US Media Accuses Biden of Being Soft on Moscow Amid GOP Furor Over Access to Central Asian Bases

On Monday, senior House and Senate Republicans asked the Biden administration to comment on media reporting that Washington had enquired with Moscow on the possibility of accessing Russian military installations in Central Asia to keep an eye on the situation in Afghanistan. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin dismissed the reports at a hearing Tuesday.

Despite promises on the campaign trail and the first months of his presidency to “get tough on Russia”, Joe Biden’s policies toward Moscow have proven disappointingly soft, with the administration looking to “ignore” the country instead of confronting it, National Review contributor Jim Geraghty has suggested.

In a piece commenting on reports that Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley had raised the subject of the possible use of Russian military bases in Central Asia by the Pentagon to monitor terror threats in Afghanistan during Milley’s recent talks with Russian Chief of General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Geraghty argued that while such a deployment might be advantageous geographically, it would also “make US counterterrorism operations in the region dependent upon Russian cooperation.”

“Vladimir Putin or his successor would be able to pull the plug at any time, giving him enormous leverage over America’s ability to respond to terrorist threats in Afghanistan and the surrounding region. Running US counterterrorism from Russian bases also seems like a really good way to ensure that Russian intelligence knows everything that the US is doing on those bases,” the columnist suggested.

Geraghty’s concerns seem like a moot point. According to the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Milley’s meeting with Gerasimov, the Russian commander’s reaction to the bases idea was “noncommittal”. Last month, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov stressed that Moscow could not see “how any form of US military presence in Central Asia might enhance the security of the countries involved and/or of their neighbours,” and added that such a deployment “would definitely not be in the interests of Russia”.

In testimony before the Senate on the matter on Tuesday, Pentagon Chief Lloyd Austin “assured” lawmakers “that we are not seeking Russia’s permission to do anything.”

Bases Anger

Republicans have nevertheless piled on the US president over reporting on the bases, with GOP lawmakers from the House and Senate armed services and foreign affairs committees demanding an “immediate briefing” from the White House over “any negotiations, agreements, arrangements, proposals or other coordination on counterterrorism in South and Central Asia involving the Biden administration as well as [the] Russian government and military.”

“Russia,” ranking Republican Senate Armed Services Committee member James Inhofe alleged, “is more concerned with collecting intelligence on the US and our allies than it is sharing information on terrorist threats.” The senator and his colleagues suggested that military cooperation between Russia and the US related to Afghanistan might be illegal, and was “not the path to the ‘stable and predictable’ relationship with Russia the Biden administration claims it wants.”

Policy Turnabout

In his article, Geraghty complained that the reported discussions of Russian-US cooperation in Afghanistan were just one example of a growing trend in the Biden administration in failing to get “tough on” the country – something Joe Biden promised to do ahead of the 2020 election and in his first months in office.

“On the campaign trail, Joe Biden pledged to get tough with Russia, boasting that he had ‘served as a founding member of a Trans-Atlantic Commission on Election Integrity to fight back against Russia’s attacks on Western democracies’. Shortly after taking office, Biden called Vladimir Putin and, in the White House’s characterization, ‘made clear that the United States will act firmly in defence of its national interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies’. And in March, Biden promised Putin ‘will pay a price’ for Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Geraghty recalled.

Relations between Washington and Moscow under Biden hit their low point in April, with Russia recalling its ambassador to the United States for consultations in the wake of a diplomatic scandal sparked by Biden’s agreement with a journalist’s characterization of Putin as a “killer” with no soul. The rift was exacerbated further when Washington slapped Russia with a new round of sanctions, targeting the country’s sovereign debt and introducing other financial and banking sector restrictions on the Eurasian nation.

In the months since, and particularly after the June summit in Geneva between Putin and Biden, relations saw a gradual thaw, with the two leaders apparently establishing a personal rapport with one another and Biden even getting into a tussle with CNN after being pressed on “changing Putin’s behaviour.” Putin, meanwhile, told reporters that the media’s image of Biden as a tired old man had “nothing to do with reality.”

Geraghty suggested that on some fronts, Biden’s Russia policy has been one of compromise, rather than confrontation, with the administration demonstrating “an eagerness to soothe tensions with Putin.”

“Biden almost immediately accepted Putin’s offer to extend the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty for five years, dropped US opposition to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline making Europe more dependent upon Russian energy exports, declined to pursue Putin’s personal wealth through sanctions, increased US imports of Russian oil, and canceled the Keystone Pipeline,” the columnist suggested.

Geraghty also pointed out that Biden did not mention Russia at all during last week’s address to the United Nations, apart from one sentence mentioning the need to defend LGBTQI rights in Chechnya. The correspondent argued that this was an indication that the administration has decided to try to just ignore Russia. But “ignoring Russia does not constitute getting tough with Putin!” the journalist stressed.

Republicans’ criticism of Biden comes after years of attacks by Democrats and media on former president Donald Trump accusing him of being a ‘Russian agent’ or ‘colluding’ with the Kremlin to win the 2016 election. During his four years in office, Trump demonstratively approved a series of policies hostile to Moscow –ranging from sanctions on Nord Stream 2 to the expulsion of diplomats, the closure of consulates, and a NATO buildup on Russia’s borders, even as CNN kept a running tally of the number of times the president was supposedly “soft on Russia.”