At the opening of the 20th century. There were five Great Western Empires. The British French Russian, German and austro-hungarian into emerging great Powers, Japan and United States by centuries and all the Empire's had disappeared. How did they perish by War? All of them? The austro-hungarian empire was crushed in World War one and Torn to Pieces at Versailles where Germany was also dismembered a vengeful. Reich then began a second.
European War ruin was total Japan believing its Empire was being extorted. Its place in the sun denied attacked America and was smashed Like No Other Nation in history, the British and French Empires already bled in the trenches of the Western Front from August 1914, to November 1918. Did not long survive. Hitler's War, Russia's Empire? Dismantled. By the Kaiser in 1918 was restored by Lenin's Bolsheviks, driven by traditional Russian imperialism and a new fighting Faith.
Communism, the Soviet Empire expanded until it's for each was Global overextended bankrupt. Exhausted by a 50-year struggle against a u.s. LED West that far surpassed the Communist Bloc in economic power and technological prowess. It collapsed after a crisis of faith and a law.
Loss of will to maintain its rule over subjected peoples, who had grown to hate it, America survives as the sole superpower, because it stayed out of the slaughter pens until the other great Powers had fought themselves near to death and avoided a cataclysmic clash with a nuclear-armed.
Soviet Russia. In World War 1 Americans did not go into combat in great numbers until 1918 in World War Two America. Do not cross the channel until four years after France had fallen in three years after the Soviet Union had began fighting for its life. We did not go to war against Japan until the Japanese Army had been bogged down for years. Fighting a no-win war against the most populous nation on Earth.
Us casualties in the two world wars were thus the smallest of the great powers and America in the 20th century has never Known the vast destruction that was visited on Russia, Germany and Japan or even on France and England yet. Today. America's leaders are re-enacting. Every Folly that brought these great powers to ruin from arrogance, and hubris to assertions of global hegemony, to Imperial overreach to trumpeting new, Crusades to handing out War.
Guarantees to Regions and countries were Americans have never. Fought before, we are piling up the kinds of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the 20th century. That is why I have written this book. Not for 50 years have Americans had to think deeply about our foreign policy. It was made for us by Tojo, Hitler Stalin Castro ho and now for 50 years, America overcame enemies who either attacked us or declared our destruction to be their highest ambition.
We will bury you. Khrushchev said we took him at his word and buried them in the last days of the Cold War. Something happened. Soviet propagandist. Giorgi Arbiter of said, we are going to do the worst thing we can do to you. We are going to take your enemy away from you. And so they did. And so we have had to face. The question asked in the war movies of our youth. What are we going to do Joe?
When this is all over Saddam, Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, briefly gave us a new Hitler and George Bush, an opportunity to smash a rack. And to declare the building of a new world order to be America's Next Crusade, but the nation did not buy in. After the Gulf War Triumph.
It turned its back on Bush, giving 37 percent of the vote to a president whose approval 18 months earlier had stood at 91% as in the 1920s Americans have tuned out foreign affairs and tuned in the stock market and the Dolls, but as the good times of the 1920s ended the depression decade and WWII the 21st century will not leave America Serene in its preeminence already and it means collude against what they consider. Intolerable American hegemony.
This is a fundamental question. Any foreign policy must answer. What will we fight for? What are the vital interests for which America will sacrifice the blood of its young with our great enemy gone. The answer is not a simple one. For we Americans disagree on what our Vital interests are, what our role in the world should be and whom we should defend without some new foreign Peril.
America is never. Want to know again, that Unity, we knew in World War Two and the early Decades of the Cold War. It may be naive to believe we can ever. Again, have a foreign policy that unites this divided and disputatious people. Nevertheless.
We must try for foreign policy is The Shield of the Republic blunders here can be as faithful as they were for the other great Empires and nations of the With Century, the purpose of this book then is to revisit the history of American foreign policy, its successes triumphs and failures from that history. We can expose the myths and identify the true Traditions
upon which we can build. And the lessons from which we can draw to offer a foreign policy for a new century that might unite most of us and ensure that America endures the greatest Republican history as Patrick Henry said, Only the lamp of experience can guide our way and the need for a course correction is urgent for while little discussion or dissent. America has undertaken the most open-ended and extravagant commitments in history, with the expansion of NATO.
We have undertaken the defense of Eastern Europe forever as well as Central Europe from Norway to Turkey. American troops are for the first time in history, policing. In the Balkans, we have undertaken the Dual containment of Iraq, and Iran, and the ground. And Naval Defence of the Persian Gulf.
These new war guarantees have been added to Old Cold War commitments, to the security of Israel in a hostile Arab world to defense of Korea, Japan, Australia, and Sido pact nations of Southeast. Asia, not to mention every lat. American member state of the real packed voices can even be heard in Washington asserting. A vital us interest in preventing Russia and Iran from dominating. The South Caucasus us War guarantees to Poland today and Lithuania Latvia Estonia, and Romania.
Tomorrow may seem Costless, painless and popular, but so, did England's guarantee of belgians neutrality. In 1839, which dragged Britain into the Great War cost, it hundreds of thousands of dead and inflicted on the Empire. A wound from which it would never recover. Our country is today, traveling the same path that was trod by the British Empire to the same fate. Do we want America to end that way?
Finally a quote from Frederick the great, he who wants to defend everything defends nothing and he who wants to be. Everyone's friend has no friends in the end. This was a quote from a republic. Not an Empire by Patrick J Buchanan. Thank you for watching Keith Knight. Don't tread on anyone and the libertarian Institute.