Biden’s risking his legacy on Ukraine

President Joe Biden needs a big foreign policy win.

After the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, he has the chance to make Ukraine’s victory over Russia and the revitalization of the transatlantic alliance his real foreign policy legacy. But after a series of recent missteps, there appears to be a widening gap between the defiant president who strolled around Kyiv despite air raid sirens and the leader who may be losing the will to win.

To be sure, Biden’s leadership throughout the war has been historic, particularly in how he has held together the transatlantic alliance and delivered levels of military aid not seen since the Second World War. But as Ukraine’s efforts to liberate occupied territory ramp up, the administration’s shortcomings grow more apparent.

Most immediately, Biden is increasingly out of step with America’s allies when it comes to giving Ukraine a path toward eventual NATO membership. In a frustrating inversion of the 2008 Bucharest Summit, when George W. Bush compromised on his desire to open the alliance’s door to Ukraine and Georgia due to objections from allies like France, giving them a never-ending open door pledge of membership, Paris now joins the United Kingdom, the Baltic states, Poland, and other allies in calling for Ukrainian membership in NATO.

The best way to halt Russia’s imperial ambitions and restore peace to Europe is by detailing the path to membership for Kyiv. If NATO’s July 11-12 summit in Vilnius ends up a repeat of Bucharest due to Biden’s intransigence, the president will have squandered a historic opportunity and peace in Europe. His misrepresentation of this debate in a recent CNN interview — ignoring that Ukraine isn’t asking for automatic membership at the summit, only a path to membership — doesn’t bode well.

Biden is also responsible for the administration’s maddening policy of slow-rolling aid to Ukraine, and Ukrainians are paying the price. Time after time, the White House has measured every bit of aid against fears of “escalation” with Russia, saying a certain weapon might cause the Kremlin to go nuclear. But each time experts and allies have pressured the administration into finally sending these systems that the White House previously deemed too provocative, be they multiple-launch rocket systems, Patriot air defense systems or main battle tanks, Moscow’s threats proved hollow.

The latest, long-running victims of this self-deterrence are F-16 fighter jets and ATACMS long-range missiles. Both could have been game-changers for Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive but have been kept out of Kyiv’s hands due to the White House’s foot dragging.

Ukraine’s commander in chief, Valery Zaluzhny, recently voiced his frustration that the country’s counteroffensive is moving too slowly, pointing out that Ukraine has to fight in a way that NATO militaries never would, since their doctrine calls for air superiority before ground forces can advance.

It’s promising that the White House will finally send cluster munitions to Ukraine, but yet again, it is slowly doling out pieces of aid rather than opening the spigot to give Ukraine a genuine advantage. How many more months will Ukrainians have to wait before Biden changes his tune yet again and delivers ATACMS and F-16s, just as he’s had to reverse on nearly every other piece of major military kit?

Troublingly, this uncertainty also seems to be impacting inter-alliance politics, after recent reports emerged that Biden tanked British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace’s bid to lead NATO after the UK got out in front of the U.S. on announcing it would train Ukrainian fighter pilots.

Biden keeps saying he supports Ukraine “as long as it takes,” but the Wallace incident plus Biden’s slow record on doling out weapons to Ukraine suggests he’s really saying, “as long as it takes, but not too much.”

The latest eyebrow-raising incident came on July 6, when news broke that former U.S. officials secretly held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to explore off-ramps and negotiations with Russia to end the war. Two of the former officials present had just published a Foreign Affairs piece arguing for concessions between Russia and Ukraine, despite Russia’s continued genocide against Ukraine. As journalist Michael Weiss pointed out, one was the former managing partner for Kissinger Associates and the other’s think tank had taken a $12 million gift from controversial billionaire Len Blavatnik.

The White House, to its credit, says it was unaware of these meetings and did not sanction them, reiterating “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Talking with your enemies can lead to breakthroughs. But you have to get it right, and Russia’s repeated pattern of war crimes and escalations — including its continued kidnapping of Ukrainian children and the catastrophic destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam — show that Moscow isn’t serious about compromise. The only way to get Russia to leave Ukraine is to force it, and if Biden is serious about “putting Ukraine in the best position,” then the way to get to that position is by finally committing to victory.

While Ukraine is walking away from this week’s Vilnius Summit without a clear path to NATO, it is already looking to next year’s NATO summit in Washington. The pressure for Biden to finally get this issue right will only magnify between now and then.

Russia’s war against Ukraine is the most devastating international conflict since the Second World War, and it may already be the defining event of the early 21st century. President Biden has proven that he has the capacity to lead the Free World to victory. He just needs to do it.

Melinda Haring is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center and Doug Klain is a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center.

This article has been corrected from a previous version.