RUTHFULLY YOURS

Once in a while, a great book – like a great red wine – becomes better over the years. “High Noon for America,” by the managing editor of FrontPage Magazine, Jamie Glazov, is such a rare book.

This breathtaking work was published in 2012, soon after our military intervention in Libya, and it rightfully starts with an in-depth analysis of our administration’s Middle East policy. We are now facing a similar intervention in Syria, and I strongly recommend that anyone even slightly interested in foreign policy and long-term peace go back to this book.

“High Noon for America” is not Jamie Glazov’s book. It is America’s book, conceived and developed over several years of roundtable dialog between Jamie and some of the most authoritative experts in foreign policy, intelligence, political affairs, economics and religion of our day. Among them: Robert McFarlane, President Reagan’s national security adviser; Richard Pipes, former member of the National Security Council, one of the world’s leading authorities on Soviet history; Natan Sharansky, former Soviet prisoner, later member of the Israeli cabinet; Roger L. Simon, prize-wining screenwriter, founder and CEO of PJMedia; Vladimir Bukovsky, former leading Soviet dissident and candidate for president of the post-Soviet Russia; and Michael Ledeen, America’s foremost authority on Iran. Full disclosure: I also contributed to Jamie Glazov’s book, and I have been a longtime contributor to FrontPage.

We all want to see democracy succeed in Libya. Our precipitate intervention in that country, however, generated chaos and the horrific assassination of our ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and it should not be repeated in Syria. There are few people who wanted to see Gadhafi removed from power more than I did. He set a $2 million bounty on my head because I had revealed his secret efforts to arm international terrorists with bacteriological and other weapons of mass destruction. But personal animus against Gadhafi – and now against Bashar al-Assad – should not have anything to do with the policy of the U.S.

The recent temporary closing of 21 U.S. embassies for fear of terrorism, a historical first, shows that we do not need more Libya-style interventions. They generate hatred, not peace. We need a coherent foreign policy aimed at protecting our country from the evil of terrorism. Former CIA Director James Woolsey just warned us that our Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Commission and the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission have established that detonating a small nuclear weapon high above any part of the U.S. mainland would generate a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse. Just one small nuclear explosion, one the terrorist dictator of North Korea is already capable of causing, could collapse the whole U.S. electric grid and the infrastructure that depends on it – communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water – necessary to sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans.

I do not know what our anti-terrorist policy should be. I have no access to classified information and no wish to play the armchair general. The know-it-all talking heads in the American media are no wiser than I am. I do, however, have good reason to suggest that our administration and Congress take a serious look at President Truman’s NSC 68/1950.

In the words of the National Council Report 68, of 1950, which set forth the strategy for wining the Cold War, “The issues that face us are momentous, involving the fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization itself.” Therefore, NSC 68/1950 focused on creating a “new world order” centered on American liberal-capitalist values, and it contained a two-pronged political strategy: superior military power and a “Campaign of Truth,” defined as “a struggle, above all else, for the minds of men.” Truman argued that the propaganda used by the “forces of imperialistic communism” could be overcome only by the “plain, simple, unvarnished truth.” The Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberation (soon to become Radio Liberty) became part of Truman’s “Campaign of Truth.”

The issues that face us are once again momentous, and we cannot solve them with more Libya-style shots across the bow. We need a new, coherent foreign policy and a new “Campaign of Truth” to deal with our contemporary problems. We also need to go back to Glazov’s book. Some of the most eminent intelligence and political experts involved in implementing NSC 68/1950 and in winning the Cold War are there, telling us how we can use that unique Cold War experience to protect our country today.

Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest Soviet bloc official granted political asylum by the United States. His new book, “Disinformation,” co-authored with professor Ronald Rychlak, is available in the WND Superstore.

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Editor’s note: To watch a video interview in which Jamie Glazov discusses High Noon for America and his other works, see below:

Part I:

Part II: