LVIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused the West of cowardice Sunday while another top official said Russia was trying to split the nation in two, like North and South Korea.
Zelenskyy made an exasperated plea for fighter jets and tanks to help defend his country from Russia’s invading troops. Russia now says its main focus is on taking control of the eastern Donbas region, an apparent pullback from its earlier, more expansive goals, but one which is raising fears of a divided Ukraine.
Speaking after U.S. President Joe Biden said in a lacerating speech that Russian President Vladimir Putin could not stay in power — words the White House immediately sought to downplay — Zelenskyy lashed out at the West’s “ping-pong about who and how should hand over jets” and other weapons while Russian missile attacks kill and trap civilians.
“The words of a president matter,” he said more than once. “They can move markets. They can send our brave men and women to war. They can bring peace.”
They can also, as Biden discovered on Saturday, spark a global uproar in the middle of a war.
With nine ad-libbed words at the end of a 27-minute speech, Biden created an unwanted distraction to his otherwise forceful remarks by calling for Russian President Vladimir Putin to be pushed out of office.
“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power,” Biden said.
Transcript of Biden's speech in Poland
It was a remarkable statement that would reverse stated U.S. policy, directly countering claims from senior administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who have insisted regime change is not on the table. It went further than even U.S. presidents during the Cold War, and immediately reverberated around the world as world leaders, diplomats, and foreign policy experts sought to determine what Biden said, what it meant — and, if he didn’t mean it, why he said it.
Shortly after the speech, a White House official sought to clarify the comments.
“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia or regime change,” the official said.
Biden’s line was not planned and came as a surprise to U.S. officials, according to a person familiar with the speakers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. In the immediate aftermath of the remark, reporters rushed to find Biden aides and seek clarity on the president seemingly supporting a regime change in Russia.
But Biden aides demurred, refusing to comment as they scrambled to craft a response.
How Biden sparked a global uproar with nine ad-libbed words about Putin
White House officials were adamant the remark was not a sign of a policy change, but they did concede it was just the latest example of Biden’s penchant for stumbling off message. And like many of his unintended comments, they came at the end of his speech as he ad-libbed and veered from the carefully crafted text on the teleprompter.
“The speech was quite remarkable,” said Aaron David Miller, a veteran diplomat and senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “This is one of those speeches where the one-liner in many ways drowns out the intent of the speech. Because that’s exactly what people are focusing on.”
Miller said that had the White House not immediately clarified, the comment would have led to a significant shift in policy and signaled to Putin that the United States would attempt to drive him out of office. It is unclear what the full impact of the comment may be in the coming days.
“I’m risk-averse by nature, especially with a guy who has nuclear weapons,” he said. “But will it have operational consequences? I don’t know.”
It likely signals to Putin what he already suspected about Biden’s true feelings, and it almost certainly will be used as part of Russia’s propaganda.
“I guess you can call this a gaffe from the heart,” Miller said. “If Biden could close his eyes tomorrow and have 10 wishes, one would be there’s a leadership change in Russia.”
But the comment also seemed to provide a window into Biden’s current thinking, and some of the mindset that the administration has with regard to Putin.
“What it tells me, and worries me, is that the top team is not thinking about plausible war termination,” said Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of the book “The Art of War in an Age of Peace: U.S. Grand Strategy and Resolute Restraint.”
“If they were, Biden’s head wouldn’t be in a place where he’s saying, ‘Putin must go.’ The only way to get to war termination is to negotiate with this guy,” O’Hanlon said.
President Biden kisses a child while meeting refugees of Russia's war with Ukraine at PGE Narodowy Stadium in Warsaw on March 26, 2022.
“When you say this guy must go you’ve essentially declared you’re not going to do business with him,” he added. “However appealing at an emotional level, it’s not going to happen. We can’t control it, and it probably won’t take place anytime soon.”
Over the past few weeks, Biden’s rhetoric on Putin — a man he once recounted telling to his face, “I don’t think you have a soul” — has become increasingly pointed. He has called him a “butcher” “pure thug” and a “murderous dictator.” So saying that he should be removed from power could viewed as the logical next step.
