The Complete Cold War Series w/ Thomas777 - 1/3

narratives be can paramount to characterize these things. But also it's as hard to place one self conceptually in an epoch that has totally passed. You know, I went through that. When when when people like my parents need to talk about the fifties and the sixties and things. You know, I mean, all all people go through that. But you know the reason why I indicated, you know, I want to I'm treating this as kind of the end was

the beginning. Everything that is happening today in political terms and in foreign policy terms, in terms of the in terms of the guiding ideology of Washington. And I say ideology not ideology, is plural because I really do believe that there's a true consensus there. There there's no opposition party in Washington at all. I mean, arguably since nineteen thirty three there hasn't been real opposition, but in discrete policy terms, there was. Now that that no longer exists.

There's an absolute quorum. There's one ideology. There's one strategic vision. There's one there's there's one sense of when intervention and force is is is legitimate, and that that is totally ideologically driven. It's not it's not driven by rategic variables of a realistic, even particularly concrete in nature. You know, it's very much based on a very abstract things and ideological things. But the only way to understand why that is the case, and the only way to understand why

Ukraine is the designated battleground. And the only way to understand why Russia, the Russian Federation as it exists today, has been slated for annihilation UH is to understand how the Cold War resolved and why it resolved the way it did. So to begin, I'm going to go back to the last sort of conflict cycle of the Cold War very briefly, to speak on Dayton. Dayton was born

in two things. For those that don't know Dayton was it was a It was an It was an explicit and series of implicit agreements between the United States and so Union warsaw pack to not engage in direct strategic competition. Part of this over the act that UH America was losing the Cold War militarily, not just in Vietnam, but

on secondary battlefronts like Angola. The the Indo Pakistan War was very much an attempt to UH, owing to the UH, to the then NACI sent of Soviets split that the Soviet turnist and hedging China with with India, you know, being a huge populous country. Pakistan was kind of the American response to that, you know, creating trying to cultivate Pakistan as a proxy. But these things are not going well,

and obviously direct intervention. There's this weird period between the end of the military draft and you know, the the the kind of full development of the all volunteer force and the full development implementations becoming known of the revolution and military affairs, you know, the entailerything from command to control technology to global positioning intelogy you know, to uh too,

smart munitions becoming the norm rather than the exception. Okay, there's a strange kind of period between those two things where the US Army was operating on a shoe string budget. I mean the whole not just the army, the whole military. There was no political will in Washington for the overseas communism in the Third World in Europe to become very stagnant.

But in the Third World it had this great animating power, and there were the Soviets were blessed with a great deal of proxies who were already in being, you know, uh in cadri with a full cadre structure, and you know, men under arms that could facilitate military outcomes that very much benefited the Soviets. All they really needed was a constant to play of weapons, and the Soviets could kind

of take a hands off approach. So from about nineteen seventy three onward, you know, this this kind of this kind of strategic paradigm ragned. However, during that period, the technology that that underpins strategic nuclear weapons dramatically improved, you know, owing to the over to the early revolution in computing technology, to going to increase improved circular error probable from you know, things like the space program, you know, and just owing

the owing the real satellite technology. We'll get into that a minute. What I mean, you know what it we take for granted that satellite imaging, you know, gives you a real time picture of the battle space, but that was not the case until the late nineteen seventies, probably until nineteen eighty. Okay, so uh, this endured until nineteen

seventy nine. In nineteen seventy nine, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Uh, and that really alarmed people because, for reasons we ate into in a moment beyond the obvious, it was misunderstood why that happened. I know, mister Trump said it was to fight Islamic terrorism. That doesn't make any sense. Other people claim that, well, it was the president doctrine you know that being that the Soviet Union declared that it would intervene on behalf of the socialist community of nation

is to preserve socialism. Okay, that was the rationale, the pretext. What it really was was that outside of Moscow, the primary command and control hub for Soviet strategic nuclear forces was in Kazakhstan or was it, Yeah, it was in Kazakhstan, Okay, And that's why not accidentally that for Star City is you know where the Soviet Union and later of the

Russian Federalation you'll, launched their space vehicles from. So if Afghanistan could be flipped or could have been flipped and transformed into a Western client state with basing rights there, uh, the Soviets have been looking at a situation where there there's strategic nuclear command and control would be decavitated, you know, at least a substantial portion of it, and that was not acceptable now and drop of even the bredgion that was at the hell Andy drop off was really kind

of the that the shadow executive of the Soviet Union. You know, the Soviet political structure was very not just because the party in the state were were interstitially combined with one another, but because who was the true executive, you know, varied, you know, generally it was a man will a communitions have all offices, you know, like the UH. He'd often would be a man who held both the

premiership and the General Secretary of the Communist Party. Other times it was it was it was far more UH Opigue and UH and drop off reigned formally as UH as as as you know, the the General Secretary from eighty two to eighty four, but I'd argue that probably fromout nineteen sixty nine he was a true shadow executive of the Soviet Union, and he was a very brilliant guy.

And the world as its structured today and the fate of the Soviet Union and decisions made therein for better and ill o very much dimster and drop of, But it was his decision doing vade Afghanistan, and he was looking many steps ahead in terms of, you know, the implications for the strategic nuclear balance and UH, the ability of the Soviet Union to survive the Ball from the Blue nuclear assault, which was a real concern for reasons we'll get into. And it's some it's difficult to emphasize

how dangerous it was. They have two superpowers fully mobilized with massive nuclear arsenals on hair trigger alert at all time when the technological curve was really moving towards removing human decision makers from the equation. You know, the only to with the narrowing temporal window of decision making in the event of nuclear war, this is really becoming out of it was really kind of becoming removed from human hands.

You know, technology is it's own momentum and societies at scale where you're talking about literally hundreds of millions of people and you know, thousands on thousands on thousands of aggregate decisions, you know, can vote control or trajectory of

that massive state. You know, these these things can't just easily be moved one or the other and the perial breaks cancas be put on an apparatus of that scope, scale and complexity, you know, Like I mean, this is this is fundamental to understanding the do you.

how nukes were being overseen. Do you think that that because of the way that could have turned into a disaster, they possibly thought that, well, if we turned this over into more of a even starting to talk about AI and things like that, it would be better than having humans handle.

I want to kind of deal with this now. By the nineteen eighties, you know where true parody existed when the superpowers in terms of strategic nuclear forces and being as well as capabilities, a bolt on the blue strike if launched by hypersonic cruise missiles from Europe against the Soviet Union, they would have as little as five minutes to render a decision on retaliation. The United States would have longer, but we're talking about eight to fifteen minutes

in the case of the United States. I'm not gonna bore people with the details. Ifought that would have played out, it would have involved things like an SLBM assault launched at the depressed trajectory, the spoof early warning systems detonating a groundburst detonation. Thus an e MP would knock out remaining early warning. But the point is, like, imagine the situation where, okay, you know, if IF IF IF policy is to you know, even the policy it's to launch

on warning, not launch on confirmation of assault. It's like, okay, it's two in the morning, you know, American time, or in Moscow. You wake up the way of the United States, or you wake up the General Secretary. You know, you say, mister President, you know, we we just received what confirmation like incoming assault. He's got eight minutes to decide, like how he's gonna retaliate, if he's gonna retaliate, what their

retali he's gonna entail. What force is gonna be availed to it, whether it's gonna be countervol counterforcement, not counter value, whether it's gonna be you know, full spectrum attack. That it's we're at the point where this too totally academics, that's not possible. Okay. So the idea was you've got to be able to discern absolute indicators before you know, not not just before launch detection, but before even was considered early morning detection. If you could code those indicators

into variables that could be rendered as inputs. Then your AI could tell you when you're facing imminent assault. But the problem with that is, like when do you decide, when do you decide to launch? Is that when there's an over a fifty percent probability of him in an attack, When when it's eighty percent, when it's anything over ten percent, you know, when it's five percent. You know, these deeper parodies make this incredibly difficult. But regardless, there was a

secondary issue too. And I'm gonna get into this now because this is a perfect kind of way to kind of slide into it. As Dayton ended Carter, who gets a batter wrap and that don't get me wrong, Carter was not a good president, but he was not a terrible man. He was actually a very moral man and he did some good things. One of the good things he did was in nineteen seventy nine Carter Carter tacked

William Odum. It was a general, very brilliant guy. Odum was rare because he kind of had the logistical brilliance of Omar Bradley, but he was also a real warrior, you know, he was like a soldier's general. He understood combat. He really understood nuclear weapons. Okay, I think it's kind of a counterpart in the total counterpart would be somebody

like Blackjack Pershing. But William Odom went through the presidential decision making a handbook and literally something that existed for nuclear war, and it was incredibly opig It was incredibly obtuse, It was not up to speed in terms of the technology of the day, and it didn't give the president any real ability to to It didn't give any liberty

of action respective war plan. Now part of that is because it was a drafted in literally ninety sixty five, So basically what it entailed it and in the core of this of this presidential handbook was the was the PSYOP, not the psychological operation, the SIOP, the single Integrated Operational Plan, because this day there's an SIOP, but it is totally

different and it's changed many times. But as of nineteen seventy nine, it was this arcane document that was no longer relevant, and it basically gave the president a handful of menu options. It was literally listed as response menu. It was counter value and counter force assault against the Soviet Union. All warsaw pack states were strategic nuclear forces are based and the same for the People's Republic in China. There's another menu option that was the same thing for

China and the USSR and war's unpacked. There's another menu option that was the reverse. There's another one that was just strictly counterfeit, strictly counterforce, no counter value. A lot of this came from the fact they were talking about a moment ago about satellites. Okay, until about nineteen eighty or like nineteen seventy nineteen eighty, US satellites that would that would provide data on the basing location of enemy forces.

There were always several weeks out of date because these satellite to take their pictures, the little film would be deposited a canister that cancer would fall to earth and be recovered from the ocean. It would be retrieved, developed and analyzed. So somebody were talking about months out of

date information. And one of the things that Soviets did, which was kind of cunning in its simplicity, rather than a veiling their land based ICBMs and to the super hardened structures, they put them on trucks and mobile launch vehicles. Like everybody's seeing the footage, I mean, at least if you're a kid like when I was, you know, there'd

be these ominous as hell. Uh uh, they'd be this ominous A little footage from the Moscow military parades, these SS nineteen, these huge ICBMs on these trucks, you know literally okay, they were they moving them around every single day, you know. Uh. And that the spoof uh, the spoof enemy targeting. And there's like the totally crazy stuff like by the by the mid eighties NSA satellites and d I satellites, they were photographing the soil and the Soviet

Union and East Germany. Uh to detect tracks from these vehicles because based on their depth, you could tell if the payload with some you know, with something of the wave in SS nineteen or not. Like it's totally insane, like not insane as and stupid or bad like, but like totally insane, like the amount of work and and like man hours that went into this, you know, uh,

people can't even can see with somebody today. But so what Carter and Odom decided was there was another thing too that was disturbing what the SIOP and the entire

the entire response plan. It was that by the time, by the state of technology of nineteen seventy nine, it was just accepted that in the event of a bolt from the Blue assault or an unforeseen escalation of conventional war wherein you know, the enemy, the enemy just you know, goes on in you know, escalates the counter value nuclear assault, it was just accepted that the president would be dead

and all civilian decision makers would be dead. So the only people who would be able to manage the response would be strategic air Command based as they were in a super hard in places like Sheyan Mountain as well as in the looking Glass aircraft that was the airborne command post. That's really disturbing. It's also damn when constitutional you can't craft a war plan and be with an

article be parameters. That's says, well, the president's gonna die, so you know general powers or general to may or general so and so he's not that de facto president, you know, he's he's he's lord high executioner, and that he's totally in control of the strategic nuclear forces. But also he's just like the reigning like government official who's going to survive, so it all comes down to him. That's a very dangerous situation. Among other things, and also

like I said, patently, and Gon's a divisional. Carter said, that's not acceptable. So what Carter did was he ordered Owe him to draft a a comprehensive response plan. Basically, bring the SIOP up to speed, account for deeper parodies, account for up to the moment intelligence that could be gleaned from you know, the then contemporary satellite systems that would allow for h you know, instantaneous retargeting as needed

and things like this. Carter demanded that there be that part of this plan include designated civilian national command authorities. You know, basically the president and his cabinet would all be issued these ID cards that all had a code, okay,

and the code would constantly change. But these men and a handful of women are in the cabinet, the executive cabinet, they have to every day, they'd have to report on their whereabouts and if they left the ad Distion of Columbia, they have to report like every hour as to where they were. So they and there was a series of military bases and hardness structures that they would be designated to travel to wherever they were an event of war.

So basically, long story short, a system was put into place. This was not completed until about ninety eighty forty five, but the system was in place where in there was no way that every civilian mansional command authority would be killed. Okay, there would always be someone who could manage the war on behalf of the executive and the civilian leadership. Okay, there's other things too, But what this basically what this

all came down, you're taken together. This meant that, owing to the technology of the time and then the evolving state of warfare, command and control, uh, smart munitions, everything else, it became America was planning to in event of nuclear war, to fight and win a nuclear war. This caused I'll get the consternation from people who didn't really understand deeper parodies,

even some people who should have. You know, people had this ongoing kind of delusion that d MAD was one part kind of talking point, one part kind of in joke of within the nuclear fraternity in the earliest days. Mutually assured destruction is not literally mean the end of everything. Assured destruction is a victory metric and strategic nuclear warfare.

It's the point at which an enemy society can no longer reconstitute the wage war it's basically the point the attrition point at which you kill an enemy society, which is a horrific metric because in the case of the Soviet Union or America as a nineteen seventy is that entailed about seventy or eighty million people. Okay, But this idea that the only reason nuclear weapons exists is to make sure they're never used like that, that's an absurdity.

And it's also it just wasn't by the nineteen seventies. The nineteen seventies, you had you had multiple independently targeted re entry vehicles, you had decoys, you have ways to spoof early warning radar, you had hypersonic missile platforms that that uh that that that wouldn't you know that that didn't that didn't even travel on ballistic trajectory. Like it was totally obsolescent. And uh, as William Otem said, he said, look uh he said at the time, and he read it,

he read it. Reiterated later to one of his biographers, He's like, I had an obligation that if America was attaged with nuclear weapons, I had an obligation, you know, in contro with the president, to fight and win a nuclear war. And he's absolutely right with the other kind of perverse feature of mad and that kind of whole ethos it's like I'm obligated to commit suicide and so it was like, you know, eighty million other people because oh, we failed in our effort to maintain peace to the

balance of terror. Like it's there's something crazy about it, but that's uh, that's basically what ushered in the final phase of the Cold War. Now I want to fast forward a bit to, uh, what exactly happened when, uh, it became clear that not just cracks in the edifice of the Soviet Empire emerging, but that there was a genuine structural crisis underway. And part of our this developed, oh, is the personalities quite literally of George Herbert Walker Bush

and Mikhail Gorbachew. Now, mister Bush, I've got to drop some biographical biographical background on Bush if it was to make any sense. I'm not trying to bore anybody. Bush was a very dynamic guy, frankly, and he's not a well loved individual, and that's fine. I'm not saying people should like Bush it and like morally or think that, you know, he was like a good man or something, but he had an incredibly in depth understanding of the

nuances of the strategic balance under the Cold War. But he was head of the CIA in nineteen seventy four when something very controversial happened see the US. As I made the point before and the Rady in context, the CIA really lost its cachet in the sixties and subsequently with the Gates hearings. And it wasn't just that people were morally outraged by things like the Phoenix program, which

they put squarely on the shoulders of CIA. And when really kind of responsibility if you want to look at that way, if you do this as a great evil kind of arrested equally with Army intelligence and mcavee, SAG the Pentagon itself. But you know, one of the reasons this is misplaced and people that like CIA is kind of the the seat of of of deep state power, it's really not. And it was really really low by a lot of very hawkish Cold warriors. So something happened

in nineteen seventy four. There's something of this day that is that is corralled by UH the intelligence services called the National Intelligence Estimate. It's it's become kind of meaningless now because intelligence and the whole all intelligence game is totally different today. And we could do an episode on that if if anybody's interested, but I'm not gonna deep dive into that because that's just too much kind of

collateral stuff. But the UH, it was the belief of UH everybody from you know, kind of hawkish senators and congressmen, you know, to Pentagon types, two guys in army intelligence, you know, to UH, to UH, to round Reagan himself, who you know, as early as as as the mid seventies, you know, had his eyes on a White House bid. You know, the believes that the CIA was not feeding they were not feeding good data to UH, to those

to whom they were accountable, civilian or military. The claim was that they were consistently underestimating Soviet capabilities as well as just kind of internal dynamics from that so within the Soviet Union, relating to the leadership cast, as well as relating to probable decisions that the Soviets would make and when confronted with with with with crises, with crises both of man and without their sphere of influence. So it was proposed that what was called Team B be

corralled as a competitive analysis exercise. Now, what was the mandate of quote unque Team b Uh? There it was commissioned to aggregate and analyze data from diverse sources basically any available intelligence sources that were then relied upon, Okay, to judge the accuracy, comprehensive nance the predictive value of the national intelligence estimate of the preceding several years. Okay, Now, the folks at Team be it was sixteen experts total, and I'll get into who those men were in just

a minute. They were divided into three teams, okay, or yeah, teams or classes if you will. One of them was to study specifically low altitude Soviet air defense capabilities, which again I don't want to bore anybody, but this relates to things uh you know, UH stealth technology didn't exist yet, but it was understood that this was in the wings and even were it not, platforms like the like what

became the B one bomber. H. You know. The idea was that you can fly below conventional radar strikes super harden targets with uh with very very heavy uh nuclear weapons. Uh you know, this most effective way to knock knock out uh these counterforce targets. So even even though it seems like overly specific and esoteric, I mean, that's that's

why this was such and such a priority. Okay, the study of low effect that those and capabilities of low altitudes pesically low altitude Soviet there def it's capabilities in places like Moscow, in places like Kazakhstan. Okay. Another team was a study the accuracy of land based Soviet and more so packed ICBMs. Okay, the circular error probable. Traditionally, the Soviets larded their their launch vehicles and warheads that

had absolutely massive throw weight. So even if they lost a substantial amount of them, you know, it's ah to ABM technology. Those that hit would would would be absolutely devastating. That's kind of how they resolve the you know the issue. I mean America at every different Amora's ethos kind of

the opposite. Remember's idea was eventually, you know, to create basically smart munitions uh on strategic play in in in the strategic arsenal and pepper the target area with with sub megaton warheads, which which is far far more devastating than one massive uh UH device. For reasons I don't fully understand. I'm sure physics guys could like shift some light on. And finally, and most importantly, the third, you know team, within Team B, there were always to study

