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With former US intelligence agents and military chiefs acknowledging that the war is over for Ukraine, Biden finds himself in a predicament where he can be remembered as the president who made the greatest geopolitical blunder in modern US history.
Written by Ahmed Adel, Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher
An eventual refusal by US President Joe Biden to support Ukraine would “represent a significant failure” that would even surpass the Afghanistan troop withdrawal debacle,” according to John Herbst, former US Ambassador to Kiev. His comments were made to the Wall Street Journal, which reported that the “sluggish pace” of Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive could raise questions about future military aid to the Eastern European country. However, it can be argued that Biden’s decision to support Ukraine is the greatest blunder in the US’ modern geopolitical history.
The newspaper pointed out that due to Washington’s strategy of not straying from the course, Biden made himself vulnerable as he became dependent on the outcome of the conflict in Ukraine, which he falsely framed as a battle between authoritarianism and democracy. The Ukrainian military’s failed counteroffensive has crushed all hopes that the fighting will end this year, at least on Kiev’s terms.
According to US officials interviewed by the American outlet, a long and indefinite conflict creates risks, especially as a potential stalemate could test the US president’s stated strategy to provide Ukraine with military support to start negotiations, where Kiev will speak from a position of strength.
“Halting arms supplies or even accepting a partial victory for Russia would represent a significant failure in U.S. foreign policy, surpassing the scale of the Afghanistan troop withdrawal debacle,” according to Herbst.
The newspaper notes that potential Republican candidates with the best chances of being nominated by the party – former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – were the instigators of Ukraine’s declining support among the American people.
In addition, another problem faced by the US is the lack of critical weapons. This led to the delivery of cluster munitions to the Ukrainian Army. This hypocritical move demonstrated the desperation of the Ukrainian military when considering Biden made threats if Russia used cluster munitions.
The newspaper also cited an unnamed senior European official saying that Washington does not expect the Ukrainian military to capture embattled Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, Zaporozhye, and Crimea fully. This follows up from a previous report that even though Western military officials knew Ukraine did not have all the training or weapons needed to push back Russian forces, “they hoped that Ukrainian courage and resourcefulness would carry the day.”
It calls to question why the US and its allies continue to pour billions of dollars into Ukraine and maintain sanctions that are now affecting their own economies worse than Russia’s. In fact, the sanctions were promoted as a united Western action against Moscow. Instead, the sanctions policy in the international arena has only strengthened alliances between targeted countries, such as Russia, China, and Iran.
The recent sanction packages imposed on Russia, and Chinese companies for national security reasons, mean that the two powers have joined a growing club of US-designated pariah states alongside the likes of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela.
As Chatham House researcher Christopher Sabatini stressed, “It’s time for Washington to recognise that its love of sanctions may be undermining its own economic and diplomatic power worldwide,” before going on to say that changes can only be made if policymakers are willing to “consider a basic fact: Sometimes sanctions don’t work.”
Making the task of defeating Russia even more difficult for Ukraine, US and European partners have yet to agree on plans to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16 fighter jets, which the allies intend to transfer to Kiev. Throughout the war, we have heard how an array of Western-made weapons, from missiles to tanks, would be a game-changer that would swing momentum in Ukraine’s favour. All of these have failed to live up to expectations, and the training of Ukrainian F-16 pilots, who cannot enter the battlefield until next year, will end in the same way – the unnecessary loss of Ukrainian lives.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted as recently as July 23 that Russia “already failed, they’ve already lost.” In this regard, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) veteran Larry Johnson wrote on his blog on the same day that “it is alarming that America’s top diplomat is so divorced from reality.”
For his part, Earl Rasmussen, a retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel, argued that the Pentagon military leadership, unlike State Department officials, most likely understands that Ukraine cannot win the war.
With former US intelligence agents and military chiefs acknowledging that the war is over for Ukraine, Biden finds himself in a predicament where he can be remembered as the president who made the greatest geopolitical blunder in modern US history – by accelerating the decline of the US as the globe’s hegemon and deepening the ties of non-Western powers by using Ukraine as a military proxy against Russia.
you will have to end it anyway. the majority of the american tax payer does not want to finance nazis in an endless war