For me, the meeting of Putin and Obama is larger than the current topic - Syria. The world is held under the threat of military escalations between our two countries. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there existed hope of a Russia with political philosophy more aligned with the US and multiple treaties including the START nuclear reduction treaty pointed to a normalization of relations.
President Putin's rise to power coupled with what Putin saw as an aggressive westernization of former Soviet states through NATO admissions created a "caged animal" response by Russia. We have witnessed several military exercises and armed conflict in Crimea and Ukraine, for example, and more recently the infringement of western airspace by Russian military aircraft. Our placing sanctions on Russia have not seemed to have the effect that many might have hoped for.
Earlier this year, KSU sponsored a talk by Dr. J Arch Getty, professor at UCLA. Getty discussed "Does Putin have a point?" in which he provided an interesting glimpse of his experiences in Russia and how the US is viewed and how Putin is perceived in Russia. What I took away was - if we were in Putin's shoes what would we do? What would we do if we saw Russian assimilation attempts to annex Puerto Rico, or Guam or American Samoa?
This is the area that I see as a bigger agenda item than Syria - for the US and Russia to respect each other's viewpoint and diminish the escalation of military exercises in Europe.
