President Biden Should Stop Holding Back and Go All In for Victory in Ukraine

 

The media likes narratives that split issues neatly into two opposing positions, and often Republican against Democrat.

 

There’s one narrative that has been repeated so often it has become conventional wisdom. It holds that President Biden and Democrats in Congress have been 100% committed to opposing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but Republican support is softening.

 

That misleading narrative was briefly scrambled when the Congressional Progressive Caucus sent a horribly naïve letter calling for President Biden to engage in direct diplomacy with Russia.

 

Clearly there are factions on both sides of the aisle hesitant about backing a Ukrainian victory. There is also confusion about who in U.S. politics is most behind Ukraine winning the war.

 

Let’s be clear, the most fervent supporters of victory for Ukraine are Republicans.

 

Meanwhile, the Biden administration gets credit for being all in for Ukraine, when in fact it is more accurate to say that it is at best three-quarters of the way in.

 

And, it has been dragged this far by events, public opinion, and some of our bolder European allies.

 

Speculation about future Republican support for Ukraine is often framed in terms of Biden’s chances to get the aid he might want, but no one asks why President Biden let $2.2 billion worth of authority passed by Congress to draw down existing weapons for Ukraine expire on September 30^th unused.

 

I have been pleased for the most part with President Biden’s rhetorical defense of Ukraine’s right to self-defense. But, I have been puzzled by some of the delays in sending crucial military aid.

 

I see signs that the Biden administration is afraid of what will happen if Ukraine is helped to push Russia back into its own borders.

 

It is understandable to be concerned about the risks when dealing with a nuclear-armed aggressor.

 

But, Putin has backed away from his nuclear saber rattling in the face of Western resolve. And, there are even greater risks in not stopping Russia’s aggression now.

 

In fact, in my view, we got where we are now because we acted too timidly in the past. Repeating that mistake now will only invite more aggression in the future.

In early February of 2021, shortly after President Biden took office, I gave a speech wondering whether President Biden’s tough-on-Russia rhetoric would be matched by his administration’s actions.

 

I reminded the Senate that 12 years earlier, in the early days of the Obama-Biden administration, then-Vice President Biden went to Munich to deliver a speech calling for the United States to hit the “reset button” with Russia.

 

Two years prior to Biden’s speech, at the same annual conference, Vladimir Putin had sharply criticized the United States and suggested we were a threat to world peace.

 

Moreover, just six months prior to calling for a “reset”, Russia had invaded and occupied a significant portion of the Republic of Georgia, which it still occupies to this day.

 

Calling on the United States to “hit the reset button”, as Secretary of State Clinton later symbolically did with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, strongly suggested that the breakdown in relations with Russia was somehow our fault.

 

President Reagan’s ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, famously identified a tendency among some of her fellow Democrats to “blame America first.”

 

I put the shameful Obama-Biden Russia reset policy squarely in that tradition.

 

Relations with Russia became bad because Putin saw the United States as an obstacle to his imperial aspirations. That is not our fault.

 

I’m concerned that some corners of the Biden administration have not fully dispensed with the naivety behind the so-called Russia reset.

 

Let’s recall just how mistaken the Obama-Biden Russia policy was.

 

Many people remember the arrest of Anna Chapman and nine other deep cover Russian spies living as normal Americans.

 

The FBI had been monitoring this spy network until agents saw signs that Chapman suspected the jig was up.

 

The FBI needed to arrest the whole network before she had a chance to warn them and they all fled the country.

 

However, it just so happened that Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president (at least in name) was in town. Medvedev was meeting with President Obama about all the areas of cooperation between the U.S. and Russia made possible by the reset, plus a photo op eating hamburgers together.

 

To not upset this chummy meeting, the arrests of the Russian spies were postponed until Medvedev was on a plane back to Moscow.

 

Remember, in order to get around term limits, Vladimir Putin drafted his loyalist, Medvedev, to be the puppet president until Putin could run for president again. This was a transparent shell game. But, there was naïve hopeful talk that Medvedev was a reformer who might steer Russia in a more democratic, pro-Western direction.

 

Anyone following Medvedev’s recent rhetoric about Ukraine knows that’s far from true. He remains totally loyal to Putin, and has been serving as his rhetorical attack dog. When Russia invaded and occupied parts of Ukraine in 2014, the Obama administration had angry words for Putin.

 

The reset was on the rocks.

 

But, the practical response of the Obama administration was to deny Ukraine defensive weapons, sending only non-lethal aid.

 

President Obama urged Ukraine not to fight to avoid escalation and to settle the matter diplomatically.

 

Russia has a history of using negotiations to create frozen conflicts.

 

Russia will snatch a piece of land, then demand a cease-fire and negotiations, allowing it to keep the ill-gotten gains indefinitely.

 

Obviously, maintaining the status quo with Russia occupying parts of Ukraine did not result in a lasting peace. It just led Putin to think he could get away with it again.

 

Perhaps he would have if he hadn’t gone big.

 

Having succeeded in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, Putin figured he might as well go big and grab the whole country.

 

It hasn’t worked out for him as he hoped, but he hasn’t given up on his initial goals either, even now.

 

Those who had put hope in resetting relations with Russia have been mugged by reality.

