russia which was i margaret but the white house should look at what the worst-case scenario is and work backward from there with their allies, germany, france, uk and, again, decide in advance what they re going to do, if they re going to renegotiate the inf treaty, if they re going to do sanctions. whatever they re going to do decide now, don t wait for the worst to happen. in terms of renegotiating the build back better bill at this point heading into an election year i think democrats are going to have to move even further towards senator manchin, even though that disappoints, really enrages progressives because at this point they ve got to get a legislative win on the board and then turn their attention back to covid, even if they only get, let s say, $1 trillion on this, you add that to the $1 trillion for the hard infrastructure bill that already passed, $2 trillion you re talking about real money. what they can t do is go into the midterms with this hanging over them as a loss.
what s the way out here? what are the concessions that you can imagine if you play out the diplomatic end game? what are the concessions that russia could give, and what are the concessions the united states could give to make sure this thing doesn t escalate into a very ugly place? well, first, i think the way russia could de-escalate is to remove their troops from the border, take the gun away that s pointed at the head of ukraine. and i think that s the that s vladimir putin s way out. he doesn t need to invade ukraine to guarantee his own security and in fact, it s going to undermine his security if he takes a step over the border. i think for the united states, in terms of concessions, look, i think the united states said that they re willing to discuss things like rejoining the inf treaty, which russia abandoned, and obviously, offensive missiles elsewhere in europe, but no, we re not going to talk about exercises close to the border of russia. no, we re not going to talk abo
being surrounded on the sea and the air by forces of the ccp and a very strong projection of force. we have to show deterrents in the region. both in eastern europe but also in the pacific. you mentioned you got a briefing from secretary blinken, as i understand it, was there anything specific that you can share with us that he was identifying as a possible threat on that front? on a possible invasion of taiwan? well, we didn t talk about taiwan. we talked more about ukraine. i think the fact that we are pulling out nonessential employees from the embassy, just like we were doing that in afghanistan, sends a message about how high the threat level actually is. he talked about trying to resurrect the inf treaty that president trump did away with. and he believes he can talk his way out of this. you leverage the diplomats, you
that is not going to happen right now. he also suggested strongly that there could be negotiations in terms of pulling back the missiles along the border of russia in a number of those countries. seems as though putin has already achieved a very open door to many of the things that he wants based on what this administration has already indicated. we put on the table short of those proposals that we were willing to discuss the informations. what he s concerned about is very much offensive missiles and certainly offensive nuclear missiles, which is rich. they first began to deploy them against the violation of the inf treaty. and also they wanted to discuss exercises. that isn t the real meat and potatoes that putin is after.
mike pompeo were working on the inf treaty because the russians were cheating. we had a lot of democrats that criticized us but we said we will not stay in the treaty worried are the only ones following it especially when the russians are cheating. similarly there was new start another treaty we were intensely negotiating at the end of the trump administration. again trying to get a fair treaty people would stick to. we ran out of time. the biden administration comes in is not talked about as much as nord stream two. but for the new start treaty the biden demonstration comes in after we did all these negotiations with the trump administration they just re- up new start. no new concessions nothing new in the deal and gave the russians exactly what they wanted. when they did that i thought here comes nord stream two and