Former National Security Advisor John Bolton has blasted President Biden over Ukraine’s stalling counteroffensive in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal that was published on Sunday.
While Ukraine has received tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons from the US, a scale of aid not seen since the post-World War II Marshal Plan, the notoriously hawkish Bolton said Biden wasn’t doing enough and blamed the president’s “hesitancy” for Ukraine’s inability to break through Russia’s defenses.
“Ukraine’s offensive failures and Russia’s defensive successes share a common cause: the slow, faltering, nonstrategic supply of military assistance by the West,” Bolton wrote.
Bolton said the administration was too concerned about the risk of escalation. “The serial debates over whether to supply this or that weapons system, the perpetual fear that Russia will escalate to war against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and occasional Kremlin nuclear saber-rattling have instilled a paralyzing caution in Western capitals,” he wrote.
Bolton described Biden’s fueling of the proxy war in Ukraine as “timid” and “haphazard” and blamed the president for the growing public opposition to the policy. A recent CNN poll found that 55% of Americans are opposed to additional spending on the war.
Bolton also criticized the administration’s sanctions policy, arguing that they weren’t being properly enforced. He also called for the US to start sanctioning China over its relationship with Russia.
Echoing the more hawkish members of the Biden administration, such as Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Bolton warned against a ceasefire and negotiations. He said the US needs to garner more public support for the proxy war and keep fueling the conflict.
“The White House must make midcourse corrections to its strategic errors of the past 18 months if it’s to bolster domestic US support for Ukraine and revitalize and broaden the anti-Russia coalition. It’s time to get moving,” he wrote.
Source: AntiWar.
