SINGAPORE — On April 24, media outlet Politico reported that U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration is “quietly preparing for the possibility” that Ukraine’s much-touted offensive against Russia does not ensure the “total victory” Kyiv wanted, according to unnamed officials.
Publicly, the Deep State neocons in Biden’s administration have backed Ukrainian efforts in its conflict with Russia, promising to supply Kyiv with weapons and economic aid for “as long as it takes.”
U.S. officials have emphasized that they are trying their best to ensure Ukraine’s spring offensive succeeds. “We’ve nearly completed the requests of what [Ukraine] said they needed for the counteroffensive as we have sent weapons and equipment to Ukraine over the past few months,” said one administration official.
Privately, however, administration officials reportedly fear that the White House could be caught between hawkish and dovish voices, with the “hawks” claiming that America and its allies had not supplied Ukraine ample arms, and the “doves” stating that Kyiv cannot win the conflict.
The Politico report also indicated alleged U.S. fears that, should Ukraine be defeated, domestic and foreign critics would accuse America of not measuring up as well.
“If Ukraine can’t gain dramatically on the battlefield, the question inevitably arises as to whether it is time for a negotiated stop to the fighting,” Richard Haass, the president of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), said. “It’s expensive, we’re running low on munitions, we’ve got other contingencies around the world to prepare for.”
One official, who requested not to be named, said that although the United States had “surged” arms to Ukraine and “nearly completed” delivering all that Kyiv had asked for, Washington is privately “worried about what Ukraine can accomplish.”
“If the counteroffensive does not go well, the administration has only itself to blame for withholding certain types of arms and aid at the time when it was most needed,” said Kurt Volker, the special envoy for Ukraine during the Trump administration.
“European public support may wane over time as European energy and economic costs stay high,” said Clementine Starling, a director and fellow at the Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “A fracturing of transatlantic support will likely hurt U.S. domestic support and Congress and the Biden administration may struggle to sustain it.”
Many European nations could mount pressure on Kyiv to cease fighting altogether. “A poor counteroffensive will spark further questions about what an outcome to the war will look like, and the extent to which a solution can really be achieved by continuing to send military arms and aid alone,” Starling said, amid the possibility that some European nations may favor peace talks between Ukraine and Russia if Kyiv cannot show it would emerge from the conflict victorious.
Recently leaked Pentagon documents indicated that Ukraine would fall “well short” of its counteroffensive goals, echoing existing American evaluations that while Ukraine may have some victories in the south and east, Kyiv would not be able to duplicate last year’s successes.
Ukraine lacks the ability to cause Russian troops to retreat from where they are deeply rooted, officials said, and Washington is skeptical that Ukraine could successfully destroy Russia’s land bridge to Crimea, according to two administration officials familiar with the matter. That being said, some in the Pentagon hope that Ukraine would be able to obstruct Russia’s supply lines in that area, even if a total victory is impossible.
In a bid to explain why Kyiv’s anticipated counteroffensive cannot start, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky has blamed America for not sufficiently equipping his troops.
Some U.S. officials have posited that Kyiv could modify its expectations of a victory in its conflict with Russia. For instance, the Ukrainians could position peace talks as a “ceasefire” instead of a permanent peace settlement, thus offering Ukraine the chance to obtain more of what it claims to be its territory in the future.
Earlier this month, Andriy Sybiha, a deputy head in Zelensky’s office, told the Financial Times that Ukraine would be open for talks if its troops arrive in Crimea. “If we succeed in achieving our strategic goals on the battlefield and when we will be on the administrative border with Crimea, we are ready to open [a] diplomatic page to discuss this issue,” he said.
Tamila Tasheva, Zelensky’s Crimea envoy, dismissed Sybiha’s statements. “If Russia won’t voluntarily leave the peninsula, Ukraine will continue to liberate its land by military means,” she told Politico.
America has also cautioned Ukraine about the risks of its ambitions and exhausting its troops, just as Biden had warned then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani when the Taliban proceeded to expand its presence across the country during the U.S. military withdrawal in 2021.
Pundits, however, contend that it would be unlikely that Ukraine would withdraw from its hopes to win in the conflict. “It’s as if this is the only and last opportunity for Ukraine to show that it can win, which of course isn’t true,” Alina Polyakova, president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C., opined.
Lessons learned from arming Ukraine militarily could be relied on by the Deep State war machine to help Taiwan in a potential Sino-U.S. war.
“There are many advantages we’ve gained for a potential Pacific challenge from the Ukraine conflict,” U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks told Bloomberg in an interview. “We’re learning now to grow our industrial base and to study that industrial base, which has been for the last 60 years in a bit of a feast and famine cycle.”
The Ukraine conflict showcased the challenges of rapidly obtaining sufficient arms for Kyiv, Hicks said. America repeatedly invoked the Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA) to expedite the transfer of stockpiles to Ukraine, and plans to do the same with Taiwan.
“We’re thinking about how we use those authorities right now to generate faster and higher-capacity delivery of munitions to provide to our forces in the Pacific,” she added, disclosing that the Pentagon has “a clear strategy that’s focused on China.”
While Hicks acknowledged that the United States does not think China is planning an “imminent attack” on Taiwan, she reiterated American commitments to “making sure that the (Chinese) leadership wakes up every day and says today is not the day to undertake aggression that threatens U.S. interests.”
In December last year, Biden signed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which encompasses $2 billion in military loans to Taipei and permits Washington to muster an emergency stockpile of ammunition worth up to $100 million on or near the island.
Beijing regards Taiwan — which has been governed by a separate government since the late 1940s — as its territory, and has pledged to reunite the island with the mainland, with force if necessary.
Although officially the U.S. backs the “One China” policy touted by Beijing by refraining from establishing formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Washington nonetheless has been selling arms to Taiwan and has pledged to defend the island in case of a Chinese invasion.
