Feb. 26, 2022 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
50:23
20220226_Hour_1
|
Time
Text
You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is the Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of the political cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
Ladies and gentlemen, a powerhouse broadcast tonight is coming your way when we welcome three all-stars to the broadcast, Mark Weber, Dr. Kevin McDonald, and once again from Canada, Paul Fromm.
All before we run out of time this evening, the entire world has changed since we were with you last week at this time, and we are going to unpack it as comprehensively as we possibly can.
We are going to take our time and do it very dispassionately, very methodically.
If there's something you believe we should be saying, give us the full three hours.
I bet we will probably get there.
Interestingly, late last year, Mark Weber and I were talking about some conversations we could have on the air, and we featured Mark earlier this year already to talk about the passing of the Founders America and what may come next.
And quite interestingly, it was on this night for about three months now that we had scheduled Mark to come on to talk about a book, a brand new book, a gripping book entitled Stalin's War, a new history of World War II.
But we were just talking before the show began tonight, and under the circumstances of what's taking place in Russia, coincidentally enough, and the Ukraine, we are going to push that discussion, the book discussion back to a forthcoming segment later on this spring and go right now to Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review, to share his thoughts on what, in fact,
is actually happening in Russia and the Ukraine and the root cause of the conflict.
And with that being said, let's welcome him back right now without further ado.
Mark Weber, thank you for being here tonight on a very important show.
Yeah, thank you very much, James, for having me on.
As important as World War II is, it's an evergreen subject that can be and should be dealt with, I think, over and over because it's so much affected our world.
But it's been overshadowed, I think everybody can acknowledge by the dramatic events that are taking place, of course, in Ukraine with the United States and Russia right now.
As you say, this affects the entire world.
I have, since I was in my 20s, a very intense interest in Eastern Europe and then Russian history in the Soviet Union.
I dealt a lot with that in graduate school at Indiana University.
But it's much more, my interest in this is much more than just academic or based on books or reading.
I have a tremendous sympathy and understanding, I think for both Russians and Ukrainians.
It isn't just a theoretical, it's also based on lots of personal experience with Russians, Ukrainians over the years.
And so this conflict really tears at me because I hate to see this to have come now to this war in Ukraine involving Ukrainians and Russians, two people that I have great understanding, great regard, great sympathy for.
And having said that, I think it's very important to focus on what does this really mean for America, not just for the tragedy and the suffering, the death that it is meaning in Ukraine and Russia, especially in Ukraine, but what should be the policy of the United States?
And in that, my views are very much in line with what I think is the wisdom of America's founders.
It's also in line with what traditionally conservatives and what are called realists have had with regard not only to this, but other overseas problems for the United States or other overseas issues.
Pat Buchanan is one example of that.
His views, I think, are really worth listening to.
You'll find a lot about all of this on our website, too.
And also very much in line with what's called a realist school of foreign policy, exemplified by John Maersheimer at the University of Chicago, Stephen Walt, and also George Kennan, who is a very important scholar.
But the big thing is, what does this mean for America?
And I think in spite of all the propaganda, in spite of the heart-rending scenes that we're all very used to that are taking place, this is not a conflict in which there's any vital American interest at stake.
Whether Ukraine is controlled by Russia or whether it's independent, I would prefer, of course, that every country in the world, every people, enjoys freedom, that they're independent, that they make their own life.
But this is not an issue that involves a vital American interest in spite of the efforts by the Biden administration to try to make it that way.
And this is, so it's very important, I think, to stand back and consider really calmly and carefully, in spite of the emotions that are excited by any warfare, to look at it as dispassionately, as carefully as you can, because it's the only way to really bring this conflict to an end and to try to work it out to the best advantage of everybody involved.
So this is what the entire program will be tonight with that opening salvo now having been served by Mark Weber.
We are going to be discussing the unrest between Russia and Ukraine and the root conflict between Putin, NATO, and the West.
That's what it's going to be, quite comprehensively so, for the next three hours.
With our expert guest, Mark Weber is certainly that.
I told you that by happenstance, he was scheduled for tonight nearly three months in advance.
But had he not been, I would have done everything I could to get him on this particular show and to lead it off, because this is certainly an area in which he has a great deal of expertise.
So going back, though, you see the American media, Putin is Hitler, this is World War III, Putin is entirely the bad guy, and the Ukrainian government is entirely our allies, and it's just that black and white and good versus evil.
Well, people who believe that don't understand the root cause of this, and this is something that has been simmering for a long, long time.
