June 6, 2014--Progressive Dinner With Vladimir Putin

High school is breaking out among the G-7.

They are meeting in Europe right now without including G-8--Russia. Because of their annexation of Crimea they, actually, Vladimir Putin, are in the doghouse.

No better evidence of how ridiculous things can get have been all the maneuvers to keep Putin and Barack Obama from running into each other. This is because Putin in fact has been in Brussels but meeting less officially with European counterparts and he, as well as Obama, were in Paris yesterday and will be in Normandy today, the 70th anniversary of the D Day landings.

But the funkiest machinations were those involving dinner and souper (supper) on Thursday (in a movement I will unpack that distinction) in Paris, hosted by French president Francois Holland.

"Dinner," at an undisclosed Parisian restaurant, will include Obama but not Putin while souper, which will follow dinner, will include Putin but not Obama.

So for Monsieur Hollande and other members of the G-7 or G-8 it will be like a progressive dinner (where courses are served at different locations) with the dinner part, I suppose, consisting of small plates while souper will be more robust.

Or the other way around.

I am not privy to the menus but they could be something like the following--

Always the good host, Hollande, wanting Obama to feel at home after being largely ignored at the G-7 talks, at dinner will order up a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza and a a couple of Big Baby double-cheesebergers.

"What, no Moules Marinieres?" Obama will ask. "Back home I eat Bug Babies all the time."

Dinner conversation with him will center around how, after tapping her phone, he can get Angela Merkel to return his calls.

At the Putin souper cabbage borscht will be served after which there will be skewers of lamb shashlyk.

"What, no Blanquette de Veau?" Putin, pouting, will ask. "In Moscow all I eat is shashlyk."

Souper conversation with him will likely include putting the final touches on France's sale of 1.2 billion-euros' worth of helicopter carriers to Russia in, sort-of, violation of the sanctions the West has imposed on Russia because of its intervention in Ukraine.

But as they say in Paris, C'est la vie.

March 5, 2014--Putin

About Vladimir Putin, George W. Bush famously said, "I looked the man in the eye . . . [and] was able to get a sense of his soul."

This was after their first meeting in Slovenia and things, to Bush, felt warm and fuzzy.

Subsequently, the new Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met with her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in March, 2009 in Switzerland, and to symbolize that she and Barack Obama were hoping for a "reset" in U.S.-Russian relations, gave him an gift-wrapped, actual reset button that she swiped from a Jacuzzi tub in Geneva.

On the other hand, there is Iran where Russia seems reluctant to endorse strong action in response to Iran's seeking to develop nuclear weapons and less than reluctance, intransigence in fact, when it comes to joining the West in intervening in the civil war in Syria, a client state of Russia's.

And now there is Ukraine.

It is feeling to some that the Cold War has resumed and people such as John McCain are sounding almost giddy about the possibility of dusting off the nukes.

If Barack Obama were to look in Putin's eyes, something he has clearly avoided doing, he would likely see the old KGB colonel residing there. he would peer into cold, emotionless, bitter killer's eyes. He might conclude that Putin is no partner for peace and stability but rather never stopped fighting the Cold War and couldn't care less about what the U.S or anyone in Europe might feel about his dictatorial, aggressive stance toward former coerced members of the Soviet Union.

But maybe, maybe Obama might see something else.

Back in 2008, the last time Putin's Russians intervened militarily in a former Soviet republic, in Georgia, Russia lived in a very different world. They were not then, as now, a fully integrated part of the global, especially Western economy.

There is lots of talk right now that European leaders will not act that tough when if comes to imposing economic sanctions because they are so dependent on Russian energy resources--mainly natural gas--with much of that coming west through pipelines that crisscross Ukraine.

But less discussed is the reaction within Russia to all of this saber rattling by another countervailing force--that of the hundreds of Russian plutocrat billionaires. They have a huge stack in seeing international market stability. They can't be happy seeing their wealth affected by the collapsing ruble and looming sanctions on their far-reaching operations and investments. Do not underestimate their political power. Particularly if the growing crisis further threatens their ill-gotten gains.

Then there is, my own speculation--Putin not wanting to spend his remaining years isolated in Russia, rejected by other members of the G-8. With his new girlfriend he appears to enjoy being out and gadding about, especially welcomed in places such as France where the food is so much better that Russian stuffed cabbage.

August 8, 2013--Boys . . .

Barack Obama's decision to cancel his summit meeting scheduled for September with Vladimir Putin is a sad example of how even silly emotions can get in the way of acting wisely.

Obama is upset that the Russians refused to extradite Edward Snowdon, the Booz Allen contract worker who downloaded and distributed thousands of documents that reveal how the NSA and CIA extra-legally gather data about virtually all of us and many citizens of other countries as part of the war on terrorism.

Yes, Putin should have found a way to fudge things, including swallowing some of his own pride and sense of manhood and turned him over to American authorities. But he is so angry that the Soviet Union lost the Cold War (he was a KGB spy during those years) and is no longer a true superpower, that he is emotionally primed to behave like a child with a temper tantrum whenever an American president wants to talk about making mutually-advantageos deals. And in Obama, in that regard, he has found his macho-challeneged match.

Just look at the mopey pictures of the two of them at the recent G-8 summit. This is no way for grown men to act. Particularly seemingly grown men who in many ways hold the fate of the world in their hands.

These leaders do not have to like each other, but they need to talk and talk and talk with each other to see if through persistence, if nothing else, they can agree about a few things.

Things such as nuclear arms limitation. Though this is not a sexy subject at the moment, we should remind ourselves that the U.S. and Russia still have thousands of warheads that are relics of the Cold War that are hardly needed in today's world unless Putin and Obama, in their mutual petulance, stumble into restarting it.

Then, there is Syria. Russia is Bashar al-Aasad's main backer, supplying sophisticated arms to prop up his genocidal regime as a way of Russia maintaining its influence in the region.

And Russia, an ally of Iran's, is well-positioned to help broker a deal to get them to back away from their self-destructive nuclear weapons program. Again, currently refusing to do so, Putin does not want to appear to be an instrument or lap dog of the West (particularly of the U.S.) to friends and foes in that neighborhood.

Big-power diplomacy shouldn't be personal. In this case, it should be about what is in the best interest of each of our countries. Presidents Obama and Putin should take a step back, turn off the frowns and negative body language, and get to work as if they were adults.