U.S. Sen. David Vance (R-OH) usefully called attention, in a tweet yesterday, to Politico’s May 31 article on President Biden’s slipping into a war with Russia. Its account of Biden’s decision to allow American weapons to be used by Kiev against limited sections of pre-2014 Russia follows:
“Biden made the decision after being prodded by aides, Democrats and foreign leaders to—slowly, incrementally—push past every red line he’d drawn on America’s involvement. And when Biden and his team saw the unfolding crisis in Kharkiv, the president was convinced to change course yet again.
“‘There’s a real sense that the Ukrainians are in trouble. There’s a sense something needed to be done to weaken the Russian advances. The idea is to slow the Russian advances long enough for the Ukrainians to recover, buying them some time,’ said a U.S. official familiar with the battlefield situation… With every move, Washington cautioned that it was just helping Ukraine protect itself, not launching a shadow proxy war against an enemy. That remains the main message now, but a harder one for the U.S. to maintain.
“‘All the veils are getting pulled off, exposing where we’ve been for a very long period of time,’ said Fiona Hill, a prominent Russia expert who led that portfolio in former President Donald Trump’s White House. ‘War,’ she said of the Biden administration, ‘has found them.’”
No matter how ‘limited’ and ‘defensive’ the action is portrayed, it “highlighted, once again, how Biden often changes his mind on once-taboo Ukraine policy ideas after battlefield conditions shift or, most persuasively, allies move first. That was especially true when the U.S. followed Britain and France in sending long-range missiles for Ukraine to use deep behind Russian front lines. Even then, the U.S. transferred the weapon quietly in March, letting Ukraine strike two targets before confirming the delivery in April.”
