On the menu today: President Biden says that the “devastating consequences” he threatened if Alexei Navalny died in prison went into effect a long time ago, and that he and his team are “contemplating what else could be done.” Meanwhile, Russia seeks a new form of leverage and deterrence against us by militarizing space and threatening the world’s satellites. The full-spectrum malevolence and ruthlessness of Vladimir Putin and his regime couldn’t be more abundantly clear — and yet somehow, we keep getting one president after another convinced that he can get Putin to see reason. Heaven forbid, we send Ukraine some of those longer-range ATACMS missile systems! We must not be escalatory or provocative, now!
Our Ineffective Presidents
President Biden, after meeting with Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland, June 16, 2021:
Q: Mr. President, just a quick follow on the same theme of consequences. You said, just now, that you spoke to him a lot about human rights. What did you say would happen if opposition leader Aleksey Navalny dies?
THE PRESIDENT: I made it clear to him that I believe the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia.
Here’s President Biden, Friday.
Q: And to be clear, you warned Vladimir Putin when you were in Geneva of “devastating” consequences if Navalny died in Russian custody. What consequences should he and Russia face?
THE PRESIDENT: That was three years ago. In the meantime, they faced a hell of a lot of consequences. They’ve lost and/or had wounded over 350,000 Russian soldiers. They’ve made it into a position where they’ve been subjected to great sanctions across the board. And we’re contemplating what else could be done.
If you run around threatening “devastating consequences” if Navalny dies in prison, and then Navalny dies in prison and you say you’ve already imposed those “devastating consequences” in response to other Russian actions and you’re contemplating what else can be done . . . everyone will recognize that your talk about “devastating consequences” was bluster.
The lack of promised “devastating consequences” fits a troubling pattern. You may have noticed that President Biden likes telling unverifiable stories about how he’s gotten tough with Putin, right to his face:
To illustrate his emphasis on personality as a factor in foreign affairs, Biden recalled visiting Putin at the Kremlin in 2011: “I had an interpreter, and when he was showing me his office I said, ‘It’s amazing what capitalism will do, won’t it? A magnificent office!’ And he laughed. As I turned, I was this close to him.” Biden held his hand a few inches from his nose. “I said, ‘Mr. Prime Minister, I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.’”
“You said that?” I asked. It sounded like a movie line.
“Absolutely, positively,” Biden said, and continued, “And he looked back at me, and he smiled, and he said, ‘We understand one another.’” Biden sat back, and said, “This is who this guy is!”
Speak loudly and carry no stick.
Last week, Representative Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, set off a great deal of speculation about some new Russian weapons system involving space. CNN has the most-detailed and best-sourced description of this weapon I can find:
“Russia is trying to develop a nuclear space weapon that would destroy satellites by creating a massive energy wave when detonated, potentially crippling a vast swath of the commercial and government satellites that the world below depends on to talk on cell phones, pay bills, and surf the internet, according to three sources familiar with US intelligence about the weapon.”
Basically, a combination of a nuclear electromagnetic pulse and a wave of space debris, along with a slew of damaged and disabled satellites, “might render large portions of particular orbits unusable.” Detonation of the weapon could turn low-earth orbit into a minefield, making it unusable or dangerous for any future replacement satellite.
People may contend, “Russia would never do this. They would destroy their own satellites in the process!” But the potential presence of this weapon is another form of deterrence and leverage against us. If we contemplate some action against Russia’s interests, we now must wonder whether Putin, or some subsequent Russian leader, could choose to take out the world’s satellites as revenge.
As the editors of National Review noted:
The news should be another wake-up call about how seriously we need to take space as a domain of warfare, which it has already become, no matter how much romantic nonsense there is about how it should be kept free of weapons. Already, satellites are absolutely essential to our military, and China and Russia have demonstrated the ability to shoot them down (the Russians, true to form, created a disruptive debris field with their exercise in 2021).
We should be wary of the false promise of arms control. If Moscow had abided by its promises under the Cold War–era Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty, there would have been no invasion of Ukraine. If it wanted to keep its promises under the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, it would not be moving aggressively to put weapons with a nuclear component in space.
Putin is always trying to screw us over and to find new forms of leverage against us and our allies — economic pressure, energy supplies, propaganda efforts, social-media trolls and bots, exacerbating existing social and political divisions, cyberattacks, espionage, advanced weapons technology, etc.
And yet somehow, we keep getting one president after another convinced that he can get Putin to see reason. Yesterday on The Editors and on Hugh Hewitt’s program, I walked through recent presidents and their relationship with Vladimir Putin.
President George W. Bush, after his first meeting with Putin, June 2001:
I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialog. I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country. And I appreciated so very much the frank dialogue. There was no kind of diplomatic chit chat, trying to throw each other off balance. There was a straightforward dialog. And that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship. I wouldn’t have invited him to my ranch if I didn’t trust him.
To offer a qualified defense of Bush, Putin had only become the Russian president in May 2000. And for a short-lived moment after 9/11, there was reason to believe that the shared threat of Islamist terrorism would lead to greater U.S.–Russian cooperation: “Putin was reportedly the first foreign leader to call George W. Bush afterwards, and subsequently facilitated US access to bases in Central Asia without a formal quid pro quo.”
Many believed that because the Russians had fought Islamist terrorists in Chechnya, they would prove to be useful allies in the War on Terror. But the American intelligence community learned, and re-learned, over and over again, that Moscow’s definition of “cooperation” resembled a one-way street:
In the days following the [9/11] attacks, Moscow hosted a high-level intelligence summit, and CIA officials began to share insights from the agency’s experiences around the world with our counterparts there. Before long, however, the Kremlin turned every request into a focus on Russian domestic terrorism, leading those engaged with the Russians on the counterterrorism exchange to label the program as the “Global War on Chechen terrorism.” Worse than the failure to share insights, the Russian intelligence service used the pretext of counterterrorism cooperation to undermine U.S. relationships with other services around the world, even sharing the identities of CIA officers with hostile countries. Despite the sharing of intelligence, the Russian services treated their CIA counterparts as adversaries rather than partners.
