Under Biden, U.S. willing to challenge Russia
It is hard to imagine that, faced with aggressive, relentless assaults on American elections by the Kremlin, evidence of Russian bounties placed on the heads of American soldiers in the Mideast and bare-knuckled moves to re-gobble Ukraine, Ronald Reagan would have curried favor with Vladimir Putin. There was a time — lasting decades, in fact — when an American president lavishing praise on a former KGB agent running a Russian police state would have been denounced by Republicans as either a dolt or a dupe. And they would have been right.
Times have changed, however, and dramatically so. During the four years of Donald Trump’s most curious romance with Putin, the Grand Old Party sided with Trump in siding with Putin against the U.S.A., lending new meaning to the expression “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
The last administration and its supporters left American credibility on the ropes. The new administration understands that restoring America’s influence abroad requires an end to the coddling of Russia, and that end has begun. In his first trip to the State Department, President Biden provided a readout of his telephone call with Putin and delivered a pointed message. “I made it clear to President Putin in a manner very different from my predecessor,“said Biden in his speech at Foggy Bottom, “that the days of the United States rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions — interfering with our elections, cyber attacks, poisoning its citizens — are over. We will not hesitate to raise the costs on Russia.”
Those were mere words, but they were words Putin hasn’t heard for quite some time. When the American intelligence community unanimously confirmed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election in order to elect Trump and defeat Hillary Clinton, Trump announced that he chose to believe Putin over his own government.
When Putin’s government poisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Trump’s silence and solicitude encouraged the Russians to believe after Navalny recovered and returned to Moscow that they could imprison him without consequences, and imprison him is just what they did. Biden has called Russia’s oppression of Navalny what it is: an egregious human rights violation, the targeting of a political dissident for spotlighting Russian corruption. He called for Navalny’s immediate, unconditional release. Seeking to galvanize a multilateral response to Russia, Biden urged the Munich Security Conference in February to confront “Russian recklessness,” an effort he called “critical to protect our collective security.” Within days, the European Union announced its imposition of sanctions on Russia in response to Navalny’s jailing. Days later, the Biden administration announced its own set of sanctions against Russian companies and individuals, as well as other punitive measures. There is more to do, including using the presidential bully pulpit to shame Putin on the international stage, and the potential sanctioning of Putin cronies. The administration says that expanding its first round of sanctions is under review.
Biden’s directness about Putin has been refreshing, though likely not to Putin. Asked by ABC’s George Stephanopoulos last week whether he believed Putin was a killer, Biden replied “I do,” and said that Putin would “pay the price” for meddling in the 2020 election, which the Intelligence community concluded earlier this month he had also clearly done. In retaliation, Putin recalled Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov back home to Moscow in diplomatic protest.
It is good to see that America is back.