War Russia and Ukraine: US and NATO reasons for not sending troops to Kiev | Joe Biden | Vladimir Putin | Donbass | Lugansk | Donetsk | The world

US President Joe Biden has spent huge amounts of diplomatic capital to counter the Russian offensive Ukraine.

His government relentlessly aired warnings of a possible immediate invasion of Moscow, which was eventually fulfilled, declaring that nothing but international order was in danger.

View: Russian military action reveals Putin’s plans for Ukraine

Biden also made it clear that while the Russians were clear, the Americans were not ready to fight.

What else, Refused to send troops to Ukraine to rescue American citizens if necessary. In fact, he expelled national forces who had served as military advisers and supervisors.

Why did the President draw this red line during his President’s most important foreign policy crisis?

Your national security interests are not at risk.

First of all, it should be remembered that Ukraine is not around the United States, not on its borders. Nor is it the site of a U.S. military base. It has no strategic oil reserves and is not a major trading partner.

But it is not in the national interest In the past, US governments have not stopped spending their country’s blood and resources to protect others.

In 1995, Bill Clinton intervened militarily in the war following the collapse of Yugoslavia. In 2011, Barack Obama did the same, citing both humanitarian and human rights abuses in the Libyan civil war.

In 1990, George HW Bush justified his international alliance for the expulsion of Iraq from Kuwait.

Biden’s top national security officials have used the same language to describe Russia’s threat to international peace and security policies.

But, so far they have spoken An economic war through retaliatory sanctions, Not military operations.

Biden is not a supporter of military intervention

This position has something to do with President Biden’s non – interventionist instincts.

Of course, these were created over time. In the past, for example, the current president has supported US military action to deal with the Balkan ethnic conflict in the 1990s.

He also voted in favor of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.. But since then, he has been very careful in his use of US military force.

Thus, he opposed Obama’s intervention in Libya and his decision to increase troops in Afghanistan. Similarly, he continues to vigorously defend his order to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan last year.

For his part, his government’s leading diplomat, Antony Blinken – who helped consider Biden’s foreign policy – focused on U.S. national security, combating climate change, combating global diseases and competing with China in terms of military intervention.

Americans do not want war either.

A recent survey by the AP and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago found that 72% of those consulted in the United States said their country should play a small role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Or nothing.

Citizens are focusing their attention on economic issues, especially inflation, which Biden has to keep in mind when it comes to midterm elections.

In Washington, the crisis in Ukraine is at the center of concern Republican and Democratic legislators, We need to impose tough sanctions on Russia.

But even harsher voices like the Republican senator Ted Cruz They do not want Biden to send US troops to Ukraine and “start a war with Putin.”

Republican Senator Yellow frameAnother foreign policy hawk has said that war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers is not good for anyone.

Risk of superpower conflict

Much of this position is explained by Putin’s large stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Biden does not want to provoke a “world war” by creating a direct confrontation between US and Russian troops in Ukraine, and he is clear about that.

“We do not seem to be dealing with a terrorist organization,” Trump told NBC earlier this month. “We are dealing with the largest army in the world. This is a very difficult situation and things could get out of hand quickly,” he said.

America is not compelled to act

The United States is not bound by any international agreement to accept this risk.

A different situation would arise if Ukraine were part of NATO because the attack on its members in that organization is considered an attack against all of them. It is the fundamental commitment of Section 5 that compels all members to defend each other.

But Ukraine is not a member of NATO. One factor cited by Blinken is to explain why Americans do not fight for the values ​​they most actively defend.

There is a certain contradiction here, because this conflict arises from Putin’s demands for guarantees Ukraine will never be allowed to join the military alliance And NATO refuses to supply them.

NATO does not need to do that either.

Paradoxically, the mutual defense commitment established in the NATO agreement was the main motivation for Ukraine to seek accession to that alliance, while at the same time being one of the reasons for that. Some of its member states do not want to recognize Kiev.

Since the early 1990s, the issue of NATO expansion to include countries in former Soviet orbit has been the subject of debate among foreign policy experts, with some believing that it could provoke a backlash. The threat can be felt by joining a coalition of countries that share borders.

Despite these objections, the coalition expanded and since 1994 has included 14 members from its former communist camp. However, there are two notable exceptions: Georgia and Ukraine.

In 2008, NATO issued a statement saying that the two countries could finally be allowed in, but this did not happen.

In fact, several analysts point out that the outbreak of war in Georgia, just months after the NATO summit, in which pro-Russian separatists took control of the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia was not a coincidence.

A similar situation was repeated in 2014, when the uprisings in Donetsk and Luhansk took place, months after the popular uprisings that led to the fall of the government of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine. Control of those territories of Ukraine.

Like the Biden administration, NATO has been sharply critical of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its general secretary, Jens Stoltenberg, called it a “brutal act of war.” But from there until military intervention in defending Kiev, there is an abyss at which the Coalition is not ready to cross at this time.

Can this be changed?

To strengthen NATO allies on the border with Ukraine and Russia, President Biden is sending troops to Europe and relocating those already there.

It was announced by his government as an attempt to reassure former Soviet republics of tensions about Putin’s broader goal of pressuring NATO to withdraw its forces from the east.

The coalition is also involved in mobilizing thousands of troops and military resources for Eastern Europe in the months leading up to the tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.

But this week’s invasion of Ukraine has raised concerns about the possibility of a wider conflict, either by accident, or by a deliberate Russian offensive beyond Ukraine.

The latter would mark a major escalation of tensions, as it would open the door to triggering NATO’s Section 5 mutual defense commitment. However, either of those two scenarios could drag American forces into a war.

“Yes [Putin] NATO enters countries, we will engage, “ Biden warned.

* With information from the analysis of the BBC correspondent Barbara Bled Usher by the US State Department.

______________________________

Recommended video

This may be of interest to you