EDITORIAL: Lame-duck Biden makes a hot spot hotter

The Biden administration has failed to distinguish itself on the world stage over the past three years. The president is apparently eager to keep that lamentable record intact as he leaves the Oval Office.

From the botched Afghanistan withdrawal to the failed appeasement of Iran’s mullahs, from the tepid support for Israel in its battle against murderous terrorists to the failure to contain Russia’s Vladimir Putin, President Joe Biden and his foreign policy team have struggled to assert American power in the name of deterrence. After inheriting a relatively calm international landscape in 2021, Mr. Biden leaves with several volatile hot spots threatening to explode into wider conflict.

One would think Mr. Biden would tread lightly on the way out the door. Instead, he has escalated tensions, particularly in the Ukraine-Russia war by giving the OK for Ukraine to use U.S. long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia. Putin responded predictably, by threatening Europe and the United States and firing ballistic missiles into Ukraine for the first time.

“Particularly jarring,” writes James Freeman of The Wall Street Journal, “is the idea of a president ostensibly changing his mind on something as momentous as enabling Ukrainian missile attacks inside Russia while the public wonders if he’s even competent enough to explain the decision.”

Indeed, the timing of the flip-flop is bizarre. Whether it is wise for Mr. Biden to have taken the handcuffs off Ukraine should be a matter of intense debate, but why make the move after 1,000 days and just weeks before Donald Trump is set to take office? “We’ve got two months to go in this administration,” noted John Ullyot, a former National Security Council spokesman, told the Journal. “President Trump has said he is going to ramp this war down. Why are we provoking the Russians, and then having a tit-for-tat?”

The Associated Press reported that Mr. Biden offered little explanation for his reversal and instead “left it to allies Emmanuel Macron of France and Justin Trudeau of Canada to offer public explanations of his critical decision to loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s use of longer-range American weapons in its war with Russia.”

Aiding Ukraine in its quest to fight off Russian aggression is a just cause. But, as Mr. Freeman points out, “there’s a reason the Biden administration has long sought to help Ukraine defend itself while also seeking to avoid being drawn into a conflict with Russia. It’s the same reason that Ronald Reagan sought to liberate the captive peoples of the Soviet Empire while also taking great care to avoid direct conflict with Moscow. The results could be catastrophic.”

Mr. Trump has been vague about his plans for brokering an end to the conflict, and it’s unclear how the Biden administration’s decision will affect the incoming president’s negotiating position. But the fact that Mr. Biden waited until after an election loss to unveil this crucial policy change represents another stain on the president’s foreign policy record.

Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates famously wrote in his memoirs that he believes Mr. Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” Can there now be any doubt?