Many in the mainstream media are fawning over themselves regarding Biden’s “masterful” handling of the current crisis in Ukraine. Let us face the facts – the Ukraine Crisis is a direct result of President Biden’s weak foreign policy and underscores how his feckless appeasement of Russia over the past year has failed miserably. A robust policy of deterrence, like maintaining the Trump administration’s sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 might have prevented the crisis. In 1994 President Clinton by the Budapest Agreement pledged to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for them dismantling their nuclear arsenal. President Biden has not stood by this pledge nor even acknowledges it exists.
The thing about deterrence is that you have to use it before your opponent makes his move. Russian forces are now on the ground and they’re probably there to stay. The time to get tough on Moscow and prevent a clash with Ukraine has passed. Sanctions, whether from the U.S. or from the European Union, are not going to force Putin to change his mind and retreat. Instead, these half-measures will give us the worst possible outcome: all the downsides of an actual military conflict, which is now certain, without the preceding benefits of deterrence.
But for any of that to happen, the United States needed to have a firm, steady hand in its dealings with Moscow. In this, Biden failed miserably, coming into office with a lot of bluster about how he was going to take a firm line on Putin, that he alone knew how to deal with Moscow. During the 2020 campaign, Biden even suggested, ludicrously, that Putin didn’t want him to become president because of “how tough Biden would be on him.”
This episode is reminiscent of the Obama administration’s handling of the Syrian civil war. Not just the weakness of President Obama’s embarrassing “red line” fiasco but also his refusal to do anything militarily to weaken the Assad regime before calling for a negotiated settlement.
So, at the end of the day, it is appearing that we as a nation are willing to write off and justify sacrificing the lives of innocent men, women, and children of Ukraine for the sanctity of NATO. The President of Ukraine and many of its citizens are of the Jewish faith yet we are willing to sacrifice them for NATO members who cozy up to Russia and refuse to pay their fair share. What ever happened to “Never Again”?
The words of my former boss SECDEF Robert Gates continue to be prescient “ I think Biden has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
Biden’s “masterful” diplomatic engagement – I think not. I pray this ends well but suspect as a realist it will only get worse before it gets better. We have abdicated our role as the leader of the free world to a tyrant who has no morals or principles in his quest to restore the former Soviet Union. A very sad day in our history and I hang my head in shame.
