Video summit on the Ukraine conflict: Putin is a nuisance for Biden – politics
For Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin is an annoying tormentor. The US president wants to focus his energies on getting his domestic political projects through Congress. He threatens to lose the majority there in the 2022 election.
But Putin is forcing him to attend a video summit with his first deployment on the border with Ukraine. Apparently he will achieve a division of the spheres of influence in Europe – in 1945 in Yalta. The dividing line would be further east than it was then. Moscow claims control over Ukraine and Belarus.
Is that wise: Forcing someone into a conversation that they don’t feel like having and then expecting concessions? So asked, of course not. But Putin is not in a position to act as an attractive negotiating partner.
He has nothing constructive to offer either to Ukraine or the USA. And Kiev will not voluntarily submit to Russia again. Likewise Putin shifts to threatening destructive things.
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His negotiating strategy follows a completely different psychology than the give and take that is usually used in the West when resolving conflicts of interest. It is even more astonishing in view of the balance of power. Economically, the USA is 15 times stronger than Russia, together with the EU 25 times.
In military terms, NATO is far superior to Russia. How can that be: The weak threatens the stronger with hardship
It is not completely hopeless. At an unfavorable time for Biden, Putin forces him to make several considerations with his pest strategy: How important is an independent Ukraine to him? It would be understandable if Biden does not want to be distracted from his domestic political priorities and does not want to invest a lot of time or resources in the goal of protecting the Ukraine from Putin’s access.
Biden might be tempted to give in if it weren’t for China
When weighed up against the risk of failure domestically, Ukraine is of secondary importance. But what Biden does or doesn’t do has consequences for China and Taiwan. If the USA tolerates that a relatively weak Russia forces the sovereign Ukraine under its control, a far stronger China should understand this as a signal that it could occupy Taiwan without fear of serious consequences to have to.
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So the video summit is about nothing less than the future world order. Putin broke the key agreements from the era of freedom that began in 1989.
In the 1990 Charter of Paris, Moscow granted every state the right to freely choose its alliance systems. In the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Ukraine guaranteed the inviolability of its borders, so that those who died gave up their nuclear weapons.
The traffic light has to decide: gas business or containment
Putin wants to go back to the world of Yalta: political control as far as the Kremlin armies penetrate. He relies on coercion. Nobody can seriously expect a majority of Ukrainians to cooperate with him voluntarily. That he keeps contracts, not either.
The question of what can be preserved from the era of freedom after 1989 and how does not only require answers from Biden. Even the new traffic light cabinet WILL FASTER THAN LOVE, stipulate: Can it still be responsible for energy deals, for which Putin his military, keyword Nord Stream? Or does Germany also have to rely on containment?