(Feb. 19) Several exchanges on today’s Sunday morning news shows gave evidence of how the Biden administration has failed tactically in helping Ukraine repel Russia’s evil invasion.
To give credit where due, the administration has been good at providing rhetorical and diplomatic support for Ukraine and in helping rally international support. Still, the problems with its approach were evident in two interviews -[p0on Fox News Sunday and two others on ABC’s This Week.
On Fox, retired rear admiral John Kirby, an impressive guy who is now the “coordinator for strategic communications” at the National Security Council, unintentionally gave voice to the mistake.
Our military assistance to Ukraine, he said, “evolves as the war evolves.”
Alas, what that means in practice is that rather than helping Ukraine get ahead of the fight and achieve decisive victory, it instead manages only a continuing stalemate as weapons delivery and training try to catch up with the latest warfare “evolution.” If Biden had provided weapons systems last April (for example) that he instead approved only in December, Ukraine’s soldiers might long ago have finished training on the equipment and instead begun using it to win. At almost every step, Biden has dithered about which system might be seen by Russia as too much of an “escalation,” only to decide belatedly that it would not be too escalatory after all.
Speaking after, but in reply, to Kirby, retired four-star general Jack Keane said on Fox that the administration needs to act “more with a sense of urgency.” He said the administration’s “piecemeal” approach is “a mistake.” Rather than try to calibrate how many weapons for Ukraine the Kremlin will bear, Keane said, “we have to give Ukraine what they need when they need it.”… [For the rest of this column, please do follow this link.]
