When President Trump chose Alaska for Friday's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine, his supporters suggested the location offered a signal for shrewd negotiations. The United States had purchased the territory from Russia in 1867 for about 2 cents per acre.

But with Ukraine being excluded — as was the case with the Alaska Natives when their lands were transferred — the summit has already reignited discussion about what some academics say Putin and Trump seem to, in some ways, share: an imperialist mindset.

The term was first popularized by Gerard Libaridian, an Armenian-American historian, who used it in a 2014 speech in England to refer to former empires like Iran, Turkey, and Russia, which sought to influence the post-Soviet states they once controlled. In his view, the term describes an approach that lingers in the psyche of many nations, combining a nostalgia for greatness with strong convictions about the right to continue dominating smaller, neighboring nations.

Since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the idea has gained traction, often in reference to Putin's Russia. And Trump's assertive second term—with threats to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st state, and send American troops to Mexico—has sparked renewed accusations from historians and world leaders that his demands for deference reflect an imperialist mindset.

Trump has been inconsistent. He frequently condemns foreign intervention and"stupid wars," while bombing Iran and expressing ambivalence toward U.S. alliances and the defense of vulnerable democracies like Taiwan.

Still, perhaps there is something imperial—or at least a version of great power behavior with some added twists—in his talk of “land swaps” to bring peace to Ukraine, despite Ukraine’s own objections.

“There’s a powerful norm that says ‘countries don’t resolve their differences by annexation’ that’s held for some time, and Putin is clearly straining that idea,” said Daniel Immerwahr, a historian at Northwestern University and author of “How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States.” “And Trump seems very comfortable with a return to the old rules.”

The imperialist mindset, of course, has never been limited to real estate. It's a mental framework for policy and power projection. It's a belief system with a long list. And with the Trump-Putin meeting underway, historians and diplomats argue that the Alaska summit has already legitimized at least three imperialist ideas that many thought were buried in the past.

1. Center versus Periphery

This week's summit was billed as a closed-door event: Ukrainian and European leaders were not invited.

This exclusion triggered a week of frenetic diplomacy , resulting in assurances from Trump that he would focus more on listening than deciding. But the meeting between the two remains. The European Union has been relegated to a secondary plane.

Many still fear another Yalta, when the world's superpowers divided Europe in 1945 after the defeat of Nazi Germany, with the most affected countries being kept out of the room where it happened. For Poland, it wasn't the first time either.

“Between 1792 and 1795, Poland was divided three times by the great powers of the time: Austria, Prussia and Russia,” said Amitav Acharya, author of a new book, “The Once and Future World Order.”

This sculpture contains the imperialist idea of the center versus the periphery.

Empires are hierarchies of subordination, scholars note. Power remains concentrated at the center, while the edges are forced to accept fewer rights and privileges, supposedly in exchange for"civilization" or enrichment.

The Romans resisted extending citizenship to conquered peoples. The French rejected requests for small measures of self-government in Vietnam. In Puerto Rico and Guam, territories the US conquered after the Spanish-American War of 1898, residents still lack the same democratic representation as mainland Americans.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky already experienced a moment fraught with great power dynamics — and subordination — when Trump and U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance berated him for his lack of gratitude for American military aid during a televised visit to the White House in February.

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"You're not in a good position," Trump told Zelensky."You don't hold the right cards."

In other words, he suggested that Ukraine is too weak to be anything more than an appendage.

Now, Ukrainian leaders fear the summit is reinforcing the idea that only a few great powers make decisions for the world. Any attempt to turn the country of nearly 40 million people into a spectator of its own future is especially sensitive, historians say, because Ukrainian identity is based on the principle"nothing about us without us."

This fundamental concept runs counter to Putin's narrative of Russian centrality—his insistence that Ukrainians are simply Russians separated from home.

“When conflicts arise, the center will likely idealize its imperial past as an era of harmony,” Libaridian said in an interview, anticipating what Putin might hear in Alaska. “This, in turn, will justify its intervention to bring peace.”

Why could Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska about the war in Ukraine be historic?

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2. Supremacy and Self-Aggrandizement

The imperialist mentality, from the Crusades onward, through European royalty and Asian emperors, often involves a strong belief in cultural and, often, racial supremacy.

European colonizers justified brutal actions and massive thefts of national treasures by claiming they were saving souls or protecting valuables from damage and deterioration.

Imperialistically minded leaders throughout history have also presented themselves as the embodiment of greatness—superhumans at the pinnacle of superior nations who should be honored by all.

Putin has become an updated version of this imperial, self-aggrandizing impulse.

A few years ago, he directly compared himself to Peter the Great, Russia's first emperor. Former diplomats in Russia said he frequently promoted ideas of messianic imperialism, seeking to make Ukraine and many other neighboring countries part of a greater Russia.

“The Russian imperialist mentality is alive and well in Russia,” said Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia and author of several books on Putin.

Acharya, who teaches international relations at American University in Washington, said the summit, requested by Putin, harks back to a world order in which great powers divided states for the “personal glory of their rulers.”

In some ways, Trump also seems to be moving in this direction. While he still focuses more attention at home than abroad, he has encouraged a confusion between patriotism and a cult of personality. He sells coins with his face on the front.

Gwenda Blair, who wrote the definitive biography of the Trump family, compared his second inauguration to the return of a king. On his 79th birthday, he spent the day soaking up the scene of a military parade he himself had ordered—ostensibly to mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, but also, no doubt, for his own honor.

Meanwhile, his family business is putting Trump's name on real estate projects around the world, leading some countries to bend their own rules in his favor.

The Europeans see their acceptance of the summit — on American soil — as a gift to the Russian leader that validates his point of view.

“Putin wants to make sure that Russia is able to control significant parts of Central and Eastern Europe, both directly and indirectly,” said Sebastian Haug, a senior researcher at the German Institute for Development and Sustainability.

"For Putin, Trump is a tool," he added."With the de facto support of the American government, Moscow is trying to reestablish the logic of a concert of great powers as the key mechanism for international affairs."

3. Economic Empire

The British East India Company, a powerful trading company, was the spearhead of British colonialism. American interventions in Latin America to protect large American companies, such as United Fruit, occurred later.

Both are examples of the kind of top-down, less market-oriented relationship between commerce, business, and the state that, in some ways, seems to be making a comeback in both Russia and the United States.

Yesterday and today, the fusion of political power and commerce can take several forms.

Chinese emperors relied on state monopolies for essential products like salt—just like Russia's state-owned energy companies or China's state-owned conglomerates.

The British crown did not typically run businesses, but it often acquired stakes in companies that extracted wealth from abroad—similar to Trump's demand that the United States receive a share of future revenues from Ukraine's mineral reserves in exchange for military aid.

Trump's offer to lift sanctions on Russia and his threat to impose "very severe tariffs" on Russia's trading partners if Putin doesn't agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine also fit into an imperialist mindset. In these and other cases, he is merging national and corporate interests and prioritizing wealth as a tool to shape the global order.

The Cold War US-Soviet summits addressed broader issues. They were choreographed events, with leaders championing differing ideologies, attempting to demonstrate strength and willingness to compromise—in part to gain influence with other countries.

As Michael McFaul, President Barack Obama's adviser on Russian affairs, told me recently,"We had an argument for a better society, just like the communists, and we were competing."

Now, in Alaska, the US-Russia relationship has been constructed more as a commercial issue than a philosophical dispute. Both presidents are motivated by their own ideas of past greatness. Trump insists that peace is the goal. Territory, for both leaders, is apparently the path to it.