Category: Nation

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden spent his first trip overseas highlighting a sharp break from his disruptive predecessor, selling that the United States was once more a reliable ally with a steady hand at the wheel. European allies welcomed the pitch — and even a longtime foe acknowledged it. But while Biden returned Wednesday night to Washington after a week across the Atlantic that was a mix of messaging and deliverables, questions remained as to whether those allies would trust that Biden truly represents a long-lasting reset or whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would curb his nation’s misbehaviors.

Biden’s mantra, which he uttered in Geneva and Brussels and on the craggy coast of Cornwall, England, was that “America was back.” It was Putin, of all people, on the trip’s final moments, who may have best defined Biden’s initial voyage overseas. “President Biden is an experienced statesman,” Putin told reporters. “He is very different from President Trump.” But the summit with Putin in Geneva, which shadowed the entire trip and brought it to its close, also underscored the fragility of Biden’s declarations that the global order had returned.

Though both men declared the talks constructive, Putin’s rhetoric did not change, as he refused to accept any responsibility for his nation’s election interference, cyberhacking or crackdown on domestic political opponents. At the summit’s conclusion Biden acknowledged that he could not be confident that Putin would change his behavior even with newly threatened consequences. Biden’s multilateral summits with fellow democracies — the Group of Seven wealthy nations and NATO — were largely punctuated by sighs of relief from European leaders who had been rattled by President Donald Trump over four years. Yet there were still closed-door disagreement on just how the Western powers should deal with Russia or Biden’s declaration that an economic competition with China would define the 21st century.

“Everyone at the table understood and understands both the seriousness and the challenges that we’re up against, and the responsibility of our proud democracies to step up and deliver for the rest of the world,” Biden said Sunday in England. As vice president and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden had trotted the globe for more than four decades before he stepped off Air Force One and onto foreign soil for the first time as commander in chief. His initial stop, after a speech to thank U.S. troops stationed in England, was for a gathering with the other G-7 leaders.

The leaders staked their claim to bringing the world out of the coronavirus pandemic and crisis, pledging more than 1 billion coronavirus vaccine doses to poorer nations, vowing to help developing countries grow while fighting climate change and backing a minimum tax on multinational firms. At the group’s first face-to-face meeting in two years because of the pandemic, the leaders dangled promises of support for global health, green energy, infrastructure and education — all to demonstrate that international cooperation is back after the upheavals caused by the pandemic and Trump’s unpredictability. There were concerns, though, that not enough was done to combat climate change and that 1 billion doses were not nearly sufficient to meet the stated goal of ending the COVID-19 pandemic globally by the end of 2022.

The seven nations met in Cornwall and largely adhered to Biden’s hope that they rally together to declare they would be a better friend to poorer nations than authoritarian rivals such as China. A massive infrastructure plan for the developing world, meant to compete with Beijing’s efforts, was commissioned, and China was called out for human rights abuses, prompting an angry response from the Asian power. But even then, there were strains, with Germany, Italy and the representatives for the European Union reluctant to call out China, a valuable trading partner, too harshly. And there a wariness in some European capitals that it was Biden, rather than Trump, who was the aberration to American foreign policy and that the United States could soon fall back into a transactional, largely inward-looking approach.

After Cornwall, the scene shifted to Brussels where many of the same faces met for a gathering at NATO. Biden used the moment to highlight the renewed U.S. commitment to the 30-country alliance that was formed as a bulwark to Moscow’s aggression but frequently maligned by his predecessor. He also underscored the U.S. commitment to Article 5 of the alliance charter, which spells out that an attack — including, as of this summit, some cyberattacks — on any member is an assault on all and is to be met with a collective response. Trump had refused to commit to the pact and had threatened to pull the U.S. out of the alliance. “Article 5 we take as a sacred obligation,” said Biden. “I want NATO to know America is there.”

When Air Force One touched back down in Washington, Biden again faced an uncertain future for his legislative agenda, the clock ticking on a deadline to land a bipartisan infrastructure deal as the president was confronted with growing intransigence from Republicans and mounting impatience from fellow Democrats. But Biden and his aides believe he accomplished what he set out to do in Europe. The most tactile of politicians, Biden reveled in the face-to-face diplomacy, having grown frustrated with trying to negotiate with world leaders over Zoom. Even amid some disagreements, he was greeted warmly by most of his peers, other presidents and prime ministers eager to exchange awkward elbow bumps and adopt his “build back better” catchphrase.

