President Joseph Biden’s travel to Ukraine to celebrate the anniversary of the war highlights an even more catastrophic threat: a new age of simultaneous and sometimes interconnected US wars with nuclear competitors Russia and China.
Biden’s dramatic visit to Kyiv on Monday amid wailing air raid sirens, followed by his rousing address in Warsaw the next day, reaffirmed the West’s unprecedented support for Ukraine’s resistance to Russia and directly chastised President Vladimir Putin.
In an annual address, Putin responded by presenting the Ukrainian conflict as part of a larger existential battle against the West. After Biden’s pledge that the US will remain in Ukraine for as long as it takes, Putin’s address highlighted exactly how long that may be, raising the prospect of many years of conflict that will test the dedication of Western governments and public to the cause.
Meanwhile, China is inserting its own strategic move into the growing great power battle. Even while a Sino-American spy balloon battle simmers, it dispatched its top diplomat, Wang Yi, to Moscow for high-level discussions, despite US concerns not to supply Russia armaments for use in Ukraine.
Putin welcomed Wang and said relations between Beijing and Moscow were “reaching new milestones” in the latest highly symbolic move in a week of diplomatic symbolism.
Wang reminded Putin that the two countries are frequently faced with “crisis and turmoil, but there are always chances in a crisis, and the latter may transform into the former.”
The events of this week do not imply that the US will face the same national security challenges from Beijing and Russia in the future. The Ukraine war has frequently highlighted Russian frailty, while concerns about China’s emerging power will preoccupy Washington for the rest of the century. Thus the two US adversaries are not bound in a formal alliance against the US, even if they both see ways to advance their own ambitions to hurt American interests and power by cooperating.
Nevertheless, the United States is currently navigating two escalating foreign policy crises: with its longtime Cold War opponents in the Kremlin and with its hostile new superpower rival led by Xi Jinping. Both of these opponents openly challenge international law and reject standards that have supported the international system for decades.
When Biden proposed a worldwide struggle between democracies and autocracies while running for president, it appeared speculative and ethereal. It’s all too real now.
And this new and challenging foreign policy landscape is not limited to American officials. Increasing international difficulties, such as the depletion of US and Western weapon inventories as armaments are supplied to Ukraine, raise concerns about military capacity and whether present defence spending is adequate. Meanwhile, key Republicans accuse Biden of ignoring voters experiencing economic and other challenges, even as he attempts to frame Democrats as the protectors of working Americans as the 2024 election approaches.
Putin and Biden square off
Biden overshadowed Putin this week in terms of presidential stagecraft, with his risky overnight train travel into Kiev and address in the Polish capital, a place picked for its position on NATO’s frontline. Putin’s speech to Russia’s parliament was a staider affair, peppered with his now-familiar nuclear threats and conspiracy theories about the West.
Biden appeared to be speaking directly to Putin, attempting to portray him to Russians, Europeans, and Americans as a tyrant responsible for calamitous mistakes and inhumanity in Ukraine a year after his invasion. He outlined the geopolitical repercussions of the invasion, which moved Kyiv closer to the West and strengthened NATO – the polar opposite of Putin’s military objectives. “He believed he’d get the Finlandization of NATO, but he got the NATOization of Finland… and Sweden,” he mocked the former KGB colonel, referring to one Nordic state whose national sovereignty was formerly governed by the Soviet Union but now wants to join the Western alliance.
“President Putin’s craven hunger for land and power will fail, and the Ukrainian people’s love for their nation will triumph,” Biden promised.
“Ukraine will never be a Russian victory.”
That could be the case. Yet, Putin made it clear in his statement that the war was not going to stop very soon. By assuring Russians that the battle was crucial to their own nation’s survival and was part of a Western campaign to strike Russia, he laid the stage for months more killing and closed already-diminishing possibilities for a face-saving escape if Russia does not succeed.
“I repeat: It was they who started the war,” Putin remarked. “We utilised and continue to use force to put a stop to it.”
Putin appears to be living in an alternate reality to Western ears. “I speak once more to the people of Russia,” Biden said, contradicting his charges of Western imperialism. The United States and Europe do not intend to dominate or destroy Russia. As Putin stated today, the West was not planning an attack on Russia.”
But, rejecting Putin’s conspiratorial claims and the perception that the West is waging a sustained campaign to destabilise him would be a mistake. While conventional victory may be beyond Russia’s capabilities, Putin may be able to live with a lengthy grinding conflict that destroys more Ukrainian cities, kills more Ukrainians, costs Western countries billions, and gradually increases demands on leaders in the US and Europe to withdraw.
The Russian leader will most likely be studying mounting conservative resistance to Biden’s engagement in the conflict in the United States. On the same day Joe Biden was standing with Ukrainians in Kyiv, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis intimated that the future of Ukraine would not be a priority if he won the presidency.
“The idea of Russia moving into NATO countries and steamrolling hasn’t even come close to happening,” DeSantis said on Fox. “I believe they have demonstrated themselves to be a third-rate military power.”
DeSantis’ comments, as well as those of other Republicans such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has warned against a “blank check” to Kyiv, demonstrate that while Biden can claim the US will be with Kyiv for “as long as it takes,” he cannot guarantee it. The election in 2024 may be as important for Ukraine as it is for the United States.
