The Biden doctrine: “As long as it takes,” or “No matter how many die”

WSWS Andre Damon, David North, 14 July 23

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden addressed a raucous mob of xenophobic Lithuanian nationalists in Vilnius following the conclusion of a NATO summit that pledged to massively expand military spending in preparation for global war.

Biden’s diatribe addressed the same themes as a speech he delivered last year in Warsaw, Poland, in which he pledged to “fight” for “years and decades to come.” Back in 2022, his unscripted rant compelled White House officials to publicly walk back the president’s remarks. But now his advisers no longer see the need to reinterpret and modify Biden’s bellicose statements. What he says about US war aims are not dementia-induced errors but actual declarations of the policies of his administration.

Speaking in Vilnius, Biden declared, “Our commitment to Ukraine will not weaken. We will stand for liberty and freedom today, tomorrow, and for as long as it takes.”

The length of a war is invariably related to the toll in human life. The longer a war continues, the greater the number of casualties and deaths, of both soldiers and civilians.

Therefore, when Biden proclaims once again that his administration and NATO will supply money and arms “as long as it takes” to bring about the defeat of Russia, what he is really saying is that the war will continue regardless of the cost in human lives.

This is the barbaric essence of what can be called the Biden Doctrine: “No matter how long it takes or how many die.”…………………………………………………………….

Just last week, Biden announced that he would send cluster munitions to Ukraine, which are banned by over 100 countries because they kill and maim civilians for decades after conflicts end.

Biden made a garbled reference to Lithuania’s myth-based narrative of struggle against tyranny, and he boasted of the United States’ commitment to its freedom. But what Biden left out of his rambling history lecture was the intense collaboration of Lithuanian nationalists with Nazi Germany and direct participation in the mass murder of virtually the entire Jewish population of the country.

During the three-year Nazi occupation of Lithuania, 95 percent of the country’s Jewish population was exterminated—195,000 men, women and children were systematically killed.

This reality gave an ominous tone to Biden’s declaration that “the bonds between Lithuanian and the American people have never faltered,” praising Lithuanian exiles who traveled to the United States.

What Biden did not mention, however, is that two of the Lithuanian immigrants welcomed by the United States happened to be the individuals most responsible for the Holocaust in that country.

Aleksandras Lileikis, the chief of the Lithuanian Security Police in Vilnius during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania and a perpetrator of the Holocaust, was given safe passage to the United States and was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency. His deputy, Kazys Gimžauskas, also emigrated to the United States, as well as three of his subordinates.

Neither of the two men saw a day of jail time for their participation in the Holocaust.

…………… In voting for the expansion of NATO in 1998, Biden proclaimed “the beginning of another 50 years of peace.” In reality, the United States was deliberately setting the stage for the type of fratricidal war that has erupted in Ukraine, with the aim of drawing Russia into wars on its borders and bleeding it white…………. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/07/14/pers-j14.html