Welcome to Keith's night. Don't tread on anyone and the
libertarian Institute. Usually, when I have my
colleague from the libertarian Institute Scott, Horton on to
discuss foreign policy will discuss.
One of his two books Fool's errand, time to end the war in
Afghanistan or enough already time to end the war on
terrorism. And usually we will take the
libertarian approach to war war is on just because it usually
involves initiating violence against peaceful people to fund
the war and usually ends up killing.
Displacing millions of people in the war.
However, there is a second anti-war stance that many
conservatives have that, they'll say yes.
I want America to be the number one Global influence on the
planet. And in order to do that.
We must have an anti-war pro-peace stance.
I believe this is best Illustrated in the book.
Churchill Hitler, and the unnecessary War by Patrick J.
Buchanan here was the final chapter of that book.
Chapter 15, America inherits. The Empire one, may pick up
something useful from among the most.
Fatal errors, James Wolfe, 1757 hero of Quebec in the Twin
catastrophes of Western Civilization World Wars 1 & 2.
Britain was the indispensable nation and Churchill and
indispensable. Man.
It was Britain secret commitment to fight for France of which the
Germans were left unaware that. To the world war with a Kaiser
who never wanted to fight his mother's country.
It was Britain's declaration of war on August, 4th 1914, that
led, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India
to declare war in solidarity with the mother country, and
Drew Britain's Ally Japan. And to the conflict.
It was Britain's bribery of Italy with Promises of Habsburg
and ottoman lands in the secret treaty of London in 1915 that
brought Italy. Lie in had Britain, not gone in
America would have stayed out. It was Britain that converted a
franco-german. Russian war into a world war of
four years that brought down the German Russian Ottoman, and
austro-hungarian Empires and gave the world Lenin Stalin
Mussolini and Hitler. It was Britain who's
capitulation to us, pressure and disillusion of her 20-year pact
with Japan in 1922 insulted. Isolated and raged that
faithful. Ally leading directly to
Japanese militarism aggression and World War Two in the
Pacific. It was Britain's lead in
imposing the League of Nations sanctions on Italy.
Over abyssinia. That destroyed the stress of
front isolated, Italy and drove Mussolini into the arms of
Hitler had the British stood firm and back to Paris.
The French army could have chased Hitler's battalions out
of the Rhineland and 1936 and reoccupied, it had the British
not gone to Munich. Hitler would have had to fight
for the sudetenland and Europe might have United against him.
Had Britain not issued the war guarantee to Poland and declared
war over Poland. There might have been no war in
Western Europe and no World War. Two Britain was, thus the
indispensable nation in turning to European Wars, in two world
wars and as is written in the opening pages of this book.
A role in both Wars was heroic, but was it wise indispensable,
man? Churchill had played a crucial
role in plunging his nation into the War of 1914.
Britain then brought in the dominions Italy, Japan and the
United States asked with gray, Churchill and haldane had
planned to make any war with Germany, a World War.
They succeeded, and Britain emerged, triumphant her
greatest. Rival since Napoleon saw its
high, seas Fleet scuttled its overseas trade.
Ravaged, its colonies, confiscated.
Germany had been destroyed disgraced divided dismembered
disarmed and driven into unpayable debt, but the cost had
been seven hundred thousand British dead.
A national debt 14 times what it had been in 1914 rebellions
across the Empire and Britain's inevitable Eclipse as the First
Nation on Earth. The British century was over,
the American Century had begun. The cost of Western civilization
was perhaps 10 million, dead soldiers, and millions of
civilians dead from starvation and disease.
The Great War began at Versailles and Versailles begat.
The second world war to stop Hitler.
Britain gave a war guarantee to Poland to honor.
It. Britain declared war.
Both decisions were victories for Churchill this War lasted
six years. Years and ended in the ruin of
Europe, Stalin ization of 11 Nations, and collapse of the
British and French empires in the two phases of the great
civil. War of the West 100 million
Europeans perished as victims of war or the monsters bread by
War, nor did The Killing stop with Hitler's suicide in his
bunker from the Baltic to the Balkans Stalin's, murders went
on and on and triumphant communism conquered China and
North Korea leading to the mass murder of tens of millions of
Asian friends of the West. Looking back at the fruits of
these two world wars in 1950. George Kennan wrote today.
If one more offered the chance of having back again, the
Germany of 1913 a Germany run by conservative, but relatively
moderate people no Nazis and no communist a vigorous Germany
United and unoccupied full of energy and confidence able to
play a part again, in the balancing off of Russian power
in Europe. Well, there would be objections.
