When Trump and Putin met in Alaska, the event was portrayed as the encounter between two strong men capable of taking decisive action and changing the course of events. However, their meeting was not that of equals. One was a man shaped by circumstances; the other, a man who bent them. Or so it seems.
Trump represents the U.S. imperial state, with all the trappings of bureaucracy, interests, and compromises that characterize it. As was demonstrated during the Biden presidency, the president is the figurehead of a complex web, and the machine of the state can run without a capable executive figure at its helm.
In fact, this is something Putin has complained about, claiming it is the reason he does not trust U.S. presidents: they might commit to something, but then an army of bureaucrats and lobbyists come to tell them “how things are done.” This arrangement is typical of power structures in their later stages, where the state apparatus can override the will of its nominal head.
The Roman Republic, before Augustus, had intentionally developed a state structure to prevent a single ruler from taking over. The century of civil wars before Augustus was an attempt to change it, and the ensuing conflict brought many authoritarian leaders forward: Sulla, Pompey, Caesar, Mark Antony, and finally Augustus.
When Augustus established the de facto empire, in what historian Ronald Syme called the Roman Revolution, power was taken from the senate and concentrated on him, but the state was still necessary to run the empire. What Augustus did could be considered a logical development: he centralized the state structure under one authority. Soon after, with the assassination of Caligula, the Praetorian Guard made Claudius emperor, relegating the figure of the emperor to secondary importance.
As in the period before Augustan Rome, the U.S. is overstretched and rife with internal divisions. In these conditions, it’s common for sectors of society, including those close to the power nexus, to call for a strong man to “establish order.” That was the call in Rome, just as it was much later in early 20th-century Spain.
In 1902, Spanish writer and politician Joaquin Costa proposed the concept of an “iron surgeon,” a man capable of restoring order amidst the instability created by the “Restoration Regime,” the republicans, and the new socialist ideas taking hold in the country. General Primo de Rivera came to power in 1923 and referred to himself as such. He also established the “National Consultative Assembly,” a sort of corporate consultative body to stand in place of the parliament, which was meant to represent the administration, society, and the party. It was tasked with creating a “New Spain.”
Trump and his administration present him as a strong man capable of “making America great again.” Some liken Trump’s second coming to a type of coup against the establishment. The theory of the unitary executive power is being pushed to the limit to further that agenda, even presenting Trump—though as a joke—as king. However, Trump is more akin to Sulla than to Augustus, even though the comparison might be disrespectful to the Roman general.
The reason is that Sulla, much like Primo de Rivera, was a representative of the optimates and hence a conservative seeking to strengthen the rule of the oligarchy, not to change the system, as Augustus did. Therefore, though Sulla was a capable general, his decisions were conditioned by the power structure he represented and wished to continue.
Trump’s decisions are equally constrained, if not dictated, by the interests he represents. These are not a homogeneous group, as shown by the fracture within the MAGA movement and his erratic behavior depending on who is influencing him. As an example, one of the reasons behind the meeting in Alaska, which some present as a bold move, was probably the trap he had set upon himself by giving Russia an ultimatum and threatening secondary sanctions—a threat that, if carried out, would have backfired.
Putin, on the other hand, is at the head of a state structure that he has rebuilt and in which he has concentrated executive and corporate power, putting much of Russia’s vast natural resources under its command. In this, and much more, he actually resembles the Roman emperor Diocletian. If we posit that there is a certain continuation of state tradition beyond the ideological rhetoric, from the Russian Empire to the USSR to today’s Russia, then the comparison to Diocletian becomes quite staggering.
When Putin came to power, the Russian state had been plundered after the dissolution of the USSR by national and foreign agents and opened to Western neocolonialism. Putin took control and rebuilt the state structure, centralized power, and put natural resources under it, in the process eliminating opposition and dissension. Similarly, during his reign, Diocletian stabilized the empire and put an end to the Third-Century Crisis. His reorganization of the fiscal, administrative, and military machinery laid the foundations of the Byzantine Empire in the East.
Both men came from humble backgrounds, rose through the ranks of the state, and were profoundly statist. They also similarly framed their ascent to power in a discourse of social and historical inevitability and a return to the true ideals of the empire.