Shortly thereafter, the Russians sought U.S. assistance to return to Afghanistan after American forces had retaken Kabul from al-Qaeda and the Taliban in early spring 2002. Washington viewed the opening as an opportunity to develop a broader rapprochement to encourage and incentivize improved relations. Russian requests, however, quickly escalated into demands for more and more significant support. After months of assistance working with Afghani authorities to facilitate Russian requests and sharing intelligence, it was clear that the Russians had no interest in a reciprocal relationship — they were, instead, interested in using the opportunity to spy on U.S. activity in-country.
Despite the lack of success in the initial efforts to engage the Russians in a mutually beneficial relationship, the White House was prepared to have another go in the mid-2000s. Again, counterterrorism was seen as a natural area to restart a larger effort of cooperation and collaboration. Knowing that the Bush administration was banking on improved relations, the Russians leveraged the relationship with CIA to wring out every bit of intelligence that could fill gaps in what they knew about us, while providing nothing in return. Russian counterparts didn’t even pretend that they were interested in collaboration.
Despite all this, by the end of the Bush years, Democrats had convinced themselves that the primary cause of tension with Russia was Condoleezza Rice’s “Cold War mentality and extreme hawkishness. . . . As Secretary of State, all she did vis-à-vis the Russians was needlessly antagonize them.”
When Barack Obama became president, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came along, they believed we just hadn’t been sufficiently nice and conciliatory toward Putin and the Russians. Hillary Clinton unveiled the infamous “reset button” — “an emergency stop button that had been hastily pilfered from a swimming pool or Jacuzzi at the hotel” — the inscription on which was actually mistranslated to “overcharge,” which demonstrates that history has its own heavy-handed metaphors.
By 2012, Obama was assuring then-outgoing Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, “This is my last election. . . . After my election I have more flexibility.” Medvedev replied, “I will transmit this information to Vladimir.” And when Obama scoffed in his debate with Mitt Romney, “The 1980s are now calling for their foreign-policy back, cause the Cold War’s been over for 20 years,” oh, how the country laughed! Oh, that silly, paranoid Romney! Why couldn’t he be as cool and sophisticated and understanding of the world as Obama? Obama and European leaders enacted some sanctions, but as we can all see, they had minimal deterrent effect on Putin.
Then the country elected Donald Trump; Trump met with Putin in 2018 and declared that he believed Putin over the assessments of U.S. intelligence agencies. Trump’s obsequious performance alongside Putin was so egregious that even longtime Trump allies such as Laura Ingraham, Newt Gingrich, General Jack Keane, and Matt Schlapp declared it indefensible. Once Putin invaded Ukraine, when the rest of the world was reacting with shock and outrage, Trump felt compelled to let us know what a “savvy” “genius” Putin is. And recently, Trump told his audience that he would “encourage Russia to do whatever the hell they want” to any country he felt hadn’t made sufficient financial contributions to NATO. Yes, Trump provided lethal aid to Ukraine during his presidency, but he tends to describe Putin in terms appropriate for a middle-school crush.
And most recently, Trump’s only public comment about the death of Alexei Navalny is that Navalny’s death reminds him of what a great injustice he’s enduring with his criminal indictments. We’ve seen Trump lash out at former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany in much harsher terms than he’s ever spoken about Putin. You see, McEnany actually bothered Trump by what she said in a Fox News appearance; nothing Putin’s ever done has really bothered Trump that much.
The election of Trump turned almost the entire Democratic Party into born-again Russia hawks who made Joseph McCarthy look like a squish. And yet, once Biden was elected, he and his team kept emphasizing that they wanted a “stable, predictable” relationship with Putin, who was becoming increasingly unstable and unpredictable. Biden declined to pursue Putin’s personal wealth through sanctions, increased U.S. imports of Russian oil, and canceled the Keystone Pipeline.
Biden acquiesced to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Russia and Germany — at least until somebody, most likely the Ukrainians, blew it up. Biden let slip that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine by the Russians might not spur a serious American response. Biden spent half a year patting himself on the back for a diplomatic breakthrough with Russia . . . that Moscow tossed aside the moment it became inconvenient. And since the Russian invasion began, Biden has dithered and dragged his feet on sending the Ukrainians all kinds of weapons systems — F-16s, Abrams tanks, Patriot missile batteries, ATACMS, etc. NBC reports that Biden is once again “leaning towards” providing longer-range missiles to the Ukrainians. The war is entering its third year — what more does Biden need to see?
What would it be like to have an American administration that treated Russia like an enemy? Wouldn’t it be nice to have a president who saw Putin with the same contempt as Putin sees us, and who didn’t always fear that some action would be “provocative” or “escalatory” against a foe who commits war crimes as easily and naturally as he breathes?
Too much to ask, apparently.
ADDENDUM: I would remind Ramesh that the easiest way to get people irritated that we celebrate “Presidents’ Day” instead of “Washington’s birthday,” and to get them to rebel and go back to the old holiday, is to remind them that “Today is Presidents’ Day, where we commemorate all presidents, not just Washington and Lincoln, whether we like it or not.” Nope, sorry, you can’t just pick the great presidents you like; you also have to celebrate the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Millard Fillmore, Richard Nixon, Biden, Trump, and Charles Logan.