Returning to the confrontational approach toward the Russian Federation like his former boss President Barack Obama, 78-year-old President Joe Biden put 68-year-old Russian President Russian President Vladimir Putin on notice that a new sheriff’s in town. Biden and Obama drove U.S.-Russian relations to a post Cold War low, ousting 35 Russian diplomats Dec. 31, 2016 over alleged meddling in the 2106 presidential election. When Obama issued the order to evict the Russian diplomats, it was 20 days from the end of his term, a highly unusual move so close 74-year-old former President Donald Trump’s inauguration. If 73-year-old former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton beat Trump, she might have started WW III. Obama, Biden and Hillary helped fund and supply arms to Syrian rebels to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Eight years of proxy was an unmitigated disaster.
Hillary said during the campaign she’d set up a no-fly zone in Syria, potentially pitting U.S. fighter jets against the Russian air force. Once mishap, one accidental shoot down, could start a regional, if not world conflict. Speaking on Zoom conferencing Jan. 27 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Putin warned about a new “dystopia,” where world powers could wind up inadvertently escalating a wider conflict. “The coronavirus pandemic has become a major challenge to mankind, and it has accelerated structural change, the preconditions for which were already in place,” Putin warned. Biden held his first phone call with Putin in which he demanded that 44-year-old pro-Democracy activist Alexi Navalny be released from detention, returning from Berlin after poisoned in Tomsk, Siberia with Novichok, a deadly Soviet-era nerve agent reportedly used by Russian security service.
When you consider Biden’s first conversation with Putin since sworn in as president Jan. 20, it’s audacious to start making demands of the Russian president, known for the last 20 years as one of the world’s most ruthless leaders. Putin warned in his Davos message about wealth disparities, populism, right-and-left-wing extremism and rising domestic political violence. Putin was trying to tell world leaders, like Biden, that pointing fingers at Russia won’t lead to a safer world. Obama and Biden did nothing March 1, 2014 when Russian invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, home to Putin’s warm water fleet in Sevastapol, Crimea. Before that move that drew international outrage, Putin invaded South Ossentia and Abkhazia in Georgia Aug. 7, 2008, annexing Georgia territory. While former President George W. Bush watched, the U.N. and European Union did nothing.
So, all of a sudden, Biden’s talking like a tough old rooster against one the world’s most determined leaders. Bidne hasn’t yet spoke out against China’s 67-year-old President Xi Jinping, North Korea’s 36-year-old dictator Kim Jong-un or Iran’s 81-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “We have every reason to believe that the tensions might be aggravated even further,” Putin said, referring to deteriorating economic conditions across the globe resembling the 1920s and 1930s before the rise of German Chancellor Adolf Hitler and WW II. Biden was quick to condemn human rights inside Russia, while the world watched for months over summer 2020, rioting, looting, arson and anarchy in American cities. Whatever protesting goes on in Russia, the world knows that Putin doesn’t tolerate much anarchy before cracking down on protesters no matter what the issues.
Putin wanted the forum to know that while he didn’t think WW III was likely, it’s not outside the realm of possibility. “In the 20th Century, the failure and inability to centrally resolve such issues resulted in the catastrophic World War II. Putin said while he didn’t think it would happen, anything’s possible. “And there is a possibility that we may experience and actual collapse of global development that might result in a fight of all against all,” Putin said, serving notice that all the finger pointing now coming from the United States and European Union is counterproductive. Foreign leaders at the G7, including Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and U.S., condemned the detention of Navalny, something Putin sees as purely an internal affair. G7 leaders called on Putin to abide by international human rights standards, without holding China, North Korea and Iran to the same standards.
Blindsiding Putin in his first phone call on Navalny, Russian hacking and unrest in Ukraine, Biden started out exactly on the wrong foot, returning again to the failed foreign policy of former President Barack Obama. Biden complained to Putin about everything but the kitchen sink, “including the SolarWinds hack, reports of Russian placing bounties on United State Soldiers in Afghansistan, interference in the 2020 United State election, and the poisoning of Alex Navalny.” Biden found out the hard way what happened when Putin marched into Crimean March 1, 2014 and seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Obama and Biden did nothing then, and Biden will do nothing now without jeopardizing world peace. Obama and Biden like to talk about their global alliances at the EU, U.N. or NATO. Where did that get them when Putin invaded Crimea? Antagonizing Putin only hurts U.S. national security.
