The Failed Presidency of Joe Biden, Part Three
Many see Ukraine as a success of Biden's time in office. History will judge the truth of that, and that judgment won't look as good for Biden.
In less than two weeks of Doanld Trump’s second presidency, we have already seen the beginning of his program to dismantle the federal government, attack free speech, and cause tensions with other countries, friend and foe alike.
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In part one of this essay, I reviewed Joe Biden’s domestic policies and found them considerably poorer than what liberals, and even some leftists portray it as. In part two, I looked at his climate and Middle East legacies. While there are many other policy areas that bear examination, I am concluding the review in Ukraine.
War is the preferred option
It was clear back in 2020 that a Democratic victory over Donald Trump would lead to increased tension with Russia. Trump’s fawning admiration of Vladimir Putin stood in sharp contrast to the rhetoric from just about every leading Democrat that was clearly hostile to Putin, often with very good reason. Whether it was Joe Biden or any other Democrat, there was going to be trouble.
Russia presented a quandary. On one hand, Putin’s regional ambitions were clear. He nostalgically recalled the days of a powerful Soviet Union with Russia at its heart. He believed Russia’s willingness to concede independence to Ukraine as the USSR collapsed was a mistake and that Russia should have disregarded the overwhelming sentiment for independence in Ukraine at that time.
Yet Putin also had some legitimate security concerns, albeit nothing that came close to justifying his invasion of Ukraine. Too often, NATO expansion as a cause of the current crisis is downplayed or even ignored. If there is to be a resolution of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, that has to change. There needs to be acknowledgment that George W. Bush’s careless invitation to Ukraine to join NATO presented a threat to Russia.
From that point on, tensions between Russia and the West gradually escalated. When the pro-Russian leader of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovitch, was ousted in 2014, Putin illegally invaded and occupied Crimea, eventually annexing it, and significantly increased support for pro-Russian forces, as well as the presence of Russian troops, in Eastern Ukraine.
The situation remained one of low- to mid-level conflict, largely confined to Eastern Ukraine through Trump’s administration. When Trump departed, Putin immediately took a more aggressive position, knowing the incoming administration would not be as accommodating to him as the outgoing one, and incorrectly judging that Joe Biden would be reluctant to help defend Ukraine militarily.
Upon his entry to the White House, Biden decided that belligerence was the best course, an approach guaranteed to lead to conflict when dealing with an aggressive, expansionist, insecure strongman like Putin. While it’s absolutely the case that all of Russia’s aggression, in 2014 and since, completely contravenes international law in the worst way, Biden refused to acknowledge that there were legitimate concerns for Russia that would have existed even if it had been led by someone who was inclined to follow international law and was not craving expanded Russian borders.
Biden never wondered how the U.S. might feel if a Chinese-led military alliance was enticing Canada and Mexico to join it. Nor did it ever occur to Biden or to Russia hawks that, instead of a reason to support war, this security concern for Russia might be used as a bargaining chip to avert that outcome.
Biden eschewed diplomacy, and he threatened and sanctioned Russia instead.
The ongoing stalemate in Ukraine
Putin was not intimidated, or, if he was, he responded with a need to show strength rather than take a more reasonable (and, ultimately, for all sides, more beneficial) route. That reaction reinforced Putin’s already mistaken perception that he could blitz Ukraine and topple the government in Kyiv quickly and that Biden and Europe would do little but object.
While the massive aid that came mostly from Biden prevented Putin from even coming close to his goal of taking Kyiv and, most likely, installing a new pro-Russian stooge in Volodymyr Zelensky’s place, Biden conditioned the aid and limited the types of aid he was giving to Ukraine, much to Zelensky’s repeated frustration.
The result has been a stalemate where each side has taken one step forward then one back. As the war completes its third year with no resolution in sight, the short-sightedness and foolishness of Biden’s strategy has become increasingly clear, as many, myself included, said it would even before Russia invaded.
The reason this undesirable outcome was entirely predictable is that Biden did what the United States has done so often in recent memory: used military force, even if by proxy, with no clear goal or exit plan.
The stalemate Biden produced has strained Russia’s manpower advantage, and, while sanctions have had an effect, they have clearly not been nearly as effective as many in the U.S. had hoped (another reminder that sanctions almost always fail to bring about the desired change in policy and merely punish innocent people). Russia was defeated in its attempt to topple the Ukrainian government, but it has become increasingly clear that Ukraine will not be able to wrest the territory Russia has captured from Moscow’s control. Even Zelensky realizes this.
The basis of the Biden strategy in Ukraine was that the United States would maintain its support for “as long as it takes.” But that was never realistic, nor even clear. As long as what takes? What was the end goal? The Biden administration never supported or opposed the Ukrainian goal of winning back all of its captured territory, nor did ever state a specific goal for its involvement in the war.
