Joe Biden has regularly gotten himself into trouble when he goes off-script. He did it again last weekend when the U.S. president called for what sounded very much like the ouster of Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Speaking in Poland during a European visit designed to affirm the West’s united resolve against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden ad-libbed about Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
Those words may only reinforce the Russian president’s paranoia. Putin conflates his own interests with those of his country, so he is inclined to take any words calling for his removal as also being a threat to Russia.
Almost as soon as the words came out of Biden’s mouth, members of his administration scrambled to reframe them, saying that regime change in Russia is not what Biden meant and is not the nation’s foreign policy. Biden himself later muddled things further, trying to distinguish between his personal outrage at Putin and American foreign policy that he is expected to set and articulate.
What Putin has done in Ukraine is reprehensible. In order to try to force a free and democratic nation back into the Russian fold, he has indiscriminately attacked civilian targets as well as military ones. He is a villain, but he’s a villain with whom the U.S. and the rest of the Western allies have to deal.
The U.S. objective is to de-escalate the war in Ukraine and help steer the conflict toward a settlement that both sides can accept. Ukraine’s brave resistance against Russia’s overwhelming military superiority is part of the equation. But so is giving Putin an exit strategy that he can take without threatening his hold on power in Russia.
If Putin feels like he has nothing to lose, the consequences could be grave, not only for Ukraine but for the world. Putin has at his disposal a nuclear arsenal that could destroy the world many times over. He has already so much as threatened to use it if the West blocks his ambitions.
To assure that threat remains an empty one, it would help if Biden were to choose his words more carefully.
