Paul Fuhs: Alaska’s role may be key to a Ukraine settlement

By PAUL FUHS

At the end of summer, Alaska was honored to host the peace negotiations between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Beyond the positive images of world leaders shaking hands, very important negotiations were held between envoys Steve Whitkoff and Russian Kirill Dmitriev, resulting in the 28 point proposed peace agreement to settle the Ukraine conflict with provisions very important to Alaska.

Although Alaska is 5,000 miles away from Ukraine, associated sanctions have had serious impacts on Alaska and other cooperating Arctic nations. As President Trump points out, in Ukraine and Russia many lives have been lost and the US has spent $147 billion on an effort that clearly is failing.

President Trump’s heroic efforts to find peace are based on the assessment of his military advisors, that Ukraine will lose even more land if the war goes on than they will if his peace plan is implemented. And this despite the delusional statements of European leaders that Ukraine will defeat Russia, that they can finance the war until the last Ukrainian is dead, and Owellian statements like that made by Denmark’s Foreign Minister that “Peace in Ukraine is worse than war.”  They have essentially made themselves irrelevant to the process.

Is there something an Alaskan can contribute to stand behind our President, and support the efforts for peace that is consistent with his newly announced National Security Policy?

Over the past two months I have been invited to speak at several European based meetings including the NATO Geneva Center for Security Policy in Geneva, the Arctic Council Emergency Management conference in Bodo, Norway, and most recently, the Primakov National Research Institute in Moscow, Russia at their World Oceans international conference.

The initial focus of these discussions was on marine safety on the Northern Sea Route, due to the extensive shipments of crude oil through the Bering Strait (128 million barrels in 2024) as a result of European sanctions against the purchase of Russian oil.  Sanctions against insurance companies have also prohibited insurance coverage for oil spills, repesenting the greatest danger to food secutiy in the Arctic that we have ever seen.

However, the discussions inevitably turned to the interrelated issue of other sanctions, and Europe’s centuries old continuous conflicts with each other, carrying on today in the Ukraine proxy war.

My invitations were due to 40 years experience in relations with Russia, starting with being the mayor of Dutch Harbor, and my experience being the founding president of the Marine Exchange of Alaska, one of the world’s premier vessel tracking, monitoring and emergency response assist organizations. Alaska would cooperate with any other Arctic nation to provide these enhanced prevention measures.

My membership in the Arctic Council and the Russian Rosatom Arctic Shipping Experts Working Groups was also relevant. I am also the Goodwill Ambassador for the Northern Forum, the trans Arctic association of regional governments, so I have some experience to bring to the table.

These invitations are also because Alaska is often positively seen as a ‘Switzerland of the Arctic” due to our long experience in cross border trade and diplomacy with Russia and all other Arctic and Asian nations.  This view was clearly reflected in the choice of Alaska for the meetings between Presidents Trump and Putin which resulted in the proposed Ukraine settlement.

With this viewpoint in mind, I proposed in both Geneva and in Moscow that Switzerland be engaged to assist and guide Ukraine into being a successful non aligned country like Switzerland.  It is a very good model and in addition, the Swiss can help root out the Ukrainian corruption and money laundering, with which the Swiss have extensive experience.  This can be done under the existing NATO program ‘Partnership for Peace” of which all EU nations, Russia, Switzerland and Ukraine are members.

Of course, I do not have the authority to formally propose anything. I am just a little country boy from Alaska.  Still, I believe the idea has strong merit and no one else was mentioning it so I did.

Without that assurance, countries will be reluctant to provide the funds necessary to rebuild Ukraine after the war. This endemic corruption is why Europe won’t even allow Ukraine to join the EU much less say NATO.  This tells you something and may even raise concern about the $187 billion the US has already given to Ukraine.

Alaska has a big stake in a comprehensive settlement of the war and the elimination of sanctions which have heavily impacted Alaska.

In addition to the drastic consequences of European oil and gas import sanctions, there have been an additional 16,000 sanctions placed against Russia.  Many of them have been very harmful to Alaska, including restrictions on fisheries research and management as fish stocks move further North, air flight and tourism restrictions, joint business opportunities which were substantial berfore sanctions, educational and cultural exchanges, Arctic Council and Arctic Economic Council cooperative activities, etc.

It can also be argued that these sanctions have harmed Europe more than they have harmed Russia, since they also seem to have been almost entirely ineffective.

