Jules Witcover, syndicated columnist

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden’s confident navigation of his summit meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin has confirmed his readiness for the job that has been his life’s ambition.

In the several hours of that critical encounter in Geneva, Biden demonstrated the discipline and deftness required to pass the most demanding challenge of his brief stewardship on the international stage. He took command of the moment by defining the terms of seeking accommodation with the man he called “a worthy adversary.”

He did so in optimistically arguing they can find the path to enduring peace after years of Cold War between the two strongest nuclear powers. He said of the summit with Putin that “I did what I came to do” and that he so informed him, warning that the United States would swiftly retaliate against any Russian cyberspace attack on American infrastructure work.

“I also told him that no president of the United States could keep faith with the American people if they did not speak out to defend our democratic values,” Biden continued, “to stand up for the universal and fundamental freedoms that all men and women have, in our view. … The bottom line is I told President Putin that we need to have some basic rules of the road that we can all abide by,” adding that if Russia continued to violate the most basic sort of responsible behavior, “we will respond … in a cyber way.”

In so saying, Biden struck a sharp contrast with the fawning and apologetic performance of his predecessor, Donald Trump, in his 2018 summit with Putin in Helsinki, wherein Trump sided with Putin over his American intelligence officials who reported Russian interference with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Trump’s name never came up in the Geneva talks, but Biden’s direct and candid confrontation of Putin could not be missed in how he civilly yet firmly stood up to the Kremlin boss.

Biden said of the summit: “The tone was good, positive,” adding “the last thing he (Putin) wants is another Cold War.” Putin benignly agreed: “There as been no hostility. On the contrary, our meeting took place in a constructive spirit.”

Putin said of Biden: “He’s very balanced, just the way I expected. He’s very experienced. You can tell that at first glance.” Intentionally or not, Putin seemed to allude to the difference between Biden and the Trump he had encountered in Helsinki.

Notably, there was no joint news conference in Geneva as there had been in Helsinki. This time, Putin agreed to speak first, followed by Biden, who thus was able to respond almost immediately in his separate news conference.

The outcome was a degree of mutual candor not seen in the previous Putin-Trump encounter. Putin at one point observed of his meeting with Biden that “on the whole, we spoke the same language. And that doesn’t mean we have to look in each other’s eyes.” The remark seemed to mock an observation of previous president George W. Bush in an earlier summit meeting with Putin that he had looked into his eyes and got “a sense of his soul.”

Putin now said of his meeting with Biden: “We don’t have to look each other in the eye and soul and make pledges of eternal love and friendship. We defend the interests of our countries and peoples, and our relations always have primary pragmatic character.”

But Biden has been an outspoken believer in face-to-face meetings in politics as the preferable way to confront differences of opinion in pursuit of understanding if not always resolution. Accordingly, he and Putin have already agreed to return their now-absent ambassadors to Moscow and Washington and to examine ways to improve relations in certain specific areas of mutual concern, including cybersecurity.

While in terms of personality, the dour and acerbic Putin and the jovial and upbeat Biden may be miles apart, their Geneva meeting appears to offer optimism for a less uncertain and even stable period ahead.

Editor’s note: Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@comcast.net.