38 United States The Economist April 2nd 2022
The ReverseRooseveltDoctrine
“I
am a gaffe machine,” Joe Biden once admitted, disarmingly.
For proof consider his speech in Warsaw on March 26th. Vlad
imir Putin’s carnage in Ukraine was part of a global “battle be
tween democracy and autocracy”, he declared, closing with an im
promptu line: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
Was Mr Biden advocating regime change in Russia? No, his aides
hastened to say, soon followed by the president himself.
The political gaffe, the commentator Michael Kinsley memora
bly observed, is when a politician inadvertently speaks the truth.
Mr Biden’s many slips often involve him getting muddled or, as in
2012, being unable to catch a double entendre. Seeking to cast Ba
rack Obama as a hard man of world affairs, the then vicepresident
cited Teddy Roosevelt’s dictum about speaking softly and carrying
a big stick. “I promise you, the president has a big stick.”
Mr Biden’s words in Warsaw were different, deliberate and in
keeping with insults—“war criminal”, “butcher”—he has been
hurling at Russia’s leader. Critics charge that, in suggesting he
seeks Mr Putin’s downfall, Mr Biden will harden Russia’s resolve
on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. This misses the
mark. The reproach rings especially hollow coming from Republi
cans who still bow to the dangerously wayward and Putinloving
Donald Trump. (On March 29th he urged Mr Putin to reveal dirt on
the Biden family.) There is little doubt the world would be better
without Mr Putin; and he already thinks America is out to get him.
Rather, Mr Biden’s failing in Warsaw is what might be called the
Reverse Roosevelt Doctrine: speak loudly and carry a small stick.
To Poles and Ukrainians in the audience, Mr Biden’s most fervent
lines carried disturbing implications. Telling Mr Putin “don’t even
think about moving on one single inch of natoterritory” sounds
like giving him carte blanche to do his worst in Ukrainian territo
ry. “We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead” implies
that he will do nothing to stop horrors quickly.
The parallels he drew—the Hungarian uprising of 1956, the
Prague spring of 1968 and Solidarity’s strikes in Poland in 1980—all
referred to events behind the iron curtain, where America had lit
tle influence. Mr Biden did not mention, say, Iraq’s invasion of Ku
wait in 1980 or Serbian atrocities in Bosnia and Kosovo in the
1990s, which America halted through military action. InterventioninUkraine,Mr Biden says, would risk “World War III”.
Finding a course between preventing Russia’s takeover of Uk
raine and averting nuclear escalation involves much semantic and
legal contortion. What weaponry is defensive, or what action esca
latory? Mr Biden sends Ukraine antitank weapons, but not tanks;
antiaircraft missiles but not military aircraft. He is at pains to say
what he will not do: no to American troops on the ground, no to
nofly zones. His response to Mr Putin’s madman nuclear threats
is reassurance that America will not get involved. Mr Biden in
voked the words of the late Polish pope, John Paul II, “Be not
afraid.” Yet it is the president who seems frightened of tangling
with Mr Putin, not the other way around.
How to explain this caution? The first and most obvious reason
is that Russia has a bigger stockpile of nuclear weapons than
America does, and a greater doctrinal propensity to use them.
Even Mr Biden’s fiercest critics agree that getting into a war with
Russia would be a bad idea. The second factor is Mr Biden’s aver
sion to America’s overreliance on force, given the quagmires in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Military action should be a last resort, not
the first, he thinks; and should be used only when vital interests
are at stake. His economic sanctions on Russia, he believes, are “a
new kind of economic statecraft with the power to inflict damage
that rivals military might”.
Left unsaid is that Ukraine is probably not as important to Mr
Biden as, say, Taiwan. America sees Russia as a disrupter, and Chi
na as the only challenger to its supremacy. Another of Mr Biden’s
gaffes last year is telling. Asked whether America would defend
Taiwan from a Chinese attack, he replied: “Yes, we have a commit
ment to do that.” The White House rushed to clarify that the presi
dent intended no change in America’s “oneChina” policy, or its
doctrine of “strategic ambiguity” about defending the island. For
Taiwan, then, Mr Biden does seem ready to risk nuclear war.
A cynical possibility, which many Ukrainians believe, is that
Mr Biden wants a drawnout war to exhaust Russia, at the cost of
much Ukrainian blood. That may be too Machiavellian. There is
little sign that the Biden administration has thought much about
the endgame. It says it will not dictate the terms that Volodymyr
Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, should accept. This is disingenu
ous given that Mr Biden in effect sets limits on what Ukraine can
achieve. If Mr Zelensky does not have the weapons with which to
evict Russian forces, he will have to give up territory; if natowill
not admit Ukraine, he will have to accept neutrality.Shoot the bear?
Now that Russia is bleeding in the battlefield, prominent Ameri
cans want Mr Biden to go allout to help Mr Zelensky rout the Rus
sian army. Victory would revitalise democracy and might even
bring down Mr Putin. Mr Biden, however, prefers the long game.
Ukraine is bravely holding its ground, Russia is being weakened
and China is paying a political cost for embracing Mr Putin. Only
Russia’s leader knows what would make him resort to nuclear
weapons, but a senior American defence official thinks the trig
gers probably include “the prospect of allout conventional defeat
of Russia’s military” or a threat to the Russian state (in other
words, a threat to Mr Putin).
What about Mr Biden’s chinjutting in Warsaw? It is probably
moral outrage, as he says, with perhaps some cheap rhetoric. The
president may be loose in his tough talk, and cautioustoa fault in
his actions. But in the nuclear age that is surely betterthanemu
lating a swashbuckling militarist like Teddy Roosevelt.nLexington
Joe Biden’s ad-libbed outburst masks his caution in dealing with Vladimir Putin