Four powerhouse thinkers on national security and foreign policy — Frank Gaffney, Bruce Thornton, James Carafano, and Daniel Pipes — recently addressed the crucial topic “Ukraine, Russia & the China Threat” at the Freedom Center’s annual Restoration Weekend, held November 10-13, 2022 at the Biltmore Hotel in Phoenix, AZ.
Don’t miss their expert insights below:
“Foreign Policy: Ukraine, Russia & the China Threat” from DHFC on Vimeo.
Transcript:
Mark Tapson: The current administration under Barack Obama, Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett — oh, I’m sorry, I mean Joe Biden — may be struggling with domestic issues, but at least Biden’s got international affairs under control, right? He’s identified the two greatest existential threats to America today: climate change and whiteness. And meanwhile, in the real world, we’re looking at possible nuclear war with Russia over Ukraine, and China basically owns our president, and how could that go wrong?
Today we have a panel of brilliant, accomplished thinkers who are going to break all that down for you. I’m going to give their quick bios here because we are running maddeningly short on time.
Immediately to my left is Frank Gaffney, former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Reagan and Founder and Executive Chairman of the Center for Security Policy. He also hosts the must-hear daily program Securing America on the American Family Radio Network. And next to —
James Carafano: Carafano. Bruce is AWOL.
Mark Tapson: I thought Bruce was with us here.
Unidentified Speaker: He’s here.
James Carafano: Oh, there he is.
Unidentified Speaker: Incoming.
Mark Tapson: Okay, Bruce is incoming. Here we go. I shall introduce him as he makes a big entrance here.
James Carafano: How impressive is that?
Mark Tapson: Bruce Thornton, Professor of Classics and Humanities at Cal State Fresno. He’s also a past National Fellow and current Research Fellow at Stanford’s Hoover institute, and a Shillman Fellow at the Freedom Center. He’s the author of 10 books and many, many essays, including regular weekly columns at FrontPage Mag. Everything Bruce writes is essential reading.
Then we have leading national security expert James Carafano. He’s the Vice President of Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Collum Davis Institute on National Security and Foreign Policy, also the author of 10 books.
And last and certainly not least, Daniel Pipes taught Middle Eastern and world history at Harvard and University of Chicago. He served under Reagan also on the policy planning staff. He’s the Founder of the Middle East Forum and author of 16 books.
Each of these gentlemen is going to make a statement about their take on the topic. We will try to get to questions, but as I said, we’re running insanely short on time, and it’s a big topic, so bear with us here. But I shall now turn it over to Mr. Gaffney.
Frank Gaffney: Thank you very much. Am I on? Yes, one, two, three? Yep. Can you hear me? Not? Not? Yes? Yes?
Unidentified Speaker: There we go.
Frank Gaffney: Yes, good. Thank you to the Horowitz team for allowing me to be back. I’m so appreciative, and want to share with you some quick thoughts on China. The coronation of Xi Jinping as the first Chinese Communist emperor has, I think, set the stage for the next horrific experience along the lines of what we’ve just been treated to. Going back to the great Chinese strategist Sun Tzu, the general operating principle has been, win without fighting if you can. But I believe that there are several considerations that are operating at the moment for Xi that make him think this is both a necessary war and one that must be fought now.
And I’m not talking about the unrestricted warfare, the — what I think of as pre-kinetic kind that he has been — and his predecessors engaged in against us for decades. It’s taken a lot of different forms. It’s been wildly successful. If you were with us for Monica Crowley’s remarks, you heard some of the cumulative effects of the elite capture and economic warfare and the political warfare and the subversion and the intellectual property theft and all the rest that has been going on for decades. And I’m not even talking about the biological warfare attack that we called COVID. It was just that.
