Ian Brzezinski, the former George W. Bush-era deputy assistant of defence for Europe and NATO Policy and son of famed US geopolitical grand strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski, has proposed “punishing” Russia financially preemptively over actions it has not taken in Ukraine.
“I agree there ought to be forceful systemic sanctions that are teed up against Russia. But we should be specifying them today. Today the alliance [NATO] and President Biden are speaking in broad generalities. They need to specify exactly what they’re going to do, be it shutting down access to credit, removal from the SWIFT [bank transfer] system, cutting off the purchase of Russian oil and gas, a trade embargo. These are things we did back in the 1980s in a similar crisis,” Brzezinski said, speaking at a recent virtual event hosted by the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based neoliberal think tank.
“We ought to be taking some preliminary economic steps now to demonstrate the credibility of those threats, may be stopping some payments on oil and gas transfers, maybe in a couple days shutting Russia off from SWIFT. These are steps that would demonstrate that the larger sanctions that we’re threatening are real,” Brzezinski added.
Warning that failure to demonstrate US commitment to the pro-Western government in Kiev might undermine the US-dominated ‘international order’, the former official urged for “some serious military steps” to be taken as well.
“NATO ought to be moving assets in southeastern Poland and eastern Romania. I’m a little bit surprised we haven’t mobilized the NATO response force and moved it into the region. We ought to be increasing lethal weapon transfers to the Ukrainian armed forces…We also ought to be stepping up our engagement with the Ukrainian armed forces, perhaps in exercises, some air presence in western Ukraine,” Brzezinski suggested.
Brzezinski emphasized that the West has the economic and military capacity to ensure that any alleged Russian aspirations to invade Ukraine would lead to “devastating” consequences, and stressed that “this is a matter of political will of the West to exercise the diplomatic, economic and political capacity necessary to deter this aggression.”
6 November 2021, 12:26 GMT
Maria Butina, a political activist and entrepreneur convicted as a ‘foreign agent’ in a US court in 2018, who is now a deputy in Russia’s parliament, slammed Brzezinski over his proposals, suggesting that his comments were meant to scare or intimidate Russia, and were “either a provocation or stupidity.”
President Putin, the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Russian military have all dismissed claims by Western and Ukrainian officials and media about alleged Russian plans to invade Ukraine. On Thursday, Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s general staff, stressed that it was the US and its allies who were “aggravating” the situation in eastern Ukraine by providing advanced arms to Kiev, with Ukrainian forces beginning to use these weapons in the Donbass conflict zone after failing to adhere to the terms of the Minsk peace accords signed in 2015.
While Western powers have accused Russia of escalating tension over Ukraine, some of its own leaders have expressed sentiments similar to Brzezinski’s. On Wednesday, Mississipi Republican Senator Roger Wicker urged President Biden not to “rule out first use nuclear action” against Russia if it invaded its neighbour, and suggesting putting ships in the Black Sea to “rain destruction on Russian military capability,” or putting “American troops on the ground” in the conflict area. The Russian Embassy in Washington responded to Wicker, calling his statements “irresponsible” and pointing to recent joint statement by Presidents Putin and Biden that there can be no winners in a nuclear war.