ORLANDO (Legal Newsline) - When K.T. McFarland was the deputy national security advisor under former President Donald J. Trump just 13 months ago, she recalled that the world was at peace.
“President Trump understood that if we could use American oil and natural gas, it would be terrific for the American economy and it would help national security because it would get us out of all those forever wars in the Middle East, and because of our ability to export oil and natural gas, we could replace Russia and other countries as the world’s dominant energy supplier,” she said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Feb. 24 in Orlando.
“It would also drive the price of oil down. That's really key for Russia.”
McFarland
| CPAC
On Feb. 23, Russia invaded Ukraine and has been advancing slowly from the east, north and south. McFarland blames President Biden, who on his first day in office shut down the Keystone pipeline that delivered Canadian and U.S. crude oil to markets in North America.
“If oil was at $40 a barrel, which it was when President Trump left office, Russians are broke,” she said. “They can't afford war. War is expensive. They could not even meet payroll unless oil was about $80 a barrel. And why is that? Because nobody buys anything that is made in Russia. Who buys Russian computers or Russian cars? So, we knew that the Russians had to have high oil and gas prices to fund everything else.”
McFarland’s co-panelist was attorney Gordon Chang, author of The Coming Collapse of China.
“Very soon, Ukraine will fall,” Chang told McFarland and the audience. “Just a couple of days ago, Russia announced they are selling a hundred million tons of coal to China, which is China signaling to the world that they are going to support Russian aggression.”
When McFarland asked how Russia’s recent aggression will impact China, Chang expressed concern.
“U.S. sanctions are toothless, unfortunately, because if the Biden administration can't act in the face of an invasion, what’s to stop China from invading India or the Philippines? I'm afraid that the Chinese Communist Party is emboldened by this,” he said.
Chang also told McFarland that Taiwan, which is crucial to America's defense program, is an important territory to protect.
"If Taiwan falls to China, then Chinese ships and aircraft are flooding into the West," he added. "They're going to Hawaii and California where we don't want them."