The run-up to the tête-à-tête between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in Alaska begged the question: where? While the general co-ordinates were known – only Anchorage’s runways can accommodate both Air Force One and the Russian presidential plane – envoys from the US State Department and Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs likely struggled to pin down an exact setting before settling on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson.
That’s because, to put it bluntly, Anchorage doesn’t inspire. The state’s largest city was levelled by a 9.2-magnitude earthquake in 1964 and was quickly rebuilt without grace. For starters, there’s only one marquee lodging property: Hotel Captain Cook. While the interior boasts some suitable nooks for hushed diplomatic chats and local touches convey a sense of place (try the reindeer sausage at breakfast), the property consists of a pair of uninspiring towers erected in the 1960s and 1970s.
The exclusive upper floors were deemed good enough for Barack Obama to spend the night there in 2015 and Xi Jinping to dine with leaders in 2017, while US and Chinese officials held testy talks there in 2021. The Captain Cook could work in a pinch for the Trump-Putin summit but it’s hardly the elegant Capella Singapore, where a plaque commemorates Trump and Kim Jong-un’s 2018 handshake.
Putin isn’t the first head of state to have been given the Alaskan hangar treatment. Richard Nixon greeted Emperor Hirohito at Elmendorf Air Base in 1971 and Ronald Reagan met Pope John Paul II at the Fairbanks Airport in 1984; both are further indications of a lack of suitable venues in Alaska. Trump and Putin could commandeer the recently renovated Alaska Airlines lounge at Ted Stevens International Airport for a quick in-and-out but such a makeshift solution would only further undercut the state’s diplomatic aspirations.
While much of the world puzzles over the choice of Alaska over rising mediating stars including Istanbul, Doha and Riyadh, the state champions its strategic geopolitical location as the US Arctic foothold. Newer buildings such as the Dena’ina Convention Center, designed by Seattle-based LMN, have boosted the profile of the annual Arctic Encounter Symposium that was held recently. But it’s hardly an architectural landmark akin to other hubs of diplomatic dialogue. Take Reykjavik’s Harpa Concert Hall, home to the Arctic Circle Assembly, or Tromsø’s Arctic Cathedral. Even David Chipperfield’s Anchorage Museum deserves praise.
Alaskan civic leaders need to build on these Arctic architectural legacies to make good on their conviction that the midpoint between North America and Eurasia could serve as the fulcrum for negotiations in the new era of great-power politics. That Russian and Chinese officials can travel there without crossing into foreign airspace is both practical and symbolic, given concerns about International Criminal Court jurisdiction and the desire to exclude European participation.
Plus, there’s powerful bilateral symbolism: Moscow sold the territory to the US in 1867 and maintains multiple Russian Orthodox religious buildings in Alaska as heritage sites. But whatever its period charms, Trump and Putin are unlikely to meet in a restored sod roof blockhouse built by the Russian-American Company in 1841 as a fur-trading outpost.
What world leaders need is a setting where inspiring design fosters healthy dialogue. In 1986, Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev sat down in Reykjavik at Höfði, an intimate early-20th-century house, and began thawing the Cold War. Two years ago, Joe Biden and Xi Jinping strolled a bucolic country estate outside San Francisco, signalling a dialling down of Sino-American tensions.
Architects take note. Alaska needs a new blueprint for success: a cool, cosy enclave blending the best of Pacific Northwest modernism and contemporary Arctic design sensibilities that can elevate the state to a Geneva-on-the-Inlet. Today’s talks might be built on sand but, regardless, Anchorage falls short.
Gregory Scruggs is Monocle’s Seattle correspondent and has reported frequently from Alaska. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
Joseph S Nye, who popularised the term “soft power”, on what it means in an ever-hardening global landscape.
The death of Joseph S Nye, the professor who coined the phrase ‘soft power’, was announced on Wednesday. He was 88. Nye’s humility and expertise have been lauded in the hours since by many who knew him and many who did not. It makes perfect sense that the originator of a phrase whose meaning rests on the idea that peace and collaboration between nations are a good thing was a peaceful and collaborative man himself. Nye worked tirelessly for many decades in positions at the White House and Harvard University to promote his concept. At a time when hard power and coercion as means of statecraft are making a comeback, his compassion and intellectual rigour will be greatly missed by the world. Here is an article that Nye wrote two weeks ago. It will feature in Monocle’s June issue.
In a world marked by wars in Ukraine and Gaza – and the leadership of Trump, Putin and Xi – has soft power as a form of statecraft ceased to be effective or even desirable? Some 30 years ago, many believed that the age of hard power was diminishing and that the world was entering a new, softer era. Clearly that turned out to be wrong but it was never my view. I formulated the concept of soft power during the Cold War and argued that it could be relevant to conflict as well as peace. Soft power is the ability to affect others through attraction rather than coercion. Its consequences are often slow and indirect, and it is not the most important source of power for foreign policy – but to neglect it is a strategic and analytical mistake. The Roman Empire rested on its legions but also on the allure of Roman culture and citizenship. As a Norwegian analyst described it, the US presence in Western Europe after the Second World War was “an empire by invitation”. At the end of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall collapsed not under a barrage of artillery but from hammers wielded by people whose minds had been affected by Western soft power.
Smart political leaders have long understood the power that can come from values. If I can persuade you to want to do what I want you to do, then I do not have to force you to do what you do not want to do. If a country represents values that others find attractive, it can economise on sticks and carrots. Attraction can be used to increase hard power. Volodymyr Zelensky used his talents as an actor to attract sympathy from Western media and parliaments, which could be transformed into weapons to increase Ukraine’s hard power in its war with Russia.
A country’s soft power comes primarily from three sources: its culture, when it’s attractive to others; its political values, such as democracy and human rights, when it lives up to them; and its policies, when they are seen as legitimate. How a government behaves at home (for example, protecting a free press and the right to protest), in international institutions (consulting others and multilateralism) and in foreign policy (promoting development and human rights) can affect others by the influence of example.
Many soft-power resources originate in civil society. Hollywood movies that showcase the US’s diversity and personal liberty can attract others. So too does the charitable work of foundations and the freedom of inquiry at US universities. Firms, churches and protest movements develop soft power of their own, which might reinforce or be at odds with a country’s official foreign-policy goals.
As I describe in my memoir, A Life in the American Century, the US lost soft power during the Vietnam War. Yet within a decade, reforms passed by Congress, the honesty of Gerald Ford, the human rights policies of Jimmy Carter and the optimism of Ronald Reagan helped to restore American attractiveness. Even when crowds around the world protested US policies in Vietnam, they sang “We Shall Overcome”. An anthem from the civil rights movement illustrated that the US’s power to attract rested not on our government’s policies but on our civil society and capacity to be self-critical and reform.
Donald Trump clearly does not understand soft power and undercuts it by actions such as abolishing USAID, silencing the Voice of America, threatening allies and belittling climate change. China values soft power – and stands ready to fill the vacuum that Trump is creating.
Nye was professor emeritus at Harvard University and author of several books including ‘A Life in the American Century’.