Soviets strategic priorities and how this interface with policy orientation. Basically, what's the Soviets the Soviet what's the Soviet doctrin on nuclear war? Like when would they truly escalate? And beyond that in more and more kind of global figuratively little terms like what is their grand strategy? Like how does the Soviet Union aim to increase its power in this

kind of uncertain epoch that we're entering now. Who was on this team and you're gona understand, You're going to understand why I made a big deal about Bush and Uh and Uh like Bush the man in personality, This

team was headed by Richard Pipes Uh. It included Uh, Daniel Graham, William Van Cleeve, uh foy D Kohler, Seymour Weiss, Paul Wolfowitz, and Paul Knits, who'd been the creator of the Committee and the Present Danger in nineteen fifty, which over over time at various iterations, all of which basically it's it's it's not really relevant now, but that was always kind of the uh that that was always that was that was GONDA, the that was the Plitable Action

Committee of Cold War hawks. Okay. Now, if you notice from that list that has ticked off these like the Fathers and neo Conservatism, not philosophically but in policy terms, that is not an accident, okay. And these guys basically were saying, well, Busch's CIA is totally competence and they do not know what they're doing. Okay. And uh. Thus, when Bush was brought on board as Reagan's VP, Reagan

was surrounded with neo conservatives as advisors. And I would go as far as to argue people like Oliver North, people like Poindexter, people like l. Hag who didn't last long in Middle these guys were ultra hawkish, but they were not Innoka. And so however, Neocon's very much had Reagan's ear, and Reagan himself is something of a Neocon. Okay, he was in He was a Roosevelt new dealer who you know, had a kind of Sall and the Road in Damascus moment in the UH in the post war years. Okay, Uh,

I mean that's a whole another issue. But so Bush was basically the company man who who was Reagan's press admission of the White House, and Bush and Reagan did not like each other. And when Bush found himself elected president, he was surrounded by men, uh who had gone on to very story and powerful roles in a policy planning corners and the national security apparatus, who were very, very hostile to his worldview and who did not view him

as particularly competent. Okay, Bush tried to insulate himself with with with his own loyalists, and I think he did that in large measure. You know, people like Baker, people like Scowcroft. He's kind of a complicated figure in terms of his values. He had Neo Connage tendencies. But first and foremance he was loyal to Bush. And uh when

Bush took office, you know, uh February nineteen eighty nine. Again, not only was this kind of TV faction that would much later he become kind of known to the public as you know, the Neocon Cabal, some aspect of it at least. Uh. Not only were they insinuated very much into the into the national security apparatus, but you know, certain expectations have been raised by Reagan. You know, Reagan and Gorbachev. Uh had this tremendous report and that was legit,

That was that was real. That wasn't. Bush found the speed of things very alarming. A few months before Bush took uh before inauguration day, Bush actually tad Henry Kissinger, and he asked him to contact Gorbachev's and intermediary. Kissinger secretly traveled to Moscow and he met with Gorbachev and Kissinger explained as ordered that there would not be a

steamless transition of administrations from Reagan to Bush. And Groza was kind of put out by this as well as taken aback, you know, and Garbachhaw said, well, why what Kisnder articulated was exactly what Bush instructed him to. He said, Look, there's a danger here of a structural and political nature. You know, a reckless US president could totally derail the transition away from communism. You know, there could be a coup of hardliners, which there was, and we'll get into that,

but that was not until what it appeared. Uh, there could be uh there gonna be open civil war between the nationalities, and that did happen in some theaters. Uh, there could be a complete Weimar style collapse, which also did happen to some degree. What Kissinger relayed in essence was Bush had told him, you know, an American president could be much to derail the transition away from communam, but could do little to grease the skids, UH to

the facility of the projects more rapidly. Now to understand what Bush's vision was, it was a lot like Nixon's. After Nixon left office, Now, as you probably remember about my age, he Nixon kind of got a second lease on life by the mid late mid to late nineteen eighties. He wrote some very good books on the strategic situation. He wrote a lot about the Cold War, which frankly was Nixon's like raison detrop and you know, and even he was even tapped by CNN during the Gulf War

like not infrequently show it before he died. But Nixon and Bush, their idea was this. Their idea was that we can preserve the Soviet Union as some kind of

benign structure, at least for the time being. You know, what what has to be paramount is total nuclear disarmament and UH and then gradual demobilization of conventional forces until such that they're drawn down to basically nothing more than the kind of Weimar style, you know, constabulary force to manage internal life or ethnic conflict or things like this.

In Bush's case, it was very much a kind of it was very much kind of the vision of Roosevelt that you know, the United States and the Soviet Union would kind of govern the planet literally with you know, Moscow as a junior partner, but that you know, this massively federated structure that took up literally one sixth of the earth should remain intact because the alternative is just too unpredictable and uh, it seems unrealistic to us, I mean regard regardless of the merit of such things on

their own terms or such concepts with how you've token the art. There's a singular fixation among policy planners after Nuremberg of at all costs is preventing armed conflict. And if you look at government as some kind of progressive instrumentality in in live looking as as either a necessary evil or as a means by which you know, the posterity and historical mission of a people is preserved, you kind of view this as the zenith of government. So the Bush Faction, if you want to call it, that

contra the neo kon or pronoun faction. This was their vision. Okay. In contrast, the guys who had staff Team B and who would now become these gott uber hawks in sinuated into various roles. They viewed the Soviet Union as quite literally evil. They like, that was not i probole, That's the way they looked at it. Some of this was some of this was ethno sectarium going to the background of a lot of these men. Some of it was

was not. It was just you know, guys who are not of that particular background, but who who just viewed it as evil incarnate. So their idea was it had to be destroyed. Now, you know, if we destroy the Soviet Union by open warfare, so be it. If that's what you know, God or or or a fortuna or whatever ordains. Or if we destroy it, you know, by by dismantling it through you know, a detonation strategy of you know, stirring up the nationalities against against against Mother

Russia and against each other. You know, uh, if if we if we destroy it by you know, imposing a kind of looting operation on it that that strips of its natural wealth, strips it of its natural resources and national wealth and control of such commodities they're in. You know, we can just run your act prostrate and impotent. That was the competing viewpoint. And this is not iperbole. These

these people spoke very openly. This Dick Cheney uh went on a record as saying quite literally quote fuck them. They lost when confronted with, you know, the kind of Bush Baker vision which seems incredibly reckless from metals to your politics. But this, uh, this said the uh, this is the effect of really kind of really kind of driving a wedge between Bush and GORBACHEWF. And this this was, uh, this is exacerbated because one of uh when when one

of Bush's first acts as president, he visited Poland. You know, in Poland was kind of ground zero of anti Soviet not just the anti Soviet sentiment, but of organized resistance, you know, like Valenca and the solidarity movement. Bush did not like Valenza. It's I think part of that was kind of inherent snobbery because Valentza was very much a proletarian. I think bushvidiam is a rail rouser. What Bush did was he met with General Geraldzelski. And again, if I'm

butchering these names. I apologize every bed with that. I don't like any any Slavic guys or girls of listening, like don't hesitate to correct me in the comments or whatever. But I'm not good with these pronunciations. But gerald Zelski was an interesting guy. Uh. He was the only military man who was a chief of state of a warsaw pet state, which is interesting to me at least because tone deaf is. The Soviets were like as bad as

their optics were. Uh, they realized in some basic way that they couldn't just install you know these like military uh strong men in the several satellite states. But Poland, this is I mean, Poland was under martial law from from nineteen eighty eighty one onward. But Geraldzelski was a tragic guy. You know. He he looked ominous because it was in uniform and he'd wear these really dark sunglasses.

Jeraldzelski's eyes were ruined by snow blindness. He was a he was a Polish and he was he was he was a Polish national of noble birth when the Soviets invaded eastern Poland in nineteen thirty nine, owing to his parentage and and pedigree. He was sent to a gulag and uh spent years at hard labor and uh the glare off the snow ruined his eyes. But he you know, was telling too that he was that the Soviets had

to rely on him. You know that there really really there there were no there were no dedicated Polish Communists, you know, it was it was more of a the the pole Communists. Poland was more of a contribance even than the D d R or any or anything else within the Warsaw deck structure, which is interesting. But Bush and Geraldzelsky had a certain rapport, and Bush went as far as to convinced gerald Zelski to stand for president when uh, when Poland UH had their first multi party election.

And Bush was criticized roundly and uniformly for that. But his notion was, uh that you know, Gerlzelski, once uh, the once the once Moscow's boot is no longer on the neck of the Polish nation figuratively and literally. A man like Gerlzelski can really rise to the occasion. And I understand that even if that's not realistic in context. But this was Bush's notion, Okay, and it was his defense.

What he said later in his own words, were he wasn't gonna go to he wasn't going to visit the Eastern Block and go on thumping his chest and trying to stick it to the Soviets that their system was crumbling. And he also would loud really large over US policy, you know, in nineteen fifty three, in nineteen fifty six, in ninety sixty eight, the Soviets these were and square level UH interventions or and crackdowns on the people, first

in East Germany, then in Hungary, then Czechoslovakia. There was an understanding among among in not just Bush, but among you know, people on kind of both sides of the divide in terms of how to proceed with the situation developing in the East, that if we push this too hard or get too greedy in terms of demanding results and demanding too much too soon, and we we may we may see you know, some kind of we may see some kind of stalin his backlash and and UH

a full scale invasion of Poland then and and it would be a massacre. So I'm not I'm not sitting here saying again that people should like it was forty one or should like share that view, but I'm just trying to give a balanced perspective. And it was his view was not born of some kind of Simpleton's delusion, even if it was not realistic. But what, uh, what ultimately did happen was, uh, it was very interesting and

really conspiratorial, kind of figuratively and literally. And again we're kind of gonna come back to the CIA and it's incompetence. And I know people think I overstate this, but consider this William Crowe. He was another general who was gonna he would have been considered something like a minister without portfolio served a European government. But he was close to Bush forty one and Baker and spoke Croft and that

whole coterie. He said, the CIA literally in mid nineteen eighty nine, he said there was still there were still showing dispatches that spoke about the USSR as if it was twenty years earlier. They were claiming that Gorbachev was simply a biting the bresident doctrine. But you know, he was reluctant to deploy force because he was trying to lull the West into a false sense of security. It's like they were in in In Crow's words, he said, it says if the CIA didn't never see the news.

He said it was as if like they'd take just kind of official dispatches from East Berlin or Moscow kind of knock a percentage off, and the credibility you then released that is basically you know fat you know, oh the East Berlin says that you know, the that the regime of Strowger than ever that must be true, or you know, the like like Grochev's the General secretary and he says there's gonna be no, you know, they're not gonna they're not gonna drop the planet economy and the

Soviet Union will remain. So that's that's the fact. I mean, I'm not I'm not using that probably that this this was literally what they were saying. And I mean that anybody again thinks the CIA is like the seat of of shadow of government or the intelligence community has got to consider that Defense intelligence really, I mean not forget the tangent, but but defense intelligence, the d i A. They really they really got of became the guts of

US intelligence in a basic way. Okay them the n s A and you know, uh a lot of quasi private uh entities that you know, our contract and things like that. But the as everybody knows, uh, the great foil to gorbich Off is Yelston. But Yelton's the sentence. Yelton was not this kind of great democratizer. I mean he he's viewed that way because uh, you know he uh he was kind of the king of the referendum.

But you know it's not people have this idea, I think because it's byzantine literally, but also like memories are short, I mean, including my own. I'm not saying I'm like above this or something. People seem to remember this as you know, there was a you know, the Soviet Union finally held elections, Yelton beat Gorbachev, and then there was some kind of referendum to dismantle the Soviet Union. Like

that's not what happened when Yelson seized the power. It's what Gorbachev was, you know, kidnapped by the koup lotters. Yelton presieded to raise to the Russian White House declare himself for all practical purposes President of the Russian Federation. Upon ascending to that role, and I mean there was a referendum insinuating him into that role, he declared the

Soviet Union to be abolished. So the office is Gorbachev held's a General Secretary of the Communist Party ceased to hold any meaning because the entity that Gorbachev held that office in was was abolished by Dick Todd, which is very strange. Now, who are Yeltsin's backers. There's a combination of kind of radical reformers, you know, these uh, these kind of uh this kind of wild West capitalist types who kind of saw the looming anarchy as a as

as opportunities for great proper potential. But it was also a lot of stalin As hardliners who uh hated gorbachew Now why did they back Yelson? I mean the kind of conventional wisdom as well. They just wanted power in the new regime. I don't know if it's that simple, man. I think some of them thought that Yelson would rook Garbicheff. Yeah, they have to settle for a rumpt state of just you know, Russia basically. But I think they thought that Yelton was just gonna return things to the status quo

after that. But then he didn't, And why didn't he do that? I think he was basically bought off by you know Team B the Oconn faction, like fearatively and literally bought off. I can't prove that with receipts, but I I've thought about this a lot, I've studied a lot, and I've read a lot of direct testimony in the in the epoch, I I think that's what happened. Now. Also, you know, Putin became Yelton's successor, and Putin had a variety of roles, like some some more prestigious than others,

and at certain junctures he was sidelined. I mean that never in In in some disgraceful way. But the fact that Putin himself and Putin is not some hardliner, but he has a product in the old system. Okay, if yelt didn't really was this kind of oren't liberal. I'm using it in these terms, in the terms of the regime employs them. I don't mean that he that's what

he actually is. But if he also has got this arch capitalist or former you know, neoliberal ideologue, like he would not have had men like Provement in his orbit. He would not have he would have had him take he would not have made him taken up a shot or something but these guys would have been pensioned off and and and sent far away from from Moscow furgively

and literally. But again I'm not I don't speak Russian or read it, and I'm not some kind of expert on the Russian people, their culture or the Soviet Union. But I am convinced that that's what that's what happened. It. Uh, there's also something that people got to consider, the other kind of factor or constellation of factors that rooked and pushed his vision. And uh, I don't want to go off track, because this is its own topic that's very dense, but you know, the casting of Sloping on the Lilow

as this mass murdering nationalist extremists. He was the State Department's guy, and he was the guy who was viewed as the moderate they could work with by Washington, and Boyce very much wanted to keep you with Slavia together. What happened was Helmut Cole, who I think was about as as nationalists as any is any chance that the Buddhist Republic could be or can be. When two Jamon's Croatian it cleared independence, Cole recognized them immediately, and then

the die was cast. There was gonna be war in the Balkans, and that was key to forming contemporary identities. That's why, in a very proximate way, and I'm sen directly, the Slavic Orthodox identity became paramount again. That's why Bosniaks became very Maslem. Again. There's a whole lot of a national soldialist inclined German guys who like Ingo Hasselbach was. He was not an attractive guy, but he was a skin ahead and he was he was very involved in in in the in the right wing and in the DDR.

