If You’re Gonna Support a No-Fly Zone, Know What It Means

BUCK: I want to remind everybody that a lot of the people who are in charge really don’t know anything, and I think that this — and it’s not just Democrats. There are some Republicans that are saying some really foolish stuff about our involvement in this conflict in one way or another. This was Congresswoman Maria Salazar yesterday. She wants a no-fly zone and she knows nothing about a no-fly zone.

BUCK: Okay. So I think she realized by the end of that very quick interview that she had just stepped in it a bit, but let’s just be clear. “I’ll do anything.” Okay. So should we stop…? Does she agree with no more Tolstoy in universities, no more teaching of the Russian classics including the anti-Soviet dissidents in universities? Dissidents, folks! People that were trying to bring down the Soviet Union from inside, people like Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn.

These are people who, when you look at this, you look at this system, you look at what they’ve been pushing, Clay, you would think they would know something about this. You would think they would have some idea. If you’re gonna say, you want a no-fly zone — and obviously Dostoevsky’s pre-Soviet. Solzhenitsyn was a dissident form inside. But if you look at this, shouldn’t they know what a no-fly zone is if they want a no-fly zone, and they could be actually voting on this as a member of Congress?

CLAY: It should be bare-minimum knowledge. If you believe that a no-fly zone makes no sense, then at least understand what you are endorsing. I mean, this is not some crazy novel idea and that she could bungle. This is a fairly well-discussed and debated issue, and there are a variety of perspectives on it, if she truly thinks that a no-fly zone makes sense, can disagree with her, but at least make the logical argument.

This is what I used to say, Buck, sometimes I feel like you should just have a tag-team arguer. This is really kind of what Jen Psaki is, right, although she’s not very good at advocating for arguments that make sense, either, but I could argue for her in favor of a no-fly zone better than she can and it makes me highly — and, by the way, as you said, Democrat and Republican, it makes me highly — suspect of all the decisions that are being made when she’s one of whatever, 435 congresspeople, and she can’t even conceptualize an argument, not even a conceptual one, Buck.

And this is a big deal. It’s not like you quizzed her unexpectedly on — I’m just trying to think — some esoteric Medicare cost-of-living increase and maybe she hadn’t been briefed on it, right? I mean, it’s hard to be on top of everything. But this is a pretty big deal. Having a perspective that is logically sound as it pertains to Ukraine should be the number one thing that every congressman and woman in the country is on top of.

BUCK: And let’s think about it for a second here. The vise is tightening around the Ukrainian people with the Russian war machine right now. There was a lot of reporting yesterday about the shelling of a maternity hospital and people being killed there, women and children being killed in the shelling. That is only likely to increase here. Vladimir Putin is willing to go to extreme and inhuman lengths to try to establish the control that he wants in Ukraine.

We should be very clear-eyed about what he is and is not willing to do, especially when you have members of Congress who are saying things like, “Yeah, if we have to shoot down Russian planes, no big deal.” Really? No big deal? Here’s even Senator Bob Menendez, longtime Senate Foreign Relations Committee guy, who’s pointing out no-fly zone?

MENENDEZ: Once you do that, you’re in a war with Russia. I don’t think that the support of the American people extends to that. Our heartstrings are tugged every day that we see the horrific pictures in Ukraine. But, you know, the fundamental question, “What is in the national interests and security of the United States?” is what has to be answered. And at this point I don’t see our ability to engage in a no-fly zone, especially when we don’t have NATO partners that are willing to engage with us.

CLAY: This is a difficult spot, Buck, because what we’re really trying to figure out is how do we go up to the edge of giving as much support to Ukraine as we can, without putting Russia over the edge in provoking a response that creates far more danger than any benefit of our activity? Right? And there’s not an easy answer here. So I can respect a variety of different perspectives, Republican and Democrat and independent, in terms of exactly what the right spot is.

Because we talked about this as soon as the news broke about the idea of the airplanes, right, and of the fighter jets being given to Ukraine. Buck, what was my first thought? “That seems more substantial to me.” If I’m trying to think about it from the Russian perspective, I can see how that could accelerate what Vladimir Putin is willing to do to us and to NATO allies in a way that hasn’t occurred so far with conventional weapons that are being given to the Ukrainians.

Now, it could be wrong. It could be the case that he’s not going to accelerate things and that if the Ukrainians get these jets, that they’re gonna be able to really fight back in a way that they can’t right now against Russia. So this is a difficult thing. This is not “Should there be masks on airplanes?” Like, this is a really difficult thing.