NATO and the Ukrainian government's yearning to be a member state of NATO plays into it.
It goes back to the 2014 color revolution and so much more.
Mark, when somebody asks and is seeking a serious answer on how did this happen, how did this happen?
Well, you've touched on part of it, two major factors.
One is the very relentless anti-Russian media campaign that's been going on for years.
I remember Hillary Clinton back, Mouse, some years back, was comparing Putin to Hitler.
We've had just a Niagara of media portraying Putin as a dictator, a dangerous man.
And of course, whenever any politician or any country starts comparing anyone to Hitler, the natural response is, well, we've got to go in and get rid of him.
We've got to go and fight him.
And it's interesting, especially considering that Putin himself has justified or talks about going into Ukraine because he claims that the Ukrainian government is run by Nazis or neo-Nazis.
That's what he claimed.
So if you can, if you can, and unfortunately, these kind of loaded terms have been used by almost everybody and are used by almost everybody in our political discourse.
So if you can show that your opponent, your adversary, no matter who he is, even in domestic politics, is like Hitler, well, then I guess that's really bad.
So we should support whatever position we have.
But look, the big thing is I think this war could have been avoided if the United States had been far more deft and far more tuned to Russia's legitimate interest in this thing.
Russia has been actually extraordinarily patient.
They have made the point year after year after year that they did not want hostile missiles and troops near their border in their area.
Hold on right there.
Mark Weber, hold on right there, my friend.
We are going to pause and pick it up right there.
The encroachment of the NATO nation states, ostensibly, in a way run by the United States, to put these bases on the shovel.
Hello, TPC family.
It's James, and I've got to tell you that I sleep better at night knowing that there are organizations like the Conservative Citizens Foundation.
The purpose of the Conservative Citizens Foundation is to promote the principles of limited government, individual liberty, equality before the law, property rights, law and order, judicial restraint, and states' rights, while, at the same time, exploring the dangers posed by liberalism to our national interests and cultural institutions.
The Conservative Citizens Foundation also seeks to educate the public on the dangers of extremist ideologies like critical race theory and cultural Marxism.
I've worked with the good people at the Conservative Citizens Foundation for many years, and their work comes with my complete endorsement.
For more information and to keep up with all the latest conservative news headlines, please check out their website, MericaFirst.com.
That's M-E-R-I-C-A-1ST.com.
MericaFirst.com.
The spirit of the American West is live and well in Range Magazine, the award-winning quarterly devoted to the issues affecting the American West.
Each issue contains informative articles, breathtaking imagery, as well as the culture of cowboy spirit today, and gift ideas like the 2021 Real Buckaroo Calendar.
Order online from RangeMagazine.com.
Loving Liberty Network salutes the spirit of the American West at rangemagazine.com.
Decades after Jimmy Carter, Joe Biden picked up where he left off.
With America surrendering to terrorists, Biden's foolish spending is causing inflation, which means more pain of the pump, higher prices on groceries, devaluing your retirement savings when you need it most.
Once was a mistake.
Twice is a disaster.
America needs strong leaders, not weak ones.
Save America JFC is responsible for the content of this advertising.
We're back, everybody, with Mark Weber.
In addition to being the director of the Institute for Historical Review, and you should make that among your daily reads at ihr.org.
Mark is, as you know, he's such a regular guest on this program and for such good reason, an accomplished historian, lecturer, current affairs analyst, and author.
He was educated in the United States and Europe and holds a master's degree in modern European history.
And boy, doesn't that come in handy for the discussion we're having tonight.
And Mark, you were touching on the military bases that the United States surely had planned for the Russian border had Ukraine or even Georgia been admitted as a NATO member.
Pat Buchanan wrote this in his most recent column.
Putin is a Russian nationalist, a patriot, a traditionalist, and a cold and ruthless realist looking out to preserve Russia as a great and respected power.
It once was, and he believes it can be again.
I say that when you consider again, and we made this point, we touched on it at least, the 2014 installation of a puppet government in Ukraine, which overthrew a democratically elected pro-Russian president and the decades-long encroachment of NATO nations closer and closer to Russia's border.
I wonder how it is that there's not more nuance on this issue, if not seeing things from Putin's perspective, Mark.
Right.
Well, before getting into that, and I think that's extremely important, it's important to remember that the whole purpose of NATO has been changed over the years.
NATO was founded after World War II to contain or to prevent further Soviet, and I emphasize Soviet encroachment in Western Europe.
At that time, the Soviets controlled what is now used to be Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany, Hungary, and so forth.
And NATO was designed to stop that.
