also beginning to face up to a hard truth.
“I’m just going to be brutally honest
about this, I don’t think he’s physically up
to being able to run again,” one Demo-
cratic strategist told Vanity Fair recently.
“He’s going to have to run a vigorous,
hard campaign that he didn’t in 2020
[because of the Covid-19 pandemic]. He’s
not going to be able to stay in the base-
ment.”
The chatter around Biden’s re-election
is becoming louder as November’s mid-
term elections approach, with the Demo-
crats widely expected to take a beating.
Biden’s latest approval rating was a lowly
40 per cent: even Trump often managed
higher during his scandal-ridden presi-
dency. But a series of recent foreign
policy gaffes over the war in Ukraine has
turbocharged this conversation — and
raised further concerns about Biden’s
mental acuity.
Biden made a trio of slip-ups on three
successive days during his recent Euro-
pean tour. First, the president told a
press conference that if Russia used
chemical weapons it would “trigger a
response in kind”. The next day, at a base
in Poland, he told the 82nd Airborne
Division: “You’re going to see when
you’re there” — appearing to imply they
would soon be deployed to Ukraine.
The real clanger came the day after
that, though, when, during a set-piece
speech in front of the Royal Castle in
Warsaw, Biden seemed to commit the US
to regime change in Russia, saying of
President Putin: “For God’s sake, this
man cannot remain in power.”
All three of these hair-raising remarks
were quickly tempered by senior Biden
officials, with the regime-change com-
ments portrayed as an emotional cri de
coeur, not official US policy.Biden supporters have played down
these episodes as off-piste moments from
a 79-year-old man long known for his
verbal incontinence, rather than a policy
shift that anyone took seriously. Focus on
the substance, they say, not the slips.
Damage was undoubtedly done, how-
ever. The gaffes were a gift to Putin and
they rattled US allies. “The president
should avoid public speaking ... at least
when the topic is important,” is how one
Wall Street Journal columnist responded,
in comments that were picked up by the
Russian news agency Tass and the China
Daily newspaper.
How big an issue is Biden’s mental and
physical capacity? A doctor’s assessment
in November found that the president
had no neurological problems. The only
medical issues highlighted after a
“detailed physical examination” were a
stiffened gait and acid reflux, leading to
periodic throat clearing.Whether the gaffe-prone
president runs for a
second term or his deputy
Kamala Harris steps up,
nervous Democrats know
they have a problem,
writes Josh Glancy
Taiwan is sharing with
European states its expertise
on Chinese disinformation
campaigns and cyberattacks
as evidence emerges of
information warfare
collusion between Beijing
and Moscow against
democratic rivals.
The island has long been
the target of interference via
hacking, fake news and front
groups organised by China’s
communist regime, which
views Taiwan as a “renegade
province” and has threatened
to take it by force.
But now, according to
Joseph Wu, Taiwan’s foreign
minister, the war in Europe
has strengthened the island’s
bonds with western
democracies and generated
mutual strategic benefits.
Facing its own invasion
threat, Wu said Taiwan was
drawing lessons from the
success of Ukrainian forces in
using lighter weaponry and
“asymmetric” tactics. But he
emphasised the importance
of democratic alliances.
“Taiwan and Ukraine are
on the front line of the
conflict between democracy
and authoritarianism,” Wu
told The Sunday Times from
Taipei. “We understand that
defending Taiwan is not justPhilip Sherwell
Asia Correspondentto safeguard our sovereignty
and way of life. We have the
responsibility to safeguard
democracy for the rest of the
world as well.”
Wu, 67, said Taiwan was
inspired by the “bravery,
defiance and determination
to defend themselves” of the
Ukrainian people.
“The belief these days is
that weakness is inviting
aggression,” he said. “And we
don’t want to be in a position
of weakness. We want to be
able to defend ourselves.”
He also noted differences
from the situation in Ukraine.
For one thing, any invasion of
Taiwan would be a
challenging seaborne
operation. Wu noted that the
island’s key role in the high-
tech supply chain — it is the
world’s biggest semi-
conductor maker — meant it
had powerful allies. Taiwan is
confident that the US would
defend the island, although
Washington’s official position
is one of “strategic
ambiguity” about its security
commitments.
Taiwan is already fighting a
constant war combating what
Wu called “cognitive
warfare”. The country is
sharing its expertise with
recipients believed to include
the Baltic states and several
central European countries.
