peace n: A state of tension falling short of armed conflict. [Definition proposed by the late Keith Laumer in his Retief tales]
Among the political fantasies of our era, the notion that one can negotiate an enduring peace with an enemy ideologically committed to one’s destruction ranks very high, possibly supreme. Yet that fantasy utterly dominates the minds of the statesmen of the First World. Even in this country, exceptions are few. The success of Ronald Reagan at defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War seems not to have taught the international bien-pensants anything.
But why should one people be ideologically committed to the destruction of another? Sometimes, it’s beyond any rational man’s powers to explain it. Hatred on that order isn’t always rationally based. In such cases it isn’t rationally comprehensible.
What President Reagan understood, in contrast to others who’ve risen to the captaincy of nations, is that the best guarantee of peace comes from a combination of two things: a lack of aggressive inclinations, plus a military capable of inflicting unacceptable consequences on aggression-minded others. He didn’t really mind international tension, for he knew that it’s a survivable, manageable condition. He did dislike military aggression, flying lead, and corpses. That informed his approach to international relations. It made the tasks of his Secretaries of State simpler than they would otherwise have been.
There have been few professional diplomats who could boast successes comparable to those of Ronald Reagan.
A much-lauded diplomat passed away yesterday at 100 years of age: Dr. Henry Kissinger. Kissinger was among the most influential thinkers on international relations of the century past. Yet in his years as America’s top diplomat he achieved very little. His famous attempt to broker peace between North and South Vietnam was a tragic failure. Yet for a while it appeared the diplomatic achievement of the Twentieth Century. It failed because neither Kissinger nor anyone else highly placed in the American foreign-policy apparatus grasped the firmness of North Vietnam’s commitment to the destruction of South Vietnam.
No doubt the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch can name another people ideologically committed to another’s destruction. Diplomacy won’t do anything to dampen their ardor, either, no matter how capable the diplomat.
There is no kind of peace which may be purchased on the bargain counter. – Carey McWilliams
Peace, whether as conventionally understood or as Keith Laumer half-humorously defined it, is not a package on a shelf at some retail establishment. As fantasy writer Jo Walton put it, it’s “an active and complex thing.” If not maintained, it will deteriorate with frightening speed. Maintenance requires the willingness of men to stand ready to fight. The English learned that from the years of the Danegeld.
Among the worst aspects of America’s posture as a “world policeman” has been our diplomats’ reflexive attempts to purchase peace. Stripped of all decoration, it amounts to a contemporary version of the Danegeld. It was plainly displayed in the Clinton Administration’s attempt to buy off the North Korean regime’s determined advance toward nuclear weapons. The American negotiators offered the North Koreans two light-water reactors plus a guarantee of many thousands of tons of fuel oil every year…for a promise that the Pyongyang regime would no longer seek to join the “nuclear club.” We know how that worked out.
One nation cannot purchase an enduring peace from another. Its statesmen can offer to pay tribute in exchange for military forbearance, as the Saxon English paid the Danish Vikings. Historically such an arrangement has never lasted. Moreover, it involves a loss of sovereignty, and a sense of humiliation among the people so burdened. For a third party to step between two nations and say, in effect, “We’ll pay both of you not to fight one another” is even worse. Yet that has been America’s foreign-policy practice for many years.
Whoever thinks over earnestly and objectively this question of a general disarmament, and considers it in its remotest contingencies, must come to the conviction that it is a question which cannot be solved so long as men are men, and States are States. – Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive of his body. Chains are worse than bayonets. – Douglas Jerrold
I never met Dr. Kissinger. I know him only through his writings and his public involvements. His thinking was intellectually impressive, yet when his theses were put to the test, they failed. A stable peace is not something that can be achieved through diplomacy. It will always require the willingness and capability to fight. The failure of the Paris Accords between North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the U.S. illustrate that tragically.
Only one attitude – “If you dare to strike us, we will make you wish you hadn’t” – can found a peace that lasts for any significant interval. Worse, even that posture cannot guarantee peace between two peoples, if one is committed to the other’s destruction. That will remain among the central truths of Mankind until Mankind is no more. But don’t expect a diplomat to accept it.
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Speak softly and carry a big stick.
Only the Chinese have determined that no peace is possible with Islam. Until the rest of the world comes to the same conclusion and takes the same steps as the Chinese peace will not be possible.
When a people lie, cheat, steal, rape, enslave and murder in the name of Allah or any god there can be no peace.
