Consider This from NPR - What's At Stake As President Biden Enters Negotiations With Vladimir Putin

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Wednesday will be President Biden's first meeting with one of America's greatest adversaries. Drawing a contrast with his predecessor is the least of what the commander-in-chief hopes to accomplish when he sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly is covering the summit in Geneva, where she spoke to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul about what the U.S. could expect to gain from negotiations.For more coverage of the negotiations, follow Mary Louise Kelly on Twitter and tune into NPR's Up First on Wednesday morning. Listen via Apple, Spotify or Pocket Casts. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Remember the last U.S.-Russia summit? Helsinki, 2018. Then President Trump shocked the world when he sided with President Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence agencies on the issue of election interference. People came to me, Dan Coats came to me and some others. They said they think it's Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it's not Russia.

I will say this. I don't see any reason why it would be. Well, on Wednesday, it is President Biden's turn to sit down face to face with Putin here in Geneva. You know, he's ruthless, aggressive, full of dirty tricks. And so the secret of dealing with Putin is not to rise to his bait. That's Fiona Hill. As the former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, she was advising President Trump at the Helsinki summit,

a summit for which Trump declined to do much prep, and a summit that went off script fast. President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. Hill was in the room. She remembers being so stunned by the former president's words, she considered faking a medical emergency to stop the joint press conference in its tracks. It was so mortifying listening to it. I just thought, how could I make it end?

This time in Geneva, there will be no joint press conference. The two presidents will interact largely away from cameras and hold solo press conferences after. Fiona Hill is out of government, but she told me she advised the Biden team ahead of this summit, too. A summit that comes amid tensions between the two countries over a spate of cyber attacks that U.S. intelligence says are emanating from within Russia, Putin's imprisonment of his political opponent, Alexei Navalny, and the election interference we just mentioned. Putin wants to manage confrontation. He wants a lot of friction in the relationship. The question is really, can we get something out of this

to take the temperature down in the relationship and to try to manage our way eventually off this course of confrontation? Consider this. It is Biden's first meeting as president with one of America's greatest adversaries. Drawing a contrast with his predecessor is the least of what the commander-in-chief hopes to accomplish.

From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly covering the summit here in Geneva. It's Tuesday, June 15th. This message comes from NPR sponsor Sotva, the comfort company. Sotva luxury mattresses are sold online and priced at about 50% less than mattress stores. Visit s-double-a-t-v-a-dot-com-slash-npr-today and save an additional $200. The following message comes from NPR sponsor, WeWork. Escape the distractions of working from home with WeWork All Access.

One monthly membership gives you access to hundreds of convenient workspaces nationwide. Sign up today to get a free trial for new members at WeWork.com slash NPR. Terms apply. An internal investigation found that a cop with the California Highway Patrol sexually harassed 21 women. But those findings were kept secret until a new state transparency law passed. We dug through hours of tapes to find out what happens to officers who cross the line. Listen to On Our Watch, a podcast from NPR and KQED. It's Consider This from NPR and KQED. It's Consider This from NPR. It's been a busy first international trip

for the 46th president. He met with leaders of the G7 in the UK, the G7 that is the gang of seven leading industrialized nations. Then it was on to NATO headquarters in Brussels. At all the talks, the task for President Biden was to reset America's international relationships. To reassure allies, America is back. The U.S. commitment to Article 5, the NATO treaty, is rock solid and unshakable. It's a sacred commitment. The NATO alliance, of course, had come under attack by former President Trump. At NATO and the G7, leaders agreed to work together to combat the coronavirus pandemic, to confront climate change, and in a

win for President Biden, to counter the rising influence of China. I think we're in a contest, not with China per se, but a context with autocrats, autocratic governments around the world, as whether or not democracies can compete with them in the rapidly changing 21st century. The final communique of the G7 called for a new study of the origins of COVID-19. Also, support for developing countries to compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative, and a coordinated response to what the G7 called China's non-market economic practices. Of course, not so long ago, the G7 was the G8. Europe and America are united in our support of the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people. We're united in imposing a cost on Russia for its actions so far. 2014. Back then, the U.S.

and European nations voted to kick Russia out of the group following Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. That move remains a major point of friction between Russia and the U.S. It's almost certain to come up at Wednesday's summit, as is Putin's treatment of his political opponents. Here in Geneva today, on a street downtown, we came across some graffiti. Right in front of me is a big mural of Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin's imprisoned rival. He is smiling. And beside him in French is written, L'Héros de Notre-Temps, the hero of our time. Now, if this sounds familiar, this is because it looks really, really similar to graffiti that appeared in St. Petersburg in Russia in April.

In the Russian version, workers had painted over yellow paint within hours. This one is part of the welcome that will greet Putin when he arrives here in Geneva tomorrow for the summit with Joe Biden. If you drive 15 minutes or so across town from the mural, you come across an entirely different scene. A beach on the shores of Lac-Léman, the lake that cuts through the heart of the city. There, we found children playing and splashing and building sandcastles. It was lovely, but we had come for a different reason. We actually picked this spot because about 100 yards away is Villa La Grange. This is this grand 18th century villa.

It is the site of the Biden-Putin summit. They've got security perimeter and checkpoints already set up. Journalists are rolling into town. Diplomats are rolling into town. Among them, Michael McFaul. Former diplomat. Former diplomat. Yes, even.

