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Biden meeting marks rare trip out of ‘bunker’ for Covid-cautious Putin
For more than a year, people who have wanted to get within breathing distance of Vladimir Putin have performed a ritual, two-week quarantine in Russian hotels and sanatoriums to protect the 68-year-old president from falling ill with coronavirus.Since March 2020, powerful business people, regional governors, his pilots and medical staff, volunteers at an economic conference, and even second world war veterans have shut themselves away to meet the Kremlin leader or even stand in his general vicinity.So it will be a rare sit-down when Putin jets into Geneva to meet Joe Biden, who has been on a whirlwind tour through Europe, attending the G7 summit in Cornwall and then flying to Brussels for meetings with EU and Nato leaders before travelling to Switzerland. Putin has not publicly travelled abroad since the outbreak of coronavirus in early 2020, hosting foreign leaders in Moscow or Sochi and holding most of his meetings with government ministers and regional governors over videoconference.Critics have chided Putin for sheltering in a “bunker” during the coronavirus outbreak, reportedly protected by medical tunnels of dubious efficacy that sprayed visitors with a cloud of disinfectant.The Proekt investigative website later claimed the Kremlin had built an identical windowless office in Sochi, a resort city on the Black Sea, where Putin was reportedly holding meetings while he was believed to be in Moscow.All that was expected to end after Putin was given his first Sputnik vaccine dose in March, a procedure that was not documented on camera but that the Kremlin said the media would “have to take our word for it”.But the two-week quarantine period has remained for many visitors, including the US television crew who met Putin for an interview before the summit.“Appreciate the extra time, Mr President,” said Keir Simmons, an NBC correspondent. “The team has been in quarantine for almost two weeks, so this interview is very important to us.” Russian state television journalists have faced similar quarantine measures.The international coronavirus response will probably take a back seat in Wednesday’s discussions to pressing issues of strategic stability, as the US and Russia try to regulate their strained, hostile relationship.But they come as coronavirus has in effect halted normal business and tourism travel between Russia and the US, a result of Russia’s coronavirus travel restrictions and forced staff reductions at US embassies that make it difficult for Russians to get visas to the US.Vaccines administered in the two countries also remain mutually unrecognised by medical authorities, portending a political battle for their approval.Slow vaccination rates in Russia have led to “explosive growth in cases”, according to the Moscow mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, leading him to declare a week-long business holiday.Before the trip for the summit, Putin’s spokesperson Dmitri Peskov told journalists he was not vaccinated because he still had a high antibody count from when he had coronavirus last year.“All safety precautions have been taken extremely seriously,” said Yuri Ushakov, a Putin aide. “From the standpoint of the presidents’ health, both the Americans and we have taken a very serious approach toward this. There have been not that many in-person contacts lately, and so the special attention attached to these issues is natural.” More
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Biden says Putin a 'worthy adversary' ahead of talks – video
Joe Biden said meeting with Vladimir Putin would be ‘critical’ and that he would offer to cooperate on areas of common interest if the Kremlin so choses. Biden warned that if Russia chose not to cooperate in areas like cybersecurity ‘then we will respond’. The US president also characterised Putin as ‘bright’, ‘tough’ and ‘a worthy adversary’. When questioned by reporters, Biden said the potential death of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, now jailed in Russia, would be a tragedy and would hurt Russian relations with the rest of the world and with the United States. The two men are meeting in Geneva on 16 June for the first time as presidents
Biden says US-Russia relations at low point but ‘we’re not looking for conflict’
Vladimir Putin refuses to guarantee Navalny will survive prison
Joe Biden to use Nato summit to atone for damage of Trump years More - in US Politics
Nato summit: leaders declare China presents security risk
