COLUMBUS, Ohio — According to military historian and former Army colonel Pete Mansoor, President Joe Biden isn't about to send US military forces to Ukraine against Vladimir Putin's Russian forces for fear of starting a nuclear war. And he said Putin has more than 1,000 nuclear weapons at his disposal.
"If he doesn't win this conflict, he'll then be ousted from power and he could then order a nuclear attack on Ukraine and that puts the world into a very, very different place," Mansoor said, who is also a professor at the Ohio State University.
He said the war in Ukraine is plain and simple - a power grab for Russian President Putin who wants to resurrect the soviet empire which Ukraine was once a part of after it broke away in 1991.
"Vladimir Putin wants Ukraine tethered to Russia and to look east for its economic and military ties, not west," he says.
Mansoor said he doesn't believe Putin will stop at Ukraine if successful.
"He is going to start with taking Ukraine and go from there and it's why he needs to be stopped because I don't think this is his last demand," Mansoor said.
Some voters believe that Putin's decision to strike Ukraine would not have happened under former President Donald Trump.
Mansoor disagrees.
"President Biden did as much as he could to deter Russia without committing U.S. forces to defend Ukraine. The fact is Putin was going to deterred regardless of economic sanctions and was going to invade no matter who was in power," he says.
The war in Ukraine is driving higher gas prices in the U.S., but Mansoor says it's also because OPEC, which controls the world's oil supply, isn't producing more oil to reap higher profits.
Some Americans argue that if President Biden had not stopped the construction of the Keystone Pipeline from Canada to the Gulf, gas prices would not as high.
Professor Mansoor said if the pipeline would have continued it would be finished about now and would have had minimal impact on what's happening now.
"There would not have been more oil in the world even if the pipeline would have been constructed. I think more to the point had we continued to encourage fracking, we would have more oil and gas in the market," he said.
Mansoor believes Putin underestimated the fight of the Ukrainian people and isn't convinced the Russian army will take the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
As for President Biden, his state of the union speech Tuesday will not only deal with the war, but also how he plans to address rising inflation.