Don’t Count on Biden to Protect Planes Over the Baltic Sea By Jim Geraghty
What will we do about Russian GPS jamming over the Baltic Sea, which is starting to increase the risk of civilian passenger airliner accidents?
Nothing. We’re not going to do anything.
Someday, after Biden’s prepared remarks have been workshopped to death by U.S. State Department bureaucrats, the president may offer another one of his patented, “don’t… don’t,” warnings that have been ignored by everyone from Hamas to the Iranians to the Houthis.
Any type of retaliation or warning shot, telling Russia to knock it off, is likely to be considered too “escalatory” and “provocative” by this administration.
Biden was shaped by the Vietnam War, and his foreign policy instincts – the ones former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates characterized as “wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades” – are always to avoid anything that could remotely be considered escalatory, hawkish or aggressive by a foe that is inclined to interpret any U.S. action as intolerably provocative. Remember, Biden’s the guy who urged President Obama to wait on the bin Laden raid, deeming it too risky.
What’s amazing is that Biden takes this hesitant, irresolute stance while simultaneously believing that he’s the toughest guy on the block. “Putin knows that I am president of the United States his days of tyranny and trying to intimidate the United States and those in Eastern Europe are over,” Biden declared in 2019. Biden also claims he went nose-to-nose with Putin and told the Russian dictator, directly to his face, that he didn’t think Putin has a soul. Of course, there were no witnesses.
Fast forward to today, and when the Ukrainians are in the fight for their lives, Biden doesn’t want them to hit Russian oil refineries. (Heaven forbid high gas prices further endanger Biden’s reelection chances!) He doesn’t want any U.S. weapon used to hit a Russian target on Russian territory in the pre-war border lines.
The closing line of Martin Iven’s column over at Bloomberg is sticking with me: “with the exception of Poland, neither the U.K. nor its European allies are on anything like a war footing. A new age of dictators demands a stronger democratic response.”
That stronger democratic response isn’t likely to arrive until it’s far too late. Washington, London, Paris, Berlin — there’s not a “wartime consigliere” among the leaders in those capitals. The leaders of every major democracy at the moment are quite comfortable with sternly worded communiques from the G7 and NATO summits, and another round of sanctions that will have minimal impact on the elites in Moscow and Saint Petersburg or the Russian war machine.
Biden boasted that he told Putin to his face that if Alexey Navalny died in prison, “the consequences of that would be devastating for Russia.” Navalny died in prison, and U.S. policies towards Russia did not change in any significant way. Biden said that the consequences had been enacted before Navalny died:
And to be clear, you warned Vladimir Putin when you were in Geneva of “devastating” consequences if Navalny died in Russian custody. What consequences should he and Russia face?
THE PRESIDENT: That was three years ago. In the meantime, they faced a hell of a lot of consequences. They’ve lost and/or had wounded over 350,000 Russian soldiers. They’ve made it into a position where they’ve been subjected to great sanctions across the board. And we’re contemplating what else could be done.
You want to send a signal to the Russians? Unleash U.S. Cyber Command and turn off the Internet access to someplace like Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, Putin’s infamous “troll factory.” (The president who authorized that act in 2018? That alleged Russian stooge, Donald Trump.) Make the lights flicker in Kaliningrad or at that air base in Pskov. Send some proportional nuisance interference to Russian systems that communicates that we can shut down their critical systems any time we want.
As former head of the National Security Agency, Army Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, said earlier this year:
Nakasone also said the U.S. has its own offensive, cyber capability and making that capability well known serves as a deterrent against Chinese cyber aggression.
“We do have the capability, and we’re very, very good—the best,” Nakasone said. “And in terms of the way that we communicate it, we communicate it in many different ways—from our policymakers who have these discussions to the exercises that we conduct to the real-world examples that, that we do with a series of different partners.”
The U.S. has the ability to send a wide variety of warning shots across the bow of the Russian state. But as far as we know, we just don’t have the will.
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