Oct. 22, 2022 - The Political Cesspool - James Edwards
50:46
20221022_Hour_2
|
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.
Welcome back, one and all, to the second hour of tonight's live broadcast.
I'm your host, James Edwards, Saturday evening, October the 22nd.
And it is amazing in the world of talk radio how quickly you can circumnavigate the globe from Bavaria in the first hour to California in our second hour, where we're rejoined by our very good friend Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review.
And he is back on the program tonight to share with us fascinating observations from his recent two-week tour of the Balkans.
He was in Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Croatia.
I can't wait to hear what he was doing over there and what he found interesting, what those takeaways and observations are.
Mark, how are you doing tonight?
Very good.
Good to be on with you again, James.
It's been a while since I was on last with you.
Yes, you know, it was a little bit earlier this summer.
I was actually, though, and I'm sure we'll get into this over the course of the hour, looking back to an appearance you made a couple of stops ago back on February 26th.
You just so happened to be scheduled to be on the program on February 26th, and that was the first show after the onset of unpleasantness between Russia and Ukraine.
And I actually went back earlier this week and revisited some of that interview.
And your analysis on that, even though now it's some eight months later, was just very prescient.
I mean, that's an interview that still stands up even after eight months of twists and turns.
So having you on as an analyst for any topic always makes for great radio, which is again why you're amongst our top five all-time interviewed guests.
So let's go talk about your trip.
I am on the IHR mailing list, and I saw Mark send out an email about this, and I said, let's do a made-for-radio presentation, if you don't mind, Mark.
And he was gracious enough to agree.
So you write in the email, for many years, I've had a keen interest in the fascinating ethnic, religious, and political complexity of the Balkan region of Southeastern Europe.
And that's what you're all to talk about.
Observations, particularly those of relevance for Americans.
Let's start, Mark.
Right.
Well, I think one of the most interesting things about this region is the very great importance in this area of identity, of religion, of nationality.
Those are very, very important factors for everyone in that region and have been for a very long time.
The history of this area has been a very tumultuous up and down one.
A place like Bosnia, for example, has gone back and forth to being part of Croatia, to being part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to being part of a multicultural, multi-ethnic state called Yugoslavia, to being now an independent but very divided country.
Many Americans pay, most Americans pay very little attention to this region, but there's a lot that everybody can learn from it.
And it's fascinating to be in an area and to talk with people and to see people who live lives that are a lot more like Americans lived back in the 1950s, 60s, 40s, and so forth.
There's a kind of normality to life that we don't see anymore in America.
You don't see lots of graffiti on the walls.
You don't see beggars.
You don't see homeless people.
You don't see people with spiked purple hair.
You don't see people with big tattoos and a lot of the grotesquener or the oddity of American life that we've seen more and more of here in our country over the last 20 or 30 years.
Now, each of these countries that I was in, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Croatia, are very distinctive in a way from each other, but there's a great deal of similarity between them as well.
But one very striking thing is to be in countries, and I'm talking now about especially Bosnia and Albania, to be in countries of European people, people that look like they're European.
They look like white Americans, more or less.
I mean, there's some difference, of course.
But at the same time, the population, these people are mostly Muslim.
And it's a very striking thing because when Americans, I think, generally think of Muslims, they think of Saudi Arabians, Pakistanis, people that look very different.
But just as there are Christians around the world of many different racial or ethnic backgrounds, so also are there Muslims of many different racial and ethnic backgrounds, including Muslims who are blonde or who are European or who you would not think differently.
In fact, one of the striking things is that the people in this region, with some variation of course, look very much the same, but there are enormous differences in people's attitude, outlook, and nationality, and even religion that also divide and in some cases unite these people together.
Anyway, all this is very important.
It was just about a little over 100 years ago that the First World War, up to that time the most destructive war in modern times, broke out in Bosnia, in fact in Sarajevo.
And I stood at the place where this young man, Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife, Archduke of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
And that led to Austria giving an ultimatum to Serbia because the assassins were Serbian nationalists.
And Serbia turned down the ultimatum.
Austria declared war on Serbia.
Anyway, the things cascaded into the First World War.
Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, was also very much in the news in the 1990s because it was under siege in 1992 and in 1995 by Serbs who were fighting the Bosnian, what we're called Bosniaks who are Muslim.
