How Biden Is Good for Russia

Donald Trump, who has not appeared in public for more than a day, announced that he had won the election “by historic numbers.” The provisional results directly contradict this, but the president is ready to fight for his truth in court. Most likely, he will lose, and the United States will be led by Joe Biden. What can Russia expect from Biden, the previously promised “sanctions from hell?” or an even more advantageous balance of power than under Trump?

Two days after the election, while Joe Biden has not yet won,* Donald Trump’s position has become hopeless – the critically important state of Pennsylvania is slipping out of his hands. They not only continued to count votes in Pennsylvania, but also received additional mail-in ballots. The incumbent president’s team sees a conspiracy – and has already sent Rudy Giuliani to the scene. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City is Trump’s personal lawyer and his executor on sensitive issues.

Giuliani is an expert at his craft. The almighty U.S. Supreme Court is dominated by Republicans. The Senate (this can be said for sure – the results in almost all constituencies have either been called or appear obvious) will remain under Republican control. For now, Trump is still the president. Despite all of this, it appears that the legal battle and recount will not achieve their purpose; the game is lost.

In 2000, the leading party failed to challenge a vote in Florida alone, where the difference between George W. Bush and Al Gore was 1,000 votes. Now, Trump will have to fight for Nevada, Pennsylvania at least, and, perhaps, for Georgia. And, at the most, also for Wisconsin and Michigan. In all those states, Trump is behind by small margins or is yet to fall behind, but the potential legal battle will concern tens of thousands of votes, involve spreading an effort across several states. It will not work.

Hence, the only thing preventing Biden from moving into the White House in January is if he dies (God forbid, of course).

It is generally accepted that a Biden win is the worst outcome for Russia, which is somehow interested in Trump’s reelection. But in the politicized part of the Russian-speaking internet, it is widely rumored that, unlike in 2016, the Kremlin’s opinions are now divided. Allegedly, there are people on the Russian president’s team who are confident that Biden will allow for the normalization of relations between Moscow and Washington, since the new president will be an experienced, rational, peace-loving person, and it is as if contact with Biden has already been established.

Some even claim that Biden’s good intentions are confirmed by the fact that Biden will not rush to impose tough sanctions on Russia, as he declared during his campaign.

That’s good, if true. But one of the basic rules of survival is that if a person promises to kill you, you need to believe him. Therefore, Russia will still have to act cautiously, or at least prepare for sanctions.

Whether this rumor is true or not, the initial position of the new American administration does not bode well for us. The Democratic Party has officially blamed Moscow for its infamous defeat four years ago. Only some Democrat leaders believe Russia acted intentionally, everyone else sincerely believes in “Russian hackers” and in links to Trump.

Biden, who was part of Barack Obama’s foreign policy team, could blame Russia for the failures of the Americans in Ukraine (for the loss of Crimea, for example), something Biden actually believes. Even worse, Ukraine presents a painful personal dimension for the former vice president, since corruption schemes involving the participation of his son Hunter and Joe Biden were uncovered there.

Simply put, the Democrats take power to take revenge. For four years they have worked to convince America that Washington is too soft on Moscow, that it’s necessary to take firmer action.

It is believed that for his part, Biden proposed “sanctions from hell,” but did not elaborate.

At the same time, one should expect that a liberal administration, unlike the ruthless Trump team, will find a common ground not only with Europe (which will make it more difficult to play on the contradictions of Washington and, for example, Berlin), but also with Beijing, where Biden is well known and respected.

One does not even want to think about new military operations; the spread of good will around the world on the wings of bombers. Biden is known to favor hawkish politics since George W. Bush’s foray into Iraq.

But Russia will not be able to prevent the rise of the Democrats, so it will have to work with them, finding something hopeful in the new president with respect to Russia’s interests.

Russian-American relations are currently at a stalemate, having become hostage to war between the Democrats and Trump. In contrast, Biden will be free to act and may decide to turn the page, since being tough with Moscow did not work.

