0 economic summit in st. petersburg. and the president says he'll still attend the summit, rebuffing calls by lindsey graham to boycott the summit entirely, and also the 2014 olympics in russia as well. but there are increasing calls from advocates to move the olympics out of russia, unless the country reverses course on a new law criminalizing the position of quote/unquote, nontraditional sexuality. i'm ready to get up under my desk and curl up for an air raid drill. who knew mitt romney was kind of right about russia. >> this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe. >> we all laughed at romney at the time, but russia does still look pretty threatening. now, not in a, we will bring nuclear annihilation kind of way, but a rather, we're still totalitarian, we don't republic," who spent three years reporting from russia. jolani kalb. miriam elder, former and national security editor at buzz feed. she used to be the neuews burea chief in moscow. and dr. nina, senior fellow in the world policy institute. she's also the great granddaughter of former soviet premier, knnikita khrushchev. so lots of conversation this week about this chilly relationship between president putin and president obama. but why should we care? i'm sure there are chilly relationships between world leaders around the world. why is this one important? >> i think it's important, well, it's come to our attention, because of the whole edward snowden manhunt, but i think, otherwise, we wouldn't really be talking about a reset of a reset with a former cold war power. if anything, this is a recalibration of a relationship that was set during the cold war and it's been over 20 years since and things have to recalibrate. russia and the u.s. don't run the world anymore like they used to and russia is kind of falling further and further behind on the global station. >> jolani, you're nodding to that. >> i think one of the things that's interesting is the dynamic here. and people have talked about vladimir putin's positioning as a strong man, how people see him, but i think he's also probably responding to the dynamics internal within russia, which is a very strong sense of their declining power in the world. i think that's been like a lens through which lots of things that there, projecting strength, and reminding people of a time where the country was at least respected, and if not respected, certainly feared. >> this idea of a declining russia does seem to be at odds with the kind of geopolitical realities, particularly related to syria and iran, that we currently see. >> well, actually, it is not. because russia is a declining killed. and the ambassador was harassed for months on the ground, in a very unprofessional, very sort of, this is not what states do to each other. and it went on from there. syria was a major irritant. and what you heard from the white house during this period was like, look, if you guys don't want to talk, there's lots of stuff going on in the world, there's the middle east, there's china. if you're not going to cooperate, we're going to allot less and less time for you. >> we dov have other things to do. the body language thing came up with the president this week -- actually, let's listen very quickly to what the president said and then i want to ask you about this. >> i know the press likes to focus on body language and he's got that kind of slouch, looking like the bored kid in the back of the classroom. >> i love that. sometimes the goes a little offscript and it's very enjoyable to watch. but sometimes when i watch president putin and obama, it does feel like almost like a pannipan i manning up thing that's happening, and these two superpowers are saying, you want to talk, oh, i'm not going to talk, oh, yeah? is that part of what's happening here for president putin, because he's positioning for his people, that pulling out of the talks allows him not to do the slouching routine. >> i think that's true, but julia's also right. when there's going to be these talks, we know that 95% of this stuff is worked out beforehand anyway. so it's mostly show. so there's no backstory, nothing's been worked out. so they don't want to go there and have something that looks the like too much of the truth. but one thing i wanted to add, with the add of the reset, even when there was the reset, and even there was this prevailing notion that the administration was operating under, there were these kind of microconcerns, the kind of stress fractures that you saw. one of which i saw personally in 2010, which was the may 9th celebrations there, which are thunl huge. much bigger than the fourth of july here, this end of the world war, that existential threat that ended in russia, 26,000 fatalities there. every head of state that participated in world war ii was there, except barack obama. and people took that as a real snub. and angela merkel was there, and had to be the most uncomfortable -- >> that wasn't a friendly moment for her. >> she was there and obama wasn't, and people did take that as a sleight. >> it was critical to remember the losses that the soviets experienced. when we come back, i want to talk a little bit more about the edward snowden question. being sixteen, alex thinks he's invincible. his dad knows he's not. that's why dad got allstate accident forgiveness. it starts the day you sign up. 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