Pat Buchanan, a syndicated columnist and former presidential candidate, discusses the national interests of Russia and the US in Ukraine; some deep background on Ukraine, the Soviet Union, and Cold War realpolitik; the competing bailout packages from Russia and the EU for Ukraine’s basket-case economy; the lesser-known great crimes of WWII; and how “natural borders” are breaking down global institutions and nation states.

Transcript

Scott Horton: Our next guest is a former speech writer for Richard Nixon and for Ronald Reagan, I don’t know all the different positions that he’s had, you know him from The McLaughlin Group and of course from his column at www.original.antiwar.com/pat and I think it’sÂ www.patrickjbuchanan.comÂ as well.

Political commentator Pat Buchanan welcome back to the show how are you doing?

Pat Buchanan: Doing fine Scott.

Horton:Â Good, good very happy to have you here and I’ll be interested to hear your take on this Ukraine-Russia crisis going on. You’re a reliable right wing old cold warrior so I’m sure you’re going to have some really harsh things to say about the Russians here and how they’re out of line and how America needs to put them back in line right? Nobody could possibly be as hard on the Russians as Pat Buchanan.

Pat Buchanan:Â Well the Soviets and the Bolsheviks are different than Russians in my judgment and what we have here in Crimea for example, I think, is simply a pre-emptive move by Vladimir Putin, who saw his political diplomatic and economic interests suddenly evaporate in Kiev, make a pre-emptive move to make sure he did not lose his security interests in the Black Sea.

The Crimea of course is the base of the Black Sea fleet of Russia, and it’s belonged to Russia or has been controlled by Russia for some 200 years. What he did is not at all irrational it is what great powers do, and I know The Wall Street Journal called it a blitzkrieg but as of thus far, I haven’t seen soldiers slaughtered.

Scott Horton:Â Yeah, I saw some warning shots fired but I don’t know if there has even been reports of any killed, although I guess it could happen at any time if you have opposing armies nearby, but it was more or less a peaceful invasion such as it was.

Pat Buchanan:Â Right they’ve got about I think 10 000 troops who are stationed in Crimea, on the peninsula there, and they may have added more, they’re not under Russian insignia they’ve taken those off, and itÂ has been a peaceful but forceful take over, undeniably, but Scott, look at the strategic situation.

What strategic vital interest of the United States has been put at risk today? There is not a single new Russian ship in the port at Sevastopol. There is no greater threat than there was yesterday to any US interest whatsoever, I think the threat to the US vital interest is absolutely zero.

Scott Horton:Â Well but what was the threat to Russian interests in Crimea? You think that with the new government, Russian basing rights there were really in question?

Pat Buchanan:Â Yeah I do. I think the new government, I mean I would be very leery, if I were Putin, taking a look at a Government which replaced the duly elected legitimate government, incompetent and corrupt as it might have been, but it was replaced by people who are clearly anti-Russia and pro-West. Some of them are understandably anti-Russian because many of those areas in the Western Ukraine and Central Ukraine suffered horribly at Holodomor -the forced starvation and collectivization in 1932 -1933 so I understand that sideÂ of it.

But Putin looked over there and he sees these elements and he is probably thinking: ‘they’re taking over Ukraine, they’re moving it out of our sphere of interest and it’s just a matter of a short time before they tell us they’re cancelling our lease on the Sevastopol naval base, so why don’t we get in there and take control of that, and make sure we have that, so we bargain from a position of strength.’

So that’s my belief as to what he’s doing Scott, and I think Putin will be taking a far greater risk if he moves troops into Eastern Ukraine basically the mainland of Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine.

Scott Horton:Â Now, well I wonder what you think the chances of that are? It seems to me, and I’m an amateur at this compared to you for sure, but it seemed like the reason he had his soldiers, because they’re clearly Russian soldiers right? He had them tear their flags off their jackets because he wants to be able to pretend when he withdraws them later that, ‘Oh that was just the local pro-Russia militia,’ Â so that he can save a little bit of face, he makes his statement but he doesn’t have to lose too much face when softening his position back again.

