“The Great Game.” June 3, 2021

 

“Bolshaya Igra” Summary: “The American big brother surveils European leaders. A major blow to Washington’s reputation in the old world a week before the official visit of Joe Biden to the NATO Summit. What does this scandal mean for Russia?”

This was something of a wasted hour. Rather than concentrating on the upcoming Biden-Putin summit, moderators Dmitriy Simes, Vyacheslav Nikonov and guests opened with a lengthy discussion of a “scandal” that was nearly a week old and had completely escaped my notice. It was a revival of allegations by Edward Snowden that NSA had spied on European leaders a decade ago. The new wrinkle: Denmark helped. The news was broken over the last weekend by a Danish news agency. I suspect the news tip was most likely received from Russian sources, all in an attempt to sow discord before the upcoming NATO Summit and to put President Biden off his stride.

Much of the rest of the hour was devoted to an interview with MFA Spokesperson Mariya Zakharova, who flacked for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and repeated predictable talking points on the latest “scandal,” the Ryanair hijacking, the JBS Meats hacking and other subjects.

The end of the program was devoted to a discussion of President Biden’s May 30 statement that only America was founded on an idea (democracy) and he would press Putin on human rights issues. This was met with raised eyebrows by the panel, and MGIMO professor Andranik Migranyan described it as a “gaffe” to claim that only America was founded on an idea. This was the signal for everyone else to pile on with their own recitation of reasons why Biden’s claim that America was exceptional was hypocritical. Simes concluded the discussion by commenting that Biden had also recently associated himself in Tulsa with “Black Lives Matter,” which was based on the idea that U.S. history began in 1619 and the beginning of slavery. Wasn’t that also an idea?

Simes summed up the discussion by noting that the summit would soon be upon us, and the predictions of the mass media did not inspire optimism. But he cautioned that the professionals were working “quite seriously,” and he wished both Presidents success. Nikonov, in a classic case of projection, concluded that the summit was not doomed to failure because Putin had never failed at any summit, Biden would never admit that he had failed, and the mainstream U.S. media, who viewed Biden as above reproach, would support him.

https://www.1tv.ru/shows/big-game/vypuski/bolshaya-igra-vypusk-ot-03-06-2021