At the end of each day, Biden would huddle with aides, including Secretary of State Tony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, eagerly going over a play-by-play of the day’s meetings and preparing for the next. Aides padded his schedule with some down time to pace the 78-year-old president, though there were still a few missteps, including some verbal flubs and when he simply neglected to announce a Boeing-Airbus deal in front of the European Council. His summit with Putin, coming three years after Trump sided with the Russian leader over U.S. intelligence agencies when those two men met in Helsinki, loomed over the trip, with the cable networks giving it Super Bowl levels of hype. Aides wanted to confront Putin early in the presidency, with some hope of reining in Moscow and reaching some stability so the administration could more squarely focus on China.

There were no fireworks in their summit near the Swiss Alps, and the nations agreed to return ambassadors to each other’s capitals and took some small steps toward strategic stability. But while Biden was able to deliver stern warnings to Putin behind closed doors, he also extracted few promises. In the Russian president’s post-summit remarks, he engaged in classic Putin misdirection and what-about-ism to undermine any of the United States’ moral high ground. In his own Geneva news conference, Biden stood against a postcard-perfect backdrop of a tree-lined lake, taking off his suit jacket as the sun beat down from behind, so bright that reporters had trouble looking directly at the president.

Once more, Biden declared that America was back, but he also soberly made clear that it was impossible to immediately know if any progress with Russia had, in fact, been made. “What will change their behavior is if the rest of world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world,” Biden said. “I’m not confident of anything; I’m just stating a fact.”

(Madhani reported from Geneva.)

US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held their first face-to-face meetings on June 16, 2021 at a historic summit in Geneva.At the end of their talks,first such meeting since 2018, both the leaders praised their talks, but have made little concrete progress.Biden said the tone of the talks were “positive,” and he told Putin that certain US “critical infrastructure” should be off-limits for cyberattacks. Putin described the summit as “constructive,” saying both countries will begin consultations on cybersecurity and US and Russian ambassadors will return to their diplomatic posts.

Disagreements were stated, said Biden, but not in a hyperbolic way, and he said Russia did not want a new Cold War.Putin said, Biden was an experienced statesman and the two “spoke the same language.” The talks lasted four hours, less time than was scheduled.Biden said they did not need to spend more time talking and there was now a genuine prospect to improve relations with Russia. The two sides agreed to begin a dialogue on nuclear arms control. They also said they would return ambassadors to each other’s capitals – the envoys were mutually withdrawn for consultations in March, after the US accused Russia of meddling in the 2020 presidential election. However, there was little sign of agreement on other issues, including cyber-security, Ukraine and the fate of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny,

“I really do think — not me, but I think we, the country, has put a different face on where we’ve been and where we’re going, and I feel good about it,” Biden said to the press, reflecting on his first foreign trip as President before boarding Air Force One. “There was a summary done by him and by me of what we covered. Lavrov and Blinken talked about what we covered. We raised things that required more amplification or we made sure we did not have any misunderstandings. It was after two hours there, we looked at each other like, ‘okay, what next?’ What is going to happen next is we’re going to be able to look back, look ahead in three to six months and say, did the things we agree to sit down and work out, did it work? Are we closer to a major strategic stability talks and progress? … That’s going to be the test. I am not sitting here saying because the President and I agreed we would do these things that all of a sudden it’s going to work. I’m not saying that. What I am saying is that I think there’s a genuine prospect to significantly improve the relations between the two countries, without giving up anything on principles and values.”

Biden also reiterated that “there were no threats” during the meeting. “Just simple assertions made…  Just letting him know where I stood, what I thought we could accomplish together, and what, in fact, if there were violations of American sovereignty, what would we do,” Biden said.The US and Russia released a joint statement on Wednesday following the summit between the countries’ two leaders, noting that “even in periods of tension,” the two nations share goals of “ensuring predictability in the strategic sphere, reducing the risk of armed conflicts and the threat of nuclear war.”

