U.S. President Joe Biden began his first diplomatic visit since taking office
G7 summit repairs alliances
Form a unified stand on Russia and China
On the eve of the U.S.-Russia summit
The diplomatic and military policies of the two sides are both soft and hard, and the chips are superimposed
Biden is calculating and hidden
Putin is cold and rigorous, listening more and talking less
Can the "General Visit" bring a breakthrough to the frozen US-Russia relations?
The operation of global strategic triangular diplomacy
What other variables will there be?
See the world today
Frozen like this, will us-Russia relations still be resolved?
On June 16, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden will hold a summit in Geneva, Switzerland.
In the face of the powerful Putin, although Biden, who is nearly eighty years old, is also an "old fritter" in the political circles, he still seems to feel some "pressure mountain".
In March 2011, Putin met with then-Vice President Joe Biden in Moscow
U.S.-Russia relations have continued to be tense in recent years. Since Biden came to power, the two sides have achieved limited cooperation in the field of arms control, but confrontation has intensified on Issues such as Ukraine, cybersecurity, human rights, and election interference. Especially after Biden made critical remarks against Putin, the Russian side recalled the ambassador to the United States, and the relationship between the two sides became more tense.
Biden recently put pressure on Russia on human rights issues
Us public opinion believes that Washington does not expect major results, but only hopes that the United States and Russia can clarify each other's positions and avoid the escalation of conflicts. The Russian side is more direct, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying russia does not have any illusions about a breakthrough and historic decision after Putin's Biden meeting.
The United States and Russia also recently revealed some details of bilateral presidential meetings. A White House spokesman said the "General Visit" would include one working session and another smaller one. After the meeting with Putin, Biden will hold a separate press conference. It was stressed that such a format of meeting was "the most appropriate".
Russian presidential press secretary Peskov said this may be the customary practice of the US president. Putin will also hold a separate press conference to give media interviews.
The Biden administration announced that it would not punish German companies for the Nord Stream-2 pipeline, and that Russia could bypass Ukraine to send gas to Germany and the rest of Europe. On the other hand, he spoke to Ukrainian President Zelenskiy and extended an invitation to visit the White House this summer. Shouting before the meeting, Biden hopes to stabilize Russia and reduce its containment and pressure on the United States, so that the United States has more strategic space and room to deal with.
But his wishful thinking is unlikely to be realized, because Putin has a deep international strategic vision, international insight, international relations judgment and international strategic determination, and may be waiting to make the Geneva meeting an important opportunity for Russia to plan against the United States.
Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University
Wu Fei, Senior Researcher of Chahar Society:
The main reason for biden and Putin's meeting is to hope to ease tensions between the United States and the European Union. Because of Biden's predecessor, Trump, his administration was characterized by a particularly large number of unilateral actions, including abandoning the European Union and leaving NATO alone. Trump's desire to build a transcendent, personal relationship with Putin, like his relationship with Kim Jong-un, tries to solve the country's problems through personal relationships, and it is clear that this idea is impossible. Then this time Biden hopes to establish the relationship between a country and an individual as a whole, that is, the relationship between the overall system of the United States and Putin, and then coordinate the development of relations between the United States and Russia.
On the other hand, the aftermath of the White Russian forced landing passenger plane incident has not yet been solved, and the Western countries behind it and Russia have played a game on withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty.
The Open Skies Treaty, signed in 1992 and entering into force in 2002, has more than 30 states parties, including the United States, Russia and most NATO members, and is one of the important basic treaties for Russia and the West to re-establish confidence-building measures and enhance military transparency after the Cold War.
But in May last year, then-US President Donald Trump unilaterally announced his withdrawal from the treaty on the grounds that Russia had violated the agreement, which went into effect in November of the same year. Russia announced that it would follow, and President Putin signed a draft law on withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty on June 7, and Russia will formally withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty in 6 months. For now, only the New START Treaty is left to balance each other.
After Biden took office, the United States and Russia agreed to extend the "New Start of Strategic Arms Treaty" for 5 years, in fact, this extension of the treaty is very different from the previous one, this treaty is mainly supervised by the three committees of the US House of Representatives on military, foreign affairs, and intelligence. Prior to this, the United States was basically in a state of turning a blind eye to Russia's "export of strategic weapons to the outside world." Then in this meeting, Biden mainly told Putin that there will be multiple units to supervise the implementation of the arms treaty this time, and ask Putin to pay more attention to and cooperate more.
Ups and downs, the United States and Russia "love and kill each other" for thirty years
Successive new U.S. presidents have tried to make a difference in U.S.-Russian relations. Even if he takes a tough stance at the beginning of his term, he will then try to reach some degree of détente with Russia, and no president has always adhered to the anti-Russian line.
However, whenever the relationship between the United States and Russia begins to warm up, something big happens, which not only offsets all the progress that has been made, but also pushes the relationship between the two countries in the opposite direction.
In the past three decades of Russia's independence, although there have been many issues in us-Russia relations, nuclear arms control, strategic and regional security, democracy and human rights, and relations between Russia and the former Soviet Union have always been the main topics of bilateral agenda and the main source of contradictions between the two countries. The opposition of these problems has made the United States and Russia always unable to find a suitable mode of getting along, which is also the commonality of successive US presidents.
