Biden escaped rigorous critical scrutiny that is the normal lot of presidential campaigns with the help of major media and Big Tech platforms that despised Trump. The world is now discovering just how grave the real-world consequences can be when reality bites back.

In the 2020 election, President Donald Trumps supporters looked beyond manifest character flaws to domestic and foreign policy results but opponents couldnt overlook his character to assess any policy achievements. Joe Biden became president as much because Americans voted against Trump as for Biden. The buyers remorse evident inopinion pollssuggests that perhaps voters should have been careful what they wished for.

In an op-ed in_The New York Times_on 18 April 2017,Antony Blinken wrote: Its one thing for a foreign partner to doubt a presidents judgment; its entirely more debilitating when that partner doubts the presidents word. Now that he is Secretary of State, we can but wonder about Blinkens private views on Bidens judgement and word and whether he can be helped to overcome a credibility gap of his own making.

The first problem, to borrow another Blinken phrase about Trump, is Bidens challenged relationship with veracity. Bidens serialfabulismislegendary. Heinvented storiesabout being arrested in apartheid South Africa during a trip to see Nelson Mandela, marching in the civil rights movement, graduating in the top half of law class, driving an 18-wheeler, chatting with an Amtrak conductor as vice president when that conductor had retired 15 years before Biden became vice president, visiting Pittsburghs Tree of Life synagogue after the 2018 massacre, having opposed the Iraq War from the start, etc.

The last example points to a second major problem with the vaunted boasts of foreign policy expertise. Biden opposed the war to liberate Kuwait in 1991, supported the Iraq War in 2003 and counselled President Barack Obama against taking out Osama Bin Laden in 2011. HenceObamas brutal assessmentnot to underestimate Joes ability to f..k things up, backed by former Defense SecretaryRobert Gatesassertion that Biden had been wrong on every major foreign policy and national security issue during his decades-long public life.

Biden escaped rigorous critical scrutiny that is the normal lot of presidential campaigns with the help of major media and Big Tech platforms that despised Trump. The world is now discovering just how grave the real-world consequences can be when reality bites back. This includes the dawning recognition that the prospect of a USRussia nuclear war ismore imaginable todaythan at any time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.

A premeditated nuclear attack is unlikely. Rather, the risk of a war that neither side wants lies more in the possibility of miscommunication, misperception and miscalculation that could see the cycle of provocation and escalation spin out of control. On one side, President Vladimir Putin has been the most criminally irresponsible of all the nine leaders of nuclear-armed states in normalising the discourse of the possession and threats of use of nuclear weapons. On the other side, Bidens verbal incontinence (Gerard Baker) and cognitive impairment could lead to nuclear war through miscommunication or inadvertent launch. The existing US protocol, designed for speed and efficiency,permits the president to launch nuclear weapons with a single verbal order.

Over the past decade, leaders of several nuclear-armed states have engaged in irresponsible nuclear bluster. In May 2016, British Prime Minister (PM) Theresa May said she would beprepared to authorise a nuclear strike that could kill 100,000 people. In DecemberPakistans Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif threatened a nuclear attack on Israelin response to a fake news story that Israel had threatened Pakistan with nuclear weapons, followed by the tit-for-tat exchange ofmutually insultingandbelligerent rhetoricby Trump and North Koreas Kim Jong-un in 2017. In February 2019, Pakistans PMImran Khanwarnedof the possibility of a nuclear war and IndiasNarendra Modi responded in kind.

Even against this backdrop, Putins serial nuclear warnings are alarming. After Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014, facing hostile Western criticism, he pointedly remarked, Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations. When President Trump insisted in February 2017 that the US would stay at the top of the [nuclear] pack, Putin spoke of the need to do the same with Russias deterrent. In March 2018, Putin boasted of anewarray of invincible nuclear weapons. On 19, 23 and 27 February, respectively, he conducted a dress-rehearsal of Russias ballistic missile forces, warned of nuclear war and very publicly put Russias nuclear deterrent forces on special alert. When the message was still not received in Washington, on 29 March, after a Kremlin spokesman said Russia would use nuclear weapons if it confronted an existential threat,The Daily Mail(UK) reported that Putin and his high command werealready ensconced in top secret nuclear bunkers. The aim may have been simply to add urgency to the nuclear signalling. A perverse consequence for Russia, considering that NATOs eastward expansion has been the primary justification for the aggression, is that US nuclear weapons could end up being stationed inPolandon Russias western and inJapanon its eastern flanks, among other places.

For his part, during his recent European trip to rally allies and boost Ukrainian resolve, Biden droppedthree dangerous clangers. Asked at a press conference in Brussels on the 24thabout Russia using chemical weapons in Ukraine, he said it would trigger aresponse in kind. Addressing US troops in Poland the next day, he suggestedUS soldiers would be going to Ukraineand some were already there. In a speech in Warsaw on the 26th, he called forregime changein Russia, saying For Gods sake, this man cannot remain in power. This could only feed Putins paranoia and make it easier to discredit domestic critics of the war. It triggered a furious response from Moscow and refutations fromhis own senior officialsandallied leaders. If Bidens three statements were gaffes, its worrying. If they were not gaffes, its a frightening reminder of the risk of a gaffe-strewn road to nuclear war. Afterwards, he was caught responding to reporters regime-change questions by hewing closely to a prepared cheat sheet to stop him straying off script.

It was clear from the start, given the level of details on provenance and content provided by the_New York Post_, that theHunter Biden laptop scandalwas authentic. Now that even the_New York Times_has concededthat, the next key question becomes: what does this tell us about theimplications of the presidents possible involvementin shady deals with China, Russia and Ukraine, all three of which are central to how the current crisis plays out? One can admire President Volodymyr Zelenskys unexpected demonstration of heroic leadership without ignoring the ugliness of Ukraine. In Transparency Internationals2021 corruption indexpublished on 25 January,Ukraines score was 32/100 with a rank of 122/180 countries, making it Europes most corrupt country bar none. TheEUaverage score is 66/100.

For over two decades Russia has signalledredlines over Ukrainethat the West simply brushed aside. This is one explanation for why the anti-Russian consensus on Ukraine is localised to the West and not global, asEdward Luce notesin the_Financial Times_.Shivshankar Menon, Indias former National Security Adviser (201014), writes in_Foreign Affairs_that Russias war in Ukraine will transform Europes geopolitical landscape but is not a transcendental conflict between autocracies and democracies, will not reshape the global order and has only limited relevance for the Indo-Pacific.Chinas continued riseis far more consequential for reconfiguring the emerging global order on both the geopolitical and normative axes than the last gasps of the Russian empire. Where is the line between immoral appeasement and prudent realism in encouraging Ukraine to seek accommodation with Russia, on terms that we might yet end up with in regard to Crimea, the Donbas and some sort of a neutral status with credible security guarantees for Ukraine?

Ramesh Thakur,a former UN assistant secretary-general, is emeritus professor at the Australian National University, Senior Research Fellow at the Toda Peace Institute, and Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He is the editor ofThe nuclear ban treaty: a transformational reframing of the global nuclear order.

This article of 7 April,2022 is posted with permission from the Toda Peace Institute