FLASH
Shkruar nga Mark Toth & Jonathan Sweet
He once advised Obama not to carry out the attack that killed Osama Bin Laden. Now, he faces a similarly momentous decision. Will he become the man who would have let Bin Laden escape, and then let Ukraine capitulate?
Ukraine needs a game changer. Actually, it takes two. The first is a clear green light from Washington, to use American weapons to contain the Russian troops that are being organized along the borders of Ukraine, especially those near the Kharkiv region.
But Kiev also needs the creation of a no-fly zone as soon as possible. President Biden should be inspired by former President Franklin Roosevelt. During the darkest days of World War II, FDR did in 1941 something that Biden has so far been reluctant to do in Ukraine: He risked escalating the war in the North Atlantic.
And it did so a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. German submarines were pounding British ships. The British Army was facing successive setbacks in the Mediterranean and North Africa from the troops of German Field Marshal Erin Rommel and his famous Afrika Korps divisions.
Britain was in danger of running out of food, weapons, natural resources and the most important elements of production, as the number of merchant ships sunk by the enemy increased alarmingly. Roosevelt realized that the loan scheme would not be enough. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his generals needed a lifeline.
And it was given in the form of Iceland. In May 1940, fearing that Adolf Hitler might seize the strategic mid-Atlantic island, England invaded Iceland in an operation code-named Operation Fork.
But by the summer of 1941, the British army and navy were too weak to continue occupying and defending the island, including securing the main North Atlantic trade routes linking the UK with US ports along the east coast. So FDR ordered US forces to invade Iceland.
In August, the US Navy began using PBY Catalinas and PBN Mariners to patrol and protect shipping lanes from German submarines. In this way Roosevelt protected Churchill's shoulders, and England could concentrate on the fight to prevent the victory of Nazi Germany.
Now is the time for Biden to do the same for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals in Ukraine. Kiev should focus its efforts on the fight against the enemy in Donbas and on recapturing the Crimean Peninsula, the decisive ground of this war.
But Zelensky cannot do that, at a time when his civilian population centers, energy infrastructure and weapons production capacity continue to come under near-daily attack by Russian drones and missiles. Defending these areas behind the front line forces Kiev to stop sending valuable air defense systems to the front line or even missile supplies.
A no-fly zone over western Ukraine would free up Ukraine's military resources to bolster the fight against Putin's army in the east. There is already enough justification to create such a zone. For example, Russian missiles have passed over NATO countries several times, violating Polish, Romanian and Moldovan airspace.
Also, Putin continues to deliberately target and kill Ukrainian civilians. Russia's recent attacks on Odesa using cluster munitions provide ample evidence of war crimes and crimes against humanity, as do its increasing attacks against Kharkiv.
Iran's recent attack on Israel shows us why a no-fly zone is more than essential. Despite Tehran's latest attack and the use of the same drones and Shahed missiles that Russia uses in Ukraine, it was 99.99 percent ineffective due to the combined air defenses of Israel, the US, the UK and several Arab states.
Israeli civilians deserved to be protected from Iran. So are Ukrainian civilians from Russian airstrikes. Therefore, Biden and NATO must withdraw and implement this "red line". At the start of Putin's war, there were fears that any such zone would lead to a direct military confrontation between NATO and Russia, and potentially full-scale war.
However, as seen in Israel and over the skies of Syria during Iran's attack on April 13, Washington and Moscow were able to avoid each other. They have done so for much of Syria's civil war, with US and Russian military forces operating in close proximity on a daily basis.
It is likely that Putin does not want to confront NATO. Because in the state that the Kremlin's air and naval forces are in, they cannot be properly engaged in the battlefront in Ukraine. They have not been able to control its airspace and operate in the Black Sea with impunity.
Under these conditions, the last thing Moscow needs now is to face NATO's air and defense assets. The imposition of a no-fly zone in Western Ukraine is not likely to lead to World War II-style fighting or the downing of NATO or US planes by Russian bombers.
Rather, it will help deter Russian drone and missile attacks, and reduce their effectiveness as seen in the skies over Israel, Jordan, Syria and Iraq last month. The opportunity for this strategic change of approach exists. Biden again finds himself at a turning point.
He once advised Obama not to carry out the attack that killed Osama Bin Laden. Now, he faces a similarly momentous decision. Will he become the man who would have let Bin Laden escape, and then let Ukraine capitulate?
Or is he willing, like Franklin Delano Roosevelt once, to line up on the right side of history, and on the right side of humanity? FDR's decision to invade Iceland in 1941 turned out to be a stroke of genius a little later, in March 1943, when large German submarines began sinking large merchant ships.
The Allies were able to defeat the formidable German fleet, and never during the remainder of the war did Hitler's submarines threaten Allied shipping on a strategic level. Ukraine's survival likely depends on Biden's willingness to stand up to Russian aggression by ordering a no-fly zone in Western Ukraine.
Symbolically, Putin is now a dilemma in Biden's mind, just as Bin Laden was in 2011. Biden's recommendation for Obama turned out to be wrong. Will he fail this test as well? Ukrainian civilians hope with all their hearts that he will make the right decision. /Adapted "Pamphlet" from "The Hill"
Note: Mark Toth, US national security and foreign policy analyst. Retired Colonel Jonathan Sweet was a US Secret Service officer for 30 years.
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