It's called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
But after the end of the Soviet Union in 1990-91, the whole purpose of NATO has changed.
It's a little unclear what it is supposed to be exactly.
Ukraine is certainly not on the North Atlantic.
The NATO membership now has been expanded into a vast U.S.-controlled military alliance directed above all at Russia.
Any pretense that it has to stop communism has been dropped entirely.
In fact, the United States even has friendly relations with one country that's run by a communist country, a Communist Party, namely Vietnam.
And the Russians know this.
They know that NATO is directed at them.
And as the Soviet Union was falling apart, the United States gave assurances verbally to Russia that NATO would not be expanded eastward toward Russia.
Well, those assurances were only verbal.
They were never made, put down in writing.
They were never made public at the time, or at least in any large way.
And the United States has expanded NATO right up to the borders of Russia.
And Russia doesn't want that.
They will not tolerate, and they've made that repeatedly clear, they will not tolerate missiles and armies on their borders in the same way that the United States would not tolerate.
In 1962, the world came the closest it ever has come to a nuclear war over the stationing of missiles in Cuba by the Soviet government at that time.
And the United States made the point emphatically.
It would not permit missiles of any outer European state 90 miles from the borders of the United States.
And that's consistent with a policy the United States has had in place for two centuries, the so-called Monroe Doctrine, that prohibits, or we prohibit, any dangerous outer North American or outer forces on our borders.
And the United States was ready to go to nuclear war to prevent Russian Soviet missiles in Cuba.
And by the same token, the Russians do not want missiles and forces directly on their border, which is what NATO encroachment on their borders would mean.
And the United States has ignored those pleas over and over, even though they're quite reasonable.
They're not fantastic or outrageous proposals.
And after the United States over and over said, we're going to go ahead and do this anyway, Russia has bitten back.
Now, that's an extraordinary thing, because behind a lot of these American policies over years has been this notion that we can just do whatever we want and countries have to eat it.
Well, actually, the track record of American military involvement overseas in recent years has been a pretty calamitous one.
We've left with our tails between our legs in Afghanistan and Iraq and other countries.
Well, Russia is a lot tougher bear than Iraq or Syria or some of these other countries.
And they'll fight back.
They'll bite back.
And the United States now is astonished.
The sad thing is, in spite of the sanctions the United States is imposing against Russia, the real sufferers, the greatest sufferers in all this are the Ukrainians.
This war and everything that is involved with it is far more harmful to the Ukrainians than it is to the Russians for a whole lot of reasons.
And so in fact, the Ukrainians are the victims, in a sense, of this.
And the United States has played a very dangerous game.
I think it may be, at the end of all of it, the end of NATO.
Because when it comes right down to it, the United States is not really willing to go to actual war over Ukraine.
And so Ukraine is in the worst of all possible positions.
It's followed the United States lead, you might say, in standing up to Russia or to insist on possibly joining NATO.
But at the end of the day, the country's being invaded now, the United States and certainly Western Europe is not going to actually go to war over this matter.
And I think people should know, and if they don't, we'll inform them now that the significance of being a member state in NATO is that if you are attacked, if you are a, say Ukraine was a member of NATO and they were attacked, and that is an attack against all of the NATO nations, and then you have this war guarantee that if one member of NATO is attacked, you all go to war against the nation that attacked them.
And of course, we saw what those sort of war guarantees did in World War II, and you could have perhaps had a similar scenario.
And that's, of course, what Putin is trying to stave off here in eliminating the possibility of Ukraine becoming such a member state.
But interestingly, well, this is actually one of the emails that has come in for you, Mark.
We've had several.
This is from John right here in Tennessee.
Your response to this comment, Putin is not our guy as much as some may think, but he is right in this war.
There was a staged coup in Ukraine via a violent mob scene that made January 6th look like a church picnic, and the West, especially Obama and Biden, applauded it.
Their puppet has been shelling the breakaway territories for years, but ultimately this isn't our fight.
However, and this is the point I think we're trying to make, Germany and the U.S. are currently arming Ukraine, making them legitimate targets for Russia.
That would have only been, of course, further exacerbated had Ukraine been a NATO state.
Well, yes, of course.
And that's why Putin had to act, at least from his point of view now, because he didn't want to wait until Ukraine was a member of NATO.
You know, NATO's very purpose has been very, very cloudy and unsure since the end of the Soviet Union.
The leaders of the people who run NATO and other spokespeople for NATO cannot give a clear answer to the question: what's NATO's purpose?
