By declaring on Saturday, to everyone’s surprise, that Vladimir Putin “cannot stay in power” after his invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden blurred the message of his tour of Europe, intended to show the unity of the Allies in the face of to Russia and contain the conflict in Ukraine.
“For the love of God, this man cannot stay in power,” said the American president, who had called his Russian counterpart a few hours earlier a “butcher”.
These remarks, at the end of a 27-minute speech in which every word had been weighed to avoid any escalation of tensions on NATO’s eastern flank, took the American president’s entourage by surprise, because they seemed to mark a a turning point in the long-standing US policy of not calling for regime change in the world.
“What the President meant was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” the White House qualified a few minutes later. “He wasn’t talking about Putin’s power in Russia, or about regime change.”
On Sunday, it was the head of American diplomacy, Antony Blinken, who tried to clarify Mr. Biden’s remarks.
The president wanted to emphasize that “Putin cannot be allowed to launch a war, or an aggression against Ukraine, or anyone else,” he said. “As you have heard us repeat, we have no regime change strategy in Russia, or anywhere else.”
But the damage is done.
French President Emmanuel Macron has warned of an “escalation of words and actions in Ukraine”.
“I wouldn’t use that kind of talk because I’m still talking to President Putin,” Macron said on Sunday. “We want to stop the war Russia has launched in Ukraine without going to war. That’s the goal.”
– “Huge gaffe” –
Several elected officials and American experts have found this little phrase from Joe Biden counterproductive at a time when Washington’s whole strategy is to prevent a Vladimir Putin who would feel “provoked” from extending the conflict beyond Ukraine, with the risk of a direct, potentially nuclear, confrontation with the United States and its NATO allies.
Republican Senator Jim Risch said Mr. Biden’s speech, delivered at the end of an emotional day in Poland, including a meeting with Ukrainian refugees, was a “good speech”.
“But there was this huge blunder at the end,” he added on CNN television on Sunday. “This administration has done everything possible to avoid any escalation. It is difficult to do more in escalation than to call for regime change.”
For analyst Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Vladimir “Putin will consider this as confirmation of what he has believed from the start”.
It was “a lapse in discipline that risks amplifying and prolonging the war,” the former US diplomat tweeted. Mr Biden “made a difficult situation even more difficult, and a dangerous situation even more dangerous”.
Others judged that the American president had only said aloud what many people think quietly.
Joe Biden “spoke what billions of people around the world and millions more in Russia think,” tweeted former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul. “He did not say that the United States should remove him from power. There is a difference.”
Francois Heisbourg of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) said neither Mr Biden’s remarks nor Antony Blinken’s efforts to correct them had been constructive.
“People always talk too much,” Mr. Heisbourg tweeted. “Why do Joe and Tony feel the need to vent when they better abstain at this point in the war?”