When Joe Biden ended his speech in Warsaw with an ad libbed plea that Vladimir Putin could not remain in power, the usual suspects immediately clutched their pearls and decried Biden's off the cuff rhetorical escalation. The fact that Emmanuel Macron still believes there's a negotiated settlement to this situation is the real gaffe, in my mind.
Max Boot has said that this is actually good, but I'm not sure I would go that far. That tends to presume that speeches move policy especially in other countries. It's the BS legend that Reagan's "Tear Down This Wall" speech actually convinced Gorbachev to rescind the Brezhnev Doctrine.
Instead, I see it this way. Putin has been escalating rhetoric since Day One. He's threatened to use nuclear weapons. He's had Medvedev threaten Poland with invasion. He's compared the Ukrainian government to Nazis. Throughout this crisis he's consistently escalated his rhetoric.
Biden - whether intentionally or not - responded in kind. Frankly, I wish they hadn't backtracked. Biden should have "clarified" that he meant as long as Putin was in power, Russia would never be a trusted nation on the global stage.
We have already demonstrated that we are aware of what Putin is discussing with his inner circle. Make him wonder about everyone around him.
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