would be devastating to their economy. we re seeing a little bit of fraying in the alliance and this puts biden in a no-win situation. he can stick with the europeans or stick with zelensky. he seems to be choosing the europeans and putin doesn t seem to be listening anyway. you can see the biden administration is scrambling to try to avoid this war before it starts. general, you just heard them say there that the u.s. said that it s unclear whether russia will actually invade. you ve got 100,000, more than 100,000 tanks and equipment and troops around the border of ukraine. as sam kiley just pointed out. all of the armor that they have at the ready. is there anything in your mind that tells you that they will not? well, christie, they certainly have the capabilities to invade at any moment, literally. i mean, it could take place right now. but as we know, any type of a threat is a combination of
capabilities and intentions, and that s inside the intentions are inside putin s head. as josh just laid out, those diplomatic elements of power and economic elements of power are out there. they re available for putin to advantage, but they aren t significant enough. so now you have this military element of power, and what is nato doing to try to deter putin s capabilities. well, frankly what they re doing is prudent, in that they are available to assist with what i would describe as a non combatant evacuation operation if that were to occur, hopefully different from how it looked in kabul this past summer. but if u.s. citizens and other nationals are in kyiv and kyiv was under attack and those folks had to be removed, i would tell you putin would give those citizens, those foreign citizens in kyiv an opportunity to escape. putin doesn t want to pick a fight with the united states. bear in mind, the united states
because australia s prime minister called china chillingly silent on this. how would a russian invasion of ukraine, how would that affect china on the global political arena? right, it s a fascinating dynamic, because we just saw president putin travel to beijing and fall asleep during the opening ceremony of the beijing olympics, and then issued a 5,000 word statement about how close friends they are but it didn t mention ukraine. it s like, well, that s kind of weird. it seems clear that xi jinping doesn t want putin to invade ukraine, even though he expresses luke-warm support in public. the reasoning is simple. china has a foreign policy based on sovereignty and non intervention and russia attacking another region destroys that and china doesn t want instability and they don t want the economy to be tanked
presence in ukraine. that begins the clock in terms of the downfall, lack of independence in ukraine, and putin gets a win. that s a win-win. josh rogan, general marks, you give us so much to think about. i always learn from you. thank you so much. and don t forget to watch state of the union today at 9:00. cnn s jake tapper speaking with national security adviser jake sullivan. still to come this hour, protests in canada over covid-19 restrictions continue for a third weekend, and now there are concerns the fight may cross the border. why one u.s. senator is backing the charge to, quote, clog up major cities stateside. plus, getting a supreme court nominee approved may mean getting bipartisan support. up next, the two republicans leading the charge to make sure president biden picks someone both sides can agree on.
air command systems. rebeccah heinrichs. the message is confused, which is why president biden worked himself up in this speech and he made a comment that he did. but the white house s response to say what he really meant is gaslighting the american people. we know he doesn t want putin to be in power. they can say, we all recognize that putin is evil, what he s doing is evil, but the policy of the united states is, in fact, to get to a position of peace in ukraine and we ll arm the ukrainians so they can get to a negotiated peace. this isn t his only gaffe. president biden made a gaffe about sending the 82nd airborne into ukraine which we re not doing and said the united states would respond in kind if there was a chemical weapons attack on the part of russia. this was not a good trip for the president because the three big ga gaffes are at a cross-purposes