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Is Joe Biden really the seasoned foreign policy maker half the world thinks he is?
Anyone who, as American President Vladimir Putin, the head of state of a nuclear power, publicly calls a “murderer” must at least be clear in advance what the purpose of this attack is and what political steps will follow.
In the foreign policy of any state it must never happen that the word Carl von Clausewitz is reversed: that politics is the continuation of the war by other means.
For outsiders, the American-Russian exchange of blows is more like a market scene in which angry traders throw power words at each other.
Where is this supposed to lead?
Isn't the new man in the White House blocking the possibility of entering into negotiations with Moscow?
After all, it is difficult for a US president to sit down at a table with someone he publicly describes as a murderer.
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But this conversation would be necessary - and not only to make progress in the area of disarmament, but also to translate one's own strategy into politics.
Recently an anonymous man drafted a containment policy against China under the title “The Longer Telegram”.
There the author recommended - one puzzles to this day whether he even belongs to the Biden government - that Washington should pull Moscow out of the Russian-Chinese alliance in order to be better positioned in the conflict with Beijing.
With verbal attacks like the present one, Biden won't even get Putin to shake hands.
It is breathtaking to see the extent to which the power that won the Cold War has forgotten its laws and rules.
John F. Kennedy and Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan and George Bush were always clear about the murderous regime of the Soviet Union.
All of them were deterrent and always ready to protect their allies against the Soviet thirst for power.
At the same time, however, since the Cuban Missile Crisis, they have ensured that the thread of conversation with the Kremlin never broke.
And today?
One can only hope that the red phone is still connected.
Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev once made it.
The US President set up the connection, although he knew that behind the CPSU chief there was the death and terror of the Gulag.
Hopefully Joe Biden thinks in similar categories.
If not, he should visit 97-year-old Henry Kissinger as soon as possible.
If the new man in the White House does not block the possibility of entering into negotiations with Moscow, asks Jacques Schuster
Source: MANDEL NGAN / AFP;
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