Biden at the improv: Ukraine and the dangers of foreign policy by open mic

US President Joe Biden delivers a speech at the Royal Castle in Warsaw, Poland.

At what point does Joe Biden’s verbal incontinence start to become a mortal threat to Americans?

Until now we’ve mostly had the luxury of observing the president’s many rhetorical infelicities with a mixture of mild puzzlement and gentle concern, as one might watch an aging relative struggle to remember the name of one’s children.

But some words have larger consequences than others - especially when you’re the president of the United States. It’s one thing to misidentify your vice president as the first lady, quite another to call for the ouster of an autocratic and bellicose leader of a nation with nuclear weapons. That is the kind of thing that can trigger wars that could result in the annihilation of much of humanity.

It’s a sign of the rising alarm the presidential blunders must be causing in diplomatic circles that the White House communications shop has stopped attempting to correct the gaffes that come flying like grapeshot from a cannon. Instead they take the Humpty Dumpty approach. Instead of issuing corrections or clarifications of Mr. Biden’s words, they simply invoke Humpty’s philosophy on the president’s behalf: “Whenever I use a word . . . it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.”

This exercise in through-the-looking-glass semantics was on display last week throughout the president’s trip to Europe, where he sought to rally allies in support of Ukraine and against Russian aggression.

At North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels on Thursday, Mr. Biden was asked what the U.S. would do if Vladimir Putin used chemical weapons in Ukraine. He said the West would respond “in kind.” You might think, deploying commonly understood definitions, that he meant to convey the somewhat shocking threat that NATO would retaliate against use of a weapon of mass destruction with a like attack. But you’d be wrong. Later, Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, said that while Russia would pay a heavy price if it used such weapons, the U.S. had “no intention of using chemical weapons, period, under any circumstances.”

The next day in Poland, the president casually remarked to American troops stationed there that some of them had already been in Ukraine and others would be going soon. Soon another administration Humpty was on the line to reporters, insisting that Mr. Biden’s words were in no way inconsistent with the fact that the U.S. had no forces in Ukraine and no plans to send any.

On Saturday we had the most arresting breach between presidential words and improvised official definitions. At the end of an impassioned speech that denounced Vladimir Putin’s aggression and framed the struggle as a battle between democracy and tyranny, Mr. Biden threw down a gauntlet: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

This apparent call for regime change in Moscow, was, we were instantly told, nothing of the sort. “The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region,” according to an unnamed White House official. “He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

We can’t go on like this. Credibility is essential to the effective and safe conduct of national security. No amount of hasty cleanup will erase the words that come from the lips of a commander in chief. And no, it is not a defense of the president to note - accurately - that his immediate predecessor was as notorious for his verbal indiscipline as Mr. Biden is.

For now, we have an immediate and escalating problem with this presidency. We can certainly hope that Russians understand as well as we do that, at 79, Mr. Biden is prone to saying things he doesn’t mean. But we can’t be sure. What we can be sure of is that Mr. Putin, who has already whipped up his compatriots into a frenzy of paranoia about the “real” intentions of the U.S. in arming Ukraine - to wit, an attempt to weaken and destroy Russia itself - will seize on every piece of evidence he can find to bolster his case.

Diplomacy is a subtle activity that combines artful deception with necessary candor. States convey to each other only what they want or need to convey; they willfully mislead each other about some aspects of their objectives and capabilities while drawing bright red lines around their nonnegotiable truths. Strategic ambiguity helps induce in allies and adversaries alike a distinct uncertainty about intentions. But clarity is essential when the stakes are existential. Decoding these complex messages, sifting the signal from the noise, is the essence of successful statecraft.

Mr. Biden’s penchant for reckless language simply bludgeons through this delicate diplomatic infrastructure. It compromises the ability of the U.S. and its allies to achieve our objectives, while significantly increasing the risk of a miscalculation on either side.

John F. Kennedy said that during World War II, Winston Churchill “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Mr. Biden seems intent on doing the same - only he may be sending it into battle on the wrong side.

The Wall Street Journal