The Biden administration is only belatedly offering Ukraine significant support against the threat of an imminent Russian re-invasion of that nation.
In the past two weeks, we’ve seen U.S. anti-tank and other munitions delivered at scale to Ukraine. But it’s too little, too late. Russia’s invasion is likely to occur during the first two weeks of February.
While the Biden administration’s rhetorical support for Ukraine has been robust, its more significant tangible support has only followed that of U.S. allies. First, Britain’s delivery of thousands of anti-tank weapons to Kyiv put public pressure on President Joe Biden to do more. Then came media coverage of the Biden administration’s reluctance to allow the Baltic states to supply Ukraine with U.S. weapons in their possession. It was only after the Baltic states told Politico that the Biden administration was sitting on their requests to supply Ukraine that the administration finally approved those requests.
These contradictions continue even as the administration belatedly does more for Ukraine.
As the Wall Street Journal reported, the administration claims the sanctions it would impose on Russia in the event of an invasion would be significant from the start. “We would start high and stay high, and maximize the pain to the Kremlin,” an official told the paper. Yet an official also tells the Journal, “Off the table, for now, are sanctions on oil and natural gas exports or disconnecting Russia from SWIFT” We also learn that major banks “may not get hit in the first round of sanctions to hold a potent option in reserve, according to former officials.”
These are prospective sanctions that “start high and stay high”?
Give me a break. This is a continuation of the Biden administration’s always-hesitant policy toward Russia over Ukraine. Fearing Russian anger, in 2021, the United States canceled the deployment of warships to the Black Sea. Shortly before the latest crisis, the White House not-so-subtly pressured the Pentagon to reduce its military activity near Russian borders (even though Russia was doing more aggressive activity at a greater scale). And, absurdly, Biden has always put Putin-appeasing Germany before other trans-Atlantic interests.
The attenuating problem is that absent U.S. leadership to do more in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty, the European Union is also reticent to do more. Take the big three EU powers — France, Germany, and Italy, all of which are signaling to Russia that a post-invasion sanctions regime might not be that “severe” after all. Even China is taking notice of this Western hesitancy.
Thus, we see Russian President Vladimir Putin’s confidence that he will likely be able to crush Ukraine in a way that avoids truly catastrophic Western reprisals for his economy and his regime. Biden, at least in significant part, is to blame.
