The Biden Doctrine of Demoralization and Defeat

By Cliff Kincaid

February 4, 2023

While advocating more weapons for Ukraine, former Obama official Michael McFaul says in a Foreign Affairs article “In return for receiving these weapons, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy could sign a legally binding agreement to not use these weapons to strike targets inside Russia.” There you have it, in clear precise terms: Ukraine is not being permitted to win.

This is another no-win war that the American foreign policy establishment wants fought in such a way as to guarantee defeat for those whose country was invaded.

If the experts at the Council on Foreign Relations have their way, Ukraine will have to settle for a bombed-out country and the corporate and financial elites will resume business-as-usual with a KGB regime in Moscow determined to resurrect the Soviet empire.

Not surprisingly, supporters of Ukraine are coming to the conclusion that, under Joe Biden, Ukraine isn’t supposed to win but to bleed and then negotiate and certify Russia’s capture of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. That means Russia wins, and it can set its sights on other countries, such as anti-communist Poland.

Joe Biden, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

Reagan, who fought communists in Hollywood and understood their strategy and tactics, had a Reagan Doctrine as president to overthrow communist and enemy regimes. But with his declaration that the U.S. will not send advanced F-16s to Ukraine, despite repeated requests, we have a new “Biden Doctrine” of demoralization and defeat.

Meanwhile, the United Nations, functioning as a communist front, does nothing about the illegal North Korean nuclear weapons program while China Joe refuses to consider re-deployment of nuclear weapons to South Korea to counter the communist threat. South Korea’s conservative ruling People Power Party will have to consider building nuclear weapons of its own.

Disarming Ukraine

In regard to Ukraine, McFaul’s proposal for a “legally binding agreement” prohibiting military action against Vladimir Putin’s KGB regime is another sell-out that allows Russia, China, and its allies to remain on the military offensive around the world.

This approach reminds us of the Budapest Memorandum devised under Democratic President Bill Clinton that returned Ukraine’s nuclear weapons to Moscow.

In return, Ukraine’s independence was supposed to be guaranteed by the U.S., Britain, and Russia.

Ukraine was disarmed, but this was predictably followed by a Russian invasion.

Advocating more appeasement of Moscow, McFaul wants Ukraine to promise not to take the fight to Russia, a primary source of global conflict and instability since its communist revolution in 1917.

McFaul’s “advice” has to be regarded as suspect because his credentials include serving for five years in the Obama administration, from 2012 to 2014 as U.S. Ambassador to Russia. The first invasion of Ukraine occurred under Obama in 2014 and the second under Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, in 2022.

The Obama/Biden policies have brought the world to this point.

After the invasion in 2014, Obama/Biden authorized a pathetic aid package for Ukraine that featured radios, patrol boats, body armor, helmets, blankets, and night-vision goggles. He “stuck to his refusal to provide weapons or other lethal military gear to Ukraine,” as noted by the Wall Street Journal at the time.

“What was democratic President Obama’s position in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014?” asks foreign policy writer and Ukraine supporter Victor Rud. Obama’s position was that “We do very little trade with Ukraine and geopolitically what happens in Ukraine doesn’t pose a threat to us.” This statement captures the mindset of those who made Russia’s aggression possible and who continue to make excuses for Russia’s war crimes today.

Trump’s Approach

With the 2022 invasion approaching its first anniversary on February 24, former President Trump says in a new video, “I think we helped lead Russia into that war by saying, well, if they took a small part of the country that would be okay. Such a tragic waste of human life.” He was referring to Biden’s statement before the war that NATO was divided on what to do if Russia launched a “minor incursion.”

McFaul’s recommendations for weapons are better than nothing, since there are some ostensibly pro-Trump Republicans, such as Stephen K. Bannon, who oppose any aid to Ukraine. Bannon has achieved a national platform against Ukraine through a channel called Real America’s Voice and Mike Lindell’s Frank Speech network and has financial connections to a controversial Chinese billionaire allegedly linked to Chinese officials by the name of Miles Guo.

Bannon comes across as a war hawk on China and Taiwan, saying America has a national interest there, but dismisses the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “regional conflict.” He is part of a group of “conservatives” hoping to dominate the upcoming Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

“Take down the Chinese Communist Party” is Bannon’s war cry, with an opening commercial featuring Miles Guo petting his cat on a yacht. It is truly bizarre.

