Summits continue to fascinate – especially when they could conceivably usher in major changes. There is something spellbinding about these occasions, when leaders come together to confer, quarrel, and, occasionally, make decisions that will change the course of history. British historian David Reynolds – the author of Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century – describes their enduring allure:

A perilous encounter between two adversaries. A dramatic act of will, opening up spectacular new vistas. A moment when a leader risks all before the gaze of the multitudes. A chance to make or break his reputation. A journey from which, once started, it is painfully hard to turn back.

Donald Trump’s forthcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin comes with that level of drama. The stakes are high. The likelihood of success seems minimal. Everything that can go wrong will go wrong. And it is all about to unfold in real time before hopeful, fearful, nervous and resigned audiences around the world.

With so much riding on the Alaska summit, it is appropriate to turn to history for parallels. The history of US-Russian or UK-Russian summitry suggests three models of how this summit may go: a nefarious deal, a veritable fiasco, and a case of reconnaissance by fire.

One of the best examples of a nefarious deal is the October 1944 Moscow summit between Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. The encounter is justly infamous for the agreement to divide Southeastern Europe into spheres of influence. The idea seemingly came from Churchill. He was at that point deeply concerned about Britain’s position in the Balkans, especially Greece. So he proposed to Stalin that the UK and the Soviet Union be each assigned a certain ‘percentage’ of influence in each of the Balkan countries. Britain was to have 90 per cent in Greece, with the Soviets enjoying just a token influence (10 per cent). The positions would be reversed in Romania. They would split Yugoslavia and Hungary 50/50 – and so on.

Churchill recounts in his memoirs how he handed the percentages table over to Stalin, and the Soviet dictator signalled his agreement by ‘ticking’ the list. ‘After this there was a long silence. The pencilled paper lay in the centre of the table. At length I said, “Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to the millions of people, in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper.” “No, you keep it,” said Stalin.’

The Russian version of the same conversation – probably more truthful giving the sensitivities involved – does not have Churchill express any regrets about his imperialistic ploy, or indeed, offering to burn the agreement: it does confirm the gist of the discussion. What is interesting, in retrospect, is just how seriously the Soviet leader took the ‘spheres of influence’ argument. For example, he initially refused to support the Communist insurgency in Greece, because he felt he was bound by this secret, oral, agreement with Churchill. But he was frustrated to learn that the Americans – who were not present at this particular summit – did not share Churchill’s enthusiasm for divvying up Europe.

If the Alaska summit were to unfold along similar, nefarious, lines, one could imagine Putin proposing Trump a deal: Russia will have a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. The US President will offer a hand in bringing the Europeans into line. Under this scenario, Ukraine would be merely a trading chip in some great Russian-American bargain shaped by a shared 19th-century understanding of how the world works.

Although undoubtedly very attractive from Putin’s perspective, this particular model is flawed. There is nothing that Putin could offer Trump that would require payment in the form of any recognition of Russia’s so called ‘sphere of influence’. All he could do was to offer similar recognition of US claims to Greenland, or even Canada, but even those holding a very dim view of Trump’s intentions will have to agree that Russia’s cheer-leading of US imperialism does not add up to a significant gain for the President. Even if Trump deeply admired Putin, he is unlikely to trade something for nothing.

Nor is it clear how a division of Europe, or the surrender of Ukraine could work in practice. Stalin held all the cards at the end of the Second World War; his armies were already in Europe. Putin’s armies are making progress, but they are still mired in the depths of Eastern Ukraine. Russia’s former colonies and satellites, asserting their distance from Moscow, and Ukraine in particular, by waging a war of resistance against Russian imperialism, have showed that they will not be cowed, nor consigned to anyone’s sphere.

It is not often that summits end as fiascos. Even when no agreement is reached, parties tend to salvage enough from their exchange to present a respectable front to the general public. Indeed, sometimes even failed summits – notably, Reykjavik in 1986 – serve as stepping stones for success down the road. But rarely, very rarely, things might just get out of hand. There was only one such summit in the recent history of Russian-US relations – the great Paris fiasco of May 1960.

The four-power summit (in addition to the Americans and the Soviets, the British and the French were also among the attendees) was meant to build on the success of Khrushchev’s September 1959 visit to the United States, where he had a heart-to-heart with President Eisenhower, and together they inaugurated something called the Spirit of Camp David – a rapprochement of sorts, born of the realisation that conflict in the nuclear age benefitted no one. The idea was to take the Spirit of Camp David a step further and find solutions to some of the pressing problems of the day.

Yet it all ended in disaster. On 1 May 1960, the Soviets shot down an American U-2 on a mission to photograph Soviet nuclear sites. When Khrushchev went to Paris, he demanded that Eisenhower promise that no such flights would ever be repeated, and that the President offer his apologies. In the meeting on 16 May 1960, Khrushchev launched into a long harangue about America’s various insults and transgressions, about how the Soviet Union would not be brought down to its knees. On and on he went, nearly shouting. Eisenhower turned deep red and ‘could scarcely contain himself’. He offered to stop the overflights, but he refused to apologise. De Gaulle ‘assumed a pained but patient expression’. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan noted in his diary that the meeting ‘has blown up, like a volcano! It is ignominious; it is tragic; it is almost incredible’.

