Posts published in “Russia’s War on Ukraine”

Biden’s Riff on ‘Armageddon’ Shows Why His Ukraine Policy Falls Short

Biden’s Riff on ‘Armageddon’ Shows Why His Ukraine Policy Falls Short

By John R Guardiano on October 9, 2022

The President’s misplaced fear of “World War III” and “Armageddon” has seriously undermined his administration’s support for Ukraine.

Most foreign policy analysts who recognize the importance of ensuring that Ukraine prevails over Russia credit President Biden for his leadership. But the President’s remarks Thursday (Oct. 6, 2022) to Democratic Party donors helps to illustrate why Biden deserves significantly less credit than most analysts think.

While the President has been a steadfast supporter of Ukraine, he has been overly timid and tardy about arming Ukraine with long-range precision weapons—HIMARS, tanks, jets, drones, and fighting vehicles—that would allow the Ukrainians to defeat Russia and quickly end the war.

Ukraine Leads; Biden Follows. The President’s hand, moreover, has been forced by Ukrainian battlefield victories that Biden did not expect or anticipate. And so, each and every time the Ukrainians succeed in battle and either stymie or defeat the Russians, they have urgently requested more and better weaponry.

Biden then follows through, belatedly, with quantitatively more and qualitatively better armaments. It is almost impossible to say no, after all, to an ally who is winning and whose moral standing in battle is as laudatory and exemplary as the Ukrainians’.

But why has Biden been so timid and so tardy to arm Ukraine?

Because, as he essentially told party donors Thursday, he’s worried that if the Ukrainian military moves too far too fast, that could force Putin into a corner, so to speak, and the result could be “Armageddon,” by which Biden means Russia’s use of nuclear weapons.

Thus, Biden continued, “We’re trying to figure out: ‘What is Putin’s off-ramp? Where does he get off? Where does he find a way out?'”

This has been Biden’s approach to Ukraine all along—from prior to the Russian invasion, when he pulled U.S. military advisers out of the country, to early in the conflict, when he said no to a “no-fly zone” and ruled out sending military jets to Ukraine.

Self-Deterrence. Biden, in fact, has been more clear and emphatic about what his administration will not do (ostensibly to prevent “World War III”) than in what it will do to ensure a Ukrainian win.

Eliot Cohen calls this “self-deterrence,” and it has been self-defeating. It signals a lack of will and resolve and it surely has emboldened Putin.

The fear of “cornering Putin” and provoking “World War III” never made much sense. In truth, Putin has cornered himself by his intransigence and insistence on erasing Ukraine as a sovereign and independent country.

The West can either stop Putin or appease him. There is no middle ground that allows him to “save face.” Putin, after all, has no interest in “saving face.” He is interested in conquering Ukraine.

As for World War III, what does that mean, exactly? The implication is that if the West is too supportive of Ukraine, it might find itself enmeshed in a difficult, multi-year conflict that engulfs all of Europe. But is that really a legitimate concern? And is it NATO or Russia that should fear a broader conflict?

The Russian military, after all, has shown itself to be utterly incompetent and incapable of defeating Ukrainian citizen soldiers. It would be quickly overwhelmed and defeated by a far superior conventional NATO military force.

Alternatively, the implication is that “World War III” would be a nuclear Armageddon that could result in worldwide destruction, and not just the destruction of Ukraine. But the rules of nuclear deterrence have not changed since the atomic bomb was developed to end World War II.

Deterrence. Any Russian nuclear strike on a NATO country means a devastating counter-nuclear strike on Russia by NATO.

That is a clearly understood by Putin and his generals. And it is why, from the advent of the Cold War in the late 1940s to the present, Russia has never launched a nuclear strike on a NATO country.

We have absolutely no reason to think that Russian thinking has suddenly changed; and that they are now suicidal and willing to risk the destruction of Moscow in order to subsume Ukraine.

Misplaced Fear. In short, the fear of “World War III” and a nuclear “Armageddon” is misplaced and counterproductive. Biden, German Chancellor Olaf Schloz, and others are using this fear as an excuse to delay arming Ukraine. But all this delay does is prolong the war and the deliberate Russian slaughter of innocent civilians.

So while it is good that Biden has stood by Ukraine, it would have been far better had he matched his pledge of support with more resolute and timely action. Yet even today, despite everything we know about Putin and Russia, Biden continues to look for ways to placate and appease the Russian dictator.

Too often, consequently, Biden is following and not leading.