You know, he and his people recruited a bunch of Germans to go fight for Croatia. And this was very real. There's not some This was not some Ukraine kind of situation of guys, you know, kind of pretending to be things they're not and and strange kind of propagandasm really makes sense like this, this really was, uh a kind of a kind of return to to to Europe's identitarian status quo. Now in the wake of this, uh, you know, obviously the view that run out was not that won out,

was not the Bush forty one view. And you know, the what was also in my opinion kind of Nixon view. Although he had Bush part of the ways and key issues, what went out was the Neo con view. Literally, and what you're seeing Ukraine is the culmination of this kind of thirty year effort of the detonation strategy of radicalizing the nationalities. Like that's what it is. It also has to do with preventing Europe from a from a you know, becoming at all autonomous, because a Russian German concord is

is really what is the path that's superpowered them? Okay, but and I mean no, I mean ron there's many many guys in Washington who don't care about Ukraine or Russia, and that's their notion. However, the faction we're talking about, they very very much have an ancestral hatred of Russia and they very very much abide this idea that you know, the structures rotten, it should be destroyed. If we can utilize Ukraine as a kind of torpedo, so be it.

You know, if we can any way we can, any way we can, we can facilitate the real detonation on on the frontier. We want to do it. Uh, it's really that simple. But that's I know, it seems like I jumped around a lot, but these are the key developments to understanding what happened. And like I said, next time, we'll we'll start out with the Berlin Airlift. I think that's a good starting point because, as I guess there, that have to be the start of the Cold War, Okay,

and from there we'll go in like linear terms. But I thought that this was important. I hope I didn't bore anybody or put anybody off by doing it that way. But that's, uh, that's I think we're all stop for now.

You know, there's that famous people People think Caucuss is kind of Howard Dean stream scream moment is when he was writing in that tank, like looking like an idiot with like a homon like the wrong way, you're trying to.

I mean, I think Caucuss was uh. I think docungss was was a tackling dummy who was he was a four inclusion that that people wanted another Reagan term and they weren't gonna get that obviously. And Bush was the closest thing. And even though Bush was very very at odds with the Reagan and people associated them, I mean just I mean, you know how voters are, especially in

those days. Yeah, of course, yeah, any any even a guy like Mondale kind of an old kind of an old line, more running the mill democratic than Kaye's kind of a weird nominee. You know. He was like like, I'm not being pressed, but he was. He was like this ethnic politician, franky. Yeah, even a more traditional U kind of Democrat, he would have had real problems, especially if at a hospital Congress. But it's also the U,

I do believe. And Bush made this point too. I mean, despite everything I just said about Bush's Bush very very very much believed in negotiating the end of the Soviet negotiating with the Soviet unions that ended from position of very very profound strength, okay, And I think that was essential. I think it overla like a conciliatory executive who'd approached the Soviet who'd approached kind of the failing Soviet Union as hey, what we want to re establish Theayton That

could have been a game changer. Maybe one thing to temb Coterie was right about. If they were right about anything. I think wolf Fords himself, I think, is the source of this and I agree with it, and I don't I say a wolf Witz at all. He said that Soviet Union by nineteen seventy four to seventy five, I was said of the Third World, nobody had any respect from Marxist Leninism people in the Soviet Union. Their quality of life was better than the Third World, but not

by hell of a lot. Nobody believed that, you know, the Soviet Union was leading the world and the sciences or something. All the Soviet Union had was arguably the world's mightiest military arguab with the mightiest army that ever existed. If the only thing, the only thing making you a superpower is your military and the fact you've got eight thousand uh nuclear weapons, that changes things. That means power projection becomes becomes overvalued. It means the entire discourse within

the state apparatus kind of orbits around hard power. And that's very what happened North Korea today. Yeah, it's superpower scale. I mean that's and I the so this idea that the Soviet Union was bent on world domination in a very in a in a very concrete and brutal way. I believe that the United State has been on world domination. Two. But the United States had a way of subverting on societies other than you know, we're going to level you

and decimate you and genocide you. I mean, America would do that too if they had to, but that wasn't just like the option of first recourse. And I have no doubt. And Gorbio his memoirs made this point, if this, if every about every decade, okay, ninety fifty, in ninety sixty two, nine seventy three, and eighty three, the world came closer, very very close to nuclear war, and each time arguably it was like even closer like the Cold War,

and definitely continued. I mean, let's take continue to like the late nineties just even and so like by nineteen ninety five ninety six, you know, nuclear weapons are basically all now in space, you know, and it's okay, like that was like a three minute warning time, you know, basically like the Soviets like blank, It's like, okay, we got to destroy them. I mean, like, what would happen then in a crisis, you know, or like it eventually it would have happened. That would mean the world would

have ended. But there would have been probably forty million people dead or like one hundred million people dead, and that would have changed everything. Man, that would have changed life on earth forever, like not in like horror movie terms, but the terminator. But if like a hundred million people died in nuclear war, like the world would never be the same, you know. And it's in ways we can't

even imagine, you know, I mean think about that. It so, I mean one of the things that so one of the reasons the Soviet Union, even guys I think believe I know this, even guys who believe in the system, they knew they had to find a way out of the Cold War, Like they knew it. Because again, this technology cannot be controlled. And people think it's and I'm not just saying people are dumb or something. They just

don't have a comparative basis. People think that something like the Soviet Union of nineteen eighty five, it's not like you know, the office you work at, even of a big company of like fifty thousand people, Like, it's not something like any one man or one hundred men or a thousand men can just control you know. It's like, once once the apparatus gets in motion towards kind of a nuclear war vector, that's just what it's going to happen,

you know. And I mean that that was what was happening, you know, and this was not some paradoig fantasy or something, you know. I mean, so that's one of the reasons. I guess I'm kind of I've got kind of a I've got kind of a like like guys in the right set, you've got like a soft view of Bush, for one. I mean maybe I do. I don't know, but I mean whatever, I don't care what people think about my takes on on on chief executives of history.

But there was like what it is described didn't happen, okay, and some of that we owe to people like Bush. Okay. Uh yeah, the Cold Wars would have happened in the first place. You know, World War can not have happened, but but it did happen. So that's where we were at. You gotta judge things in their epoch. So that's I realize. That's the name complete answer, the best the best I can do. That's a great question, thank you. Yeah.

it's like you're getting. If you're getting smoked by Bush, you know, it's like you've got you're not a viable candidate. See docs was a weird like a guy like greetor Scott Greer. He'd be a good guy to take that up with because like he, I mean, he knows like electoral politics like the back of his hands, Like I really don't. I mean I know the outcome, but it's I don't have like deep takes on that stuff generally, But do Coucress was a weird He was a weird

nominee man. He definitely was. He definitely was.

never actually violated Twitter in terms of service. I'm not just saying like I never have, you know, but I've been banned like half a dozen times. But you can find me there at Triskellian Jahad. The first t is number seven, but I'll post it's posted up in my substack and stuff and just go there. And I mean, for all I know, in like two days won't be there anymore. So it's and I am launching the day and YouTube channel. Please don't think I'm being a total flake.

I've just had a lot on my plate in terms of content and like other stuff. But I it is moving forward. I got an announcement. I think people will be happy about him. I'm debating the jfk assassination in a few days with a guy that I got a lot of respect for and he's actually a college professor of the right kind. He's like a right wing history but he does agree with me profound me so that people will dig that. I'm going to do it on a live stream, so well, I'll hit people to that.

And that's what I got. And thank you very much, Pete. I really appreciate your hosting me. I really, I really appreciate people watching and comment and stuff. I really mean that, I'm not just being poor.

going to remain relevant for the foreseeable future. And this is approximately caused by the Cold War. And if we're talking about anything of a foreign policy nature or anything relating to the strategic situation as it stands in twenty twenty two, where we're talking about phenomenon events and even personages like the primary players are our people who who's who can only be understood in the context of the

Cold War. And also some of the fellas on t GRAM we're asking some questions about the topic, and we

can get into some of those two. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that they were asking, some of which is kind of like ahead of where we're at on the timeline, some of which relates more to the revision of stuff we were dealing with with a second World War, but a long last moving forward, we'll cover all of those, But I just briefly I'm not some poll watcher like our friend Scott Career, DJ Scutty g uh Internet cereal thriller and uh Beltway kill a but uh,

but I'm not making fun of him. He's a good dude and he's been nice enough to host me on IT show a few times. And I don't know why anybody would do that if they're a reputable person, because I like that seems like I.

That's all I meant. But he's got you know, he's got a real uh. He guys like him and like and like our guy Paul Fahrenheit. I always tap them for kind of their thoughts on on you know, on on during election the season because they're really like clued in to that and I am not. However, uh national elections, Uh, I tend to I tend to pick presidential contest pretty well in primary season. But regardless, I didn't think there's

any big surprises, man. And I know this morning I got on Twitter like that that uh that uh that sling blade guy in Pennsylvania. Uh like Bubba Feder person or whate the fuck his name is or Feder federal woman, federal person. I don't know what he. Uh, I mean they're that and like the he because you know, the diabolical doctor Oz going down in flames made a lot of people upset. But the Republicans, they they won huge in Florida, like statewide and uh jd Vance came after

to Ohio. I mean, grant, I'm not at loop, but I like look at those things as like a win, man. I mean, I like, unless I'm missing something like that's that's a win. And they obviously got twenty twenty. They got the white I was twenty twenty four unless they joined the kind of witch hunt against their guy, mister Trump.

and presidents. I haven't been on it for a minute, but like this morning, like I got all these like got all these Twitter alerts, these like Republican type guys who were not not Scott Greer. He's a very he's a very not only a sensible guy, but he doesn't go in for that kind of stuff. You had to read Balance for you. But a whole bunch of these kind of Internet you know, GOP cheer leaders. They were acting like they were acting like there's some crushing defeat

or something. And so then like I started like looking at their returns, I'm like, what the fuck are they upset about man like im contemporary metrics. That seems like a win. But again, what do I know. I'm I'm a guy who writes about stuff from long ago and speculates about the future. Maybe I don't really like plugged into the present day, but I don't know man like that.

And yeah, the sand this is a phenom I'm not going to be impressed with the saying is I mean as a political operator, like he's dope, he's very good at what he does. And yeah, it's very impressive the way he's been able to flip uh you know, some key some key jurisdic jurisdictions at the local level. But uh, yeah, I I don't. I don't know what they're I don't know why they're crying in their fucking corn flakes. But again I'm not I'm not some pole watcher or some

freaking builtway expert. Quite the contrary. You know down in Texas when you were where people fire up about Trump and stuff or they just kind of like whatever, Oh they.

he was younger. But I thought it was weird that, I mean, to Texas really liked him. You don't forget that W was actually he had a he had a very strong rapport of this constituency in Texas. And then in his first term as president, like this idea that you know, everybody always hated W and he was just this failed politician. That's not true at all. I mean, nobody has to. I don't like the guy, and I nobody nobody should. But he's you know, he he he

did not. You can't simply buy your way uh to uh to competitiveness, no, even especially if anything that might work against you. When I say like textas okay, guy like Bush, So I mean, I yeah, it's but I thought it was weird that of all, I thought it was weird. He struck me as like the kind of twenty first century version of a Rockefeller Republican. And I'm like, why why is Texas like this guy's home base? But I mean, what do wh I know? And he was big on he was big on gun rice, and he

was big pro death and the enemy back. And then he's like those were issues that were kind of still up for grabs. So I don't know.

I think also get some health problems that we're not let on on do because yeah, it wasn't just I mean I remember some of his apologists just being like, oh, he you know, it's just like nerves. He's not used to the office. It's like in Texas is a huge state man, and like he's not. He was not some freshman congressman. He was a fucking governor. You know, you can't tell me he's like scared of the camera or something.

It's you know, he was not. He was. He was compromised in some way, you know, whether it was health related, ing the illness or substance abuse or whatever. And again, like I said, I'm not like putting shade on it. I'm the last person to do that. But but yeah, he was like two different people. It was really weird. I'll see how that foot you're talking about. But we can, we can dive into the Cold Wars. That's something I know a hell of a lot more. I know a

hell of a lot more about than I do. Uh, the goings on in the swamp I kind of wanted to get into. You know, there's this big debate like to this day, and frankly, it's actually some decent scholarship coming out about the Cold War, not as much revision as stuff as I would like. And that's kind of one of the things I believe I'm like here on

earth to do. I mean, I'm not I'm not being melodramatic, Like I really believe that, because like there's not there's a million guys who are World War Two revisionists, and that's dope. That's that's important, Okay, But frankly, there's there's almost nobody dealing with the Cold War and in a critical capacity. So I think we're doing important stuff here in that regard. I mean we always are, but in any event, there's a scholarly debate going on. It's like

when the Cold War ensued. I mean you can't. It's tricky because obviously, when you're talking about a discrete armed conflict, even when it's complicated as as the Second World War, you know, you can kind of identify points at which

the status of relations fundamentally changed. You know, September third, ninety thirty nine, you know, the Western Allies declared war on the German Right, Okay, that starts starting point, Like, yeah, there was hostilities emerging and active before then, but there's not there's not any such point in the Cold War. And the kind of tonal shift, not just in optics and narrative, but in policy, uh, from between the Truman administration that Roosevelt administration was dramatic. I know, people on

our side don't like Truman. I mean, I I've got i Truman was not an evil man. He was not uh, he was not a gangster like Roosevelt. He didn't have the hubris of Roosevelt. I've got mixed feelings about Truman.

I don't think Truman should have been president. Okay, But if we're talking about his moral character, and if we're talking about what constituted his policy orientations with the Soviet Union, he was in a very very difficult position and most of the variables that were framing the decisions he had to make it had nothing to do with his own sympathies. You know, he quite literally inherited this bizarre situation whereby Germany was occupied by the four powers of the United States, UK,

and then France got a seat at the table. I mean, there's a total other issue in the in the Soviet Union, there was there was no not only was there no permanent status of of of you know, well now there's no prodent peace treaty in the running. Nobody was even talking about it, and it wasn't even clear like what that would constitute. And really the only thing that it set the tenor of relations at Yalta or at Tehran. Everybody thinks Yelta's kind of word like everything, you know,

everything kind of was set in perverbial stone. It was not. It was Tehran in forty three. That's when Roosevelt seeded Berlin to Stalin, which seems crazy unless you understand the new Dealer ideology, which we we delved into in earnest in our whole World War two series. But beyond that, what's facinating to me is even men who you would

think would have known better, like Eisenhower. Okay, Eisenhower, whatever else can be said about him, the guy was something of a savant in terms of logistical, an engine hearing, military matters, and he was a protege of pershing blackjack person who's an under understated figure in the very histories he hasn't made. Eisenower said, uh. Eisenwer said uh to one of his adjutants, And this is related by Omar Bradley,

you know. Uh. When there was discussion as to, you know, the issue of allowing the Soviets to take Berlin, Eisenwer said something effective with my god, like who would want it? You know they're gonna lose, you know, one hundred thousand men taking it, and Bradley's he was stupefied by that. He's like, well, what do you mean, you know, like how you know I can say that, you know? Uh

and uh. And Eisenhower retorted with something like, well, as a military objective, it's meaningless, you know what, what significance does it hold? You know what? Bradley said, Well, you know, in a few years, that's gonna be quite clear, you know. And Malotov Uh, you know, the Soviet foreign minister, Old Bolshevik that he was, like a lot of those guys, he actually had a pretty strong sense of geopolitics, and he said, you know, what happens in Berlin decides the

fate of Germany. What happens in Germany decides to fade of Europe. So if you look at a map of I mean, I can't pull it up now, but those who are inclined to do so. If you look at if you look at a map of divided Berlin, it's strange because the Soviet sectors kind of bulges East Berlin extended uh to Mitte, which was kind of the historical core of the Berlin city center. That was like the

municipal like Hobb traditionally of Berlin. You know, that's where city Hall was, you know, that's where Parliament was, That's all these other traditional structures and administrations, the machinery and the machinery of garment were. So it was obvious why Stalin was making these demands. Okay, I mean it wasn't and it wasn't just for prestige or something. Rose elenal problem with that. But Roosevelt also what he the only the only kind of signaling he'd given to uh Stalin

was that Tehran. And then before he died, apparently according to people at Cordell Hull, he said, Roosevelt stated to Stalin as well as to you know, his cabinet in the Apartment of State and uh In Department of War, that oh, well, you know, American forces, I can't see them staying in Europe beyond two years? Why would they? You know which I don't think you can chalk up to naivete because Roosevelt was uh Roosevelt is not naive,

whatever else we can say about him. And you know, like we discussed in the you know earlier, we discussed a couple of times even before we began a dedicated series on the Cold War. You know, the New Dealer vision was, uh, you know, a con a permanent concord between the United States and the Soviet Union with the United Nations. That's kind of a world legislature, you know, the Security Council being uh, I mean, ultimately this is

what what what what what developed? But this is what they had in mind, you know, early on, even the Security councilor it's equivalent being you know, kind of like the upper House, the General Assembly being the lower house, you know, in America, having having a monopoly on atomic weapons, you know, therefore, you know, being able to reign in the Soviets when they were when there was policy disputes

out of governing the world. But even that, aside the UH, there's no possible outcome where uh, where in neutral Germany or a demilitarized Germany is tolerated. Okay, you know the UH true Truman took Truman took the oth of office with a hostile Congress, the UH. Even though even the Republicans gutted as they were, the America First Movement had been cast into disrepute, and some of these people had actually been prosecuted and hounded and terrorized. Sounds kind of familiar.

