Will Biden ignore security advice to meet the Churchill of our era, Zelensky?
This might be an occasion where geo-strategy and domestic politics mesh, a fantasy moment come true for the US president.
Could Joe Biden spring a Zelensky surprise on the world when he visits Poland on Friday? This might be an occasion where geo-strategy and domestic politics mesh perfectly, a fantasy moment come true for Biden.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the US President found a way to get across the Polish border into some speck of Ukrainian territory to meet personally with the most popular man in the world, Volodymyr Zelensky, our era’s Winston Churchill. Failing that, perhaps Zelensky could briefly steal into Poland. The pictures would be everything – a meeting that would be in everyone’s interests. Priceless and immortal.
Biden’s approval ratings are terrible. The one issue he has going for him is people like his tough rhetorical line on Russia’s shocking and indefensible war against Ukraine. If his numbers don’t rise, the Democrats will get creamed in November’s congressional elections.
But Biden would have to give Zelensky something. He wouldn’t get a huge lift from a meeting in which Zelensky asks for a no-flight zone, or the MiG fighter jets Poland wanted to donate and Biden vetoed. Biden doesn’t want a meeting where Zelensky urges him to show more leadership.
But if the US President has something he can give Zelensky, then he could get him saying thank you, not only to America but to Biden personally. It would be the best endorsement Biden’s ever got. It would be pretty good for Zelensky too, a further investment of American prestige in the Ukrainian cause, a further sign that the US thinks Ukraine can win.
The security and logistics would be nightmarishly complex. Earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met his Ukrainian counterpart on the border and the two walked into Ukrainian territory for a few minutes. It was a good thing for Blinken to do, but he’s a naturally undramatic kinda guy. It didn’t make the splash it might have.
Whereas Biden, whatever his other limitations, is every inch the politician and would ham up such a moment to maximum effect.
In his own way, the President has actually been quite brave over the years, visiting US troops all over the world. Once in Afghanistan a helicopter he and John Kerry were in was forced into an emergency landing. They were snowbound in unfriendly territory and had to wait some hours until US army vehicles could come and rescue them.
Biden has referred to that incident about a million times subsequently. Sometimes, his imagination gets the better of his recollection. In the vice-presidential debate with Sarah Palin in 2008, he recalled chasing Hezbollah out of Lebanon, which would certainly have been news to them.
Of course, that was as nothing compared with Hillary Clinton who claimed she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia in the 1990s, a claim demonstrated as preposterous when CBS unearthed film showing the stately progress she and daughter Chelsea made from the plane after a routine landing.
In the unlikely event Biden runs for re-election in 2024, imagine how often you would hear the words: “When I visited Ukraine, against the advice of my security detail, to support my friend President Zelensky.”
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