Since Russia launched its offensive last month, Biden has sought to punish and isolate President Vladimir Putin and soften the massacre of civilians by providing the Kiev government with defensive weapons. But he has also carefully calibrated his actions so as not to be embroiled in a dangerous direct conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia, while at the same time improving his delicate political situation at home. growth. This will especially be the case if, as is increasingly likely, the rest of the world is forced to watch the brutal Russian siege and bombardment of Kyiv.
On Wednesday, at an important moment for Washington, Zelensky will deliver a virtual address to Congress. If his recent speech to the British Parliament, which drew comparisons to Churchill, is any guide, it will be a burning and inspiring slogan for legislators. If the Ukrainian president makes the latest calls for fighter jets and a no-fly zone over his country, which Biden rejected on the grounds that they could provoke a war with Moscow, he will put the president under intense domestic pressure.
Biden’s problem is that, after unleashing a full-scale economic war against Russia with extremely heavy sanctions, there are now limits on the steps he can take to significantly increase the pressure on Putin without risking direct military or cyber conflict. Some critics of the president in Congress and in the foreign policy establishment, including in his own party, argue that he was too cautious. But it’s one thing when a deputy accuses Biden of giving in to Putin’s threats. The president bears a serious responsibility in such a situation and cannot risk miscalculations. The White House has been extremely careful not to push the vindictive and increasingly reckless Putin into an even bigger corner. It, for example, did not react to his last year’s order to put its nuclear forces on high alert and interpreted the Russian leader’s atomic poker as an attempt to intimidate the West. In a similar vein, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Monday declined to describe a Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian base near the Polish border as a new phase of the conflict that could threaten NATO territory. The administration is determined not to give Putin an excuse to push the conflict beyond Ukraine’s borders. But Biden is still the first commander in chief since the 1980s to grapple with the real possibility of an escalating cycle with Moscow that could lead to nuclear war. He also needs to consider how he would react if a Russian missile wandered into NATO territory in Eastern Europe, a scenario that, at least in theory, could trigger the Alliance’s Article 5 on collective defence.
Biden, who came to Washington as a young senator in the midst of a standoff with the Soviet Union, now faces the same lonely burden of Cold War presidents—the fate of the world could be on his shoulders. And the situation may be fraught with more uncertainty than in the long decades of Soviet-American confrontation. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which underpins the concept of nuclear deterrence, was carried out throughout the Cold War. Now the question is whether Putin, humiliated and at stake with his political survival, will stick to the same red lines as his communist predecessors.
“The prospect of nuclear conflict, once unthinkable, is now possible again,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday, calling Putin’s announcement of his country’s nuclear readiness “chilling to the bone.”
A senior US official, speaking after intense talks with China on Monday that were centered in part on Ukraine, put it this way: “There’s a lot of seriousness right now.” Not surprisingly, as CNN correspondent Kevin Liptak reported earlier this month, senior officials believe the Ukraine crisis will largely determine Biden’s term. Sources also said on Monday that the president is considering a visit to Europe, a morale-boosting trip for NATO that will immediately become the most important cross-Atlantic trip for any American president in decades. NATO leaders could meet in person in Brussels as early as next week, a diplomatic source familiar with the plans told CNN’s Caitlan Collins on Monday evening.
Diplomacy fails so far
If the strategic stakes weren’t high enough, the enormous significance of the president’s next steps is exacerbated by the failure of international diplomatic efforts to force Putin to step down and Russian-Ukrainian talks that failed to produce a breakthrough.
The President of Russia has turned his country into an economic, diplomatic, cultural and sports pariah. Russia was embarrassed by the slow advance of its troops after earlier predictions of a blitzkrieg and heroic Ukrainian resistance. But everything the world has learned about Putin’s psychology and track record in Putin’s more than two decades in office suggests that his instinct would be to escalate war. Violent attacks on civilian targets such as tenements, bombardments and sieges of several cities suggest that this is already happening.
“If Ukraine does not bend the knee to Russia, he will turn Ukraine into a wasteland,” Heather Conley, president of the German Marshall Fund, told CNN’s Inside Politics on Monday.
Brig retired. Gen. Mark Kimmit said Monday on a CNN news program that Putin’s tactics, which have already sparked allegations of war crimes, will soon become even more extreme.
“Now that they’ve realized that it’s tedious, they’re doing what they’ve always done in history, which is a slow, bulldozer-like vehicle that pushes everything out of their way or under it. They are going to start laying siege to Kyiv pretty soon and I think we will see how this strategy works,” Kimmitt said.
The paintings, taken from the besieged coastal city of Mariupol, devastated by Russian bombardments, where heat, electricity, food and water are scarce, and from villages outside of Kyiv, offer a chilling vision of what the capital might be in store for.
The spectacle of a prolonged Russian siege of Kyiv, with massive civilian casualties and unfathomable destruction, would leave Biden vulnerable to accusations that he did not intervene to prevent genocide or war crimes. This will put extreme global and domestic political pressure on the President to overcome his reluctance to take measures that could lead to direct conflict between the US and Russia.
Biden, who came to power emphasizing his empathy and compassion in the midst of a pandemic, could end up as the president on the other end of the phone line, having to explain to Zelensky why the West can’t do more to save Ukraine.
New push in Congress for planes for Ukraine
Signs that the battle for Kyiv could be looming Monday added urgency to calls from the US Congress for Biden to do more, as it was revealed that Zelenskiy would speak at a joint meeting via video link on Wednesday. The courage of the Ukrainian president helped inspire the Western world to unite and punish Putin much more severely than many expected. The Alliance is again engaged in the killing of Russian soldiers after it unleashed a virtual proxy war in Ukraine by providing anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles. So far, these measures have not prompted Putin to go directly against the West, although Russia has warned that it views such shipments as legitimate targets. Ukraine meant that the US bowed to Russia’s bluff. Only a few members of Congress have called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, emphasizing a reluctance to endanger U.S. military personnel and engage in an unsettling head-on collision with Russia. But Republican Senate member John Thune said Monday that bipartisan support would include a provision to approve the deployment of military aircraft in Ukraine in a bill addressing Russia’s energy imports and trade status.
“I know that the administration has its own position on this matter. But the planes will be supported by two batches,” Thune, from South Dakota, told reporters on Monday.
Nevada Democratic Senator Jackie Rosen, a member of the Armed Services Committee, urged the administration to help Ukraine get more combat aircraft.
“The President is still resisting,” Rosen told CNN’s Jake Tupper on Monday, referring to the Polish plane plan. “I think they are continuing to work with our NATO allies, trying to find a bypass channel without provoking World War III.”
Her comment encapsulates the dilemma Biden faces as he navigates his way through a conflict that is doing everything the US and its allies can do to prevent humanitarian outrage while containing war inside Ukraine. But the crisis is approaching the moment when doing both becomes increasingly difficult.