For Biden presidency, Ukraine crisis offers a defining moment
-
Howard LaFranchi Staff writer
Vladimir Putin’s mobilization of more than 125,000 troops around Ukraine has accomplished something he almost certainly did not intend. It has reinvigorated President Joe Biden’s Atlanticist roots, and has revived a transatlantic alliance that in recent years had revealed fissures and a faltering unity of purpose.
Moreover, the Russian leader’s efforts to smother Ukraine’s fledgling, pro-Western democracy have helped put meat on the bones of President Biden’s ringing but as-yet squishy call to defend the world’s democracies.
Why We Wrote This
Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine crisis is doing more than testing Joe Biden’s desire to turn U.S. attentions from Europe to Asia. It’s also giving him the opportunity to act on his pro-democracy principles.
“This is a defining moment for President Biden and the Biden administration foreign policy,” says Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “If an aggressive power can succeed in changing borders through military action, that poses dangerous risks to the entire international system.”
Beyond that, “This fits into his understanding of the world right now as an arena where liberal democracy is confronting the rising revisionist and authoritarian regimes,” she says. “And in his view, it’s time to demonstrate that the U.S. is willing to stand up against those authoritarian actors who are testing us.”
As Russia’s Vladimir Putin has amassed more than 125,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders, a mobilization that threatens the largest military operation in Europe since World War II, he has accomplished something he almost certainly did not intend.
President Putin has reinvigorated President Joe Biden’s Atlanticist roots. And he is breathing new life into a transatlantic alliance that in recent years has revealed fissures and a faltering unity of purpose – between Europe’s East and West, and between a Europe less focused on security issues and an America anxious to turn eastward toward Asia and an assertive China.
Moreover, the Russian leader’s efforts to smother Ukraine’s fledgling, pro-Western democracy have helped put meat on the bones of President Biden’s ringing but as-yet squishy call to defend the world’s democracies.
Why We Wrote This
Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine crisis is doing more than testing Joe Biden’s desire to turn U.S. attentions from Europe to Asia. It’s also giving him the opportunity to act on his pro-democracy principles.
Indeed, some foreign policy analysts say Mr. Putin’s Ukraine gambit – and his efforts to undermine the democratic principles undergirding the transatlantic partnership – has provided a salient point of reference for Mr. Biden, who has depicted liberal democracy’s ability to stand up to rising autocracies as key to this century’s defining ideological battle.
“This is a defining moment for President Biden and the Biden administration foreign policy,” says Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.
“This administration came in amid questions around the importance and centrality of the NATO alliance to U.S. security, and over the last year there were a lot of strains – in the wake of the drawdown in Afghanistan and the way it was handled, and over the [U.S.-Australia] submarine deal – that led to questioning of the strength of relations with European allies,” she says.
“But Russia’s actions have reminded everyone of the importance of transatlantic unity and got everyone singing from the same sheet of music,” adds Ms. Kendall-Taylor, a former senior intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
“Yes, this is about helping the Ukrainians help themselves,” she says, “but there is also a widespread understanding that if we don’t respond significantly to this crisis, you run the risk that President Putin will feel emboldened to test the alliance in even more threatening ways.”
The United States delivered to Moscow Wednesday what Secretary of State Antony Blinken described as a “diplomatic path forward” for resolving the Ukraine crisis. The written response to Russia’s demands concerning the West’s posture in Eastern Europe accompanied a similar written reply from NATO.
Russia has demanded that NATO agree never to accept Ukraine as a member and that NATO forces and U.S. nuclear arms be pulled from Eastern Europe in exchange for a pullback of Russian forces from Ukraine’s borders. Both the U.S. and NATO have called such demands “nonstarters,” but officials said the letters offered other proposals for mutual European security enhancement.
In a press briefing Wednesday, Mr. Blinken put the responses delivered to Russia in the context of the values he said have guided the alliance since its founding.
“We make clear that there are core principles that we are committed to uphold and defend, including Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and the right of states to choose their own security arrangements and alliances,” he said.
Test of U.S.-Europe unity
Over recent weeks as the Ukraine crisis has intensified, questions have arisen over the strength and durability of U.S.-Europe unity toward Russia.
