Chronic. The “distant wars” of America, those who marked the beginning of the century, weigh on Joe Biden’s policy in Ukraine. Situations are not comparable but, beyond the Atlantic, Iraq’s syndrome and that of Afghanistan have not dissipated. These bad memories of semi-defeat, the American president leads them when he debated with his European allies – this week, NATO in Brussels – of the war in Ukraine.
Even before the start of Russian aggression, Joe Biden said that no American soldier would go fight for kyiv. NATO’s “leader” had “phoned” his position in advance to his Russian counterpart: no direct participation in the fight of the Ukrainians. At the time of engaging his troops, Vladimir Putin knew. What did not stop him from denouncing NATO’s natural bellicism to justify the attack on a country that did not threaten Russia. The man of the Kremlin leads a “war of choice”, no necessity.
The American President has very good reasons to assert his position. It could have, however, to choose to stay in blur or ambiguity – as it does with Taiwan, the autonomous island that China wants to take control. Ukraine is not a member of the Atlantic Alliance and does not have automatic protection. A direct confrontation between the United States and Russia can transform the Russo-Ukrainian war into a much larger conflict. It can test the practice that both have deterrence theory, which underlies that nuclear weapons in their possession should never be used.
“for the Average class “
Unlike Donald Trump, its predecessor, Biden located its foreign policy in a particular environment: rivalry between democracies and autocracies. But Ukraine, in the process of democratization, is assaulted, also for free as an adjustment, by a russian diet more and more dictatorial. It is linked to the European Union by a partnership agreement. Main grievance of Moscow: Ukraine drumbles and tracked. Ambition posted by Putin: bring back this country under Russian guardianship.
But Biden also announced that he would conduct a foreign policy “for the middle class”. To an American public opinion suffering from “strategic fatigue”, he promised to continue the disengagement of the United States of the “Great Middle East” and to draw a feature on the series of “distant wars” – Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya – conducted since 2001. Hence his little glorious exit from Afghanistan, in August 2022, allowing the Taliban to return to Kabul … and Vladimir Putin to imagine that Americans are no longer mood to play everywhere the “gendarmes of the world “. The need to set up its foreign policy between these two poles – the defense of democracy, the morale of its voters – explains, in part, the profile of the answer of biden to the Putin War.
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