To mark the anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, President Biden made a surprising visit to Kyiv, where he promised continued American aid and international support. There, and in a second stop in Poland, his speeches sounded like declarations of victory.
“President Putin is confronted with something today that he didn’t think was possible a year ago,” Biden said in Warsaw. “The democracies of the world have grown stronger, not weaker. But the autocrats of the world have grown weaker, not stronger.”
Even allowing for Ukraine’s remarkable tenacity, the assertion of large geopolitical gains for the West is premature at best. The war in Ukraine is far from won, and claiming victory at halftime is a fool’s errand.
In fact, the second year is already shaping up as far more complicated than the first. Iran is expanding its drone supply to Russia and China aims to play a bigger role, with President Xi Jinping planning to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. More alarming, China might supply Russia with arms, creating a new axis of evil that could spark a world war.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is preparing to launch a new, larger offensive within weeks.
Despite these developments, Washington acts as if nothing has changed. It continues to drag its feet in helping Ukraine match Putin’s weaponry even as most of NATO has pulled its usual disappearing act.
Although the US has committed a staggering $113 billion to the war without serious auditing of where the non-military aid goes, it is still slow-walking military equipment Ukraine says it needs. The pattern is that first, the administration says no to a request, then weeks or months later says yes, and weeks or months after that, makes a delivery.
Two-year wait
The habit is reaching new levels of absurdity over Zelensky’s push for Abrams tanks. The White House agreed to the request on Jan. 25, according to The Wall Street Journal editorial page, but now says it might take up to two years for the 31 tanks to make it to the front lines.
In wartime, two years means never. Zelensky’s push for fighter jets is still in the “no” stage, so presumably, he will get those sometime after he gets the tanks.
The possibility that China will compound Russia’s offensive power should be a wake-up call to Washington. Instead, officials comfort themselves by repeating wishful talking points.
The always-unimpressive Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Adviser, declared on CNN last week that “Russia has already lost the war” and sneered at a larger China role by insisting, without evidence, that many Chinese officials already find it “difficult to deal with” Russia’s assault on Ukrainian civilians.
“They’re just trying to get through,” he said of the Chinese officials, “they’re trying to find a way in a very awkward space to not oppose Russia but to not fully support them either.”
Samantha Power, head of the US Agency for International Development, echoed Sullivan’s view of a reluctant China, saying: “What Russia is doing is bringing them into circumstances that I think fundamentally are not in their economic interests, not in their — the interests of, again, expanding their standing” in the world.
Both hailed the impact of sanctions on Russia’s economy until anchor Fareed Zakaria reminded them of estimates “that the Russian economy is actually going to do better this year than the British economy or the German economy.”
The Biden team’s happy talk strikes me as a dated, self-serving view of Chinese motives and goals. It’s as if the officials are talking about the China of 25 years ago when it was emerging as a modern power.
But what if they are totally misreading the communist regime’s agenda now? What if China is using the war and America’s involvement to make a move toward its goal of global dominance?
Count historian Niall Ferguson among those who believe the US is missing the big picture. Speaking on Dan Senor’s podcast, “Call Me Back,” Ferguson expressed fears that Chinese leaders “are on a path to war and we don’t yet realize that. We still think this is just about speeches at Davos and sending Secretary of State Blinken to Beijing.”
Balloon boy
He cited the spy balloon that crisscrossed America as a “classic Cold War strategy,” and worries Chinese President Xi Jinping has concluded a military showdown with the US is “inevitable.”
Ferguson also fears our massive military aid to Ukraine has reduced our ability to help defend Taiwan if China moves against the island.
“The military industrial complex has withered away,” he said. “It’s startling to realize how much capacity we’ve expended in Ukraine and how long it will take to replace it.”
Recall that the Pentagon early on bragged that America aimed to wear down Russia’s military capability by constantly resupplying Ukraine. Ferguson calls this a “strategic error” because Washington “failed to realize that China is the bigger beneficiary” of the policy.
“We’re not ready for prime time and all the tough talk about defending Taiwan is from an alternate reality,” he said.
Given developments, that sobering perspective makes far more sense than the nonsense coming from the White House. Biden’s notorious history of being “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” as former Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously put it, does not inspire trust.
Moreover, there remains a possibility — no, make it a probability —that the Biden family’s corrupt deals with China tie the president’s hands. His response to the spy balloon suggests he was pulling his punches.
He tried to keep the balloon secret from the public so Blinken could go to Beijing to try to reset relations. After civilians spotted the balloon, Biden let it meander across America for four more days until it was shot down.
It was an extraordinarily brazen act by China, and officials there followed the shoot-down by demanding that America apologize! Thankfully, Biden didn’t, but days later, shrugged off the incident as “not a major breach.”
Of course, he also said the fatal withdrawal from Afghanistan was a success and he had stopped inflation. And that Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation, that he never talked to his son about his foreign business and on and on.
The big guy says a lot of things that aren’t true. Why trust his assurances now about China?
Gummy dummy Gotham students
Mayor Adams, railing against illegal pot shops, provides the quote of the week.
“Children are getting high on their way to school” by eating pot-laced gummy bears, he said. “I must be old-fashioned. People don’t realize what’s happening in our country and in our city. We have to start refocusing.”
Amen to that.
You asked for it, NY
Reader Robert Feuerstein, no fan of Gov. Hochul, says New Yorkers got what they deserved by electing her:
“Crime, taxes and a poor quality of life for years to come. So get out or suck
it up.”
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Michael Goodwin