Biden’s Dangerous New Ukraine Endgame: No Endgame
By: Michael Hirsh (Foreign Policy)
Joe Biden may be trying to paint Vladimir Putin into a corner but Biden is also painting the United States into a corner. Even if Biden succeeds in toppling Putin, what happens next? What happens if the Russian military seizes control of the Russian government? What happens if the Communist Party regains control over Russia? What do we do if Russia becomes more active in Cuba and South America? What do we do if Russia becomes a state sponsor of terrorism?
The heightened risk is that North Korea or Pakistan or Iran could trigger a global nuclear war. A direct confrontation with Russia prevents the United States from using nuclear deterrence against smaller nuclear threats. Kim Jong-un could nuke Seoul and what could we do about it? The United States threatening a nuclear response to provocations by Kim Jong-un would ratchet up everyone using nuclear weapons. And it would be to Russia's advantage for more small countries to obtain nuclear weapons because that would hamper the United States.
What's next? How can we reshape relations with China now? What do we do about the simmering regional conflicts in Asia, Africa, and South America? Biden has placed the United States in a position where any tin-pot dictator can pretty much do anything they want. Whatever side the United States is on, Russia will be on the other side. And China will step in whenever there is an opportunity to advance Chinese interests. We don't know which way Turkey will turn. We don't know which way India will turn. And we don't know if tepid allies in the Middle East will play along with containing Iran. Syria has already given full support to Russia in Ukraine.
An honest assessment is that Biden is only confronting Putin and Russia for his own political reasons. Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan was botched and Biden is polling badly in the United States. Biden wants to be seen as a transformative President. Biden may get his wish but not in the way he wants.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
In a dramatic series of shifts this week, U.S. President Joe Biden and his NATO allies have escalated their policy of helping to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression into a policy of undermining the power and influence of Russia itself. In so doing, some observers fear, they are leaving Russian President Vladimir Putin little choice but to surrender or double down militarily, raising the possibility of widening his war beyond Ukraine.
On Thursday, Biden urged Congress to provide $33 billion in additional military, economic, and humanitarian assistance for Ukraine—more than double the previous amount—and said he was sending a clear message to Putin: "You will never succeed in dominating Ukraine." Beyond that, Biden said in remarks at the White House, the new policy was intended "to punish Russian aggression, to lessen the risk of future conflicts."
That followed an equally clear declaration this week from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who after a meeting in Kyiv with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the U.S. objective is now to curtail Russia's power over the long term so it does not have the "capability to reproduce" its military assault on Ukraine. "We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine," Austin said in a stopover in Poland.
The shift may have been what prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov to declare afterward that Washington and the West had entered a "proxy" war with Russia, risking another world war that, Lavrov warned, could go nuclear. "The danger is serious, real. And we must not underestimate it," Lavrov said. Putin also again suggested this week, as he has since the beginning of his invasion on Feb. 24, that he still had the option of using nuclear weapons against NATO, saying, "We have all the instruments for this [to respond to a direct threat to Russia]—ones nobody else can boast of. And we will use them, if we have to."
The newly aggressive U.S. approach won plaudits from many quarters—in particular from current and former NATO officials who insist the Russian nuclear counterthreats are only empty rhetoric.
"It's the only way to go forward," said former NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen in an interview. "In Putin's thinking it doesn't make any difference, because he would only claim that the Western policy is to weaken Russia anyway. So why not speak openly about it? The mistake we made in the past was to underestimate the ambitions of Vladimir Putin, to underestimate his brutality. At the same time, we overestimated the strength of the Russian military."
The new U.S. and NATO strategy is partly based on Ukraine's continuing battlefield success against Putin, who has been forced to scale down his ambitions from a full takeover of Ukraine to a major new assault in its eastern and southern parts. NATO allies including Germany, which until this week had equivocated on sending heavy offensive weaponry to Ukraine, have ratcheted up their aid in response. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, under political pressure at home and abroad, announced earlier this week that his country would provide 50 anti-aircraft tanks to Ukraine.
