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Vladimir Putin Just Wants to Save Face
His bluff called, outmaneuvered by President Biden, Putin may soon be looking for a graceful way out of his mess in the Ukraine.
For the past weeks, as tensions have roiled between Russia and the Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s Administration has been engaged in a very public, very high-stakes chess match against Vladimir Putin.
As the world has breathlessly watched every move, second-guessing all the while, members of the press have missed the larger implications of Biden’s posturing on Russia.
Biden’s threats of sanctions, his emergency meetings with world leaders; warnings from the U.S. military that American citizens should evacuate Kiev, even the withdrawal of American military troops on a routine training mission in Ukraine: Everything Biden has done has been about one thing.
Deterrence.
He has executed this strategy so well, Joe Biden may in time come to be known as the Anti-War President. If the purpose of Biden’s ministrations was to cause Russia to hesitate before invading Ukraine, and the Ukraine to consider making concessions to Russia previously considered verboten, then Biden has succeeded.
If his goal was to impress the tabloid-obsessed press corp, he has failed.
Subverting a violent military confrontation, check. Encouraging two sovereign nations with a long history of military conflict and aggression to work out their differences without U.S. intervention, check.
What more does the legacy media expect from a U.S. President?
The only 100% reliable way to prevent the U.S. from being dragged into a military conflict half a world away is to prevent the military conflict from occurring in the first place.
Once a conflict begins, almost anything could happen. Nuclear weapons could be threatened- or used. Biological weapons could be unleashed. The conflict could escalate into global warfare. The Chinese Communist Party could use the crisis as cover for a full-scale military invasion of Taiwan. Turkey could join the fray by violently pushing into neighboring Greece and the whole world could go up like a powder keg.
Whatever the Biden Administration did or didn’t do; however the press has tried to…
