Facing Vladimir Putin, America’s second most eminent adversary, President Joe Biden is fashionably presented as some kind of ordained savior. Biden, the casual thinking goes, is the antidote to President Donald Trump’s Russian appeasement policy.

There is little factual basis for this understanding. He might call Putin a killer, then a couple of weeks later call up Putin to ask for a summit, but Biden is weak on Russia. So far, at least. Let’s start out at sea.