An assumption made by the Biden administration was that Putin would hold fire until Trump gets sworn in on January 20, 2025. They may soon be proved wrong, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat
Once he was forced out of the US Presidential contest in July, President Biden seems to have lost the motivation needed to carry on with a job that in many ways is as demanding as it is powerful. Hence he may have only nodded his head when the many Russophobes clustered within his administration asked for formal approval to send long range missiles to Ukraine, something that President Vladimir Putin had warned would cross a red line that he would not ignore.
The Russophobes have been bitterly disappointed that despite strenuous efforts, the Russian Federation remains united. Worse, Putin continues to be in charge at the Kremlin. Not incorrectly, they believe that it has been Putin who has, since taking office at the turn of the last century, been the architect of the turnaround of the Russian Federation from the abyss of being a failed and dismembered state.
Boris Yeltsin was doing an excellent job of causing such a catastrophe, and if he had continued in a figurehead role in the Kremlin for a few years longer, the Russophobes in Washington are convinced that they could have succeeded in dismembering the Russian Federation. After all, partitioning a large state into smaller, more malleable, entities was a staple of the policy of countries who regarded the formal end of European empires as needing to be followed by another method of achieving the same level of control over former vassal states.
When Putin began using the same tactic in the case of countries that were stepping on Russian toes, they intensified efforts at getting him out of the job he is in, President of the Russian Federation. In 2014, when the Washington Russophobes overthrew through street violence a Russophile President and replaced him with a Russophobe, Putin in effect annexed parts of Lugansk and Donetsk in the east of Ukraine, as well as took formal control of Crimea. He was clearly no Yeltsin, and yet his repeated warnings about the certainty of escalation should NATO provide long range missiles to Ukraine to hit deeper into Russia went ignored.
The Biden administration may have relied on Beijing to restrain Putin. After all, officials from that capital had privately assured them that Putin would not react in the manner he was threatening when the US administration kept intensifying its backing for Ukraine. Hence this time around as well, they were expecting a muted response when they sent long range missiles for use inside deep inside Russia by Ukraine. Instead, Putin wasted no time in sending across a nuclear capable missile with an MIRV warhead to strike, for the first time ever since Cold War 1.0 started.
It was these same officials in Beijing who had told them after the Russia-Ukraine war started in 2022 that when Putin met Xi just days before such an attack, no hint of the impending action was given by the former to the latter. Since then, although China under Xi has been about the only beneficiary of the war, Russophobes across both sides of the North Atlantic have several times claimed that Xi would restrain Putin and tell him to end the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian military.
Kiev claims that for the first time, a missile with MIRV capabilities has been launched into Ukraine. Now Putin has gone public in saying that the war now directly involved NATO, something that the populations of member states of that alliance must find disturbing. Another assumption made by the Biden administration was that Putin would hold his fire until Trump gets sworn in on January 20, 2025. They may soon be proved wrong. Rather than hold his fire, Putin is likely to go all out before Biden demits office. As a consequence, the people of Ukraine would suffer even more than has been the case since Zelenskyy declined a ceasefire offer from Putin in April 2022.
Had he accepted, he would not have lost 40% more land area than what had been already taken since 2014 to Russia, with more such losses heading his way. As has been pointed out by this columnist from the start of the conflict in 2022, given the disparity in size and strength between the two sides, it was an impossibility that Ukraine could retake the territories lost since 2014.
Try telling that to the Russophobes in Washington and apparently London who are still using Ukraine in a project that has only succeeded in expanding the Russian military machine and has brought Moscow closer to Beijing than at any other time in the history of Sino-Russian relations. Apparently London as well because there are reports that British long range missiles too have been used by Ukraine, something that was not expected now that a Labour government is in power in Whitehall.
Deposed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appears to have found like-minded people in the Labour Party. Incoming President Trump has been right all along, that the best thing to do about Ukraine (and for Ukraine) would be the end the war and prevent Ukraine joining NATO. Meanwhile, larger and larger fires are being lit by Biden before Trump returns to the White House. By giving long range missiles to Ukraine and permitting their use, what happens as a consequence could define the Biden Presidency.
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