K.T. McFarland to Newsmax: Stop Putin by Ending Fossil Fuel War

The United States can help bring Russia's aggressions on Ukraine to an end not by going to the battlefield, but by cutting off Moscow economically, and President Joe Biden can do that by declaring his administration's war on fossil fuels over, former deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland said on Newsmax Saturday.

"He should immediately say that 'the war on American fossil fuels that I declared the first day of my administration: I'm putting that on pause,'" McFarland commented on Newsmax's "Saturday Report." "'I am now encouraging American energy production. I want to have America be the country that supplies European oil and natural gas and their energy needs. I want to make sure that America is not just energy independent for us; that's great for us.'"

If that happened, McFarland said, that would drop the price of oil internationally and it "bankrupts Russia."

"I've always thought that the solution to this would be to not go to war with Russia but go to economic war with Russia," said McFarland. "That means Russia doesn't have the money or the resources to continue this war. We win, but we win it economically."

McFarland also on Saturday called Russian President Vladimir Putin's annexation of four Ukraine territories a "PR move" because of how badly the war is playing in Russia.

"He's got to show something for this big sacrifice Russia's made," said McFarland. "It was supposed to be we'll be in, we'll be out. We'll have Ukraine; we'll have a coup in Kyiv; and then we will have a pro-Russian government within a week."

But instead, Ukraine has been pushing back hard; and now, Putin needs to show something to the Russian people for the effort, said McFarland.

Putin is also trying to send a signal to the West that if there is an attack to try to retake the provinces, that means an attack on Russia itself, said McFarland.

"He's now mobilized 300,000 troops prior to this," she said. "The people fighting in Ukraine, the Russians fighting were ... from the hinterlands. They were impoverished. They were not the sort of people that he needs to support his government."

But now, with his conscription orders, Putin is ordering in the young men who work in the nation's major cities, like St. Petersburg and Moscow, who are the heart of his economy; so he must show progress to make that happen, said McFarland.

"I think he also finally understands that he can't stay in power, nor can he probably even stay alive if he has to go home and retreat in shame and defeat; so he's doubling down to try to make it work," said McFarland. "I don't know that it's going to work for him. I hope it doesn't work for him."

McFarland further said she doesn't think Ukraine will be admitted into NATO because that would mean the organization essentially declaring war on Russia, which the Western powers and the Europeans don't want.

But historically, Putin's aggressions may well spell his end in Russia, said McFarland.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, she said, people were angry over the economic situation and its weak international standing.

"Throughout Russian history — 1,000 years of Russian history — if the Russian people feel that their life is bad, their economic life, their day-to-day life is bad as well, as Russia being disrespected and losing internationally, that's when they rise up," she said. "That's when they rose up in the Russian Revolution and during World War I. That's when they rose up during the Cold War and the defeat of the Soviet Union in the 1980s."

She said she's not sure if that will happen now, "but it's pretty clear that Vladimir Putin is looking for a lot of PR." But "throughout history is that Russian leaders, indeed, under certain circumstances, are very vulnerable to attack from within — not because we impose it, but the Russian people take things into their own hands."

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