And that was a very big bloody conflict at that time.
And America sided against the Serbs, and very few Americans still remember.
But at one time, American airplanes were bombing the capital of Serbia, Belgrade.
And of course, Serbs still remember this very much.
And so the attitude of people about the United States is very much influenced and shaped by their experiences with the United States during that entire very bloody period.
And the wounds of that are still obvious everywhere.
In fact, the wounds even of the Second World War, the First World War, and the heritage of the multicultural, multi-ethnic Yugoslavia is still very evident in these areas as well.
One of the fascinating things to me was Albania.
Albania, for a time, from 1945 up until 1991, was the most communist Marxist society in the world, more communist, more Marxist than the Soviet Union or China.
It was something like a European North Korea.
It was sealed off from the rest of the world and fanatic.
So fanatic that in 1967, Albania declared itself the world's first atheist country.
Not just the atheist government, an atheist country.
Every form of religious activity was made a criminal offense.
Every single church, every single mosque was shut down.
It was illegal even to have a Bible in the country.
And anyway, today, the situation, of course, is radically different.
And that underscored for me also the importance that ideology and the kind of government that is in power the lives of people.
Hold on right there, my friend Mark Weber.
We'll be back.
I've got a lot of questions for Mark about this trip, and we will get to them right after this.
Antelope Hill Publishing is America's leading publisher of dissident books, bringing you a wide variety of new translations and original works on every subject from the Spanish Civil War to the funding behind the transgender movement.
Antelope Hill publishes books that mainstream publishers won't touch, full of information that challenges the political status quo and brings real culture to the reading public at an affordable price.
If you count yourself as a political dissident, you owe it to yourself to check out the Antelope Hill catalog with exclusive offerings like Sol Shenitsyn and the Right, the Open Society Playbook, opioids for the masses, and many more.
There's something there for everyone, and new titles are added every month.
Check out the catalog today at antelopehillpublishing.com.
That's antelopehillpublishing.com.
I'm James Edwards, and I want you to go to antelopehillpublishing.com.
Why does the left lie constantly?
Because they get spiritual power from lying.
The lies come from Satan, the father of lies.
John 8, 44.
Here's how the political lying process works.
Satan provides the beast with a lie.
Then the more they use the lie, the more spiritual power they get.
Look, the media is a lie multiplier, and this multiplication gives more evil spiritual power to the beast.
And that can overwhelm and even deceive the body of Christ, especially when the body is being disobedient to the head.
The churches today are incorporated, so they're subordinate to human government.
They obey the beast and do nothing to restore our national relationship with God.
And the government shall be on his shoulders, Isaiah 9, 6.
That verse is not for the present-day church.
Rather, it is for the end time church, the body of the line of Judah.
A message from Christ's Kingdom Ministries.
Okay, welcome back.
Yeah, I think these types of conversations, to me, are quite engrossing.
I can remember a couple of years ago, my wife and I went on a little Caribbean trip where we spent some time in Mexico, Belize, and Honduras.
And I really enjoyed, once I got back home, sharing the observations and experiences that I had there.
And it got a lot of feedback from the audience.
And we just had, of course, Sasha Rossmuller, the German journalist on in the first hour appearing live from Bavaria.
I think it certainly carries more weight to talk to someone who has recently traveled to certain locations or is broadcasting live from that location as opposed to people who have opinions on things but without having that on-the-ground experience.
And so when Mark Weber, when I received word that Mark Weber had toured this quartet of Balkan states, I certainly wanted to have him on.
He mentioned the white Muslims earlier.
That's right.
I know what he's talking about.
I'm sure many of you do as well.
But yes, they look and are, in many cases, as white as you or I. You would expect them to be more dusky-hued, but that's an interesting thing that he saw.
By the way, we will talk to Mark a little bit more later this hour.
We will pivot back to Ukraine and Russia.
His last appearance, we were talking about that, was actually on June the 4th.
We normally don't go that far in between appearances with Mark, but he's been busy.
And we were talking with him on June the 4th about, of course, Russia-Ukraine with regards to U.S. foreign policy over there.
And we will end this hour going back and looking at that a little bit more in terms of the more recent occurrences.
But first, I really want to take our time, Mark, and allow you to continue to make this presentation.