The Reagan Doctrine

The real conservative position, dating back to the period of Ronald Reagan, is to support freedom fighters and anti-communist regimes around the globe. I attended several of CPAC gatherings in the 1980s when Reagan was the featured speaker and spoke of the evils of communism. Today, unfortunately, some in the MAGA movement speak approvingly of Putin and his KGB associates.

“By bending their knee to Putin,” Victor Rudd says of Stephen K. Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and their ilk, “they accept his caterwauling that the fall of the USSR was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.”

True conservatives are being given a false choice — Michael McFaul’s limited support option for Ukraine, under certain circumstances, or the Stephen K. Bannon approach of leaving the country completely at the mercy of Putin’s KGB regime.

McFaul’s article is somewhat helpful in the sense that he lists many different weapons systems that Ukraine desperately needs for national survival and hasn’t received. But he insists these only be used for defensive purposes. That’s a recipe for more bloodshed and a Russian victory.

To understand this approach, remember that Joe Biden, since his Senate days, has been an advocate of a New World Order and doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the foreign threats.

For his part, McFaul is worried that, “If the war drags through the end of the year without major Ukrainian victories, the Biden administration will struggle to obtain congressional renewal for a new military and economic assistance package, especially as the presidential election heats up with at least one major candidate, Donald Trump, who is not a fan of aid to Ukraine.”

The claim that Trump “is not a fan of aid to Ukraine” is misleading. He was not a fan of foreign aid in general as long as the countries receiving it were not doing enough for themselves and for America. Hence, he recommended that NATO countries pay for more of their own defense, a very wise course that might have kept Moscow at bay, and develop their own energy resources.

More recently, at a rally in Texas, Trump declared, “China is threatening Taiwan, Iran is on the cusp of a nuclear bomb, Russia may take over Ukraine… Joe Biden’s weakness and incompetence is creating a very real risk of World War III.”

The terms “weakness” and “incompetence” are more accurate than Michael McFaul’s claim in Foreign Affairs that Biden has shown “remarkable leadership in galvanizing the world to assist Ukraine in 2022.” Biden’s too little and too late approach has brought us to this perilous point.

As we enter 2023, we have a war in Europe, the threat of war in Asia, and two recent terror attacks in Jerusalem involved the murder of Israeli civilians and 1 Ukrainian citizen.

Under these circumstances, surrender is not an option.

Understanding the Enemy

Our book, Red Jihad: Moscow’s Final Solution for America and Israel, examines the communist strategy that is being employed not only against the United States, Europe, and Asia, but Israel. The key to understanding what has happened lies in the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin is a former Soviet KGB colonel and his regime is based on the remnants of the old Soviet Union, including its military and intelligence establishment.

In Ukraine, we see the brutality of the old Soviet military and KGB. There’s no excuse for buying the nonsense that Putin is somehow unlike his Soviet predecessors.

The reorganization of the old Soviet Union has indeed confused many in the West. My co-author J.R. Nyquist devotes his section of the book to the “collapse” of the Soviet Union and Russia’s geopolitical strategy to defeat and destroy the West.

Fortunately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands the Soviet roots of international terrorism and the threat to Israel. He has spoken of the “poisonous tree” that has given rise to groups like Hamas. In fact, as Netanyahu knows and as our book demonstrates, modern-day Islamic terrorism grew out of the communist networks and Arab regimes that the Soviets sponsored. The roots of the “poisonous tree” can still be found in Moscow. In fact, many of the terror organizations active today can be directly traced to Moscow.

At the same time, the Iranian regime is sending warships to the Western Hemisphere, including Brazil, as well as drones to Russia for use against Ukraine.

Therefore, we can see that Ukraine’s defeat of Russia would deal a major blow to the Communist China-Russia-Iran alliance threatening the West.

But in order for this to happen, conservatives have to be united against our enemies — all of them — and make it clear to the world that people like Bannon, Tucker, and Charlie Kirk do not speak for the conservative movement.

If Ukraine goes down, the conservative movement should not let itself be blamed for having greased the skids.

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net

*Cliff Kincaid is president of America’s Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org