AMAC Exclusive – By Daniel Berman
Since Russia’s invasion in February, Joe Biden has tried to claim credit for the Ukrainian people’s brave resistance. The Ukrainian ambassador was invited to the State of the Union. Ukrainian flags and colors have adorned Democratic elected officials and White House staff. Yet if British Prime Minister Palmerston’s remark that “nations have no long term friendships, only interests” were to be adjusted to describe Joe Biden and his team, it would be something along the lines of “Joe Biden has no long-term friends, only future scapegoats for upcoming failures.” Sadly, it appears Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy may be next on Biden’s list of betrayals. Biden, who is holding up heavy weapons deliveries to Ukraine, is already blaming Zelenskyy for not heeding his warnings about the Russian invasion, while senior officials are suggesting that if the Ukrainians do not retreat in the face of the Russian invasion, as Biden urged Zelenskyy to do before the war, they will face certain defeat – which according to the Biden White House, will be solely Ukraine’s fault. With this administration, the buck always stops somewhere else.
At a fundraiser this past weekend, Joe Biden bizarrely unloaded on the Ukrainian President for ignoring repeated warnings of an impending Russian invasion. “I know a lot of people thought I was exaggerating,” Biden said at the event in Los Angeles. “And there was no doubt, and Zelenskyy didn’t want to hear it, nor did a lot of people. I understand why they didn’t want to hear it, but he went in,” Biden continued. The remarks provoked outrage among Ukrainian officials who contested both their accuracy and propriety.
Biden’s remarks “probably need clarification,” the Ukrainian Presidential office said, with Presidential Spokesman Sergei Nikiforov adding, “In addition, if you remember, the President of Ukraine called on partners to impose a package of preventive sanctions to encourage Russia to withdraw troops and de-escalate the situation. And here we can say that our partners ‘did not want to hear us.’” Another Zelenskyy adviser, Myhailo Podoliak rebuked Biden for blaming a country more than a hundred days into an invasion for being attacked.
It would be easy to write off Biden’s remarks as just another gaffe. The President is apt to blame others for his own failures, as is evidenced by media coverage in which he has thrown his own staff under the bus to explain his low-poll ratings, a failure to communicate his agenda, and the slow progress of legislation. Biden apparently feels that by blaming Zelenskyy for not heeding his “warnings”, he can in some way absolve himself of his own guilt for having taken real no action to avert the invasion he knew was coming. But in this case, the blame game may be another in a long line of self-inflicted political wounds, given that Zelenskyy is currently a far more popular figure among Americans than Biden.
Yet there seems to be something more to Biden’s remarks, and it is not just Joe Biden who has a tendency to respond to failure by blaming those he failed. It is an attitude common to the entire administration, evident during the Afghan withdrawal when Jake Sullivan and other national security officials were quick to blame the Afghan Army for the chaotic collapse, and European allies for the disorganized and incomplete evacuation, with an implication that the U.S. military, too, had “lost the war.”
Biden’s remarks come on the heels of a broadside of leaks from the administration attacking the Ukrainian war effort, strategy, use of resources, and prospects. On June 8, the New York Times published an article under the title “US Lacks a Clear Picture of Ukraine’s War Strategy, Officials Say,” in which U.S. intelligence officials, clearly with the approval, if not under the instructions of, the White House, systematically suggested that Ukraine was failing to adequately share information, that these failures were making it harder to supply arms to Ukraine, and that if, as it implied was likely, Ukrainian forces in the East fell back, it would be their own fault for not cooperating better. On June 11, the Washington Post reported “Russia is likely to seize control of the entire Luhansk region of Ukraine within a few weeks, a senior U.S. defense official said, as Ukraine sustains heavy casualties and its supplies of ammunition dwindle.”
Knowing how this administration operates, these reports are ominous. Experience, whether with Afghanistan, Build Back Better, or even the domestic dynamics of the administration, indicates that when the Biden team sees trouble approaching, their response is not to plan how to prevent it, but rather to publish leaks to the media that they predicted it, so when it happens it will be someone else’s fault. The quantity of these statements therefore is the best sign that the administration expects bad news in the near future.
Ironically, contrary to Biden’s claims to his LA donors, the administration actually has quite a poor record when it comes to predictions regarding Ukraine and Russia. The administration predicted that Ukraine would collapse quickly and was leaking to the press about plans for whether the U.S. would back an anti-Russian insurgency following a Ukrainian defeat back in January, and urged Zelenskyy and his government to flee in the event of a Russian invasion before the war. It seems quite a good thing for everyone that Zelenskyy wasn’t paying much attention to what Biden was telling him in January and February because not only was it wrong, but because Russia would control Kyiv and potentially most of Ukraine had he done so. On February 24, U.S. officials were openly briefing that they expected Kyiv to fall within 96 hours.
This is not to say we should dismiss any bad news emerging from the Donbass. Sadly the dynamics of the conflict are playing much more to Russia’s strengths than the earlier phases. The Russians are now on the offensive on only one front, negating the wasteful process of relocating formations hundreds of miles from one area to another. They can control the tempo, allowing units to rest while attacking where units are fresh. By contrast, Ukrainian forces are forced to respond to Russian attacks wherever they occur, potentially creating new openings. To break this, Ukraine either needs to take the offensive itself or fall back.
The Ukrainians, however, have been taking the offensive, launching a major attack against Kherson. It is the Biden administration which has held up the delivery of heavy weapons which would allow the Ukrainians to go on the offensive, out of fear they might be used to hit targets in Russia. Whether it is out of genuine concern for escalation, or a belief the Ukrainians cannot succeed in attacking and should fall back, the Biden administration seems to be withholding those weapons to eliminate option #1 in the hope Ukraine adopts option #2, withdrawal. And all of these leaks either are efforts to pressure the Ukrainians into making it a reality or blaming them for the consequences if they do not listen to advice.
Biden’s bad advice before the war was merely unhelpful to Ukraine, as long as Kyiv ignored it. But now it seems to be being used to undermine Ukrainian morale and is being tied to holding up weapons deliveries unless Kyiv follows Biden’s (bad) advice. This is not just passively aggressively shifting blame for a potential disaster, but it risks actually helping to bring one about. If that is what happens, we have already heard the line. Biden will say the Ukrainians should have listened to his warnings about Russia and run away.
Daniel Berman is a frequent commentator and lecturer on foreign policy and political affairs, both nationally and internationally. He holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from the London School of Economics. He also writes as Daniel Roman.