I will probe you a little bit with some questions, but by all means, continue to share with the audience during your recent two-week visit to Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Herzegovina, and Croatia the things you think they should know.
One of the striking things is that when I came back to the United States, a couple of friends asked me, well, what did people think or say about the Ukraine war or the Russia-U.S. conflict?
And I was surprised by the question because when I thought back, I realized that in that entire two weeks, the subject had never even come up.
It's a striking thing that it's like asking Americans today, in a way, what do you think about the conflict right now between Armenia and Azerbaijan?
It's out of the context.
I mean, people are aware, of course, of the conflict with the United States and Russia over Ukraine.
But America seems very far away in many ways, more so than in the past.
What I mean by that is that when you travel around these countries, and we had a rental car and we did various things, people, there are very few Americans, and there's very little American presence in a sense.
Yeah, there are a few KFC restaurants.
Some places have McDonald's.
But overwhelmingly, the automobiles on the road, the products, and even the tourists that we see, there's very, very few Americans.
In Montenegro, there are far more Russian tourists than American tourists.
In one town in, well, all over, there are far more tourists from Italy or from Austria and so forth than America.
And we felt, actually, as Americans, I was with my wife and stepson and his girlfriend, just how far away the United States seems and how, in a way, almost irrelevant these big issues of foreign policy seem because the area is much more tied to Europe economically, culturally, and so forth than it is to the United States.
In addition to one interesting stop that we made during our stop was at the small town of Medjagoria in Bosnia, which is in the Croatian part of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
This is an enormous pilgrimage site for Catholics.
Every year, a million people go to this little town because in the early 1980s, the Virgin Mary, so they say, appeared to five teenagers in that city, in that town, on a hill.
And ever since then, hundreds of thousands of people come.
And when we were there, there were big tour buses from Italy, Austria, and people from Brazil, Philippines, all over the world, who were there as very devote pilgrims to this site, which has become a very important Catholic pilgrimage center.
At the same time, in other parts of this region, there's a very strong Muslim presence that's very, very striking too.
And people take religion in that part of the world much more seriously, in a sense, than most Christians around the world.
Religion is not just a personal thing.
It's a very important part of one's social identity as well.
Anyway, that was another high point of the trip when we were there.
You know, just because you visit a place, I think this goes for most people.
I'm not saying this applies to you.
We're about to find out.
That doesn't mean you actually engage with the locals.
I really am enjoying hearing you explain and describe some of the cities, some of the sites, some of the tourist destinations that you visited and what you thought about those.
But I know you have an inquisitive mind, Mark.
Did you spend a lot of time in any of these four nations talking with people about any issues?
Small talk at least?
Of course, of course, James.
Yes.
I mean, I make a point very much of cultivating talks and interacting with people to learn more.
For example, in Albania, the capital Tirana, there's a large National Historical Museum.
It's on a major square called Skunderbeg Square.
And I went through it and I was very struck by the odd way that 20th century history was presented.
The period from 1945 to 1991 isn't even mentioned.
And I was so struck by this, I arranged the next day to talk with officials of the museum, of this National Historical Museum, including the director.
And I learned that there's a great deal of unease and a lack of certainty about how to even present the entire communist period in Albania.
And so they just ignore it.
But I talk a lot with not only officials at this museum, but many other people about how they saw their country, themselves, and the future.
In Bosnia, for example, in conversations, I didn't meet a single person who's very optimistic about the future of Bosnia.
That's because Bosnia has an enormous division in the country between the Muslim Bosniak population and the Serbian Orthodox Christian population.
In fact, even though it's one country, the Serbian part of the country, which makes up almost half of the territory, calls itself the Serbian Republic, the Srepska Republika.
And when you drive on a road or a highway or whatever, when you enter the Serbian area, there are huge big signs that say you are entering the Republika Srepska, the Serbian Republic.
They have Serbian flags.
And each area, each people, they're very, very conscious of this ethnic identity and that this is ours.
This land is ours.
That's rather different than the United States, where there's much less devotion to the land or the territory than there is in the United States.
Now, having said that, there's a big division in Bosnia.
But in Albania, the national consciousness is very, very strong.
So strong, in fact, that it overrides the religious differences.
Even though Albania is a mostly Muslim country, the national airport of Albania in Tirana is named after a Catholic saint.
