MUNICH — President Biden and his top aides acknowledge they are risking American credibility as they constantly renew the alarm that Russia is only “several days” away from triggering an unprovoked land war in Europe that could kill tens of thousands of Ukrainians in its opening hours, and plunge the world back into something resembling the Cold War.
But Mr. Biden’s aides say they are willing to take that risk.
They would rather be accused of hyperbole and fearmongering than be proven right, they say, if that’s what it takes to deter Russian President Vladimir V. Putin from pursuing an invasion that they worry will not stop at Ukraine’s borders.
“If Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine, then we will be relieved that Russia changed course and proved our predictions wrong,’’ Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at the United Nations Security Council on Thursday morning, in a speech that Mr. Biden had asked him to give only hours before. “That would be a far better outcome than the course we are currently on. And we will gladly accept any criticism that anyone directs at us.’’
“I am here today not to start a war, but to prevent one,’’ he declared, an oblique reference to Colin L. Powell’s famous but false case, also made to the United Nations, about why the United States and its allies had to disarm Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Biden and Mr. Blinken make no secret of their suspicion that their increasingly desperate-sounding, last-ditch efforts to deter calamity will likely fail. Their pessimism was reinforced Thursday by a series of escalations. Russian-backed forces in the Donbas region appeared responsible for shelling a school, and later claimed they had come under fire from Ukrainian forces, exactly the kind of incident Mr. Blinken warned might be used as a pretext to justify an invasion.
Mr. Biden will hold a phone call Friday afternoon with trans-Atlantic leaders about Russia’s buildup of military troops on the border of Ukraine and continued efforts to pursue deterrence and diplomacy.
Russia acknowledged on Thursday having expelled the No. 2 diplomat in the American embassy in Moscow, and sent Washington a contradictory-sounding note in which it mocked the claims that it was planning to invade. It said no such action was being planned, and then warned that it would use “measures of a “military-technical character” if the West did not meet its security demands with “legally binding guarantees.” (It is not entirely clear what “military-technical” means to Mr. Putin, but officials in Washington speculate it could encompass everything from cyberweapons to relocating nuclear weapons closer to Western Europe or the United States.)
While Mr. Biden insisted that “every indication we have is they’re prepared to go into Ukraine,’’ a growing number of diplomats and leaders pouring into Munich for an annual security conference said they thought the best they could hope for was no invasion — but a long siege of Ukraine. Under that scenario, Mr. Putin might do everything short of sending his troops over the border — cyberattacks, assassinations, coup plots, cutting off trade — in hopes of toppling the government without triggering sanctions.
“My sense is that he will avoid an overt cross of the border with Russian troops and will aim for options short of that,’’ Douglas Lute, a former deputy national security adviser and former U.S. ambassador to NATO, said Thursday.
“He enjoys this position,’’ Mr. Lute said. “Everyone’s paying attention to him, like they haven’t in years. And he feels in control.”
That is all taking place on the surface. Behind the scenes, Mr. Biden’s aides are searching Mr. Putin’s comments for evidence that he is sensing that he may have overplayed his hand — that his massing of troops has managed to unify the normally fractious 30 nations that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
Mr. Putin has reinvigorated an alliance that spent years confused about its purpose once it lost the adversary it was formed to contain, the Soviet Union. Now, containment is back. And European allies have largely, if reluctantly, lined up behind a sanctions plan that would cut off technology to Russian industry and separate its top banks from the world financial markets.
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