1. On 15 August 2025, hours before Presidents Putin and Trump met in Alaska, I was on Democracy Now! hosted by Amy Goodman and Juan González.
The other guest on the show was Matt Duss, who was Senator Bernie Sanders’ chief foreign policy advisor at one point in his career.
Although Matt and I disagree about the origins of the Ukraine war, we talked mainly about what was likely to happen at the meeting in Alaska.
On that front, there was little disagreement between us; and now that the meeting is over, I think our analysis was basically sound.
As U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska for a high-stakes summit to discuss a possible ceasefire in Ukraine, we host a debate between two foreign policy thinkers about the war, its causes and how it could be brought to a conclusion.
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1. John Mearsheimer is an international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, known for his realist perspective.
He has long argued that Western policies are the main cause of the Ukraine crisis.
“There’s overwhelming evidence that it was NATO expansion into Ukraine that drove this train,” says Mearsheimer.
2. Matt Duss is executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and the former foreign policy adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders.
He says that despite Western missteps, Russia is ultimately the main cause of the current war, which Putin started in 2022 with a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Putin has made clear that he has a pretty grandiose historical conception of what he sees as a kind of renewed Russian empire,” he says.
Both Mearsheimer and Duss say Ukraine’s war effort is flagging and that the best way out is to “make the best peace they can,” even if it means conceding territory to Russia.
0:00 Intro
2:02 Trump-Putin summit
7:19 What caused the war?
14:56 What Ukrainians want
19:42 How does it end?