BUCK: Yeah. These are tough calls with super-high consequences, no question about it. But that’s why you want people who have at least some understanding of what’s involved to be the ones speaking about it publicly possibly voting on. We’re talking about members of the U.S. government, members of Congress here. Menendez has been in the game a long time. So I’m not just gonna trash what a Democrat says ’cause they’re Democrats, and especially on an issue that’s this important.

Democrats who understand that this is not our fight, I agree with those Democrats on this issue. I’m not gonna move, not gonna be throwing tomatoes at them just because they’re on the other team, so to speak. This is too important. When you think about the implications of what a no-fly zone would actually mean in the context of Ukraine and against Russia, you’re basically saying — if you wanted this to happen — somebody would be signing on for is that Russian forces on the ground are no longer gonna have air cover, and Ukrainian forces are gonna be able to kill them at a higher rate.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Now you’re talking about greater losses of Russian forces on the ground, Vladimir Putin is gonna be suffering through. He’s gonna be seeing that happening. And you’re gonna say, “Well, he won’t shoot down U.S. planes.” Really? While his guys are being ambushed and you can’t call in close air support because there are American planes in the sky, you think he’s not gonna decide to have surface-to-air missiles or fighters engage?

Guaranteed that you’re gonna have U.S. and Russian planes shooting at each other when this happens. There’s active combat operations. It’s not like… If we’d established a no-fly zone before the invasion, Clay, might have been a different calculation. Now, you would have had the political will to do that, and we didn’t do it but once the Russian planes are already in the sky you’re talking about their military on the ground now that’s taking casualties.

Yes, it’s a war of aggression. Yes, they’re the bad guys. But they don’t care. They’re gonna want to save their guys, and looking at it from the American side, okay, we get a plane shot down, let’s say, if we’re having this no-fly zone. Now you’ve got an American pilot let’s say goes down in Ukraine behind liens that are controlled by Russia. Are we gonna send in U.S. ground forces?

We gonna send in a search-and-rescue team to get him? What happens when they come under fire from Russians? This is how a war with Russia starts, and the people who understand the implications of all this see that. And that’s why to say, “Yeah, shoot down Russian planes, no-fly zone,” for a member of Congress to say that, pretty terrifying.

CLAY: Especially to say it and not understand the significance of the argument. If you are going — ’cause you can make an argument for a no-fly zone, but you have to understand the consequences that can coming from that. She clearly didn’t, and that’s what’s scary. That’s how you stumble into war, and I don’t know what the resolution is gonna be as it pertains to these jets because the idea of getting them out of Germany seemed to be, “Well, there’s no way that Russian is going to bomb Germany.”

But Russia very well could bomb Poland if there are jets that are soon to take off to be attacking Russian assets. They certainly could do it for any of the Baltic states. I don’t know what country ends up feeling comfortable having these jets on their airfield in order to take off and get them into Ukraine, and I don’t know, Buck… Maybe there’s some sort of solution where you can find a way to get these jets into Ukraine secretly. I don’t know.

Shipping them without actually flying them in so they take off for the first time on Ukrainian airfields? I don’t know if that’s a possibility. But at least then you could follow — and this is the lawyer in me — the precedent of, “Hey, we’re already shipping other weapons across the border, and now we’re just going to ship these planes across the border”? I don’t know. I’m not an expert in transport of airplanes like this. But is that a solution that could get the Ukrainians access to the jets? That’s maybe where we’re left thinking through this.

BUCK: I think the Democrats realize — the ones who can see this and have an understanding of the implications, Clay. I think even the Democrats see that the closer you get to this, the closer you are to an open war with the Russian Federation over Ukraine, and is Ukraine really…? This is when it’s hard to have the conversation. It’s easy six months ago to say, “Ukraine’s not a core U.S. national security interest,” ’cause it was obvious then, right?

It’s a country that we like, we wish the best for, we do trade with, et cetera. But now when buildings are being leveled and more will be leveled in days ahead, it’s gonna get worse. And I’ve been saying this for weeks, in the first few days, when everyone’s like, “Oh, the Ukrainians are kicking all the Russian military, kicking them out of the country. Just give it some time.” I was like, “No, it’s not gonna happen. This is getting worse.”

So it becomes harder to make the case that, as an American, this is not our fight because we see the devastation, we see the inhumanity, we see the suffering, and we want to, as humans we want to do something. But this is where you have to make that determination. Is this a core national security interest that you should be sending United States military, our men and women, to fight and die for? I still say the answer is now “no” and that’s why I say no no-fly zone because one leads to the other, in my mind.