Yet other Russia experts expressed worry that the United States and its Western allies are, in effect, crossing the very redlines they have avoided until now. For most of the two-month conflict, Biden has refused to authorize any military support, such as major offensive weapons or a no-fly zone, that might be perceived as putting U.S. or NATO forces in direct conflict with Russia. Now, some observers worry that with the additional aid and tougher economic sanctions, the U.S. president is forcing Putin into a corner in which he can only fight on or surrender. The latter course would mean relinquishing Putin's career-long aim of strengthening Russia against the West. Yet Putin, who has long said the West's goal was to weaken or contain Russia, has never been known to surrender during his decade and a half of aggressive moves against neighboring countries, mainly Ukraine and Georgia.
"In the Kremlin's eyes the West is out to get Russia. It was unspoken before. Now it's spoken," said Sean Monaghan, an expert on Europe at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you combine this with Biden's comments, at his summit in Poland last month, that 'this man [Putin] cannot remain in power,' all that turns this a territorial war into a wider confrontation and might make negotiating a settlement to end the war in Ukraine far more difficult or even impossible at the present." (Biden officials later said that the president was not seeking regime change in Russia.)
George Beebe, a former chief of Russia analysis for the CIA, said that the Biden administration may be in danger of forgetting that the "the most important national interest that the United States has is avoiding a nuclear conflict with Russia." He added that "the Russians have the ability to make sure everyone else loses if they lose too. And that may be where we're heading. It's a dangerous corner to turn."
Perhaps the most worrisome turn of events is that there no longer appears to be any possibility of a negotiated way out of the war—despite Putin's statement to visiting United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres that he still hopes for such a solution.
"It's one thing to pursue a policy of weakening Putin, quite another to say it out loud. We have to find a way for Putin to achieve a political solution, so perhaps it is not wise to state this," said one senior European diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"It's getting more dangerous," said Charles Kupchan, a former senior U.S. official and now a scholar of international relations at Georgetown University. "We need to start moving beyond Javelins and anti-tank missiles and talk about a political endgame." Or, as Beebe put it, "We need to find a way of somehow discreetly conveying to the Russians that we would be willing to ease sanctions in the context of an international settlement. The military aid to Ukraine could also be used as leverage."
Yet any such negotiation looks less likely than ever. Both sides appear to be settling in for a long fight. After meeting with Putin and Lavrov on Tuesday, Guterres acknowledged that an imminent cease-fire was not in the cards and that the war "will not end with meetings."
Only a month ago Zelensky was floating the idea of a neutral Ukraine that did not join NATO, and he suggested that separatist forces in eastern Ukraine should be acknowledged. But Zelensky has since told European Council President Charles Michel that, in light of Russian atrocities, Ukrainian public opinion was against negotiations and favored continuing the war.
Meanwhile, Finland and Sweden have indicated they are interested in joining the NATO alliance, breaking with their longtime policy of nonalignment and potentially creating a new hair-trigger environment along Russia's northern border. That would deliver a devastating blow to Putin, who has often cited NATO's eastward expansion as a casus belli for his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
And there is little prospect that any of these tensions will abate anytime soon. Austin also convened a 40-nation "Ukraine Contact Group" this week that was readying itself for what Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley has said is likely a "protracted conflict" that will be "at least measured in years."
Biden has not said what the U.S. response might be if Putin deploys tactical or strategic nuclear weapons. Moreover, neither side has set any clear rules in the post-Cold War environment for the deployment of nuclear weapons—especially as Cold War-era arms agreements such as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty have been shelved and nuclear weapon delivery systems have become faster and more governed by automatic digitized systems. Under a Kremlin policy known as "escalating to de-escalate"—threatening to go nuclear if the West tries to stop him—Putin has year by year reintroduced nuclear weapons into his conventional war calculations. During his two decades in power, he has authorized the construction of nuclear-powered cruise missiles, transoceanic nuclear-armed torpedoes, hypersonic glide vehicles, and more low-yield nuclear weapons on the European continent.