But Robert Taff still made who remained like a strong voice on Capitol Hill as kind of the you know, the opposition, and even people who are interventionists, you know, even like hawk as Republicans who who who are not isolationists, you know, they were they were demanding essentially that you know, Germany not be allowed to just fall into the Soviet sphere of influence outright, So looking ahead, unless Roosevelt's plan quite literally was a simply just seed Europe to the communists,

you can't really come to either conclusion, okay, and it's not me just being like the famatory makes a minio logical point, like what other conclusion can you come do? You know? In one of the UH despite what despite that kind of public face like pretty much everything and well I'm gonna get into Berlin airlift in a minute,

and and what that signifies. But pretty much all the negotiations with Stalin from UH from nineteen forty five onward were or in basically bad faith about we're talking about the stands in Germany because again, I mean, nobody was gonna, no nobody in America, regardless of political strike, was going to allow in neutral Germany, Okay, because that meant that there's absolutely no point in fighting the Second World War,

and the Second Worlder should not have been fought. But whether the strategic logic of the war planners in America, at all costs journey must be prevented from capturing the East, whether that's by a concord, a peaceable concord relatively between Germany and the Soviet Union, whether it's by conquest, you know, with Hitler at the helm. I mean today as we see, I mean, what what that? This is what underlies the

Ukraine War? Is it not the fact that the fact that the interdependence facilitated by from Merkle and mister Putin was not something that America is going to tolerate, because that's the only way that Europe casts off the shackles of America in the UK and becomes a super Okay, So even no matter where anybody fell in the political spectrum, you know, they were not just going to allow demilitarized Germany, but wherein you know, just by accident geography and proximity,

they were going to be incorporated into the Soviet sphere of influence in some basic way. So there's that. I mean probably there's there's there's more there than then we have time to cover right now. But I I think that that it's not a mystery, but it is enigmatic as to what exactly Roosevelt's intentions were, and especially when considers too that I mean Roosevelt and knowing certain terms, knew that he was not going to liver along. Okay, So I what how how exactly saw the world developing

after he was gone? Is? UH? Is is an open ended question. And again, I mean, Roosevelt was a lot of things, but he was not Joe Biden. He was not Senile Okay, any it was really wasn't until the final months of his life, was really compromise, and he wasn't really you know, running running the country or the war and an executive capacity anyway. But it uh, But

back to back to UH, back to UH. The topic at hand, what to give an idea of how kind of slap dash for lack of a better word, the led administration that divided Germany was there was AH, what was emplement was called the Common Common to Tourah and UH.

It was representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, the UK, and France meeting in UH, this kind of mini UH executive council, and they were supposed to come to they were supposed to going to terms on how Berlin was to be administered, you know, in Berlin being you know, to Maladov's point, you know, Berlin being quite literally, you know, the kind of heart and lungs of Germany and Germany being you know, the the axial pivot of Europe.

The idea was, well, what's the sayings of Berlin has resolved, you know, the UH, the state, the stands of Germany proper will be resolved, and then you know that this this will just be a you know, UH, a done deal, which seems incredible. Anybody could entertain that possibility is anything realistic? As time as time passed to be unclear that not only did the Soviets have absolutely no intention of of allowing a Western military presence in Berlin, but the Soviet

delegates UH. The Soviet delegate neither him nor any of his UH nor any of his UH adjutants spoke English. The American delegation nobody spoke Russian. You know, a couple of people were like trying to communicate like pigeon French kind of like across the aisle. Like this whole thing, this whole thing was was a ridiculous charade, you know, like the most petty issues that be debated for weeks

sometimes months. The uh, the Russians were demanding. UH, they issued something and the sorry and the Sonian language is not unintentional. They produced a document called the Fourteen Points, which which basically demanded that in the Eastern sector of Berlin there could be like no no quote profiteering at the expensive workers and things like this, you know, like

it was. Uh, it's basically like a radical socialist manifesto saying that you know, the the the only, the only, the only legitimate capitol producer in in this arbitrarily designated eastern sector in Germany, you know, was Moscow and nobody else the UH And finally this carried on for a good, uh close to two years, and UH finally UH a clerical staff, some kind of skeleton crew remained at UH at UH at the at these at these meetings, representing

the Soviet Union. But on by August first, nineteen forty eight, some UH, some representatives U un ceremonious we removed the Soviet flag, took all their files, clean up their offices,

and the Soviets has never returned. You know, they were they they they essentially like it was basically like a solid boycott that killed the enterprise because it had it had no no, no even second reason, that forced a law without all for resident of all four occupation states present, what's more significant to show you kind of the the dysfunctional state of East Germany. I've noticed that a lot

of people, I mean people, obviously, I'm talking about court historians. Okay, they're obsessed with the personages of the Third Reich uh generally because they want to cast on those cutitive like possible, but even more sensible, even more sensible people, you know, they fixate very much. And the individuals who constituted sort of the control group of the party and of and

of the of the state. You don't find that a lot with East Germany, Okay, Now, not in any sort of the imagination suggesting that these men were nearly as dynamic as those who constituted the the NSDAP or that the DDR was you know, some some kind of you know, independent power into itself, that they wielded any great authority or power of projection capability. However, it was in fact part of the German state. Okay, even if you don't even if even if that is now people didn't recognize

its legitimacy as as a sovereign regime. It you know, twenty million Germans lived there. Berlin was within its borders and it was, uh, it was quite literally at the front lines of of of the geostrategic divide for forty years. Now. Who who came to run the d DR? Well, the Soviets tapped h Walter Ubert. Walter Ubercht was even an

exiled member of the KPD. You know, he'd been uh, even an active revolutionary in the Weimar years, you know, into the UH into the years of the the Third Reich, and like a lot of communists, you know, he he realized that he was gonna be prosecuted and imprisoned if not, if not shot, and he fled to the Soviet Union. Ulbrich was deployed to Berlin before the cessation of hostilities. He arrived in April thirtieth what was called the Ulberton Group.

There are various various functionaries, uh, prisoners, anti fascist prisoners of war, you know, various guys like Ulbert himself, who whould fought for the Reds in Spain and then UH and then and then found amnesty and in in the Soviet Union after the ascendancy of the n sd A P. But these guys uh and and all and and all and there there was what was called the Akerman group who was deployed to Sacks and the Eve, the Sabatka group, two to UH to Mechlenberg, you know, all named after

their their cadre leader, you know. And Anton Akerman of the sonianed Akerman group, he was part of the he the functionary of the communist youth movement in Germany in the twenties, you know. Then he joined the KPD. H he was sentenced to death in absentia, you know, and after nineteen thirty three. Like these guys are basically the whole post war coterie of Germany. They were the old like KPD control group. So that meant that, you know, not only they've they've been they've been gone for ten

sometimes twenty years. They hadn't been they hadn't been a home, you know, so they were it's not like they had UH cadres and being on the ground, I mean even among the Communis who stayed behind. You know, people were like, who the hell are these guys? You know, they had no they had no real mandate from people. Okay, I mean arguably, you know, when you're under occupation by the Soviet Union, it can't be said that any kind of genuine expression of popular will is possible. But this was

especially contrived. And famously when Lubrick derived, you know, everybody knew who he was, you know, because he he was uh, you know, he he arrived in in you know, in uh in what had been East Prussia initially you have to have been you know, like liberated by the Soviets, and uh there were Germans who were some of communist sympathetic who said, oh, you have no idea like what

they're doing to us, meaning the Red Army. You know, this this this rape and this and this, this pillage and this destruction, you know, And Ubert said, uh, you know that that's fascist propaganda. I don't believe that. You know, if you utter that again, I'll have you shot. You know,

people were like, who the hell is this guy? You know what I mean, like he they uh so even what I'm getting at is that even even he consider that people were not enthusiastic about you know, the KPD or its legacy party coming to coming to dominate the state apparatus ubric teddy unique like lack of of credibility. You know, they might as well have just deployed you know, some some some Russian apparatchick from uh from Moscow or from or from at Vostok, you know, like what what

what was even the point? But I believe, in my opinion, uh, it was basically for the benefit of the outside world. Like they were saying like, hey, look, you know we're we're not We're not afraid of Germans having, you know, sovereignty over the run affairs like mister Ubrich is you know, he's a German national, you know, so z Ackerman or

I believe that's what it was all about. And uh, I mean the stories never would have trusted a genuine uh yeah, I mean even a genuine like radical socialist movement that was truly indigenous to Germany like that the war had changed all that. But I people are often they often say like, you know, how can they how could the uh how cold the Soviets think that the people just spotted the s c D. You know, it's like, well, I I don't, I don't. I don't think that was

the point. I think the point was, you know, they it was, it was it was a kind of it was a kind of alibi when the eviction was raised that you know this, this was nothing but a hostile occupation and all but name. But in any event, and then when I say the se D the in the in the in the in the Soviet occupation sector, there was U. The KPD, UH declared uh E merged with

the Social Democrats and became the Party of Socialist Unity. Okay, the real party of the d d R was not the KPD, it was the s D. Okay, just for reference sake. But as this UH, as this was developing, there was UH in in the west, there was there was not a clear kind of policy trajectory. Now enter entered George Kennon. Kennon was the He was the de facto ambassador to the Soviet Union. He was actually the charge of the affairs. Okay, but I mean, for all

pradical purposes, he was the ambassador. You know what Kennon's uh. What Kennon's not known for is UH is is the long the long memo Okay, there was so so named because it was the longest State Department dispatcher ever said by telegram. It was all over five thousand words, the Long Telegram, not the Long Memo. I find this to be the most mischaracterized document or statement of the Cold War,

save maybe for Cruisehip's quote secret speech. Okay, the term containment was, yes, it was coined by this telegram, but uh Kenan was not calling for some kind of hawkish military resistance to the Soviet Union. Like Kenyon was profoundly an a communist, he was horrified by the Soviet Union, but he was not a military man, and he was not proposing any kind of military doctrine what he When the Long Telegram was expanded to an essay length, it appeared in Foreign Affairs, which at one time was a

great periodical. I've not looked at it in years. I assume it's kind of woke and silly like everything else, or it's full of crazy people want to like attack everybody on this planet for no reason. But at one time it was it was. It was not just a lot of prestige behind it, but it had real cachet because it was very serious. But the actual title of the long Telegram expanded to proper pay per form with sources of Soviet conduct, And that's exactly what it was about.

Ken It was a rare kind of occidental man. And I'm not trying to be offensive or say bad things are Russian people, but they're very different. Okay, They're very different than the West. Even the best of times, even when they had a more normal government, it was difficult to decipher their intentions. And there was not just linguistic barriers. There's there's cultural barriers that relate to symbolic psychology and

historical experience and all kinds of other things. But Kennon's enterprise was, I've got to try to make the Department of Stay in the Department of War, and more importantly, mister Truman understand the world to the Soviets eyes. Now, kenn said that, uh, there's not gonna there's never there's no one. You're not gonna be able to come to come to terms with the Soviet Union, Okay, he said, you so get that out of your head right away. In policy terms, he said, the Soviets are never going

to give you what you what what you want. They're not gonna either They're they're not gonna abide Roosevelt's vision of you know, ruling the world with Uncle Sam as a junior partner. They're they're not gonna accept the United States has a benign influence in Europe. You know, they're not They're not gonna view, uh, any of America's move outside the out of side of its immediate sphere of influences is legitimate, and that owes to a few things.

It was the It was that it was the Russian traditional Russian fixation on security, and in very basic terms, the Russians need defense in depth, and Russia is a state that is in a nation that is constantly attacked by its enemies. So there's that. Now you add to that the overlay of Marcist Leninist city ology, which at that time it's still very much was still very much interstitially bound up with kind of the Russian political mind.

They've viewed the United States is not much different than the Third Reich, and they've give the third right because that is still doesn'ts of evil and the view the United States and the UK as capitalist states and crisis who at all costs are gonna pursue an adversarial pass with the Soviet Union, because the only way capitalist states can keep from cannibalizing one another is to find an

enemy from without. Okay, now this is boiler plate Leninism, but the Soviets that actually believe that, and kend Of made the point that, you know, unlike in the United States, unlike in the UK, you know, where political discourse is kind of this, it is almost kind of this. It's almost kind of like play acting in the Soviet. Soviet leaders like when they say things, they actually mean exactly

what they say, even if it sounds crazy. The Soviet Union is not an able transparent but the official statements coming from the Kremlin are actually exactly what the and you can extrapolate that to today when the Russian government is is a formal statement that's actually exactly what they mean. Now, don't get me wrong. The Kremlin then is now is literally byzantine. Russian political culture is totally opig is massively conspiratorial. Uh,

it's all screwed up. But you don't have like weird actors, you know, just kind of saying things in Russian political life like you do in the West. It's totally different. And obviously American political culture then was not nearly as degenerate as now, but there was some of that. And

this was a very important point. And so Kennon's point was what he meant by containment is this, he said, the way the world's gonna be ordered, the way this entire planet, the fate of this entire planet, quite literally in political and structural terms, political structural terms and sociological ones, it's going to be decided by who can win over the developing world and the Third World and the Soviet you mean, Kennon pointed out, has a lot of cachet

there because the third world is full of people who are already kind of radicalized. They've not had a good experience with the white Western world. Part of that is

the scapegoating. Part of that is, you know, just kind of the tragedy of when traditional societies, especially primitive ones, and again I'm not saying that cunitively, that's just an accurate assessment, you know, collide with modernity, you know, and the UH and UH and the double edged sort of technology, you know, and you know, the quote unquote what weav was progress, but what they view as you know, very very traumatic UH processes and beyond that, the uh just

within you know we we we even in the nineteen fifties, you know, uh, people in America had come to look at Bolshevism and and Marxist Leninism outside of you know, academic corners and things like the Man in the Street used as something that did not really deliver and if uned as basically alien and those of the interviewers basically alien, uned as something that you know, was was was not was not it's not animated him towards you know, some

kind of impassionate defense of the ideology. Okay, but in the Third World that was not the case at all. I mean really until the eighties, Marcus Lennon hasn't had great cache in the Third World. And if you want to understand the Cold War and White endored for so long that is why, okay, I mean long after there was any kind of risk of you know, France, uh, you know, people in France going to the polls and

voting in some Stalinist party. So long after you know, Gus Fall and his friends said any any chance of turning you know, the teamsers unied into a some kind of Communist client, you know. Uh, in in places like Angola, you know, places like Nicaragua, in places uh, in places you know, like Indonesia, there was there was still cachet who communism. Okay, So Kenn said, UH, there's got to be a broad spectrum uh attack on communism, particularly uh, you know, in terms of UH, in terms of suaging

anxieties about uh the development model of the West. You know, that means not disturbing and upsetting uh indigenous cultures where it's not essential to do so in order to uh, in order to create a political culture that you know

is suitable for American goals. You know that means that you know, not over reliance on on the military aspect of competition, but you know, demonstrating uh, demonstrating uh American systemic superiority that we can see you away, you know, scientifically, culturally, technologically, you know, uh, in the arts, like all all of

these things. Unfortunately, the people are selective in especially in policy terms, and what they what they take from UH these kinds of broad based position statements of of inspired people like Kenon. So the way people read uh the Kenon uh the Long Telegram and the Canon memo is oh, we've we've we've got to challenge the Soviet Union militarily

at all costs. Uh, basically like in every theater where where they assert themselves and that uh and then that and thus Kennon and that this was this was the bane of his existence for his whole life. And he made that clear, uh decade after decade that he was called the quote father of containment. But at the event, regardless of the fact that Kennon did not appreciate being forced to go to the court of public opinion to co sign, you know, what became containment as policy with

what was fleshed out in his in his position paper. Uh. You know, Truman had a problem because Truman was facing an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union that was quite clearly doing everything that could to lock uh the West out of Berlin and ultimately locked the West out of Germany at all. And as we said, he had a hostile Congress. Already people had become very, very soured on the idea of the Soviet Union, not just as an ally but as

a benign influence in the world. And furthermore, you know, one of the things we were speaking of Tehran, uh, the Tehran's Summit, not not fleshing out what the status of Berlin and the status that German Germany would be

moving forward. It didn't indicate anything as to how, what what what would become of the world where you know, the UK is simply you know, UH just simply declared these people in the dominions to have like, you know, to to have like rights of British citizenship now, you know, and like these these these territories in Africa you know that were being that were they were being seated to indigenous rule and divested from you know, from the from the French and from the Belgians. You know, like what

like what how do we manage these places? You know, like what moving forward? Like you know, who's going to take the lead here? You know, is is it going to be you know, is it gonna be under some kind of like u N jurisdiction? Is it going to be under the jurisdiction of the former colonial authority? You know, this was not clear and this caused huge problems and it led to UH. It led to UH and what I considered to being one of the first UH active

crisis of the Cold War. One of the many horrible things UH we can say about Churchill and they are many you know that trying to resort diperbole as it became clear posti alta in Churchill's mind that the United States was not gonna do anything to preserve the British Empire, like why why it goes to show you the man's fundamental lack of understanding under the character of Roosevelt, but of you know, the emerging kind of geopolitical culture of

uh of the epoch. Turchile hascided that something had to be done to guard the UK's fledging interest in the Mediterranean.

