2 years ago
Even as President Joe Biden has emphasized that the U.S. and NATO do not want to engage with Russia militarily, Congress has pushed the administration to take a hard stance against Russia through unprecedented financial and economic sanctions. In recent years, behind the scenes, lobbyists representing Ukrainian interests pushed for sanctions on the other combustible issue, gas.
Tonight, Playbook author Ryan Lizza has dinner in downtown Washington, D.C., with lobbyist Daniel Vajdich, on his strategy, before the war, to help deter Russian aggression and protect Ukraine, and his thoughts on the potential fallout from being burned by lobbyists. A transcribed excerpt from that conversation is below, edited for length and readability.
Ryan Lizza: Have you been part of the discussions over the Ukraine security package that's a part of the omnibus, either on the sanctions or on additional security assistance?
Daniel Vajdich: I would say Sen. [Pat] Toomey, the ranking member, the senior Republican on the Banking Committee, is pushing for these sanctions.
Lizza: He's pushing these sanctions that you're talking about?
Vajdich: We're really grateful for him doing that. We met with him recently. He understands the consequences of this. But he also understands the importance of this, the sanctions infrastructure that we need to create. This is the foundation, the financial sanctions. What do you do after that on the energy side? Just as with Iran, we create these escrow accounts in various countries and markets around the world where the Russians are. They can continue to sell their oil and gas but all or at least some of that money goes into these escrow accounts and we hold that until the Russians withdraw from Ukraine and possibly engage in other forms of behavior change. So this is a model that I think is even more applicable in the case of Russia than some would argue that in the case of Iran.
What are the counter arguments? Well, that Europe in particular can't sustain a cut off of Russian oil and gas. Well, on gas, we don't think that that's true. First of all, it's the end of the winter. They don't need gas right now. Right now, winter's over. They have seven months and we have seven months to work with them to build up their reserves for the next winter. They have over 150 billion cubic meters of import capacity. That's more than what Russia exports to Europe, combined with possibly looking at a few other energy resources on the gas side because you can transition gas to other forms of energy. You can look at coal temporarily, you can look at nuclear.
I know that those are difficult issues and I'm not someone who disagrees necessarily with Europe or our own energy transition or our movement towards renewable, but we cannot subjugate ideology and ambition in the renewable space to geopolitics right now, at least not for the next 12-24 months. This is our plea to the administration. This is our plea to the Europeans — I say the Ukrainian plea as well — that we may need to deprioritize some of these things temporarily so that we can sustain cutting off energy from Russia in the short term, because that's the only thing they're going to understand.
Lizza: You're talking about Germany using more nuclear and coal? That's not something that the Biden administration controls.
Vajdich: This is where I go back to their flawed philosophy from the recent past where I try not to focus on it or dwell on it. But you know, they continue, quite frankly, to subjugate a lot of U.S. policy to Germany and what the Germans would or wouldn't do. I mean, up until this point, the Germans have been willing to do nothing.
Right now they're doing something but, but but look at Kharkiv, look at Ukraine, look at Kyiv, look at Mariupol. That's what it took for the Germans to come to the realization that they needed to do these things. So do you really want to continue to pursue a policy whereby you're saying we need to be in lockstep with the Germans when it took them this long to get to this point?
Lizza: Well, everyone seems to be pretty impressed with the speed at which Germany's changed a lot of policies.
Vajdich: I am. But that only speaks to how low the expectations were. I'll tell you something that I heard today, literally before I got to dinner, from folks around President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy. There is a narrative going around in Ukraine among very smart, pro-American people that the United States is withholding security assistance to Ukraine and real assistance because we want to use the Ukrainians to exhaust the Russians.
Lizza: Just cannon fodder, basically.
Vajdich: I try and convince the Ukrainians that this is not true and gives too much credit to a lot of people. But this is just reflective of...
Lizza: It doesn't really make sense, if you think about it. I mean, if you wanted to exhaust the Russians, you would supply the Ukrainians with sophisticated weaponry to basically kill the invaders. Rather, the argument makes it sound like you want to...
Vajdich: The argument of these people is that it's being calibrated.
Lizza: So that's slow.
Vajdich: It's slow. It's being calibrated. They're evaluating where the Ukrainians are and where the Russians are and how to maintain basically the status quo.
Lizza: It makes it sound like the Iran-Iraq War, where we basically liked the fact that they were fighting each other. Like that's what they're thinking.
Vajdich: That's a really good analogy and I think that's exactly the right analogy. Again, I don't think this is true and I tell the Ukrainians this is not true. I hope I have some credibility with them to be able to tell them that. But I say this because it is reflective of where the Ukrainians are and how they feel right now. They believe that they're receiving so little support from the United States that they're starting to come up...
Lizza: So little despite everything?
Vajdich: Again, they feel that the United States is not doing all that it can to defeat Russia. Let me put it this way: “the United States is not doing all that it can to defeat Russia...
Lizza: Well, that's true. We're not.
Vajdich: ...in order to allow for the war to continue.” And again, I can't emphasize how much I disagree with that, but I just want to point that out, where very smart, logical, pro-American Ukrainians in and out of government are. I do think it's something that needs to be kind of noted. It's indicative of something in terms of where they are and what they're thinking.
Lizza: Do they understand the U.S. position on the no-fly zone?
Vajdich: My sense is that they don't. I don't think that they do. They're going to continue to push for it. But you know, my emphasis has been really on the security assistance side when I talked to people.
Lizza: Stingers and Javelins.
Vajdich: Stingers, Javelins, and let's figure out the fighter aircraft issue.
Lizza: So this is an example where you're in the position of explaining to your Ukrainian counterparts what's feasible, rather than you being told by the Ukrainians "Hey, you know, go up and talk to [Sen. Bob] Menendez and [Secretary of State Antony] Blinken."
Vajdich: Absolutely. It's a two-way street. It has to be. Again, we're not doing what my firm was founded to do.
Lizza: If you went into Menendez's office or sources in the administration, at the Pentagon or the State Department and made a case for a no-fly zone, you'd be laughed out. That's a nonstarter.
Vajdich: Look, I'm telling you where the center of gravity is right now. Could that change? You know, we're literally seeing — and I don't think it's an overstatement — a desire or an ambition of genocide in Ukraine. I mean, they do want to depopulate certain areas of Ukraine. They've tried. Thankfully, they've failed. So the question is, if this continues, I don't know. I don't know whether that shifts. But right now, the center of gravity on both sides of the aisle is against a no-fly zone. But I know that President Zelenskyy and Foreign Minister Kuleba and others are going to continue to push for that.
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