The logic is well known: if the newcomer in the class wants to act as a spokesman, he has to identify the strongest on the second day at the latest with an expert eye, brutally bump into him in the schoolyard in front of a maximum audience and loudly threaten to beat him. What then follows determines the future ranking.
Biden: Putin will pay a price
This is exactly how US President Joe Biden acted when he confirmed on Wednesday that he considered the Russian president to be a murderer and threatened that Vladimir Putin would “pay a price” for Russian interference in the recent US elections. He did not communicate all of this elegantly through diplomatic channels, but in the world politics schoolyard – on television.
Anyone who dismisses this as the rhetorical incontinence of the oldest US president of all time has not understood the logic of the matter (see above). Joe Biden has set a signal. The message is: With immediate effect, Washington is once again playing first fiddle in global politics. No deal, no wink. We define the rules.
So far, the EU has only used needle sticks
The European Union has long since thrown its illusions about Vladimir Putin aside. The EU is also openly saying today what it has been able to prove for years: that the Kremlin is using massive disinformation campaigns to polarize and divide societies in Europe, to influence elections and referendums (such as the Brexit vote) – financial support for nationalist groups included.
But so far the EU has only used pinpricks against Putin’s environment. To date, she has not dared to bump into the strongest in the schoolyard in public. Now all she can do is watch how Moscow reacts to Joe Biden’s deliberate provocation and whether it comes to a big fight. Nobody in Europe wants a new Cold War, but the understanding is growing that limits must be set for the power-hungry Putin.
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