It also is in line with Biden at times articulating policy before his aides are ready. Last week, he called Putin a “war criminal,” which White House aides quickly said was simply him “speaking from the heart.” But within a few days, U.S. policy changed as Blinken also called Putin a war criminal and released a formal assessment on war crimes committed by Russia.
Biden’s comment was particularly striking because his administration has taken pains to avoid even implying that regime change is a goal of the Western response to Russia’s aggression.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told state news agencies, “That’s not for Biden to decide. The president of Russia is elected by Russians.”
Some officials, both in the U.S. and abroad, said Biden’s comment was an honest acknowledgment of reality — the U.S. will likely never have a normal relationship with Putin after the invasion. But the bigger worry may be that, in the short term, Biden’s rhetoric could escalate tensions and make any diplomatic off-ramp harder to find.
“There ought to be two priorities right now: ending the war on terms Ukraine can accept, and discouraging any escalation by Putin. And this comment was inconsistent with both of those goals,” said Richard Haass, a veteran diplomat and president of the Council on Foreign Relations.
“It discourages Putin from any compromise essentially — if you’ve got everything to lose, it frees him up. Why should he show any restraint?” Haass added. “And it confirms his worst fears, which is that this is what the United States seeks. His ouster and systemic change.”
He said the remark overshadowed an otherwise relatively smooth trip aimed at building additional support for Ukraine, bulking up additional sanctions enforcement and further unifying NATO allies.
“What’s frustrating about this is, up to now, the Biden administration has conducted itself with significant discipline. … This goes against the grain of their handling of this crisis,” Haass said.
“They obviously recognize that, they walked it back in a matter of minutes,” he added. “The problem is, from Putin’s point of view the president revealed his and our true intentions.”
Smoke rises after a Russian airstrike in Lviv in western Ukraine, March 26, 2022.
David Rothkopf, a foreign-policy analyst and CEO of the Rothkopf Group, compared Biden’s speech to President John F. Kennedy’s speech in Berlin expressing solidarity with German citizens in 1963.
“There is within Biden’s comment a kernel of truth,” Rothkopf said. “Vladimir Putin can’t lay waste to a country, kill tens of thousands of civilians, commit serial war crimes and expect to be welcomed back into the community of nations. If Russia wants to be part of the community of nations, then they are going to have to produce change.”
“The statement I think is naturally going to be a bit of lightning rod as it has already been,” he added. “It shouldn’t distract from the much more important speech, but it also wasn’t wrong.”
Biden entered office with significant foreign policy experience and frequently touted his relationships with world leaders and ability to forge diplomatic compromises.
But if some other leaders operate as discrete poker players with cards close to their chest, Biden has often failed to hide his true intentions and thoughts when he is before a microphone.
The man who once confessed, “I am a gaffe machine,” has a long history of veering from the carefully crafted text of his speechwriters, and the inability to control his words has been a running joke among staffers for decades.
“I feel very capable of using my mouth in sync with my mind,” he told reporters, with more than a hint of defensiveness, in 1987.
At the launch of his 2008 campaign, Biden came under criticism for calling Barack Obama “the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Later, as Obama’s vice president, Biden was captured on a microphone whispering an expletive to Obama at the bill signing for the landmark health care law.
Biden drew significant ire from Obama and his aides when he announced his support for same-sex marriage before Obama or many other prominent politicians.
During the presidential campaign, Biden referred to Margaret Thatcher instead of the more recent British prime minister Theresa May, and he misstated when he had met with students impacted by shooting in Parkland, Fla.
As president, aides have often worked to keep him on message. Sometimes that means limited exposure in formal settings — he waited longer than any president in at least a century to hold his first formal news conference — and it also means trying to keep him tightly to a script.
But there is little any aide can do when the president decides to extend his remarks and tuck in, almost as an aside, a declaration that he wants to see Putin removed from power.
“God bless you all. And may God defend our freedom,” he said after suggesting Putin’s removal. “And may God protect our troops. Thank you for your patience. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”
When the year began, there were about 80,000 U.S. troops based in Europe, either permanently stationed or participating in heel-to-toe rotations from bases stateside. But as Russia amassed more troops on Ukraine’s border and then launched a full-on invasion in late February, the number of Americans posted along NATO’s eastern front has swelled to more than 90,000.
