What Will Biden Do? Why Ukraine Matters

BUCK: Ukraine. We’ll break it down. I’ll put on — I don’t know — an ex-CIA hat. Is that a thing? I’ll put on my ex-CIA hat. Clay and I will get into the latest here. I think the biggest implications, of course, are what it means for U.S. military, U.S. involvement, which I think this whole audience knows we do not want to go to war in any capacity with Russia over Ukraine.

I think that’s where… Let’s talk about who’s pushing for what and what the Biden regime is doing right now. We will get into all of that. We’ve got one guy who will be familiar to some of you from the second impeachment of Trump, who’s saying we could be on the cusp of a World War II-style war in Europe, which is completely insane. Clay, it’s nuts.

CLAY: Well, I want to really dive into this Ukraine thing, ’cause I was having a conversation with my wife last night and my oldest son, and I think the vast majority of people out there, first of all, couldn’t point to Ukraine on a map. Let’s start here. Democrats, Republicans, independents, most people don’t know anything about Ukraine. I had to look it up. Have you been to Ukraine?

BUCK: Have not. Have not.

CLAY: Okay. You’ve all over the world so I thought you might have been to Ukraine. I think a lot of people’s question is, “Why should I care?” That’s the question that I get most commonly about Ukraine, and so you are the former CIA spook. You are the guy who has knowledge of international affairs, frankly, on a level that I do not. Why should I and many people out there like me who are not aggressively following foreign affairs in Eastern Europe, care about what happens in Ukraine?

BUCK: Very good question that not a lot of people have a particularly good answer to right now. Can I just put a pin in that question?

CLAY: Let’s discuss that this hour.

BUCK: Let’s do Ukraine. Let’s do Ukraine. But I just want to mention the World War II-style war. This is Lieutenant Colonel Vindman. Remember this guy from the Ukraine phone call, everybody, where “Oh, Donald Trump needed to be impeached over this”? The whole thing was so absurd. Of course, now Vindman’s a hero to the left. He was nonpartisan. He was a veteran. He’s nonpartisan. That’s what they were saying. Here’s what he’s saying now about this.

VINDMAN: I think we’re basically just on the cusp of war. (sputtering) I think it’s all about certain in my mind that there’s going to be a large European war on the order of magnitude of World War II with air power, sea power, massive gun force and offensives. I think at this point we also need to start preparing for the day after, the day of the outcome, for the humanitarian catastrophe that’s going to unfold in Europe — and we’re gonna have to come to the reality that there are going to be seismic effects on the geopolitical landscape, the economic landscape the American people should be aware of. Because they’re going to be direct impact on the U.S. economy, on U.S. national security, and we should just be doing everything we can to prepare for that. But the ball is in — in Putin’s court.

BUCK: Okay. There’s so much wrong here that it’s hard to just even say it’s wrong. Let’s start with 40 to 60 million people, depending on whose estimates, died in the Second World War. Civilians, military, all across the board. On the battlefield, in the death camps, in the bombings, everything, 40 to 60 million is the number I think that most people use. So let’s call it roughly 40 million, and that’s insane. That’s not gonna happen.

Clay, we already had Russia take Crimea. Russia is already at war in some capacity in eastern Ukraine, and it is not causing a conflagration that’s brought in all of NATO and European nations and all the rest of it. You’re asking, why should we care? The answer is: Most people don’t really care to the point where they think that we should put any military force involved here. Ukraine is an allied country, so we want to help or allies. We don’t want anything bad to happen to Ukraine.

But it’s not our fight, and so you’re asking me why do we care? It’s all a question of how much do we care not why we care because we don’t want war anywhere but what do we do about it in this context? The Biden administration is considering moving U.S. military right on the periphery of Ukraine, which would be NATO countries. A little while really gonna do? There’s a big difference, and Putin knows it, between invading a NATO allied country and invading Ukraine right now.

That’s, at least, understood. But if this is something that breaks out into some kind of a military confrontation, there will be Ukrainians who are fighting, and there will be international outrage and sanctions. It’s not gonna turn into World War II, though. And that’s just unhelpful and I think kind of crazy to see at this point.

CLAY: Yeah. Look, I care in the context of I support democracy around the world. When I say, “Why should I care?” I mean it in the context of, “Why should I care about the United States getting involved in this particular battle?”

BUCK: Do we care to the point where you would send your sons in 10 years in the same situation?

CLAY: And the answer is “no.” I would be opposed. I’ve got three boys. I would be opposed to any of them being sent to Ukraine to fight against Russia invading. Some of you out there may disagree. The bigger picture question I guess, Buck, is if opportunity somehow took — based on what happened in Crimea and also what may happen in Ukraine. If he took a limited, muted, insubstantial response from allied democracies around the world to mean that he could further invade, do we get into a situation…?

I mean other countries. Do we get into a situation where he feels like he has free rein to go back after other former Soviet satellites that have now declared their independence because they are a traditional part of Mother Russia? I suppose that would be the concern is that there’s a form of appeasement in, “Oh, it’s only Crimea. Oh, it’s only Ukraine,” and he decides to keep pushing the envelope with the misguided belief being that there’s not gonna be any consequences for his actions.

BUCK: There’s also the realities of what the Russian military could even accomplish if they took the most expansionist and aggressive posture, right? The Russian economy is under $2 trillion a year. It’s like $1.6/$1.7 trillion. The French economy, just one country in NATO, one European country is $3 trillion, just by way of comparison, right? So before we all start getting worked up about it, this is not the Soviet Union. They do not have the same force-projection capabilities. They do have a large nuclear stockpile.

