Trump's shadow lurks over Biden's support for Ukraine - POLITICO

It’s also created one of the sharpest policy contrasts yet between Biden and his predecessor.Trying to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin at bay without escalating the standoff into World War III, Biden has pushed allies to hold together, resisted calls for more direct confrontation, all while attempting to manage the economic impacts back home.The moment has showcased his pledge to reset America’s relationship with the world after four tumultuous years of former President Donald Trump — and heightened his recurring call for democracies to rally together to confront rising autocracies.“These are complicated calculations but the overall priority is that Ukraine needs to prevail,” said William Taylor, who was ambassador and acting ambassador to Ukraine under three presidents. Whereas Trump would openly boast about inflicting wide-scale damage on countries — declaring at a U.N. speech that he’d “totally destroy” North Korea and recently telling golfer John Daly that he threatened Putin with “hitting Moscow” — Biden has ruled out the use of American forces on the ground in Ukraine, or the establishing of a no-fly zone, as either of those measures risked a confrontation with the Russian military and a battle between two nuclear powers.Retired Lt. Col. But White House aides have also said that Biden has laid down such clear markers as a means to exhort allies to help with everything they can while also being reassured that the U.S. would not provoke the conflict further into Europe.“The Biden administration has instinctively and intelligently realized that the NATO alliance would be their smartest decision,” said James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO. Biden’s focus on alliances has been the backbone of the nation’s response to Putin, Taylor said.“The commitment the Biden administration has made to the United States’ allies stands in stark contrast to the apparent lack of commitment from the previous administration,” said Taylor, who also served under Presidents George W. Stavridis, who spent four years as the NATO commander in Europe, said Putin also likely misjudged the United States’ willingness to engage on the world stage after two years of being battered and distracted by Covid-19 while still grappling with the divisions that Trump fostered.“The chaos that Trump helped create, the divisiveness of his term, made it seem to Putin that America was broken and couldn’t respond like it has,” Stavridis said.While Republicans have attacked Biden for not confronting Putin more directly, such as by declining to help get old Soviet-era jets to Ukraine, they also have largely ignored how portions of their party warmed to Putin during Trump’s term.