Are We Willing to Sanction Russian Energy or Just Wear Ukrainian Flag Pins?

BUCK: Clay, part of last night’s State of the Union address, I think, analysis of it has to be whether we’re looking at the situation in Ukraine, how much of the Biden administration’s posturing up to this point is driven by principles and human rights concerns, and how much of the decision-making is really being pushed by the fact that we have a high energy prices already in this country.

It’s easier to talk tough on this than it is to take… Even I’m talking purely economic front right now, for everybody. We’re not even discussing for the time being — we will, but we’re not even discussing in this moment of — military action on behalf of the Ukrainians against the Russians. I think there’s still enough of an understanding that that is going near absolute catastrophe, that is going right up to the edge of the abyss.

So here, for example, when Biden was talking about all of this last night, Clay, it seems to me that there’s a recognition that the American people will not go all the way on this issue, and that’s why you’ve got a high chance, I’d say — a high chance — that we try to stay where we are for some period of time here. We try to stay at this level of involvement. What do you think, though, would turn the corner on this? What would change the sense of what Biden and the administration are willing to do from a U.S. perspective in Ukraine?

CLAY: I think the challenge that is so profound here is we have allowed Russian oil and gas industries to become so incredibly powerful. I was reading this morning in the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and don’t miss what’s going on here. As there has become this climate sensitivity, this Green New Deal, this “America and the world is gonna cease to exist because of global warming,” there has been a decision to downgrade our own production of oil and gas.

The same thing has happened simultaneously in Europe. And don’t mistake what’s occurring when that happens. Oil and gas demand is not disappearing. When we decide to ratchet back our production of oil and gas, we are allowing Vladimir Putins of the world, the Mideast authoritarians of the world to have more power. So this, to me, is a calculated example of how our misguided, in my opinion, focus on global warming and climate change and everything else is destroying our ability to create energy independence for ourselves.

And the absence of us producing that oil and gas, that energy production, allows these autocrats, these communist dictators — these people who are, frankly, not in alliance with American values or in global democracy — to rise up and grab more power. And that’s the underlying story here, Buck. And the reality is, are we willing — and I think it’s such an interesting question.

Are we willing to bear the increased cost of actually sanctioning Russia such that their oil and gas is not distributed to Europe and it’s not distributed to the United States, and we might have pay — let’s be honest — a dollar or more a gallon for gas? That’s the reality. Or are we going to say, “Oh, we’re happy going in one foot instead of both feet into this sanction world.”

BUCK: He’s Representative Steve Scalise saying that Biden needs to stop financing Putin’s war.

CLAY: Yeah.

SCALISE: President Biden needs to stop financing Putin’s war with Russian oil because he shut off the spigots of American energy. Its having devastating impacts on the peoples of Ukraine, but it’s putting billions of dollars in Putin’s pocket. Think about the number again: $700 million a day between the United States, European Union, and U.K. are going to Russia, every single day. President Biden, these failed energy policies are having devastating impacts on Americans but also on the people of Ukraine because those policies are financing the war.

BUCK: Climate change ideology comes with very high costs, and I don’t even just mean the financial costs of driving up the price of energy and making it more difficult to get leases on federal land and shutting down pipelines. We know about that. We have to keep hammering it. But also, Clay, when you think about it, to the point you were just making, what are some of the countries in the world that are the worst actors on a global scale?

They’re often countries that have been, essentially, economically one-trick ponies, right? Russia is the biggest one that comes to mind. Saudi Arabia got away with a lot for a long time because of its oil reserves and still does to this day. Venezuela obviously was funding its insane… Venezuela ran an experiment: “If we have a lot of free money in the ground and we take a more Marxist approach, can we ruin an economy that’s basically sitting on a giant ATM machine?”

The answer is: Yes. Socialism can even ruin that. Largest proven oil reserves in the world is actually Venezuela, not Saudi Arabia. So keep that in mind when you see that people are on the, quote, “Maduro Diet” there of essentially slow starvation because they can’t get food. We know that a lot of the bad actors on the world stage rely on fossil fuels to prop up their regime, to pay for their militaries.

So when gas prices are high, those places become more belligerent. They become more willing to take risks, including what we’re seeing right now in Russia. And even if you want to be somebody who thinks, “Oh, climate change we will have to take this more seriously,” the only adult way to try to limit CO2 emissions in a meaningful way is nuclear power, which European countries, particularly France, are ahead of the U.S. on because they haven’t had some of the same environmentalist wackos calling the shots over there that they have here.

But nuclear power. It’s not windmills. Not only is the climate catastrophe theory, I think, just wrong on the merits, and in 10 years they’ll be saying, “Oh, we only have 10 years,” and then 10 years after that, “Oh…” We know. We’ve done this before. Go back and watch the Al Gore movie, An Inconvenient Truth. But that aside. If they were serious about it, we’d be talking about nuclear, and these decisions have massive national security implications for us and all over the world.

CLAY: No doubt, and the fact that we’re not willing to have those conversations in a detailed fashion — oh, it’s great for you to change your social media profile picture to the Ukrainian flag — but ultimately there are hard choices that are required, and you have to balance what you may want to do if you are a Democrat when it comes to the Green New Deal and it comes to climate change and energy spending and the reality that those choices that we make in this country and that Europe is making are enabling and empowering places like Russia.

And if we’re not willing to cut off the oil and gas spigot from Russia, then, frankly, we aren’t going to be able to destroy the economy of Russia. We’re just not because they’re still going to be bringing in at least half of their overall resources in that respect.

BUCK: And just keep in mind, they’re assuming… For everyone out there, they’re assuming that all the economic actions we’ve taken against them… Look, haven’t normalized relations with Iran since 1979, right? We haven’t had diplomatic relations with Iran for decades now. The Russians are assuming that when this is done, that will be normal diplomatic relations, just because of how important their energy and just geographically and from a national security perspective. The Russians think they’re too big to isolate over the long term.

CLAY: Too big to fail. They’re too big to be shut down.

BUCK: And so in the short term, they’re willing to take a lot of pain — and when I say “they,” I’m talking about the Russian leadership, not the Russian people who clearly are gonna suffer a lot from all of this and with no actual say in the discussion. To that end, we should talk a little bit about some of these efforts to take action against Russians in weird ways all over the world, people pouring out their vodka and this stuff.

I remember the “freedom fries” moment in 2003 where we weren’t supposed to say “french fries,” and that was just ’cause the French premier was not willing — what was it, Chirac, Jacques Chirac, was not willing — to go along with us in the “coalition of the willing.” So now we’re supposed to be calling them “freedom fries.” There are people who are actually boycotting French restaurants in New York City — this actually happened — only to find out it that was owned by an American and they just were serving French cuisine.

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: So we’ve gotta also maintain a degree of seriousness about actions that are gonna be taken here in the homeland with regard to the situation in Ukraine. I saw a lot of flag pins and such last night at the State of the Union. That’s fine, but a Ukrainian flag pin and no U.S. flag pin, member of Congress? I think that’s… People might say, “Hmm.”

CLAY: How about, do you think people would wear Taiwan flags if China invaded?

BUCK: Even better question. No, I don’t, actually. I think a lot of people would be too scared to do that among our elites and among the apparatus in this country.