The big story today is the meeting between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland. The event was carefully choreographed and left neither of them humiliated the way former president Trump was on July 16, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland, where he took Putin’s word over that of U.S. intelligence about Russian interference in the 2016 election (Trump’s Russia advisor Fiona Hill said recently she was so appalled during the joint press conference with Trump and Putin she thought about faking a medical emergency to interrupt it).

Biden refused a joint press conference, unwilling to give Putin a platform next to the U.S. president. (Critics note that even shaking Putin’s hand was a public relations victory for the Russian president before his country’s September elections.)

Biden’s goal was not to try to push Putin into that ubiquitous “reset” we’ve heard about since the administration of President George W. Bush; it was about establishing some rules of the road to promote stability going forward. “This is not about trust. This is about self-interest,” Biden said.

He warned Putin that the U.S. will no longer permit cyberattacks on critical infrastructure from either the Russian government or the hackers it shelters, and that it will respond to any further attacks on our democracy. "I made it clear that we will not tolerate attempts to violate our democratic sovereignty or destabilize our democratic elections, and we would respond," Biden said. He also made it clear that the U.S. will defend human rights. The two men began to talk about the issues involved as climate change opens sea lanes through the previously frozen Arctic Ocean.

Neither side expected any agreements to come from the meeting, but it was more productive than the initial low bar predicted. The two sides agreed to return their ambassadors to each other’s country and agreed to resume talks on nuclear weapons. “There has been no hostility,” Putin told reporters. “On the contrary, our meeting took place in a constructive spirit.” “We don’t have to look each other in the eye and soul and make pledges of eternal love and friendship,” Putin said. “We defend the interests of our countries and peoples, and our relations always have [a] primarily pragmatic character.”

"I told President Putin my agenda is not against Russia or anyone else, it's for the American people," Biden said. "I made it clear to President Putin that we'll continue to raise issues of fundamental human rights because that's who we are."

Skeptics note that this meeting took place while Putin holds his chief political opponent, Alexei Navalny, in prison on trumped-up charges and just after his government outlawed Navalny’s three political organizations. Since hackers based in Russia just recently shut down a major U.S. oil pipeline, Putin’s people might interpret Biden’s willingness to meet with him as acceptance of that behavior. But Biden thought a face to face meeting would be productive. "We'll find out within the next six months to a year whether or not we actually have a strategic dialogue that matters,” Biden said. "I did what I came to do."

What Biden accomplished in the past ten days was crucial. He reestablished friendly footing and cooperation between the U.S. and our allies at the G7 meeting and shored up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, bringing the U.S. back into a leadership role there. He worked with the European Union on trade, extending the suspension of some of Trump’s tariffs and resolving a 17-year-old dispute over aircraft subsidies.

The U.S. and its allies pledged to supply vaccines to countries that don’t have them, combat climate change, create good jobs, empower women and girls, stand together against Russian aggression, and cooperate in the face of Chinese growth. Each public statement they released used Biden’s motto: “Build Back Better.”

What President Biden really did was to rally our allies behind a defense of democracy.

Yesterday, the U.S. and the E.U. issued a statement saying that they are “an anchor for democracy, peace, and security around the world,” and declared their commitment to protecting democratic governments. “We reject authoritarianism in all its forms around the globe, resisting autocrats’ efforts to create an environment that protects their rule and serves their interests, while undermining liberal democracies.”

Here at home, there was news, today too. The House passed legislation making a federal holiday of June 19th, known as Juneteenth, the day in 1865 that enslaved Americans in Galveston, Texas, heard an army officer confirm that they were free. Forty-eight states currently celebrate the day in some form. Fourteen Republicans voted against the measure; one suggested he feared it would introduce Critical Race Theory into schools. The Senate passed the bill unanimously on Tuesday. It will now go to President Biden for his signature.