Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) is participating in the Munich Security Conference amid a tense moment between Russia and Ukraine. On Thursday, Warner said on a call with reporters that the situation would be one of the main topics at the annual conference, which wasn’t held during the past two years due to COVID-19.
“The challenging thing is that we have seen no real de-escalation efforts by Putin and the Russian forces. There may have been some forces that have moved around a bit, but no indications of de-escalation,” said Warner, who is chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
He said, “I hope and pray that a week from now we could have one of these sessions and say short-term, nothing has happened, but we are still in a extraordinarily dangerous week. And again, I hope all the actions of America and the west will weigh on Putin and he won’t take this effort, which could be the most dramatic effort in terms of changing boundaries of Europe since the end of the Second World War.”
On Thursday, Biden’s new U.S. Ambassador to Germany Amy Guttman began her tenure by attending the conference. Guttman has come under fire from Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chair Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) and other Republicans for a lack of experience and a perceived quid-pro-quo in her appointment, but others see her academic background as a bonus. German Marshall Fund of the United States Senior Transatlantic Fellow Sudha David-Wilp called the decision a “thoughtful and smart choice,” according to politico.eu, citing her intellectual ability as an advantage in the German-American relationship.
Recently, Rubio warned that aggressive foreign policy by Russia and China risks returning international politics to a time where powerful countries can take over neighboring countries. Rubio warned that a Russian invasion of Ukraine would impact energy prices, according to Fox News.
In the press call, Warner said there’s no way to guarantee that economic sanctions against Russia wouldn’t impact energy markets.
“If you have a major disruption in energy markets, you could see higher prices in natural gas, you could see higher prices on oil, and that could translate through to the pump. If we launch these sanctions and Russia responds in kind with a cyber attack against American infrastructure, it could further disrupt some of our supply chain,” Warner said.
“But the alternative of giving in to a bully, giving in to a country that is not respecting the international boundaries, giving in to an authoritarian state, would encourage that kind of Russian aggression, it would encourage potentially the Communist Party in China and Xi Jinping taking aggressive actions in Asia. This is the reason why NATO was created back in the post-World War II world to contain then, the Soviet Union, and to prevent war and to show a united front,” Warner said. “We can’t walk away from that commitment because if we did it would be Ukraine today and Poland tomorrow and the Baltics the day after that.”
– – –
Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