Which from many quarters and it wouldn't make everybody happy.
But in many ways it wouldn't sound so bad in comparison with
our problems today. Now, think of what that means
when you total up the score of the two world wars, in terms of
their ostensible objective, you find that if there had been any
gain at all. It is pretty hard to discern.
The price of Britain's victory in 1945 was 400,000 more dead,
the fall of the Empire and an end to the days of Hope and
glory. And bankruptcy of the nation
Britain face socialism at home and your absolute dependency on
the United States and the displacement of National
Socialist Germany as dominant power in Europe by a stalinist,
Russia with a revolutionary agenda that posed a far, greater
menace to British interests and western civilization.
All the British dominions and colonies.
Now, turn to America for their defense and Leadership for
coming. Belatedly to the rescue of the
mother country. America had demanded and taken
title to her estate. Britannia was allotted a Cottage
By the Sea to live out her declining years, but the great
man was given his own statue. In Parliament Square.
How America triumphed in negotiating with Stalin,
Churchill as we have seen made far greater blunders than had
Chamberlain and With Hitler. He had put his trust in Stalin
believing that. If Britain gave him all, he
demanded Stalin would cooperate in building a lasting Peace by
March 1946. When Churchill gave his Iron
Curtain Speech, it was apparent to all.
But the incurably gullible that Churchill had been had that the
Soviet Union was and always had been a mortal enemy of the West.
The Americans had watched the initial crisis from afar on,
September 3rd. 18:39 the same day, Britain and France,
declared war. FDR had assured the nation and a
fireside chat. There will be no blackout on
peace in the United States. This war was not America's for
FDR told his countrymen in 1940 the year of Churchill's
Norwegian debacle Dunkirk and the fall of France, FDR won
re-election on a pledge while I'm talking to you mothers and
fathers, I give you one more assurance.
I said this before but I shall say it again and again and
again, your boys are not going to be sent into any Foreign
Wars, FDR was lying. But in the election of 1940, he
had to Echo America First for even after Hitler had occupied
Europe from the Atlantic to the Vistula America was saying this
is not our war though. Derided as isolationist, the
America First Patriots, kept the United States out of the war
until six months after Hitler had faded Russia.
Thus the Red Army bore the brunt of bloody combat to bring Hitler
down as would seem only right for Stalin had colluded with
Hitler in the rape of Poland and had launched Wars of aggression
against as many nations as his Partners in Berlin.
Not until four years after France had fallen and three
years. After the Soviet Union had been
invaded did u.s. Troops land on the Normandy
beaches to open the second front.
They are the Americans and British faced, a German Army
1/4, the size of the German armies, on the Eastern Front
because we stayed out of the war.
Until after the Soviet Union had been invaded America.
Lost 400,000 men while Soviet combat losses are estimated.
Rated at 10 times that how many more US military cemeteries
would there be in Europe? Had we had to face a German army
of three million instead of seven hundred thousand troops
under Rommel and Vaughn Road instead on D-Day America is the
last superpower, because she stayed out of the world wars
until their final acts and because she stayed out of the
alliances and the world wars longer than any.
Great power, America, avoided the fate of the seven other
nations. That entered the 20th century,
as great Powers, the British French, German, austro-hungarian
Russian, Ottoman, and Japanese Empires are all gone.
We alone remain because we had men who recalled the wisdom of
Washington Jefferson and John. Quincy Adams about avoiding
entangling alliances staying out of European Wars, and not going
abroad in search of monsters. Monsters to destroy The Road
Less Traveled by after America emerged, as the Undisputed
leader of the West in 1945. However, the shocks reversals
and humiliations at the hands of Stalin were greater than those
that had caused Britain to declare war in 1939 America.
However, chose a different course embracing the wisdom of
George Kennan. America pursued a policy of
containment and conscious avoidance of a third world war.
When Stalin trashed, the Yalta agreement, terrorizing the
peoples of Poland and Eastern Europe for whom Britain had gone
to war. America was stunned and second
but issued, no, ultimate a when Moscow blockaded Berlin in
violation of Allied rights Truman responded.
With an airlift, not armored divisions or atom bombs.
When Stalin's agents carried out, the Prague coup in 1948.
Truman did not see in Czechoslovakia and issue that
justified War as Churchill had, When the checks were forced to
give up the sudetenland, America's answer was NATO
drawing a red line across Europe that the West could defend as
Britain should have done in that March of 1939.
