MSNBC, February 10, 2022
“We want a stable, predictable relationship,” President Joe Biden saidlast May when asked about his goals for his summit the next month in Geneva with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The official summit photograph communicated a sense of harmony and balance, with the leaders seated in matching chairs, a globe between them.
Uh-oh, I thought at the time: A stable relationship with America is the last thing Putin aspires to. Russia works hard to weaken American democracy through cyberattacks, election interference, and supporting secessionist movements and other forms of extremism.
As an analyst of autocrats, I also knew that being presented as Biden’s equal at the summit could spark a desire in Putin to show dominance. A few weeks later, I forecast that post-summit, we would likely see an uptick in Russian international aggression, with “chaos and risk-taking” on the horizon. That is now manifesting in Putin’s apparent planned invasion of Ukraine, which would mark a return to the active warfare of 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean region.
Read the full article here.