As I type up these notes, there is a great deal of chatter about whether the US will authorise Ukraine to use western–supplied missiles against targets in Russia. The immediate context is a meeting between UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and US President Joe Biden at the White House.
It feels like the decision has already been taken. This week US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Europe, including Kyiv, and his press comments during the trip appeared to be preparing the ground for an announcement of a policy shift. He pointed out that Iran's supply of missiles to Russia had changed the situation, significantly increasing Russia's offensive capability. Blinken argued that authorising Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia would merely be a response to a Russian–Iranian escalation. Their fault, not ours. I imagine the decision will be formally announced in the next weeks.
Behind his soft and measured tones, Blinken has always been more hawkish than his boss. Writing about Blinken's early years in politics, Alexander Ward says:
'What set Blinken apart [...] was his interventionist streak. During the Obama years, he was a lead proponent for U.S. military involvement in stopping the slaughter of civilians in Libya and Syria. But he also believed that "superpowers don't bluff," a statement that American rhetoric couldn't go further than what officials in Washington were really willing to do' (p.35).
Perhaps that remark about not bluffing is the key to understanding what the US will or won't decide in the coming weeks when it comes to the weapons in Ukraine.
Ponderous Biden
The counterargument is that the decision ultimately falls to Biden, whose decision–making style is ponderous. That really comes across in Ward's gripping account of US decision–making around the evacuation of troops and American citizens from Afghanistan in 2021. It was the low point in Biden's foreign policy during his term in office.
Reading Ward's account of the behind–doors discussions led me to realise it was far worse than I recall. Even while the evacuations were underway, with Taliban soldiers taking control of Afghan towns vacated by the Americans, there was a sense that the Americans were still considering their options rather than executing a carefully planned procedure.
The US did successfully evacuate 124,000 people (p.179), which was no small feat in the circumstances. But Biden didn't help the case for defending his choices. In a television interview, anchor George Stephanopoulos pressed the president on whether there had been mistakes. Biden replied, 'The idea that somehow there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens.' So the chaotic scenes at the airport, suggested Stephanopoulos, were 'baked into the decision'? Incredibly, Biden agrees that the chaos had been foreseen (pp.162–3). The president tried to salvage his position but it was too late.
This came early in his presidency. In his first major foreign policy speech he had proclaimed that 'America is back' (p.38). He told his audience that he had spoken to Vladimir Putin and made clear that the US would no longer 'roll over' in the face of Russian aggression, whether that meant interfering in elections or poisoning opponents (Alexey Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok in August 2020). Biden went on to address the challenge of China: 'We will compete from a position of strength [...] working with our allies and partners, renewing our role in international institutions, and reclaiming our credibility and moral authority, much of which has been lost [during the Trump era]' (pp.38–9).
But Afghanistan dominated that year. It was an inauspicious start on foreign policy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 almost comes as a relief, since it ensured that Afghanistan 'isn't the only thing [Biden's] administration is remembered for' (p.213).
The Russian doll
In the spring of 2021, Russia started to gather troops along the Ukraine border for 'drills'. The Biden team seemed uncertain about the calibre of Ukraine's president Volodomyr Zelenskyy (p.48) and pushed ahead with plans to organise a Biden–Putin summit.
The summit with the Russian leader took place in Geneva in June. The fact it came before Biden had met the Ukrainian leader was interpreted in Kyiv as a snub (pp.110–1). When Zelenskyy was eventually invited to Washington, the proposed timing of that meeting also upset the Ukrainians who felt everyone would be on their summer holidays. The meeting then suffered delays and once the two leaders were side by side, as Ward describes it, Biden 'couldn't have sounded less excited to be in the room' (p.192). Zelenskyy left unimpressed with Biden's scant knowledge of the situation on the ground in Ukraine and, according to Ward, 'glommed' on his disappointment (p.194).
The Republicans initially tried to portray Biden as weak on Russia. Biden had also given the go ahead to Russia's Nord Stream II pipeline, defending the decision on the basis that the pipeline's construction was almost completed anyway and obstructing it would have limited effect. Republican Senator Ted Cruz chastised Biden who, he said, was 'in bed with Putin' (p.118).
Inside this pliant Biden, like a matryoshka doll, sat another Biden keen to appear tough. As vice–president back in 2011, invoking George W. Bush's infamous remark that he had looked into Putin's eyes and seen his soul, Biden told the Russian leader bluntly: 'I looked into your eyes and I don't think you have a soul' (p.104). Putin's cold riposte was that they understood one another. As president, in March 2021, Biden tried to give another glimpse of his toughness. In a separate interview with Stephanopoulos, he agreed that Putin was 'a killer' – hardly diplomatic language. It was an effort to show he was tougher than Trump who had clumsily responded to the same question by suggesting that America kills people too.
Many of today's Republicans, mesmerised by Donald Trump, think favourably of Putin and argue that the US should end its support to Ukraine. They see Biden as being anything but 'in bed' with the Russian leader. One might say they now think he's too aggressive.