With Biden, the White House will remain hostile to Russia in its rhetoric. However, sharp tensions will be avoided, and we will find some common productive ground. Unlike the Republicans, Democrats love international agreements on arms regulation. The Democrats (and Biden personally) opposed the U.S. withdrawal, for example, from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. As such, we will at least extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, as we wanted, since its expiration occurred happened under the Obama-Biden administration.

We’re reminded that the almost 78-year-old politician is a familiar figure for the Russian elite, we have already worked with him and will not have to start from scratch.

Biden was a senator for 36 years, repeatedly headed the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and even became the vice-president and acted as a mentor to Obama who was inexperienced in foreign affairs. Biden is known as a centrist and by virtue of experience, a pragmatist and “old school” politician who is now trying to adapt to progressive trends. This is more good than bad.

The problem is that all of this may not matter given Biden’s age and health. A significant part of his responsibilities will delegated within the new administration, and one can only guess how it will shape up and about the coming transfer of power. This game could end not so badly for us, or it could end in the worst possible outcome.

But something else is obvious: the way Biden’s arrival is really good for Russia and more precisely, how it is bad for America.

The Democrats did not succeed in achieving the win they wanted, that is, a landslide against the “dangerous” and “intolerable” Trump, who was presented as a kind of electoral anomaly. Despite an unprecedented hate campaign, around 70 million Americans voted for the incumbent president – and now the U.S. is left to calling a photo finish.

There are significantly more who support Trump’s policies in the United States than there seemed before. And for many of them, Biden is an impostor who stole someone else’s election, regardless of how much fraud there was, if any, and any evidence the Republicans produce to support those claims. It is enough for Trump supporters that there was a well-known motive for alleged fraud – how much people hated Trump.

In American elections, it is difficult to “tweak” something from above, for instance, by dumping ballots if the White House or Senate so orders. In fact, there is no centralized election organization in the country – and management of the process lies with state authorities. But at the local level, for example, in counties that are home to large ultraliberal cities like Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, Michigan or (notorious for its scheming) Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where the election outcome for the key swing states is decided, fraud is easy to imagine – all the same, Republicans in those cities are hard to come by.

Back in the spring, looting and rioting were justified by the need to fight racism and the need to fight Trump himself. Compared to that, ballot dumping for Biden is not a crime or theft. It is a sacred mission and a “white lie” (choose as you please) used to “stop the orange monster,” “save the country from the fascist dictator” or “amplify the voices of the Black community."

Therefore, suspicion of voter fraud will live on and undermine the authority of the new administration like a parasite. And the new administration will inherit an America that is in a state of unprecedented political and social crisis characterized by one side not believing another at all and willing to go the distance for its beliefs.

It is unlikely that any litigation can resolve the conflict – renewed street protests seem almost inevitable.

There is not just a scandal now, there is a riot. And the country which is America’s main enemy (according to Biden himself, this is Russia), can only rejoice at this. Our enemy is wounded, weakened, has lost its agility and is forced to spend its energy fighting domestic battles.

It will probably not come to a full-fledged revolution. But in an age of information and social media, all of this could have a far more devastating effect on the smug American nation than the dirtiest and the most scandalous (to date) election of 1876.

This situation is largely Trump’s fault – not a single president in U.S. history has refused to leave after losing an election. No matter what you think of Trump, his current actions are a destructive form of friendly fire, dealing damage to his own country and fully deepening the already agonizing divisions in American society.

Thus, he will secure a much worse place in history than he really deserves. But this is Trump’s problem and only his, no matter what he is now guided by – his unfairly trampled pride or painfully inflated ego.

For Russia, the consequences of his actions will be compensation for the fact that its puppet or rather its agent has lost the presidency of the United States. Not bad compensation, since the agent was fake, while the political crisis in America is now real.

*Editor’s note: Joe Biden won the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 7.