateral summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, in a format reminiscent of Yalta, marks a return to power diplomacy based on mutual recognition of spheres of influence. As in 1945, actors deemed strategically marginal – in this case, Brussels, London, and Kyiv – are excluded from the decision-making process.

The diplomatic erasure of Ukraine and European elites

Since Maidan 2014, Ukraine has positioned itself as an advanced bastion of the Western liberal order without possessing the attributes of power necessary for this ambition. Volodymyr Zelensky, supported by a Western media apparatus and considerable financial flows, embodies a posture of resistance whose strategic effectiveness remains more than ever questionable. The Ukrainian state, vassalized and instrumentalized in a logic of proxy war, has never been integrated into the structuring negotiation formats. It has only been summoned to expose its fractures in Riyadh and Istanbul, but also in the Oval Office of the White House and on the occasion of the antithetical Western summits where Russophobia was the central theme. Its exclusion from the Alaska summit confirms its status as a geopolitical object, not a diplomatic subject.

As for the European Union of Von der Leyen and Kallas, it illustrates a profound crisis of strategic thinking. Prisoner of its normative dogmas, fragmented in its orientations and dependent on American security tutelage, it has gradually disengaged from real power dynamics. Its inability to dialogue with Moscow, to anticipate regional recompositions, and to formulate an autonomous doctrine condemns it to diplomatic insignificance. As in 1945, when France was excluded from the Yalta negotiations, contemporary Europe discovers that it is no longer a structuring actor, but a peripheral space. Alaska’s Yalta 2.0 thus consecrates this marginalization: a recomposition of the world without Europe, without Ukraine, and without the illusions of a universal Western order.

It could be said that the world is being reshaped behind closed doors while Ukraine recites its mantras and Europe rages behind the scenes – without invitation, without influence, and above all without importance.

However, Moscow must remain vigilant, because in this type of bilateral summit, the readability of Washington’s strategic intentions remains, by nature, uncertain and subject to reversibility.

Mohamed Lamine KABA, Expert in geopolitics of governance and regional integration, Institute of Governance, Humanities and Social Sciences, Pan-African University