Five Towns Jewish Home - 6-2-22

Page 152

The Jewish Home | JUNE 2, 2022

152

Political crossfire

The Secret Planning That Kept the White House a Step Ahead of Russia by David Ignatius

12

OctOber 29, 2015 | the Jewish Home

t

he first instruction that Secretary of State Antony Blinken got from President Joe Biden was to “reset” America’s alliances and partnerships abroad so that the United States could deal with the challenges ahead. That strategy would prove decisive in combating Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. Blinken and other officials gave me new details this week, describing a series of behind-the-scenes meetings over the past year that helped forge the U.S.led coalition to support Ukraine. His narrative validates President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s observation in a 1957 speech: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” The Biden administration’s secret planning began in April 2021 when Russia massed about 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border. The buildup turned out to be a feint, but Blinken and other officials discussed U.S. intelligence

about Russia’s actions with leaders of Britain, France and Germany at a NATO meeting in Brussels that month. Their message was, “We need to get ourselves prepared,” a senior State Department official said. Germany was a reluctant but essential ally, and the Biden administration made a controversial decision last summer that was probably crucial in gaining German support against Russia. Biden gave Germany a pass on an initial round of sanctions against a company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in exchange for a pledge from Chancellor Angela Merkel that if Russia invaded, Nord Stream 2 would be scrapped. When the invasion came, Merkel was gone but her successor, Olaf Scholz, kept the promise. By avoiding a crisis with Germany early on, Blinken said, “the net result was that the foundation was in place when the Russians went ahead with the

aggression.” This U.S. diplomacy gets high marks from Emily Haber, the German ambassador to Washington. “The wording in the joint statement (about Nord Stream) was vague, but the administration trusted the old – and later the new – chancellor to follow up on it. Which is what happened,” she told me. “A sublime form, I thought, of partnership management.” The Ukraine threat got red-hot in October, when the United States gathered intelligence about a renewed Russian buildup on the border, along with “some detail about what Russian plans for those forces actually were,” Blinken said. This operational detail “was really the eye opener.” The Group of 20 nations were meeting at the end of October in Rome, and Biden pulled aside the leaders of Britain, France and Germany and gave them a detailed readout on the top-secret evidence. “It was galvanizing enough that

there was an agreement . . . to fleshing out the consequences for Russia if it went ahead with the aggression,” Blinken said. CIA Director William Burns traveled to Moscow on Nov. 1 to warn President Vladimir Putin that the United States and its allies were prepared to arm Ukraine and impose crippling sanctions on Russia if he invaded. Putin apparently thought Biden wouldn’t be able to deliver. Persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to take the invasion danger seriously wasn’t easy, initially. Blinken spoke to him at the COP 21 climate summit in Glasgow in early November and provided a summary of intelligence about Russia’s plans. “I basically had the task of telling him that we thought it was likely that his country was going to be invaded,” Blinken recalled. Zelensky was skeptical, according to a State Department official.


Turn static files into dynamic content formats.

Create a flipbook

Articles inside

Jewish D-Day Heroes by Avi Heiligman

9min
pages 158-159

Portion Control Moments by Rivki D. Rosenwald Esq., CLC, SDS

2min
pages 166-168

CLASSIFIEDS

18min
pages 160-164

Your Money

3min
page 165

Gas Prices are Through the Roof by Marc A. Thiessen

4min
pages 156-157

Georgia’s Primary Turnout by Marc A. Thiessen

4min
pages 154-155

The Secret Planning That Kept the White House a Step Ahead of Russia by David Ignatius

3min
pages 152-153

Notable Quotes

4min
pages 148-151

What Does a Good Marriage Look Like? by Dr. Deb Hirschhorn

7min
pages 134-137

10 Pro Flower Tips That Every Person Should Know by Raquel Goldish

3min
pages 142-145

Parenting Pearls

8min
pages 140-141

Delving into the Daf by Rabbi Avrohom Sebrow

4min
pages 114-115

The Wandering Jew

9min
pages 116-119

My Israel Home

3min
pages 120-121

Shmoozing with the Big Cheese by Nati Burnside

16min
pages 122-127

Mosquito Tones: Hearing G-d’s Messages by Sarah Pachter

7min
pages 112-113

The Mysterious Ancestry of David HaMelech by Rabbi Daniel Glatstein

22min
pages 108-111

National

8min
pages 36-37

Rabbi Wein on the Parsha

2min
pages 98-101

In the Name of Shame by Rav Moshe Weinberger

9min
pages 102-103

Voicenotes

3min
pages 92-93

That’s Odd

4min
pages 38-39

Israel News

19min
pages 22-35

Global

19min
pages 12-21
Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.