Former United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined me this AM. His statement from CavPac.com on the need for more sanctions on Russia’s energy sector is here.

Audio:

02-28hhs-pompeo

Transcript:

HH: Joined live by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Good morning, Mr. Secretary. Welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show.

MP: Thank you, Hugh. It’s great to be on with you again this morning.

HH: I read the CavPAC statement that you put out yesterday. It appears as though you believe across the board President Biden has done too little, too late. Can that be turned around today and tomorrow?

MP: You can always do better. It’s the great achievement of mankind. We learn from the things that we got wrong. Yeah, we, American, the West, frankly, more broadly, has been on its back foot for months now. We’ve seen this coming, and we’ve been reactionary. And that gives Putin the capacity to drive the agenda, drive the mission, set the timing. That always creates risk and opportunity for the bad guy. And Vladimir Putin, who is an evil thug, has taken advantage of that, and much to the chagrin, and now much to the detriment of the victims in Ukraine.

HH: Now talk to me about what President Biden should be doing. I’m personally in favor of cancelling the State of the Union, because I don’t think the President is particularly effective communicating. And every time he shows up, you know, I hold my breath.

MP: Well, he has an obligation to communicate with the American people not only about why this matters to the United States, the impacts that you can expect if there’s a destabilized Europe, but to talk about the things that America can and should do. Yesterday, the statement you were talking about had half a dozen ideas. They’re very concrete. One could do them with a stroke of a pen, and with urging the American people to get behind the mission set. It starts with flooding the world with American energy – crude oil, natural gas. Drill it, pump it, pipe it, get it on a boat, get it to where it needs to be. Drive down prices. It’s good for us at home, lower prices at the pump, less money to heat your home or cool your home. But importantly, it would deny Vladimir Putin the premium he’s getting for his product today that is underwriting the very war crimes he’s conducting today in Ukraine. We could stop every plane from flying. Go to the, it’s called the ICAO. It’s a little bit in the weeds, but it’s the international body that covers air travel. And you could say no Russian planes can fly anywhere in the world or land in any commercial airport in the world. If you’re an oligarch or the girlfriend of an oligarch, that’s bad news. This would end up mattering in the medium and immediate terms. There’s, he should be at the U.N. every day pounding the table, going to the General Assembly, and I get it. I’m not a U.N. fan. It does a lot of things that are problematic. But make every country pick a side. And tell the world where they sit on this. That would be important to see where countries landed. There’s so many tools, and we just simply, we’ve waited too long. And then we put sanctions in place, Hugh, and you know how this works, right? It’s pretty technical, but you put a sanction in place, and then you give waivers. And it’s those waivers that are letting the money out the back door. Putin can see that.

HH: Now Mr. Secretary, before I go to the specifics, at the same time that we’re trying to deter Russia and get them to go back, we’re dealing with the Iranians. And if this administration does a deal with the Iranians right now, it will be appeasement on steroids. We should be shunning those talks, because of course, Iran and Russia are in bed with Xi. And you’re off to Taiwan this week. Is there any way you foresee the Biden administration doing a deal with Iran against this backdrop?

MP: You know, I put out a note last night. Today in Vienna, the United States was at a negotiating table. At that negotiating table, we were sitting on the same side of the table with the Russians and the Chinese “against” Iran. That’s nutty to give Iran money, the capacity to produce its crude oil and ship it to Russia at a time when Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine. To sit on the same side of the table with them is disgusting. It is despicable. And it’s an enormous geostrategic mistake to give Iran this capacity. It’ll put America and Israel at risk.

HH: What message does it send to the rest of the adversaries – China, Iran, that we are doing that? It is almost unbelievable that we would do that. Pathetic, but also unbelievable.

MP: Look, it tells other countries, too, the European nations, nations in the Middle East and in Africa, it says look, you can work with Russia in certain places, too. We’re doing it on something that we care about. We want to give Iran a nuclear weapon. We want to set them on a pathway to a nuclear program. We’ll work with them there. They should be locked out of every international institution. And we certainly shouldn’t be negotiating alongside them against the Ayatollah. You know this. As a strategic matter, China, Iran, Russia have enormous shared interests in moving military weapon systems around the world. And Iran will provide enormous support for the Russians. To think that they’re winking at each other, looking at each other across the table with the Americans sitting on the side with the Russians? It’s incomprehensible to me, Hugh.

HH: Now Mr. Secretary, Germany is incomprehensible to me, but in a good way. And you dealt with them for four years as CIA director and Secretary of State. And you know that Angela Merkel was basically the blob in the center of Europe. Scholz has showed up, and all of a sudden, Germany is back defending the West. Are you surprised?

