How Much Are We Willing to Pay to Punish Russia?

CLAY: Buck, one of the big discussion points around Ukraine has been that we are effectively fueling both sides of the conflict. We’re giving hundreds of millions of dollars in support and materiel to Ukraine while we were simultaneously buying 600,000 barrels of oil from Russia every day.

Giving them tens of millions of dollars every single day as the price of oil continues to go up, and so there has been a discussion surrounding why in the world would we continue to give any money at all to Russia while we’re engaged in the sanctions that we’re trying to economically provide a great deal of hardship for.

BUCK: A lot of money, by the way. Yeah.

CLAY: Tens of millions of dollars every day. So, Joe Manchin addressed this. And, by the way, Joe Manchin has been one of the most reasonable people in the Democrat Party, maybe by far the most reasonable person. You noticed at the State of the Union he actually sat with the Republicans, which I thought was somewhat intriguing. We’ll see what he decides to do in 2024, in a couple of years, whether he runs for the Senate again, whether he potentially becomes an independent, whether he decides to caucus with Republicans, who knows?

But he says — we talked about this the other day — sometimes you have to have difficult discussions, and the question is, “Okay. If you’re not going to take Russian oil, how much more are you willing to pay for gas in order to support Ukraine?” He says he’d gladly pay more but is he talking about paying enough more? Let’s listen to cut 15 here.

CLAY: Would you pay a dollar more a gallon — that’s the real question, right — 50 cents more? How many people out there would be willing to do that I think is a fascinating question.

BUCK: And there would also be other economic implications of it. People would see the energy costs would go up, which means all costs go up. We have to… Our economy is a fossil fuel economy still, despite the Green New Deal and AOC and Biden picking up all that nonsense and running with it, it’s still a fossil fuel economy. So when it becomes more expensive, everything becomes pricier. And, yeah, to your point, okay 10-cents-a-gallon more, people might say, “Yeah, fine.”

A dollar a gallon more, let’s say that we were told that you would have a doubling of the unemployment rate and 20 or 30 — 20 or 30% increase in cost of living over the next year or two if this were to happen. Doubling unemployment, maybe that’s too extreme, but I’m just saying real cost and consequence economical, do the American people want that? Is that something that we would advocate in favor of?

Clearly the Biden administration thinks no, because they’re not willing to do this yet. You’ve got cluster bombs being dropped in Ukraine. You’ve got reporting about multiple assassination attempts against Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. They’re tightening the noose around city after city in Ukraine. They’re going after the capital of Kiev. So we’re not doing these things. When would we do them, so to speak, from the Biden administration point of view? I think everyone realizes, there are costs they’re willing to bear and costs that we’re not.

CLAY: And I think it’s such an intriguing question to contemplate. If we’re talking about… There are forecasts now, Buck, of the price of oil, a barrel of oil going to $175 or $180, and to put that into context right now — and I don’t have the price of oil directly open in front of me — but there’s around $110, $115 this week. It’s continued to go up, and $180 would be an all-time high, effectively.

I believe 2008 is the highest the price of oil has ever been, and obviously you’ve gotta adjust for inflation and all those things, but I believe we are rapidly trending towards an all-time high in the price of oil. What is interesting about this is right now we’re already at seven and a half percent interest, inflation. So we’re probably headed for double-digit inflation as you really analyze, just based on the price of energy.

And the Biden administration is terrified of inflation being the overriding, number-one impact. Buck, you can study data on voting patterns. The number-one thing that motivates people is price of gas because they see it, they feel it in a way… I just talked about it earlier this week. It cost me $100 to fill up my car and I didn’t even get it all the way filled up. There are a lot of people like me out there in disbelief when you get to $100 level to fill up your tank of gas and you feel that in a way that you might not, candidly, feel a Big Mac costing a little more or a gallon of milk costing a little bit more.

