Although underplayed by most of the media, it’s clear that President Joe Biden is wobbling on the eve of his Wednesday summit with Vladimir Putin.
Coming after Biden has broken from congressionally mandated sanctions on Putin’s Nord Stream II pipeline, has appeased Putin-enabled ransomware attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure, and has hinted at a withdrawal from Syria (a longtime Russian priority), Biden’s hesitation is problematic.
For a start, Biden has made himself appear unsure even before arriving in Geneva, Switzerland. His most serious error has been to reject a post-summit press conference with Putin. Biden says that “this is not a contest about who can do better in front of a press conference or try to embarrass each other.” Instead, Biden will take questions from the press by himself.
The problem with this approach is that it allows and encourages the Russians to present Biden as timid. The United States thus risks transitioning from a truly delusional presidential interaction with Putin — former President Donald Trump’s 2018 Helsinki press conference with Putin was manifestly disastrous — to a truly weak interaction. That perception matters in terms of driving Putin’s opportunism, but it also risks undermining Biden’s credibility with allies. Putin and Russian state media have very deliberately presented Biden as mentally incapable of withstanding a press conference. Biden should have rebutted the precept. Who cares if Putin rants about how he seeks compromise while the U.S. seeks to dictate and destabilize? Biden could have simply stated his commitment to U.S. values and allies and his willingness to act in defense of those interests.
This is also about values. The U.S. media would rightly react with fury were Trump to have refused a joint press conference with Putin. They would suggest that Trump had something to hide. But as Fox News’s John Roberts observed to the Hill on Tuesday, there is a similar cost to Biden’s decision. That’s because a joint-leaders press conference “really does tell a big story about the issues they talked about, the attitudes between the two leaders and the relationship between the two nations going forward.”
Indeed. Americans deserve insight into what the two leaders discussed. This is especially important when it comes to Russia, which is America’s second preeminent global adversary.
Were he taking a resolute line toward Putin, showing absolute clarity as to the nature of his adversary, Biden might mitigate the costs of his press conference decision. But Biden has done the opposite. Asked this week if he still believes Putin is “a killer,” Biden responded, “He’s bright. He’s tough. And I have found that he is a, as they used to say when I used to play ball, a worthy adversary.”
Sorry, Mr. President, Putin won’t respond favorably to concessionary rhetoric. This summit was never a good idea. Now, it’s turning into a Putin victory before it even begins.
