It is an unspoken but growing feeling of discomfort. Faced with the straight talk of the new American diplomacy, one can feel the anxiety of all those who are so afraid of their own shadow and fear so much for their exports that they keep repeating that one would have to be very naïve and stupidly “human-rightist” to imagine changing things by denouncing the crimes of dictatorships.
So let’s imagine the opposite.
Ahead of a week of consultations in Brussels between Americans and Europeans, let’s imagine for a moment that instead of answering “I do” to a journalist who asked him if he thought Vladimir Putin was “a killer”, Joe Biden had more conventionally replied that he was not a judge.
In that case, people should have been worried, in Asia as in Europe, that the President of the United States was so weak that he feigned to ignore that Vladimir Putin’s services were obviously behind the assassinations or attempted assassinations of Alexei Navalny, Sergei and Yulia Skripal, Boris Nemtsov, Anna Politovskaya, Boris Berezovsky, Alexander Litvinenko or Vladimir Kara-Murza, of numerous prominent opponents, of bothersome journalists, or people who knew too much, not to mention the political assassinations committed in more remote parts of the Federation.
Famous or not so famous, troublemakers often die under Mr Putin. Here lies the scandal, and certainly not in the “I do” that Joe Biden should be applauded for. After the tenderness that Donald Trump showed to dictators, this “I do” restores the image of the United States, which is taking such a clear turn that the very next day the leaders of its new diplomacy did not go soft on their Chinese counterparts. Face to face, at their first meeting, they reproached them for the genocide of the Uighurs, the persecution of the Tibetans, the ongoing repression in Hong Kong, their attacks on “fundamental values” and the threat that their behaviour posed to international stability.
Neither Mr Xi nor Mr Putin will become democrats but, with the weapon of truth pointed at them, both will have to understand that the world’s leading power is ready to arm wrestle and that they will have to accept to hear their misdeeds denounced because what else could they do?
Would Mr Putin be tempted to sue for slander?
Oh, yes, go on, that would be a nice one!
Will Mr Xi retaliate by invading Taiwan?
That would be anything but nice, but would his foreign trade and economy be willing to pay the price and would his Political Bureau itself let him commit such a folly?
No.
So do not worry, dear clients of cocktail parties with the man-eaters, calm your fears, for the aggressiveness of dictatorships is inversely proportional to the resistance they are met with. Appeasement policies allowed Hitler to conquer Europe, while the constant denunciation of communism and political support for dissidents precipitated the break-up of the Soviet bloc. Just because Mr. Biden calls a spade a spade and a poisoner a killer does not mean that he would go to war with China and Russia. This realist simply starts from the idea that compromises are not forged on pretences but on a clear understanding of what separates you and the courage to tell it like it is.
