Biden goes off on Ukraine's president
More divisions bubble up among NATO allies as the war drags on.
I don’t know if Pres. Joe Biden went off script again or if his poke at Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky was planned in advance. But whatever, there it was. Biden, speaking at a Democratic fundraising event in Los Angeles on Friday night, claimed that Zelensky “didn’t want to hear it” when U.S. intelligence officials raised warnings of a looming Russian attack before the Feb. 24 invasion.
Biden’s boasting at Zelensky’s expense not only belittled and discredited his supposed partner in the war against Russia but also revealed more about the undercurrent of division and rivalry between the two leaders, the two countries, and among their NATO allies over the conduct of the war and the prospects for a negotiated end to it.
“I know a lot of people thought I was maybe exaggerating,” the president said, according to the AP.
Yes, they did. Well, maybe it was more prodding than exaggerating. The cold warriors inside the White House had shown no interest in a diplomatic solution to the brewing crisis which might have delayed or even prevented the invasion before it began. They still don’t.
Now, after 100 days of war with thousands of Ukrainian deaths and millions displaced and dispossessed, the same issues remain to be negotiated before the war can end.
Ukrainian officials, however, rejected Biden’s account, calling it “absurd.”
Pivoting for a longer war
Biden’s remarks come as Ukraine is on the brink of losing the battle for the eastern region of Luhansk to Russia.
The US and its allies have “pivoted to planning for a longer war in Ukraine” and are committed to continuing the supply of advanced, expensive weaponry into the war zone while Russia claims that the US is “deliberately and diligently ‘pouring fuel on the fire.”
Cold Warrior, Simon Tisdall, writing in today’s Guardian, moans about the miscalculations by the west which he says, opened the way for Russia’s invasion and that the NATO alliance remains badly divided and risks “another catastrophic failure.”
He points to NATO’s upcoming summit in Madrid this month which is being billed as its most consequential, “transformative” gathering since the cold war era.
“Expect much self-congratulation over how the 30-country alliance united to protect the ‘free world’ against Russian aggression. Yet huge question marks remain.”
Several of the allies are wavering over support for the war and over the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO and the EU. Several of them fear that such a move will lead to a further expansion of the war beyond Ukraine’s borders. Not to mention the threat of nuclear war looming over everything.
NATO is also increasingly overstretched, warns Tisdall, caught between a Russian threat in the Euro-Atlantic area and challenges in the Indo-Pacific from China.
‘Imperial appetites’
I’m also struck by a comment made by Biden’s #2 Cold Warrior (behind Blinken), Sec. of Defense Lloyd Austin Friday at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is what happens when oppressors trample the rules that protect us all. It’s what happens when big powers decide that their imperial appetites matter more than the rights of their peaceful neighbors. And it’s a preview of a possible world of chaos and turmoil that none of us would want to live in.”
I couldn’t agree more so long as Austin keeps that [s] on the end of “big powers.”
From Judee Hauer
Most people got on the bandwagon and fought rather than worked at the tables for resolution. Who IS making $$$$$$ on this? What will the little guys and mommies come home to after the guns have stopped?