Nikki Haley: Putin has proven he can withstand pain

Russian President Vladimir Putin has proven through his country’s ongoing war with Ukraine that he can withstand pain.

And along with making that observation, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said the key going forward is how the United States handles Putin. Since his red carpet meeting with President Donald Trump, Russia has flown drones over a German airport, a Belgian army base and the Baltic Sea.

“Putin’s just pushing and pushing and pushing to see if he’ll get a reaction from us,” Haley said in Salt Lake City during a “fireside chat” at the Zero Gravity Summit put on by 47G, a Utah-based aerospace and defense advocacy organization.

The conference brings together leaders in national security, aerospace, energy, technology, venture capital, academia and government.

A former governor of South Carolina, Haley said states need to take a holistic approach to building the workforce, attracting foreign investment and growing manufacturing. About the conference she said, “Every state in the country should be doing this because this will give Utah a competitive advantage going forward.”

Haley answered questions on several hot global topics for about 40 minutes posed by Troy Thompson, chief operating officer of Big D Construction, one of the event’s sponsors.

Helping Ukraine finish the job

Poor economic conditions, withholding pay from soldiers and their families, raising the draft age to 65 and moving at “snail’s pace” in Ukraine has hurt Putin’s approval in Russia, she said.

But the meeting with Trump in Alaska in August “all of a sudden elevated him in the eyes of Russians that he was still seen as a global leader. What we need to make sure we do going forward is hold him accountable,” Haley said.

Trump, she said, was right to sanction two Russian oil companies. But now that the U.S. knows Putin can “handle the pain,” it needs to “double down” on sanctions. Also, she said Ukraine must be allowed to use U.S. weapons if it has them.

“What they really need is to be able to use what they have and finish the job,” Haley said. “Ukrainians have shown themselves to be a great military force. All they need from us is to hold Russia accountable and to make sure we have the backs of our allies in the process.”

The most important thing to the end of the war is that Putin can’t declare victory, said Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2017 to 2019.

“If Putin declares victory, it will actually make Trump look weaker. And we don’t want that because that hurts us with our other adversaries,” she said.

Haley said Putin has made it clear he wants to take all of Ukraine but he’s not going to stop there.

“I think we all want to see an end to this war, and the key is to make sure that there’s no gray when it comes to Putin. He needs to know where the U.S. stands. We need to stand by what we’ve already put in place and we need to make sure Ukraine can finish this,” she said.

Taiwan watching but not waiting

The Russia-Ukraine war also has implications for China and its designs on Taiwan, Haley said.

“If Ukraine stands strong, China is watching that. China sees Ukraine the same way it sees Taiwan,” she said. “They watched every company that left Russia. They watched every country that supported Ukraine. They’ve taken notes on all of this as they look at what’s going to happen with Taiwan.”

Haley said she visited Taiwan a year ago wanting to know if the Taiwanese saw themselves as “sitting ducks” waiting to see what China does, but she came away impressed that they have learned from the war in Ukraine.

“The Taiwanese feel a kinship to the Ukrainians,” she said.

Taiwan has stopped almost all of its business with China, doubled the amount of spending on defense systems and extended military training from four months to a year, Haley said.

“Their whole focus is how to be ready,” she said. The only thing Taiwan has asked of the U.S. is training on unmanned systems like ones Ukraine has successfully used against Russia. “And we should help do that,” she said.

Taiwan, she said, has bought $20 billion in military equipment from the U.S. that it has yet to receive.

“That’s how slow we are to produce and deliver,” she said. “And so the one thing that keeps them nervous is they don’t have what they need to defend themselves. They paid for it, but they’re waiting.”