Biden-Putin summit was really just so Vlady awful

FOR 13 days in 1962 the world held its breath as US President John F Kennedy and his Russian counterpart Nikita Khrushchev neared the brink of nuclear war in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Addressing his nation, president Kennedy told Americans to prepare for nuclear war. ‘We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear… but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced,’ he said.

From the Kremlin, Khrushchev likewise warned Soviets that doomsday was nigh. But the two presidents’ outward braggadocio belied their inner terror. With mutual cataclysmic destruction assured, pragmatism superseded patriotism for the prescient two men, and on Day 13 they reached a detente and nuclear war was averted.

In the 1980s we had geo-political theatrics as president Ronald Reagan stood at the Berlin Wall and sent a resounding, deafening directive that reverberated inside the Kremlin, famously and forthrightly telling Mikhail Gorbachev to end hostilities, saying ‘Mr President, tear down this wall’.

In the 1990s it was Bill Clinton’s turn. Cold War tensions were almost arctic when he visited the Kremlin in the dying days of Boris Yeltsin’s Russian rule. Clinton wanted to meet Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, in person and what he saw was prophetic. Clinton enjoyed a cordial relationship with Yeltsin and on his last visit he looked hard into the eye of the ailing leader and said: ‘I’m a little bit concerned about this young man that you have turned over the presidency to. He doesn’t have democracy in his heart.’ He said later Yeltsin’s eyes silently agreed.

George W’s initial Putin encounter brought about an unlikely alliance. He was touched by a story Putin told him about how he held dear a cross his mother gave him which was the only memento to survive a fire at his dacha. A bamboozled Bush famously proclaimed he looked him in the eye to ‘get a sense of his soul’, concluding ‘he’s a man deeply committed to his country’. But, of course, Bush finally realised it was a ruse.

Barack Obama’s parting shot at Putin saw him grab the Russian autocrat by the arm and, in a room full of diplomats, whisper that the US knew of Russia’s meddling in the election. Obama meant business.

Then, of course, there was finally a warm front as Trump came to the Kremlin and, for four years, it was truly a match made in maniacal heaven.

So the meetings of US and Russian heads of state have historically lent themselves to drama on a global scale.

Until, that is, this week’s meeting in Geneva between Biden and Putin which was a summit snoozefest.

At the end of the meeting Biden emerged saying that progress had been made as the two were committed to working ‘towards shared goals’.

Quite what shared goals a dithering Democrat and a cunning communist share, the world can but wonder.