Russia-Ukraine war: Sen. Cornyn says US should not back down

AUSTIN, Texas - Today, the issue is double trouble, and we're not talking about the duo who played with Texas music legend Stevie Ray Vaughan, but the sour notes involving NATO in Ukraine. 

Texas Senator John Cornyn has something to say about that. He was here in Austin to kick off early voting, and FOX 7 Austin's Rudy Koski asked him about the growing chorus in Congress to bail out on those two hot topics, and why that idea doesn't strike a chord with him.

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SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, first of all, we promised to protect Ukraine's sovereignty in exchange for giving up their nuclear weapons. In 1994, there's something called the Budapest Memorandum, where the United States, among others, agreed in exchange for Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons, which had the second-largest stockpile in the world, that we would work with our allies to protect their sovereignty. But if you don't like the legal arguments, let me just talk about the national security argument. So we know that Putin has this illusion that he wants to restore the Soviet empire. He's fancied himself as Peter the Great. He said, you know, the fall of the Soviet Union was one of the greatest geopolitical disasters of the last 100 years. But Putin is an ideologue, and he wants to capture some of this territory that he lost when the Iron Curtain fell in 1991. And Ukraine is just the first step. We know that, because there wasn't an effective response in 2014 when he annexed Crimea, that he got the impression that he could just keep coming. Well, you know, what's after Ukraine is the NATO countries. And we have a treaty obligation under article five to come to the defense of NATO allies who were threatened by Russia or anybody else. So I believe it's in our national security. Finally, I would say that President Xi, over in China and, of course, the supreme leader in Iran, Kim Jong-Un and North Korea are paying attention. We're the most powerful nation in the world, economically and from a military standpoint. And like it or not, it's in our national security interest to do everything we can to prevent wars. Not to be prepared just to fight a war. We want to prevent wars. About that: Reagan was right when he said that comes with peace through strength.

RUDY KOSKI: So with that said, why support Trump after what he said about NATO and suggesting that Russia should go after the guys who don't pay up?

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: Well, I don't take everything President Trump says literally. I take it seriously. But sometimes I think he's trying to make a point. And the point here was NATO countries need to step up and provide for their self-defense. And many of those countries in Europe are not doing that and need to do so. That's the point I got from what he said.

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RUDY KOSKI: Sen. Cornyn went on to say there is a clear message to NATO. The way things have worked in the past is not going to work in the future. But he also made it clear he believes NATO will remain important to the strategic interest of the United States in the 21st century.

SEN. JOHN CORNYN: It's critical. That's the one thing that the United States has that Russia does not have, that China does not have, and that is friends and allies. The United States, on the other hand, doesn't have a choice where to be engaged without American leadership. Things don't happen. And we have to pay attention to the global range of threats from Iran to Russia to China to North Korea. And we can't, as my friend Dan Sullivan from Alaska said, he said deterrence is not divisible. In other words, we can't cherry-pick where we're going to be involved. We need to be involved and working with our allies, hopefully arm-in-arm with them, making significant contributions to mutual self-defense.