Biden’s Impressive Success on Ukraine (So Far)

The United States is back as a leader on the world stage, but there is more to be done.

Prior to taking on my assignment as the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, I worked at the National Security Council for the first three years of the Obama administration. There, I had the privilege to watch now President, then Vice President Biden in action, creating and conducting U.S. foreign policy. Unlike some other administrations, we fully integrated Vice President’s foreign policy advisors, back then headed by the current Security of State, Tony Blinken, into Obama’s national security team. For instance, Blinken asked me to offer edits and additions to Vice President’s first major foreign policy speech at the Munich Security Conference in February 2009. Biden and Blinken asked me to travel with them to Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Finland, and Russia. I learned a lot. I particularly enjoyed our long plane rides home, like when Vice President Biden would not escape to his suite at the front of the Air Force 2, but instead engage with his staff, sometimes for hours. The flight from Chisinau to Washington is a long one!

While working at NSC, I learned a few things about Biden, his view on foreign policy, and his methods for conducting diplomacy.

First, Biden deeply believes in alliances, especially NATO. He is an old-school “Transatlanticist.” He’s been to the Munich Security Conference dozens of times!

Second, Biden has an in-depth understanding of eastern Europe, possessing probably greater knowledge of the region than any former U.S. president. In the Obama administration, we had a kind of informal division of diplomatic labor. Obama dealt mostly with Russia; Biden dealt mostly with countries near and threatened by Russia, thus the trips to Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. Third, Biden believes that the political systems – regime types – and ideas matter in international relations. Democracies tend to behave one way; autocracies another.

Fourth, Biden sees good and evil in the world. It seems to me that his Catholic faith guides and informs his worldview.

Fifth, Biden takes personal relationships very seriously, be they with heads of state or staffers like me.

Sixth, as we all have learned, Biden speaks to the point and sometimes off the cuff. At times, his unscripted remarks trigger indignation from foreign leaders and even other officials in the Obama administration. On our trips to Georgia in 2009 and Russia in 2011, for instance, Blinken had to do some clean-up after Biden’s unscripted remarks. But those quips can be useful in allowing the world to know what he really believes.

It is too early to judge whether this combination of attributes has produced a successful Biden foreign policy overall. But this mix of ideas, knowledge, and methods has served President Biden and the American people exceptionally well in crafting the American, NATO, and free world’s response to Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Biden is the perfect American president for this tragic, scary moment in European history. As I wrote previously here on Substack, Ukrainian warriors, Zelenskyy, his government, and all of Ukrainian society are the real heroes of this war so far. “Glory to the Heroes” as the Ukrainians say in response to the toast “Slava Ukraini.” But Biden also deserves a lot of praise. Without his leadership, the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine and the international diplomatic response could have been very different.

In fact, Putin was counting on a different American response. Putin assumed that the American and European response to his 2022 invasion would be similar to Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, when the United States and NATO neither implemented sanctions nor provided military assistance to Tbilisi. Or maybe Putin calculated that the Western response would be akin to the reaction to his annexation of Crimea and military support for separatist movements in eastern Ukraine in 2014 – modest sanctions, but no military assistance. This time was different. Biden led this change.

Biden and his team started to organize and shape a unified NATO and international response months before Putin ordered his soldiers to cross into Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Through brilliant intelligence work, the Biden administration determined very early on that Putin was planning to invade on a massive scale and that no engagement with Putin’s draft treaties for European security was going to stop him. Biden’s team then shared this intelligence with allies and later, in a very unprecedented decision, decided to declassify it to warn societies about impending war. Doing so helped build the coalition necessary to respond to Putin’s barbaric invasion well before it started. Even Putin’s closest partner, Chinese President Xi Jinping, did not know or believe that Putin planned to invade in February – a signal of what country in the world still maintains the best intelligence services.

Developing a unified policy required thousands of hours of behind-the-scenes diplomacy with NATO allies and partners to build the coalition to respond to Putin’s war. This is when Biden’s transatlantic reputation came in handy. But Biden also has a deep bench of advisors at the NSC and the State Department with strong transatlantic ties; they all went into action. So, on February 24, Biden and his team had their game plan ready.

First and oftentimes forgotten now, Biden led European leaders to strengthen the eastern flank of the NATO alliance. NATO allies reinforced existing battlegroups, sent extra ships, planes, and troops, and established four additional international battlegroups, now based in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia, bringing the total number of such groups to eight. The United States deployed over 20,000 additional forces to Europe and added air, land, maritime, cyber, and space capabilities. Now, more than 100,000 American service members are based across Europe. At the 2022 NATO Summit in Madrid in June, the Allies then agreed to upscale battalions to brigade size, “where and when required.” All of these actions have only solidified NATO’s transatlantic bond, reinforcing the Organization’s solidarity and commitment to suppressing the aggressor. NATO then initiated the process of welcoming two new members, Finland and Sweden, whose participation would greatly enhance the alliance’s capabilities. NATO is now more unified than ever before in the post-Cold War era. So far, Putin has chosen not to attack NATO countries supplying Ukraine with weapons. Deterrence is working. Putin understands that direct military confrontation with NATO would end in catastrophe for his armed forces. Credit Biden’s leadership for this outcome.   

