Bar the thinnest of odds, Biden’s missile gambit will not have the decisive impact many may hope for
Robert Clark 18 November 2024
Late yesterday afternoon in Washington, Joe Biden decided to abandon almost three years of risk-adverse American policy in Ukraine, by finally gifting Kyiv permission to launch long-range US-supplied missiles to strike targets inside Russia.
The relief in Ukraine is palpable – having long-courted the US to allow such a policy the talk is now just how quickly this newly lifted restriction can achieve some sort of tactical breakthrough across the various stagnant fronts. The reality however is far more depressing. Bar the thinnest of odds, this change will not achieve the decisive effect that many are now jubilantly claiming will occur.
Whilst President Zelensky is quite right to remain resolute that Ukraine will decide when Ukraine enters negotiations, President-elect Trump and his newly appointed team are already busy at work communicating their desires for a peace settlement to be agreed upon by both parties as early as next spring.
Ukraine have six weeks until the new administration in Washington begins to significantly ramp up these talks, and the diplomatic pressures that they will entail. Trump knows that he will have to demonstrate to the American people who voted for him that he meant what he said on several key policy decisions. Bringing Ukraine and Russia to Trump’s heel will be a quick domestic political win, no matter how damaging this may be for Ukraine.
Like all of Trump’s decisions, one must view these from a US political domestic mind, and not a European. US financial support to Ukraine has grown steadily unpopular amongst ordinary Americans, as the war in Ukraine is increasingly portrayed as an extension of the political mainstream’s – and the Democrat’s in particular – so-called ‘forever wars’, which many claim do nothing to further America’s interests.
This spring’s Congressional budget deadlock demonstrated this wider American distrust that this war will not result in dragging in the US more overtly, and whilst many Americans – especially across the Republican heartlands of the southern border and swing states – view aid to Ukraine unfairly whilst they are grappling with an ever-increasing immigration crisis costing billions and inflaming security worries along the southern border.
Six weeks is simply not enough time to reverse any of Russia’s recent tactical advances across the remaining key eastern battlefields, without a major uptick in manpower, artillery, armoured support, and air defences. Lifting the ban on long-range US missiles into Russia could have had a significant effect damaging Russian supply lines and logistics columns, bringing Putin’s war machine to Ukraine, but this is unfortunately too little, far too late.
This needed to happen years ago, when it really could have made a game-changing difference to the outcome of the war, not six weeks before Biden bows out in yet another foreign policy disaster on his watch.
Time and time again, Biden and his team, including Harris, Anthony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, have repeatedly done the bare minimum on Ukraine, too hesitant and weak in the face of Putin’s repeated bluffs of escalation against the west, often only reluctantly siding with Europe long after key decisions were made in London, including sending western anti-tank missiles and main battle tanks.
The return of Trump has caused much speculation concerning American foreign policy. Far from a perceived more aggressive and unpredictable agenda, Trump is merely advancing the now-decade long isolationist approach Washington has gradually employed.
Initiated under Barack Obama – with Biden as, you guessed it, Vice President – the 44th President famously went back against his own now infamous ‘red-line’ on Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons on his own people back as 2012, sending a clear message to adversaries around the world that America had lost its bite.
Biden has simply continued this trend, evidenced by his catastrophic and shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Trump is now continuing this trend, in an attempt to achieve peace through strength.
There is merit in this approach, the ability to deter an adversary from fighting due to your military power and strength is absolutely in a nation’s interests – wars are the most costly and destructive activity for any state to engage in.
But Ukraine is not a case in this point. This is a war already approaching three quarters the length of the Great War. US-led western deterrence went out the window in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, and has suffered irreparable damage since Kabul in August 2021.
The next six weeks will likely see an increase in Ukrainian attacks against Russian airfields, storage depots, and military bases inside Russia, which will have some effect damaging Russian supply lines and morale. But this will not result in the meaningful decisive breakthrough that Ukraine needs in order to maintain territorial sovereignty into next year.
Biden could have chosen to enact this policy months – years – ago, but chose not to based on a deep miscalculation that it would only embolden Putin. Putin has been emboldened for a decade, and feverishly so under Biden’s watch since 2021.
Whilst there are merits to the national security people surrounding Trump – particularly on the need to invest in the defence manufacturing base, and rearm the US Navy for the Pacific – there is a key facet that they have gravely misunderstood. They argue that supporting Ukraine does little to advance American interests. But what is bad for Ukraine, threatens Europe. And what threatens Europe, has historically dragged in America for over 100 years.
Robert Clark is a Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, a security and strategy think-tank based in Washington, DC
Comment from :
richard millbank
We all want the war to stop. Anyone who’s been in conflict would wish that to happen.
