Biden: Our sanctions are crushing the Russian economy 5:46
(CNN) --
The election and US President Joe Biden's challenges on Ukraine were already extremely difficult.
As the horror of war mounts, they are about to become even more unbearable.
Since Russia launched its onslaught last month, Biden has sought to punish and isolate President Vladimir Putin and mitigate the killing of civilians by providing defensive weapons to the Kyiv government.
But he has also calibrated his actions to avoid being drawn into a dangerous direct conflict with Russia, which possesses nuclear weapons, while fixing his delicate internal political situation.
As Putin escalates his assault, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky grows more desperate, and the civilian toll grows more dire by the day, Biden's balancing act becomes that much more difficult.
Elon Musk challenges Vladimir Putin to a fight 1:09
Political pressure on the president, after a period of unusual unity in Washington, is also about to mount.
That will be especially the case if, as seems increasingly likely, the rest of the world is forced to witness an inhumane Russian siege and bombardment of Kyiv.
In a big moment from Washington on Wednesday, Zelensky will deliver a virtual address to Congress.
If his recent speech to the UK parliament, which drew comparisons to Churchill, is any guide, it will be a scathing and inspiring rallying cry for lawmakers.
If the Ukrainian president includes last-minute pleas for fighter jets and a no-fly zone over his country, which Biden foiled on the grounds that they could trigger a war with Moscow, he will create extreme domestic pressure on the president.
ANALYSIS |
After more than three decades covering Russia, I leave in despair.
A man has extinguished the bright hope that many once felt
Biden's problems
Biden's problem is that after unleashing an all-out economic war against Russia with extraordinarily harsh sanctions, there are now limits to the steps he can take to significantly increase pressure on Putin without risking direct military or cyber conflict.
Some of the president's critics in Congress and in parts of the foreign policy establishment, including his own party, argue that he has been too cautious.
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But it's one thing for a lawmaker to accuse Biden of caving in to Putin's threats.
A president has deep responsibilities in a situation like this and cannot risk miscalculation.
The White House has been very careful not to further corner a vengeful and increasingly reckless Putin.
For example, it did not respond in the same way to his order last month to put its nuclear forces on high alert, interpreting the Russian leader's atomic poker as an attempt to intimidate the West.
Along the same lines, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Monday refused to describe a Russian airstrike on a Ukrainian base near the Polish border as a new phase in the conflict that could threaten NATO territory.
But Biden remains the first commander-in-chief since the 1980s to have to navigate the genuine possibility of a cycle of escalation with Moscow that could risk nuclear war.
He must also consider how he would respond if a Russian missile were to stray into NATO territory in Eastern Europe, a scenario that, in theory at least, could trigger the collective defense clause of the alliance's Article 5.
Biden, who came to Washington as a young senator at the height of the standoff with the Soviet Union, now faces the same lonely burden of Cold War presidents: The fate of the world may rest on his shoulders.
And the situation may be fraught with more uncertainty than in the long decades of Soviet-American confrontation.
The doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which underpins the notion of nuclear deterrence, was maintained throughout the Cold War.
The question now arises whether Putin, humiliated and with his political survival at stake, would maintain the same red lines as his communist predecessors.
"The prospect of a nuclear conflict, previously unthinkable, is now back within the realm of possibility," UN Secretary-General António Guterres said on Monday, referring to Putin's declaration of nuclear alert for his country. as "creepy".
A senior US official, speaking after intense talks with China on Monday that focused in part on Ukraine, put it this way: "There's a lot of gravity right now."
Not surprisingly, as CNN's Kevin Liptak reported earlier this month, top officials believe the Ukraine crisis will largely define Biden's term.
The sources also said Monday that the president was considering a visit to Europe, a NATO morale-boosting trip that would immediately become the most critical trip across the Atlantic by any American president in decades.
NATO leaders could meet in person in Brussels next week, a diplomatic source familiar with the planning told CNN's Kaitlan Collins on Monday night.
Diplomacy is failing so far
If the strategic stakes were not high enough, the sheer importance of the president's next moves is exacerbated by the failure of an international diplomatic effort to make Putin resign and talks between Russia and Ukraine that have produced no results.
The Russian president has turned his country into an economic, diplomatic, cultural and sports pariah.
Russia has been embarrassed by the slow advance of its forces, after earlier predictions of a blitzkrieg and the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians.
But everything the world has learned in Putin's more than two decades in power about his psychology and his record suggests that his instinct will be to escalate the war.
A weekend of ferocious attacks on civilian targets such as apartment blocks and the shelling and sieges of several cities suggests this is already happening.
"If Ukraine doesn't bend the knee to Russia, it will ensure that Ukraine is a wasteland," Heather Conley, president of the German Marshall Fund, said on CNN's "Inside Politics" on Monday.
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Retired Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said Monday on CNN "Newsroom" that Putin's tactics, which have already drawn war crimes charges, are about to become even more extreme.
"Now that they've realized this is hard work, they're doing what they've always done in history, which is act like a slow-moving bulldozer-like vehicle that pushes everything out of their way or under them. They go to start the siege of Kyiv very soon, and I think we'll see how that strategy plays out," Kimmitt said.
Images emerging from the besieged coastal city of Mariupol, which has been devastated by Russian bombardment and where there is little heat, electricity or food and water, and from villages outside Kyiv offer a terrifying glimpse of what lies ahead for the capital.
The spectacle of a prolonged Russian siege of Kyiv, with multiple civilian casualties and unfathomable destruction, would leave Biden vulnerable to accusations that he failed to intervene to prevent genocide or war crimes.
He would put extraordinary domestic and global political pressure on the president to overcome his reluctance to employ measures that could risk direct conflict between the United States and Russia.
Biden, who came to power emphasizing his empathy and compassion in the midst of a pandemic, could eventually be the president on the other end of the phone line, having to explain to Zelensky why the West couldn't do more to save Ukraine.
A new push in Congress for planes for Ukraine
Signs that the battle for Kyiv could be looming added a new urgency on Monday to calls in the US Congress for Biden to do more, after news broke that Zelensky would address a joint session by liaison. video on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian president's courage has helped inspire the Western world to come together and punish Putin in much stronger terms than many expected.
The alliance is back in the business of killing Russian soldiers after launching what is effectively a proxy war in Ukraine by providing anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles.
So far, those moves have not led Putin to turn directly against the West, though Russia has warned that it views such shipments as legitimate war targets.
That has encouraged Biden critics in Congress to warn that Washington's opposition to Poland's offer to send Soviet-era planes to Ukraine was tantamount to the United States bowing to a Russian bluff.
Only a few members of Congress have called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, underscoring the reluctance to send US service personnel into dangerous situations and an alarming face-to-face confrontation with Russia.
But Senate Republican Leader John Thune said Monday there is broad bipartisan support for including a provision approving the deployment of military aircraft to Ukraine in a bill that targets Russia's energy imports and trading status. .
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"I know the administration has its position on that. But there would be a lot of bipartisan support for the planes," Thune, of South Dakota, told reporters Monday.
Nevada Democratic Senator Jacky Rosen, a member of the Armed Services Committee, has called on the administration to help Ukraine get more fighter jets.
"The president is still resisting," Rosen told CNN's Jake Tapper on Monday, referring to the Polish plane plan.
"I think they continue to work with our NATO allies to try to find a secondary channel without causing World War III."
His comment summed up the dilemma Biden faces as he navigates a path through the conflict between what the United States and its allies can do to prevent humanitarian outrage while containing the war inside Ukraine.
But the crisis is approaching a point where doing both will be increasingly challenging.
Joe Biden