So he approached Stalin and Molotov without Roosevelt's knowledge, and he drafted this is an absurd document what was called the Percentages Agreement, quite literally, where he wrote out what percentage of influence the Soviet Union be allowed and the UK would be allowed, and he territories the Mediterranean like literally writing, well, the you know, the US is organ ten percent influence in Greece and London hast of ninety percent, Like how any rational person I think that's the way

fear of influence works, And what the hell is ninety percent influence in our political terms? The whole thing is absurd, it's it's crazy it's literally crazy. But Greece was the first state post war really when the Germans withdrew from Greece and forty four a communist insurgency jumped off. And it was very complicated like who the players wore and everything like that, but it was the UK deployed to

prevent a communists takeover. People sympathetic to the communists. They you referred to it as the second White Terror in Greece.

There's a lot of mercenary action there. It was. It was actually a very it was a bloody conflict, okay, but the uh but the point is that, uh, you know, this is also what later led you know, a decade subsequent to the Suez Crisis or and that led Eisenhower to kind of you know declaring uh a status of uh of of relations for the Middle East, you know, and shutting uh, shutting the French, the French and the UK out of it permanently. And in those days too,

Eisenow was the last president. It wasn't all the old and as this issue. But at any event, you know, there was not uh what what whatever Truman thought about containment, you know, however hawkish or conciliatory, he felt about the Soviet Union. If he wanted to continue as president, he's gonna have to take some gonna firm line, at least

what appeared to be such. He's gonna have to articulate some kind of policy and make clear, you know what, what the conflict diets were, that if the Soviets traversed them, there would inevitably be war. And uh, a lot of that. It was the experience of Korea and how NATO was formed. And the next episode is gonna be the Native episode,

and it's hugely important, especially today. But I don't want to jump into that now, but to continue the uh, the the real kind of key incident, in my opinion, or like a series of events, what started the Cold Wars. The Berlin Blockade. Okay, and as as people probably imagine, even people who you know don't reel out of the Cold War, you know, West Berlin was one hundred and ten miles into the Soviet occupation sector. Okay, it was. It was. The entirety of Berlin was in with the game,

the DDR and the western half. The only way you could access it civilian or military vehicles was by dedicated access routes. There's roads for the duration of the Cold War that were literally dedicated access routes for like US military and civilian uh and West European traffic, you know, to pass through the d d R, you know, to reach West Berlin and then to return the dedicated access road and that was the only traffic permitted there. And

that was the case early on. I mean they they these routes were later you know, on a formalized like structurally as a matter of law, but uh, it was uh, the the Soviets weren't weren't simply allowing uh you know open uh aggress and egress of Americans and British and French civilian or military in and out of West Berlin. But they weren't. They they did not outright blackaded it before.

But what was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back was uh the uh as the United States uh as uh as like as a true economic policy kind of took shape, I mean just not a necessity. I mean, this just proceeded, you know, a formal political uh outlook, let alone policy on West Berlin. But uh, I mean the economy had to rebuild because people, i mean, their infrastructure was destroyed. You know people, people weren't being

fed what and it became, uh, it became imperative. First and foremost introduced a viable currency, so the uh, the United States introduced the Deutsche mark, which is interesting because it's interesting, I mean, like a lot of people think of the deutsch mark because I mean the deutsch park was I mean the strongest currency in Europe and which I saw him. I'm taking them engagement the other day. You know, the Germans didn't sign the Matric Treaty because

they wanted to get off the deutsch Mark. It was owing to political pressures and other things. But people have an idea of it. It's just kind of us like it's kindrad Aden now where you know, and and like the and like the Buddhist Republic, like Deutsche Bank or whatever. Just uh just saying like, okay, this is a successor to the rice market. That is not what happened. It was he was occupation and authorities who introduced it then and very much UH sold the Nasson West Berlin government

on it. But uh, the Soviets went nuts uh when this happened, and uh they banned uh they banned uh there the Deutsche mark from uh the from the the Eastern zone of occupation. And yes they were literally arresting people for for for for using it. So in the Eastern in the Eastern occupations or Berlin, people resorted using cigarettes as a defective currency. Like no, lie, I think I mean that quite literally shows you, like what a

prison society this was from from jump, I guess. I mean, I don't even have a particularly putitive view of the d d R, and I mean that that should be clear to anybody. But the uh, the introduction of the new currency, uh when when you know, before with we would all in the in the course of all the failed four powers uh administrative bodies. You know, the one thing that the Soviets that opposed unconditionally was uh, you know, the introduction of of a private enterprise in the East

occupation zone. Okay, because there's no way they could to controlled that, I mean obviously, and it couldn't have Eventually if the Soviets had played their cards right, I'm talking like years later, if not decades, I think they could have made East Berlin kind of like they could have viewed it treated, they could have treated kind of like

you know that the Chicoms treat Hong Kong. But I mean that was many years off, like they this could not that was not in the in the cards in ninety forty eight, especially not by you know, the shock therapy is the introduction of of of this new currency back by uh, you know, back by American dollars. Okay that there's no way, but the uh it was, uh, things changed. The deutschbeer was introduced on June seventeenth nine

or June eighteenth, June eighteenth, ninety forty eight. The next day Soviet guards suddenly cracked down, you know, suddenly suddenly people uh the relatively kind of free ingress into into East Berlin. You know, people are being stopped and searched. People are being turned back. You know, UH trains are being halted, any freight shipments, any old water transport. They had to secure special permission from the Soviet authorities, not

from the East Berlin authorities, from the Soviets themselves. The uh and UH got in the final uh got got to the point of no return. Three day subsequent, on the twenty first, the Soviets halted a US military supply terrain to Berlin and sent it back. So essentially, as always refused resupply of the United States Army forces in Europe and even the idea in Berlin because Berlin, again, Berlin was one hundred and ten miles into the interior

of the d DR. There's only at that time there's only about three thousand US combat troops on the ground, about two thousand British. The Soviets had a comprable size force in East Berlin, but the Soviets had three hundred thousand forces and being throughout you know, Eastern Germany proper, so, I mean, if they came to war, there's those those guys in US Berlin were dead, you know, they they would have been slaughtered. I mean, so that this was

an ominous thing, you know. And uh, that same day, the twenty second in June, the Soy's announced that they were introducing the East German Mark in their own zone of occupation. It was to be the only only legitimate, only legitimate currency. And uh, later on, which is really really weird. In East Berlin, Uh, I'm talking like into the eighties, there were specialty shops, there were there were like duty free shops where non East German citizens were visiting,

they could they could buy stuff with foreign currency. Like cigarettes or liquor or like or like other things like food, like like like specialty food items. But but they were like designated foreign currency shops. I mean kind of like the the hoops that these Marxist Lennon states jumped through. They got to maintain the fiction that their currencies were actually worth something is really really weird, you know what I mean. It's it's called like you know the old

movie Brazil, Uh say, attire movie. I think, yeah, yeah, like yeah, it reminds me of that in some basic way. But it was a June twenty fourth. Uh, the Soviets severed land and in water connections between the non Soviet zones in Berlin, so all all ground rail or water traffic was cut off. Like nobody, nobody got in or

out of West Berlin. Okay, the uh the uh. They couldn't cut off obviously like electricity and water, because that would have been an own goal, because I mean Berlin was quite literally just divided down the center with this kind of artificial like what like on a battle map, be considered like a salient, but it you know, there wasn't. It was not. People sometimes had this idea that there was something like rhyme or reason to how Berlin was divided,

like there was not. So I mean it's not that you couldn't cut off utilities to half of Berlin but not the other half, but just the same West Berlin at the time, UH, at the time it was blockaded, and that's just over like a month's where like it was between like thirty five and forty five like days with the food, something like fifty days where the coal.

It was like a very critical situation. And the entire the entire United States Army just total forces and being by ninty forty eight have been reduced about half a million men. The UH total force in the Western sector were about eight thousand, nine hundred Americans, about seventy six hundred British, about six thousand French. UH there was only thirty one thousand combat forces and all of West Germany.

So I mean, if it came to war like a both Soviet attack, total Soviet military forces in the Soviet sector were one point five million. Now, the United States at that point that night still a monopoly and the atomic bomb, but I mean, what do you if if if if communist force is trewe to Berlin, what are you gonna do you know, you're gonna, you gonna you didn't you had launch an atomic assault in Berlin and

waste drooling people and all the Berliners. I mean this, this, this was this was very very and frankly it was a uh it was a gamble of the sort that Stalin did not usually take. But interestingly it was Lucius Clay. Uh he was a commander of a the U. S. Occupation zone, you know, he said it was he said

Curtis LeMay. Interestingly, le May wanted to do a he wanted to he wanted to mobilize atomic capable of B twenty nines an assault the Soviet sector but you know, like like nukeam you know, and uh and and mobilized with infantry they were available in West Berlin, uh or in West Germany, you know, and then to forcee delivery West Berlin with them after after this, after a massive atomic assault on Soviet forces with with B twenty nines.

But uh that uh that that that suggestion was not invited, obviously, But I I it was not some kind of mad man. I'm a I'm I'm quite fond of May in history, and I think he's kind of unduly characterized as this kind of like Jack d Ripper type, you know, like in in Strange Love but UH loses Clay. Uh. It was uh in concert with uh a lot a lot of a lot of civilian types who you know, we're still we're still kind of uh, we're still kind of situated into into government and quasi military roles owing to

the war only being three years past. US Army Corps engineers UH, US Army Air Forces. The Berlin airlift, UH was really uh, it was really kind of an amazing It was really kind of an amazing not just the not just policy coup, but sort of strategic rooking of Stalin. But it it it it Uh. It demonstrated the feasibility of uh of airpower in uh and not just in military capacities. I mean, which was obvious, but it it's

some ways weird. It sounded maybe more coporable with the idea of you know, huge amounts of air traffic in and out of a major city, you know, and there there's there's a there's literally ideas before like oh there's gonna be like pollution and noise and things like it. You know, these like thousands and thousand, thousands of sorties in and out of Berlin. Uh. That that kind of changed things. Uh. And that's I mean, honestly, that's like

a lot of time. How people become habituated to do technologies. It's not any kind of uh, it's not it's not any kind of small thing. I mean, there was guys like LeMay himself and these guys, ticularly guys who fought with the Army Air Forces in the Pacific. You know, they developed these uh they you know, they they developed these uh, these these assault routes from the Mariannas Islands and things, and uh, you know, there was the ex pres experience of the airlift uh over the quote hump

of the Himalayas, you know, from India to China. But it was military guys who kind of understood the potential of air power it broad spectrum application, you know, military and civilian and commercial use. Like the man in the street really didn't. Then the Berlin Airlift. Uh, the Berlin Airlift changed it. Uh it uh it uh. But le May was he uh In terms of staffing decisions, he did,

and he did. He did end up appointing a lot most of the key figures in executive roles who uh who May the airlift happened General Joseph Smith not to be confused, but like the father of Mormonism, he was he'd been uh but Smith had been like there's a huge amount of guys who served and served under le May during the war who went on like prestige rolls

and including Robert McNamara or uh yeah McNamara. H Smith had been uh la made chief of staff uh when LaMDA B twenty nine command like in India and then in the Mary honest, Uh you know loss Clay wasn't under Lay's command. But I mean they you know, they made acquaintance during the war. But the uh, it demonstrated,

it demonstrated what was possible. And it also uh it was such a collaborative effort between I mean it had to be even in the United States in the UK, I mean, for better or worse, you know, like and I'm not tragged in the UK. You know, the UK remained airstrip one in a real way obviously because of this and owing you know, like we like we talked about is an FDR is kind of inconsistent and frankly, Eve Pierant signaling about the status of U UK US

relations uh post uh bellam. It wasn't clear like what role the UK would add here or whether or not the United States would raise a finger to defend you know, key strategic interest, not not just the interests of the empire, which regulating an interest in the United States and in preserving for any reason, but I mean the adults. So I mean it was it solidified the quote I hate the term special relationship. And there's all kinds of like things that are are far far less than admirable that

that entails. But apparently, like uh collaborative strategic terms, it solidified you know, the US UK UH concord, particularly as regards UH operational coordination with UH with their forces, and that's no small thing. And before the revolution in military affairs and decades before contemporary commanding control, that was incredibly difficult. Uh. They really can't be overstated. I mean, something like Berlin AirLand would be the hell of a hell of an

operation today. But I mean you're talking about like you're talking about like radios, the cutting edge of like commanding control technology and nine forty eight, like think about this, it's like stuff. So that's like it's son's less what like the Rockie talkies he played with his kid in like the early eighties, you know that. UH. But the the UH that was UH, that was the UH that was the that that was the opposite of the Cold War in UH in in real terms. And I don't

I don't think anybody would. I don't think anyone would

dispute would dispute that. And there were shenanigans too, like the there was one single municipal election for all of Berlin in UH in ninety forty six, and the the UH, the Socialist Unity Party didn't pull pathetically yourself and they only polled like you know, and that that's what put the Christian Democrats on the map, not just in West Berlin, but it's like the Bundesst Republic like Conservative party, but the Soviets basically they're basically they were like, you know, okay,

the hell with it, Like we're not we're not gonna pursue a political solution, you know, with because obviously they weren't gonna they weren't gonna get you know, because my Berlin had been like the that had been like the Communist art Land, you know, like in the our years, I and people people post the question like not not as curious like readers, but like historians who like are deeply understand you know, uh rush of the era. They're like, why did the Russians do this? And uh, it was

just to get the lay of the land. I'm telling you. I mean that that's it makes total sense from Stalin's perspective. Stalin was Stalin was what if Stalin's was a guy even the personality type today because there him like a dada junkie like Stalin was obsessed with informational awareness, you know,

like he really was. And it's I guarantee. You just said, like, well, let's I mean, let's see, let's let's hold an actual election, like a legit election, and let's see what was more We got on the ground, Okay, about twenty twenty five percent, that's fair. We can build coveredies around there. But this is never gonna happen again, you know. But that's I

think we're coming about an hour. I think we'll stop there and uh well, uh well, deep dive into I realized this might have been the most exciting episode, but it was important because otherwise we're we're dealing with a huge phenomenon, and that being the cold war where no actual kind of starting starting point or tab list has been identified. But well, we're gonna get into the Korean War, the formation of NATO, and it's the Truman doctrine next episode.

is a number seven. You can find me on substack uh at real Thomas seven seven seven. And I mean you can find me, like I said when I in in about it in a few days when I when the unit vannel doesn' launch, I'll upload a lot of this stuff there and it's uh Thomas TV in front of these Thomas seven seven seven. I know that's corny is supposed to be. It's a riff on Dave TV. If you're old like me, you remember, well there's Dave TV. I got Thomas TV. So yeah, but thank you, Pete.

