Anne Applebaum: “Peace is war, freedom is slavery” (Substack)

 Anne Applebaum:

“Peace is war, freedom is slavery”
Substack, August 20, 2025

Forgive me for using an Orwellian cliche in this headline (The full quote is “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.” It’s from the novel 1984, if you don’t recognize it, and it is an example of doublethink, the Party’s propaganda). But unfortunately we are entering that territory. I wound up writing on that theme in two different ways this past week.
Let me first note that in the days before and during Trump’s meeting with Putin in Alaska, I contracted a mystery virus. Because it initially seemed like it could be something worse, I spent a few days in a hospital. From that more distant perspective the absurdity of the meeting, the Kabuki theater element, was perhaps clearer. Everyone was playing their roles for the camera. Putin was there so that he could show his audience at home that he is the leader of a great superpower. Trump was there to fulfill the demands of his own ego, to prove that Putin really is his friend. American soldiers literally kneeled and rolled out a red carpet for a war criminal. The American president stood on the carpet clapping like a seal as the war criminal arrived. 
Trump also looked weak because he is. In a burst of antibiotic-inspired energy, I did write something for the Atlantic on Saturday: Trump Has No Cards. I started by listing all of the ways in which Trump has already dismantled all forms of American pressure on Russia: 
President Donald Trump berated President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office. He allowed the Pentagon twice to halt prearranged military shipments to Ukraine. He promised that when the current tranche of armaments runs out, there will be no more. He has cut or threatened to cut the U.S. funds that previously supported independent Russian-language media and opposition. His administration is slowly, quietly easing sanctions on Russia, ending “basic sanctions and export control actions that had maintained and increased U.S. pressure,” according to a Senate-minority report. 

Given all of that, it’s hardly surprising that Putin now thinks he can win the war. Instead of agreeing to a ceasefire, he can enter prolonged “negotiations.” Instead of feeling pressure to stop fighting, he is convinced that the US, at least, will do nothing to stop him. The Anchorage meeting encouraged that perspective. 
Certainly the Europeans, who are now providing Ukraine with more money and weapons than the United States, understood the PR catastrophe of Alaska very well. They flew to Washington, on short notice, because they wanted to prevent the Alaska disaster from morphing into something worse. But quite a lot of damage has already been done: 

The better way to understand Anchorage is not as the start of something new, but as the culmination of a longer process. As the U.S. dismantles its foreign-policy tools, as this administration fires the people who know how to use them, our ability to act with any agility will diminish. From the Treasury Department to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, from the State Department to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, agency after agency is being undermined, deliberately or accidentally, by political appointees who are unqualified, craven, or hostile to their own mission.
Many of these changes have gone almost unremarked on in the United States. But they are widely known in Russia. The administration’s attacks on Zelensky, Europeans, and Voice of America have been celebrated on Russian television. Of course Vladimir Putin knows about the slow lifting of sanctions. As a result, the Russian president has clearly made a calculation: Trump, to use the language he once hurled at Zelensky, has no cards.