Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed Monday that former President Bill Clinton had effectively set Ukraine up as a “sitting duck” when he signed the 1994 agreement under which Ukraine gave up a sizable nuclear arsenal.
After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow left thousands of nuclear arms behind in Ukraine. Three years later, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum — an agreement stating that they would fully denuclearize in exchange for a guarantee that NATO and Russia would see to their security.
Clinton, at the time, called the arrangement “a hopeful and historic breakthrough that enhances the security of all three participants.”
But Watters argued that if Ukraine had retained ownership of those weapons — well over 100 Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and more than 1000 warheads — Russian President Vladimir Putin might have thought more carefully about sending troops across the border.
He began with the impact that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could have on the United States, noting that President Joe Biden had even said recently that the situation in Ukraine was likely to result in Americans paying higher prices for energy.
“Gas will be $4 a gallon. It’s probably going to $100 a barrel within the next couple weeks if this thing goes through,” Watters said, predicting that the stock market would “take a huge hit” and inflation was only going to get worse. “Have we been prepared as a country to stomach this? No.”
Watters went on to call on President Biden to offer an explanation to the American people before things got worse. “Because right now the American people are not ready for this. Oil’s going to go up. Inflation will get worse. And the Democrats and the media are going to blame Russia.”
“How did we get here? Bill Clinton forced the Ukrainians in the early ’90s to give their nukes back to Russia. If he had just let the Ukrainians keep the nukes, Russia wouldn’t have gone in. You don’t invade a nuclear power,” Watters continued. “He forced the nukes out there, back to Russia and now they’re sitting ducks for Putin. So, I expect a formal apology by Bubba.”
Watters argued that the rest of Europe was in trouble as well, mainly due to recent moves toward more green energy.
“They went green here, and they reduced nuclear. They reduced coal. They reduced exploring for natural gas domestically and they’re now just sucking at the teat of Vladimir Putin’s pipeline. So they’re over a barrel, they’re going to get squeezed, there’s nothing they can do about it because they’re Putin’s biggest customer. So that’s also a problem,” Watters added.
Watters concluded that what was ultimately coming was a showdown between NATO and Russia, one that he argued had been brewing in one way or another since the Soviet Union fell.
“Since the fall of the Soviet Union, NATO has aggressively pushed NATO expansion into these former Soviet territories,” Watters said, claiming that Russia viewed the expansion of NATO as a humiliation and a direct threat and was pushing back against that. “They’ve been on a collision course ever since the Soviet Union crumbled. Here we are today. The American consumer is gonna get destroyed by this and we don’t know why.”
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