US President Joe Biden.
US President Joe Biden. Credit: The White House / Wikimedia Commons Credit: The White House / Wikimedia Commons

Joe Biden is a dangerous man. He currently is conducting two major American-led proxy wars: one in the Middle East, the other in the Ukraine. These wars have led to a significant loss of life, destruction of the environment and unprecedented expenditures and use of armaments. But that is not the man who Biden believes himself to be. His self-delusion hides his murderer’s face. Rather, when he sees himself, he is simply an amiable guy doing what he believes is best for his country. But what he believes is best for his country is informed in large part by his deeply held imperialist beliefs and ambitions that he has sought to realize over the years through NATO.

NATO has grown from 12 countries at its inception in 1949 to the current number of 32 and Biden has been one of its foremost architects. 

For example, NATO has expanded eastward, with the placement of weapons, into the former Warsaw Pact nations including Poland, Romania, and Bulgaria, and as well as into former parts of the former Soviet Union such as Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. 

In a 1997 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Biden forcefully laid out the case for the United States to uphold a robust NATO alliance over the long term. “The United States is a European power,” he said. “We have a strong interest.”

In 1998 Biden was quoted as characterizing the additions of Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia to NATO as “righting an historical injustice forced upon them by Joseph Stalin. This, in fact, is the beginning of another 50 years of peace” he crowed, quite unaware of what would become of his actions.

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2008, Biden called for expanding NATO membership to countries in the Balkans including Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia. He boasted, “Here in the Senate, I helped lead the effort to enlarge NATO.” 

In 2009, Biden expressed support for Ukrainian membership in NATO saying, “We do not recognize anyone else’s right to dictate to any other country what alliance it should seek to belong to, or what relationships, bilateral relationships, you have.”  

Putin, for many years, had been especially concerned about NATO’s courting of Ukraine to join its alliance. Geographically, Ukraine shares an extensive border with Russia, making Russia exceedingly vulnerable to a military attack by a hostile heavily armed future NATO neighbor. Biden’s statement is designed to purposely obfuscate Putin’s understandable concern and rather instead assert unfettered access and control of Ukraine for NATO.

With these remarks, Biden was already setting the stage for what would become, 13 years later, a fateful confrontation with the Russian leader.

During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden made the following bellicose statement “I want to make it clear, absolutely clear to all the people of the Baltic States, we have pledged our sacred honor, the United States of America, our sacred honor to the NATO Treaty and the right to defend under Article 5.” A declaration of war for Putin’s ears.

Later, now as the U.S. President, Biden pledged to the Bucharest Nine, the group of Eastern European countries added to the NATO alliance during the Clinton and Bush administrations, to “defend literally every inch of NATO against Russia.” These words could have only further antagonized Putin.

In March and April 2021, the Russians began amassing thousands of personnel and military equipment near their border with Ukraine and Crimea. A second build-up began in October 2021, this time with more soldiers and with deployments on new fronts. By December over 100,000 Russian troops were amassed around Ukraine on three sides, including Belarus from the north and Crimea from the south. 

In December 2021, Russia advanced two draft treaties that contained requests for what it referred to as “security guarantees”, including a legally binding promise that Ukraine would not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and a reduction in NATO troops stationed in Eastern Europe and threatened an unspecified military response if those demands were not met in full.

At that moment in time, Biden had an opportunity in which he could have undone the crisis that was now unfolding around him and to which he had personally contributed. There existed the possibility that he could have brought the world back from the brink of a catastrophic war through his own singular efforts. 

On February 12, 2022, Biden spoke directly alone with Vladimir Putin for two hours by telephone, ten days before what would be Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine. Earlier in the day on February 12, the U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken talked to his counterpart Sergei Lavrov. Lavrov raised with Blinken that the U.S. was continuing to ignore its security proposals, which include a guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO and a withdrawal of NATO forces from eastern Europe. These concerns were not new to Blinken as they had been reiterated on many occasions by Russian leaders in the past. No doubt Biden was briefed about Blinken’s phone call before he took his own personal phone call with Putin. So, when Biden took the call, he was well aware of what Putin’s concerns were. 

In this two-hour phone call, according to U. S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Biden made no commitments or concessions on NATO regarding a reduced U.S. military presence in Eastern Europe nor Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO. Biden refused to take any responsibility or acknowledgement in the phone call of the provocative military threat he had created towards Russia through his promotion of NATO expansion and his advocating for Ukrainian membership.

This fleeting opportunity for peace was lost through Biden’s failure to transcend his own imperial worldview. In his view, NATO’s concerns and interests are non-negotiable. NATO exists to be constantly growing; to be adding more and more countries; more and more armaments; more and more power. NATO’s actions he understood were beyond reproach because they were, after all, done in the service of security. NATO had right on its side and therefore had nothing to answer for.

For Biden in that phone call there were no doubts. No deals to be made with the undeserving. And if Putin wanted war, let that be on his head. Not ours.

Ten days later Russia invaded the Ukraine and began the proxy war that has now raged for over two years.

The Ukrainian war has been a very generous gift for NATO. New members are clamoring to join. The profits of the armament sales of NATO’s suppliers have reached astronomical levels and its goal of militarizing the economies of Canada and Europe is advancing with promise. Further, NATO is expanding into the Asia-Pacific region and other areas as well. Its power has never been greater.

In turn, Biden is playing his part by pushing through the U.S. Congress a steady stream of massive appropriation bills of increasingly lethal weapons destined for Ukraine and urging his fellow NATO members “not to waiver” in their gifts to Ukraine’s President Zelensky. He repeatedly pledges to the world that he will “do whatever it takes for as long as it takes” to defend Ukraine against the Russians. Actions and words that have, to date, ensured the continuation, not the ending of the war.

We see in the relationship between Joe Biden and NATO an unwavering blind arrogance, which has now led the world into war. They are both driven to compete and win at all costs. To see their ambitions as a sacred trust that should go forever unquestioned.

Mark Leith is a retired psychiatrist, a past board member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and a member of Seniors for Climate Action Now.

Mark Leith

Mark Leith is a retired psychiatrist, and a member of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War Canada and Seniors for Climate Action Now and the author of the hit play on propaganda Dinner...