In December 1991, Russia became independent, and the president of the United States at the time was George H.W. Bush. The collapse of the Soviet Union has made the West rejoice, and the nascent Russia has also admired the West, and both sides are full of hopes for the future.
In January 1992, Yeltsin and Bush Sr. met for the first time at Camp David, and six months later, Yeltsin paid a state visit to the United States. The United States and Russia reached a series of important cooperation agreements, thus beginning a long journey of US-Russian relations.
Yeltsin met with Bush Sr. at the White House
In January 1993, Clinton succeeded him as US president and was extremely enthusiastic about developing US-Russia relations. On his first foreign visit in April, he met with Yeltsin in Ottawa. The two saw each other as they were, referring to each other as "Bill" and "Boris", and soon developed a close personal relationship.
During clinton's eight years in office, he met with Yeltsin 18 times
Yeltsin praised Clinton as young, strong, handsome, energetic, and always smiling; Clinton tolerated all of Yeltsin's shortcomings. In September 1994, Yeltsin visited Washington. One night he was so drunk that he ran down Pennsylvania Avenue in his underwear and shouted for a rental pizza; the next night he did. This did not affect Clinton's liking for Yeltsin in the slightest, saying that "a drunken Yeltsin is also better than most candidates who don't drink."
In the early years of the Clinton administration, US-Russia relations entered the first "honeymoon"
In January 1994, NATO proposed a plan for eastward expansion, followed by the outbreak of war in Chechnya, and U.S.-Russian relations moved toward "cold peace." In March 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary formally joined NATO, and in the same month, NATO launched a large-scale air strike against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in spite of Russia's repeated objections, and the US-Russia relations completed a reversal from "love" to "hate."
NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
It lasted from March 24 to June 10, 1999
In February 2001, George W. Bush came to power. At the beginning of his term of office, he announced the expulsion of 50 Russian diplomats, the largest expulsion of diplomats between the United States and Russia.
Things soon changed, though. In Ljubljana in June of that year, Bush Jr. and Putin met for the first time, and Putin told the story of the cross left by his mother surviving the fire intact, which resonated with the religious Bush Jr., who said at a news conference: "I looked into Putin's eyes and saw that this was an upright and trustworthy person. I could feel his soul. ”
Three months after the meeting in Ljubljana, 9/11, which shocked the world, immediately announced that he would cooperate with the United States on Afghanistan.
In 2002, George W. Bush made his first visit to Russia, and the two countries issued a joint declaration on establishing a new strategic relationship, and a second "honeymoon" appeared in US-Russian relations. Then in 2003, the United States launched the Iraq War, and the "alliance" between the United States and Russia in the War in Afghanistan finally broke down.
In 2008, the presidents of the United States and Russia were replaced at the same time, with Obama and Medvedev as presidents. Medvedev is considered to have a more pronounced Westernist color, which makes people optimistic about the Russian-American relations under his presidency.
In February 2009, the Obama administration proposed a "restart" strategy for Russia. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov simultaneously pressed the red button symbolizing "restart" in Geneva, indicating that both sides were hopeful of improving and enhancing U.S.-Russia relations.
But after Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, he openly called out the West in the "Prism Gate" incident and the Ukraine crisis, and the Obama administration drew allies to increase sanctions against Russia. The "restart" has completely failed, and bilateral relations have fallen into a new trough.
In 2016, Trump was elected President of the United States. Before his election, his "pro-Russian" overtones were well known. Trump's praise for Putin is not hidden, and although he has been plagued by "Russia's door" during his tenure, this appreciation and the original intention of friendship with Russia have never changed. It also provoked a general ill-feeling among the American elite toward Russia, and "anti-Russian" became politically correct.
Trump has always claimed to improve U.S.-Russia relations, but neither government is willing to change its stance on issues such as election interference, Ukraine, and Syria. The Trump administration actually continued to increase sanctions against Russia, and during its tenure, the U.S.-Russia relationship reached its lowest point after the end of the "Cold War."
Moderator: Lu Chen
Biden is the only U.S. president in nearly 40 years who has just entered the White House and made it clear that "there will be no improvement in U.S.-Russian relations."
The Russian side has also been fighting back hard. On the eve of the US-Russia summit, Russia's new version of the National Security Strategy was introduced. It was pointed out that Russia would consider using strong means to respond to foreign unfriendly actions and, if necessary, would use force to coerce.
In the long run, the United States does not want to maintain a rigid relationship with Russia, and it is still possible for the United States to cooperate with Russia after the integration of allies is completed. For example, the reduction of weapons of mass destruction, the Middle East issue, and so on.
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev once said that US-Russian relations are the key to world security and stability. Since the Crimean crisis, Russia's ability and scope to intervene abroad has been increasing, and the United States needs to coordinate its relations with Russia for a global strategic adjustment.
Under the circumstance that many deep-seated contradictions and problems still exist, there is not much room for the US-Russia relations to turn around, and the current state of "fighting without breaking" will continue, and it is difficult to bring a breakthrough to tension relations at one meeting.
Editors: Jia Qian, Li Wei