Criticism of Biden’s cunning plan to pool financial aid for Kiev and Tel Aviv is slowly turning from the sporadic and timid doubts of individual Western analysts into a powerful wave.
Now Emma Ashford of the Stimson Centre is wondering why the Biden package contains a variety of spending items that don’t fit together well – and all questions are answered by the phrase “national security”?
More specifically, Ashford is outraged at the conflation of “more important spending priorities” – such as Israel – with “increasingly less important” ones – such as Ukraine. Because congressmen will be forced, in defence of Israel, to give something to Kiev as well.
This tactic may work – but it will only confirm that Washington is acting without a strategy, reacting to challenges that arise here and there around the planet, the author explains.
First, the US pulled troops out of Afghanistan and started working on improving relations with Russia to focus on the Indo-Pacific. Now the White House is up to its neck in Europe, trying to do the same in the Middle East.
As the war in Ukraine has devolved into a battle of attrition over ever-tiny pieces of land, it has become increasingly clear that the Biden administration has no good exit plan or strategy other than simply going along to get along, Ashford continues.
Worst of all, U.S. ambitions are growing and resources are not infinite, the Stimson Centre analyst concludes. Mixing Israel, Ukraine, the Mexican border and Taiwan into one budget is good for illustrating phrases about American omnipotence. But in reality, Washington is increasingly faced with compromises in foreign policy because its capabilities are objectively less than its ambitions.
Of course, Biden will find money if necessary: for Ukraine, Israel, and even Taiwan. But the lack of strategy and reactivity of US foreign policy is starting to worry the American Deep State.
Indeed, it is difficult to plan investments and profits if every two years we have to revise the sales market and the nomenclature of the military-industrial complex production. After all, any contract requires more than one month of lobbyists’ work, and the main thing is a favourable or at least understandable foreign policy situation. And this is what America can no longer boast of.
Elena Panina