Nato leaders have declared China presents a security risk at their annual summit in Brussels, the first time the traditionally Russia-focused military alliance has asserted it needs to respond to Beijing’s growing power.The final communique, signed off by leaders of the 30-member alliance at the urging of the new US administration, said China’s “stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order”.After the summit, Joe Biden said that the US had a “sacred commitment” to come to the defence of its Nato allies in an effort to soothe residual nervousness in the wake of Donald Trump’s hostility. Biden said that his fellow leaders at the summit knew most Americans were committed to democracy and that the US was a “decent, honourable nation”.On the question of potential Ukrainian membership of Nato, Biden said the Russian occupation of Crimea would not be an impediment, but that Ukraine still had work to do on corruption before it could join a membership action plan.“It depends on whether they meet the criteria. The fact is, they still have to clean up corruption,” Biden said.The Nato leaders declared their concern about China’s “coercive policies” – an apparent reference to the repression of the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang – the expansion of its nuclear arsenal and its “frequent lack of transparency and use of disinformation”.The language, notably stronger than the China remarks contained in the G7 statement agreed on Sunday, follows lobbying and pressure by the Biden administration, seeking to create a counterweight of democratic nations in response to Beijing’s growing economic and military might.However, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, insisted China was “not an adversary”, saying instead the emerging strategy was to address “the challenges” posed by Beijing, which will “soon be the biggest economy in the world” and “already has the second-largest defence budget, the biggest navy”.At the beginning of the summit, Biden said there was a growing recognition that Nato faced new challenges. “We have Russia, which is acting in a way that is not consistent with what we had hoped, and we have China.”Nato, founded in 1949 at the start of the cold war, was created to respond to the Soviet Union and more recently Russia, while Beijing rarely posed a serious security concern for its members.China had never previously been mentioned in a Nato summit declaration, apart from a brief reference in 2019 to the “opportunities and challenges” the country posed for members of the western alliance – a time when Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, was president.On Sunday night, Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, promised Nato would increase its focus on Beijing, saying that China “will feature in the communique in a more robust way than we’ve ever seen before”.Other countries have highlighted the importance of striking a balance. Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, said as he arrived at the gathering: “I think when it comes to China, I don’t think anybody around the table today wants to descend into a new cold war.”G7 leaders criticised Beijing over human rights in its Xinjiang region, called for Hong Kong to keep a high degree of autonomy and demanded a full investigation of the origins of the coronavirus in China.China’s embassy in London said such mentions of Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan distorted the facts and exposed the “sinister intentions of a few countries such as the United States”. It added: “China’s reputation must not be slandered.”Stoltenberg also said the alliance’s relationship with Russia was at “its lowest point since the end of the cold war”. He blamed Russia’s “aggressive actions” for the deterioration in relations at the start of a one-day summit attended by Biden for the first time since he took office.Alliance members had hoped for a strong statement of support for Nato from Biden after several years in which Donald Trump dominated the summits, threatening to pull out of Nato in 2018 and storming home early in 2019.“Nato is critically important for US interests in and of itself,” Biden said as he met Stoltenberg. The president described Nato’s article 5, under which an armed attack against one member is deemed an attack against them all, as “a sacred obligation”.He added: “I want Nato to know America is there.”The allies denounced Moscow’s “hybrid actions”, “widespread disinformation campaigns”, “malicious cyber activities”, and election interference directed against Nato members. “Until Russia demonstrates compliance with international law and its international obligations and responsibilities, there can be no return to ‘business as usual’,” the statement said. “We will continue to respond to the deteriorating security environment by enhancing our deterrence and defence posture.”Alliance members agreed a new cybersecurity strategy in response, and will for the first time help each other out in the case of “cyber-attacks of significance”, mirroring Nato’s obligation of collective defence in the traditional military sphere, enshrined in article 5. More
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Apple Says It Turned Over Data on Donald McGahn in 2018
