DIALOGUE OF INTEREST

Summit of the presidents of Russia and the United States, Vladimir Putin and Joseph Biden, on June 16 in Geneva was an important geopolitical news of the month. The fact that the leaders agreed to a face-to-face meeting has already been called an exclusive event. Yet, as expected, most of the conversation was held in private and we can only guess the topics addressed by the heads of the Kremlin and the White House.

Enemy, rival or friend?

Nevertheless, there is a lot of detailed reports about the meeting, including attempts to predict future relations between Moscow and Washington. The tone of publications varies from pessimistic (everything is bad, and it will be even worse) to almost optimistic (there are still points of contact, and hope). At the same time, most publications go in line with the traditional idea that Russia and the United States are strategic opponents. However, it is possible that such an approach is not quite true. After all, on the one hand, Russia is not the main rival of the US and is considered as equal in the West. On the other hand, Russia, despite the traditional approach to America almost as the main ideological enemy, is ready to cooperate and be friends with Washington and other Western states.

After all, the days when the leading powers of the world grouped under large unions to collectively act against their opponents are long gone. Perhaps the US, which after the Second World War has strongly relied on NATO, is willing to present the case in a different form, but it seems that it can hardly handle this. We now live in the era of local unions based on interests, where each party is interested in its own benefits, albeit through making problems for others. There are too many interdependent interests, including geopolitical, economic, financial, logistics, environmental, security, humanitarian. We can see too many vulnerable areas in the era of the Internet, globalisation, and digitalisation. Too many key issues in the modern world are so intertwined that defeating your enemy you also risk to harm yourself.

The allegedly renewed Russian-American dialogue is a striking example of the above. The leaders met because it was necessary to adjust respective positions, rebuild, refresh the red lines. Therefore, issues such as strategic weapons or cybersecurity, which the media presented as the key outcome of the summit, were in fact not the essential elements of the recent bilateral talks. They are, of course, very important, but not critical, since they initially represent mutual interest. After all, in case of confrontation, both parties may suffer significant losses. So the parties will achieve some compromise on these issues anyway, even if the news is publicly disclosed otherwise. These are just the tools, no matter how powerful and dangerous for the rest of the world they can be. But by no means they represent the main cause of disagreements. The news presented as a ‘big success’ in terms of ‘restarting’ the diplomatic relationships between the two states is also insignificant. First, the current level of these relationships has not been dramatically low to require for restart, as it might seem. Secondly, the restart would have happened in any case but the extreme case.

Yet the official sources do not disclose the main reasons explicitly, which is not true for the social networks teeming with various assumptions. Some observers believe that the US proposed Russia a certain level of stabilisation of relations in return for some concessions. What can Americans expect from Russians (which the Kremlin can really provide, since the White House team certainly does delude itself with illusions)? It is unlikely that Washington is really concerned with the fate of Mr. Alexei Navalny, although the American president seems quite pessimistic about the Main Oppositionist of Russia.

To a certain extent, the White House does not care about the situation in the south-east of Ukraine. That is why we could not hear any specific statements in Geneva on this occasion. Perhaps it was decided to postpone the issue until Zelensky’s visit Washington, while Moscow will have time to reflect. The conflict in Ukraine is the problem of Kiev, Moscow, and the European Union, but by no means of Washington. It is sort of Washington’s tool for pressing on the Kremlin, but again – it is not its problem. Unlike a huge and threatening state in the south-east of Russia - China.

Instrumental tool

Reasons why Washington considers China a dangerous opponent are widely known. In this context, the US obviously does not want a confrontation with Russia as well. Rather, it is the opposite. Yet it may be necessary to clarify how the Americans will most likely act in this situation. Washington is not going to create a certain alliance for confrontation with Beijing and pull Moscow into it. This could be a good strategy in the last century. Instead, the Biden administration (and perhaps the previous administrations, with some individual nuances) has a plan for systemic and comprehensive containment of China. And it clearly views Moscow as a party in some points of the plan, albeit quite important ones. The Kremlin perfectly understands this. Russians are happy with China exploiting the huge military-political resources of the US, and Putin will certainly try to use this situation for his country’s benefit. This is exactly what Moscow can use as its own leverage for pressing on Washington. And at the same time on Beijing...

So, there is no doubt that Moscow will continue to play in contradictions within the EU and the dangers coming from the Asia-Pacific region. After all, not all of the European allies of Washington in NATO share the same view on Beijing being a great challenge to the Western influence. Some European countries believe that China can be a profitable partner, while others are worried about completely different problems.

It seems that this was the main idea of Putin’s article published in the liberal German newspaper Die Zeit immediately after the Geneva summit and called Being open, despite the past. In a nutshell, the Russian leader referred to the German elites, trying to prove that cooperation with Russia was beneficial, but it was necessary to show more independence from the US and NATO. Russia seeks to become an important balancing element in American-Chinese rivalry and at the same time pushes its own project of Big Eurasia.

Apparently, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is happy with this approach, although her call to resume the dialogue with Russia was rejected by the heads of Eastern European states and governments. Definitely, neither the US nor NATO have such explicit steps towards Moscow in their plans. Therefore, it is difficult to argue that Russia views NATO as a threat of its national security. According to Forbes, "Vladimir Putin has two main goals: to put countries that were once part of the former Soviet Union under the actual control of Moscow and undermine the close relations of Europe with the US, making Russia a dominant force on the continent." Thus, the West clearly views this as a threat to its own security.

On the other hand, it is obvious that the external positions of Russia are now significantly weakened by the internal events – the new wave of coronavirus, growing discontent due to the lockdown, as well as approaching elections. Some observers believe that in such a situation Russia will find it useful to switch to the external agenda by promoting the ideas of patriotism and popular consolidation against the common enemy. But since the West uses a wide variety of tools against Russia, it may so happen that the situation comes out of control, although none of the parties seem to be interested in such a turn of events. Like a recent incident in the Black Sea with the British HMS Defender. It was also reported that a group of ‘foreign combat aircraft’ teased the Russian military during the military exercise of the Russian Navy in the Pacific on June 7-24, some 4,600 km southeast of the Kuril Islands. Earlier, the whole world witnessed a dangerous deployment of troops along the southeastern border of Russia with Ukraine.

On June 28, American-Ukrainian military exercises codenamed See Breeze were launched with the military personnel from 32 countries, including from Turkey, Israel, and Arab countries. 5,000 troopers, 32 ships, 40 aircraft, 18 teams of special operations and divers worked out practical actions to exercise steps to resist Russia's attempts to dominate most of the Black Sea region...

In general, this is all we need to know about the outcome of the Putin-Biden summit. Or, as one of the Russian journalists put it after the Geneva talks, "Putin has clearly benefited from the meeting with Biden. At least, no one can specify what he lost [from it]."