What does Biden want from the Ukraine crisis?
China News Weekly reporter/Cao Ran
Published in the 1032nd issue of "China News Weekly" on February 21, 2022
In 1990, the Soviet Union experienced its warmest February in 20 years.
In the member republics of Russia and Ukraine, the deserts and lakes that used to thaw in April broke through the end of February.
The then US Secretary of State Baker, who arrived in Moscow, took this as a good sign.
He will confirm the security pattern of Eurasia after the drastic changes in Eastern Europe with Gorbachev, the then top leader of the Soviet Union.
After 32 years, Europe has ushered in a warm winter again, and the rivers and lakes in the Donbass region of southeastern Ukraine will thaw at the end of February and early March 2022.
This time, Washington sees climate change as an "offensive signal" for Russia.
No matter how the Kremlin denies it, U.S. Army analysts have emphasized that the earlier thaw time means that the "window period" suitable for large-scale deployment and operations of mechanized forces is about to end, and Russia will launch a large-scale military "aggression" on Ukrainian territory within February. ".
The controversy quickly dates back to February 1990.
The Russian side said that Baker verbally promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to Russia’s immediate neighbors. Now NATO’s intention to accept Ukraine as a new member violated the promise. The two sides should sign a security agreement that expressly stipulates that “Ukraine shall not join NATO”. .
The Biden administration said that any European country has the freedom to join NATO, the "security consensus" between the United States and Russia (Soviet Union) does not include this issue, and Moscow should not use this as an excuse to use military deterrence against Ukraine, otherwise it will pay " Unprecedented price."
Subtly, America's European allies have not shown the same attitude as Washington.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Scholz are looking forward to peacefully resolving disputes through the "Normandy model" of the four-party talks between Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine, and advocated certain concessions to Russia.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has consistently said that although he believes Russia is threatening Ukraine, friends in the White House have "exaggerated the possibility of an imminent attack."
Some Ukrainian analysts have privately told the media that Biden's rendering of Russia's war threat may be "part of the U.S. information war."
The growing number of open differences between the United States and Europe show that the real crisis lies beyond military activity.
Former Assistant Secretary of State Joseph De Thomas told China News Weekly that the Ukrainian issue is regarded by the United States as part of the "strategic stability" of the United States and Russia, which reflects the White House's desire to continue to strengthen the NATO system to contain Russia.
But at the same time, Europe and Russia are looking forward to a European multilateral security system that goes beyond the old NATO system.
Stephen Bryan, the former deputy secretary of defense of the United States, admitted that if only talking about the Ukraine crisis itself, it is not difficult to solve the problem: NATO's admission of new members requires a vote of all member states.
Under the premise of maintaining NATO's "free access" clause, it is enough that the leaders of Germany, France or any NATO member state promise Putin "not to vote for Ukraine to join".
But the real difficulty is: the mutual trust between the West and Russia, Europe and the United States, and between different political forces in the United States has been further reduced, the NATO system led by the United States is incompatible with the multilateral mechanisms that are more inclined in Europe, and what should the new European security order be? How to build?
A "period of opportunity" to reshape the European security order?
"We have no plans to withdraw." On February 8, 2022, after Russia, France, and Germany all clearly signaled a negotiated solution to the Ukraine crisis, current US Army Secretary Kristin Worms said at a public event, The U.S. military will not slow down its troop increase to Europe due to the recent easing of the situation in Ukraine, even if Russians say that the Russian military can partially withdraw from the Russian-Ukrainian border.
On the same day, more than 3,000 officers and soldiers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division, which Worms called the "highest-level reserve", were heading to Poland from the United States. This was also the first time that the unit was organized to perform missions on the European continent more than 20 years after the end of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia. .
Previously, more than 8,500 US soldiers have been stationed in military bases in NATO member states such as Germany and Poland.
U.S. officials have repeatedly confirmed that Ukraine is not a member of NATO, so these forces will not be used to directly defend Ukraine.
An intelligence briefing written by former senior officials of the White House National Security Council and Intelligence Council also pointed out that these forward-deployed troops face the Russian military's comprehensive and three-dimensional military deployment, "have no real military value and are almost useless in conflicts. ".
At the same time, an American think tank estimates that these transfers may involve tens of billions of dollars in military spending.
What is the purpose of the Biden administration's approval of a series of military deployments?
"Biden needs a period of opportunity to reshape the U.S.-led European security order." An analyst close to the U.S. State Department told China News Weekly that he personally believes that Biden's "most successful point" is: although Europe There is no strong national desire for Ukraine to join NATO, but Biden's success in convincing European leaders that the Ukraine crisis is a "European-wide security crisis" and making them believe that NATO must respond has "greatly strengthened U.S. power in Europe" exist".
Before the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014, most of the United States' European allies did not support Ukraine's membership in NATO.