Pat Buchanan:Â Right. As we mentioned earlier when the German army went into Poland it didn’t tear its insignias off and I think what he wants here is, he’s got a bargaining position that is fairly strong right now, but at the same time he’s got a problem on his own hands from this. This is why I think it is so silly to talk about any military operation on the part of the United States.

As I say we’ve got no vital interests there, no NATO, no commitment to use force at all. I think that he has basically lost Ukraine, he’s lost an enormous asset, a strategic asset of Russia in his own back yard and I think he realizes that and there is no reason why we should go to war over something like that.

Scott Horton: Well, you know, it’s incredible I’m looking atÂ www.antiwar.com/blogÂ right now and John Glaser has a poll where 14% of Americans answered that the US has quote: ‘any responsibility to get involved in Ukraine’, never mind how involved we already are.

But it’s interesting to compare that to the tone of voice of every single person, on every single cable TV news channel, all day long – each and every one of them, other than Stephen Cohen from The Nation they interview from time to time on CNN. Otherwise its 100% unanimous, and the media wants us to believe that we are with them on all of this but it doesn’t seem to be working Pat?

Pat Buchanan:Â Yeah and quite frankly why is this Americas responsibility? We are not only on the other side of the Black Sea, we’re on the other side of the Mediterranean, and we’re on the other side of the Atlantic.

Now with the British Empire in 1853-1856 they did fight in Crimea, they did fight at Balaclava. That is where The Charge of the Light Brigade took place that LordÂ Tennyson wrote up so magnificently.

But that has not ever been in any vital interest to the United States. Scott take a look at the Cold War. I didn’t do anything at the time of the Hungarian Revolution, which was in Central Europe.

What did Reagan do when solidarity was shut down on Moscow’s orders?

I was with Richard Nixon in 68 in his apartment when he talked to Lyndon Johnson during the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw-backed 250 000 troops.

LBJ said, ‘Cut me some slack,’ and Nixon didn’t come down on him with both feet because they both knew we’re not going to do anything militarily. In other words during the Cold War when we faced, I believe a genuine strategic and civilizational threat, some of the strongest Presidents in Cold War history said Americas vital interests stop at the Elbe River, not on the Nepa River.

Scott Horton: Right, and there really was no question in the 1980’s that if it had come to it, like in the TV movie where the Russians were driving all their tank divisions into Western Europe, Reagan would have gone to war over that, but that’s how many miles west of where we’re talking about?

Pat Buchanan:Â Thousands of miles, and that’s what gets me as I noted in my column, people, these editorial writers are saying it’s in the heart of Europe. Okay, now wait a minute, by my map it’s east of what we used to call Eastern Europe.

Scott Horton:Â Well you know, for some of the younger listeners could you describe very briefly the difference between the USSR and the Russian Government today, and I don’t just mean that they have a free-er media and elections and that kind of thing but in terms in the size and the power

Pat Buchanan:Â Sure, strategically the Soviet Union —The USSR, after WW2 was the center of an Empire that included ten colonies in Central and Eastern Europe. You’ve got: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, all of these were satellite states and this part of Central Europe hosted 400 000 Soviet troops and tank armies.

We had 300 000 men on the other side of the Elbe River in Germany, we had them in Norway, we had them in Turkey eventually. So the world was divided between the Soviet Empire which was led by the Soviet Union and the Sino-Soviet Block in Asia which was Mao Tse-tung’s China, allied with the Soviet Union and they over ran South East Asia.

This was extraordinary, they had bases in Cuba they were trying to build bases in Nicaragua, they had Grenada, they had Angola they had Mozambique, they got Ethiopia.

It was a world-wide struggle and this country stood strong and stood tough under leaders like Eisenhower, and like Ronald Reagan, and we just held the line and avoided a major war with Russia.

We came close a number of times and so eventually when I was in The White House, right after I left The White House, suddenly you looked up and the Soviet Empire collapsed.

