Why is a lame duck President trying to escalate the war?
Ukraine launched the American “Army Tactical Missile System” (ATACAMS) towards Russia on Tuesday, after it was given permission by outgoing US President Joe Biden to launch the long-range (300 km) missile outside of its territory—meaning hitting Russia. Significantly, after Biden’s decision, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday signed a revised nuclear doctrine, allowing Russia to use nuclear weapons against aggression by any a non-nuclear country backed by a nuclear country. “Aggression by a non-nuclear state with the participation of a nuclear state is considered as a joint attack,” the Russian spokesman said. The doctrine also says that any major attack on Russia with conventional weapons, including ballistic missiles, may be replied with a nuclear retaliation. It is not that Biden and his men did not know that this would happen. It was because of this possibility that Biden did not allow Ukraine to launch any Nato-made missile to target Russia, as that would mean direct Nato involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war and would amount to dangerous escalation. Hence what he has permitted Ukraine to do amounts to dangerous escalation, with the Russians making it clear which way this war is headed.
The question is: what exactly is Biden up to? He is a lame duck with one foot out of the door before Donald Trump takes charge as the next President of the United States in two months from now, in January 2025. It’s Biden’s policies that the American people voted against resoundingly and gave a historic mandate to the Republicans led by Trump—historic because the Republicans now control the presidency, the House and the Senate. Apart from the fact that Donald Trump even won the popular vote over Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris. In other words, Biden may have the chair but does not have the mandate to take any major policy decision and should be concerned about the transition, on how to hand over power to the incoming Trump administration. He certainly does not have the mandate to authorise any action that will dangerously escalate an ongoing war. In fact now that Biden has authorised the use of these US missiles, even Britain and France can allow Ukraine to use the Franco-British long-range Storm Shadow missiles. All this would be a major escalation because the Nato countries would now be involved in the war directly against Russia. Can the world afford to have one such war? No one knows what dimensions it will take?
Not that allowing Ukraine to launch these missiles will do much harm to Russia or let Ukraine get back its lost territory. Ukraine’s forces are depleted, it doesn’t have the ability to sustain the war for long. Even its capture of some Russian territory in Kursk is not significant damage to Moscow, but more like a diversion. Ukraine just does not have the capacity to take the war into the Russian territory. But launching missiles at Russia will definitely make Putin retaliate with a ferocity that may push the two sides and the Nato over the edge.
One way of looking at Biden’s sudden decision to escalate the war is because that he wants to inflict a serious body blow to Russia as his last act and thus mark his legacy in history. But then the subsequent escalation may taint his legacy forever as the President who unleashed possibly the third world war on the world. Or is he actually following the scorched earth policy, where he hobbles the Trump Presidency even before it takes office, by destroying everything in sight, and leaving the next administration to pick up the pieces. It will be case of the world suffering the consequences of the Democrats losing the election. It seems Biden just doesn’t want Trump to be successful by any means possible, and wants to have him fire-fighting right from the first day of his tenure. Questions are also rising about the role his advisers have played in this, for there already exist questions about Biden’s cognitive impairment. It’s the Cold War mentality of the Biden administration that has made it stay focused on Russia as the biggest threat to the world, when it is anything but. The aim has always been to topple Putin and cripple Russia, and the invasion of Ukraine gave Biden and Company the opportunity to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian standing. It’s common knowledge that it’s because of this that Biden and the then UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson did not allow Zelenskyy to negotiate a deal with Putin in the initial days of the war. And now that negotiations are an actual possibility, not just because the Americans are tiring of the war, but also the Europeans, Biden decides to throw a spanner in the works. It was only last week that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz opened a channel of communication with Putin by telling him over a phone call that he must withdraw his troops from Ukraine and start talking to Zelenskyy for a “just and lasting peace”. It seems none of this matters to Biden.
The problem is Trump does not have any power to stop this, because he is not President. Even then it is hoped that he will reach out to the warring sides and remind them that it is he they will have to deal with for the next four years, not Biden.