The company notified Donald F. McGahn II last month that it had been subpoenaed for his account information three years ago.WASHINGTON — The Justice Department subpoenaed Apple for information in February 2018 about an account that belonged to Donald F. McGahn II, President Donald J. Trump’s White House counsel at the time, and barred the company from telling him about it, according to two people briefed on the matter.Apple told Mr. McGahn about the subpoena last month, said one of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter. Mr. McGahn’s wife also received a similar notice from Apple, the person said.It is not clear what F.B.I. agents were investigating, whether Mr. McGahn was their specific focus or whether he was swept up in a larger net because he had communicated with someone who was under scrutiny. As the top lawyer for the 2016 Trump campaign and then the White House counsel, Mr. McGahn was in contact with numerous people who may have drawn attention either as part of the Russia investigation or a later leak inquiry.Still, the disclosure that agents had collected data of a sitting White House counsel, which they kept secret for years, is extraordinary.And it comes amid a political backlash after revelations that the Trump administration secretly seized the personal data of reporters and Democrats in Congress from phone and tech companies while investigating leaks.Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill on Sunday ratcheted up pressure on the Justice Department and former officials to provide a fuller accounting of events. They called on the head of the Justice Department’s national security division, John C. Demers, and the former deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to testify before Congress along with the former attorneys general Jeff Sessions and William P. Barr.A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment, as did a lawyer for Mr. McGahn. An Apple representative did not respond to a request for comment.Apple told Mr. McGahn that it had complied with the subpoena in a timely fashion but declined to tell him what it had provided the government, according to a person briefed on the matter. Under Justice Department policy, gag orders for subpoenas may be renewed for up to a year at a time, suggesting that prosecutors went to court several times to prevent Apple from notifying the McGahns earlier.In investigations, agents sometimes compile a large list of phone numbers and email addresses that were in contact with a subject, and seek to identify all those people by using subpoenas to communications companies for any account information like names, computer addresses and credit card numbers associated with them.Apple told the McGahns that it had received the subpoena on Feb. 23, 2018, according to a person briefed on the matter.Under federal law, prosecutors generally need to obtain permission from a federal judge in order to compel a company like Apple to delay notifying people that their personal information has been subpoenaed, said Paul M. Rosen, a former federal prosecutor and a partner at Crowell and Moring.“There is a lot here we don’t know, including the facts and circumstances surrounding the request for the delay and what was presented to the judge,” Mr. Rosen said. But, he added, prosecutors typically need to prove that either notifying the person “would endanger someone’s safety, risk the destruction of evidence or intimidation of witnesses, or seriously jeopardize an investigation.”The subpoena was issued by a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, the other person familiar with the matter said.It is not clear why prosecutors obtained the subpoena. But several notable developments were unfolding around that time.The federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia was the center of one part of the Russia inquiry led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, that focused on Paul Manafort, a former chairman of the 2016 Trump presidential campaign.Because Mr. McGahn had been the top lawyer for the Trump campaign in 2016, it is possible that at some earlier point he had been among those in contact with someone whose account the Mueller team was scrutinizing in early 2018.Notably, Mr. Manafort had been hit with new fraud charges unsealed in the Eastern District of Virginia the day before the subpoena. Subsequent developments revealed that Mr. Mueller’s investigators were closely scrutinizing some of his communications accounts in the following days.On the other hand, the Manafort case was largely handled in the District of Columbia, where he faced separate charges. Still, the Mueller team was also working with federal prosecutors in Virginia during that period on an unregistered foreign agent case related to Turkey and a business partner of Michael T. Flynn’s, Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser who had also advised him during the 2016 campaign.It was also around that time that Mr. McGahn was involved in another matter related to the Russia investigation, one that included a leak.In late January 2018, The New York Times reported, based on confidential sourcing, that Mr. Trump had ordered Mr. McGahn the previous June to have the Justice Department remove Mr. Mueller, but Mr. McGahn had refused to do so and threatened to resign. The Washington Post confirmed that account soon after in a follow-up article.The Mueller report — and Mr. McGahn in private testimony before the House Judiciary Committee this month — described Mr. Trump’s anger at Mr. McGahn after the Times article and how he had tried to persuade Mr. McGahn to make a statement falsely denying it. Mr. Trump told aides that Mr. McGahn was a “liar” and a “leaker,” according to former Trump administration officials. In