The president of the United States, Joe Biden, has spent enormous diplomatic capital to counteract the Russian attack on Ukraine.
His government relentlessly broadcast warnings of a possible imminent invasion by Moscow, which finally materialized, and declared that nothing less than the international order was at stake.
But Biden has also made it clear that the Americans are not willing to fight, even though the Russians clearly are.
In addition, ruled out sending forces to Ukraine to rescue US citizens, if it arrives ra the case. In fact, he pulled out of the country troops who were serving as military advisers and monitors.
Why has the president drawn this red line in the most important foreign policy crisis that Are you holding the presidency?
Your national security interests are not at stake
In First of all, it must be remembered that Ukraine is not in the US’s neighborhood nor is it on its border. It is also not home to a US military base. It does not have strategic oil reserves and is not a major trading partner.
But that lack of national interest has not prevented US governments from spending in the past blood and resources of his country to defend others.
In 1995, Bill Clinton intervened militarily in the war that followed the collapse of Yugoslavia . And in 2011, Barack Obama did the same in the Libyan civil war, citing both humanitarian and human rights reasons.
The United States sent troops that were part of the contingent of NATO in 1280.
On 1990, George HW Bush justified his international coalition to expel Iraq from Kuwait by defending the rule of law against the law of the jungle.
Biden’s top national security officials have used similar language in describing Russia’s threat to international principles of peace and security.
But, until now, they have spoken of an economic war through crippling sanctions as a response, not military operations.
Biden is not a supporter of military interventionism
This position has something to do with President Biden’s non-interventionist instincts.
Of course, these were developed over time. In the past, for example, the current president supported US military action in the 1990s 1752 to deal with ethnic conflicts in the Balkans.
Also voted in favor of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. But since then, he has become more cautious about using US military power.
Thus, he opposed Obama’s intervention in Libya, as well as his decision to increase troops in Afghanistan. Similarly, he continues to vigorously defend his order to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan last year despite the chaos that accompanied it and the humanitarian catastrophe it left in its wake.
For his part, the chief diplomat of his government, Antony Blinken —who has helped conceive Biden’s foreign policy— has defined a more focused on combating climate change, fighting global diseases and competing with China in terms of military interventionism.
The Americans don’t want a war either
A recent survey by the AP agency and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Chicago concluded that 47% of those consulted in the US said that their country should play a minor role in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, or none at all or.
Citizens focus their interests on economic issues, especially on the increase in inflation, something for Biden to keep in mind as the midterm elections loom.
In Washington, the crisis in Ukraine is at the center of the concerns of both Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who are demanding tougher sanctions against Russia.
But even hardliners like Republican Senator Ted Cruz do not want Biden to send US troops to Ukraine and “start a war with Putin”.
Republican Senator Marco Rubio, another foreign policy hawk, has said that the war between the two largest nuclear powers I don’t know about the world would be good for no one.
The danger of a confrontation of superpowers
A large part of this position is explained by the fact that Putin has a large stockpile of nuclear warheads.
Biden does not want to provoke a “world war” by risking a direct confrontation between US and Russian troops in Ukraine and has been clear about it.
“It’s not like we’re dealing with a terrorist organization,” the US president told NBC earlier this month. “We are dealing with one of the largest armies in the world. This is a very difficult situation and things could get out of hand quickly,” he pointed out.
USA is not required to act
USA. nor is it bound by any international treaty to assume this risk.
A different situation would occur if Ukraine were part of NATO, since in that organization it is assumed that an attack against any of its members is an attack against everyone. That is the fundamental commitment of Article 5, which obliges all members to defend each other.
But Ukraine is not a member of NATO, a factor cited by Blinken to explain why Americans will not fight for the values they defend so vigorously.
There is some irony here, since the conflict stems from Putin’s demands for guarantees that Ukraine will never be allowed to join the military alliance and NATO’s refusal to give them to them.
Neither is NATO obliged to do so
Paradoxically, the mutual defense commitment established in the NATO Treaty is the main incentive for Ukraine to request admission to that alliance and, at the same time, one of the reasons why some of its member states do not want to admit Kiev.
Since the beginning of the decade of 1990, the issue of NATO enlargement to include countries that belonged to the former Soviet orbit was the subject of debate among foreign policy experts, among whom there are those who believe that this could generate a negative reaction from Russia, which could feel threatened by the inclusion in the alliance of countries with which it shares borders.
Despite these objections, the alliance was expanded and from 1997 has included among its members 14 countries that come from the former communist bloc. There have been, however, two notable exceptions: Georgia and Ukraine.
In 2008, NATO made a statement in the which indicated that these two countries could finally be admitted, but this has not happened.
In fact, many analysts point out that it is no coincidence that, just months after that summit of the NATO, the war in Georgia took place through which pro-Russian separatists took control of the territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.
A similar situation was repeated in 2014, when a few months after the popular uprisings that led to the fall of the government of the pro-Russian president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, the rebellions in Donetsk and Luhansk were registered, in which pro-Russian groups assumed control of those territories of Ukraine.
Like the government of Biden, NATO has harshly criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Its secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, called it “a brutal act of war.” But, from there to intervening militarily in defense of Kiev, there is an abyss that the alliance does not seem willing to cross at the moment.
Can you change this?
President Biden has been sending troops to Europe and redeploying those already there, to bolster NATO allies bordering Ukraine and Russia .
This has been announced by your government as an effort to reassure the former Soviet republics, nervous about Putin’s broader goal of pressuring NATO to push back forces on its eastern flank.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has harshly criticized the Russian invasion.
This effort has also involved the alliance, which during the previous months of tension between Russia and Ukraine has mobilized thousands of troops and resources m military to Eastern Europe. Although not with the purpose of protecting Ukraine but to reinforce the protection of its members in that region such as Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania.
But the invasion of Ukraine this week has stoked concerns about the prospect of a wider conflict, whether due to an accidental expansion of hostilities or a deliberate attack by Russia beyond of Ukraine.
The latter would imply a great escalation of tension, since it would open the door to invoke the mutual defense commitment of NATO Article 5. However, either of those two scenarios could draw US forces into a battle.
For the first time in its history, NATO deployed its Response Force by land, sea and air to defend all its allies with the aim of preventing the spillover of war into territory of the Alliance, but without intervening in Ukraine.
“Yes enters the NATO countries, we will get involved“, warned Biden for his part .
*With information dThe analysis of Barbara Plett Usher, BBC Correspondent at the US Department of State
Now you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Download our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content.
- Do you already know our Yo channel? uTube? Subscribe!