Biden’s speech at the NATO summit

Biden in his speech at this week’s NATO meeting got to strike a posture as a resolute Cold Warrior.

Today, NATO is more powerful than ever: 32 nations strong. For years, Finland and Sweden were among our closest partners. Now they have chosen to officially join NATO. And because of the power and meaning of Article 5 guarantee — that’s the reason. It was the most important aspect of the Alliance in 1949, and it is still the most important aspect. (1)

Article 5 is the mutual defense commitment. I’m pretty sure that no one familiar with NATO needed to be reminded that it’s primarily a mutual defense alliance and always has been. And one directed primarily at defending against first the Soviet Union and now Russia.

The speech is most notable for what it does not include.

Nuclear war danger

The most important omission was that there was no mention at all of the need to improve nuclear nonproliferation. But as Joe Cirincione recently warned (2):

President Joe Biden has a terrible nuclear policy. A re-elected President Donald Trump’s would be much worse.

Biden has authorized the largest nuclear weapons budgets since the Cold War, delayed then squandered his chance to contain Iran’s nuclear program, and apparently has no policy for containing North Korea’s missiles and weapons. But a re-elected Trump would put nuclear weapons programs on steroids, trash what remains of the global arms control regime, and likely trigger new nuclear weapons programs in more other nations than we have seen at any time since the early 1960s. [my emphasis]

Between brain-dead militarists who fantasize that nuclear weapons are somehow magical devices – just drop and nuke and the other side surrenders just like after Hiroshima! – and the big bucks that go into weapons development and manufacturing, there are strong incentives apart from the real threats of more and more countries going nuclear that promote nuclear proliferation.

We know how nuclear arms limitations and nonproliferation work. After the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, both Soviet and US leaders started sobering up to what full-on nuclear war would mean and moved toward limitations and nonproliferation.

I always do a double-take when people call climate change is the biggest existential threat to human life. It is such a threat. But an all-out nuclear war between the US and Russia would be a far more immediate one than climate change and would have immediate catastrophic effects in mass deaths and immediate destruction of infrastructure. It would also put climate change on steroids in a way that would quickly wipe out much of the world’s capability to grow food.

Ukraine

By my count, there were 21 mentions of Ukraine in Biden’s NATO speech – and two of “Uraine.”. Not one of them included even a hint of any kind of peace plan for Ukraine.

In Europe, Putin’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues. And Putin wants nothing less — nothing less than Ukraine’s total subjugation; to end Ukraine’s democracy; to destroy Uraine’s cul- — Uraine — Ukraine’s culture; and to wipe Ukraine off the map.

And we know Putin won’t stop at Ukraine. But make no mistake, Ukraine can and will stop Putin — (applause) — especially with our full, collective support. And they have our full support.

My God, this is the “domino theory” on steroids with the usual threat inflation. Yes, Russia is committing illegal aggression in Ukraine. And war crimes, too. We worry about war crimes – well, when The Enemy commits them, but not when Benjamin Netanyahu does so with full US support.

Today, I’m announcing the historic donation of air defense equipment for Ukraine. The United States, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, and Italy will provide Ukraine with the equipment for five additional strategic air defense systems.

And in the coming months, the United States and our partners intend to provide Ukraine with dozens of additional tactical air defense systems.

The United States will make sure that when we export critical air defense interceptors, Ukraine goes to the front of the line. (Applause.) They will get this assistance before anyone else gets it.

All told, Ukraine will receive hundreds of additional interceptors over the next year, helping protect Ukrainian cities against Russian missiles and Ukrainian troops facing air attacks on the front lines.

Make no mistake, Russia is failing in this war. More than two years into Putin’s war of choice, his losses are staggering: more than 350,000 Russian troops dead or wounded; nearly 1 million Russians, many of them young people, have left Russia because they no longer see a future in Russia. …

When this senseless war began, Ukraine was a free country. Today, it is still a free country, and the war will end with Ukraine remaining a free and independent country. (Applause.)

Russia will not prevail. Ukraine will prevail. (Applause.) [my emphasis]

Anyone familiar with foreign policy “realist” perspectives would not have been surprised that the US and European NATO members would provide aid to Ukraine, condemn Russian aggression, and so on. But, of course, the war didn’t start in a vacuum in February 2022. NATO countries knew for sure by latest 2008 that EU and especially NATO expansion to include Ukraine would be considered a threat by any Russian government, and Putin’s government was explicit about that.

Now of course, no one would expect a US President in a speech like this to give a nuanced review of US policy toward Ukraine for the past two decades.

Biden also stated clearly the cold pragmatic calculation at work in US policy toward the Ukraine war: “More than two years into Putin’s war of choice, his losses are staggering.” If NATO is committed to pursuing an expand-or-fight strategy against Russia, it counts as practical success that NATO can contribute to military damage to Russia while not having NATO soldiers (yet) directly on the battlefield.

