Armies can move with your words. Markets can be broken. diplomacy can unravel. That did not stop President Joe Biden from blaming the war in Ukraine – calling Russian Vladimir Putin a war criminal, he seems to support the overthrow in Moscow, calling Russian hostilities genocide – and then saying everything is personal, not presidential. opinion. It sows confusion in dangerous times. America is no mere observer of this conflict. The United States is Ukraine’s main supplier of weapons to the West, a key source of military intelligence for Kyiv and a driving force behind global sanctions against Russia. She has generations of experience in how to talk about her historical nuclear rival. But on the issue of superpowers, Biden is “speaking from the heart” these days, his aides have repeatedly said. Unlike his predecessor, he sometimes reacts to what he sees on TV. It should not always be taken literally, it is argued. The declaration of genocide is the harshest crisis in history against a country that can bind the signatories of a United Nations treaty to intervene. Concerns about this obligation prevented the United States from recognizing the killing of 800,000 Tutsis in 1994 by Rwandan Hutus as genocide. It took more than a century for a US president, Biden, to acknowledge the Armenian genocide last year. But in a statement in Iowa on Tuesday, Biden equated the mass killings of Ukrainian civilians with Russia with genocide and remained in that position on the way back to Washington: “Yes, I called it genocide,” he confirmed. Lawyers will decide whether Russia’s behavior meets international standards, the president added, but “it certainly seems so to me.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy praised Biden’s statements. “The true words of a true leader,” he wrote on Twitter. “To say things by name is necessary to resist evil.” The story goes on But as the war unfolds in Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron has warned: “I’m not sure if the escalation of words serves our purpose.” “I’m wise with the terms today,” Macron said. “Genocide makes sense. … What is happening today is madness. It is unbelievable barbarism and a return to war in Europe. “But at the same time, I look at the facts and I want to continue to try to stop the war and restore peace.” At the White House last month, Biden said of Putin: “I think he’s a war criminal.” He said the same thing again when he visited US troops in Poland. The White House was quick to point out that this did not necessarily signal US policy. “He spoke from the heart and spoke from what he saw on television, which is barbaric acts by a brutal dictator, through his invasion of a foreign country,” said spokeswoman Jen Psaki. Psaki on Wednesday rejected the idea that someone was confused by the idea that Biden’s personal comments did not reflect federal policy. He said Biden had been nominated, promising “he would shoot him in the shoulder,” is a phrase he often uses, and he speaks it directly to them. Also, after meeting children from Ukraine who had been separated from their families during the war, Biden sent his staff to try to explain his apparent support for Moscow’s regime change when he said of Putin: “In the name of God, “This man can not stay in power.” Again, not US policy. “I was expressing the moral outrage I felt towards this man,” Biden said days later. “I was not making a policy change.” It was Donald Trump who rejected the idea of a script presidency in every way he could, with his tweets at the forefront. Some reflected politics. Some just reflect on what was on his mind right now. “We made a dramatic transition during the Trump presidency, realizing that a president may not talk about the government or the country sometimes, but only about himself,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Center for Public Policy in University of Pennsylvania. She credits Biden White House with rushing to break records when that happens. In the academic world of Jamieson’s political rhetoric, some public figures like Barack Obama are considered self-monitoring – they listen to what they have to say and catch themselves in the act when they get carried away. Biden, he says, does not have this filter. “Obama was a high self-control,” he said. “Biden is not. For Biden, the distance between thought and expression is not too great. “ Along with long-standing foreign policy credentials and a deep understanding of how government works, Biden has a history of loose lips and letting his emotions affect him. This caused occasional frustration when he was Obama’s vice president, such as when Biden defended same-sex marriage rights in a television interview in 2012, before his boss was ready to do so. Biden “probably went a little over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit,” Obama said at the time, adding that he “would have preferred to have done it my own way, on my own terms.” White House aides say Biden’s statements reflect that he was never one of those people who kept his tongue in Washington for five decades, even when it got him into trouble. They see Biden’s statements, separate from his government’s policies, as reactions not only to the horrific scenes in Ukraine, but also to political pressure inside to say and do more in response to the Russian invasion. To David Axelrod, a former adviser to the ever-cautious Obama, Biden’s remark that Putin “can not stay in power” reflected Washington’s motto that “everyone’s strength is his weakness.” Biden’s strength lies in his empathy and authenticity, Axelrod said in a recent podcast, and it can also be a weakness when a president says the wrong thing in a time of crisis. The danger of spontaneous statements is not new to Biden. In 2016, Axelrod predicted a similar concern from Trump’s ability to make highly controversial comments. “You can not, when you are President of the United States, just shoot first and think about what you say later,” he said at the time, “because people can really start shooting based on what you say.”
