What to Expect from the Biden-Putin Summit

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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. As President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin hold their Summit meeting. Let's take the long view for a few minutes on how we got to this point of antagonism and distrust and see if that lens can help bring into focus how to move forward constructively. As a starting point, let's turn back the clock to 2012. President Obama is running for re-election against Mitt Romney. They're having a televised debate. Romney had recently said that Russia is the number one foreign policy threat facing the United States and Obama mocks him for it.

Obama: Governor Romney, I'm glad that you recognize that Al-Qaeda is a threat. Because a few months ago when you were asked what's the biggest geopolitical threat facing America? You said Russia, not Al-Qaeda, you said Russia. The '1980s or now calling to ask for their foreign policy back, because the Cold War has been over for 20 years.

Brian Lehrer: Who remembers that sound bite from 2012? Who remembers those days? Obama also told Putin during that campaign that after the election was over, they could work on resetting relations. You think that seems a different world, let's go back a little more. In 2001, first year in office for President George W. Bush, he holds his first summit with Putin. In fact, it was 20 years ago today. Seriously, 20 years ago today June 16th, 2001. Bush was asked afterwards if he can trust Vladimir Putin.

Bush: I'll answer the question. I looked the man in the eye, I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul. A man deeply committed to his country and the best interest of his country and I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue. There was no diplomatic chitchat trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialogue and that's the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn't have invited him to my ranch if I didn't trust him.

Brian Lehrer: You heard that laughter from the reporters. That was when reporters were still laughing with George W. Bush. Did Putin somehow snooker both Bush and Obama? Or did the US blow the opportunity for better relations in some way that both presidents seem to be after? Obviously, we know now about Russian interference in the 2016 election and much more, and the world looks very different than it did during the Obama-Romney debate, or the Bush and Putin lovefest.

Joining me now someone who has covered all of this as it has unfolded in real-time, Fred Kaplan, who writes the War Stories column for Slate. He's also the author of several books including his latest, The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. His latest article on Slate is called There's Reason to Be a Little Hopeful About the Biden-Putin Summit. We'll save a few minutes at the end to touch on Fred Kaplan’s other recent article called Why New York's Chaotic Depressing Election Matters for America. Fred always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Fred Kaplan: Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Your article goes much further back than Obama or Bush to remind us that some of the bleakest moments in the cold War led to thaws and we'll talk about some of those. Can you comment on that Bush to Obama era? Did they both underestimate Putin's ill will toward the United States?

Fred Kaplan: Well, the thing to remember about Obama, when he made fun of Romney for saying that Russia was our number one geopolitical threat, Obama was right. The reset, which is what Obama and Hillary Clinton were calling their new form of data. They called it active data with Russia, was a real thing. When Dmitry Medvedev was Russian president, he and Obama signed the new START, Nuclear Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. Which reduced nuclear arms and created a forum for verification actual on-site inspections that were far more intrusive than anything that had been negotiated up at that time.

There was one moment Russia had sold a very advanced anti-aircraft missile to Iran, and Obama convinced Medvedev to cancel the sale. Iran had already paid for it. Russia refunded the money. It was several hundred million dollars. If they had installed this air defense weapon, it would have been very hard for the United States or Israel to launch an airstrike on a Iranian nuclear facility if Iran had built a nuclear weapon, which they seemed to be on the road to doing.

Because of the cancellation of the sale, that was one of several things that made possible the Iran nuclear deal, with which by the way Russia was a co-signature. Russia and the United States were cooperating on many things up to about 2014.

Brian Lehrer: How do you think Biden's experience with Putin in those years. Biden, obviously was Obama's vice president, as well as anything else from that longer view, not just Russian interference in the 2016 election informs how Biden is approaching his Summit with Putin today?

Fred Kaplan: Well, I think a thing to remember about Biden, whatever else you think about Biden, he's been involved in foreign relations as one of his uppermost interests for nearly a half a century. For the entire time, he was in the Senate, he was in the Foreign Relations Committee. For a while, he was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee when he was Obama's vice president. Especially early on when Obama was not experienced in these matters, Biden was the lead person on these kinds of things. For all of his talk about American ideals and human rights and so forth, which he believes in very sincerely. He's also a realist.

