Thread by @JMichaelWaller

1) My colleague Andrei Illarionov has a breathtaking strategic analysis of Biden's request for a summit with Putin. @AnIllarionov centerforsecuritypolicy.org/heading-to-can…

@AnIllarionov 2) "First, the meeting was initiated not by Vladimir Putin, but by Joe Biden. It was Biden who called Putin on April 13. A few weeks earlier, the US president seemed to agree with a journalist’s opinion that the Kremlin owner is a 'killer.'"

@AnIllarionov 3) "Secondly, the organizers of the summit on both sides are not the top diplomats, but the presidential aides for national security. Not Antony Blinken and Sergei Lavrov, but Jake Sullivan and Nikolai Patrushev."

@AnIllarionov 4) "Sullivan has 12 years experience at the State Department. Patrushev spent 47 years in the Soviet and Russian political police– the Soviet KGB and the Russian FSB. Why did the Biden administration choose Patrushev, and not Lavrov, as its liaison for the summit? We don’t know."

@AnIllarionov 5) "Why the American president had Sullivan and not Blinken prepare his summit with Putin, making Patrushev his partner on the Russian side, is unknown. Biden thus empowered Patrushev, one of the most anti-American hawks in the Kremlin...."

@AnIllarionov 6) Biden has ignored everything "that he was advised, recommended, urged to do by his Democratic Party allies in their numerous reports, concepts, strategies, and policies that formulated what had promise as a robust response to the aggressive actions of the Kremlin."

@AnIllarionov 7) "Biden has done nothing about Putin that he had accused President Trump of not wanting to do. He did nothing about what he, Biden, personally proposed to do about Putin in his joint article with Michael Carpenter, 'How to Stand Up to the Kremlin,' just three years ago."

@AnIllarionov 8) "in the same bare five months of his stay in the White House, Biden took many of the exact opposite steps that he demanded to be taken three years ago. Some of his actions cannot be called otherwise than multibillion-dollar financial and geopolitical gifts to Putin."

@AnIllarionov 9) @AnIllarionov: "If President Trump had taken those actions, he would have been branded by mainstream media, justly, as an unscrupulous Putin accomplice."

Biden's "Putin accomplice" actions include:

@AnIllarionov 10) Biden extended START-3 after Russia locked in its qualitative gains, stopped the Canada-US Keystone XL pipeline, helped Putin and his ex-Stasi comrade complete the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, denied help for Ukraine to defend itself, had US warships retreat from the Black Sea...

@AnIllarionov 11) Biden "publicly denied [Russian] involvement ... in cyber attacks on vital economic infrastructure in the United States – the Colonial Pipeline, whose closure caused a multistate fuel crisis, and the network of JCB poultry processing plants."

@AnIllarionov 12) "Biden provided Putin with an unthinkable foreign policy breakthrough and diplomatic triumph that helped break the Russian strongman out of his relative international isolation."

@AnIllarionov 13) "Biden gushed over Putin’s faceless, colorless, substance-free speech at the climate summit.... Every few days either Biden himself or his administration officials [spoke] about how Biden longs for a meeting with Putin, how he hopes for the success of negotiations with him."

@AnIllarionov 14) @AnIllarionov: "although Biden’s people have said more than once that the president would meet with Putin 'from a position of strength,' his actions and his statements in fact testify to the opposite – of Biden’s glaring weakness."

@AnIllarionov 15) "The need for [Biden] to meet multilaterally [with G7 and NATO prior to the summit] means that he is too lightweight on his own to meet with Putin without substantial external advance reinforcement."

@AnIllarionov 16) "...it has never happened that the American president tried to increase his political weight through meetings the day before with his allies and friends. ... Biden’s approach to the summit diminished his stature and strengthened Putin."

@AnIllarionov 17) "... already signs of self-deprecation. When a journalist asked Biden why he refused to hold a joint press conference, Biden replied: 'this is not a contest about who can do better in front of a press conference to try to embarrass each other …'"

@AnIllarionov 18) "First Lady Jill Biden made the situation worse, announcing that the president was 'overprepared.' White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s attempt at damage-control turned out to be a real embarrassment." whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/…

@AnIllarionov 19) Psaki: "Well, what I think she meant by that – I also know she said – which I agree with, from having many conversations with him – is that foreign policy, national security, you know, engaging on the world stage is an area that has been a central focus of his 50 years...."

@AnIllarionov 20) Biden is on a Road to Canossa: "a humiliating ritual of a powerful Holy Roman Emperor from the Middle Ages who pleaded for an audience with the pope, trudging through a blizzard to meet the church leader at a castle in Canossa" only to be locked out, kneeling naked, begging.

@AnIllarionov 21) @AnIllarionov asks some questions: Why?

Why did Biden invite Putin at all?

Why does he want to meet him?

What does he want to discuss with him?

What does he want to negotiate with him?

Why has Biden already taken so many steps that would be unusual for any US president?

@AnIllarionov 22) "Why is he going to a meeting, the agenda of which was not formed until the very last moment, the formats of discussions of which still have not been determined, with no deliverables expected, and with no traditional joint press conference" or "standard diplomatic protocol?"

@AnIllarionov 23) "Why did Biden have this summit arranged from his National Security Council staff in the White House with an old KGB man as the Kremlin counterpart, and not through traditional and established diplomatic channels?"

@AnIllarionov 24) "At best, it then enumerates a bland vinaigrette of traditional themes ... But their very predictability ... which require no urgent meeting at all, indicate that, obviously, there is something else. There is a hidden reason why Biden asked for this summit with Putin."

@AnIllarionov 25) The hidden reason is that Biden has suddenly realized the mortal threat from Communist China.

Biden needs Putin. centerforsecuritypolicy.org/heading-to-can…

@AnIllarionov 26) "That is why Biden allowed Putin to complete the construction of Nord Stream 2.

"That is why Biden refused to increase military aid to Ukraine."

"Biden de facto gave Putin the green light to maul the Russian opposition."

@AnIllarionov 27) Biden has "turned the American president’s 'position of strength' into detestable submission, and his planned triumphal march to Geneva into a 'stable and predictable' as well as humiliating road to Canossa.'" centerforsecuritypolicy.org/heading-to-can…

@AnIllarionov N.B.: For those who are not aware, Andrei Illarionov is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Security Policy. centerforsecuritypolicy.org/author/andrei-…