Containment postponed?
Foreign Min. Jan Lipavský of the Pirates was a containment hawk going into the Nato summit in Washington earlier this month. He had spoken at a Nato ministerial meeting in Prague in late May about using the summit to formulate a "credible strategy to the containment of Russia." Then he tweeted after a foreign-policy session at the Castle on July 1 that "the Alliance needs a comprehensive approach for containing Russia." Yet the Washington Summit Declaration didn't mention containment. It spoke numerous times about deterrence, but that's quite a different subject when the issue of containment is whether to commit Nato or Nato-member forces to recovering lost Ukrainian territory. Perhaps Lipavský was acting on his own without any outside support, or perhaps it was the famous Biden-Trump debate that slowed Nato down. Joe Biden was already a half-lame duck at the Nato summit and, after having pulled out of the presidential race, is now fully so. The question is whether Biden will serve out his term quietly or whether "not going anywhere" means that he too will become a containment hawk in his final months.
Glossary of difficult words
containment - the action or policy of preventing the expansion of a hostile country or influence;
hawk - a person who advocates an aggressive or warlike policy, esp. in foreign affairs;
to contain - to prevent from spreading or intensifying;
deterrence - the action of discouraging an action or event through instilling doubt or fear of the consequences;
lame duck - a politician or administration in the final period of office, after the election of a successor;
to serve out - to complete.