Defining "peace through strength" (06-27-2025--Hour3)

What's going on? Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron, go to dpeteclendershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. So, okay, before I go into this next topic, sure, I'll take Jim regarding last hour's topic. Jim, what's up? Hello Jim? Hello Jim, Jim. Okay, thank you, Jim, compelling and Rich. Let me start here. Paige Maston. She is the deputy opinion editor for the Charlotte Observer and she covers stories. According to her bio at the Observer, she coverslories that impact people in Charlotte and across the state. And she has an. Editorial that she put up yesterday and the headline is North Carolina Republicans echo Trump's absurd claims that bombing Iran is an act of peace. So yeah, that got me scratching my head too. Far? Be it for me to suggest that a you know, a twenty something year old in Charlotte is a foreign policy expert. But look, I talk about all sorts of stuff and I'm no expert on anything really, So who am I right to judge? So she starts off with this piece though peace through strength in quotes peace through strength. We've heard this term, right, peace through strength. She says, I'm gonna read. This to you. And just listen to the full sentence. Okay, it's one of those deliberately vague phrases that sounds like both a euphemism and a paradox. A deliberately vague phrase that sounds like a euphemism and a paradox. It does not actually sound like a paradox at all. And it. I mean, I mean, I guess you could say it could be a euphemism in certain circumstances. She says. She's repeated so many times that it's practically lost all meaning? Has it? Though? Has it? What's your understanding of the piece through strength axiom? I have a pretty good understanding of what it means. I understand it to mean that you build up your military might aka your strength, You build up your economy aka your strength. Right, you build up a national ethos, a pride in your country, so your citizens love their country that strength, and that makes you not only less vulnerable to aggression, but it also means that if you are aggressed, you can you can fight back and defeat. Your enemies, right. Or you know, it could be that you're projecting this this strength outward and you are able then to translate that into diplomacy diplomatic efforts. And why would that occur is because people are afraid of you, right, That's the whole point. People are afraid of your strength and how you might use that against them because they are not as strong as you are, so they don't pick fights with you. They are more willing to go along with you. You're seen as strong, and they want to be They want to be friends with a strong person or a strong country in this case. Right. So there are all sorts of ways that this manifests itself. It's it's a it's more of a philosophy. It's not strictly a it's not a policy. There's no law. It's it's it's just. A way of being. It's to be strong. And I think this might be where page masked in at the Charlotte Observer where she doesn't really understand what this all entails, because I feel like she thinks that we can just talk this stuff out sometimes and or not sometimes, but like all the times, and no, you can't. All the time. When when a when a wolf comes to your door, right, it's not there to talk with you. So the way that you prevent the wolf from coming to the door, or maybe i'll say a bear, I'll use this analogy and staid because bears they could seem cute and cuddly, right, and they come to your door, but the next thing you know, they learn how to open door handles and they rip open your fridge, they destroy your kitchen. Oh, and they may maul you to death. Right, So you bang a bunch of pots and pans and this sort of thing. Okay, so you're scaring them. So I guess that's some bit of peace through strength. Because the bear runs away. You haven't harmed the bear. The bear didn't destroy your kitchen, but you bang the pots and pans loud enough and he runs away. Or if the bear is not scared by your pots and pans banging, you may have to shoot the bear. This does happen people cry about it. When I was up in Ashville, this occurred with a west Asheville bear that everybody knew and loved. And then the bear went into the front yard with a couple of toddlers playing, and dad saw it and was like, oh hell no, and shot and killed the bear, and people were really really mad about it. See, that's also peace through strength. Here's another one to go back to the wolves. Peace through strength could also mean that you've got cattle out, and you got a pack of wolves that are running all around the area murdering all of your cattle, and so you go out with a couple of your hunter friends and you hunt and kill the wolves. You are stronger than the wolves. You kill all the wolves, and now there's peace. So I hope this has been helpful to Page Maston. See, there are many different ways this can manifest itself. This peace through strength phrases, as she calls it a deliberately vague phrase, it's not actually deliberately vague. It's an ethos it's a philosophy. I think most guys understand this. I'm not trying to like I'm not being like flippant about that. I'm serious. Like I think I think most men understand what this concept means. I don't. That's just my guess. President Donald Trump, she says, insists that his bombing of Iran is a perfect example of this so called strategy, A