Nothing personal in US and Russia, just business
By Stephen Ndegwa, June 24, 2021The much anticipated summit meeting between US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland on June 16 was an anti-climax.
Well, the world waited with baited breath for elaborate side-shows similar to what the US took China delegates through during the inconclusive meeting between the two countries in mid-March.
Experts believe that the meeting came last during his first overseas tour by design, to give Biden the courage to face Putin after showing him the unity between America and its powerful allies.
His pronouncements to the media on this summit before boarding Air Force One in Washington that he aims “to make it clear to Putin and China that Europe and US are tight, and the G-7 is going to move,” betrayed his unspoken fears.
However, for all the hard talk in the run-up to the Biden-Putin meeting, Biden was surprisingly conciliatory, even apologetic in his body language.
Basically, he came across as someone avoiding a confrontation and trying hard to de-escalate the building tension between the two countries.
One had a feeling that Biden was actually searching for rapprochement – why can’t we just be friends?
The choice of Geneva was also highly symbolic. Apart from the idyllic location in southern Switzerland, the city is a renowned centre of diplomacy and hosts many agencies of the United Nations.
Expressing hard feelings would have been an abuse of the peaceful and neutral reputation of the host.
Indeed, the two presidents agreed to repost their respective Ambassadors. In addition, they committed themselves to hold bi-lateral talks on arms control, cyber-security and diplomatic ties.
Opinions published in the American media over the weekend show that the Western media felt ‘betrayed’ by Biden’s soft approach.
On Thursday, CNN aired a news feature in its Reality Check program titled “Were Republicans rooting for Russia at Biden-Putin Summit?”
The piece interrogated some headlines of leading publications in the US that suggested some Republicans were engaged in covert strategies to undermine Biden’s reputation.
Major news outlets also cast aspersions on Biden’s performance in what came out as a duel.
For instance, Fox News was cynical with opinions such as “Biden gets little at Putin meeting, apologises for snapping at reporter” and “Biden praised as the non-Trump, but will Putin outfox him on world stage?”
So was The Washington Post with headlines like “Biden’s strategy of pessimism ekes out a few gains with Putin”.
The New York Times article, “We’ve Come a long way since Trump. Putin is still winning” shows the direction of popular public opinion.
That wouldn’t be surprising considering that the Republican Party, is an avowed rival of the Democratic Party and they wouldn’t mind using Trumpism tactics to increase their ratings after former President Donald Trump’s embarrassing and disgraceful four-year term.
Observers say he sucked up to Putin by not reading the Riot Act to him as he had intimated. In a post-summit news conference in Geneva, he said: “Now, I told President Putin my agenda is not against Russia; it’s for the American people: fighting Covid-19; rebuilding our economy; re-establishing our relationships around the world with our allies and friends; and protecting our people. That’s my responsibility as President.”
Biden also realises that he needs some communist allies and alienating Russia is suicidal to America’s increasingly shaky geopolitical interests. Moreover, the US cannot afford to have two powerful enemies in Russia and China.
Whether Biden achieved his objective is a matter of conjecture. The outcomes of the meeting will be analysed in the coming months and years as the two countries engage both bi-laterally and on the global stage.
Further, your guess is as good as mine on the question whether Biden will succeed in isolating China by using an apparent divide-and-rule strategy between the two top allies. — The writer comments on international affairs