‘PUTIN WILL ONLY STOP WHEN WE STOP HIM.’ CLOSE BIDEN ALLY PUSHES FOR U.S. TROOPS IN UKRAINE. Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, from President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, has been called the president’s “closest Senate ally” and even a “shadow secretary of state.” When he travels abroad, Coons is widely thought to speak for the president. “The fact that I am known to have a close relationship with [Biden] helps me deliver a more forceful message,” Coons told Politico last year.
Now, Coons is using his clout to nudge Biden toward sending U.S. troops to fight the war in Ukraine. Last Thursday, he gave the Vandenberg Lecture at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He said the United States is “coming right up against a Cuban missile crisis,” by which he meant there will soon be a “direct confrontation between NATO, the United States, the West, and Russia.” Mixing his historical references, he said today is “a 1939 moment,” referring to events leading to the start of World War II in Europe.
Coons predicted there will “almost certainly be an incident” in which Russian leader Vladimir Putin “goes too far, either within Ukraine by using chemical weapons or just over the border by claiming an accident in which a cruise missile strikes an arms depot where Americans are unloading Stinger missiles from a C-17 about to go across the border.” At that point, Coons said, the U.S. will have to decide whether to send troops to Ukraine. “It is important that in a bipartisan and measured way, we in Congress and the administration come to a common position about when we are willing to go to the next steps and to send not just arms but troops to the aid and defense of Ukraine,” Coons said. “If the answer is never, then we are inviting another level of escalation and brutality by Putin. But so far, that is the answer of a majority in Congress and this administration.”
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Although he put his thoughts in the form of a question, it seemed clear that Coons, who before the Russian invasion opposed sending U.S. troops to Ukraine, is now in favor of troops. That is a position at odds not only with the president but with a large majority of the people. On Sunday, when he appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation, moderator Margaret Sullivan asked him flatly: “In some public remarks this week, you said the country needs to talk about when it might be willing to send troops to Ukraine. You said if the answer is never, then we are inviting another level of escalation and brutality by Putin. Are you arguing that President Biden was wrong when he said he would not send troops to Ukraine? Are you asking him to set a red line?”
Coons did not say no. Instead, he said that he and others in Congress and those who advise the president “need to look clearly at the level of brutality” in Ukraine. The U.S., he continued, “cannot turn away from this tragedy.” He offered mild praise of his friend, saying Biden’s leadership has been “steady and constructive.” But he said that if Putin is allowed to “continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the West coming more forcefully to its aid,” then he worries that “we will see Ukraine turn into Syria.”
And then the key line: “Putin will only stop when we stop him.”
The question now is how influential Coons might be with his close ally, Biden. Throughout the Ukraine crisis, Biden has been pulled along by others while maintaining his determination to keep U.S. troops out of the fight. “That’s called World War III,” Biden said last month when he decided not to facilitate the transfer of fighter jets to Ukraine.
Recently Biden flip-flopped on the question of whether Putin is committing genocide in Ukraine. On April 4, after the publication of photos of Russian atrocities in the area around Kyiv, acts that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called genocide, Biden was asked, “Do you agree that it’s genocide?” He responded, “No, I think it is a war crime.” When asked what he is going to do about it, Biden answered, “I’m seeking more sanctions.”
That changed eight days later, on April 12, when Biden gave a speech in Iowa and declared, “Your family budget, your ability to fill up your tank — none of it should hinge on whether a dictator declares war and commits genocide a half a world away.” Asked later if he used the word intentionally, Biden said, “Yes, I called it genocide. It has become clearer and clearer that Putin is just trying to wipe out the idea of even being able to be Ukrainian. And the evidence is mounting. It’s different than it was last week. More evidence is coming out of the — literally the horrible things that the Russians have done in Ukraine. And we’re going to only learn more and more about the devastation. And we’ll let the lawyers decide internationally whether or not it qualifies, but it sure seems that way to me.”
That is not the State Department’s position, and like earlier Biden statements on Ukraine, the department stayed away from it. And other observers, such as National Review’s Rich Lowry, argued strongly that while Russia is in fact committing atrocities and war crimes in Ukraine, it is not committing genocide. “The United Nations defines genocide as acts ‘committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group,'” Lowry wrote. “The Russians are guilty of great savagery in Ukraine, but there is no evidence that they intend to exterminate the Ukrainians.”
But now Biden is on record calling the Russian invasion genocide, and his closest ally is pressing for the U.S. to be ready to send troops. Meanwhile, poll after poll after poll finds that most Americans do not want U.S. troops to fight in Ukraine. You can find plenty of them at RealClearPolitics, but here is an interesting question asked by the Quinnipiac University Poll last week:
Which comes closest to your point of view: A) The United States should do more to support Ukraine, even if it means increasing the risk of the United States getting into a war with Russia. B) The United States should do more to support Ukraine, but not if it means increasing the risk of the United States getting into a war with Russia. C) The United States is already doing enough to support Ukraine.
The result was an overwhelming majority against getting into the war. Among registered voters surveyed, 52% chose option B — that is, the U.S. should do more to help but not if it increases the risk of getting into the war. Then, 23% chose option C, meaning the U.S. is already doing enough. Just 18% chose option A, the U.S. should do more to help even if it means increasing the risk of getting into the war. Put options B and C together and that is 75% of those surveyed opposed to the U.S. taking actions that increase the risk of U.S. involvement in the fighting.
But now the voices in favor of U.S. troops in Ukraine, including Coons, are speaking out more forcefully. And Biden himself has muddied the picture with his declaration of genocide, evoking images of the Holocaust and World War II. If the Russians are committing genocide, doesn’t that increase pressure on the U.S. to become more deeply involved? Can the president plausibly argue that if the Ukraine matter is just a war, then the U.S. will send Javelin missiles, but if it’s genocide, the U.S. will raise the stakes and send helicopters? Doesn’t that seem a disproportionately small gesture if there is, in fact, genocide going on in Europe?
Some opponents of U.S. troops in Ukraine might have relaxed a bit in recent days when it became clear Russia has failed in its effort to take Kyiv and perhaps all of Ukraine. But now, as the focus shifts to more concentrated fighting in eastern Ukraine, the debate over U.S. intervention is likely to grow, not subside.
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