Putin and Biden need one another

Does Joe Biden think that Putin is a killer? asked ABC host George Stephanopoulos. ‘Mmm-hmm, I do,’ answered the President. Once, that would have been fighting talk. Today? Biden can insult Putin with impunity because he believes that Russia is, quite simply, no longer important or dangerous. Once a deadly serious enemy whose rivalry threatened to destroy life on the planet, Russia’s diminished status means that, these days, there’s little left to the grand old conflict except mere mudslinging.

‘We no longer think in Cold War terms, for several reasons. One, no one is our equal. No one is close,’ Biden told Ukrainian lawmakers in Kiev in 2014. ‘Other than being crazy enough to press a button, there is nothing that Putin can do militarily to fundamentally alter American interests.’

Russia and the United States are like an old divorced couple, still bickering 40 years after their stormy superpower marriage broke up.