As readers of Viewpoint can discern, I'm not a fan of President Biden. Now's not the time to get into the reasons, but I did hope that he would do all he could to make war in Ukraine such an ugly prospect for Vladimir Putin that the Russian president would find some way to save face and back out.
I thought that the best way to do this was to arm the Ukrainians with such an arsenal of defensive weapons that Mr. Putin would count the cost and choose not to invade. I have to say that Mr. Biden has deeply disappointed. However much he equipped the Ukrainian military, and that seems to be a classified secret, his use of sanctions is mystifying.
He has sanctioned several big Russian banks which means that the Russian people, already poor, will be made a bit poorer, but he has declined to sanction Mr. Putin himself, and worse, he has declined to sanction Russia's oil and gas industry.
Even as he's ostensibly trying to cripple Russia's economy we and our NATO allies are still buying Russian fossil fuels! Gas and oil make up 50% of the Russian economy, but Mr. Biden has decided that neither Americans nor Europeans are willing to pay $4.00 or $5.00 a gallon for gasoline in order to help the Ukrainian people.
Of course, had he not turned us from being a net exporter of fuel to being a net importer reliant on Russian petroleum for 10% of our fuel, we'd still be energy independent, as we were under Mr. Trump, and Mr. Biden wouldn't be in the ridiculous position of allowing Russia to continue to sell its chief export while also seeking to stifle the Russian economy.
Nor is it clear that the sanctions Mr. Biden unveiled on Thursday will do much to help the Ukrainian people in any case. He admitted as much himself when he said that we'll have to wait a month or so to see if they're working.
The Ukrainian people don't have a month to sit around waiting to see how Mr. Putin's Russia is holding up under Mr. Biden's sanctions. I'm sure they'd like a bit more help this afternoon rather than next month.
I also don't know why, if the sanctions won't bite for a month, they weren't imposed a month ago. Nor is it clear why they were imposed at all if, as Mr. Biden acknowledged, they weren't intended, contra Vice-President Harris, to be a deterrent.
If they weren't a deterrent then they're just punishment, but why not save thousands of lives and do something before Russia launched its invasion to perhaps make them reconsider?
I'm not a military expert nor am I a statesman steeped in international finance, but none of what President Biden has done in Ukraine, just like none of what he did in the Afghanistan pullout, nor what he's doing on our southern border, makes any sense to me.
I don't think it makes any sense to many other people either, least of all the Ukrainians.
