In an interview with Corriere della Sera today, historian Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and essayist, discusses Joe Biden’s strategy on the war in Ukraine which has so far cost the President a collapse in polls and explains why it can be dangerous : « The Biden administration has pursued a strategy aimed at prolonging the war, in the belief that this will lead to regime change in Russia. Biden’s socalled slip was not a slip by any means: officials have repeatedly pointed to what I call the cynical but optimistic strategy of prolonging the war and waiting for sanctions to bring down Putin. However, I find this strategy extremely risky and poorly thought out. If the US used its influence over both Ukraine and Russia to push for a ceasefire, this would happen: Yet the Biden administration does not appear to be engaging in diplomacy. That’s a serious mistake: And the risks of prolonging the war are far greater than Biden seems to realize. He might be lucky and maybe Putin really fell: but if you bet Ukraine’s future on this outcome, the odds seem terrible to me,” the teacher said in an interview with Luigi Ippolito.
Putin, Ferguson argues, is not Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi: he has a nuclear arsenal and can use it. While a regime change in Russia could at best push Moscow into the arms of China: “The whole American strategy is based on a profound and strategic misjudgment that makes me very nervous for the next few weeks.” While Ukraine has a role model when it comes to peace negotiations: «Finland is the most obvious example: despite its neutrality, it has functioned as an open and democratic society and should have good relations with the USSR. The great mistake of Western politics was to flash the option of joining NATO without really having the intention. If we weren’t honest, we should have taken it off the table back in 2014 and demanded something in return from Russia. Instead, we are now in a position to accept neutrality under pressure, which is much worse, with the possibility of territorial claims that will be very difficult to sell to the Ukrainians. We now have to save what we can, and the only way is a Finnish model, which Zelenskyy understood: he wants security guarantees, but if they are not given, the US will be a weak deal ».