so called strategy. Do you get the idea that She's very dismissive of the concept of peace through strength, she says, despite the fact that it stands in stark contrast to the anti interventionist image he cultivated on the campaign trail and to the peacemaker and unifier that he promised to be. Again. This is one of those things, She's like, violence never solves anything. Not true, It's actually not true. Sometimes violence does solve some stuff. War never solves anything. Not true, Sometimes war does. Sometimes it ends in peace afterwards, you know it does. You have a side that surrenders and like, find fine, we won't fight you anymore, and then you have peace. But you had to have a lot of violence first, right, A lot of Dare I call it strength first? See, it means different things in different situations. I'm I'm not trying to sound patronizing here or like, I'm not trying to condescend. I'm genuinely trying to inform for others who may not understand what this philosophy might mean. In fact, I went over and found some definitions for what this could mean. This is actually from here you go the political dictionary dot com. And if you can't trust the political dictionary, and really, who can you trust. Peace through strength is the accumulation of military power and security assets by a country to encourage an amenable diplomatic atmosphere with other countries. So what does that mean? To encourage an amenable diplomatic atmosphere? Other words, the implied threat is we will use this massive military power against you if you don't engage in diplomacy. I said this the other day. If you you cannot say no without an implied threat of force. Otherwise it's just a request. And you really can't stop somebody from transgressing you. You can't unless. Because if they're willing to use force and you cannot overcome that force, then you can't say no if they want to use force against you. You know, Stories are powerful. They help us make sense of things, to understand experiences. Stories connect us to the people of our past while transcending generations. They help us process the meaning of life and our stories are told through images and videos. Preserve your stories with Creative Video started in nineteen ninety seven and Mint Hill, North Carolina. It was the first company to provide this valuable service, converting images, photos and videos into high quality produced slide shows, videos and albums. The trusted, talented and dedicated team at Creative Video will go over all of the details with you to create a perfect project. Satisfaction guaranteed. Drop them off in person or mail them. They'll be ready in a week or two. Memorial videos for your loved ones, videos for rehearsal, dinners, weddings, graduations, Christmas, family vacations, birthdays, or just your family stories all told through images. That's what your photos and videos are. They are your life told through the eyes of everyone around you and all who came before you, and they will tell others to come who you are visit creative video dot com. Let's get over to the phone lines. Walter is on, Hello Walter, welcome. Hey Pete from I just wanted to know if the lady that you're referring to that wrote the article understands what mutual assured destruction means. You know, that was an axiom that we used a lot in the seventies and the I. Remember it, yeah, mad mutually assured destruction. This was the the I don't want to say strategy, but it was sort of the promise that if the Russians or the Soviets, I should say, if they launched nukes on us, we would retaliate on them immediately and then do a second strike and a third strike. And so the idea was we would both blow each other up to the extent that it was not worth it. Yeah. I'm just wondering if the lady that wrote this article did any research back into what we used to tell our enemies or potential enemies. Look, this is what's gonna happen to you, right, you know. I mean, whenever we come up with these phrases and whatnot that she's referring to. It's not for games, it's for it's a real deal. It's life or death. Literally. Yeah. Yeah, you're dealing with somebody who has a nuclear weapon or is you know, chanting death to you, and and you're trying to convey to them if you do this, it will be the last thing you ever do. That's the threat, that is peace through strength, because the strength is the threat and the belief that you will carry through with it, and then they leave you alone. There's your piece. Maybe she should go back and do a little bit of historical research. Well, I mean she was a UNC Chapel Hill grad so she probably didn't get any of this education. That's I kid, I kid the tar heels. Not really though, all right, Walter, I appreciate the call man, David, Welcome to the show. Hey David Billo, Hey, how you doing it? Good sir? What's up? Well? I've been listening to this argument about what is it? What is peace through strength? What I have to say about it is we have been attacked for twenty years by this come country called Iran, and we were strong enough to do something about it, but we didn't because we didn't have the same policy you're speaking of. I agree one hundred percent with what you think that means. And in my view, any enemy needs to respect the strength of its enemy. Yeah, unless if you don't. I mean, if you if our enemy doesn't respect our strength, they'll just do whatever they want to us. That's correct. So you have very