“The recent extension of the New START Treaty exemplifies our commitment to nuclear arms control. Today, we reaffirm the principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement said. “Consistent with these goals, the United States and Russia will embark together on an integrated bilateral Strategic Stability Dialogue in the near future that will be deliberate and robust. Through this Dialogue, we seek to lay the groundwork for future arms control and risk reduction measures.” US President Joe Biden boarded Air Force One and departed Geneva en route to Washington, DC, following his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Leaders of the world’s largest economies unveiled an infrastructure plan Saturday for the developing world to compete with China’s global initiatives, but there was no immediate consensus on how forcefully to call out Beijing over human rights abuses. Citing China for its forced labor practices is part of President Joe Biden’s campaign to persuade fellow democratic leaders to present a more unified front to compete economically with Beijing. But while they agreed to work toward competing against China, there was less unity on how adversarial a public position the group should take.

Canada, the United Kingdom and France largely endorsed Biden’s position, while Germany, Italy and the European Union showed more hesitancy during Saturday’s first session of the Group of Seven summit, according to a senior Biden administration official. The official who briefed reporters was not authorized to publicly discuss the private meeting and spoke on condition of anonymity. In his first summit as president, Biden made a point of carving out one-on-one-time with the leaders, bouncing from French president Emmanuel Macron to German chancellor Angela Merkel to Italian prime minister Mario Draghi, a day after meeting with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson as if to personally try to ward off memories of the chaos that his predecessor would often bring to these gatherings.

Macron told Biden that collaboration was needed on a range of issues and told the American president that “it’s great to have a U.S. president part of the club and very willing to cooperate.” Relations between the allies had become strained during the four years of Donald Trump’s presidency and his “America first” foreign policy.Merkel, for her part, downplayed differences on China and the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which would transport natural gas from Russia to Germany, bypassing Ukraine.“The atmosphere is very cooperative, it is characterized by mutual interest,” Merkel said. “There are very good, constructive and very vivid discussions in the sense that one wants to work together.”

Competing with Belt and Road

White House officials have said Biden wants the leaders of the G-7 nations — the U.S., Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Italy — to speak in a single voice against forced labor practices targeting China’s Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities. Biden hopes the denunciation will be part of a joint statement to be released Sunday when the summit ends, but some European allies are reluctant to split so forcefully with Beijing.

China had become one of the more compelling sublots of the wealthy nations’ summit, their first since 2019. Last year’s gathering was canceled because of COVID-19, and recovery from the pandemic is dominating this year’s discussions, with leaders expected to commit to sharing at least 1 billion vaccine shots with struggling countries. The allies also took the first steps in presenting an infrastructure proposal called “Build Back Better for the World,” a name echoing Biden’s campaign slogan. The plan calls for spending hundreds of billions of dollars in collaboration with the private sector while adhering to climate standards and labor practices.

It’s designed to compete with China’s trillion-dollar “Belt and Road Initiative,” which has launched a network of projects and maritime lanes that snake around large portions of the world, primarily Asia and Africa. Critics say China’s projects often create massive debt and expose nations to undue influence by Beijing.Britain also wants the world’s democracies to become less reliant on the Asian economic giant. The U.K. government said Saturday’s discussions would tackle “how we can shape the global system to deliver for our people in support of our values,” including by diversifying supply chains that currently heavily depend on China.

Not every European power has viewed China in as harsh a light as Biden, who has painted the rivalry with China as the defining competition for the 21st century. But there are some signs that Europe is willing to impose greater scrutiny.Before Biden took office in January, the European Commission announced it had come to terms with Beijing on a deal meant to provide Europe and China with greater access to each other’s markets. The Biden administration had hoped to have consultations on the pact.

But the deal has been put on hold, and the European Union in March announced sanctions targeting four Chinese officials involved with human rights abuses in Xinjiang. Beijing responded with penalties on several members of the European Parliament and other Europeans critical of the Chinese Communist Party. Biden administration officials see an opportunity to take concrete action to speak out against China’s reliance on forced labor as an “affront to human dignity.”

