Fraser Myers
Spiked, Feb. 22, 2022
“… attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis were never going to come easy – not least because Biden and Co had gone to such lengths to demonise Russia and Putin, often for puerile partisan reasons, over the past few years.”
The ‘adults are back in the room’, we were told when Joe Biden assumed the US presidency. The turbulence of the Trump years was behind us, and a return to normalcy – both domestic and global – was all but guaranteed.
Things feel rather different now. With Vladimir Putin’s decision to roll tanks into Ukraine, we are on the cusp of major destabilisation in world affairs. And while Putin alone is responsible for this unacceptable incursion on Ukrainian sovereignty, the Biden administration – the smart set, the sensibles, the adults, supposedly – has managed to bring about the worst of all possible worlds. It has invited Russian aggression, more or less forcing Putin’s hand, while hindering any prospect of a diplomatic climbdown.
Back in 2021, in his first foreign-policy speech as president, Biden declared that ‘Diplomacy is back at the centre of our foreign policy’. But attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis were never going to come easy – not least because Biden and Co had gone to such lengths to demonise Russia and Putin, often for puerile partisan reasons, over the past few years.
‘Putin knows that when I am president of the United States his days of tyranny… are over’, Biden warned in 2019. A year later, he returned to the theme: ‘Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president.’ The domestic political imperative to tar Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, as a stooge of Putin always came ahead of the more serious foreign-policy concern of actually having to deal with Putin. Earlier today, in his first speech since the Russian invasion, Biden insisted that the diplomatic door is still open. But this rings hollow.
Fraser Myers is deputy editor at spiked and host of the spiked podcast. Follow him on Twitter: @FraserMyers
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