articulatively stated that. I just want you to know I agree with that. Sure, I also want to say that we have another little twist to this that is not always there in a way of enemies and how they hate each other. In this case, the hatred is ideological and that is forever. It doesn't go away, even if we beat them and nuclears or whatever we beat them in, it doesn't go away. After all, it's started back into six hundreds and it's it's persistent all this time, and they openly state you are going to be destroyed by us. So that said, I think we're dealing with more complexity than just an enemy. Oh h with one hundred percent agree, Yeah, yeah, I one agree, Like this is not you're you're dealing with a religion, a philosophy, an economic posture as well. That's part of Islam as well. But yeah, but here's the thing. That kind of reform has got to come from within Islam itself. Right. We can't force that kind of an enlightenment, uh, in that faith. They have to come to that themselves to say, yeah, you know what, I know there's some stuff in this book that kind of has been interpreted as you know, murder everybody, but we're not going to We're not going to do that. Anymore, right, and. If there comes a point that that they have this kind of an enlightenment, then that has to come from them. That we can't force that onto them. And that's what I think. I mean, that's what became very clear to me over the last twenty years with the Iraq War. It was like they this is this is way more deeply rooted, deep seated, and like, that's that's not even anything to speak of. The anti Semitism. I mean, you got people in the Middle East that are otherwise learned, educated, very nice people and all of this, but you mentioned the Jews, and it's just woo, you know, trips the trigger and you know, anti Semitism in the Middle East is just it's off the charts. So yeah, I don't know how you combat that. But hey, David, I appreciate the call, man, have a great weekend. I think it's it's this this piece through strength philosophy that Paige Maston at the Charlotte Observer. And I don't mean to pick on her. I've never met her, I don't know her. I'm just i'd the peace and I'm like, Okay, she doesn't seem to understand what this is all about. I'm not trying to be mean about it at all. I'm just trying to sort of explain, like, for example, you get peace through strength when you show strength outward displays of strength, right, And what does that mean? Well, I mean it could mean yeah. Sending food and aid and recovery relief supplies after an earthquake or something. Oh, look at you, you're so strong. That would be soft power, right, you have allies, your allies stand around you and like, hey, look at everybody. We're all allied. Yes, sure, but the alliance doesn't mean anything if you don't, let's say, build militaries among all of those countries, which, by the way, hat tipped to Donald Trump yet again another foreign policy win here, he's got NATO countries going up to five percent of GDP to their military. I'm old enough to remember when the lefties and media, but I repeat myself that they were like, oh my gosh, he's gonna destroy NATO because he's a putent puppet. Well how did that turn out? He was trying to get him to just fund the two percent. I think it was that they were required to fund as part of a NATO alliance, they had to fund two percent of their GDP for military and they weren't doing it. They were just like free loading off of us. And He's like, that's got to stop. And if you don't want to pay your two percent, then you know what, we don't need to be doing this anymore. And everybody's like, oh my gosh, he's gonna destroy NATO. Is he destroying NATO or is it the countries that haven't made their obligations destroying NATO? And I would submit it to the latter. And now all of a sudden, and. Maybe it was, you know, Russia invading Ukraine and Trump saying, you know, screw Zelensky. I don't want anything to do with this guy. He doesn't wear a suit whatever, which by the way, he did wear a suit to NATO. Again, like Trump not only got these NATO countries to go to five percent, he got Zelenski to wear a suit and he took out the Iranian nuclear facilities. See this is the thing. Strength strength is displayed. Yes, there is a perception of one strength. Like if I'm looking at my enemy and I'm trying to assess or whatever, and I can observe things that I think make them strong. But that's just observation, outward displays, and real world examples of strength. Those are the most observable of all. And this may be lost on people who are suffering from Trump derangement syndrome. But when we talked about the nature of this bombing run on Iran, it is remarkable. It has not been done. This kind of thing has not been done before. From the size of the bombs, the number of the bombs, the precision of the attacks, the fact that the Israeli's completely obliterated all of the israel the Iranian air defense, like the length of the bomber mission. It was an amazing feat. And I understand you hate Trump, right, I get it, you really don't like the Orange Man. But for America, if this guy ends up getting a piece deal between Israel and Iran, you guys are going to have to just acknowledge that you've been wrong about this stuff. All right, If you're listening to this show, you know I try to keep up with all sorts of current events, and I know you do too, And you've probably heard me say get your news from multiple sources. Why, Well, because it's how you detect media bias, which is why I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app and it's a website, and it combines news from around the world in one place, so you can compare coverage and verify information. You can check it out at check. Dot ground, dot news slash pete. I put the link in the podcast description too. I started using ground News a few months ago and more recently chose to work with them as an affiliate because it lets me see clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the left and the right. See for yourself. Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature. Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it also supports ground News as they make the media landscape more transparent. So you know me, I am a giver, and so that's why I'm giving this sort of breakdown on this philosophy Piece through Strength, because the deputy opinion editor for the Charlotte Observer appears to be unclear what Piece through Strength means on dare I, Well, I will say it. It's a spectrum. Okay, it's a spectrum. Strength can mean different things in different situations, but. The goal is always peace. So if you have. A theocratic, tyrannical terrorism funding regime that is calling for your death, your annihilation, how do you get peace with them? Right when they want all of America to be wiped off the map? How do you get peace with that kind of a regime? Do you settle with like, say, okay, how about half of America? In which case then I do have some proposals to offer for states to be a No, I'm kidding, but like do you say, okay, well just half of America or is it like a sixty to forty split? Do we do like a geographic breakdown? Like can you negotiate here? So again, like when they say death to America, you all should die, wiped off the map, whatever, and we say no, how do you arrive at peace with that kind of. A negotiating partner? Well, I would submit, you don't. You can't. So you have to then make yourself so scary to them that they will not try anything, and if they do try something, then you will wipe them off the map. Let's say, I'm not saying we should. I'm just like that's but that's always as Rush Limbaugh always used to say, the world is governed by the aggressive use of force. And you may not like it, and I may not like it, but that is true. And we can negotiate stuff. And if people want to come to terms, and Donald Trump wants to do deals, he wants everybody to get along. I do believe that. But if you have a negotiating partner that does not want to get along, then what is the projection of strength? So she goes on to say that she's that these North Carolina Republicans are happy to defend Donald Trump. The most absurd of the defenses came Monday when Representative Pat Harrigan, who represents North Carolina's tenth congressional district, appeared on Fox News to discuss the strikes on Iran. We're trying to this, what Harrigan said, We're trying to lower the temperature of global conflict while simultaneously kind of raising it here in order to lower it. Harrigan is a former Army Special Forces officer, and so she says, what when you're trying to cool down your house, do you turn up the heat before you blast the AC. Okay, that is a completely silly analogy. I don't know why you would even make that reference. But here you go like I would. I would submit you don't turn the heat up, but you would take the AC offline. Right If your air conditioner is blowing air and it's not cooling to the degree that you have said it to, the AC repairment is going to shut it completely off first in order to fix it. Right off would be worse than it blowing like eighty five degrees when you want it at seventy two. Off would be worse, but only for a short period of time. You shut it off in order to fix it. I think that's a better analogy with the air conditioning. It's not an analogy that I would have used. I'm just trying to fix the one that she presented. Or how about this one she presents When your friends are fighting, do you intentionally inflame the situation before trying to diffuse it? Do you intentionally inflame? Well, there's your assumption that this is inflammatory, and again that's Western conceit that you see this as your friends are fighting. These aren't friends fighting. These aren't our friends fighting. This is one of our friends fighting. Against somebody that wants to kill both of us. It's not our friends fighting. So if we want the person that hates us and our friend, if we want them to stop attacking our friend and also us, by the way, you punch them in the nose, right, that's what you do to bullies. No, or you just hope that they stop. Please don't pick on me anymore. And how well does that appeasement work. The answer to that, of course, she says, is no. Again, so these are straw man arguments. She just sets up these ridiculous analogies so she can knock them down and set them on fire. So it stands to reason, she says, it doesn't. Actually that raising the temperature of global conflict may not be the best strategy if the goal is to actually lower it. Yet, I would point out, if you just look at the way things are developing, there is a cease fire. They are both abiding by it. Iran is actually talking about coming to negotiate. Why, because they have no more strength. They have no strength, and so now they're going to throw themselves on the mercy or at