Tough stand needed on Ukraine

Joe Biden must make it clear he meant it when he warned Vladimir Putin at their summit on Wednesday of “strong economic and other measures” by the US and its allies if Russia invaded Ukraine. After the damage done to America’s credibility by the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, that will not be easy. But with so much at stake for the West in Mr Putin’s belligerent deployment of 175,000 troops along Ukraine’s eastern border, it would be hard to overstate the importance of Mr Biden showing the muscular leadership needed to deter the Russian despot from the brazenly aggressive course he is on. At issue in what may come to be seen as the gravest foreign policy test of the Biden administration is not only the sovereignty of democratic and free Ukraine and the stability of the rules-based order that has underpinned European security since World War II. At the heart of the crisis, too, is Mr Putin’s view, declared in a menacing, 5000-word article earlier this year, that Ukrainian independence, like the collapse of the former Soviet Union, was a “geopolitical tragedy” he intended to put right.

Mr Biden must show more ticker than he did in 2014 when he was the vice-president in Barack Obama’s administration, which allowed Mr Putin to get away with his illegal annexation of Crimea. A similarly supine response over Ukraine would be a disaster that not only would embolden Mr Putin further but also would encourage his close strategic ally, Xi Jinping, in his ambition to invade free and democratic Taiwan. Ahead of Wednesday’s summit Mr Biden consulted the leaders of Britain, France, Germany and Italy. They are said to have agreed on a joint strategy “to impose significant and severe harm on the Russian economy” if Mr Putin goes ahead with invading Ukraine.

Mr Putin’s hostility towards Ukraine is not difficult to understand. As The Times noted, “a successful, independent Ukraine is an existential threat to his own authoritarian regime. No matter how many opponents Mr Putin locks up, so long as Ukraine continues to defy Russian meddling and remains democratic and free, it belies Mr Putin’s bogus ahistorical claims that Western liberal values are inimical to Russian society.”

The test Mr Biden’s leadership faces in deterring the Russian ruler’s aggression could not be more important to the entire free world. The US administration’s Afghanistan debacle must not turn out to be a tragic foretaste of what awaits Ukraine and that other brave democracy, Taiwan.