Watching our President engage with the Russian invasion of Ukraine is troubling. There is precious little of his broader agenda that I can support, and yet I must hope (and pray) for his success in this one. We could find ourselves wishing for a different leader, but as the song goes, we’re going to have to dance this war with President Biden, for good or ill.

Some like to say that great events in history reveal a person’s character rather than make it, and I think that it’s largely true, especially with someone as old as President Biden. I’d hoped, for example, that President Trump would see Covid as an opportunity to grow out of the “it’s all about me” schtick and become the leader we needed him to be, and yet he turned the daily briefings on Covid into a food fight with the media. When we needed clarity, strength, and steadiness we got more of the carnival. Something about you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. And Mr. Biden is an older dog than Donald Trump….

One of the prevailing criticisms of Mr. Biden’s handling of Russia and Ukraine is that he is simply reactive–not leading in any important sense of the word. I think these criticisms are fair (certainly to a degree) and are shaped by who he is. Joe Biden has always been a vocal strong leader of where the Democratic Party is at the moment. He has never been characterized by strong commitments to any particular issue, and almost every issue that he strongly believed in has been subsequently jettisoned when it appeared more advantageous to do so (think Hyde Amendment). It is this reality that suggests that Mr. Biden’s overarching concern is about staying wherever would be more advantageous to him in relationship to his base. It was only in the Obama administration (oh, so long ago in the fast-moving Democratic Party world) that energy at least rhetorically was an “all-of-the above” strategy, and yet now when energy is revealed as the geopolitical instrument of power it is, Mr. Biden cannot embrace the necessary war-time concept of drill-baby-drill while we transition into the sustainable energy future many dream of. That leads us to practical absurdities of us continuing to beg the worst regimes in the world to produce more oil, while rejecting steps that would allow us to produce more. It results in Mr. Biden responding to pressures to ban Russian oil imports rather than leading the effort.

Related to this reactive nature is Mr. Biden’s unwillingness to “escalate,” which he allows Vladimir Putin to define, and worse, he does so publicly. In other words, we will have clear red lines of what we will not do. Do we have any clear lines of what Mr. Putin will or will not do? Advantage Putin. And when Mr. Biden says above all else we must do our part stop World War III, with his red line being attacks on NATO, this says to Mr. Putin that nothing he does in Ukraine will result in military engagement with NATO and the U.S. No atrocity within Ukraine is seemingly too much to change Mr. Biden’s mind on military action. While my heart hopes and prays we have some sort of covert support that will ensure Russia’s military defeat in Ukraine, my head tells me that Mr. Biden is willing to allow the complete devastation of Ukraine to avoid the broader conflict he fears would go nuclear. This is informed in part by public reports of Mr. Biden himself making the decision to deny the Ukrainians MiGs from Poland. Mr. Biden has been able to achieve a broad-based unity against Russian aggression, but that is likely more from the world’s horror at what Mr. Putin has done and is doing than from U.S. leadership. Mr. Biden’s focus on consensus is something that will likely pay dividends in the long-term, denying Russia the strategic victory it seeks in Ukraine, if it can maintain that consensus for the long-term after the conflict ends. The economic sanctions we are levying are tough, but they are going to be tougher on the integrated global economy than Mr. Biden seemingly thinks, making it difficult to imagine they’ll be sustained in the long term. This you can for sure say about the Russian people–they’re used to suffering much more than those in the West, and they’ve tolerated leaders whose policies led to that suffering far more than we would ever do.

So we’re seemingly left with two Hobbesian choices: Stop Putin and start World War III, or let Putin destroy Ukraine and its people, and let the economic sanctions eventually lead to his withdrawal. Is there no other choice possible? Where is the West’s Zelensky? Where is our hope? It certainly is not in Joe Biden: Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation. When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish. But we will pray for Mr. Biden nonetheless.

Edit Update: Nathan’s comment below linked to this Reagan quip that is so good, I just have to bring it into the body of the post. Watching a serious leader like Reagan is such a joy.

Edit Update #2: William Galston at the WSJ is asking the same questions we’ve been asking–what is the moral responsibility we have toward those facing this kind of evil, and clearly coming down on the side that Mr. Biden is way too cautious. Worth a read if you have access (paywall).