And you might wonder, well, who would that Catholic saint be?
Well, it's probably the most famous Albanian of the 20th century, Mother Teresa.
Mother Teresa was Albanian.
And the airport is named after Mother Teresa because she's probably, as I say, the most prominent Albanian.
But the Albanian consciousness is very, very strong of being Albanian.
It's more important than the religious.
And the largest, about 60% of the population is Muslim.
About 20% is Catholic, actually.
And then there's a small minority, which is either not religious or Orthodox.
But all of these religious identities play a role that's rather different than in the United States.
And again, around the world, some countries, or many countries, the religious identity plays this very, very big role, especially, say, in Muslim countries or in India, Hindu, and so forth.
Anyway, that alone was a very fascinating aspect.
But I tried very much to talk with people.
Serbians are, Serbs, for the most part, are rather anti-American.
They see America as a country that bombed Serbia, that is hostile to them.
They're sort of unsure why this happened.
But America is nonetheless committed to trying to uphold the trying to keep a country like Bosnia together, even though it's very divided.
And that's probably a hopeless task.
But anyway, that's one of the, because in the 1980s, the United States under the Clinton administration tried very hard to cobble together a united Bosnia, as hard as that is to do.
Boy, I can't believe how quickly I just looked at the clock when I heard the music begin, how quickly these first two segments have gone.
I hope you're enjoying this, ladies and gentlemen.
To me, I love hearing about people's experiences as they travel abroad.
So I'm just sitting back as a member of the audience for the most part and listening to Mark Regalis with these stories.
We'll be right back as it continues.
Protecting your liberties.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
USA Radio News with Tim Berg.
Gas prices are dropping.
AAA reporting the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded is now $383.
That's down from $391 a week ago.
China's foreign ministry doubled down on their claims to Taiwan last week, saying they will not tolerate moves toward Taiwanese independence.
Wisconsin Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher tells Fox and friends that he believes the United States needs to stop projecting weakness.
In our defense industrial base, we've blown through so many years worth of javelins.
We just don't make some things that we need to make here domestically in order to restore Freedom's Forge, restore America as the arsenal of democracy.
The Biden administration is filing charges in a criminal scheme.
From the USA Radio News West Coast News Bureau, Lance Pry explains.
The Biden administration on Wednesday announced a round of criminal charges and sanctions related to a complicated scheme to procure military technologies from U.S. manufacturers and illegally supply them to Russia for its war in Ukraine.
The Department of Justice charged nearly a dozen people in separate cases from New York to Connecticut.
After a short six-week term as the prime minister of the United Kingdom, Liz Truss resigned from her position.
We've agreed that there will be a leadership election to be completed within the next week.
This will ensure that we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country's economic stability and national security.
She will remain prime minister until her successor is chosen.
This follows harsh criticism from lawmakers and her party, as well as the opposition.
Week seven of the NFL season kicks off with the Arizona Cardinals hosting the New Orleans Saints.
That game can be seen on Amazon Prime.
You're listening to USA Radio News.
Stress, it never seems to end when you owe money to the IRS.
What about the years of unfiled tax returns?
Have you tried another tax service and gotten nowhere?
Then you need tax alliance.
Why?
Years of being A-plus rated with a better business bureau with no consumer complaint sets them apart.
Call 800-624-9275.
That's 800-624-9275.
Don't wait until the IRS attacks your wages, bank account, your home or pension, and even your social security check.
Tax Alliance specializes in IRS tax relief programs, including the Fresh Start Initiative, which can finally free yourself from IRS debt.
Their tax professionals can file returns, fight the IRS to substantially lower your IRS debt, or possibly even have it forgiven.
If you owe the IRS $10,000 or more in back taxes, have unfiled tax returns or have a payment plan and are still frustrated.
Call 800-624-9275.
That's 800-624-9275.
Tax Alliance, your tax resolution solution.
Mark Webber back with us tonight for the third time this year, adding to the dozens of appearances he has made on this broadcast over the course of the last 18 years.
Next week will be our 18-year anniversary program.
And Mark has been doing good work for even longer than that.
I am at his website right now, ihr.org.
That's for the Institute for Historical Review.
ihr.org.
And of course, in addition to being the director of the IHR, Mark, of course, is an accomplished historian, a lecturer, a current affairs analyst, and author, educated both in the United States and Europe.