They were tearing down the Berlin Wall. People were pouring out of Eastern Europe into the West. People in the West were walking across the border into these countries. All of them overthrew their Communist Governments so you got ten countries coming free, then you saw The USSR – The Soviet Union broke up into 15 separate nations, 15 nations.

It came apart and you got Ronald Reagan walking through Red Square. The guy that called the Soviets the evil Empire and seven years later he’s walking through Red Square and being patted on the back by Russians.

The war was over, the West had won, America had led the West to victory but when the war is over we should have bought the troops home.

Scott Horton:Â Okay Pat, TV is saying, very quickly we have about a minute and a half, TV is saying yeah but Yeltsin, he was drunk, he was a pushover, but this Putin ifÂ he’s not a new Stalin he’s the new Mussolini or something – he’s hardcore man and he wants to rebuild the Soviet Empire with this new Eurasian Union, is that nothing?

Pat Buchanan:Â No what he does want is a Eurasian Union and he wants it to be his version of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement)- Canada, United States and Mexico. EU’s got its Economic Union and you’ve got the Asian Economic Union.

He wants to build an economic union of several of the old Republics of the Soviet Union, but it is a voluntary union, it is an economic union it is not a military alliance at all.

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), quite frankly, which has 28 nations in it, we bought all those states of Eastern Europe into NATO. NATO is a military alliance. His Eurasian Union is an economic alliance; it’s just like all these other groups that have gathered together in the post-Cold War era.

Scott Horton:Â Yeah Peter Beinart in The Atlantic,Â has a very interesting piece out yesterday saying, ‘No it’s not American weakness that led to this,’ he has a very detailed history about NATO expansion and talks even about the, I forget the exact name for them, forgive me Pat, but it’s something like NATO stand councils where they normalize the military forces of even all the stands along NATO lines even thought they’re not outright allies yet, that’s even further than I understood it

Pat Buchanan:Â What is the purpose of NATO? It’s purpose is to contain and to control Russia.

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All right everybody welcome back to the show, it’s the Scott Horton show, I’m him. We’re talking with Pat Buchanan, syndicated columnist you can find him atÂ www.orginal.antiwar.com/buchananÂ .

Scott Horton:Â Now Pat is that really true it’s not our crisis? What can you tell us about American intervention leading up to for example, I guess according to TV news, history began when the first Russian troops started coming across and landing in Crimea or leaving their bases in Crimea, what happened before that, or does it matter?

Pat Buchanan:Â What happened before that is they had a negotiation between Mr Putin’s economic union, the Eurasian Union or whatever he calls it, and the EU (European Union) where both were bidding to have Ukraine join them or move in their direction.

The EU came up with the very cheesy offer to have the IMF (International Monetary Fund) come in and improve austerity, give them some loans, but give them no guarantee they are going to become a member of the EU with all of its benefits.

So Putin sat down at the table and offered Kiev 15 billion dollars in loans and concessionary terms on all their oil and gas. So Yanukovich said in effect: ‘You know, we’ve got to take the Russian offer,’ and Yanukovich is from Eastern Ukraine, which is very pro-Russia, and so Putin won the battle.

And then the winning stakes were stolen from him. How?

Groups came in first to protest the decision. They were from Western and Central Ukraine, secondly they set up barricades, and then they bought in equipment and the rest of it and then they began to battle police, first with sticks, and then with Molotov cocktails, and then they burned down buildings and occupied other public buildings and demanded concessions from Yanukovich the President – who made one concession after another.

He offered to bring the opposition in to his Government and they kept pushing him until finally he broke and they cut a deal. It was not honored by the people in the streets, and Yanukovich fled to Russia. Then the victors in that revolution ran to the parliament, impeached him and then they said Russian is no longer second language.

They’re sitting up there in Moscow, what do you think when you see something like this going on? They’re saying the West is behind this, the Americans with their National Endowment for Democracy and all those agents they bring in here for those color-coded revolutions, they have to be behind this.

And my guess is Scott, and this is where you get in to conjecture, my guess is he said: ‘look politically and diplomatically we’ve temporarily lost Ukraine but we could lose our naval base and our strategic position in the Black Sea,

why don’t we just secure it?’

