The meeting in Alaska between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin is being sold as a failure. It depends, of course, what you mean by failure. There was no agreement on peace in the Ukraine War, no handshakes followed by laughter and champagne. But, assuming each side put its case to the other, and assuming each side will now consider the other’s case in the light of the true correlation of forces, it should be the beginning of a journey towards settlement. If so, the meeting will be seen as political theatre—as a performance designed to cover the collapse of Western policy in Ukraine and, more broadly, the disintegration of American power.

Two facts remain, both undeniable even if rejected by those who wave blue-and-yellow flags or who insist that one more consignment of weapons will alter the course of events. The first is that the American monopoly moment is over. The second is that Russia has won in Ukraine.

The monopoly moment began in 1991. The Soviet Union imploded. China was still gathering strength. Europe was a satrapy, not yet a corpse The Islamic World was a joke. For nearly two decades, the United States could impose its will almost without restraint. It bombed Serbia into submission. It invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. It expanded NATO to Russia’s borders. It imposed the Washington Consensus on much of the world economy. For a time, it seemed unchallengeable. That moment has passed. It ended with failed wars, hollowed finances, social disintegration, and the emergence of rival powers. Only those still chained to CNN or the BBC can fail to see this.

As for Ukraine, the war is lost. Russia holds territory larger than England. The Black Sea is closed to Kiev. The Zaporizhzhia nuclear station is in Russian hands, together with most of Ukraine’s mineral wealth and heavy industry. The Ukrainian army is broken. The economy is wrecked and the people scattered. No amount of Western money or weaponry will alter this outcome. Further intervention can only enlarge the casualty list.

Talk of “off-ramps” and “peace initiatives” is therefore not diplomacy but camouflage. If NATO believed it could win, there would be no search for compromise. There would be escalation and an open declaration of war. The Trump–Putin encounter was a burial, not a negotiation—an attempt to cover rout with rhetoric, to translate defeat into stage-managed “statesmanship.”

This war might have ended almost at once. In 2022, Turkey hosted talks. Zelensky was prepared to deal. Then Boris Johnson appeared, as Washington bagman, to promise limitless support if Kiev continued to fight. It did. The result was more destruction and an even greater Russian victory. I see, by the way, that Johnson will appear at the Usher Hall this coming 2^nd September. Anyone who gives him £121, in addition to the £159.90 for the main event, can pose with him for photographs. The last time I noticed, citizen arrests for crimes against humanity were still legal in this country. So was booing and heckling, for those who lack the nerve to risking being beaten half to death by the usual slab-faced bodyguards.

But back to the Ukraine War. Of course, Russia did invade. But all serious states have security interests, and Russia’s were disregarded. The West encouraged Ukraine to dream of NATO membership, then used it as a forward operating base against Moscow. If Mexico had invited Chinese missiles onto its soil, American reaction would not have been diplomatic. The double standard is obvious, and pretending otherwise is a form of madness.

The larger consequences are European. German industry is collapsing without Russian gas. Inflation erodes wages and savings. The political parties that governed as American clients are losing office to movements of the socialist left and nationalist right. Sanctions that were supposed to strangle Russia have instead throttled Europe. Russia sells its oil and gas to China and India. Europe freezes.

The moral case has collapsed alongside the strategic one. Gaza has shown the world the emptiness of Western “values.” The same capitals that bewailed Ukrainian suffering are complicit in the starvation and bombardment of Palestinians. The hypocrisy is visible to all. It has destroyed what little credibility the West retained.

Trump’s role in this is ambiguous. He promised to end the war in twenty-four hours. Six months later, nothing has changed. His administration is filled with the same advisers and strategists who brought every other war. He is impulsive and incoherent. I suspect he is going senile. He may be preferable to the bloodthirsty maniacs of the Democratic Party, but he is not a statesman. He is a man of instincts, easily manipulated, surrounded by enemies. He may delay disaster. He will not avert it.

The truth is that the United States can still destroy, but it cannot command. It can still bomb, but it cannot build. Its currency is still dominant, but it is debased by debt and money-printing. The empire is finished. It is dangerous only because its ruling class refuses to accept the fact.

This is not the first time a declining power has been forced to confront its weakness. In 1956, Britain, together with France and Israel, invaded Egypt to seize the Suez Canal. Militarily, the operation was successful. Diplomatically, it was a disaster. The Americans pulled the financial plug. The pound collapsed. The British retreated in humiliation. In a single week, the pretence of imperial power was stripped away. The façade of global authority was gone.

If not exact, the symmetry has a gloomy comfort for those of us who regret the passing of Empire. In 1956 it was America that forced Britain to accept reality. Eisenhower ordered Eden to retreat, and Eden obeyed. Britain could no longer pretend to be a world power. In 2025, it is Russia and China that force America to accept reality. Putin holds the field in Ukraine. Xi offers markets and credit that America cannot match. Just as Britain was shoved aside by its supposed ally, so America is now shoved aside by its adversaries. In both cases, the truth is the same: the age of command is over. The illusion of supremacy has been exposed. The media still repeat slogans about democracy and freedom. The dollar still circulates. But the weakness is plain. The decline is irreversible.

There is one difference, however, and it is decisive. Britain’s fall left the United States to inherit its role. America’s fall leaves no single heir. It leaves a multipolar world—Russia, China, India, Iran, Brazil—states that cooperate when convenient and compete when not. The age of unipolar command is finished.

The choices ahead are limited. Either the West accepts a settlement on Russian terms, or it continues to escalate until accident or calculation produces nuclear war. The dream of Western supremacy has ended as all such dreams end—with dishonour and defeat. The bill will be paid by the populations that tolerated their rulers, by the Europeans who traded their industries for slogans, by the Americans who sent their sons to die in deserts and steppes; and it will be paid by all the non-Western pawns and victims. The empire was squandered. What remains is the wreckage.