Joe Biden has caught hell the past couple of weeks for making some fairly obvious observations to a reporter about Russia's internal problems and for implying that the interests of such a weakened country needn't worry the United States all that much. Moscow officialdom has responded in high dudgeon, and Russian commentators are insisting that the vice president has revealed the dark and irresponsible motives behind American policy. Administration spokesmen dismiss it as just another Biden gaffe.
It's no surprise that comments about Russia's demographic decline, its over-dependence on commodity exports, the shakiness of its banks and so on can be interpreted to mean that the United States intends to push the envelope at Moscow's expense -- and expects to get away with it. Yet it appears that what the reporter asked the vice president was not why America is doing so much to provoke Russia but, rather, why the United States thinks it can deter Russian power while doing so little. As a response to this question, Biden's answer sounded more like an attempt to change the subject, an uneasy way of saying that maybe the Russians, with all their problems at home, will end up deterring themselves. No need for the United States to push the envelope after all.
An uproar, in other words, about whether the United States is overreaching and disregarding Russia's interests should perhaps have been about whether America is trying to succeed on the cheap and is failing to uphold its own interests. But no matter which question the vice president was asked, the Obama administration needs a more convincing answer.
In explaining that the United States is not putting itself on a collision course with Russia, Biden could have claimed credit for what has already been accomplished. And to reassure those who think that U.S. policy is long on talk and short on action, he would have to be more candid about what it will take to strengthen the independence of Russia's neighbors.
Showing that the administration is serious about Russian-American relations is the easy part of dealing with the Biden flap. By now Russian policymakers have seen enough of U.S. policy to know that Washington's guiding thought is not how to bring Russia to its knees. The administration is not counting on Russia's backwardness to win its cooperation. It's counting on common interest.
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