Some things are best not said aloud. It will come as no surprise to Vladimir Putin that the U.S. would prefer to see someone else in charge in the Kremlin. And the U.S. is right to want this. Not out of a wish to see a democratic Russia, however much such a development is to be hoped for, but because Putin has irrevocably crossed a line.
For years, we treated Putin as a dangerous but relatively cautious opponent. His acts of aggression appeared carefully calibrated to what the limits imposed by the current international order would tolerate. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine has changed that. It is no longer safe to stick with our earlier assumptions about the limits on Putin’s behavior. Even much of Europe now recognizes Putin as a challenger to that order.
Nevertheless, for President Biden to have added the impromptu comment that “this man [Putin] cannot remain in power” at the end of a major speech in Warsaw was a serious mistake, however understandable the sentiment. In a situation as perilous as the one in which we now find ourselves, a president cannot enjoy the luxury of venting. He should not threaten things he is not prepared to back up.
Biden’s words were a gift to Putin’s propagandists, enabling them to assert, however ludicrously, that the U.S. has every intention of meddling in Russia’s internal affairs, a claim that will not only rally domestic support behind Putin, but will also help Russia’s dictator depict any opponents at home as American puppets.
At this point, the president’s team took the least bad course of action, which was to attempt to “clarify” Biden’s comments (“the President’s point was Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change”). Making matters worse, they had already had to walk back some earlier remarks in which Biden had appeared to suggest that American paratroops would soon be in Ukraine.
The inevitable result of all this is that the president looked first bellicose and then both muddled and weak, a triply damaging impression that will not have been lost on our allies, opponents, or those undecided in which direction they should leap. To say that that is unhelpful is an understatement. A statement intended to convey moral clarity and a unified West instead showed a president who can’t even be trusted to toe the White House line.
When it comes to our response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. is faced with an immensely difficult and dangerous challenge, made all the more menacing by the fact that the threat of a nuclear conflagration is currently higher than it has been since some of the darkest days of the Cold War. If we are to stay well short of disaster, the president will need to show considerably more guile, and more care.