REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
President Joe Biden didn’t make loads of information along with his press conference after sitting down with NATO leaders Thursday, and what he did make was complicated at finest, and basically discouraging.
That got here in reply to a query about what NATO would do if Vladimir Putin makes use of chemical weapons in Ukraine, as Biden warned earlier than going to Europe appears to be an actual risk.
“It would trigger a response in kind,” the prez stated. Huh? Unless somebody’s hiding them, no NATO energy has chemical weapons. At finest, this appears to imply some severe harmful motion in opposition to Russia’s forces in Ukraine.
But possibly not, since Biden then added that NATO would determine what to do “at the time.”
Meaning: They haven’t labored it out forward of time, and can wait ’til it occurs to begin figuring it out.
NATO has 30 members, a few of them extremely reluctant to confront Putin; if all of them have to agree on a response, it’ll take days if not weeks. Some international locations might effectively demand extra proof.
This is the very reverse of what we’ve referred to as for — specifically, for Biden to publicly establish prematurely a particular US (at the least) hard-power response to Putin’s use of chems (or different weapons of mass destruction).
Vague threats aren’t sufficient, and the suggestion that we’ll negotiate the response with 2½ dozen different international locations after Putin strikes makes it not a menace in any respect.
This is even worse than Biden’s pre-invasion remark that the West may not do something if Putin merely grabbed a number of items of Ukraine.
The different notable a part of the presser was Biden’s heated insistence that he’d by no means stated the specter of sanctions was meant to deter Putin from invading within the first place.
Hmm. Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan stated Feb. 11, “The president believes that sanctions are intended to deter.” Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a longtime Biden crony, stated Feb. 20 that the aim of sanctions “is to try to deter Russia from going to war” and Feb. 23 that sanctions are a bid “to try to deter Russia from taking further aggression.” Other high officers chimed in a dozen occasions.
This is Joe Biden: reversing himself and pretending angrily that it by no means occurred. Why ought to Putin consider any of his threats?
Someone get the president a war-time consigliere.
