On Ukraine, tough talk is not cheap
Biden has done a pretty good job managing the world reaction to the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. But speaking in Poland, Biden declared that Putin cannot remain in power. This comes on top of his earlier declaration that Putin is a war criminal.
From WAPO:
White House officials were adamant the remark was not a sign of a policy change, but they did concede it was just the latest example of Biden’s penchant for stumbling off message. And like many of his unintended comments, they came at the end of his speech as he ad-libbed and veered from the carefully crafted text on the teleprompter.
. . .
“What it tells me, and worries me, is that the top team is not thinking about plausible war termination,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book “The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint.”
“If they were, Biden’s head wouldn’t be in a place where he’s saying, ‘Putin must go.’ The only way to get to war termination is to negotiate with this guy,” O’Hanlon said.
It’s worth remembering why this type of tough-talk rhetoric is harmful:
- It makes it harder for the United States and Europe to lift sanctions as part of a negotiated compromise to the war
- It makes it harder for the U.S. to endorse any negotiated compromise in which Putin stays in power
- It makes it harder for Zelensky to compromise in negotiations with Putin
- It makes it harder to resist escalation in response to Russian provocations
- It makes it harder to resist Zelensky’s demand for planes and other weapons that might lead Russia to escalate
- It makes it harder for Putin to save face (maybe not such a big deal for him internally, and we don’t know how important saving face on the world stage is for him) and to step down (retirement options for war criminals are not great)
Biden needs to resist reckless jingoism, not encourage it.
What is going on here? Is this just more of Biden’s overpromising (COVID, Afghanistan, gas prices)? It’s hard to believe Biden and his team are not thinking about war termination; they are clearly worried about escalation risks.
I became a Biden supporter early in 2020, when the more progressive candidates moved so far to the left competing for base voters that I felt they would lose the general election. One of my concerns about him at the time was with his lack of message discipline. Ugh.
It was certainly a stupid error. But keep in mind that the war in Ukraine, and the sanctions for war criminality are partially separate issues, and should have different negotiations. Ukraine alone should negotiate an end to the war; but sanctions negotiation terms should at least begin by including delivery of Putin to the Hague.
You seem oblivious to the fact that Putin should not remain in power because he is a murderous, butchering thug who has endangered the entire world as well as destroyed large chunks of Ukraine for no reason other than his ego and that he controls nuclear weapons. And Biden does have a domestic audience that he must appease and that domestic audience is much more reckless than the Biden administration. The truth is that Putin has lost his war of choice and as long as the west keeps up the sanctions and resists the urge to directly confront Russia, Ukraine will prevail and all of NATO will be strengthened. Putin is as bad a leader for Russia as Trump and W were for the U.S.
I agree that Biden has a domestic audience to appease, but deciding when to pander and when to lead is critical. Biden has rightly resisted calls for a no fly zone which (I believe) polled well. He should resist damaging anti-Putin rhetoric as well.
On sanctions, allowing Russia back into the world trading system is perhaps the largest carrot we have to offer in negotiations, it is arguably critical for allowing a post-Putin Russia to evolve in a democratic direction and avoid becoming a permanent kleptocracy, but sanctions are an easy issue for Members of Congress to demagogue. Biden shouldn’t make this easier.
Finally, remember that these were unscripted remarks. Biden had an opportunity to think calmly and strategically about his messaging, then he got in front of a microphone and went rogue.
Exactly. This was an unforced political error on Biden’s part, and the walk-back was transparently lame.
Calls for regime change brought us the US invasion and military occupation of Iraq, which catalyzed the formation of ISIL/Daesh. Biden knows this and knows it’s bad optics.
Eric Kramer is exactly correct on this except for perhaps the why Ordinary Joe chose this inopportune time to speak honestly off the cuff.
We just got home from a funeral service in Springfield, VA. The 94 year old matriarch of ultra-conservative family passed last week and she was the mother of my wife’s oldest surviving sister’s husband. So, I spent the day yesterday in the bosom of mainstream Christian conservatives and their defense contractor sons and grandsons. The one granddaughter writes business press releases in NYC, but the boys all play with tanks and aerospace toys, including the eldest son that is a congressional lobbyist for General Dynamics. These were Trump people, not Biden supporters and they lived and breathed in a stratified, purified, insular world of money and politics. My wife cut me off short when I began to talk politics with them. She may have prevented WW-III on her own.
Ordinary Joe was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania and transplanted with his family when he was ten years old to New Castle, Delaware in 1953. Coal miners, manufacturing workers, and farmers are a different breed of Christians than the ones that sell war machines.
Somewhere deep inside of each of us is the child that developed shaped by their own surroundings with responses formed by the character that was molded before we became “independent” adults. From his formative years spent amidst communities of mostly blue collar workers, then Ordinary Joe grew up with a penchant for honesty and sincerity that served him better during elections than as a political leader. So, Joe Biden is only a half-baked politician, but what other choice did he have? Certainly there is no place for that kind of character in congressional lobbying or defense contracting.
