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The Presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris has been criticized for being one-sided where the hosts declined to fact-check Harris even once. This especially applied to a section of the debate on the war in Ukraine where the scale of disinformation was the greatest.
David Muir asked Harris how she would deal with Putin and how her policy is different from Biden’s. Harris emphasized that Trump was not running against Biden but against her.
But the examination of her answers demonstrates that she has little role in U.S.-Ukraine policy and plans to continue the current Biden policy.
In response to Muir’s question, Harris stated that that she “actually met with Zelenskyy a few days before Russia invaded … I shared with him American intelligence about how he could defend himself.”
Correction: Harris met Zelenskyy for the first time on February 19, 2021 on the margins of the Munich Security Conference, as she met there with many Western leaders. It was a purely symbolic meeting where she assured him of U.S. support and announced that”if Russia further invades your country … we will impose swift and severe economic sanctions.”
The intelligence briefing was given to Zelenskyy by William Burns, head of National Intelligence, on January 12 in Kiev. Thus, Harris did not conduct any negotiations with Zelenskyy and up to the moment of invasion, there were no U.S. penalties or deliveries of military equipment in response to Putin’s threats.
Next, Harris said: “Later, I went to NATO’s eastern flank, to Poland and Romania.”
Harris came to Poland on 10th of March, thus almost three weeks after the invasion started, not a few days.
Her message was to reassure Poland as a member of NATO, to offer some humanitarian assistance to millions of Ukrainian refugees pouring into Poland, and to admonish the Polish government not to supply Ukraine with its MIG 29 planes, which the Biden administration deemed to be “escalatory.” But the Polish government pushed the planes across the border anyway.
In the next sentence, Harris claims that “through the work that I and others did, we brought 50 countries together to support Ukraine because of air defense, ammunition, the Javelins … Ukraine stands as an independent and free country.”
The facts are that Harris had a small role in this endeavor. Her visit was followed by the visit of President Biden to Warsaw on March 25. This is when agreements were made for transport of U.S. arms to Ukraine through Poland.
The first U.S. military equipment arrived in Ukraine in May, with some guns and ammunition in April, thus three months after the invasion.
Ukraine survived this initial onslaught as an independent country due to a transfer of almost all military equipment from Poland plus gasoline and from some other East European countries.
East European leaders were the first diplomatic supporters of Ukraine. Poland also took a lead as an advocate for aid to Ukraine among Western countries and formed the so-called tank coalition.
Only later did the Biden administration get involved in this effort. Germany only announced in January 2023 that it would provide weapons to Ukraine. Thus, the reason that Ukraine withstood the initial assault on its independence is due to efforts of East Europeans, particularly Poland, and not Kamala Harris or the Biden administration.
A small point: Harris claimed that she provided Ukraine with Javelin missiles when in fact it was Trump who was the first president to provide U.S. lethal aid to Ukraine — Javelin missiles — In December 2017.
Next, Harris accused Trump of not understanding “the importance of the greatest military alliance — NATO.”
It could be argued that Trump understands very well that NATO is an alliance, and not a protectorate, and therefore requires that all members must contribute to it. That’s why he is a constant advocate of increasing their contributions to a mutually agreed level.
This especially applies to Germany, which deliberately and provocatively, contributes very little.
Harris threatened that if Trump were president, Putin would have his “eyes on the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”
But the facts are the opposite. It was Trump who made Poland secure by fully integrating it militarily with NATO and extending NATO infrastructure, while previously its membership was only formal.
In his speech in Warsaw in July 2017, he proposed supplying Poland with more American troops, established a new NATO military command in Poznan responsible for defense of the eastern flank of NATO, and revived a missile defense program, cancelled by Obama.
The fact that Putin will not touch Poland is due largely to this extensive integration with NATO. This is in contrast with Obama’s reset policy with Russia, which was repeated by Biden in 2021, calling it a reset with guardrails.
His implementation of this policy was the signing of the SALT treaty with Russia in January 2021, giving a permission for the Russian Nordstream 2 pipeline, and suspension of the aid to Ukraine in spring of 2021.
Discussion then shifted to how the war started. Trump mistakenly accepted Harris’ insinuations that she was the emissary to negotiate with Putin and Zelenskyy before the war started. Despite repeated questions from Muir, Harris never admitted that she never met Putin and met with Zelenskyy only on symbolic occasions.
And what was the Biden administration policy before the war started?
Most significantly, Putin visibly became more belligerent on Ukraine after the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He put 100,000 troops on the Ukraine border.
On December 17, he issued an insulting ultimatum to Biden, demanding neutralization of Ukraine, dismantling of NATO in Eastern Europe and the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe. Biden dutifully engaged in diplomatic negotiations with Putin until the war started, failing to provide any deterrence to Ukraine.
Harris declared that she plans to be “a president who understands the significance of America’s role and responsibility in terms of ensuring that there is stability and ensuring we stand up for our principles.”
This Clintonesque strategy was already demonstrated by Biden when he established “a stability working group” with Russia at the Biden-Putin summit in Geneva in June 2021. During its duration, Putin seriously destabilized the political situation in Europe without virtually any response from the Biden administration, except for its expressing support for the international order.
The most important question on foreign policy was asked by Muir right at the beginning: “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” He asked it of Trump, but it should have been directed to Harris.
In a sense, it was a wrong question to ask because with the present level of military aid under the Biden administration, its lack of timeliness and restrictions on equipment usage, Ukraine is unable to win the war under current conditions. However, this discussion highlighted significant differences in approach between Trump and Biden.
Biden’s strategy in Ukraine, described publicly many times, is a war of attrition. Its goal is to degrade Russia’s military capability, expressing itself in destruction of large amounts of military equipment, killing of numerous soldiers, deterioration of its economy, promoting infighting among the Russian leadership and demonstrations of its incompetence and failures.
As Trump stated, he is opposed to such strategy and prefers a negotiated settlement. Trump pointed out that it is not only the Russians who are being killed, but Ukrainians as well.
Officially, maybe 1 million soldiers have been killed and wounded on both sides, and probably more. The economies of both countries are seriously affected.
Trump disagrees with the Biden strategy of war of attrition that Ukraine must eventually lose, as it is a much smaller country than Russia. He wants to negotiate an acceptable settlement of the war both to Ukraine and to the West.
Thus, Harris’ misrepresentation of her role in U.S. foreign policy on the issue of Ukraine confused not only the audience, but even Trump himself. At the same time, she made an impression of success of the Biden administration policy.
While it was successful in coordinating an international coalition to assist Ukraine, its strategy of attrition, which led to a current bloody stalemate, is a failure that threatens Ukraine’s future. An honest discussion of the issues would be more enlightening to the American electorate.
Dr. Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon is a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C. She was a strategist, policy adviser and project manager on democratic and economic reforms in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Central, South and Southeast Asia for Deloitte & Touche Emerging Markets, Coopers & Lybrand, and others. She has been an adjunct scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Dr. Cannon received a B.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Columbia University where she was an International Fellow and IREX Scholar at Warsaw University, and the London School of Economics. Read more of Swiatkowski Cannon's reports — Here.