{"id":155338,"date":"2024-06-06T17:50:08","date_gmt":"2024-06-07T01:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=155338"},"modified":"2024-06-07T15:54:14","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T23:54:14","slug":"new-cold-wars-chinas-rise-russias-invasion-and-americas-struggle-to-defend-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=155338","title":{"rendered":"New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Sanger writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\nIt was classic Biden: He inserted himself into a complex dispute half a world away, convinced that his long experience in diplomacy and personal touch could make a difference. Like a hostage negotiator, Biden was trying to build a rapport with Yanukovich even as he tried to talk him down, to convince him to take a deal that the European Union \u2014 along with the Russians \u2014 had brokered to guarantee elections by the end of 2014 and end the crisis. Under that plan, Yanukovich would have stayed in power in the interim..<\/p>\n

For President Obama, the urgent question was how to respond to Russia\u2019s move into Crimea. It was a clear violation of Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty. Biden and Victoria \u201cToria\u201d Nuland, the Russia hawk who was serving as Obama\u2019s assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, were pressing him to act. Biden himself was eager to make Moscow \u201c pay in blood and money,\u201d as my colleagues Glenn Thrush and Ken Vogel later reported.
\n Obama resisted the effort. Don\u2019t get me into a war with Russia, he warned his aides repeatedly. That, first and foremost, was his goal. Such a war would not only be a new conflict with potentially unimaginable consequences for the United States \u2014 it\u2019s a different calculus taking on a nuclear – armed state \u2014 it would, Obama believed, believed, become a fundamentally losing battle. Obama told his aides that Russia would always care more about the Ukrainians than Americans would. Intervention, in Obama\u2019s view, would have been a violation of the guiding principle of foreign policy that he once boiled down for reporters on Air Force One into one pithy phrase: \u201cDon\u2019t do stupid shit.\u201d
\n The fate of Crimea, Obama determined, was important but hardly a core U.S. security interest. In public, he sought to downplay both the geopolitical significance and the impact that U.S. involvement would have. \u201c The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non – NATO country, is going to be vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,\u201d he later said.<\/p>\n

In Belgium, less than a week after the annexation, Obama had already made up his mind. \u201c This is not another Cold War that we\u2019re entering into,\u201d he said. \u201cUnlike the Soviet Union, Russia leads no bloc of nations, no global ideology.\u201d<\/p>\n

…IN THE END, Washington\u2019s response to the Russian incursion into Crimea was typically tepid. Obama spun out a handful of executive orders sanctioning individuals and organizations for their roles in Ukrainian corruption or the Russian annexation. The U.S. military conducted exercises with European allies and shored up its presence on the continent. There was nothing that would ruin Putin\u2019s day.<\/p>\n

Mild as the American moves seemed, the Europeans did even less. What they were mostly interested in, they were quick to emphasize, was the opportunity to stabilize the situation and allow cooler heads to prevail…<\/p>\n

For much of his political career, Joe Biden had played the role of the hard – liner when it came to Russia. He had pushed for NATO expansion, despite Putin\u2019s protests. So it wasn\u2019t a surprise when he sided with the relatively small group of Obama aides seeking a harder line and real weapons for the Ukrainians. At the same time, he was careful not to be caught publicly disagreeing with Obama, recalled Toria Nuland.<\/p>\n

Biden used his weekly lunches with Obama to press for the kind of lethal aid that might make a difference in the war for the Donbas. \u201cBiden was the pit bull for defensive weapons,\u201d Nuland told me. \u201cHe especially wanted Javelins sent,\u201d she said, referring to the powerful American anti – tank missiles that Obama declined to ship, for fear they would be provocative…<\/p>\n

Part of this drive stemmed from the deep ties Biden had built with people in the region, stretching back decades. It was why he led the American support for anticorruption reforms in Ukraine \u2014 including his support, now infamous, in accordance with established U.S. policy at the time, for firing the corrupt chief Ukrainian prosecutor.
\n What tainted Biden\u2019s initiative were the activities of his troubled younger son, Hunter Biden, a lawyer and lobbyist with a long record of addiction problems and poor judgment. Hunter appeared to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars \u2014 starting in 2014 \u2014 to sit on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma that was also under investigation for corruption. But when Obama aides broached the potential conflict of interest with Biden during their first presidential campaign, he lit into them \u2014 the blind spot Biden has often had when issues touch his family \u2014 and told them to back off. Biden maintained that his son was an independent adult and that there was no crossover between their work.
\n Later, Biden\u2019s aides would cite his early work in Ukraine to make the case that he was always a Russia hawk \u2014 and that his support for Kyiv was the product of years of scar tissue as he tried to aid a country that often undercut its own interests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David Sanger writes: It was classic Biden: He inserted himself into a complex dispute half a world away, convinced that his long experience in diplomacy and personal touch could make a difference. Like a hostage negotiator, Biden was trying to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4708],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-155338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t