United States of America eSeries: Joe Biden is giving Vladimir Putin a carrot.

Joe Biden is giving Vladimir Putin a carrot.

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May 26, 2021

Stephen Collinson and Caitlin Hu

'Moral and intellectual decline'

Joe Biden is giving Vladimir Putin a carrot.

One theory about Russia's post-Cold War resentment of the US is that the perceived American victor showed too little respect to the vanquished. As a result, a centerpiece of Putin's long political project has been to restore Moscow's prestige -- by tarnishing Washington's.

News that Biden has offered -- and Russia has accepted -- a summit in Geneva that will draw comparisons between iconic superpower meetings of the past is therefore symbolically and diplomatically important.

Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, US President Dwight Eisenhower, French Foreign Minister Edgar Faure, and UK Prime Minister Anthony Eden at the historic Geneva Summit in 1955.

In 1955, US President Dwight Eisenhower met the leaders of France, the UK and the Soviet Union in the Swiss city, in a meeting designed to defuse tensions that threatened to pitch the world back into war. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev forged a personal relationship in Geneva that was one of the first steps in ending the Cold War.

Gorbachev and Reagan in Geneva in 1985.

The picture beamed back to Moscow this June will show the President of the United States treating the President of Russia as an equal. In itself, that's a win for Putin and will cause some Americans to question Biden's game. After all, Russia meddled in the last two elections to help Donald Trump, is suppressing its democratic opposition, moving closer to American foe China, and is accused of cyber hacks against the US government and economy.

Trump supporters might complain of double standards — given past critical coverage of the ex-President's fawning over Putin. But there's also little chance this time Biden will emulate his predecessor by throwing US intelligence agencies under the bus to please the former KGB colonel.

While cozying up to Russia rarely works, neither does humiliation. Former President Barack Obama tried to reset relations with Moscow, but came away deeply frustrated. And after Putin annexed Crimea, Obama witheringly dismissed a nation with a proud cultural and political heritage as a "regional power" acting out of "weakness."

The new Geneva summit is unlikely to be friendly. Biden has strong domestic and geopolitical incentives to deliver a face-to-face tongue lashing. And big differences on cyber security, arms control and territorial disputes in Eastern Europe hang overhead. But given the tension in the current estrangement, Biden's gamble is probably worth a try.

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And Trump invoked presidential immunity against insurrection claims.

'A sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline'

Not even the Holocaust can escape the outrage-driven politics of Washington, which is still under Trump's poisoning influence.

It all started when the former President's favorite conspiracy theorist, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, compared the requirement to wear masks in a pandemic to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. It took five days for Republican House leaders to condemn Greene's remarks; once they did, they used their statements to also accuse Democrats of being anti-Semitic for criticizing Israel's tactics in the recent battle with Hamas.

Greene's willingness to speak so casually of the Holocaust is the latest example of a trend of ill-informed historical analogizing, that seeks to compare modern day events to history's most painful chapters. Sometimes during the Trump administration, activists on the left compared statements or actions by the former President with those of Hitler. While his presidency did end in a riot of lawlessness and anti-democratic violence, nothing Trump did came anywhere near the systematic inhumanity of the Nazis. Republican claims today that Democratic social safety net plans equate to the totalitarian oppression of leftist Central American tyrants are similarly historically ignorant and obscure the suffering of people targeted by oppressive regimes abroad.

Given Greene's support from Trump and her popularity with the conservative media, it seems unlikely that her latest outrageous comment will lead to serious sanctions like a censure motion sponsored by party leaders or even expulsion from the House Republican conference. Tolerance for her behavior is indicative of the party's turn against truth and fact and the strong sense of victimhood that runs deep in Trumpism.

Or as the trustees of the Museum at Auschwitz put it: "The instrumentalization of the tragedy of Jews who suffered, were humiliated, marked with a yellow star, isolated in ghettos & murdered during the Holocaust, in a debate on different systems that aim at protecting public health is a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline."

'Rebuilding a relationship to the Palestinian authority and with the Palestinian people'

On a visit to Ramallah on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration will reopen the US consulate in Jerusalem and provide $5.5 million in immediate disaster assistance to Gaza, as well as additional new assistance to the Palestinian people, CNN's Kylie Atwood and Michael Conte report.

The consulate had been closed during the Trump administration and serves as the primary diplomatic post for US-Palestinian relations. "I am here to underscore the commitment of the US to rebuilding a relationship to the Palestinian authority and with the Palestinian people," Blinken said, after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Thanks for reading.

On Wednesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit Jordan. Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov holds talks with his Yemeni counterpart Ahmed Bin Mubarak in Sochi. Controversial Syrian presidential elections will be held in different parts of the war-torn country.