Instead of handing out an insane War guarantee to Poland and
where the British had failed to line up a Russian Alliance
before giving its War guarantee. America enlisted, ten European
allies before committing herself to defend West Germany.
Unlike Churchill in the 1930s, American leaders of the late
1940s and 1950s believe that, while the fate of Poland and
Czechoslovakia was tragic. Both were Beyond, u.s.
Vital interest from 1949 to 1989.
The American Army, never crossed the Yalta line.
When East Germans Rose in 1953 and hungarians in 1956.
Eisenhower declined to act in 1959 Ike welcomed The Butcher of
Budapest to Camp David. When Khrushchev built the Berlin
Wall, Kennedy called up the reserves then sent them home
after a year in the missile crisis of 1962.
Kennedy cut a secret deal to take u.s.
Missiles out of turkey for Cruz chefs.
Taking Russian missiles, out of Cuba.
When the Prague spring was crushed in 1968.
LBJ did nothing. U.s.
And action was not due to cowardice but cold calculation,
as to what was worth risking war with a nuclear arms.
In Soviet Union and but was not worth risking War.
When the Polish workers movement solidarity was crushed in 1981.
Ronald Reagan, denounced the repression, but he neither broke
diplomatic relations with Warsaw nor imposed economic sanctions.
Eisenhower and Reagan were not Chamberlain's, but neither were
they Churchill's. Who ruled the capitals east of
the elbe was not to them. A vital us interest worth a war
they believed in Defending. What?
We had not risking War to retake what?
Roosevelt and Churchill had given up at Tehran and Yalta,
Reagan believed America, and freedom were the future.
That communism was headed for the ash heap of history that we
need. Not indeed must not blunder into
a war to hasten. Its inevitable and patience and
perseverance were required. The use of proxies to bedevil.
The Soviet Empire and its outposts in Afghanistan Angola.
And Nicaragua and carrying a bigger stick.
That was the Reagan way. For half a century.
The United States confronted stalinist enemies as evil as
Hitler, but more powerful and more dedicated to our
destruction. Yet America never went to war
with the Soviet Union. We won the Cold War by avoiding
the blunders Britain made that plunged.
Her into two world wars, unlike the Brits of 1914 and 1939
Americans did not feel the need to pull the bully down, if it
meant war with a great power. Such as the Soviet Union of
Stalin Khrushchev and Brezhnev our way was not as glorious as
Churchill's way. But Reagan won the Cold War and
World leadership without firing a shot.
When Churchill who had inherited a world Empire left behind a
small dependency to win a war. Without fighting is the greatest
victory said Sun Tzu, that was Reagan's achievement replicating
churchillian Folly with the end of the Cold War.
Or in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
America was at her apogee. All the great European nations,
Britain, France, Germany. Italy Were Us allies as were
turkey Israel. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and the
Middle East and Australia, South Korea and Japan in the Far East
in the Reagan Era. Russia was converted from an
evil empire of the early 1980s into a nation where he could
walk Red Square, Armand. I'm with Gorbachev with
Russians, straining to Pat him on the back. 400 million people
in Europe and the USSR had been set free.
The Red Army had begun to pack up and go home.
The captive Nations looked on Reagan's America as their
Liberator with all the territory and security any country could
ask for the first economic political cultural and military
power on Earth. America ought to have adopted a
policy to protect and preserve what she had for.
She had everything. Instead we started out on
Familiar road. We were now going to create our
own New World Order after 9/11 the project took on urgency,
when George w-- Bush. A president, disinterested and
untutored in foreign policy was converted to a wilsonian
ideology of democratic fundamentalism.
Only by making the whole world Democratic.
Can we make America secure? Marxism is a religion, Joseph
schumpeter said in 1942 and as James, Jose montagnier, an
economist and student of schumpeter has written to the
believer Democratic fundamentalism, like Marxism
presents. First a system of ultimate ends
that embody the meaning of life and our absolute standards by
which to judge events and actions.
And secondly, a guide to those ends which implies A Plan of
Salvation and the indication of the evil from which mankind or a
chosen section of mankind is to be saved.
It belongs to that subgroup of isms, which promises Paradise.
This side of the Grave Democratic fundamentalism added.
Montagne is akin to the religious fervor of old Bush
professes. His faith.
In the ideology of democratic fundamentalism in, his Neil
biblical rhetoric as Christ said, he who is not with me, is
against me, Bush declared either, you are with us or you
are with the terrorists. This war is a struggle between
good and evil, the evil ones. Have no country.
