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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Kevin Cramer (R-ND), member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, joined Linsey Davis on ABC News Live last night to discuss the situation in Ukraine. This follows the senator’s trip to Ukraine last week. Excerpts and the full video are below.
On the Importance of Ukraine:
“There are a number of national security reasons when it comes to the stability of Europe. The stability of Europe is of important consequence to the United States as a trading ally and as a NATO ally. There are also a lot of North Dakotans who do business in Ukraine. There are a lot of Ukrainians who moved to North Dakota. We have some very direct and personal contacts, but the larger geopolitical global context is: they’re a freedom-loving country. They were once a part of the Soviet Union. Vladimir Putin obviously still harbors a fantasy about bringing them back under the Russian flag. That has a lot of ramifications beyond just this little country of 42 million people.”
On Vladimir Putin:
“Vladimir Putin wants his old Soviet regime back. I have no doubt about that. He’s been willing to take it back a little bit at a time. Crimea, of course, being the most famous and directly relevant occupation to this situation. He’s been patient, but he’s also a leader who’s running out of time. He’s not getting any younger, just like the rest of us. The time for the fulfillment of taking more territory and more country underneath his umbrella is coming to a close. While he’s a smart guy, he’s not irrational. He also harbors these fantasies. I worry about people like him doing things that are irrational or for that matter well-planned out, but still really, really bad.”
On 8,500 Troops on Heightened Alert:
“I’m a little bit confused by it and I imagine others are as well. Our position has always been that we wouldn’t deploy troops, on the other hand, a unified NATO is really important. American leadership in unifying NATO is really important.”
“Perhaps this extra show of force is a move to demonstrate unity. The problem is it’s an event that’s taken on in the context of a lot of confusion. The believability of the president’s bluster is certainly questionable at best considering recent gaffes, especially the minor incursion gaffe of the other day. He’s just not proven to be strong. The Afghanistan debacle, of course, continues to haunt him, and rightfully so. The ramifications well beyond Europe include things like China and Taiwan. I get the sense the president wants to demonstrate strength, but he’s having a hard time with the credibility factor.”
On Sanctions:
“I think doing sanctions after an invasion is too little, too late. That’s not going to deter anything. The threat of it isn’t even a deterrent. Because, again, this president has drawn lines before and not done anything when people have crossed them. He has a believability problem. I do think and I do support a strong bipartisan sanctions package realizing in a 50-50 Senate there’s going to have to be compromise. The sequence of when the sanctions kick in matters. To get Vladimir Putin’s attention we need to issue sanctions right now. Let’s not forget, he’s already incurred on Ukraine through cyberattacks. He’s demonstrated his willingness and his ability to get inside of their systems. He’s going to act on that if we don’t respond in my view. He only responds to strength at least from a deterrent standpoint… The goal of all of this is to deter an invasion, not to spark a war. A sanctions package needs to be a combination of increments that begin immediately.”
