U.S. President Joe Biden read his annual address to Congress in the presence of the Ukrainian Ambassador, who had been invited to the Capitol by the First Lady. Most of the White House master's speech was indeed about Russia and Ukraine - Biden tried to prove that "the costs and threats to America have grown", but that America would still win. How?
After U.S. President Joe Biden announced a "crushing sanctions response to Russian aggression" and once again consulted with partners in Europe, he disappeared from sight not only of Russia but also of America. The White House master took a leave of absence and went to Delaware, the tiny state in the Northeast that he represented in the Senate for 36 years.
Leaders of this caliber are supposed to rest on days of quiet for the nation and with a sense of accomplishment, and this is certainly not Biden's case. Things are bad for Biden.
For the seventh month in a row, inflation has surpassed the 5% mark, a record in nearly half a century. On the southern frontier, the migration crisis continues. Crime, including murders, is on the rise in major cities.
Among Biden's active conservative critics (Tucker Carlson is a typical example) it was common to argue that the president's increased attention to Ukraine was primarily dictated by his inability to solve the internal problems of the United States, a country where few people would find Ukraine on a map.
Now that the Russian military operation is in full swing, Biden can no longer claim to have "prevented war" and "stopped Putin" as originally intended. By imposing a full range of his "sanctions from hell," the U.S. president is faced with the impossibility of influencing the situation in a way that can be interpreted in his favor.
In reality, of course, the U.S. is influencing the situation in a very destructive way. At least Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is convinced that Ukraine is deliberately dragging out the negotiations at the behest of Washington. If this is true (which it is: the negotiation process is really dragging out, and the opinion of the U.S. leadership is still critical for Kiev), then the intention of the American side is transparent: it needs more military and any other losses in order to use them later as an illustration in the socio-political process over Moscow.
Most American military analysts have no doubts that the Russian Armed Forces' operation in Ukraine will end successfully. But Washington wants as much blood spilled as possible.
However, the president could not share this strategy in his annual address to Congress - too bloodthirsty even for an American, especially for an American Democrat. Biden clearly would have preferred an arrangement in which he could have made himself look like a peacemaker or announced Russia's retreat, but now he has what he has.
According to polls, only 36% of Americans believe the president is up to the job. And 62% of respondents believe that if Donald Trump had been in Biden's place, there would not have been a military crisis. Trump, by the way, is sure of that, too.
Three days before the president's speech to lawmakers, the former president addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he accused Biden of neglecting the country's problems and being "stupid." "Ukraine's borders seem to be sacred to American Democrats, while at the same time they don't care about destroying U.S. borders and are willing to sacrifice America's sovereignty," Trump said, referring to the migration crisis.
As for the Ukrainian crisis, he characterized the situation as follows: "It's not just that Putin is smart, although he is smart, it's that our leaders are stupid.
A particular difficulty for Biden is that the possible ways of solving some of the country's internal problems contradict the ideological doctrine of the Democrats. Already in his address to Congress, the president had to shift to the right, which triggered a new wave of criticism, already from the "progressive wing" of his own party.
For example, he promised to increase funding for police cuts in liberal metropolitan areas at the demand of the BLM movement, which is believed to have caused an increase in crime. A second unpopular decision among Democrats was to strengthen the southern U.S. border, which is stormed day in and day out by illegal migrants.
What Biden did not go for was unfreezing U.S. oil projects, which would have reduced the price of black gold at a time when rising fuel prices are the main driver of inflation and inflation is the main problem in the United States. This would not have been forgiven by the green lobby.
On the other hand, the focus on oil prices did not allow Washington to impose sanctions on Russian energy trade operations, in which case prices would have jumped even higher.
The president also had to admit that a sanctions war with Russia would result in additional losses for America. At the same time, the U.S. has almost run out of new ideas about how else to limit Russia without fatally damaging itself.
Almost as the last, purely symbolic trump card, Biden took out of his pocket the closure of the sky for planes "with any Russian involvement", including charter flights. Earlier, Canada and the EU countries had taken a similar step, while Russia responded in kind. Russian experts say that in this case the United States shot itself in the foot rather than punishing Moscow.
With such inputs, it was hard to get out, and Biden stuck out that the losses from the war of sanctions were a price for democracy, and that his policy had not actually been a total failure, but "managed to slow down Putin's advance.
Of course, there is nothing he can do to confirm this, but he claims that the "real damage" Russia will feel later. That is, the results of the sanctions policy cannot be presented right now, but "Russia's economy is shaky. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to this in the Kremlin: the economy is suffering a serious blow, but there is a margin of safety, so it will stand on its own feet.
"Putin may cordon off Kiev with tanks, but he won't get the soul of the Iranian people," Biden also proclaimed, thus giving rise to another "Bidenism."
The bottom line is that Americans are simply told to believe that policies that most disapprove of are in fact the right ones and will lead the country to success, just later. An extremely weak summary given that this is the time when Americans are experiencing a crisis of confidence in their head of state.
The Democrats will lose re-elections to Congress in seven months, losing their monopoly on power and burying their grand plan to take over the country. And Biden himself will become a "lame duck" in his second year in office. But this "clash with democracy" unfortunately does not mean that the U.S. as a power and Washington as a receptacle of the political elite will lose the opportunity to harm Russia and influence the situation in Ukraine so that as much blood as possible will be spilled there and the price of the operation will be high for Moscow.
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