Joe Biden is applying his own policies in Ukraine and Taiwan, which is opposite to Theodore Roosevelt’s prescription for peace – “speak softly and carry a big stick”. In Ukraine issue, Biden has possibly committed political blunder through personal attacks on Russian President Vladimir Putin and by calling for regime change in Kremlin. Most importantly, although Biden has used terribly undiplomatic comments at Putin, his officials later had to retract it or had to make efforts of somehow burying these controversies. Biden officials did come up with unconvincing denials of the meaning of those words. It seemed to many that Joe Biden was having a personal vendetta against Vladimir Putin instead of actual desire of either helping Ukrainians or their president Volodymyr Zelensky.
From the beginning of Ukraine war, Joe Biden has been consistently downplaying the superiority of Russian army while his administration was mostly engaged in bluffing the world with propaganda. Now Ukrainians are paying the price of such blunders. While sufferings of Ukrainians are on rise, the world gradually seems to be getting tired of beating the propaganda drums. Meanwhile, Joe Biden is sending billions of dollars to Ukraine, although almost seventy percent of such cash and logistics are vanishing immediately after entering Ukrainian soil.
Now Joe Biden is repeating the same blunder in Taiwan. He has even hinted of waging war against China by sending US troops to Taiwan, despite the fact of America’s humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, where they could not resist continuous terrorist acts and threats posed by the Taliban and other terrorist groups.
While the world is fed with a wrong perception of Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, actually it was Biden who had created atmosphere in Ukraine thus compelling Russia in sending troops. It began all the way back when he pulled out America’s small contingent in Afghanistan. This made all of America’s allies nervous about depending on Washington’s commitments, promises and even capabilities. At this junction, Joe Biden reassured them in a way that compounded the problem, where he said America would defend its Article V treaty allies, period.
There were many other steps by which Biden invited Russia in. He stopped sending Ukraine the weapons that Donald Trump had quietly sent there for four years—and Trump, who was personally polite to Putin, had sent them without the crisis ensuing that Barack Obama’s people had argued would inevitably come of arming Ukraine. He capitulated to Angela Merkel on the Nord Stream II pipeline, something treated by Russians, in 2022 as in 2014, as a green light for twisting Ukraine’s arm and invading when it didn’t say “uncle”.
Biden did nothing when Putin massed troops on the Ukrainian border for the better part of a year. He merely said it would be foolish for Putin to invade, and he would suffer economic sanctions—but meanwhile reassured Putin that the United States would not defend Ukraine if Russia invaded.
Then, at the last minute, Biden sent a trickle of weapons. The administration’s plan, we can all remember, was for Ukraine to get totally occupied in less than a week, and then a resistance might ensue that for some reason Biden would finally feel alright about arming, never mind that this would be much more dangerous—and less effective—than seriously arming the country in advance to defend itself. Analyzed objectively, this “feel-good” matter seems to have been decisive for Biden: the guiding concern was to be able to say that Washington hadn’t done anything that might get called aggressive or provocative.
The results were predictable: Putin had to declare special operation in Ukraine. The danger of nuclear war, invoked by Biden as a reason for his weakness, became very real because of that weakness. Biden got sucked into the conflict one step after another, publicly shamed into giving Ukraine a few more weapons each time, although they were too little too late. He publicly argued each time against the weapons and said that providing them would “provoke” Putin, but Biden and his people provoked Putin through rhetoric that was far more confrontational than any actions they were afraid of taking. But they blindly praised themselves for not being provocative; America, they said, was not to blame for the escalations that it kept getting sucked into.
Biden has pushed Ukraine into this ongoing crisis, and for decades, even after end of the war, Ukrainians will continue paying a heavy price. There will be economic and social crisis in the country for many years, while Ukraine will witness further expansion of neo-Nazi activities followed by terrorist acts. Foreign investors and tourists will feel scared in either putting money in Ukraine or visit that country in fear of fascist atrocities of neo-Nazis and their cohorts.
Most importantly, as Ukraine crisis will get further deepened within the next several months, in Washington, Biden’s political rivals will get majority in the Congress and Senate and begin strategically punching Joe Biden until the 2024 presidential election by blocking budget and his decisions. Republicans may not feel inclined in sending further fund to Ukraine considering America’s own economic troubles.
Similarly, Taiwan also may fall into the same ditch if they start considering mightier than China.
