Tom Cotton Slams U.S. Responding to Russia With ‘Strongly Worded Speeches’: ‘What Does That Say to Xi Jinping?’ About Taiwan
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) argued on Sunday that the Biden administration’s “mealy-mouthed” response to mounting Russian aggression at the Ukrainian border “emboldens and encourages our adversaries everywhere.”
Cotton noted two of Vladimir Putin‘s demands — that Ukraine not join NATO and the U.S. not have large numbers of combat troops in Ukraine — are “pretexts.”
“There is no plan for Ukraine to join NATO,” Cotton said, adding that the U.S. has not had large numbers of combat troops in Ukraine either.
“What [Putin] really wants is to reassemble the greater Soviet Russia empire that he thinks…was a geopolitical catastrophe when it collapsed in the 1990s,” Cotton said. “And he wants to have a non-democratic buffer zone so the Russian people can’t look to places like Ukraine and Georgia and say, ‘If democracy works in those countries why shouldn’t it work in ours?'”
Cotton said this has been a longtime goal of Putin’s, but the reason he appears to be acting on it now, by increasing Russian military presence on the border and planning a “false flag” operation in order to justify an invasion, is largely because of President Joe Biden.
“For a year he has been appeasing Vladimir Putin,” Cotton said. “He gave him a very one-sided nuclear arms control treaty the very first month of his presidency. He removed sanctions from the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which his own party opposed.”
On top of that was the “debacle” in Afghanistan, all of which Cotton thinks shows Putin the “timing is right.”
“It is very dangerous when you allow our adversaries like Russia, China, and Iran to try to upend the status quo and all we do is have strongly worded speeches or some mealy-mouthed sanctions,” Cotton said. “If Vladimir Putin can get away with this in Ukraine, what does that say to Xi Jinping about what he can do in Taiwan? Or what he can do to threaten our military positions in the western Pacific? What he can do to continue to cheat on trade deals to take jobs and wealth away from this country?”
Cotton concluded by saying: “That’s why the American people care about what happens in Eastern Europe is because it emboldens and encourages our adversaries everywhere if we simply look the other way when Vladimir Putin might invade Ukraine.”
Watch above, via Fox News