When Trump and Putin met in Alaska, Trump had to put on a show to pretend that he commands the same personal auctoritas as Putin does, that it was a meeting between two equals. On paper, they are. One could even argue that, on paper, Trump still commands the largest economy and strongest army in the world. But they stand as heads of two states at very different stages: one aging and one renewed after the collapse of the USSR.
Putin stands at the head of a rejuvenated state and wields the power that it confers. One could argue that he has bent his personal circumstances as well as those of Russia as he found it. Proof of this is how he rose through the ranks and how he has made Russia capable of standing up to NATO and winning.
Trump, on the other hand, could be said to have been made by his circumstances, riding the wave of his social position and wealth. He has risen to power on the back of a populist discourse, which usually gains traction under social and economic conditions of later-stage power structures, and is supported by a new wealthy class allied with a nationalist industrial aristocracy, to which he belongs. In this case, it could be argued that he is the result of a set of circumstances, not its maker.
However, I’m well aware that someone could make the exact opposite argument: that Putin is the result of the Russian circumstances after the end of the Soviet Union, and that Trump has fought against the political establishment to rise above his circumstances. Though I’m less inclined to support this view, if well argued, it could be valid. This seeming contradiction exists because when dealing with the debate of man versus circumstances, it’s a matter of perspectives.
There are certain views which will undoubtedly maintain that history makes men, and they are not exclusively religious. For example, a Marxist materialist reading of history will come to that conclusion; this is then difficult to marry with the awe shown by Marxists toward certain leaders. Another example is that of neuroscientist and primatologist Robert Sapolsky, whose book, ‘Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will,‘ makes the claim—from a purely evolutionary argument—that humans are absolutely determined by their biological makeup.
Religious people have been grappling with this question since time immemorial, which, articulated differently, is the same debate as free will versus predestination. The responses vary from absolute predetermination to a compromise between that and free will, to propose that, despite God and decree, humans have free will. Later, humanism developed a faith in rational, human-centric free will, which evolutionary science then reframed as a survival tool that is simultaneously constrained by uncontrollable external circumstances.
We will not settle that debate here, but the point I’m trying to make is precisely that there is no definitive answer to the question because it will depend on the angle from which one looks at it. In support of this, I will just mention two writers—to be fair on the comparison—who hold opposite views, but there are many others.
Thomas Carlyle argued in his book, ‘On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History,‘ that ‘universal History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here.’ Carlyle is credited with being the first proponent of the ‘great men theory,’ though I would argue against this statement. Plutarch’s ‘Parallel Lives,‘ which compares the lives of ‘great men’ of antiquity, could be said to have articulated a similar intention first.
On the other hand, Tolstoy’s second epilogue to ‘War and Peace’ completely rejects this view. Quoting the Times Literary Supplement (only because the subheading serves the argument), it reads: ‘Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace rejected the “great man” theory of history, made fashionable by Thomas Carlyle. Napoleon, Cromwell, and Caesar were “history’s slaves,” fulfilling the will of Providence, argued Tolstoy, not its masters.’
Tolstoy argues that there are only two ways to account for the historical: ‘nations guided by individual men’ or ‘the existence of a known aim to which these nations and humanity at large are tending.’ He dismisses the first and tries to argue for the second. Following the second view, TLS adds to the previous title: ‘So how to judge the three ‘great men’ who have presided over China’s return to the pinnacle of world power—the Communist Party leaders Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Xi Jinping?’ That is no different from asking to account for Putin or Trump’s ascension to power.
Or, to bring it back to the departure point of this article, was the Alaska Summit a meeting between two “great men” or one brought about by circumstances? If we are to follow much of the press coverage, we would have to assume the first. Many accounts of the summit have regarded it in personal terms: “Trump lost” and “Putin won,” which also shows how much of the press is conditioned by a language favored by the power structure.
This personalized narrative is what the Trump administration prefers. They want to present Trump as a “strong man” capable of opposing the bureaucracy of the “deep state” and able to force others to his terms and achieve “deals.” According to this narrative, he is the strong leader that will “make America great again.” But the over-focus on his persona hides the enormous apparatus of the state and its private interests.
