Putin Emboldened: "The Invasion of Ukraine Is the Failure of Policy to Begin With"

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Published: March 1, 2022 | Date of Source Audio: March 1, 2022

Modified for publication from the original audio program

 Hugh Hewitt talks with Senator Tom Cotton about Russia, COVID & the SOTU

Hugh Hewitt:

Welcome back America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, joined by United States Senator Tom Cotton, from Arkansas. Good morning, Senator.

Senator Tom Cotton:

Good morning, Hugh. It's good to be on with you.

Hewitt:

To your great disappointment, I'm not going to ask you five questions about Donald Trump. I just don't understand interviews that go that way. I'm going to ask you about the State of the Union and what you want to hear tonight. I want to hear sanctions on Russian gas and oil. Do you expect we'll get that?

Cotton:

Hugh, I don't expect we'll get that, but we should get it. Hugh, to your broader point, Joe Biden has been caught on the back foot from the very beginning. We have ceded the initiative of Vladimir Putin for four or five months. During that time, I've been urging the president to take quicker action, more decisive action and tougher action. Early sanctions, more deliveries of weapon systems and to make it clear what would happen if Vladimir Putin went down this path. Now, unfortunately he didn't do that. I think along with his concessions to Putin over the last year emboldened Vladimir Putin, as well as the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Right now, some of our European allies are actually moving faster than we are, which is good for them, although they should have been moving earlier, too.

But there's still more things we can do. One of the most important things we could do, as you say, Hugh, is announce oil and gas sanctions. So, we're no longer sending hundreds of millions of dollars every day to Vladimir Putin's war machine. And make the SWIFT sanctions comprehensive to cut off every bank in Russia. You know, Democrats keep saying that well, we've sanctioned 80% of the banks in Russia. Unfortunately, Vladimir Putin controls a hundred percent of the banks in Russia. So, 20% of the banks can be used to evade these sanctions over time. And then, of course, we need to continue to rush even more weapons to the front, to the brave Ukrainian people have done such a valiant job over the last week of defending themselves and continue to do so.

Hewitt:

Senator Cotton, we are quote, “leading from behind,” close quote, again. This is the famous Barack Obama formulation that governed our Libya policy, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in charge and Tony Blinken was the Vice President now President Biden's national security advisor. We're back to leading from behind. The Europeans are actually tougher than we are. Germany, of all people, is doing more than we are. They've already voted a hundred million euros into a special fund. Will the appropriators get to work, will Armed Services and Intel get to work and get a supplemental done?

“The Biden administration is still not taking seriously the threats that we face.”

Cotton:

Hugh, unfortunately, I'm not actually seeing that kind of urgency. And it's not just from the (inaudible), also from the Biden administration. We've now had two separate cabinet-level conversations with the full Senate. And in both of those conversations, they've had a chance to ask for more money. They've been specifically asked by Republican senators, how much more money will you need in the supplemental bill? How much more money will you need in the annual defense bill? And in both of those instances, they've refused to give an answer. It just goes to show again that the Biden administration is still not taking seriously the threats that we face. Part of the reason we are in this situation is they thought that they could simply talk Vladimir Putin out of his long-standing ambition, as opposed to back it up with the credible threat of force, both economic force and weapons into the hands of Ukrainians.

Hewitt:

Now we've seen the effect –  

Cotton:

The invasion, we still haven't seen that.

Hewitt:

We've seen the effectiveness of the Javelins. And I know that President Trump authorized them. It was a slow deployment of the Javelin to Ukraine. Secretary Esper, when he was Army secretary, was not very enthusiastic about this, but they got there. Now Germany is sending Stingers, which are ground-to-air missiles, which take out the Russian air force. Apparently, we're going do that as well, but do you have any idea of how fast and how many we're sending?

Cotton:

Hugh, I don't want to get into how much the United States are sending. We're also working with our partners to send them, and some of those partners are actually getting them there very fast, given the proximity to Ukraine. But it's still not fast enough and there's not enough. We should have been stockpiling these things in Ukraine for the last six months. You ask the Biden administration or my Democratic colleagues why we weren't doing that and they blamed Volodymyr Zelensky. They say that he didn't want them, he didn't ask for them. Well, part of effective diplomacy is encouraging our allies to do the right thing, if they even are speaking what is a factual matter. What these Ukrainians needed was to have these weapons ready and available in large scale. So, none of these columns you see moving down the street, none of the aircraft you see in the sky could do so with impunity. They have proven to be very courageous and valiant fighters and skilled fighters who may have the arms they need, but clearly they're going to need more, and they should have had more already and we should be getting them more.

Hewitt:

I'm not sure you've seen the video from Kharkiv yet this morning of the devastated center of the city, where cluster bombs and other munitions, allegedly a vacuum bomb as well. That's an allegation, not a proven thing, but the cluster bomb has been proven by Bellingcat. I am curious whether there isn't some level of international program that can still be brought to bear on every Russian. They fired the head of the Berlin symphony today. He's a Putin pal. Is it time to send home the NHL? Is it time to really make Russia feel this?

Cotton:

Well, Hugh, to give you an example of why Vladimir Putin thought he could get away with this, you just saw the ridiculous spectacle at the winter Olympics of something called the Russian Olympic Committee competing, even though Russia's had a widespread systematic doping program for its Olympic team for years and years and years. And we made a show of kicking them out of the Olympics and we turned around and let them compete. If you can't even enforce the rules in a game, why do you think Vladimir Putin would worry about you enforcing the rules when it comes to warfare?

