The principle that democratic nations have the right to govern themselves free from fear of invasion is paramount.
Overtly deploying military forces into southeastern Ukraine on Monday, Vladimir Putin has shredded that principle. The Russian president insists that his action is designed only to defend Russia and ethnic Russians in Ukraine. But this is not true. Ukraine poses no credible threat to the Russian Federation. Ethnic Russians in southeastern Ukraine are not targets of the Ukrainian military. Putin’s aggression is a clear-cut assault on international order and European security. And Putin now threatens a far wider offensive against Ukraine.
Facing such a profound challenge, you would expect an American president to take a clear, robust stand in defense of Ukraine and democratic values. President Joe Biden insists he is doing so. From the start of this crisis last year, Biden has presented himself as Ukraine’s steadfast guardrail for freedom. Unfortunately, the president’s actions do not lend credibility to his claims.
Biden’s Ukraine blunders took their roots back in 2009. That was the year of the Obama administration’s disastrous “reset” with Russia. Led by Hillary Clinton and supported by then-Vice President Biden, this delusional effort encouraged Putin to believe that he would face little opposition to his escalated aggression. Putin was right. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and then seized Crimea, the Obama administration offered equivocation and mild sanctions. Biden was a senior party to this failure to enforce deterrence.
Skip forward to 2021.
As tensions began growing around Ukraine last year, Biden’s first instinct was weakness. He canceled U.S. Navy deployments to the Black Sea and pressured the Pentagon to reduce its military activity near Russian borders. Biden has also steadfastly opposed Republican-sponsored sanctions against Putin’s Nord Stream II natural gas pipeline, lobbying Senate Democrats to join his misguided opposition. While Germany did suspend that pipeline’s certification Tuesday, the suspension is unlikely to be permanent.
What about supporting Ukraine’s ability to defend itself?
Until mid-January, Biden slow-rolled the delivery of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine. Even now, Biden refuses to provide Ukraine with significant quantities of anti-air missile systems. Instead, the far smaller Baltic member states have been left to fill this desperate Ukrainian need (and even then, Biden slow-rolled approving their doing so with U.S.-made weapons).
Biden’s rhetoric has often been equally unhelpful.
The president has undertaken a Herculean effort to remind everyone relentlessly that he has no intention of deploying U.S. military forces to Ukraine. Many, including this publication, support that proposition. But it makes very little sense to so relentlessly remind Putin of this posture. Doing so only suggests to Putin that he retains the strategic initiative.
More absurd was Biden’s recent pledge that there are no circumstances in which he would order the U.S. military to rescue Americans in Ukraine. When asked if his self-imposed restriction covered even evacuation flights, Biden insisted that it did. Again, what message does this send to Putin? Certainly not one of strength.
Unfortunately, Biden has supplied Putin with further ammunition on that count.
After warning in January that any Russian re-invasion of Ukraine would result in a massive Western sanctions response, Biden then suggested that a “minor incursion” by Russian forces would meet lesser sanctions. While White House communications staff backtracked for Biden, the White House showed new hesitation Monday in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. An administration official once again underplayed developments, saying that they “would not be a new step” in terms of noteworthy Russian aggression. Once again, the White House had to backtrack.
The damage is done. This mix of chaotic messaging and hesitant strategy has only emboldened Putin.
The former KGB officer has reason to see the West not as a unified bloc of democracies dedicated to the defense of their shared and supposedly sacred values but rather as a weak morass of his scared inferiors. Biden administration sympathizers often point to Russia’s relatively small economy as proof that it is not so serious a threat. Their arrogance, however, utterly ignores the ruthless skill and purpose with which Putin leverages his power. The broader point is also clear — namely, that if Putin’s economy is vulnerable, why not bring him to his knees rather than tinker with half-hearted measures? A total U.S. restriction of Russian access to Western financial markets, energy servicing firms, and the seizure of Putin’s overseas assets would force him into a harder choice over Ukraine.
Still, Biden is hardly the only weak link in the Western alliance.
Powerful European Union member states have done little to deter Putin. Italian businessmen, for example, flirt with Putin and openly oppose calls for any new sanctions. Even Britain, which has taken a lead in delivering anti-tank weapons to Ukraine and bolstering NATO’s eastern flank, has hesitated. After proclaiming that any new Russian invasion of Ukraine would result in a British crackdown on the many pro-Putin oligarchs in London (sometimes referred to as Londonograd), Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government sanctioned only three oligarchs Tuesday (none of whom reside in Britain). Close allies of the Russian leader, such as Roman Abramovich and Alisher Usmanov, retain their mansions, influence, and ownership of English soccer clubs.
Ukraine, ultimately, will bear the brunt of the West’s failed deterrence. But so also will Biden’s legacy. The president who abandoned Americans and their Afghan allies has shown himself incapable of stopping a grievous assault on the U.S.-led international order.
