Don’t Leave Joe Alone with Valdimir!

The first indicator: there is no one-on-one meeting between Putin and Biden.

The second indicator: there is no joint press conference for the presidents after the summit.

The humorous and amusing thing is the interpretation of the two issues by Western and US media. A Reuters article published three days ago touched on this topic, namely Biden’s solo press conference. In the first sentence of the article, Reuters portrayed the matter as a move by Biden to “deny [Putin] an elevated international platform to castigate the West and sow discord”; that is, Putin will be denied standing with Grandpa Joe in front of the cameras to spread Russian toxins. What a loss!

On its part, CNN praised the Reuters article, saying that “officials say Russia pushed for a joint press conference during negotiations about the summit”. However, Biden said in explaining why he chose to hold a solo press conference, that “This is not a contest about who can do better in front of a press conference or try to embarrass each other”.

Thus, Biden spoke the truth, even if it was as an equivocation: If the contest takes place, it would be an American loss, and on top of that, there will be an “embarrassment”.

The Explanation

The realistic explanation for the two indicators we started with is that the US staff is avoiding leaving Grandpa Joe alone with Vladimir, and rightly so. Even Trump, a bully who frequently broke all sorts of diplomatic decorum with heads of state and state officials, could not play his usual shenanigans during the 2018 summit with Putin.

So how would things go with Joe, who has proven over the last few months that the aging factor plays a big role day after day in influencing his performance, including his ability to focus and remember? Therefore, a great embarrassment can occur, whether behind closed doors or in a press conference before the whole world.

However, this is not the only reason behind this, and we believe there is something more important. What we mean is the following:

Anyone following the massive media hubbub with which the Americans pre-empted the summit and their cardboard-like heroism, while at the same time following the reality of the American retreat in the face of China and Russia based on major economic, political, and military indicators, would know that the main objective of the hubbub and the attempt to rally the “allies” as closely as possible behind the US involves two things. The first is covering up with media smoke and sound bombs the concessions that will be made, and the second is attempting to pass on to those particular allies as much as possible of the bill for the concessions that will be made.

Together, these two things go against holding a joint press conference for Putin and Biden, in which even a suggestion of the size and type of agreements that will be ratified could appear.

Thus, Grandpa Joe will be more comfortable in this manner, as will be the huge team working behind him. Meanwhile, there is no problem that CNN and its likes (whose work in essence is no different from media outlets in our region that hail the regimes of the region) continue to say that the American hero will deny Putin an opportunity to address the Western audience, and to say other entertaining anecdotes.

(Arabic version)