As lawmakers on the right and left sign off on more funding for Ukraine, politicians advocating for peace have warned that supplying the country with more weapons to use against Russia could spark World War III.
Breitbart News asked Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Saturday just “how close” the United States is to tipping off a world war “if we keep going down this path.” Greene, in an interview during the Turning Point Action conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, said she “think[s] that’s a question that a lot of Americans have.”
“We are inching dangerously, and dangerously because what we are doing is we are basically creating a war against a nuclear-armed nation, and that is Russia — that’s why it is dangerous for all of us,” the congresswoman said.
Greene pointed to several amendments she proposed to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which were rejected, as examples of how the U.S. is escalating conflict.
“One of them was to stop cluster munitions from going to Ukraine. That’s something Joe Biden wants to do. Cluster munitions are very dangerous bombs. They have a wide range of explosion. But they also have a dud rate, meaning they can fall and land in a place and never explode but maybe explode years later killing innocent people,” she said. “My amendment failed, unfortunately, but 120 countries have banned cluster munitions as well as our own Congress. … But Joe Biden signed a waiver to send them anyway to Ukraine.”
“Another one we talked about was stopping long-range missiles from being sent to Ukraine,” she added. “And so, just for comparison, China now has a military base on Cuba. Cuba sits 90 miles off the coast of Florida,” she said, appearing to reference a June Wall Street Journal report, which detailed how China and Cuba are holding advanced negotiations to establish a joint military training facility on Cuban soil, less than 100 miles away from Florida.
“Let’s talk about how we would feel if China put long-range missiles on Cuba that could fire into the United States,” she continued. “That’s what sending long-range missiles to Ukraine is — it’s the same thing.”
Greene is not the only lawmaker to sound the alarm of impending widespread bloodshed. In February, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) warned that hostile acts around the globe have us “teetering on the brink of World War III.”
He said in part:
We’ve got a lot of work to do in the military. Unfortunately, I will tell people this, and everybody needs to understand this — this is the most dangerous time in my lifetime, and I’ve lived in this country, on this planet for 68 years. I’ve never seen us in such turmoil in terms of the Middle East now, with Israel shooting missiles in Iran, of course, Ukraine and Russia. I mean, we are teetering on the brink of World War III. And then you’ve got China over there laughing, just going, ‘what day are we going into Taiwan?’ And when that happens, it won’t just be us. Japan is going to jump into that. Australia is going to jump into that. And we’ve got an administration here that is worried about climate. Their number one focus is on this climate hoax that we’ve got. And everybody worries about our environment. That should be number 25th on the list.
Former president and current 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump has also warned of the potential devastating impacts of funding the Ukraine War. In a statement last week, Trump slammed President Joe Biden for “dragging us further toward World War III,” after he authorized mobilizing military reservists to active duty to support the Ukraine War.
“Joe Biden’s decision to mobilize reserve forces proves that his reckless escalation in Ukraine is straining the U.S. military to the point of disaster,” he said in a statement.
“Just last week, Biden shockingly admitted that our arsenals are so badly depleted that the United States is running out of ammunition. Now, we see the ranks are growing so thin that reserve troops are being forced to support Biden’s calamitous policy in Europe, while our own borders remain undefended,” he said.
Trump added in his statement, “Joe Biden can’t even walk up the steps of Air Force One without tripping. The last thing this incompetent administration should be doing is pushing us further toward World War Three.”
WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW:
Greene, whom House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) appointed to the conference committee to negotiate with the U.S. Senate the differences between the House and Senate version of the NDAA, told Breitbart News her “red line in the sand” is fighting to remove any funding to the Ukraine War.
“That’s what I’ve been speaking about for months and months, and actually from the beginning of the war. I’m one of the only members of Congress that has never voted to send any money to Ukraine. I’ve been against this war the entire time because America’s only position should be peace,” she said.
She said funding the war in Ukraine does not deter war or protect the United States’ national security interests — two promises which are outlined on the Department of Defense’ website.
“The Ukraine war does neither one of those. And so funding in the NDAA to a war in Ukraine — which is really a proxy war with Russia — it enables war, it increases war, and it creates war. It does not deter war,” she said. “It doesn’t protect our nation’s national security interests. It actually puts all of us at risk as we get closer and closer to WWIII. So on that conference, I’ll be doing everything I can in that room to convince my colleagues in the House and the senators on the other side of the Capitol that we need to stop funding a war in Ukraine.”
The congresswoman also said she would fight to keep an amendment to the NDAA that would forbid the Department of Defense from funding organizations that censor Americans, as well as the Hyde Amendment banning federal dollars from paying for abortions, and a ban on military funding for transgender procedures.
“What we need to do is we need to make sure that all the good things that we put in the NDAA, like the pay increases for our military members, stays there — all the good benefits that they get through health insurance — but also the buildup that we need to do for our military in replacing equipment and weapons. Think about how much equipment and weapons were abandoned in Afghanistan by Joe Biden,” she said.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Twitter @thekat_hamilton.