Before the war started, Biden’s administration executed one of the most shrewd and incisive applications of intelligence sharing and publication to categorically disprove not only Putin’s smoke screen of “we’re totally not planning on invading Ukraine”, but also pretty much their entire casus belli.
After the war started - and before the current regime took power - there was a frustratingly long period of time where the US more or less hung Ukraine out to dry, and we only started seriously supporting them (in a similarly frustratingly piecemeal and nannying fashion) pretty far into the active phase of the war.
There’s an argument to be made that the Biden admin’s policy towards the war was aimed at bleeding Russia out; while I agree that there’s something to that with regard to the outcome of that policy, I honestly think Jake Sullivan (Biden’s NS advisor) being such a categorical limpdick with infuriatingly outdated worldviews, particularly with regard to Russia, was the primary driver of why things were so stingy and halting for so long. The attrition was much more an effect of that hemming and hawing, and much less the actual intent - at least, until towards the very end of the administration’s tenure… at which point leaning into the attrition strategy was blindingly fucking stupid, considering the incoming regime’s obvious predilections.
I don’t think it’s coherent to try to tie the Biden admin’s policy - frustrating, myopic, and stuttering as it was in many ways - to how the current regime is trying to orchestrate things, for several reasons:
Orangeboi is still kind of obviously super Russophilic for deeply suspicious reasons
Orangeboi et al have an extremely transactional, zero-sum, and kissingeresque worldview, and are demonstrably quite frustrated that Ukraine isn’t acquiescing to being treated like a nice little obedient pawn
Orangeboi personally dislikes Zelenskyy, and orangeboi is notorious for letting petty personal disputes dictate his actions, and is further notorious for holding the most insanely stupid and spiteful grudges far beyond the bounds of logic and reasonability
Orangeboi detests his political opponents, to the point where his regime is disassembling pretty much every single thing not associated directly with him, simply out of spite and animosity
Uh… no…?
Before the war started, Biden’s administration executed one of the most shrewd and incisive applications of intelligence sharing and publication to categorically disprove not only Putin’s smoke screen of “we’re totally not planning on invading Ukraine”, but also pretty much their entire casus belli.
After the war started - and before the current regime took power - there was a frustratingly long period of time where the US more or less hung Ukraine out to dry, and we only started seriously supporting them (in a similarly frustratingly piecemeal and nannying fashion) pretty far into the active phase of the war.
There’s an argument to be made that the Biden admin’s policy towards the war was aimed at bleeding Russia out; while I agree that there’s something to that with regard to the outcome of that policy, I honestly think Jake Sullivan (Biden’s NS advisor) being such a categorical limpdick with infuriatingly outdated worldviews, particularly with regard to Russia, was the primary driver of why things were so stingy and halting for so long. The attrition was much more an effect of that hemming and hawing, and much less the actual intent - at least, until towards the very end of the administration’s tenure… at which point leaning into the attrition strategy was blindingly fucking stupid, considering the incoming regime’s obvious predilections.
I don’t think it’s coherent to try to tie the Biden admin’s policy - frustrating, myopic, and stuttering as it was in many ways - to how the current regime is trying to orchestrate things, for several reasons: