Historically, ex-presidents spend their golden years on the speaking circuit, writing their memoirs or planning for the inauguration of their presidential libraries. What they don’t do is lash out at their successors when they disagree with a policy or decision. Joe Biden, however, has no intention of keeping quiet.
A little more than three months after vacating the White House, Biden is unencumbered from conventional decorum and feels free to speak his mind. Last month, he gave his first post-presidency speech in Chicago, where he blasted the Trump administration for taking a sharp hatchet to the federal workforce, including the Social Security Administration. But it was during an interview with the BBC, released today, where the former president went off on everything from Trump’s diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine to the 47th president’s incessant barbs against Canada, Greenland and Panama.
On the subject of Ukraine at least, the whole interview came off as unconvincing. Even as he defended his own record on the war, Biden shredded the Trump administration’s attempt to shove a peace deal down the throats of Presidents Zelensky and Putin. A core component of that draft peace agreement, of course, is a freezing of the frontline, which would allow the Russians to maintain de facto control over the roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory it currently occupies. Biden described the entire outline as a case of “modern-day appeasement,” as if Trump was operationalizing the diplomatic playbook of British prime minister Neville Chamberlain. “I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his, that that’s going to satisfy him,” Biden said.
Biden’s right on one thing: he doesn’t understand. For a man who prides himself on his foreign-policy experience, Biden is exhibiting thin knowledge of international diplomacy.
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