Biden-Putin summit surprises, but ties still frozen

GENEVA is home to the European seat of the United Nations and the international headquarters of the Red Cross, yet its unofficial status as the world's "peace capital" did little on June 16 to cut the diplomatic ice in US President Joe Biden's big summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

To be sure, Mr Biden described the talks as "positive", and Mr Putin, "constructive". Moreover, the two sides not only unexpectedly released a joint statement, but also agreed to return ambassadors after they were withdrawn earlier this year.

However, little substantive progress was made on broader pressing issues including climate change, Moscow's military involvement in Ukraine, and the jailing of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny. Indeed, despite the diplomatic language from the Biden team, US concerns about Russia's behaviour are only growing, at the moment, with organisations linked to Mr Navalny outlawed by a Moscow court on June 9 for being "extremist".

Addressing American troops in the United Kingdom recently, it is noteworthy that the biggest line of applause Mr Biden got was when he warned that he would tell Mr Putin "what he wants him to know" in their meeting. While the US president was playing to his military audience, he has repeatedly warned of "robust and meaningful" consequences for Russia if it continues to engage in "harmful" activities, including cyber hacking of US interests.

This builds from US concern with Russia's recent escalation at the Ukraine border in a major show of force. Former deputy prime minister Dmitry Kozak has warned that Moscow could intervene to help its citizens in eastern Ukraine, as tensions rise in the region which has been a flashpoint since Russian-sympathising separatists seized swathes of territory there in 2014. This has worried some in the West, and former US ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer asserted recently that the situation is "one step from war". To this end, the US put its forces in Europe on a higher level of alert, with Mr Biden reaffirming his support for Ukraine's "sovereignty and territorial integrity".

Mr Biden is also still seething from recent major foreign cyber hacks by Russia. A key United States intelligence report released in January highlighted that up to 10 US government bodies, such as the US Treasury, had their data potentially severely compromised. Organisations outside of government were also affected, with work still ongoing to understand the scope of the incident.

Were it not that the intelligence report was released the same day as the historic attack on Congress by pro-Trump supporters, and the-then intensifying pandemic in the US to boot, this report on the hack of critical US infrastructure by Moscow (which denies involvement) would have taken up many more headlines.

Part of the reason why the incident is so serious, is that the breach was undiscovered for months, with the attacker showing a degree of sophistication and stealth that the study says is a trademark of Russia's foreign intelligence agency.

The outlook for Washington's relations with Moscow, therefore, appears poor in the immediate term. Russia was one of the last major countries to acknowledge Mr Biden's election victory last year, and Mr Putin has previously expressed no great hopes for an improved relationship. In April, the Russian president accused Western powers of trying to "pick on" Moscow and warned them not to cross any "red lines".

So the best that appears possible for the foreseeable future is both sides aiming for, in the US president's words, a more "stable and predictable relationship". Yet, Mr Biden has not ruled out completely a more constructive relationship in the medium term, and stressed again on June 16 that he is not "looking for conflict". He was, after all, one of the architects of the attempted US reset of relations with Moscow in the Obama era when key achievements included the US-Russia civilian nuclear cooperation agreement, and Washington is interested in a longer-term extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction agreement.

REAL CHALLENGES TO COOPERATION

There may be some common agendas here, but also some real challenges to cooperation. And if the going gets tough, Mr Putin (68 years old compared to Mr Biden's 78) may already be thinking ahead to the next US president, or even two, hoping for another maverick Donald Trump-type figure more congenial to his interests.

This, despite the fact that the four years of Mr Trump's administration were a deep disappointment for Moscow, after the initial hints of a rapprochement and calls to "fully restore" ties. This agenda was stalled by the accusations of the Trump team's collusion with Russia, a charge not completely refuted by the Mueller report. However, a much wider range of issues clouded the bilateral agenda too. This included disagreements on issues from Iran to Syria and arms control deals, including the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which the Trump team began withdrawing from in response to alleged Russian violations.

Tensions between the two sides became particularly strained over Syria. Rex Tillerson, Mr Trump's former secretary of state, said in 2017 that "either Russia has been complicit or simply incompetent", referring to Moscow's apparent inability to prevent the Assad regime from using chemical weapons despite a 2013 agreement, under which Russia was a guarantor, to remove these stockpiles from the country. The depths to which relations sank was underlined by then-prime minister Dmitry Medvedev who said that bilateral relations were "one step away from war" and "totally ruined" after Mr Trump ordered US bombing in Syria.

One of the key uncertainties over US-Russia relations that Mr Biden wants to probe, is the degree to which Moscow's much-warmer ties with Beijing are now set in stone under Mr Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Perhaps the most cited area of their closer collaboration is on the political and security front. However, there is also an extensive economic dialogue which has grown since Moscow's annexation of Crimea. Mr Xi asserted last year that bilateral relations are at "the highest level, most profound and strategically most significant relationship between major countries in the world". He also praised Mr Putin by stating that he "is my best, most intimate friend", and the Russian president appears to reciprocate this sentiment.

This underlines the clear limits on the degree to which any warming of US-Russia ties might occur during Mr Biden's presidency. Not only may relations be significantly constrained in the immediate term, but there are also wider constraints on the scope of any significant future rapprochement for as long as Moscow's relationship with Beijing remains so close.

• The writer is an associate at LSE IDEAS at the London School of Economics.