Biden completely blindsided Putin who thought he had his most important adversary all figured out. As the intelligence of a likely Russian invasion of Ukraine hit his desk the President decided on a strategy that was really unprecedented. He would make the secret intelligence on Russian plans, communications, troop movements, and false flag operations public. The world got a real-time play-by-play of all Putin’s secret plans. A lot of what the President released was probably news even to officials in the Kremlin. You can be sure that this plan got some pushback from veterans in intelligence and state. Many advisors probably thought it was ill-advised, and carried too much risk. This was the stuff that was only shared with officials with high-security clearance.
The press called the President an alarmist. Russia’s flunkies in the US and right-wing media crowed about how this was all proof that the President was senile. Biden was no match for the Machiavellian genius of Putin. Even the Ukrainians were skeptical, wanting to dial down any suggestion that war was inevitable. But, war was inevitable. Putin had been planning it for years and nothing and no one was going to stand in his way. Thanks to Biden, Putin had to scrap his planned charade of creating a staged event as a pretext for the invasion. When Russia unleashed its long-planned full-scale invasion on multiple fronts into Ukraine without any provocation, the world was shocked and all the President's warnings were confirmed. Leading up to the Russian blitzkrieg, it turns out Biden had a blitzkrieg of his own planned. With Putin’s unwitting help, the President repaired the damage that Trump had done to the European alliance and NATO virtually overnight.
As for Putin, the best he could do after Biden had shown a light on all his plans was hold a press conference post-invasion and claim the invasion was to liberate Ukrainians from drug addicts and Nazis who had seized the country and were suppressing Russian Ukrainians. The democratically President of Ukraine is a Jew who grew up speaking Russian as his first language so this was some “Stop the Steal” level absurd nonsense. Thanks to Biden, Putin had been reduced to resorting to Trump-level babble that no one could take seriously to justify his war. Overnight, all the media stories concern trolling Biden’s mental capacity were replaced with stories wondering if Putin had lost his marbles.
All of the European nations collectively came to the realization that the American Paul Revere was right; the Russians were coming. Putin himself confirmed Biden’s worst-case scenario. Plus, who knows what other scary stories Biden had been sharing with our allies behind closed doors. All of it was verified beyond a shadow of a doubt by events in Ukraine. Russia now faced a Europe more united than it had ever been. All of Putin’s years of effort sowing division and discord up in smoke, and at the worst possible moment. Putin was likely sure that a racist autocrat in his own mold like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would never go along with the woke liberals of the West. Another shocker, Orbán pushed to kick Russia out of SWIFT. Orbán was as onboard as Macron for all the sanctions.
Over the course of the first few days of the invasion, a combination of inspiring Ukrainian valor and gross Russian incompetence destroyed Putin’s myth of genius and invincibility. Biden used this newly exposed weakness to solidify his alliance and unleash the economic and diplomatic equivalent of shock and awe on Putin. The Kremlin was completely blindsided by the scale and speed of the West’s response. The scale of the sanctions, like his strategy to release the intelligence is really without precedent. No timid half-measures for Biden. He seems to know approximately how much he can push the envelope without triggering a Nuclear holocaust — and he is making full use of every millimeter of the space he has.
No one would ever have believed you could get so much of a fractious and divided world on board for anything but token measures. The effect on the Russian economy was far beyond what Putin had planned for. The Russian economy collapsed at the same time the world’s most advanced weapons and aid poured into Ukraine. At every stage of this crisis, affable ole’ Uncle Joe has been two steps ahead of the ‘mastermind’ Putin. No one in the media predicted any of this. But as is evident from Biden’s communications and actions throughout the crisis, none of it was a surprise to Biden. The person who was most surprised and shocked by how things played out was Putin himself. Biden’s effective diplomacy, the incredible Ukrainian resistance, and his own incompetent, corrupt military machine have Vlad scrambling in a panic to recover some semblance of control.
The President transformed incoming intelligence into very effective action. An extremely rare event in US foreign policy. This is just the beginning of a treacherously dangerous crisis. Any misstep could be fatal, but President Biden is so far proving himself up to the task. I shudder to think where we would now be if we had the orange clown facing Putin instead of Biden.
