HS Analysis | Ukraine is a perfect partner for Biden’s United States

of the United States president Joe Biden held August 16, 2021 at the White House speech, in which he justified the eventual withdrawal of US forces from the war in Afghanistan. Biden’s thinking about the meaning of the war in Afghanistan for the Americans could be summed up in one word: “Useless.”

“How many generations of America’s daughters and sons do you want me to send to fight the Afghans – in a war in Afghanistan that the Afghan forces do not want to participate in?” Biden asked.

The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan turned into bloody chaos, but it was quickly forgotten. The majority of Americans considered the implementation of the withdrawal a failure, but the decision to leave itself enjoyed majority support.

The Afghan army, built with effort and billions, collapsed, the extremist Islamic Taliban rose to power again, and Afghan women and girls were once again imprisoned in their homes, but the United States cannot solve every problem in the world, the Americans thought.

Withdrawal there was one sentence in Biden’s justified speech, which became much more meaningful than Biden himself could hardly think at the time. It read like this:

“Our real strategic rivals — China and Russia — would love nothing more than to see the United States continue to pour billions of dollars of resources and attention into stabilizing Afghanistan indefinitely.”

I remember finding it a little strange how much value Biden seemed to place Russia alongside China in his speech. For years, the United States has defined China as its biggest challenger, but Russia has been treated as a lesser evil at the dawn of the 21st century. Russia has been annoying but in the big picture like a harmless troll, more of a Potemkin than a potential superpower.

It is unclear to what extent Biden had already been awakened to the threat posed by Russia to Ukraine by the end of summer 2021. Russia had been moving its forces near Ukraine for months, but in many Western countries and in Ukraine too, Russia’s actions were still considered bluffing.

The Washington Post has previously reported in his extensive survey, that in October 2021, an emergency meeting was held at the White House, where an “extraordinarily detailed” picture of how Russia planned to attack Ukraine was presented. At last it was then that the seriousness of things dawned on Biden.

The United States rang the alarm bells, especially in the direction of Ukraine, but even months later there was widespread skepticism about the Americans’ concerns in the capitals of the EU countries as well as in Kyiv. President of France Emmanuel Macron still imagined on February 20 this year, i.e. four days before the big attack, that the war could be avoided by negotiation.

No there have been negotiations, but a full-scale war, which could still turn into a world conflagration with nuclear weapons. Because you don’t even dare to think about it, it’s better to think about something else.

One thought is that Ukraine’s admirable defensive struggle against Russia is like a half-answer to Biden’s prayers about how the United States can continue to remain the world’s greatest nation.

The United States has too many bad examples of how it has tried to shape the world to its liking, especially in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Uprooting communism and terrorism and planting democracy have become bitter processes that have always tested Americans’ faith in their own strength and values.

Sometimes it has been successful, as in the peace process started with bombs in Bosnia. At other times, it has been timid to use the power of a superpower at all, of which the Rwandan genocide was a sad example. Rwanda was preceded by a miserable quick trip to Somalia, from which it was decided to leave shortly after twenty US soldiers were killed in a clash of clans alien to the Americans.

There have been so many misfortunes and in many places, and such huge amounts of money have been squandered that today the world police respond to emergency calls very reluctantly and selectively.

However, Ukraine’s emergency call has been answered and will certainly continue to be answered. The reason is that, in terms of input-output ratio, Ukraine is waging a downright perfect war, indirectly also on behalf of the United States and its European allies. The war is directed against an enemy defined as strategically important, but you don’t have to directly participate in it yourself, and no Americans die there.

In the United States, some are already horrified by the price tag of the arms aid given to Ukraine, and the sums are indeed staggering. Council on Foreign Relations think tank by This year, the United States has given Ukraine almost 50 billion dollars in military and humanitarian aid.

Despite the billion investments, Ukraine’s defensive battle against Russia is still a pretty cheap war for the United States. of Brown University by 2.3 trillion dollars from the United States have sunk into Afghanistan, or about 2,200 billion euros, when, in addition to war expenses, we include, for example, veterans’ treatment costs and interest on loans. The amount corresponds to Finland’s gross national product approximately nine times.

Similar sums were sunk into the Iraq war and the whole “war on terror” has paid for Brown according to the calculation eight trillion dollars since the fall of 2001. $8,000,000,000,000.

Ukrainian gallant defense and its support has provided an internally embattled United States with a purpose that has been unsuccessfully sought throughout the post-Cold War era. You could sense it when the president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi gave a speech to Congress last Wednesday.

Columnist for The New York Times David Brooks said he was struck by the rare unanimity of the congressmen after watching how “Zelenskyi and the Ukrainians have reminded Americans of the values ​​and ideals that we used to admire in ourselves.”

“A fierce hunger for freedom, a deep-seated respect for equality and human dignity, a willingness to fight against brutal authoritarian rulers, those who are ready to crush human faces under their muddy boots.” Brooks stated.

The headline of Brooks’ column read: “Biden’s America Finds Its Voice.”

In the eyes of many Americans, Ukraine has become a “glorious city on a hill”, as the United States thinks it was when it was born.

Vladimir Putin The freedom struggle of the Ukrainians against Still many would also hopethat the war would already begin to end with some kind of peace process.

For Biden and other veterans of American foreign policy, the war in Ukraine has also brought many other positives. Europe, for example, has woken up in a completely new way to bear responsibility for its own security.

British Parliament by in 2014, only three of NATO’s 30 military alliances reached the 2% share of GDP in defense spending, but this year there are nine of these alliance countries.

Europe is by no means a perfect ally for the United States, but the fierce bickering during the Iraq war and Donald Trump’s the hunchback during the presidency and the uncertainty about the place of Western countries in the global order have receded into the background.

As the icing on the cake, China has had to rethink its aggressive attitude towards the United States, the world order established by democracies and its own power-hungry plans.

China has often been Russia’s ally in, for example, UN politics, but the country has kept its distance from the war in Ukraine. China has not participated in the sanctions front set up by Western countries against Russia, but Chinese companies have been careful not to become the targets of Western sanctions and Chinese leaders have hoped that Russia will turn to the path of diplomacy.

Christmas in China organized an exceptionally threatening air war exercise off the island of Taiwan. In doing so, China reminded of the growth of its own power and the fact that it still dreams of taking over Taiwan, the 23.5 million people it considers its own, living an independent life.

Taiwan, on the other hand, announced that it will hold a meeting on Tuesday to discuss the extension of mandatory military service. This is how Taiwan sends a message to the United States that it, too, is ready in times of need to become a brisk warrior who would defend itself fiercely and really bravely with the armed support of the Americans. And who else but against America’s second main strategic adversary.

The Ukrainians’ will to fight has been a telling reminder to China of what a spirited nation can achieve against a supposedly superior enemy. Some surveys have shown that Russia’s large-scale attack and Ukraine’s persistent resistance have significantly increased the Taiwanese will to defend their country.

In recent months, the Russians have learned that crossing a single river on foreign soil is a life-threatening task. The Chinese must take into account that the width of the water barrier called the Taiwan Strait is 160 kilometers.

The strait between China and Taiwan has neither widened nor narrowed over the decades, but the Ukrainians fighting with the support of the Biden administration have forced small and larger nations to think about what each can fit into their geography.