Yet Putin has never come this close to threatening to use them, nor has he made clear if or how he might do so. Until the Ukraine crisis, U.S. strategists had not considered their deployment to be a credible threat. Most believe Putin would first escalate using cyberattacks or other non-nuclear capabilities.
Many experts also say they don't believe the Russian president would gain much advantage from the use of tactical nuclear weapons inside Ukraine—and he is considered enough of a rational actor that he would never contemplate launching nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missiles at the United States. But Putin has also indicated previously that he cannot accept the separation of an independent Ukraine from Russian control, writing in a July 2021 essay that such a development would be "comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us."
Robert Gallucci, a former senior U.S. nuclear arms negotiator, said the Russian nuclear threats are a new tactic and "should be taken seriously if we were to get involved directly in conflict with Russian forces in or around Ukraine, that is, on or across the Russian border."
Beebe, who is currently director of grand strategy at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, said he believed the outcome would most likely stretch into a volatile stalemate—but one that could well be more unstable and dangerous than much of the Cold War. "Most likely we're going to end up in some sort of long-term unstable confrontation that divides Ukraine and divides Europe where there aren't rules of the game," he said. "It's not so much a new cold war as it is a festering wound in Europe."
Matters could get even dicier if a newly emboldened West and NATO expand their reach beyond Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific, as British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss suggested in a speech this week. Truss said that "NATO must have a global outlook, ready to tackle global threats. We need to preempt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with our allies like Japan and Australia to ensure the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves."
That in turn raises the prospect for a drawn-out global cold war with not only Russia but China as well. And it is one that could easily turn hot, Beebe said, with the United States and its allies faced off against an alliance of "a resource-rich Russia partnered with a technologically and economically powerful China."
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The first Cold War was so much fun that Joe Biden has decided we should have another. Let's party like it is 1962.
Tell us why you've become such an apologist for Putin
Who's apologizing for Putin? I've been around long enough to know how Russia does things.
A reasonable approximation for Russia found in nature would be a honey badger. Smart, aggressive, and unpredictable. Honey badgers defend themselves by attacking.
Joe Biden has screwed it up. Biden hasn't earned a bye. Russia is going to fight. Russia is going to escalate. And Biden has done everything to ensure that fight lasts for decades.
Russia is engaged in an unprovoked military onslaught against Ukraine, which the Russians are losing. Putin screwed up. If Russia were to prevail, they would escalate their pursuit of their Eurasianist imperialist goals with attacks against other former subject countries and the rest of Europe. By confronting Russia to the extent he is, Biden is clearly doing the right thing.
What is considered a provocation? Who decides what is and isn't a provocation?
It certainly looks like Putin screwed up. But that doesn't mean Russia won't fight and Russia won't escalate.
Russia was operating in Ukraine before 2013. NATO and the United States military was operating in Ukraine before 2013. What changed?
The United States has been meddling in the Ukrainian government since 2013 in pursuit of its own imperialist goals. Joe Biden boasted of meddling in the Ukrainian government as the policy of the United States and Europe. Why wasn't that provocative?
Nothing that Ukraine did vis-à-vis Russia.
I decided. Who should decide?
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched an invasion into Ukraine beyond the areas it had been occupying previously, with the intent of overthrowing the Ukrainian government, dismantling Ukrainian sovereignty and absorbing all Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
That sounds like Putinist propaganda.
If that was the case, at most, it would be provocative towards Ukraine, not Russia.
Agreed. The US and EU should keep arming and finding the Ukrainians until there aren’t any Russians left to die there.
Certainly better than Nerm’s apparent policy of let Putin do whatever he wants without consequence.
Putin's criminal aggression cannot go unmet. The Ukrainians cannot do it without help. Since it appears that Putin will not back down, the only solution at this point is a military one.
I saw no apologies - and if you can't specifically point out an apology then your comment is ignorant and uselessly inflammatory. What I read was an explanatory common-sense article posted on Foreign Policy, a respected if somewhat biased news site.
