The US president Joe Biden met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin at a quaint lake side mansion, Villa Le Grange, in Geneva on June 16. If nothing, the summit meeting between the leaders of the two most powerful countries brings in existence the global order as it was in the cold war period.

Immediately following the Second World War, the world was cut up in two halves— the democratic free world and the world behind what Winston Churchill had described as the Iron Curtain.

They were competing with each other to prove the merits of a free democratic order vis-a-vis the closed Communist order behind the Iron Curtain. Their mutual suspicion and competition had spawned the nuclear war threat with arms stockpiling by the competing blocs. However, the armed preparedness had also drawn the red lines which were respected willy nilly.

In between, the cold war had ended and the Soviet Union had collapsed. With that the taut standoff dissolved and slowly but steadily Russia drifted into comparative insignificance. We had started talking in terms of a unipolar world.

This was eventually disputed with the arrival of Vladimir Putin as the absolute ruler of Russia. He asserted Russian supremacy and capabilities in ways which had created uncertainty and instability.

This was inversely articulated by the new US president Joe Biden when he said that all he wanted in US-Russia relations was “predictability and stability”. Biden-Putin summit in Geneva on Wednesday can be credit with bringing a modicum of these desirable attributes in the relations between the two. Thus history was created, of sorts.

At the same time, history never repeats itself. Notwithstanding the deep fissures and suspicions between Russia and America in today’s world, they are exactly not locked up in nuclear warheads competition. They are looking for ways of collaborating.

So the meeting between US and Russian leaders however was not exactly the setting of the cold war era of confrontation. Today, both were looking for a new medium for working with each other.

Joe Biden once said in course of his interaction with a chaotic press that the US and Russia were two most powerful countries. This summit and US recognition of Russia as the other power in the room at once cuts China down a notch or two in the global hierarchy.

China has been posing as the true peer of America and it was placing itself as the other super power. Now suddenly Russia sweeps back from behind and starts being an equal of USA. If at all, any progress in talks between the two leaders would be detested by none other than China, which had sought to forge a new special relationship with Russia.

Both the two leaders are highly experienced and well versed in handling taut situations of uneasy confrontation.

In a way, Russia has already got what it could have asked for from a summit with the US president. Since recently, US has been describing Russia as a regional power and not being in the same league as the United States. This had hit Russian president Vladimir Putin’s pride to no end. Now that he was meeting the US president on a platform of equality, Putin has achieved a good part of his strategy.

On the part of the American president, he had put the bar very low for outcomes from his meeting with the Russian president. All he was interested in was a “predictable” behaviour from Russia instead of unprovoked actions upsetting the established order.

Russian invasion of Ukraine, snatching away Crimea from Ukraine and making it part of Russia, wanton attacks in Syria, interference in US elections and scores of other actions by Russians state like internment of its opposition leader, Alexander Navalny, or repression of dissent with the state, were what had drawn American ire.

Both the leaders are practical enough to realise that summit cannot be expected to create an atmosphere of bon homie. Biden had earlier described Putin as a man without a soul. He had severely criticised Russian actions.

The expectations about outcomes are so low, and the US trust in Russia and its president is so shaky that summit will not follow what happens usually after such event.

There will be no hint press conference or a joint statement. While the Russian had insisted on this, the Americans had steadfastly opposed the idea and now the two leaders will hold separate press conferences after the summit.

As of now, the two summiteers have ended their first segment of talks lasting an hour and twenty minutes. They are supposed to start a larger interactions with their foreign ministers and other senior officials and experts in a larger meeting.

Whatever be the final outcomes of the summit, it is sure that the meeting would open up a lot of communication links between the two countries. This will at least make unnecessary escalation of tensions less likely. (IPA Service)