The confrontation with Russia is a chance for the president to win back credibility on foreign policy. Can he?
America’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan last year was a made-for-TV tragedy — complete with camera-ready scenes of frantic civilians, harried U.S. Marines and helicopters hovering over an embassy roof. Ukraine is a foreign policy conundrum of an entirely different sort. President Biden’s task is to stop a war from beginning, not to end one with dignity. But even if he wards off a Russian invasion, he shouldn’t expect any ticker tape on Fifth Avenue. “The politics of foreign policy are rarely fair, and this is the epitome of that kind of situation,” said John Gans, a former Pentagon speechwriter in the Obama administration. “You rarely get credit for the dogs that don’t bark.” Our colleagues have been all over the national security aspects of the showdown with Moscow, including the latest news developments, with reporting by Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper on how the White House is trying to outfox Russia, and Michael Crowley’s look at Biden’s calculations. But this is a political newsletter, so we must ask a crass question: Can Ukraine help Biden win back some of the public trust he lost after the Afghanistan pullout? In conversations in recent days with current and former officials, members of Congress and Capitol Hill aides, we found broad support overall for Biden’s approach to Ukraine, although some Republicans complained about specific aspects of the strategy. But the president’s options for resolving the crisis, many said, could give critics an opening. And, as Biden warned in his remarks on Tuesday, confronting Vladimir Putin is not likely to be “painless” for Americans, even if Russia relents. For the moment, Biden has faced some criticism on the right, but there’s been no sustained chorus of rebukes from either party. Republicans aren’t speaking with one voice. They are split between those, like Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who are agitating for a harder line against Moscow, and skeptics like Tucker Carlson of Fox News who say that Ukraine is not America’s problem. The party lost in 2018 its most prominent hawk, Senator John McCain of Arizona, while its current leader, Donald Trump, makes for a less than ideal messenger when it comes to Russia. The White House has also kept leading progressives on board. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has praised the administration for “doing its best walking a very difficult tightrope,” while Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Jeff Merkley of Oregon told HuffPost that they support Biden’s strategy. Unlike with Afghanistan, criticism from the foreign policy establishment has been muted. “I think they started with a bit of an analytical mistake — that they could have a stable and predictable relationship with Russia so they could focus on China,” said Michael McFaul, a former ambassador to Moscow in the Obama administration. “But, generally, I’m impressed.” Since November, the administration has held more than 300 “diplomatic engagements” with partners and allies. Biden has sent troops to bolster jittery NATO allies in Eastern Europe. And the White House has used information as a weapon of deterrence, declassifying and disclosing intelligence to disrupt possible Russian operations in real time.
