The Biden-Putin Summit Offers Better Perspectives than the Current Status Quo

It was finally announced on May 25 that Presidents Biden and Putin would held their first face to face meeting on June 16 in Geneva. The announcement came after weeks of speculation and rumors during which relations between the two countries continued to plunge.

Nonetheless, both sides expressed the hope that the talks would lead to a more stable world, and certainly dialogue on the highest level is preferable to no discussion at all.

However there will undoubtedly be many attempts to sabotage the holding of the summit itself, or at least the outcome. Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Mission Dmitry Polyanskiy pointed out to reporters on May 28 that “our American colleagues are very capricious. They always try to put forward preconditions”, that are unacceptable for Moscow.

Indeed, even in the past week, the Biden Administration has threatened to impose more sanctions on Russia for cyberattacks against U.S. facilities and for alleged collaboration in the hijacking of a plane to Belarus and arrest of a Belarussian “dissident” (cf. below), while promising to take a hard line against Vladimir Putin on “human rights” issues in Geneva. Meanwhile, NATO is conducting multiple military exercises throughout Europe, including near Russia’s borders. and now plans to expand its powers to face threats arising from “climate change” as well as “the rise of China”.

In that context, one stated objective of the Anglo-American war party is to drive a wedge in the ever stronger Russia-China partnership, by making an opening to Moscow, but as various spokesmen and official media on both sides have pointed out, that will not happen.

It is therefore to be hoped that the discussions in Geneva will lead at the very least to a lessening of the acute danger of a new world war, if only by accident if not by design. Whatever the outcome turns out to be, the Schiller Institute will hold its next online international conference of June 26-27 to discuss the necessary shaping of a policy geared to the common objectives of mankind.

The complete program for the Schiller Institute conference and registration will soon be available online at https://schillerinstitute.com/.