This is what happens when a well-meaning incrementalist locks horns with a brutal opportunist: The opportunist seizes the opportunity.
This is what happens when one of the most traditional politicians in the United States faces a historic confrontation with the world’s wiliest authoritarian, for whom the ends justify any means: The authoritarian takes the initiative.
This is what happens when US President Joe Biden, battered by America’s messy democracy after a long year in office, comes up against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who looks more determined than ever in the third decade of his authoritarian reign.
Unless Biden can turn the ongoing crisis over Ukraine into an opportunity—by rallying allies and managing internal divisions the way former US President Harry Truman did at another such inflection point—the setback for Europe and the world could be generational.
Unless, like Truman, Biden can shift the tide such that the United States and its allies retake the initiative, Putin (with China’s moral and material support) will continue his long campaign to reverse the most significant outcome of the Cold War: the changed principles under which countries in the world navigate the future together.
“Those principles,” said US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Berlin on Thursday, “established in the wake of two world wars and a cold war, reject the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.”
To read the full article click: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/inflection-points/putin-is-threatening-not-just-ukraine-but-post-cold-war-principles-and-the-stakes-are-generational/?fbclid=IwAR1wxxVzYb9OJWrUNpQSQQkYWbCTjYCOjN38XnpFm1wTKqMw16P0Z5rzL2s
