Threatening war should never be a bluff, especially if you can’t back it up. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:
Even before Moscow’s recognition of the separatist Ukrainian “republics” and introduction of “peacekeeping” troops, President Joe Biden’s strongest critics were members of Washington’s omnipresent War Party. Its members were horrified when he ended US involvement in Afghanistan last August after only two decades of conflict. What’s wrong with forever, they wondered?
Now they are mad that the president refused to go to war or at least threaten war with Russia over Ukraine. He said in January: “There is not going to be any American forces moving into Ukraine.” And we should be especially thankful now, with Moscow’s advance into the Donbass region, that none went.
However, that is not the position of Washington’s sizable kettle of military hawks. War always and forever should be their slogan. Given their druthers, some of them would have started dropping bombs already.
For instance, though retired Gen. Kevin Ryan of Harvard’s Belfer Center accepted the president’s refusal to directly threaten war, he suggested taking indirect actions that could risk hostilities. He proposed supporting Georgian and Moldovan military action against Russian-backed separatists in, respectively, Abkhazia/South Ossetia and Transnistria, even though secessionist sentiments reflect local grievances and predate Vladimir Putin. Ryan also proposed blockading Russia’s isolated territory in Kaliningrad, an act of war. Although not easily countered by Moscow, such a step might spark comparable Russian action against the Baltic states, a dangerous escalation on the way to full-scale war.