I really really appreciate it.

you know. It it really kind of it created the contemporary strategic landscape, you know, and it endured for it endured for a century. So there's so much there. You've kind of got to pick and choose what you emphasize. I'm trying to go and lineit your order, because you know, that's and whatever you're whatever you're trying to whatever, whatever your emphasis is in in in revisionism, you know, you need to be as rigorous as you would in any

other historical study. I mean that doesn't mean just you know, relating, relaying facts and documenting events for its own sake. But I don't just want to be taking off a list of you know, what I consider key events or something. However, if if I'm if I'm getting ahead of myself, or if there doesn't to be a kind of tie that binds to make the narrative listenable or intelligible, please tell me in the comments, and not going to get upset.

What was on my mind a lot lately, especially because in the morning a couple of days a week, uh, my dad gives me a ride downtown for stuff I gotta do. And you know, I listened to eight ninety AM Talk Radio, which isn't it's not garbage like NPR,

but it's garbage of a different sort. And they have all these polemical takes from you know, these like retired you know, captains and majors, you know, like kind of like third rate want to be war college types, you know, as well as you know, some of these kind of DeSantis type Republicans or kind of like the token conservatives on on the panel on these morning talk radio programs. You know, there's there's it's it's interesting the way these

guys talk about Russia. Okay, because Russia kind of like dar al Islam. You're still allowed to say basically prejudice things about it, you know, because it's not you know, it's it's not part of that kind of protect it's not conceptually you know, incorporated into you know, the the

victimology narrative. Okay. But also there's even as even if they erastinated as people are in America, you know, especially in terms of these you know, the kinds of people who populate media, what remains the original media at least, you know, even academic types who who couldn't tell you anything about their own heritage and are not very racially conscious at all. There remains this kind of atavistic fear

of Russia. And that's not just some that's not that's not just some kind of hackneyed poetical take that people like Lavrov you know, drop uh on the on the floor of the you on General Assembly in order to make a point or to scandalize people. That really is true, and to understand the Cold War, you've got to understand You've got to really understand why that came about. I've

been reading lately. There's this book by Michael Proudon and it was released interview, different titles, The Value I've got, it's under the titled The Mongol Empire. There's another one. There's another addition, identical book, you know, called called Storm out of Asia. But what it's all about is it's all about when the Europeans made first contact with the Mongols, you know, in the thirteenth century a d okay. Now

why was this so significant? Well, you know, the Europeans since ten ninety five and intermediately been at war with U, with the Saracens, you know, at Salahadeen and his descendants.

You know that this was a crusading ero, okay. And what was fascining about that is that it was the only time until I me, unless you count you know, the Napoleonic Wars, which were kind of more convenience than than than than you know, than a unity of faith obviously, you know, it's really the only time we had it, you know, truly European armies, you know, going off to the war against the common civilizational enemy. However, some of that kind of concord had been had been reached with

the Mauslims. Okay, I mean sometimes, you know, sometimes there's relative peace that reigned, you know in UH, in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. You know, after that Battle of hot Team and UH the Moslim conquest, things deteriorated, but you know, there's just kind of like an ongoing thing. But in the twelve you know, in the twelve twenty, something of these rumors came about that there was this huge marauding army.

It was just slaughtering everything in its path, and a lot of people in monasteries and monks, they're like, well, you know this, this, this is the scourge of God and he's punishing you know, the infidel Moslims, but he's also punishing these pagan tribes to populate the step, you know, because all these barbarian people are literally being driven west to the European frontier and saying, you know, there's these men on horses, there's long torsos, and they kill everybody.

You know, when they like those left alive, you know, they take the women as slaves and they you know, they force the men into you know, into into Duty of Janis series. Basically you know, and they and they drive them, you know, out front, and you know they take they take the first blow when we when they encounter their enemies, and their enemies are everybody but them. And some people thought this was just nonsense, say, these are primitive Pagans, they're you know, they they don't know

that hell are talking about. They probably smet the Saracens, you know. Other people said there were Jews who said, like, well, you know King David his combit, you know, and he's coming to punish you for the way you've treated the Jews, you know, and he's coming to punish Jews too, who've

like forgotten God. Well, obviously with none of those things was the Mongols, okay, and the association of the East with this barbarian element that never really left okay, And I mean it never really left in the European cultural mind and conceptual horizon. But it also never really left literally okay, Like I'm not I'm not saying Russians are

a bunch of Mongols or barbarians. But there was this this massive, uh, this massive monolithic force emerge it from the step that was just destroying everything in his path, assimilating everything that was left alive or left standing like literally into its into its structure. You know. That's that's really what the Soviet Union was. Okay. And at the at the at the at the s s uh Yunker schools, the uh, the Proudings book was actually given officers, okay,

and that that significant. Himler didn't assign Himler and Paul Houser. They didn't have people reading the International jew They didn't have people reading Clouds of Wits. I mean, people didn't read Clouds with was Py the curriculum. But you know, the book you got my graduate graduation was this book by proud him Both because it's you know, it's always it's saying, you know this, this is your enemy. You know,

this is what you know. You're you're in You're you're a knight of the new uh Blood Order of of of Europe, you know, in the s s and this is what we're fighting against, you know, because where the

where the we're the watch on the Rhine. Okay. But also after you know, three hundred years of of the Westphalian paradigm, it you know, uh, the reality of true total war was was in and again okay, and uh that they cannot be emphasized enough, and even it sounds corny, but you can glean things from you know, uh, you can, you can you can discern symbolic psychological things even in kind of trashy media. You know, and I watch I didn't watched it in years. You know, I like a

lot when I was a little kid. You know, Red Dawn, you know, with Patrick Swayze and see Thomas Howell. You know, the that's actually kind of an interesting movie, like as a period piece mostly, but you don't like the black history teacher when when the when when when the town first gets assaulted by like the Soviets and the Sandinistas and the Cubanos. He's teaching a class about gang is Khan, okay, And that's like not an accident, there's really like on

the nose, okay. But so when you consider that, you consider that, you know, Europe is literally this kind of indefensible peninsula that you know it that that's the way you got to understand. That's way you gotta understand the Second World War. That's way you've got to understand essentially the entire the entire nuh, the entire European uh military orientation and uh, the you know, and the and uh and the the this this you know, the the striving

eastward of UH of Teutonic peoples. And in the Cold War, this was very much kind of transposed to America. Okay, there was there was very much a racial component here. Okay, even though there were strange things going on in America. You know, there was the the fact that the Soviet Union became, you know, a superpower and without annihilated oh do uh oh to the United States align with it, to to crush uh imperium Europa with you know, under

the under the German Reich. But you know, nevertheless, uh, you know, these uh, the these things re emerge again and again. It's it's almost like a it's almost like a natural structural form that like snatched back in a place, even when people try to corrupt it or mold it into different configurations. But I uh, what I want to talk about today is the war in Korea, and this bear is directly what we're talking about. And the Cold

War actually was fought in terms of hot war. I mean all kinds of ledgered Maine, and there was there was true violence in Europe of but it was all I mean, it was never there was. There was never a general war fought in Europe during the Cold War. There was. The Cold War was literally grew hot in Asia. Okay, the Cold War where there was lead in the air

between you know, mass conventional forces. They have been in Asia, and it's not accidental, and uh that's not uh, it wasn't just a matter of you know, well, you know this is a place where this is a place, these are this is a theater where you know, the Soviets, the Americans respect that we can push and not resk, triggering you know, the the apocalyptic conflict diad that's gonna

lead to general nuclear war. And interestingly or fascinatingly, in the final phase of the Cold War, which will get into later, the real catalysts behind Reagan's five hunder I mean it's actually James Webbs, but I mean the the Reagan Administration's six hundred ship Navy was that they wanted. They wanted nuclear battle platforms and and and and supporting the fleet elements. You know, it was essentially like forest forest.

The Soviet Union War was uppack to fight a two front nuclear war, if you can think of nuclear wars having a front, a rather two theater nuclear War and this, uh, this caused a serious problem from Frank drop of Uh a special I mean bresident of it began really under Carter, but that that's one of the things that really really kind of rooked the Soviet ambitions. Uh. It wasn't just the revolution of military affairs and and like the technological

edge being lost, but getting into the Korean War. And again I hope those in't two like scatter Shot. We got into the Berlin Airlift last episode, you know, and in the Cold War, you know, the Cold War, the Cold War it formally kicked off by then, okay, and then in nineteen forty nine, the story has developed their own atomic capability. You know. We can get into the Rosenbergs maybe next episode if you want. I I didn't

know if you wanted to cover the act. It's kind of controversy to you and people's strong feelings about it.

pretty unflattering. But Adisin was kind of a peculiar. I think it was kind of anna feat uh aristocrat type of the sore of the worst source. But I mean that's just my opinion. There's definitely even worse chief diplomats,

but uh Absison's great blunder. I think it's inarguable. In January thirteen, nineteen fifty, you know, mind you this was as we talked about, uh, we talked about, you know, the desire to draw down conventional forces and rely upon that you know, the the the atomic bomb, you know, to resolve basically military exigencies, you know, in the threat

of massive escalation. That this was creating problems as you know, the Cold War uh be you know, began to heat up in earnest quite literally, but there had not yet

been an open challenge to uh to Truman. Okay, there had not yet been uh, I mean, other than the Berlin Blockade, which was I I mean that that was that was not a conventional provocation, you know, owing to the bizarre occupation regime and the fact that you know, Germany was permanently in limbo as a matter of law, you know, because there it was, it was quite literally under occupation authority, and there was no there was there was no end in sight and no pathway to a

permanent peace treaty emergent. But the the UH, you know, the first true kind of challenge UH to UH to UH to American burgeening American and Germany was the Korean War. And I think of the Korean War and why it happened UH as somewhat analogous to why UH the First Gulf War happened. It had to do with incorrect signaling by UH, by by US diplomats. Like when I say incorrect,

there really is a correct way to not disclose UH intentions. Well, at the same time, the turn reckless acts by you know, by national enemies, and that's deplomats must have instincts to know when to resort to such measures and must have a basic understanding of how to code their language such that you know, the signals can be clearly read while still you know, keeping keeping potential, keeping intentions, actual potential, you know, relatively hidden as need be a sustained credibility.

But Danaison certainly did not do that. What Deanagison did on January thirteenth, nineteen fifty, he addressed he should have speech to the National Press Club, and what he said was this, When he was asked about, you know, what the policy was towards the communists in Asia, he said, Look, he literally said, there's a defensive perimeter in Asia. He said, the extens from Japan, do the Reikus Islands down to

the Philippines in the south. So quite literally, if you look at a map that consumes kind of a line through the Pacific, Okay, within which I mean obviously you know, he like you, has sea lanes and things, but basically it's it's it's like a it's quite literally like a containment barrier, uh, you know, uh, bulwark against the against

the against the Asian land mass. Okay. Now, Stalin was paying attention to this, as was Mao, And the way they read that was that, well, you know, despite the fact that Korea was under similar occupation in Germany, you know, you had you had a you know, you had you had a Soviet occupied UH. North you had a briefly American and Allied occupied in the south, and then north you had this UH kind of cargo cult Stalinist regime. And in the South you basically had a military dictator ship,

but the military that was running it was not particularly capable. However, there was not forces in being on the ground in the South. UH, they had THEYD left Okay, and UH the UH. The the understanding was that America is not gonna defend Korea. Okay. Now why Stalin and Mao comed in Korea is UH is what's significant because Korea was not UH in Germany. And the reason why Korea today remains dysfunctional is because it UH. It borders UH both China and Russia, and so the striking distance of letty

vas stock it's a stones throw away from Japan. Like quite literally, nobody wants to United Korea, but the Koreans, you know, America doesn't. The Russians and Chinese will not tolerated. Japan would not tolerated. This both supersedes and transcends UH Cold War rivalries now obsolescent, but also UH but but also as far less of a of a of a potential conflict. Diad that that that could result in true catastrophic escalation. It became that way because I'm a carthon.

We'll get to that in a minute. Okay, Now what happened months later was on June twenty fifth, UH, the North North Prey launched and massive assault of of the South. It was a Sunday. President Truman. UH was at home in Missouri, away from Washington. Dean Atchison was in Maryland at his gentleman's farm. Henry Nis, who people the name people were recognized from our earlier episodes did so, was the Secretary of Defense. He was not a fishing trip

in New Brunswick, but nitsad. Decades later, he was the principal architect of the Team Be exercise. He was a huge early neo conservative, okay, massive extreme Cold War hawk. He was the author of National Security Council Paper sixty eight, which was drafted in April of nineteen fifty, and that was one of the most important policy blueprints or policy statements of the Cold War. It provided it provided the roadmap for the permanent militarization of America of both conventional

forces and in strategic nuclear forces. From you know from the time it was written the ninety nineteen fifty until you know, the Soviet Union collapsed, you know, forty years later. So he was a hugely significant guy, Okay, and uh, his first, uh, his first kind of challenge political nature was uh, was was butting heads with with you know,

mister George Kennan. And we we discussed earlier. I mean Kennon obviously from what we discussed about him, and you know, from what we've talked about or is this kind of basic traits and character and it's kind of it's kind of decency in his basic sense of caution. I mean, he believed very much in strong defense, but you know, the cautious application of force and the service they're in. Kenn was one of the few men whatever people can say. I mean, we'll get into why this isn't a minute.

But Kenan was really savaged in the era, in the epoch by his opponents, including people like Mitza, you know, for being you know, soft on communism and conciliatory towards the Soviets. But kenn Uh, he had been adamant for once prior to to the June twenty fifth that there were definite indicators of communist military activity in Asia and

that they were going to assault somewhere. It was not clear where the theater would be for such activity and what the point of concentration would be and what would be prioritized they're in but MacArthur staven Tokyo just did not. They just disregard him entirely. They're like, this guy's in

the egg ahead, he's never been in uniform. He isn't what the fuck he's talking about, and he can't even you know, provide us conceptual model of like where this is gonna jump off, you know, and what what we're gonna forces, it's gonna entail, you know, and what and what what what feeder is gonna be the primary area of operation. So they totally disregarded it. Okay, but this uh to give you an idea of kind of how fubar the National security Estalishman was neither Truman, nor uh

Nis nor Atchison. It wasn't until they returned to Washington from their respective you know, vacations that uh they found out that Career was going to ressault because they saw the newspaper lines. Okay, there was no structure in place of of you know, notifying national command authorities of a wartime emergency and branded. I mean, this was that this was the dawn of the atomic age. But it doesn't matter.

I mean a you know, America, for better or worse, had had had just come off of a total mobilization and then you know, a mansion two front war. It was unprecedented in scope, scale and intensity, so impossible to rationalize as it is. That's the way things were when Kenon uh arright that night. Kennon Ken at this point was something of a minister without portfolio. Okay, Uh, he was. He'd been dismissed, as you know, the kind of quasi

regent of the Department of State in Moscow. He'd ended his tenure as a special consultant to the National Security Advisor. But he, I mean, Ken was always in the executive orbit, okay, because he was a brilliant guy and he uh, he was the he was the foremost expert in the Soviet

Union and the Rush and Russian culture. Okay. The evening, I'm sorry, evening at June twenty fifth, Kennon double time to the Department of State and he said, look, he said, the critical strategic matter here is that formosa Taiwan has to be defended. He's like, if this is a general push, and it may well be, you know, he said, Uh, the secondary of Soul is the soult in South Korea, the primary cult is gonna be on Formosa, and ultimately, uh,

there's gonna be a massive assault in Japan. Okay. If if the Soviets are going all in in Asia and uh, the Chinese, their Chinese proxies are going all in where we're gonna we're gonna be We're gonna fight a world war Japan, okay, which is very interesting. And uh, Taiwan is interesting because Taiwan is actually zero strategic significant today.

And it shows you like the raw delusion of these of these of these bizarre fucking idiots, like like missus Pelosi, mister Biden, that they pretend that it's nineteen fifty and that this matters, or that they actually have you know, not only is there no steak in Taiwan, but this idea that if I mean, if an American carry group showed up declared the Taiwanese until the twenty two that we're gonna defend you, like, they'd be totally befuddled. And then they laugh in their face. You know, I mean

it's uh, it's incredible. But in nineteen fifty UH had Taiwan fallen and had that ben you know, the like Moscow and Stalin's ambition. Ken was absolutely right the and UH, as we will see as we get deeper into this series, the Soviets put remarkable pressure on Japan, and then the Soviets roy is seeking out a weak spot as kind of their counterweight to UH to UH to the situation in Berlin especially and and the inner German border generally.

