Mike Pence warns Putin will wage war on NATO if Ukraine loses

BRUSSELS — American troops will have no choice but to fight Russian invaders in Europe if Vladimir Putin defeats Ukraine, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said Thursday.

The warning, from Donald Trump’s former deputy during an event in the Belgian capital, is part of Pence’s appeal to Congress to approve additional funding for military aid to Ukraine, which has been delayed for months.

“Isolationism is never the answer to tyrannical regimes with expansionist intent, and I believe the majority of members of Congress understand that,” Pence said at the event, which was hosted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank. “I believe they’ll meet this moment.”

On Wednesday, U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson unveiled an outline of his foreign aid plan. The four-part proposal splits aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan into separate bills, and some of the assistance would be conditioned as a loan and would include mandates for military strategy and oversight.

If Putin defeats Ukraine, “I have no doubt in my mind the time would come that he would cross the border [into Europe], that our men and women in uniform would have to fight,” Pence said. “It would not be very long before he crossed the border that our men would have to go fight under Article 5” of the NATO treaty, under which an attack on one member is an attack on all, Pence said.

He continued: “Number two, I think it would not be long before we [see] action in the Taiwan Strait or somewhere in the South China Sea.”

Pence defended Trump’s tough rhetoric on European allies’ failure to meet NATO’s target of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense. “Our NATO allies today are in a better position to [support] Ukraine over the last two years because of those increases in defense spending than they would have been otherwise,” he said.

Still, Pence emphasized that Trump was “a little bit different” from him, as he reflected on his 2021 refusal to back Trump in blocking the congressional certification of Joe Biden as the winner of the U.S. election.

“I’ve always believed, by God’s grace, I did my duty that day, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States,” Pence said.