While calling out China in the G-7 communique would not create any immediate penalties for Beijing, one senior administration official said the action would send a message that the leaders were serious about defending human rights and working together to eradicate the use of forced labor. An estimated 1 million people or more — most of them Uyghurs — have been confined in reeducation camps in China’s western Xinjiang region in recent years, according to researchers. Chinese authorities have been accused of imposing forced labor, systematic forced birth control, torture and separating children from incarcerated parents.Beijing rejects allegations that it is committing crimes.

Johnson, the summit host, also welcomed the leaders from “guest nations” South Korea, Australia and South Africa, as well as the head of the United Nations, to the summit to “intensify cooperation between the world’s democratic and technologically advanced nations.” India was also invited but its delegation is not attending in person because of the severe coronavirus outbreak in the country.

Hundreds of environmental protesters took to the Cornish seaside early Saturday in a bid to draw the attention to climate issues. A crowd of surfers, kayakers and swimmers gathered on a beach in Falmouth for a mass “paddle out protest” organized by Surfers Against Sewage, a group campaigning for more ocean protections. The leaders took steps to transition away from the use of coal, committing to spend $2 billion to help developing nations move off the fuel by funding job training and technology improvements. Japan had expressed reluctance to slow the construction of new coal fired plants. China remains a big funder of the technology.

Biden ends the trip Wednesday by meeting in Geneva with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The White House announced Saturday that they will not hold a joint news conference afterward, which removes the opportunity for comparisons to the availability that followed Trump and Putin’s 2018 Helsinki summit, in which Trump sided with Moscow over his own intelligence agencies. Only Biden will address the news media after the meeting. Putin, in an interview with NBC News, said the U.S.-Russia relationship had “deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years.”He added that while Trump was a “talented” and “colorful” person, Biden was a “career man” in politics, which has “some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements” by the U.S. president.(AP)

At the end of the Summit, leaders made the following statement — Our shared agenda for global action to build back better:

“We, the leaders of the Group of Seven, met in Cornwall on 11-13 June 2021 determined to beat COVID-19 and build back better.  We remembered everyone who has been lost to the pandemic and paid tribute to those still striving to overcome it. Inspired by their example of collaboration and determination, we gathered united by the principle that brought us together originally, that shared beliefs and shared responsibilities are the bedrock of leadership and prosperity.  Guided by this, our enduring ideals as free open societies and democracies, and by our commitment to multilateralism, we have agreed a shared G7 agenda for global action to:

End the pandemic and prepare for the future by driving an intensified international effort, starting immediately, to vaccinate the world by getting as many safe vaccines to as many people as possible as fast as possible. Total G7 commitments since the start of the pandemic provide for a total of over two billion vaccine doses, with the commitments since we last met in February 2021, including here in Carbis Bay, providing for one billion doses over the next year. At the same time we will create the appropriate frameworks to strengthen our collective defences against threats to global health by: increasing and coordinating on global manufacturing capacity on all continents; improving early warning systems; and support science in a mission to shorten the cycle for the development of safe and effective vaccines, treatments and tests from 300 to 100 days.

Reinvigorate our economies by advancing recovery plans that build on the $12 trillion of support we have put in place during the pandemic. We will continue to support our economies for as long as is necessary, shifting the focus of our support from crisis response to promoting growth into the future, with plans that create jobs, invest in infrastructure, drive innovation, support people, and level up so that no place or person, irrespective of age, ethnicity or gender is left behind. This has not been the case with past global crises, and we are determined that this time it will be different.

Secure our future prosperity by championing freer, fairer trade within a reformed trading system, a more resilient global economy, and a fairer global tax system that reverses the race to the bottom. We will collaborate to ensure future frontiers of the global economy and society, from cyber space to outer space, increase the prosperity and wellbeing of all people while upholding our values as open societies. We are convinced of the potential of technological transformation for the common good in accordance with our shared values.

Protect our planet by supporting a green revolution that creates jobs, cuts emissions and seeks to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees. We commit to net zero no later than 2050, halving our collective emissions over the two decades to 2030, increasing and improving climate finance to 2025; and to conserve or protect at least 30 percent of our land and oceans by 2030. We acknowledge our duty to safeguard the planet for future generations.