his testimony, Mr. McGahn said that he had been a source for The Post’s follow-up to clarify a nuance — to whom he had conveyed his intentions to resign — but he had not been a source for the original Times article.There are reasons to doubt that Mr. McGahn was the target of any Justice Department leak investigation stemming from that episode, however. Information about Mr. Trump’s orders to dismiss Mr. Mueller, for example, would not appear to be a classified national-security secret of the sort that it can be a crime to disclose.Yet another roughly concurrent event was a Justice Department investigation into unauthorized disclosures of information about the Russia inquiry. As part of that investigation, prosecutors sent Apple a subpoena on Feb. 6, 2018, for data on congressional staff members, their families and at least two members of Congress. Apple only recently informed those targeted because it had been prohibited from disclosing the subpoena at the time.Among those whose data was seized were two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: Representatives Eric Swalwell and Adam B. Schiff, both of California. Mr. Schiff, a sharp political adversary of Mr. Trump, is now the panel’s chairman. The Times first reported on that subpoena last week.Many questions remain unanswered about the events leading up to the subpoenas, including how high they were authorized in the Trump Justice Department and whether investigators anticipated or hoped that they were going to sweep in data on the politically prominent lawmakers. The subpoena sought data on 109 email addresses and phone numbers.In that case, the leak investigation appeared to have been primarily focused on Michael Bahar, then a staff member on the House Intelligence Committee. People close to Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein, the top two Justice Department officials at the time, have said that neither knew that prosecutors had sought data about the accounts of lawmakers for that investigation.It remains unclear whether agents were pursuing a theory that Mr. Bahar had leaked on his own or whether they suspected him of talking to reporters with the approval of lawmakers. Either way, it appears they were unable to prove their suspicions that he was the source of any unauthorized disclosures; the case has been closed, and no charges were brought.Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday called for Mr. Barr, Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein to testify before Congress about the subpoenas. She said that what the Justice Department did under Mr. Trump went “even beyond Richard Nixon” but declined to say whether a congressional committee would compel their testimony.“Let’s hope they will want to honor the rule of law,” she said. “The Justice Department has been rogue under President Trump.”Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, called for anyone potentially involved in the subpoenas, including Mr. Demers, to testify before Congress. “The sins of the Trump administration just continue to pile up,” he said at a news conference in New York.“This was nothing less than a gross abuse of power, an assault on the separation of powers,” Mr. Schumer said, warning that if the men would not testify, lawmakers would subpoena them.He also called on Senate Republicans to join Democrats in voting for congressional subpoenas to compel testimony.On CBS, Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, called the allegations “serious” but said only that she was backing an investigation into the matter by the Justice Department’s independent inspector general that was announced on Friday.Katie Benner More
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Vladimir Putin says Biden ‘radically different’ after impulsive Trump
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has said US-Russia relations are at their lowest point in years, in an interview before his meeting with the US president, Joe Biden, next week.Putin and Biden will meet in Geneva on Wednesday. The White House has said Biden will bring up ransomware attacks emanating from Russia, Moscow’s aggression against Ukraine, the jailing of dissidents and other issues that have irritated the relationship.“We have a bilateral relationship that has deteriorated to its lowest point in recent years,” Putin said, according to an NBC translation of excerpts of an interview broadcast on Friday.Putin characterised the former US president Donald Trump as “an extraordinary individual, talented individual”, but impulsive, and said Biden, as a career politician, was “radically different” from the “colourful” Trump.“It is my great hope that, yes, there are some advantages, some disadvantages, but there will not be any impulse-based movements on behalf of the sitting US president,” he said, according to a translation by NBC News.Putin has openly admitted that in the 2016 vote he supported Trump, who voiced admiration for the Russian leader and notoriously at their first summit appeared to accept his denials of election interference.Biden, at the start of an eight-day visit to Europe this week, said: “We’re not seeking conflict with Russia.