All empires overreach themselves. Even if, like the United States, they aren’t empires in the traditional sense. This get-out clause began to lose its credibility around the time of the Monroe Doctrine and should not be taken seriously by a thinking person or even a career politician. As the nature of power projection changes, so the nature of empire changes. Power is not only projected by military strength or subjugating populations. It is also projected by influence over local elites and by control over resources, communications, currencies, and systems of economic exchange.
The war with Russia in Ukraine demonstrates America’s quasi-imperial reach. But it also shows how the country’s strategic goals are beyond its grasp. The Biden administration’s stated goal in Ukraine is to force Russia to withdraw entirely from Ukrainian territory. The administration’s unstated goals are to destroy Russia’s military and economy, harden the European Union’s eastern border, permanently establish NATO garrisons on Russia’s doorstep, and, as President Joe Biden stated openly when he visited Poland, bring down Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Our docile media repeat the administration’s line that we are not really at war with Russia, but we are. The administration has used the global financial system as a weapon of economic warfare against Russia. The proxies in our supposed proxy war include not just Ukrainian troops, but also American technology and American troops. The Ukrainian military’s communications are protected from Russian jamming because they use Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite. The American government is paying American manufacturers to send state-of-the-art weaponry to Ukraine in order to destroy Russian equipment and kill Russian soldiers. American soldiers train Ukrainians in the use of the HIMARS rocket artillery system.
Every administration since the Truman presidency inherits the assets of global influence. Most cannot resist the impulse to spend it. Few spend it wisely. The Biden administration is squandering it out of arrogance and panic. If Putin falls from office or, as so many of his critics do, falls from a high window or down several flights of stairs, the new Russian leader will also be a nationalist playing energy politics. Ukraine will continue to be on Russia’s doorstep. And NATO’s border will be doubly indefensible because it has now doubled with the accession of Finland.
As of this week, Congress will have sent $65 billion to Ukraine. Russia continues to control most of southern and eastern Ukraine, and Putin very much remains in power. He threatens to use nuclear weapons if Russian soil is attacked and is busy expanding his definition of Russian soil by holding referendums, the prelude to annexation, in occupied Ukrainian territory. Rather than revitalize NATO and the EU, the war has become a stress test that is breaking them apart.
Biden and Putin are playing chicken over Ukraine. The player who will blink first is Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany. Winter is coming. The European benchmark price for gas rose from around 66 euros per megawatt hour in January to nearly 300 euros pmw in late August. It is now around 200 euros pmw and rising. Germany’s federal energy regulator has
stepped
up plans to ration the supply this winter. The French prime minister has told companies to reduce usage by 10% or face rationing.
Biden’s economic warfare might not have beaten Russia, but it’s driving America’s European allies into a recession. It’s not doing much for Americans, either. The dollar gets almightier by the day as the tired, poor, and huddled masses of foreign investors seek a safe haven for their pounds, euros, and yen. Prices of imports rise with it. Meanwhile, rising energy prices have
boosted
Russia’s energy export earnings by 38% this year. Russian oil exports have risen by 12% despite six rounds of economic sanctions. The roots of Europe’s energy failure lie close to home in green sentimentalism and, in Germany’s case, the corruption of its political and business leaders by Russian cash. That will only make it more necessary for elected leaders to blame the U.S. when the lights go out.
The U.S. is fighting a war on the other side of Europe that it cannot win, and the Europeans don’t want a war at all. This is the very definition of overreach. It is exactly what George Kennan, the architect of Cold War containment, warned against when he called the Clinton administration’s expansion of NATO up to Russia’s borders a “tragic mistake.” The Biden administration’s strategy is compounding that mistake. It is not just eroding America’s credibility. It is accelerating the decline of the American-led global system.
Dominic Green is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Follow him on Twitter @drdominicgreen.