So I think they sent in these groups to do it in as non-obvious or non-provocative way as possible. They don’t have them have any insignias on but they take over all the key posts,grab the air field so the Ukrainians can’t land troops there, and simply take these places over, and that is what he did. And now they will negotiate from a position of strength.

Scott Horton:Â Yeah, its funny how the biggest piece of the coup was in broad daylight, in all the papers, but it was in few places that anyone put the cause and effect together.

It was the threat of sanctions against virtually, I guess all of the billionaires, certainly all of the oligarchs of Ukraine who are supporting Yanukovich, like ‘listen ,we’re gonna seize all of ya’lls bank accounts, you better forsake this guy, one two’, and they did.

It wasn’t the hippies, they had the help of the brown shirts in the streets I think, but it wasn’t the hippies protesting out there that did this regime change, it was the threat of sanctions by the Western powers, pretty much one two right?

Pat Buchanan:Â Well, that is certainly involved in it, and also I’m not sure, Mrs Nuland wasn’t right down there in the barricades, as of course, was John McCain. Is this not direct interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine? Trying to affect the overthrow of a legitimately elected government?

I mean the aura of hypocrisy around some American actions in recent years is astonishing. It’s like in Cairo when the military took over and they threw out the elected President, and John Kerry said all they were doing was restoring democracy. I think Putin looks at this and he says, ‘Who do these guys think they’re kiddin?’

Scott Horton:Â Yeah, it’s funny, the whole world was laughing at all of Kerry’s statements about, ‘Hey look you don’t just go around regime changing, people.’ Seven billion people laughed at once and it hurt my ears.

Pat Buchanan:Â You know you wonder if Putin can say, ‘We went into Crimea because we suspected weapons of mass destruction?’ (laughs)

Scott Horton:Â By the way, you’re the master of all this history so I bet you that you know the answer to this: Who are these Bander-ists? Does it matter the history of Bandera?

Pat Buchanan:Â Stepan Bandera? Well Stepan Bandera, this is interesting, initially when the Germans attacked the Soviet Union in June of 1941,they went lateÂ because they had to clean up something in the Balkans that Mussolini got them in trouble with, but they went late and they swept in to the Ukraine and in to Russia and they made enormous gains. And in the Baltic Republics which had been taken over by Stalin two years earlier, when he was in alliance with Hitler.

The people had been brutalized and murdered; there was enormous suffering. That’s why initially some of the Baltic people and the Ukrainians initially welcomed the Germans with open arms.

The Germans were deeply racist and after a brief amount of time they found out they had traded one bully for another of equal evil. But Bandera and these folks fought on the side of the Germans, just like the Vlasov army did, he was a Vlasov.

Google that name and you will find out the that the Soviets genuinely detest him. He led something like two million Russian prisoners of war against Stalin. He had been a hero of the Soviet Union …..

Scott Horton: Â And then was betrayed by Truman right?

Pat Buchanan:Â Oh yeah, what we did, take a look at Operation Keelhaul. There is another term for it as well, but Operation Keelhaul, we sent all the, not only the Russian prisoners of war back to Stalin and certain death and brutalization, but even Cossacks and others who had fled Stalin and had no role in the war.

It is one of the great crimes of American history and it has been swept under the rug in the quote ‘Good War’ but that was horrible and then at the end of the war, you had the biggest ethnic cleansing in history. 12-15 million Germans from Prussia and from Brandenburg, Bohemia, and all these people just herded out of there, and several million died, it was a horrendous thing and but to be honest Scott, when you take a look at what’s going on right now, this is tinker toys compared to what went on back in the 1940s.

Scott Horton:Â Sure, well you can see why the lines are so hard, I mean you see how hard people fight over Republicans and Democrats here, and call each other names like Nazi and Commi but, over there they actually have these legacies, their political parties actually do come from people who for one reason or another, for one time or another, sided with the totalitarians.

