Biden-Putin summit: For the US, it’s Russia without love

Behind the diplomatic niceties, handshakes and photo-ops, the unseen backdrop was one of backstabbing when the United States President Joe Biden met Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Geneva on Wednesday, at a time when relations between the two nations had reached the rock bottom.

There was little love lost between them. Officially, the US has declared Russia as an acute threat. The threat perception was more than evident in Biden’s messages to the recent G7 meeting at Cornwall in England and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation summit in Brussels. Russia, too, has included the US in its official list of ‘unfriendly states.’

The hostilities resemble cold war politics. They have withdrawn their ambassadors from each other’s capitals after a row over Biden’s recent endorsement during an interview that Putin was a killer, just as he had in an earlier occasion described Putin as a man with no soul. Thus, Biden’s path to Geneva was strewn with disagreements with Russia over crises in Ukraine, Belarus, Syria and Iran and attacks on Putin over allegations ranging from Russia’s meddling in US elections, cyber-attacks on US infrastructure systems and poisoning of opposition activists such as Alexei Navalny.  But in a pre-summit concession, Biden described Putin as a ‘worthy adversary’ with whom he hoped to come to agreement on issues where they could find common grounds. 

Putin appeared willing to let off the past hostile remarks of the new US President. For he badly needed the meeting, as it offered him an opportunity to come out of virtual ostracisation the western powers had imposed on him following Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Many analysts compared the Biden-Putin meeting to the cold war era meetings between the US and Soviet leaders. But Putin would not want him to be compared with Mikhail Gorbachev who met the then US leader Ronald Reagan in the very city in 1985 during the cold war. A strong nationalist, Putin blames Gorbachev for the Soviet Union’s fall which he describes as the ‘greatest geopolitical catastrophe’ of the twentieth century. 

When history mentions Wednesday’s meeting, Putin would be portrayed as a resurrected Cold War warrior on a mission to regain the superpower status Russia, the mother country of the Soviet Union, lost in 1991.  An autocrat who changed the constitution for him to stay in power till 2036, Putin has now met five US presidents.  Barring health problems or a regime-toppling revolution, the 68-year-old will see four more US Presidential elections before he retires at 84. 

At the Geneva talks, the vibes were hardly conducive for a new détente, although the two leaders agreed to return ambassadors to each other’s capitals and did not dislike the talks that offered a working relationship. Going by post-summit comments the two leaders had hardly moved from the position they were before the talks began. Even on the key US allegations of Russian cyber-attacks on the US and poison attacks on Russian politicians, there were only passing warnings. The US warnings were so subtle that it would have only evoked a smirk from Putin. 

In sharp contrast, Cold War era summits produced accords on issues such as disarmament.  Wednesday’s talks, however, produced no major confidence-building measures or compromises.  How could there be any shift towards détente or thaw in relations when Russia bashing was the norm at the G7 and NATO summits which Biden attended during his first foreign tour as president. China came a close second with western leaders labeling it as a systematic challenge which they have decided to meet with their proposed ‘Build Back Better World (B3W)’ global programme that will rival China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative. 

True, both Russia and China, just as the US and its western allies, are not suitable for global leadership to guide the world nations out of the multiple crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the world economy. What guarantee the people the world over will have that their governments will respect human rights and uphold democratic values when the new international order will be led by China or Russia – countries that show scant respect for human rights and democracy? Whatever the double standards the US and its Western allies adopt with regard to human rights and global justice issues, the West offers the best hope for freedom, however elusive the hope and freedom are for Palestinians and others who are oppressed by the West’s friendly nations. 
Be that as it may, coming back to US-Russia summit, how can there be détente when the US-led NATO makes pincer movements to encircle Russia -- and also China? Russia is surrounded by NATO’s hostile battle formations and reinforcements that keep coming dangerously close to Russia’s borders. Putin’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine were largely aimed at keeping the NATO away from Russia’s backyard. Putin is also probably having the last laugh while the US and its NATO allies are withdrawing from Afghanistan without militarily defeating the Taliban extremists.  The withdrawal means Russia’s southern buffer zone -- Central Asia -- will soon be cleared of US military presence.  

But to weaken Russia, the US and its allies are also resorting to the time tested cold war strategy – the arms race.  During the Cold War, the Soviets kept on matching the US in military expenditure only to realize too late that their economy had almost reached the breaking point. No wonder, Washington has slapped a broad array of sanctions on Russia to weaken its economy and is now moving to intensify the offensive on the military front with a heightened arms race.

At Monday’s NATO summit, the military alliance in response to Russia’s recent feat in supersonic military development, agreed to outspend Russia and push up its military expenditure by 4.1 percent to reach a staggering US$ 1.049 trillion. The vulgar military expenditure by nations that are incapable of making peace with each other at a time of the covid pandemic is a crime against humanity. 

The money spent on the arms race should have been diverted towards the fight against the covid pandemic. 
At the end of June 11 G7 summit, the rich nations – the US, Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and Japan -- did pledge a one billion dose vaccine donation to the world’s poor. But the World Health Organisation this week warned that Covid-19 was spreading faster than the vaccines, and pointed out the G7 pledge was simply not enough.  The world could have benefited immensely if there had been cold war type one-upmanship to vaccinate the entire world population against COVID-19.  Russia did give a political twist to the Sputnik V vaccine it developed, naming it after its space war success against the US in the 1960s. But that was an ego-massaging exercise sans any altruism aimed at ridding the world of covid.