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Biden’s lack of leadership is galvanizing US critics of Ukraine aid

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Forget the administration’s gloating about Ukraine.

Things are not going well, and it is Joe Biden’s fault.

Thus far, the Biden administration has failed to do what is needed for Ukrainians to win.

Our total aid, military, financial and humanitarian, amounts to more than $70 billion.

Though substantially less than what our European allies are spending (around $137 billion), it is a lot of money.

It ought to be spent wisely and with a clear purpose.

Yet the president’s actions do little to reassure those who want to see a return on America’s investment in European security.

The administration, for instance, continues to deny Kyiv a crucial long-range-missile systems, the ATACMS.

The French and the British, meanwhile, are supplying the Ukrainians with comparable missiles (SCALPs/Storm Shadows), which have already decimated the Russian fleet.

Europeans, despite the decrepit state of their own militaries, are putting together a fleet of hundreds of Leopard tanks, while the United States has agreed to deliver only 30 Abrams tanks.

Mind you, the US military has around 3,700 Abrams sitting in storage, left over from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

They are unlikely ever to be used again, as they would be useless in a possible conflict over Taiwan.

Even if only 10% of them are still battleworthy, they could make a critical difference on the battlefield.

And on the delivery of F-16 fighter jets, it is the Dutch and the Danes who are speeding ahead with training and the setup of necessary infrastructure while the United States vacillates.

Perhaps more important, the president is failing as a political leader, as illustrated by the growing Republican opposition to further assistance.

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By ignoring American voters’ domestic concerns — especially the chaos at the US southern border — Democrats have created an opening for less responsible voices to paint a false binary choice between protecting our own border or the Ukrainian one.

Of course, America is a global superpower.

It should be (and traditionally has been) perfectly capable of both securing its borders and playing a muscular role on the global stage.

Moreover, no one wants to support Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” to use Biden’s turn of phrase.

What all people of good will ought to wish for, and what the president should articulate, is a viable path for a quick, decisive and relatively inexpensive Ukrainian victory.

Ukrainians can indeed win, as illustrated by the extraordinary territorial gains made more than a year ago in their Kharkiv offensive.

Even today, with fighting that appears increasingly static, Ukraine is slowly penetrating Russian defenses and degrading enemy forces.

What Biden must say and do, in addition to taking seriously the grievances of ordinary Americans, is simple.

It does not take much for the United States to help Ukraine finish the job, other than taking aging military equipment out of storage and shipping it to Eastern Europe — while, of course, replenishing and modernizing our own stocks, which the Pentagon ought to be doing regardless of the war in Ukraine.

And once Ukraine’s victory is complete, Biden should make it clear, the American taxpayer will not be on the hook for the country’s reconstruction — Russia will.

The Russian central bank has more than $300 billion in assets frozen in Western financial capitals, including $39 billion in the United States.

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Together with the announced European Union fund worth €50 billion ($52.5 billion), to be disbursed over 2024 to 2027, that amount almost covers the cost of Ukraine’s future reconstruction, estimated by the World Bank at a little more than $400 billion.

Unfortunately, both US officials and their European counterparts are excessively squeamish about touching the money.

Ongoing discussions revolve around the prospect of imposing a tax on the profits generated by Russian assets, to the tune of several billion dollars since the beginning of the war.

That is not a display of strength.

Based on existing UN General Assembly resolutions condemning Russian aggression and stipulating Russia be held accountable for its depredations, the United States and its allies contributing to Ukraine’s cause could easily conclude a treaty that would direct the funds to Ukraine’s future reconstruction — not to speak of the myriad assets of Russian oligarchs scattered across the Western world.

Time is slowly running out but, thanks to Ukrainian bravery, it is still possible for Biden to step up in a major way.

If he does not, the foreign-policy record on which he will run in 2024 will look nothing short of catastrophic.

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Twitter: @DaliborRohac



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