Pat Buchanan:Â Right, there is a part of me that deeply sympathizes with the Ukrainians who dumped their Government over. It’s not just that he was corrupt, but if they want to be free of Russian control and they would like to be part of Central and Western Europe, and they would really like to say goodbye to the Russians, I mean I can understand that.

The point I make is, look this is not America’s war, this is not our struggle, this is not our battle. One of Barack Obama’s better lines was on Syria when he said, ‘Look, we’re not going to get ourselves involved in somebody else’s civil war.

Scott Horton: Right, well what do you think is behind this, because he was the one, or at least it’s his Government, that got us involved in this. All of Nuland’s intervention and that kind of thing so, is it just the pipelines, or is it Russia? Are they obsessed with it, do they just want to dismember it like Gates said that Dick Cheney always wanted to do?

Why are they are so interested in this land so far from home?

Pat Buchanan:Â I separate President Obama from a number of the others, see I don’t think President Obama wants a confrontation with Russia. I think he wanted a genuine reset. I think he wanted to work with Putin.

Putin is an elected President but he is an autocratic ruler, he’s a very tough customer, he’s a Russian nationalist. It’s validity some people may question, but he is clearly trying to re-establish the orthodox church to find some kind of basis for law and morality in Russia because the communism just eradicated everything, and now communism itself has been rejected and repudiated by all the people, I think all the people over there, or almost all of them. But you have got to replace it with something.

I’ll tell you one thing there is a Russo phobia in this town and an anti-Putin attitude which I find is just reflexive; reflexively hostile almost, and seizing upon anything he does.

Look in terms of human rights and political freedoms and freedoms of the press and the rest of it, the Chinese are much worse. Russia is not as bad as China. So I think there is a genuine hostility here, and I think there is a real desire on the part of some people really to get back to the Cold War. They were happy in that kind of division, back and forth you know, going to conferences and moving chess pieces around the board and all the rest of it. I mean, they’ve missed it.

Scott Horton: Now at this point do you think, I don’t know if you saw the latest headline, that Hillary Clinton, at least she is not officially in Government now but she’s, she didn’t outright call Putin Hitler, but she compared him to Hitler, and Ukraine to Czechoslovakia I guess, do you think things are just going to keep getting dumber and worse from here?

Pat Buchanan:Â I wrote a book about that called Churchill,Hitler And The Unnecessary War, its almost 500 pages, it goes all the way back to getting in to WW1 and there is a chapter on what happened to Czechoslovakia and what are the origins of that were, I don’t want to get into it right now but that thing was a disaster waiting to happen.

The disaster was created at Versailles. You knew that thing was going to come apart, putting the Czechs in control of all of those Germans and Slovaks and Hungarians and Poles, and none of them wanted to be under Prague.

There is no doubt, Hillary, you really ought not to use the Hitler analogy because all of a sudden we’re talking, we’re in to you know, who is the most evil man in all of history?

But there is no doubt that ethnicity and tribe and nationality, these to me are the most powerful forces in the world and they’re beginning to tear apart these trans-national institutions, the UN, the EU, all the rest of it, and countries.

Scotland wants to break away from England, Catalonia wants to break away from Spain, Western Ukraine would like to break away from East Ukraine, Crimea would like to break away from Ukraine altogether and go with Russia, all of these things I mean look at the battle over Georgia it was over OssetiaÂ and Abkhazia. These are two small units that when Georgia broke away from the Soviet Union and from Russia, these two broke away from Georgia.

They said, ‘We don’t want any part of you’ (laughs) Butthis is what I think -the statesmen of the coming century are going to be people who are going to find a way to accommodate all these forces without the kinds of terrible wars they almost inevitably bring.

Scott you take a look at India today their the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party)-Â this Hindu Nationalist party, is rising toward power and the Muslims I think number something like 170 million in India, I mean they’re going to be unhappy with a lot of things that are done I think, and so all of this religion, culture, tribe, ethnicity and race, these are the forces that are really pulling the world apart.

Scott Horton:Â Right because all those borders are in the wrong places according to the things you just described

Pat Buchanan:Â Exactly, I think it was HT Wells who wrote, and it’s in my book, I think it was entitled The Natural Borders of the World. And it says they should be based upon language, and ethnicity and nationality and people-hood and culture and faith, and I think people are moving back toward these things.

