{"id":1422740,"date":"2022-04-06T22:14:50","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T02:14:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1422740"},"modified":"2022-04-06T22:14:53","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T02:14:53","slug":"defense-secretary-admits-biden-administrations-goal-was-to-deter-putin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/defense-secretary-admits-biden-administrations-goal-was-to-deter-putin\/","title":{"rendered":"Defense Secretary Admits Biden Administration&#039;s Goal Was to Deter Putin"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdefense-secretary-admits-biden-administrations-goal-was-to-deter-putin%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1422740&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p class=\"subheading\">Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday admitted during a House hearing under questioning from a Republican lawmaker that one of the Biden administration\u2019s goals was to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine.<\/p>\n<p>During a House Armed Services Committee hearing, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) asked if Austin had shared the goal of European Command Commander Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters \u2014 who recently testified to the committee \u2014 on deterring Putin from invasion, to which Austin responded:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"D-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B1\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"gmxrevmore\" class=\"H\"><\/figure>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Well, I hope General Wolters shared my goals, since I\u2019m the Secretary of Defense. And my \u2014 my objectives were to, number one, defend this nation; number two, make sure that we did everything possible to unify and defend NATO if required. Number three, flow security force assistance to \u2014 to Ukraine.\u00a0And then number four, manage escalation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Gallagher asked, \u201cSo the goal was not to deter Putin from invading Ukraine?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Austin responded, \u201cI\u2019ve just laid out what my goals were, and certainly \u2013,\u201d before Gallagher noted, \u201cWhich did not include deterring Putin from visiting Ukraine, unless I missed it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Austin then admitted it was not only a goal to deter Putin, but admitted that deterrence was likely to fail unless forces were put on the ground and that the administration had taken that measure of deterrence off the table early on.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B2\" class=\"a8d\"><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cWell, it was an objective of the government to deter Putin, but as General Milley described, it\u2019s very difficult to do unless you put forces on the ground, and that\u2019s a decision that we made early in the effort here, that we\u2019re not going to put forces in Ukraine to fight Russia,\u201d Austin said.<\/p>\n<p>Gallagher then pressed\u00a0Austin on whether there was anything that could have been done to deter Putin.<\/p>\n<p>Austin admitted if the U.S. had put troops into Ukraine, it might have deterred Putin, but the administration did not want to do that.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs General Milley pointed out, if we put forces into Ukraine to fight Putin, this would be a different story. But we made a decision that we weren\u2019t going to do that, and we made the decision for the right reason. And I support those decisions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n[embedded content]\n<figure id=\"M-ROS-B3\" class=\"a8d adSo\"><\/figure>\n<p>President Joe Biden recently denied that the threat of imposing sanctions was meant to deter Putin, despite Biden and half a dozen Biden administration officials saqying sanctions were meant to do exactly that, as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.breitbart.com\/politics\/2022\/03\/28\/biden-claims-sanctions-never-meant-deter-putin\/\">reported by Breitbart News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Former senior Trump administration official Nadia Schadlow, currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, explained in a recent interview that while not sending U.S. troops to Ukraine may be the right policy decision, one does not want to advertise that to the adversary, because it undercuts the effectiveness of deterrence.<\/p>\n<p>Explaining that deterrence requires an expression of will as well as capability, Schadlow said in a March 29 interview:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Early on in this crisis, the White House failed to really articulate our will\u2026That does not mean we would actually deploy troops to Ukraine. There\u2019s a difference. But saying what we won\u2019t do all the time since December, saying, \u2018We will not do this, we will not do that,\u2019 sort of undercut the value of deterrence.<\/p>\n<p>December, January, February, constant statements of what we would not do, which sends the wrong signal at that time to Putin.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>She added, \u201cThese might be the right policies\u2026but you do not want to broadcast to your adversaries your thinking and your options, you want to create complexity for the adversary. You want to keep your options open.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Gallagher said in a statement to Breitbart News on Wednesday, \u201cYesterday\u2019s hearing confirmed what I argued in the months leading up to the Russian invasion: only American hard power on the ground in Ukraine could deter Vladimir Putin from launching his barbaric invasion.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAfter all, putting American hard power in our adversaries\u2019 path significantly raises the costs of escalation and makes our enemies think twice about aggression. Instead, the Biden administration took options off the table and relied on the threat of sanctions to deter Putin. The results were as predictable as they were tragic,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Follow Breitbart News\u2019s Kristina Wong on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/kristina_wong\">Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kristinawongreporting\">Facebook<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday admitted during a House hearing under questioning from a Republican lawmaker that one of the Biden administration\u2019s goals was to deter Russian President Vladimir<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1422740","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422740","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1422740"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1422740\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1422740"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1422740"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1422740"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}