I don’t think anybody thinks they’re about to start nuking NATO countries and destroy the world. Everyone needs to take a step back and calm down a little bit who’s talking about this in such overheated and, I think, apocalyptic terms. What we’re gonna do is what we’ve in the past, largely, with these issues where we try to convince Russia not to engage in these acts. There are red lines.

Invading a NATO country is a red line. Now, you can argue about whether that should be a red line for our military, but that is a red line, right? We are contractually bound in a sense through the NATO charter to take military action in response to any Russian incursion into a NATO country. Ukraine is not a NATO country, okay? (chuckles)

So we’re dealing with a different circumstance here. And Russia already has substantial footholds in that country, not just seizing of Crimea, but also in the eastern Donbass region. And that’s been ongoing now for years. So you’re in a different place, a different situation, and the Biden administration… I do think it’s funny they didn’t try any of this crap during Trump — let’s just point that out — the Russian puppet Trump.

CLAY: That’s exactly right. I was just gonna say, Buck, here’s my concern. We’ve never really seen this happen with a country that has nuclear weapons, right? We understand that Iran wants to get nuclear weapons. North Korea wants to get nuclear weapons. But it’s almost like you’re shadow boxing when I hear, “Oh, we’re gonna have a World War II-style battle,” well, yeah, but in World War II there wasn’t at the beginning of World War II the ability to inflict mass casualty events with atomic bombs, right?

We hadn’t had the Manhattan Project. So my concern is just, Buck, if you’ve ever seen a schoolhouse fight, two guys get into a fistfight, most of the time it ends with a fistfight. Guys are over it; you get all the angst out. But sometimes a guy the bets his ass kicked. And he feels so bad about the fact that he got his ass kicked that he goes to the next level — knife, gun, whatever it might be — and he feels like in order to get back whatever he lost in terms of the perception of his toughness or of his power or of his overall impact, he goes to the next level.

I could see… This is what concerns me a little bit about getting involved militarily here. To your point, Buck, on the size of the Russian economy, for instance, Russia is an embarrassed country. Putin really, his entire regime, is about the collapse of the Soviet Union and trying to recapture — based on my reading of this — some of the culture cache that existed. Russia is a humiliated, in some ways, country. And humiliated, backed-into-the-corner countries don’t always behave rationally. So my concern is when they have the ability to go to that next level, Russia’s like the guy who loses a fistfight and decides, “I’m gonna bring out the next level of weaponry.”

BUCK: But there’s really no likelihood that Russia would… To your point out, we’re talking about nukes, right? This is what makes everyone so concerned. Russia’s conventional military is advanced and capable. But look at what an advanced and capable military like ours accomplishing in 20 years in Afghanistan in terms of occupation. Seizing territory with people that are culturally linguistically different from you who don’t want you there is a very, very complicated thing.

Now, another complicating factor in this is that in the eastern part of Ukraine, as well as other parts of Ukraine, there are a lot of Russian speakers who are also Ukrainian speakers but do have affinity for the Russian Federation, do feel like their interests would be better served in some contexts if there were a closer relationship, at least, with the Kremlin. So it’s not as cut and dry. It’s obviously not the same thing as when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and the disaster that they went through there. But in terms of escalation to the true nuclear option of using nuclear weapons, they’re looking to control Ukraine. They’re not looking to make take wasteland of nuclear fallout for the next 500 years, right?

CLAY: I’m talking about going after one of the NATO countries with nuclear weapons.

BUCK: The Russian military does not really have the capability to do that, and they wouldn’t take that risk. Beyond that, I don’t think they want that, right? They want… Ukraine has a tremendous importance in the Russian mind-set. Remember, Ukraine had the third… People forget this. After The Wall fell, Ukraine had the third most nuclear weapons in the world when the Soviet Union fell.

Ukraine actually gave up its nukes as part of an agreement which the U.K. and Great Britain were signatories to — as well as Russia, by the way. “We will defend your territorial integrity. Don’t worry! Just give up your nukes ’cause you can’t really be trusted as this country right now to keep full control over them and handle them.” There is a lesson here. One: When you got nukes, you never give up your nukes. And, two, I think that people need to understand that there is a long-standing desire from within Russia to have not just a closer relationship but perhaps a symbiotic relationship with Ukraine that is gonna outpace whatever diplomatic rancor we come up with from the U.S. and NATO side of this.

CLAY: Worth mentioning too: A lot of European countries are so desperately in need of Russian gas and oil that they’re not gonna really stand up to Russia. For instance, Germany, their entire economy would collapse if they lost their access to Russian oil and gas.

BUCK: So would the Russian economy though, right? So kind of mutually assured destruction.

CLAY: There’s a symbiosis there that I think maybe didn’t exist in earlier days of the Cold War because Russia has joined more of the global economic system.

BUCK: Russia… Just for everybody, Russia’s not about to like invade Latvia, Poland, Romania. They couldn’t do it. They couldn’t do it. They would actually just start losing horribly and this is not gonna happen. So people need to take a step back, calm down. I think what Vindman said about World War II-style war is completely insane, and so that’s where we are right now. Everyone just take a deep breath. We’ve got this one covered. This audience knows we’re gonna… Well, we know what’s going on here. Does the Biden regime? That’s the part of it. What are they gonna do? That does get me a little concerned.