Apparently expecting U.S. citizens and America's allies to forget the way Biden bungled America's withdrawal from Afghanistan, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday that the administration is 'fully prepared' if Russia invades Ukraine.
Is that sort of like how the State Department and other Biden officials promised there was no panicked evacuation happening from Afghanistan? Totally different from its preparations and intelligence that led Biden to repeatedly insist a Taliban takeover was anything but inevitable? Or perhaps like they explained that no Americans would be left behind in the deadly airlift?
If the Biden administration's approach to Russia is anything like it's approach to Afghanistan, Blinken should have finished the sentence about being "fully prepared" with "to run away."
The Biden administration, and Tony Blinken in particular, have little to no credibility left to offer such reassurances to Ukraine or other governments of the world. Among his many failures, Biden's foreign policy has been especially disastrous. In addition to hurriedly exiting Afghanistan, which was a shock to the world and angered long-time allies from the word "go," there was also the nuclear submarine deal dustup that resulted in France recalling its ambassador.
Nonetheless, Blinken is insistent that the U.S. is ready to handle Russian aggression if they cross the red line of invading Ukraine. As NPR reported, Blinken threatened "things that we have not done in the past," whatever that means.
With a heavy dose of nonspecific politically sanitized verbiage, Blinken told NPR that the Biden administration has "an important responsibility to help shape [Putin's] thinking and again make very clear from our perspective what the options are, what the consequences will be of the options that he could pursue."
The seemingly empty-threats — after all, Biden saying he'll punish Putin for putting military pressure on its neighbors after allowing Russia to build its gas pipeline that will allow Putin to put pressure on European countries is more than ironic — are not backed up by any track record of successful retaliatory military action.
Remember Biden's "righteous" drone strike in Kabul in the wake of the ISIS-K suicide attack that claimed the lives of 13 U.S. service members and scores of innocent Afghans? The one that turned out to be a total miss and in fact killed an innocent aid worker and seven children? Biden's not one to threaten too much shock-and-awe against Putin if he decides to roll Ukraine.
And thanks to the aforementioned diplomatic bungling of the U.S. relationship with key European allies, Biden's bargaining power in trying to convince regional partners to join the U.S. in a significant action against Russian forces is a tough sell. It seems more likely at this point that one or more European nations would be prone to act against Putin independent of the U.S. due to Biden's feckless leadership on the world stage and inability to effectively guide or protect American forces abroad.
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