He understands that nations behave according to their interests. He sees that when the United States and Russia, or the United States and any number of other countries have and recognize common, or converging interests. There is a road to cooperation that can be paved so that both sides can meet those interests. He was asked the other day when he had a press conference, "Do you still think that Putin is a killer?" He goes, "Look I was asked that question in an open mic. I told the truth, but that has nothing to do with what we're going to be talking about in the next couple of days."

In other words, look let's not take our eye off the fact that this guy is not to be trusted, has a lot of interests that are very inimical to our interests, but we can deal on some things too. Unlike a lot of previous summits, which really did aim for breakthroughs in relations, an end to the Cold War, a reset, or whatever. That's not what's going on here. What's going on here is that we are at, as both leaders have said, the lowest point in relations since the end of the Cold War. There are a lot of things on our agendas and it would be better to have--

Right now there's not even a forum to talk about these things, both sides have recalled their ambassadors. Let's at least set some forums for dialogue to avoid situations where maybe we accidentally get into a war, or we see opportunities for cooperation in areas that are to both of our interests and we can actually follow up in these inputs.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, any questions or comments about the US-Russia relationship right now as Putin and Biden are holding their Summit at this hour for Fred Kaplan from Slate. 646-435-7280. Listeners, we apologize for those technical difficulties. Technical difficulties happen from time to time. We continue with Fred Kaplan, author of The War Stories Column for Slate. The article on slate right now, There's reason to be a little hopeful about the Putin-Biden Summit. Fred, do we have you back? Can you hear me?

Fred Kaplan: I’m here. I’ve been listening to the muzak.

Brian Lehrer: Okay, yes. We'll have to get something a little hipper to cover technical difficulties for the future in my personal opinion. Let's pick up where we left off. On MSNBC this morning they had a panel of Russia experts. One of them was asked something like, "Is the United States irrationally obsessed with Russia?" The response was that these problems are largely because Putin is obsessed with us. He doesn't have to make the US such an enemy as opposed to run his own country, but he chooses to. Do you agree with that thought and if so, why would that be true for Putin?

Fred Kaplan: I think there's a lot to that. As I said, when Obama and Russia were doing this big reset and actually having pretty productive relations, Dmitry Medvedev was president, Putin was prime minister. Now it was a little bit of nonsense, Putin was still running things, but Medvedev who was much more Western-leaning back then, really was given some leeway. Putin comes in in the spring of 2012 and then lots of things begin to change. By the way, they weren't all caused by Putin, we did certain things that pushed his buttons. It's worth pointing out, you played that that track of Bush talking about peering into Putin's soul and he can trust him and all that. In fairness to Bush, he later said, and other people who worked with him told me this is true, that you have to remember in 2001 Russia was flat on its back.

Post-Soviet Union, those first decades or so, they had very little revenue. Oil prices which was all they depended o, were low. The military was completely nothing. This was Bush's way of kind of reassuring Putin that we're not going to take advantage of our strength over you at this time. He said in a very naive, awkward way, but that's what was going on. Brian, I was Boston Globe's Moscow correspondent from '92 to '95. This was right after the Soviet Union collapsed. Putin was still a KGB agent at the time. If you look at what was going on through the eyes of a KGB agent, the whole place was collapsing.

You would drive around Moscow. There were billboards all over town with ads written in English. The TV was filled with American TV shows and movies. All over the halls of government and the Kremlin, there were American economic advisers. From the viewpoint of a guy like Putin, he's seeing it as an invasion. You had Clinton enlarging the domain of NATO. He had assured Yeltsin that this wasn't going to happen, but in fact, Germany is reunified, it all becomes part of NATO. Poland, Czechoslovakia, all these countries who would choose to be part of the Warsaw Pact are now part of NATO.

Putin has genuine concerns that Ukraine, which really very traditional Russians like Putin have always seen as kind of a suburb of Russia really. I'm not saying that's justified, but that's how they view it. They see Ukraine is possibly becoming a member of NATO, the European Union. That explains some of Putin's extreme paranoia and aggression toward Ukraine. Not to make any apologies or excuses at all for what Putin is doing, but it's worth noting that this isn't just some conniving, Kremlin master exploiting his strengths against the United States. It's a guy who's quite resentful about American intrusion into what he sees as his space, and who really feels quite weak in the face of it.

