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Owen Matthews

Biden’s missiles won’t help Ukraine

Biden chose to throw away one of the few diplomatic cards that Trump would have had left to play

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Ukraine

(Getty)

With just over sixty days left in office, Joe Biden’s White House has significantly escalated the Ukraine war it had tried so hard to contain by authorizing the use of US-supplied medium-range ATACMs (Army Tactical Missile Systems) and antipersonnel mines against targets inside Russia. Biden’s U-turn breaks a long-standing convention on presidential transitions that lame-duck presidents aren’t supposed to make major foreign policy changes — especially not ones that severely constrain the stated policies of their elected successor. The immediate result has been a direct Russian threat to the US embassy in Kyiv and what German defense minister Boris Pistorius has called “sabotage” of undersea internet cables in the Baltic. The White House’s announcement, rather than helping Ukraine, has instead made Donald Trump’s vow to end the war more difficult.

Biden chose to throw away one of the few diplomatic cards that Trump would have had left to play