Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here| Email Alex | Email Max There is no world leader JOE BIDEN has likely spent more time thinking about than VLADIMIR PUTIN. While GEORGE W. BUSH initially found Putin “trustworthy” and BARACK OBAMA pushed for a “reset,” Biden was wary of the Russian leader — even before the 2016 election scrambled the politics towards Russia. Days after Bush’s chummy 2001 meeting with Putin, Biden expressed reservations. “I’d caution the administration against being excessively optimistic about Mr. Putin and his intentions. Russia has exhibited a troubling pattern of less than democratic behavior since Putin took office,” he said, as POLITICO’s NAHAL TOOSI reported last summer. Biden’s 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad,” largely focused on his deceased son BEAU. But it still mentioned the Russian president more than 65 times. “While I had been encouraged by Putin’s willingness to sign on to the nuclear arms treaty, I thought the Russian leader had proven himself unworthy of our trust in almost every other instance. Our meeting that day did nothing to dispel that notion,” Biden wrote, recounting a 2011 meeting with Putin. “It was long and contentious. Putin was ice-cold calm throughout, but argumentative from start to finish.” Even the books Biden consumed have, to a degree, involved the Russian leader. He’s read 2015’s “The New Tsar” by The New York Times’ STEVEN LEE MYERS and 2018’s “How Democracies Die” by Harvard Professors STEVEN LEVITSKY and DANIEL ZIBLATT, according to people familiar with the president’s reading. Now, Biden is getting his chance to tackle Putin his way after watching prior presidents, including one he served, try it theirs. And as he stares down the biggest foreign policy crisis of his presidency, he is relying on his decades of researched and well-honed skepticism of Putin in this high-stakes confrontation. Aides say it’s why he’s been sounding the alarm on Putin’s actions vis-a-vis Ukraine for weeks, if not months. It’s why he’s declassified intel in an attempt to preempt those actions. And though he has repeatedly declared he would not send troops into Ukraine, he has otherwise taken an aggressive approach that has earned him praise from some unlikely corners and criticism from people like TUCKER CARLSON for potentially putting the U.S. on the path to war. Whether it works is another matter. But the seeds of this approach — from the philosophical approach to the personnel — were planted years ago. In 2018, Biden co-authored a 4,000-plus word op-ed in Foreign Affairs headlined “How to Stand Up to the Kremlin: Defending Democracy Against Its Enemies.” His co-author of the piece, MICHAEL CARPENTER , was the former deputy assistant secretary of defense with responsibility for Russia and is now U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. In fact, Biden’s diplomatic team is stuffed with longtime aides and confidantes who he is now relying on to unite other European countries against Russia. Permanent representative to NATO, JULIANNE SMITH, was then-Vice President Biden’s deputy national security adviser under Biden's then-national security adviser ANTONY BLINKEN. And the ambassador to the European Union is MARK GITENSTEIN, who has been with Biden since the 1980’s. In 2019 on the campaign trail, he called Putin a “multi-billionaire” and a “kleptomaniac.” And Biden’s first overseas trip as president included a one-on-one meeting with Putin. Afterward, Putin said American and Russian media have over-stated their claims and insinuations that Biden was senile. “The image of President Biden that our, and even American, media present has nothing to do with reality,” Putin said in televised remarks in front of Russian lawmakers. “Biden’s a professional, you have to be very attentive with him so as not to miss anything. He doesn’t let anything get by, I assure you.” While many foreign policy thinkers, including CIA Director BILL BURNS, have argued that the U.S. needlessly provoked Russia by expanding NATO’s reach after the collapse of the Soviet Union during the Clinton and W. Bush administrations, Biden–who was heading the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for much of that period–has repeatedly argued the opposite. “Does anybody think if NATO did not exist, the expansion of NATO did not occur, and somehow the fact that a KGB thug ended up in control of that country would have been altered? I don’t [see] any evidence that suggests that would be the case,” he said at a 2018 Q&A about the Foreign Affairs piece. “As you’ve noticed, I’ve been a very strident voice in…the last administration about Putin and Russia, as I am now.” His sense of Putin seemed firmly in place by the time he had written “Promise Me, Dad.” In its pages he recounted meeting Putin and telling him with a smile: “I don’t think you have a soul.” Biden wrote that Putin “looked at me for a second and smiled back. ‘We understand each other,’ he said. And we did.” TEXT US — Are you Ambassador JULIANNE SMITH, the permanent representative to NATO ? We want to hear from you and we’ll keep you anonymous. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com or you can text/Signal/Wickr Alex at 8183240098 or Max at 7143455427.
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