The White House raises the pressure on Russia and China: in the virtual summit with Vladimir Putin organized on Tuesday, President Joe Biden intends to look for ways to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine, however issuing a warning to the Moscow leader not to order invasions of the Country. On pain of severe economic sanctions that would cut Russia out of the international financial system.
The administration, on another sensitive foreign policy front with a strategic rival, also announced a political boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics next February. He will not send any official delegations, he announced. US athletes will be able to participate and will be supported from home, Biden spokesman Jen Psaki added. The action was decided in response to the “continuing genocide” in Xinjiang, to the detriment of the Uighur minority. The administration is also at loggerheads with Beijing over military threats to Taiwan and repression in Hong Kong.
Finally, Biden wants to relaunch Washington’s leadership on the world stage more generally in the coming days, in a gauntlet in Moscow and Beijing, with a great meeting for democracy, the Summit for Democracy, organized for Thursday and Friday. The event will see over one hundred participants in remote connection, between government and civil society representatives, with an agenda dedicated to countering authoritarianism. China and Russia are not invited. The US Treasury is also expected to announce new sanctions against individuals held responsible for human rights violations.
But it is the appointment between Biden and Putin that is undoubtedly the most dramatic due to the high and close stakes at stake. The American President should invoke the existence of diplomatic leads. At the same time, however, although without commitments to direct military interventions alongside the Kiev forces, he wants to evoke clear and firm support for Kiev. And, above all, the specter of drastic measures against Moscow in the event of new Russian aggressions. To this end, the White House is working alongside European nations to show a tougher common front with Moscow, avoiding excessive caution fueled by fears of Russian retaliation such as reductions in gas supplies.
Moscow, which in 2014 had invaded and then annexed the Crimean peninsula, has certainly intensified the siege of the country by amassing troops on the border (in January they will be 175,000 from today’s 100,000, according to the Pentagon). And it has multiplied the disinformation and destabilization campaigns of the Kiev government. Putin also made no secret of considering Ukraine part of a great Russia and the two peoples identical for historical ties, despite a clear majority of Ukrainians who want greater ties with the West.