I’m talking about a full on kinetic, military form of warfare that I think is now in the offing. Why? There are several factors. I think that consolidation of political power is one of them. I think the fact that despite that consolidation, there are very real and growing problems within China, and anybody who tells you the Chinese are 10 feet tall is ignoring several of these realities. The real estate bubble in which most Chinese have been encouraged to invest for decades has burst disastrously. The banking system, which has been a running fraud operation for many years, is coming off the rails. The COVID lockdowns that Xi is intent on continuing to impose for reasons that aren’t entirely clear is taking a terrible toll.
And the demographic disaster that is the product of the decades of population control — first the one-child policy, then the two-child policy, now the three-child policy — now have as many children as you can possibly can policy, cannot offset the cumulative effects of what has been done that has given rise, by some estimates, to 40 million military-age men for whom there are no women. That’s a lot of cannon fodder, though, and if, as totalitarians often do, they believe that they can change the subject from those domestic difficulties, social engineering, some call it divert attention, rally round the flag, whatever you want to say, it is not infrequently the case that people will go to war under these kind of circumstances.
And then there’s the Biden problem. A man who, as Xi will take stock in a couple of — well, hours now, again, personally, is clearly unfit, let alone a formidable adversary. And that’s without even taking into account the fact that he is owned by the Chinese Communist party.
All of these, unfortunately, my friends, conduce to, I believe, a calculation: This is the time to act on the next step in the realization of the China Dream that Xi has explicitly embraced and articulated and, as recently as the 20th party congress, said he was going to implement. What is the China Dream? It is world domination. What is the impediment to the realization of that dream? Us.
So while Taiwan will be the immediate object of the exercise, I think it is perfectly clear — and this is the consensus of smart people who know more about this subject than I — our assets, our personnel, our territory will be attacked in this war, not just Taiwan.
Now again, I don’t want to rule out the possibility that if we surrender, and Taiwan gives up, that China may forego all of this, win without fighting, but I think there is now an imperative need for them to fight as well, to use all of this equipment and capabilities that they’ve been putting into place. And if you heard my friend David Goldman’s presentation, you know this is a formidable capability indeed.
So let me just close by saying I think that we need, now, especially if there is going to be a Republican Congress, at least a House, at least a little bit of a House, is to use this as a moment to lay out to the American people what we should have, frankly, sought a mandate to do in this election cycle. It was a terrible opportunity squandered.
I was imprinted by Ronald Reagan; I had the privilege of serving with him, as was mentioned. In 1980, he went to the American people and he said, we are not going to continue the policy of what was then called détente engagement. We’re not going to compete with the Soviet Communist party, let alone continue to prop them up. We are going to seek to defeat them. We win, they lose, exercising the policy of peace through strength. He took that to the American people, and in 1980, they gave him an overwhelming mandate to do just that, and thanks be to god, he did it. We need to do the same.
Six specific items I suggest need to be done now: one, we need to be absolutely clear that the Chinese Communist party is our mortal enemy. It happens to be a transnational criminal organization, the worst criminal organization, let alone regime, in the history of the world. And it must be defeated. We can’t be treating it as competitors, let alone, again, propping it up. To do this, we have to do what the Chinese Communist party has done; to adopt a war footing, to mobilize our people and the whole of society and our economy and our country to contend with the danger that is now upon us. That will, among other things, require disengaging from China comprehensively. I’m not suggesting that any of this is easy. It’s been made painfully hard, in fact, by Chinese policies, but it has to be done.
Fourth, we must rebuild our military. It’s been spent for decades now in the kinds of wars that we’ve just described so incredibly eloquently. A complete distraction from the real threat that we are now facing, one that has, unfortunately, worn down not just the equipment, as was mentioned, much of it older than the people who are manning it, but also the people themselves. And that’s the people that are still left, not the people who have been driven out by this administration. Jim will, I suspect, talk about that a bit.
Fifth, those who have been compromised by the Chinese Communist party, especially in political life, but ideally, those elites that have been captured in all of the other sectors — business, academia, culture, media and politicals — must resign. We can’t bid war with a hostile power and have people running our government who work for them. Again, not easy, but necessary.