On the other hand, Putin favors a depersonalized narrative. It’s not about him, it’s about Russia, Mother Russia. There was a time when he also presented himself as a “strong man,” riding horses shirtless. That was the time when he had to establish his power over other oligarchs. Now that he holds power, he is clever enough to push for a different narrative.
For Putin, the Alaska summit was about explaining root causes, realities on the ground, and constitutional and political processes, though he knew who he was dealing with. For Trump, it was about him solving a situation and making a deal. But who was in control of circumstances and who was under them?
Man versus circumstances seems to be a matter of perspective. But which perspective is chosen seems to reveal much about both circumstances and men.
I would imagine a lesser version of man over circumstances theory can be put forward: in times of crisis, either people manage to put things together or they fall apart completely. A pretty sizable chunk of what tilts things towards the former is likely “leadership,” the factors specific to what a leader brings to the table. There is no reason to believe that Russia without Putin would have avoided becoming a cross of Ukraine and Yugoslavia, although, admittedly, one can’t be sure since that exact path (for Russia) was never taken…
While many people expected it to go like Yugoslavia back in the 90s, by the time Putin came to power that ship has definitely sailed. We certainly could’ve done worse, but I think General Lebed’ (the most popular of our post-Soviet military officers, who started playing many of the same notes earlier and had previously helped freeze the Transnistrian war) may well have been better or at least no worse. However, he would’ve had a harder time getting into power in the first place, being very much a populist upstart going against the 90s establishment. Ironically, I recall that Lebed’ even had some dealings with Trump back then…
Then again – if Putin had not been there, I’m sure Yeltsin’s Family would’ve been looking for someone similar to fill the role. He was not the only smart young man in the FSB. Whether that someone else would’ve done better or worse is hard to say, but while I wouldn’t dismiss Putin entirely, I do think we were not going to wallow in the 90s forever regardless. There was a widespread desire to leave all that behind, and many politicians offering to deliver just that, including some who were theoretically more willing to review the results of privatisation. Also, the worst shocks were already past us by then – some of the recovery would’ve happened under any leadership that wasn’t fanatically determined to run the country into the ground for some cause or other. That we would’ve avoided such leadership is not guaranteed, of course, and we may have been lucky to get a sober moderate instead.
Fair points. I suppose I was thinking less of a “Putin” as much as a competent and sober leader. Countries where lack of a single top leader who was sober and able caused catastrophes are dime a dozen and I think Russia is fortunate to have had one at the helm.
Actually I think Putin does believe in the personal touch and that’s why he keeps flattering and kowtowing to the obviously desperate for flattery Trump. A new Patrick Lawrence makes much of this turn of events.
https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/19/patrick-lawrence-that-big-beautiful-summit-in-alaska/
Putin says the Ukraine war wouldn’t have happened under Trump and this is both likely true and music to Trump’s ears. He really wants that Peace Prize and maybe a new Trump golf course on the steppe.
Which doesn’t make Trump less horrible given Gaza and all the rest but maybe a little less dumb than usual. Unlike Biden and the delusional Dem deep staters he is at least able to see that Putin is more of a “stable genius” than he is. He may have decided to ride this horse to Stockholm and realize his abiding goal–the greater glory of Donald.
Thanks for the link. Patrick Lawrence at his finest.
Putin has been trying to come to an accommodation with the West for 25 years, while clawing back much of the national sovereignty that had been stolen by Clinton’s Harvard Boys. Trump has been on good terms with the post-Soviet oligarchs for decades and doesn’t suffer from the Hollywood/Langley Russophobia of the DC neocons. Only the Americans can end this war. We started it.
Nobel Peace Prize? Why not? Genocidaires like Begin and Kissinger got one.
Persons are important.
I always remember General Jaruzelski in Poland, back in the 80s. Poland was bubbling and it looked ready to explode, Jaruzelski came along, put a lid on it, and some two three years later, Poles stabilised. They didn’t get to go through internal strife and chaos.
My 5 pence.
