Ret. Gen. Marks: Sanctions Are Fine, But Putin and His Military Needs to Feel ‘Significant Pain’ Immediately

EXCERPT:

MARKS: “Well, I would say that the editor of RT probably is Putin himself, and I’m not being facetious. I mean, things are not going to be stated publicly that will not get his approval, at least in advance, or at least the confidence that it won’t get some type of punishment if it’s not — it doesn’t accord with what he wants. I’m looking at all of this and I realize that the president is, as he stated, getting frustrated with Putin, but Putin, in the vernacular, he is blowing him off. There is nothing that this administration has indicated that it will then step up some degree of an incentive for Putin to stop what he’s doing. Sanctions, there are ways around sanctions. Economic sanctions can be very powerful, but they always have a much longer horizon in terms of how they affect decision makers. So, economic sanctions at this point may have an effect six, eight, 11 months down the road. Good, let’s start that. But in the immediate timeframe, if you’re looking for some type of a result in 14 days, whatever that period is, there has to be some significant pain that Putin and his military feels on the ground, so that the military turns around and says, look, we’re running out of airspeed and altitude here. This is very difficult.”