WASHINGTON, June 1. /TASS/. If it wants the forthcoming meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Joe Biden due in June to succeed, the US administration should abandon a policy based on the concept of a unipolar world, Professor of History Peter Kuznick, the Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, told TASS.
"Unlike the days in the early 21st century when the U.S. credibly claimed unipolarity and lorded its military, economic, and political hegemony over Russia and China, we now live in a multipolar world. The U.S. will have to recognize this and adapt to that new reality, if the meeting between Biden and Putin is to succeed," he said.
The expert believes Washington is getting aware of this.
[US Secretary of State Antony] Blinken’s changed tone in his recent meeting with Lavrov and the U.S.’s backing off on efforts to block Nord Stream 2 might indicate that the new reality is starting to sink in," he remarked. "Let’s hope for the sake of a planet desperately in need of statesmanship and vision that the Geneva summit will be another step in that direction."
Chinese card
Kuznick cautioned the US administration against attempts to use the summit to play on some rifts between Moscow and Beijing to its advantage, the way Washington preferred to do during the Cold War.
"Biden should not go into this meeting with the hopes of improving relations with Russia in order to drive a wedge between it and China. Such reverse Kissingerian strategy will not work this time," the expert said. "It is important to note that U.S. attempts to simultaneously confront and contain China and Russia have only driven the erstwhile adversaries closer together."
Kuznick stressed that at the moment when the date of the Russian-US summit was announced, a member of the Political Bureau of the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee, Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee Yang Jiechi, was in Moscow on a visit. Together with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev he held the 16th round of strategic stability consultations. Kuznick recalled that Yang was the diplomat who "berated" Antony Blinken at their "calamitous" March meeting in Anchorage.
Meeting in Geneva
It is expected that the Russian and US presidents will meet in Geneva on June 16. It will be the first Russian-US summit meeting since Putin and the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, met in Helsinki in July 2018. The Kremlin said that the Russian and US leaders would discuss the current state of bilateral relations and the outlook for their development, strategic stability, and crucial issues on the international agenda, including cooperation in the struggle against the pandemic and the settlement of regional conflicts. On May 30, Biden said that, among other things, he would bring up the issue of human rights.