The president on the border between Poland and Ukraine among the paratroopers of the 82nd division
US President Joe Biden went to NATO’s eastern front. Soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division awaited him in Rzeszów. It is from there that Washington observes Putin’s moves, feeds Ukrainian forces and launches the great battle “between democracy and tyranny”. It is a challenge that concerns an entire generation, explains the president in which the world will serve America, “the indispensable nation” defines it, recalling the words of Madeleine Albright, who passed away a few days ago.
The first battle front is Ukraine obviously, America moves by supporting the resistance of Kiev and helping Poland and the other Eastern countries on refugees with a billion dollar plan. 2.5 million Ukrainians have arrived in Poland and today Biden will visit a reception center in Warsaw.
NATO has approved new arms deliveries, officially defensive, but in military jargon, anti-tank missile batteries are “lethal”.
Putin has fixed – according to some reconstructions – the end of hostilities against Kiev by 9 May. No one in Washington is unbalanced, it remains difficult to penetrate the circle of the Kremlin and evaluate its moves, as well as its stability. If the economy – it is the reasoning that sources of the US administration make – is likely to collapse by 15% in 2022, and Russia is now a pariah state in the international context, it is nevertheless a gamble to think about the strength of the Putinian regime. Not even the Americans go that far, it would be speculation. But there is a belief that the blockade of technological exports is biting more than expected and could drain the Russian military machine in the long run. The sanctions were imposed “quickly and effectively” is the widespread belief in Western diplomatic circles that acknowledge the Americans for having moved well in advance. In fact, at the end of November, in a restricted meeting at the White House, present the Secretary of State Blinken and the one at the Treasury Janet Yellen, it was decided to contact the European allies and start the sanctions machine.
The sanctions in a few months managed to destroy what Putin had built in 30 years. And this is an element around which Washington thinks convinced of the goodness of the strategy followed so far and that it will bear further fruit in the future.
To date, however, what is evident is that the Ukrainian resistance is going well beyond expectations. After a month of war between training – which began well before the war winds of winter – and delivery of weapons, the Ukrainians not only resisted, but also regained positions. The imposing military device placed in Ukraine would have partially shifted the balance. Russian tanks have to face an overwhelming anti-tank force, there is talk of proportions of nearly a dozen missiles available for each Russian tank. This also explains the difficulty of Putin’s men in advancing with the armored divisions. The use of mixed guerrilla operations and bombing of civilian infrastructures was the consequence.
Washington and NATO are maneuvering the conflict from not too far away. And they also prepare for afterwards. The four multinational battalions that will be deployed shortly in addition to the four present between the Baltic and the Black Sea could become central elements of the new NATO “posture”. The idea of transforming temporary bases into permanent ones and thus making the border with Russia “a fortress” is a hypothesis that is on the table at the Alliance headquarters in Brussels and that it will be squared off in Madrid.
The military defense of Ukraine, however, is only one step in the vision of the White House which imagines a different world for the next generations. Biden yesterday reiterated this to the military with whom she joked, ate a slice of pizza and praised them as a bulwark in the defense of Western values. Today at the Warsaw Castle he will give a speech that Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, called “very important”. The defense of democracy will be the heart of everything. And if Russia is today’s enemy, yesterday Biden made it clear that there is a long-term rival: “Xi Jinping thinks democracy doesn’t work in 21st century China.” A union with Putin is not discarded in Washington even if there is no evidence for now of concrete support by Beijing for Moscow in the Ukrainian war. But the challenge of values goes beyond the conflict in Europe. And today Biden will say it out loud
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