“The American conservative”: ‘Biden doctrine’ – to cash in on the blood of another nation

President Biden (centre), Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of defense (left) and Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint chiefs of staff of the U.S. Army (right).

The Biden doctrine is a cynical effort to cash in on the blood of another nation, writes “The American conservative”.

Joe Biden created for the U.S. a war like no other, one where others die and the U.S. simply sits back and pays the bills on a gargantuan scale. No attempts are made at diplomacy by the Americans, and the diplomatic efforts of others like the Chinese are dismissed as evil attempts to gain influence in the area (similar to the dismissal of Chinese diplomatic work in the Yemen war.) Biden is coming close to achieving 1984’s end state of perpetual warfare, while only putting a handful of American lives at risk. He has learned lessons from the Cold War, and has already put them into play.

Can we call it the Biden Doctrine yet?

Biden’s strategy is clear enough now after well more than a year of conflict; what he has been sending to Ukraine jumped from helmets and uniforms to F-16s in only fifteen months and shows no signs of stopping. The problem is U.S. weapons are never enough for victory and are always “just enough” to allow the battle to go on until the next round. If the Ukrainians think they are playing the U.S. for arms, they best check who is really paying for everything in blood.

Ukraine will learn even with the promise of the F-16 it can’t acquire aircraft and train up pilots fast enough (minimum training time is 18-24 months), and next will be begging the U.S. to serve as its air force. That’s what the current escalation portends: air power.

A single F-16 costs up to $350 million a copy if bought with weapons, maintenance equipment and spare parts kits.

As it is, the planes are likely to be based out of Poland and Romania, suggesting NATO will pick up the high-skilled tasks (and costs) of maintaining and repairing them. Left unclear is the NATO role in required aerial refueling to keep the planes lingering over the battlefield. F-16s aside, a spin off bonus to all these weapons gifts is that the vast majority of transfers to date have been “presidential drawdowns.”

This means the U.S. sends used or older weapons to Ukraine, after which the Pentagon can use the Congressionally authorized funds to replenish their stocks by purchasing new arms. The irony that war machines once in Iraq under President Obama are now recycled on the ground in Ukraine under his former vice president can’t be missed.

Yet despite the similarities to Cold War Strategy, some lessons have been learned over the intervening years.

One of them is a lesson – learned how to do with nation-building, or rebuilding, or reconstruction — whatever the vast postwar expenditures will be called in this conflict. No more straight-up governmental efforts as in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This time it will be all private enterprise. “It is obvious that American business can become the locomotive that will once again push forward global economic growth,” President Zelensky said, boasting BlackRock, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs. Others, he said, “have already become part of our Ukrainian way.”

Earlier this year JP Morgan and Zelensky signed a memorandum of understanding stipulating Morgan would assist Ukraine in its reconstruction.

The Ukrainian chamber of commerce called the country “the world’s largest construction site.” The New York Times echoed one prediction that claimed rebuilding efforts will cost $750 billion. Ukraine reconstruction will be, says the Times, a “gold rush...”

The eventual gold rush in rebuilding makes for an interesting addendum to the Biden strategy of fighting to the last Ukrainian. The more that is destroyed the more that needs to be rebuilt, which offers more money for U.S. companies smart enough to wait by the trough for the killing to subside.

So let’s put some lipstick on this pig of a strategy and call it the Biden Doctrine.

Part I is to limit direct U.S. combat involvement while fanning the flames for others.

Part II is to provide massive amounts of arms to enable a fight to the last local person.

Part III is to transform the home government into a puppet instead of creating an unpopular one afresh.

Part IV is to turn the reconstruction process into a profit center for American companies.

How long the war lasts and how many die are not part of the strategy, stresses “The American conservative”.

…And who is a killer now?

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