As a 40-kilometre long Russian convoy of trucks, tanks, and other heavy artillery snaked its way toward Kyiv and a siege on the Ukraine capital, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered his #SOTU on Tuesday. 

Biden spent the first third of his speech on the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He didn’t exactly inspire, at one point in his speech getting tongue-tied and referring to the bravery of “Iranians” instead of Ukrainians fighting Russian forces. Fox News had fun with that one. 

Despite mostly positive reviews for delivering a forceful message to Putin, the truth is that for Americans there’s no rallying around Old Glory on this one. This is Europe’s war and that’s become more apparent in recent days as the fighting has dragged on and a U.S.-led NATO has rejected Ukraine’s repeated calls for a no-fly zone over the country. The risk of dragging the U.S. into a shooting war with a nuclear power led by a madman is too great. 

That’s partly because Biden presides over a divided U.S. whose citizens seem more concerned about rising gas prices than defending democracy. Despite at least one recent poll showing broad support in the U.S. for a more aggressive stand against Putin, Biden’s personal popularity is at an all-time low at home.

There are some 70,000 American troops already permanently stationed in Europe, about half of those in Germany. Some 2,700 have been deployed to Poland and Romania. Another 8,500 have been placed on “high alert” just in case Putin gets any bright ideas and casts his gaze further westward. A U.S. aircraft carrier is also taking part in training exercises near the conflict zone in the Mediterranean.

But it’s the European Union countries, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland that are doing the heavy lifting on sanctions against Russia. The U.S., which has yet to ban Russian imports of oil, is way down the list. Never before has such an international effort been marshalled to cut off one country’s economy from the rest of the world and its banking system. But make no mistake, with a severely weakened Biden in the U.S., the crisis in Ukraine is Europe’s to confront and no one knows that better than the U.S.’s NATO allies.

Germany and France have announced plans to increase military spending. Military supplies including Polish fighter jets, have been sent to Ukraine forces. Europe is in this for the long haul, moving to wean itself off Russian gas and oil imports it relies on to heat homes and power its businesses and connecting Ukraine and Moldova to Europe’s existing power grid. Efforts are also underway to bring countries like Sweden and Finland into NATO. 

Countries bordering Ukraine have fast-tracked the acceptance of more than one million refugees. Major companies, including BP and Shell, are pulling their investments out of Russia completely. And cargo ships carrying goods to Russia are being intercepted on the high seas. State-run Russia Television has also been blocked from the continent and bombarding the West with pro-Russian propaganda, which has been an important tool in destabilizing and winning sympathy for Putin’s war in the West.

The reaction to Russian aggression has been swift and it’s been thorough. Even close allies have condemned Russian aggression at the UN. For all intents and purposes, the war with Europe is already underway except that theonly ones firing against the Russians at this point are Ukrainians. 

European countries moved with a flourish to prepare for the possibility that Biden won’t have their backs—or be around in two years’ time to defend them as Donald Trump looks to make a return to the White House in 2024.

Biden has repeatedly stated that American troops will not be entering the fray unless a NATO ally is attacked for fear of giving Putin a pretext to avail himself of nukes. The result has been an escalation of Russian attacks on civilian targets, including the largest nuclear power plant in Europe. This is part of an effort by Putin to dig himself out of the hole he has dug and, according to some observers, create a moral dilemma to draw NATO into the conflict.

The Russian deployment has seemed plodding and unorganized. It’s not clear what the plan is anymore—if it’s to install a puppet government and only occupy southwestern parts of the country or to occupy the country completely. The latter seems unlikely and will only corner Russia into a drawn-out guerrilla war. Already Russia has reportedly suffered as many casualties in Ukraine as in Afghanistan, according to some estimates. The Kremlin has begun to acknowledge the dead, but in far lower numbers.

Putin said in a television address this week that things are going “according to plan”. That’s clearly not the case on the ground. But in the information war, Putin has managed to soften up enough Republicans stateside to keep Biden otherwise engaged on the home front.

From civil war over vaccine mandates and the pandemic to immigration on the southern border to gridlock on Capitol Hill, Biden is weighed down at home and facing the prospect of midterm elections in November cementing further gridlock in Washington. For Retrumplicans the war in Ukraine is another opportunity to play up the narrative that this never would have happened if Trump was still president. A handful of Republicans have even voted against condemning Putin’s aggression.

On the contrary, it was Trump who wanted to take the U.S. out of NATO. And it was Trump who held up the sale of military aid to Ukraine when he was in office as Putin marched into Crimea. Remember? It’s what led to grounds for Trump’s impeachment over allegations he sought information on the business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter in exchange for the aid. It continues to colour the view of the war stateside among Trump Republicans.

Biden has seemed weirdly aloof at times during the Ukraine crisis. Maybe he knows something we don’t. Or maybe he has an asset in the Kremlin. The U.S. actually warned the world that Putin was planning an invasion months ago and how it would unfold. It shared that intelligence with its allies. 

With Trump in the White House, it’s safe to say there would be no sanctions. There would be no financial constraints placed on Russia. It would be carte blanche for Putin to pursue his plan for “Great Russia,” if that’s still the plan. 

We’re entering a new phase in the war. It could be weeks before Russia controls the capital Kyiv and installs a government. Ukrainians, of course, won’t stand for it. 

If there’s anything predictable about Putin it’s his unpredictability. As sanctions bite in the coming weeks, they could become a provocation for Putin just as easily as they could become a reason for Putin to return to peace talks.

The added layer of danger is Putin himself. He has lost the plot. The stated goal to “de-Nazify” Ukraine doesn’t hold. Neither does the stated moral justification to protect the 17 percent of Ukraine that claims Russian ethnicity.

The more sideways things go for Russia, the more the chances are that Putin will do something rash. Some Kremlin observers suggest he’s desperate. That the only thing he has left in his bag of tricks now is to threaten nukes. It’s a sign of weakness, they say.

If that’s so then at some point, the world will have to call his bluff to end the madness. To what extent the U.S. will be there is another question.