Under the pretext of, well, in the name of NATO, the United States got Germany and Britain to send troops into Afghanistan.
Well, I mean, this was done because the United States insisted on it, but nobody in Europe can see any good reason why German or British, or many Americans would agree, even American troops in Afghanistan after the especially the drubbing that Russians and other and the British have gotten in that same country.
But the point is, NATO doesn't have a clear goal except to oppose Russia.
And this is a bigger point.
It goes back to the second part of what you said.
Why is this tremendous campaign against Russia being organized?
It's being organized largely because it's an expression of America's purpose and even the purpose of the European Union.
It's not based on real security.
It's not based on or driven by real concerns for the welfare of the people.
It's driven ideologically.
The United States is now committed, and Biden and other leaders have emphasized this, to an ideology of liberal democracy, of egalitarianism.
We're the good guys, and we're going to spread this around the world.
And that is really more dangerous because it's a recipe for war.
And Putin is, quote-unquote, dangerous to the people who are in control of the United States because the very existence of a country like Russia or China or other countries that reject liberal democracy is considered just completely unacceptable by those people who run the United States.
I emphasize very strongly this point about how America's identity now is not based on culture or heritage or race or religion.
It's based on adherence to an ideology.
And an ideology is almost an open-ended recipe for conflict all over the world.
And we're seeing one example of that now in Russia.
Ironically, the United States is more hostile to a non-communist Russia than it was to the Soviet Union.
That isn't an incredible thing.
Isn't that interesting and a great place to take another time out here?
Listener writes in, I'm glad to hear Mark on the situation.
If we had a serious government, Mark Weber would have a permanent office in the White House.
Isn't that true, ladies and gentlemen?
You're hearing again tonight exactly why that is.
Mark Weber, IHR.org will be back with so much more to come from Mark Weber and Kevin McDonald.
Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, is now under fire from Russian forces.
This man explains the scene.
He went out just for half an hour, and then shelling began again.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken authorized $350 million to help Ukraine fend off the Russians.
Over the past year, the U.S. has given more than $1 billion to security assistance to Ukraine.
Authorities say columns of Russian troops with heavy weaponry are approaching major cities in the country.
President Zelensky recorded a defiant video on the streets of Kyiv.
We will not lay down the weapons.
We will defend our state.
The UN says 120,000 people have made it out of the country, mostly women and children, because men have been ordered to stay behind to fight the Russians.
This is USA Radio News.
Let's see.
If something costs less, but people are happier with it, that sounds like something to look into, and that's MediShare.
Maybe you've heard switching to MediShare to pay for healthcare can save the typical family 500 bucks a month, and that's huge.
But it's also true that people are way more satisfied after making the switch, too.
The customer satisfaction rate for MediShare is double that of the typical health insurance plan.
Double.
MediShare works.
It's been around for more than a quarter century, and members have shared more than $3 billion of each other's bills.
People love having telehealth and a huge nationwide PPO network.
So, yeah, you can save a ton and like it better.
Imagine being happy with how you're taking care of your health care.
So, if you're self-employed or part of the gig economy, or you just want a plan you're happy with, you can call right now and get a price within two minutes.
Very, very smart use of two minutes.
Here's the number you need: 833-34-Bible.
That's 833-34-Bible, 833-34-Bible.
The CDC is announcing it's loosening mask guidelines for U.S. residents, allowing most people to leave their coverings behind in indoor public locations.
The new recommendations uses new metrics that place less emphasis on case counts and give more weight to hospitalizations as a key measure of risk, according to Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director.
CDC officials said the agency will continue to recommend that high-risk people wear masks for their own health and that people who are sick with COVID-19 should wear a mask regardless of whether they're in a low-risk area.
Jurors in the trial of former police detective Brian Hankinson visited the apartment where Breonna Taylor was shot dead in March of 2020.
Hankinson is on trial for three counts of wanton endangerment.
He fired 10 shots into Taylor's apartment, three of which entered an adjacent unit where a pregnant woman and her five-year-old son were sleeping.
You're listening to USA Radio News.
Back with Mark Weber, we are IHR.org.
That's where you need to be for the Institute of Historical Review.
That is Mark's organization and one that we highly recommend you support.
So much more I want to cover with you, Mark.
If I could just very quickly have you touch on Putin's speech, the address that he gave, sort of laying out this in advance, in which he, as James Kirkpatrick of Vidair has mentioned on Twitter, Putin, during his address, drew from a detailed knowledge of Russian and European history, culture, and geopolitics, which he expected his audience to be aware of, too.
