By Bonnie Kristian
“We’re not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that can strike into Russia,” President Biden said at the end of May, but one day later, he announced exactly that: The U.S. will provide Ukraine with high mobility artillery rocket systems (HIMARS), which have a range of about 50 miles. These are the rockets Biden’s earlier comments were thought to preclude, and they’re powerful enough that striking into Russia is entirely possible. Ukraine reportedly “assured” the White House that this won’t happen, but who could be surprised if it did?
This episode is typical of the Biden administration’s equivocation about U.S. military intervention in Ukraine. It’s a dangerous habit, one risking escalation with Russia that we must avoid.
On the rhetorical front, the administration has held its position from the beginning: The United States will not go to war with Russia in Ukraine. Biden has “been very clear about one thing,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in early March, “which is, we’re not going to put the United States in direct conflict with Russia.” That means no U.S.-enforced no-fly zone, Blinken said, and no “American planes flying against Russian planes or our soldiers on the ground in Ukraine,” because “direct war with Russia, a nuclear power” is “clearly not in our interest. What we’re trying to do is end this war in Ukraine, not start a larger one.”
In the months since his remarks, U.S. policy indeed has avoided all those options. Washington rejected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s pleas for a NATO no-fly zone, and neither U.S. planes nor troops have fought in Ukrainian territory. But the qualification of “direct” — as in, “direct conflict” — increasingly is becoming strained.
This piece was originally published in The Hill on June 20, 2022. Read more HERE.