Much of the US foreign policy “blob” apparently still considers it a great US success that we funded the Muslim jihadist war against the pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan back where actual supporters of the American side like Osama Bin Laden got lots of experience. Since it produced the particular version of political warfare we came to call “jihadism,” we can even say it made a distinct contribution to the science and politics of warfare.

In the immortal words of Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser of Zbigniew Brzezinski who staunchly advocated for that intervention, "What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?" (3)

(For what it’s worth, the failure of economic modernization in the USSR, the costly burden of supporting its Warsaw Pact allies, and the general economic troubles that included the very mixed blessing of the USSR becoming a petrostate very exposed to oil price swings were all more plausible reasons for the USSR’s collapse than the war in Afghanistan, though the latter was certainly an unhappy experience for them.)

Meanwhile, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and cities are being chewed up in a war that is now 2 ½ years old. And what happens if Trump becomes President again, which the polls are currently showing as likely?

As people like Über-Realist John Mearsheimer have been repeatedly pointing out, Ukraine is clearly losing the war, which has become a war of attrition in which Russia’s wealth and manpower reserves give it a strong advantage over Ukraine. And despite the hype promoted by Biden in the speech, Putin has never actually declared it will settle for “nothing less than Ukraine’s total subjugation” or “to wipe Ukraine off the map,” at least not anything known to be in the public record. Mearsheimer has consistently argued that Putin’s most likely maximum goal in this war would be to take the capital Kiev and to establish a puppet regime there, but to leave western Ukraine as a dysfunctional rump state. Speaking of Mearsheimer, here is a current interview with him about Ukraine. (4)

Falling dominoes?

He also argues against Biden’s domino-theory position, “we know Putin won’t stop at Ukraine.” For him, that’s a gross over-estimation of Russia’s current capabilities.

Notably, Mearsheimer is doubtful whether a reinstalled President Trump would just pull out support for Ukraine in the proxy war. As the old saying goes, it’s a lot easier to get into a war than to get out of one. And Trump has shown no ability to execute such a complicated thing as working out a half-reasonable ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump also did say in his debate with Biden that he would not accept the two preconditions that Putin has given for formerly opening Ukraine peace negotiations.

The US and NATO are facing a hostile Russia and are even waging what can be accurately called a proxy war with it in Ukraine. As a practical matter, NATO does have to maintain a defense capability on its eastern borders to deter any Russian attack.

Here’s where a lack of any alternative vision for NATO is problematic. If the US in the 1990s and afterward had seriously pursued to notion of a cooperative security arrangement with Russia, a more stable and cooperative security arrangement for Europe might have been established. But the US was the “global hegemon” (as the realists call it) during those years. And the temptation to just throw our weight around proved too strong for our leaders to resist.

But it’s not a “unipolar” world any more now. And Russia’s economy has even managed to avoid major damage through the economic sanctions that the US got so used to using. On the contrary, the strength of their economy has surprised most observers, it seems. The US decision to go the proxy-war route in Ukraine – “more than 350,000 Russian troops dead or wounded” – also meant that Russia is getting an economic boost via the “economic Keynesianism” of increased war spending. And it also meant that Russia has increased the size of its army substantially since the start of the war.

Whether Biden with Ukraine and Israel is simply stuck in his previous perspectives or whether his capacity to deal with such situation in a different way has simply diminished, his Administration doesn’t seem to have any constructive ideas for a near-term end to the current Ukraine war and can’t seem to figure out how to stand up to Benjamin Netanyahu’s reckless and destructive conduct which the Biden Administration is enabling.

And he seems to have no serious intention of pursuing nuclear arms reduction and nuclear nonproliferation more seriously.

Notes:

(1) Remarks by President Biden on the 75th Anniversary of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization Alliance. White House website 07/09/2024. <https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/07/09/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-75th-anniversary-of-the-north-atlantic-treaty-organization-alliance/> (Accessed: 2024-11-07).

Cirincione, Joe (2024): Trump has a strategic plan for the country: Gearing up for nuclear war. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 07/02/2024.<https://thebulletin.org/2024/07/trump-has-a-strategic-plan-for-the-country-gearing-up-for-nuclear-war/#post-heading> (Accessed: 2024-11-07).

(3) Statement of Rachel Bronson to the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States July 9, 2003. National Commission website. <https://9-11commission.gov/hearings/hearing3/witness_bronson.htm> (Accessed: 2024-11-07).

(4) Prof. John Mearsheimer: Ukraine Collapsing. Judge Napolitano-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 07/11/2024. <https://www.youtube.com/live/vZRw0Dcxs6I?si=f-x7gJuNLp0WYVDm> (Accessed: 2024-11-07).