Could you maybe compare and contrast what you saw from Putin's address, what you heard from Putin's address to, as Kirkpatrick has done, something you might have heard prepared for an American audience from the likes of Joe Biden or Kamala Harris?
Well, it's the kind of speech that you might expect an Abraham Lincoln of our time to make if the South wanted to secede from the United States.
It's something like that.
I mean, Putin regards Ukraine as not exactly Russia, but something like Russia.
Remember, for centuries, the area was not even called Ukraine.
Ukraine means border at the edge.
But during the Tsarist period, 150, 160 years ago, before the First World War, the area was called Little Russia.
They made a distinction between Russia proper was called Great Russia.
Then there was White Russia or Belarus, which is what it means, Belarus, White Russia.
And Ukraine was called Little Russia.
They're considered very closely related.
They're overwhelmingly all Orthodox Christians.
They all speak languages written in Cyrillic letters.
They're very closely related.
In fact, the history of Rus or the origin of Russia is in what is now Kiev or Kiev, as they call it, in the media.
I mean, most Russians regard Ukraine as so closely tied.
Sure, there's a distinction, but they're very closely related.
And it's one that Putin and all Russians are very, very aware of.
Over the years, we've had speakers at IHR meetings, both Ukrainian nationalists and Russian nationalists.
Several years ago, we had a Russian nationalist activist speak.
And he was emphatic.
He says, well, there isn't any really Ukraine.
They're really Russians.
Now, it doesn't matter in a sense, because if people regard themselves as different and they want independence, to my mind, well, they have a right to it, no matter what else anybody may say.
But that view that he expressed at that meeting was one that many, many Russians hold, and Putin made that point.
But beyond that, well, Putin has not made very clear exactly what he does want.
But one thing is clear.
He does not regard the boundaries of what is called Ukraine to be sacrosanct.
He made the point, the strong point, and the accurate point, that the boundaries of what the United States and Ukraine say are its borders were drawn by the Soviets.
They weren't drawn by taking a plebiscite or asking the people there what they wanted.
They were drawn by the Soviets in a rather arbitrary way.
And he says these boundaries are not sacrosanct.
And he's right about that.
The eastern provinces, the so-called Donbass or Luhansk and Donetsk, are very heavily Russian speaking.
The further west one goes, the stronger, generally speaking, the Ukrainian national sentiment is and the Ukrainian identity is.
The further east one goes, the more Russian or pro-Russian it is.
And that's true also in Belarus.
But these are points that Putin made.
But he also makes the bigger point that he is not going to permit a hostile Ukraine in a territory that traditionally historically has been part of Russia to exist right on their borders, a hostile military force.
And that's understandable.
I think the whole thing could have been avoided if the United States had agreed very early on that it would support a neutral Ukraine.
Finland used to be part of the Russian Empire.
It's neutral.
It's not a member of NATO.
There aren't any foreign troops in Finland.
And that's been acceptable to both the Soviet Union and to Russia.
And I think something like that should also be true of Ukraine.
Because not only for, you might say, ideological or world political reasons, but also economic reasons.
Because Ukraine and Russia, which have an enormous border together, share very important economic interests, and they should cultivate and develop the legitimate and understandable economic interests they have.
It's a similar situation with Georgia, the country of Georgia.
Georgia used to be part of the Soviet Union.
Now, they're a very distinct people, very much different than Russia.
But there are two sections of the boundaries of what are called Georgia that the people there don't want to be part of Georgia.
And it's also, in other words, a border or a boundary that's not sacrosanct.
It's rather ambiguous and rather artificial.
And the United States' position of saying that the boundaries of this country or that country are somehow sacred is nonsense because the United States doesn't apply that standard itself when it doesn't want to in other countries and other places in the world.
And I'll give some examples of that later.
So that the legalistic argument the United States is giving about international law or sovereignty or sanctity of borders or sovereignty of nations is just words, just empty words from the United States to try to justify.
And in fact, there should be another example of that is, of course, in 2014, the Russians took over Crimea, which the United States still regards supposedly as part of Ukraine.
But it's been taken back by Russia.
There's an important Russian naval base there in Sevastopol.
And it's never going back to Russia, at least not in our lifetimes.
But the United States accepted that, and most of the world accepted that.
And it should accept some revision, I think, of the boundaries of what is now Ukraine as well.
Mark, you touched on the long-standing history of the region and how those borders weren't always what we know them to be now.
This is something that the Swedish activist Daniel Freeberg commented on this week.
Donbass is historically Russian and has a Russian Orthodox supermajority, 74%.
