Biden Says F*** You to Putin
Throws in a dare to Xi
I was stunned.
Well, may be frozen would be the better word to describe how I felt when I saw the U.S. President Biden and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky walking in the streets of Kyiv.
Russia targets Kyiv. Day in and day out. With just four days to mourn the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion, it was a guarantee that Putin’s thugs will target Kyiv with Iranian drones and left over missiles.
According to reporting by NYTimes, when Biden and Zelensky went on a stroll, air-raid sirens went off. We can only imagine the blood rush and nausea secret service agents would have experienced when the sirens went off.
Biden took a 10 hour train ride from Poland to reach Kyiv. One mistake or bad luck would have changed the whole world upside down for a while. It was a monumental risk. A risk no other president had taken in my lifetime. I don’t think any other president in the future will do it either.
The visit wasn’t merely symbolic or a statement to the entire world. It is a little bit more than that. Just when Russia was planning to deploy an information blitzkreig around their anticipated victory in Bakhmut, President Biden sucked all the wind out of their sails.
No one is going to care about the Russian victory in Bakhmut anymore. Everyone is going to be talking about the risk Biden took to reach Kyiv.
Politics is built on narratives. You cannot separate war from politics. Biden’s visit is a huge message to western allies that the United States is standing firmly behind Ukraine, while also asking Putin to go fuck himself.
Average Russians will be left wondering how the US president visited a war torn country, while their own macho man, the bare chested, horse riding, Kalashnikov wielding, Putin never bothered to visit Russian soldiers in the frontline. The next time Putin organizes show piece events and releases hunting pictures, some Russians are going to die of laughter.
Apart from shaming the Russian president for hiding in Kremlin, the U.S president has also delivered a big ‘I dare you’ to do it message to Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Biden visited Kyiv just as Russia was preparing to host China’s top diplomat in Moscow. According to the Biden administration, China is slowly gravitating towards delivering weapons to Russia.
Over the last two days, on multiple occasions, Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state , told the entire world that the Biden administration believes China is close to crossing the line in the Ukraine war.
In an interview with Margaret Brennan of CBS News, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. is concerned China may consider stepping up its support of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The back and forth warnings, acceptance, refusal and adjustments routinely happen in diplomatic circles. But diplomats never take their warnings public unless they believe public pressure will better serve their interests.
The United States is trying to dissuade China from offering weapons to Russia by calling them out in public.
If China crosses the redline and becomes an active participant in the war, the dynamic on the ground will completely change. It will take the world one step closer to the beginning of the next cold war, where the United States, Europe, Japan and Ukraine stand on the one side, while Russia, China, Iran and North Korea stand on the other side.
This is not the first time the United States has used its public campaigns to pressure China. “In March 2022, U.S. officials told reporters from a few news organizations, including The New York Times, that Russia had asked China for aid. That disclosure took place right before Jake Sullivan, the White House national security adviser, was to meet Yang Jiechi, China’s top foreign policy official at the time, in Rome.
It was part of a wider strategic gambit involving use of intelligence by Washington to try to foil Russia’s war. In the months before President Vladimir V. Putin began his invasion, the Biden administration quickly made public declassified intelligence to try to deter him from sending in his troops.
That did not work. The intelligence proved accurate — but Mr. Putin went ahead with his war”.
Public Pressure Campaign can Work
The United States shared the intelligence report that Russia is mobilizing near the Ukrainian border with an intention to invade. While it didn’t stop Russia, it did give the world a sense of what was happening. Public pressure campaign did not stop Russia, but it has the potential to stop China from entering the war.
Putin knew the entire world will rally against his war. Public pressure campaigns would have made no difference to his decision making because the decision was already made. But the decision making process will be completely different for China and so will be the risk vs benefits in participating in the Ukraine war as an arms supplier for Russia.
If China is made to believe that it cannot get away easily by supplying weapons to Russia, their cost-benefit calculus will change. In that regard, the Biden administration will be better off in leaving the job of warning China to Europe. He needs to push European leaders to speak in one strong voice that any intervention by China will be met with a strong response.
Such display of solidarity will go a long way in dissuading China because if there is one thing China prioritizes very well then that it its own economy. China has a lot of money riding on its business with Europe.
Not just exports. China imports lots of goods from Europe.
In 2021, China was the third largest partner for EU exports of goods (10.2 %) and the largest partner for EU imports of goods (22.4 %).
The trade route from Beijing to Brussels is extremely important for China. I am not talking about Europe threatening China with sanctions. Instead, Europe should make it clear that the unfettered access China enjoyed to the European markets will be over on the same day China drops its weapons on Ukraine.
Europe has no other choice but to face its own fears. The bloc cannot keep hiding behind Biden’s shoulders. Putin is not threatening the United States. He is ripping apart Ukraine because he wants to break the European unity to expand his sphere of influence in the region.
A divided Europe will make his life easier.
The 1 Trick to Stop this Madness
So, yes, there are ways in which China can be persuaded from the path it has embarked on. But nevertheless there is always a risk of failure. There is one fool proof strategy that will keep China out of Ukraine.
Cut the Time.
Russia will need lots and lots of weapons to turn things around in Ukraine. The supply of heavy weapons has tilted the balance in favor of Ukraine. Russia’s final offensive is already tapering towards a tame end. Just as the Russian army exhausts itself, Ukraine will get its hands on the heavy weapons and roll in.
Russia needs China, now more than ever. With his own survival under serious threat, Putin may have offered unconditional surrender of Russia’s natural resources to China’s Xi. Never forget, China is one of the world’s largest consumer of oil and Russia is one of the world’s largest producer of oil.
An unholy nexus cannot be ruled out. As Putin gets more desperate, his offer to China will only expand in its size, scale and longevity. A 100 year access to couple of oil reserves sounds like a reasonable deal to explore.
The west can stop this relationship between Russia and China from progressing to the next level by ending the war in Ukraine within the next three months.
Moving weapons is not as simple as buying a car in a dealership and driving it home. It is bit of a logistical nightmare. The weapons have to be manufactured, or taken out of the warehouse, kitted out and then transported to the buyer. Then there is the training part, which will take a long time.
On 5th January, Berlin announced it will supply it’s Patriot defense systems to Ukraine. We are yet to see the patriot in action in Ukraine because of training requirements. So is the case with the armored vehicles and tanks. You can easily expect two to three months between the announcement of supply and commencement of operations in the frontline.
That time gap is the weakness Russia and China have. The west can easily exploit it. If Russia suffers massive breakthroughs, losing tens of thousands of territory in March or April, the desire to support a losing country at the risk of losing its number one trading partner status with Europe does not look very appealing to me.
- The Chinese may not listen to wisdom. They don't have to.
- But they will listen to the fresh smell of currency.
- The west has to make the cost benefit ratio worse for China.
- Biden took the lead and delivered the dare. Now it’s Europe’s job to place that call to Bejing.