Alistaire Crooke says it was significant because it was the first time Trump was hearing Putin’s view and he was listening. Trump has the attention span of a goldfish, my view is his impression is limited to the photos of he and Putin walking off the tarmac, and especially the headlines, which he craves. The thing will be settled on the battlefield.
In the film The Decline of the American Empire, directed by Denys Arcand, there is a line delivered slightly enviously by a bunch of French Canadians, that the Americans were lucky in their Founders.
That is a great truth. But it isn’t an argument for a “great man theory” of history. The American Founders were a remarkably talented bunch — I’ll single out Thomas Jefferson (yeah, I know), James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin. George Washington had a certain self-regard and talent as a steady figurehead (as did Augustus Caesar).
So I’m going to straddle the divide. What matters in the making of history is talent, presence of mind, probity (if one wants to be constructive), and drive.
I’m skeptical that Plutarch was an advocate of a proto-great-man theory. First, Plutarch himself was remarkably talented and humane. Second, he was a priest of the oracle of Delphi, where great man after great man had had his hopes dashed and his life shortened. I am reminded of Plutarch’s missing biog of Epaminondas, of which tantalizing passages remain. After the Peloponnesian War, Thebes remained a second-tier power. Yet Epaminondas innovated battlefield tactics and, remarkably, vanquished the Spartans and freed their slaves. It was a combination of talent and the moment that caused the collapse of Spartan preeminence.
I am also reminded that one of the main reasons that the Italian Communist Party was the plurality party in Italy after WWII was its remarkable talent pool. From the formidable Nilde Iotti to the formidable Rossana Rossanda to the ghost of Antonio Gramsci to Palmiro Togliatti, Piero Ingrao, Enrico Berlinguer.
Putin is a man of many talents who arrived at the right moment. He also happens to be ruthless — a Tiberius Caesar. Trump is the product of a bureaucratized, no-longer-innovative, stratified society. He isn’t tremendously different from the sweatily ambitious Hillary Clinton. But the verdict is out on whether Putin and Trump are great factors in history. Right now, I’d argue that Putin is a historic figure, and Trump (like Biden and Obama) is going to end up at the level of Grover Cleveland.
Mr Putin is very much in the mold of Pitt the Younger, both put into power by players in the background at a young age, managing huge coalitions in international affairs. Modernising their states. He is improving the welfare state late in his term, like Pitt intended to do before his early death.
Both Mr Trump and Mr Putin are trying to manage an historical process, the fall from the heights of the former hegemon, this has happened a few times before and can’t be halted. The problem is of course to stop the US lashing out on its way down and starting a nuclear war. How much of this Mr Trump is truly aware of is the big dilemma and one of the reasons no doubt that Mr Putin had to talk to him personally, to gauge if they can still manage the situation or they need to prepare for the worst.
Grover Cleveland had certain qualities that are so remote in our political class today as to leave him unrecognizable. He was scrupulously honest and opposed many spending initiatives because they would provide opportunities for corruption. He also opposed the imperial seizure of the Hawaiian Islands. His annual birthday celebration at the site of his childhood home in Caldwell NJ regularly attracts a contingent of grateful Hawaiians.
I don’t disagree that Plutarch might not have had a proto-Great Man theory in mind, but he must have had something in mind when deciding the subject of “great men” and choosing which ones to write about. Perhaps he wanted to show that they are not that important, as you can see their lives repeating at two different points in history, but nevertheless, they were.
Let’s add Enrico Mattei to your list of powerful post-WW2 Italians. A unique individual with extraordinary abilities.
Marx was actually a little more nuanced. Personally I find his position hard to disagree with: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”
Am I a Marxist if I suggest a ‘ talented and lucky group’ theory of history?
My own interpretation would be a gradient, if not opposition, between the two. It’s possible to be lucky and have no talent, but also having talent is itself seems a lucky turn of fate. Maybe it’s easier to say you don’t have to be talented to make history, but it sure helps (the quote is from “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” after all, a book about one of the most talentless makers of history of all in the19th Century).
