GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Director of National Intelligence came out with a report today saying that Vladimir Putin authorized operations during the election to under -- denigrate you, support President Trump, undermine our elections, divide our society. What price must he pay?"Walking and chewing gum" over Russia in the 19th century
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: He will pay a price. I, we had a long talk, he and I, when we -- I know him relatively well. And I-- the conversation started off, I said, "I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared."
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You said you know he doesn't have a soul.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I did say that to him, yes. And -- and his response was, "We understand one another." It was-- I wasn't being a wise guy. I was alone with him in his office. And that -- that's how it came about. It was when President Bush had said, "I looked in his eyes and saw his soul."
I said, "Looked in your eyes and I don't think you have a soul." And looked back and he said, "We understand each other." Look, most important thing dealing with foreign leaders in my experience, and I've dealt with an awful lot of 'em over my career, is just know the other guy. Don't expect somethin' that you're-- that -- don't expect him to-- or her to-- voluntarily appear in the second editions of Profiles in Courage.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he's a killer?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Uh-huh. I do.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So what price must he pay?
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The price he's gonna pay we'll-- you'll see shortly. I'm not gonna-- there's-- by the way, we oughta be able that ol' -- that trite expression "walk and chew gum at the same time," there're places where it's in our mutual interest to work together.
That's why I renewed the [START nuclear arms control] agreement with him. That occurred while he's doin' this. But that's overwhelmingly in the interest of humanity, that we diminish the prospect of a nuclear exchange. But that and SolarWinds as well. He's been -- they've done some mischievous things, to say the least. And so we're gonna have -- I'm not gonna announce what I'm doing, but he's gonna understand that -- [my emphasis]
Russia has been around for a while. In the early decades of the United States' existence, the country's foreign policy was less worried about Russia than about Barbary Pirates, Britain, France, Spain and the challenge of dispossessing the native population in North America.
During the first part of the 19th century, republicans and democrats in Europe and the "New World" generally took a dim view of Russia because it was seen as the ultimate guarantor of the royalist regimes of the so-called Holy Alliance in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon and the 1815 Peace of Paris.
But even then, things weren't that simple. Thomas Jefferson in his mansion in Monticello kept prominently displayed busts of Napoleon and of Alexander I of Russia, the emperor who had defeated Napoleon and was the protector of the Holy Alliance. In 1813, Jefferson was a post-Presidential "elder statesman," as we used to say. But he was still an influential voice on political matters. And he understood very well that even in 1813, foreign policy was complicated. His biographer Dumas Malone wrote about Jefferson in this period in Jefferson and His Time: The Sage of Monticello (1981):
Toward the end of 1813 a Federalist paper in Philadelphia printed an extract from a private letter of his, written a couple of months earlier. In this he voiced his detestation of Napoleon, describing him as "the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the Continent of Europe with blood." At the same time the ex-President expressed his gratification at the recent disasters of the unprincipled French Emperor in Russia and the successes of "the virtuous Alexander [I of Russia]." From this extract alone it would seem that, at a time when his own country was at war with the British, he was siding with them against their inveterate foe [France], and his strong language was particularly disturbing to members of his own party who retained pro-French sentiments. [my emphasis]Jefferson later explained the context of that letter, which had been published by a Federalist Party partisan. The War of 1812 was still going on in 1813, and the Federalists were in the process of fatally discrediting themselves by their pro-British partisanship. Jefferson was the founder of the Democratic-Republican Party, which evolved into today's Democratic Party but in those days was known as the Republican Party. Then-President James Madison was a Republican.
The quotation was from a letter of [Jefferson's] replying to one from Dr. George Logan, a Quaker. This former supporter of his had once gained favor in Republican circles, and reprobation in Federalist, for his efforts to prevent war with France. A doctrinaire pacifist now seeking to end the war with Great Britain, he besought Jefferson to ask Madison to "come forward with just and honorable proposals for peace." He was entirely confident that these would be accepted. Instead of brushing him off as a visionary, Jefferson wrote him a long account of Anglo-American relations, leaving no doubt of his own conviction that the object of procuring a just peace would be "best promoted by a vigorous and unanimous prosecution of the war [i.e., of the US war against Britain]" As he explained to Leiper, the references to Napoleon, while indisputable, were incidental. They were being quoted wholly out of context by a former friend who had become a "bigoted partisan of England, and malcontent of his own government." [my emphasis]Foreign policy with Russia was complicated even in 1813.
Since Jefferson's reputation has fallen considerably in recent decades, especially among the party he originally founded, I assume I'm not doing any favors by comparing him to Jefferson. But the party founder and third US President did know something about walking and talking at the same time in foreign policy matters. And the example above shows how Jefferson was balancing a variety of partisan and ideological considerations and his understanding of the general US interest in how he was evaluating foreign policy.
His busts of Napoleon and Alexander I could be taken as a symbol of that complexity. Napoleon was a military aggressor. But his conquests also advanced the progress of political and economic reforms of a liberal nature across Europe. Alexander became the backstop of reactionary regimes in Europe. But he was also an internal reformer in various ways, most notably in establishing a system of public education in Russia. Alexander came to the throne after cooperating with a successful plot to assassinate his father Tsar Paul I (Pavel Petrovich). Alexander was also sort of a "killer" type, it seems.
