Joe Biden, 81, is not the only one to shine in the art of the gaffe.
Two years his senior, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, who was speaker of the House of Representatives until 2023, made a slip of the tongue this weekend during the Munich conference, which we will leave to psychoanalysts to determine whether it was revealing or not.
Asked about Russia and the war in Ukraine, the former representative, first elected in 1987 and re-elected continuously until 2022, declared vehemently:
“We must continue the sanctions [against Moscow].
Because the sanctions give the Russians the money to pay for this war and build their army even more
.
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Nancy Pelosi of course intended to assert the opposite: that it was necessary to continue the policy of sanctions against Russia to weaken its economy and thus dry up its financing of the particularly costly war in Ukraine.
In 2024, Russia's military budget is expected to jump by 70% in one year to exceed $100 billion (or more than 6% of Russian GDP), after an already strong increase in 2023.
“Russia is not giving in.
We have to prepare to win.
Victory is our only option.
I heard today during the meetings that Russia has more soldiers today than at the start of the invasion of Ukraine
,” said the former head of the American lower house.
“They buy them”
Nancy Pelosi is particularly concerned about the human resources of the Russian army, whose ranks continue to grow:
“Where do they find these men?
They buy them.
They travel around the countryside, where people don't have a lot of money and they pay them more to go to war.
They used their prisoners, the ethnic minorities.
And they have mercenaries
.
Russian authorities have announced that by 2023, more than 400,000 Russians have signed a contract to join the armed forces.
A high figure, effectively supported by attractive salaries and which prevents Vladimir Putin from having to go through a new mobilization, after that of autumn 2022, the only one so far on the Russian side.
Conversely, the Ukrainians, weakened by their failed summer counter-offensive, will have to mobilize half a million men in the coming months to compensate for the losses of two years of war, replenish their forces and make turn the workforce to the front.
Also read: Immanuel Kant, responsible for the war in Ukraine, according to the Russian governor of Kaliningrad
At the very least, Nancy Pelosi's slip of the tongue is indicative of this deep concern, while the economic and financial sanctions against Russia have not caused the Russian economy to collapse, which largely manages to circumvent them, via countries third party.
At the beginning of February, the IMF even raised the growth forecast for the Russian economy for 2024 from 1.1% to 2.6% - a figure higher than that forecast for the euro zone.
Inflation is certainly high, but in proportions that are sustainable for the population whose real wages are being maintained, or even increasing slightly.
The industry is running at a particularly high rate, as Russia has shifted to a war economy, which has a direct impact on Russia's ability to compensate for material losses on the front.
Weapons production in Russia
“is really much higher than we expected,”
Mark Riisik, deputy director of the planning department of the Estonian Defense Ministry, revealed to the
Guardian
last week .
We still do not see where Russia's breaking point lies.
»
China, “one of the freest societies”…
Nancy Pelosi does not make her first political slip of the tongue.
In August 2022, the Speaker of the House of Representatives visited the island of Taiwan, a visit which triggered the wrath of Beijing which considers the former Formosa as part of its own territory.
Back in the United States, the representative defended herself from any diplomatic reversal.
“We didn’t go there to change our policy.
We always support the one-China policy.
We went there to recognize that our policy is the status quo
,” she said.
Before launching in a very surprising way:
“It was just a matter of saying that China is one of the freest societies in the world.
It is a strong democracy;
courageous people..."
.
Did she mean Taiwan?
Without a doubt.
Has it confused the island and the continent, thereby conforming perfectly with the principle of “one China”?
No doubt too, but at the cost of a serious democratic implausibility.