-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War!
Q. Speaking of the Middle East, we have seen an increase in violence between Israel and the Palestinians. The United States is perceived in many countries as being unfairly siding with Israel. Russia is supposed to be a cosponsor to the peace process. In your opinion, is there anything that Russia can do to promote peace in the region? A. As the situation is deteriorating and no one seems to have a solution, perhaps there is: Why not step out and lay down what Russia believes the terms of a just peace are, and get the Western Europeans to sign on, and propose it? At least then the warring parties would have something on the table. Other than that, I cannot think of what Russia could do dramatically to affect the situation, and I confess I am pessimistic. Prime Minister Rabin was a great man. I first met him in 1967 in Israel, with Mr. Nixon, right after the Six-Day War. And General Rabin and Ehud Barak were on the right track, and Arafat should have at least hailed the Camp David proposals as enormous progress, even if he could not sign on the dotted line. But then Sharon went stomping around the Temple Mount with a thousand bodyguards and the second intifada exploded. Our difficulty here is that most Americans who are most passionate about the Middle East think Rabin and Barak were foolish to make the offers they did. They want Sharon to unleash the Israeli army. They believe the way to end violence is to thrash the Palestinians, once and for all, so they will sit down at the table and behave like good little boys. As of now, the U.S. seems to have given Sharon a virtual free hand, so long as he does not physically eliminate Arafat. America’s second difficulty is that we are trying to be both Israel’s most loyal ally -- not criticizing anything they do in self-defense -- at the same time we are supposed to be an "honest broker" who brings together both sides in a compromise. To the Arabs, the U.S. umpire, who is supposed to be neutral, is spending most of his time in the other team’s locker room, plotting strategy, and cheering them on. In the correlation of forces today, the Israelis have the power and the land, but the population numbers are against them. By 2025, the 4.2 million Palestinians now under Israeli rule -- in Israel, East Jerusalem, on the West Bank, and Gaza – will number 9 million. By 2050, they will number 15 million, and there will be 10 million more in Jordan. If demography is destiny, Israel is in an existential crisis. I don’t think this is something that Israel can resolve with F-16s and helicopter gunships. If I were President -- an idea the American people enthusiastically rejected -- I would lay out what I think are the terms of a just, honorable peace for both sides. Perhaps that would break the cycle of violence that is swirling ever more rapidly, and which may draw a lot more of us in -- Israelis and Palestinians, Arabs and Americans -- before it is done. An independent Palestinian State on the West Bank and in Gaza, with its capital in East Jerusalem, with Islamic control of Islamic holy places, is a necessary condition of peace. But, with the recent deposits of bitterness and hatred on all sides, I wonder if it is any longer a sufficient condition for peace. This may be a terminal struggle, like Vietnam, where the side with the greater willingness to sacrifice, suffer and die, eventually wins all and dictates terms to the loser. Because Western peoples believe in compromise and contracts, we tend to think other peoples believe in them, too. But other people usually believe in them only as long as we have the power to enforce them. When they acquire the power, they tear them up and impose their own solutions. The Israelis think this is what the Palestinians and their Arab allies will do, if Israel gives up strategic terrain. And they may be right. This is why I would not impose an American solution. But, in the long run, this is not our problem, it is Israel’s problem. If the Israelis cannot find a way to make peace with their neighbors, their future is going to be very unhappy. As for the United States, if we cannot be a truly honest broker, we ought to disengage militarily and let these nations work out their own destinies. Again, President Washington had it right. If you wish peace, be prepared for war, but if you wish peace, stay out of other nation’s wars. Americans have always be ready to fight for their freedom, but we are not like the British, we are poor imperialists. Most of us have no interest in ruling other nations. We have everything we want or need right here in God’s country, the U.S.A. Q. Do you have any comments about Russia’s recent role in Afghanistan? It seems that some people were surprised when Russian troops set up a hospital in Kabul. Why do you think people were surprised by this action? How do you see future events in Afghanistan playing out? A. The reason people were surprised is that they did