BUCK: And I think we have to be prepared for the narrative to get about why this is a good thing in the sense of it’s the price we pay to stick up for Ukraine. I think you have to be prepared for people to start saying that, and I’m talking about those making the decisions like the Biden administration and the top Pentagon officials who work for him and the secretary of defense. Here, for example, is the kind of argument you’re gonna be hearing going forward more. It’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken this morning, and here he is saying… Well, play clip 12.

BLINKEN: This is an aggression, a challenge, a threat that is relevant to the entire world because what’s at risk first and foremost are literally the lives of Ukrainian men, women, and children. But beyond that, the very fundamental principles that we’ve established together after two world wars that are so important to keeping peace and security for everybody — principles that President Putin is egregiously violating every single day. And if we allow those principles to be challenged as Putin is doing now with impunity, that will open a Pandora’s box of trouble for not just us but, quite frankly, for the entire world.

BUCK: The whole world, Clay, a Pandora’s box for the whole world he’s saying here. Hold on a second. What are these principles, exactly? Everyone opposes innocents being killed, and everyone opposes aggressive war on moral grounds. Okay. That has been something that occurs, and we have actually been involved in wars, as we know, over the last 20 years multiple times. So what does this mean?

He says we have to stand up for principles. To what extent? He also says that this is effectively going without punishment on Putin’s part. No, we’re doing economic things. We’re doing the things that the diplomatic set always claims will be effective as a means of preventing conflict. It just feels like there’s a whole set of the national security apparatus in this country and in the West more generally that says diplomacy, diplomacy, “Oh, actually things are getting rough. Let’s send in the troops,” and that’s what we’re trying to avoid here.

CLAY: That feels like where we’re headed is even when you hear the arguments about no-fly zones, when frankly we started off the show talking about Lindsey Graham asking for someone to assassinate Vladimir Putin. It feels like the longer this goes on, that the accelerant continues to grow. And we should mention, by the way, Russia is not certainly not without flaw when it comes to assassination plans. The Times of London in England is reporting that Volodymyr Zelensky has already survived three different discrete assassination attempts by Russia.

And you pointed out earlier, Buck, that if Russia had actionable intelligence that Zelensky was in a certain building at a certain point in time I don’t think there’s any doubt that they would love to be able to wipe him out. He has become the personification, the symbol of the resistance in Ukraine. And we don’t know if he’s not there, does the martyrdom live on, or if he’s gone, does that just destroy in many respects the resistance itself?

BUCK: Clay, I spent time in two war zones as a civilian analyst for the agency. You got kids. If your kids were of age, and if one of your sons said, “I’m 19, I want to go, I want to go fight in Ukraine for these principles,” what would you say to him?

CLAY: A hundred percent no.

BUCK: Yep.

CLAY: He gets to make his own choice. That’s the challenge of being a parents.

BUCK: On this one?

CLAY: One billion percent, no. You’re not going. And, you know, the challenge I think for so many parents out there is, 18-year-olds are technically majority age. When you know that one of your kids is making an awful choice, you can argue against it. By the way, it doesn’t have to be war. It can be they’re dating the wrong person or they’re deciding to major in the wrong thing or they’re not going to college, or you think they’re taking the wrong job.

But it just points to, to me, what an incredible powder keg we are dealing with over there. You saw what happened with the potential dangers of the nuclear plant that looked like it might blow up for a while. There’s people who are doing forecasts right now saying a billion people could die if we end up in a nuclear war scenario here.

BUCK: Just to Tony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, about all the principles. Here’s a principle. If I had a son who said, “I wanted to go fight either as a volunteer as part of this Ukrainian militia or I’m gonna go join up ’cause I want to get deployed with 82nd Airborne or I want to go with the Marines and fight in Ukraine,” I would say, “I don’t think you should do that.

“I don’t want you to do that. This is not our fight.” So if that’s how I feel or would feel about a son and you — who do have three sons — feel, I don’t want someone else’s son who fights for this country who serves the uniform for this country to get deployed to a war that I wouldn’t send my own family member to, neither with you.

CLAY: Exactly right. I think that’s exactly right.