Biden’s rhetoric on war in Ukraine remains incoherent, inconsistent

On Saturday, President Joe Biden gave a speech in which he appeared to call for Vladimir Putin’s removal from power — directly contradicting the policy of his own administration, which does not support a regime change.

Rushing to course-correct, the U.S.’ NATO ambassador later insisted that the remarks were “a principled human reaction” to his emotional visit with Ukrainian refugees.

This was by no means the first verbal blunder that Biden has made during this crisis.

He recently told U.S. troops in Poland that they would witness the bravery of the Ukrainian people “when you’re there” — implying that the U.S. would send soldiers to Ukraine, which would undercut his pledge not to send American troops into NON-NATO countries.

Further, in January, Biden erroneously implied that a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine might not trigger Western sanctions.

In both cases, the White House scrambled to clean up the president’s mess by explaining away the misstep while also reinforcing that America’s position had remained unchanged, despite what Biden had said.

Ultimately, these gaffes are not justifiable mistakes — rather, they are characteristic of the incoherence and inconsistency that President Biden has frequently exhibited during his handling of this global crisis.

The American president’s words and actions carry the most weight of any leader. The world is watching, and every time President Biden says something he doesn’t mean or doesn’t follow through on, America’s credibility suffers and our undemocratic adversaries feel emboldened.

Indeed, despite Biden’s harsh rhetoric against Putin, his administration is actively and directly undercutting Western efforts to isolate and destabilize Russia by reentering the Iran nuclear deal. It strains credulity for the Biden administration to impose debilitating sanctions against Putin vis-à-vis Ukraine while also entering a deal with Russia that gives Putin an opening to leverage Iran for relief from sanctions imposed by the West.

Notably, Biden has even been called out by Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his actions not always living up to his words. The Ukrainian president recently criticized the West’s “incomplete” sanctions on Russia and asserted that Western nations weren’t sending more aid to the Ukrainian military because they were “afraid of Russia.”

An important note: While Zelenskyy’s criticisms are in many ways valid, Biden does deserve credit for rallying Europe around crushing sanctions against Russia, banning imports of Russian oil and sending billions of dollars in military aid and weapons to Ukraine.

Further, Biden and Zelenskyy spoke Wednesday, and Biden reportedly said that the U.S. intends to provide Ukraine with $500 million in direct budgetary aid, on top of the additional $1 billion in humanitarian aid that the U.S. announced for

Ukraine last week.

The time has come for Biden to draw a ‘red line’ for the Kremlin, making it known to Putin that all options are on the table if he deploys biological, chemical or nuclear weapons against Ukraine. If the United States fails to make this clear to Putin, the Ukrainian people will continue to suffer immensely, and powerful rogue states like China will be emboldened by this inaction.

To be sure, Chinese President Xi Jinping likely already feels encouraged by Biden’s recent blunders and inconsistencies, as it signals that the administration’s response would be similarly disjointed if mainland China begins taking more aggressive actions against Taiwan.

Since Biden took office, his ostensibly tough talk against the CCP — for its aggression against Taiwan, its undemocratic actions to quell opposition in Hong Kong, and its human rights abuses — has not been met with comparable action. Thus, if Biden does not course-correct vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine, Xi will take this as reassurance, and Taiwan will be at risk.

To that end, if Taiwan feels that the U.S. — the most prominent steadfast supporter of the island’s independence — is an unreliable international partner, Taiwan may be more willing to accept the terms of mainland China’s rule out of fear.

Simply put, the stakes of the war in Ukraine are too high for the inconsistency and incoherence that we’ve seen from the president.