MALIBU, Calif. – As the Russia-Ukraine war wages on, we asked Professor Robert Kaufman of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy for his in-depth views. Kaufman specializes in American foreign policy, national security and international relations. He has written several books on these subjects.
What follows is a Q&A that has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. We strongly encourage you to watch the accompanying video so you may hear Kaufman in his own words.
Q: President Biden said he knew Russian President Vladimir Putin was long planning to attack Ukraine. Why didn’t he take action?
A: When President Biden said that he anticipated the attack on Ukraine, that is true in a sense, but not in the larger sense. When Biden took office, he expected that Russia would be, potentially, a partner for peace.
Witness his decision to resign the arms control agreement that former President Trump abrogated, an agreement that Sen. Mitt Romney rightly described as one of the worst we had ever signed, because it allowed the Russians to build while it constrained us, including the building and developing of strategic defenses.
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When people focus on Biden's actions as they bear on the calculation of our enemies on whether to take risks, it's necessary also to understand the link between the signals Biden sent, not only by his foreign and defense policies but by what he did at home.
This is a world in which social media has amplified the velocity and effect of actions taken in one sphere, affecting calculations across the board. Our enemies have witnessed a president unwilling to defend our own borders. Our enemies have witnessed the president and his party trivializing the eradication of law and order in American cities … Our enemies have witnessed the self-destructive impulse to sacrifice energy independence with all of the costs associated with it.
Why would our enemies take seriously the credibility and resolve of an administration that not only has cut defense spending until recently, but also refuses to defend the basic building blocks of sovereignty — borders, law and order and energy security?
Q: What kind of a leader is Biden, and what drives him?
A: Biden is largely Obama 2.0 when it comes to foreign policy: believing in smart power substituting for hard power; believing that the United States and its arrogance has caused more problems rather than the malevolence of our enemies; diminishing the significance of military power; embracing a political economy that will lead to a repeat of the 1970s under Carter; and leading our enemies to think it's open season on the free world.
It is the heroism of Ukrainians, in general, and their intrepid president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in particular, that literally has forced a reluctant Biden administration to do more than it would have.
To put it bluntly, Ukraine surprised them. Ukraine surprised them by the extent and courage of their resistance because the Biden people expected that Putin would achieve a fait accompli relatively quickly and that the next threat would be, if Putin succeeds, to Poland and the Baltic Republics.
So, to the extent that Biden has not been former President Obama in his priorities of climate change, building down defenses and defining power to the diminution of the significance of military power—to the extent Biden has not been Obama, is that Ukraine's heroism has forced Biden's hand rather than any intrinsic vigilance, fortitude and wisdom on the Biden administration's part.
Q: Is Biden’s defense budget and energy policy enabling or deterring the opposition?
A: Our defense budget is inadequate and is not sufficient to reconstitute robust deterrence. Our energy policy is even worse. It's genuinely perverse, enabling our enemies and actually unwittingly undermining the environment because Biden's energy policy and his obtuseness and abstinence in not increasing domestic production is leading him to rely more on Venezuelan and Iranian energy as a substitute for Russia.
This is perverse in a number of ways. It fills the Iranian bank accounts that are bare, thanks to regime's ineptitude and Trump's primary and secondary sanctions. It gives Iran a new lease on life to spread discord across the Middle East … It's also perverse because Russia, Venezuela, Iran – any tyranny – is going to be far less respectful of the environment than the worst of any Texas oil man. …
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Also, Biden’s energy policy undermines whatever vigilance his sanctions policy has achieved with regard to Putin.
With regard to defense … we have the smallest, the oldest, least ready Air Force we've had in the history of the Air Force. Our Navy is going to shrink to 280 ships when our Naval officers believe, uniformly, that a 500-ship Navy is the bare minimum for deterring China from dominating the Indo-Pacific.
We're not building enough. We need to spend at least 5% of the GDP on defense, given the magnitude of the threat, the relentless Chinese and Russian military buildups. 5% sounds like a lot. It isn't. We spent 12.5% under the final years of Harry Truman's presidency after Korea. Eisenhower close to nine. Kennedy, 8.6. Reagan, 6.6. This is freedom insurance. …
The real culprit is the burgeoning domestic spending of the entitlement state that Biden has feasted on steroids with these stimulus packages that have fueled inflation and given people the incentive not to work. This will create an economic situation that will replicate the worst of the '70s. …
So, the energy policy is entirely perverse and Biden's defense budget is inadequate to meet the challenge of not only Ukraine, but the more dangerous collaboration of China and Russia symbolized by the gangster pact that Chinse President Xi Jinping and Putin announced on Feb. 4.
Q: After Afghanistan and now Ukraine, how does China view the Biden administration?
A: I am delighted that Ukraine's heroism has given Putin a much more difficult time than the Biden administration expected. Nevertheless, it is premature to claim victory. Quite the contrary, the jury is still out on the outcome of this war. It's going to depend on what we are willing do and what we don't do. So the answer on how this affects China's calculus is a contingent answer.
If Putin responds as Russia has to military defeat in the past, by redoubling its efforts, doubling down, if Putin is not pulling back as I don't think he is, but reconstituting his forces for an assault that is going to be even more sanguinary and it ends up in a defeat, this will embolden China.
Also, beware of a bad peace agreement. A lot of commentators in the Biden administration seem to be euphoric over the possibility of Putin accepting less than full sovereignty over Ukraine. Don’t be.
A bad peace deal, like the Munich agreement of 1938, will put Putin in the position to make Ukraine indefensible, the way the Sudetenland being taken by Germany at Munich rendered Czechoslovakia indefensible and was the basis of the next act of aggression.
It's salami tactics. Peace per se doesn't mean we win. Putin reconstituting his forces doesn't mean that he's given up. And we have to do far more than what we're doing—not send boots on the ground, but we have been derelict in responding incrementally and being reluctant to send Ukraine the aircraft from our NATO allies that they need to make sure that they have a fair chance to prevail.
If we don't do more … will China conclude that Taiwan is ripe for the pickings?
What worries me is that China may view the weakness that the Biden administration has radiated across the board as its prime opportunity to reconstitute the international chessboard … We are entering a period by my assessment, which I hope is wrong, of maximum danger.
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Q: Are we in danger of seeing freedom shrink on a global scale under Biden?
A: It's already been shrinking. If you look at the venerable freedom rating agency, Freedom House, freedom has been in retreat and freedom is definitely in danger of retreating globally.
In Europe, freedom has already retreated in Ukraine. And be prepared for Putin to demand more, including the Baltics and Poland. The idea that Putin's going to be satisfied if he succeeds in Ukraine or achieves a partial victory is delusively wishful thinking. We have to expect that weakness will encourage tyrants as we have seen with the Afghan pullout tempting Putin in Ukraine and China’s increasingly brazen violations of Taiwan's airspace while its propaganda boasts that the United States won't come … It is not a coincidence that there's been an escalation in violence and provocation by gangster regimes in the immediate aftermath of Biden's Afghan pullout.
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