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In classifying the massacre of the Armenians as genocide, the United States is acting with remarkable consistency in several ways. First, Joe Biden is following his own promise as a presidential candidate a year ago. Second, he is following what Congress had already done in 2019: even then, both chambers declared the atrocities to be genocide - and this even with an unusual consensus (only a dozen Republicans voted against). Thirdly, the USA is following the example of other politically enlightened states, including Germany, which has already classified the murder of around 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire as genocide.
Biden's words break, as they did before when dealing with Russia and Saudi Arabia, with his predecessor's strange affection for autocrats in various countries.
Donald Trump had always ensnared Recep Tayyip Erdogan ("I'm a big fan of the President").
Joe Biden, on the other hand, risks a further cooling of the American-Turkish relationship with his plain text on the Armenian genocide.
It will be interesting to see how the two presidents will meet at the NATO summit in Brussels in June.
The White House follows the insight that politics begins with looking at reality.
He sees the poisoning of Alexei Navalny as poisoning.
It describes China's dealings with the Muslim Uyghur minority as genocide (like Trump's foreign minister on the penultimate day of his term in office).
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With his declaration on the genocide of the Armenians, Biden also ends Washington's undignified wandering. In order not to alienate Turkey, Bill Clinton once prevented Congress from making a declaration of genocide. Barack Obama broke his campaign promise to identify genocide as such. Clinton, George W. Bush and Obama all called on the EU to accept Turkey as a full member, fortunately unsuccessfully. The last US presidents have rarely shown a lack of appeasement towards Ankara. That seems to be changing now.