What the President should do, instead, is look for ways to ensure that Russia loses and is forced to withdraw from all of Ukraine. That is the only “off-ramp” for Putin and the only way to end this war.

The bottom line: credit Biden for standing by Ukraine. However, fault him for his misplaced fear of “World War III” and “Armageddon,” which have caused him to dither and delay on critically-needed military support for Ukraine.

The President deserves a B, not an A; one or two cheers, not three, for his foreign policy vis-a-vis Ukraine.

Feature photo credit: Salon/Getty Images courtesy of Salon.

Putin’s Nuclear Blackmail Gambit

Putin’s Nuclear Blackmail Gambit

By John R Guardiano on October 2, 2022

The danger is less that Putin will use nukes and more that the West might be intimidated and back down because of Putin’s threat to use nukes.

Vladimir Putin doesn’t want to use a nuclear weapon to win a military victory in Ukraine, because he knows that won’t work. A nuclear strike makes no military sense and will not alter the course of the war.

Instead, Putin wants to use the threat of a nuclear strike to secure a political and territorial victory in Ukraine without having to further employ his inept and incapable military.

Putin hopes to intimidate the West into backing down and to force Ukraine to the bargaining table, where it will have to acquiesce in Russia’s sham annexation of five Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, and Crimea.

As the New York Times reports:

The revelation of the Ukraine conflict—that Russia’s conventional forces were poorly trained, unimaginative and ill-equipped—has made Mr. Putin all the more dependent on his unconventional weapons…

[However], the threat [to use a nuclear weapons] may be more effective than actually using [such] a weapon because the cost to Russia of breaking a 77-year taboo could be astronomically high.

Indeed, and so, the question for the United States and NATO is:

Will we allow Russian nuclear blackmail to succeed? Will we set a new international precedent that might makes right; and that bad men with nuclear weapons can force good men with a conscience to back down and surrender?

Fortunately for Ukraine and for humanity, it doesn’t look like that will be the case. President Biden and other NATO leaders have been steadfast in their refusal to be cowed and intimidated by Russian nuclear threats and bluster.

President Biden: We “are not going to be intimidated by Putin and his reckless words and threats. He’s not going to scare us… We’re going to continue to provide military equipment, so that Ukraine can defend itself and its territory and its freedom…”

French President Emmanuel Macron: “France expresses its firm opposition [to Russian threats and Russian annexation of Ukrainian territory. We] will continue to stand by Ukraine in order to deal with Russian aggression and to enable Ukraine to recover its full sovereignty across its entire territory.”

German Chancellor Olaf Schloz: “The sham referendums carried out by Putin in the illegally occupied areas of Ukraine are worthless. They violate international law. Germany will never recognise the so-called results. I assured [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky of this in a phone call yesterday.”

British Prime Minister Liz Truss: “We will not hesitate to take further action, including imposing more sanctions to cripple Putin’s war machine. We will ensure he loses this illegal war.”

These assurances are important, critical, and welcome: because if Putin’s nuclear blackmail gambit succeeds in forcing the West to back down, it will give license to further nuclear blackmail by other bad actors and incentivize them to acquire nuclear weapons. The results could be catastrophic.

Now is the time and Ukraine is the place to draw a clear red line. The use of nuclear weapons cannot and will not be tolerated. Any Russian use of nukes will be met with a catastrophic consequences for Russia. Then and only then might we prevent the unthinkable from ever happening while securing a real and lasting peace.

President Biden and other NATO leaders clearly recognize this. So, too, should the Russian dictator, Putin. The West, sir, ain’t bluffing.

Feature photo credit: U.S. President Joe Biden (L) and British Prime Minister Liz Truss (R), courtesy of The Independent.

The New U.S. Command to Aid Ukraine is a Good But Insufficient First Step

The New U.S. Command to Aid Ukraine is a Good But Insufficient First Step

By John R Guardiano on October 1, 2022

Now increase defense spending, put ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine, and move U.S. troops out of Germany and into Poland and the Baltic States.

The New York Times reports that the Pentagon is establishing a new command to arm Ukraine over the long haul. This is a good thing, because arming Ukraine and ensuring that it has all means necessary to defeat Russian aggression is and ought to be an American priority.

As we’ve noted, Ukraine today is at the epicenter of the fight for Western Civilization. This means that their fight is our fight, and their victory will be our victory.

The threat from Russia, moreover, is not going away anytime soon, even after each and every last Russian is expelled from all of Ukraine. Thus American-Ukrainian defense cooperation and engagement will be required for many years and several decades.