And finally, and this is perhaps the most important of all, really — unbeknownst, probably, to most of you, you have made much of what I just described possible. Your investments in pension funds, 401(k) plans, mutual funds, exchange traded funds, index funds and other investment vehicles, have been diverted, probably without your knowledge, certainly not the extent to it, I imagine, to fund the Chinese Communist party through its myriad companies. That money is underwriting the most dangerous threat we’ve ever faced in the history of our country. It must stop. And I would love to talk to you about how you might do that, because it’s absolutely imperative, as I think these six steps are.
We may have a joint select committee on China coming out of this congressional election; whether we do or whether we don’t, we must make it clear to those who now represent us that these are the sorts of steps we expect them to take, and nothing less will suffice.
Thank you very much.
Mark Tapson: Thank you, Frank. Bruce Thornton?
Bruce Thornton: I was thinking about what to talk about, and I realized that what I really wanted to talk about, I don’t have time to talk about. So I’m going to sort of hit some high points. I do have a — in the lobby, a Freedom Center publication on foreign policy, and it sets out in greater detail, if you’re interested in that.
And basically, what I’m talking about we can call our foreign policy idealism. And this has been going on since the 19th century, and it’s the notion that technology has made a smaller world; it has created new modes of transportation, communication and, most importantly, global trade, and this process will start to bring people more to the level of the West.
Now, that’s a pretty arrogant assumption, isn’t it? In a world with remarkable diversity of every sort, of ethnicity, of faith, of history, custom, et cetera, and you know, they really want to be like us, and so we should help them reach that same level. And once we do, all the evils of the old world, the pre-modern world, the world before what C.S. Lewis once called the arrogant oligarchy of those who just happen to be walking about, that everything before us, we’re better than and smarter than, and they had wars and attacked each other and did all these horrible things, but we’re going to go beyond that. We’re going to go beyond war. We’re going to build, oh, why don’t we call it a new rules-based international order. Have you heard that expression? We heard it a lot, didn’t we? And so that’s where our foreign policy should be focused on, and that means soft power, that means multinational, transnational, global institutions like, oh, how about the WHO, the World Health Organization? They did such a cracker-jack job with COVID, didn’t they? They should run things, right? Or the big monster of useless globalism, the United Nations. They should have the power to set policy, not the nation.
This whole globalist ideal doesn’t want nations. They don’t want national sovereignty. They don’t want, interestingly enough, one of their favorite words, diversity. That’s a ruse. They don’t want real diversity. They want centralized power, they want to be able to tell everybody what to do, and we’ll have — you’ve probably heard this phrase a lot, too — diplomatic engagement. Oh, we shouldn’t be so trigger-happy. We shouldn’t always reach for the guns. We shouldn’t always — we should sit and talk and make them partners.
Now, we just heard about China. China is where it is because of decisions made by the United States under George Bush and under Bill Clinton to bring China into the World Trade Organization. Make them a stakeholder. They’ll get rich, and once they get rich, they’ll have democracy and they’ll be like us. And they won’t be rivals; we’ll be partners.
Now, we heard this with David Goldman’s great talk, and what we just heard; they just gamed that from the start, didn’t they? They violated every canon of the World Trade Organization, every treaty, everything, and we kept pouring money into it. And so now, we helped create a rival that is a peer rival of us, who has a military right now that is — again, as we’ve heard — superior to ours. So we created the conditions that made China a rival.
The same is true with another — I know that we said the Ukraine-Russian war — I think something much more dangerous and more insidious is the continued efforts to negotiate with Iran, right? That is — and I don’t know the polite academic word for it. That is utterly stupid. And from the beginning, it was stupid. Iran has been at war with us for, what, 49 years? Right? They have American blood on their hands and arms up to the elbow. They have declared war on us numerous occasions. They have made clear what their intentions are. They want to get a nuclear bomb because that’s a game-changer, isn’t it? Look at North Korea. It’s nothing but a criminal state, family — godfather-like mafia, but who’s going to tell them, hey, you can’t do that. You can’t test missiles over falling in the ocean near Japan. Because they have a nuclear bomb. And how did they get a nuclear bomb? By gaming the process of the rules-based international order where negotiation and give and take and concessions will achieve the results you want. And it failed, didn’t it? North Korea played the game for how many decades? At least three or four. And then at the end, they test-fired their nuclear weapon, and they said, bye. International energy agency, right? Bye. We’re done.