Each nation decides what is a provocation and how to respond. That's one of those national sovereignty things we're claiming to defend.
Russia has been providing support for separatists in the Donbas since 2014. VP Joe Biden threatened to withhold US economic aid in exchange for removing the Ukrainian prosecutor in 2016; US policy was to meddle in the internal affairs of Ukraine. The United States began supplying arms to the Ukrainian military to fight in Donbas in 2019. Russia had been assembling troops on the Ukrainian border six months (or more) before the invasion in February, 2022.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was not a surprise attack. Russia had participated in negotiations to resolve the issues in 2014, the United States did not. The United States has been attempting to undermine the Minsk agreements, meddling in the Ukrainian government, and providing weapons to use against Russian backed Ukrainians without any intention for the United States to become directly involved.
Yes, the policy of the United States since 2014 has been to use Ukraine to provoke Russia. Primarily because Obama screwed up in Syria by backing a civil uprising in 2011 with calls for regime change. Joe Biden was involved in that botched up job, too.
So in other words your strategy is to let the Russians do as they please.
A proper response by Biden would have been to place a show-the-flag force on the west bank of the Dnieper, demand a ceasefire in the Donbas, and call to restart negotiations with the Minsk agreement as a starting point. That should have included NATO forces, too, but Europeans would have crapped their pants and begun squealing about provocations and escalation; Europe is a highly unreliable ally. But European knee-jerk resistance to show of force would have primed Europe to act as mediators.
That's not what Biden did. Biden sent a clear, unmistakable message that the United States has no direct interest in Ukraine and that the United States would posture and not fight. Putin had been building troop strength on Ukraine's borders and conducting provocative exercises for six months (or more) to gauge how the United States would respond. In diplomatic terms, Biden gave a green light to Putin.
Biden has been around long enough that Biden should know how Cold War diplomacy with Russia works. Either Biden is an incompetent idiot or Biden deliberately threw Ukraine into the meat grinder for Biden's own political purposes.
Biden got the invasion that Biden wanted. Biden fucked up and, as usual, we're going to pay for it.
So many questions, so few answers. Nerm is now my super hero:
Here's another question for you: How does the United States respond to Russia using tactical nukes as defensive weapons inside Russian territory?
The Bidenista have been making hair-on-fire claims that Russia is threatening global nuclear war. But if everyone pulls Dr. Strangelove out of their backsides and pays attention, Putin has been warning that a counteroffensive inside Russian territory would face nuclear attack.
If Russia withdraws from Ukraine then the Ukrainians had better not follow. The Ukrainian military attempting to expand the fight into Russia would only get their asses nuked. That is what Putin is warning.
Does that include the Ukrainians pushing the Russians all the way back out of the Crimea?
I can almost picture that happening.
Wouldn't surprise me. The Soviets had a track record of scorched earth retreats. The Russian military hasn't changed that much. Russia has a history of destroying everything it can and then rebuilding when Russia reclaims lost homeland.
Russia has been kicked out of Crimea several times over the last 250 years. And Russia has fought its way back into Crimea every time. Kicking Russia out of Crimea again would only be temporary. Crimea was considered Russian homeland long before the Soviets took control of Russia.
And should that scenario (which has already been started with AUKUS and QUAD) take place as suggested by that warmongering British Foreign Secretary, there may not be a safe place left on this planet for survival. At least I've already lived a long life, but I feel sorry for my children and grandchildren who woudn't.
One BIG problem with that assessment, China’s economic power relies 100% on its ability to trade and do business with NATO nations.
I don’t see NATO expanding beyond Europe or Central Asia there is no need and no benefit. European nations cannot do much outside of their own continent, and we already have military alliances in place with multiple Asian and pacific nations. China can hitch themselves to Russia if they want, but they need to be careful they don’t let themselves get so attached that they drive the west away and start isolating themselves.
America has already done a good enough job of driving China away and "containing" China, pushing into a closer relationship with Russia.
