U.S. President Joe Biden may send U.S. troops and military hardware to NATO countries bordering Ukraine as a show of force in response to a Russian military build-up on Ukraine’s borders, according to a New York Times report. Meanwhile, a Washington Post report said that Biden is also considering a series of technology sanctions that would further cripple Russia’s economy should the Kremlin decide to invade Ukraine.
The two reports came after President Biden spent a weekend with top advisors at his presidential retreat at Camp David addressing the Ukraine crisis, and as Russian troops continued to mass at Ukraine’s eastern frontier, including for joint military exercises in Belarus, whose border is less than two hours drive from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
The New York Times report quoted Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in an interview on the U.S. news program “Face the Nation,” in which he underscored the U.S. commitment to continue diplomatic efforts to resolve the impasse with Russia. He said that strengthening defenses and deterrence were also important.
“NATO itself will continue to be reinforced in a significant way if Russia commits renewed acts of aggression. All of that is on the table,“
Blinken explained.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that other moves may include flyovers by U.S. bombers in NATO’s airspace and U.S. naval movements into the Black Sea, according to NBC News.
The announcements came as the U.S. State Department ordered the voluntary evacuation of non-essential personnel and the mandatory evacuation of all family members from its Embassy in Kyiv.
The Biden administration also announced that it was considering additional sanctions that would put significant controls on the export of U.S. technology to Russia. The action would come under the guise of the “direct product rule,” which the U.S. previously utilized to ban the use of equipment produced by Huawei, the Chinese tech giant. The U.S. controls most of the world’s semiconductor market.
The export controls would go further than the current U.S. financial sanction imposed on Russia. Today, semiconductors are an essential component of most electronic devices. Export controls would not only make it difficult for Russians to continue to have access to a wide range of technology, including the popular Apple iPhone, but would also impact Russia’s longer-term goal of developing its own tech sector, crippling Russia’s ability to obtain technology for everything from artificial intelligence and quantum computing to civilian aerospace.
