As Biden's presidency enters its second year, the rapidly escalating situation in Ukraine has once again become a "tightrope"-like crisis in his political career.
Historical coincidences are that Biden flew to Ukraine six times during the Obama administration's vice presidency. Three days before leaving office in January 2017, he also made a "farewell visit," the most recent U.S. official to visit Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
Vox bluntly said in a Feb. 7 report that few U.S. presidents spend as much time thinking about Ukraine as Biden. In his 2017 memoir, "Ukraine" may be the only topic that has received more attention than family or presidential campaigns.
In January 2017, Biden visited Ukraine as vice president with video screenshots
"Memories of 2014 linger"
Back 8 years ago, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych stepped down in the "color revolution" and a pro-Western government came to power in Ukraine. The Crimean region decided to "break away from Ukraine and join Russia" after a referendum.
At the time, the Obama administration was considered a gross miscalculation and caught off guard by the changing situation.
Then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to the New York Times, quoted a former White House aide as recalling: In early 2014, an emotional Biden went in and out of a security phone booth outside the war situation, trying to contact Him through Yanukovych's mobile phone. "Where the hell is this guy?" He kept asking, and finally Biden learned that Mr. Yanukovych had fled from Ukraine to Russia.
Eight years later, Biden, sitting in the presidency, once again embarked on the "tightrope" of Ukraine. Many of his advisers, like him, racked their minds during the Crimean crisis of 2014. Biden's current top diplomat, Secretary of State Blinken, was then undersecretary of national security; two senior diplomats today, Wendy Sherman and Victoria Newland, held other senior positions at the State Department; and National Security Adviser Sullivan and his deputy, Jon Vann, both worked in Biden's vice president's office.
CNN said in a report on the 16th that for Biden and his advisers, the memory of 2014 lingers, and they hope to rely on the experience and lessons of 8 years ago to avoid being caught off guard as at that time.
Officials were quoted as saying that Biden had been in-depth discussions with his team over the past few weeks about how to deal with the tightrope-like crisis. A tipping point in geopolitics is testing his foreign policy acumen, which has put him to the test. His aides said it was a "good card" for his specialty and that he had decades of experience.
Biden had suggested that Obama provide weapons aid to Ukraine, but was denied
Biden, who has spent 36 years as a senator and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, said the New York Times has always considered himself one of the few in the Obama administration who understands Europe and is willing to challenge Putin. In early 2014, as the rest of Obama's team scrambled to complete the issues with Cuba and Iran, Biden told Obama that he wanted to take on three of the most unpleasant unfinished foreign policy tasks: containing the Islamic State, restricting immigration from Central America, and resolving Ukraine.
But at the time, Biden was just Obama's deputy. Obama opposes the supply of weapons to Ukraine. Biden later wrote in his memoirs that although he persuaded him at weekly private lunches with Obama to increase aid for lethal weapons in Ukraine, Obama flatly rejected the idea and sent him to the region as a special envoy, warning him "not to overproduce the Ukrainian government."
Obama responded, "Joe, we're not going to send the 82nd Airborne Division." They have to understand that. ”
So Biden threw himself into the vice president's routine: urging Ukraine's leaders to address rampant corruption and pushing for reform of Ukraine's crony energy sector. In a phone call with the country's newly elected president, Petro Poroshenko, in early 2014, said, "You have to be whiter than snow or the whole world will abandon you," according to former administration officials." Meanwhile, his son Hunter has just joined the board of a Ukrainian gas company that has been subject to multiple corruption investigations.
The series of events later led Trump to ask Ukrainian officials to investigate the Biden fathers and sons, dramatically pushing Trump to the brink of impeachment. One of the central arguments biden defended himself in the primaries was his 8-year diplomatic career as Obama's deputy.
In his 2017 memoir, Biden described Ukraine as giving him a chance to fulfill his childhood promises and make a difference in the world.
Screenshot of The New York Times
Biden's 2017 memoirs
Weapons and allies
That year, the Obama administration screwed up in the Ukraine crisis; now, these 8-year-old mistakes are affecting the White House's reaction now.
Today, according to Vox, many of the hawkish officials who took a hawkish stance during the Obama era and advocated the delivery of weapons to Ukraine are in high positions. So it's no surprise that the Biden administration quickly pumped hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine.
Ian Kelly, who served as U.S. ambassador to Georgia from 2015 to 2018, said: "Obama doesn't want to sell lethal weapons, Obama doesn't want [the situation] to escalate, Obama didn't react much in 2014," but the Biden team was "staunch transatlanticist and believes in NATO." ”
Eight years ago, the Obama administration failed to coordinate European allies well, and Blinken acknowledged in 2016 that sanctions against Russia would be more effective when "we unite other nations."
Therefore, the biden administration's action this time clearly wants to pull European allies into the company. According to CNN, the Biden administration shares U.S. intelligence with allies in the hope of building a "united front" against Putin.
Last November, a group of government officials formed a so-called "Tiger Team" to develop a set of tactics to predict how the United States would respond to such attacks in Russia. A government official told CNN that the operation, led by Alex Bick, director of strategic planning for the National Security Council, has been brewing for months and involves several parts of the response, "from humanitarian aid, to armed action, to embassy security, to diplomatic efforts, to sanctions and other forms of pressure, to cyber." The team, which included officials from the State Department, the Pentagon, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, USAID, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security, the Treasury Department, and the intelligence community, conducted two lengthy tabletop exercises, one of which involved Cabinet members.
Eight years ago, according to CNN, Biden "flew between Washington and European capitals to gain the support of his allies, staying up late into the night revising his speech and dictating new passages to aides." ”
Eight years later, the United Kingdom and the European Union followed the Announcement of Sanctions against Russia by the United States, and Germany announced the suspension of the approval process for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. But Biden also acknowledged that domestic oil prices could rise as sanctions are imposed. Affected by the situation in Russia and Ukraine, the international oil price once approached $100 per barrel on the 22nd, and the settlement price was close to the high point of 2014. U.S. crude oil futures also hit a seven-year high.
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