not expect it. It was like that midnight run to Pristina airport that caught General Clark by surprise. As I understand it, he was not amused. In my view, Russia has been a good ally in this Afghan war from the start. President Putin was right to urge the Central Asian states to help us. He has won great good will for Russia in the United States. If Russia wants to help out in Afghanistan with humanitarian aid, more power to them, though it is probably best to coordinate. Your interests in the region are longer lasting and greater than ours. We just want to stop the country from being used by terrorists who come over here to murder our people. Who rules Afghanistan is something they should decide. As to the future, I am not very hopeful. The Afghans are a proud and brave people. But some of our Afghani allies have terrible track records on treating people they rule. Some appear to have records as bad as that of Milosevic, and we are prosecuting him for war crimes. We should help as much as we can, but then move out and let the peace-keeping force be made up of other nations troops, preferably Islamic. Our objective is a limited one: We don’t want Afghanistan used as a boot camp for terrorists whose ambition is to die as some suicide-martyr in the United States. Q. Do you have any opinion of Mr. Putin? What would you say to him if you were ever to meet him? A. I have never met Mr. Putin, but my impression is he is a patriot and a nationalist who puts Russia first, and who is a resolute guardian of Russian national interests. He seems to be what we would call a "tough customer." What I would do, if President, would be to sit down with President Putin during a long summit and lay out the areas of concern to us Americans – the independence of the Baltic states and Ukraine, ending further nuclear cooperation with Iran, then lay out where I think we can work together, on terrorism, on developing Russia’s enormous resources, on tying Russia closer to the West and the United States. I would tell him that a Russian-Chinese alliance against America is unwise. Americans can be boorish at times, but we do not threaten any vital Russian interest, we only wish the Russian people well, and, frankly, we prefer you across the Bering Strait as neighbors to the alternative. On the oil pipelines, I don’t think the U.S. should try to cut Russia out, we should cut everyone in, including Iran, and create a multiplicity of ways to bring that oil out. Just as Russians have to put the Cold War behind them, so do we. America’s quarrel was never with the Russian people, it was with the Bolsheviks who terrorized Russia and said to Americans when I was young, "We will bury you!" Then I would tell Mr. Putin I would like to hear him lay out at length how he views the world and Russia’s destiny over the next fifty years. My view is that, as Islamic fundamentalism rises and crests and Chinese nationalism is backed up by greater and greater military power, Russia and America are Going to have a great deal to talk urgently about. Q. What is your opinion of the proposed NMD system that the Bush administration wants to build. It seems that it would be much easier for a terrorist organization to launch a chemical or nuclear attack using means other than an ICBM. A. You are right on the second point. As I wrote in A Republic, Not an Empire, if an atomic weapon explodes on American soil, it will not come in by ballistic missile, but by merchant ship or Ryder Truck, the way the bomb did that Timothy McVeigh used to blow up the Murrah building in Oklahoma City. But, on missile defense, I am a Reaganite. No nation, not Russia, and not America, that has the ability to defend its people from these awesome and awful weapons, should forever forfeit the right to do so. Suppose North Korea fired a ballistic missile at Anchorage or U.S. troops in Korea, and we had had the ability to shoot it down, but had not deployed defensive missiles, because of a treaty signed by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, thirty years ago. How could our leaders look our people in the face, if they had had the ability to defend America, but refused to do so. Even Russia, back in those days, had a missile defense around Moscow, and you were building that giant phased array radar out at Krasnoyarsk. That was outside the ABM treaty. In the White House, we used to hear of other giant radars, also forbidden by the treaty, Russia was building along her borders. So, if Russia feared a U.S. strike and wanted to protect her homeland against it, should we not fear some rogue state lashing out at us in hatred and frustration? A BMD system threatens nothing but an incoming missile. I realize some people believe that the U.S. wants a missile defense so we can launch a first strike with impunity. This is preposterous. There is nothing in the world America lacks or needs worth fighting a nuclear war over. I was with President Reagan in Reykjavik where we almost had a deal to