Strengthen our partnerships with others around the world. We will develop a new partnership to build back better for the world, through a step change in our approach to investment for infrastructure, including through an initiative for clean and green growth. We are resolved to deepen our current partnership to a new deal with Africa, including by magnifying support from the International Monetary Fund for countries most in need to support our aim to reach a total global ambition of $100 billion.

Embrace our values as an enduring foundation for success in an ever changing world. We will harness the power of democracy, freedom, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights to answer the biggest questions and overcome the greatest challenges. We will do this in a way that values the individual and promotes equality, especially gender equality, including by supporting a target to get 40 million more girls into education and with at least $2¾ billion for the Global Partnership for Education.

We shall seek to advance this open agenda in collaboration with other countries and within the multilateral rules-based system. In particular, we look forward to working alongside our G20 partners and with all relevant International Organisations to secure a cleaner, greener, freer, fairer and safer future for our people and planet.”

As U.S. President Joe Biden returned from his Europe tour, seeking to rally the leading democracies, a looming question is the future role of NATO. As the alliance contemplates the conclusion to its 20-year operation in Afghanistan, it confronts serious questions about its roles and relevance from political camps on both sides of the Atlantic. The starting point for the alliance must be to recognize that it leaves Afghanistan in a world entirely transformed from when it entered. NATO started operations in Afghanistan at the height of American unipolarity, at the peak of the Western dominance of the international system. It leaves at a moment when the West is constrained internally and challenged externally, including by authoritarian powers of growing capacity — and perhaps growing coordination.

FOUR REGIONS

To chart its future role in this world, NATO needs to start by addressing the core question of its geographical scope. It should start in Europe. NATO was born as an instrument to protect Europe and the democratic West from a threat from Moscow. Its first task in 2021 and beyond must be to protect Europe and the democratic West from a threat from Moscow. That threat is nowhere near as severe as it was during the Cold War and it is of very different character, but it is a threat nonetheless and a complex one, involving gray operations like the Skripal attack, political interference, and nuclear saber-rattling. It would be the height of irony if in seeking to respond to China or other new challenges, NATO failed to mount an adequate response to Russia. Not all the instruments to respond to Russia are in NATO’s hands; many of them reside with the European Union. But that is a bureaucratic and institutional distinction that can be overcome; the broader point is that Europe working with the United States must restore a sense of collective defense against Moscow’s efforts to weaken the West. NATO has a vital role in that.

Coordination on Russia policy was extraordinarily difficult during the Trump administration; it must now be central to U.S.-Germany, U.S.-U.K., and U.S.-EU/NATO dialogues. That includes the contentious issue of Ukraine’s future Euro-Atlantic integration.

But the geopolitical challenge to the democratic West doesn’t end in Europe. The second vital region is Asia. That is of course essentially a China question, and that in turn is an economic, technological, values, and military question. Whether or not NATO has an institutional role in Asia remains to be determined, though Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has argued that NATO’s new strategic concept must address the challenge that both Russia and China pose to a rules-based order. As we see key NATO members like Britain and France increasing their maritime presence in the Indo-Pacific, it’s a central question for the alliance’s future. Put this starkly: If the United States views China as its core strategic challenge and NATO is its most important alliance, what happens to NATO if there’s no match between those two? NATO has to find a way to add value, whether by contributing to U.S.-led crisis management planning in Asia, or through a focus on technological and economic resilience — ideally, both. That includes a focus — in close coordination with the EU — on China’s economic statecraft and political influence in Europe itself.

Third, NATO will have to address whether it has a continuing role in Central Asia or the Middle East. Whereas NATO’s rise to an Article 5 defense of the United States after the September 11 attacks was an extraordinarily important political act, NATO’s operational performance in the wider Middle East has been mixed. That’s in large part because NATO lacks a dynamic, effective political mechanism through which to lead its in-country engagements; it is military-led, not multi-dimensional. (There have of course also been challenges at the operational level.) The wider history of civil war management and counterterrorism response tells us that closely integrated political, military, and development strategy is what’s required. Those are not NATO’s strengths.

A fourth region that should be on NATO’s agenda is the Arctic. We have now firmly passed the point where the Arctic is primarily a question of climate change, commerce, and scientific cooperation. All those continue, but the Arctic is now also a zone of military pre-positioning and tension. As Russia beefs up its air and naval presence in Murmansk and beyond and China begins to tiptoe into a wider “dual-use” presence, NATO has useful assets and the critical geography to bring to bear, especially those countries on NATO’s northern flank, like Norway, Canada, and the U.K. (as well as the U.S. of course).

