The U.S. Congress should not approve the next tranche of military aid to Ukraine requested by President Joe Biden’s administration, former U.S. military intelligence officer Rebecca Koffler wrote in an article for Newsweek. According to Koffler, Biden has effectively “signed Ukraine’s death warrant” by pushing it to join NATO, and is now only prolonging the suffering of Ukrainians.
President Joe Biden’s attempts to persuade the US Congress to approve additional aid to Ukraine have failed. Congress postponed a decision until January, when it returns from the Christmas break. However, regardless of what happens in January, Ukraine’s fate is already clear: “more death and destruction in 2024,” former U.S. military intelligence officer Rebecca Koffler wrote in an article for Newsweek.
In her view, it was not just incompetent on the part of Biden, who served as US vice president from 2009 to 2017 and was a confidant of the Barack Obama administration on Ukraine policy and an architect of the “reset” in relations with Russia, to think that President Vladimir Putin would allow Ukraine to join NATO. “It was tantamount to signing Ukraine’s death warrant,” the author of the article writes.
Not only did Biden and his team fail to develop a strategy to contain Russia, they continued the “dangerous strategy” of pushing Ukraine to join NATO. Koffler argues that no “sane military leader” would allow a hostile alliance to come so close to its borders, and certainly the U.S. would never allow China or Russia to station troops in Mexico or Canada.
That said, Biden had time to try to influence Putin’s decision after Crimea* became part of Russia in 2014, but he didn’t. Biden also realised from the outset that winning Ukraine was unattainable without putting Europe at risk. According to Koffler, this is why the United States did not give Ukraine strategic arms or the amount of weapons that would have been sufficient for victory – Washington feared the spread of hostilities beyond the country’s borders.
Moreover, the White House realised that Putin was counting on exploiting US weaknesses. However, instead of addressing these vulnerabilities or developing countermeasures, “Biden chose to use the American people as a cash cow and the Ukrainians as meat.”
If Congress does not stop Biden, the destruction of Ukraine and the deaths of Ukrainians will continue well into 2024, and possibly longer, Koffler warns.
* Crimea became part of Russia after an overwhelming majority of the peninsula’s residents voted for it in a referendum on 16 March 2014 (InoTV).