So Iran had a program, a playbook from North Korea of how to do this, and they followed it. You negotiate to bide time, you harvest concessions, like the billions that Barack Obama transferred over to Iran, so they can keep spinning the centrifuges, keep developing missiles, where now they are a formidable missile force. They’re giving Russia their drones that Russia is using against Ukraine. Now, think of the incoherence of this. This administration has talked about, we have to defend the Ukraine. We have to send them weapons. But we’re going to negotiate with Iran, who’s partners with Russia and is sending Russia its weapons. Does that make any sense to anybody?
A minute?
Mark Tapson: I know you’re on a roll, and we’d love to hear more, but.
Bruce Thornton: I was just getting started. What do you mean, a minute?
So all of these issues that we’re talking about, China, Iran, the Ukrainian-Russian war — if we had the time, we’d go through that and see how it’s also a result of this idealistic order that when the Soviet Union collapsed, they made a big mistake. The West made a big mistake, right? Hey, we won! What did the West start doing? Cashing in the peace dividend. Nobody gathered NATO around and said, well, since one of NATO’s functions was to keep the Soviets out, and the Soviets aren’t here anymore, where are we going to find our new threats? And it manifested itself in the ’90s, didn’t it? While Bill Clinton was pulling hijinks with blue dresses in the White House, Al-Qaeda was declaring war on us, was attacking our military, our soldiers, told us we’re at war. Bin Laden said, we declared war on you like [Colmaney] did, ’79, and thought, we’re going to take a vacation from history, instead of sitting down and saying, okay, NATO, what is the threat we need to prepare for?
Oh, and by the way, you guys, all you deadbeats that — some of the richest countries in the world that can’t even pay — spend a measly 2% on their own defense? No, no, no. Hey, let’s put NATO countries right on Russia’s border. Didn’t anybody have any knowledge of Russian history at this point to see how that would work out? It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it; just means that you should have thought about while you’re doing it, and if you were going to do it, then make a NATO a force that can back that up. Right? And that’s why we have that problem today, and we don’t have a choice. Anyway, since the boss has put me on notice, and I —
James Carafano: So why don’t you hold up Bruce’s pamphlet, because — so everybody can see it, because that’s something really worth reading.
Mark Tapson: Yes. Mike Finch brought this up. This is a copy of American Foreign Policy: A Century of Dangerous Illusions, is the pamphlet by Bruce Thornton that we have out front. Do not go without picking up a copy of that.
James Carafano: Right.
Bruce Thornton: Thank you, and I apologize, Mark, for making your job harder.
Mark Tapson: You are forgiven.
Bruce Thornton: But it’s always good to be here in the Freedom Center with all — some of the smartest people in the world, and I appreciate it. Thank you.
James Carafano: Well, I agree with you. Hello, my Freedom Center family. I missed you guys. It is so great to be back. I feel so inadequate for — I mean, Clint was — I mean, it was just unbelievable. It’s just unbelievable. And if you haven’t seen the film in which he’s portrayed very accurately, you should see that. This is an incredible panel. I just feel so inadequate. And I have nothing to offer you. I haven’t been banned by the Chinese, I’m not sanctioned by the Russians, there isn’t an Iranian death squad chasing me down.
Unidentified Speaker: That you know of.
James Carafano: Yeah, well —
Unidentified Speaker: Or not yet.
James Carafano: I was once censored on YouTube, if that counts for anything. And I’m only here to do one thing, which is answer or ask the existential question: Why does Daniel Pipes and Mike Finch have more hair than I do? That’s — I don’t really understand.
