Praise from a rightwing Opinion columnist at the rightwing Wall Street Journal.
No paywall on this article.
*snip*
Mr. Biden hasn’t committed U.S. troops to Ukraine itself, but this I now think would smack of desperation, and seems unnecessary. The U.S. and NATO don’t need to lift so many fingers to make Mr. Putin realize he can’t afford the risk.
Whatever the Russian leader is thinking, he hoped to find the U.S. and its allies weak and divided. This is proving a bad bet so far. From a larger perspective, it’s easier to say what Mr. Putin wants than how he hopes to get it. He wants to be a U.S. client, spared any too-fervent support for democratic forces in Russia or its neighborhood. He could play the equal while, in truth, being a nuclear-armed Mobutu whose insecurities and vanity we patronize because it’s less trouble than not patronizing them.
When he finally broke his silence on Ukraine last week, Mr. Putin’s key words, which he repeated for French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, concerned the strategic but awkwardly situated peninsula his forces seized from Ukraine in 2014.
For a short-term boost in patriotic rah-rah, for a simulated victory for Russia’s “historic” interests, he created a headache for himself that can only get worse. He all but admitted as much: “Let’s imagine Ukraine is a NATO state and they start this operation [to retake Crimea]. So now do we have to start a war against the NATO alliance? Did anyone think about that? I don’t think so.”
The person who forgot to think was Mr. Putin.
No paywall on this article.
Joe Biden, a President for the New Cold War
In one way, the 79-year-old NATO adherent is the right man for his times.
Mr. Biden has a few flaws but he was a child of the Cold War and, unless I’m mistaken, has surprised and discombobulated Vladimir Putin with his un-Obama-like response to renewed tensions over Ukraine, including, on Monday, whipping a German chancellor into line. By sending military supplies to Ukraine, by deploying troops to Eastern Europe, by preparing sanctions, the Biden administration has orchestrated a set of signals that even Mr. Putin can’t misinterpret.*snip*
Mr. Biden hasn’t committed U.S. troops to Ukraine itself, but this I now think would smack of desperation, and seems unnecessary. The U.S. and NATO don’t need to lift so many fingers to make Mr. Putin realize he can’t afford the risk.
Whatever the Russian leader is thinking, he hoped to find the U.S. and its allies weak and divided. This is proving a bad bet so far. From a larger perspective, it’s easier to say what Mr. Putin wants than how he hopes to get it. He wants to be a U.S. client, spared any too-fervent support for democratic forces in Russia or its neighborhood. He could play the equal while, in truth, being a nuclear-armed Mobutu whose insecurities and vanity we patronize because it’s less trouble than not patronizing them.
When he finally broke his silence on Ukraine last week, Mr. Putin’s key words, which he repeated for French President Emmanuel Macron on Monday, concerned the strategic but awkwardly situated peninsula his forces seized from Ukraine in 2014.
For a short-term boost in patriotic rah-rah, for a simulated victory for Russia’s “historic” interests, he created a headache for himself that can only get worse. He all but admitted as much: “Let’s imagine Ukraine is a NATO state and they start this operation [to retake Crimea]. So now do we have to start a war against the NATO alliance? Did anyone think about that? I don’t think so.”
The person who forgot to think was Mr. Putin.