China recognizes the risk. China is attempting to become the financial center of Asia. China is no longer 100 pct dependent upon trade with the west. However, China is not going to make the same mistake as the United States by giving up China's industrial advantage.
China's socialist history means that the policy emphasis is on jobs rather than profit and growth. China will use jobs programs to gain influence in Asia; something the United States and Europe abandoned in the 1970s.
NATO is nothing more than American influence. Without the United States there would be no NATO. It appears that the Biden policy is becoming an attempt to use NATO as a tool to expand American influence. While only circumstantial at this point, it seems that Biden is attempting to tie NATO to a revival of the old British commonwealth. The UK trying to reestablish influence in the Pacific means NATO will go along for the ride. Where the United Kingdom goes, so goes NATO.
That has been the policy of the United States for seventy years. What has changed?
In the 1970s the United States began trying to make China (among many other developing countries) dependent upon western finance; primarily dominated by the United States. To accomplish that the United States had to abandon its own industrial advantages. The idea was to make China so dependent upon foreign infusions of money that the Chinese government could be manipulated and controlled. And the trick was that China's dependence upon foreign money would be sustained by devaluing US currency. Any money China obtained today would be of less value tomorrow. China's industrial advantage would be counterbalanced by inflation.
The facts are that today's China is not nearly as dependent upon infusions of foreign money. So western inflation doesn't provide leverage to manipulate and control the Chinese government any longer. China's decreasing dependence on foreign finance means the United States and Europe has begun to view China as being too damned independent. Since the United States and Europe can't compete industrially any longer, the only thing available to reassert western influence is through financial measures (which are less effective now) and military threats.
The only effective thing the United States can do now is shift policy to emphasize industrial competition. But the United States doesn't know how to compete industrially any longer. The United States has deliberately placed itself into the position of being unable to compete industrially with developing countries. China becoming a global player in finance is an existential threat to the United States. And the United States can't inflate its way out of its own neoliberal mistake.
At the end of World War II, the United States and Russia were the only powers capable of dominating the planet. The world has turned a few times since then. Now there is the European Union, OPEC, and China. India is trying to move into the ranks of global powers, too.
An alliance between China and India would be a much bigger concern than an alliance between China and Russia. An alliance between China and India would combine 35 pct of the global population. That's a hell of big economic sphere and a lot of potential military capability. China's interest in Russia is due to Russia's ties to India. A pact between China and Russia could open the door to India. But Russia wants its ties to India to become a more expansive union that can compete with China.
Russia and Belarus are attempting to establish a union that competes with the European Union. And Belarus and Russia are attempting to attract the old Soviet block in eastern Europe. But Russia is also making efforts in the Middle East and southeast Asia. Russia has been touting the advantages provided by the Soviet Union but isn't trying to recreate the Soviet Union.
The United States is still stuck with using NATO to expand American interests. But Russia clearly recognizes that the Warsaw Pact is an anachronism in today's geopolitics. Russia sees the United States using NATO (and World War II) policy to prevent establishing an economic union that can compete with the European Union.
well, I am on the side that NATO protects
What has NATO protected? What has NATO done in Ukraine? Several European countries have been providing weapons and equipment to Ukraine but NATO has not.
Putin is showing the world that NATO does nothing, protects nothing. NATO is just a political tool used by the United States to threaten and posture. To use the favorite Marine BS slogan, NATO won't watch your back in a firefight.
That should be 'fun' to watch, the combined GDP of Russia and Belarus in 2020 was $1.5 Trillion. The combined GDP of the EU in 2020 was $21 Trillion. Add in Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey and they could pull an Elon Musk. As to Hungary and Moldavia being attracted into some Back to the Future nonsense, that's some serious nightmare dreaming.
Meh, Winnie the poo could change that by reigning in some of chinas practices like their treatment of the Uyghurs, their rampant theft of IP, the imprisoning of anyone who criticizes the regime, and their open hostility to the existence of democracy to name a few starting points.