I just want to talk about us for a little bit, because actually, I do think that in many ways, and as both Bruce and Frank actually suggested, we are the problem. Look, when the Cold War ended, we lost the notion that peace through strength, that the kind of things Ronald Reagan taught us, were really the core of the conservative movement.
And if you think of the conservative movement in the post-1990s, we, like everybody else, were honestly deceived into this notion that history, indeed, had ended, and we could just go off and do our own things. And for many years, our movement, the movement that we built, and in fact many people in the room here helped energize and create the incredible Reagan revolution, we started treating it like a buffet table. So you walk up, and hey, give me a slice of pro-life and a little side of low taxes, and then I’m done. I’m full. Really, I can’t eat any more. Right? And so we all just went off and did our two things, and people — and we had — and the one thing I love about conservatives is we argue with each other and we debate and we disagree. That is the great powerful strength of our movement. But we didn’t all agree on a lot of very — on a lot of tough issues, including national security, and we said, well, we just won’t talk about that. We won’t argue about that. We just won’t do that, right?
And so what we did was, we outsourced national security and foreign policy to a bunch of yahoos on the left and the right, and we did all kinds of crazy, wacky things, and we just kind of watched the train wreck go by, and in part, not only did we not really have a powerful, strong voice on the critical issues for decades; this is really what created the space for the problems that Frank and Bruce just mentioned and that Daniel will talk about. We allowed them to metastasize because we were so busy doing whatever we were doing and letting people — and outsourcing foreign policy and national security to a bunch of people without, really, the strong input of the American people.
And so that’s why we are where we are today, and if we have one obligation as a conservative movement, we have to care about all the things that are important to us. And we have to all care about all of them. And so me, as a national security — like, I have to care about life. And that’s an important core of our movement. I have to care about our fiscal issues and fiscal responsibilities. I have to care about the culture wars.
But we all have to care about everything, and that just gets me to my second point, which is, how do we think about this? And I think we have allowed our movement to lapse into this caricature of a debate between restrainers and isolationists, or whatever, and neo-cons, speaking about ideological supremes, much in the way Bruce just did. And that’s nonsense. That’s not how conservatives really look at foreign policy. We describe them exactly in ways that actually Bruce talks about in his pamphlet.
And I think we have to get that mojo back. And we frame it — my new president at the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, calls it the third way, which just drives me crazy because all I can think about is that stupid book about Vietnam and the quiet American, because the third way was like — it didn’t really exist. It was just basically made up. But he’s trying to argue this: look, if the extremes are we’re going to go out and conquer the world and bomb everybody into submission or we’re going to sit back in America and do nothing, or let the U.N. take care of it, or just spend billions of dollars on foreign aid, the argument is no, neither of those extremes really represent how conservatives get to good foreign policy.
And it starts first with the national interests. When Trump first enunciated America First, he was really enunciating kind of a timeless principle of a good approach to foreign policy, which is, what’s in it for us? What is our interest? And then, what’s the most efficacious balance of risk and rewards to invest to secure that interest? And if you don’t start the conversation there, you’re not having a conversation about serious consequential foreign policy.
And the second thing is, is we have a sacred obligation, if we’re making public policy, and we’re looking after the interests of the people, to keep them free and safe and prosperous, and you don’t get credit for two out of three. So you can one-off and spend a lot of money on whatever, but if it’s undermining our prosperity here at home, if it’s compromising the freedom of American citizens, that fails. And so you have to deliver both on domestic policy and foreign policy in a way that delivers all three.
And the third thing is, and this is the one that just freaks me out, if you have a foreign policy, it ought to work. Right? It actually ought to deliver the outcomes that you’re saying you’re there for. So if you think of this guy at camp Keating, why the heck are we sitting kids on a mountaintop that’s actually not accomplishing anything? Why are we pursuing that policy?
And so I’ll just end on this. I have my own personal thoughts on why the election didn’t go as strongly as it did. Yeah, I think there are policy differences, and I actually think clarifying those policy differences is important to the American people, that there’s a choice between, for example, people that want to think serious about these issues, about national interests, about [indiscernible] all our priorities, about doing things that are practical, and people that don’t, but we also have to demonstrate that we can deliver on these things.
