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Seen as some are beating up on Biden - I'll join in but care neither for Biden or Trump...put an electoral gun to my head I vote Biden all day long. Biden is/was perceived by Russia as a Ukraine 'hawk' in that under his watch as VP with portfolio responsibility for Ukraine under Obama....he was seen to have encouraged supported and maneuvered the most hard West pivot that Ukranian leadership had ever taken raising alarm in the Kremlin (if you care to look at it from a singular Russian security perspective). Add in the barisma stuff with Hunter....and you can see....if you pause for a moment and walk in a Russian's shoe for second....the strange feeling that Ukraine was becoming a US puppet state & Biden during his time as VP was chiefly responsible for what Mearsheimar refers to as "the leading Ukraine down the primrose path period" which is to encouraging them to pivot to us more completely as means by which WE ehanced our security in the West....better Ukraine is a western puppet state...than like Belarus a Russian puppet state. When Biden assumed the presidency and given his prior Ukrainian portfolio responbilty and 8yrs a Ukraine hawk......paradoxically for all the Republicans out there that like to pretend that Russia invaded Ukraine because Biden is WEAK......they actually invaded Ukraine after he assumed the presidency because the calculation was that Biden was the most AGGRESSIVE i.e. hawkish president to sit in the Oval Office (vis a vie Ukraine's) in decades. It's no coincidence that Russia invaded Ukraine a year after Biden's inauguration.....they perceived the most Ukrainian hawkish president in decades sitting in the oval office with potentially 8 full years in front of him to transform completely Ukraine into a Western bulwark on Russia's doorstep......a project he'd started as Vice President......or what we euphemistically call a vassal state. I agree with a poster above.......Trump's transactional foreign relations stance......from a Russian standpoint was infinitely more preferable vis a vie Ukraine & Russian security concerns there......than Biden's Ukraine track record....and his idealistic/zealot democracy vs. autocracy rhetoric that characterized his first year in office. Remember the "Summit for Democracy" in December 2021...three short months before Russia's Ukraine invasion: Sitting in Beijing or the Kremlin....and you see the picture above.....you the know the 'deal' as Biden would say.....its projecting liberal democracy because you beleive in it but also because it hurts your enemies (Russia, China, Iran, N.Korea)...and that photo to an autocrat looks like a tonne of future mischief making by the new US president in your part of the world coming down the tracks!!!!!!! I assume Zelensky's in that photo somewhere? (EDIT: to answer my own question, he sure did attend...Ukraine released this statement that was translated and carried on US state departments website no less afterwards: https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/UKRAINE-Summit-for-Democracy-Written-Commitment-eng-2021-12-20-Accessible-Final.pdf with this paragraph on the front page : "Ukraine is currently an outpost of democracy and freedom in Europe. For the eighth year in a row, Ukrainians are defending with arms not only their freedom, but the values of democracy and the free world") In international relations - WEAK/STRONG leaders have different meanings depending on your viewpoint......Russia invaded Ukraine during Biden's presidency not because he was perceived to be weak but quite the opposite...Biden was intent, and his track record was flawless, on projecting US power via liberal democratic ideals in far flung regions.....all the better if that liberal democratic idealism also strategically weakened autocratic regimes that were US enemies. In this respect Putin the mad man, Putin the imperialist....is really Putin the calcuting statements (miscalculating for sure based on what happened)....but on Feb 2022 he made a deeply aggressive move to assert dominance on his Western flank. He miscalculated for sure based on subsequent events.......but the calculation contained undoubtedly the above variables....and Biden was a key part.....not because Biden is weak....but because Biden is strong (again weak/strong are subjective and I use them here in terms of a dove vs. a hawk on Ukraine).

For Europe.......with friends like the US who needs enemies Back to what I mentioned a couple of pages back.......Macron has articulated this view.........Europe is a price taker of US foreign policy in the region and most certainly in other regions......Europe minus a robust German (& French) military capability....is a toothless tiger from strategic autonomy point of view.....the US and Europe are sympatico on so many things...we are great allies in that respect.......but there's divergence there too.......and the Ukraine/Russia stuff is an example.....perpetuating the war in Ukraine......is a mechanism by which the US can ensure structurally higher energy prices for German manufacturers they compete with......and the list goes on.......minus the billions of dollars the war is costing the US....in some respects there's lots of upside with limited downside.....the US gets to slowly cripple the Russian state/army fighting with other people soldiers......energy intensive European manufacturing becomes structurally uncompetitive vs. the US's unlimited Then you get interesting little incidents like the US spending a decade protesting against Nordstream 2 & ever closer energy integration between Europe and Russia..............and a gas pipeline getting blown up by mystery saboteur that no European country wants to talk about right now... The realpolitik of all this is very simple - and explained by the realist IR perspective: - a great power looks to secure its own region first....becoming a regional hegemon...the US spent much of the 1800's and early 1900's doing this...and was hugely successful....not a single person in the USA ever wakes up with concerns about neighbouring sovereign aggression....the US is totally secure with the Monroe Doctrine in place - regional hegemon then seeks to play in other regions (Europe/Asia/Africa) to contain and box in the rise of regional hegemon emerging that one day could go global - boxing in & constraining the emergence of regional hegemons is very logical.........a regional hegemon once they have dominated and secured their own region.....seeks to 'play' in other regions....potentially your region!!!!....cause thats exactly what you started doing once you'd secured yours....the US understands the playbook - the pivot to Asia by the USA....is not some charity exercise its concerned with ensuring China never fully dominates Asia in the way the USA dominates the Americas......if China achieved this regional hegemon state.....it would be likely to begin to play deeper games in South America/Caribbean bringing 'trouble' to the US's doorstep........its why a conflict in the South China sea at some point is so likely.....better to go toe to toe with China there....than the Caribbean Sea! - nations are chiefly concerned with their own survival and security....it drives everything in international relations....while we tell a heroes story about WWI & WWII.....great powers joined the conflict (WWI - britain, then the USA...and WWII (both)...as it became clear that Germany, if successful, would potentially emerge as a regional hegemon ala the Unites States if they didn't.....Britain and the USA at various junctures identified this as a strategic threat to their own sovereignty and security and joined the French in fighting. To contain China...and stop its emergence as a regional hegemon....we've already got bases all over Asia.....and are ready in various arenas to go toe to toe with China.....Korea, Taiwan, Japan....ideally you do it in a Ukraine fashion......send money/arms and let others die doing the fighting and furthering your strategic objectives of containing/diminishing a potential rival/competitor. Europe, as I mentioned needs to step up now with its own military capability aspirations, balance of power dynamics I think requires a third force between the USA and an emergent China.....left alone in a bilateral global competition the escalation dynamics are too easy to get out of control.....the situation is best served by a kind of EU referee but a referee with an army, nukes & artillery (the EU is already an economic superpower) and enough strategic autonomy to be neither China or US's "bitch".