Biden Announces New Sanctions, But What About the Planes?

BUCK: President Biden — just about an hour and a half or so before we came on air, so earlier this morning — was saying that there is an escalation in the financial sanctions which the Kremlin is calling financial warfare, against Russia. Most favored nation trade status being pulled. So this, I think, is meant to signal a more long-term, hostile trading posture toward Russia from the U.S. and allied countries.

It’s also unlikely, unlikely that this will stop Russia in the days, I would say even weeks ahead from what seems to be implementation of the plan all along, which is to seize Ukrainian population centers, pummel them with artillery strikes, and squeeze and squeeze until eventually the Ukrainian government has to sue for peace. I think that is the Russian plan.

Biden also — this was interesting — specifically said Russia will pay a severe price if they were to use chemical weapons, which is just raising yet another specter of WMD. Let’s talk about the MiGs for a second and the transfer of them. So the fighter planes that were supposed to be pushed… I mean, I was talking about this on Fox this morning.

Senator Tom Cotton, for example, says we’re sending missiles — you know, shoulder-fired missiles, MANPADS, which is Man-Portable Air Defense System — why not send them planes? It seems like Poland wanted to make sure that Germany wanted — Germany and the U.S. would also have their hand in pushing MiG fighter planes to Ukraine, and the Biden administration looked at this and said, “No.” What do you make of it?

CLAY: It’s such an interesting question because, Buck, what we have debated on this show and some of our callers have called in is, “What is the line of demarcation where Russia says, ‘This is considered a direct act of aggression and decides to hold in the United States directly accountable?'” Right? Because all of the materials that we’re sending into Ukraine now, all of the sanctions that we are putting on Russia, to me those are in some ways acts of war.

I think it’s hard to say when the ruble has lost 50% of its value, when the Russian stock market is not allowed to be opened, essentially, since the invasion began, when you are not able to get money out or transfer money due to variety of issues, we’re not allowing your oil to be sold to many different countries around the world, those feel like acts of aggression in some way.

But the Biden administration is of the opinion that they’re not going to cause Russia to take the next step, whatever that proverbial next step of action is. What we discussed is, I understand if I’m Poland and I have these MiG fighter jets and I’m going to try to let Ukrainian fighters take off from Poland that Russia might decide to bomb Poland, to try to prevent these fighter jets from taking off.

So Poland made what I think is a smart calculation and they just flew ’em to Germany, and they thought to themselves, “There’s no way that Russia is going to bomb Germany, and certainly there’s no way that they’re going to bomb an American Air Force base,” and the Biden administration seems to have been caught unaware by this and then they tried to backpedal and say, “Oh, we have nothing to do with it.”

But I now, the more I have thought about it, am of the opinion that the 40 Republican senators now who have reviewed this issue have decided that these jets should go to Ukraine… I’m now of the opinion that that’s the right call, because we’ve already created this huge story surrounding it, and allowing Ukrainian pilots to get into these MiGs and take off and fly the planes to Ukraine, at this point feels like we’re bowing down to Vladimir Putin too much in not allowing that to occur.

So I am going to be on the side of the 40 Republican senators who have looked at all these factors and said, “Hey, this is not going to cause an acceleration in the way that Vladimir Putin is behaving, and so let’s let Ukrainians have access to these planes.” I think that makes the most sense. What about you?

BUCK: I think that they should do it. But, remember, it’s not about whether we can make the case. There’s no judge here that we get to make a case before about whether this is an escalation or not.

CLAY: Right.

BUCK: Rationally speaking, you can make a clear case that this is not really different from giving lethal munitions, like I said the MANPADS, Stinger missiles, Javelin missiles, which are anti-tank, that’s ground-to-ground. There are different things we’re already in large numbers sending to Ukrainians. And they’re using them to kill Russian soldiers. That’s already happening.

CLAY: No doubt.

BUCK: So it’s a question of whether Vladimir Putin would be… The whole point here is, “How does he react to it?”

CLAY: I guess the question is, and I think it’s an interesting one, what is he going to do differently? Is he going to suddenly nuke Ukraine because the United States is sending 24 MiGs in with Ukrainian fighter pilots on them? I guess when you’re bombing a maternity ward already inside of Ukraine, I think the argument that is interesting is, what is the next level of acceleration that he’s willing to undertake that would occur because of this?

BUCK: So that’s the point or rather that’s the question that I don’t think anybody —

CLAY: Knows the answer.

BUCK: — can definitively answer. Would he fire missiles at a Polish air base just to make a point and say, “I’m not starting a war with you guys, but if you’re gonna have a pipeline of fighters that are killing my guys, I’m gonna take out…”? I don’t know, by the way. I don’t think anybody has a clear sense of it. I do know, though, that, for example, on our side of it I think people get concerned.

All right. So now we provided them with planes. The next step feels like a no-fly zone, which people have been talking about now already for days. Right? At what point is it, “Well, the planes take off from NATO bases. Is he really going to fire at NATO bases? Would he really be willing to do that?” Because the logistics and support that the Ukrainians are gonna need to keep those planes in the sky, I also think honestly…

People probably don’t want to hear this right now, but I think it’s important to always look at this with just the most clear eyes possible, the most factual analysis we can give. You know, a bunch of MiGs in the sky? The Russians have 1500 fighter planes. The Ukrainians have roughly a hundred at the start of the conflict. This is all from the open source. You can check this online.

So they’ve got, call it, a 15-to-11 plane advantage right now. They have not been using it. So I think people believe, “Oh, if we put Ukrainian planes in the sky that’s going to have a dramatic effect on the Russians’ ability to prosecute this war.” I think that’s unlikely to be the case. Now, you could say, “Well, Buck, we’re also sending them missiles, and that’s not changing every…”

We’re just trying to just help them fight with whatever we can. But it doesn’t strike me that this is going to necessarily be… The game-changer is that we clear the sky of Russian planes which would be a no-fly zone. But that’s war and I think people recognize it. That’s war with Russia because you also have to hit their planes. Remember they have surface-to-air missiles on Russian territory that can fire hundreds of millions into Ukrainian airspace.

So you cannot have a no-fly zone without sitting those SAM sites. You sit those SAM sites, it’s war. It’s straight-up warfare. Now you’re hitting Russian soil. This is how when we see, Clay, we want to do war, but are we…? Ultimately, we’re gonna have to face this as a nation. Is it more important to us to stay out of World War III with Russia or more important that Russia loses in Ukraine? That’s gonna be a question that we have to answer as we go along here.

CLAY: Well, and I think the fear becomes even if Russia loses in Ukraine, it’s not eliminating the threat of Vladimir Putin. In many ways, it actually is making him more dangerous. That’s why I would analogize in some way, if you want to pay attention to what happened when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, we mobilized an entire American response, international response, but we didn’t depose Saddam Hussein.

So we then went back into Iraq later and created the mess that later ensued there. But Saddam Hussein was not eliminated as a threat. Even if Russia eventually pulls out of Ukraine and even if, potentially, they end up “losing,” in quotation marks, both sides are gonna claim victory, right? Probably, before all is said and done, the Vladimir Putin threat is still gonna be there. And so what is he going to be like in the wake of however this Ukrainian situation revolves itself? It’s still gonna be, I believe, an existential threat to Americans in a way that it wasn’t before he invaded.