Things will have to go seriously off track for the Alaska summit to repeat this sad experience. All eyes will be on Trump. After all, he is going to this summit in the expectation that Putin will want to strike a deal. If it turns out that, despite his very best efforts, the Russian President refuses to do so, or presents insurmountable obstacles to a reasonable solution, then Trump will face a choice: pretend nothing has happened, or slam the door on Putin and walk out in anger. Given that Trump is given to sudden outbursts and is very sensitive to how others view him, it cannot be ruled out that he’ll choose confrontation over obfuscation.

Putin, too, is an emotional man, despite having a reputation for cold-headed thinking. He, too, could explode in rage if he is subjected to what he perceives as humiliating treatment. Still, given the rarity of such fireworks in Russian-US summitry, this scenario is perhaps least likely to unfold, which leaves us with the third model.

One of the best examples of a summit that saw ‘reconnaissance by fire’ was the June 1961 meeting in Vienna between Khrushchev and President John F. Kennedy. The summit unfolded against the backdrop of heightening superpower tensions. Berlin was the deepest, festering wound. For almost three years Khrushchev had been trying to evict the Allies from the divided city in order to stop skilled workers from leaving the socialist paradise of East Berlin for better opportunities in the West. There were other issues, too. In April that year the US sponsored an attempted invasion of Cuba by paramilitaries. Although the Bay of Pigs invasion failed disastrously, Khrushchev was alert to the possibility of a re-invasion. Meanwhile, dark clouds were gathering over Southeast Asia.

Khrushchev, 23 years older than Kennedy, approached Vienna as a test of strength. The purpose was to intimidate and bully with nuclear missiles – in short, to see if the American President would blink first and accept Soviet demands, in particular in relation to Berlin. Although the Vienna summit is widely remembered as an American failure because, allegedly, the inexperienced Kennedy was taken advantage of by the aggressive Khrushchev, the reality was more complex. The summit was indeed very tense, but Kennedy held his ground, rebuffing the Soviet leader at practically every point. Enraged, Khrushchev threatened war. ‘Looks like it’ll be a cold winter this year,’ Kennedy answered.

If Khrushchev drew any conclusions from his summit with Kennedy, it was that the risk of war was higher than he was comfortable with. He was worried that Kennedy, partly because he was so inexperienced, was secretly controlled by what we would today call the ‘deep state’ (in Khrushchev’s case, mainly the business elites of the United States, plus the military). The ‘military-industrial complex’ pulled the strings, Khrushchev thought, and they could well unleash a war. So when push came to shove, Khrushchev decided against trying to expel the Allies from divided Berlin, and opted, instead to build a wall through the city.

If Trump holds his ground in Alaska, he will press Putin hard to abandon his goals in Ukraine by threatening retaliation. Putin will press his own case, presenting, like Khrushchev did in 1961, a series of attractive proposals that would amount to Ukraine’s and the West’s capitulation. Trump will reject these out of hand. The test of strength will end on a sour note, but Trump will have proven that Putin was mistaken if he believed that the US President was a walk-over who does not understand American national interests or is willing to sell his allies out for a pittance.

There are at least superficial indications that this is indeed how the summit might unfold. First, although he had on occasion expressed his appreciation for Putin, Trump has also criticised him fiercely for his obstructionism in Ukraine. He has made gestures – however symbolic and perhaps even theatrical – that intend to project American resolve in the face of Russian bullying (the meaningless order to send two submarines to ‘appropriate regions’ in response to Medvedev’s militant rhetoric was one such recent case). In short, he has not deferred to Putin in quite the way that some of Trump’s detractors had expected. And there is no reason why he should allow himself to be taken advantage of in Alaska. Trump wants a summit that will reflect positively on him as a statesman. He certainly doesn’t want to be seen as a weakling who caved in to Putin’s pressure.

David Reynolds, in his book, compares political summitry to mountain-climbing, quoting Shelley on his first visit to the Alps in 1816: ‘The immensity of these arial summits excited, when they suddenly burst upon the sight, a sentiment of ecstatic wonder, not unallied to madness.’ The circumstances, the timing, even the location of the forthcoming summit – in as exotic a place as Alaska – add to the sense of wonder and fascination. But the journey to the summit is hard; the air is thin, the route is treacherous, and the view at the top is often obscured by dense clouds.

No one knows how this particular summit will fare, least of all its immediate participants, Putin and Trump. But whatever happens, they will have made their contribution to the tortuous practice of Russian-Western summitry that, for all of its all-too-frequent failures, has occasionally produced impressive results.