Biden’s ‘De-Escalation’ Obsession Has Prevented De-Escalation
Seth Mandel for Commentary.org
There’ll be time enough for counting, Kenny Rogers famously sang, when the dealin’s done. Regrets are for after the war. Nevertheless, watching the recent developments in the defensive wars of our allies Ukraine and Israel, it’s hard not to wonder if both could have already achieved their goals. In Ukraine’s case, that means keeping its borders where they were before Russia invaded. In Israel’s case, that means Hamas’s defeat.
First Ukraine. The big news this week is that Ukrainian forces launched a surprise attack on Kursk, inside Russian territory. The offensive coincided with a reported Ukrainian attack on a Russian air base a bit further east, in Lipetsk. The drone attack grounded Russian aircraft and took out a munitions warehouse.
The problem for Ukraine has been that Russia’s manpower advantage, as well as Vladimir Putin’s complete disregard for human life, has produced a sense of inevitability in Moscow’s favor. The fear is that if Russia is willing to pay the high price, it’ll eventually get a foothold in eastern Ukraine that will be difficult to dislodge, creating new “facts on the ground” and, crucially, undermining the entire concept of Ukrainian sovereignty.
The strategy is, essentially, to melt Ukraine’s borders rather than march on Kyiv. Without something disrupting the shape of the war, time is on Russia’s side—especially because Moscow has been successful at disabling parts of Ukraine’s power grid, which will have to be repaired before winter. Forcing Russia to defend itself inland scrambles Moscow’s strategy and its assessment of its own resources.
Part of the reason Ukraine is going on offense is because the West simply hasn’t provided it with what Kyiv would need to defeat Russia’s invasion. It’s one of the ironies of the Biden administration’s obsession with “de-escalation”: Ukraine had to open up a new front in the war to keep Russia’s troops at bay because it didn’t have the firepower to stick to defense.
The recent arrival of F-16s to Ukraine is a case in point. The U.S. was a hard sell on allowing Ukraine to get its hands on a batch of the planes—we are now 900 days into the war, after all, and President Biden approved the beginning of the transfer process a year ago. But these planes’ true value is in bolstering Ukraine’s defense, not offense. “The planes Kyiv has received are ideally suited to the task of shooting down the Russian missiles and drones that are regularly fired at Ukrainian cities and vital infrastructure,” notes the Atlantic Council’s Olena Tregub.
Along the same lines, if the West wants this war to end, Ukraine’s foray into Kursk is designed to facilitate that. “When will it be possible to conduct a negotiation process in the way that we can push [the Russians] or get something from them?” asked Myhailo Podolyak, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Only when the war is not going on according to their scenarios.”
There’s a basic point here, but it’s one the Biden administration has routinely ignored: Our allies want to negotiate from a place of strength not weakness. Tying their hands only prevents that from happening. A lot less blood could have been spilled to get them to this point.
The same is true in Israel. The U.S., Egypt, and Qatar invited negotiators to put the finishing touches on a ceasefire deal at a conference next week in Cairo or Doha. Israel has accepted and will send a delegation. For months now, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar has—at least according to the Biden administration—refused to take “yes” for an answer. What is motivating Sinwar to close the deal now, finally?
First and foremost, his back is against the wall. Hamas’s leadership has been obliterated by Israel, Hamas’s forces have been routed out of key battlegrounds, and Israel now holds the Rafah crossing area and the Philadelphi Corridor, a prime smuggling and resupply route for Hamas.
Sinwar himself was recently promoted to head the Hamas politburo because of that aforementioned obliteration—specifically Ismail Haniyeh’s elimination. The assassination of Haniyeh in an IRGC safe house in Tehran was a clear warning to Iran that Israel’s capabilities continued to exceed Iran’s knowledge of them and its ability to prepare. That mission’s success also brought a wave of suspicion and paranoia down on the regime’s upper echelons. The Israeli mission could not have succeeded without an inside man or two, at the least.
The fact that Sinwar felt obligated to replace Haniyeh has allowed that suspicion to infect Sinwar’s relationship with his paymasters as well. The Times of Israel reports that “Sinwar feels the appointment was a trap, as he’s been given the title without the ability to carry out the duties since he is hiding underground in Gaza. Accordingly, this allows other deputies abroad who he’s not as close with — such as Zaher Jabarin — to become more dominant players within the terror group.”
Yet Israel has had to take these retaliatory measures over the objections, implicit or explicit, of the Biden administration. That was also true of Israel’s operations in and around Rafah, which the president did his best to prevent.
Biden and other Western leaders have embraced stalemate. But stalemate isn’t what pushes Yahya Sinwar to the brink and then to negotiate in seriousness. It isn’t what spooks the Iranians enough to contemplate supporting a Gaza ceasefire instead of escalating its military attacks on Israel. And it won’t be what motivates Putin to take an off-ramp in his war on Ukraine. A lot of bloodshed could have been avoided had Biden accepted this reality much sooner.