The cyber-onslaught fromChina has intensified in
recent months. “They say,
‘Look, the US abandoned
Afghanistan’ and ‘Look, now
they won’t commit military
forces to Ukraine’. So they
claim they won’t help Taiwan
either,” he said.
“We are dealing with this
day in and day out, so we
have accumulated a lot of
experience. And because of
that, there are several
countries in Europe that want
to share this experience.”
The importance of this
co-operation has been
reinforced in recent days. In a
report, Doublethink Lab, a
Taipei cybermonitoring
group, revealed that Beijing
has used its control of media
and the internet to amplify
Kremlin propaganda that
Russian forces are
“denazifying” Ukraine and to
tie the Hong Kong protests to
Kyiv’s resistance to Moscow.
In another apparent
indicator of covert
cybercollusion between
Beijing and Moscow, China is
said to have hacked Ukraine’s
military and nuclear facilities
in the build-up to the Russian
invasion, according to The
Times yesterday.
China reinforced its “iron-
clad” alliance with Russia last
week, asserting during a visit
by Sergey Lavrov, the
Kremlin’s foreign minister,that “there is no ceiling for
co-operation”.
China’s intimidation is
incessant. Warplanes have
flown nearly 1,000 sorties
into Taiwan’s air defence
identification zone during the
past year, and navy ships,
including a new aircraft
carrier, regularly sail through
the 110-mile-wide strait.
Beijing is building its
arsenal for an amphibious
attack and security analysts
predict that the greatest
danger of invasion could be
the approach to 2027. The
unification of Taiwan with the
mainland is a mission for Xi,
who by then is expected to be
nearing a legacy milestone —
the end of an unprecedented
third term in power.
“Traditional types of
defence cannot be forgotten,
because the Chinese
airplanes, missiles or naval
ships are still there,” Wu said.
Taiwan’s sophisticated
conventional weaponry
include anti-ship missiles and
about 500 modern fighter
jets, with a submarine fleet in
development.
“But,” he added, “if the
Chinese attack Taiwan, then
in coming onshore
asymmetric warfare is
probably the most effective
defence. This is a lesson we
can draw from the war in
Ukraine.”16WAR IN UKRAINE
In the less genteel corners of America’s
right-wing media, the assumption that
Biden is suffering from some form of
senility is firmly entrenched. There is no
evidence for this; what we are more likely
to be seeing is just the natural extrapola-
tion of an already gaffe-prone man
approaching his ninth decade.
“He’s not senile, but clearly he’s losing
a step,” said Rich Lowry, the editor of
National Review. “He didn’t exactly start
at a high level of verbal acuity and care,
and then you have some element of
decline.”
Unlike the Trump White House, which
endured regular leaks about the presi-
dent’s habit of watching cable news in his
dressing gown and periods of “executive
time” blocked out of his calendar, the
Biden administration runs a tighter, more
stable and more professional ship. One
motif of Biden’s presidency is the sound
of a bossy press officer herding the media
out of the Oval Office with a terse “no
more questions”, minimising the presi-
dent’s exposure.
Biden also faces a friendlier media,
with leading liberal outlets shying away
from asking too many difficult questions
about his personal life.
But rumours circulate in Washington.
One source close to the administration
told me four or five-hour gaps in the pres-
ident’s schedule are not uncommon.
Another congressional source said Dem-
ocratic senators are finding it increas-
ingly hard to get time with the president.
Mulvaney says trimming Biden’s
schedule makes perfect sense. “It is com-
pletely legitimate for a chief of staff to
bring down some of the meetings, spread
things out and build in rest time,” he said.
“They wouldn’t be doing their job prop-
erly otherwise.” There are limits though.He’s not
senile
but he’s
clearly
losing
a stepXi has us in his sights but we’re inspired
by Zelensky, says Taiwan foreign minister
Is the
Biden
Show on
the blink?
The Democrats have a Joe Biden prob-
lem. They may not be saying it out loud,
or speculating openly about who their
next presidential candidate is going to be,
but a consensus is growing within the
party that an increasingly gaffe-prone
president is simply not fit to run for a
second term of office — by the end of
which he would be an unlikely 86-year-
old commander-in-chief.
Republicans are already salivating
over the chaos that will be unleashed in
the Democratic Party if Biden doesn’t
run. Mick Mulvaney, who was Donald
Trump’s White House chief of staff, said:
“I don’t think it’s realistic for him to have
a second term.This job will wear on you.
It aged me ten years and I only worked
there 15 months. It’s not something you
should be doing in your eighties, and
Democrats know that.”
Behind closed doors, Democrats are