But asking the Ukrainians to cede territory to Russia in a settlement agreement is absurd. The war has been fought mostly in their country, it has borne the brunt of the destruction, and any kind of outcome which Russia perceives to have ‘won’ will encourage aggression in others.
This is a ‘make or break’ decision for world peace across the next generation.
Jan Kras
First and foremost, Europe is to blame here. NordStream, cowing to Putin. And not investing in defence. The US has kept Ukraine in the game and has helped immensely. Yes, Biden’s administration of enough to survive, not enough to win made no sense. But I think Trump will not want to look like the loser Biden has been. He wants peace, but Ukraine cannot be streamrolled by Russia to get it. Ukraine cannot win the war now for the simple reason it lacks the manpower. More and better weapons will keep them in the fight and stop territory loss, with some possible gains. But as the author says, too little too late to win.
Richard Young
We (NATO) are scared of Putin & the reality of confrontation. This has allowed Putin to continue with his satanic assault on Ukraine with impunity.
Only one man will win or stop this madness. Roll on January 2025.
Charlie Hutchinson
The value in the long range missiles is not the damage they can do to airfields and depots, but the disruption they will cause to Russia’s wider air defence strategy. The Russians will now be required to pull air defence back from Ukraine if they want to defend places like Rostov and Voronezh. The knock-on effects from that on the front line (F16s, glide bombs, ISTAR etc) are likely greater than the physical damage the missiles themselves are capable of, they’re just harder to measure and attribute.
Well Then
Europe has not stepped up; they antagonised the issue in the first place by removing or threatening to remove parts of the long agreed “buffer zone” between NATO and Russia.
Reply from Sven Daman.
Read up a bit of the topic before looking silly writing this comical drivel here. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 when Ukraine was not planning to join NATO, when NATO was unpopular among Ukrainians and when Ukrainian constitution stipulated the country remained neutral.
Also, there was never a buffer, Russia has always bordered NATO in Alaska, USSR bordered Turkey. But now Finland asked to join the NATO bringing the border much closer to St.Petersburg and Moscow than Ukraine. Did this worry Putin? Not at all, he, in fact, removed his troops from Karelia (bordering Finland) to deploy them in Ukraine.
lg lgm
Russia is so worthless that starting a war in Ukraine seemed a golden opportunity for a quick win over the west simply because the US and European political system has decayed to the point of useless. From my own experiences travelling between Moscow and Kyiv I knew that Ukraine had a sort of fairyland mysticism in Moscow. Getting a travel permit in Moscow to go to Kyiv was almost impossible for Russians. When I told people that I had been given a permit the day after I asked for it they were amazed. When I returned to Russia all sorts of people were asking me what Ukraine was like! I was then back in Russia so I said very little for my own good but the enquiries did not stop! All in all, a never to forget strange experience.
Seamus O’Leary
Only one way to end this conflict long term.
The West to get serious about sanctions. Crush the economies of Russia and its proxies. Their oppressed peoples will then take matters into their own hands starting with the Kremlin tyrant.
Primary and secondary sanctions to be applied more firmly. Bring India and China to heel for circumventing sanctions.
Wim Kotze
Things look better for Ukraine and the end of the war than it did two months ago. Trump’s election and Biden stepping it up are both good developments, though it would have been better if the conditions weren’t as strict – Ukraine can only use the weapons in Kursk.
But any advantage Ukraine can get will help in negotiations.
European countries are getting weary of supporting Ukraine, and Ukraine itself cannot continue loosing men. Unless there is a plan for the West to engage directly with Russia and teach them a lesson, what we are seeing if there are no plans to make peace, is a very long drawn out war, one in which Russia is slowly getting it’s way as Western and Ukrainian appetite for war wanes. Trump’s plan to draw this war to an end is a good one, ultimately, for Ukraine.
It will mean a bitter pill to swallow, ceding something to Putin. This is not ideal, but if the alternative is a war dragging on and Ukraine being worn down further with no real actual support, it is the better alternative.
Ben Wallace; former UK Def Sec, on Scholz’s call to putler :
“Putin is laughing at Scholz”, says Ben Wallace.
Olaf Scholz made the West look weak and “emboldened” Russia by speaking with Vladimir Putin, Ben Wallace has said.
The former defence secretary said “Putin is laughing” at Scholz, who he said had been “manipulated” by the Russian president to “exactly where he wants him”.
“No Taurus but huge amounts of humiliation. I think Scholz is probably best suited to chairing a sub committee of a local council rather than running a government,” Mr Wallace said.”
In my judgment, Ukraine’s situation is very serious, bordering on critical. They know that they will shortly be asked/coerced into ceding land to putler and Zel can’t do that even if he wants to. The constitution forbids it.
This could trigger an internal crisis within Ukraine. Just what the rat nazi wants.