The U.S. appears poised to send troops to Eastern Europe to defend Ukraine’s “territorial integrity,” while ignoring America’s territorial integrity.
The Biden administration has placed up to 8,500 troops on high alert as Russia openly ponders an invasion of Ukraine. The White House has repeatedly warned that a Russia invasion could be imminent and that the U.S. has a sacred obligation to protect Ukraine, even though they are not a NATO ally. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that Joe Biden “reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity” during a recent phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Psaki has repeatedly dismissed the carnage that has taken place at our southern border since Biden took office. She refuses to call the situation a crisis while claiming that Americans are much more focused on the state of the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic, ignoring the major impact the border crisis has had on both.
The Biden administration has spent over a year downplaying or even ignoring the crisis at our southern border, but has suddenly changed their tune now that a country halfway across the world is having its borders threatened. Now, sovereignty and territorial integrity are all the rage in Washington, D.C.
“It goes to a very fundamental principle of all nations,” White House Deputy National Security Adviser Jonathan Finer said in a recent television interview. “Our borders should be inviolate, that our sovereignty should be respected.”
“We have been clear and consistent for quite some time that we respect the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine and we expect that Russia would do the same,” Kamala Harris said.
This is the kind of rhetoric that Americans should expect from our leaders about our borders and our sovereignty, not the borders and sovereignty of a nation thousands of miles away. The same administration that is now so concerned about sovereignty and territorial integrity allowed nearly two million illegal aliens to cross the U.S. border in its first year in office. This is the same administration that is resettling illegal aliens into the U.S., in broad daylight. This is the same administration filled with people who are prepared to demand that Americans spill their blood and treasure for the sovereignty of Ukraine, but they recoil at using the military to protect our own sovereignty.
Democrats revolted in 2018 when former President Donald Trump sent 5,800 troops to protect the U.S. southern border, nearly 3,000 fewer troops than the Biden administration appears poised to send halfway across the world to defend Ukraine’s borders. At the time, a group of Democratic senators, including Kamala Harris, wrote angrily to the Trump administration and accused the administration of politicizing the military. Now, Democrats in Congress are preparing a massive spending bill to help defend Ukraine’s borders after having previously shut down the government for the longest period in history in order to deny the Trump administration money to secure the border. The stated goal of Democrats’ new legislation is to “bolster support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders.”
As Biden and his allies in Congress wag the dog over Ukraine, more evidence of the administration’s malfeasance at the border is coming to light. Earlier this month, leaked footage surfaced of illegal aliens reportedly being unloaded at an airport in New York. This comes months after the White House acknowledged that they had been flying underage illegal aliens into New York through nighttime flights.
The U.S. is facing the most dire situation in history at our border due to the policies of the Biden administration, yet the White House is now trying to gin up support for conflict with another nuclear power over the border of a country halfway across the world. The best way for Biden to improve his approval ratings is to take action to address the crisis at our border, not Ukraine’s. Unfortunately, it looks like Biden and his administration are far more focused on the latter than the former.
William J. Davis is a communications associate for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.