Victor Davis Hanson Describes Biden’s Big Mistakes with Putin

BUCK: Here is Victor Davis Hanson, who’s one of my favorite voices that you’ll hear as a guest over on Fox, saying that Biden should keep all options open at this point.

HANSON: Anytime you assure an enemy what you’re not going to do, you’re assuring them that they will do it. And Biden is always telling Putin what we’re not going to do. This is a mistake. You know, we’ve had kind of a missile spree. It’s not just in Ukraine. After Afghanistan and this administration, North Korea let off more missiles in January than it has in its entire history. And then we had Iran jump in and send missiles pretty close to a consulate, and then we had sent missiles near the potential border. All these players have been watching Afghanistan and this administration, and they’re thinking, you know what? There’s no consequences, and this is a rare moment to get real strategic advantage over the United States and its allies.

BUCK: This is very interesting in the sense that the weakness of Biden administration does seem to be encouraging bad actors around the world. It’s what former attorney general here Bill Barr said a few moments ago, that when people who are trying to test the limits of American resolved and strategic vision, when they see what we’ve all seen over the last year, when leaders from countries whether it’s Iran or Russia, perhaps soon income, even, there’s some rumbling that there may be more aggressive missile testing to see if North Korea can advance its technology there.

With all of this happening, you have to wonder what would it take for the Biden regime to finally recognize that they don’t have some of the best people making these determinations, they don’t have the diplomatic edge that they coming into this. There was always something of an arrogance around Biden and the team that he brought in on the foreign policy side and an unearned one at that. I mean, what are the victories of foreign policy that the Decembers could point to?

I would remind everybody, Biden was for eight years the vice president to Barack Obama, as we all know. But he was brought in to that role under the promise that he would be a steady hand on foreign, he knew foreign policy stuff so well. The Obama administration for eight years was one long series of international mess-ups and missteps on the diplomatic front.

The only thing, if a Democrat were hire right now I’ll tell you, their argument would be, what about the bin Laden raid? And to that you’d say, okay, that was excellent, and thanks to our Navy SEALs and the night stalkers and the folks that actually conducted the mission, there was some measure of justice achieved against bin Laden.

But think about this on a national and strategic level. Think about Iran and what got worse or got better in terms of our relationship with allies around Iran that we were hoping to be able to count on to box in the ambitions of the mullahs.

Think about Syria, total mess, an absolute disaster playing out in Syria for years. The Obama administration presided over — I can’t remember the exact figures, but it was something like $500 million spent to train a member — and I think it was five or six members of the Free Syrian Army. Unless they were giving everybody Iron Man suits or something, it made no sense whatsoever. But they had no idea. They were messing up all over the place.

So keep that in mind as the situation in Ukraine unfortunately grinds on and gets worse. We should have very limited confidence, if any at all, not just in Biden. I mean, I think he’s clearly lost more than a step, but the people around him have a legacy of foreign policy failure. I’m hoping they get this one right enough that calamity beyond what we’ve already seen is not the result. That’s where I am on this one.