{"id":61948,"date":"2022-02-19T13:54:58","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T18:54:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61948"},"modified":"2022-02-19T13:54:58","modified_gmt":"2022-02-19T18:54:58","slug":"is-the-confrontation-over-ukraine-joe-bidens-wag-the-dog-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=61948","title":{"rendered":"Is the Confrontation Over Ukraine Joe Biden\u2019s \u201cWag the Dog\u201d Moment?"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"article-header-content\">\n<h3 class=\"title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/world\/ukraine-biden-putin-exceptionalism\/\">Is the Confrontation Over Ukraine Joe Biden\u2019s \u201cWag the Dog\u201d Moment?<\/a><\/h3>\n<p class=\"subtitle\"><strong>The people now gunning for a showdown with Putin were gunning for a showdown with Saddam Hussein two decades ago\u2014with the same promises of a happy outcome.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"byline\" data-nosnippet=\"\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<section class=\"tnpaywallcontent article-body  abody-408034  \">\n<div class=\"article-body-inner\">\n<aside class=\"left full-width-mobile image wide indent\"><a class=\"gallery imgHover\" title=\"Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow.  (Alexei Druzhinin \/ AP Photo)\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/putin_kerry_ap_img.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/cdn-cgi\/image\/width=896,quality=80,format=auto\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/10\/putin_kerry_ap_img.jpg\" alt=\"Putin and Kerry\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"caption\">Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow.\u00a0<span class=\"credits\">(Alexei Druzhinin \/ AP Photo)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">W<\/span>hile some wars may be necessary and unavoidable, a war pitting Russia against Ukraine\u2014and potentially involving the United States\u2014doesn\u2019t make the cut. Yet, should such a war occur, some members of the American commentariat will cheer. They have yearned for a showdown with Vladimir Putin. The depth of their animus toward Putin and the hyperbole it inspires is a bit of a puzzle that deserves examination.<\/p>\n<p>A veteran\u00a0<em>New York Times\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/02\/12\/world\/europe\/macron-putin-ukraine.html?searchResultPosition=1\">correspondent charges<\/a>\u00a0that Putin \u201chas put a gun to the head of the West.\u201d In an op-ed recently published in the\u00a0<em>Times<\/em>, a former US national security official\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/02\/11\/opinion\/russia-ukraine-biden-military-nato.html?\">accuses President Biden<\/a>\u00a0of \u201csending the message that the United States is afraid of confronting Russia militarily.\u201d \u201cIn an era when fascism is on the march,\u201d a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bostonglobe.com\/2022\/02\/10\/opinion\/deterring-putin-will-test-mettle-west\/?\"><em>Boston Globe<\/em>\u00a0columnist warns<\/a>, \u201cmuch more may hang in the balance\u201d than simply the security of a single country on the far eastern fringe of Europe.<\/p>\n<p>A sense of impending doom punctuates the taunts: With unnamed fascists gathering outside the city gates and the very survival of the West at risk, the sitting president succumbs to cowardice. Whence does such overheated language come? What does it signify?<\/p>\n<p>One obvious explanation is the unvarnished Russophobia pervading the ranks of the American political elite. With roots going at least as far back as the Bolshevik Revolution, disdain for Russia only deepened across several decades of Cold War&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is the Confrontation Over Ukraine Joe Biden\u2019s \u201cWag the Dog\u201d Moment? The people now gunning for a showdown with Putin were gunning for a showdown with Saddam Hussein two decades ago\u2014with the same promises of a happy outcome. Russian President Vladimir Putin meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow.\u00a0(Alexei Druzhinin \/ AP [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[17911,1320,694,23401,821,827,15096,862],"class_list":["post-61948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-andrew-j-bacevich","tag-joe-biden","tag-russia","tag-the-nation","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-wag-the-dog","tag-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61949,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61948\/revisions\/61949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}