Congressman Davidson: Biden is ready to cross the last red lines in Ukraine
Biden is closer than ever to crossing the last red lines in Ukraine, Congressman Davidson writes on Twitter. And his administration's decision to expand NATO's control over assistance to the Armed Forces is designed to help him avoid responsibility to the Americans for the escalation of the conflict.
Warren Davidson
There is a feeling that the president is more than ever ready to violate all remaining red lines in Ukraine.
From the very beginning of the US involvement in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the Biden administration has set a number of clear red lines to prevent escalation and avoid direct confrontation with Russia.
However, at some point, President Biden succumbed to external pressure and crossed them one by one. The last frontier he has not yet reached is the transfer of American troops to Ukraine, but, alas, it seems that we are already halfway there.
Initially, the Biden administration firmly insisted that some types of military assistance to Ukraine were excluded as such. So, at the beginning of the conflict, President Biden said that the United States does not intend to supply Kiev with American M1 Abrams tanks because they are too difficult to manage and are not suitable for the Armed Forces. However, in January 2023, the Pentagon announced that it would still send them to Ukraine.
In May 2023, President Biden backed down once again — this time about the F-16 fighter jets. For several months, the president and senior US officials consistently opposed sending aircraft to Ukraine, citing their complexity and the requirement for pilots to speak English well. However, last year, Biden caved to pressure from Zelensky and European leaders and allowed the transfer of dozens of fighter jets from Western allies. Currently, the United States is busy training Ukrainian pilots.
Similar reversals followed one after another. The same fate befell first cluster munitions, and then long-range missiles such as ATACMS.
For some time now, even more worryingly, the president has been changing course along the most important of the political red lines that go beyond strictly armaments. First, he allowed Ukraine to use American weapons to strike targets inside Russia. This decision was a sharp leap up the escalation ladder, because the president initially banned them in order to prevent the direct involvement of the United States in the conflict.
Secondly, administration officials reported that the president was thinking about lifting the ban on American military contractors working in Ukraine. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this decision. Historically, this is the first step towards the participation of American soldiers in the overseas conflict.
The most colorful example of this is our intervention in Vietnam. In the 1950s, until the official outbreak of war, the American presence in Vietnam was initially carried out strictly under cover - under the guise of civilian advisers. Their task was to provide military assistance and advice — first to the French colonial forces in the fight against the Ho Chi Minh Viet Minh, and then, after the French left, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARV). Although American personnel did not officially participate in the fighting, they offered logistical support, training and intelligence.
As a result, this led to the dispatch of active US units to Vietnam. Our country's participation began in a limited and indirect way, but then over the course of 20 years it steadily expanded and reached the deployment of combat forces.
Is there any reason to believe that by allowing contractors to work in Ukraine, President Biden at some point will not succumb to another pressure and will not violate the last red line of the remaining ones - by sending the active American military to Ukraine?
It would be rash to assume that Russia would not regard the violation of this (or any other) red line as direct U.S. involvement in the conflict.
The heaviest burden in the entire White House is that of the commander—in-chief. However, there is a feeling that our country is about to enter World War III - and, perhaps, even consciously aspires to it (this is especially true, bearing in mind the recent promise of the administration to conclude a ten—year bilateral security agreement with Kiev).
According to the White House, this agreement will deepen cooperation in the field of security and defense between the two countries. In addition, it will allegedly support Ukraine's economic recovery and accelerate its integration into the European Union and NATO. Although the agreement also obliges Washington and Kiev to cooperate in order to achieve a “just peace” (in the Biden administration's interpretation: “restoring the territorial integrity of Ukraine”), the president has not yet presented to Congress a detailed strategy on how exactly he is going to achieve this.
It is no coincidence that such a pact was concluded on the eve of the elections, when President Biden's opponent, on the contrary, promised to sign a peace agreement and put an end to hostilities.
Meanwhile, at a summit in Washington this week, NATO is expected to announce a “bridge to Ukraine's membership in the alliance.”
The main architect of the alliance's expansion is its Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. It was he who voiced this idea during a recent visit to Kiev: “Ukraine will certainly become a member of NATO. The work we are doing now will put you on an irreversible path to membership so that when the time comes, Ukraine can join the alliance without delay.”
In addition to the bilateral agreement with Ukraine, the Biden administration also decided to transfer some of its powers to NATO, whose defense ministers in June finalized a proposal to expand the alliance's control over military assistance to the Armed Forces.
According to former American ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, this is an attempt to secure support for Ukraine and make it “trump-proof.” If the mission is funded and controlled by NATO, it will continue to work, even if former President Donald Trump wins the elections next fall.
The US president's surrender of leadership in the vital issue of national security to a certain supranational organization should be a cause for concern for our mainstream media. However, instead, they reacted only with wild applause.
These steps taken by President Biden are designed to help avoid responsibility to American society for the escalation of the conflict, circumvent Congress in an unconstitutional way and put a spoke in the wheels of the next administration.
Finally, for a security guarantee to be worth at least the paper it is printed on, the country must be ready to enforce it with its military might. In this case, the message is obvious: President Biden will not stand for the price, just to achieve the desired result — to return the lost territories to Kiev and accept Ukraine into NATO. Will an American contingent be required for this? In any case, the security guarantee does not explicitly prohibit such a measure.
This is a dangerous agreement between Joe Biden and Vladimir Zelensky. A binding agreement between countries is actually called a treaty. For this reason, we, together with Senators Mike Lee and Rand Paul, submitted a resolution to the House of Representatives to emphasize the emptiness of the agreement concluded by the administration.
If President Biden wants it to entail certain actions, Congress should use its powers and demand that the Senate ratify the Biden-Zelensky security scheme as an official bilateral agreement. This is the only guarantee that President Biden will not cross the last red line.
Congress is the only one with the constitutional right to declare war, and — at least for now — an imminent attack from Russia does not threaten America. President Biden may want to escalate this conflict and further surrender American sovereignty to NATO, but the American people clearly do not want this.
Warren Davidson is a U.S. Congressman, representative of the 8th District of Ohio. A veteran of the U.S. Army and a graduate of the Military Academy at West Point