“We want a stable and predictable relationship … but I’ve been clear: the United States will respond in a robust and meaningful way if the Russian government engages in harmful activities.”Putin was asked about several Russian dissidents whose deaths have been blamed on Moscow, including the ex-KGB spy Alexander Litvinenko who was poisoned in 2006. Putin dismissed the question and said some of those responsible for the deaths had gone to prison.Asked about Biden calling him a killer in an interview in March, Putin said he had heard dozens of such accusations. “This is not something I worry about in the least,” Putin said, dismissing it as part of “macho behaviour” common in Hollywood.Such discourse “is part of US political culture where it’s considered normal. By the way, not here, it is not considered normal here,” he said.On the issue of recent ransomware attacks that the United States has traced to Russia, Putin denied any knowledge of the hackings and called on Biden to reach an agreement with him on cyberspace, NBC News said.Putin also dismissed a report in the Washington Post this week that Russia was preparing to supply Iran with an advanced satellite that would enable it to track potential military targets across the Middle East. “It’s just fake news. At the very least I don’t know anything about this kind of thing,” Putin said, according to NBC News. “It’s just nonsense, garbage.” More
They Are Coming for Us
Quoting its favorite source for everything we need to know about the world, The New York Times clarifies the burning question of UFOs: “American intelligence officials have found no evidence that aerial phenomena witnessed by Navy pilots in recent years are alien spacecraft.” This is The Times’ way of telling its readers that there ain’t much there.
The fact that The Times cites “intelligence officials” is unfortunate. Intelligence officials are trained in the dual skills of obscuring the truth and fabricating alternative truth. That is in essence the purpose of intelligence. Its agents are also trained to exploit the media, and The New York Times in particular, to spread their message. The trusting relationship between The Times and the intelligence community is what enables the newspaper to be the first to give credible shape to whatever stories the intelligence community wants the public to believe.
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The Times journalists, Julian Barnes and Helene Cooper, inform us that “a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology.” The Times, as expected, takes that statement at face value. “That determination would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots who reported seeing unexplained aircraft might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret,” Barnes and Cooper write.
Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Unexplained aircraft:
The opposite of explained aircraft. Flying objects that for the past 80 years have been seen by Americans and no one else.
Contextual Note
CNN gets straight to the point when, quoting “one of its sources,” it explains that “US officials also cannot rule out the possibility that these flying objects were aircraft belonging to American adversaries, namely Russia and China.” The Times less dramatically reports that there is simply “worry among intelligence and military officials that China or Russia could be experimenting with hypersonic technology.” Of course, they “could be” doing lots of other things.
MSNBC’s Chuck Todd requisitioned Barack Obama’s former CIA director, Leon Panetta, to offer some clarity on the issue. Todd asked him, “Is it your assumption that it is Russia or China testing some crazy technology that we somehow don’t have, or are we sort of over-assuming the abilities of China and Russia and that the only other explanation is that if it is not us ourselves then it is something otherworldly?”
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This confused question should surprise no one. A significant part of Todd’s job at MSNBC is to focus the public’s fear on Russia and China. Panetta stepped willingly into his role of respected authority. He quite reasonably suggested that the most likely place to look would be in the direction of drone technology, which has become far more sophisticated than most people imagine. As expected, Panetta cited Russia and China, but few commentators have noticed that he didn’t stop. “I believe a lot of this stuff probably could be countries like Russia, like China, like others, who are you know using now drones, using the kind of sophisticated weaponry that could very well be involved in a lot of these sightings,” he said.
Who could the “others” be that Panetta mentions after the obligatory Russia and China? This could produce an interesting guessing game. Could it be Cuba, a nation that once threatened the US with Soviet missiles? Or Mexico? But it seems to have its hands full with the war on the drug cartels. India, which has begun to assert itself as an active player in space? What about the Europeans, especially France and the UK? As part of NATO, they wouldn’t dare. The list could go on, but when every other nation besides Russia and China is eliminated, only one remains: the United States.
