With the White House trying to walk back U.S. President Joe Biden’s call for regime change in Russia, the world has been thrust into the most fraught time in human history. The one red-line that the Russians have given that would motivate their use of nuclear weapons--- a threat to the continued existence of Russia, has been crossed. This, as the American people have been denied basic information that makes Biden’s regime change words read as not just plausible, but the likely case, to world leaders.
It was the U.S.-led ouster of the duly elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014 and the U.S. sponsored war against ethnic-Russian Ukrainians that followed, that in part motivated the Russian military incursion into Ukraine. The same American neocons who carried-out that coup--- which included Joe Biden, have long described it as a stepping stone to ousting Vladimir Putin in Russia. This has certainly long been known to the Russian political leadership.
Unbeknownst to most Americans is the history of U.S. regime change wars. In 2003 the U.S. destroyed Iraq to remove former CIA-asset Saddam Hussein from power. Muammar Kaddafi handed over Libya’s armaments to NATO and was summarily executed--- and Libya destroyed, after doing so. The U.S. attempted to oust Hugo Chavez, the democratically-elected President of Venezuela, in 2002. And the U.S. rigged the Russian presidential election in 1996. And so on over the last century.
While Biden’s words are now being portrayed as off-script, the political leaderships of China, India, and the global South undoubtedly heard a refrain so familiar that ‘regime-change wars’ undertaken by the U.S. are a thing. When Kaddafi handed over Libya’s weapons and was ousted and killed regardless, the lesson learned around the world was that getting and retaining WMDs was the only strategy that might keep the U.S. from attacking.
Americans reading U.S. press accounts have been led to believe that Vladimir Putin lacks the support of the Russian people and could be easily removed from power. Assuming that this is true for a moment, nothing consolidates the power of a national leader like a plausible threat against them from a hostile foreign power. And the press accounts simply aren’t true. It is wishful thinking by American neocons living in metaphorical bunkers.
The only thing more frightening than the American President intentionally threatening the Russians with a regime change assault is the American President doing so without apparent knowledge of how his words would be interpreted outside of the U.S. Had Biden been speaking to a domestic audience, and in some ways he probably was, he could rest assured that 95%+ have no knowledge of the American history that give his words their threatening context. But he wasn’t.
With the proverbial horses having left the barn, it is virtually certain that Biden either can’t or won’t effectively de-escalate from here. Versailles-on-the-Potomac, a reference to the destructive isolation that renders official Washington an imperial echo-chamber that actual information rarely penetrates, is perfectly capable of interpreting Biden’s words as patriotic chatter that won’t be taken seriously abroad. The Washington Post is apparently already promoting this line.
Through American eyes, de-escalation is either unnecessary or not the responsibility of the U.S. The larger challenge is that due to past actions, there is no reason why foreign leaders should take what the American political leadership says with respect to de-escalation at face value. The Obama administration, with Joe Biden as its Vice President, promised Muammar Kaddafi that Libya wouldn’t be attacked if it gave up its weapons, following which it was completely destroyed.
The explanation for the unhinged nature of official Washington at present is that it sees U.S. global dominance slipping away. Whether Biden’s comments were a mistake or intentional, threatening regime change in Russia will either accelerate this process or end human life on the planet. Imagining that foreign political leaders will fall in line in response to American threats, rather than forming political alliances to assure that the U.S. can’t carry those threats out, has already been disproved by Chinese and Indian refusals to condemn Russia for its actions in Ukraine.
The only path forward is for the U.S. to assure foreign leaders that Biden’s comments were unintentional and begin the diplomatic process for ending the Russian incursion into Ukraine. As suggested above, the Americans are constitutionally incapable of perceiving and / or accepting the changed position of the U.S. in the world. This is creating a Strangelovian doom loop that only the Americans can stop. This will never take place until Americans come to terms with the true motivations for U.S. history. They are not what Americans have been told they are.