Diplomacy 101 is not promising things that you don’t intend to do. It weakens your credibility and deterrence whether you’re a great power or a tiny country. Biden already announced several times that his response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine would be more sanctions, but nothing military. And yet here he is back to shooting his mouth off about responding decisively.

The Ukrainian president may be a comedian, but Biden’s the one telling the jokes.

President Biden told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday that the U.S. and its allies will “respond decisively” if Russia again invades the so-called Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine.

Not in any way that will make a difference. Biden doesn’t even want to provide the military aid that Trump did. 

Putin may be bluffing an invasion in order to get Biden to extract concessions from Ukraine. But if it’s a bluff, it’s a credible one because Russia does invade and take over other countries, and he put up a credible show of force.

Biden’s bluffs, as usual, are a pathetic farce that everyone knows is a farce. The only reason at this point that Putin appears to be playing along is because he may have been bluffing as well.

The plan then may be to have Biden and Putin back up each other’s bluffs with Putin getting what he wants and Biden being able to claim tha the deterred Putin.