Ukraine: The frozen strategy of Joe Biden and the West, and its portents for an endless war, or possible defeat
REVISED AND EXPANDED
The war in Ukraine is already a “frozen conflict”. But what is frozen is not only the trench warfare on the front lines, but also the strategic thinking in the White House and some NATO capitals, such as Berlin.
While the Europeans are beginning to grasp what is at stake in the war, and to grapple with the possibility of a Trump presidency, the strategic thinking in the White House is frozen, controlled by an aging man frightened by Vladimir Putin’s threats of nuclear war.
Joe Biden is critizized because of his age. But the gaffes and memory glitches on television are not the core of the problem. The core of the problem is that Biden evidences the rigid thinking and inflexibility that is often though not always characteristic of men of advancing age.
Added to that is the fact that Biden was never known for the acuity of his foreign policy judgment. As former Secretary of Defense Bob Gates observed in his 2014 memoir, “I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”1
Moreover, Biden has failed to put together a strong foreign policy team.
His principal advisers are his former srtaffers, Jake Sullivan and Antony Blinken. His Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, is a member of a small coterie of national security officials and former officials who have joined together in a private consulting firm.
Austin appears to have been chosen on the basis of identity politics. While he has done an able job in executing Biden’s foreign policy, he has not shown brilliance or creativity in shaping foreign policy. There is a reason the law provides that military leaders must have left the service for seven years before they can be appointed to be Defense Secretary. Biden’s grant of a waiver in Austin’s case ignored the rationale behind that provision.
The one thing that is common to Biden’s foreign policy advisers is that they are not likely to challenge his positions.
The one person who might have demonstrated independence of judgment, Susan Rice, the former U.N. Ambassador and Assistant Secrtary of State for Africa, was shunted off to head the White House Domestic Policy Council. She resigned in 2023.
Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser, appears to have eclipsed Secretary of State Antony Blinken and others on Biden’s foreign policy team. Biden once referred to Sullivan as a “once-in-a-generation” brilliant mind.
He has Biden’s solid support, and with it has risen to be Biden’s principal foreign policy adviser.
Sullivan is brilliant, in an academic and analytical and information-processing sense. But he has never served overseas in a foreign policy role, and indeed seems to have had very little experience on the ground overseas. He lacks the kind of on-the- ground experience that a former ambassador has, and yet is sent by Biden to talk to foreign leaders instead of the Secretary of State.
Biden’s rigidity of thinking was dramatically demonstrated by his ill-considered decision in April 2021 to withdraw all Americans from Afghanistan, overruling his military advisers and then lying about the fact. By withdrawing all contractors as well as soldiers, Biden guaranteed that the Afghan Air Force could not fly, and that without the Air Force the Afghan Army could not fight. This made the fall of the regime of Ashraf Ghani, the democratically-elected President of Afghanistan, inevitable.
Biden’s and his administration’s criticisms of Ghani and the Afghan Army for being unwilling to fight were utterly shameful.
On Ukraine, Biden’s statement that NATO forces would not intervene in Ukraine if Russia invaded that country greatly undercut the deterrent force of NATO and U.S. forces.
Before and at the time of the invasion on February 24, 2024, Biden and the EU were very slow to threaten or actually impose the most serious sanctions on Russia. One can never know, but perhaps as a result, at least in part, deterrence failed.
Since the invasion, Biden has manifested extraordinary rigidity in his strategic thinking about the conduct of the war.
First, he has consistently refused and/or delayed the transfer of modern weapons systems to Ukraine, or blocked their transfer by others, from the introduction of the HIMARS artillery units to the transfer of Abrams tanks and F16 fighter aircraft.
Second, Biden has enforced a rule that no weapons transferred by the U.S. or other NATO countries may be used by Ukraine to attack targets in Russia proper or the Kerch Strait Bridge. He has thus prevented Ukraine from using these weapons as they have every right to do in exercise of the right of self-defense under international law and Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. He has, in effect, forced Ukraine to fight with one hand tied behind its back, unable to strike bases in Russia from which missiles and drones are launched against its cities and civilian infrastructure, such as the electrical system, dams, and other civilian targets including schools, hospitals, churches and other institutions protected by International Humanitarian Law.
Third, Biden, NATO, the EU, and other nations supporting Ukraine have failed to ramp up their production of weapons sand weapons systems and in particular artillery shells and other munitions to meet Ukraine’s military requirements. Moreover, it is shocking to learn that European countries are only now considering prohibitions on exports of munitions to third countries, where much of their production has been going—sold for a nice profit.
In the face of a likely drawn-out war, the U.S. and the West have failed to move to a wartime economy that might guarantee production of the weapons and other munitions that it was foreseeable would be needed by Ukraine in such a conflict.
Fourth, failing to take the constraints of peremptory norms of international law (jus cogens) into account, the U.S. and major Western allies of Ukraine proceeded on the assumption that a peace settlement (or ceasefire “freezng” the conflict) with Vladimir Putin and Russia was possible.