The close relationships that the U.S. military has with the militaries of Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Australia is the model we should emulate. And there are other lessons we must heed.

Robust military aid must be procured and delivered quickly, and American and NATO armories must be replenished pronto through a long-overdue increase in defense spending.

The Times reports that 18 new High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers (HIMARS) will be delivered to Ukraine directly from the manufacturer, Lockheed Martin. However, these will take “a few years” to arrive in country.

Sorry, but that isn’t good enough. This delay underscores the Biden administration’s overly timid approach to arming Ukraine. It also underscores the disconcerting lack of available munitions in American and NATO armories.

Defense Spending. The fact remains: the United States and NATO simply are not spending enough on defense. We weren’t spending enough before Russia invaded Ukraine, and we still aren’t spending enough after the fact.

Witness the fact that few NATO countries meet their pre-war pledge to spend a mere two percent of GDP on defense.

The United States spends between three and four percent of its GDP on defense, but that is dramatically less than it spent at the height of the Cold War (roughly 5-10 percent of GDP, according to Brookings Institution defense scholar Michael E. O’Hanlon).

There is no “substitute for military strength,” explains Elliott Abrams, ” and we do not have enough. It should be crystal clear now that a larger percentage of GDP will need to be spent on defense.”

America and NATO must place “boots on the ground” in (western) Ukraine.

The Times also notes that America and NATO had “boots on the ground” in Ukraine after Russia’s first invasion there in 2014. Western military advisers played a crucial role in strengthening and professionalizing the Ukrainian military.

However, when, earlier this year, Russia threatened to invade Ukraine again, America and NATO meekly and foolishly pulled their military advisers out of the country, and they have not returned since.

To be sure, a relative few Ukrainian soldiers have journeyed to Poland, Germany, Britain and the United States for training. But as the Times observes:

With no U.S. troops currently in Ukraine, providing support by phone or computer has been challenging, American officers say.

“It is much more difficult now to communicate with our allies and partners,” Maj. Gen. Steven G. Edwards, the head of U.S. Special Operations forces in Europe, said at a security forum this month.

“Teleconference is good, but it’s not nearly the same as what we had before.”

The American and NATO phobia about “boots on the ground” must end. In reality, having “boots on the ground” in Ukraine for several years goes a long way toward explaining the surprising success of the Ukrainian military.

Iraq-Afghanistan Distortion. But again, because of the American tendency to see Ukraine through the prism of Iraq and Afghanistan, policymakers feared that, if U.S. troops remained in Ukraine, they would end up fighting and dying there.

This fear might have made sense early on in the war when Russia was attempting to enter Kyiv. However, it made no sense several weeks into the conflict after the Russians were repulsed and forced to withdraw to eastern Ukraine.

When, in April 2022, the United States sent its diplomatic personnel back into Kyiv, it should have sent back in U.S. military advisers as well. We still should.

“World War III.” The fear that this might “provoke Putin” or cause “World War III,” as President Biden has suggested, is ludicrous. Putin knows America and NATO arm and advise Ukraine. Whether we do so in western Ukraine or Germany is a distinction without a difference in his eyes and meaningful only in Paris and Berlin, not Moscow.

Moreover, Russia demonstrated early on in this conflict that it is in no position to pick a fight with the United States or any NATO country.

Russian military incompetence and ineptitude is demonstrable and obvious. The West, not Russia, has the whip hand. We should act like it—not to “provoke Putin,” but to defend and liberate all of Ukraine.

Relocate NATO headquarters out of Brussels and into Warsaw; and, more importantly, redeploy the 38,000 U.S. troops now in Germany into Poland and the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania).

During the Cold War, it made sense to station hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops in West Germany. A Russian invasion there, after all, was a real possibility. However, this makes zero sense today, when the threat is not to Germany, but to Poland and the Baltic States.

Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania also are geographically much closer to Ukraine. Thus deploying U.S. and NATO troops there will facilitate Western aid to that besieged and battered country.

The bottom line: if NATO is serious about deterring Russia and defending against the Russian threat, then it must reposition its forces accordingly. The Cold War is over and new cold war has begun.

The Biden administration recognizes this, which is why it wisely has established a new command to aid Ukraine. But more can and must be done:

Increase defend spending to meet this new threat; put U.S. military trainers back on the ground in Ukraine; and reposition American and NATO forces eastward where the Russian threat now lies.

