Finally, after almost three years of Russia pummelling Ukrainian cities with every manner of bomb and missile, Joe Biden has magnanimously allowed the Ukraine to hit Russian targets with long-range ATACMS rockets.
The question every opponent of Russian fascism is asking is: “What took you so long?” Yet this isn’t what Trump’s people, including his son Donald Jr., are saying.
“The Military Industrial Complex seems to want to make sure they get World War 3 going before my father has a chance to create peace and save lives,” tweeted Don Junior, repeating the Kremlin line almost verbatim.
That war is already under way, Don, and it’s no use pretending it isn’t. And it’s Putin’s Russia, not “the Military Industrial Complex” that has started it.
According to David Sacks, a major donor to the Trump campaign, Biden’s decision violates the sacred tenets of American democracy: “President Trump won a clear mandate to end the war in Ukraine. So what does Biden do in his final two months in office? Massively escalate it.”
I’d suggest Mr Sacks brush up on constitutional law. Then he’d know what the words he used, “in office”, actually mean. To save him time, I’m on hand to help out.
The US Constitution doesn’t provide for an interregnum, with no president at the helm. Joe Biden may be a lame duck president, but a president nonetheless. He remains in office until 20 January, and he enjoys all the powers the office confers.
As for Trump’s “clear mandate”, I’m not aware that ending the war was a key part of his campaign. Most of the people who voted for him did so in the realistic hope that the economy would become more robust and the border more secure.
That’s what Trump campaigned on, and he outlined some of the ways, most of them sound, in which he’d act on his promises. He did make some noises about stopping the war in an hour, a day or a week, can’t remember which. But, a few noncommittal hints apart, he never said how he planned to do that, nor what kind of end he found desirable.
His voters didn’t give two flying rockets about the Ukraine, and I’m not sure they can tell it apart from the UK. All in all, Trump did win a clear mandate, but not to let Russia pound the Ukraine with impunity.
Nor did Biden “massively escalate” the war. He only did something he should have done almost three years ago: remove some of the shackles from a country defending Europe from fascism on the march. If he did so to make it harder for Trump to force the Ukraine’s surrender, so much the better.
Until now, the US has pursued a palliative approach to supporting the Ukraine. Every bit of military materiel the US supplied was gauged against the potential risk of escalation, all the way to a nuclear holocaust.
Somehow, it was only the Ukraine that was deemed capable of escalation. Russia’s carpet bombing of residential areas, targeting the energy infrastructure in the hope of Ukrainians freezing to death, large-scale murder, rape and looting of civilians – indeed her very unprovoked predatory assault on the Ukraine – didn’t constitute escalation. The victims fighting back did.
Now the Russians have pushed escalation even further by using foreign troops. It’s good to see that Putin enjoys such an intimate relationship with Kim. Tell me who your friends are, and I’ll tell you who you are, goes a Spanish proverb. That, decided Biden, was the last straw.
ATACMS missiles have a range of 186 miles, which makes them long-range only in a manner of speaking. They are far from being doomsday weapons capable of hitting the Kremlin.
They may help the Ukrainians to strike at the airfields and missile sites from which the Russians hurl death at the victims of their aggression. If that is escalation, I say bring it on.
That Biden is motivated by political rather than humanitarian considerations is fairly obvious. If he felt the urge to save Ukrainian lives, he would have removed his injunction earlier. But what motivates Trump and his people, all of whom are in favour of ending the war on Putin’s terms?
I singled out a few names two days ago (http://www.alexanderboot.com/birds-of-a-feather-2/), but, from Trump down, such sentiments are unanimous. His administration will force the Ukraine to sue for peace on pain of losing US supplies altogether.
Now, I can’t judge how decisive the use of ATACMS missiles will be. Such judgements are best left to experts. In my layman view, the hope there isn’t that the Ukraine will win the war but that she’ll be able to negotiate better peace terms.
But I can absolutely guarantee that Putin and his gang will regard any pro-Russian peace treaty, along the lines of what Trump may have in mind, as just a breather.
Putin may accept a chunk of Ukrainian territory in exchange for a ceasefire, but he isn’t after more land. He already has more than he knows what to do with. Putin is after restoring the Soviet empire to its past toxic grandeur, which means wiping the Ukraine off the map as a sovereign state.
The Soviet empire included three tiers: the 15 constituent Soviet republics proper, Eastern European colonies, and ‘finlandised’ neutrals, such as Austria and, well, Finland. All the countries drawn into that orbit are keenly aware of the menace they face.
That’s why Finland hastily joined NATO, something that had been out of the question for decades. That’s why Poland too supports the Ukraine with all she has got, while fortifying her own eastern border and rapidly beefing up her armed forces. The Finns and the Poles know what they are dealing with – they’ve had plenty of opportunity to learn.
The question is, When will the West learn? That sand in which some Western leaders hide their heads, ostrich-like, may soon get red hot. And yes, the way to prevent that is to negotiate with Putin – but from a position of strength.
The Ukraine is unlikely to occupy that position on her own, or even with Western aid. But if ATACMS missiles help her reach approximate parity, not only she but all of us will be better off. These rockets are a factor of de-escalation, but I don’t expect Trump and his people to understand this.