MOSCOW -- Summits have gone to the dogs. Gone are the days when a meeting of two presidents could change the world overnight, redrafting borders, changing governments and ensuring peace or war.
Probably, the last meaningful Russian-American summit occurred in 1989 when Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George H.W. Bush met on Malta: The Soviet leader agreed to withdraw from Eastern Europe, thus leaving it to become a potential U.S. sphere of influence.
Since then, the White House and the Kremlin have done a slow diplomatic waltz -- consequential in that it has secured some sort of partnership between them, but not solving real issues and rarely addressing them seriously.