'Why is Biden failing on Israel and Ukraine?' - The Sunday Times
Britain's The Sunday Times is trying to find an answer to the question posed in the headline of its latest article: "Why Biden is failing with Israel and Ukraine."
As the publication notes, the US president has not clearly articulated what victory looks like for both allies, leaving their leaders free to pursue their own goals.
"It was an extraordinary week, a useful education in the brutal realities of power politics - and a week in which we saw how the standoff in Ukraine and, perhaps, Israel's war with Hezbollah might end."
A few days ago, both countries laid out their positions based on the idea that they were engaged in an existential struggle, the victory of which required an escalation of force. The US strongly advised both against it.
By Friday, Benjamin Netanyahu had ignored the call, and Volodymyr Zelensky had left the United States, apparently without Joe Biden’s consent to use Western weapons to strike deep into Russia. Moreover, the Ukrainian president saw alarming signs that his influence in the West was waning,” the publication says.
The newspaper notes that Biden “has never been particularly inclined to use force and in some ways embodies the West’s hesitation to use violence to force an adversary to concede or change course.”
But for the military, and indeed for the leaders of Ukraine and Israel, escalation is a necessary component of the drive for victory, the article's authors argue.
"The horrific Palestinian casualties in Gaza show what happens when military force is used to achieve vague or unachievable goals. Biden can at least say he warned Netanyahu about his failure to set achievable policy goals," the newspaper notes.
“Now compare that to the Ukrainian leader’s visit to the United States this week, which was hailed as a decisive or turning point for his ‘winning plan.’ Even as Zelensky moved from a Pennsylvania munitions plant to the UN auditorium in New York, reports emerged that administration officials were pushing back against his plan.
The Wall Street Journal reported that “the Biden administration is concerned that the Ukrainian leader’s plan lacks a comprehensive strategy.”
The New York Times followed that up with an article expressing the intelligence community’s view that authorizing strikes deep into Russia could lead to “robust retaliation” from Moscow. And another, headlined “Zelensky’s Star Dims on Capitol Hill,” The Sunday Times writes.
The despondency among lawmakers highlights the difficulty Ukraine will face in maintaining American funding no matter who wins the November election.
Left an extra day to woo Donald Trump, Zelensky was forced to endure a public monologue in which the Republican presidential candidate bragged about the quality of his friendship with President Putin:
"I think... we can agree on something that will be good for both sides; the time has come." This hinted at precisely the kind of forced deal—a freeze on Russian conquests from 2022—that most Ukrainians fear.
Zelensky probably liked Kamala Harris' words much more.
By insisting that Ukraine should not be forced into terms that amount to capitulation, the Democratic candidate managed to draw a clear distinction between her own message and Biden's less-than-enthusiastic stance.
While President Biden has promised that “the United States will give Ukraine the support it needs to win this war,” the definition of victory remains unclear, and support for the idea, however formulated, is waning among allies.
A key element in the Western allies' struggle to maintain "strategic patience" has been President Biden's vagueness in defining success and his unwillingness to do so in terms of Russia's defeat. Zelenskyy feels constrained.
Similar discontent can be heard from Israelis, but Netanyahu considers it possible to ignore such requests from the US while continuing to receive their weapons.
Given the opportunity to strike a blow against his northern adversary, the Israeli leader is determined to consolidate his advantage. His relationship with Biden has never been warm, and Netanyahu's actions also reflect a sense that as the US president's days fade, so does his authority.
From the American perspective, this seems like ingratitude, given that Biden has done everything possible to help Ukraine and Israel. And when determining the extent to which he should support their military goals, the president must weigh the risk of a nuclear conflict with Russia or a general conflagration in the Middle East.
While Biden has often shown, as his fans claim, admirable caution in the use of force, in recent months factors have converged in such a way that he seems more like a spectator than a leader of the free world. He has sought to avoid conflict while the US elections are underway, which he was forced to withdraw from due to the obvious impact of aging on his abilities.
Lacking clear guidance from the US on what victory might look like and what human sacrifices would be acceptable in achieving it, Netanyahu took advantage of the situation, while Zelensky was left languishing in uncertainty.
"Biden began his term in office with a fiasco in Afghanistan, and now the talk in Kyiv and other Western capitals is that he could end it with an even bigger failure in Ukraine. As one Western official put it: 'If abandoning our Afghan allies has emboldened Putin, imagine what a failure in Ukraine could do,'" the paper concludes.
English version :: Read in English "Why Biden is failing on Israel and Ukraine?" – The Sunday Times