He holds a master's degree in modern European history, which is even more interesting in light of the topic tonight, his recent trip to Europe.
And we're going to spend one more segment on that, and then we'll talk a little bit about the odds for global conflict over there in Russia and the UK and get Mark's thoughts on that and how maybe perhaps that crisis can be ameliorated.
But Mark, you were talking about, obviously, and I knew that you would.
I knew that you would engage in the conversation.
I knew going over there you would do that.
And I appreciate you sharing with us some of the engagements there.
What was the reception that most people gave you as an American?
You were talking about how some of the people in that part of the world view America, but how about individual Americans?
People are very friendly.
The countries are, no, that's fine.
In fact, there was one woman we talked to who is Serbian by background.
She goes back and forth between Montenegro and Dublin, Ireland.
She has a doctor's practice in Dublin, Ireland.
She goes back and forth.
She speaks fluent English.
She refuses ever even to visit the United States.
She feels very strongly, but she's very friendly to individual Americans, of course, because in most countries, including the United States, the average citizen has very little say or awareness really of the larger geopolitical military policies that are carried out by our government.
And of course, that's a very sad thing when one's government is busy with in military activity all over the world with oftentimes very, very destructive consequences.
And Americans really, it's hard to be aware of that in America because these take place far, far overseas.
But she and many Serbs remember very well the time when the United States was militarily attacking, I mean, hostile to Serbia during this conflict in what used to be Yugoslavia.
But people are still amazingly friendly.
And the main goal that people have is just to sort of get on with their lives and to try to integrate more into Europe.
When we were in Sarajevo, in fact, I talked briefly with a television crew because the president of Turkey was visiting Sarajevo at that very time because elections are coming up.
And Turkey, other countries are trying very hard to cultivate relations with a country that, like Turkey, is mostly Muslim.
But in Bosnia itself, there's election posters.
I talk to people about this election coming up.
Unfortunately, the only ethnic group in Bosnia that seems really devoted to a united Bosnia are the Muslims.
The Serbs are very much in favor of their own Serbian championing and supporting their own Serbian national interests and so forth.
And the Croatians, similarly, in this smaller area of the country that they have, that's Croatian, they're dedicated to the interests of Croatians.
And that's why, talking to people in Bosnia, people are very pessimistic about the future, because just below the surface are these tremendous, very deep, and very historically old ethnic, religious divisions in the country.
One of the fascinating things is that the names of some of these countries are rather odd in English.
Albania, for example, we call the country Albania, but in their own language, the country's name is Land of Eagles or Land of the Eagles.
And the word in their own language for Albanians are sons of the eagle or sons of eagles, whatever.
Montenegro.
I've never heard that before.
The word Montenegro is actually the Italian name for the country.
In their own language, Serbo-Croatian, Montenegrin, the country's name is the Black Mountain, the Black Mountain Republic.
But we don't call it either an English name or a Serbian name.
We call it, give it an Italian name of the country.
Montenegro only has about 600,000 people, but very few Americans, I think, realize that it's the latest member of NATO.
The United States is committed militarily to defending the territorial integrity of this little tiny country.
And for reasons that I won't go into, they're kind of odd and so forth.
I saw some ships of the so-called Montenegrin Navy in one of the coastal towns.
It's kind of an odd thing, even, that the United States has a military commitment to this tiny country that's smaller than many, some American cities even.
You know, I am so enthralled by maps.
If you stuck me in a room with a world map on a wall, I would stare for hours.
I have always been that way.
And even as I'm listening to you, Mark, right now on the program, I have here at the studio the map of that particular part of the world, that part of Europe.
And it is uniquely positioned.
Or rather interestingly positioned, I guess, with proximity to the rest of Europe proper.
Istanbul and places like that.
So yeah, it's not quite that close to Russia or as close as you might think.
I guess relative to our proximity to Russia, it's certainly much closer, which is, I guess, why, in a way, I was a little bit surprised to hear you say they had such a cool demeanor with regards to the prospects of a wider war in Ukraine.
But is there any trepidation or anxiety with regards to the oncoming winter?
We've been talking about the energy crisis with a couple of guests this month and how much it's going to cost to heat the homes.
But I don't guess they have that necessarily cold out there.