And as they move back to these things they tend to separate from their neighbors. Look at the Kurds. They’re carving out their own nation out of Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria now I think. I’m all for it but there is no doubt we can’t give them a war guarantee because that is going to be a problem for all four of those nations going down the road.

Horton:Â Yeah, well and we sure, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the commentator investment advisor Richard Maybury, but he says in the West no matter where you’re from, if you’re willing to cooperate with our system of limited law and property rights and that kind of thing, you can fit in here, one way or the other.

But in the old world he calls it chaos-stan where all the lines are in the wrong places, and where the easiest method of resolving disputes between individuals and factions, and that is property rights and law, without those things there, it’s just one crisis after another and it always will be, maybe in 50, I think Maybury actually predicts that one way or another, America intervening or not, Russia will eventually break up because there are all kinds of tiny little nations in Russia that most of us have never even heard of before, but…..

Buchanan:Â Look at the battle, not only in Chechnya to break away, but in Dagestan they’ve got a battle going on there, and I’ve read of other ones out in Central Asia where these little enclaves want their own identity – North Ossettia, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and they’re bordering there on Georgia and they want their own nationhood and it can be done peacefully. I mean look at what happened when Czechoslovakia broke apart in 1939 in March.

The British gave a war guarantee to the Polish colonels they should never have given, but, look what happened to Czechoslovakia when was it just recently? I’m not sure if it was in the 90’s but Slovakia said we’d like to secede and set up our own country, and it was done peacefully.

Scott Horton:Â I think it was in 91, I think it was before the end of 91 and they were done

Pat Buchanan: And of course look at Yugoslavia, part of that was bloody, but Slovenia had to fight only 10 days and they were gone, the Slovenian Croatia come out of The Habsburg Empire and Serbia and some of the other places there were part of the Ottoman Empire. You’ve got that dividing line all the way through there, and so some are Catholic, and some are orthodox and some look one way and some look another, and especially of course we had the horrible atrocities in WW2 in the Balkan Peninsula with the Serbs and Croats and that explains the barbarity of the war they fought and the continued animosities there.

Scott Horton:Â And of course, the American government will always find something to point out as an excuse to intervene in the rest of the world forever if the only criteria is that something bad is happening then they have plenty to do.

Pat Buchanan:Â But you know the American people are, some things are very hopeful. Obama was even talking and I think Kerry was using Hitler analogies back last summer, and Obama was all set to go and bomb, or missile strike on Syria, and the American people really rose up and said, ‘Look don’t take us into that mess,’Â and so Obama said I’ve got to get authorization from Congress, so he ran for cover and Congress was hit with all manner with phone calls and letters and wires and everything was coming in a hundred to one ‘don’t get us into that mess’ and he didn’t.

So I think the American people have a real ability in, like in now if they will just speak up and say ‘keep us out of the Crimean Peninsula,’ – we don’t have a light brigade’

Scott Horton:Â Another Crimean war is so far from, – and now, we are way over time but, I wanted to ask you just at the end here, as the rhetoric keeps increasing, until now it seems like we are going to sanction this and we’re going to kick you out of our co-NATO councilÂ that and all of these things do you think this could be smoothed over pretty easily …..

Pat Buchanan: I think the reason is, everybody that you’re talking about, they were going to put all these sanctions on Russia, they were going to sink the banks, you know, you sink their banks and they’ve got inter -bank relationships then you pull down some others with it.

And what do you do if for example Russia says ‘ok, you’re sinking our banks we’re calling in our loans from Ukraine, we’re going to charge them the full price for oil and gas we’re not going to take any more of their exports and we take more than anybody like that and we’re going to shut down the 15 billion we were lending them and we’re going to ask back the 2 billion or 4 billion we’ve already given’ well that will leave us with a basket case nation the size of France and more with four times the population of Greece.