On the CIA’s “Innovation and Tech” website, the agency proudly announces its deep engagement in technology. The spy agency’s research is not directly connected to what the Pentagon does and certainly not shared with it at anything but the highest strategic level. The website proudly announces: “At CIA, we’ve pioneered bold and innovative technologies for decades.” It invites the visitor to appreciate its work. “Learn how our cutting edge solutions have helped solve America’s biggest intelligence challenges.”
What the site describes is impressive. This should lead any discerning visitor to speculate about what it doesn’t describe. A former high-level CIA operative once explained to us in a private conversation that when the CIA technology team briefed insiders, even at his level, about research on drone technology, they were only allowed to show technology from the past, which was already mind-blowing. In other words, it is unlikely that if the unusual behavior of an unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAP) observed by a Navy pilot happened to be a CIA invention, that pilot would have any clue to what it might be. And in no case would they be briefed afterwards on the experience. The CIA is specialized in keeping all kinds of things “unidentified.”
Does this mean that The New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and the others are unaware of the possibility that it could be “our guys” who are up to these visual tricks? Both The Times and Chuck Todd evoke the possibility, only to dismiss it with no further discussion. That alone should raise questions in the public’s mind.
When The Times’ journalists write that “a vast majority of more than 120 incidents over the past two decades did not originate from any American military or other advanced U.S. government technology,” and then state that that “would appear to eliminate the possibility that Navy pilots … might have encountered programs the government meant to keep secret,” they are admitting two things while creating the opposite impression. By evoking a “vast majority,” they admit that a significant minority actually did originate with US technology. The journalists never bother exploring that paradox. And when, in a Times article sourced from the intelligence community, a sentence begins with “would appear to eliminate the possibility,” the discerning reader should see the verb “would appear” as a signal that the possibility in fact exists.
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.custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}Panetta may have inadvertently revealed the truth to Todd, who, as an inquiring journalist, could have asked the former CIA chief which “others” he had in mind. But the media have a mission to reduce the question to exactly two possible explanations of the UAPs: extra-terrestrial invaders, on the one hand, or one of the two officially recognized adversaries of the US, Russia or China (or both), on the other.
The further implication is that because serious scientists have pretty much dismissed the thesis of intelligent, technologically advanced extra-terrestrial visitors, there is one logical conclusion: The US needs to beef up its military technology in a new arms race justified by what the media have been promoting for at least five years: a new cold war. Donald Trump provided the nation with a new branch of the military, the Space Force. It’s time for President Joe Biden to make it work.
Historical Note
With his novel, “War of the Worlds,” the British author H.G. Wells launched a new genre of fiction involving space travel. The serialized novel was later turned into several Hollywood films and a famous radio broadcast by Orson Welles in 1938. Advances in aerial, military and rocket technology that came to prominence during the Second World War turned extra-terrestrial science fiction into a genre that quickly displaced the Western in Hollywood’s culture. Martians vs. earthlings came to replace cowboys vs. Indians.
Unsurprisingly, Wells set his story in England. Equally unsurprisingly, Hollywood’s extra-terrestrial dramas always take place in the US. Those movies may have tipped off the non-fictional extra-terrestrials about where to guide their crafts, though no one has bothered to explain how they managed to access the films.
