The Ukraine Situation Looks Like It’s Getting Worse

BUCK: Ukraine right now looking like it’s about to get a whole lot worse. You have this large Russian convoy making its way to Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine, and there could be a dramatic increase in shelling in missile and aerial strikes, which would increase casualties along with it, civilian casualties. Right now, Zelensky is saying he’s wondering whether Russia is actually willing to negotiate.

We shall see if there’s any update on that. There are civilian sites that have been hit in Kharkiv, another major city close to the Russian border, where there have been some large-scale military operations underway against Ukraine. Now, the debate about what to do, we talked in the first hour a little bit on whether the energy sector is something we’re willing to go after with all of this.

Are we willing to take the pain economically — around the world, not just here in America but everywhere — from effectively cutting off Russian oil. We have removed them from the SWIFT system. There has been an effort to make it very hard for Russia to engage in any international financial transactions. But I’m also seeing, Clay, it didn’t last very long. When we seem to have something of a consensus, the White House saying and many others saying there will not be U.S. troops involved in this conflict, there will not be U.S. military engaging directly with Russian military, as in fighting Putin’s Russia. That’s not going to happen. Here is Jen Psaki on that.

PSAKI: The president has been very clear that he is not intending to send U.S. troops to fight a war with Russia. And I think what’s important to note here is that is essentially what this would be a step toward, because a no-fly zone would require implementation, it would require deploying U.S. military to enforce, which would be a direct conflict, potentially a direct conflict and potentially war with Russia, which is something we are not planning to be a part of.

BUCK: There are, to be clear, members of Congress who have brought up or even called for no-fly zones. Remarkably some of the Republicans, Clay, in Congress who spend all of their time attacking other Republicans, they seem to be among the most desiring of increasing U.S. presence and even U.S. military in and around Ukraine. So this is something that I do think we have to watch.

Because the imagery and the emotions around this, I do believe — unfortunately, tragically — is about to get a lot worse. And what seemed like clarity on this is not America’s fight can change very quickly depending on what the conversation is here. You’ve already got people, members of Congress, saying a no-fly zone with Russia turns into a war with Russia very quickly.

CLAY: No doubt, and we’re already seeing countries have to make decisions — let’s leave aside the United States right now — but as it pertains, for instance, to ships coming through. What is Turkey going to do? As it pertains to potentially allowing materials through, what is exactly Poland going to do? And this says going to get more difficult, and I think you raise a good point.

This is now an emotional issue for very many people. What I mean by that is, social media is ruled almost entirely by emotion-based obsession, right? Benjamin Franklin back in the day said, “Passions rule, and they rarely rule wisely.” That’s what goes on every single day with social media, and so you can already see a drumbeat of, “How can we allow this to occur?” I saw yesterday, Buck — I’m sure you did, too — that 40-mile convoy of Russian materials that are rolling towards Kiev. Several people, including, I believe, a couple of senators, said it was time to consider bombing that convoy —

BUCK: Yes.

CLAY: — and potentially, obviously, stepping directly into this conflict. Whether it is the no-fly zone, which gets into, “Okay, well, as soon as you start setting up that no-fly zone, you have to have consequences if the no-fly zone is violated, which makes you a party to this battle.” And I believe, as the civilians bear more and more of the brunt of the pain of this advancement, this invasion by Russia, you’re gonna see more and more viral videos. You’re gonna see more and more tearful children, tearful parents, and may people are going to be asking the question, “How can we allow this to continue without getting involved ourselves?”

BUCK: Clay, I’m also concerned with some of the louder voices that are emerging on this, including Hillary Clinton, who is — interestingly enough — coming forward a whole lot more in the media these days. She had been quite quiet for a while, and now you’re seeing a lot of Hillary. I think we all understand there could be some long-term implications to that. But here she is essentially saying, “Don’t worry.” Well, she’s not saying don’t worry, but she’s saying, “You know, we’ll turn this thing into Afghanistan with the Soviets back in the eighties.”

HILLARY: Remember, uh, the Russians invaded Afghanistan, uhhhh, back, in 1980, and, uh, although no country, uh, went in, uhhh, they certainly had a lot of countries, uhh, supplying, uhh, arms and advice and even some advisers, uhh, to those who were recruited to fight Russia. It didn’t end well for the Russians. Uhhh, there were other, uh, unintended consequences as we know. But the fact is that a very motivated and then, uh, funded and armed, uh, insurgency, uhhh, basically drove the Russians out of Afghanistan.

BUCK: Let me just say that her basic history here is correct, but I think the lesson from it is… We should be very careful. You had between a million and two million Afghan civilians die in that war. Very few people, I think, know that number. Usually, the upper estimate is about two million over the course of it. Tens of thousands of Soviets were killed or seriously wounded in that war.

It went on for years and then led to the Taliban taking charge and further war afterwards. So the “we’re gonna arm them like we did the mujahideen, yay!” This isn’t Charlie Wilson’s war, this isn’t a Hollywood movie, this isn’t an Avengers movie. You’re hearing people talk about this or frame this? N what I think is a very simplistic narrative. The only thing that’s simple about this is Vladimir Putin has done something that is terrible, and a lot of innocent people are gonna die and be hurt over this.

But how this plays out and what we’re going to see in the days and weeks ahead I think is gonna be incredibly gut-wrenching and it’s gonna be complicated to make this come to an end under the best of circumstances. So the notion that, “Oh, we’re gonna arm them up like we did the mujahedeen against the Soviets back in the eighties for a decade-long war,” Clay? We want to avoid a decade-long war in Europe. We want to avoid a month-long war if we can. So I think some of the voices that are becoming very loud on this are not people that — I mean, Hillary Clinton among them, are not people that — anyone should be listening to.

CLAY: What I’m concerned about also, Buck, is Joe Biden, as we talked about earlier, as a 35% approval rating right now. Now, I am sure that they are gonna argue, “Hey, this is our opportunity — the State of the Union address is — to recalibrate and reset expectations for Year Two of the Biden presidency.” I think that’s going to fail because everything Joe Biden is touching is failing.

But if they start to recognize that there is a substantial amount of support for Ukraine, I worry that we could have a Wag the Dog-like scenario start to emerge where the Ukrainian resistance is popular and Joe Biden is so desperate to find something to be associated with that is popular that he buys into this idea that the United States needs to take increasingly more substantial steps towards being directly in conflict with Russia, right?

Because already, what has knocked covid off the front pages and turned it into a secondary story? Ukraine. Right? Everywhere you look you put on television… Now, I don’t know how long this goes on, right? A month from now if the situation is still similar, is Ukraine still going to be the number one story in America? I don’t know. I don’t know whether this is something that fades in the American consciousness as it continues and we kind of enter into a long slog of drawn-out violence in Ukraine.

I tend to think that Americans are going to have relatively short memories. But, Buck, remember one of the big topics we discussed was, as Afghanistan collapsed, if you go back and look at Joe Biden’s approval rating, they turned negative for the first time in the wake of Afghanistan, and they have continued to plummet since then. Afghanistan then became a window into larger failures for the Biden administration. It reflected those failures.

Is the same thing potentially in reverse from the Biden administration’s perspective going to offer them an opportunity in Ukraine, where they can take all of the failures domestically off the front page and pour all their energy and attention into trying to combat the Russians in Ukraine? I don’t know, but that’s one of my fears, that this could become the trajectory that the Biden administration decides to follow. We’ll talk about this and more. Stock market down over 700 points. Price of oil surging.