What we are not saying about Alaska

Alaska. A vast wilderness, the Arctic frontier, a preserve of ancestral epochs, in which continents were reshaped, glaciers molded mountains, and rivers were born from midnight suns. A white bear hibernating between two seasons of vast unknowablility—one gripped by imperial nostalgia, the other doubting its values-based origins. A valley of witness and opportunity, nestled at the edge of an ocean that covers half the planet.

Alaska is more than wilderness and empire, more than history and geology. It is also a vantage point for observing the planetary change happening right now through the atmosphere, the ocean, and the shifting of ices and weathers above and below ground. It is a haven and a place of immense vulnerability, a land of freedom and risk and community and isolation. Its islands extend far into the Pacific Ocean, until they nearly touch Russia, with its closest land visible in front of the horizon.

On Friday, Alaska hosted a strange, consequential, enigmatic summit of two heads of government, one from each of the vast countries whose political cultures have, over the last century, sought to shape the rights of all. Vladimir Putin—a war criminal who breached every foundational principle of international law, and faces arrest in much of the world, who has murdered tens of thousands of people to crush democracy and extinguish human rights—was welcomed to a military base in a land his country once sold to the United States, the first country founded on the principle that rights have primacy over power.

We do not yet know what the consequences will be, in far-reaching historical terms, but we can observe a few tell-tale moments of strangeness and intrigue:

• The dictator was caught looking befuddled and unnerved by journalists demanding answers from him, asking moral and legal questions he has no safe way to answer.
• It is instructive to see how involuntarily he reveals this particular weakness, reinforced over decades of unaccountable rule, in which anyone who criticizes him can be punished, exiled, or disappeared.
• He also showed a plainly foolish side, talking of an ”agreement” he claimed had been reached, only for Mr. Trump to correct him saying there is no deal until there is a deal.
• Though Trump lavished Putin with praise, he also made a point to recognize in clear language that there can be no agreement about Ukraine without Ukraine's full and free consent.

The Alaska summit could be the moment Putin lost Trump—through bullying, intransigence, bloodlust, and arrogance—and with him the hope of manipulating democratic elected officials into some kind of appeasement.

• Failure to reach a just and enduring peace would subject the people of Ukraine to more war crimes by Russian forces (the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine has recorded more than 150,000 violations of the Geneva Conventions).
• The Russian people also suffer under the cruel indifference of their government to the immense loss of life required to help Putin demonstrate strength he lacks—an indifference reportedly observed by American diplomats in the meeting in Anchorage.

What we are not saying about Alaska is that it offers important lessons for all of us hoping to uphold the foundational principles of self-government. At this haunted juncture, we might be well served by some insights from the far north: 

• Center values that make community work;
• be steady when risk and fragility threaten to redefine us;
• defend the innocent, always;
• build for all weather.