I think there’s — if you look — for example, I think the difference between Ron DeSantis and Kari Lake, you put them on a panel together, and their talking points are almost the same, identical. The difference is, Ron DeSantis was a governor for years, through some really tough, difficult times, and he delivered. And so what he had was the trust and confidence in voters. That wasn’t just ideas. It wasn’t just policy, that he was a leader of character and courage. And if we’re going to win the war that Frank talks about and deal with the challenges that Bruce talks about, or the grave threats that Daniel’s going to talk about, we need leaders of character and courage. And I don’t think you measure them by the character of their Tweeting or their looks, but by — do they look at things like we do? Will they look after our national interests? Will they look after all our priorities? And will they be practical, responsible people? And are they leaders of courage and character? When we start putting those people back out there, we’ll not only win this country, we will save our place in the world and our future in history, and that’s what’s really important.
Thanks.
Mark Tapson: Thank you, James. Dr. Pipes?
Daniel Pipes: Well, unlike my fellow panelists, Frank, Bruce and Jim, I’m going to talk about a specific topic, not the grand issues facing the United States. I’m going to talk about Ukraine, but not the war in Ukraine, but rather the refugee crisis that came out of the war. And I’d like to point to a problem in the future that I don’t think anybody has noticed. I’d like to bring it to your attention.
After the Russian invasion on February 24, there was a stream of Ukrainians going to Europe. By now, some 8 million, a substantial portion of Ukraine’s population. And when they arrived, they were delighted. Quote: We have everything, really everything, even too much stuff. The people here are amazing, so generous. We didn’t expect so much sympathy. Quote: It is unbelievable how much they help. They gave us everything they have.
Now, this is wonderful. The fact that the European Union decided to give them a new status, something called a temporary protection mechanism, that they could live up to three years in the 27 member states of Europe, is wonderful. They got healthcare and housing and education. They got cash, they got — they got everything. It’s great. I think it’s great. We also contributed. We contributed more money than we did to any refugee crisis since 1939 to ’45, since World War II.
But there’s a danger here. Advocates of multiculturalism and open borders have widely seized on the Ukrainian example to argue that any less generous response to migrants from Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, constitutes racism, xenophobia and so-called Islamophobia, while little noticed at this moment, the intense focus on Ukrainians after the current crisis ends will likely lead to a reasoning that will certainly prominently emerge and become a force. I think now is the time to recognize this and to fight it.
So to begin with, non-Western migrants watched the refugees coming to Europe primarily but also the United States and complained. Said one Afghan in Germany: The Ukrainians are first-class refugees and we’re only second-class. Said an Afghan, translator: Ukraine’s people can go freely to European countries, but where do we flee? Said a Nigerian: The Ukrainians get all these benefits and we’re not even offered a glass of water.
Now, confronted with this challenge, politicians and journalists in Europe and the United States offered awkward and embarrassing explanations. For example, Ukraine’s former deputy chief prosecutor said that the situation in Ukraine is very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blond hair being killed every day. The Bulgarian prime minister said, the Ukrainians are Europeans. These are people who are intelligent, they’re educated. This is not the refugee wave we have seen before, people who are not sure about their identity, people with unclear paths, people who could be terrorists. In other words, there is not a single European country which is now afraid of the current wave of refugees, so in other words, there’s a kind of racial quality, educational quality and the like.
These inept explanations led to a barrage of fury, talking about bias, bigotry, discrimination and orientalism. The Washington Post led the way with no less than eight articles in two months on the subject, once a week. Here’s one from the Washington Post: While Europe is relatively united in its desire to help Ukrainians, some have questioned why similarly temporary protection was not offered to fleeing Afghans or to assist other asylum seekers reaching Europe’s shores. Or another one: Countries in Europe that just a few years ago rose up and protested against the arrival of immigrants fleeing wars and extremism in the Middle East and North Africa are suddenly welcoming hundreds of thousands of refugees. A Nigerian in Athens said: I hear people say all lives matter, but no, they don’t really all matter. Black lives matter less.
