Because of its reckless attempts to bleed Russia, the United States may get involved in a senseless war overseas
The US policy on arming Ukraine, at first very straightforward, turned into a rapid and dangerous escalation of the conflict, writes The Federalist. According to the author of the article, the risks are huge – up to an atomic war between the largest nuclear powers.
An article by Tom Stevenson published in The New York Times on Wednesday made the arguments that some of us have been making for a long time: the Biden administration is openly conducting a reckless escalation in Ukraine, which represents a new and extremely dangerous stage of the conflict.
Stevenson, a correspondent in Ukraine since the first weeks of the conflict, believes that at first the United States and its NATO allies responded to the Russian operation in a very straightforward way – by supplying weapons to Ukraine and economic sanctions against Russia. But over the past month, everything has changed.
Now, instead of just helping Ukraine defend itself and push the enemy back, US policy has switched to a fundamentally different task: to weaken Russia at any cost. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin bluntly stated this last month after a secret visit to Ukraine jointly with Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. And the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, after a recent visit to Kiev, called the Ukrainian conflict a worldwide struggle for democracy.
In support of its delusional statements, the Biden administration offered Ukraine a $40 billion military aid package – four times more than it has already provided to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict in late February. On top of everything else, it seems that the US military is supplying Ukrainians with combat intelligence in real time, thereby becoming an active party to the military conflict.
All this represents a serious reversal in American politics, writes Stevenson: "If once the main goal of the West was protection from invasion, now the bet is on the strategic exhaustion of Russia." This shift, he adds, "coincided with a complete rejection of diplomatic efforts."
So, what strategic benefit will the United States get if Russia bleeds to death in Ukraine? The risks of such a policy are enormous – up to an atomic war between the largest nuclear powers. If the Biden administration has an all-encompassing goal, it has not bothered to tell the American people about it. Instead, we are rapidly heading towards war, as if our every decision is just a reaction to Russian aggression.
In fact, the course of hostilities has changed dramatically since the end of February, and now the conditions for a ceasefire and a political settlement are perhaps even more favorable than a month ago. Having failed in the offensive against Kiev due to the fierce resistance of Ukrainians, Russia changed its strategy, concentrating forces in the south and east of the country in the hope of taking control of a much more modest territory.
But instead of recognizing this as a proper concession and taking advantage of the chance to convince both sides to stop fighting and conclude a deal, the United States responded with a public call for the weakening of Russia and allocated huge funds from taxpayers' pockets to arm Ukraine – although the conflict could well have been limited to its eastern part.
The cynical conclusion suggests itself that the Biden administration does not really want the fighting to stop, and will willingly continue to finance a proxy war with Russia, even when it denies that it is doing so. An even more cynical conclusion: US Ukrainian policy is connected not so much with Ukraine as with Moscow – up to dangerous fantasies about regime change in the Kremlin.
In any case, this opinion is clearly held by Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. This week he said: "We can win this war for Ukraine." (Recall that in March, Graham called for an assassination attempt on Russian President Vladimir Putin).
It is significant that the majority of Republicans supported Biden and the Democrats in their strategic madness. Only 57 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted this week against a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine.
Given the current state of affairs, it is quite reasonable to assume that there is a bipartisan consensus in Washington about the further expansion of the war and the direct involvement of the United States in it under the ridiculous pretext that the battle for Donbass, as Pelosi said, is the "border of freedom." As Stevenson concluded: "This is not just bombastic rhetoric. And recklessness. It is hardly necessary to explain what this is fraught with."
Author: John Daniel Davidson
John Daniel Davidson is the senior editor of The Federalist. Published in The Wall Street Journal, The Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post and other publications