And China’s relationship with Russia is 100% about russias resources. China is going to walk the tight rope of keeping Putin in their pocket (as much as one can) for resources while not going too far to alienate the west and western companies.
The US is without a doubt the main power behind NATO and has outsized influence, but the US does not dictate the policy of NATO members. NATO is first and foremost a defensive pact among nations. With very limited exceptions NATO hasn’t actually taken any military action against anyone.
I often wonder why it is so difficult for authoritarian lives to understand that different nations can share the same goals and willingly cooperate with one another.
And with the UK leaving the EU, their NATO influence also took a hit. Britain really isn’t much of a major player anymore, and NATO isn’t going to follow them anywhere. You won’t see any Asian nations joining NATO anytime soon because again, there is no point. The US already has numerous military alliances in place making an expansion of NATO in the region completely unnecessary.
Pretty much everyone in Asia dislikes China already.
India and China a are not going to be Allie’s. The two do not like each other and each views the other as a threat. I mean if we are going to be throwing out absurd hypotheticals we may as well discuss the possibility of China allying with Emperor Palpatine and the Galactic Empire.
China has few, if any friends in Asia because every other Asian nation knows what the Chinese government is all about and knows that they aren’t interested in actual mutually beneficial partnerships.
Apparently someone missed the part about how the Russians are not well liked in Eastern Europe and are showing exactly why right now in Ukraine. Of anything they are driving the people in Eastern Europe closer to the EU.
Yeah, your link states that NATO has done nothing. From your link:
Putin has tiny hands. (Someone misses Trump after all.)
You do know that only three EU countries have a GDP larger than Russia. Of the EU countries Germany ranks highest with a GDP of $3.7 trillion. France has a GDP of $2.5 trillion. Italy has a GDP of $1.9 trillion.
Six NATO countries have a GDP larger than Russia with the United States being the overwhelming largest.
Russia has the 11th largest GDP in the world. Russia represents 2 pct of global GDP. That's why Russia is included in the G20. That's also why economically isolating Russia has a global impact.
Before the invasion, Ukraine was ranked 60th with a GDP of $110 billion; roughly 1/10th of Russia's GDP.
Yeah? Where does India get its energy with fossil fuels going away?
For a few seconds I thought you were this site's super-Christian preacher. No cartoon character would ever be capable of successfully managing a nation of almost 1.4 billion people. Your "sleepy Joe Brandon" or the "pussy-grabbing Trump Dump Rump" haven't been able to manage a nation of 320 million people and maintain any kind of unity or common progression so don' t be so fuckng proud and quick to criticize. Frankly I'm quite happy and comfortable living in a country that considers the health and life of its residents more important than temporary inconvenience, and quite safe where freedom from gun violence is more important than people running and hiding when they hear a motorcycle backfire.
Perviously I've seen some very common sense comments from you - what happened?
I often wonder why it is to difficult for democratic lives to understand that different nations can share the same goals and willingly cooperate with one another. Actually, all I can really come up with is the need to do whatever they can to contain and prevent from progressing any nation that could surpass the existing "number one".
Does that explain NATO's twenty year presence in Afghanistan?
Just don't ignore how the United States has 'dictated' international relations before and since the collapse of the USSR. The United States has, at times, deliberately destabilized regions, supported insurgent overthrow of foreign governments, and used its influence to isolate countries for ideological purposes. How long has the United States isolated North Korea? Cuba? Iran? If economic isolation worked then the Korean War would have ended and Cuba would have become a western democracy decades ago.
The technocratic bureaucracy of the United States is as authoritarian and dictatorial as many regimes the United States opposed ideologically. The technocracy of the United States even exerts control over elected political government inside the United States.
Don't try to claim the United States imposing goals and means of cooperation onto the world isn't authoritarian. Don't ignore that the United States also has a permanent seat on the UN Security Counsel and uses its veto to protect ideological interests of the United States.
What do you think the AUKUS agreement was about? Do you think the UK could have pursued AUKUS if the UK had remained in the European Union?
After Brexit, NATO now has more economic influence that spans the globe than does the European Union.