There was something truly surreal about President Biden suddenly changing course and agreeing to give Ukraine advanced long-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory in the last two months of his administration. There was no speech to the nation; no debate in the Senate; just a quiet demonstration of unilateral presidential fuck-you power. You know: the kind we’ve long worried about with Donald Trump. The missiles up the ante considerably against a nuclear power for a simple reason. As Putin noted:
[E]xperts are well aware, and the Russian side has repeatedly emphasized this, that it is it is impossible to use such weapons without the direct involvement of military specialists of the countries producing such weapons … We consider ourselves entitled to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities. And in case of escalation of aggressive actions we will respond also decisively and mirrored.’
There was a time when a NATO missile strike on Russian territory, followed by a Russian threat to attack NATO “military facilities” in response, would have caused the world to stop dead, paralyzed by the fear of nuclear armageddon. Yet here we are, blithely preoccupied by Pete Hegseth’s sexual exploits and Congressional bathrooms.
Others are not so sanguine. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” Ukraine’s former military chief, Valery Zaluzhny, warned yesterday, noting both the new involvement of NATO troops and the involvement of North Korea. Our own president, having brought us much closer to the brink as a lame duck, seemed unconcerned. He was last seen wandering off-stage in the vague direction of the Brazilian rainforest. Not optimal.
The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was even punchier, and pledged to allow Ukraine to use British long-range missiles as well: “We need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war.” When asked if he was prepared to risk the UK forces or Ukraine or a third country like Poland being nuked in response, as Putin has threatened, Starmer simply ignored the question. …
The brinksmanship over Ukraine will set a precedent for brinksmanship over Taiwan. What Putin and Biden have done — by allowing this conflict to persist, despite no chance of a conventional military victory for either side — is to render the world far less stable and far more dangerous than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Quite a legacy for a president we were assured was a foreign-policy master.