MP: I’m heartened. It makes me, it makes me really appreciate that he feels like he can do that, that the German people are allowing him to do this. He has taken the lead to now say that he’s going to ship weapons. Now the proof’s in the pudding. Two pieces to this. First, it was great to say we’re going to halt the pipeline for a bit. It needs to be completely cancelled, and then ultimately demand that the pipeline built be dismantled. This has to be long-term. Second, he said they’re going to ship weapons systems. Ship them, for goodness sake. Maybe, he has. Maybe overnight, he did. I haven’t been able to find that out. But put them on a plane. Show me a video. We’ve got to get this moving. We are late. We are behind. The Germans shouldn’t have been doing this. The Europeans should have been doing this. We’ve all seen the famous videotape now where President Trump was demanding this four years ago. I’m happy that they’re doing it. Germany can’t be pacifists in the face of this kind of aggression against Europe. They should take the lead. They’re a big economy. They now say they’re going to get to 2% of their GDP. That’s a promise they had made an awfully long time ago. The right number is 4 or 5, Hugh. And they need to get there in an orderly way, but just as expeditious as possible. They have, they have the lead responsibility providing this security blanket for Europe.

HH: Mr. Secretary, when you were at the Agency, there was the initial commitment by former President Trump to send Javelins and other lethal aid to Ukraine. Most of that, I think, was handled by the Agency. I think the Army slow walked it for a while. Are you satisfied with what happened at the Agency and the Department of State under your tenure that we got as much as we could as fast as we could to Ukraine? And did we get enough?

MP: Goodness. You know, I wish we could have done more. We were moving fast. We were reversing years of American policy where the Obama administration with President Biden as the Vice President was refusing to ship those very systems that took a while for us to get the pipeline sufficiently full and begin to move that equipment not only into Ukraine, but to the right places. I’m proud of the work that we did. You always look at it and say gosh, I wish, wonder if there was just anything more we could have done. But I am so glad now that we under President Trump reversed that policy and began to develop the relationships with the Ukrainian military, not only the pipeline for equipment and materials, but the intelligence relationships. I went down to the Donbas myself to watch what the military was doing down there alongside our team at CIA. We were doing remarkable work, important work. We ought to keep at it.

HH: Have we reverted to leading from behind, the famous term that described President Obama’s approach, his own term to the Libya, as it was reported by the New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza at the time, because it seems to me we don’t lead. We just do whatever Germany does. So they send 500 Stingers, we send 500 Stingers. The EU is going to send fighter jets. That’s great. I don’t think we’re going to send fighter jets. Are we leading from behind again, Secretary Pompeo?

MP: It certainly appears that we’re following in the sense of, you know, the EU announced some really harsh economic sanctions. WE said okay, we’ll go along, too. That’s a real mistake. I heard the administration say last week that we couldn’t get, couldn’t get the Russian kicked out of SWIFT without everyone’s support. The truth is the United States has the capacity to do that alone. I can prove it. We did. We kicked the Iranians out of 50-plus banks out of SWIFT. We did it against Europeans’ will, not just when they were passive, but when they were working actively to work around our effort to find other, and they couldn’t do it. American sanctions alone work. One should lead, and then one should demand that the Europeans get on board instead of following. When I hear President Biden talk about America being back, right? He always talks hey, America is back. I fear that it is back, back to the foreign policy of President Obama, the kind of policy that allowed Russia to take a fifth of Ukraine in Crimea, and now has permitted Vladimir Putin, who is responsible for this mess, has allowed him to make so much progress in Ukraine. I’m praying for the Ukrainian people today, that they’ll continue their resistance. The West has the responsibility to support the Ukrainians in their fight to push back against Russia and demand their continued independence.

HH: Two more questions, Mr. Secretary – tanks and Taiwan. You’re an old tank guy. Are you surprised that the Russians cannot take Kharkiv or Kyiv, and that we see lots of pictures of burned out columns of Russian vehicles?

MP: It’s a hard fight in the cities. I remember as an M-1 tank platoon leader. You wanted to fight across big plains with 1,500 to 3,000 meters fields of fire. To get into a city is hard work. To occupy a city is hard work. And when there is a city of that scale, most of whom want you all to die, it’s really, really difficult. You need patience, you need air cover, you need long, logistical tails. I’m not surprised that they’re struggling, but it is a big military that you can see on TV. It’s continuing to advance.

HH: And last question, you are going to Taiwan. Bravo. What are you doing there? What signal do you want to send to President Xi and the Chinese Communist Party?

MP: Yeah, I’m going to Taiwan to talk about the things that matter to America, for Taiwan, why it matters that Taiwan remain with a capacity to live lives in the way they want to, not under the jackboot of Xi Jinping. I’m going to talk about the things that the people of Taiwan can do. And then I’m going to talk about an American policy that will prevent the Chinese Communist Party for its continued expansion. We are pretty focused on Europe for the moment, properly so. But it is, in the end, the Chinese Communist Party that presents the central threat to our times. And I want to go thank the people of Taiwan for the good work they have done to push back and demand their continued ability to live in their democracy and live their lives in the way they want to.

HH: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Safe travels. Talk to you on the other side.

MP: Thank you. Bless you. See you, Hugh.

End of interview.