FOUR ISSUES

In tackling the issues of those geographical regions, NATO also needs to confront challenges of coherence and capacity. Two decades of focus on counterterrorism and stabilization efforts in Afghanistan have not left NATO well-equipped, well-trained, or well-postured to confront new dynamics of great power rivalry. NATO needs to reorient and retool itself.

First, with regards to technology. NATO has become the most advanced international mechanism for responding to cyberattacks. That’s important and should be sustained, but to confront future challenges the alliance has to go deeper on questions of artificial intelligence (AI) and its application to the military domain. Not all members of NATO will bring much to this table; but a core group of countries — including smaller members with niche capabilities — could work with the U.S. to develop critical AI-infused deterrent capacity.

Second is interoperability. NATO developed in important ways its engagement with non-NATO members in Afghanistan, notably Australia, the Gulf Arab states, Singapore, and South Korea. And it’s also had some limited experience in interoperability with countries like India in the Shared Awareness and De-confliction (SHADE) counterpiracy operations off the Somali coast. But whether or not it can have a sustained mechanism for interoperability with non-NATO members, especially Asian powers, in the absence of a major operational action like Afghanistan is a challenge, one that’s central to its future.

Third, is the looming internal question — i.e. Turkey and Hungary. These cases are primarily portrayed in terms of the erosion of democracy, and that’s a real question to be sure; but NATO has had non-democracies or weak democracies in its ranks before. Weak democracy is one thing, buying Russian weapon systems or otherwise supporting Russian – or Chinese – strategy, is rather another. NATO needs to be resolute that behavior that strengthens Russia’s hand in Europe (or elsewhere) will come at a steep cost — as French President Emmanuel Macron recently hinted.

Last, but perhaps most importantly, NATO members will ultimately have to grapple with the question of European strategic autonomy. Asked the other way around, they have to address the issue of U.S. reliability. Here, it’s worth highlighting that NATO came through the Trump experience far less scarred than many other multilateral arrangements; the alliance has deep support in the U.S. defense establishment and in Congress. Still, the issue looms over the question of NATO’s future.

In my view, it’s the wrong way to ask the question. The right way is: If we start seeing genuine collaboration between China and Russia to challenge the West, is NATO capable of responding? Can NATO mount two strategic operations at the same time, say in response to an acute U.S.-China crisis in the western Pacific and a simultaneous Russian move on a sliver of the Baltics? The first might be U.S.-led, but usefully buttressed by European naval and economic assets, and the second could be Europe-led, but reassured and buttressed by the United States, including in terms of nuclear posture. That is not currently the concept nor the premise for command and control arrangements, but it’s well within the capability of NATO members to produce such an arrangement. A NATO capable of responding in those terms would be a NATO fit for the strategic challenge in front of us.

A face to face meeting between President Joe Biden and  Russian President Vladimir Putinhas been planned in Geneva, Switzerland  The summit would cover a “full range of pressing issues” as the US seeks to “restore predictability and stability” to its Russian relations.

The White House has announced a face to face meeting between President Joe Biden and  Russian President Vladimir Putinin Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16th. That comes at the tail end of Biden’s already scheduled trip to the United Kingdom for the G7 summit and Brussels for a meeting of NATO leaders, giving the president plenty of time to hear from US allies before sitting down with Putin.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in a statement announcing the meeting, said the summit would cover a “full range of pressing issues” as the US seeks to “restore predictability and stability” to its Russian relations. That echoes comments Secretary of State Antony Blinken made during a meeting with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, in Iceland last week, as he said Biden’s goal was a “predictable, stable relationship with Russia”.

A full slate of topics – and tension

When Biden and Putin meet, they’ll have plenty to talk about. A short list of subjects includes arms control, climate change, Russian military involvement in Ukraine, Russia’s cyber-hacking activities, including the 2020 SolarWinds attack on US government and private computer networks, and the attempted poisoning and jailing of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny.

