Marco Rubio warns U.S. must ‘deter’ Vladimir Putin or risk repeat of 1930s chaos

Daylight continues to grow between U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio and more isolationist Republicans on the matter of Ukraine, in the wake of Joe Biden’s decision to deploy more troops to Eastern Europe this week.

Presented with comments from Sen. Josh Hawley arguing on an episode of Tucker Carlson’s show that the U.S. shouldn’t be “embroiled in European conflicts,” Rubio warned failure to “deter” Vladimir Putin could unleash global destabilization similar to the run-up to World War II.

“If we live in a world where countries can say, ‘Look, that land belongs to us. We want it. We are going to go and take it for ourselves’ — if that’s the world we live in, we’re back to 1937, 1938, 1939,” Rubio said on Fox and Friends Thursday. The remarks were made in response to the threat of Russia invading Ukraine amid tensions with the U.S. and NATO.

“By the way, that’s what China says about Taiwan. And about parts of its border with Vietnam. In Europe alone, there are probably nine or 10 countries who have leaders or at least movements in those countries that are arguing that they got screwed over by some treaty 120 years ago, and they would like to rewrite it,” Rubio continued.

“If they have more military power than their neighbors, they can go in and take it. And I’m telling you: If we live in a world where countries can say, ‘That belongs to us, we’re going to go in and take it by military force and annex it,’ then you are going to see an impact to the United States,” Rubio warned.

Rubio stressed that he does not want to send “military troops to fight in the war in Ukraine,” which doesn’t exist yet. He then said there needed to be “serious consequences to deter Vladimir Putin from what I think he ends up doing.”

“Once he does it, he’s got to pay a big price. Or other people are going to follow his example and do the same thing,” Rubio warned.