As tragic reports of war and suffering in Ukraine flood our screens, one thing is clear: Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) failed in his job of counseling President Biden on this crisis.
As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Menendez had President Biden’s ear on foreign policy. He should have used his position to highlight the urgency of the Ukraine situation and warn President Biden that Putin’s threats and actions were incredibly serious.
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Instead, Menendez didn’t advocate hard enough and could not effectively convince the Biden Administration to act sooner and with purpose. For Senator Menendez, this is a pattern in his official life and his personal life. Senator Menendez is the Chairman of one of the most powerful and important Senate Committees, but with everything else that he touches, he leads from behind and is incapable of processing real time facts, charting a course and leading the execution of that course.
During a press conference on February 24, President Biden admitted he knew Russia’s attack was coming, saying “This is a premeditated attack. Vladimir Putin has been planning this for months, as I’ve been — as we’ve been saying all along.” If President Biden knew this, Senator Menendez likely had similar intelligence. It’s disgraceful that he didn’t pressure the president to act swiftly and forcefully to stop a tyrant and to project American values to a despot.
Putin has more nuclear weapons than any other nation. Everyone wants to avoid a nuclear war, but we also can’t let Putin abuse that goodwill and do as he pleases. Putin has also weaponized civilian nuclear reactors against the world by attacking the largest nuclear reactor in Europe, potentially creating radioactive fallout that may affect every person in Europe and beyond. That’s why we should have stopped his aggression before war commenced. Meanwhile, President Biden did nothing and only after several stalls did Senator Menendez recently finalize sanctions on Russia.
After dragging his feet for weeks, President Biden has only now decided to suspend normal trade relations on Russian goods and to ban all purchasing of Russian oil and energy products. These are sanctions that should have been imposed from the start to deter Russia, especially as the Russian government’s oil and gas sales made up 36% of its entire budget last year.
President Biden had months to prepare American energy production to keep up with demand in a Russian energy boycott. His response should have been an increase in our domestic oil production, but instead he said in his State of the Union address that we should move away from nonrenewable sources of energy completely.
I’m not sure what world he’s living in, but most sources say that’s not possible until at least 2050. President Biden and Senator Menendez have ignored economic reality, scientific reality, energy reality, and Putin reality, resulting in the reality of Ukrainians dying, over 2.8 million refugees in Europe threatened, and America threatened as well.
Now, because of Senator Menendez and President Biden’s inaction and profound inability to understand reality, the situation in Ukraine is becoming more desperate by the hour. Following Russia’s invasion, millions of Ukrainians have fled as refugees, weapons are being handed out to any Ukrainian willing to fight, and the government is asking for foreign volunteers to aid in defense.
On a global scale, the other consequence of their inaction is how it will affect diplomatic relations with other countries that have nuclear weapons. In the 1990s Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for the U.S., U.K. and Russia guaranteeing its safety. Another broken promise by a Democrat President. Now that Russia has betrayed that trust, President Biden’s and Senator Menendez’s abandonment of Ukraine destroys our credibility with other countries that we want to denuclearize, like Iran and North Korea. If Russia can get away with it unhindered, why not them?
In international relations there are good actors and bad actors. Realism means looking at the playing field and seeing things as they are—not through rose-colored glasses and certainly not through the distorted world and American vision of the woke left who President Biden and Senator Menendez defer to on just about everything.
President Biden and Senator Menendez knew this would happen but were too weak and disorganized to even attempt to prevent it. Their defeatist attitude and glaring incompetence disqualify them from leading our great nation. America and our allies depend on us to have a foreign policy that promotes democracy, projects American values, champions strength, and crushes injustice.
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Mayor Mario M. Kranjac is the Mayor of Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. He is the son of immigrants, a venture capitalist, corporate attorney, husband and father.
