we re certainly not prepared to send u.s. forces to ukraine so we ve got to handle this with a little bit of care and we still ought to be looking for an acceptable diplomatic effort. so let s close on that point then. you mentioned putin s cost/benefit analysis. president biden has to make a similar cost/benefit analysis. there s this exchange of papers. russia has questions. the united states is sending written response. nato is responding a written response. one thing putin wants is the united states to say ukraine will never join nato. he wants biden to concede that u.s. troop presence in certain countries would come down or at least not increase. is there something biden can quote/unquote, give putin that is not such a major concession that it s embarrassing? well, the united states has already said is not going to welcome ukraine any time in the visible or foreseeable future. i think we re very open to various types of arms control
nato and the european union. getting out of the current crisis requires acting, not reacting. a, do you agree and, b, what would the acting part entail? i don t agree with it. i think putin is calculated. he put 100,000 troops on the border. he was probably thinking of using all of them. and then the strength of the u.s.-led western response got him to think again. i think now if he does act he s more likely to use something smaller. one of the reasons he d do something smaller is not to trigger certain response he doesn t want to see. if he does something small, for example, the germans aren t going to be with us on sanctions. we may not have the same nato reactions. putin is calibrating his cost/benefit ratios of various kinds of action and, look, the united states, i don t quite know what it means to say we should act, not react. we ve got a lot of considerations in the world, including china, including iran and north korea. including domestic. we do not want to have a crisis in u
president is doing now is not calibrated correctly? i think it s fine that we put u.s. forces on alert. shorten the lead time that if they needed to be sent to europe they could be. i think that s just fine. i think it would be premature to send them to europe since one of the things we re messaging to putin is essentially, if you go into ukraine, one of the ways you will pay a price is nato will be reinforced close to your borders in places like poland or hungary. he doesn t want it. so it seems to me the threat of doing that is one of the pieces of leverage i wouldn t the government in ukraine is not happy that the united states and a couple other western countries are drawing down families of nonessential personnel from the embassies. they say it sends the wrong signal at this time. but as joe biden tries to be ukraine s friend he also has to worry about those americans, doesn t he? sure. and it s tough. look, the u.s./ukraine
agreements. various pullbacks on forces, mutual ceilings on the forces putin would have near european countries. et cetera. it s up to putin whether he s looking for an off ramp or something that s face-saving. as i keep saying, i don t rule out the possibility that he won t find satisfaction like what you were just talking about. some new formula. virtually everything has been tried. i wouldn t be surprised if at some point we increased russian presence in the western hemisphere. having russian bombers visit nicaragua or venezuela. he can widen the chess board and find an acceptable outcome from his point of view that way. we then to have to decide what we re prepared to live with. widening the chess board. we ll say in touch as that happens. richard haass, grateful for your insights today. thank you. thank you, john. up next, cnn talks to the senate minority leader mitch mcconnell.
relationship is strained. no matter what we do, it s not quite enough. from our point of view, we re taking reasonable steps in this case to reduce the vulnerability of american personnel and citizens. from ukraine s point of view we re signaling that we think war is likely. that s the last thing they want to see. this is a scratchy relationship, i think, that s inevitable what the foreign minister just said at the beginning of your program. he doesn t want deals made behind his back. he s talking about the united states. and he s basically signaling washington, we don t trust you. we don t want you and the russians cooking up something at our expense. bill clinton was president of the united states when we first tried to figure ot what does vladimir putin want. there s been a lot of bad behavior in the 25-plus years since. an analyst you know quite well, fiona hill writes this of putin. he has the united states right where he wants it. right now, all signs indicate that mr. putin wi