How will Biden respond to Putin?

How will Biden respond to Putin?
“Invasion.” The Biden administration used that all-important I-word this morning to describe the actions of the Russian military in Eastern Ukraine after Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary rant justifying Russian recognition of the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics on Monday afternoon.

“We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia’s latest invasion into Ukraine,” said deputy national security advisor Jon Finer on CNN this morning. The I-word matters because invasion has been the closest thing to a red line that the Biden administration has drawn during the…

How will Biden respond to Putin?

“Invasion.” The Biden administration used that all-important I-word this morning to describe the actions of the Russian military in Eastern Ukraine after Vladimir Putin’s extraordinary rant justifying Russian recognition of the separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as independent republics on Monday afternoon.

“We think this is, yes, the beginning of an invasion, Russia’s latest invasion into Ukraine,” said deputy national security advisor Jon Finer on CNN this morning. The I-word matters because invasion has been the closest thing to a red line that the Biden administration has drawn during the crisis: the action that would trigger a harsh response from Washington. And although Finer went there this morning, it remains to be seen exactly what the White House says constitutes “invasion.”

When it comes to Putin’s angry fireside tirade, the White House was hardly sheepish in its response. On Monday evening, a senior administration official characterized Putin’s remarks as “a speech to the Russian people to justify a war.”

Putin’s words were as clarifying as they were disconcerting. Throughout the crisis, self-styled realists and restrainers in the foreign policy community have attempted to paint Putin’s demands as somewhat understandable and worth taking seriously at the negotiating table. Yesterday’s tirade, in which the Russian dictator revealed grievances far deeper than the specifics of NATO’s borders, put paid to that line of argument.

Here, for example, are just some of his ominous words on Ukraine: “Modern-day Ukraine was in full and in whole created by Russia,” he said “And now grateful descendants have demolished monuments to Lenin in Ukraine. This is what they call decommunization. Do you want decommunization? Well, that suits us just fine. But it is unnecessary, as they say, to stop halfway. We are ready to show you what real decommunization means for Ukraine.” This is just a flavor of the deep-seated hostility, centuries-old grievances and unapologetic aggression that defined Putin’s remarks.

With Putin effectively blowing up the formal diplomatic process, the foreign policy debate has already changed in Washington. For example, the dovish Quincy Institute has spent weeks taking Putin’s demands for written assurances on NATO expansion seriously and urging major concessions from the West. Now their Russia expert Anatol Lieven argues that were a wider invasion to follow Putin’s recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, it “should be met with the harshest possible Western economic and political response.”

Since Putin’s speech, Germany has suspended Nord Stream 2, a welcome development (and an admission of multigenerational miscalculation by Germany’s political leaders). Britain has unveiled a package of sanctions. The EU is preparing its own set of measures.

So far, the Biden administration has announced a limited response, effectively embargoing Luhansk and Donetsk. Officials have signposted that a more extensive response will follow later today.

Biden will inevitably face calls to deliver the harshest possible package — though such a move would leave the United States with no further cards to play in the event of further Russian aggression. That tricky balancing act — which measures to deploy now, which to hold in reserve — is what the administration is now grappling with. It is the latest, and surely not the last, in a series of foreign policy questions with no easy answers.

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Fighting the last war

Throughout the present crisis, one has often been left with the impression that the Biden administration is fighting the last war. The White House seems desperate to avoid the mistakes it made during the Afghanistan withdrawal. Having spent the weeks leading up to the collapse of Kabul insisting that that worst-case-scenario would never happen, Biden officials have this time delivered grave warnings of imminent invasion. (If that move was designed to deter a Russian escalation, it didn’t work.) Having been caught in a disastrous and hurried embassy evacuation last year, the administration last week moved the US embassy west from Kyiv to Lviv. Yesterday it was moved out of the country altogether.

Putin’s speech may have been a rude reminder that not every geopolitical development is the result of the US president’s actions. But the present crisis nonetheless represents a failure for the president — and in an area where he sought to draw a sharp contrast with his predecessor on the campaign trail. In 2020, Biden promised to increase US assistance to Ukraine, including lethal weapons. A year later, his administration suspended arms support in the lead up to a Biden-Putin summit. He lifted sanctions on Nord Stream 2, a move that already looks like a bad mistake. It is an emerging irony of the Biden era that the leader of the party who talked up the threat from Russia is the one caught off guard by Putin’s belligerence.

Tulsi heads to CPAC

CPAC sets up shop in Orlando this week. On the list of speakers — very much the usual suspects — one name sticks out. As far as I know, Tulsi Gabbard is the only former Democratic presidential candidate to have addressed the CPAC true believers. On the surface, it’s a strange pairing. But there’s a logic to the former Hawaiian congresswoman’s appearance. Her anti-interventionist foreign policy has long made her popular among the paleocon crowd. She has also become an increasingly strident critic of wokeness and is a frequent guest on Tucker Carlson’s primetime show.

If Gabbard feels more politically homeless by the day, might her CPAC appearance point to a future in the Republican Party?