How Biden Got Inside Putin's Head

Let's review for a moment what President Biden's strategy was in the weeks leading up to Russia's launch of an unprovoked war against Ukraine. First of all, the White House began receiving intelligence about Putin's plan back in October. 

The White House acknowledged from the start that its campaign to stop Mr. Putin might not actually prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. But at the very least, White House officials say, Mr. Biden exposed Mr. Putin and his true intentions, which helped unite, at least for now, the at-times fractious NATO alliance.

One of the lessons I've learned in life is that you set yourself up for failure if you attempt to control something over which you can never have control. Biden recognized, from the start, that he wouldn't have control over what Putin would eventually do. What he did have control over was how the U.S. would respond. 

So the administration made the critical decision to share intelligence with both our allies and the public. That accomplished the twin goals of both combating the kind of disinformation campaign Putin was sure to launch in order to justify an invasion, and exposed his true intentions. As a result, our allies rallied together to respond in unison.

The strategy Biden chose wasn't without risks. For example, when the intelligence suggested that Putin would invade Ukraine on February 16, it didn't happen. During her press conference on Wednesday, Jen Psaki gave a plausible explanation for why they were wrong: Putin didn't expect the U.S. to have the level of information they have and didn't expect them to put that information out. In response, Putin has been adapting and improvising his strategy in Ukraine.

That leads me to step back for a moment and speculate about what it's like for a former KGB officer to have U.S. intelligence gathering such accurate information about his plans and basically use it against him in such an unprecedented and public way. 

Most tyrants who have been in power for a long time develop a strong streak of paranoia. They also don't have experience with having their plans and intentions thwarted. Putin is obviously no exception. So we can only imagine how angry and terrified he has become as the U.S. (and our allies) obviously have access to his inner circle. 

Can you imagine the time and energy Putin must be putting into trying to determine who is betraying him? Paranoia is corrosive, not only to an individual leader, but to the cohesion of those surrounding him. Everyone becomes a suspect. It could be that the hissy fit of rage we witnessed during Putin's speech on Monday was triggered, at least in part, by paranoia. 

Of course, there are risks associated with triggering that kind of rage from a brutal dictator. But from Biden's perspective, they already knew that Putin had decided to invade Ukraine and had calculated that they probably couldn't stop that from happening. What they could do was expose his true intentions and force him to make adjustments to his plan - possibly leading to mistakes. 

No strategy in a situation like this is ever guaranteed to be successful and the one Biden chose is unprecedented, so there was no road map to follow. It is way too soon to judge whether the president chose the right path. All we can say for now is that he got inside Putin's head in a way that seems to have caught the Russian president off guard.