Whether it was Trump or another Republican, the minute the White House flipped, aid to Ukraine would be in serious jeopardy, as it now is. While many congressional Republicans support the aid, Republican voters do not. In a November 2024 poll, Pew Research found that 42% of Republicans wanted to reduce or eliminate aid to Ukraine, while only 29% thought it should either be increased or remain the same.
Biden was never in a position to commit to supporting Ukraine for “as long as it takes,” regardless of what he said. Now Ukraine faces a serious crisis, if Trump should decide, as many in his inner circle wish, to sharply reduce aid.
That could be ascribed to a policy difference and some short-sightedness on Biden’s part. But the complete refusal to pursue diplomatic alternatives was a consistent Biden position from the day he assumed the office of President, as was the lack of a realistic vision for an endgame.
While it’s not true, as some allege, that Biden forbade Zelensky, in Spring of 2022, to reach an agreement with Putin, there is no doubt that Biden’s disdain for diplomacy was a factor in Zelensky’s thinking and a significant one.
As Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko noted in an April 2024 piece in Foreign Affairs, the talks that might have produced “…an agreement that would have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU,” in March 2022 did not fail because of the desires of both the United States and United Kingdom, desires communicated in person to Zelensky by Boris Johnson.
That was a moment of particular outrage in Ukraine in the wake of some of the worst atrocities Russia committed in the early part of the war. The mood was definitely not one of compromise. And Zelensky himself was feeling overconfident in the wake of the unexpected success by Ukraine in forcing the Russian advance through its eastern region to a complete standstill.
Still, Biden was doggedly determined to continue the war. Had he been more forward thinking, and had he not, in his blind arrogance and tactical stupidity, completely ignored the fact that while Russia and Ukraine could fight indefinitely, his term in office would expire, and with it, his guarantee of staying the course “as long as it takes,” he might have convinced Zelensky to stay at the negotiating table, rather than, as he did, encourage him to adopt a zero sum stance that insisted that the war would continue until every Russian soldier was expelled from Ukrainian territory.
Now, Ukraine has recognized, as most of its allies have, that a compromise will be necessary that will leave Russia in some parts of Ukraine, almost certainly including Crimea. This represents a major setback for Ukraine and for the global principle that forbids the theft of territory by force. All of this might have been avoided if Biden had insisted on diplomacy instead of steadfastly refused it before and after Russia’s invasion.
Is that certain? Of course not. Putin might have been determined to go to war regardless of what Zelensky, Biden, or the Europeans did. But the consequences of that war have been grave, for Ukraine, for Russia, for Europe, and for many in the Global South who have had to face a shortage of grains from both antagonists in the war. These consequences might have been inevitable, but we’ll never know because Biden refused to even try diplomacy, before or after Russia’s outrageous, brutal, and illegal invasion.
China and elsewhere
In general, Biden’s foreign policy reflected his political upbringing during the Cold War. It was based on great power competition. He did little to tamp down the Sinophobia that so characterized Trump’s first term, at least not in terms of dealing with China itself (he certainly did cast an atmosphere that was less encouraging of the anti-Asian hate that Trump fomented).
The gradual buildup of tension with China continued at a slow but steady pace under Biden, with few efforts to find areas of mutual cooperation. China, to be sure, played its part in that dynamic as well.
While many judge Biden’s stance on Ukraine to have been a strength of his foreign policy, history will eventually decide whether that is so or not. The same can be said for his “revitalization” of NATO, a relic of the Cold War that serves not to keep peace but to build up caches of weaponry and, through that path and others, foment the roots of armed conflict.
Biden offered little in the way of realism when dealing with Latin America either. His immigration policies, while less blatantly racist and despicable than Trump’s, continued the assault on the United States’ responsibilities for asylum under international law, not to mention the tradition—insincere and inaccurate as it might be—of the United States being a haven for the world’s “tired, poor, and hungry.”
More to the point, he continued to dodge an honest assessment of the history of American dominance of the Western Hemisphere and its interference in many countries under its expansive, imperial definition of the Monroe Doctrine and how such policies have been pursued in different forms for more than two centuries.
Epilogue to come
In a final piece reflecting on Biden’s presidency, I will explain why I think it’s important to do this sort of assessment of Biden’s term. It’s not merely to bury his legacy, and it is certainly not intended to minimize the authoritarian threat that his successor now represents.
As I will explain, it is because we collectively made a choice to elect Joe Biden, and it was a deadly, predictable, avoidable mistake. And we need to learn from it. The epilogue to all this will expand on that point. Coming soon….
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