RESETTING VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

Vice president Joseph Biden has a reputation for speaking before he thinks.  When a senator he was famous for his extended ruminations at committee hearings and on the floor.  However, Mr Biden is no longer a senator but vice president, and he should have revised rather than extended his recent remarks regarding Russia's "withering" status and the advantage that gives Washington in dealing with Moscow made in an interview to the Wall Street Journal  (Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2009, 8:54)

Biden's remarks have created confusion and consternation in Moscow over what the real U.S. Russia policy actually is - and who is making it. Officials and analysts are wondering whether the U.S. ruling 'tandem', rather than the Russian one, is subject to splits and political infighting.  The U.S. Russian policy is now seen as somehow confused or, worse, duplicitous; this, after a successful Moscow summit in July that significantly improved the atmospherics in the U.S.-Russian relationship - after having made concrete progress on nuclear arms reductions and non-proliferation, greater cooperation in the war against jihadism, especially in Afghanistan, and greater military-to-military cooperation.

In short, Biden's comments in part short-circuited the very 'reset' in relations that Biden was the first to call for. Mr. Biden would serve our country better by carefully planning his comments before speaking to the mainstream U.S. media.  They are anxious to undo the reset fashioned by President Obama, and will use any incautious malleable comments for their own purposes.  The vice president should not help them.