Those troops are in place temporarily, to reassure allies, the Pentagon has said, but a senior defense official told reporters Friday that the ongoing war in Ukraine has forced the Defense Department to re-think its numbers in Europe.
“There have been no posture decisions, permanent posture decisions ... there are no serious negotiations with other nations in terms of permanent posture right now,” the official said. “But I think it’s safe to assume that the security environment in Europe is now radically different than it was before.”
In recent years, the U.S. has leaned more on rotational forces training with local troops from the Baltics down to Bulgaria, as permanent bases in Germany have closed.
Now, with Russia’s unprovoked hostility considered a very real threat to NATO countries, there may be a call for even more U.S. troops in Europe, either permanent or rotational.
“But it’s safe to assume we have, frankly, our allies, who will be looking at what the posture should be like, going forward, longer-term ― that was a topic of discussion at the NATO summit yesterday,” the official said. “No decisions made, of course. No specific proposals debated or discussed, but the issue of what the security posture in Europe needs to look like long-term absolutely is being discussed.”
In the immediate future, the official said, U.S. and NATO leaders are considering how many troops are needed to bolster eastern front countries as Russia’s invasion continues.
Thousands of US troops deploying for first-ever NATO Response Force activation amid Russia attack
Troops would join 7,000 American service members already unilaterally deployed to Europe as Russia attacks Ukraine.
By Meghann Myers
To date, the U.S. has activated about 11,600 troops for the mission: 4,700 from the 82nd Airborne Division to Poland; 300 from the XVIII Airborne Corps to Germany; 1,000 from the 2nd Cavalry Regiment to Romania; 800 from the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team to Latvia; 100 F-35 Lightning II aircrew to Estonia, Lithuania and Romania; 100 AH-64 Apache aircrew to Poland and the Baltic states; 3,800 from 1st Armored Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division and its sustainment unit to Germany; 150 airmen from Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington; 40 members of an air support operations unit to Romania and Poland; 300 ordnance and maintenance soldiers to Germany; and 300 members of V Corps to Germany and Poland.
The U.S. has committed another 2,000 or so to the NATO Response Force, but the Pentagon hasn’t yet identified those units for deployment.
“Right now our focus is on whether or not there need to be additional temporary deployments to shore up the eastern flank given, what’s going on in Ukraine,” the senior defense official said.
About Meghann Myers
Meghann Myers is the Pentagon bureau chief at Military Times. She covers operations, policy, personnel, leadership, and other issues affecting service members. Follow on Twitter @Meghann_MT
Which supplements are banned by the military? Better check this database
A new Defense Department instruction requires training on dietary supplements, as well as a database for every banned substance.
VA’s caregiver review would’ve booted 90% of young vets from the program
The figure is nearly three times higher than what department officials had predicted last fall.
Border mission should be a Homeland Security job, says head of Northern Command
Customs and Border Protection shouldn't use troops as a back-up forever, NORTHCOM boss said.
In Other News
Biden lashes at Putin calls for Western resolve for freedom
President Joe Biden's speech marked the end of a four-day trip to Europe, where he met with NATO and other Western leaders.
Staff Sgt. Matthew Shannon, of the individual personnel readiness office with the 911th Force Support Squadron, takes notes during an enlisted performance report bullet writing seminar at the Pittsburgh International Airport Air Reserve Station, April 8, 2018. The EPR bullet writing seminar was conducted by Chief Master Sgt. Chin Cox, the Office of the Joint Staff Surgeon Senior Enlisted Leader at the Pentagon, to improve airmen's writing skills. (Airman 1st Class Grace Thomson/Air Force)
For service members learning to speak civilian, it’s about softening the edges
Troops leaving the military—especially for the first time—can feel misunderstood. Here's how they can better communicate with their new civilian peers.
Supreme Court gives Biden win for now in Navy vaccine case
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that the Navy may consider sailors’ vaccination status in making deployment, assignment and other operational decisions while a lawsuit on the military's vaccination mandate plays out in court.
Stinger and Javelin production can be boosted, says Army acquisitions chief
The U.S. has sent Ukraine an array of weapons and other equipment in recent weeks. An $800 million security package announced on March 16 included 800 Stinger and 2,000 Javelin systems.
Biden in Poland to see US troops
Biden planned to meet with members of the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, who are serving alongside Polish troops.
No comments:
Post a Comment