AMAC Exclusive – By Barry Casselman
The partisans, hypesters, and media fellow travelers trying to portray President Joe Biden’s actions on the Ukraine crisis in a positive light are not having much success with the general public so far, the latest polls show. In fact, some of the more reliable pollsters, such as Rasmussen, show the Democratic president with worse numbers than he had before the Russian invasion.
The President’s pre-invasion strategy of publicly disclosing intelligence of Russian President Putin’s plans did not work, and his post-invasion actions of incremental aid to Ukraine and economic sanctions on Russia haven’t worked either — perceived as half-hearted or too slow, especially compared to stronger measures imposed by most of the U.S.’s European NATO allies. It was, after all, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, not Joe Biden, who pushed to remove Russia from the SWIFT international banking system. Even President Biden’s trip to Europe this week has not done much to restore a perception of American leadership.
Mr. Biden explains his hesitancy, and refusal to take stronger measures, as a prudent caution about precipitating a wider war, but savage images from Russian-caused death and destruction on the ground, plus the remarkably eloquent pleas from Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky for more help (including a dramatic televised appeal to a special session of the U.S. Congress) have seemingly left an impression that the U.S. could do more.
The European response has seemed so far to be more robust. In addition to providing Ukraine with significant weaponry and humanitarian supplies, nations that border the crisis are taking in great numbers of Ukrainian refugees, now believed to be more than 3 million, fleeing the invasion violence. Those border nations used to be Soviet Russian satellites cruelly suppressed by communist totalitarianism, and they are especially concerned by Mr. Putin’s perceived ambition to reconstruct the old Soviet empire that collapsed in the early 1990’s before Putin took power — and then gradually suppressed the fledgling Russian democracy.
Mr. Putin has reportedly asked China for help in Ukraine, and the Chinese have been cautiously supportive, yet Chinese leader Xi Jinping is watching the current crisis carefully, and has to be sobered by the democracies’ unexpected and unified response to the Russian aggression, especially the willingness of the Europeans to endure at least short-term hardships in order to sanction Russia.
China has now had a glimpse of what Western economic actions might do if at a future date Beijing took precipitous action against Taiwan. Russia does $25 billion in trade annually with the U.S., but China does about $1 trillion. Russia has worldwide economic interests, but they are small compared to China’s global commitments. In the four weeks since the invasion began, China has observed Russia losing the propaganda war in Ukraine to an ex-TV comedian; watched a much superior Russian military at least temporarily checked by a small but determined Ukrainian armed force; and seen the national brand of the new Russia almost overnight become, with only a few exceptions, an international pariah.
A world of limited and relatively slow transportation options, no television, no internet, no social media, widespread poverty, hunger, and limited medical technology — that is, the world of only 75 years ago — is not the world of today. Totalitarianism is not what it used to be. Mr. Putin is a throwback, an anachronism, to a time when bad things usually happened out of sight and too late to do something to stop them. The question now is whether China’s leader understands the new complexities arising from how the world has changed.
There seems to be little question about whether or not Joe Biden gets it. He has seemed to wander from crisis to crisis unaware of public opinion and the public’s real interests. His belated actions in Ukraine are only a replay of his failure to act effectively on the border crisis, looming inflation, parents’ concerns about schools, the Middle East, and energy policy.
The voters apparently have his number, and that number isn’t likely going higher any time soon.