Biden’s Ukraine tactics look like a version of Vietnam Syndrome
Quin Hillyer
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By refusing to provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, President Joe Biden yet again is imitating then-President Lyndon Johnson’s tragic tactics in Southeast Asia six decades ago: He’s doing just enough to fail to win.
Biden told ABC’s David Muir Friday that the U.S. won’t send the jets because “we’re sending him [only] what our seasoned military thinks he needs now” and that “there is no basis upon which there is a rationale according to our military now to provide F-16s.”
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH UKRAINE AND F-16S?
This is sickeningly familiar. At various times in the past year, Biden has refused to provide Ukraine with Patriot missile defenses, HIMAR missiles, and Abrams tanks, only to later change his mind and send them. Each time he declined, he or his aides argued either that the weapons weren’t needed or that they would be considered too escalatory towards Russia. Then, as if by some secret divination, they decided Russia wouldn’t be too provoked by those systems after all. Each time, Ukrainian fighters needed many weeks or months of training on the systems, so by the time they were operational, their use was months behind when they might have been decisive.
In his interview with Muir, Biden specifically denigrated “the idea that we know exactly what is going to be needed” down the line. But that’s the problem, exactly: a failure to anticipate what might be needed for a clear-cut victory. By providing only enough for Ukraine not to lose, Biden contributes to the stalemate that saps U.S. and other Western patience and support for Ukraine’s necessary, existential battle.
This is the same sort of asininity Johnson used in Vietnam by attempting to oh-so-carefully calibrate how much military assistance South Vietnam needed to defend itself without needlessly antagonizing the Soviet Union and China. The foolishness was two-fold: China and the Soviets, just like the Russians today, were, of course, antagonized already, while the calibrations treated war almost as a matter of accounting rather than as a life-or-death struggle.
The results were disastrous.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at times did much the same thing in the war in Iraq 20 years ago, again leading to a slow bleed-out rather than a clear-cut victory.
As for the F-16s, bipartisan groups of House and Senate members repeatedly have urged Biden to send them. And in the Feb. 24 Wall Street Journal, retired Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula and Evelyn Farkas, who formerly headed the Russia-Ukraine desk for the Pentagon, made a comprehensive case for why those planes should be sent immediately.
“Fighter aircraft typically fly at around 600 miles an hour and can defend multiple parts of the country on a single mission,” they wrote. “These planes not only would give the Ukrainians new ability to defend against Russian aerial attacks; they would also provide counteroffensive capability to destroy missiles, aircraft, and offensive-drone launch sites that are putting much of Ukraine at risk. Close air support and interdiction from fighters would provide a significant advantage to Ukrainian ground forces.”
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And much more. Deptula and Farkas blasted Biden’s habit of approving arms only “slowly and cautiously” because it “gives Russia the advantage of time and increases the chances that Mr. Putin’s war aims will prevail. It is a mistake to wait until the Ukrainians are on the ropes to start training them on Western aircraft.”
The American public has limited patience for using its tax dollars for foreign wars. To keep the patience from running out, Biden should stop his half-in, half-out tactics and help Ukraine not just barely survive but win — and win fast.