Ukraine is heating up. Putin's threat to NATO.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us today is Ambassador John Bolton, one of the most knowledgeable people of what the heck is going on in the war and in Europe. Ambassador, what a mess we have on our hands. Putin is now threatening the United States and some of the stupid things that are being done. Why don’t you brief the American

0:24 people Sunday morning. They want to know what’s going on in Europe?

0:29 Speaker 2 Well, you know, the Russian invasion of Ukraine two and a half years ago has led to a lot of concern in Europe and in the United States about what they might do, how far they might go. Was Ukraine going to fall to the Russians, would the Russians go after another country like Poland next, or how would this

0:50 play out? And yet for two and a half years in the Biden administration, we haven’t acted in a strategic fashion. We haven’t. We’ve got war in gridlock because the administration didn’t give the Ukrainians adequate aid. And now again Pots threatening that that pill use nuclear weapons if if if he’s attacked again inside Russia. So this is this is

1:18 a consequence of not standing up firmly against this aggression to begin with, and allowing it to drag on and on and on, and many people are worried that what we see in Ukraine could be replicated in other countries in Europe and certainly in the Middle East. I think things are an even more more difficult situation. So the

1:38 White House wants to keep all this out of the newspapers and off the media for the next two months. But events in in Ukraine or events in the Middle East could could easily make them front and center in this election.

1:51 Speaker 1 Impassionor hey, this administration, whether you know it’s President Biden or Vice President Harris, has no clue how to handle the world crisis, has no clue to handle the crisis going on in America, with the migrant situation, with the fetanyl situation, with the universities being undermined by foreign money.

2:18 I mean, when I’m looking at the polls and they say fifty to fifty Trump Trump or Harris, who is the people voting for Harris? I mean America is under attack in so many directions.

2:37 Speaker 2 Well, you know, in the case of Ukraine, the Biden administration clearly failed to deter Russia from attacking. They didn’t they didn’t try and provide more aid to Ukraine beforehand, because their intelligence was telling them that Russia would win very quickly. Now we know in fact that has not turned out to be the case. But although Biden failed

3:03 to deter Russia, Russia has been deterring Biden right throughout this war. And so the Ukrainians have seen their country being ground into the dust and they’d like to get the war over with. They don’t want to fight it a lot longer either, but they haven’t had the tools they need. And I must say in the Middle East,

3:22 you know, the Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan, I think helped convince Iran that Biden was weak and wouldn’t stand up to the attack that Hamas unleashed at Israel. The Russians drew the same conclusion from Biden’s withdrawal in twenty twenty one, that if the US wouldn’t stand against the terrors there, they would have a free hand in Ukraine. The Biden

3:50 administration ambassador to Moscow said, the Russians drew a straight line from Afghanistan to Ukraine. And I think this feeling of weakness you can see it in the Far East too with China. His behavior is something that to the extent Kamala Harris has a foreign policy and I think that’s open to question. Her administration would look like four

4:11 more years of Biden at least. That’s I think the best prediction you can make at this point, and that would just expose this as weak and undependable. Around the world.

4:22 Speaker 1 Now, NATO and European communities are they how do they feel about the Ukraine. I get the feeling that some of them say, you know, there’s no way that the Ukraine could win, and let’s settle this.

4:40 Speaker 2 Right. Different different countries have different have different views. You know, if you ask Poland or the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, down in the Balkans, in Romanian Bulgaria, they’re very worried about this because they’re worried they may be next. But in Germany, despite the chance saying two years ago there would be a sea change in Germany funding of its

5:05 own defense capabilities and its assistance to Ukraine. While they’ve given some to Ukraine, there certainly has not been a sea change, and I think Putin is counting on that as Europeans lose the resolve to withstand the aggression, just time goes by a lot of people simply want to turn the page. And he’s counting on both in Europe

5:29 and the United States that to happen to allow him to consolidate the gains inside Ukraine he’s got. And you know, as I mentioned a moment ago, I worry a lot about what the rulers in Beijing conclude from all of this, because I think they think that if the US and Europe won’t resist the aggression on the continent of Europe,

5:53 that we’re not going to stand up for Taiwan either. So a lot of people are quite worried, and the Chinese have become more aggressive recently. They’ve been they’ve conducted incursions into the the maritime domain and airspace of Japan, ratcheting up from what they do it’s Taiwan. So that threat out there we tend to put on the back burner.

6:13 We don’t think about it because we look at Ukraine in the Middle East, But but the risks in East Asia are very real as well.

6:21 Speaker 1 Understood, Uh, Sunday morning, anything else you want to tell the American people.

6:27 Speaker 2 Well, look, I think this is a time if you’re in the middle of an election campaign and you can’t get politicians to tell us what their views are on critical national security issues, you’re never going to have a better time. So I think the American people are owed a real serious debate about this. We’ve got a lot

6:42 on the line where we’ve We’ve got our society and our economy to protect here, and we need we need to have a Reaganite foreign policy to do that. But in any event, you have to have a debate and and uh and get the get the politicians to say where they stand, and the voters will make up their minds.

6:59 Speaker 1 I agree on Ambassador Bolton. Thank you for speaking out for America and continuing to work for America, and we’ll catch up again real soon.

7:08 Speaker 2 Thanks very much for having me