Atlantic Council Believes Zelenskyy Will Stop Biden from Giving in to Russia

Dec. 21, 2022 (EIRNS)—Today, the Atlantic Council posted a forecast of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s intentions during his visit to Washington, D.C. This is composed of brief statements from seven different “experts” presenting their views on what the war against Russian President Vladimir Putin, which is how they view it, requires. In summary, they are optimistic that the supposedly wildly popular Zelenskyy will impress Biden with his strength and dissuade him from being at all cautious in the matter of destroying Putin, any nuclear confrontation be damned.

Ian Brzezinski, Zbigniew’s son, agrees with Zelenskyy that Patriot air-defense systems are fine and good, but “Kiev also seeks offensive capabilities to push Russian forces off of Ukraine’s territory—tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, aircraft, and longer-range artillery and missiles.” Zelenskyy’s task, this deranged former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense insists, is to “convince Washington to shed its exaggerated fear that a swift Ukrainian victory would cause Russia to escalate the war with nuclear weapons.”

And then there is Matthew Kroenig, who hails Zelenskyy as “the Winston Churchill of our time,” endorsing Ukraine’s demand that it be freed up to carry the war into Russian territory. In Kroenig’s words: “At the White House, Zelenskyy will attempt to convince Biden that he should lift arbitrary restrictions on weapons sales and give Kiev the weapons it needs to shoot the archer, not just the arrows.”

John Herbst applauds the decision to provide Zelenskyy with Patriot weapons systems, but argues that Zelenskyy wants the Biden administration

“to publicly express its support for a Ukrainian victory in this war and to provide the more advanced weapons systems—accurate artillery and missiles with a range up to 300 kilometers (186 miles), tanks, and fighter jets—that would enable Ukraine to take back all of its territory more quickly.”

He concludes his argument, however, fearing that “unfortunately, hesitation in the White House makes that outcome, which would serve American interests, a long shot.”

Daniel Fried writes that Zelenskyy has demonstrated by coming to the U.S. that it is the leader of the free world that can ram through an agreement on the recommended $45 billion budget increase for Ukraine. “Like Churchill,” Fried writes, Zelenskyy knows that some in the U.S., the “neo-isolationists, America-firsters, or ‘realists’ ” on both right and left, “reject the Biden administration’s commitment to Ukraine and to the Free World generally,” and might be willing “to force Ukraine to surrender people and land to Russia.” Zelenskyy, he asserts, is coming like “Winston Churchill did in 1940, as Adolf Hitler battered Britain,” to prevent that.

Melinda Harding is also sure that Zelenskyy is “coming to defuse the problem at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The White House remains convinced that Ukraine can’t win and that sending long-range missiles and planes would escalate the conflict. Zelenskyy is coming to change minds and burst the myth of these self-created limitations.”

Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian Defense Minister, heralds this “first visit after February 24 to the United States ... necessary after the U.S. midterm elections and just before Christmas.” Plans will be made for 2023, a year Zagorodnyuk hopes “may mark the war’s end, with Ukraine able to push Russian occupants out of its territory. It will also be a year of commencing legal trials against Putin and his government. Thus, next year’s events may seriously damage and even end Putin’s regime.”

Peter Dickinson writes of Zelenskyy’s “eagerness to win over skeptics within the Republican Party ... and also send a powerful message to Ukraine’s other allies and to Russia” that the U.S. will not waver in its support even as protracted fighting continues in 2023. “This is crucial at a time when the Kremlin hopes to secure a ceasefire in order to rearm and is looking for signs that the West may be ready to compromise,” he insists. “Ukrainian leaders understand the importance of demonstrating to Moscow that such hopes are futile. Nothing could make this clearer than the fanfare of an official visit to the United States.”

We can adduce from the Atlantic Council’s open commitment to goading the sitting President of the United States into unnecessary combat with the next-in-line nuclear power, that the British Empire fanatics (as we must conclude from their embrace of Winston Churchill) are as willing to fight to the last American as to the last Ukrainian.