Second, the United States and NATO allies have supplied Ukraine with massive military assistance. Since the onset of the invasion, the United States – the largest donor – committed to provide $27.5 billion in direct military support to Ukraine. The UK pledged $4.38 billion in military spending, providing Challenger 2 tanks and air defense systems such as Starstreak. Germany and Poland have approved security packages of  $2.49 billion and $1.93 billion respectively. Almost every ally is providing something. In per capita terms, Estonians have been real heroes; roughly of third of their military budget has been given to Ukraine. And of course, recent decisions from NATO countries to provide infantry fighting vehicles, additional Patriot air defense systems, and U.S.-made Abrams tanks and German-made Leopard tanks from Germany, Poland, and other countries are new important milestones. The speed at which the United States and NATO allies provided such military assistance is also remarkable. You rarely see USTRANSCOM in the headlines, but their efforts over the last year have been extraordinary.

Third, democratic countries more broadly have provided Ukraine with massive economic and humanitarian assistance. The United States pledged $15.9 billion and $10.43 billion in economic and humanitarian aid respectively. On top of $1.65 billion of aid for immediate humanitarian relief, the EU provided $31.9 billion in economic assistance with the most recent package, $18.9 billion in value, approved on December 10, 2022. With Ukraine’s economy shrinking by roughly a third this year due to Putin’s invasion, international economic assistance is essential to keep the Ukrainian government afloat as it tries to provide the basic functions of the state while also rehabilitating critical infrastructure, destroyed almost daily as the result of Russian missile and drone attacks. European leaders also deserve special credit for how well they have cared for Ukrainian refugees. Also, the Multi-agency Donor Coordination Platform to support Ukraine’s repair, recovery, and reconstruction process was launched last week by Ukrainian high-level officials, the EU, G7 countries, and financial institutions, like the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.

Fourth, Biden helped to bring together a coalition of four dozen countries, including a handful outside of Europe, and crafted the most comprehensive sanctions regime against Russia. Thousands of Russian individuals and companies have been put on sanctions lists. Over 1,000 companies have pulled out of Russia, $300 billion of Russia's $640-billion gold and foreign exchange reserves are frozen, Russia’s core European markets for oil and gas have moved away (or are in the process of) from Russian suppliers, a $60 oil cap was implemented by G7 and other European countries last month. European reductions in purchases of Russian oil and gas have been particularly impressive. In July, Europe imported more natural gas from the United States than Russia. Strikingly Chinese leader Xi Jinping – Putin’s last hope – also offered Putin only feint nominal support for his war efforts, has not provided weapons to Russia, and has not violated the global sanctions regime. Quiet American diplomacy, even with China, seems to be working.

Fifth, Biden and other democratic leaders have rallied the world to condemn Putin’s war. At the United Nations General Assembly in March of 2022, the resolution ES-11/1, denouncing Russia’s actions in Ukraine and demanding immediate withdrawal of troops, passed with a giant majority – 141 Member States voting in favor, 5 voting against, and 35 abstentions. China, India, and some African countries abstained, but only Belarus, Eritrea, Russia, Syria, and North Korea voted against. Tragically, too many governments in the Global South have not recognized how Putin’s war in Ukraine is a new variant of old-school imperialism and colonialization. Instead, governments, particularly on the African continent, have chosen to remain neutral, even if Putin’s war disrupted crucial food exports from Ukraine, putting many on the border of starvation and famine. But most of the world has condemned Putin’s invasion.

Sixth, Biden and his team so far have also sustained American public support for their strategy to help Ukraine. Zelenskyy has helped the cause too, especially by visiting Washington and delivering a moving speech to the U.S. Congress last December. But Biden and his communications team deserve applause for helping to thread the needle between expanding support to Ukraine without scaring the American people about getting dragged into a direct war with Russia.

Partly due to this package of international support, Ukraine’s army has stopped Russian attempts to seize Kyiv and Kharkiv and then pushed Russia out of Kherson, which Putin annexed on paper just a month earlier. As of November, Ukraine has reclaimed 54% of the territory occupied by Russian forces since the beginning of the war. Watch an animated map of Ukrainian successes here.

Biden enjoyed the partnership of many leaders in Europe – including Ukraine – as well as Canada, Japan, and elsewhere in crafting this multi-pronged strategy for responding to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. But Biden’s leadership has been key, demonstrating that the United States is not a fading power as some in Moscow and Beijing believe, but is still the leader of the liberal, democratic world. A different president in the White House might not have had the convictions, knowledge, experience, and diplomatic skills to pull this off. Biden is leading the world in taking all these actions to help Ukraine while keeping American soldiers out of the fight. Biden has been the right leader for this moment.

Tragically, however, the war is not over. This is why Ukraine, NATO, and the world need Biden to do even more in 2023. For my ideas, read my most recent article in Foreign Affairs called “How to Get a Breakthrough in Ukraine.”

And in 2023, Biden and his team need to do more to stop the war, start preparations for post-war reconstruction in Ukraine, and create a proper structure to hold Russians accountable for war crimes. On my ideas on these topics, keep an eye out for the next Substack article.