With just over 60 days left in office, Joe Biden’s White House has significantly escalated the Ukraine war it had tried so hard to contain by authorising 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 US 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 defence 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
International support for continuing to arm Ukraine is collapsing, while diplomatic efforts are gathering pace.
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