Bryan acknowledged that, from a realist point of view, NATO's expansion into Ukraine is a "death blow" to the European security system, because "the simplest military reality is: the bigger the alliance, the harder it is to defend it."
Once a local conflict breaks out, NATO cannot really provide sufficient defensive protection for Ukraine or any member states that are close to Russia. It will only drag EU countries and Russia into a non-war stalemate and force EU countries to move towards a US-Russian-style confrontational relationship. .
More fundamentally, the contradiction between the United States and Russia on whether Ukraine can join NATO began in 1990 when the United States and the Soviet Union negotiated to reshape the European security order after the drastic changes in Eastern Europe.
At that time, today's major powers in the EU were still in a "dominated" position.
When U.S. Secretary of State Baker went to Moscow to persuade Gorbachev to support Germany's NATO membership, Baker's reasoning was: "Do you want a neutral but strong Germany that is independent of the West (the United States), or a NATO membership that can only Germany operating within these limits?"
Biden's ability to "seize the opportunity" also benefits from the United States' long-term NATO strategy.
Transatlantic relations were once more balanced after 2000, as Washington shifted its focus to the war on terror and the European Union advocated for strategic autonomy.
But since the 2008 financial crisis, European countries have massively reduced security spending, and the US's dominance in the NATO system has continued to rise.
Between 2008 and 2020, U.S. military spending increased from $656 billion to $778 billion, while total military spending by the EU-27 and the United Kingdom fell from $303 billion to $292 billion.
The United States spends more than seven times as much on new defense technologies as all EU member states combined.
As for the construction of "European strategic autonomy", due to the different willingness of countries, the funds actually implemented so far are less than one-third of the plan.
However, for Europe, which is pursuing "strategic autonomy", the situation is not optimistic.
Shapiro, research director at the European Council of Foreign Affairs, pointed out that this Ukraine crisis is taking place at a "particularly inopportune moment" for major European governments: British Prime Minister Johnson's attention is focused on domestic political agendas, and a post-Brexit Britain In foreign and security policy, it is more inclined to the United States; France is in an election year; the new German government is still divided in foreign policy.
In this context, "Europe almost 'outsourced' the Russian-Ukrainian crisis to the US".
On January 19, 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron reiterated the security concept with Europe as the main body in his speech at the European Parliament.
He said that in the face of the Ukraine crisis, Europe urgently needs to establish its own collective security order and "collectively formulate our own demands", which means direct dialogue between European countries, not the United States, with Russia.
"For many years, I have been advocating this kind of dialogue, which is not optional, because historical and geographical conditions determine that we and Russia are inseparable." Macron emphasized that the current European security order is not defined by the Biden administration NATO expansion under the "counter-Russian", but "an order that we (the West) and Russia have built together".
Similar to Macron, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and new Chancellor Scholz both pursued "European strategic autonomy". EU countries such as Sweden and Finland refused to join NATO, and expressed "closer to France's position" after Macron's statement.
On the other hand, whether it is Trump who "sanctions allies" or Biden who "returns to Europe", successive US administrations cannot accept a "more independent Europe".
The aforementioned analysts close to the U.S. State Department pointed out that because of the fundamental lag in the strategic autonomy of major European countries, Biden’s successful grasp of the “Ukraine crisis” has greatly strengthened the U.S. military presence in Europe, thereby not violating Russia’s overall security commitments. Under the circumstance, it subtly forced European countries to distance themselves from Russia.
For example, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Bryan believes that the longer-term impact of this is to increase the deployment of missile forces and missile silos.
Beginning in August 2021, the US military announced the deployment of a new army task force in Germany in the name of responding to the Ukraine crisis, equipped with land-based intermediate-range ballistic missiles that had previously been rejected by European allies.
Today, the U.S. military also plans to revive a disbanded artillery command, which during the Cold War was responsible for controlling intermediate-range ballistic missiles deployed in West Germany and aimed at Eastern Soviet Union.
Bryan pointed out that these missile units and equipment are deployed in the name of "defensiveness", which on the surface conforms to the "security consensus" of NATO and Russia, but in fact the launch vehicle can be adapted to offensive cruise missiles. significant security threat.
This will become a major concern for future relations between Europe and Russia.
The aforementioned analysts close to the U.S. State Department said that the Biden administration is indeed worried that focusing on European security affairs will distract attention from the Indo-Pacific region and “containment of China,” but the premise of shifting the U.S. strategic focus to the Indo-Pacific is to have a solid “U.S.-Russia strategic stability.” relations” and ensure that European allies can take responsibility for maintaining the security system.
But "independent Europe" clearly pierced the "bottom line" of "strategic stability".
The Biden Administration Is Influenced by the U.S. Domestic Agenda
The latest poll by "Politico" magazine shows that 48% of the American people support the government to increase troops in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, more than half of the respondents call for NATO to accept Ukraine, and nearly two-thirds of voters call on the Biden administration to respond to Russia in a timely manner impose more sanctions.
