There’s Too Much Confusion

The Biden administration’s conflicting messages trouble America’s allies — and even some administration officials

President Biden’s ad-lib remark that Russian President Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” didn’t just upset foreign and domestic political leaders. It also troubles some U.S. military, Foreign Service and intelligence officers, and even members of his own administration.

U.S. and allied military and intelligence officials and diplomats said the administration’s lack of message discipline, which has been evident on other fronts as well, is troubling for three reasons.

First, these officials said, the President’s personal references to Putin as a “thug” and a “war criminal” and his off-the-cuff remark that the Russian leader has got to go risk escalating the conflict in Ukraine.

“I wouldn’t use this kind of words,” French President Emanuel Macron said in a television interview Sunday, adding that he feared escalatory language could derail European efforts to seek a diplomatic resolution to the conflict in Ukraine.

There is less concern about that in official Washington, however, because there is little optimism about negotiating a lasting settlement.

A senior U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s off-the-cuff remark, said there’s still a danger that giving the impression that the U.S. seeks to remove Putin “could give him the excuse he may be looking for to abandon even the appearance of any interest in pursuing diplomacy. Worse, it risks cementing his ambition to sooner or later install some puppet regime in Kyiv”.

Others fear that Biden’s talk of regime change could help Putin tighten his already firm grip on power, despite the domestic troubles his invasion of Ukraine has created, by rallying oligarchs and others who dislike Putin to his side in the face of a U.S. attempt to decide who rules Russia.

Second, these officials said, some of Biden’s and other officials’ sometimes contradictory public comments may foster the impression that important decisions are unsettled or subject to sudden revisions. That, in turn, raises doubts about the stability of U.S. policy, which one European official, who also requested anonymity, said “at times would appear to be a bit of an unmade bed”.

For example, Biden’s comment that the U.S. would respond “in kind” if Russia used chemical weapons in Ukraine has sowed doubt about whether the U.S. has destroyed its entire stock of CW, as American officials have said. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s attempt to clear up the confusion by saying “the U.S. has no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstances” did little to dismiss questions about whether the U.S. still has a little Sarin or VX stashed somewhere.

Similarly, Biden on Monday appeared to contradict Sullivan’s March 22 remarks by suggesting that American troops are training Ukrainian fighters in Poland.

Third, some U.S. officials posted overseas said they’ve had to set aside important coalition-building work to answer their counterparts’ questions about how to interpret the President’s comments, including whether Biden’s “up close and personal” exposure to Ukrainians’ suffering has prompted the administration to take a harder stance toward Russia.

“I’d rather be talking to our allies about what more we can do together than answering questions about whether the U.S. is trying to lead them somewhere they don’t want to go,” said one official posted to a NATO country.

“It is admirable to have a soft heart, but only if you also have a hard head,” another official said, quoting a conversation with an Asian diplomat.

Speaking to CNN’s State of the Union Sunday as part of the administration’s immediate effort to dowse the flames Biden sparked, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith called the President’s unscripted comment “. . . a principled human reaction to the stories he’d heard that day”.

Biden himself picked up a fire extinguisher on Monday, saying he was expressing his moral outrage at what Russia is doing in and to Ukraine, not signaling a change in U.S. policy.

Other American officials said the controversy over the President’s comment is overblown and blamed the news media for overplaying the story because, as one official put it: “Sensation outsells sense.”

One U.S. intelligence official said Biden’s remarks are unlikely to affect Putin’s thinking because Russia’s leader “has always thought we’re trying to get rid of him. Hell, if you look at the pictures, with everybody sitting a first down away from him at the table, it looks like he thinks everybody’s trying to get rid of him. I bet he has a tea taster.”

All the officials contacted at home and abroad dismissed questions about Biden’s command of his faculties, saying that in Poland Biden’s heart rather than his head was doing the talking.

Three American officials, however, said Biden’s comment that Putin has got to go didn’t come only from his heart, but also echoed classified U.S. and allied intelligence assessments that the war in Ukraine is unlikely to end while Putin remains in power.

“There’s a consensus, here and among our allies, that although the war might freeze, maybe for awhile as Putin consolidates gains he’s made in the east, it won’t end so long as Putin is in charge,” said one official.

The President has been briefed more than once on that assessment, another official said, also on the condition of anonymity because presidential intelligence briefings are classified.

“Unlike his predecessor, this president listens to his briefings and often asks good questions, which cannot be said of President Trump, especially when it came to matters pertaining to Russia and Vladimir Putin,” the official said.

“For Putin, anything short of victory, regardless of whether it’s incremental and how long it takes, would be defeat, and given the price he’s already asked his people, from conscripts up to general officers and his oligarch buddies, to pay, he’s not likely to accept that,” the official added.

That suggests that the President’s remarks might resonate more with the U.S., its allies and Ukraine than they do in a Kremlin where Putin is firmly in charge and determined to make Ukraine his next step toward rebuilding a Russian empire.

Asked about reports that Putin may bow to reality and dial back his imperial ambition and settle for a neutral Ukraine and Russian control over the Donbas region and a land corridor that includes what remains of Mariupol from Donbas to Crimea, which Russia seized in 2014, another U.S. official replied: “If there’s any truth to that  — and I’d question whether there is  — it’d be just a breather before he’s on the march again. He’s not giving up until he’s swallowed it all, and he’ll be 70 on October 7 where the average man doesn’t make it to 73.”

Putin might even have had May 7 as a target date for formally installing a puppet government in Kyiv, mused a British official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity and admitted that he was just venturing a guess. That date will mark Putin’s tenth anniversary back in power — and May 9 is VE Day in Russia, the day in 1945 when Nazi Germany surrendered to the Soviet Union and the other allies, ending World War II in Europe.

“Wouldn’t that be a lovely time to celebrate Great Patriotic War 2.0 that rid Ukraine of Nazis, right? said the official, referring to what Russians call the Second World War and to Putin’s claim that one of his objectives in Ukraine is ousting the Nazi regime of President Volodomyr Zelensky — whose family is Jewish.