Before the war, Russia’s demands were reasonable, but afterwards the Kremlin’s demands became almost impossible to meet. According to this view, the primary party responsible for the war in Ukraine is President Joe Biden, not President Putin. Biden refused to negotiate with Putin before the war about the necessity of Ukraine’s neutrality and its non-accession to NATO, which intensified Moscow’s anger, reservations, and fears. Consequently, the Kremlin’s leader decided to launch the war in order to seize more Ukrainian territory and annex it to Russia by military force.
Joe Biden could have listened to Putin, allowed for a rational and peaceful relationship, and adhered to what former U.S. Secretary of State James Baker had promised regarding NATO’s non-expansion to include Ukraine. What the U.S. administration has failed to understand is that Russia is not an enemy as much as it is a state with its own system and particularities, and it will not, under any circumstances, transform into a Western liberal democratic model.
Thus, Biden deprived the world—especially Europe—of a golden opportunity for an agreed-upon peace, including by Ukraine itself, and hastened a war whose consequences extend over a highly sensitive region. In North Africa, we are concerned with this conflict, because if it expands or if nuclear weapons are used, we will be affected alongside Europeans. The role America claims to play in promoting global peace is ambiguous and questionable; it is in fact the one igniting wars through policies with poorly considered consequences. So how will Washington put an end to a war in which Putin’s demands have become greater than they were before it began ?