Such a settlement would have required what were euphemistically called ”territorial concessions”—i.e., cession to Russia of territories it had conquered by aggression and the illegal use of military force.
Such “territorial concessions”, moreover, would have involved the surrender of millions of Ukrainian citizens to occupying Russian troops which have routinely engaged in assassinations, torture, the abduction and removal to Russia of thousands of Ukrainian children, and the subjection of the population to a military force of almost unimaginable brutality.
The Russians have been guilty of an ongoing pattern of war crimes on a massive scale, crimes against humanity, and in the last analysis acts of genocide, committed by definition with genocidal intent. Russia represents absolute Evil. Its military strategy has been based on the intentional use of terror .
Fifth, Biden and the U.S. have failed to energetically press the countries of the so-called “Global South”, the fence-sitters, to join the sanctions regimes adopted by the U.S., the EU and other countries against Russia, with the goal of bringing that country’s economy down and support for the war to a halt. This generally laissez-faire approach to the imposition of sanctions by countries in the so-called Global South has been a major factor in the failure of the sanctions to achieve their intended objectives.
The overarching failure of the Biden administration has been its failure to understand the big picture and the stakes in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, and to relate specific decisions to that larger understanding.
To be sure, there have been some successes.
After telegraphing to Putin that the U.S. and NATO would not intervene militarily if Russia invaded Ukraine, and having failed to deter the invasion, the U.S. and its NATO allies and the EU did succeed in maintaining unity in their responses to Russia’s aggression and war crimes.
Unfortunately, this unity—particularly in the first year or two—seemed to be built on agreement on the least demanding position among NATO members.
The basic consensus was formed around two propositions. First, NATO countries would provide military and economic assistance to Ukraine sufficient to avoid defeat at the hands of the Russians. Second, NATO countries would not become directly involved militarily in the conflict.
The ultimate question—was the goal merely to avoid defeat, or also to secure victory over Russia?—was basically glossed over with the disingenuous formulation that NATO and EU countries would support Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.
As long as it takes for what? To avoid defeat? To achieve victory? The answer was fudged in a way that allowed both camps to repeat the mantra.
A singular achievement of the NATO countries has been the expansion of NATO to include Finland and Sweden. The Biden administration deserves great credit for helping to overcome Turkish objections to Sweden’s entry into the alliance.
A related success has been the progressive stiffening of EU sanctions against Russia. The members of the EU deserve the greatest credit for this achievement. However, the Biden administration also deserves considerable credit for its success in coordinating Russian sanctions with the EU.
Nonetheless, there have been significant and glaring failures, in addition to those outlined above.
One glaring failure has been the failure to secure the expulsion of Russia from the G-20. The very fact that officials from Western democracies continue to meet with Russian officials within the framework of the G-20 is scandalous and shameful beyond any words of description.
Putin is guilty of the international crime of aggression, while Russia is currently engaged in the systematic commission of war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide against the Ukrainian people.
Russia continues a frontal assault on international law and the U.N. Charter-based international legal order, and indeed on our entire modern civilization based on reason and law.
It is deeply shameful and a betrayal of our deepest values for representatives of the United States and other Western democracies to sit down with representatives of a regime which represents the embodiment of pure evil. The U.S. and other democracies should push vigorously for the expulsion of Russia from the G-20.
If they are unable to achieve this, they should simply withdraw from the G-20. They should absolutely shun Russia and its representatives, everywhere.
A second major failure has been the failure of Joe Biden and the Biden administration to successfully convince he American people that the outcome of the war in Ukraine is of paramount importance, that it will demand great sacrifices from the American people, and that it will determine the nature of the world their children will inherit.
Conclusion
It is not so much Biden’s frailty and increasing memory lapses that are so threatening, as it is the rigidity in his thinking, and the fact that he never had particularly good foreign policy judgment to begin with.
The rigidity in Biden’s thinking is extraordinarily consequential in terms of U.S. strategy in foreign policy in general, and in the struggle with Russia in particular.
This rigidity is all the more concerning in view of his very stubborn and prideful character.
Biden has done a great job as a domestic president, on the whole.
Compared to Donald Trump, a cunning and dangerous fascist, Biden is a paragon of reason and wise decision making. Yet fear of Trump should not deter Biden’s closest allies from insisting that he make changes in the area of foreign policy, for the good of the country.
U.S. strategy in Ukraine is not likely to change, or to change quickly enough to avoid a long, drawn-out war, or defeat, so long as Biden is president, and so long as he does not replace his current foreign policy team, or at least strengthen it with outside advisers of great stature.
James Rowles is a former Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School and professor of international law at other universities.
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See, e.g., Philip Bump, “Robert Gates Thinks Joe Biden Hasn't Stopped Being Wrong for 40 Years,” The Atlantic, January 7, 2014.
3/24
I like this article overall. After some editing for typos it needs to be sent to newspapers!