President Joe Biden took the seat saying “diplomacy is back”. But in the war in Ukraine, it ignored diplomatic options, sent tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons to the fore, and threatened to face a nuclear-armed Russia.
Russia attacked Ukraine without any provocation or justification. It probably violated international humanitarian law with its brutal aggression and occupation. In fact, it is in America’s national interest that Russia did not take the capital of Kiev.
But the calculus changed when Russia withdrew and concentrated its military efforts in the two eastern provinces, where it had been supporting separatist forces for years. Ukraine’s sovereignty is no longer a threat. There doesn’t seem to be an advantage on either side.
Conditions seem ripe for a negotiated solution, in which Ukraine accepts some kind of border change and Russia withdraws its troops. There may be compromises on NATO enlargement or the deployment of NATO weapons.
But the Biden administration is not proposing negotiations.
When White House Press Secretary Jan Psaki was asked a few weeks ago what Biden’s role was in the negotiations to end the war, the answer was simple: no.
Recently, Biden has improved his White House message a bit. He claims that Ukraine has strengthened its position at the negotiating table.
But there are no “tables” – at least not in public, and not in the presence of the USA and Russia.
Ironically, Biden and the once anti-war Democrats act as if negotiations are impossible. They demand that Congress provide billions of dollars worth of new weapons to Ukraine, without oversight or consideration of alternatives.
Rather than continuing the war, it may be possible to end the war with fewer casualties and less economic damage through a negotiated solution. But the choice is presented as all or nothing. We are not even told what “success” looks like.
Interestingly, in 1986, comic book writer Frank Miller published a four-part series, Batman: The Dark Knight ReturnsWhich eventually became a comic book and adapted for the Hollywood screen. Set in Gotham, the United States and the Soviet Union are waging a proxy war against the fictional Latin American island nation of Corto Maltese.
Calling for a US war effort, Superman forced the Soviets to retreat. But when they retreat, they unleash powerful nuclear weapons.
This fictional scenario is not far off when the world is faced with an unstable tyrant like Vladimir Putin. As some predicted that Putin would actually invade Ukraine, few know what to do if forced to retreat via conventional warfare.
A nuclear conflict would have been a disaster for the country – but Russia’s economic isolation turned into a disaster. He has nothing to lose and knows that it will be difficult for NATO to retaliate by launching a nuclear attack on a non-member country like Ukraine.
Biden told Americans that all the problems they face—inflation, fuel prices, a lack of baby food—are caused by the ongoing war. If so, it won’t do anything to stop it.
Perhaps his rhetoric—promising to remove Putin from power by calling the Russian leader a war criminal—prolonged the war, or at least gave Putin more reason to keep fighting. It did nothing but help voters forget that Biden’s early attempts to appease partially ended in war.
“Diplomacy is at the center of our foreign policy,” Biden once said. What he seems to understand by “diplomacy” is a farce, in which the United States agrees to sacrifice its interests to the perspective of utopian global transnational institutions.
He didn’t mean what Trump meant by “diplomacy” – the use of negotiations to win backed by economic and military power.
Trump has been suppressing Russia for four years. Joe “Diplomacy is back” Biden can’t find the phone and the danger escalates.
Joel B. Pollack is Senior Editor and news anchor for Breitbart News Breitbart Market News Every Sunday night from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM ET (4:00 PM to 7:00 PM PT) on Sirius XM Patriot. He is the author of the recently published e-book Neither Free nor Fair: 2020 US Presidential Election. last book RETURN NOVEMBERtells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries from a conservative perspective. Won the 2018 Robert Novak Graduate Journalism Fellowship. follow him on twitter @joelpollak.
Source: Breitbart
