Biden said out loud in Poland what the whole world already knew -- including Vladimir Putin

Everybody but Joe Biden seems to have forgotten the age-old rule that he who starts a fight has to live with the consequences.  That’s what he was telling the world when he said of Putin, "For God's sake, this man cannot remain in power."  He started it, Biden said, but we’re going to finish it.

The day the first tank tread crossed the border from Russia into Ukraine the world was compelled by common decency to stop caring what Putin thinks and start caring about the Ukrainians whose territory he invaded, whose cities he was destroying and whose citizens he was murdering.  That the leader of the nation who started the first land war in Europe since World War II cannot be permitted to retain the power and position to do such a thing again is not just stating the obvious, it is taking the moral stand backed up by every bullet fired in opposition to his aggression.  Without such moral authority, the Ukrainians who have lost their lives will have died in vain, for they are fighting not only for their land and their possessions and their lives, but for the right to continue to exist as who they are with what is theirs.  The outcome of their fight is not up to Vladimir Putin.  It cannot be any more than the lands taken by Hitler’s armies in 1939 and 1940 and 1941 could remain under his control rather than in the embrace of those who lived in them.  That would include, in case you’ve forgotten the history of those times, the very lands being fought over once again in Ukraine.

What Putin has wrought in Ukraine is existential in the sense of the lives and lands of the Ukrainian people, but it is greater even than that.  A lesson must be taught and the lesson must be learned.  That is what happened in Germany and Japan after World War II.  In the case of that war, whole nations had to be defeated and occupied for decades to ensure that the lesson of what happens to aggressors when they lose was driven home and stayed there.  That is not going to happen in the case of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.  The rest of the world is not going to defeat Russia and occupy its lands with foreign armies to punish its aggression.  Somehow we had convinced ourselves that the atomic bomb had brought a halt to wars of aggression at least on the European continent.  Nuclear deterrence was supposed to have solved what could be called the Hitler/Hirohito problem.

Putin proved us wrong when he started his war, but now we have to prove him wrong by helping Ukraine defeat Russian aggression and teach Russia the lessons of World War II all over again, but in a new way.  We erased what there was left of Germany’s and Japan’s imperial ambitions by altering both countries forever by occupying them and gradually bringing them back into the world of civilized nations by helping to rebuild their economies with trade and cultural exchange.

The free world, if you will, is not going to militarily defeat Russia and occupy its lands, but we can do the same thing in reverse.  We went into Germany and Japan to force a change in their behavior as nations.  By staying out and turning Russia into an economic, cultural, and physical prison, we can accomplish the same thing.  Instead of going in and occupying Russia, we’ll keep them out of everywhere else.  Russia cannot continue to exist as an economically viable country under those conditions.  Something will have to change, and that something is Vladimir Putin. Because Russia cannot survive under the unprecedented sanctions that have been imposed, Putin cannot survive.

This will have the effect of forcing Putin to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine that will include his own domestic political survival.  This is good for Ukraine and good for us, because it means one of two things.  The sanctions will not end unless Putin is gone as leader of Russia, or Russia is gone completely from Ukraine.  Zelensky’s power as the leader of a nation under siege comes from exactly this:  Every time he shows himself on television, he’s telling Vladimir Putin, if you want to stay in power, give me Ukraine back.  All of it. Putin must accept a defeat on the battlefield in order to achieve the win of political survival at home. 

To state the obvious, Putin and Ukraine cannot coexist.  That’s what Joe Biden said out loud in Poland, and he was correct on the facts and correct morally.  You can’t do much better than that.  Sometime stating the obvious is the right thing to do.