Feature photo credit: Wisconsin National Guard “Lt. Col. Clay Salmela, the chaplain with Task Force Juvigny, congratulates a Ukrainian soldier upon completion of initial entry training at Starychi Military Base near Combat Training Center–Yavoriv, Ukraine. Image by Cpl. Jared Saathoff / Wisconsin National Guard Public. Ukraine, 2020,” courtesy of the Pulitzer Center, Feb. 12, 2020.

Why Italy’s New Conservative Prime Minister Supports Ukraine

Why Italy’s New Conservative Prime Minister Supports Ukraine

By John R Guardiano on September 25, 2022

—and why American conservatives should, too.

Italy’s new conservative Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, has much to teach American conservatives—especially so-called nationalist conservatives, who too often have been hostile or indifferent toward Ukraine.

Not Ms. Meloni. She is, reports the Wall Street Journal, “robustly pro-Ukraine.”

“We are fully committed to supporting Ukraine and condemning Russia,” said Raffaele Fitto, a senior member of the Brothers of Italy party, which leads a right-wing alliance that polls suggest could win around 60% of the seats in Parliament.

“Sanctions must be supported,” he said, “no ifs or buts.”

Western Civilization. Amen. Ukraine today is at the epicenter of the fight for Western Civilization; and Italy, of course, is one of the cradles of this civilizational inheritance. Our civilizational inheritance.

Indeed, the rule of law, the Judeo-Christian moral code, market-based commerce, and representative democracy all owe a debt of gratitude to the Romans who pioneered these concepts in the Italian peninsula and beyond in the millennium before Christ.

So it is perhaps not surprising that modern-day Italians are among the strongest supporters of Ukraine in its fight for independence against an alien and countervailing political tradition manifest in 21st Century Russia.

As Ms. Meloni explains:

We did not fight against and defeat Communism in order to replace it with a new international regime, but to permit independent nation-states once again to defend the freedom, identity, and sovereignty of their peoples.

Ms. Meloni’s remarks were not directed toward Ukraine specifically, but they apply there nonetheless. To translate:

the West did not defeat the Soviet Union in order to replace it with an imperial Russia that tramples upon the rights and liberties of free and sovereign nation-states like Ukraine.

America Conservatives. Yet a disconcerting number of American conservatives, especially so-called nationalist conservatives, are soft on Putin’s Russia and antagonistic toward Ukraine. Bizarrely and perversely, some so-called conservatives even hold up Putin as a sort of model leader. Why?

Part of this is simple ignorance and a lack of education. Generations of dismal public schooling have taken their toll. Consequently, too many Americans are ignorant of the origins of Western Civilization and the struggles of our ancestors as they attempted to form a more perfect union in these United States. Novus ordo seclorum.

This lack of historical understanding and appreciation is overlaid with an obsession over current events and the very recent past, which, together, distort our understanding and confuse matters.

Iraq and Afghanistan. For Americans, especially younger Americans, the very recent past is Iraq and Afghanistan. All conflict is viewed the prism of these two wars. And so, the fear all along has been that Ukraine might become yet another “endless war” that consumes our time and our resources at the expense of other, more pressing issues like China.

But of course, as we’ve noted, Ukraine is neither Iraq nor Afghanistan. It is a very different country in a very different time and place. And the war in Ukraine is orders of magnitude more important to the United States than the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan ever were.

A Taliban-run Afghanistan overrun with jihadists who seek to do us harm is a problem, to be sure. But terrorists in caves do not pose the same level of threat as a Russia, nuclear-armed and China-aligned, that is intent on expanding westward to gobble-up Eastern Europe.

The Italians, fortunately, are not burdened with the legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan. Thus they are able to see Ukraine for what it is: a war the West must win.

Grazie a Dio per l’Italia.

Feature photo credit: Italy’a new Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Why ‘America First’ National Security Hawks Can No Longer Support Trump

Why ‘America First’ National Security Hawks Can No Longer Support Trump

By John R Guardiano on September 24, 2022

No one should be under any illusions that a second Trump administration would be anywhere near as hawkish as the first Trump administration.

Republicans who believe in a strong national defense and an assertive U.S. foreign policy, and who supported President Trump in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, cannot pull the lever for him again in 2024.

Why? Because of Trump’s own statements about Ukraine, Putin, Iran, and Russia. And because, in a second Trump administration, Trump almost certainly will be more isolationist and accommodating of Russian President Vladimir Putin and other anti-American dictators.

Perennial “never Trumpers” will say, of course, that they were never fooled. “America First,” they say, had tainted origins dating back to the 1930s before the Second World War. But whatever the history of the “America First” movement, there is no denying that, in his first administration, Trump was no isolationist.

