The Atlantic Daily: Vladimir Putin Is Testing U.S. Foreign Policy
And scrambling domestic politics too.
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What to do about Vladimir Putin? Today the Russian president accused the United States of attempting to lure his country into armed conflict over Ukraine. But war with Russia is an ending that Americans—Republicans and Democrats, elected officials and the general public—very much hope to avoid. As we’ve noted before, this conflict represents a test of international order. Putin in particular seems to be forcing questions about the role of the U.S. on the international stage.
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At home, Republicans and Democrats agree: The U.S. won’t go to war over this. The conflict has “exposed a rare point of consensus” between the two parties, our politics reporter Russell Berman writes.
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Meanwhile, Fox News is parroting Putin’s talking points. “Russia-Ukraine is becoming a trial of strength, not only between Putin and NATO, but between different parts of the conservative world,” our staff writer David Frum points out. But although the “conservative entertainment complex” has often overpowered Republican elected officials, now, it seems, it may have overstepped.
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The battle for the West’s future is on. “The problem for Europe is that with each new crisis, Washington’s commitment to its own hegemonic world order continues to weaken,” Tom McTague notes from our London bureau, “but nobody has any real idea what to replace it with.”
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Diplomacy has its limits. “Putin created this crisis, and only Putin can end it,” Tom Nichols, who writes the newsletter Peacefield, argues.
The rest of the news in three sentences:
(1) Build Back Never: President Joe Biden’s spending package is officially “dead,” according to the longtime holdout Senator Joe Manchin.
(2) More than a dozen HBCUs received bomb threats on Monday and Tuesday.
(3) Tom Brady, a man out of time, formally announced his retirement from the NFL.
Today’s Atlantic-approved activity:
Read a banned book. The school-library shelf is once again a flash point in states such as Tennessee. We round up a dozen titles that have come under fire in America’s schools, and that you should buy and read anyway.
A break from the news:
The Tumblr snowflakes won—and defined a generation of internet users.
Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.