Biden's High-Risk Brinksmanship In UkraineNATO has just attacked Russia with long-range missiles. What could go wrong?
There was something truly surreal about President Biden suddenly changing course and agreeing to give Ukraine advanced long-range missiles to attack deep inside Russian territory in the last two months of his administration. There was no speech to the nation; no debate in the Senate; just a quiet demonstration of unilateral presidential fuck-you power. You know: the kind we’ve long worried about with Donald Trump. The missiles up the ante considerably against a nuclear power for a simple reason. As Putin noted:
The tiny tsar continued:
And he looked on edge, bedraggled and belligerent, his arms and hands not moving a millimeter in what sure looks like AI. There was a time when a NATO missile strike on Russian territory, followed by a Russian threat to attack NATO “military facilities” in response, would have caused the world to stop dead, paralyzed by the fear of nuclear armageddon. Yet here we are, blithely preoccupied by Pete Hegseth’s sexual exploits and Congressional bathrooms. Others are not so sanguine. “I believe that in 2024 we can absolutely believe that the Third World War has begun,” Ukraine’s former military chief, Valery Zaluzhny, warned yesterday, noting both the new involvement of NATO troops and the involvement of North Korea. Our own president, having brought us much closer to the brink as a lame duck, seemed unconcerned. He was last seen wandering off-stage in the vague direction of the Brazilian rainforest. Not optimal. The UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, was even punchier, and pledged to allow Ukraine to use British long-range missiles as well: “We need to double down. We need to make sure Ukraine has what is necessary for as long as necessary, because we cannot allow Putin to win this war.” When asked if he was prepared to risk the UK forces or Ukraine or a third country like Poland being nuked in response, as Putin has threatened, Starmer simply ignored the question. Meanwhile, just to keep things from escalating, the deputy chief of the British defense staff told a parliamentary committee yesterday:
There seems to be a general impression that Putin is of course bluffing, that NATO can keep lobbing missiles into Russian territory with minimal consequences, and nothing could possibly go wrong. But Putin has responded by launching a long-range missile that could be used to carry a nuke but didn’t, as well as lowering the bar for the use of nukes in his military “doctrine”. And ask yourself: if Russia were found to have had its own troops assemble a long-range missile and help launch it into the United States, do you think a US president would feel able to let it slide? Here’s what the British missile, the Storm Shadow, did in hitting an underground military facility in Kursk, according to unverified Russia media sources:
I can’t verify that, but it’s perfectly possible. To have NATO’s fingers on the targeting and launch of that missile puts us in a whole new category of conflict. The job of a president is to keep us far, far away from any risk of nuclear conflict, as Biden seemed to understand until now. And any student of history will know that blithe complacency as two sides trade military escalations is often exactly the precursor to something going very, very wrong. Accidents happen; misjudgments occur; the point of never getting to this point is that this point contains a host of unknowables, some of them globally existential. I assume that this is all about strengthening Kyiv’s hand in what will be grueling negotiations to end the conflict once Donald Trump gets back into office. Or the intelligence is worse than we know and it’s about avoiding an Ukraine collapse before Biden leaves office — which, after Afghanistan, would be a final, damning verdict on his foreign policy. Or the intelligence is better than we know and the Russian economy is so weak and his military so depleted that NATO thinks this extra pressure will force Putin to crack. Or it’s a norm-defying attempt from an outgoing administration to derail any peace process the incoming one might want to start. The latter possibility — with Biden rolling the dice because he thinks someone else will have to face the music — is not a minimal risk. Whatever the reason, it’s an odd position for a superpower to be in: simultaneously ramping up aggression against Russia to a new, nuclear-tinged level while signaling it will soon try to end the war anyway. And it implies an end to what we used to believe was mutually assured destruction: the idea that nuclear war is so unthinkable that we should avoid any direct conventional conflict between nuclear-armed powers at all costs. NATO has now decided it can risk the furthest edge of outright conflict with a nuclear superpower and have no serious worries about catastrophe. And that opens up a world of possibilities for conflict between nuclear powers that we once believed would be forever forestalled. The brinksmanship over Ukraine will set a precedent for brinksmanship over Taiwan. What Putin and Biden have done — by allowing this conflict to persist, despite no chance of a conventional military victory for either side — is to render the world far less stable and far more dangerous than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Quite a legacy for a president we were assured was a foreign-policy master. (Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my take on the McBride-Mace uproar; my chat with Reihan Salam on pluralism after Trump’s multiracial win; reader dissents over my views on the Dem reckoning; nine notable quotes from the week in news; 17 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of topics; a Cool Ad Watch of a vibe-shift against wokeness; a Mental Health Break of a Bowie cover; an autumnal view of Philly; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!) From a lapsed subscriber who re-joined: “I was so moved by the first part of your convo with Anderson Cooper that I started to subscribe again.” Another:
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Heads UpI’m back on Real Time tonight for the season’s closer, talking to Bill with Donna Brazile. It’s why the Dish is a little later than usual today. West Coast time! Grace vs MaceAs an act of political grace, it doesn’t come much better than this:
That, of course, was newly-elected Congresswoman Sarah McBride’s response to the Speaker’s decision to bar transwomen from the common women’s bathrooms in the House. It came after a manic social media campaign by Congresswoman Nancy Mace to keep the sole transwoman in Congress from bumping into her in the loo. Instantly, Mace looked like an asshole — and deserved to. And she picked the wrong fight. (Read the rest of the piece here, for paid subscribers) New On The Dishcast: Reihan Salam
Reihan is a writer and the president of the Manhattan Institute. Before that he was the executive editor of National Review and worked at publications as varied as the NYT, The Atlantic, National Affairs, Slate, CNN, NBC News, and Vice. He’s the author of Melting Pot or Civil War? and Grand New Party — a 2008 book he co-wrote with Ross Douthat that pushed a policy program for a GOP connected to the working class. He was also my very first assistant on the Daily Dish, editing the Letters page, over two decades ago. Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on finding “Americanness” out of immigrant diversity, and Trump vs the education system. That link also takes you to a bunch of commentary on my talk with Anderson Cooper on grief. We also hear from many readers on the trans debate in the wake of the Democrats’ defeat, including a dissent from the dad of a trans son. Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: David Greenberg on John Lewis and the Civil Rights Movement, Adam Kirsch on his book On Settler Colonialism, Brianna Wu on trans lives and politics, Mary Matalin on anything but politics, Christine Rosen on humanness in a digital world, and John Gray in the new year on the state of liberal democracy. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com. From a subscriber who’s spreading the word:
Dissents Of The WeekA reader responds to my latest column:
I do reject it — because I believe that trans people exist and are not making it up, and because I believe that for a very small number of people, their psychological gender really does contradict their biological sex. The distinction between sex and gender is the critical one for me — and it’s the elision of it by the transqueer movement that concerns me. A transwoman can indeed have a penis; but in so far as she has a penis she remains a biological man. We can treat her as if she were a woman even if she is not biologically so. Three more dissents, along with my replies, are here. Follow more Dish discussion on the Notes site here (or the “Notes” tab in the Substack app). As always, keep the dissents coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com. In The ‘StacksThis is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as “non-crime hate incidents,” birthright citizenship, and the rise of green MAGA. Below are a few examples, followed by a new substack:
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com. The View From Your Window Contest
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From a recent winner:
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