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Bar the thinnest of odds, Biden’s missile gambit will not have the decisive impact many may hope for
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Late yesterday afternoon in Washington, Joe Biden decided to abandon almost three years of risk-adverse American policy in Ukraine, by finally gifting Kyiv permission to launch long-range US-supplied missiles to strike targets inside Russia.
The relief in Ukraine is palpable – having long-courted the US to allow such a policy the talk is now just how quickly this newly lifted restriction can achieve some sort of tactical breakthrough across the various stagnant fronts. The reality however is far more depressing. Bar the thinnest of odds, this change will not achieve the decisive effect that many are now jubilantly claiming will occur.
Whilst President Zelensky is quite right to remain resolute that Ukraine will decide when Ukraine enters negotiations, President-elect Trump and his newly appointed team are already busy at work communicating their desires for a peace settlement to be agreed upon by both parties as early as next spring.
Ukraine have six weeks until the new administration in Washington begins to significantly ramp up these talks, and the diplomatic pressures that they will entail. Trump knows that he will have to demonstrate to the American people who voted for him that he meant what he said on several key policy decisions. Bringing Ukraine and Russia to Trump’s heel will be a quick domestic political win, no matter how damaging this may be for Ukraine.
Like all of Trump’s decisions, one must view these from a US political domestic mind, and not a European. US financial support to Ukraine has grown steadily unpopular amongst ordinary Americans, as the war in Ukraine is increasingly portrayed as an extension of the political mainstream’s – and the Democrat’s in particular – so-called ‘forever wars’, which many claim do nothing to further America’s interests.
This spring’s Congressional budget deadlock demonstrated this wider American distrust that this war will not result in dragging in the US more overtly, and whilst many Americans – especially across the Republican heartlands of the southern border and swing states – view aid to Ukraine unfairly whilst they are grappling with an ever-increasing immigration crisis costing billions and inflaming security worries along the southern border.
Six weeks is simply not enough time to reverse any of Russia’s recent tactical advances across the remaining key eastern battlefields, without a major uptick in manpower, artillery, armoured support, and air defences. Lifting the ban on long-range US missiles into Russia could have had a significant effect damaging Russian supply lines and logistics columns, bringing Putin’s war machine to Ukraine, but this is unfortunately too little, far too late.
This needed to happen years ago, when it really could have made a game-changing difference to the outcome of the war, not six weeks before Biden bows out in yet another foreign policy disaster on his watch.
Time and time again, Biden and his team, including Harris, Anthony Blinken, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, have repeatedly done the bare minimum on Ukraine, too hesitant and weak in the face of Putin’s repeated bluffs of escalation against the west, often only reluctantly siding with Europe long after key decisions were made in London, including sending western anti-tank missiles and main battle tanks.
The return of Trump has caused much speculation concerning American foreign policy. Far from a perceived more aggressive and unpredictable agenda, Trump is merely advancing the now-decade long isolationist approach Washington has gradually employed.
Initiated under Barack Obama – with Biden as, you guessed it, Vice President – the 44th President famously went back against his own now infamous ‘red-line’ on Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons on his own people back as 2012, sending a clear message to adversaries around the world that America had lost its bite.
Biden has simply continued this trend, evidenced by his catastrophic and shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Trump is now continuing this trend, in an attempt to achieve peace through strength.
There is merit in this approach, the ability to deter an adversary from fighting due to your military power and strength is absolutely in a nation’s interests – wars are the most costly and destructive activity for any state to engage in.
But Ukraine is not a case in this point. This is a war already approaching three quarters the length of the Great War. US-led western deterrence went out the window in 2014 when Putin invaded Crimea in 2014, and has suffered irreparable damage since Kabul in August 2021.
The next six weeks will likely see an increase in Ukrainian attacks against Russian airfields, storage depots, and military bases inside Russia, which will have some effect damaging Russian supply lines and morale. But this will not result in the meaningful decisive breakthrough that Ukraine needs in order to maintain territorial sovereignty into next year.
Biden could have chosen to enact this policy months – years – ago, but chose not to based on a deep miscalculation that it would only embolden Putin. Putin has been emboldened for a decade, and feverishly so under Biden’s watch since 2021.
Whilst there are merits to the national security people surrounding Trump – particularly on the need to invest in the defence manufacturing base, and rearm the US Navy for the Pacific – there is a key facet that they have gravely misunderstood. They argue that supporting Ukraine does little to advance American interests. But what is bad for Ukraine, threatens Europe. And what threatens Europe, has historically dragged in America for over 100 years.
Robert Clark is a Fellow at the Yorktown Institute, a security and strategy think-tank based in Washington, DC
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