The Biden administration is right to try to avoid a direct military confrontation with Russia, but their confrontation avoidance has made the White House dangerously and unreasonably risk-averse. The effect of President Joe Biden’s intense risk aversion cedes the advantage in any intense crisis to the party prepared to threaten escalation— in this case, the Russians. When Biden officials publicly reassure the Russians what they are unwilling to do in Ukraine, the Russians increase their brutality and hit targets closer to NATO’s borders. More than two weeks into the war against Ukraine, Russia is not looking for an off-ramp. The United States must get to work on making Russia look for one.

When Russia was building up forces to invade, the Biden team withheld sanctions to give diplomacy a chance. In response to Russian nuclear saber-rattling, the Biden administration announced that it was exercising “restraint.” It canceled a long-planned intercontinental ballistic missile test, and after a naval incident, a Biden official announced that the U.S. didn’t provide Ukraine with intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance — lest Russia think we were helping too much. Even when Lithuania and Latvia were sticking their necks out to provide man-portable Stinger missiles to Ukraine, out of fear of being provocative, the U.S. still had not. When Poland went public with its plan to send MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine via a U.S. base in Germany, Biden officials publicly rejected it and called the move “high-risk.” And, of course, Biden officials have been very publicly unwilling to consider any version of a no-fly zone. Biden took to Twitter to reiterate that the U.S. “will not fight a war against Russian in Ukraine,” which is compatible with a recent media report that said the White House chose not to send U.S. military trainers to Ukraine in February for fear of provoking Russia.