No ideology. They're motivated by hate
America's. Ultimate goal is ending tyranny
in our world after seven years of a foreign policy rooted in
such moral Clarity, the world of 1989 has disappeared and America
has begun to resemble the Britain of Salisbury and
Balfour. A superpower past, her Prime
with enemies Rising everywhere in Latin America.
Castro has found a successor in Hugo, Chavez across the Middle
East, Islamic people's seek to expel us.
We are mired in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and defined by the
surviving partner of the axis of Evil Iran.
China may be about to become for us.
What Wilhelm in Germany, became for Britain.
Notwithstanding all the neoconservative blather about
our being in Omni power in a unipolar world.
We are bedeviled on every continent what happened rather
than follow the wisdom of conservative men.
Like Kenan Eisenhower and Reagan.
We began to emulate every Folly of Imperial Britain in her
plunge from Power. With all our braying about being
the indispensable nation and bring them on braggadocio.
We exhibited an imperial. Hubris.
The whole world came to detest. There was hardly a blunder of
the British Empire. We have not replicated as grey
and Churchill seized on Vaughn clocks violation of Belgian
neutrality to put her precook plans for war into effect the
neoconservatives seized on 9/11 to persuade, our untutored
president, that he had a historic mission to bring down.
Saddam Hussein liberate Iraq, establish a strategic position,
flanking, Iran, and Syria democratize, the Middle East,
and the Islamic world, and make himself The Churchill of his
generation as Chamberlain gave Awards.
Guaranteed a Poland. He could not honor the United
States began to hand out. NATO War guarantees 26 Warsaw
Pact Nations, the three Baltic republics and soon Ukraine and
Georgia should a hostile regime come to power in Moscow and
reoccupied these nations. We would have to declare war
yet. No matter how much we treasure.
The newly, free Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Their independence is not a vital us interest and never has
been and the threatened loss of their independence cannot
justify War. With a nuclear-armed, Russia.
As Britain had a balance of power policy, not to permit Any
Nation to become dominant in Europe, the 2002 National
Security strategy of the United States, declares Our intention
not to permit, Any Nation, to rise to a position to challenge
us dominance on any continent and attempt to freeze in place
America's transient moment of global Supremacy, but time does
not stand still new powers arise old Powers fade.
No power can for long dominate, the whole world look again at
the graveyard of Empires the 20th century.
Even we Americans cannot stop the march of history as Britain
through over Japan and drove Italy.
Into the arms of Hitler Bush pushes.
Russia's Putin into the arms of China by meddling in the
politics of Georgia, Ukraine and Belarus planting us bases in
Central, Asia and hectoring him for running an autocratic state.
That does not pass muster with the National Endowment.
For democracy. Ours is a peculiarly American
blindness under the Monroe Doctrine.
Foreign powers are to stay out of our hemisphere yet.
No other great power is permitted to have its own sphere
of influence. We below self-righteously when
foreigners funnel cash into our elections, yet intrude massively
with taxes, dollars in the elections of other nations to
promote our religion of See as the British launched, an
imperial war in Iraq, after their victory over the Ottoman
Empire. We launched a war in Iraq.
After our victory over the Soviet Empire, never before have
our commitments been. So numerous or extensive yet.
Our active duty forces have been reduced to 1/2 of 1% of our
population. 1/9. The number under arms in May
1945. We are approaching what Walter
Lippmann called foreign. Policy bankruptcy, our strategic
assets armaments and allies cannot cover our strategic
liabilities. Our commitments, to go to war on
behalf of scores, of Nations, from Central and South America,
to the Baltic, and the Balkans, to the Middle East, the gulf,
Japan, South Korea, the Philippines Australia and Taiwan
like the British. Before us, America has reached
Imperial over stretch, either we double or treble.
Our air sea and land forces or we start.
Writing commitments or we are headed in examiner oblique for
an American DN Bien Phu. For if the US Army and Marine
Corps are stretched to their limit by insurgencies in
Mesopotamia and Afghanistan. How can we police the rest of
the planet? We cannot if two or three of the
iou's we have handed out are called in the bankruptcy of u.s.
Foreign policy will be exposed to the world.
America is Is as overextended as the British Empire of 1939, we
have commitments to fight on behalf of scores of Nations that
have nothing to do with our Vital interest commitments.
We could not honor were several to be called in at once.
We have declared it to be US policy to democratize the planet
to hold Every Nation to our standards of social justice and
human rights. And to end tyranny in the world.
And to show the world. He meant business, President
Bush had Placed in his Oval Office.
A bust of Winston Churchill. Thank you for watching Keith
Knight. Don't tread on anyone and the
libertarian Institute.