I don’t think the US wants the war to escalate, but I’m afraid they don’t want it to end anytime soon, either. A proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, with Ukrainians (and Russians) doing the fighting and dying, might be fine. We might not be so much helping Ukrainians as using them. The longer it goes on, the more Russia is weakened, might be the reasoning. And the US’s primary purpose I think is to weaken Russia. It can’t have anything to do with opposition to aggression or respect for democracy. The US has committed aggression against many countries (killing a lot more people than Putin has), and supported aggression by others, and overthrown or helped to overthrow many democracies whose winners were not to our liking.
Mike B.,
When you wrote “I don’t think the US wants the war to escalate, but I’m afraid they don’t want it to end anytime soon, either,” then I do not believe you were referring to the general public sentiment on this issue. So, then to what institutional arrangements are you referring? POTUS is one thing, Pentagon another, military industrial complex lobbyists and their pet congressmen another, the Council on Foreign Relations another, and then there is still the larger private interests and ideologues reflected in the Trilateral Commission et al.
Just wondering?
I was referring to Biden and the people whose advice he’s taking.
Mike:
Been a while. Hope all is well by you.
“The US has committed aggression against many countries (killing a lot more people than Putin has), and supported aggression by others, and overthrown or helped to overthrow many democracies whose winners were not to our liking.”
Are we comparing nations with this statement or a nation against “one” person? Biden has been around since the nineties. I guess we could check how he voted on certain acts, bills, initiatives, etc. involving war or acts of physical aggression.
No one wants an escalated war between the two global giants. Amassing 100,000 troops on the border of a country is not necessarily an act of peace either. There was no way the US was going to be directly involved in this war. I am surprised the jets have not magically appeared in Ukraine.
By “Putin,” I was referring to Russia under Putin, and specifically to the invasion of Ukraine. By US, I didn’t mean Biden. Maybe he has a principled opposition to aggression and respect for democracy, but I don’t think so. I meant the US historically, and I think continuing to the present, supports aggression in some cases, and often opposes democracy if the winner is not to its liking.
I think almost every US leader believes the US should be the predominant power in the world, and view China or Russia (or likely both) as the biggest rival for power. So when Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine, which was wrong and unjustified, I think the US saw this as an opportunity to weaken Russia. Perhaps like the Carter administration “helping” in Afghanistan after (and even before) the Soviet invasion. Brzezenski still thinks that turned out great.
Of course, maybe I’m wrong.
Before writing the sentence about Brzezenski, I forgot to check to see if he was still alive. He isn’t. The quote by him I usually see saying the arming of the mujahideen in Afghanistan was an excellent idea was from 1998.
Mike,
“…I think almost every US leader believes the US should be the predominant power in the world, and view China or Russia (or likely both) as the biggest rival for power…”
[It is not just US leaders that believe this. Certainly US hands in both global politics and the treatment of domestic minorities are not clean, but considering their records on how they treat ethnic minorities in their own territory and given their admitted desires to annex neighbors, then the US looks like saints.
There are two important rules worth remembering in sociopolitical judgement. One is that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely (Acton). The other is that all things are relative.
Biden does have the politically inconvenient habit of sometimes being accidentally honest, but he is plugged into geopolitics from his experience. He is no angel, but who is that has great power?
Have a great day.]
Eric:
I believe the more important issue is the Domestic economy which would keep us plebians happy and more so those who tend to lean more to the right. Mortgage rates are up well beyond the 2.6% I received last November to 4.72% as reported by NDd. New Housing inventory is up. The Fed increase has gotten everyone’s attention. Except for a few hot spots, we may see a downturn there.
Then there are those who drive the too big, too noisy, too fast, too often vehicles with 35 – 40 gallon tanks facing persistently higher gasoline prices which Biden and Dems will take the hit for come November . . . even though he can not control pricing. He will still take the blame for this as well as food.
Much of our issue is still supply chain related due to the purposeful bumbling around of corporate interests willing to make excess profits off of short term shutdowns and slow downs in manufacturing. The chip issue should be closed by now. This is a rerun of 2008.
Being the premier NATO member (at least I think we are), we are obligated to join in
any conflict that results from a NATO member being attacked. We would have no choice,
sacred-commitment-wise (to use Biden’s words.)
Not a good situation to be in, since this started with Russia attacking a non-NATO
member to set all of this off.
But the US is always getting intimately involved with events in Europe, so whatever
happens in the next few weeks or months will eventually be seen as ‘inevitable.)
American officials scrambled to clarify Biden’s suggestion that Putin ‘cannot remain in power.’
NY Times – March 27
US intelligence suggests that Putin’s advisers misinformed him on Ukraine
NY Times – March 30