get rid of all nuclear weapons, but President Reagan walked out – because Gorbachev wanted him to give up purely defensive weapons. Who was right? I think Reagan was. He detested nuclear weapons, but loved SDI, because it could not kill anybody or anything, but a missile aimed at the country he loved. Q. Some people say that because of globalization, the "Right" and "Left" are moving closer together. Some have said that your politics are a combination of left-wing and right-wing ideas. Do you seen any evidence to suggest that this combining of the Left and Right is taking place in America? A. At the end of the Cold War, the Nixon-Reagan coalition, which was united on the Cold War, fell apart. Today, Left and Right get together, but only on a few issues. Foreign policy has been one. The Old Right and some Leftists were against the Gulf War, and many believe that, with the Cold War over, America should bring our troops home, dissolve the Cold War alliances, and follow the formula of the Founding Fathers: Peace, commerce and friendship with all nations, but "entangling alliances" with none. On trade, the Old Right has found some common ground with the Left. But even here there are differences. The paleo-cons believe in economic patriotism, that trade laws should be designed to make the homeland more self-sufficient and to raise the standard of living of its workers. A country is like a family. You take care of your own, first. To us, globalism comes close to economic treason. "Global companies" put profit before country. Jefferson had it right about the Davos crowd: "A merchant has no country. The very ground he stands upon does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which he draws his gain." But the Left is internationalist. It would like to enlarge the World Bank to transfer more of America’s wealth to the Third World. We would abolish the World Bank and IMF, as parasitical elites who hand out to their client regimes billions of dollars none of them did anything to earn. Left and Right in America opposed NAFTA and GATT, but not for the same reason. So, a Left-Right coalition on some issues is fine, but I don’t think it can work on a permanent basis. On the moral, social and cultural issues -- abortion, preferential hiring of minorities, homosexual rights, euthanasia -- we disagree. They believe in Big Government and we believe much of the Federal Government could be shut down, with the duties sent back to the states and communities, and the tax revenues they consume sent back to the people. Q. Do you have any thoughts about the "Patriot Bill"? Should Americans be concerned with losing their civil liberties? Would most Americans be willing to trade their civil liberties for greater security? A. President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft are not any threat to American freedoms. Military tribunals were used in our Revolutionary War, the Civil War, and World War II. Why, then, the great howl when President Bush asks for the same power? More American civilians died on U.S. soil on September 11 than in any foreign war. On wiretaps and Internet intercepts, many people will raise a horrible stink if the U.S. Government goes too far. I think we can safely rely on the domestic political balance of power to protect us here. The real threat to our freedom comes from a mammoth government that never ceases to grow and consume Americans’ wealth, and which has an endless appetite for controlling our lives, and which, unfortunately, has a penchant for empire. My fear is that our people have grown comfortable with Big Government, and do not know anymore what the old America was like. But if there are repeated acts of mass terror on U.S. soil, the American people would, I think, accept restrictions on their freedoms, and certainly on immigration, until the terrorists were run to earth. Q. Is there anything else you would like to add? A. The Russian people and nation should ask themselves this question: If a great "clash of civilizations" is coming, on whose side do you wish to stand? I trust that the answer will be: "We are with the West." Second, a story. Forty years ago, when I started out in journalism at the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, I took a Russian language course at night at the university, as I wanted to be a foreign correspondent in Moscow. To help me with the language, I subscribed to Pravda. Soon, my neighbors told me, the FBI had come around to ask if Buchanan, living in the ground floor apartment, was associating with known Communists or suspicious people speaking Russian. So, I would like to thank Pravda for bringing me to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Thank you very much for the interview Mr. Buchanan. Questions compiled by Justin Cowgill Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the Reform Party’s candidate in 2000. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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