Reports have broken across multiple mainstream media outlets that Joe Biden has authorized an additional 3,000 US troops to be deployed into Eastern Europe, specifically to Poland and Romania in addition to American forces already there to “reassure NATO allies”. But that isn’t the real story, no. The most important piece of information to come out of the press conference led by Pentagon spokesman John F. Kirby was this according to The New York Times: “the United States has no intention of sending troops into Ukraine”. Plain and simple: Joe Biden just greenlit Ukraine for Vladimir Putin.
“Its important that we send a strong signal to Mr. Putin and the world that NATO matters,” Mr. Kirby told reporters at a news conference. “We are making it clear that we are going to be prepared to defend our NATO allies if it comes to that.”
The White House and the Pentagon are pumping up the volume on the tough talk with Russia while simultaneously opening the door wide for Russia to reacquire what Putin has described in his own words:
“I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia.”- V. Putin, July 12, 2021
Putin explained, “During the recent Direct Line, when I was asked about Russian-Ukrainian relations, I said that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe.”
A Deployment That Provokes Russia But Is Meaningless to Ukraine
There are at present approximately 4,000 American troops deployed to Poland and another 900 in Romania, but only about 100 in Lithuania and 60 in Latvia and Estonia on rotating assignments as reported by Cooper & Schmitt in their piece for the Times. But the Pentagon and top-brass are still crowing about how effective a deterrent to Russian expansion and encroachment this deployment will be.
“It’s a big, unambiguous signal,” said Jim Townsend, a former top Pentagon official for Europe and NATO policy. “It’s also significant that they are going to the Black Sea. Finally, the Black Sea region is being recognized as a major theater. It’s not just the Baltics.”
“This is a smart, tight and focused deployment that provides real combat punch by linking up with the very capable U.S. troops already stationed in Europe,” he said. “But its symbolic value is even higher in reassuring the Baltics and Eastern Europeans that NATO is tangible and real in its deployable combat power.”
But there’s one glaring problem: while we’re providing tons of weapons, material and logistical support to the Ukrainians, all the toys in the world arent’ going to help them if 100,000 Russian soldiers saunter across the borders to the East and to the North from Belarus.
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Biden Abandons Ukraine & America’s Obligations Under The Budapest Memorandum To Defend Them
This announcement from the Pentagon has stated clearly and concisely that the Biden administration has absolutely no interest in upholding the Budapest memorandum on security assurances that was signed 5 December 1994 in which the United States, Great Britain, AND RUSSIA guaranteed “security assurances against threats or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine” in exchange for Kyiv giving up their former-Soviet nuclear stockpile which at the time was the third-largest in the world.
But as Biden laid out in December, in his view “We have a moral obligation and a legal obligation to our NATO allies under Article 5. It’s a sacred obligation. That obligation does not extend to … Ukraine.”
While we bolster our other NATO allies in Eastern Europe, in a manner that can only provoke Putin further, nations that are not presently under threat, Ukraine is being left out in the cold, to fend for themselves with shipments of American armaments and supplies that since the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan will do little more than making them an even more tempting target rather than a more secure nation.
