For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.
So concluded President Biden’s speech at the Royal Castle in Warsaw. It ended his tour of diplomatic meetings — NATO, G-7 and a summit of European leaders — visits with US troops, top-level meetings in Warsaw with Polish President Duda, then joined with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister and Defense Minister, and exchanging hugs with refugees from Ukraine.
Our media was quick to report that the remark was unrehearsed and spontaneous, absent from the prepared text. The White House Press Office was quick to “clarify” that the President was not calling for regime change. Editorialists scrawled that it was ad lib, a gaffe typical of Joe Biden. “A gaffe from the heart”, said Aaron Miller, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “An outburst”, “an unforced error”, Tom Nichols wrote in The Atlantic, “language that could be misconstrued”. Other responses ranged from “magnificent” (Rep. Ted Lieu, D-CA 33) to “major misstep” (MSNBC anchor Medhi Hasan) to “horrendous gaffe” (Sen. Jim Risch, R-ID, ranking minority member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee).
What was it, really?
An arc of possible readings:
— A rhetorical riff in the emotion of the moment or another gaffe, so nothing to hear here? Not likely. Those nine words had a cadence. There was no fumbling or hesitation. In the official text released by the White House, they stand alone, a single sentence in its own paragraph. Spontaneous or not, those words were thought out and intentional in the telling and the official transcript.
— Reassurance to Ukrainians that Russia will not be victorious? True, Biden is addressing Ukraine in his final paragraph. But Putin is not “in power” in Ukraine, so there is no power there for Putin to “remain” in.
— Biden was being generic. As in, “We will have a different future, a brighter future ...” That was the thrust of his speech as a whole. But that statement is about “this man”. It is aimed directly at Putin.
— Maybe, actually, regime change? If so, it would be tantamount to a declaration of war or presaging a forthcoming targeted assault if by “regime change” Biden meant the classic definition of it: Replacement of an administration or government by another by means of military force. That would be contrary to all of Biden’s other statements about not escalating the war.
— Perhaps Biden was mindful of Regime Change Lite such as some sort of collegial sharing or even neutering of Putin’s preeminent position? Calling for that would also be a huge and startling step with formidable odds against it. Significantly, the Biden speech was translated into Russian shortly after he spoke. And parts did directly address the Russian people:
We stand with you. Period. ...
I’ve always spoken directly and honestly to you, the Russian people. Let me say this, if you’re able to listen: You, the Russian people, are not our enemy. …
I’m telling you the truth: This war is not worthy of you, the Russian people.
— Words to the broader world, perhaps. After all, much of the speech was vintage Biden: Democracy versus autocracy, rule-based order on an international scale versus “contempt for the rule of law, contempt for democratic freedom, contempt for the truth itself.”
Putin’s reaction? Not yet apparent. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was mild: It is not for the US “to decide who will remain in power in Russia.“ In the last weeks, the President has set Putin apart from the politically civilized world that Joe Biden envisions. This speech was the capstone. It was also a recognition of the existing ideological war. It was a reminder of what Putin has been up to as he fraudulently misdescribed his plans to diplomats, to his own people and the rest of the world. This is Joe Biden calling Vladimir Putin out.
In this light, importantly, there isn’t anything new here. Biden is sticking by his resolve not to put US or NATO troops in Ukraine, not to fly air cover for Ukraine operations, not to escalate in country beyond supplies and logistics. But he is using words as viral weapons. They cannot help but goad Vladimir Putin, showing the truth of him to those who see the news of the world outside the Russian bubble.
Will this piss Putin off? It explicitly amplified Biden’s many public disclosures of Russian plans for aggression. But Putin can use it for his own judo moves, as he surely will. And if it doesn’t upset Putin any more than calling him “a butcher” did, so what? Every word of this speech, including the unscripted ones, was a lodestar declaration of Biden’s approach to international relations and delivered to an exceptionally wide and attentive audience. It has engaged us all to think through what Joe Biden said.
Among those doing heavy thinking in the United States are Republican Senators and their advisers and yea-sayers who have shown sympathy for Mother Russia … and the Truthless Donald Trump. Joe Biden has drawn a bright clear line between his views and Trump’s slathering approaches to Vladimir Putin. To the Hill, Biden’s words were warning shots at apologists for Russia and Putin. They could be read as a rallying cry directed to members of a party which once stood obdurate against the Soviet Union and all it stood for. Or as a dare to come out campaigning in 2022 with empathy for Russia and see how that sits with constituents.
So, how impromptu were the President’s concluding remarks?
As other commenters on DailyKos also observed, these words together with the Press Office’s surprisingly immediate “clarification” could have been planned in advance, intended to provoke serious discussions of possibilities. And not just an ad lib poke at the bear.