“No One Fears This Pathetic Old Geezer,” wrote Kyle Smith this morning of Biden, a few hours before this afternoon’s brief remarks on Ukraine. He does sound old in the clip below. More so than usual, as you’ll see.

But he did at least walk out today to announce consequences for Russia’s new incursion, not to chatter lamely that diplomacy is still on the table if Putin wants it. The news from this afternoon’s presser is that he’s imposing the “first tranche” of sanctions with more on the way depending upon how far west the Russian military proceeds. That’s Biden’s solution to the dilemma described this morning: If you hit Russia with maximum sanctions at a moment when they haven’t yet attacked Ukrainian forces, you’ve ceded any deterrent power over them. At the moment, there’s a chance that their army will go no further than to occupy territory already occupied by Russian separatists. Holding off on more severe sanctions for now gives them an incentive to do that.

Although, as the president himself observed, you typically don’t move large quantities of blood to the border of a country you’re planning to invade unless you expect shooting to begin.

So the White House is starting small-ish for now. The Russian invasion is just beginning, Biden pointed out, so U.S. sanctions are just beginning too. We’re sanctioning two Russian financial institutions and cutting off the Russian government’s ability to raise sovereign debt in the west, a heavy blow. Biden also claimed that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline will not move forward, which … isn’t quite what Germany’s chancellor said this morning. He said the pipeline was halted, not canceled. And halting Nord Stream is more of a burden to Germany at the moment than it is to Russia since Russia can sell its gas to other countries. Long-term, easing Europe’s dependency on Russian gas is essential to boosting NATO’s ability to stand up to Russia. But short-term, it’s an energy crisis for Germany and soaring energy prices for everyone else.

Biden noted that too today, warning Americans to expect another hit in the wallet from the economic warfare to come. Most in the U.S. side with Ukraine in this standoff on the merits, I’m sure, but we’ll see how firm that resolve is when gas is five bucks a gallon.

Biden also announced that he’s taking military moves to shore up NATO (and only NATO, not Ukraine), sending more U.S. troops to the Baltic states in case Putin decides smashing Ukraine isn’t enough for him. Which brings us to a provocative tweet from Rich Lowry:

The sheer unpredictably of Trump, his anger at being defied or disrespected, his willingness to take the occasional big risk (the Soleimani strike), all had to make Putin frightened or wary of him in a way that he simply isn’t of Joe Biden https://t.co/NVhAGneN62

— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) February 22, 2022

Lowry’s being pilloried for that by people who remember Trump’s disgraceful spectacle at Helsinki, siding with Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies, and his attempt to withhold military aid from Ukraine in exchange for dirt the Ukrainians had on Hunter Biden. But Trump also sold anti-tank missiles to Ukraine (however reluctantly) and withdrew from the INF Treaty with Russia. Putin could have made his move on Ukraine during Trump’s presidency but he didn’t. Why not? Why did he give the Ukrainians five extra years to develop their military and amass an arsenal instead of striking at Kiev in 2017, after Trump’s inauguration?

One possibility is the “madman theory” articulated by Lowry, that Trump is such a loose cannon that enemy powers couldn’t be assured he’d react rationally to aggression. It’s true that he was very predictable with respect to Russia during his presidency, seeking better relations and reliably dismissing domestic criticism of Putin, but Trump is also a man obsessed with projecting “strength.” And having Putin roll over Ukraine on his watch would have made him look pitifully weak, no matter how many times he may have tweeted “We have no national interest there!” to try to spin it. (It also would have made the smears that he’s a secret Russian agent worse by an order of magnitude.) Putin may also have feared that attacking Ukraine prematurely would have driven NATO closer together and that even a NATO skeptic like Trump would have been swept up in the demand for American leadership in a crisis.

So maybe he calculated that his best play to weaken NATO was to lie low, giving the alliance no cause to mobilize, and trusting that Trump would follow his instincts and undermine it by questioning its rationale, demanding more defense spending by member nations, and generally signaling his ambivalence about the U.S. remaining part of the group. Putin gave him four years to do that, but once Biden won the election that project went out the window. There’d be no near-term dissolution of NATO to make the conquest of Ukraine easier, which meant the time for lying low was over. Presumably Putin became further convinced that the hour was near after Biden’s withdrawal fiasco in Afghanistan, an episode that logically would have led Russia to question whether the new guy in charge of the U.S. knows what he’s doing. Put it all together and Putin may have decided that 2022 was his last window to grab Ukraine: He’s getting older, NATO has been weakened by the Trump years, and Biden might be too inept to hold a western coalition (especially one that includes Germany) together.

But it has held, somewhat surprisingly. Germany suspended Nord Stream; the U.S. and other European allies are coordinating on sanctions; NATO seems more unified than it has in a long time. As noted this morning, Putin’s own advisors seemed less gung ho about attacking Ukraine at yesterday’s televised national security meeting than Putin himself did. Maybe he miscalculated and hasn’t yet realized that yet while the people around him seemed to have done so. Hopefully they’ll get him on the same page soon. Like, really soon.

Meanwhile, maybe it’s just me but this doesn’t sound like a guy who’s outraged at what Putin’s doing:

Trump says Putin's military move on Ukraine is "genius."

"Putin is now saying, 'It’s independent,' a large section of Ukraine. I said, 'How smart is that?' And he’s gonna go in and be a peacekeeper… We could use that on our southern border."

"Here’s a guy who’s very savvy." pic.twitter.com/8vk9SWm3QO

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) February 22, 2022

What would MAGA Nation have had Trump do that Biden isn’t doing, exactly? Half of the populist right seems to think we shouldn’t be helping Ukraine at all on America First grounds (“We have no national interest there!”) and the other half wants to call Biden a wimp by insisting that Putin wouldn’t have dared tried this with Trump. Because … why, exactly? Trump would have deployed the 82nd Airborne to Kiev and gotten into a shooting war with Moscow, the very thing that everyone — I thought — agrees shouldn’t happen here? Please.