By Max Boot
Columnist
Yesterday at 1:27 p.m. EDT
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4 min
President Biden speaks at the Royal Castle in Warsaw on March 26. (Radek Pietruszka/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The uproar over President Biden’s speech Saturday in Warsaw — which concluded with the ad-libbed words that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” — made me recall the last time that an American president spoke in the Polish capital. That was Donald Trump.
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His Warsaw speech on July 6, 2017, echoed white-nationalist complaints about how Western civilization was allegedly being undermined by foreigners and liberals. Russia rated only a passing mention, which rested on the dangerous and fallacious assumption that Putin shared common values with the West: “We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere … and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.”
Trump made headlines that day less for his speech than what he said at a news conference, where he again denied that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election: “I think it very well could be Russia but I think it could very well have been other countries.” Trump then flew to Hamburg for the Group of 20 summit, where he genuflected before the Russian tyrant. He emerged with a farcical proposal for Moscow and Washington to form a joint cybersecurity unit to guard against election hacking — an idea so batty that it was swiftly disowned.
In short, Trump was a patsy for Putin. That is not an accusation anyone could possibly level against his successor, who has been skillful and stalwart in mobilizing the West to resist Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Biden’s Warsaw speech began with a quote: “Be not afraid.” Those words, uttered by a Polish pope, John Paul II, on his visit to Warsaw in 1979, were a call for Poles to resist the Soviet empire that Putin is attempting to resurrect. Biden made clear that the West is again engaged in a “great battle for freedom” with “Ukraine and its people … on the front lines fighting to save their nation.”
Biden calls out Putin in speech on last day in Europe
President Biden met with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Ukrainian refugees before his speech outside the Royal Castle in Warsaw on March 26. (Video: Joy Yi, Alexa Juliana Ard/The Washington Post, Photo: The Washington Post)
Biden delivered an unequivocal message of support for the brave Ukrainians who are inflicting grievous casualties on the Russian invaders. “We stand with you,” he said. “Period.” And he made clear that the United States would meet its “sacred obligation under Article 5 to defend each and every inch of NATO territory.”
Can anyone imagine Trump delivering an equally principled message of resistance to Russian aggression? In case there are any doubts of where the former president’s sympathies lie, at a rally on Saturday he again trashed NATO and again praised Putin for supposedly being so smart. Losing up to 40,000 Russian troops — killed, wounded and missing — while deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians — what an act of genius!
Max Boot: With his praise for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump makes his apologists look foolish. Again.
Biden’s speech was a pitch-perfect call for Western unity in the face of Russian aggression. The only thing that marred his address, at least according to much of the news coverage, was his seemingly ad-libbed ending: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
I understand the argument that Biden blundered because raising the prospect of regime change in Russia runs the risk that Putin might now fight all the harder. Certainly the fact that Biden’s aides rushed to walk back his remarks with lame explanations (“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” one said) suggests that this was indeed a gaffe — one of many that Biden has committed over his long political career.
Yet I wonder if perhaps history will vindicate this Biden “gaffe” in much the way that many historians have praised comments by President Ronald Reagan that were once seen as dangerously provocative. Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and predicted it would wind up on the “ash-heap of history.” Those tough but true words contributed to raising superpower tensions in the early 1980s, but they also inspired many behind the Iron Curtain to fight for freedom. After the Berlin Wall came down, many saw Reagan as a visionary, not as a warmonger.
Future historians might similarly vindicate Biden’s hope that Putin — whom he has accurately branded a “war criminal” — will fall from power even though the United States apparently has no plan to remove Putin, just as in the 1980s the United States did not have any plan to topple the Berlin Wall.
Biden’s words give hope not only to Ukrainians but also to Russian dissidents fighting to build a freer country, and it is hard to see how they could make Putin fight any harder than he already is. I would rather have a president who is fearless in calling out Putin’s war crimes than one who toadies to the Russian tyrant.
Columnist
Yesterday at 1:27 p.m. EDT
Listen to article
4 min
President Biden speaks at the Royal Castle in Warsaw on March 26. (Radek Pietruszka/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The uproar over President Biden’s speech Saturday in Warsaw — which concluded with the ad-libbed words that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” — made me recall the last time that an American president spoke in the Polish capital. That was Donald Trump.
Sign up for a weekly roundup of thought-provoking ideas and debates
His Warsaw speech on July 6, 2017, echoed white-nationalist complaints about how Western civilization was allegedly being undermined by foreigners and liberals. Russia rated only a passing mention, which rested on the dangerous and fallacious assumption that Putin shared common values with the West: “We urge Russia to cease its destabilizing activities in Ukraine and elsewhere … and to instead join the community of responsible nations in our fight against common enemies and in defense of civilization itself.”
Trump made headlines that day less for his speech than what he said at a news conference, where he again denied that Russia had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election: “I think it very well could be Russia but I think it could very well have been other countries.” Trump then flew to Hamburg for the Group of 20 summit, where he genuflected before the Russian tyrant. He emerged with a farcical proposal for Moscow and Washington to form a joint cybersecurity unit to guard against election hacking — an idea so batty that it was swiftly disowned.
In short, Trump was a patsy for Putin. That is not an accusation anyone could possibly level against his successor, who has been skillful and stalwart in mobilizing the West to resist Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Biden’s Warsaw speech began with a quote: “Be not afraid.” Those words, uttered by a Polish pope, John Paul II, on his visit to Warsaw in 1979, were a call for Poles to resist the Soviet empire that Putin is attempting to resurrect. Biden made clear that the West is again engaged in a “great battle for freedom” with “Ukraine and its people … on the front lines fighting to save their nation.”
Biden calls out Putin in speech on last day in Europe
President Biden met with Polish President Andrzej Duda and Ukrainian refugees before his speech outside the Royal Castle in Warsaw on March 26. (Video: Joy Yi, Alexa Juliana Ard/The Washington Post, Photo: The Washington Post)
Biden delivered an unequivocal message of support for the brave Ukrainians who are inflicting grievous casualties on the Russian invaders. “We stand with you,” he said. “Period.” And he made clear that the United States would meet its “sacred obligation under Article 5 to defend each and every inch of NATO territory.”
Can anyone imagine Trump delivering an equally principled message of resistance to Russian aggression? In case there are any doubts of where the former president’s sympathies lie, at a rally on Saturday he again trashed NATO and again praised Putin for supposedly being so smart. Losing up to 40,000 Russian troops — killed, wounded and missing — while deliberately targeting Ukrainian civilians — what an act of genius!
Max Boot: With his praise for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump makes his apologists look foolish. Again.
Biden’s speech was a pitch-perfect call for Western unity in the face of Russian aggression. The only thing that marred his address, at least according to much of the news coverage, was his seemingly ad-libbed ending: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”
I understand the argument that Biden blundered because raising the prospect of regime change in Russia runs the risk that Putin might now fight all the harder. Certainly the fact that Biden’s aides rushed to walk back his remarks with lame explanations (“The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” one said) suggests that this was indeed a gaffe — one of many that Biden has committed over his long political career.
Yet I wonder if perhaps history will vindicate this Biden “gaffe” in much the way that many historians have praised comments by President Ronald Reagan that were once seen as dangerously provocative. Reagan called the Soviet Union an “evil empire” and predicted it would wind up on the “ash-heap of history.” Those tough but true words contributed to raising superpower tensions in the early 1980s, but they also inspired many behind the Iron Curtain to fight for freedom. After the Berlin Wall came down, many saw Reagan as a visionary, not as a warmonger.
Future historians might similarly vindicate Biden’s hope that Putin — whom he has accurately branded a “war criminal” — will fall from power even though the United States apparently has no plan to remove Putin, just as in the 1980s the United States did not have any plan to topple the Berlin Wall.
Biden’s words give hope not only to Ukrainians but also to Russian dissidents fighting to build a freer country, and it is hard to see how they could make Putin fight any harder than he already is. I would rather have a president who is fearless in calling out Putin’s war crimes than one who toadies to the Russian tyrant.
