The United States can deter Russia from invading Ukraine by threatening specific actions that would have devastating consequences for Moscow, Dick Morris said on Sunday.
Speaking to "The Cats Roundtable" radio show on WABC 770, hosted by John Catsimatidis, Morris, the former presidential adviser and political strategist, said the Biden administration is giving a false impression that the only way to respond forcefully to a potential invasion of Ukraine by Russia would be by going to war.
Morris said cutting Moscow out from the SWIFT international banking system unless he talks to Ukraine and doesn't invade it would completely cripple the Russian economy.
Morris insisted that "we’ve done that with Iran, and we should do it with Russia. And we should make very clear that that’s going to follow like night after day any [Russian] decision to send troops into the Ukraine."
He said that the West must learn lessons from the 1930s that "if we appease these countries and don’t censure them and don’t make clear that we are doing it, they will just continue to attack."
Morris said the U.S. also has other weapons in its arsenal to diplomatically deter the Kremlin, such as declaring a ban on purchasing oil from Russia, noting that Moscow currently sells a quarter of a million barrels of oil to the US every day.
He also said that the U.S. can force Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the gas pipeline he is building because he wants to bypass Ukraine so he can cut off shipments to them.
Morrris stressed that "if the US makes clear that an invasion of Ukraine would lead to our invoking the sanctions" against Russia that have already been passed by Congress, Putin’s going to back down and Germany’s going to back down if the Biden administration is very aggressive about it.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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