Biden demands not to abandon Ukraine

US President Joe Biden has written an op-ed for The Washington Post emphasizing that the United States will not abandon its support for Ukraine and Israel and will confront the challenges posed by Russian leader Vladimir Putin and the Hamas terrorist organization.

Why is this article so important today? First of all, because the American president continues to defend his concept of unifying challenges, linking Russia's war against Ukraine with the war that the Hamas terrorist organization is waging against the Jewish state. This is quite important from the point of view that for American society, it is about the risks associated with the threats of dictatorships against democracies and the need to resist those who want to assert their right by force. For Ukraine, this may be a lifeline, given the obvious decline in sentiment among the American political elite to support our country in the amounts previously proposed by the US administration.

Joe Biden is known to have proposed a joint bill that would support Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan at the same time, but it has not yet been passed by the US Congress due to opposition from Republican members. It is unclear at what point this bill will be considered by the House and Senate at all, given that the next budget has been approved, which will be temporarily in effect until January or February of next year. There are optimistic forecasts that lawmakers will be able to consider proposals to help Ukraine as early as December, but it is possible that they will address this issue in February, when they will consider a new attempt to protect the permanent US budget.

We need to realize that Mike Johnson, the speaker of the lower house of the US Congress, backed by former US President Donald Trump, will do everything possible to ensure that support for Ukraine is not considered by the US Congress. I don't even say not voted on, because by and large, the majority in favor of supporting Ukraine in the US Congress is among Republicans and Democrats. That is, if the idea had been put to a vote, the votes of Democrats and a certain part of Republicans would have been enough to approve such support. However, unfortunately, the document may not be included in the agenda unless a compromise is found between Democrats and Republicans on important domestic political issues, and so far there are no prospects for such a compromise.

It is also quite important that President Biden is trying to outline these motives that guide his administration in its support for Ukraine and Israel. Here, too, we can see some differences in approach. For example, with regard to thoughts on the Middle East, two-thirds of this presidential text is devoted to it. There are absolutely clear and understandable approaches to how to resolve the Middle East crisis, what the leadership of Gaza should look like after Hamas is destroyed, how the Jewish state and Arab countries should behave, how the United States will interact with the Arab world and Israel to normalize the situation in the Palestinian Authority, what the functions of its administration could be, and how the United States views the possibility of the Palestinian Authority governing Gaza. In other words, these are very specific and clear proposals that allow us to hope that after the end of Israel's operation against the Hamas terrorist movement, negotiating mechanisms can be used. 

There are no such specifics in the thoughts about Ukraine, because, as we are aware, the situation does not look like it is likely to be resolved in the timeframe outlined, perhaps even during Joe Biden's presidency, before the US presidential election. Support for Ukraine, given the long duration of the conflict and the lack of political mechanisms that would allow us to say that we will see the end of the Ukrainian-Russian war in the near future, is primarily of a value nature.

President Biden is reminding his countrymen that if the conflict in Europe is not ended, it will sooner or later lead to the globalization of the conflict. I am also absolutely sure that if the war in Ukraine continues, it will become the mother of new bloody wars in different regions of the world. 

Biden says that supporting the Ukrainian state and army is a real investment to keep American soldiers from fighting. This is still unclear to many citizens of NATO member states. However, it must be realized that if Putin's ambitious plan is implemented, the Ukrainian state disappears from the political map of the world, and other former Soviet republics fall like dominoes, either becoming part of Russia's sphere of influence or part of Russian territory, then the West will have to deal with an economically degraded but aggressive and self-confident revived neo-Soviet union led by Vladimir Putin and former members of the Soviet Union's state security committee.

Given that the value of human life in Russia is worth nothing, I am sure that Western countries will be in a difficult situation, and they will have to say goodbye to many of their compatriots who will become victims of bloody wars, and possibly a nuclear disaster, which we will all witness in the event of such a conflict between the United States and Russia. And it is not known what position China will take in such a situation when it sees the humiliation of the West, whether the country will have a desire to join such a struggle between dictatorship and democracy actively, and not at meetings between Biden and Xi Jinping. 

Therefore, Biden's belief that the United States should help Ukraine and Israel in their struggle, which actually protects the entire civilized world, is absolutely justified. However, the question of whether his compatriots will listen to these views of the American president remains open.

About the author. Vitaly Portnikov, journalist, winner of the Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine

The editors do not always share the opinions expressed by the authors of the blogs.