The Biden Administration Goes Beyond MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) Over Ukraine

Biographer William Manchester tells us “no man wept more easily” than Churchill. (Yousuf Karsh. Library and Archives Canada, e010751643)

Commentary

Seventy-six years ago, Sir Winston Churchill gave his famous “Iron Curtain” speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, warning of Communist Russia’s westward expansion and the need for a united Western response under America’s leadership.

At that time, President Harry Truman had the strategic advantage of the atom bomb but after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he had no appetite to use one again. Soon, Russia obtained its own weapons of mass destruction and from then on, direct conflict between the world’s superpowers became unthinkable.

That is until the Biden administration convinced itself that, through Ukraine, it had found a way out of the Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) impasse to get at Russia.

Speaking to reporters in Poland on March 25, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin pledged to move “heaven and earth” to make sure Ukraine wins and: “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

He added that Russia “has already lost a lot of military capability and a lot of its troops, quite frankly. ... And we want to ... see them not have the capability to very quickly reproduce that capability.”

In that provocative speech, he made two things very clear to Moscow: Firstly, he has never read Lao Tzu, or George Washington for that matter, and is dangerously underestimating his opponent. Secondly, America aims to go far beyond defending Ukraine, to diminishing Russia as a world power.

This would have reaffirmed the fears Vladimir Putin expressed to the Russian people at the outset of the hostilities: “This is a real threat not just to our interests, but to the very existence of our state, its sovereignty—this is the very red line that has been talked about many times. They crossed it.”

So, too, did a speech to mark the 36th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, made by the emboldened Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he called for “global control” of the Kremlin’s nuclear capabilities.

He knows that could only happen if Russia was under some form of occupation, or if Putin is replaced by a pro-Western, globalist leader.

The West’s confidence in a Russian defeat surged after its forces were seen to retreat from around Kyiv last month. But this assumes that Russia’s intent was the takeover of the whole of Ukraine and even neighboring countries.

Wannabe NATO member Georgia was the previous country to suffer Putin’s wrath. That involved a five-day occupation in 2008 after which a ceasefire was declared. Its full sovereignty was restored, apart from losing its own two breakaway states, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and it was forced to drop its aspirations to become a NATO member. However, in 2014, it was able to sign an associate agreement with the European Union.

The victory that Putin originally sought in Ukraine was equally limited: that it should remain outside of NATO and nuclear-free. In addition, it should recognize Russia’s historic claim to Crimea, which its citizens also voted for, although he has since upped the ante to include the Donbas region as well.

The difference between the scale and length of the two conflicts was that NATO countries didn’t interfere militarily in Georgia. For this, they received much criticism, and questions have been asked if the later Crimea annexation and now war in Ukraine would have happened if the West had gotten involved back in August 2008.

Certainly, the scale of death and destruction would have been much higher than the not insignificant 850 people who lost their lives during the five-day incursion. Russia stopped its advancement that time too before reaching Georgia’s capital, Tbilisi. Was that a defeat or a tactical decision?

This time, the Ukrainian government feels that however much death and suffering its people are now facing, it’s a necessary sacrifice. Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told MSNBC: “We will pay the price for the safety of the world. But we are ready to do it because it’s also the price for our own independence.”

Brave words, but then he’s still alive.

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby outlined the United States’ objectives to CNN: “We want Russia not to be able to threaten their neighbors again in the future. That’s what we’re talking about here.”

His line was almost borrowed from Putin, who had told the Russian people that he wanted Ukraine not to be able to threaten its neighbor, Russia. This was after Zelenskyy’s announcement at the Munich Security Conference, with U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris by his side, that Ukraine would be joining NATO, inferring he would site its nukes on Ukrainian soil to be aimed at Russia—for Moscow this instantly became its very own Cuban missile crisis.

Secretary of the Russian Security Council Nikolai Patrushev claimed, “The need for demilitarization is due to the fact that Ukraine, saturated with weapons, poses a threat to Russia, including from the point of view of the development and use of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.”

The West denies these allegations and Austin dismissed them as “unhelpful,” but it was under a similar pretext of the development of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein that the United States invaded his country in 2003.

Without providing any real proof this time either, Western governments are now basing their policy decisions on the assumption that Putin intends to push further West after Ukraine.

“And let’s be clear—if Putin succeeds, there will be untold further misery across Europe and terrible consequences across the globe.” UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss warned in a combative speech in London last week.

“We will keep going further and faster to push Russia out of the whole of Ukraine,” she added. This would include Crimea and Donbas.

Truss all but implied that a state of war now exists between the UK and Russia by adding, “The war in Ukraine is our war—it is everyone’s war. … because Ukraine’s victory is a strategic imperative for all of us.”

Her fightin’ talk went further.

“Heavy weapons, tanks, airplanes—digging deep into our inventories, ramping up production. We need to do all of this. We cannot be complacent. The fate of Ukraine remains in the balance.”

She may want to be seen as The Iron Lady II, but Lady Margaret Thatcher never contemplated a direct confrontation with Soviet Russia. Indeed, her dialogue with Mikhail Gorbachev was an important step in ending the Cold War.

Speaking at almost the same time in St. Petersburg, Putin responded by threatening that any country meddling in Ukraine would be met with a “lightning” fast response.

“We have all the tools [to respond] that no one can boast of, and we will not [just] be bragging about them, we will use them if necessary.”

A day later, on April 28, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters in Moscow: “In the West, they are openly calling on Kyiv to attack Russia including with the use of weapons received from NATO countries. I don’t advise you to test our patience further.”

It’s worth reading the rest of Churchill’s Iron Curtain speech, because he left the door open for a better outcome with Russia, which was at the time being ruled by Joseph Stalin.

First, he made his audience in Fulton aware of the responsibility their country now faced.

“It is a solemn moment for the American democracy. With primacy in power is also joined an awe-inspiring accountability to the future.”

Then, he encouraged them to consider the world from their new adversary’s perspective.

“We understand the Russian need to be secure on her western frontiers by the removal of all possibility of German aggression. We welcome Russia to her rightful place among the leading nations of the world. Above all, we welcome constant, frequent, and growing contacts between the Russian people and our own people on both sides of the Atlantic.”

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been hugely influenced by his predecessor and once authored a biography about him, but maybe he didn’t read that particular speech fully. He should certainly know his famous line, “Meeting jaw to jaw is better than war.”

Western leaders are currently playing with fire, but do they really want a world war?

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.