According to the nationalist principle, these territories should be Russian, claiming that what is happening right now is a precursor to a large-scale invasion of Europe is ridiculous.
This is Brad Griffin now writing over at Occidental Descent.
He always has good takes.
And he writes quite accurately that Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire for all of American history until the 1990s.
It was, of course, part of the Soviet Union as well.
And believe it or not, we managed, and the sky didn't fall.
If Vladimir of Putin took all of Ukraine and Belarus and Moldova and Kazakhstan to boot, Russia would only be slightly larger than it is now.
And it could boast about having restored a few more impoverished provinces that were lost after the fall of the USSR.
Ultimately, Brad concludes, it doesn't really matter whether it is just a little bit of Ukraine or all of it that is in Russia.
We still don't have anything at stake there.
So again, though, it is important to know that historically, I mean, we're only talking about Ukraine existing as it appears on the map now for a few years compared to the history of many centuries that it existed as part of Russia.
Right.
Well, again, the boundaries of what is called Ukraine now, or which Ukraine says are its boundaries, they were written by the Soviets.
That's why Putin, in his speech, to go back to that, he said the person who should be called the author and architect of Ukraine or this Ukrainian state was Lenin.
And that's not quite, that's not strictly true.
I mean, Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev all were responsible for these borders.
But he basically says that it's the Soviets who drew these boundaries.
And he said, of course, in Ukraine, they've torn down the statues of Lenin.
And Putin rather pointedly says, well, if you want to go the full bore and decommunize your country, we'll show you what decommunization means.
It means the borders change completely.
Now, that's an ominous way to put things, but he has a point.
The point is that these boundaries are not sacrosanct.
And after World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to massive transfers of people, as Putin pointed out in his speech, massive population changes to create ethnically homogeneous Ukraine, Belarus, and Poland.
And that meant moving not only Germans and other minorities from what became the Polish state and is still the Polish boundaries, but it also meant moving lots of Ukrainians and Belarus, excuse me, moving Poles out of territories that had been Ukrainian or Belarus.
I mean, but anyway, these are all kind of details, but the important point is these boundaries are not sacrosanct and demanding as the United States is that these boundaries are somehow have to be treated as sacrosanct is pure hypocrisy because the United States doesn't recognize that principle in other places.
The most obvious example of that is in the case of Israel.
Israel won't even say legally what its boundaries are.
It's a free-floating thing.
Basically, it says what we've had, we're going to hold on to and maybe we'll extend it.
But the point is that Israel occupies part and took over part of Syria in violation of international law.
But that's just fine with the United States government, but it takes a very different attitude when it comes to Ukraine or other places where we want to draw the line in the sand.
Well, that's right.
It picks and chooses when to have principles, and of course, the hypocrisy is staggering on that and so many issues with regards to our system, media, and our government, as Sam Dixon calls it.
Be right back, Mark Weber.
Find your inner rebel at Dixie Republic, the world's largest Confederate store, located in Traveler's Rest, South Carolina.
The anti-white, anti-Christ, anti-Southern world ends at the asphalt.
Welcome to God's country.
Log on to DixieRepublic.com to view our Southern merchandise from flags to t-shirts to artwork.
At the store, browse through our extensive collection of belt buckles and have a custom-made leather belt handcrafted in our Johnny Revs gun and leather shop.
That's DixieRepublic.com where you can meet all of your Southern needs.
While you're waiting, drop by our Confederate corner for a free cup of coffee and good conversation.
Remember, there are no strangers here, just friends who haven't met yet.
Dixie Republic, we're not just a roadside attraction, we're a destination for our people.
For more information, visit DixieRepublic.com.
The spirit of the American West is alive and well in Range Magazine, the award-winning quarterly devoted to the issues of the American West.
Each issue contains informative articles, breathtaking imagery, as well as the culture of Cowboy Spirit Today, and gift ideas like this year's Buckaroo Calendar.
Order online from RangeMagazine.com.
Loving Liberty Network salutes the spirit of the American West at rangemagazine.com.
I think that my family has always had a big influence on me for not smoking because since I was little, I was taught that smoking was wrong.
Recent studies indicate that smoking among teens often leads to the use of alcohol and other drugs.
I think having faith in God is a big part in it because the way I was raised has helped to avoid smoking.
Smoking, if you think you're old enough to start, you're smart enough to stop.
A public service message from this station and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
One more segment with the great Mark Weber of IHR.org.
