certainly gazprom is one of their 50 60% of the russian economy right now. but you can t you can t go and tell the germans, look, we re just going to cut you off on day one that really would have hurt a lot of european countries. and frankly, those are a lot of countries that are trying to take in ukrainian refugees right now and are bearing economic costs at that moment. so you can only do what you can do. i don t think we should really lay too much blame at the bush administration s feet, but i think it is fair to say that the previous administration would have said to with it, let germany fend for itself. president biden s if not willing to do that . yeah, it appears he is not david martok. so great to see you. thanks for coming on . we appreciate it. thank you . and i think david griff jenkins makes a good point here because the concept of this is and tom cotton made a good point saying why are there more sanctions? i mean, i thought we threw the whole ball of wax at them in the be
no sign we are willing to send forces in ukraine to help ukraine defend itself. comes down to basically the economic sanctions. already a lot of them on russia. a other ones could be taken. russia could be cut off by the west by the international banking system that would hurt. the nord stream 2 pipeline not active but expected to be. would hurt the russian economy if it were never activated. i don t think the allies are going to go along with either of those two things. germany doesn t seem at all prepared to have nord stream 2 which they depend they depend on russian gas. germans have curbside their use of nuclear power. they have curbsided their use of coal power. they need russian gas and it will hurt them badly. i don t think they will go along with it and i don t think the rest of the allies will be willing to go along with the tough banking sanctions. it remains to be seen what the president and his team can get the allies to do. bret: yeah. just to clarify. peter was in an
terms of its response to the letter that was delivered today outlining the u.s. and allies positions. and, of course, as the white house continues to say the ultimate decision lies with president putin as to whether he intends to invade ukraine and follow through on that or doesn t. the white house is watching closely, and president biden is obviously watching it closely. it would lead to a what he said, the biggest invasion since world war ii and it would change the world. those were his words yesterday. so, right now i think they are just waiting to get a response to that letter. bret: right. marc? i hope that that letter not only answered russia s questions but included specific sanctions that the u.s. would impose, including energy and gas sanctions, banking sanctions, all the things that the biden administration has refused so far to say publicly they would do because russia doesn t want energy sanctions, bikd is under pressure for gas prices here at home. he doesn t want en
not been particularly effective. talking about the swift protocols which is how banks internationally pay each other. i think putin will take that more seriously. with personal sanctions, individual sanctions in the past. i think they are prepared to say we can overcome that. i m glad you ve mentioned the swift. it s an acronym for banking sanctions and that could be very significant. general, let me ask you about another thing. you re talking about how putin may be working other ways as well, whether it s cyber and he is putting troops another ukraine s border and there s
at stanford university. are you surprised, given how the europeans, even after crimea were not very willing to put in very tough sanctions, that this time around they do seem to have come around to a view of maybe some stronger sanctions? well, i hear that there would be crippling sanctions, but i think we d have to see what the specifics would look like. if there was that little slip of the president that it sort of depended on the nature of what the russians did. and i am not sure that we would see the kinds of crippling sanctions, for instance, banking sanctions, that would deny dollar denominated transactions to the russians. if we had more limited activity. president of ukraine says that maybe nato membership is a dream. do you think that the end of the day, where we re going to come out of this is everybody knows