Already the heating bills, the natural gas bill for heating and stoves and so forth, has gone up hugely all over Europe.
I heard one person say that in Italy, for example, I was meeting with an Italian recently.
He says the monthly gas bill has gone from 50 euros a month to 300 or 400 euros a month.
There's been a big increase all over Europe in natural gas because about 40% of the natural gas of much of Europe comes from Russia or has come from Russia.
I would caution, though, people who talk about everybody freezing this winter.
There's still a lot of belt tightening that's possible in Europe before things get really bad.
And after all, if it's only 40%, there's still a lot of natural gas and there are other ways to heat things.
In other words, the European countries are sort of doing things to try to get around or ameliorate this problem when it comes up.
But see, the big point is for many Europeans, they realize at the end of the day, Russia is still going to be Russia.
Europe has to live with Russia.
Russia isn't going away.
Whether it's Putin or the Soviet Union, whatever, whoever's in charge in Moscow, they have to live with it.
That's a big difference than many people.
There's not going to be any sweeping change in the elimination of Russia.
When people talk about regime change in Russia, as John Bolton did the other day, that's just ridiculous, really.
Russia is still going to remain Russia.
India is going to remain India.
China is going to be China.
United States is going to be United States.
And so anyway, that's, well, I just would urge people to be cautious about what the winter will be like.
Overall, yeah, people are interested in the Russia war.
It just didn't come up as a conversation.
I mean, but they're not so worried that it's going to spin out of control.
It's a limited thing.
Remember, even some areas right on the border with Russia and so forth, the war isn't really affecting them directly.
But because wars continue, there's a war going on now between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
But in the capital of Armenia, life seems fairly normal, even though they're involved in war.
And just like in the American Civil War, life went on in much of the north, in New York City or Boston, in a way that people were not very conscious of.
So it's important to remember that although a country can be at war, it doesn't seem like they're not on the front lines of the conflict.
That's absolutely right.
That's a good observation.
Okay, when we come back, we are going to talk with Mark about, well, the prospects for a global conflict and how compare what's going on in Russia now to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
So that's what we'll end things with Mark in the next segment.
But Mark, with just seconds remaining before we go to our next break, final word that you'd like to share with the audience about that incredible trip.
Well, like every other region and like other historical epics, I think it's very important for Americans who really care about these things to learn from these experiences.
That's why I put a big emphasis on in our website and in what I try to do in a more global and historical perspective because these have important consequences and lessons, I think, for America today and in our future.
Here, here is why you're back on the program tonight and while we're thankful for it.
We'll be back.
One more segment with Mark Weber, ihr.org.
I'm Michael Hill, president of the League of the South.
I and my compatriots are Southern nationalists.
We seek the survival, well-being, and independence of the Southern people, our people.
The League wants a South that enjoys the sweet fruits of Christian liberty and prosperity, but our current situation won't allow it.
We must have our independence from Washington, D.C. and the globalists.
The present system cannot be reformed.
Without independence, we will continue down this path of destruction.
To us, this is not acceptable.
I'm asking you, Southern man and woman, to join us today to free the South.
Call us at 256-757-6789 or see our website at www.leagueofthesouth.com.
God save the South.
Have you ever had great honey?
No, I mean really good, all-natural, raw honey.
Well, now you can.
Thanks to localhoneyman.com.
We can ship out our locally made honey all across the U.S.
So don't worry, you won't miss out.
Plus, Local Honeyman has so many different flavors like Utah Wildflower, High Desert Delight, Happy Valley, and Blackberry, just to name a few.
So purchase your delicious raw honey today at localhoneyman.com.
Do you treasure your liberty?
Well, at lovingliberty.net, we most certainly do.
And we want to help protect your liberty too.
Become part of the family.
Everyone knows that the core of any society is the family.
Therefore, the government should foster and protect the integrity of its family.
We the people.
Won't you join us as a Loving Liberty sponsor to help us promote the principles in the 5,000-year leap?
Let's restore the miracle that changed the world at LovingLiberty.net.
Ladies and gentlemen, I know you have enjoyed as much as I have hearing Mark Webber explain and talk about what he saw and experienced over there.
Two weeks spent in a quartet of Balkan states.
Mark and I always exchange a series of emails behind the scenes in advance of each of his appearances on this broadcast.