Do we really want that? I mean you start this economic war and the backlash comes immediately. You saw what happened in the stock market. The Dow Jones was down 200 on Monday and on Tuesday it came roaring back and it looked like peace was breaking out.

Scott Horton:Â Yeah I guess they succeeded; they didn’t get Crimea invaded when they did the Orange RevolutionÂ of 2004 there and against the very same guy right, Yanukovich.

Pat Buchanan:Â Oh yeah they threw him out then, and the Russians took it and they waited six years and they won the election when Yulia Timochenko, the gas princess for heavens sake, it was corruption all through. And it is corruption all through there, and it is awful.

You know what? I’m surprised that American journalists don’t investigate all this money that the US moves under the table, into all these areas where we’re preaching democracy and we’re working under the table to buy elections basically ….

Scott Horton:Â Right, and there’s a clip and it’s kind of mysterious to me actually, it’s Victoria Nuland speaking with a big Chevron banner behind her to only important people in the room I guess, it doesn’t look like it’s the official video to the event or anything but it, I don’t know if it is supposed to be an exposÃ© type of a leak either, but she’s talking about how we , the US Government has funneled 5 billion dollars into the Ukraine to support pro democracy organizations ….do you have a guess at the time frame she is talking about, for 5 billion dollars?

Pat Buchanan: That is an enormous amount of money in to the politics, 5 billion dollars, I wish I’d had that when I was running for President. I can’t believe that’s an accurate figure but why are the press not looking into this? I’ll tell you why, I bet there are a lot of forces in these places.

Scott Horton: And you know, they’re pretty lazy, they don’t want to learn much more than the party line, cos they’ve got to go on in a few minutes these TV news people

Pat Buchanan: Well some of those do, but there is still some good journalists out there on these newspapers and also on the web. I read a lot of things I find very impressive on the web, and a lot of websites you know.

But I wonder why they just don’t run down where they’re putting all this, it reminds me of the old comintern the Soviets had which was responsible forÂ dumping over democratic countries and making them vote communist.

And we say its fine for us to do it because we want them to realign to the West but those are Cold War institutions…

Horton:Â Yeah it is, it’s kind of a reversal there not just of right and left but the global democratic revolution. That’s what makes it okay is that it has that ‘democratic’ in there, but in a way it’s the domino theory with us as the reds – we spread democracy to this country its going to help catch on in the next country and the next country too….

Buchanan:Â Yeah who was the fellow that wrote that book ‘The End Of History AndÂ The Last Man – the inevitability of the democratic revolution world wide it seems that some of our friends in Washington want to hurry it along a bit….

Horton:Â Yeah you know, I agreed with your column back in 2004 -that that’s it, Fallujah is the high tide of the Empire but I don’t think the rest of them got the memo Pat?

Buchanan:Â Well I think they did, look are we in Fallujah now? No.

Horton:Â They don’t seem like they’re done yet

Buchanan:Â Well look there is no doubt there are people that would like to be still in there but Scott there are some reasons to be optimistic here, we are out of Iraq and it was a horrible situation….we’re coming out of Afghanistan, that stupid thing in Libya, that is over and done with but we did not get involved in Syria.

The American people rose up, the American people as you say are expressing themselves with ‘Stay out of Crimea’ I think President Obama and the American military, they’re not anxious to fight the Russians in Georgia or somewhere …

Horton:Â Yeah that is true, I think Dempsey helped, it wasn’t just the American people it was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, really told Obama what was what about Syria so that’s a pretty good coalition, the American people and the military against war, maybe we could keep the eggheads in check together

Buchanan:Â Well they’re more and more visible, yowling for this and yowling for that, with due respect to my former Republican colleague John McKee, I mean he’s been through the last four wars that didn’t happen.

Horton: And the four ….that did too

Buchanan:Â We’re all Georgians now and why aren’t we moving into Syria and we ought to bring Georgia and the Ukraine into NATO and all the rest of it….

Horton:Â I’ve kept you way, way over time but thank you very much for your time on the show today Pat I really appreciate it…

Buchanan: Ok you take it easy

Horton:Â Okay everybody that is the great Pat Buchanan ….

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