In comments to reporters yesterday, President Joe Biden made the geopolitical assertion that Russia—Putin—is likely feeling “squeezed” by China right now. Completely ignoring the fact that Russia is a great power, which maintains a strong, cooperative, and strategic relationship with Russia, Biden asserted that Russia is in a “very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China. They want desperately to remain a major power.” But the problem is, “You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is moving ahead, hellbent on election, as they say, seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world. You’re in a situation where your economy is struggling, you need to move it in a more aggressive way, in terms of growing it.” So, from Putin’s standpoint, “I don’t think he’s looking for a Cold War with the United States.” On the contrary, “they desperately want to be relevant.”
China’s semi-official Global Times responded to Biden with some choice editorial words today, accusing him of humiliating the Russian people and treating one of the world’s most important powers “as an idiot.” (See separate item.) Biden argued that Russia doesn’t “want to be known, as some critics have pointed and said… [as] the ‘Upper Volta with nuclear weapons.’ It matters. And I found it matters to almost every world leader — no matter where they’re from — how they’re perceived, their standing in the world. It matters to them. It matters to them in terms of their support at home as well.”