Did it have to be this way and was it unprovoked?  In 2008, CIA Director and former US Ambassador to Russia William Burns clearly stated that Ukraine was a special case, and that trying to push them into NATO would cause a war, and he was right. Who didn’t listen to him? He knew this would be exactly like the US response to the Cuban missile crisis when we came within inches of a nuclear war. At that time, State and Defense Departments were advising President Kennedy to invade Cuba, not realizing, due to faulty intelligence reports, that at least two of the missile systems were completely armed and ready to be fired.

Thankfully, President John F. Kennedy and his brother RFK used emissaries, bypassing the State Department to defuse the situation.  Apparently, this is what President Trump did in this case with emissaries Steve Whitcoff and Jahred Kushner.

The President’s proposal is not ‘capitulation’ or ‘appeasement’, as claimed by Europe.  It is military and situational realism that would be confirmed by any competent military analyst.

How could Europe have veered so far off course?  The answer lies in two thousand years of conflict across Europe where empires, countries and people have repeatedly learned to fear and hate each other.  Look up ‘list of conflicts in Europe’ on Wiki and you will see 947 of them.  100 years wars, 80 years wars, the more recent German Nazi invasions, Napolean, deep religious wars, etc.  The 100 years war being finally settled at last when the Burgundy French turned Joan of Arc over to Brittain, where the Church of England found her to be a heretic for wearing men’s clothes and speaking to demons, for which they burned her at the stake.  A quaint relic of European conflict resolution that everyone remembers.

The point is, that these conflicts have become so inbred that they reach the sociological definition of ‘sedimentation’, that is, so deeply seated that they are socially almost genetic.

It didn’t have to be this way. There was a strategic logic to confronting Russia during their ideological promotion of Communism, but when communism completely collapsed in Russia during the early 90’s, this justification evaporated.  Germany was reunited, the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and thousands of Western companies were welcomed into Russia including many Alaskan companies who brought their profits back to Alaska.

This was a major opportunity to establish an integrated Europe, which was being proposed by Russian leaders at the time, was completely ignored by European leaders who continued the Cold War and pushed for NATO expansion.  An impoverished post communist Russia posed no realistic threat to Europe but it seems that the Europeans were more concerned that if they didn’t keep presenting Russia as an enemy, there would be no reason for NATO to exist. Political leaders used a fearful ‘common enemy’ to maintain social cohesion and their own political power. Our own sedimentary condition was the continuation of the Cold War and the characterization of Russia as the ‘Evil Empire’. We will also have to shake this outlook.

However, with communism behind them, Russia rebuilt and established new world alliances, including BRICS, and is now a world power that cannot be ignored.

A new opportunity for a stable pan European Security Architecture exists today as an outgrowth of the Ukraine settlement, including resumption of business and trade relations with Russia as contained in the proposed agreement.  In Alaska, we saw this approach work in real time as we took the lead in melting the ‘Ice Curtain’, promoting business, cultural and tourism exchanges, even during the period of the USSR, which showed the people on both sides our many common interests and mutual desire for peace.

Another important proposed provision of the settlement is the requirement for a Ukrainian election within 100 days.  It is hard to say we are fighting for ‘freedom and democracy’ when Zelensky has cancelled all elections, outlawed any opposition parties, put his political rivals in jail and seized control of all media in the country.

An additional provision in the proposed settlement which goes beyond the Ukraine specific issues, is the reference to resuming the START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) negotiations. Historically, these were initiated by the resolution of the similar Cuban missile crisis.  An isolated Russia has continued to create new weapons such as the hypersonic Oreshnik, Zircon and Bereshnik missiles and the particularly concerning nuclear powered and armed Poseidon torpedo, all of which there currently is no defense for.  Rather than further escalations, these START negotiations should begin immediately since their standing provisions expire in January.

I know a lot of this sounds negative, but I am more hopeful now than I have been in some time, since we finally have a president who is talking about peace, and the horrible impact these conflicts and sanctions are having on the people of the world.

For Alaska, our most important current effort should be to propose an immediate resumption of our trans Arctic cooperation as part of any negotiated Ukraine settlement. We had nothing to do with the war in the first place and there is no reason to continue holding us hostage as collateral damage any longer.

As Alaskans, we should stand behind our president’s quest for peace, for the world and especially for Alaska.

Paul Fuhs is the Goodwill Ambassador for the Northern Forum where he served as founding Secretary/Treasurer for Governor Wally Hickel in 1991, and also serves on the Arctic Shipping Experts Working Groups of the Arctic Council and Northern Sea Route Administration Rosatom.  He is also the founding President of the Marine Exchange of Alaska.