And one of the things that got brought up in the last email before coming on live tonight was one thing we'd like to work in.
And Mark wrote that in addition to this accounting of this two-week visit to Europe, we wanted to look back on the 1962 missile crisis, the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the world came closest, of course, to nuclear war.
So this is all timely and relevant given all of the talk recently of the danger of nuclear war arising from the current Russia-U.S. standoff over Ukraine.
So with that, we turn it over to our European affairs analyst, Mark Weber.
Right.
Well, I just want to make the point that this month is exactly the 60th anniversary of the 1962 missile crisis.
I guess I'm showing my age by recalling that when I was a boy, and I remember that, there was a really strong sense that we could come to a nuclear war.
Every school classroom for kids, everybody was trained, including me, to get down under your seats if there's a nuclear attack.
I mean, it was far, far stronger than what we hear today.
But the crisis ended with a compromise between President Kennedy of the United States and Khrushchev of the Soviet Union.
A deal was made that the Soviet Union took missiles out of Cuba, and America promised and did take missiles out of Turkey that were aimed at Russia.
Now, the second part of that was kept secret at the time, and most Americans viewed it as a victory for the United States.
And it was.
It was a victory for the world, you might say.
But it shows the importance of wise, cautious leadership to avoid a catastrophe that's a calamity, a disaster for everyone.
And right now, the danger is of a larger conflict is we don't have, I don't see right now, the same kind of careful, measured response to what's going on by American leaders and maybe even Russian leaders as well to avert that.
But having said that, you know, at the time, remember, in 1962, the Soviet government put intermediate missiles in Cuba.
And the United States says, that's our sphere of influence.
We're not going to allow hostile missiles close to our border.
Well, this is very much the way Russians see the prospect or the danger as they see it of Ukraine joining NATO.
If Ukraine ever were to join NATO, it could mean that the United States puts military bases right on or in the Russian sphere of influence in their country.
That's a great comparison.
That's a great comparison.
They are absolutely opposed to that.
And people who think that Putin is unique, that he's responsible for all these problems, fail to understand just how strongly Russians view this.
No Russian leader is going to accept a hostile military presence in Ukraine aimed at their country.
And remember, for Russians, Ukraine is not some faraway foreign country.
For the entire 19th century, Ukraine was part of Russia.
For centuries, it's been part of Russia.
In the 20th century, with very few exceptions, it was also part of either Russia or the Soviet Union.
And Americans should try to appreciate the extent to which Russia's security concerns are not unreasonable in the same way that no American president would permit Russian or Chinese missiles in Mexico or Cuba as well.
But a big danger is that in all of this is to take a very measured thing.
At the time, in 1962, the American military leaders wanted Kennedy to go in and invade Cuba and bomb the country.
Just go to immediately do military response.
Kennedy didn't do that.
And they imposed a kind of quarantine or embargo of Cuba until the situation was dealt with.
But the rhetoric now has become so extreme in the United States and in Russia too, but particularly in the United States, that it's very difficult.
I'm most of all worried that the extent to which Americans are jumped up and excited about Ukraine in a way that never used to be the case.
Americans didn't care about who controlled Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union.
In World War II, Stalin was considered an ally of the United States.
And his oppression, not only of Ukrainians, but all the other nationalities, was something Americans weren't even permitted to talk about.
The big point is that there's no crucial American security interest in Ukraine.
The United States did not go to war with Russia when the Russians sent tanks into Prague in 1968 in Czechoslovakia.
The United States didn't go to war when the Soviets sent tanks into Hungary in 1956.
But we've drawn a line on the sand, drawn a line now, making the fate of Ukraine essential to the United States.
And that's a dangerous thing because as this war goes on, the people who suffer the most are the very people that we claim to be most concerned about, mainly the Ukrainians.
And I think the main focus ought to be not on deciding who are the good guys or bad guys, but bringing the war to an end as quickly as we can.
That's the main thing.
The end of the war should be a primary priority consideration and not trying to make the good guys supposedly win.
That's not going to happen.
Pat Buchanan talked, wrote rather about this and his most recent column as well.
He touched on some of the things you're touching on.
And yes, it was interesting.
I don't know when compared to the Cuban Missile Crisis, I don't know to the extent that America is acting in good faith on any of this and the extent to which they would go to provoke Putin.