And then the conversation on this very topic, what's going on geopolitically speaking between Russia, Ukraine, NATO, the United States, and other parts of the world.
We'll continue with Dr. Kevin McDonald in the second hour.
Keith Alexander will join us for that part of the conversation.
And then the third hour, we'll go back to Canada for the third time in four weeks with Paul Fromm, our good friend, who will be talking about Justin Trudeau's abrupt revocation of the Emergencies Act.
Just nine days after he invoked it, he revoked it.
We'll find out what's up with that with Paul Fromm.
And then, well, wouldn't you know it, we'll get Paul's take on the situation in Russia and Ukraine as well.
It's all still forthcoming tonight.
But first, back to Mark Weber.
Mark, we have covered a lot this hour.
Just to sort of put it into summation, I again go to something written by Brad Griffin over at OD, and he says that his views can be summed up as follows.
And I think I would agree with this, and perhaps you might as well.
We'll get your take.
War is terrible.
I've been anti-war.
I've always been anti-war.
And we also know from experience that the worst kind of war is devastating wars between Europeans.
I don't support imperialism, but I don't see any inconsistency here, though, because Russia has always been an empire.
I'm not interesting in changing Russia.
I only want my own country to change.
Putin is largely correct about NATO expansion, Brad writes.
The 2014 coup in Ukraine and flooding Ukraine with weapons.
While American presidents come and go, the blob pursues the same foreign policy.
The blob kept us in Afghanistan for 20 years.
It was the Obama administration which engineered the color revolution in Ukraine.
It was Trump who armed Ukraine with javelin anti-tank missiles.
Ukraine is a puppet state and a NATO satellite that has run out of the State Department.
Americans have been arming and training the Ukrainian army.
I think war in Ukraine is a tragedy that could have been avoided.
That is something you have said now, at least on two or three occasions, Mark, just during this hour.
Brad concludes by writing, it looks like the ultimate, and this is what I want to get to.
What do you think is coming next?
This is what Brad writes.
It looks like the ultimate outcome will be the fall of Zelensky, the surrender of Ukraine, and its demilitarization and neutralization.
Why this couldn't have been accomplished without a war, I don't know.
Couldn't Zelensky have just agreed that Ukraine wouldn't join NATO or continue to be flooded with American weapons instead of laughing off a Russian invasion.
Mark?
Right.
Essentially, I agree with what he had to say.
I would be a little careful, though, about calling Zelensky or the government puppets.
I think the tragedy in part is that Ukrainians followed the lead of the United States and have been left high and dry.
A similar thing happened in Georgia when in August, in 2008, Saakashvili, who was the president of Georgia, tried to take back these two provinces of Georgia that had been lost, but which the United States says should be part of Georgia, something similar to the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
And the Russians gave him a bloody nose.
And he thought or expected the United States was going to do much more than it did to pull his chestnuts out of the fire, and he failed.
And the Ukrainians have made a similar miscalculation.
They thought that with backing from the United States and a lot of big words, the United States would keep, that would be enough to keep Russia from doing anything.
But Russia has made very clear, Russian leaders have made clear for years that this is unacceptable.
They've drawn the line in the sand, and in fact, it's remarkable that they didn't act more resolutely sooner.
But the big point is, this is not involving a vital interest of the United States.
As tragic as it is, and it's a terrible thing, it could have been avoided.
It should be.
Now, how does this end?
The best solution would be to, as I said earlier, Ukraine agrees to some sort of referendum or plebiscites in areas that are very pro-Russian or Russian speaking.
If they want to be part of Russia, it might mean that the territory of Russia is going to be smaller.
They will have to accept at some point, either sooner or later, that Crimea is not going to be part of Ukraine anymore.
And they probably should accept a government that is neutral, that is not part of NATO, and not beholden to and tied to the United States.
That would probably be the solution to this thing.
But those things need to be worked out.
And certainly it could have been handled without going to the horrible consequence we see today of bombs and missiles and death and suffering now in Ukraine.
So do you see, Mark, under any circumstances, and I guess this is a question that sets up anyone who's asked to fail, but are there any reasonable circumstances where this ends up in a World War III?
No, I don't think so.
For one thing, remember, there's very little stomach in the United States or anywhere except maybe in there's been some support verbally from Britain for a full-scale war.
The American public isn't ready to go.
We've already failed and gotten bloody noses in Afghanistan, in Iraq, or a war with Russia, or for that matter, with Iran, would be just a calamity.
Americans would not, it wouldn't mean just $4 gasoline at the pump.
It would mean real suffering.
I mean, really bad things would happen.
