RICHARD FERNANDEZ: Slow Boiling the Western Alliance Like a Frog.
Being an ex secret policeman, Putin knows much of his menace comes from unpredictability. The public can tolerate ordinary police because they know what the rules are and do not anticipate a midnight knock on the door. As with secret police, Ukraine and the Western public don’t know what the rules are. They are hanging on the caprice of a seeming madman, who curiously keeps going to the brink without crossing it for good reason; if he actually invades in a recognizable way the uncertainty is removed and the West knows what to do about aging overreaching dictators who’ve started something they can’t afford. By preserving ambiguity Putin has Biden spellbound, on the one hand reportedly convinced it’s on. “The President was very clear that he is convinced by U.S. intelligence that this invasion will happen, that President Putin decided to do it, … ‘Because the intelligence says that Russian troops have actually received orders now, to proceed with the invasion,’ CBS News correspondent David Martin said.”
On the other hand, Biden seems to think Putin can still be talked out of it. The wires announced a breakthrough summit brokered by French President Emmanuel Macron in which “President Biden has agreed ‘in principle’ to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the near future, provided Russia has not invaded Ukraine, the White House announced.” Taking all the elements together it seems, according to a former White House adviser, that “ultimately Putin wants some kind of deal. They think Biden is the kind of president who could actually make a deal. Trump never could.” Perhaps Putin’s first choice in the Ukraine crisis was always a deal. He ramped up the geopolitical tension and held out until there was enough sweetener in the pot to make it worth his while.
Already Putin has begun what the New York Times calls “a carefully choreographed day of building drama over the fate of Ukraine”. In the short term buying Putin off is “good” because it averts war. But in the longer run it solves nothing because Putin will be back once he’s burned through the loot he anticipates getting from the West. Ironically Putin may even front load his demands to compensate for the possibility political checks made out by Biden dated “2023” and “2024” might bounce owing to electoral misfortune.
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Previously, I wrote for our VIP members:
Putin is also testing. He needs answers to questions of his own.
Is Biden so beholden to enviro-radical domestic interests that he can’t wage an effective foreign policy? Would NATO agree to withdraw weapons and troops from former Warsaw Pact countries close to Russia’s borders? Can the West be coerced or conned into recognizing Putin’s illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea? Will Ukraine succumb to threats and return to a government more friendly to Moscow? Or could Europe go full Munich 1938 and agree to a de facto partitioning of eastern Ukraine and the Finlandization of the rest?
A “Yes” to any one of these questions would make Putin’s game of mass chicken more than worthwhile.
Even better, so far as Putin is concerned: He can always move the troops around some more in a year or two and see what he can wrangle out of us next time.
No matter what the White House claims, I don’t see an all-out shooting war happening between Russia and Ukraine. Putin can gain too much profit, or at least for now believes he can, through simple bluster. Sending in the Russian Army risks too much, including perhaps showing for all the world to see his military’s real limitations.
What I do see, however, is Biden giving the farm away at the negotiating table—all to avoid a war that Biden, himself, seems to be drumming up.
If the summit happens, we might have to add Neville Chamberlin to Biden’s growing list of unfavorable historical analogs.