Putin-Biden meeting: this is the backstory 2:50
(CNN) -
Joe Biden's Meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this Wednesday is one of the most critical summits in recent times, and not only because the relations between the two nations, which own 90% of the weapons The world's nuclear weapons are as low as after the Cold War. The presidents will meet in Geneva on Wednesday for talks with historic echoes of previous clashes between the Soviet Union and the United States. Your nations are at a strategic crossroads that, if not properly resolved, could lead to a disastrous escalation to a new battlefield: cyberspace.
The talks also represent a critical political first test for Biden and exemplify the global challenge facing a presidency anchored in the fight for the preservation of democracy, which is under siege both at home and abroad.
After all, the main goal of Putin's foreign policy is to break the political stability and prestige of the United States.
He is accused of meddling in two elections to help former President Donald Trump, the main internal threat to the country's democracy.
Biden says Putin will "pay a price" for Russia's efforts to undermine the 2020 US elections.
Biden will hold the summit at a time when multiple factors are pushing American democracy to a breaking point: Trump's false claims about voter fraud, efforts by Republican states to make it difficult to vote and facilitate the manipulation of elections. elections, and the Republican Party's refusal to hold the former president accountable for the Capitol uprising.
The chaos, largely encouraged by Putin himself in disinformation operations targeting US politics, will contribute to Russia's leader's notion that the US is weakened, turning on itself, and hardly a model for the world.
Biden joined the west before the conversation
This dialogue, on neutral Swiss soil, is the culmination of Biden's first trip abroad as president, which he used to revitalize Trump's battered European alliances and invoke a new struggle by the West for his political values and his future.
The United States is among the remnants of the last Cold War with Moscow, which lacks the former power of the Soviet Union but retains the ability to wreak havoc on US interests, and a growing superpower clash with China, another serious threat to the primacy of the West.
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The preparation for the summit has seen Biden's entire tour, which has so far been a proven success, judged based on his confrontation with one of the most astute world leaders, whose smiles on camera show that he has overcome to previous presidents of the United States used to a more conventional geopolitical game.
OPINION |
Biden's historic opportunity with Putin
The preparations for the summit have been the subject of great expectations and intense exchanges among the leaders. Biden earlier this year acknowledged that Putin was "a murderer" and called him an unrepentant autocrat. Putin has denied any knowledge of infiltration and ransomware cyberattacks against the US government, private companies, and vital infrastructures that have been attributed to Russia's intelligence agencies and criminal gangs. And with the classic false equivalence, he has compared political prisoners such as the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, the victim of an apparent poisoning plot by the state, with the suspected insurrectionists of the Capitol indicted by the courts of the United States.
Biden's opponents at home, in a narrative picked up by the traveling media, have wondered why, given Russian aggressiveness and little US hopes for "results," the meeting is taking place. .
However, the summit's greatest success may be what prevented it from happening, not what it accomplished on Wednesday.
Biden surprised many in Washington by suggesting the talks.
But the invitation came at a time when Russian troops were gathering on the Ukrainian border, and many observers fear a full-scale invasion and with the imprisoned Navalny seemingly near death after he was denied medical treatment. .
The keys to the dialogue between Biden and Putin 1:31
President Biden's carrot offered Putin a platform that he longs for alongside the US commander-in-chief and that comes with the implicit respect for Moscow that other recent US leaders have dismissed, and that will be maximized by the machinery. of Russian propaganda.
“This meeting was held in part to save Ukraine, to save Alexey Navalny, so that's already something.
At least a short-term gain, "Evelyn Farkas, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, said on CNN's" Newsroom "program on Tuesday.
There is no "clean slate", but stability is expected.
Biden says that one of the goals of the summit is to see if Putin is willing to accept a more stable and predictable relationship with the United States. The US president, who has long experience with Putin's irritable behavior, does not want a reboot with Moscow. But softening the tone could lead to breakthroughs on common interests like Syria, Afghanistan, climate change and the Iran nuclear deal.
He's looking for some kind of stable, predictable relationship.
The question is whether he can do that with Putin, "said Senator Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Putin realizes that his actions not only get what he wants but also create instability in the world.
There has to be a clear message that there is going to be a consequence for it. "
But even Biden's limited goals set the bar very high.
Putin's authoritarian rule in the Kremlin for more than 20 years needs to discredit democracies like the US to make its own government more attractive to Russians.
A change in attitude toward the United States would force it to crack down on cyberattacks and stop propaganda and disinformation campaigns designed to harm American democracy.
It would mean that a former KGB officer, who saw the demise of the Soviet Union as a tragedy, abandons Moscow's strategic pressure on his former sphere of influence, including Ukraine.
Whether through coercion or diplomatic carrots, Biden knows that the US may simply not have the clout to change Putin's zero-sum game.
"Autocrats have enormous power, and they don't have to answer to an audience, and the fact is that it is quite possible that if I respond in the same way, as I will, that will not deter you: you want to move on," said the president. weekend.
US Warnings
Biden also says that he will take the opportunity to convey to Putin the kind of consequences that the United States will impose for continued attacks on the country's interests, even if Russia refuses to take action against ransomware attacks on American life staples, such as food production, transportation, and pipelines.
Hackers paralyzed an oil pipeline.
Banks and stock exchanges are even bigger targets
The most obvious danger in US-Russian relations stems from the new cyber confrontation.
Although each adversary has the power to destroy the world, nuclear weapons are regulated and systems are in place to deter escalation.
Safeguards are not as sophisticated in the relatively new arena of cyberwarfare.
Any US response to Russian provocations, and it is very possible that there have been secret retaliations, runs the risk of provoking an out-of-control confrontation.
"We are prepared to take seen and unseen response measures," Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
The political stakes for the Biden and Putin reunion have skyrocketed to new levels every day of the president's European tour.
But, paradoxically, this increased tension may ease Biden's political exposure at home.
With the world expecting a contentious showdown, any summit outcome that does not include open conflict can be considered a success.
Furthermore, in the absence of a joint press conference in Geneva, the US president will have the opportunity to present himself as someone who enforces Putin without being undermined in real time by the leader of Russia.
Biden will also be flattered by the comparison to one of the most extraordinary moments in the colorful history of post-Cold War US-Russian relations: Trump's sycophantic behavior toward Putin at his Helsinki summit.
(2020) Pleasing Putin, Denigrating Allies, and Ignoring His Advisers: Trump's Calls Alarm US Officials
The then president surprised his own team and the rest of the world by publicly accepting the denial of electoral interference by Putin, who had a poker face.
His comment prioritized the word of a former Soviet intelligence officer over that of the US spy community.
And it renewed frenzied speculation about the mysterious relationship between Trump and the Russians.
Whatever the outcome of the summit, the heavy political, diplomatic and historical forces weighing on the relationship between the United States and Russia are unlikely to be relieved.
Biden and Putin are not expected to step down after setting the tone for an era of rapprochement, as President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev did in Geneva in 1985. In fact, the reverse is more likely.
"Without a doubt (Putin) will put us to the test after this summit," Farkas said.
Joe BidenVladimir Putin