Former President Joe Biden has accused the Trump administration of “modern-day appeasement” in its dealings with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and of risking the transatlantic alliance that has prevented a world war for 80 years.
In his first interview since leaving office in January, Biden told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme that it was “foolish” to think that Putin would be satisfied by permanently gaining the territory his forces seized after the 2022 invasion, which President Donald Trump and senior officials have said may be necessary to secure a peace deal.
In the wide-ranging interview broadcast on Wednesday morning, Biden also made an impassioned defense of his record on the economy and on U.S. aid for Ukraine, while offering strongly worded attacks on the current administration.
At times Biden sounded hoarse and at one point apologized for a persistent cough and at other times he seemed to slur his words, a reminder of the disastrous presidential debate with Trump that ended his campaign for reelection in July last year.
“I just don’t understand how people think that if we allow a dictator, a thug, to decide he’s going to take significant portions of land that aren’t his and that’s gonna satisfy him, I don’t quite understand,” Biden said, speaking from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.
“It is modern-day appeasement,” he said, referring to the policy of Britain and other nations towards Nazi Germany in the 1930s, in which leaders hoped that war could be avoided if Adolf Hitler was allowed to make a series of territorial gains.
“What this man wants to do is reestablish the Warsaw Pact — he can’t stand the fact that the Russian dictatorship that he runs, that the Soviet Union has collapsed. And anybody that thinks he’s just gonna stop is foolish,” Biden said.
Biden was speaking to mark the 80th anniversary of VE Day, which marks the Allied victory in Europe at the end of World War II and argued that NATO had successfully kept Europe and the wider world safe since then.
Trump has criticized NATO, favoring an isolationist “America first” foreign policy, and signaled a major change in U.S. policy towards the alliance, including potentially ending U.S. command of NATO operations in Europe.
Asked whether the alliance could die out, he said: “It’s a grave concern, I think it would change the modern history of the world if that occurs.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the NATO summit in Washington in July 2024. (Samuel Corum / AFP via Getty Images file)
“We’re the only nation in the position to have the capacity to bring people together and lead the world. Otherwise you’re going to have China and the former Soviet Union, Russia, stepping up.”
He added that there was now a more grave threat to democracy than at any time since WWII and that without the buffer of NATO — all members must militarily defend any member that is attacked, under the treaty’s Article 5 — Putin would not have stopped at Ukraine.
“Look at the number of European leaders wondering, ‘What do I do now? What’s the best route for me to take? Can I rely on the United States, are they gonna be there?’ Instead of democracies expanding around the world, they are receding,” he said.
Biden said the extraordinary argument between Trump and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February was “beneath America” and said it was part of a wider trend of the Trump administration breaking with long-held traditions and norms.
“They way we talk about the Gulf of America, or we need to take back Panama, maybe we need to acquire Greenland, maybe Canada. What the hell’s going on here? What president ever talks like that?” Biden said.
Asked whether Trump was acting more like a king than a president, Biden said: “I’d rather not comment. He’s not behaving like a Republican president.”
Some critics have argued that Biden’s reluctance to arm Ukraine, particularly with long-range missiles in the early stages of Russia’s invasion, meant that Kyiv failed to defeat Putin’s forces on the battlefield.
Trump has also blamed Biden for the war in Ukraine, which began when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its smaller neighbor, and said it wouldn’t have happened had he been president.
During the interview, Biden argued that his administration managed to avoid a world war between nuclear powers and “gave them everything they needed for their independence” and that he would have responded “more aggressively if in fact Putin moved again.”
On whether he was right to walk away from the Democratic nomination and endorse Kamala Harris — or whether he should have listened to critics and done so sooner — Biden admitted it was a difficult choice.
“Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away. And it was a hard decision,” he said. “I think it was the right decision. I think that… it was just a difficult decision.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
