LEON HADAR
AS American President Joe Biden started mobilising international support in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the consensus in Washington and in other world capitals was that the main objective of the US and its allies was to defend Ukraine and its beleaguered democratic government against the aggression committed by its powerful Russian neighbour.
The hope was that employing a mix of economic pressure on the Russians, making it difficult for them to use their oil-export revenues to fund their military, and providing the Ukrainians with arms to defend themselves, would put pressure on Moscow to consider ending its aggression. That could lead to some sort of a deal between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to end the war.
In fact, early on in the war the Biden administration was operating under the assumption that it was only a question of time before the Russians would invade Kiev and even offered to help President Zelensky to flee his besieged capital. To which the Ukrainian leader famously replied that what he needed was “ammunition, not a ride” out of Kiev
But while Americans were insisting that they were trying to ensure that the invasion would prove to be economically and militarily costly for the Russians, very few observers in Washington believed that Ukraine could actually “win” the war against Russia.
US officials were emphasising that they didn’t want to provoke Russia and that they were providing Ukraine mostly with defensive weapons. President Biden made it clear that he wanted to avoid a direct military confrontation between the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Russia, which, as he warned, could lead to a World War III.
Hence the Biden administration made it clear that it would not deploy US or NATO troops into Ukraine and would avoid imposing a no-fly zone over the country, a move that could ignite direct fighting with the Russians.
That was then and this is now: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kind of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” stated US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday while addressing NATO members in Germany after a trip he made to Kiev.
There he pledged to bolster Ukraine’s resistance to Russia, by continuing to deliver to it billions of dollars of increasingly heavy weaponry American tanks, drones and radar, as part of the US$3.4 billion in defence support provided by the US so far. Or, to put it in simpler terms, the American goal now is to help Ukraine win the war and defeat Russia. “Russia is failing; Ukraine is succeeding,” declared Secretary of State Anthony Blinken after meeting with President Zelensky.
Projecting its growing confidence in the Ukrainian president, the US has announced the return of staff to its embassy in Kiev and the appointment of a new American ambassador to Ukraine.
This is all a big deal on many levels and recalls a time at the height of the Cold War during the 1980s when the US provided direct diplomatic and military support to the Muslim guerrillas in Afghanistan who were fighting the Russian invaders. That confrontation, thanks to American assistance, ended up with a major Russian military defeat that in many ways marked the beginning of the fall of the Soviet empire.
There are several reasons for the decision by the Biden administration to transform its strategy in Ukraine and to embrace a policy that is expected to prolong the war and perhaps risk a military confrontation with Russia.
First, for over two months and with thousands of civilian deaths, the world, including Americans, watched the Ukrainians defend their homeland and defy early predictions by military experts by bravely countering the Russian blockade and holding on to their capital. Kiev didn’t fall and Americans seemed to have fallen in love with Ukraine and its charismatic president.
This big change in public opinion, with many Americans flying the Ukrainian blue-and-yellow flag from their homes and telling pollsters that they were ready to welcome hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees into the country, has had a major political effect.
The Biden administration and Congress have come under enormous pressure to embrace a more aggressive approach vis-à-vis President Putin who is now being compared to bloody dictators from the past like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin.
In that context, and against the backdrop of the images of death and destruction in Ukraine perpetrated by the Russian military, that President Biden called President Putin a “war criminal”, accused him of committing genocide, and referred to him as a “butcher”, “pure thug” and a “murderous dictator”, should be seen as a reflection of public sentiments.
At the same time, the reference by President Biden to Putin during his recent visit to Warsaw, Poland, suggesting that “for God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power”, was an indication that while US officials continued to insist that they didn’t seek a “regime change” in Moscow, the Biden administration has no qualms about goading the Russian president and even challenging his hold to power. That was a kind of provocation that no US president made in dealing with Soviet leaders during the Cold War.
But the main cause for the change in the American approach is clear: It may be too early to conclude that the Russians are losing the war in Ukraine. But it’s evident that contrary to their earlier expectation that they would win it and take over Kiev in a few days, the Russians have failed to achieve their goals and have paid dearly for what is now seen as a colossal strategic mistake, with the sanctions imposed on them squeezing the economy that is expected to contract by at least 10 per cent by the end of the year.
According to most Western estimates, thousands of Russians have been killed, far more than the number of American troops that had been lost during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars; thousands of Russian armoured vehicles have been destroyed, and many jets, fighters and helicopters were downed by Ukrainian forces.
Indeed, one of the big surprises of the war has been the success of Ukraine’s military forces in the face of the Russian attack, thanks to the will of the Ukrainian people to defend their country and the military assistance and training they received from the Americans. That has raised the hopes that perhaps Ukraine would be able to defeat Russia.
That at least is the impression that President Zelensky wants to make as he puts pressure on the Americans and other NATO members to provide his country with more advanced weapons that would allow its military to prevent Russia from achieving its current objective of invading eastern Ukraine and perhaps to drive all the Russian forces out of Ukrainian territory.
No one in Washington is confident that that is going to happen and some expect the Russians to eventually achieve their goals in eastern Ukraine. Secretary Blinken admitted on Monday that “we don’t know how the rest of the war will unfold” but added that “we do know that a sovereign independent Ukraine will be around a lot longer than Vladimir Putin is on the scene".
While the Biden administration recognises that the goal of defeating Russia may not be realistic, it has concluded that bleeding Russia on the military, economic and diplomatic fronts in what is expected to be a long war would demonstrate to President Putin that he needs to abandon his dreams of re-establishing a Russian empire and that a unified Western alliance will do everything in its power, short of direct military confrontation, to ensure that he stops threatening the neighbours.
The defeat of Putin's political ally, Marine Le Pen, in the French presidential election and the prospect of Finland and perhaps Sweden joining NATO, have added to the sense in Washington that the West is on a roll and Russia is playing defence.
But after creating so much expectation at home and abroad that President Putin will turn out to be a loser in his big bet in Ukraine, Russian military victories could come as a disappointment, if not a shock, to many Americans and turn President Biden into a political loser.