US President Joe Biden is convinced of his victory over Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a June interview with ABC News, he declared that he had stopped Putin. And in his farewell address at the Democratic National Convention, he boasted “Putin thought he’d take Kyiv in three days, but three years later, Ukraine is still free!”
Unfortunately, this is only a half truth. Yes, Ukraine is still free. But it is still at war, and Putin remains free to continue waging it.
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Moreover, US policy to date has made Russia and its supporters bolder and more determined in their intentions to overthrow the Western liberal order. Yes, they suffer economically and all kinds of other unpleasantries. But their belligerent ambitions have not been pacified.
Russia has in fact become a champion of these ambitions. And despite Western sanctions, they still have the means to fight. The aid that China, Iran and North Korea have rushed through to support Russia has emboldened them further.
This consolidation of this Autocratic Axis occurred not because the West became suddenly weak, as the Axis thinks. It happened because of the Biden administration’s grave mistakes on Russia and Ukraine. They were a consequence of a strategy that was inadequate to the challenge and led directly to two major history-changing wins for Russia.
- Russia’s first success was that Putin was allowed to start the war. He did so because the Biden administration failed to employ deterrence in 2021.
- Russia’s second success was that the Biden administration allowed Putin to go scot-free in autumn 2022, when Ukraine’s initial wildly successful counteroffensive was interrupted due to a lack of weapons.
Both scores were possible for Russia because the Biden administration chose to design its Russia strategy based on responding only, and – as with military aid – responding minimally. In lame terms, Biden allowed Putin to lead the dance. In political vernacular, instead of pursuing proactive deterrence, his administration settled for reactive policies.
ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December, 20, 2024
Reactive policy is a response to a concern or crisis that must be addressed – proactive policies, by contrast, are introduced and implemented through deliberate choice.
The Biden administration avoided preemptive – proactive – measures. What’s even worse and more tragic – they telegraphed their strategy and intentions to Putin.
This clearly shows that the administration either did not realize that Putin was already at war against the US – just not a kinetic one – or deliberately downplayed the true nature of the confrontation.
If the classification reflected reality and the administration chose to be proactive, it could have – without involving the US military – avoided the war altogether in 2021, deterring Putin from invading and keeping him in check. Here, the Biden administration is guilty of inaction. A stark contrast is the administration's deliberate choice to employ preemptive decisive deterrence in the context of the China-Taiwan conflict and Iran’s threats against Israel.
As Putin was allowed to launch an invasion and the error became clear, the administration could have switched to a more proactive policy and made it possible for Ukrainians to drive Russians out of Ukraine in 2022. But the administration did not change its approach. Here, it is guilty of craven delays and neglect in providing military aid to Ukraine.
It is important to emphasize again: both these alternative courses of action were possible without the US engaging in kinetic military action – a euphemism for involving active warfare, including lethal force.
This is not speculation – the facts clearly show this. And an examination of these facts could be helpful in crafting a new approach.
Timeline of failure
- Spring 2021: The US tries diplomacy with Russia and demonstrates a willingness and ability to help Ukraine.
It was visible what the Russians were doing — building up a large military force on the Ukrainian border. Satellite imagery revealed hundreds of trucks and heavy equipment at newly constructed makeshift bases in western Russia and at a large training range in Crimea, equipped even with field hospitals and kitchens. The buildup was way larger than anything seen during the 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
The Biden administration took diplomatic action to mobilize NATO partners and talk to the Russians. The moment that revealed the futility of doing so came very quickly.
In response to aggressive Russian troop movements, the administration prepared a big military aid package for Ukraine, worth nearly $100 million. But in the lead-up to Biden’s high-stakes summit with Putin (June 16, 2021), the National Security Council put the package on hold. Why? Because Russia announced it would draw down troops stationed near Ukraine.
The White House declared that additional security assistance had been made ready, but would be contingent upon Russia crossing territorial red lines: “As President Biden told President Putin directly, we will stand unwavering in support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said Jen Psaki, the White House spokesperson at the time.
The Russians – surprise, surprise – ignored those verbal warnings and did not draw down their troops at the Ukrainian border as promised. On the contrary, Putin kept steadily building the force up.
The fact that Russians ignored Biden’s tactics should have set off alarm bells and forced the administration to change its approach. It did not – the approach remained reactive and that was the first big mistake.
- Autumn 2021 – February 2022: The US withdraws from Ukraine and NATO rejects another Ukrainian membership bid
Over the summer of 2021 the Russians continued to build up forces. After the fruitless Biden-Putin summit in June, the US administration returned to expediting military aid to Ukraine: altogether Ukraine received that year $275 million under the Department of Defense’s Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. This included only $75 million in lethal assistance.
That was not enough to deter Russia. What could have – if the administration had been proactive – was what was going on in Ukraine and what could have been expanded.
NATO troops and US troops were in Ukraine on drill exercises and helping to train the Ukrainian military. Some 4,000 Ukrainian troops and 2,000 foreigners participated in the "RAPID TRIDENT – 2021″ drill, between Sept. 20 and Oct. 1, 2021. It involved a brigade combat team of the Washington National Guard, deployed in Ukraine since April as part of a multinational training force and troops from 12 countries in total.
