Ostracising Putin is merely common decency

Is Putin now beyond the pale? Joe Biden apparently thinks so, to judge from the peroration of his speech in Warsaw on March 26. In improvised words that went beyond his written text, the President told his Polish audience at the Royal Palace: “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia. For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

Never mind that White House officials and Secretary of State Antony Blinken later sought to “walk back” Biden’s remarks, claiming that he meant to say that Putin could not exercise power over Ukraine. Some NATO allies have reacted with alarm. President Macron, who likes to present himself as Europe’s peacemaker, is warning against “verbal escalation”. He did not need to mention Biden’s name. Chancellor Scholz said that he had spoken to Biden and satisfied himself that regime change was “not the objective of NATO, nor that of the US President”. The Kremlin has its own interpretation: that the Americans have now arrogated the right to choose the Russian President. On both sides of the Atlantic, the media has depicted Biden’s comments as a gaffe which overshadowed a successful week of diplomacy and as a gift to Russian propaganda.

Maybe Biden’s words were indeed all these things. But they may also still be true. Speaking truth to power is not only the prerogative of the powerless. During the Cold War, there was a long history of US Presidents defending “the free world” against aggression by the Soviet Union or other Communist regimes. Every time, they endured harsh criticism for supposedly provoking their nuclear-armed opponents. When in 1947 Harry S. Truman declared that America would “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures”, he was denounced by Left and Right for dragging America yet again into European conflicts.

His own former Commerce Secretary, Henry Wallace, said that the President’s words amounted to a “declaration of war” against the Soviet Union. Truman, remember, had used nuclear weapons against Japan just two years before. Yet within a short time, the consensus was that he was right — a consensus that has stood the test of history.  

Another example: in 1983 Ronald Reagan described the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”. At the time, many Europeans saw this as bellicose and some even swallowed the Soviet line that Reagan was a “lunatic anti-Communist”. Even in Washington many foreign policy experts thought it was a serious error. When in 1987 Reagan went to Europe to speak on the 25th anniversary of the Berlin Wall, State Department officials strongly objected to the peroration for which the speech is remembered: “Mr Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!”  

Biden is a much less effective communicator than Reagan, but his speech in Warsaw came from the heart. In fact, it was by far the best he has ever given. In contrast to Donald Trump’s speech in the same place in 2017, which focused on terrorism and migration and made just one brief mention of Russia’s “destabilising activities in Ukraine”, Biden drew a clear distinction between democracy and authoritarianism. That conflict had resulted in the return of war to European soil, hence Biden in effect reaffirmed the Truman Doctrine that the US could not stand by and ignore the subjugation of a free people, the Ukrainians, by Putin — whom he has variously described as a “liar”, a “butcher” and a “war criminal”.  

Here Denis MacShane argues today that we have often had to make peace with evil people — and Putin is no exception. But there are, of course, exceptions. Hitler, Mussolini and the leaders of Imperial Japan were explicitly made exceptions: at Tehran in 1943, Churchill and Roosevelt adopted an uncompromising policy towards the Axis powers: unconditional surrender. There were to be no negotiations, only capitulation and Allied occupation.

Having been invaded a few months later, Italy repudiated Mussolini and changed sides, although the Germans installed the dictator as a puppet in the northern regions that they still occupied. As a result, Italy avoided severe consequences after the war. Nazi Germany fought to the bitter end: the Allies refused to negotiate with Hitler or his successors, Joseph Goebbels and Admiral Dönitz. The Germans suffered consequences that included large territorial losses and a brutal Russian occupation of what eventually became East Germany, while the Nazi leaders were tried at Nuremberg.

Japan, which surrendered after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was treated more leniently: its leaders were tried as war criminals but the head of state, Emperor Hirohito, was left in peace. Unconditional surrender remains controversial to this day, but it is difficult to see how a negotiated settlement with either Nazi or Imperial Japanese leaders could ever have been acceptable to public opinion in the democracies. Such criminal regimes are even less acceptable partners today.  

Is Putin comparable to Hirohito? Not really. He is not even comparable to Napoleon or Kaiser Wilhelm II, both of whose lives were spared and ended their days in exile. President Putin is directly responsible for prima facie crimes against humanity and war crimes on a huge scale, quite apart from the crimes he has committed in Russia proper. He may have to be tried in absentia, but he cannot be allowed to escape justice. Can we negotiate with such a man, let alone allow him to remain in power, there to continue to threaten the whole of humanity with nuclear weapons? The answer is no.

Biden may not have thought this through to its logical conclusion, but that conclusion must surely be that Putin is too dangerous to be left in charge of the Kremlin. He is no longer a legitimate head of state and Russians should be urged to remove him from office by whatever means they can. That is not the same as a policy of regime change: it is of course for Russians to decide what form of government and which leaders they want. But they should be in no doubt that as long as Putin remains President, Russia will remain ostracised, isolated and excluded.

The sanctions already imposed can and should be extended even further. And the war in Ukraine should be prosecuted with all the help that NATO can give. Having failed to conquer the Ukrainian people, Putin cannot be permitted to partition the country and deport those of its population who remain in his power. Europe cannot afford to have a new Korea on its eastern border, divided and militarised, menacing a whole continent with nuclear war for generations. Ukraine will continue to seek peace with Russia, but any deal with Putin will only be a temporary reprieve. He is reported to have responded to the latest terms offered by Kyiv through Roman Abramovich with the words: “Tell them I will thrash them.” Unless Putin has clearly lost the war, he will continue to be obdurate.

The policy outlined here is closer to the British position than to any other NATO government’s. It is revealing that in an interview with the Economist, President Zelensky praised Britain, as a country that unequivocally “wants Ukraine to win and Russia to lose”. He added that “Johnson is a leader who is helping more”, in contrast to Macron who was “afraid of Russia” and the Germans, who “are making a mistake today. I think they make mistakes often. I think the legacy of Germany’s relations with Russia shows this.”

In the interview Biden meets with more approval from Zelensky, who does not comment on the US President’s Warsaw speech — perhaps because he gave the interview before that had occurred. But it is safe to assume that Zelensky will not be joining Macron and Scholz in condemning Biden’s unscripted words. NATO is not at war and cannot make regime change in Russia its policy. But its leaders can and should express their repugnance for Putin and his methods. The truth cannot and should not be hidden. And the West ought never to be neutral in the fight for freedom and humanity. Ostracising Putin is merely common decency.

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