One of Biden's first actions as president was to sign the New START arms control treaty with Russia, which is now in tatters. What comes across clearly from Ward's narrative is how rigorously Biden's staffers thought through its Russia policy in the months leading up to the large–scale invasion which they expected. That doesn't mean there weren't 'tensions and disagreements' with NATO allies (pp.241–2). Nor between Biden and Zelenskyy. The latter publicly criticised the US for causing panic and crashing Ukraine's economy with its insistent warnings of an imminent invasion.
For the moment, it's tricky it is to evaluate Biden's policy on Russia. Biden has sought to avoid World War III or nuclear exchange: he has so far succeeded, but there is no end to the war in sight. In both of the main US political parties there are those who argue Biden is being weak by not giving more support to Ukraine – as well as those who think the US is risking Armageddon if it goes further. Hence the wranglings over allowing Ukraine to hit targets in Russia.
Early birds sometimes miss the worms
Ward's book comes too soon. One presumes the manuscript had been submitted before 7 October last year and that is why there is no mention of the Hamas attacks on Israel and everything that followed. The war between Hamas and Israel will account for more than a full year of a single–term presidency and the US policy on that must be integral to any appraisal of Biden's tenure. Not least because Biden has been staunchly pro–Israel throughout his career, something that Ward traces back to a meeting the thirty–year–old Biden had with Israeli prime minister Golda Meir in 1973 (pp.83–4).
The other omission is China. Biden's first major foreign policy speech had identified China as well as Russia as the defining challenges in foreign and security policy. If US foreign policy needed restoring after Trump's four years, then surely China was integral to that: trade tariffs, Covid–19 and espionage were key themes for Trump. Russia may have invaded Ukraine in 2022, but China is the major geopolitical challenge to the US in the first half of this century and one that I think Biden has handled far better than many would give him credit for.
Yet the reader comes away from Ward's book with very little insight on the conversations that have taken place between the US and China during Biden's tenure; such conversations have been ongoing, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently in Beijing where he met China's foreign minister for the fourth time. Given that Ward's book opens with a fawning account of Sullivan's abilities and acumen, it would be good to have learnt more about his work on China, not least because Ward has good sources on Sullivan. The book ends, as it began, with the National Security Adviser: this time delivering a talk on economics and globalisation (pp.297–300). Sullivan's argument is that the current order hasn't stemmed Russian and Chinese expansionism.
Xi and Biden met in San Francisco in late 2023. That was half a year after Sullivan's talk about economics and globalisation, and well after the narrative of Ward's book ends, but it shows the importance of the China relationship. Despite the undoubted frostiness in bilateral relations, I think a strong case can be made that bilateral relations are more stable today than when Biden came into office.
Things can easily change for the worse. China could invade Taiwan, or it could drastically step up its support for Russia. China's relationship with Russia is one of the reasons the current discussion about Ukraine's use of weapons matters very much. (Another is US domestic politics: especially if Trump gets re–elected in November which, I think, is a likely outcome, even if it is no longer the foregone conclusion it may have felt before Kamala Harris joined the race.)
Those who wish to see the restrictions on Ukraine's use of long–range weapons lifted often resort to an inductive logic. Putin said there would be serious consequences if NATO members supported Ukraine with lethal weapons, but did little when they were delivered. Putin said there would be serious consequences if long–range missile systems were sent to Ukraine, but did little when they were delivered. Putin said there would be serious consequences if F–16 fighter jets were sent to Ukraine, but did little when they were delivered.
All of the aforesaid is true, but it cannot be a guarantee about what will happen next time. The stronger argument, in my view, is that it is not in Russia's interest to escalate, at least not by spreading the war beyond Ukraine and Russia's borders: Moscow does not have the resources to wage a conventional war against NATO (not on its own, at least) and, unless Putin really believes NATO's unity will fall apart when confronted with direct involvement in war, it would be a foolish move to, say, bomb a storage depot in Poland.
The other standard line about what escalation might mean is that Russia will use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. Here the inductive logic is more relevant: why now, after all the other 'red lines' Putin let to fade away? Again, there is no obvious benefit to Putin or Russia in doing so.
Nothing has stopped Putin's threats. He blames NATO for everything. He said earlier today that a decision to allow Ukraine to aim at targets inside Russia would constitute the 'direct involvement' of NATO in the war. Some pooh–pooh his warnings that the US and UK would face severe consequences. As I've said, however, they usually resort to inductive reasoning that is inherently flawed. Still, I think the US should relax the restrictions and reiterate Russia's culpability. But what if this time, as a younger Antony Blinken once thought, superpowers don't bluff?
Alexander Ward, The Internationalists: The Fight to Restore American Foreign Policy After Trump (Portfolio/Penguin: London, February 2024). ISBN–978–0–593–53907–1.
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