Biden walks fine line on Ukraine invasion
WASHINGTON — As Russian President Vladimir Putin escalates his effort to destroy and subdue Ukraine, President Joe Biden seeks to resist with a more tempered stand against him.
Our president chooses to counter Putin through coordinated efforts with other member states of NATO, the alliance created in the wake of World War II to counter the expansionary threat of the Soviet Union to Europe. Biden declared that he will not send American military forces to fight Russians in what he says could escalate into a third world war in Europe.
In a sense, his posture may seem a dodge, as the U.S. is supplying arms to
Ukraine and Americans are training Ukrainian forces on how to use them. But it is well worth making the point explicitly to avoid giving Putin a pretext for broadening the war in Central Europe.
Putin, having failed to capture the Ukrainian capitol of Kyiv and having lost the Russian navy’s flagship in the Black Sea, has now pivoted his armed strength eastward to secure the territory it has taken in the Donbas region.
Biden accordingly is now focusing his resistance through major anti-aircraft assistance to the Ukrainian defenders. But it falls short so far of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s plea for a no-fly zone over his independent country, which Biden holds could bring about that third world war in the region.
From the White House on Thursday, he announced a whopping second $800 million military aid package to Ukraine to hold off Putin’s latest assault, still hewing to his determination to avoid a greater European calamity.
Biden’s caution is a commendable compromise that demonstrates the restraint of a world leader who often in the past has been subject to charges of being too flippant in off-the cuff remarks, to the point of acknowledging being known as “a gaffe machine,” to his own detriment.
On this occasion, however, he is admirably holding his tongue in his effort to cool down the Ukraine crisis, in the hope of steering a path to a more accommodating resolution of the ongoing threat to peace in that corner of the globe.
If Biden can achieve that objective by blunting Putin’s brash and inhumane assault on the people of Ukraine, he will have demonstrated a much-desired restraint in a situation of major peril playing out there.