You were the U.S. ambassador to Russia back in 2012 to 2014. Right. And I think the last time I saw you in person was in Helsinki. Yes, that was a very memorable one. It was indeed. Well, let's start with what the little preview of this one on Wednesday. I am always curious how much actually gets decided in these meetings. Because you've got Vladimir Putin. Yes. And so much of power in Russia seems to be centralized in the person of Vladimir Putin. Can you actually get that much done if he's not in the room?

You can't. And I would say increasingly so. That's become true. He doesn't listen to his advisors. No disrespect to Foreign Minister Lavrov, but he's an implementer of policy, not a maker. And I think that's part of the Biden administration's thinking about why they decided to do this meeting is because they thought at the part of the Biden administration's thinking about why they decided to do this meeting is because they thought at the end of the day, there's just one decision maker. So let's sit down with them. So the agenda, President Biden says he is going to confront Putin, tell him the cyber attacks have got to stop. Have you seen any indication that Putin is inclined to listen to that, to comply?

Not yet. You know, he's not writing talking points about how to improve relations with the United States as they get ready to sit down with President Biden. But I do think it's important for the president to say those things nonetheless. I actually was at their last meeting. It was 10 years ago when he was vice president and Putin was prime minister, March 2011. And I was impressed by how the vice president would not let go the difficult issues, the irritants sometimes diplomats call them. And we spent a great deal of time actually on Georgia

because Russia had invaded Georgia and they were still occupying territory. By the way, 10 years later, they still are. And I think that's important for Putin to hear from the president of the United States. But to the point you just made, Biden spoke strongly to Putin, according to you, who were in the room about Georgia, and yet they're still there. Does the U.S. have any leverage at this summit? Not a lot. Not on the big things. They're not going to trade barbs and then Putin's going to say, hey, you're right, I'm leaving eastern Ukraine. Oh yeah, Crimea, that was a mistake.

Putin has never admitted to a mistake ever in 20 years of running that country. So that's not going to happen. But there is a small agenda that with a little bit of, you know, give and take, maybe we might see that. Things like climate? Climate's easy.

Humanitarian assistance to Syria on the multilateral agenda. That would be a great achievement from this summit. And then in Iran, JCPOA, President Biden and his team have made it clear they want to get back into it. That's a place where we're on the same side. And then I find it tragic how small our representation is in Russia today. We have no ambassador on the ground there. No ambassador. And I think just some tiptoeing towards normalizing diplomatic presences,

not relations. That's out of the question. There's going to be no normal relationship with Russia as long as Putin is in power. But diplomatic presence, they might be able to make some progress on that. There's going to be no joint presser. Biden will give a solo press conference. They've studied Helsinki. Well, I mean, what do you think's going on here? Is this a good idea? Well, they have studied Helsinki, and they've also studied George W. Bush's first trip to Europe. Then he went to Slovenia to meet with President Putin. And he made a mistake in that meeting.

I can't remember exactly, but he said on the spot, he said, I looked into Seoul and I saw somebody I could cooperate with. And I tell you that story because Helsinki's a really low bar. I mean, Helsinki will go down in history as the worst bilateral meeting between Russians and Americans ever. One, because President Trump agreed with Putin and not his intelligence community. But the other thing is Putin jammed him. He jammed him with this idea to interrogate alleged criminals on both sides.

You have a personal stake here. I was one of them. This list of a dozen names that Putin dropped, you were on it because of your involvement in pulling together what came to be known as the Magnitsky list back when you were in the Obama administration. That's right. So I was watching President Trump. I'm sure he had no idea what President Putin was talking about. And he looked really bad, and it took him a week to clean it up. So I think it's right not to do a joint press conference.

One, you're going to avoid those kind of mishaps. But two, why give Putin a stage next to President Biden? He doesn't deserve that. Critics of President Biden would argue that he's already giving too big a platform to Putin by granting the summit in the first place. I got to take you back to another moment of high-stakes diplomacy here in Geneva. 2009, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had flown in to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Still in the job. To do this big reset.

And she handed him an actual, palm-sized reset gift which represents what President Obama and Vice President Biden and I have been saying and that is we want to reset our relationship. We worked hard to get the right Russian word. Do you think we got it? You get it wrong. I got it wrong. It should be перезагрузка. And this says перегрузка, which means overcharged. Needless to say, there was not a successful fresh start in the relationship with Russia. You had a hand in that. I was here. You were the top Russia guy on the National Security Council.

Right. What are the lessons from that? One, focus on substance. Don't focus on gimmicks. That was a gimmick. Even if the substance is about disagreements, you're much better off on that territory. And I want to be honest with you. I've been in many meetings with Putin. He's taken this meeting really seriously. And on occasion, he'll spring things on you and make you at unease. And even

if the substance is thin, don't be too chummy either. You know, there's a tendency from these leaders at the top. I've saw it with President Obama. I saw it with Vice President Biden, especially. He likes to build rapport. That's dangerous here in Geneva. Michael McFaul, veteran, as you just heard,

of a lot of meetings with Vladimir Putin. Thanks for giving us a little preview of what we may see at this one. Thanks for inviting me to the beach. Great to see you guys. Michael McFaul, the former ambassador to Russia, talking to us on the shores of Lac Le Mans here in Geneva. NPR will be here covering Wednesday's summit and all that comes with it. We've got

links in our episode notes where you can continue to follow our reporting. It's Consider This. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.