Biden Administration Suggests U.S. Backing for Ukraine Against Russia

While the political world’s attention is fixed on the outcome of former President Donald Trump’s so-called hush money trial in New York, you may have missed that President Joe Biden’s administration intimated it would be willing to go one step closer to full-on war with Russia over Ukraine.

In a news conference in Moldova on Wednesday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the administration was considering letting Ukrainian forces use American-supplied weapons to strike within Russian territory, according to The Wall Street Journal.

As the Journal noted, this was “the first time that a top Biden administration official has publicly indicated that the U.S. is considering the policy shift.”

“Previously, the U.S. has said it wouldn’t allow Ukraine to attack targets on Russian territory with ATACMS missiles or other U.S. weapons,” it said.

During the briefing, Blinken said — in carefully couched language — that Ukraine “has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself. We’re going to make sure that it has the equipment it needs to do that.”

“Another hallmark of our support for Ukraine over these, now, more than two years has been to adapt as conditions have changed and the battlefield has changed, as what Russia does has changed in terms of how it’s pursuing its aggression and escalation,” he continued.

“We’ve adapted and adjusted, too, and I’m confident we’ll continue to do that.”

After Blinken’s comments, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a briefing on Wednesday, “We do not encourage nor do we enable attacks using U.S. weapons on Russian soil.”

“Our support to Ukraine has evolved appropriately as the battlefield conditions have evolved. And that’s not going to change. But right now, there’s also no change to our policy,” Kirby said.

Just in case that didn’t make it clear that a policy shift has taken place in the Biden administration, officials confirmed to the Journal that there was a rethink underway about the White House’s policy regarding whether the weapons could be used to target Russian territory. A decision hasn’t been reached, however, the officials said.

The move comes as other European nations have begun allowing Ukrainian forces to use their weapons to strike inside Russia.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said during a news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that France would allow Kyiv’s forces to use Paris-supplied cruise missiles to strike inside Russian territory, the Journal reported.

“We must allow them to neutralize military sites from which missiles are being fired, military sites from which Ukraine is being attacked,” Macron said regarding the French-supplied Scalp missiles Ukrainians would be using.

He did, however, indicate that the missiles in question would not be used to strike civilian targets or military facilities that are not involved in the Ukrainian invasion.

The Scalp missiles in question have a range of more than 300 miles.

The public statement by Macron, furthermore, comes as Kyiv and its European allies have been pushing the United States to be less restrictive with what Ukraine can use U.S.-supplied weaponry to do.

The Biden administration has had misgivings about letting Ukrainian forces use the weaponry inside Russian territory, and with good reason.

According to the Journal, the administration wants to avoid “any steps that could lead to an escalation in the Ukraine war — an approach that Kyiv and some of its allies have criticized as giving Moscow a crucial edge on the battlefield. Macron and Scholz were meeting in Germany as allies scramble to reinforce Ukraine and slow the advances of Russian forces.”

“We can see every point where Russian troops are concentrated. We know all areas from which Russian missiles are launched and combat aircraft take off,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said during a Sunday address.

Hitting these targets, he indicated, “is entirely a political decision. The decision that must be made.”

Right — and it’s a decision that should be easy, were this not a president who is running a campaign based in part on tarring his opponent as a Muscovite tool.

The reason Ukraine has been denied the use of U.S. weapons to strike within Russia is based on the not-quite-ignorant assumption that Moscow might view the world’s most powerful military supplying weapons to Kyiv to conduct offensives within Russian territory as a de facto declaration of war, ratcheting up tensions between the two nations.

Furthermore, Macron is a bit of an outlier, even in a Europe that’s less skeptical about getting stuck in the mire in Ukraine; he’s one of the few leaders who has refused to rule out using his own troops on the ground in the country, a huge step from merely supplying weaponry.

And there’s another issue: Just like Biden had previously promised to keep American weapons in Ukrainian hands from attacking Russia on Russian soil, he’s also promised to keep American boots off the ground there.

After Macron’s refusal to rule out troop deployment in February, National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said Biden “has been clear that the U.S. will not send troops to fight in Ukraine,” according to Agence France-Presse.

It was the latest in over two years of insisting that U.S. troops would never be stuck in an Eastern European quagmire — something the president was saying before the Russian invasion of Ukraine even happened, as Reuters noted.

The questions practically raise themself, then: If the White House can about-face on the matter of where American-supplied weapons strike, why can’t it about-face on troops, as well? Why should we trust anything that was told to us at the outset of this war if the red line keeps being moved? If Zelenskyy makes a plea for U.S. troops to enter the war, arguing that deploying them or keeping them out “is entirely a political decision” and that it was a “decision that must be made,” what’s stopping Joe Biden from sending them to save face?

The answers are obvious. The White House can and will about-face, we shouldn’t trust anything, and nothing is stopping Joe Biden.

The proof of that is in the series of decisions that have led us to get more dug in than ever, the same way that Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did with Vietnam and prior administrations did with Afghanistan. Unlike those wars, this is a disaster that could end in a series of mushroom clouds, which is seldom a good sign.

America cannot afford and will not abide by a decision to throw our might 100 percent behind Zelenskyy, no matter what the costs.

There’s a reason the phrase “America First” resonates with Trump voters. When it comes to this issue — like so many others — Biden is America Last. Kyiv and the opinion of Emmanuel Macron and other Eurohawks trump (excuse the pun) our best interest.

While the former president is being tried on Mickey Mouse charges in a Manhattan courtroom, our current president is busy ensuring that we get stuck with a conflict where the way out for the United States gets more thorny by the day. He hopes we won’t pay attention, one gathers.

Enough is enough. It’s time to ensure that Kyiv knows that there’s a bright red line regarding American involvement in their regional conflict.