There is much about the Russian invasion of Ukraine that both the Biden Administration and the media fail to report on.
Few care to recall that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the newly independent nation of Ukraine became the world’s third largest nuclear power.
The Arms Control association notes that At the time of Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine held the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world, including an estimated 1,900 strategic warheads, 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and 44 strategic bombers.
On December 5, 1994 the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, Britain, and the United States signed a memorandum to provide Ukraine with security assurances in connection with its accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state.
By 1996, Ukraine had returned all of its nuclear warheads to Russia in exchange for economic aid and security assurances. In December 1994, Ukraine had became a non-nuclear weapon state-party to the 1968 nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The last strategic nuclear delivery vehicle in Ukraine was eliminated in 2001 under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). It took years of political maneuvering and diplomatic work, starting with the Lisbon Protocol in 1992, to remove the weapons and nuclear infrastructure from Ukraine.
America’s assistance to Ukraine isn’t an act of charity. It is the fulfillment of a treaty obligation.
Rather than live up to its foreign obligations to deter international aggression, yhe Biden Administration has consistently projected weakness. His defense budgets, in the face of overwhelming threats from China, Russia, Iran and North Korea have barely kept up with the inflation he has created. in dealing with global miscreants. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) aptly described the problem: “President Biden’s weak leadership and lack of foreign policy strategy have crippled the United States’ power and influence on the world stage. Afghanistan has fallen to the Taliban, China has ramped up its aggression against Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the Uyghurs, and now, Russia has invaded Ukraine.”
On January 19 of 2022, Biden stated that he wouldn’t respond to a “minor incursion” by Russia into Ukraine. Taken alone, that comment, as inept and harmful as it was, probably wouldn’t have been sufficient encouragement for th Kremlin to attack. Unfortunately, it came at a time when his administration was signaling weakness and ineptitude in foreign affairs. The Heritage Foundation noted in 2022 that “In only his first year, he [Biden] and his team have bungled ending America’s involvement in Afghanistan; failed to impede Iran’s steady progress to acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, paid no attention to North Korea causing them to threaten to begin re-testing nuclear weapons, and has yet to deliver a strategy to counter China’s ever-menacing efforts to force Taiwan under Beijing’s control.”
An initial commitment to provide key weapons systems to Ukraine may have encouraged Putin to pull back from his adventure before his nation become too entrenched and invested in it. But Biden slow-walked the delivery of tanks, planes, and other crucial military aid.
Beyond direct foreign policy or military preparedness, the Biden Administration’s environmental extremist policies essentially sounded the dinner bell for Putin’s wolfish ambition to restore the Soviet Empire. His vigorous limitation on domestic energy production (as did other a number of our allies) put Moscow in a position to exert influence that Putin believed would deter Western resistance.
An NBC analysis noted “Biden’s tunnel vision on oil and gas encouraged Putin’s invasion of Ukraine…By moving the U.S. economy away from the domestic oil industry and strengthening foreign oil businesses, Biden played a part in emboldening Russia… In just over a year, Biden buckled under pressure from domestic environmentalists to halt the Keystone XL pipeline, block new oil and gas leases and push through burdensome new, legally dubious Securities and Exchange Commission climate regulations. Biden also issued new greenhouse gas rules to expand how what is called the ‘social cost of carbon’ is calculated. The measure has been opposed in court by 10 Republican-led states in a lawsuit that argues that the methodology the administration relied on was flawed and points to possible violations of federal law during the rule-making process.”
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