No two American presidents differ as night and day in their dealings with Russia than that of President Joe Biden and former President Donald J. Trump. Their contrasting styles are made more pronounced by the fact that they succeeded each other and their posture toward President Vladimir Putin during their term of office are too recent to be overlooked. Biden is an implacable foe who never hesitates to call out Putin’s despicable conduct, while Trump is a condescending figure who never misses the opportunity to prostrate himself before the Russian ruler despite the latter’s egregious behavior.
Biden minces no word in criticizing Putin. Short of calling for a regime change, which his government is careful to avoid making, the American president strongly exhorted: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power!,” in reference to his Russian counterpart. This quotation, no doubt, will reverberate throughout history much in the same way as former President Ronald Reagan’s famous Berlin Wall Speech: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” Putin’s place in history was damaged beyond repair when Biden described him as a “dictator” and a “butcher,” when either term would be enough to ruin one’s name.
Juxtapose Biden’s belligerence with Trump’s condescending attitude towards Russia and its supreme leader and one will be aghast to find a yawning difference. For a start, Trump’s misplaced opinion on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine betrays his fawning reverence to Putin. He called Putin a “genius” and “pretty savvy” for declaring the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk independent before launching his unprovoked and unjustified attack on Ukraine. Then he used them as launching pads to invade Ukraine. While he was all praise for the Russians, Trump condemned Biden for his alleged incompetence: “The problem is not that Putin is smart, which of course he’s smart, but the real problem is our leaders are dumb.” Trump also belittled the economic sanctions imposed by the US and the NATO countries against Russia as ineffective when even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been asking for more sanctions to cripple the Russian economy.
When Trump ran for president the first time around in 2016, he caused the removal from his party’s platform of the giving of military armament to Ukraine after its southern territory, Crimea, was annexed by Russia. When he became president, he proposed the recognition of Crimea as a part of the Russian territory and asked for the return of Russia to the Group of 7 countries after it was expelled for invading Crimea. And he was impeached for the first time after he withheld the release of $400 million as security aid to Ukraine duly approved by the US Congress in exchange for a political favor from the Zelenskyy government. In 2019 while he was campaigning for his reelection, Trump specifically asked Zelenskyy if the latter could dig up incriminating information on his political nemesis, Biden, and his son Hunter, who had done business in Ukraine.
It seems that the only language that Putin understands is force. Biden called Putin a “war criminal” without batting an eyelash. This is a stirring endorsement of the move to hale Putin before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for the alleged war crimes he has committed in Ukraine. During his recent visit to Poland, Biden branded Putin “a butcher” who has killed thousands of innocent civilians. He assailed Putin’s brutal and barbaric conduct of the war, which has shocked the civilized world. Addressing the Nato members in Brussels, he warned his allies to be ready for a long haul. “This battle will not be won in days, or months, either. We need to steel ourselves for the long fight ahead.” Biden emphasized that the battle for freedom is neither simple nor easy. It will “be fought over not days and months, but years and decades.” And he invoked the late Pope John Paul II’s bold and prophetic words when he visited his home country Poland in 1978 in the midst of its fight to regain freedom from the clutches of the Soviet Union’s iron rule. “Be not afraid!” Biden said that it was the message that ended the Soviet Union’s repression of Poland and the rest of Central and Eastern Europe, and that the same message will help overcome Russia’s evil design in Ukraine.
Throughout history, right has prevailed over wrong and freedom over bondage. The victory of the Union Army during the US Civil War, the defeat of Germany at the hands of the pro-democracy forces in WWI and the triumph of the Allied Powers over the Axis Powers during WWII all attest to this fact. Expressing unbridled optimism, Biden intoned that the democratic forces shall once more emerge triumphant in Ukraine and anywhere where “the great battle for freedom, a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between rules-based order and one governed by brute force” is waged. Wherever he goes, Biden rallies the free world to “sustain unity and resolve in the face of Russian aggression.” He asserts that “we not only lead by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” These are words that we won’t hear from Trump. Instead, Trump is spineless when it comes to confronting Putin. In his first State of the Union address, Biden vowed that “the United States and our allies will defend every inch of Nato territory with the full force of our collective power—every single inch.” And where was Trump all this time? In the past he has shown that he would sell his country short to appease Putin. In the infamous Helsinki Summit with Putin, against the verified findings of the US intelligence, Trump backed Putin’s claim that there was no truth in the claim that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election. As usual, he has been busy making political rounds rallying his Make America Great Again (MAGA) followers to return him to the White House in 2024. He never gets tired of claiming that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him and that Putin would not have the gumption to invade Ukraine had he been the president of the US. Trump reserves his best overtures toward Putin. He once claimed that Putin had been a far better leader than Barack Obama. “Certainly…he’s (Putin) been a leader, far more than our president has been.” And he has not let up even in the face of Putin’s boorish and bestial behavior.
Mary L. Trump, the daughter of Trump’s older brother Frederick, said that Trump’s pathologies, dysfunctional character and hubris make him the world’s most dangerous man. In her top-selling book, Too Much and Never Enough, she recalls that she did not take seriously Trump’s announcement that he would run for president on June 16, 2015 but when his poll numbers started to rise she got alarmed. It was about this time that she suspected her uncle Donald “may have received the tacit assurances from Russian President Vladimir Putin that Russia would do everything it could to swing the election in his favor.” And all her fears had come to pass during Trump’s 4-year presidency, which she deftly chronicled in her book. And we have not heard the last from Trump. Outside of the White House, he continues to weave tales and spread lies about the events in Ukraine. An unabashed Russophile, Trump keeps his love affair with Putin who he hero-worships. I’m glad the Americans dumped him in favor of Biden.