And that's not going to happen.
And the United States, I mean, the whole art of international diplomacy is to have a correct understanding, a correct calibration of what the power constellation is in the world.
And that's a bigger point.
The basic truth that Americans leaders have a hard time accepting is that America's relative power in the world is decreasing.
It's been going down for years, and it's going to continue to decline.
There's a lot of just objective reasons for that.
But it was already during the Reagan years the United States shifted from being the world number one creditor nation to the world number one debtor nation.
And especially in recent years, the United States has been maintaining its standard of living here by printing a lot of money, by going into debt, enormous debt, huge debt.
And we can afford to do it, or we can get away with it because the dollar is still the world's reserve currency.
But this is a kind of fool's paradise.
We don't export finished products, manufactured products anymore, the way certainly we did in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and so forth.
Just recently, even in the United States now, more Toyota cars or vehicles are sold than that of any other manufacturer.
That's here in the United States.
And Toyota worldwide is much bigger than the American.
I mean, the world has changed.
And the efforts by Biden or Trump or so forth to somehow return to the days of the 1950s and 60s when America was a preeminent power in the world, it's still the number one financial power, it's still the number one military power, but its overall and relative power in the world is declining.
And we have to get used to that.
We have to understand that because that was a temporary situation deriving from the end of the Second World War, and it's not coming back.
Ladies and gentlemen, what you've heard from Mark Weber tonight is the sort of conversation and discussion about this very intricate topic that you should be hearing on CNN or MSNBC or even Fox News.
I know Tucker does a pretty good job, but even if I'm not hosting it, Mark Weber should be the guest.
That much I can tell you.
And I'm excited to tell you that we will have Mark Weber back in short order to have the conversation that we had originally planned on having tonight about this gripping new book entitled Stalin's War, a New History of World War II.
I was very much prepared for that, but under the circumstances, we felt it important to push that a little bit further down the road so we could have this comprehensive discussion on Russia and Ukraine.
We will also have Mark back on sometime later this spring or early summer to have him break down a talk he just gave at a recent IHR meeting entitled The Post-American Age.
And boy, isn't that even more glaringly apparent now over the course of the last year you've had that the Taliban is back in control in Afghanistan.
We have now what's going on in Russia and Ukraine, as you know, and then in Canada.
There are fault lines that seem to be appearing.
One thing I wanted to make, a point I wanted to make is I'm very pleased that the way you talk and I think most listeners now understand is that, well, when I was young or in the 50s, 60s, 70s, especially Americans who call themselves conservative, whenever the flag was raised or we were going to war, there was almost an automatic response of, okay, we're off.
We're against the bad guys, America's right, and so forth.
It's very obvious that over the last 10, 15 years, the confidence and trust in our institutions has fallen tremendously.
And Biden can talk about how America's got to stand tall and so forth.
But I think increasingly across the board, especially among white Americans, there's a sense that this government in Washington for years now, and certainly today, does not really represent our best interests.
And that's a difference that's taken place over my lifetime and over our lifetimes.
And especially Southerners had a tendency to stand up and salute whenever Washington said, well, it's time to get patriotic and get behind this war or that war.
Those days are over, and there's very little, there's far, far less trust in our institutions and our leaders, especially because, I mean, one of the most obvious things is it's just astonishing that we have a government that's talking about the sanctity of the borders of Ukraine when we don't even care about the sanctity of the borders here in this country.
That's right.
It's so fake.
It's so fake, Mark.
And you see, and the media is now just in the Liz Cheney wing of the Republican Party.
If you have a nuanced conversation as we're having tonight, an objective conversation, it's the equivalent of an enemy of the state.
You're probably.
It's a sign of just how pathetic the discourse is that when Tucker Carlson makes these kind of points, or anybody does, they're called parrots of the Kremlin.
They're called puppets.
This is crazy.
I mean, anyone who stands up for, I think, realistic and authentic American interest in all of this or tries to be even just objective, they're just called names and denigrated and so forth.
This is not only bad for this particular issue, it's just bad for the entire country when basically they're saying loyalty to the Biden administration is loyalty to the United States or loyalty to our people.
And that's just completely wrong.
Mark, I can't thank you enough.
It's been a privilege and a pleasure to have this conversation with you tonight, our first guest after the onset of hostilities there in that part of the world, which, of course, we have inserted ourselves in there.
We, the system, the American system has.
So it's important to us as well.
And it's important to us because we're all part of this European family.
I thank you again.
I look forward to your next appearance already, and I'm sure it will be in a very short order.