On Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield led an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to call out Russia over its massing troops on the border of Ukraine in advance of a possible invasion of that country. “Russia’s aggression today not only threatens Ukraine. It also threatens Europe. It threatens the international order,” she said, an accusation disputed at the Council meeting by both Russia and China.
This war of words at the UN represents just the latest in a series of bilateral engagements between the U.S. and Russia on Ukraine over the past two months. The frantic diplomacy between the two countries has included at least two phone calls between President Biden and Russian President Putin, as well as multiple in-person and video meetings by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his counterpart, foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and separate engagements with other diplomatic officials on both sides.
Unfortunately for Biden, his litany of diplomatic engagements only plays into Putin’s hands, as the Russian leader’s overall goal is to make his latest saber-rattling over Ukraine into a bilateral dispute between the U.S. and his country, and ultimately to project parity for Moscow on the world stage with Washington 30 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with Russia’s GDP far less than a tenth that of the U.S.
What’s more, China’s President Xi could not be more delighted by Biden’s decision to focus on this eastern European standoff, as it distracts the U.S from any meaningful pivot to countering China under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), particularly with our partners in the Indo-Pacific, a goal that President Trump set out early on in his administration, with a strong track record of success. Xi recognizes that every minute that Biden’s team spends going head-to-head with Putin on Ukraine, to include the possible deployment of thousands of U.S troops to eastern Europe, represents a missed opportunity to check China’s ambitions with respect to its neighbors, as well as the CCP’s actions with respect to Taiwan, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs.
It’s important to recognize that Putin’s threatening moves on Ukraine were born out of Biden’s weakness on the world stage early on in his first year as President. Putin never tried such a move under President Trump, who demonstrated strength on the world stage, including by prodding our NATO partners to pay up to $400 billion more in defense spending, eliminating al-Baghdadi and the ISIS Caliphate, countering Iran, and standing up to China’s aggression in all its forms.
By contrast, Biden projected the opposite from day one of his presidency, rivaling his Democrat predecessor Jimmy Carter for overall foreign policy fecklessness. Biden shut down completion of the Keystone pipeline over climate change concerns, while giving into Putin on finishing the Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline to Germany. He allowed China to lecture the U.S. on human rights in the first bilateral meeting of the two countries in Anchorage, Alaska, months before bungling the U.S. exit from Afghanistan, including the killing of 13 of America’s finest service members. Also, Biden went cap-in-hand to the Iranians on restarting nuclear talks with that country, to no avail, while Russia, China and Iran held joint naval exercises in the Indian Ocean last month in the latest “deepen[ing]” of ties between those countries. Finally, Biden refuses to this day to hold China accountable for the spread of the greatest worldwide pandemic in a century that has claimed over 880,000 U.S. lives to date.
With all this display of U.S. weakness leading Putin to push for a revival for Russia on the world stage, Biden needs to make three quick but important course corrections to thwart Putin’s ambitions and resume our proper focus on our own national security.
First, Biden needs to have NATO replace the U.S. in the driver’s seat when it comes to public negotiations with Putin. No more U.S-Russia bilats on Ukraine -- time for NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg to step up as the public face opposite Putin on all things Ukraine. This goes for troop deployments as well. NATO is well capable of providing troops to Poland and other neighboring countries as needed, without a complement of U.S. troops as part of that effort. The U.S. should continue to supply lethal aid to Ukraine and threaten strong Russian economic sanctions together with its EU partners and other countries if Putin does in fact invade, but once again this should be done as a joint international effort, not a U.S.-led push.
Second, Biden needs to refocus on ramping up U.S. oil and gas production, completing the Keystone XL pipeline and pushing for expansion of liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals in western Europe. He should also reverse his effort, announced late last year, to raise federal royalty rates for oil and gas production on federal lands. All this will complement Biden’s efforts in recent weeks to line up other countries, including Australia, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Qatar, to assist in supplying western Europe with LNG in the event of a Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent cutoff of imports of petroleum products from Russian suppliers.
Finally, Biden must recommit publicly to our great power competition with China both in boosting our presence in the Indo-Pacific, and in countering Chinese efforts at expansion in other parts of the world, including Africa and the Western Hemisphere. As part of that effort, we need to look at further increasing our troop presence in Asia, bolstering the regular exercises we have in Australia with U.S. Marines, for example, and redoubling our efforts to increase our shipbuilding, following President Trump’s commitment to a 355-ship Navy. Let’s consider taking the 8,500 troops we are ready to send to eastern Europe and instead look to deploy them to the Indo-Pacific. Last, during the Beijing Olympics in the next few weeks, the U.S. government should call out the Chinese Communist Party publicly on a daily basis for its malign actions in the region and elsewhere on human rights, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and pressure the International Olympic Committee never again to award the Games to autocratic regimes and bad actors on the world stage.
The more Putin rattles the saber on Ukraine, the more important it is to understand his real goal – to reassert Russia’s strength as a world power after 30 years of decline following the collapse of the Soviet Union, and, to that end, to draw the U.S. into a public, bilateral conflict on the world stage. Through his actions and bilateral engagements with our two countries over the past two months, Biden unfortunately is playing right into Putin’s hands, and it’s high time he becomes smart to the game and resets the rules based on our own priorities, not Russia’s.
John Ullyot was Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and NSC Spokesman from 2019-2021.