Doubts have surfaced over how far some European countries would go in imposing what Mr. Biden says will be “severe sanctions” and “overwhelming economic costs” if Russia invades Ukraine. Some Europe analysts have suggested that economic powerhouse Germany could end up the weak link in transatlantic unity – suggestions that were only reinforced by recent reports that Germany is disrupting the delivery of arms to Ukraine, and that Britain is having flights delivering anti-tank weaponry to Ukraine take detours around Germany.
As if to answer those doubts, Mr. Blinken underscored that the response to Moscow was the result of close consultation with European allies. “There’s no daylight among the United States and our allies and partners on these matters,” he said.
The accuracy of that statement is likely to be tested over the coming weeks and may depend on how the Ukraine crisis develops. But what seems less debatable is the significant impact the confrontation with Russia over Ukraine is having on President Biden’s foreign policy.
Presidents know that the foreign policy decisions they make can determine the course of their presidencies.
Barack Obama, for example, issued a red line to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad about the use of chemical weapons and threatened to unleash the weight of the U.S. military against him in Syria’s civil war. But in the end, Mr. Obama chose not to entangle the U.S. in another Middle East war or to be distracted from the top priority of confronting China and fortifying partnerships in Asia.
Mr. Biden came into office declaring China and its authoritarian system of government the era’s most important geopolitical challenge. At the same time, growing doubts about the relevance and durability of the 75-year-old transatlantic alliance met him as he entered the White House.
But Biden aides and foreign policy analysts say Russia’s Ukraine campaign has caused a rethinking of who and what constitute the most important short- and long-term national security challenges to the U.S. – and a new appreciation for the importance of America’s Western and liberal democratic allies in confronting those challenges.
“Biden and the team around him are dyed-in-the-wool Atlanticists, and I think we see the president reaching down into those roots as he has responded to Russia’s aggressive actions towards Ukraine,” says Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as senior director for European affairs in the Obama National Security Council.
Mr. Biden’s announcement that he’d send 8,500 troops to NATO’s eastern flank – and potentially 10 times that many – in the event of a fresh Russian incursion into Ukraine is meant to be a strong deterrent to Mr. Putin, Mr. Kupchan says. But he adds that at least as important to Mr. Biden as Ukraine’s sovereignty is the wider threat that the Russian leader’s actions pose to America’s European allies and the principles of democratic governance more broadly.
“I see transatlantic relations as rock solid, and in some ways the connection to Europe has been reinforced in this administration by the crisis in liberal democracy and Putin’s aggressive efforts to undermine it,” he says. “On both sides of the Atlantic, this is not just about resisting the Russian aggression; it’s about locking down who, together, we are.”
China still a priority
As Mr. Biden reassesses his foreign policy priorities, China will almost certainly retain its status as America’s top long-term challenge, a range of observers say, even if Russia ends up diverting attention from the administration’s focus on the Indo-Pacific region.
“Would a Russian invasion of Ukraine distract the U.S. from a focus on China and the Asia-Pacific? Sure,” says Mr. Kupchan. “The main distraction would be to the political capital and the political time it would take up, more than the resources addressing [Russia’s aggression] would require.”
Ms. Kendall-Taylor notes that both the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy, documents the administration is expected to unveil in the coming weeks, will almost certainly reflect a reassessment of the threats Russia poses in light of the Ukraine crisis.
“The priority for everyone is still China, but I think we’ll see changes in those forthcoming documents because this is a game changer,” she says. “If an aggressive power can succeed in changing borders through military action, that poses dangerous risks to the entire international system.”
Beyond that, she says the Ukraine crisis is prompting a “realignment” of foreign policy priorities because it illustrates the dangers to democratic governance that Mr. Biden has been talking about since taking office.
“This fits into his understanding of the world right now as an arena where liberal democracy is confronting the rising revisionist and authoritarian regimes,” she says. “And in his view, it’s time to demonstrate that the U.S. is willing to stand up against those authoritarian actors who are testing us and pushing ahead in ways that would hurt the U.S. in the long term.”
