Was there ever a red line? The Biden administration wants a reset with Putin.
Hey, Europe, I hope you’re reading the news.
“How do the same people who have consistently misunderstood, miscalculated, and mishandled our policies re Russia continue to remain in charge of Russia policy? And why would we want to ‘re-set’ relations with the current Kremlin occupants? Let Ukraine defeat Russia…then re-set”, former commanding general, United States Army Europe, Ben Hodges, let out his frustration out in the open.
Ukraine’s Kursk invasion has not only exposed the Kremlin but is also unmasking the Biden administration’s true intentions. They pose as if they are committed to helping Ukraine defend its democracy, while secretly pining for a reset with a dictatorship that has never hidden its intentions to destroy European unity.
Marshall Plan be damned.
Biden administration officials told Politico that they are not interested in relaxing the restrictions on long-range weapons given to Ukraine because it would affect their plan to reset the relationship with Moscow.
I am not joking. They actually said this.
Remember this?
The image above shows then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton presenting Sergei Lavrov with a reset button in 2009, just seven short months after Putin invaded Georgia and made his modus operandi clear to the entire world.
I honestly have my doubts about whether it was Hillary Clinton who wanted a reset with Putin or if it was the entire Obama national security apparatus behind it. We may never get that answer.
The Obama administration wanted a reset with Putin. So does the Biden administration. I am honestly at a loss for words. It’s one thing to anticipate certain things, but it’s completely different when that reality hits you in the face.
Time and again, it has only been public and global pressure that has moved the Biden administration. Their refusal to send tanks was broken by Poland and Great Britain when they made a public request asking Germany to authorize the transfer of Leopard tanks. The Biden administration rushed to save the Scholz administration’s face by promising to send a massive shipment of 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
Their refusal to allow Ukraine to get fighter jets was broken by Great Britain and the Netherlands, as both nations slowly normalized the handover by creating a fighter jet coalition for Ukraine. But still, the reset aficionados found a way to hamper it by training only 12 Ukrainian pilots to fly the jets over the course of an entire year. The United States has the capacity to train hundreds of pilots every year.
Germany paid for three American made HIMARS units in May 2024 and delivered them to Ukraine probably because they understood the value the Biden administration places on pressing the reset button with Putin.
Germans have changed. The Biden administration is stuck in 2009.
In August 2024, the Biden administration released $250 million worth of aid to Ukraine, fully aware that Ukraine had seized the initiative with both hands. I think their actions speak louder than their words.
When President Biden visited Kyiv in 2023, he promised to stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes.” Then, one day, he changed his stance to “the United States will support Ukraine as long as it can.” I was disappointed because that’s not what you want to hear from the de facto leader of NATO.
He lifted my hopes again when he told the United Nations General Assembly last September that he would not allow Ukraine to be cleaved.
But I ask you this: If we abandon the core principles of the United States [U.N. Charter] to appease an aggressor, can any member state in this body feel confident that they are protected? If we allow Ukraine to be carved up, is the independence of any nation secure?
I’d respectfully suggest the answer is no. — President Biden, September 2023, United Nations General Assembly
Now all of that is starting to look like statements made for TV.
I never had a great opinion of the national security credentials of the Obama administration after they erased their own red lines over and over.
They did it in Crimea.
Then they did it in Syria.
Now the Biden administration is doing the same with Ukraine.
All they can do is keep pointing to the value of aid offered to Ukraine. I’m not sure if the White House deserves any credit for this. All credit will one day go to the U.S. Congress and the Senate.
It is heartbreaking to write this.
There really is no other way to say it. I am happy that President Biden is not running for re-election. Many thanks to Nancy Pelosi for seeing the writing on the wall. A lot of people ask me if Harris would continue in the footsteps of past Democratic administrations that so badly want to keep that connection with Vladimir Putin and his elites.
I hope not.
I am slightly confident that she won’t go down that ugly road. Women handle things very differently than men. Margaret Thatcher. Kaja Kallas. I could go on. Time and again, I have seen women act with a lot of courage when men sacrificied the righteous path for political expedience.
Tell me one woman who has run a dictatorship in the last 100 years?
There are none.
I can only think of ‘Catherine the Whatever’.
President Biden changed the way Democrats handled the economy. He was the first President to break the shackles of top-down, trickle-down economics. His policies were bold and effective. Middle-out economics has the potential to change America for the better. He did it by bringing in a strong economic team. He is never going to get the credit he deserves for it, but he has already changed America, and we will realize what he has done many years from now.
God bless him for that.
That leaves only national security on the table. Kamala Harris can take that opportunity with both hands. She needs to build on the middle-out economics path Biden laid out while charting a new American course on national security.
The first thing she needs to do is to remove all the Obama-era holdovers in her administration. It won’t be easy. Biden did it on the economic front; Harris has to do it on national security. If she does, the America that the world respected will be back.
Don’t believe me?
Just ask any man or woman (not the Taliban, just a commoner) from Afghanistan what they think of America. That’s the America the world needs — not the one that secretly wants to hit a reset button with dictatorships while posing as protectors of democracy.
Thanks for reading. Making critical information on Ukraine accessible is one way to fight misinformation. That’s why I’ve made 253 stories free to the public in 2024, including this one.
