If the Biden Administration keeps capitulating to Zelensky, or at least does nothing to stop the Cuban-like crisis that he’s plotting by enticing Poland and/or France into conventionally intervening in Ukraine and setting into motion the worst-case scenario of forcing Russia to use tactical nukes in self-defense as a last resort, then World War III can’t be ruled out.
The New York Times reported on Monday that “In private, Mr. Biden’s advisers concede that American and Ukrainian priorities are diverging. At this point, Ukraine has nothing left to lose from escalating with Russia. Mr. Biden still does: Inside the White House, the obvious concern is that President Vladimir V. Putin will roll out battlefield nuclear weapons”. Despite this outlet’s history of putting a self-interested political spin on their reporting, they might actually be telling the naked truth this time.
Ukraine had earlier defied the US’ public demands not to strike Russian oil refineries, which the US was against due to fears that the consequent oil price spike could harm Biden’s re-election prospects while Ukraine saw this as a means of pressuring Congress to approve its long-delayed aid package at the time. Ukraine then attacked at least one of Russia’s early warning systems, which prompted an unnamed administration source to tell the Washington Post that the US was concerned by this latest escalation.
It was wondered at the time here whether Ukraine had gone rogue or if it had done this with American approval, but the latest New York Times report that was cited in the introduction suggests on the surface at least that this was yet another piece of evidence in support of those two’s divergent priorities. At the same time, those two outlets’ reports might just be disinformation planted by administration officials in an attempt to mislead Russia about the US’ intentions and plead plausible deniability in those attacks.
Nevertheless, the argument can be made that the US and Ukraine’s priorities have actually been diverging for some time even before those two high-profile examples, with the most compelling proof being the US’ continued reluctance to give Ukraine everything that it demands right away. Policymakers not only miscalculated that the sanctions would crush the Russian economy before last summer’s failed counteroffensive dealt Russia a strategic defeat, but they were also rightly worried about escalation risks.
They’re still worried about them too, to be sure, but they’ve also now engaged in “mission creep” brought about by Ukraine’s increasingly nasty public pressure campaigns across the world (led to a large extent by aggressive trolls and sympathetic “experts”) and changing battlefield conditions. This observation explains why the Biden Administration has thus far kept capitulating to all of Ukraine’s demands, albeit sometime after they were first made, not ever doing so right away.
Hellbound and Down 