 

But, behind the current tough talk, I worry that some in the Biden administration, maybe President Biden himself, still cling to a hope that we can reach an understanding with Putin.

 

Like Jeane Kirkpatrick, who remained a Democrat throughout her service in the Reagan administration, there are many Democrats today who have a clear-eyed view of Russia, including many colleagues in this body.

 

I just wish President Biden would listen to them rather than those in his administration who let concerns about antagonizing Putin keep us from doing everything we can to save Ukrainian lives.

 

The administration has eventually relented and given Ukraine many weapons systems it had repeatedly said “no” to. But, there are still weapons we could transfer to Ukraine today that would bring the end of the war closer and save lives, yet the administration is refusing because of fear of “escalation.”

 

We have seen that our HIMARS system has allowed the Ukrainian military to destroy ammunition depots and supply lines, making it possible for the Ukrainians to liberate significant territory. We have seen the videos of Ukrainian soldiers greeted with tears of joy by liberated civilians who have endured brutal Russian occupation.

 

However, we did not transfer the HIMARS until June, months into the war. And, we denied the Ukrainians longer-range missiles for the HIMARS. There are reports that we even modified the systems before delivery to make sure they could not shoot longer-range missiles. This is apparently based on a misguided concern about threatening Russian territory.

 

Recently, the Biden administration has announced it will send Ukraine the ground-launched small-diameter bomb, which is double the range of the current HIMARS rockets, but which still fall far short of the range of the Army Tactical Missile System that Ukraine has been asking for.

 

Despite its success in retaking some of its own territory, Russia cannot seriously claim to be concerned about a Ukrainian invasion. Ukraine is the one that is being brutally invaded and occupied by Russia. And, Ukraine has every right under international law to target Russian bases from which Russia is launching missiles at electrical plants and apartment buildings.

 

Moreover, as the Lithuanian Prime Minister pointed out on her most recent visit to the United States, Ukraine needs these longer-range missiles to attack Russian positions inside Ukraine itself.

 

The most clear-eyed leadership about the war is coming from those who know Russia the best, like the leaders of our Baltic allies.

 

When Americans see Iranian-made drones and Russian cruise missiles crashing into apartment buildings, killing old women and young children, our hearts break.

 

But, knowing that many of these attacks are being launched from Russian-occupied Crimea, within range of the missiles we have been denying to Ukraine, makes the death and destruction even more heartbreaking.

 

The more advanced weapons Ukraine can obtain quickly, the faster the war will end. The U.S. and many of our allies have now announced delivery of tanks to Ukraine, something previously off the table. But, it isn’t clear if this decision was taken in time for the tanks to arrive in sufficient quantity to play a role in a spring counter-offensive, or to help Ukraine defend against Russia’s renewed offensive efforts, which are underway now.

 

We should not be afraid of Ukraine winning.

 

President Macron of France has expressed concern about humiliating Putin.

 

It is true that a defeated Putin would be dangerous, but a victorious Putin would surely be even more dangerous.

 

Precisely because Russia has long been dangerous, we have built up military stockpiles in case we need to defend our allies in Europe from a possible attack by Russia.

 

Some of those stockpiles are now being used very effectively to degrade the Russian military and the threat it poses.

 

This is being done by the Ukrainian military without a single American soldier in battle.

 

Some people have expressed concerns that we could give too much military aid, reducing what we need in case we have to fight a war.

 

Obviously, we need to ensure our own potential defense needs are taken care of.

 

I have been following closely what we have left and what we have given. Our military stockpiles are not public, but I can say that do not see any cause for alarm.

 

Keep in mind that the level of stocks our military has determined we need is based on possibly having to fight the Russian military, but the Russian military as it existed before the full scale invasion on February 24^th.

 

Since the Ukrainians have significantly diminished the Russian military, the threat to the United States is greatly reduced.

 

So, our requirements for ammunition and equipment are also now also lower.

 

The Russian war against Ukraine has also shaken us from our peacetime complacency about the state of our defense industrial base.

 

Efforts are now underway to rejuvenate our ability to replenish our stockpiles of arms and ammunition. This will help not only with our efforts to aid Ukraine, but will greatly improve U.S. readiness to deal with potential threats in the near future, such as from China.

 

There are also understandable concerns about the cost to the American taxpayers of replacing the equipment given to Ukraine.

 

Aside from the fact that some of this would be replaced with upgraded versions soon anyway, the cost-benefit of a Ukrainian soldier destroying a Russian tank with one of our Javelins is enormous.

 

The Russian military is being destroyed for pennies on the dollar and zero cost in American blood.

 

Then, just think of what the cost in American blood and treasure would be if Russia did attack one of our NATO allies.

 

And make no mistake; Russia’s imperial ambitions do not stop with part, or even all of Ukraine.

 

Estonia’s Prime Minister often points out “If Putin wins, or if he even has the view that he has won this war, his appetite will only grow.”

 

That’s exactly what happened after Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014.

 

Putin’s background is in the overlapping world of the KGB and Russian organized crime.

 

In that world, only strength is respected and weakness invites aggression.

Let’s not repeat past mistakes.

 

Preventing future Russian aggression will greatly enhance American security and avoid major costs down the road.

 

That makes it in America’s national interest to support a decisive Ukrainian victory as soon as possible.