the mercy of us, rather than us throwing ourselves at the mercy of them. See because they will rely on our goodness and maintain the peace. See, that's how that works with actors like Iran, that's what they respect. You cannot nego. I mean, how else would you have settled, say, World War two with Hitler? Right, how else would you would you have done that? You had to punch the bully in the nose. In Iran's case, you have to eliminate their ability to defend themselves in the skies. They have lost all air dominance. They have no air power at all anymore, they've lost their nuclear program. They're worried about being overthrown, and they just want peace now. They want it, See, because twelve or fourteen days they didn't want it. Their entire regime has been mobilized for forty years in order to fight the war against Israel and America. So now they have a different opinion because they got punched in the nose. So that's how you got to the peace part, Peace through strength. She says, it's meant to be a strategy of deterrence. True. True, but at the core of that is an implied threat. Once again, the ability to say no carries with it an implication of force, because if they're like, we want you all to die, and we say no, but we can't enforce that. And then like, oh, you have this big military, I'm not going to do it. But they don't care about the size of the military because they're fighting in an asymmetrical way. How do you say no? Just let them keep attacking, attacking, attacking, attacking for decades and decades and killing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Americans over the course of decades. And that's okay, I guess is that peace? I would say no. Here's a great idea. How about making an escape to a really special and secluded getaway in western North Carolina. 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Cabins of Ashville has the ideal spot for you for any occasion, and they have pet friendly accommodations. Call her text eight two eight three six seven seventy sixty eight or check out all there is to offer at Cabins of Aashville dot com and make memories that'll. Last a lifetime. We only have about three minutes here, so be judicious. I'm gonna get to Carl and Frank if I can. Carl, Welcome to the show, Hey Carl, Oh hi Pete. Enjoy your show. Listen regularly. Question, since my Korea is within striking distance of our allies South Korea, which I was stationed here fifty years ago, why did we allow them to chiminate such a large array of nuclear weapons underre considered a roade nation. So I think that was because China gave them the nukes secretly. I'm sorry, what was that. China? Didn't China give them the nukes secretly? China gave them the bomb, right, Okay, right, so we and they did it secretly. Right. They gave North Korea the technology, They gave them all that stuff. And I don't know what our intelligence apparatus is like. I don't know what South Korea's intelligence apparatus is like at the time. So it's sort of like Pakistan with aq Kahn, who got the nuclear technology in secret stole it. Okay, thank you, Okay, yeah, you're welcome that. I mean, that's my understanding of it, but I could be completely wrong on that. Let me get to Frank. Hello, Frank, welcome to the show. Heugh, Yeah, I was just thinking. I was born in nineteen forty nine. My dad was in the first Marine Division on Okinaw after the battle, and if it hadn't been for Harry Truman and the bombs, there would have been no peace. I probably wouldn't be here because my dad said he would have never made another battle like Okanaala was, So that's pace through strands. Yeah, that's a good example of it. Frank, I appreciate the call, man, Thank you, and have a great weekend. This deputy editor at The Observer. She says, if Iran had escalated the situation further and brought us even closer to war, would Trump's actions still be a success? Oh? Maybe not, but it did at least that's the way it looks right now. Like this is what I mean. People making predictions about whether this was the right call or not the right call or whatever. Like, just let's let things play out. I think at this point Trump has earned a little bit of a benefit of the doubt on this stuff. He's been racking up quite a few wins. She says that North Carolina Republicans should be troubled that the strikes occurred without a consulting Congress and therefore may not even have been legal. Okay, that's not true. It was, and they did give a heads up to members of Congress. She then says, peace through strength can too easily shift into the Orwillian paradox of peace through war. There's a reason why previous presidents never made the choice that Trump did. I would submit that's because of the progress of the nuclear program, and Trump's refusal to even acknowledge the possibility of failure is what makes his behavior so reckless. Well, now, that's that's part of the strength strategy, is that you say, like, this is what we did right. We made a tough choice, and we made the right choice, and we'll do it again. That's the strength part. She says, we can't bomb our way to peace, and just because we were lucky enough to avoid disaster this time doesn't mean we always will. And you know, sometimes you actually can bomb your way to peace. That is possible. Talk to the people in World War two. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecalnarshow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.