"Walking and chewing gum" today
Returning to the present, here's a English-language Deutsche Welle report on Biden's recent comments, Russia recalls US ambassador after Biden's 'killer' comment 03/18/2021:
Here's an additional Deutsche Welle report on the immediate response to Biden's comments, Russia recalls US ambassador after Biden's 'killer' comment 03/18/2021:
Patrick Revell reports on another early response from Putin, Putin challenges Biden to debate after president calls him a 'killer' ABC News 03/18/2021.
My general attitude toward Biden' foreign policy is pretty much "trust but verify," which was Reagan's famous phrase for nuclear arms control. Or maybe "be skeptical and verify" would be closer. Because I think the US spends way too much on the military and that our foreign policy is far too militarized and should be focused much more on pressing dangers to humanity like nuclear proliferation and climate change.
But I'm not alarmed by this particular turn of events. Does Putin really mind that much if Biden calls him a killer without a soul? He may take it as a compliment, although in diplomatic terms he obviously knows it's an insult. And of course Russia expects other countries to respond to attempts to interfere in their internal politics.
A lot of foreign policy is posturing, sending signals, saving face, and satisfying various internal constituencies and external actors. And when countries are negotiating with each other, just like in business or labor negotiations or a lawsuit, both sides are going to assume that the other side will try to maximize its advantages and get as much as they can. And that their opposite numbers will be hardnosed and practical in their approach to negotiations.
In the real world of US foreign policy, the military-industrial complex and its allies in think-tanks and politics are and will continue to be hardnosed in pursuing policies that lead to bigger and bigger military budgets. People who actually favor a peaceful, practical, and democratic foreign policy need to build a lot more clout than they currently have.
Part of that is paying attention to serious analysis from those who aren't exclusively devoted to the profits of armaments companies. Like this piece from Anatol Lieven (Calling Putin a ‘killer’ with ‘no soul’ is not exactly the best way to reset diplomacy Responsible Statecraft 03/18/2021), who warns:
The Biden administration has created an completely unnecessary confrontation with Russia at a time when reasonable working relations with Moscow are extremely important for achieving two immediate and key administration goals: rejoining the nuclear agreement with Iran, and a peace settlement in Afghanistan facilitating U.S. military withdrawal from that country and an end to America’s longest war.Lieven also reminds us that we can be try to be realistic about Putin's government, which is admired by rightwingers and even the most radical rightists, and still be critical-minded about simplistic "Russiagate" claims, "In essence (assuming that the allegations [about Russian election interference in 2020] are true), Russia did what thousands of Washington lobbyists are paid to spend their lives doing (perfectly legally): influence U.S. politicians, media and policies in favor of particular foreign governments." I don't take Lieven to mean that the US shouldn't distinguish between legal and illegal influence operations.
The administration approach combines many of the errors committed by Washington officials, politicians, and the media in recent years. First, you have an intelligence report based on evidence that the public cannot see stating that it is “likely” that the Russian government ordered attempts to influence the elections. This report is then turned by the administration and much of the media into an absolute certainty. In a recent ABC News interview, Biden says Putin will “pay a price” for what the report says his government has done. As usual, the issue is personalized by attributing the decision to Putin himself, and the U.S. statement is accompanied by gratuitously insulting language which is likely to offend even many Russian opponents of Putin. Does nobody remember the advice of Teddy Roosevelt — hardly a weakling on U.S. security — to speak softly and carry a big stick? [my emphasis]
It's also worth noting that current celebration in the West of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny does not mean that if he were the leader of Russia he would pursue a fundamentally different foreign policy, since he rose to his present level of influence in Russian politics with a distinctly Russian national-chauvinist tone, although in the last decade he has put more emphasis on the fight against corruption.
Putin had obvious pragmatic power reasons to prefer Trump as President over Clinton or Biden. Trump may have been inclined to actively help him in some areas, and may have been subject to blackmail in some way. Certainly Trump weakened the credibility of the US as player in world politics and particularly within the NATO alliance, both goals of Putin's government. But Trump also continued to increase the military budget, and didn't obviously cater to Putin's foreign policy preferences in places like Syria. Russia's power-balancing interests would also be aided by increase US tension with China, a country with which Russia currently has good relations.
Whatever benefits Trump may have provided in term of basic espionage gains, Trump's main policy benefit from the standpoint of Putin's government was in being a chaos agent. Trump was spectacularly incompetent in actually running the government, including the military, intelligence, and diplomatic parts. And he was terrible at negotiating with other countries, shown particularly by his dealings with North Korea. And as we see with the bizarre clown coup attempt in Venezuela, Trump was no good at regime-change operations either, and Putin seems to be genuinely worried about the US targeting such operations at Russia and its immediate neighbors, especially nations once part of the Soviet Union.
I assume that Putin's government regards the Biden Administration as a mix of blessing and curse. He isn't going to provide Putin a lot of opportunities to look like he's slapping the US around, and Biden obviously isn't going to kowtow to Putin personally in the way Trump did. But for substantive agreements affected things like the Nord Stream 2 pipeline deal or the Iran nuclear deal, the Russians will probably be relieved to have an adversary in the White House who actually knows something about foreign affairs and who doesn't see the Presidency as a professional-wrestling promotion act. Related: Biden's February 4 foreign policy speech Contradicciones 02/06/2021
