The Trump administration has extended an invitation to Putin to attend the G20 summit in Miami. There are several things to watch for, so let’s break it down.
First, Putin has to decide if attending the summit will result in his arrest based on outstanding warrants. Should he attend, we should keep a close eye on how the G20 members and U.S. allies respond. Last, Putin could use this opportunity to create a foreign-policy crisis to test NATO and Trump. Should make for an exciting time down in Miami.
Hey all, Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from the home office because it’s crappy outside today. Anyway, today we’re talking about something that went down last week. On September 23rd, Secretary of State Rubio confirmed that Donald Trump had invited Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, to Miami for the G-20 summit this fall. Oh my God. Right now, there are multiple international arrest warrants out for Vladimir Putin for his role in initiating and maintaining the war in Ukraine over these last several years. The Trump family has publicly disclosed that they own lots of property in Russia. And Trump’s son specifically have said one of the reasons why Donald Trump is so pro Russia when it comes to the Ukraine war, isn’t so much that he doesn’t like Zelensky, who is the president of Ukraine, although that is true, but because of that property. So this is a flat up, corruption play by the Trump administration
Anyway, there’s three things to watch for here. Number one, Putin would have to accept the offer. There’s no guarantee he’s going to do that because he wants to make sure that he doesn’t get arrested. Putin has been agitating against the United States online, in person, using the tools of Russian power for the last 25 years. And that’s one of the reasons why he has never gotten along with, really, any of the presidents that we’ve had in the modern era until Trump and his personal interests get involved. And Putin has been working to try to ingratiate himself with Trump deeper and deeper. So, for example, one of Putin’s allies recently paid for one of Trump’s sons weddings because, you know, that’s apparently what you do when you’re corrupt to that level. And it’s worked. But that’s not the same as knowing that Trump, who has a reputation for being a little erratic and mercurial, isn’t going to flip the table on him based on something that happens in the moment. Now, arresting a foreign leader who is in country for a summit would be wild. We’ve never had anything like that happen, but we’ve had a lot of things that have never happened before this administration. So who knows.
So number one, Putin has to be 100% convinced that he’s not going to be arrested at some point during a Florida trip. That’s piece one. Piece two is the effect that this would have on the Alliance. As I mentioned, there are multiple arrest warrants out for Putin. Those include, but are not limited to several of the countries who are going to be at the G20 summit, including the leaders of the United Kingdom and Germany and France and the EU structures as a whole.
So if Putin comes, there’s the open question of whether or not these other leaders will come. Now, from a international structure point of view, I’m not really concerned about this as much. The G20 has its uses from time to time because it brings together the richest countries of the world and the largest countries in the world. So while you do have Canada and the U.K. and Japan and Germany, you also have Brazil and India and China. Anyway, point being is that these countries really don’t have a lot of common, and the last time they did anything that really mattered was during the 2007 to 2009 financial crisis. And since then, when they meet, it’s really just a talk shop. And the question is whether anything can happen beside meetings. Which brings us to the third person, one of those Senate meetings.
If Putin does attend, it is going to be really interesting. Putin is really good at making really bold announcements quietly to a world leader, especially the American president, while Russian forces are doing something else elsewhere. So if you go back to, say, the 2004 Winter Olympics. George W Bush was in town. Putin hosted him in Sochi. And while the Olympics were going on during the opening ceremonies, Russian forces invaded the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. And there’s some wonderful footage of one of W Bush’s aides whispering the news to him. As W is sitting next to Putin in the box. If Putin does come to Florida, he would absolutely engineer a moment like that and wouldn’t be about Ukraine because Trump doesn’t care about Ukraine. It would probably be about Estonia or Latvia who are NATO members.
There’s been plenty of evidence over the course of the last several months that the Russians are putting in some forces together that would have the option of crossing the border into these two places. And seizing control of territories that might be ethnically majority Russian but are still in the Western camp. Keep in mind that the Russian population in these two states don’t want anything to do with Russia. They haven’t for a long time. Anyway, announcing the invasion of a NATO country, while he’s sitting next to Trump and then forcing Trump to decide right then what to do about Russia, what about to do about NATO? What about to do about the allies. When Trump very clearly doesn’t have any meaningful advisors in any of those capacities? That would be a coup, but it would come with risk because you never know what Trump is going to decide anyway.
Those are the three things to watch, whether Putin actually comes, whether the allies then basically walk away. Because at that point, the United States has basically said that we really don’t care about your defense at all. And then, number three, whether or not the Putin government would use that as an opportunity to just completely shatter the alliance completely. That’s what I’m watching for. And we will know over the next couple of months.
