A summit about nothing

Why even hold a summit with Vladimir Putin in the first place?

That’s the important question raised by Wednesday’s news that the White House had decided to cancel President Barack Obama’s upcoming meeting with his Russian counterpart.

We’re told that the justification for canceling the Moscow summit was the lack of progress in the advancement of a bilateral agenda, even though most of the recent attention in U.S.-Russia relations had focused on the fate of NSA leaker Edward Snowden. If that’s true, why consider meeting at all?

Critics of the Obama administration love to bash its much-heralded “reset” with the Kremlin, but the fact is it produced important achievements, at least in the president’s first term. Most significantly, the Russians allowed U.S. transit of personnel and materiel into Afghanistan, providing a greatly needed alternative to the corridor through Pakistan. This proved critical in the president’s decision to authorize the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. Had the only route into Afghanistan been through Pakistan, it would have been much more difficult for the president to move forward with an operation he knew would antagonize the Pakistani government, since he could not have risked losing his only supply route into Afghanistan. In addition, the Russians supported further sanctions on Iran, and the United States and Russia signed the New START agreement taking thousands of deadly nuclear weapons out of circulation.

But the U.S.-Russian relationship obviously looks a lot less rosy today. It’s not simply because Putin moved back to the presidency; he dominated the Russian government even while serving as prime minister “under” President Dmitry Medvedev. Putin does care much less than Medvedev about what Obama thinks of him, and the escalating crackdown on civil society in Russia further complicates Obama’s engagement of the Kremlin. But the greater challenge is that most of the big-ticket issues on the agenda are not ripe for progress because in most cases there is little to discuss.

Let’s start with Syria. Putin made a bet that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad could remain in power despite Western calls for his departure. That has proven to be a good call: Given the lack of external pressure – to say nothing of the vast support Russia and Iran have provided the Syrian government — Assad has lasted longer than many prognosticators in and out of government in Washington believed possible. Since Obama has sought to avoid U.S. involvement in a conflict that has claimed more than 100,000 lives, there is little for the United States and Russia to accomplish together.

On Iran, the interesting question is whether the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and new President Hassan Rouhani plan to engage differently with the West. If so, then Russia becomes less important. Similarly, as U.S. forces withdraw from Afghanistan over the next year, Russia becomes less important.

The one bilateral issue about which Obama appears to care deeply is his aim to sign another arms control treaty. But arms control treaties existed to regulate Cold War competition. If we finally hope to move beyond Cold War mentalities as the president keeps chiding Putin to do, we should recognize that we are not dependent upon arms control agreements to reduce nuclear weapons levels.

Think about it: Why does the United States possess a nuclear arsenal in the first place? To deter other countries from attacking it. America could reduce its number of strategic nuclear warheads unilaterally to 1,000 and ensure the ability to deter any state. After all, we are deterred by a handful of North Korean nuclear weapons from taking strong action against that country. One thousand is more than adequate to keep America’s enemies at bay.

Obama will still visit Russia, as he should, for the G-20 summit next month. And if he wants to have a quiet side conversation with Putin while there, he can do so. But presidential summits are for countries that have major business with one another. That is simply not the case when it comes to the United States and Russia today.

James Goldgeier is dean of the School of International Service at American University.