Biden has bluffed before, and is doing so again on Ukraine
National Post, 22 January 2022
The Afghanistan debacle has convinced Putin that the Biden administration is not only weak, but lacks even basic competence
Vladimir Putin likely decided to invade Ukraine, or least to threaten it, a year ago, when U.S. President Joe Biden was inaugurated. The intuition that the new president’s historic weakness on foreign affairs would afford Russia an opportunity was confirmed in August with Biden’s handing over of Afghanistan to the Taliban. Putin has fond memories of Biden’s time as vice-president under Barack Obama, who presided over both Syria and Crimea being given over to Russia.
Recall the history and nothing today is surprising. Obama had declared, regarding Syria, that the use of chemical weapons was a “red line” that would not be tolerated. Bashar al-Assad used them in 2013, killing thousands of his own people. Obama huffed and puffed and blew his own resolve down.
Putin spied an opportunity and stepped into the failure of American leadership, brokering an agreement that Assad would entrust his chemical weapons to Russian supervision. In one masterstroke, Putin got Russia back into the Middle East after a decades-long absence and protected his client, Assad. As a bonus, he humiliated Obama and the United States.
Commenting serenely upon this catastrophe in 2016, Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations :
“I am not a big fan of red lines. I am not a proponent of laying down markers unless you’ve thought through the second, third and fourth step that you’re going to have to take and almost assuredly will have to take in order to accomplish your initial goal … Big nations can’t bluff. You do that, then what’s the next step? Because you know what’s going to happen. What’s going to happen is exactly what was happening anyway.”
“Big nations don’t bluff.” That’s likely why Biden spoke about a tolerable “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine earlier this week. He walked that back but Putin took note.
Just as he took note in 2013 in Syria. He knew that weakness in Washington meant that he could strike Ukraine and swallow Crimea. He had the small matter of the Olympics in Sochi in February 2014, so he had to wait until the torch was extinguished. He invaded Ukraine the next month and annexed Crimea.
That was not a minor incursion. It was invasion, occupation and annexation. Putin faced sanctions, the cumulative effect of which after eight years is that he is now ready to do it all over again.
Tyrants respect strength. That’s why Soviet expansion, which gobbled up nation after nation in the 1970s and sent tanks into Afghanistan in 1979, stopped dead in 1981 with the coming of Reagan.
The situation in Ukraine is different today. Biden and his allies have made clear that there will be no military response. Crippling sanctions are threatened instead. Is that a big nation bluff?
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