Vladimir Putin’s aggression in Ukraine is evil. We all know and recognize that.

We are now 20 moves into a high-stakes chess game that few of our leaders expected, and few of them know how to play.

The West, and many other parts of the world, have responded to Putin’s war with steep sanctions.

Good. We need to do that.

However, there are a few things that the American people, and their leaders, must understand about the moves already made, and the moves that are still available to us.

First, many aspects of our strategy are unprecedented. Of these, perhaps the most important is our attempt to destroy the Russian currency (the Ruble).

Most Americans do not understand that “destroying a country’s currency” is the same thing as hyperinflation. Our policy toward Russia is to produce hyperinflation which will affect Russia’s entire population – 144 million ordinary people – in a profound and terrible way. When I was in graduate school, one of my professors remarked that “inflation is the most corrosive and dangerous thing that can happen to a society.” Hyperinflation puts that corrosion on steroids.

Why am I pointing this out? Precisely because Vladimir Putin is evil and is capable of monstrous deeds. And, he controls as much as two-thirds of the world’s fertilizer inputs used to grow corn and wheat around the world. If he gains control of Ukraine, he will control a quarter of the world’s wheat production.  That means he will control much of the world’s food supply.

And so, we have a world in which we are using 144 million ordinary Russian citizens as pawns in our attempt to respond to Putin’s aggression. The obvious danger is that a man like Putin will respond in kind by using our own citizens as pawns – by disrupting our food supply. Were Putin to withhold fertilizer inputs, the result would be dramatically higher food prices, and in some places there could be famine. 

I watched Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s testimony to Congress recently, and do you know who pointed out this danger to Chairman Powell? It was David Scott – a Democrat from Georgia. 

I am a Republican. I agree with David Scott and I applaud him for raising this issue.

Rather than dangerously hyper-inflating Russia’s economy and using 144 million people as pawns, I propose that our main policy response to Putin is to simply compete away his defense budget by unleashing American oil and gas. 

Putin’s military budget is financed by Russia’s oil-and-gas exports. At $110-a-barrel oil, Putin’s military benefits mightily. We, and our European counterparts, are unwilling to stop purchasing oil from Mr. Putin because we need that oil. 

Instead, America could be energy independent – just like we were before Joe Biden took office. America could be exporting oil – just like we were before Joe Biden took office. We could be adding oil and gas to the global supply and driving down the price of oil. In the process we would be defunding Putin’s army.

These two alternatives represent two completely different kinds of responses to Putin. Currency-driven hyperinflation is total economic warfare because it unleashes hell on an entire population. It thereby risks further escalation by Putin in the form of global food scarcity – we inflict pain on his people and he responds by inflicting the same kind of pain on us. By contrast, oil-driven economic warfare primarily affects Putin’s military – which is our goal.  The escalation risk is lower and yet we still accomplish what we want to accomplish. That is, we defund his military.

Americans need more leaders in Congress who are aware of such risks. They need realism. They need adults in the room. That is why I am running for Congress in Colorado’s 7th Congressional District. There is not a single economist in Congress right now. We need one – especially when economics is at the center of geopolitics.

Tim Reichert is an economist and businessman in Golden. He is running to be the Republican nominee in Colorado‘s 7th Congressional District and is the founder and CEO of Economics Partners, a firm of economists with offices around the US and in Israel.