H. R. McMaster and Gabriel Scheinmann
The Biden administration failed to deter Russia from its secondinvasion of Ukraine. Like his predecessors in the White House,President Biden went to great lengths to placate and reassureRussian President Vladimir Putin in return for stable rela-tions. Biden defied Congress when he refused to sanction the Nord Stream2 pipeline, unilaterally extended US adherence to the New Strategic ArmsReduction Treaty without reciprocation by Russia, and honored Putin with a bilateral summit during his first overseas trip. As Putin amassed his troops on Ukraine’s borders, Biden pulled US navalforces out of the Black Sea, refused to send additional weapons to Ukraine, enu-merated everything the United States would not do to help Ukraine defend itself,and evacuated US embassy staff and military advisors. More broadly, the admin-istration proposed a real cut to the defense budget; sought to reduce the role ofnuclear weapons in US defense strategy; restricted US production capacity foroil, gas, and refined products that might have displaced Russian supplies; andsignaled its willingness to overlook Russian and Chinese aggression in exchangefor hollow pledges of cooperation on global issues such as climate change.
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