For months before the Feb. 24 Russian invasion of Ukraine, 79-year-old President Joe Biden huffed-and-puffed, threatening 69-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin with the most crippling sanctions in history. Biden’s threats only made matters worse, with Putin doing what he thought was best for Russian national security. When Putin saw the U.S. arming Ukraine to the teeth, with NATO circling around the Russian Federation, Putin acted to stop what he saw was a growing menace to Russia on its Western border. Biden rejected all of Putin’s rerquests to revisit security arrangements watching Ukraine become a puppet U.S. state on the border. After the Feb. 24 invasion, Putin soon realized that he was in a proxy war with Ukrainian troops against the United States. So the ferocity with which Putin battles in Ukraine essentially sends a loud message to Washington.
Biden accomplished little cobbling together the Western Alliance to back what he thought were crippling sanctions. What Biden miscalculated was half the planet was dependent on Russia energy, with no way to suddenly break existing energy contracts, but, more importantly, not joining Biden’s boycott. Biden asked the world’s two most populous states, China and India, to denounce Putin, prompting strong resistance from both countries. Biden decided to boycott the Beijing Winter Olympics, watching Putin visit China and cut new energy deals, and, more significantly, a new global cooperation agreement to confront U.S. encroachment on both countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping told Biden he would not publicly denounce Putin, prompting more threats of sanctions by Biden. When Biden asked Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi to denounce Putin, he said “no way.”
Biden’s left with backing a military campaign against Putin, with little or no chance of his economic sanctions deters Putin from finishing the job in Ukraine. Putin has said clearly what he wants to accomplish, mostly demilitarization of Ukraine. That’s going to be difficult with the U.S. continuing to supply Ukraine with lethal weapons, assuring, if nothing else, the war goes on indefinitely. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, 72, plans to visit Moscow April 26, hoping to talk with Putin about Istanbul peace talks and humanitarian corridors to evacuate trapped Ukrainians caught in the crossfire. Whether that helps or not is anyone’s guess. Putin specified his conditions for a ceasefire, all rejected by Biden and Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky. Biden hoped that his economic sanctions against Moscow would have discouraged Putin from pressing ahead.
Biden found out the hard way that much of the communist and third world do business with the Russian Federation. Xi told Biden that while he wanted the war to end he understood Putin motive in invading to stop NATO encroachment. That was the last thing Biden wanted to hear because he’s been telling the world daily that the Ukraine War was “unprovoked and unjustified.” So when Xi said he understood Putin’s frustration with NATO, it signaled he saw provocation for the conflict. “There is a very clear isolation of Russia from the Western bloc, especially due to a series of successive sanctions that have complicated commercial and financial exchanges,” said Sylvie Matelly, Director of the French Institute for International Relations and Strategic Affairs,” giving a very different picture than the White House and U.S. press. Clearly, half the world still does business with Russia.
India, China, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, to name a few, rejected Biden’s call to denounce the Russian Federation. “There are a growing number of countries that are more willing to assert their independence in spite of the fact that they aspire to closer cooperation with the West and are even in need of Western support,” said Chris Landsberg, professor of Intenational Relations, University of Johannesbur. Landsberg points out that most countries don’t like the war in Ukraine, but, unlike the U.S., they are not willing to go to economic war against Russia. “It’s one think to condemn the invasion of Ukraine—it’s another to launch and economic war against Russia, and many countries in South America, Africa and Asia re not ready to cross the line,” said Landsberg. If you listen to the U.S. and EU press, you’d think the whole world is aligned against Putin.
Former President Barack Obama and then Vice President Joe Biden tried to build an internationa coalition against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. After eight years of proxy war against al-Assad, Putin backed the Damascus government and the proxy war against Syria fizzled. Parallels today show that a tight Western alliance doesn’t amount to global backing for the war against Putin. Biden has thrown down the gauntlet, going all in on funding Ukraine’s war against Putin. When Biden said March 26 that Putin should not remain as Russian President, the world saw the aim of the U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Russia’s 72-year-old Foreign Minister said April 11 that the Kremlin views the Ukraine War as a U.S. war against the Russian Federation. “Yes, the sanctions are tough, but they do not deter Putin from extending his siege of Mariupol . . .or shelling other cities,” said Judy Dempsey, analyst at Carnegie Europe Think Tank. Biden should look to Istanbul to end the conflict, not ship more arms to Ukraine.
