Vladimir Putin’s pressure campaign against President Joe Biden just keeps paying off.
Last May, the United States deterred Russian aggression by airdropping 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers straight from Fort Bragg into Estonia. But then Putin started complaining. Biden quickly blinked, pressuring the Pentagon to stop military deployments that the Russian president disliked.
Avoiding the Baltic states, Biden’s latest troop deployments evince a similar hesitation. And not, as many in the media would apparently call it, a signal of resolve.
After a week of pointless prevarication and new steps by allies to compensate for Biden’s weak support for Ukraine, Biden has now authorized the deployment of 2,000 U.S. troops to Europe. The majority of that force, a supported brigade combat team from the 82nd Airborne, will be sent to Poland, with the remainder going to Germany. One thousand Stryker mechanized infantry brigade troops in Germany will deploy to Romania.
On the surface, these deployments evince a U.S. commitment to allies under threat from Putin. Still, these deployments evince hesitation far more than they do strength.
Currently, more than 100,000 Russian troops encircle Ukraine from the north, south, east, and from within Ukraine’s borders. In addition, Russia has boosted its military activity around the Baltic member states. Biden cannot deal with such a threat with tiny troop deployments designed not to upset Putin.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby gave the game away with his description on Wednesday.
“These are not permanent moves,” Kirby said. “These forces are not going to fight in Ukraine. They are going to ensure the robust defense of our NATO allies.”
Russia knows the U.S. is not going to fight for Ukraine. Biden has made it abundantly clear, and Americans rightly wouldn’t support such a fight. But by so publicly and relentlessly repeating his unwillingness to use force in Ukraine, Biden has shown Putin he is terrified of Russian escalation. It would have been sufficient for Biden to say the U.S. will not use military force in response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Instead, Biden has begged Putin to believe he won’t do so. To the KGB shark, that is blood in the water — proof that Biden is cowering and his administration lacks credibility.
Biden’s choice of where to send these tiny U.S. forces raises the same concern. If Biden were at all serious about ensuring the “robust defense of our NATO allies,” he would have sent those forces to Lithuania and Estonia.
Estonia sits on Russia’s border, only a two-hour, 30-minute drive from Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg. The small democracy faces the threat of rapid Russian seizure in the event of an invasion. Estonia is also under constant military, political, intelligence, and cyber harassment from Russia. Indeed, Russian jets intruded on its sovereign airspace just this week. Sandwiched between Latvia, the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (a fortress territory that Russia has recently reinforced), and Putin’s puppet outpost Belarus, Lithuania faces a similar threat: invasion from two sides and the Baltic Sea.
The basic facts of Russia’s present threat suggest the U.S. move to consolidate these Baltic allies. Moreover, unlike Germany, Estonia and Lithuania meet the 2%-of-NATO defense spending target. They are allies that have proven themselves worthy of commitment.
In contrast, neither Romania nor Poland faces an immediate military threat from Russia. Besides, Poland’s military is one of Europe’s best equipped and most ready for combat.
So what is Biden doing, exactly? The answer: the very least he can do to keep allies off his back. Putin will see right through it. Biden, I fear, is not proving true his inaugural pledge to be a “strong and trusted partner for peace, progress, and security.”