If you look at any measure of strength from economics, to really anything but the number of nuclear warheads. United States is way ahead of Russia and Putin is playing all the marbles he's got to try to keep the sense of encirclement that Russian leaders going back centuries have often felt when looking out toward the West.

Brian Lehrer: To the title of your article, There's reason to be a little hopeful about the Biden Putin Summit, hopeful about what?

Fred Kaplan: As I was saying before the interruption, I think all we can hope for, there's not going to be any great treaty that comes out of this. This is not a reset, we haven't been talking about anything. There's not been a forum for talking about anything. There are areas where our conflicts could lead to accidental war. There are areas where our common interests could make some progress in world stability. I think the best that we can hope for coming out of this summit, and I think it's a reasonable hope, is that forums are reestablished where we can talk through crisis and when we can talk through our opportunities.

Right now, for example, both sides' ambassadors have been recalled home. It might be a good idea to re-install them. One thing worth noting about this, and support for my hope, my modest hope. Within two weeks of Biden's inauguration, the United States and Russia extended the new START Arms Reduction Treaty, which was about to expire. It had a 10 year span, extend it for another 5 years. There was no controversy over this, there was no discussion after this. It was something that could be done and was done in a matter of minutes.

That was because both sides saw the continuation of this treaty as something that was in their interests. Both Biden and Putin know enough about foreign policy to realize that countries generally act according to their interests. There are a number of things where the United States and Russia have converging interests and it's a good idea. We still have the power to blow each other off the face of the planet and much of the world along with it, it's a good idea to pursue these things when they come up. It's not appeasement. There are going to be some people who were upset, "Biden is giving Putin a forum as a peer even by agreeing to have this summit."

No, you still understand the things that we disagree about, you don't compromise on those. All through the Cold War, even the worst years of the Cold War, the United States and Russia signed half a dozen, quite substantive arms control treaties. In 1966, Russian and American scientists cooperated under WHO auspices to design a smallpox vaccine. We co-wrote the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty in 1967 while the Vietnam War was going on, while our own nuclear arms race was soaring. You can walk and chew gum and do a lot of other things at the same time.

Brian Lehrer: Last thing, before you go, and we're going to have to squash this into about a minute. You also wrote an article on Slate recently about the New York City mayoral election, which our next segment is going to be about with Christina Greer. You used to be New York bureau chief for the Boston Globe if I remember correctly. You even covered this stuff in addition to foreign policy. Your headline was Why new York's chaotic Depressing Election Matters for America. Are you finding this election depressing?

Fred Kaplan: Yes, aren't you? You don't have to say that. One inherent thing that's really kind of stupid about New York mayoral elections, is that they happen when there aren't any other elections going on at all. If it was even an off-year election, when you're also going to go vote for a Congressman and maybe a Senator, more people would go to the polls, a presidential year. Three times as many New Yorkers vote when there is an off-year election than in off [unintelligible 00:17:59].

In de Blasio's last election, I think it was like 18% of people voted. He got 8.5%, of the eligible voters in New York. What kind of mandate is that? This is a much bigger topic, but I like the idea of ranked voting, but I think five is too many. How many of even your listeners who are savvier than most, how many could even name five candidates? I don't think I can name two candidates for my city council thing. I think I can maybe name three candidates for comptroller, but that's only because I know one of them.

Other people would have dropped out by this time, but they didn't think, well, there's a chance because I might be somebody's second vote that I could make it. There's too many candidates, I'm kind of surprised that really compared with previous mayoral elections that the relatively green caliber lets out, and I don't mean environmentally green. I mean the inexperienced green caliber of the people running, especially given the numerous crises and problems that New York City faces in the months ahead. Just as an emblem of democracy in the country's largest city which sets the agenda for so many things related to society, politics, culture, so forth. I don't think it's a glorious display.

Brian Lehrer: Fred Kaplan, Brooklyn resident on why he finds the New York City mayoral race depressing, and why there's reason to be a little hopeful about the Biden Putin summit. His two most recent articles on Slate, where he writes the War Stories column, usually focusing on foreign affairs, and Fred's most recent book is called The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War. Fred as always thanks a lot.

Fred Kalpan: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer WNYC. We'll see if Christina Greer finds the mayoral race depressing and focused on a particular thing about Wiley versus Adams, stay with us.

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