Those conversations seem destined to be fraught, as Biden and Putin have traded verbal barbs amid rising tensions in the past months.In an interview in March, Biden agreed with the description of Putin as a “killer”, prompting Russia to temporarily recall its ambassador to the US and Putin, in turn, to say it takes one to know one, before dryly wishing Biden “good health”.

There’s little expectation of any tangible results from this meeting, aside from the hopes it will lead to improved relations and understanding between the two leaders.

Sanctions imposed and waived

Contributing to the current US-Russia tensions are new penalties the Biden administration imposed last month as punishment for the Solar Winds hacking, which included new limits on transactions between US financial institutions and the Russian government as well as sanctions on Russian businesses and the expulsion of some Russian diplomats in the US.

If those sanctions were a diplomatic “stick”, the announcement last week that the Biden administration would waive congressionally mandated sanctions on the nearly completed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany could help ease US-Russia tensions in the run-up to June’s summit. (It also avoids irritating Germany, which could be an equally important concern for the Biden administration, which is intent on repairing US-EU relations.)

The Trump factor

If predictability and stability are part of Biden’s goal, it will mark a sharp contrast from the four years of the Trump presidency, which began with allegations – confirmed by the US intelligence community – that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election and was behind cyber-attacks on the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton.Those attacks cast a shadow on much of the Trump presidency, leading to Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation and revelations of contact between members of the Trump campaign and Russian nationals (although the investigation found no evidence of co-ordination between the two camps).

When Trump and Putin had their first and only one-on-one summit in Helsinki, Finland, in July 2018, Trump controversially stated that he believed Putin’s insistence that Russia was not involved in election hacking, despite US intelligence conclusions to the contrary.During his presidential campaign and throughout his time in office, Trump expressed admiration of, and a sympathetic ear toward, Putin, although his administration did – after some delay – follow through with congressionally mandated sanctions on Russia.

Biden’s fine line

The rhetoric of the Biden administration toward Russia has been markedly different, even if its actions have not always matched the stronger words. That has led to some criticism of the White House’s Russia policies from both political friends and adversaries.

Following the Nord Stream 2 waiver announcement, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Bob Menendez, a Democrat, said he didn’t see how the move helped “counter Russian aggression in Europe”.And shortly after the White House summit information was made public, Republican Senator Ben Sasse hit Biden’s Russia policy on a number of fronts, including the recent move by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to intercept a passenger jet in order to capture a dissident journalist.

“We’re rewarding Putin with a summit?” he said in a statement. “Putin imprisoned Alexei Navalny and his puppet Lukashenko hijacked a plane to get Roman Protasevich. Instead of treating Putin like a gangster who fears his own people, we’re giving him his treasured Nord Stream 2 pipeline and legitimising his actions with a summit. This is weak.”

US-Russia summits are always diplomatic high-wire acts, with US presidents having to walk a fine line as the world looks on. Biden, as a former vice-president and long-time foreign relations expert in the Senate, has plenty of experience in the diplomatic arena and seems to relish developing one-on-one chemistry with world leaders.The Geneva summit will be one of the biggest in-person tests of his political career, however.

UNITED NATIONS, May 14 2021 (IPS) – The UN Security Council (UNSC), the most powerful political body at the United Nations, has largely remained silent or ineffective in resolving one of the longstanding military conflicts in the Middle East involving Israelis and Palestinians.

But, at the same time, several attempts to condemn Israel for its excesses have been thwarted by successive US administrations, which have exercised the veto power in the Security Council to protect a client state whose survival has depended largely on billions of dollars in US economic and military aid, state-of-the-art weapons systems and outright military grants doled out gratis.

Stephen Zunes, professor of Politics and chair of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco and who has written extensively on the politics of the Security Council, told IPS the US has vetoed no less than 45 resolutions critical of Israel, “thereby rendering the Security Council effectively impotent”.

Asked if any other UN member state has been protected by so many vetoes, he said: “Not even close”.
In January 2017, he pointed out, an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed a resolution opposing United Nations involvement on the question of Israel and Palestine, insisting all matters should be resolved only through direct talks between the Palestinians and their Israeli occupiers, a position which thus far appears to being upheld by the administration of President Joe Biden.

