https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/14/how-to-start-a-war/
Wars often arise from uncertainty. When strong powers appear weak, truly weaker ones take risks they otherwise would not.
Sloppy braggadocio and serial promises of restraint alternatively trigger wars, too. Empty tough talk can needlessly egg on aggressors. But mouthing utopian bromides convinces bullies that their targets are too sophisticated to counter aggression.
Sometimes announcing “a new peace process” without any ability to bring either novel concessions or pressures only raises false hopes—and furor.
Every new American president is usually tested to determine whether the United States can still protect friends like Japan, Europe, South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. And will the new commander-in-chief deter America’s enemies Iran and North Korea—and keep China and Russia from absorbing their neighbors?
Joe Biden, and those around him, seem determined to upset the peace they inherited.
Soon after Donald Trump left office, Vladimir Putin began massing troops on the Ukrainian border and threatening to attack.
Putin earlier had concluded Trump was dangerously unpredictable, and perhaps better not provoked. After all, the Trump Administration took out Russian mercenaries in Syria. It beefed up defense spending and upped sanctions.
The Trump Administration flooded the world with cheap oil to Russia’s chagrin. It pulled out from asymmetrical missile treaties with Russia. It sold sophisticated arms to the Ukrainians. The Russians concluded that Trump might do anything, and so waited for another president before again testing America.
In contrast, Biden too often talks provocatively—while carrying a twig. He has gratuitously called Putin “a killer.” And he warned that the Russian dictator “would pay a price” for supposedly interfering in the 2020 election.
Unfortunately, his bombast follows four years of a Russian-collusion hoax, fueled by a concocted dossier paid for by 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton. Biden and others swore Trump was—in the words of Barack Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper—a “Russian asset.”