BIDEN’S FAULT: Mike Pompeo: Putin Wants to Bring Back Soviet Union

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine was the latest sign of the autocrat’s desire to “bring back the Soviet Union.” Pompeo also said the Russian invasion of Ukraine will affect Americans both in economic and national security ways.

“This invasion was by no means inevitable,” Pompeo wrote in a Fox News opinion column on Thursday. “We in the Trump administration knew that it was Putin’s aim to establish Russian dominance and influence over all the old Soviet bloc countries, including in Ukraine.

Pompeo wrote that President Joe Biden has been weak toward Putin, and “doesn’t know that it takes strength to defend America and keep us out of war.”

Under former President Donald Trump, the U.S. prevented the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from being completed, withheld talks on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and worked with NATO partners to increase defense spending, Pompeo said.

“We knew what Putin wanted to accomplish if given the chance, and we took the steps necessary to ensure he didn’t get that chance,” Pompeo wrote. “Make no mistake, Putin is about the business of trying to bring back the Soviet Union. We must not allow that to happen.

“It is not Vladimir Putin who has changed; it’s American leadership that’s changed.”

Pompeo said that sanctions have and will do little to deter Putin.

“They failed because sanctions are just one tool for executing effective diplomacy and establishing deterrence, yet the Biden administration has acted as if they are sufficient as a reactionary strategy,” Pompeo wrote.

“They are not; deterrence must be multifaceted — military force projection, American energy dominance, allied resolve, and clear, concise dialogue and expectations.”

The former secretary of state warned about the Russian invasion’s effects on Americans.

“Energy prices will skyrocket due to the invasion’s effect on global energy markets,” he wrote. “The rising cost of energy means that the historic inflation levels we’ve seen under the Biden administration will only continue to increase. Instability in Europe will also strain our economic relationships here at home, meaning less jobs for Americans. And how can we make the case for controlling our own southern border while we allow a free nation’s sovereign borders to be violated with impunity?”

He also said China’s Xi Jinping, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and Iran’s ayatollahs will see “these failures of American leadership as a green light for them to execute their sinister designs to disrupt peace and make war.”

“This will make the world far less safe for all people, including Americans,” Pompeo wrote. “We need to establish strong U.S. leadership with urgency to avoid such a future.”