And that's when underlay cruise shifts on the serves amparently reckless deployment a strategic nuclear forces at Cuba, which blew up in his face. But UH, the UH finding a finding a if the Soviets had been able to find a soft spot as it were in uh the Asian UH defense paradigm or structure rather wherein they could squeeze Japan with a combination of you know, a hard power threat and and soft power UH UH insteadivization, UH America

would have had a real problem in that regard. So Ken was not just you know, dropping wild doomsday scenarios, and what he was saying was very possible as it was I Uh, I think I think Stalin was. Uh. I think Stalin was testing Mau's loyalty and uh the side still get split as complicated. There's profound cultural variables there as well as political ones, as well as simple uh well as well as things as simple as you know the uh like like dang who was you know,

who's the shadow executive? I mean basically, after after mild and after the Gang of Four got he was finding this somewhat greedy and and so were and so was his inner coterie and and and men like him and men like them can be blocked. But also the reason why uh it was it wasn't just owing to the kind of nascent uh nascent uh nature of of the of the of the Cold War paradigm during the last

years of Stalin's life. That that that that Pey king was in basically unconditional alliance with Moscow is because they were they were well to Stalin. I mean, Stalin was a remarkable person. I maintained he was probably the most powerful man who ever lived. Okay, hands down, But the as Kenyon came to realize, uh, China very much was the Soviet Union's proxy, and he treated it very much like a client state, I mean a very important client state.

One was potentially great UH power, political potential and uh military mobilizing potential. But nevertheless they very much treated them like, uh, like a somewhat inferior race. Okay, not to be crass about it. That is the reality of the situation. Kenda maintained, you know, UH in that same vein like here, first of all, like how how how is Truman able to

corral this this, this whole UH coalition effort. And again the parallel with with the goal for stands out here, although the way in which the coalition was uh was corral is quite different. The USSR was boycotting the United Nations at this point. Okay. Now, as as people probably know, the Soviet Union had a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. The UN Security Council access the defect will

higher House of the UN. If you're gonna look at the UN as like a unit camera legislature of Nations, uh, any permanent member of the Security Council was at veto on any resolution. Okay, the Soviet Union, a boy was boycotting this the UN. So they simply were their seat was vacant. And why were they boycotting the UN. They're a boycotting the UN because their proxy China had not

the UN and not permitted them to be set seated. Okay, there was there's this absurd situation where the Americans were demanding that chank I Scheck's government done from osa he recognizes the true government of China. I I mean, I mean, when you're sitting in pet king and you've got dominion over nine nine hundred million people, you know, declaring like you know, the guys on that you know, little island over there, the real government, there's something that there's something

satirical about that. But this is why the Soviets were boycotting the U. N That's when Truman, uh, through Antison, you know, said look, you know this is this isn't this is thet gregious violation of international law. You know, uh, the the communists are are you know, in the front that decency and you know, the the you know, the the more is the civilized commnitiyan nations of assaulted Korea. This this marvelous nass and democracy. You know, we we

we've got to rush to his defense. So that's what happened. Okay, Truman. Uh, Truman wasn't any gonna, wasn't any kind of pure Wilsonian, but he was like a liberal internationalist. So this this

kind of stuff really got him excited. He really he really dug that sh and frankly, uh, politically it was uh, it was a savvy move, Okay, I mean granted it's Truman didn't do anything to facilitated and it was the Soviets who were, you know, playing typical kind of comedy games that uh, you know of a political theatrical nature that facilitated it. But that's what happened. Now back to Kennon.

Kennon is observing all of this, and he's growing very concerned because Kennon knows MacArthur pretty well and MacArthur was just a weird guy. Uh. He lived with his parents pretty much his whole life until he was pretty old. He uh, he was immature, not in the way that Churchill was like, he wasn't he wasn't like this kind of buffoonish piggy drunk who was playing with army men

at age you know, twenty five. But he, like MacArthur, had this kind of His father was a Medal of Honor recipient who fought for the Union Army in the ward due in the States. MacArthur himself, uh, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in this in this anti bandit action in the Pancho Villa era. But it was strange and like it, it seemed very much like MacArthur kind of coveted this medal of honor and he created

circumstances we're in. He could, he could, he could grab one, but got a spinning facts in such a way that would appeal to the you know, to the uh, to those you know, commissioning such an award. He was not a very attractive guy. And aside from that, there's a reason why he was uh. He was sent to the Pacific Theater. The Pacific Theater was an it was a navy show. Okay. Now the runts there, those guys suffered like nobody else, Okay, and they fought harder than anybody else.

I'm not saying that at all, but the Army in in the Pacific War, they really were not center stage. And that's like, uh something if you're one of the reasons I like the film The Thin Red Line because it's one of the few reasons it's about the army in uh in the Pacific War, you know, not the Marine Corps. And you get a sense of these guys being literally in the middle of nowhere, and desertion in the Pacific was almost zero because there's nowhere to desert too.

You know, you were in this green hell uh a lot of time they weren't getting the gear they needed. You know, things have become totally savage by this point. But you know all that aside, I mean that that that that there's enough there to constitute an episode and the so own right, But the key takeaway is that there's a reason why MacArthur was not given some theater white command. You there's a reason why he wasn't given

an armored corps in Europe. Okay, there's the reason why he was sent in the Pacific, where he was basically under the thumb a guy's like Nimic's okay, because he was a cowboy, he was a glory hound, and by this point he was basically he was basically running Japan like like like some kind of swaggering Cardillo, you know, or some kind of like great white hunter or something. And what, uh, what Kennon's view was is I don't know what the hell this guy is gonna do. You

know Kennon's view as well. You know, MacArthur is in his element with this, uh you know, if if, if, if he sticks the mission and orientation of liberating Republic of Korea. But in MacArthur decides he wants to collect more medals and marcive led Evostok he's gonna start World

War three, you know. Now, I know there's like the stupid cliche uh of a fucking idiots who were always like talking about like, you know, talking about like general officers, like, oh, there's some crazy generals gonna do something like not at

that times. That's a fucking retarded take. Butcars MacArthur's MacArthur did crazy shit, and he didn't he didn't really respect the chain of command, and kenn uh what Kenyon did was, Uh, Kenon, he began very publicly saying, look, and this is fascinating because in presage is obviously what ultimately resolved the Cold

War and what mister Nixon and Kissinger did. Kennon said, look, he's like, we need to give MacArthur a free hand in operational terms, so long as the mission remains limited to the reliberation of of of their public career, not the Congress in the North. He's like, concovenantly simultaneously, he's like, we need to offer Beijing inducements to not cooperate with USSR. You know. He's like, we should even offer them a permanent seat on the UN Security Council if they're willing

to formally break with Moscow. Uh, And we should tell him that, you know, a further dom is we will recognize them unconditionally as a sole representative of the Chinese governments. Now, John Foster Dulles wouldn't berserk when when Kennon said this, and people are saying that Kennon was there, they were they were saying he'd been like gotten to by the Soviets because like awful slanderous things. He was literally just

shouted down and this really really hurt him. Okay, Uh, As the Korean War started to go very poorly, and uh, despite what they I don't I have no idea what the age kids in school about this, But the Korean War was incredibly unpopular. It was incredibly brutal, it was incredibly bloody, you know, it was uh, and not not in like Vietnam, in all kinds of ways. Okay, I don't want to go through a laundry list of grotesque things that happened. And and the awful thing is the

guy who had to go there suffered through. But there was a lot of commonality, Okay, not just owing to the owing to the fact that we're talking about, you know, Asian battlefeaters. But this, uh, this really, uh this this really Kenyon. Kenyon really got kind of sandbagged until uh until the Eyesenhower era. Well we'll get into that too as we progress. Also, we're gonna come back to Cannon again and again now just because I've got a huge escheme for Kennon. But he's a key player in the

Cold War. And like I said it, uh I, I give Nixon all credit for the facility in the Sino Soviets split, because he's the man who actually facilitated it in an executive role. Conceptually, this was this was George Kennon's kind of augury and instinct for for uh, for

hard power politics. But as the war dragged on, Truman did increase naval patrols and and just overall naval present the Pacific and especially in the Taie went straight and hugely signed, huge significance Truman Beige basically bankrolling the French War and into shining against the viet min Okay, and uh, you know, America's involvement in into China goes back to

the late forties in some capacity. And uh, this idea, this kind of Oliver Stone Howard, is an idea that like, you know, Vietnam was a lie man and look at a bunch of fish as generals and capitalists just decided to fight a war there. Like that's not true at all, and it's not okay, and you've got to look at you gotta look at Korea, You've got to look at Vietnam.

You've gotta look at this entire paradigm I talked about that ultimately kind of resolved in uh, this sort of massive escalation or yeah, massive escalation of forces and being in the Pacific, you know, in the Reagan area. You gotta look at this. It's all part of like a common paradigm. Okay, you can't look at these things in isolation. Now. What Kennon did do during this time is he started

writing a lot in policy journals. Okay, and he kind of back in those days, you still had public intellectuals that we talked about, and Kennon first and foremost among among socially, among social science types and political theorist types. I mean, he was he was the king, Okay. So Kenny started kind of making his case to the American people and to kind of like you know, uh and kind of like the learned you know, uh like top layer of h the civilian world and Kennya's plan for uh.

I mean, we we think of history in the rearview mirrorcause that's inevitable. Everybody comes to Monday morning quarterback when they're like looking backwards. Kenna was pretty convinced, along with everybody else, that there was probably gonna be there's probably gonna be a world war within several years, and at some point there was gonna be a catastrophic nuclear war. That was inevitable in his view. And I understand why

you thought that. And Frankly had had growichav and Reagan not found a way to end end that, uh, that paradigm uh there there would abstutely would have been at some point, you know, being in nineteen ninety three, two thousand and three, two thousand and thirty three, it would have happened eventually, but I'm sorry you calling it so

I've been another weather. But uh, the Kenon view was this, Okay, this is this was Kennon's kind of grand design for how to not to de escalate, but like get out of the Cold War without without seeding ground to the

point that America is totally compromised. Okay, he said, there's got to be looking a comprehensive settlement with the Soviets that would terminate astillities in Korea because because if if, if hostilities went on in definitely He's like, eventually, you know, the Chinese by then, where you know, we're fighting a general war on the peninsula against the U went that

American let you went forces. You know, He's like, eventually they're either gonna get the upper hand or we're gonna escalate, or we're gonna find ourselves in a general war with the Soviet in the Chinese. So we've got to find some kind of way of pull a plug on this and go back to pre war you know, presumably go back to pre war lines of demarcation. In the thirtieth parallel, he was like, we got to admit that People's Republic

China the United Nations in some capacity. Okay, even if we're not gonna give him a permanent seat on the Security Council, we can't pretend this government is not legitimate. There's a billion people who live under this government. You know, they're they're they're they're the third most powerful state on this planet. This is ridiculous. He's like kind of coma, and we need to we need to allow a PLEBIS site and Derman Taiwan's future and Kenya's like, don't worry,

the Taiwanese are gonna overwhelmingly vote for independence. But he's like, we've got to do it. And uh, we've got to allow third party monitors, you know, so that it's they can just be said that, you know, these Taiwanese are are under the heel of some called Billow, who in turn is taking orders from the White Man or whatever. Okay. And finally, and finally, this is a this is most

significant and this is fast. Kenn said, to prevent massive escalation in in the Pacific theater, and uh, to Aviy was probably you know, gonna this paradigm that is probably gonna result in a nuclear war. He's like, we need to bring about a neutral and de militarized Japan. Uh No, no U S Force is there, you know, No, uh no, not not not even a token kind of Japanese army. You know. He's like, Japan, Japan needs to become just the neutrals on okay, And uh that's the only way

moving forward. Uh, We're gonna keep it off the table, as you know, the it's kind of like the prize objective in the Pacific. And also this is long forgotten to history, other than there's a you occasionally come across copy uh, mostly like grand students come across headlines from the seventies and stuff. When the Japanese Red Army faction was killing p people because they dropped a lot of bodies. But communism had real momentum in Japan, it was entirely

possible that Japan would go red. Okay, that's a whole nother story. But just for contact, it seems weird that Kennan is like emphasizing that, look like we gotta we've got to basically like take Japan out of the Cold War entirely. That's why. Okay, And in turn, he said, finally, he said that we're entering into a catastro. What's gonna He's like, we're in arms race with the Soviet Union.

He's like, which we can probably win just because we we can essentially like in definitely outspend them on weapons. But he's like, at some point the Soviets are probably going to go all in and assault us, you know, with everything they have, rather than just lose. Okay, So he's like, we need to reduce some veryan capabilities to a mixed like a mixed combined arms force that's capable of dealing you know, a concentrated and devastating blow on

a limited front, but basically anywhere on this planet. And that was very pressing in too, okay because that that kind of thing. He became dominant by the end of the Cold War definitely and even beyond, although the strategic landscape is totally changed, and arguably arguably the reason why that that uh that notion has gained legs is for totally different reasons. But I mean there's all kinds of factor of the plane of that, you know, like political,

technological in others. But Kenon uh, Kennon had I guess I'm getting is this Kennon hit or he wasn't something on augur and light or anything. But he put Kennon ahead of his peers, particularly in the issue not of the of Korea but also Asia generally get an understanding of h understanding of cause as in politics, because causality and politics it I mean cause causality and human affairs

obviously isn't like causality in physics or something. I mean, everybody can see that, But in politics is a peculiar domain of human endeavor, and there's a weird kind of causation in politics. Part of this owes to what men and command rules have to do to maintain credibility. Part of it has to do with the way humans perceive

threat at scale. Part of it has to do with just how decisions are made in uh in in in technology driven societies where uh you know where uh that that that that that wields such great power over the forces that animate them that you know, uh oftentimes, once once the decision one one, once the decision making process

set in motion, it really cannot be stopped. Kind of had instincts for all this stuff, and he kind of understood the implications that thistrategic matters as they were happening, and That's what really makes a political theorist, particularly like an IR theorist, is you can look at you can you can look at affairs as they unfold, and you can basically disturb the trajectory of of of of the of war and peace parents. I can't think I better way to put it, But that's kind of.

out how to wage nuclear war. You know, if you're like a brilliant economist, you know, you'd, uh, you'd you'd meet with the president and you'd say like, okay, like what's the best way? You know, the Marshall Plan was great for politics, but it didn't do a whole lot for you know, capital and return on investment and for technological development. You know, how can we how can we how do we build up Korea? How can we build

up you know, Taiwan? You know, how can we build up you know these uh, these kind of key proxy regimes to fight the Soviet Union, you know, like nowadays, like the only people who go to government are real losers. I mean it's it's like it's like weirdos, freaks, like like literally like half assed actors, you know, like weird people who have like nothing going for him, but they have some desperate need to like be famous or something.

