Biden’s ‘slow yes’ helped Russia

From the outset, US President Biden framed the war in Ukraine as a tectonic battle between autocracy and democracy. Yet, the US and NATO have been helping Ukraine, a democratic country, fight merely to survive rather than win. 

Last week, Time Magazine published a definitive update with this striking headline: “The Biden Administration’s Slow Yes Has Doomed Ukraine.” Here’s the critical excerpt:

We’re seeing that when it has come to Ukraine’s requests for international support—particularly military aid—there’s an answer that has proven worse than a slow no: the slow yes. … As President Zelensky petitions the US and NATO for continued support, with high-profile visits to several capitals in December, and as Congress fights over another aid package to Ukraine, the US and NATO are now shipping to Kyiv many of the sensitive weapon systems that Ukrainian officials have been requesting since 2022. 

Had the Biden administration and its NATO allies decisively armed and supported Ukraine in the early days of the war, it’s possible the Russian invasion could’ve failed. 

Time’s takeaway? Indecision has become Biden’s decision-making style. And it coined a suitably Orwellian term to describe the manifest absurdity of Biden’s strategy for helping Ukraine: “The slow yes.” 

Take the famous and formidable Patriot missile system, for example. When Biden finally decided to send it, Ukraine had already suffered under ten months of Russian bombardment. It’s akin to opening your umbrella after the rain has ceased – less deadly, but equally late. 

Irrational fear driving NATO military strategy

Except that, with all due respect to Time Magazine, this update is about as timely as Biden’s slow yes to Zelensky’s requests. After all, I’ve been sounding alarms in this respect for over a year. 

For instance, on June 16, 2022, I criticized Biden’s slow yes in my post “Zelensky to Macron: Non-Monsieur, Humiliating Russia Is Critical!” I likened the US and NATO’s drip-drip strategy for supplying military aid to Ukraine to Chinese water torture.

I also dismissed their fear of escalating tensions with Russia as patently irrational. After all, Russia had already bitten off more than it could chew by invading Ukraine. So taking on the US and NATO, too, would’ve been tantamount to choking itself to death. 

That’s why I followed up on July 8, 2022, with “Is the West supplying Ukraine with enough Weapons?” My answer was an exasperating and prescient: No! 

Biden’s slow yes: an epic blunder 

Crudely put, I will see Time Magazine’s “The Biden Administration’s Slow Yes Has Doomed Ukraine” from last week and raise it my “Biden’s Dithering Over Sending Weapons to Ukraine Will Be the Biggest Blunder of the War” from December 14, 2022.

After all, I didn’t just foresee what Time reported; I declared it. Of course, Time is far more authoritative, hence my hailing its update as definitive. 

But the way the US and NATO are aiding Ukraine reflects the paralysis gripping democratic countries. We’re seeing this paralysis play out in both Washington and Europe:

• Republicans are holding new Ukrainian aid hostage to partisan squabbles over immigration policies. But they could argue that they’re just implementing the congressional version of Biden’s “slow yes.”
  
• Hungary is doing the same by exploiting the requirement for unanimity to extract concessions to enable its illiberal policies. 

The US and NATO claim they’re helping Ukraine protect and preserve democracy. But they’re making democracy look like a dysfunctional mess. 

Not to mention the irony of one man, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán, dictating what the whole EU can do. A representative version of majority rule is supposed to prevail in democracies. But this reeks of the one-man rule that prevails in autocracies.

Frankly, autocratic stunts are making a mockery of democratic rule. And democratic paralysis is exacerbating the dithering that has defined US and NATO military aid from the outset. 

Ironically, Putin is using these apparent “cracks” in Western support for Ukraine to boost morale in Russia. Russians are suffering a collective form of Stockholm Syndrome from Putin’s decades of autocratic rule – complete with gaslighting propaganda. 

Yet, his misadventure in Ukraine has even them questioning his strategy. The death toll is shocking Russians into reality. Because Putin keeps mobilizing hapless recruits as cannon fodder in a stalemated conflict.  But I digress…

Biden has emboldened Xi to take Taiwan

Meanwhile, the way the US and NATO are supporting Ukraine is sending a foreboding message to Taiwan: Do not depend on the US and NATO to help fend off China. 

Indeed, it’s telling that Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly warned Biden during their summit in San Francisco last month that he plans to take Taiwan, by any means necessary. That’s how much the US and NATO’s feckless support for Ukraine has emboldened Xi.

This is why I’ve been urging the US and NATO to avoid repeating the mistakes of Ukraine. Primarily, they should arm Taiwan to the teeth before China invades. Because, once war begins, they are bound to be even more fearful of offending Xi than they have been of offending Putin. 

God help Taiwan if the US and NATO subject it to the slow yes for supplying weapons. Because that would enable China to cause death and destruction in Taiwan and make what Russia wreaked in Ukraine look like nothing more than broken glass windows.

What price Biden’s ‘slow yes’? Ukrainian resentment

Again, from the outset, the US and NATO have been more concerned about offending Russia than helping Ukraine. I cannot overstate that. Not least because it has enabled Russia to bomb Ukraine to smithereens with relative impunity.  

The US and NATO keep pledging to stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. But that pledge must ring hollow to Ukrainians. After all, they have little to show for US and NATO help but death and destruction.

Hell, Europeans spent the first year of this war supporting Russia’s war effort by continuing to buy Russian oil and gas. Because they were more concerned about paying more for oil and gas than saving Ukrainian homes and lives. 

That’s why the “slow yes” strategy for sending weapons to Ukraine will be the biggest blunder of this war. And when Ukrainians reflect on this blunder, I suspect they will be consumed with inconsolable resentment. 

History will not be kind to Biden. Because it will show that Ukraine could have been celebrating victory today, not languishing in a stalemate. That is, if only Biden had listened to Zelensky – and, dare I say, to me – from the start.