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NR PLUS NATIONAL SECURITY & DEFENSE
In Ukraine, Is Biden Winning the Spin War but Losing the Real War?
By ROBERT ZUBRIN
February 22, 2022 6:30 AM
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President Joe Biden prepares to deliver remarks on his administration’s diplomatic efforts on Russia and Ukraine at the White House in Washington, D.C., February 18, 2022. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
It’s one thing to win a messaging war against Putin. It’s quite another to come out ahead in an actual conflict.
Remember the war against Franco,
That’s the kind where each of us belongs.
Though he may have won all the battles,
We had all the good songs.
— Tom Lehrer, The Folksong Army, 1965
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In his two speeches delivered last week, President Joe Biden unquestionably won the spin war against Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. Biden is no Churchill, and every recent president from Reagan through Obama, inclusive, probably could have performed better. Nevertheless, Biden got the job done. If Putin proceeds with his plan to conquer Ukraine, he is definitely going to look bad.
But Putin is not fighting a spin war. He is fighting a real war.
In real wars, spin-war victories have limited utility. The Spanish Republicans beat Franco in the spin war, hands down, and the Abyssinians certainly trounced Mussolini. In 1939, Poland absolutely crushed the combined forces of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union in the spin war, and after the Nazis bombed Rotterdam, the Dutch gave Hitler one hell of a spin-war beating. That said, none of these conflicts turned out well for the spin-war victors.
