It appears that Team Biden wants to find an answer to the question under what circumstances Russia would lose patience and launch a direct attack on the US and its allies, a DC-based think tank has written on June 12.
What's more, Biden officials apparently believe that "the best way to discover an answer to this question has been to experiment," the scholars added.
"Washington has over time gradually increased the sophistication and lethality of the weapons it is providing to Ukraine, assessing with each discrete new delivery whether any Russian retaliation will target the West," the report read.
Scholars have drawn attention to the fact that over the last year and a half, Washington's assistance to the Kiev regime has grown from anti-tank weapons and shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles to M1A1 Abrams tanks and Patriot air defense batteries. It appears that Biden and his entourage "has grown increasingly confident" that the Kremlin's "red lines" aren't as solid as they previously imagined, according to the scholars.
This assumption prompted Secretary of State Antony Blinken, a key Biden confidant, and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to push forward with even more lethal supplying for the Kiev regime, the Washington Post revealed, citing unnamed government officials. Recently, the Biden administration green-lighted handing over F-16 fighter jets to the Ukrainian Air Force and stepped up the training of Ukrainian pilots.
Meanwhile, US officials claimed that Moscow's decision to exercise restraint in response to Washington's actions could be explained by "the diminished state of Russian military": "It would not seem to be in their interest to get into a direct confrontation with NATO right now. They are not well positioned to do so," insisted the newspaper's source.
As per Responsible Statecraft scholars, this approach could lead the Biden administration to nothing short of a "fatal flaw."
"We are likely to discover that we have gone too far only after we find ourselves in a direct confrontation with Russia, not before," they warned.
Furthermore, the think tankers don't rule out that the Kiev regime may consider that it is "their best hope for victory" to drag Washington into a direct conflict with Moscow. If Washington relies on "tight Ukrainian discipline" while providing it with more longer-range, sophisticated arms, it "looks increasingly unwise".
An "experimental approach" to testing Russia's "red lines" may end up in a direct conflict between two nuclear powers. In order to avoid this worst-case scenario, the US should focus on what is vital to US security, i.e. preventing escalation into a direct war with Russia, the think tank's report emphasized. The scholars urged Washington to resort to a diplomatic offensive to broker peace in the region. "The American people should insist on it," they added.