Neocon Think Tanks Steer Biden’s Ukraine Policy

In Joe Biden’s Washington, it’s the self-proclaimed national security “community of experts” that drives and directs the administration’s Ukraine policy.

A little note open letter which appeared in the Washington tabloid The Hill on June 1 put a public face on what had hitherto been a low-key, but highly successful effort by Washington think tanks – many of them, like the Disgraced Brookings Institutionare funded by foreign governments – to direct White House policy on Ukraine.

The letter says, in part:

“The United States and Europe must avoid the urge to encourage kyiv to negotiate a ceasefire that does not meet Ukraine’s objectives and could hand over millions of Ukrainians to Russian control.”

The signatories of the open letter urge the Biden administration to stay the course and continue to arm Ukraine, so that when the time comes, it can negotiate from a position of strength.

Among the letter’s most prominent signatories are longtime neoconservative ideologues, including Professor Eliot A Cohen of John Hopkins SAIS; Eric S Edelman, also of Johns Hopkins SAIS; Paula Dobriansky of the foreign-funded Atlantic Council; failed congressional candidate and executive director of the McCain Institute Evelyn N Farkas; John Herbst, also of the foreign-funded Atlantic Council; former assistant to John McCain David J Kramer; and, of course, former ambassador and MSNBC member Michael McFaul.

Russian gains and severe, perhaps insurmountable, Ukrainian losses did not appear to have been enough to change the dominant calculus in Washington, which remains: fund Ukraine to the tune of over $40 billion and hope for the best. .

In the meantime, the administration and its proxies in the US government-controlled media and think tank world have waged a relentless and well-coordinated messaging campaign.

For proof, look no further than David Ignatius’ latest column in The Washington Post.

Ignatius, a longtime messenger pigeon and indefatigably loyal to Langley, informed readers on June 14 that “Russian military advances in eastern Ukraine this month have sparked growing concern in the West that the balance of the war tilts in favor of Moscow. But Biden administration officials believe those fears are overblown and that Ukraine’s defenses remain strong in this horrific war of attrition.

Also on June 14, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl told the New York Times, “We’re not going to tell the Ukrainians how to negotiate, what to negotiate, and when to negotiate… They’re going to set themselves- same conditions. .”

Three days later, on June 17, Missy Ryan of the Washington Post, who has done so much to set the stage for an endless American intervention in Syria, reported: “The United States and its allies are preparing for a protracted conflict in Ukraine , officials said. , as the Biden administration tries to deny Russia’s victory by increasing military aid to Kyiv while working to mitigate the destabilizing effects of war on world hunger and the global economy.

The report notes that Ivo Daalder, a former US ambassador to NATO who now heads the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said the United States faces “a stark choice: either continue to help Ukraine maintain a potentially bloody status quo, with the devastating global crisis that entails, or cut off support and allow Moscow to prevail.

“That would mean feeding Ukraine to the wolves,” Daalder said, according to the Post report.

Abandoning the American agency to Volodymyr Zelensky – what Kahl and Daalder and the others are essentially proposing in the case of a war that threatens to engulf both NATO and the United States – is the height of the ‘irresponsibility.

Yet the Biden administration remains recklessly committed to a failed policy of rejecting talks to arm Ukraine to the teeth.

The question that American citizens in good conscience must now ask themselves is: Why?

This article was previously published by the American Committee for American-Russian Accord and is used with the permission of the author. Read the original here.

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