Joe Biden, or the shadowy group that does his thinking, is said to be considering a presidential trip to Europe in February to mark the first anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
The intent would be to show his ongoing support for the nearly Texas-sized nation’s valiant and surprising success in not only resisting Russian advances but actually pushing them back.
So far.
Now, Joe Biden rarely does anything in public that isn’t for the sake of appearance. And what he says in public often lacks, shall we say, a large amount of veracity.
Or, more accurately, any veracity. You know, his arrest while bravely fighting for civil rights, his athletic and academic accomplishments, and his career driving 18-wheelers.
In the case of demonstrating support for Ukraine, however, I’m all for the trip and the appearance of rock-solid U.S. and allied backing for a former Soviet republic struggling to maintain its independence while building a democracy out of whole cloth. More on why below.
I also favor the many billions of dollars, pounds, and euros in military aid being flown, trucked, and trained into Ukraine to aid the increasingly effective resistance against ill-trained Russian troops–and an oligarch’s private army of mercenaries, who enforce discipline with executions by sledgehammer.
The other day Biden, once again over some reported Pentagon resistance, ostentatiously announced another package of military aid to Ukraine and financing for purchases of U.S.-made weapons, including 31 of our most advanced Abrams battle tanks. It was a major policy reversal for the man.
Did someone say Biden likes appearances? Ukraine won’t actually see any of these sophisticated battlefield monsters for at least a year and many months of crew training, if ever.
Biden made the announcement because Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been doing everything possible to stall giving crucial aid to Ukraine for fear of Russian retribution. A real profile in courage.
A collegiate Marxist and now Social Democrat, Scholz had refused permission for any German Leopard 2 tanks to go to Ukraine until the U.S. sent Abrams. That’s his defense when Putin calls.
Biden’s solution to breaking the logjam was to say we’re sending Abrams (while whispering, in a year or so, assuming Ukraine endures).
Poland, another NATO ally and invasion victim of German tanks in 1939, has Leopard 2 tanks and was preparing to openly defy Germany to help Ukraine out of its own self-interest. So, Biden’s Abrams announcement was really as much about preserving NATO unity as helping Ukraine.
The self-interest of Poland, once a Soviet satellite that sits next-door to Ukraine and Russia, is it would most likely be high on Putin’s invasion menu. As the first victim of Hitler’s blitzkrieg and then decades as a communist satellite, Warsaw knows only too well that no invader stops on its own.
Putin was a KGB colonel when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, releasing its league of satellites, including Ukraine. He has already successfully taken over two provinces of Georgia in 2008, and then Crimea in 2014.
He encountered no real Western resistance beyond ineffective, photo-op sanctions, which he prepared for. Why halt rebuilding a Grand Russia until someone stops you?
The U.S. president’s self-interest, which he doesn’t mention, is if Putin attacks any of NATO’s 30 member states, Biden becomes the next in a lengthy line of Democrat presidents to lead the United States into war. (See Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Barack Obama, if you count Libya and his Afghan troop surge.)
Article 5 of NATO’s charter obligates every member to come to the instant defense of any other member under attack. It has been a powerful, effective deterrent since 1949, and has been used only once — to support the U.S. after 9/11.
But if, for instance, Poland or any of the Baltic states experience a Russian assault, the United States is instantly involved in real-life-and-death combat, with its own troops in harm’s way on foreign soil.
At the moment, the only direct U.S. involvement in Ukraine is treasure, some $28 billion so far, plus billions more from nearly three dozen other countries. No small sum, but far cheaper in money and blood than fighting our own war.
Everyone, except Ukraine, expected that out-gunned and outnumbered country to be quickly subdued when Vlad the Conqueror launched his “special operation” on Feb. 24.
But hold on, Buttercup. Turns out, contrary to Putin’s writings, intelligence briefings, and expectations, Ukraine sees itself as its own nation and is willing to fight and die to maintain its 32 years of independence. It has inflicted enormous losses on the invaders, while suffering thousands of its own dead and entire cities destroyed.
To catch up and follow this ongoing war, I highly recommend the informed and detailed accounts by my RedState colleague streiff, an Army veteran whose must-read Putin’s War updates are archived here.
Biden has displayed inordinate caution, in my opinion, for fear of provoking Putin. That’s what Hitler counted on at Munich in 1938. And it worked. Whether nation states or schoolyard thugs, bullies succeed through such fear. Until there’s strong pushback.
To his credit, as Allied leader, Biden has ramped up the type, quantity, and deadly potential of the weapons shipped and sold to Ukraine–from the merely defensive to those with far greater range and lethality, like the GPS-guided HIMARS missiles.
The concern has been that Biden’s incremental arms enhancements were designed to avoid provoking Putin, but the result merely stymies the Russians, not defeat them.
In a prolonged war, which this is becoming, that favors Russia, which has far more resources than Ukraine and is willing to expend as many soldiers’ lives as it can recruit.
While helping Ukraine keep its independence, as France helped the fledgling United States from 1778 to 1782, American policy has its own national interests, as France had its.
Defense Secy. Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star general, put them bluntly:
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.
The not-so-subtle policy shift since last Feb. 24 from defensive Javelin anti-tank missiles to guided missiles, Bradley fighting vehicles, and now main battle tanks began when Ukraine’s underdog fighting spirit surprisingly turned the tables on Russia’s once-vaunted, but now clearly malfunctioning military.
The Abrams decision underlines that. There is nothing defensive about these constantly upgraded tanks made by General Dynamics.
They are 67-ton battlefield monsters, with four-man crews and 1,500-horsepower turbine engines. They have advanced targeting systems, including night vision, and a two-mile target range. They can bounce 200+ miles through rough terrain, up to 45 miles an hour, while the 120-millimeter cannon stays steadily on a target.
One problem that worried Pentagon generals about supplying Ukraine with complex Abrams is they are mechanical divas requiring steady attention from highly-trained maintenance crews.
They guzzle jet fuel, less than a mile per gallon. And while the tank can go anywhere, fuel trucks can’t. Fuel supply was a major reason the initial Russian thrust failed crossing Ukraine’s vast landscape in harsh conditions.
The generals argued the less-complex German Leopard 2 was a better immediate match for now. And they’re already in Europe. But the commander in chief wanted the appearance of immediate support.
Meanwhile, some whining has emerged about supporting Ukraine from people with tunnel vision and clearly no relatives in the active U.S. military. ‘You know, Ukraine is corrupt.’ As if the U.S. isn’t. Think of the $300 million COVID fraud, for instance, or Solyndra.
Remember Barack Obama, of Chicago’s Democrat political machine, lecturing Afghanistan’s president on the need to root out corruption. Obama kept a straight face. I didn’t.
And don’t get me started now on the international, financial tentacles of Hunter and James Biden.