Thread by @samagreene

There's a lot of hyperventilating in my feed right now -- mostly from US, UK and EU neocons, but also from various others in CEE -- about the implications of the Blinken/Lavrov meeting in Reykjavik. Everyone needs to calm down.

/1

We don't have a report from DC yet (at least not that I can find), but it's noteworthy that State are treating this meeting as an afterthought in Blinken's Denmark/Iceland/Greenland tour. state.gov/secretary-trav…

/2

Contrast that to the treatment by the Russian MFA, where the meeting is the top news item. Moscow is playing this for political looks and preening in the spotlight; Washington is nonplussed.
mid.ru/ru/foreign_pol…

/3

Further, from everything we can tell, the meeting was brief and cursory in content: they covered strategic arms control, nodded in the direction of joint interests, but kicked the can on an agenda for a Biden-Putin summit.

/4

That agenda will now be hashed out by the respective natsec grandees, Sullivan and Patrushev -- and that discussion will be both less public and less diplomatic.

/5

As I've written before, Moscow isn't really part of the solution to any of Washington's most pressing problems, and so there are no grounds here for a grand bargain.

/6

themoscowtimes.com/2021/04/22/how…

Accordingly, Moscow is looking much more eager for something approaching a reset than Washington, but we're seeing no indication that Biden is interested.

/7

Beyond reversing diplomat expulsions (which would be a good thing, IMO, at least if it allows for normal visa issuance), there's no commensurable quid pro quo on the table -- or anywhere near the table.

/8

More important to Washington, however, is restoring the trans-Atlantic alliances, and that is the context in which I would read the withdrawal of sanctions on NS2: evidence of a more equitable approach to Berlin, rather than of caving to Moscow.
/9
moscowonthames.wordpress.com/2021/05/19/bac…

If people want Washington to help deter further Russian aggression in the Eastern Neighbourhood, then they should understand that such deterrence is contingent on trans-Atlantic solidarity.

/10

I expect Moscow to play Berlin and Washington off one another. But Warsaw and Riga shouldn't play that game. If EU member states are concerned about the impact of NS2 (and don't get me wrong - they should be), they need to fight that battle in Brussels, not Foggy Bottom.
/11

Maybe I'll be proved wrong, of course, and Biden/Blinken will prove to be naive dreamers. But we don't have any evidence of that just yet.

/END