On Tuesday, President Biden held his first presidential phone conversation with Vladimir Putin. Biden is winning media plaudits for raising various contentious issues with the Russian leader. These include the plight of Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition journalist now imprisoned in Moscow, various Russian intelligence operations, and the sovereignty of Ukraine. The credit is not yet deserved.
Ukraine offers a particularly valuable case study here.
While former President Donald Trump undermined American values and interests with his pressure on President Volodymyr Zelensky to dredge up political dirt on Biden, Trump also gave Ukraine something that the Obama administration never did: anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons. So while it’s all good and well that Biden is pledging support for Ukraine, Navalny, and deterrence against Russian aggression, it’s not enough. Biden must act in concert with his words. If he fails to do so, Putin will sense that he can manipulate the president as he has so many presidents before. We must never forget that Putin is an exceptionally skilled manipulator of the finer KGB-class (finer at least in skill, not morality). Putin is intelligent, ruthless, and hateful of America in equal parts. But he is particularly unimpressed by warnings unbound from action. This is a reality to which Biden should be keenly aware. The former vice president should recall the disdainful response President Barack Obama received when in August 2016, he warned Putin to suspend his election interference efforts. Putin simply ignored Obama and continued with his interference.
Do not misunderstand me, I’m not trying to attack Biden for the sake of it. Trump’s Russia policy was mixed at best. While Trump authorized more aggressive U.S. intelligence and military operations against Russia than did Obama, he also undermined NATO’s alliance-based deterrence (even if Trump was right to pressure European allies on defense spending). The basic point is that Biden has not in any sense earned his preelection claim to be tougher than Trump on Putin.
Consider, for example, that Biden used his phone call to pledge an unqualified extension of the New Start nuclear arms control treaty. While the agreement deserves extension, the failure to adopt new inspection protocols is a gift to Putin. As is Biden’s plan to reduce U.S. nuclear strike capabilities.
What of other concerns?
On Saturday, the U.S. Navy deployed a destroyer into the Black Sea proximate to Ukraine. But the Trump administration authorized repeated deployments of this kind. And how about Navalny-beyond-the-call?
Don’t get too excited. The Biden administration has replicated the Trump administration’s excuse for hesitation by claiming that the intelligence picture as to what happened with Navalny during his August 2020 poisoning is still being assessed. As I documented on Monday, this assertion is simply untrue. The intelligence is clear, and it shows that Russian intelligence officers acted under Putin, via his national security council chief Nikolai Patrushev, in an attempted chemical weapons assassination. Putin’s attacks on Navalny thus represent clear challenges both to international stability and to basic human rights.
Perhaps resolute U.S. action is coming. That will get Putin’s attention. But this phone call will only have earned his amusement.
