The Joe Biden who, at the stroke of midnight on Thursday (early morning in mainland Spain), welcomed at the foot of the plane steps the three Americans freed by Russia in the framework of a massive prisoner exchange, was the very image of satisfaction. And of a political triumph: the US president had finally scored an achievement, after weeks of setbacks and criticism that made him abandon the race for re-election. A point in favour of the Democrats too, achieved at a low cost: the “difficult decision”, as the president defined it – to release a criminal with blood on his hands like the Russian Vadim Krasikov – fell to Germany. With Kamala Harris at his side to welcome Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Alsu Kurmasheva, the staging of a particularly emotional moment also projected an image that was both institutional and electoral: a finishing touch to Biden’s legacy; another push for the vice president toward the Democratic nomination (she collected the necessary votes on Friday).
Despite the hours, Biden waited for each of the released people to leave the plane, embraced them, joked and pinned his American flag pin on the lapel of former Marine Whelan, and when it seemed the event was over, he broke the protocol barrier and approached first the group of cameras and then, feigning a little run on the runway, the group of informants, with Harris behind him, in her double institutional and presidential role. “This is wonderful,” he said spontaneously, without being asked. “It took a long time, but I was absolutely convinced that we would achieve it. What I said [en un mensaje desde la Casa Blanca, horas antes] I was serious: alliances make a difference.”
Alliances and patience, one might add: the elements of a model of diplomacy that is the antithesis of what Republican Donald Trump considers as such; based on interconnection, perseverance in negotiations and the forging of agreements – something that, however, has not served him in the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, in which Washington is mediating – and that an advisor to the president defined as “diplomacy vintage”. The same as that of a politician with a 50-year career who, before arriving at the White House, learned its intricacies as a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, later, Barack Obama’s vice president. The foreign policy of his mandate, which began under question due to the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, is now being compensated with the achievement of liberation, on which his Administration has been working for months.
And despite the late hours and the torrid nature of the night, the president wanted to share his model: diplomacy as undermining work, in a multilateral network of partners and allies. Jake Sullivan, the White House National Security Adviser, had resorted to that label (vintage: classic, lifelong) to define the interweaving of conflicting interests that the United States, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Norway and Russia wove to free 24 prisoners, plus the two youngest children of a Russian couple who posed as Argentines. Approaching journalists on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base, while the freed prisoners hugged their families out of the spotlight, Biden gave details of the agreement: “I asked them to do some things that went against their immediate interests and that were very difficult for them to do, especially for Germany and Slovenia. Slovenia came in at the last minute and…, and I’ll tell you something, the chancellor was incredible. He was incredible. So…” he hesitated, with Harris to his right. “Slovenia made the right move at the right time and that’s how it was achieved: with a lot of help.”
The Democratic president was referring to the difficult internal political digestion of releasing the Russian prisoner accused of killing a Chechen opponent in Berlin, which has cost Chancellor Olaf Scholz numerous criticisms, and the Russian spy couple in Slovenia, included in the exchange and received in Moscow by President Vladimir Putin. Biden made the decisive call to Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob hours before announcing his withdrawal from the electoral race on July 21. “I would have done it anyway, even if I were still running for a second term, it had nothing to do with it.” [con las expectativas electorales]. It had to do with opportunity and trying to convince the last country [necesario para cerrar el trato] to step forward,” he told reporters.
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Nothing to do with Donald Trump’s promises that he would be able to return the prisoners himself, without help or giving anything in return. Asked about it at the White House, hours before the plane arrived, Biden counterattacked with a question: “Why didn’t you do it when you were president?” An hour later, the Republican lashed out at the exchange agreement, saying it set a “bad precedent” and suggesting on his social network, without expressing any joy at the return home of the three Americans, that the deal did not favor national interests. “How many people did we get over them? Do we pay them in cash too? Are they giving us cash (Please take that question back, because I’m sure the answer is NO)?” he wrote on Truth Social. “Are we releasing murderers or thugs?”
Bargaining currency
He even boasted of securing the free release of citizens held abroad. In 2017, he authorized a $2 million payment to North Korea to bring home college student Otto Warmbier, though it is unclear whether the money was ever paid because the young man was in a coma when he left the country and died shortly after arriving in the U.S. In 2022, the Republican claimed he had rejected a deal to free Whelan in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout, the so-called merchant of death. Bout was the bargaining chip used to bring basketball player Brittney Griner back to the United States during the Democrat’s presidency. A swap that the Republican described as “crazy and bad.”
But Biden was adamant on the runway: “There is nothing beyond our capability when we act together… nothing, nothing, nothing. Remember who the hell we are. We are the United States of America. The United States of America. And we built relationships with countries we never had before. We rebuilt NATO. We rebuilt the circumstances that allowed this to happen, that’s why it happened.” A clear message to the Republican and his policy of isolationism and disdain for multilateralism.
Kamala Harris, who also took part in the negotiations – she met Scholz during the last security conference in Munich in February – sometimes seemed tempted to grab her boss by the elbow and lead him back to the caravan of cars; Biden himself showed signs of fatigue and clumsiness, but his enthusiasm outweighed any embarrassment. He even had time to talk about the Middle East, about his concern about the escalation of tensions following the attacks in Beirut and Tehran against a Hezbollah leader and the Palestinian political leader Ismail Haniya, respectively. “We have the basis for a ceasefire.” [en Gaza] and the Prime Minister [israelí] “I should move forward with that now,” he said of his last conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu, on Thursday. Biden said that Haniya’s assassination “does not” rule out the possibility of a ceasefire, but refused to comment on the possibility of Iran striking back at Israel, directly or through an intermediary. His last foreign reference was to Putin. Asked what he would say to the Russian president, Biden simply said: “Stop.”
The exchange “is an important element in forging Biden’s legacy in his term as lame duckthe kind of success that goes down in the history books. And what’s good for Biden is good for Vice President Harris,” Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University, told the newspaper The Washington Post. The same lame duck who, indifferent to fatigue or clumsiness or the end of his term, was jumping for joy on Thursday night on the runway at Andrews Air Force Base.
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