To the contrary, thanks to Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, National Security Advisers H.R. McMaster, John Bolton, and Robert C. O’Brien, Deputy National Security Adviser Matthew Pottinger, Ambassador Nikki Haley, Senator Lindsey Graham, and others, Trump often acted in a strong, Reaganesque fashion.

Trump 2017-2021. Thus he ordered and oversaw the quick destruction of ISIS, adoption of the historic and path-breaking Abraham Accords, and the killing of Iranian General Qassem Suleimani.

Trump withdrew from the fatally flawed Iran nuclear deal and Paris climate accord. He recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and launched retaliatory missile strikes at Syria to degrade its chemical weapons program.

And, perhaps most historic, long-lasting, and consequential: Trump became the first president to recognize that China posed the greatest strategic threat to American national security since the Soviet Union a generation ago during the Cold War.

Thus he began the necessary process of decoupling the U.S. economy from China’s, a process that will play out over the next two decades.

Now, to be sure, there are plenty of things about Trump’s foreign policy that deserve condemnation. He shamelessly, for instance, abandoned our Kurdish allies in Syria, while setting the stage for Biden’s disastrous withdrawal and surrender in Afghanistan.

Trump’s China policy also was lacking. He foolishly withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement and failed to build and sustain an anti-China alliance on the world stage. Trump also was late to recognize the threat from COVID, mostly because he was too eager to reach a trade deal with China.

‘America First’ means…? But that’s exactly the point: “America First” was always a jump ball policy-wise in Trump’s first administration. It could mean either hawkish or dovish positions, depending on who proved most influential with The Donald. The two factions competed for Trump mindshare.

But that almost certainly won’t be the case in a second Trump administration. The hawks have mostly moved on. In fact, many of them—Ambassador Nikki Haley and National Security Adviser John Bolton, for instance—moved on well before Trump had completed his first term.

Trump’s isolationists supporters, meanwhile, have grown more vocal, more strident, and more influential. They also have big and consequential megaphones, thanks to Fox News and social media.

Ukraine. Tucker Carlson, for instance, rails regularly and often against American support for Ukraine. Laura Ingraham calls the war a costly disaster and a diversion from the real “America First” agenda.

Other prominent and influential Trump supporters call for the United States to negotiate a “compromise solution” that will end the war and bring peace to Ukraine. As a result, Trump now says that he would bring Putin and Zelensky to the negotiating table to end the war.

The problem is that by negotiating with Putin, Trump serves to legitimize and strengthen Putin. And any negotiated settlement now would result in the formal annexation of Ukrainian territory by Russia.

This is an obvious nonstarter. But who would convince Trump otherwise?

Maybe Senator Graham, but he would do so from the Senate and would face the opposition of a bevy of new isolationist Trump administration officials like Russian accommodationist Douglas Macgregor. The hawks have moved on and, for the most part, will be gone in a second Trump administration.

Trump 2025-2029. And it’s not just Ukraine, but NATO, Israel, and our Gulf States allies as well that would be endangered in a second and more isolationist Trump administration.

Trump has often flirted with withdrawing from NATO and he might well do so given a second term.

This, obviously, would be disastrous for American national security. It would immeasurably strengthen Putin’s hand and threaten the peace and security of Europe, especially Eastern Europe, in a way not seen since the 1930s just prior to the Second World War.

Trump also has expressed his desire to reach a deal with Iran. “I would have had a deal done with Iran one week after the [2020] election,” he boasts.

True, in his first term, Trump imposed severe sanctions on Iran, but given Trump’s eagerness to show that he is a great dealmaker, and given the absence of hawkish advisers in a second Trump administration, it is all too easy to see Trump agreeing to a bad deal that strengthens the hand of the mullahs and paves the way for their acquisition of nuclear weapons.

In short, no one should be under any illusions that Trump’s foreign policy in a second term would the same as it was in his first term of office.

To the contrary: there are deep-seated and disquieting reasons to believe exactly the opposite: that Trump’s foreign policy would swerve wildly and recklessly to the left precisely to appease his most fervent and fevered isolationist supporters on the populist right.

Conclusion. For this reason, no one seriously committed to a strong national defense and an assertive U.S. foreign policy can possibly support former President Trump in 2024. The stakes are too high; the risks are too great; and the resultant damage would be too deep-seated and widespread.

In 2024, “America First” necessarily means “Donald Trump last and never again.”

Feature photo credit: YouTube screen shots of “America First” national security hawks Ambassador Nikki Haley (L) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (R), courtesy of Fox News.