Biden meets with Putin in Geneva. U.S. President Joe Biden will meet with his Russian counterpart Vladamir Putin in the Swiss city on June 16 in an attempt to de-escalate rising bilateral tensions. The summit will be the first of its kind since Putin met with former President Donald Trump in Helsinki in 2018. The upcoming Geneva meeting will mostly focus on laying out red lines in the hopes of establishing some predictability regarding which actions would trigger retaliatory actions, most likely in the form of sanctions from the United States and cyberattacks from Russia. Arms control will also be at the forefront of the talks — specifically, preparing for a comprehensive replacement to New START, as well as other bilateral arms control treaties between Russia and the United States that have fallen by the wayside in recent years. The leadership summit may also result in Moscow and Washington beginning to reverse the diplomatic tit-for-tat that has decimated each other's consular presences. However, any de-escalation is likely to be fragile and could be jeopardized by instability in Ukraine or Belarus.

Biden meets with NATO and EU leaders in Brussels. U.S. President Joe Biden will be in Brussels on June 14-15 for meetings with NATO and EU leaders, including bilateral meetings with several EU heads of government. Trade will be the main topic of discussion, as Brussels and the White House are looking to end their disputes over steel and aluminum tariffs and the tit-for-tat punitive measures connected to the Boeing-Airbus case. The leaders will also discuss climate change, cooperation on the development of new technologies, and relations with China and Russia.

Biden meets with Erdogan on the NATO summit sidelines. U.S. President Joe Biden will also meet with his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on June 14 during the NATO summit in Brussels. The meeting is likely to be heavily focused on establishing a baseline of rapport after several tumultuous years in the U.S.-Turkey relationship. In addition to its contentious relationship with Washington, Ankara has also often had strained ties with other NATO members, despite Turkey remaining a key member of the security alliance. While a simple sidelines meeting is unlikely to broker a relationship reset with either the United States or NATO, Erdogan is probably hoping that easing stormy diplomatic waters via rhetoric will at least help deflect future sanctions on Turkey.

The U.S. Federal Reserve’s next policy meeting. The Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) will leave U.S. monetary policy unchanged when it meets on June 15-16, but may start shifting its message about inflation being temporary in light of the most recent data on the price level and employment. New quarterly forecasts for growth and inflation and a more balanced approach may highlight discussions, even if decisions on tapering of quantitative easing are still a ways off. The August conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming is probably the earliest the Fed would begin a more serious discussion of tapering with no action until the fall. The FOMC’s anonymous “dot plot” of members’ current thinking on the timing of interest rate increases may show some changed ideas about a rate hike happening before 2024.

A presidential election in Iran. Iranians will head to the polls on June 18 to select their next president. After an especially intense period of disqualifications by the Guardian Council, most of the seven candidates on the ballot are politically, socially and economically conservative. This nearly guarantees that the next administration will lean away from the moderate policies embraced by outgoing President Hassan Rouhani. It will be a couple of months before the new president takes office, but as soon as the election is over, attention in Iran and globally will shift to how the incoming administration will deal with negotiations with the West in pursuit of sanctions relief.