Dispatching Vice President Kamala Harris to Poland and Romania in response to the “difficult logistical challenges” involved in delivering Eastern European fighter jets to Ukraine shows that the administration’s short moment of laser-sharp focus on defeating Russia’s Vladimir Putin is over. Not even two weeks into his invasion of Ukraine, the Biden team appears to be back to its previous complacency and fecklessness.

Providing Kyiv with older, Russian-made fighter jets that Ukrainian pilots are already trained to fly would be an easy way to prevent struggling Russian air forces from asserting air superiority over Ukraine. After the initial public promise made by Josep Borrell, the European Union’s high representative for foreign and security policy, several Eastern European countries offered their planes while counting on the United States and NATO to both handle the logistics and fill in the gaps thus created in their own air defenses.

The Biden administration’s initial response was muddled and confusing. After days of mixed reports, the Polish government announced Tuesday that it was moving ahead with the plan, which would involve transferring the planes to a US base in Germany, from where they would be flown to Ukraine. That was followed by a cold reaction  from the Pentagon, whose spokesman called Polish plans “not tenable.”

The public humiliation of a key ally aside, the US reaction sends the worst possible signal to the world — namely that Poland is on its own, raising implicitly the question of NATO’s response to a hypothetical Russian retaliation against Polish targets, should Poland move ahead with the initiative.

More seriously, the shambolic nature of a debate that should have been handled far more discreetly by everyone involved — from EU and Polish officials to the Biden administration — underscores the key question of this war: Just what is the United States, and the West collectively, willing to do to stop Putin?

As of now, the Russian dictator’s quest to incorporate Ukraine into his demented dream of a “Russian world” is being held back primarily by the bravery of Ukrainian defense forces, not by the West. True, the lethal aid is helping, but this is not exactly the moment to pat ourselves on the back. And it is definitely not the right time to hand matters over to a hapless, gaffe-prone politician whose only interest is in elevating her lackluster profile through photo-ops with Ukrainian refugees.

The fate of Ukraine is not going to be decided by rhetorical displays of solidarity or by economic sanctions. Putin might not be able to turn Ukraine into a Kremlin-controlled satrapy, and he may face serious economic problems at home. But he is still perfectly capable of reducing Ukraine to rubble and fatally destabilizing NATO’s eastern flank — unless we stop him.

Meanwhile, the West’s approach has combined draconian sanctions on the Russian economy and lethal aid to Ukraine with the pretense of staying formally out of the conflict, so as to avoid Russian retaliation.

Yet if Putin seeks a conflict with NATO, as those concerned by the escalatory nature of donating planes to Ukraine warn, he can easily create a casus belli on the basis of any policies that the United States and its allies adopted over the past couple weeks.

He has not done so, despite lambasting “hostile moves” by Western powers. Much like in his younger years as a low-level street thug in Saint Petersburg, Putin is being “street tough” by preying on the weak while staying away from stronger opponents.

If this account of Putin’s thinking is correct, it is equivocation and half-heartedness that are provocative — not displays of decisive, credible action. It follows that we are in a position to do far more than just provide Ukraine with old fighter jets. We should be helping to recruit foreign volunteer pilots and ground crews; beefing up the country’s supply of drones; intensifying cyberattacks targeting Russia and Belarus; and training volunteer fighters, particularly among expatriated Ukrainians.

This is also the time to remind Putin that his military is nowhere near the size of the Soviet one. Stretched thin and overcommitted to Ukraine, Russian forces could be thrown off balance by a NATO contingent in Moldova at the request of the local government, which has good reasons to worry it’s next on Putin’s hit list. This is also a perfect time to conduct large naval exercises off Russia’s shores and to test Russia’s air defenses in much the same way that Putin has tested those in the United Kingdom, Denmark and Norway.

One surely hopes that the veep’s mission to Eastern Europe proves more successful than her previous international misadventures. Yet to believe that her trip is in any way an adequate substitute for policies that would reassure our allies and give Ukraine an upper hand in its defense against Russian aggression is deeply delusional.

Dalibor Rohac is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Twitter: @DaliborRohac.