How Ukraine Matters to Joe Biden

For analysis of what’s at stake for Europe, Russia, the U.S. and the world more generally in the potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, I’ll defer to experts for foreign policy analysis — I do recommend checking out recent posts by political scientists at the Monkey Cage (see several links in this Twitter thread). Beyond that, I’ll just advise everyone to be wary not only of partisan point-scoring, but also of any pundits who begin with the assumption that everything traces back to the actions of the United States.

What I can talk about is what is and isn’t at stake for President Joe Biden. For that, I’ll lean as I usually do on Richard Neustadt’s 1960 book, “Presidential Power.” What Neustadt emphasized, above all, is that presidential actions should do what they can to increase the president’s influence in the political system — necessary, he explained, because the Constitution doesn’t automatically grant presidents very much influence (what Neustadt called “power”) at all. And presidential influence is needed to make the U.S. political system run smoothly. Therefore, Biden shouldn’t just be thinking about what’s good for the nation; he should also be thinking about how to use Russia’s actions to help himself. Presidents do that, Neustadt says, by maximizing their popularity and by building impressive professional reputations.