Still, said Dr Zunes, it is unlikely the Biden administration will allow any resolution to pass that is critical of Israeli attacks in East Jerusalem or Gaza, even if balanced by criticism of Palestinian actions, since in the view of Washington, every military action by Israel is by definition “self-defense.”

Early this week, a State Department spokesperson defended the Israeli air strikes in a crowded urban area in the Gaza Strip on the grounds that every state has a right to self-defense.However, when pressed, he was unwilling to acknowledge–even theoretically–that Palestinians also have a right to self-defense, said Dr Zunes, a columnist and senior analyst at Foreign Policy in Focus.

As US Presidents go, Biden was no exception when he told reporters early this week that his expectation was that tensions would be “closing down sooner rather than later” but pointed out that “Israel has a right to defend itself, when you have thousands of rockets flying into your territory.”
But he ignored the lethal Israeli airstrikes with US-supplied fighter planes that have so far killed 67 Palestinians, including women and children, while turning houses and buildings into rubble, including a 12-storeyed office building.

In the US, the Israeli lobby has remained so powerful that few Americans politicians dare challenge the Jewish state or its violations of Security Council resolutions.Pat Buchanan, a senior advisor to three US Presidents and twice candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, once infamously described the United States Congress as “Israeli-occupied territory” -– apparently because of its unrelentingly blind support for Israel.

Meanwhile, according to Cable News Network (CNN), riots and violent clashes between Arab and Jewish citizens have swept through several Israeli cities after days of deadly airstrikes and rocket attacks.“Militants in Gaza have fired more than 1,000 rockets into Israel since the latest round of violence began Monday afternoon, and Israel has responded with devastating airstrikes in Gaza.”

At the same time, residents have reacted with fury, and there have been reports of attacks and raids at places of worship, said CNN.Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), told IPS the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories has been justify to fester and rot for a generation.
In the past, he said, the United States routinely used its veto to provide political cover for Israel, making the UN Security Council irrelevant.

“The new Biden administration should make it clear that the US will no longer provide diplomatic excuses for Israel’s violations of international law, its collective punishment of civilian populations or its apartheid-like policies,” he said.“Otherwise, the UN Security Council will be justify on the sidelines watching as yet another senseless war kills both Israeli and Palestinian civilians,” declared Dr Adams, a former member of the international anti-apartheid movement and of the African National Congress in South Africa.

Zunes said since the United Nations and virtually the entire international community recognizes East Jerusalem as territory under foreign belligerent occupation, responding to the escalating violence is very much within the purview of the Security Council.

Since 1993, however, the United States has blocked—either by a veto threat or an outright veto—every UN Security Council resolution which has included criticisms of Israeli actions in Jerusalem in its operational clause.
It was under the Clinton administration when the United States began to informally recognize occupied East Jerusalem as part of Israel and blocking UN Security Council resolutions that confirmed greater East Jerusalem as occupied territory.

Meanwhile, an “Atrocity Alert” issued by the Global Center for the Responsibility to Protec, said Israel has controlled East Jerusalem since the 1967 war, but Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention prohibits an occupying power from transferring parts of its civilian population into occupied territory.

JahaanPittalwala, Research Analyst at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, said that, “forced evictions of Palestinian families from East Jerusalem are rooted in the Israeli government’s apartheid policies. The illegal transfer of Israeli settlers into occupied territory may amount to a war crime.”

With tensions already high in Jerusalem, last Friday, 7 May, Israeli security forces stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as tens of thousands of worshippers finished their prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Israeli authorities fired rubber bullets and stun grenades at Palestinian protesters who were throwing rocks.The situation escalated further when Israeli forces carried out another raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, one of the holiest sites in Islam. According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1,000 Palestinians were wounded between 7-10 May. At least 17 Israeli police were also injured.

On 11 May two UN Special Rapporteurs issued a joint statement asserting that, “the recent scenes of Israeli police and security forces attacking large crowds of Palestinian residents and worshipers is only intensifying a deeply inflammatory atmosphere in the City. A militarized response to civilian protests against discriminatory practices only deepens social divisions.”

(ThalifDeen is the author of a newly-released book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That.” Published by Amazon, the book is mostly a satire peppered with scores of anecdotes– from the sublime to the hilarious. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/)