Contrariwise, I was a bit disappointed by Michael McFaul’s piece in the Washington Post on Joe Biden’s upcoming meeting with Russian President Putin. Here’s the meat of the piece:
The two leaders could launch strategic stability talks. Biden and Putin have rightly extended New START. But a subsequent arms-control treaty will be difficult to complete before New START expires five years from now, since nonstrategic nuclear weapons and new delivery vehicles must be part of a new deal. Negotiators need to start now.
Next, a series of consulate closures and diplomatic expulsions, as well as reduced hiring of Russian staffers at U.S. diplomatic missions, have brought public diplomacy and visa issuance to a near halt. Biden and Putin should reverse this trend. And that’s it — that’s the cooperative bilateral agenda. The remaining time in Geneva should focus on issues of disagreement, such as Putin’s persecution of opposition leaders, the detention of Americans, Belarus, Ukraine, cyberattacks, assassination attempts and microwave-radiation attacks.
The multilateral agenda is potentially broader. Working together with their international partners, Biden and Putin should commit to cooperating on stopping Iran’s nuclear weapons program, providing humanitarian assistance to Syrians, fulfilling the Minsk agreement on eastern Ukraine, and working together on covid-19 and climate change. Even in multilateral settings, however, the possibilities for cooperation are limited.
Once the Geneva summit is over, Biden and his team should not hope to forget about Russia. They cannot freeze U.S.-Russia relations in place to focus on the greater challenge of China. As Putin recently proved by amassing Russian soldiers on the Ukrainian border or unleashing more cyberattacks, he’s not going to allow that. Nor should Biden’s Russia policy become a derivative of his China policy. (For Biden to pursue his own version of the Nixon-goes-to-China strategy would be a huge mistake. It won’t work.)
No mention of the Arctic, Syria, or multi-domain operations which I would think to be an excellent talking point. I don’t believe that the Russian government is actually behind the recent spate of cyberterrorism but IMO it should be a major point of discussion. There’s little question the hacks are originating in Russia whether they’re state-sponsored or not and the Russian government should be willing to do something about them.
Seems to me like he’s setting the expectations pretty low.
And two leaders like Biden and Putin wouldn’t even agree to meet unless they expected something specific to emerge from the meeting. What will it be?
Every President since Roosevelt has met their Soviet/Russian counterpart.
Biden and Putin meet because they cannot let relations deteriorate to where misunderstandings on red lines turn into a hot conflict with thousands of nukes on each side.
I expect Biden will meet with Xi at some point for the same reasons as well.
With Putin?
Stroke his ego.
Gently help him amble towards retirement.