Big Strings Attached To Biden's Israel, Ukraine Aid

Israel had wanted to impose a medieval-style siege on the Gaza Strip by barring deliveries of food, water and fuel into Gaza. Washington objected and the bans on food and water supplies were lifted.

Deliveries have been miniscule and fuel shipments are still banned. Hospitals are worried that their petroleum-fueled electric power equipment will soon run out of power.

Biden's messaging had much to do with his desire to assure allies and other friendly countries that he can persuade Israel to avoid wanton punishment of Palestinian civilians.

Netanyahu has steered clear of directly rejecting Biden's advice. In a televised speech on October 25, the Israeli leader suggested his ground offensive simply requires a bit more planning.

“We are preparing for a ground invasion. I will not elaborate on when, how or how many. I will also not elaborate on the various calculations we are making, which the public is mostly unaware of and that is how things should be,” he said.

Experts suggested that Israel may not have needed Biden's prodding to delay its offensive: it is simply not yet ready to move, having been surprised on October 7 and fearing another debacle.

“That's a huge added dose of anxiety and tension into what is already a tense and anxious, and what is a politically fraught, moment,” said Robert Satloff, an expert in US Middle East policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Studies.“Add it all up and they haven't made a decision to go in yet.”

Biden himself faces some political pressures at home. Less than a week into the war, dozens of lawmakers urged him to ensure protection for both Israeli and Palestinian civilians. A few lawmakers called for a ceasefire, something Israel has opposed.

Palestinian authorities claim more than 5,000 Gazans have died. Hamas does not segregate military from civilian deaths in their casualty figures. Israeli civilian deaths are up to 1,300.

Dissension has erupted inside Biden's administration. Critics contend Biden is giving Israel too much of a free hand in assaulting Gaza. Last week, a State Department official resigned, saying he could no longer back a“one-sided” policy that favors Israel.

Ukraine – the other war protagonist Biden is trying to manage – has run into different restraints. There have been disagreements between Kiev's desire for certain types of weapons versus decisions in Washington about what arms to provide and when.

American and allied aid has been fundamental in thwarting Russia's plan to quickly conquer much of Ukrainian territory. But Ukraine complained that Washington's micro-management is making the process slow and crippled Ukraine's effort to expel the Russians from its territory this year.

“Breaking through a well-prepared defense requires an extraordinary number of capabilities, many of which Ukraine lacks despite generous Western aid,” said Frederick Kagan, an American military expert and frequent critic of Biden's war management.

“It requires tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery systems in sufficient numbers to absorb heavy losses while retaining enough combat power to exploit a been penetration. It requires air superiority,” Kagan said.

There have been unexplained gaps between Ukrainian requests for weapons and US decisions to supply them. For example, Biden delayed sending cluster bombs, which Ukraine requested last year until this spring.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky thought the cluster bombs, which are launched by artillery shells that release them in mid-air, would help break through Russian infantry defenses.

The US also declined to provide long-range missile systems that can reach distant Russian weapons that are out of range of Ukraine's current batch of rockets.

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There was a big political disappointment for Zelensky, too. He had hoped Washington would endorse a date for Ukraine's NATO membership. At a July NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, another post-Soviet state, NATO declined.

Even before he arrived in Lithuania for the summit, Zelensky expressed intense frustration.“It's unprecedented and absurd when [the] time frame is not set neither for the invitation nor for Ukraine's membership,” he said.“Uncertainty is weakness.”

After the meeting, Biden told a television interviewer that there was no“unanimity in NATO about whether or not to bring Ukraine into the NATO family now, at this moment, in the middle of a war.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is introduced to the US Congress by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on March 16, 2022, in Washington, DC. Photo: J Scott Applewhite / Pool / Twitter Screengrab

Later, Biden said individual countries could make bilateral security treaties with Ukraine if they chose. None have done so to date, leaving Ukraine without solid guarantees of steady future support.

On occasion, US officials have suggested that Ukraine's goal should not be to oust the Russians totally but rather to take enough territory to be in a strong position to negotiate. That idea counters Zelensky's goal to oust the Russians entirely.

General Mark Milley, who recently retired as Biden's military chief of staff, said Ukraine had only a“slim chance” of defeating the Russians.

“If the end state is Ukraine as a free, independent, sovereign country with its territory intact, that will take a considerable level of effort yet to come,” he said. “That's going to take a long, long time, but you can also achieve those objectives – maybe, possibly – through some sort of diplomatic means.”

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