These exercises ended on Oct. 1. By then, Putin had amassed more than 100,000 Russian troops, along with rocket battalions and heavy armor units, near Ukraine’s border. It could not have been more obvious that he intended to invade Ukraine, and the US diplomats and officials were vocal about it.
Imagine that, instead of ending the exercises, the US and NATO extended them, rotating troops, and expanding their presence. Add to that fact that at the same time Ukrainians kept nagging NATO about opening the process of Ukraine joining the alliance.
Imagine a bold move – NATO setting up a timetable for Ukraine to join NATO. Would Putin have invaded Ukraine? Some would say it would have hastened the invasion. I highly doubt it. It was clear that Putin intended to invade – so a bolder move by the US/NATO would risk nothing. But it could have stopped Putin in his tracks. Putin would never dare to go to war with the US military. Much less so against all of NATO.
Meanwhile, the continued presence of US warships in the Taiwan Strait, intended to curb China's enthusiasm for Taiwan, and the dispatch of an aircraft carrier strike group to the Mediterranean to deter Iran's plans to attack Israel, provide a contrast from which to assess policy toward Russia.
After the military exercises ended, the Biden administration phased out all the US military presence in Ukraine – with the last 150 troops from the Florida National Guard withdrawn in February 2022. Putin was apparently waiting for them to leave.
- February – Summer 2022: Showing cards and declaring intentions
When the shock that Putin had dared to invade began to sink in, Biden, instead of reversing his policy assumptions, doubled down on staying on the sidelines. This made it clear to Putin that he had nothing to fear by invading.
Before the invasion, the Biden administration relentlessly broadcast doomsday warnings that the impending invasion was no less than the international order at stake. But when it came to confronting the threat, Biden made it clear that the Americans were not willing to fight. He even ruled out sending forces into Ukraine to rescue US citizens, should it come to that, and pulled out remaining military advisers and monitors.
I wonder – what would you think if you were Putin and watched the US withdraw from Ukraine?
If Biden had kept his decision not to get involved in the conflict to himself, the Russians would have been left guessing. Seeing US troops pulling out and hearing Biden’s assurances that the US will stay away, the Kremlin no doubt popped a few champagne corks seeing the clear skies.
By contrast, once again, Washington emphasized openly that it would use military force to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese attack. In doing so, Biden broke up with the policy of uncertainty by stating plainly what China might expect from the US. Similarly unequivocal are the Biden administration’s messages to the Iranian Ayatollahs should they actually want to attack Israel.
True, the Kremlin did not expect the scale of sanctions, swiftness of the West mobilization of its strength against Russia, and most certainly the Kremlin was shocked by the Western resolve.
This is nearly entirely thanks to Biden – he mobilized the allies.
That is why the true reasons for the (later) restrained and continued delay to military aid to Ukraine are so hard to understand – Putin’s nuclear bluff. I seriously doubt that the administration bought it – they used it because they feared the implosion of Russia.
- Autumn 2022: Ukrainian counteroffensive, liberation of Kherson and then “stop.”
The Ukrainian counteroffensive that began in September 2022 was a huge success.
The Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) already had the wind in its sails and the Russians had been caught off guard. There was the Hostomel airport defense in February, then Western sanctions, the speed and resolve with which the West unified behind Ukraine, and a growing flow of weapons to Ukraine in the first 7-8 months of the war.
The Kerch Bridge was on fire in October 2022, the Ukrainians were pushing Russians back and they liberated Kherson on Nov. 12 that year.
President Volodymyr Zelensky came to taste watermelons in Kherson two days later and then the counteroffensive fizzled out. The weapons stocks were exhausted and Zelensky was forced to ask for more weapons in his Christmas address.
The ensuing battle for Leopard tanks, ATACMS and F-16s lasted for months. We all know the story of requests and refusals, and how the pause in the Ukrainian offensive allowed the Kremlin to revise their approach, resume weapons production, mine fields in Donbas, dig trenches and set dragon teeth, all while adjusting its battlefield strategies.
Now imagine that the Ukrainians in October/November 2022 received what they had asked for from the US and other allies – Leopards, Abrams, Bradleys, Mig-21s, ATACMS, and other long-range weapons. How far would they have gone with their counteroffensive?
Yes, Ukraine did receive some of what was needed 7–8 months later, when the Russians had solidified their positions in Donbas and when the element of surprise for the Russians had already disappeared. By then, the morale of Ukrainians was sagging.
The old adage “he who gives quickly gives twice” stands true here. The failed second counteroffensive in 2023 was only a consequence of the failure to support the first Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2022.
Conclusion
The mistakes pointed out here show that the Biden administration’s approach and strategy of half measures, was woefully inadequate to meeting the challenge.
Yes, the US helped to save Ukraine from total Kremlin subjugation, but thinking it could do so sat on the sidelines was a mistake.
Who, if not the US, was more in a position to act boldly and proactively? After, all it is the greatest country in the world as the gospel says…
Anna Magdalena Wielopolska is a former Polish journalist of “Rzeczpospolita,” and holds a PhD in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is currently leading a counteroffensive against Russian propaganda in social media
The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.
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