it was trump that made that promise. decided that talking to the taliban was the right thing to do. he set a deadline, whichjoe biden actually pushed back, because he thought it was too soon. so if you re going to blame all of this on weakness showed over afghanistan, that s on donald trump. well, i don t think so. i think many presidents have tried to get out of there. i think it was the way it was done, stephen, more than anything, and trump would have had conditions on the ground. i don t think he would have had an unconditional surrender to the taliban, or given up bagram air base. i was in favour of the residual force to, you know, protect the region and the homeland. having said that, it did project weakness, and irrespective of afghanistan, this waiver of the nord stream ii pipeline no european country that agrees with this other than germany, whose chancellor, former chancellor schroeder, is the lobbyist for
i think it was the way it was done, stephen, more than anything, and trump would have had conditions on the ground. i don t think he would have had an unconditional surrender to the taliban, or given up bagram air base. i was in favour of the residual force to, you know, protect the region and the homeland. having said that, it did project weakness and, irrespective of afghanistan, this waiver of the nord stream ii pipeline no european country that agrees with this other than germany, whose former chancellor schroeder, is the lobbyist for putin for gazprom. right, right, well, you know. sure, so you ve got a problem with germany, and we can talk more about the europeans in a second. but ijust want to come back to this extremely important and serious charge that you are putting at biden s door, that putin smells weakness around the biden administration . let us look at what joe biden has done.
question on this specific, then we ll move on. but on this specific of sanctions, are you seriously saying to me that if the united states were to pre empt any new move from putin and impose crippling sanctions now, you think vladimir putin would say, oh, you know what, i ve been rumbled here. i can t continue this confrontation. i m going to back off, all my troops are going home. joe biden, you win. you really think that would happen? i think sanctions for the cyber events that have happened and things that have already happened, but i do think to lay out what the sanctions would be once an invasion occurs. we didn t see the chancellor from germany yesterday when he came to washington to basically say, and i was waiting for him to say, if putin invades, we will shut down the nord stream ii pipeline. i didn t hear that from him. now the president, biden, said that. yeah. ..but not germany. but that, with all due respect,
we didn t see the chancellor from germany yesterday when he came to washington to basically say, and i was waiting for him to say, if putin invades, we will shut down the nord stream ii pipeline. i didn t hear that from him. now the president, biden, said that. yeah. ..but not germany. but that, with all due respect, congressman, is surely the key point here, thatjoe biden not only has a duty, as he sees it, to talk tough to vladimir putin, he also has a really important obligation to keep the western alliance together. he can t move far further forward than the french, the germans, or other key players in nato are prepared to let him move, because if he does so, the nato alliance will look completely fragmented, completely weakened, and that will only benefit vladimir putin. so there s some very nuanced and important diplomacy here that antony blinken and joe biden have to achieve.
this most favoured nation trading status, there is some sympathy in washington that europe, of course, is in a very different situation from the us when it comes to the reliance on russian fuel and russian products. you look at what the us imports in terms of barrels of oil from russia. it is only about 700,000 a day, whereas for europe, it is 4 million. and then you look at some european countries that are one almost 100% reliant on russian gas. so to tell their people that now you need to freeze or actually be paying through the roof for home heating and home cooking is going to be very difficult. so i think there are some compassion there within washington as to europe trying to go a little bit slower, and also recognising that, for example, you have chancellor 0laf scholz in germany already taking that step of suspending the nord stream ii pipeline, which the biden administration had wanted for a long time. and now they actually have done. the figures are dramatic only 2% of