Biden touches down in a changed Europe
According to national security advisor Jake Sullivan, Joe Biden’s trip to Europe is an “opportunity to coordinate on the next phase of military assistance to Ukraine. He will join our partners in imposing further sanctions on Russia and tightening the existing sanctions to crack down on evasion and to ensure robust enforcement.”
The president is in Brussels today for a NATO pow-wow and will head to Poland tomorrow. On this trip, as with the rest of the Biden administration’s diplomatic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the emphasis is on unity. This White House has, more than anything else, sought to present a united front with European allies throughout the crisis.
But are the cracks in that unity starting to show? Tom McTague asks in the Atlantic: “As the current sense of shock and disgust gives way to the usual pressures of political and economic cycles, does the West agree on what lessons should be drawn from this crisis? Does it collectively know what it stands for — and whom it stands against?”
Aside from these big-picture differences, America is at odds with some allies on how far to go to punish Russia. See, for example, Germany’s opposition to an embargo on Russian energy. Or the row of how to get foreign fighter jets to the Ukrainian air force.
As these debates rumble on. there is more than a whiff of complacency to the mood in the West. Whether in Washington, Berlin, London or Brussels, too many key protagonists appear think they can have their cake and eat it.
As Niall Ferguson observes, American and British officials appear to have settled on Putin’s downfall as the strategic goal in the current crisis. “The only endgame now,” an official reportedly said at a recent private event, “is the end of the Putin regime.”
“Again and again, I hear such language,” writes Ferguson. “It helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the US to secure a ceasefire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.” But is the West doing what it must to deliver these bold objectives? Might it be overpromising and underdelivering? As Putin’s invasion falters, there is a dangerous mix of complacency and triumphalism in the air. And the Biden administration is reluctant to acknowledge trade-offs that the thorny question of how to Russia unavoidably entail.
As the adrenaline rush of the war’s early phase passes, the reality of a new normal in Europe is settling in. Or at least it should be settling in. In a sobering essay, Damir Marusic argues that “Europe in particular ought to be steeling itself for a generational confrontation with Russia” but worries about a “scenario where European leaders, and some in Washington, try to put this ‘crisis’ behind them and get back to the bigger project of rebuilding the liberal world order of their fantasies.”
In other words, the world has changed. And yet Biden often leaves the impression that he thinks little of his administration’s policy, at home and abroad, needs to change with it.
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Madeleine Albright, RIP
Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as secretary of state, has died. Writing for the site, James Snell notes the poignancy of the timing of her death “at the very moment the liberal post-Soviet world has met its own, more violent, end. Her term as Bill Clinton’s secretary of state coincided with the moment America, the most powerful nation in the history of the world, sat, unknowingly, at its own apogee.”
To read her obituaries is to be to read of a great American life, but also to be reminded of how short our holiday from history really was. By the time she was eleven, she and her family had twice fled her native Czechoslovakia, first thanks to the threat of Nazi persecution and then Soviet tyranny.
Dr. Oz paints McCormick as a pro-China finance bro
Cockburn reports on escalating hostilities in the Pennsylvania senate primary. The Dr. Oz team has released a humorous attack ad featuring self-satisfied finance bros and David McCormick fanboys Chad and Tad. As Cockburn notes, Dr. Oz’s charge that his primary rival is a part of the super-rich elite is somewhat undermined by his own fortune. But expect to see more of the soft-on-China attacks. McCormick is a formidable candidate, but his past business in, and comments on, China could prove to be his biggest campaign-trail headache.
What you should be reading today
Gilbert T. Sewall: Will the West Coast walk away from wokeness?
Charles Lipson: How will the battlefield stalemate end in Ukraine?
Alexander Larman: Zelensky’s sitcom is now as sad as it is funny
Noah Rothman, Commentary: Cuomo’s macabre pandemic nostalgia
Brahma Chellaney, Project Syndicate: Putin’s war and the mirage of the rules-based order
Greg Ip, Wall Street Journal: The odds don’t favor the Fed’s soft landing
Poll watch
President Biden Job Approval
Approve: 41.3 percent
Disapprove: 53.2 percent
Net approval: -11.9 (RCP Average)
Do voters support the federal government encouraging the production of nuclear power?
Encourage: 35 percent
Discourage: 26 percent
Neither: 37 percent (Pew)
