What to Look for at the Biden-Putin Summit

June 10, 2021 Topic: Russia Region: Europe Tags: RussiaJoe BidenVladimir PutinNATODiplomacy

What to Look for at the Biden-Putin Summit

Can the two presidents find a pragmatic way to manage competition while avoiding past pitfalls? A new webinar held by the Center for the National Interest explores this timely question.

Presidents Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin will meet in Geneva next week under much different circumstances than those surrounding the ill-fated meeting in Helsinki between Putin and Donald Trump in 2018. Few suspect that Biden harbors any secret affection for Putin or rejects key judgments of the US Intelligence Community. Few believe that any grand bargain between the two heads of state is possible or desirable. But both sides also seem to share a common belief that the dangers of an unwanted US-Russia confrontation have grown too great for comfort.

Can the two presidents find a pragmatic way to manage competition while avoiding past pitfalls? What signs should we look for at the summit that might provide clues about how this critical relationship between the world’s foremost nuclear powers might develop?

Paul Saunders, George Beebe, Melinda Haring, and Andrey Sushentsov discuss these issues in the Center for the National Interest's latest webinar.

Image: Reuters.