By Noah Rothman
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
This week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin all but
confirmed a blockbuster report in the Financial Times from late March indicating that the
Biden administration was prepared to sacrifice Ukraine’s battlefield objectives
if they imperiled his own reelection prospects.
In testimony before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, Austin scolded Ukraine for executing long-range
attacks on Russian oil refineries. “Ukraine is better served in going after
tactical and operational targets that can directly influence the current
fight,” the Pentagon chief said. But Austin gave away the game when he fretted
that Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian infrastructure “could have a knock-on
effect in terms of the global energy situation.”
Austin refers to the global price of oil and gasoline,
which have experienced upward pressure in recent weeks owing, in small part, to
a decline in Russia’s seaborne crude-oil exports. His remarks dovetail with
the FT’s allegation that the Biden White House fears Ukraine’s
attacks on Russian energy could boost the price of energy to unacceptable
levels or even tempt Russia to “retaliate by lashing out at energy
infrastructure relied on by the West.”
Biden’s turn against his partners in Ukraine, much like
his (predictable) pivot against Israel, is a stab in the back.
Ukraine’s effort to wage asymmetric warfare against a better-armed, well-funded
adversary is a tactical shift necessitated by relatively stagnant battlefield
conditions. Insofar as those attacks have the capacity to limit Russia’s
capacity to fund and equip its armed forces inside Ukraine and destabilize
Russian society, Kyiv’s tactics are perfectly legitimate. Moreover, the Russian
assets Biden apparently seeks to protect are assets his administration has sanctioned, and the pain at the pump
Biden hopes to avert is pain he implored Americans to expect and endure.
“I will not pretend this will be painless,” Biden confessed on the eve of Russia’s second invasion
of Ukraine. “There could be impact on our energy prices, so we are taking
active steps to alleviate the pressure on our own energy markets and offset
rising prices.” Nevertheless, even as Russia’s surprise attack rattled global
financial markets and sent commodity prices spiking, Biden urged Americans to
bear the burden. “Defending freedom will have costs for us as well, here at
home,” the president admitted. “We need to be honest about that.”
Well, you may be stoically shouldering that
responsibility, but Biden is tapping out. When his own reelection prospects
were in the balance, all that happy talk about defending freedom and democracy
from land-hungry tyrants was exposed as hollow. And yet, Biden’s understanding
of the politics of Ukraine’s war is remarkably shallow. Is the president’s
political position threatened more by a modest increase in the price of energy
or by the abandonment of a cause to which he pledged vast sums of taxpayer capital
and an irreplaceable commitment of American national prestige? What would
improve his chances at reelection more? A two-cents-per-gallon decrease in the
price of gasoline or a revanchist Russia reeling amid the judicious application
of American might in defense of its principles?
Joe Biden sold Americans on a noble cause. He implored
them to support Ukraine’s war of defense against Russia’s war of conquest and
subjugation, and they eagerly obliged. Now, in shackling Ukraine to tactics
that foreclose on battlefield outcomes America supposedly wants, Biden risks
abandoning the American people at the rally point to which he summoned them.
Ukrainians surely resent Biden’s pivot, but they can’t be alone.
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