The fallout from the Biden administration’s approval on the transfer of M864 Dual-Purpose Improved Conventional Munition (DPICM) cluster bombs to Ukraine continues to spread, with US allies, dozens of human rights and anti-war groups, and the United Nations condemning the decision, and Moscow warning that it will result in a further escalation of the conflict.
Cluster Bombs
The US military had previously pledged to eliminate its M864 stocks, and stopped using them in 2016, citing their high dud rate (which can reach up to 20 percent). These particular weapons are reportedly over 20 years old, thus further decreasing their immediate viability as a weapon, but increasing their deadliness to civilians and the surrounding environment over the long term.
In February 2022, then-Biden press secretary Jen Psaki characterized the possible use of cluster munitions in Ukraine by Russia as “potentially…a war crime.” Apparently when the shoe is on the other foot, that’s no longer the case.
Long-Range Missiles
In May 2022, Biden assured that the US was “not going to send to Ukraine rocket systems that can strike into Russia.” Less than a month later, the US announced that it would send M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, to Kiev. These weapons have a range of between 80 and 110 km. A year after that, Washington’s UK allies announced that they would send long-range Storm Shadow cruise missiles, which have a range of more than 250 km. Now, discussions are underway in Washington on the possible delivery to Kiev of a variant of a HIMARS known as the ATACMS, which has a range of over 305 km.
Kiev has already demonstrated its readiness to use its HIMARS and Storm Shadows against civilians in the Donbass and infrastructure in Crimea, as well as Belgorod region and Donetsk's border with Rostov region, which everyone in the West (apart from former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, perhaps) definitely recognize as Russian territory.
Tanks and Planes and American Crews
When the Ukrainian crisis first began, President Biden expressed caution about the types of military equipment that the US would be willing to deploy, and who would operate it.
“We are showing our strength and we will never falter. But look, the idea that we’re gonna send offensive equipment, and have tanks and planes and trains going in with American pilots and American crews – just understand, don’t kid yourself, no matter what you all say, that’s called World War III. Okay? Let’s get it straight here,” Biden in March 2022.
But less than a year later, in January 2023, Biden announced that the US would be sending 31 Abrams tanks to Kiev, with the announcement serving as a palliative to ease the transfer of hundreds of German-made Leopard and Leopard 2 MBTs. In May 2023, the US greenlit the training of Ukrainian fighter pilots to fly F-16s, even though just a few months earlier Biden promised that Washington would not be sending F-16s to Ukraine.
As far as “American pilots and American crews” are concerned, the recently leaked Pentagon assessment on the status of the Ukrainian conflict revealed that NATO countries already have dozens of special forces boots on the ground, including at least 14 American troops. On top of that, thousands of foreign mercenaries, including combat veterans of US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, have flowed steadily into Ukraine over the past 16 months. The Russian military announced Monday that it had information that Kiev is working with CIA-controlled private military companies to expand the recruitment of volunteers from the US and Canada to use as “cannon fodder” in Ukraine. If these aren’t the “American crews” that Biden was talking about, what are they?
Defending ‘Democracy’
On the campaign trail in 2019, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden pledged that “as president,” he would “ensure that democracy is once again the watchword of US foreign policy, not to launch some moral crusade, but because it’s in our enlightened self-interest.”
Has he kept his word on that foreign policy pledge in Ukraine? Well, to date the Zelensky administration has imposed martial law, canceled presidential elections scheduled for 2024, imprisoned political opponents, banned opposition parties, and gone after the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Must be a special US ‘export’ brand of democracy.
‘Transparency’ on Ukraine
“If the president were standing here with me today, he would say he works for the American people…But his objective and his commitment is to bring transparency and truth back to government – to share the truth, even when it’s hard to hear,” Jen Psaki said at a press conference in the White House in January 2021.
An often forgotten facet of the Ukrainian crisis is Biden’s intimate involvement in shaping US policy on the country going all the way back to his tenure as Barack Obama’s vice president and the 2014 coup in Kiev. At a Council on Foreign Relations event in 2018, Biden bragged about his personal intervention in Ukraine’s domestic politics to get Viktor Shokhin, a prosecutor investigating a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma on money laundering charges, fired. Biden jovially recalled how he told Ukrainian officials that the US would withhold a $1 billion loan agreement to Ukraine until the prosecutor was let go. Kiev folded, and the prosecutor was gone.
Later, it emerged that Biden’s son Hunter was sitting on the board of the energy company. Later still, President Trump got impeached for nudging Kiev to reopen the investigation into Burisma. And just last month, it was revealed by investigators in Congress that President Biden and his son allegedly received up to $10 million in bribes from Burisma’s owner to court favor with the powerful politician.
Has Biden met his administration’s pledge to be transparent on Ukraine-related issues? Judging by his string of denials, and most US media’s blackout silence on the matter, the answer doesn't seem encouraging.
Dangerous Lies
As the NATO-Russia proxy war marks its 500+ day anniversary, it’s anyone’s guess what the future holds. Washington’s European allies, pouring in nearly $100 billion in weapons and as much or more in economic and humanitarian assistance to Kiev, are growing increasingly weary of continuing to support a conflict that has thrust their economies into a recession and threatens to leave them deindustrialized husks.
Perhaps in time Biden, his administration, and the Washington political machine will come to the same realization in Ukraine that it did in Afghanistan in 2021, and pull out of the country, leading to the swift collapse of its puppet government.
Or, on the contrary, perhaps the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction, and NATO will entangle itself more deeply in the conflict (as Kiev and some alliance members are seeking), and potentially thrust the world into a global conflagration that could easily go nuclear.
Biden has promised repeatedly that the US “will not fight a war with Russia in Ukraine,” saying he recognizes that “direct conflict between NATO and Russia” would be “World War III.” But his track record on other promises and commitments made to date relating to Ukraine leaves much to be desired.