Alexander Dugin declared the Alaska summit a triumph. “The very fact of the meeting is already a victory. Russia broke through isolation and was recognized by Trump as a great power.” Recognition itself, not negotiation, is the achievement. No communiqué, no agreement, no end to the war — just the theatre of validation. Sovereignty here is not a practice of governing but a posture: Russia in the room, Trump listening, the West unable to deny the encounter.
He insists that ignorance is strength. “As for the actual conditions that were discussed, I know nothing about them. And that is a good thing.” The absence of detail becomes proof of seriousness, the fog of diplomacy elevated to patriotic virtue. In Dugin’s telling, it is precisely not knowing that guards the purity of the national myth. One need not worry about terms, only about symbols.
Yet even as he hails triumph, Dugin circles obsessively around a single uncertainty: is Trump “sovereign”? “Will he be able, for example, to stop the conflict in Ukraine from the American side? Will he ensure this, even if he insists on his own position?” Over and again the question returns, each time deferred, unanswered.
It is obvious what Dugin means. He is asking whether Trump is a Caesar-like figure who can bend the American state to his will, override the “globalists,” and deliver policies aligned with Russia’s interests. If he is not, then Trump is just another mask of the Western war machine, no different in essence from Biden or the neoconservatives.
Here the mysticism dissolves. Sovereignty is not some metaphysical quality; it is brute capacity. Can Trump command the American state as if it were an extension of his will? If yes, Russia might find an ally. If no, then nothing has changed.
The Trump Problem
But Trump is not sovereign in any sense Dugin imagines. He is captive to his own performance. He cannot be seen to capitulate to the “war party,” but nor can he risk alienating the donor class and the military–industrial nexus that props him up. His manoeuvre is to posture as the Nobel-worthy peacemaker while seeding the ground for more militarisation. Washington is no longer policed; it is occupied. Red-state Guard deployments in the capital wear the insignia of the United States, but their loyalty is to one man. Trump’s “independence” exists only in the theatre of populist sovereignty, where the script requires constant crisis.
Dugin lists the “MAGA coalition” as Russia’s natural ally — “very interesting figures (Elon Musk, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie)” — before admitting they have “separated from Trump.” This is how the trick works. MAGA is both essential and impotent. For Dugin it functions as a Western fifth column, sympathetic to Russia, yet always too fragmented to matter. That is not analysis; it is siege logic. Allies exist only to prove that Russia must rely on itself.
War as Fate
The spiral always ends in fatalism. “Even if we stop now, the war will catch up with us. It seems that war is our fate.” It sounds like prophecy, but what he’s admitting is that Russia can’t imagine itself outside war. Russia cannot allow peace because peace would dissolve the identity of a nation that only knows itself through resistance. A ceasefire would be betrayal, diplomacy mere camouflage. Dugin translates weakness into destiny: Russia suffers, Russia resists, Russia endures. The Alaska summit proves its point precisely because it guarantees that nothing has changed.
This is why his commentary is circular. He asks: will Trump betray MAGA? Will he resist the Deep State? Will he be sovereign? Each question loops back to the same answer: uncertainty, but war regardless. The circle is deliberate. Every road must lead back to siege.
The Western Mirror
This is not just Russia’s problem. Trump’s second presidency is already defined by the same paradox. He needs to appear sovereign but rules only through instability. Tariffs rattle markets, Guard deployments test federalism, culture-war diktats inflame division. He cannot deliver sovereignty because he thrives on crisis.
The same trick is played in Britain under Starmer. He mouths sovereignty but governs as steward of capital. His authority depends on repression. From banning protest, disciplining unions, to silencing Palestinian solidarity. Sovereignty here is obedience to markets and NATO, sold as stability. Starmer is sovereign not because he commands but because he manages. His sovereignty, like Trump’s, is theatre.
The mirror is clear. In Alaska, Moscow, Washington, and Westminster, sovereignty is staged as control, but it exists only as performance. Dugin insists Russia has been recognised; Trump insists America is independent; Starmer insists Britain has stability. All three rely on permanent crisis: siege, polarisation, repression. Peace would expose their emptiness.
The False Binaries
Dugin’s “war party vs peace party” division is instructive. “Those who want to fight us are more numerous than those who want peace.” He lists the EU, Ukraine, the Democrats, neocon Republicans, the Deep State. Against them he places Trump and MAGA, wounded but sincere. This inversion mirrors Western liberal fantasy, where centrists are the peace camp and populists the threat.
Both dissolve class into allegory. Both erase the interests of capital. Both insist the true battle is between cultural blocs rather than material power. Dugin’s “war party” is as mythical as the liberal “centre ground.” In both, the dominant class disappears behind morality tales.
Sovereignty as Theatre
Dugin ends where he must: Russia must rely on itself, harbour no illusions, prepare for a long war. His rhetoric metabolises every event into proof that war is eternal. Trump needs to appear as peacemaker but cannot deliver peace. Starmer needs to appear as guarantor of stability but cannot govern without crisis. All three depend on the same structure: sovereignty becomes real only in crisis. Without crisis, it dissolves into farce.
For Russia, sovereignty is recognition: the great-power seat at the table. For Trump, sovereignty is command: the Guard in the capital, the tariff decree. For Starmer, sovereignty is management: the Treasury spreadsheet, the protest ban. Three theatres, three faces of the same system, each feeding on the same global disorder.
The Dialectical Close
What happened in Alaska wasn’t diplomacy in any serious sense, more a parable acted out for the cameras. Russia celebrates recognition; America debates Trump’s autonomy; Britain rehearses managerial sovereignty. Each claims control but is captive to forces it cannot master: global capital, permanent war, ecological breakdown. Dugin calls this destiny. Trump calls it America First. Starmer calls it stability. All three are names for the same thing: the liquidation of politics into crisis management.
What Dugin names fate is in fact structure, and structures can be broken. War is not destiny but the means by which the dominant class sustains accumulation through conflict. The task is not to choose between Dugin’s siege, Trump’s Caesarism, or Starmer’s technocracy. It is to expose their shared logic and organise against it: a politics that refuses war as legitimacy, that refuses sovereignty as spectacle.
Until then, Alaska will stand as emblem: recognition without resolution, sovereignty without power, diplomacy without peace. A theatre of endless war, staged in Anchorage, performed across the world.
