Confronting Putin: What can Americans expect?

no one knows where this conflict is headed and events are changing by the hour still it's not too soon to wonder just how far americans are willing to go to stop russian aggression we have a report from senior contributor ted koppel nobody is going to attack the ukrainian people sometimes in weighing what russian officials are saying now or what they may be saying next week there are a lot of fake news there are a lot of fake factories that produce those news it helps to take a look at what they were saying just a few days ago we have no plans no intentions to attack ukraine we [Music] there are no strikes on civilian infrastructure no one can possibly know for sure what's next but we have turned to four people whose life experience and accumulated expertise gives their opinions special weight people are being fired for speaking against the war my niece just got arrested in the center of moscow she was just walking and because she's young the police assumed that she must be protesting against the war she would just get arrested her great-grandfather was nikita khrushchev nina khrushchev defected that was the term in those days when russia was known as the soviet union she is now a professor of international affairs at the new school in new york but still has close ties to the country where she was born putin's numbers are up you mean his popularity 71 percent from 60. now can we trust those polls the kremlin no no it's not the kremlin it's not the kremlin it's the levada paul but i suspect when the bodies come back it'll be in the dark at night and there won't be anybody there to photograph it absolutely and they already i mean they're already information that they're burning those bodies really yep so it's really quite stalin-esque time right now he's not getting the movement out of the military in ukraine he's not making the progress he thought i believe he's going to turn to cyber keith alexander was a four-star general when he ran the nsa the national security agency few americans know more about cyber warfare or vladimir putin or how he may retaliate than general alexander does i believe he's going to hit europe and the united states with that cyber and i believe those attacks will go across a wide spectrum can you put it in terms of what the average citizen is going to experience the average person is going to look at what's happening to their bank what's happening to their power company or their credit cards or the distribution of goods whether it's oil and gas or supplies to their stores all of that could be impacted by cyber attacks well in terms of thinking about modern war it's not just about territorial conquest it's what we call hybrid war information war influence operations propaganda cyber ransomware attacks it can be the use of criminal groups you know for example fiona hill worked at the trump white house in the national security council where she served as senior director for europe and russia her memoir there is nothing for you here is just out in a sense fiona you're saying that we are already engaged in world war iii exactly while many average american families particularly in the heartland have had their sons and daughters in afghanistan in iraq in syria and deployed overseas we're going to have to think that we're all part of this as well we can't just think of it's the families of other people in america who've been deployed overseas and who have been in harms where it may all be all of us right now the reality is that cyber is today a weapon of war without question it can be used to paralyze another country it's hard to think of anyone with more government experience than leon panetta once chairman of the house budget committee white house chief of staff secretary of defense cia director attackers could also seek to disable or degrade critical military systems and communication networks and one of the earliest voices warning of the dangers of cyber warfare these kinds of attacks could be a cyber pearl harbor when you hear vladimir putin warning about consequences the likes of which the world has never seen before everyone immediately assumes that he's talking about nuclear warfare could he be talking about cyber warfare i don't think there's any question he could be talking about cyber warfare you know cyber as a weapon means that you don't have to deploy your air force or boots on the ground you can simply sit at a computer and deploy a very sophisticated virus that can take down our electric grid system take down our financial systems or government systems or banking systems president biden has repeatedly emphasized that no u.s troops will be sent to ukraine our forces are not and will not be engaged in the conflict with russia in ukraine at the same time the president has warned putin against attacking any one of the 30 nations which are members of nato the united states and our allies will defend every inch of territory that is nato territory for the full force of our collective power every single inch what's being positive right now and this is not theoretical this could be next week or next month that vladimir putin orders russian troops into one of those baltic states do we risk nuclear war to respond to that it's a dangerous moment nobody can deny that we're dealing with somebody who might very well resort to some kind of nuclear weapon or worse we have drawn a line and i think if we fail just to stand by that line it would deeply undermine our credibility to ourselves and to the world well he wants us to think and to believe because he's been explicit about it that the nuclear option is on the table because he has put his nuclear forces on high alert and so he wants us to to know that he's thinking about this because one of the things about vladimir putin if he has an instrument no matter how cruel and unusual or terrifying uh that instrument may be he wants us to think that he would use it so we have to address this issue seriously not be intimidated because that's exactly what he wants not to be scared and to fall back my fear is that he's prepared to go as far as he needs to go and that's why i hope it excludes nato countries but we really at this point cannot exclude that possibility and that would mean that we are at the brink of nuclear war it will mean that we're exactly at that world war three that we've been talking about for the last three months and so eagerly trying to avoid so that's that's also a sign that he's playing and i hope he's only playing but playing a very very very dangerous game if he uses the nuclear weapons i think that's the end of his regime i think he understands that i believe the alternative he will use is he'll threaten with nuclear he will use cyber and i believe we're going to push back in both those areas and we have the ability to do the same thing against him the issue will be i believe ours will be more focused to go after him than the russian people the russian people are accustomed to enduring pain the american people quite frankly are not so when it comes to those exchanges of cyber attacks depriving us of what we need for our daily lives that's what the russians have been doing forever we are accustomed to having what we want when we want it yeah so you bring out a great point and on the surface what you say makes sense what happens when that's disturbed i believe we'll grumble and don't but it's almost like what happened in world war ii it'll awake the american people my belief and they'll say this has to stop i don't know where that will go i have tremendous faith and confidence in the will of the american people to push back when the going gets tough [Music] you

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 450,137

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, russia, vladimir putin, president putin, invasion, ukraine, confrontation, americans, united states, ted koppel, fiona hill, nina khruscheva, keith alexander, leon panetta

Id: 5Z-FlRbjwKw

Length: 9min 48sec (588 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 06 2022