Such criticisms, I would argue to you, have a purpose: To make Westerners feel guilty, and thereby to turn the Ukrainian experience into the template for the whole world. All migrants, without exception, legal or illegal, from wherever they might come, must be welcomed as those from Ukraine.
So the — Qatar’s foreign minister thundered about Ukrainians faring better than Syrians, Palestinians, Libyans, Iraqis and Afghans. He then demanded that the Ukraine crisis serve as “a wake-up call” for Middle Eastern issues to be handled with the same level of commitment. President Emmanuel Macron of France wasn’t quite so explicit, but he said that this crisis reminds some around the table who showed less solidarity when the migratory pressure came from other borders other than Europe’s borders, that it is good Europe that is totally supportive and responsible neighbor. A Human Rights Watch leader said that the tremendous empathy and solidarity for Ukrainians should stretch to everyone in need. Now, note the wording: everyone in need. That defines a potentially limitless group of people. Everyone in need means refugees, asylum seekers, migrants and so forth.
Now, there are obviously enormous differences between the Ukrainian refugees and the illegal migrants coming from around the world. I’ve documented some 13 differences. I won’t go through them here, but I’ll just note that the Ukrainians are true refugees. They tend to be the elderly, females and children. The men are not there. The young men are fighting. Whereas when it was Syrians in 2015, ’16, it was primarily young men. Second difference is the viable skills that the Ukrainians have brought with them. They immediately got employed, versus the unemployability of so many illegal migrants from the outside world. Good citizenship versus criminality. Cultural similarity versus differences. And limited versus unlimited numbers; there are only so many Ukrainians. If you look at the outside world, it’s unlimited.
In sum, the contrast is sharp and stark. On the one hand stand the Ukrainians, a neighboring people of limited size and similar culture, language, religion and skills, fleeing an external genocidal assault. On the other side, peoples of alien cultures, alien languages, often historically rival religion, harboring various forms of hostility, arriving in huge numbers without permission for their personal economic self-betterment.
So this analysis leads to three conclusions. First is that it is unsurprising that the Western response to Ukrainian and to non-Western migrants vary as widely as they do. The two groups themselves are very different. This should not lead to embarrassment. Rather than flagellate themselves for welcoming Ukrainians, Europeans and Americans ought to take pride in this munificence.
Secondly, the reception given to Ukrainian refugees cannot become the template for all migrants from all places and all circumstances at all times, as multiculturalists and open-border types would argue. Distinctions must continue to be made. To succumb to pressures that return Europe to its lawless immigration of 2015-’16, when anyone from anywhere could enter, is to invite chaos and, ultimately, to the collapse of Western civilization.
And finally, thirdly, the Ukraine crisis points to the need for thinking in terms of cultural zones. This is a point I’ve been making for years that essentially nobody has paid attention to. I believe that each region of the world, each cultural region, broadly speaking — Latin America, Africa, Middle East, South Asia, Southeast Asia and so forth — should contain its own refugees, its own migrants. So Middle Easterners should go to the Middle East and Africans to Africa and Europeans to Europe. What could be more natural? The surge in Ukrainian refugees has revealed, as no other event since World War II, that the West is the natural refuge for its own peoples and not the natural refuge for the entire world.
Thank you.
Mark Tapson: Thank you, Dr. Pipes.
I’m sorry, everybody, but we’re out of time. We don’t have time for questions, I’m afraid. You’re going to have to hold onto those and try to pin the speakers down later, maybe while they’re trying to have dinner tonight, but thank you. Please, everybody, thank our speakers, Frank Gaffney, Bruce Thornton, James Carafano and Dr. Daniel Pipes.
Spurwing Plover says
And first they had to steal the election in 2020 and put that shmuck Biden in the Oval Office