Cal Thomas - Standing up to tyranny

PAUL BUTLER, HOST: Today is Thursday, May 26th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Paul Butler.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Here’s commentator Cal Thomas.

CAL THOMAS, COMMENTATOR: For the third time since he became president, Joe Biden has said he would send U.S. forces to defend Taiwan should mainland China launch an attack. And for the third time, White House staff and the State Department has had to “walk back” those remarks. That’s diplospeak for denying that the United States has changed its position on the “one China” policy.

Perhaps the president means to dissuade Beijing. But this is the same president who too rapidly withdrew U.S. forces from Afghanistan and promised not to send troops to Ukraine to help it repel Russia’s invasion. His excuse? Russia is a nuclear power. So is China. What’s the difference?

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, now 98 years-old, jumped into the fray this week. In an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Kissinger said Ukraine must give up some of its territory to Russia for the war to end and to avoid a wider conflict.

Kissinger has it backwards. If Ukraine surrenders territory to Russia it would likely invite Vladimir Putin to move against other countries once under Soviet control. Would Kissinger be OK with ceding those territories to Moscow to avoid “destabilization” and a wider conflict?

If the Cold War had a side benefit, it was that Democratic and Republican administrations—along with most members of Congress—were consistent on their approach to the USSR and communism. Moscow knew where we stood and that contributed to what Ronald Reagan called “peace through strength.” It also led to the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and freedom for millions of people.

I understand the feelings of those who say we can’t be the world’s policemen. With our $30 trillion debt we can’t afford to send troops everywhere. But—and this is a large but—if evil is not opposed, it will spread. That is a lesson from history we will see repeated if we don’t address it.

Doing nothing and turning a blind eye to evil allowed Nazi Germany and the imperial empire of Japan to wreak havoc on the world. Exhausted by the carnage of World War One, the West was reluctant to fight again. But the consequence of that reluctance was more carnage that might have been reduced had we acted sooner.

Yes, George Washington warned against the danger of “foreign entanglements,” but that was a far different era. And yes, Dwight Eisenhower warned against the “military industrial complex” that always seems to find wars it wants to fight and demand new weapons to fight them.

On the other hand, as John Stuart Mill wrote, “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse… A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”

Somewhere between isolationism and intervention must be a middle ground. It’s up to our leaders to find it. Where are those leaders and what is our foreign policy? Those questions had better be answered quickly, or the consequences from delay could be severe.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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