I think the comparisons are way too forced. The collapse of the Roman Republic, first and foremost, come because no one was interested in maintain it. Not even the plebs who benefitted from it. Cesar, and the long list of “proverbial men” were in fact 100% alligned with optimates, patricians and the whole dust bin: the Republic for that people was an infame experiment who gave too much power to the underpeople, and changed their national sport (civil warring, that never stopped, not at all during the Empire) to the very dangerous one servil warring, which was the red alert to shut down the entire circus. Yes, they disagreed in the way to do it, which did some historical misteries like the most botched coup ever (the Idus) and many other things, which of course make clear how contingency and pure accident is actually the force of history.
And about Primo de Rivera, that man who disappeared days in brothels, has nothing to do with a failed state that spent its 19th century in an intermitent civil war, because since the collapse of the empire which gave birth to it, never has the slightest idea about what to be and what to make, apart from stand for its oligarchies. Primo was far more important to help to create a prefascist army which absorbed 50% of state resources (to help to protect the south flank of the Gibraltar British base) and was the main force after the most destructive of its civil wars.
I don’t think anything of it has anything to do with the Putin-Trump meeting. Apart for being usual human stupidity.
Russia will never forsake a political system which enthroned such a guy like Gorbachov. You can live with morons like Khruschov, not with a guy who is pretty responsible of many of the chaos which come after him, inside and outside Russia, as if he didn’t knew who the Western leaders were -and are. That thing is something that both Trump and Putin know perfectly well.
I can remember perfectly well how Putin started to govern, almost thirty years ago. It’s not a KGB colonel vs. a picaro, it’s the (backup) emergency system of the USSR, not commie anymore (if it ever was) vs the US fascist forces which needed 60 years to dismantle FDR, and now are totally unchained.
The comparisons are only too forced if you think of them from individual to individual, but not, I think, if the purpose is to show how circumstances push certain individuals forward, or the other way around.
I disagree with your proposition that they viewed the Roman Republic as an “infamous experiment.” Otherwise, why such a despised for the term “rex”? That’s why they came up with “imperium.” I don’t think that is just a thing of language; I believe it reflects a view about the state and society.
Precisely about Primo, there was nothing really special about him, but he presented himself as a “strong man,” which shows circumstances at play. I do believe that, despite the differences, that is something similar to Trump.
Keep in mind with Spain, they had been roundly defeated in the Battle of Annual in the Rif War in 1921, which is where the need for a strongman leader came about in Primo.
Bacchunin: It’s not a KGB colonel vs. a picaro, it’s the (backup) emergency system of the USSR, not commie anymore (if it ever was) vs the US fascist forces which needed 60 years to dismantle FDR, and now are totally unchained.
An astute perception.
Though while probably correct, I don’t know that going forward it tells us much that will be useful.
I’m late to the party on this. But I’d want to review more American history and less European history for a reply.
Lincoln vs Buchanan. While I suppose it didn’t have to be a Lincoln, more Buchanan, or likes of him, we’d have been doomed. Pretty good comp for Russia, too, I think.
FDR vs Hoover is another dandy.
In Canada they essentially had a Hoover until 1935 in the guise of PM R.B. Bennett, and the country suffered.
Yes, Trump’s character and the current machinations do come as a result of where 150 years of US history has got you collectively, and the failure to resolve Civil War schisms.
Yet they are not unique in terms of the failures for mankind in the nature of power seekers and elites.
The personality defects of those who aspire to power are pretty ubiquitous, and Alaska was crudely performative.
I would agree that constant reflection on the classical civilisations of Greece and Rome are unilluminating except for those who love ancient history. There is plenty to go on from the last 500 years.
Putin has been in the game much longer and is in awe of US power. None of that has anything to do with ‘great men’. Part of why we in the west can’t understand Putin is because we have had a string of rubbish US leaders who couldn’t explain Putin’s politics. Churchill could do that. Roosevelt could do that. Lincoln could do too. We the people of west can’t tell the difference between friend and foe, that is the fault of politicians.
Joan of Arc
Management’s sole purpose is to organize and mentor talent. The US has nothing like the integration of the General Staff, the MIC, and the economy that Russia does. But the rest of the non-war economy is organized and functioning also.
The Russians are happy with it because it works. That’s what Putin has accomplished, and Trump won’t.