Evil Franklin
Another David Rockefeller puppet, NWO, Illuminati, WEF, CFR, Trilateral, treasonous rat bastard Tribe Member has just assumed room temperature. My Boston Terrier and I will dance a jig of mourning in the living room. Anathema sit.
The usual suspects will issue extravagant and lengthy proclamations of the “greatness of Henry Kissinger,” but if he is judged by more hard-headed and pragmatic criteria, the man does not measure up to the myth.
The much-ballyhooed “opening” of communist China can now be seen for what it was: The worst calamity ever to befall the great American middle class, and a nightmare for those concerned with our nation’s security. Again, the blindness of the inside-the-beltway elites to reality: Our nation was, in the early 1970s, still fighting the Chi-Coms by proxy in Vietnam, and we’d fought a hot war against them twenty years before in Korea 1950-1953.
Anyone with decent common sense and two brain cells to rub together could see that this was a recipe for disaster, pivoting from viewing them as enemies or at least adversaries to our new best pals, but Nixon-Kissinger forged ahead, and here we are fifty years later, watching the Chinese displace us on the world stage and wondering where our much-vaunted manufacturing base went.
We can’t make anything in this country anymore, not even the weapons needed by the military. Back then, some of us tried to tell the elites they were making a historic blunder ~ but of course they didn’t listen.
Kissinger was one of the architects of the petrodollar regime, another arrangement that has, shall we say, not worked out to the benefit of the American people. Tricky Dick wanted to spend more money on the Vietnam conflict, but the budgetary cupboard was bare so he didn’t have the money. What to do? Abolish the last vestiges of the gold standard since that was what served as the hard brake on his spending.
Rather than back the dollar with gold, it was decided to back it with oil, namely the oil of OPEC and the Sunni Arab nations of the Middle East. In return for doing all OPEC oil sales in dollars, the U.S. government promised to defend those kingdoms from all enemies, foreign or domestic. Which, if you look at the historical record, is one reason why the U.S.military today has such a large footprint in the Middle East.
And the financial cherry on the sundae was that all of those billions in profits made by the Arabs would be recycled back into western ~ including U.S. ~ banks. Pop the champagne corks… good times are here, right? An ocean of money flowing into the central banks… what’s not to like?
Like a drug-dealer giving away his product in a new market to addict the unsuspecting rubes, the Arabs shrewdly got the U.S. government addicted to their purchases of T-Bills and other debt instruments, giving them even more leverage over our foreign policy and other actions.
This vast pool of profits amounted to a de facto credit card without limits, for fed.gov. All restraint was thrown away, amidst a binge of deficit spending and indebtedness. Relentless creation of new money devalued the USD to such a degree that today, it is worth less than 10% of its inflation-adjusted value in 1970. Hence, combined with the de-industrialization of the U.S. to Red China, the middle class was for all intents and purposes, destroyed as it had been prior to the 1970s.
There’s more: The dollar being the reserve currency of international trade gave the U.S. a big advantage: Whereas other nations had to convert their currencies into dollars to buy oil from OPEC, the U.S. did not… and could print money at will whenever the Fed wanted it. This enriched the elites beyond compare, but impoverished everyone else, Americans and foreigners alike. Today, with the world de-dollarizing and distancing itself from the USD and the predatory western financial class, the scope of their resentment is now finally being heard and seen. Let’s just say that they are not happy, not at all, and many nations around the world are now saying that the less they have to do with the U.S. the better.
Based upon these “achievements” alone, Dr. Kissinger should not be missed, for he left a trail of destruction, economic and otherwise, in his wake. For those who claim he was great, let us ask: For whom? Whoever it was who benefited from Kissinger’s actions, it certainly wasn’t the common person.
“The success of Ronald Reagan at defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War seems not to have taught the international bien-pensants anything.”
Just as Satan has never learned anything from the love of Jesus Christ and for the same reason.
Kissenger was not an American and therefore should never have been expected to work in our interests. From the perspective of a globalist financial elite he is revered; he served them well.
Our major problem is inherent ethnocentrism and ego. To be clear, I do think we, when we look around the globe, have good reason to consider our culture – at lest our traditional cullture – superior. But in that, combined with ego, we believe that we can somehow, through bribery, passivity, or kindness, expect other cultures to be rational. We cannot. Perhaps it is our own moral failings that lead us to believe others can be bought. But this pattern underlies the vast majority of today’s “crises.” We cannot bring civilization to the barbarian hordes, both within and without. Their cultures are not amenable to it. They use our foolishness against us.
Kissinger was straight up evil. No its, ands or buts about it. Very intelligent, but evil nonetheless. May he roast in Hell.