One of the main lessons emerging from the battlefields in Ukraine is the need to refrain from sweeping historic generalizations, and at the same time be attentive to the spirit of the times and the prevalent views. In recent weeks, the dominant analogy has been Great Britain's and France's placatory approach to Hitler's Nazi Germany in the 1930s – to Europe's stance against Vladimir Putin's challenge to Ukrainian independence and sovereignty.
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Yet, contrary to the infamous Munich Conference of September 1938, over the past week a broad and united European front has taken shape, acting restlessly – in governmental and private spheres together – to determine a price tag, which is growing costlier by the day, for Moscow's aggression. Amid this backdrop of Europe's rise to the center of the global stage, the ongoing weakness of the American hegemon is particularly glaring.
Contrary to the dominant role the United States played in the lion's share of global crises and conflicts since becoming a superpower at the end of the Second World War – in Ukraine it is hesitant, indecisive, and lagging behind its European partners who, under UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, are leading aggressively and decisively and overshadowing the featherless American eagle.
To be sure, the Biden administration, which said from the very beginning that it would focus on domestic issues, responded lethargically to an escalating crisis in Ukraine that bucked its desire to withdraw inward and away from global flashpoints. Hence the White House is slowly but surely being drawn against its wishes into adopting an escalating strategy of economic punishment in an effort to counter the quickly growing Russian threat – not just to Ukraine's existence but to the pro-Western orientation of most central and eastern European countries (excluding Belarus), which the Kremlin is seeking to intimidate by exterminating a legitimate sovereign state entity.
Ultimately, Washington fell in line with London, Berlin, and Paris, but cautiously and measuredly. A flagrant expression of the United States' shaky status came in US President Joe Biden's State of the Union Address on Tuesday.
Along with declaring the US would join its allies in closing off American air space to all Russian flights (here, too, Biden trailed Canada and Europe), the president said the Russian leader was meeting "a wall of strength he never anticipated or imagined." However, in noting this wall is formed by the people of Ukraine, he essentially implied that his administration was not particularly involved. Indeed, together with his harsh condemnations of Moscow's war crimes and alongside his support for the far-reaching economic sanctions imposed on Russia by Europe – the man in the Oval Office was waving a rather hollow stick. After all, once again, he explicitly ruled out the option of using military force (or even strategic measures that don't include direct military intervention).
In short, it was an anemic, lifeless address that lacked any specific, suitable answers to the Russian escalation on the ground and to the growing hysteria in Moscow, which is now openly evoking the nuclear threat in a desperate attempt to sow fear and panic in the hearts of the coalition members standing against it. Indeed, even the repeated threat of apocalyptic nuclear war has failed to rouse the 46th president to action more befitting the world's preeminent hegemonic power, willing to come in from the cold and lead the axis of restraint, enforcement, and punishment against Moscow.
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