Hewitt:

True.

Cotton:

Just every, every Russian who there's any degree of culpability, especially the oligarchs who have gotten rich and powerful off of Vladimir Putin’s regime, should be paying the price for this invasion. At the same time, Hugh, I think it's important to remember that the first victims of Vladimir Putin’s aggression and brutality are the Russian people.

I also credit those Russians, those brave Russians in places like St. Petersburg and Moscow who are protesting by the thousands. Hugh, this is not like America, where you can go out and protest what your politics are. Protesting Vladimir Putin can bring a death sentence to you. So, we should -- and look at what some of these conscripts and the Russian army are doing in Ukraine as well, Hugh. They didn't even know that they were in Ukraine. They thought they were doing training exercises in Belarus. This is not a war of Russia on Ukraine. This is Vladimir Putin's war against Ukraine.

Hewitt:

Your longtime friend, Secretary Pompeo, was on yesterday, denouncing the fact that we're back in negotiations with the Iranians – though Russian proxies, there were Russians at the table speaking our behalf in Vienna yesterday. Does anyone in the Senate on the other side raise a voice about this? We've got to cut them out of everything and we can't do a deal with the Iranians. Talk about projecting weakness. That would be the ultimate in projecting weakness.

Cotton:

Hugh, it's just another example of why Putin probably thinks he can get away with this in the long run. If we're cutting them off from European airspace and taking their soccer clubs and seizing their yachts and sanctioning some of their banks, yet we'll sit down with them at the negotiating table at Vienna to try to get a terrible nuclear deal with Iran. He knows that Joe Biden is not serious about fighting this fight for the long run. Just like we've isolated Vladimir Putin and so many other ways, we should not be negotiating a dangerous nuclear deal with his aid with Iran.

Hewitt:

There was a shouted question at the president yesterday, “Are you afraid of nuclear war?” He said, no. What did you make of Putin's upping of his nuclear forces alert level?

“Resolution where others waiver is a hallmark of leadership among nations and men.”

    
Cotton:

Nuclear saber-rattling, Hugh, is a longstanding tool of Russian statecraft, whether it's Soviet Russia or Vladimir Putin. And when Russia engages in nuclear saber rattling, what they're doing is trying to frighten Western leaders, to include America, and to diminish resolve and unwillingness to confront their aggression. There's no need for us at the moment that I'm aware of, to go to a heightened nuclear posture. After all, our nuclear missiles were always ready to fire on just a moment’s notice and our submarines are always on patrol. But it's also not a time for diminished resolve in the face of nuclear saber-rattling because resolution where others waiver is a hallmark of leadership among nations and men.

Hewitt:

Are you going to be attending the State of the Union tonight, Senator?

Cotton:

Well, Hugh, they've been mandating some COVID theatrics, you know, social distancing and masking and testing. I think that they're trying … I won't engage in those theatrics, but if they remove those, then I may be there. We'll see.

Hewitt:

Well, I would like people to sit on their hands when he says things short of sanctioning gas and oil. Because that's the last thing we can do.

“They said the data has changed. I agree. The data has changed. The polling data shows that Joe Biden and his COVID policies are massively unpopular.”

Cotton:

I don’t know, you may have seen the news at the White House today. They're no longer requiring masks. They said the data has changed. I agree. The data has changed. The polling data shows that Joe Biden and his COVID policies are massively unpopular and they know that it's going to cause them to get beaten badly this November. So that's the data that's changed at the White House and that data may have changed in Nancy Pelosi's House as well.

Hewitt:

You know, the polling data also showed from Quinnipiac that 57% -- that’s a big number, as you know –  57% don't think President Biden has been strong enough on Ukraine. Does that penetrate the claim defenses at the White House? Does someone get inside the blue bubble and say to the president sanction Russian oil and gas?

Cotton:

No, unfortunately Hugh, I mean, what we saw at that briefing last night was people that are trapped in that bubble, patting themselves on the back about the robust, unprecedented diplomatic coalition they built. Which, Hugh, to me sounds kind of like Neville Chamberlain celebrating the coalition he built to declare war on Germany after it invaded Poland in September, 1939. The whole point of building a diplomatic coalition is you do so in advance, backed by strength, to avoid war in the first place.

Hewitt:

Were they really giving themselves high fives?

Cotton:

Yes, Hugh, absolutely. It's the same rhetoric you've seen on television from the president’s spokesmen and cabinet members, celebrating what a great diplomatic response that's been since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, not acknowledging that the invasion of Ukraine is the failure of policy to begin with.

Hewitt:

Will you be doing any media after the speech tonight, Senator?

Cotton:

I don't know, Hugh.

Hewitt:

Well, you are one of the people that mark whether or not he does the one thing he needs to do, which is sanction oil and gas sales, and those who receive them. Last question: Would you agree, it's not just sanctions on Russian oil and gas, but people who trans-ship them and buy them should be sanctioned?

Cotton:

Hugh, there's a lot of things that we can do, stuff that goes into kind of the international plumbing of markets, whether it's ships, which transport about two-thirds of Russian oil, the insurance companies that insure those shipments, and similar kinds of targets along the entire supply chain of Russian oil until it gets to the point of the end use.

Hewitt:

I will look for those. Senator Cotton, always a pleasure. Thank you.