This was what Buchanan's takeaway was, and this is a guy who's certainly no slouch with regards to his knowledge of foreign policy and the way these things work in his own right.
That if pushed to the brink, he could see a scenario in which Putin lobs some nuclear weapons.
Do you see that, Mark?
I mean, what would you handicap the likelihood of that?
I doubt that very much.
I think there is a general consensus by leaders everywhere that beginning a nuclear exchange would very dangerously, could very dangerously escalate into a conflict that would be out of everyone's control.
I'd like to remember that in the aftermath of the First World War and the use of poison gas, the consequences were so horrible that basically the countries of the world agreed never to use poison gas in warfare again.
Now, there's been some violations of that, but generally during World War II, no country used poison gas against each other during the Second World War, even though both the Americans and the Germans, for example, had large stockpiles of poison gas in case the other side did it.
And a similar situation is with nuclear weapons.
Once they start being used and escalate, it spins out of control in a way that's catastrophic for everyone.
So I'd like to think that wiser minds, I hope, in the Biden administration will avoid that.
Having said that, though, the rhetoric and the trajectory of American foreign policy is so hostile and so self-righteous, this is a very dangerous thing.
The Biden administration makes a big point of putting the world situation in terms of we're the big defenders of democracy and we're going to be fighting all over against the bad guys.
That's a very dangerous thing because it's a recipe for endless war.
They're always going to find bad guys.
And when Hillary Clinton or other American leaders compare Putin to Hitler, that rhetoric is already very exaggerated.
It almost implies the only choice is to go and kill Putin or go to war.
This is very dangerous rhetoric when it's escalated to this extent.
We had a guest recently who said this.
Well, let me first ask you this.
And my goodness, we're running out of time.
Never trust a neocon, of course, but you have heard Kevin McCarthy sort of begin to say if the Republicans take Congress, that's coming up just days away, you wouldn't know it.
There hasn't been a lot of media chatter about the midterms, in my opinion.
I've talked about that in recent weeks a couple of times.
But do you see any sort of scenario with the Republicans capturing Congress and cutting off the blank checks to Zelensky?
Unfortunately, both Republicans and Democrats are like birds on a telephone wire.
When there's a big call to war, they tend to jump right in.
And many leading Republicans and Democrats were all gung-ho for a showdown with Putin over Ukraine.
Now, that happens over and over.
When America invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, you'll find this kind of consensus.
And it's only after a lot of people die and a lot of destruction that people finally say, well, wait a minute here.
What did we get into?
What's the cost really involved?
And there are only a few voices who are on the side saying, wait a minute, consider what you're doing.
And that was true of the Vietnam War.
It was true of the Iraq War.
But because our general politicians will go along with the tide of the time, so to speak, what the media says and getting everybody raw, worked up about this.
And so unfortunately, there are very few voices, I think, of reason and rationality within either of the parties right now, whatever it happened.
But having said that, as the war goes on and it's more and more obvious that neither side is delivering any kind of knockout punch to the other, there will be increasingly strong calls for some sort of end to this conflict that doesn't mean total victory, quote unquote, for one side or the other.
Seconds remaining, this is an impossible question to answer, but this is talk radio, so we'll ask it anyway.
You look at, I mentioned this in the last hour.
You look at the two world wars, our war between the states here.
All three of those, I believe, last about four years.
I had a guest a couple of weeks ago say this thing's going to be over in January.
Our friend from Germany in the first hour said a year from now this will still be going on.
What do you think, Mark?
What kind of timeline are we looking at?
It's hard to say.
No, I'm reluctant to make a prediction like that.
It's going to depend a lot on the United States.
If the United States wants the war to end with less than what Ukraine says it wants, that is the restoration of all of Ukrainian territory, so-called, that can happen.
It's really up to the leaders above all of the United States and Western Europe to try to bring this war to an end.
Because without that involvement, some sort of solution can be arrived at.
So the development goes on.
And we'll find out together.
That's for sure.
IHR.org, be sure to check out Mark Weber's brand new weekly show, Weekly Roundup with Mark Weber.
He's doing that with Frodie Midyard.
And you can check that out.
All the information there at iHR.org.
Mark, thank you so much for being back with us tonight.