On “60 Minutes,” former US Navy pilot Ryan Graves claimed that pilots training off the Atlantic coast were seeing UAPs regularly: “Every day for at least a couple years.” The fact that the tell-tale sightings all seem to occur in or near the US tells us that either the intergalactic visitors are fascinated by US culture or there is some magnetic force that draws them to North America. Unless, of course, the technology itself, which may be the drones Leon Panetta mentions or nothing more than optical illusions, was made in America.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
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Biden Aims to Bolster U.S. Alliances in Europe, but Challenges Loom
The good will President Biden brings on his first trip abroad papers over lingering doubts about U.S. reliability and the cost that Europe will be expected to pay.WASHINGTON — It should not be that hard to be an American leader visiting Europe for the first time after President Donald J. Trump.But President Biden will face his own challenges when he departs on Wednesday, especially as the United States confronts a disruptive Russia and a rising China while trying to reassemble and rally the shaken Western alliance as it emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.Mr. Biden, who will arrive for a series of summit meetings buoyed by a successful vaccination program and a rebounding economy, will spend the next week making the case that America is back and ready to lead the West anew in what he calls an existential collision between democracies and autocracies.On the agenda are meetings in Britain with leaders of the Group of 7 nations, followed by visits to NATO and the European Union. On Mr. Biden’s final day, in Geneva, he will hold his first meeting as president with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.Mr. Biden’s overarching task is to deliver the diplomatic serenity that eluded such gatherings during four years in which Mr. Trump scorched longstanding relationships with close allies, threatened to pull out of NATO and embraced Mr. Putin and other autocrats, admiring their strength.But the good will Mr. Biden brings simply by not being Mr. Trump papers over lingering doubts about his durability, American reliability and the cost that Europe will be expected to pay. At 78, is Mr. Biden the last gasp of an old-style, internationalist foreign policy? Will Europe bear the cost of what increasingly looks like a new Cold War with Russia? Is it being asked to sign up for a China containment policy? And will Mr. Biden deliver on climate?Those questions will loom as he deals with disagreements over trade, new restrictions on investing in and buying from China and his ever-evolving stance on a natural gas pipeline that will route directly from Russia to Europe, bypassing Ukraine.Throughout, Mr. Biden will face European leaders who are wary of the United States in a way they have not been since 1945 and are wondering where it is headed.“They have seen the state of the Republican Party,” said Barry Pavel, the director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at The Atlantic Council. “They’ve seen Jan. 6. They know you could have another president in 2024.”White House officials say that stable American diplomacy is back for good, but of course they cannot offer any guarantees after January 2025. European officials are following the raging political arguments in the United States, and they note that Mr. Trump’s grip on his party is hardly weakening.Days before Mr. Biden’s departure, Republicans in Congress rejected the creation of a bipartisan commission to examine the Capitol riot. Republican lawmakers embrace Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Democrats are faltering in their efforts to pass sweeping legislation to counter Republican attacks on voting rights at the state level.Through it all, Mr. Trump keeps hinting at a political comeback in four years. “There’s an anxiety about American politics,” said Ian Lesser, a vice president at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “Simply, what is going to happen in the midterm elections? Whether Trumpism will prove more durable than Mr. Trump. What is coming next in American politics?”If the future of the United States is the long-term concern, how to manage a disruptive Russia is the immediate agenda. No part of the trip will be more charged than a daylong meeting with Mr. Putin.Mr. Biden called for the meeting — the first since Mr. Trump embraced Mr. Putin’s denials of election interference at a summit in Helsinki, Finland, three years ago — despite warnings from human rights activists that doing so would strengthen and embolden the Russian leader. Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser, has noted that American presidents met with their Soviet counterparts throughout the Cold War, and their Russian successors afterward. But on Monday, he said Mr. Biden would warn Mr. Putin directly that without a change in behavior, “there will be responses.”Yet veterans of the struggle between Washington and Moscow say disruption is Mr. Putin’s true superpower.President Donald J. Trump embraced the denials of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Helsinki, Finland, in 2018.Doug Mills/The New York Times“Putin doesn’t necessarily want a more stable or predictable relationship,” said Alexander Vershbow, who was an ambassador to Russia under President George W. Bush. “The best case one can hope for is that the two leaders will argue about a lot of things but continue the dialogue.”White House officials say the president has no intention of trying to reset the relationship with Russia. Having called Mr. Putin a “killer” this year, Mr. Biden is cleareyed about his adversary, they said: He regards Mr. Putin more as a hardened mafia boss, ordering hits with the country’s supply of nerve agents, than a national leader.But Mr. Biden is determined to put guardrails on the relationship, seeing out some measure of cooperation, starting with the future of their nuclear arsenals.But there is a dawning awareness in Europe that while Mr. Putin cherishes his growing arsenal, Russia’s nuclear ability is a strategic remnant of an era of superpower conflict. In what Mr. Putin recently called a new Cold War with the United States, the weapons of choice are cyberweapons, ransomware wielded by gangs operating from Russian territory and the ability to shake neighbors like Ukraine by massing troops on the border.Mr. Biden will embrace NATO and Article V of its charter, the section that commits every member of the alliance to consider an armed attack on one as an armed attack on all. But it is less clear what constitutes an armed attack in the modern age: a cyberstrike like the SolarWinds hacking that infiltrated corporate and government networks? The movement of intermediate-range missiles and Russian troops to the border of Ukraine, which is not a NATO member?Mr. Biden’s associates say the key is for him to make clear that he has seen Mr. Putin’s bravado before and that it does not faze him.“Joe Biden is not Donald Trump,” said Thomas E. Donilon, who was a national security adviser to President Barack Obama and whose wife and brother are key aides to Mr. Biden. “You’re not going to have this inexplicable reluctance of a U.S. president to criticize a Russian president who is leading a country that is actively hostile to the United States in so many areas. You won’t have that.”When Mr. Biden defines the current struggle as “a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies,” though, he appears to be worrying more about China’s appeal as a trading partner and source of technology than Russia’s disruptions. And while Europeans largely do not see China as the kind of rising technological, ideological and military threat that Washington does, it is an argument Mr. Biden is beginning to win.The British are deploying the largest fleet of its Navy warships to the Pacific since the Falklands War, nearly 40 years ago. The idea is to re-establish at least a visiting presence in a region that once was part of its empire, with stops in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand. But at the same time, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has signed on to the effort by Washington — begun by Mr. Trump and accelerated by Mr. Biden — to assure that Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications company, does not win new contracts to install 5G cellular networks in Britain.Some in Europe are following suit, but Mr. Biden’s aides said they felt blindsided last year when the European Union announced an investment agreement with China days before Mr. Biden’s inauguration. It was a reflection of fears that if the continent got sucked into the U.S.-China rivalry, European companies would bear the brunt, starting with the luxury auto industry in Germany.The future of the agreement is unclear, but Mr. Biden is going the other way: Last week he signed an executive order banning Americans from investing in Chinese companies that are linked to the country’s military or ones that sell surveillance technology used to repress dissent or religious minorities, both inside and outside China. But to be effective, the allies would have to join; so far, few have expressed enthusiasm for the effort.Mr. Biden may be able to win over skeptics with his embrace of the goal of combating climate change, even though he will run into questions about whether he is doing enough.Four years ago, at Mr. Trump’s first G7 meeting, six world leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris climate accord while the United States declared it was “not in a position to join the consensus.”Protesters outside the White House in 2017 as Mr. Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.Stephen Crowley/The New York TimesMr. Biden is reversing that stance, pledging to cut U.S. emissions 50 percent to 52 percent below 2005 levels by the end of the decade and writing in an op-ed in The Washington Post before the summit that with the United States back at the table, countries “have an opportunity to deliver ambitious progress.”But world leaders said they remained wary of the United States’ willingness to enact serious legislation to tackle its emissions and deliver on financial promises to poorer countries.“They have shown the right approach, not necessarily to the level of magnitude that they could,” said Graça Machel, the former education and culture minister of Mozambique.Key to reaching ambitious climate goals is China, which emits more than the United States, Europe and Japan combined. Peter Betts, the former lead climate negotiator for Britain and the European Union, said the test for Mr. Biden was whether he could lead the G7 countries in a successful pressure campaign.China, he said, “does care what the developing world thinks.”Lisa Friedman More