And when Washington talks about further policy options toward Russia, European allies have tied Biden's hands and feet.
From June to November 2021, Biden traveled to Europe several times to coordinate the formation of a "united front" against Russia and China by his main allies, but ended in vain.
US media later revealed that leaders of Germany, France, Italy and other countries carefully considered their words and did not want to touch the bottom line of Russia-EU relations, and often dragged the meeting to determine common documents until late at night.
After the situation in Ukraine deteriorated, some in both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party accused Biden of being restrained by his allies and failing to quickly "kill" a new round of Ukraine's crisis in 2021.
The sanctions that the United States intends to impose on Russia in the future are also constrained by various aspects.
According to US media reports, initially, Washington considered imposing sweeping sanctions on major Russian banks during Russia's "invasion of Ukraine" and exercising sweeping control over technology exports to Russia.
But later, the Biden administration appeared to narrow the proposed sanctions to a few Russian business leaders and government officials.
Analysts believe that this is because the Biden administration is trying to avoid European countries’ concerns about U.S. sanctions, so as not to affect economic exchanges between Russia and Europe as much as possible, and to ensure the supply of Russian natural gas, which accounts for about 40% of Europe’s total gas consumption.
However, critics accuse that the US government has imposed more than 850 sanctions on Russia in the past 12 years, and Biden has imposed 25 new sanctions on Russia over the situation in Ukraine, but all of them have failed to work because of concerns about alliance relations.
On February 7, 2022, after meeting with German Chancellor Scholz, Biden promised the media at a joint press conference that once Russia "invades Ukraine", the "Nord Stream II" energy pipeline project jointly developed by Germany and Russia will be destroyed. termination.
"I promise you, we're going to be able to do that," Biden said.
In this regard, German Chancellor Scholz did not refute.
But then he sidestepped all the questions that led him to make the same promise and signaled that he had no desire to adopt a unified attitude and policy with Biden.
Unlike the negotiations on the European security order in 1990, today European countries are no longer passive bystanders.
Briefings by top White House security and intelligence officials have noted that European elites do not see Russia as the only source of current European instability, and are increasingly taking a stance against Washington.
After the press conference between Biden and Scholz, some German media wrote that Scholz's non-confrontational statement was a "diplomatic language that Americans cannot understand."
In "response", an inexplicably leaked German diplomatic document has warned that a growing number of politicians in Washington are calling Germany an "unreliable partner".
"The most important thing for Biden is that the period of opportunity is not one-way." The aforementioned analysts said that there are now voices in Washington that Russia is also taking advantage of the vacuum of post-Merkel European leadership to promote European security. Order is more independent.
Kortunov said that currently Russia does support a broader multilateral security dialogue on the European security system, which involves not only Russia, Ukraine, and NATO countries, but also "other affected neighbors" such as Belarus.
"Western countries have a lot of prejudice and reservations about dealing with Russia, and there is no trust. Maybe it's easier for everyone to cooperate based on a more side mechanism." Kortunov said, "Yes, that means we have to do more But even if you don't like Lukashenko (the leader of Belarus), you can't rule out these 'dislike' countries and build a real all-European security order."
But the Biden administration does not see this as an option to consider.
Smith, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, recently stated publicly that "it's hard enough to get dozens of people to discuss what to eat for dinner."
De Thomas told "China News Weekly" that from the perspective of the United States, now "Russia is not a credible partner, but it cannot compete strategically with the United States, so the goal of the United States is to hope that they will not take the risk of dragging the two sides into war. NATO is the most effective deterrent structure against Russia.”
In the short term, it is the domestic political agenda that will have more influence on Biden's policies.
The battle over the Ukraine crisis has become a key battle in the 2022 midterm elections.
The Republican-led Congress should pass a sanctions bill to "deter aggression" before Russia "invasion," rather than "after the fact," as Democrats and European allies advocate.
Another issue of contention is whether to impose the "most damaging" sanctions directly, as the Republicans have called for, or to set up a phased plan, as the Democrats and Europeans have called for, to apply different sanctions depending on the situation.
Silverberg, senior legal counsel for congressional Republicans, pointed out that behind these disputes is actually a struggle between congressional power and presidential power.
In order to pursue the flexibility of sanctions-related bills, most of the sanctions bills of previous US administrations have left the final decision for the president.
But Republicans are now arguing that future sanctions bills should not give the president a veto because the Biden administration "wasted" the opportunity to contain Russia in 2021.
Considering that analysts mostly believe that the Republican Party will win one or both chambers of Congress in the 2022 midterm elections, the game over the Ukraine crisis-related bill actually points to the relationship between Biden and the Republican Congress in the next two years of his term in office.
Against this background, agreeing to or acquiescing to the emergence of a European security mechanism that is more diverse than NATO is not an option that Biden is prepared to consider.
"China News Weekly" Issue 6, 2022
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