The West Is Rewriting the Rules of Foreign Policy Over Ukraine

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. Let’s dive right into the news of the day. Here’s what’s on tap: a sea change in Western security policy a week after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden delays rollout of National Defense Strategy, and new Pentagon nominees confirmed by Senate.

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If you blinked, you might have missed it: On Saturday, Germany sent anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, ending a three-decade-long streak of not sending arms to active war zones. By the next night, the European Union was dangling membership to Ukraine, and Switzerland—whose neutrality survived even World War II—had forsworn its neutrality to join in EU sanctions on Russia.

And by Monday, the United States reportedly sent Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to help the Ukrainian military target low-flying Russian aircraft and helicopters, a powerful weapon that the Pentagon has mostly kept on the shelf since arming the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. 

If that’s enough news to make your head spin, you’re not alone. The Ukraine crisis is shattering a series of long-held foreign-policy shibboleths in a frenzied blur of headlines, and U.S. and European officials are still struggling to figure out the implications. NATO countries are rearming to deal with the threat of a revanchist Russia after years of cajoling from the United States to spend more on defense. 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a budget that would increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP, in line with NATO’s long-held target. “This has the potential to change German foreign policy in the longer term,” Rachel Rizzo, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Europe Center, told SitRep in a call over the weekend. “I think the way the Germans see this is a threat to post-World War II stability.”

Meanwhile, Poland, inundated with a flood of more than 547,000 Ukrainian refugees crossing the border, has boosted defense spending to 3 percent, above the alliance’s threshold. 

And the changes aren’t just limited to Europe. The Biden administration is frantically rewriting its foreign-policy strategies to catch up with the news. The White House has also taken steps alongside European allies to put Russia in the grip of maximum-pressure-like sanctions that prevent Russia’s Central Bank from defending the ruble and the country’s oligarchs from accessing their assets, drawing rare bipartisan applause.

No one, not even Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, or the two leaders’ top spies, seems to know how this will end. But the United States is convinced that the gravitational shift in foreign policy will leave Russia in dire straits. “When the history of this era is written, Putin’s war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger,” Biden said in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night. 

The Senate this week confirmed two nominees to top jobs at the Pentagon: Melissa Dalton to be assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, and John Plumb to be assistant secretary of defense for space policy.

The former head of U.S. Southern Command, retired Adm. Craig Faller, has joined the Atlantic Council think tank as a distinguished fellow. 

Zoe Liu and Inu Manak have joined the Council on Foreign Relations as fellows for international economy and trade policy.

What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.

Jan. 6 committee. The congressional committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, said it had evidence that former President Donald Trump and some of his close allies engaged in “criminal conspiracy” and may have broken laws in their efforts to overturn the results of the presidential election based on false claims of voter fraud.

The lawmakers on the House committee, made up of mostly Democrats and several Republicans who have been criticized by members of their own party for participating in the committee’s investigation, suggested they would refer the matter to the Justice Department to determine whether the government should file charges against Trump. 

Back to the drawing board. The Biden administration’s National Defense Strategy, the Pentagon’s foreign-policy blueprint anticipated for release in early 2022, has been delayed amid the further Russian invasion of Ukraine, Politico reports. The China-centric strategy was almost ready for release but is now being rewritten to project a more global focus as Russia appears to be waging deadly siege warfare on populated centers in Ukraine.

That will sting. The United States delivered several hundred Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine this week, including more than 200 on Monday, NBC News first reported. The move sets a precedent for the U.S. military, which has thousands of Stinger missiles—which the Reagan administration gave to Afghan mujahideen to fight the Soviet Union in the 1980s but had long been kept under stiff export controls. 

Members of a Ukrainian territorial defense battalion set up a machine gun in a military redoubt in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Feb. 25.Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

Friday, March 4: Finland’s president, Sauli Niinisto, visits Washington to meet with Biden.

Sunday-Wednesday, March 6-9: Saudi Arabia hosts the World Defense Show expo for global defense industry groups.

Tuesday, March 8: Adm. Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command, and Gen. James Dickinson, head of U.S. Space Command, testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. 

“I still feel like I’ve been thrown into a parallel reality by some evil genius, and that my quiet normal life is out there somewhere.”

—Lesia Vasylenko, Ukrainian member of parliament, reflecting on her country’s week of war against the Russian invasion. 

Political crISIS. A new political scandal out of Texas, via Reuters: “Texas Republican quits U.S. House race, admits affair with former ISIS war bride.”