By Jim Geraghty
Thursday, June
17, 2021
President Biden said of his meeting with
Russian president Vladimir Putin in Switzerland, “I did what I
came to do.” Which was what, exactly?
The joint statement that emerged from the
meeting emphasized the mutual desire
for “strategic stability.” Stability
means maintaining the status quo, and right now, the status quo is good for
Vladimir Putin. His regime is
more oppressive than ever, and
Alexei Navalny is rotting in a prison cell. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline has a
green light to finish, making Germany and Central Europe even more dependent
upon Russia for its energy needs and reducing the leverage of Ukraine. Russian
hackers disrupt American life with near impunity. Russian forces still controls
Crimea. Putin’s little buddy, Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko, just
effectively hijacked another country’s plane when it crossed over his country’s
airspace to silence a political critic. The Russian
Navy is conducting large-scale exercises near Hawaii. Russia is selling Iran
advanced satellite equipment with military applications and moving
long-range bombers into Syria.
And while I think the electoral consequences
of Russia’s 2016 Facebook advertising and disinformation efforts are (often
intentionally) overstated, not too long ago, the Democratic Party saw them as a
key part of the crime of the century and Putin as ranking among history’s
greatest monsters. So what, exactly, is the United States and the Biden
administration doing to reduce the leverage Putin’s regime has over the rest of
the world?
Chris Cillizza says Biden communicated to
Putin that “the adults are
back in charge.” That’s nice, I guess, but that’s really
setting the bar low.
Frida Ghitis of CNN contends that, “By meeting
with Putin, and letting him showcase his signature evasive style, Biden was able to use the Russian president as a prop — a
show-and-tell for his campaign to demonstrate that authoritarianism is a malign
force.” Is that what happened? We needed a Biden-Putin summit to demonstrate to
the world that authoritarianism is a malign force? I kind of figured the malign
intentions of authoritarians would be illustrated by all of the invasions, the
wink-and-a-nod acceptance of cyberattacks and hacking, and the “crackdown on
dissenting voices, with new, politically motivated
prosecutions and raids on the homes and offices of political and civic
activists and organizations.”
“Authoritarians are malign” is a pretty
good way of summarizing the entire 20th century in three words. I’m not sure we
needed a Biden-Putin grip-and-grin to
communicate that, and Biden choosing
to call Putin “bright,” “tough,” and a “worthy adversary” doesn’t really clarify the moral distinction all that well.
You don’t have to look too hard to find
some slightly more skeptical assessments of the intensely covered summit in
Geneva.
Matthew Chance
and Luke McGee of CNN write that Putin got what he wanted out of the summit:
The optics
of the summit were almost tailored to suit Putin’s domestic needs. The meetings
were requested by the US, which as far as the Kremlin is concerned, confirms
that Putin is a leader of similar stature to the US President.
“This is
exactly what the Kremlin wants. To talk to the US as equals and in such a way
that the other side does not demand a change of position as a condition of
dialogue,” says Oleg Ignatov, Crisis Group’s senior Russia analyst based in
Moscow . . .
Of course,
Wednesday’s events also play into a longer narrative that has taken hold over
the past decade: the West, no matter how hard it talks on Russia, has been
largely incapable of reining in Putin and his allies. In the eyes of Putin’s
opponents, there have been insufficient repercussions for a man who poisons
political opponents, meddles in other countries’ elections, supports the Syrian
dictator Bashar al-Assad in bombing his own country, and annexed foreign
territory.
Alexander Vindman — you probably remember
him from the first Trump impeachment — writes in
the New York Times today:
Biden’s
statements will no doubt play well in the U.S. media for a short time, but the
visual of Mr. Putin shaking hands with Mr. Biden will probably be replayed ad
nauseam on Russia’s state media for weeks and months, particularly in advance
of September parliamentary elections.
The clear
problem here is that Russia is coming away with a public relations win while
the U.S. has little to show from the summit in terms of tangible improvements
to national security. Mr. Putin has once again been elevated to the world stage
in a face-off against the world’s pre-eminent superpower in a well-rehearsed
and tiresome script that burnishes his credentials as a world leader.
The past week hasn’t been all
bluster; the Pentagon’s
assistance to Ukraine is now up to $150 million in “counter-artillery radars, counter-unmanned aerial systems,
secure communications gear, electronic warfare and military medical evacuation
equipment, and training and equipment to improve the operational safety and
capacity of Ukrainian Air Force bases.”
But if you’re a true foe of Putin, the
worry now is that the Biden approach to Russia in the coming years will be a
lot like what we’ve seen from his approach to China: something that sounds a
lot tougher than what came before, but that mostly amounts to cosmetic changes
and keeps in place a status quo that strengthens the autocrats. The Editors
note that the vaguely worded communiqués coming out of the G-7, NATO, and
U.S.-E.U. summits offer a lot of
tough talk but little commitment to any concrete changes.
I would note that for eight years, Barack
Obama and his top advisers had convinced themselves that Vladimir Putin was
growing more belligerent and aggressive because Russia was growing weaker, not
stronger. In his final press conference as president, Obama confidently
asserted, “The Russians
can’t change us or significantly weaken us. They are a smaller country. They are a weaker country. Their economy
doesn’t produce anything that anybody wants to buy, except oil and gas and
arms. They don’t innovate.” At this point, would anyone outside of the most
diehard Obama supporter dispute that this thinking was spectacularly naïve?
Russia is innovative enough to be completing international gas pipelines while
Americans are forced to wait in gas lines because of unrestrained Russian
hackers.
Obama insisted his policies worked well in
containing Russia — even when preparing to welcome Donald Trump to the White
House and reaffirming that Russia hacked the DNC, and that Russian troops
occupied Crimea and even as Russia’s ally Assad stood atop a mountain of
corpses. Obama blindly insisted that his policies had succeeded because they
were his policies, and his ego wouldn’t allow him to admit that his scoffing,
shallow, smug, “The 80s called, they want their foreign policy back” attitude
had completely underestimated Russia.
Biden’s prickly, whiny comments after the
summit — “Look, to be a
good reporter, you got to be negative. You got to have a negative view of life
. . . okay? — it seems to me, the way you all —
you never ask a positive question” – suggests that Biden may well continue the
Obama pattern of insisting his approach is working in the face of grim
counter-evidence.
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