Like any guy, any guys, anything going for him is gonna have nothing to do with governments, you know, Like why what you I mean that's part of it.

develop weapons platforms that you know truly hasplaited first right potential, Like that's what you'd be doing, Like now, who the hell is gonna go? Who the hell's gonna go debate with AOC about whether like kids should learn about anal sex or not in seventh grade like that, Like, who the hell is gonna do that? Like any normal person that's totally beneath them, and they wouldn't like selling themselves that way. But also it's like government is for losers,

you know, it's it's for people like the bidens. You know, it's it's for it's for people like AOC, it's for uh, it's for or it's for guys or or or it's for kind of like uh, or's for kind of like you know, guys like the scantists who have some kind of like like stride or nurses just need to like you know, see their face on TV or something like. You know, people have something going for them, like aren't going to anything have anything to do with it. And

I mean, but it's also part of the problem. I mean, like we talked about before, and I'm sure people think that I'm flowing a dead horse here, that maybe I overstate my case, but even aside of the fact that we've got like a hostile regime that's wholly destructive and like an enemy of the people and stuff, even in like let's say you have like a normal regime of like of like normal people, like the government has structured it's only structured to really fight the Cold War and

not much else. I mean, it's like why does it even exist? You know, there's there's like there's something of a there's there's more than there's more than a modicum of fraud to it too, you know it, and people see through that, like at a highly intelligent guy aside of the fact that there's nothing government is doing that got positively interested in. Now he's not, he's not gonna go he's not gonna go pretend that like, you know, he's he's he's he's actually accompisting something by working in

some idiotic bureaucracy. You like, you know when you I mean, if people want to Jerry Portnell, I mean, I'm a big science fiction guy, so I love Jerry Parnell, but you know he, uh the Committee on the Present Danger, he really kind of took over that, uh that role. I mean that the Committee on the Present Danger went back to the fifties, but in the eighties he truly made it into like a a into like a military science like political action committee. Okay. And Pornell was the

guy who put like S ANDDI on the map. Okay. That's why the Cold War, I mean, dynamic people were in government because of the Cold War. Okay, That's that is why they were there, like they weren't. There is government as awesome armor because they really want to. They all want to figure out, you know, how to draft a school curriculum for like poor kids, because they weren't like past laws like make gay people feel better about themselves. I mean like they they were there to fight the

Cold War and that's it. And uh, the Cold War was something that comes like a paradigmic that happened once in a thousand years if that, And people realize that on some deep level, even when it was horrifying, and even when people would have done anything to get out of it, you know, when like and at junctures, you know, like like Cuba of sixty three or sixty two, you know, uh, you know, uh, the seventy three war and like able Archer, even even even as horrifying as that stuff was, like

people realize like you know, these were these were apocal or shatering events than I'm participating in. That's why.

telecom like across the board. I mean he has an eccentric weirdo but uh, I mean all all these guys are. But I mean I'm glad he's around and he you know, I's he's a great man and and like not in the sense of I love him and think he's awesome, but and by any objective metric. But that's you know, government, You know, government is going to attract users when it doesn't. I mean they were this is I don't wanna go too of our field and I'll wrap, but I want

to up in the hour. But but I mean, uh I government is gonna cease to exist as as as we know it today in the next two hundred years. Like I'm not saying like the state will wither, you know, like some utopian anarchists or some you know kind of like low key uh like Trotsky or something, But you're not. It's just not gonna have you know, a center of now people stuff like you know the twentieth century. Uh. Features that that that created this regime are gonna be

so remote as to be like not even intelligent anymore. So, Like a lot of what government does as it's make work, uh business the day to day is just not gonna exist and you work, and plus it's be like a natural devolution, you know, like you're gonna like localism is gonna become just like more and more thing it already is. But so I think the problem is gonna take care of take care of itself in some basic way. But that's uh, that's there's something I I can't thought. I

thought there was something I wanted to bring up an conclusion. Again, I swear I'm not going to senile.

at then, it's just like what the hell happened? Man? It's like idio, you know, it's like idiocrasy. It like snuck up on us. Yeah, in a decade.

like James Baker was like like a here. I really looked up to them, you know. But these you know, I go from that kind of very heavy, severe in both good and bad ways regime you know, to Bill Clinton and it's kind of like Merry band a circus freaks like it. It was bizarre, man, Like it was jarring. But I mean that's why, like I said, I can't it was a joke on Like these boomers were like who like flying to like, you know, rages about Donald Trump.

You know, these like the same assholes were like telling us thirty years ago like you gonna get with the times, man, you like, Bill Clinton is the future, Like we don't want your white male stuff anymore. But you know, it's like you can't like turn around and say, like you're outraged at some reality TV show stars as the president. It's like you guys made this shit happen, you know,

like you're the ones who said that. Like we're a bunch of squares and fishes and idiots who you know want like weight meal stuff to rule, man, and you know, we gotta get with the times. So it's like, you know, yeah, yeah, but.

but I mean there's always horrible things. You know. The world is a falling place, man, like that that's that's why, you know, That's that that's you know, we're all born in sin But at any event, Uh yeah, well let's let's uh, let's wrap up now because I don't want to. I don't want to go into another big uh like subtopic because it's coming up on the hour. But like I said before we went live, man and i'm ah the Felt was invited me to go with them to

the American Renaissance Conference this weekend. So that's where I am going. I'm going to Nashville. So if you're there, you will see me. If you seek me out. Please don't try to assassinate me or something like, but you'll cotch me at these things that they're they come as friends.

I promise. I'm sorry for the delay. It was not my fault, nor was it my dear publisher's fault, the Period Press. We've had censorship problems on our own and deep platforming problems. But it will be here in January. I'm sorry you cannot be here for the holidays, but uh, that is uh, that is where I'm at.

Korean War, it uh, you know, like what we discussed in the last episode about I was essential. Let end you know, uh, containment is policy, you know, not just as some sort of theory abstracted from from concrete military decision making. You know, you've really got to understand the Korean War as kind of the first iteration of that, you know, and as well as you know what became to great lectory, you know, policy towards the Communists for the next the next forty years. And it's also too

that's when America trulyuated into the viet conflict. You know, Like I made the point before, there's all kinds of lives about the Vietnam War and just missed just kind of misperceptions, some deliberate, some deliberately confabulated, you know, for polemical leological reasons, supportive brought ignorance the idea that Vietnam, which is kind of the opportunity the you know, owing the the designs of you know, uh profiteers and financiers

and things, this nonsense and the it and arguably you know, the Far East was there. It was far more dangerous during the Middle and late Cold War than than the European theater. I mean, obviously come to Europe that would have been because basically a single conflict diad and had it been triggered or trit the potential for catastrophic escalation was was was ever present. But did you but there was many many like diads potentially and how and where

uh uh, you know, actual warfare would ensue. That was very difficult to predict. And you know, once hostilities didn't sue, it was it was equally difficult to predict, you know, what the potential of escalation was. You know, it's also to the there there's there's more of a fluidity the

sphere of influence and things like this. But that's you know, that's why Korea is important and it's also it uh, it's it's essential to I think he were you kind of the outcome of the Korean conflict, you know, in terms of it's very pretty much Truman came under you know, Truman left office really kind of in disgrace. It's not I mean, he was he was an whenever he was about Truman, and he was honest. He didn't have character issues, he wasn't corrupt, but he was in the toilet on.

The Korean War was incredibly unpopular and you know, the the very public rift between Truman and Carthur, which led him Carter's dismissal. The Pike generally sympathized with MacArthur, not just because you know, he was kind of this heroic personas that had been very deliberately hated by you know, by media, but also the view of the view of Truman was that Truman's of gyms, you know, as stated where to quote, restore peace and security on the Korean peninsula.

You know, there was you know, basically the re establish the stay as quote lu of victory. And in Truman's words, you know, we're waging the Christrean war, you know, not just for for the sake of you know, deterring aggression and and uh and they're prevailing and and you know, and guarding the prevailing peace, but to quote protect our forces, you know, and that's one of the officers in the ground refer to that as an absurd tautology. You know,

your forces are there to protect your forces. I mean, that doesn't that that's not why you go to war. And you know we're talking about you know, not just men's lives, uh, you know, and and and and expecting them to sacrifice their lives in the national interest. You know, you you really have an obligation to the country, not just to those men and and their families and relations, but you know to the country at large, you know, to to wage war to.

But also suddenly you know, kind of court historians was on the right and the left, they kind of they kind of view this as as this real low point for a you America and the Cold War, Uh, you know, kind of a a precursor to what ensued during the detent era after you know, Segon fell and things. But I have a different take on that. I mean, that's part of the reason we're doing this is is owing the you know, the earth of with in his perspectives

and dealing with the Cold War. But in kiss interests diplomacy, he's about the only kind of I mean, I said Kissinger a lot because I you know, like before, for whatever reason, people kind of on both sides the logical divide, they they love kind of burning uh Kissinger at proverbial effigy, but he in power political analyses, he's really second to none, Okay, And he he made the point. Uh I got a little bit further than he did, but or he does.

But he made the point that you know, uh, the Stalin uh and and the Soviet Union ended up in pretty in a pretty precarious position only to the Korean War, the uh, the the you know, the there's a basic ambiguity as to where American sphere of influence stuff in

Soviet interests began in the region. American did not the forces and being even outside of Japan, really but even that is our uh, you know, to prosecute a major war in the Far East or they or they you know, those forces weren't present before the outset of hostilities in nineteen fifty you know, the UH in the aftermath of Korea, you know, the the Department of Defense, it it asked for the defense budget to be tripled, and it got its way, and it truly integrated military alliance developed in

Europe under American Supreme Command. I mean that's built NATO was the Korean War. Before that, there was you know, talk of a European defense community. There was real hostility to the you know to UH the UH the idea of an in of of American for being in any any in any real you know, numbers remaining in Europe.

And I'm not saying it's a good thing that that that this is what happened, But in terms of UH you know, relative power UH and and between the United States and and the Soviet Union and what became the warsaw packed, this really just really changed things uh uh and and skewed the strategic landscape against the interests of the communists. I believe the UH it it it gave the United States a certain credibility in terms of multilateral action,

or at least the appearance of it. You know it uh it bade basically Congress UH gave a blank check to UH Eisenhower subsequently, you know, to beef up these client regimes you know in Africa and the Ear East and in the Orient, you know, and and throw huge amounts of hardware at them. And you know, this was this was the catalyst really for the you know, for

for American special warfare. I know, like Kennedy gets all the credit for that, you know, and that's why you know this this the spec War centers you know, literally named for him. But you know this was really like like spec war and special operations really became a thing, you know, UH during the Eisenhower era, you know. And then this oh to UH the experience of Korea and things like that, and Stalin Stalin had been UH Stalin related. I don't want the Korean War to happen. I mean,

he had, he didn't have any problem with it. He greenlit it when uh when Mao U was able to convince him. But Mao and and Kim Olt Sung were able to convince him that you know, victory would be rapid and initially, I mean it did appear that that would be the case. You know, the the U Republic of Korean forces got pushed back to Pusan and the perimeter was this tiny little corner literally the Republic of Korea until uh, I mean, those guys fought fought hard.

I'm not putting shade on on the South Koreans, but I mean, you know, they they were, they were they were totally routed. It wasn't. Uh, it wasn't until you know, the the Incheon landings, you know, cut the country in half basically, and uh, you know, the UN forces essentially fought this kind of desperate rear reaction and uh and pushed the communists all the way back like literally to the Yellow River. And I mean obviously that you know,

that's what triggered intervention by the Red Chinese. But but but playing you know, this was not despite someone like the Cold the Cold War Hawks alleged this is not Stalin like you know, sitting in Moscow, you know, trying to you know, go to America into this Asian war, you know, whereby then you know, uh, the pots whatever have an opportunity on Berlin or something like that was and then but it just you know, didn't go as planned, Like,

it's not what happened at all. But you know, the uh, what Stalin was really doing, in my opinion is uh Stalin realized that the Soviet Union needed China. Okay, the Soviet Union needed China as much as the United States needed Western Europe. Because what became the Warsaw Pact, this was this was not some sort of you know, equivalent to Western Europe or it's some sort of equivalent to the you know, the capital base uh and and resources human material that you know, America and the UK had

in NATO. Really all the Warsaw Pact was, with the exception of East Journey was U was the defense court on you know, it was literally space where in you know, the right army could deploy in depth to protect itself or the stage you know what they characterized to preemptive as against NATO, so occupying occupying Poland with hostility, you know, uh, you know, and you know, creating like a climber theme in Bulgaria like this, these things are these not profiting

the Soviet Union and these things were huge dreams, okay, But what the Soviets had was the Soviets had China and even though China was you know, very very underdeveloped at that time in power political terms, you know, pure military terms, there's incredible power potential and frankly a communist block that's literally from uh, you know, from Berlin uh uh to uh to Handoi contiguously. I mean that that's a good that that's about that's about a fifth of

this planet. Okay, just the just the raw kind of geostrategic momentum of that is incredible. So this uh, this uh, that was a lot of what underlay kind of this this the apparently it's on the service kind of odd posture that Stalin had towards towards the Chinese and and

the Chinese War against the Americans. But it also it did lay the foundation for the sign of Soviets split because the Soviets were not generous and there's and their material support at China, and they very much made it clear that you know, they dude China as their client regime and uh, they would not Stalin would not commit to a a proportionate response if if America deployed you know, atomic weapons, uh you know what they were as as atomic bombs, you know, against against the knees and don't

get me wrong. I mean mal himself, Uh well, I think was something of a crazy person and somewhat primitive. Frankly of mind, I I do believe he was basically playing spoken and and he said knowing certain terms that that you know, the you know, the reason why you know, Pete King would not give its loyalty to to Cruse Chef is because Crusier was not the man that Snalin Wasn't you know, Stalin was a remarkable figure. I mean,

whatever else we can spout him. And but by my point being that you know, the man was with Stalin at the helm, the kind of relationship I just described, you know, characterized by the Chinese being very much subordinate to Moscow. Grudgingly, the Chinese would have accepted that under Stalin.

They would not accept that under you know, some under some under some apparatic like like cruise chief or under you know, some kind of uh you know, and under some kind of uh you know, octapaneery and dictator like prison of But that's what I said, the scope of what I wanted to cover here what it did and what what it did do on the communist side, uh and in kind of like the victory column as it were.

I mean, China did fight the United States to a standstill, and I mean that was no small thing, Okay, I mean, yeah, the Chinese had certain advantages on the ground, but America then had tremendous military might. You know, it's a huge

disterity and t G the Chinese absorb these casualties. But I mean that you know that uh, that that emboldened, that embolden, the hoaching, that emboldened Paul Pott, you know, that emboldened uh you know, uh that bolden one hundred insurgencies, you know on every continent that uh, you know, the United States is not invincible, you know, and that uh, I think that I think I can't really be overstated.

And you know when people people I had a kind of substantiate my claim that you know, the Soviet Union really you know, kind of developed uh not so subtle credibility prop album and in uh in in in the way of the Korean War, you know, it was it

was a year before Stalin died. It was March tenth, ay to you know, some died basically right by after cessation of hostilities, uh In uh in Korea, and uh it was we talked about the Stalin memo or the Stalin note last time, you know what was called the heat nooked and and some of the some European media. So later on, you know, when kind of the comments this more publicized. But you know, Stalin's notion was uh, a demilitarized Germany, you know, know, as a neutral zone.

You know, Germany being retained a kind of nominal military force under a under its own authority. But you know, all all all troops you know, gone from German soil and a you know, and and then and this jury neutrality enforced on Germany. How that would be enforced? I was never really clear because nego she didn't reach that point. I would assume, you know, uh, some kind of un manny would have would have been you know that it was. It was managed, but be as it may, there's a

reason why you don't. I mean, yeah, obviously the Soviet Union, they're big, they're they're big. Problem was uh, you know, the strategic and some of the fact that you know, NATO was at their doorstep what became NATO, and then

you know it was at their doorstep. I realized NATO was was uh incorporated forty nine but it was about ten years, in my opinion, before it became a truly you know, like it integrated comy force other than just uh you know kind of a you kind of kind of a kind of mandated for you know, operate within

the borders of these at least nominally sovereign states. But uh, you know the reason, you know, you know, the reason why Stalin made the effort when he did, you know, if the Soviets were in this great kind of position to strength and you know, in uh in power political terms, you know, the Korean War was you know, really going their way and really kind of uh you know, breaking the face not just a Truman, but of uh of

the entire an entire kind of Cold War apparatus. I mean that that would not that that's not what he would have been doing, but the uh, it's also to the fact that I mean it was dooming to fail because I mean this was submitted a mere eight months before the present election, you know, and I realize, you know, I realized Eisenhower wasn't any arch warhawk, but he was he was a military man, and he was he he was viewed, uh you know kind of as uh, the

Soviets were afraid of him, number one. And that's that's all. That's an interesting topic and to itself, but point being, for better or worse, regardless of what everybody feels about Eisenhower in history, you know, like he was, he was viewed as the man to wage the Cold War, Okay, and that that's really what kind of catapulticed him new office.

But even even taking Eisenower of the equation, obviously obviously eight months out from uh from from a from a presidential contest, nobody's gonna, you know, nobody's gonna be willing to undertake uh, you know, some kind of shift in uh in in status or relations with the Soviet Union, you know, in in ninety fifty two of all of

all years. But what I want to kind of segue into is the person at conray at add an Hour, Like before I said a recording, I said, I wanted to get into the culture that boomed this republic and how they came about and why it came about. Understand that you gotta understand ad Hour, you know, and now was the first uh, he was the first post war chancellor.

I mean, if you if you if you if you consider Western Germany, Ben you know, like the real Germany or whatever and uh, you know, the success or state of uh of of of of the German Reich. You know, he was he was the first post war chancellor. And if if you reject that, which I I don't think people do with some might I don't, I don't get

to the current German state and particularly legitimate that. But in terms of you know, linear political uh legacy, I think I don't think it's controversy will do And if I had now as the you know, as the first uh real post uh war executive, but he uh, and it was an interesting guy. And it's kind of fancy to me that he was the man did for the role,

but it makes perfect sense. And it goes to show you how America at one time I had a real political plans of a man who really really understood kind of the nuances of power of politics and you know, the kind of deeper implications of of of what of what of what chiefs of state represent both the the people whom they rule all so to uh, you know, allies and foes alike. And and there was a perfect example of that. And now we're uh. He was born in the seventy six, so He took office when he

was seventy three. He stepped down when he was eighty seven. I believe that makes him the oldest Yean head of state in the modern era. The ten and I think was eighty four eighty five. I mean, and there was a remarkable guy. And he and now I was born in the Catholic Rhyanland, Okay, and he was born uh literally you know what the kind of zene of the Bismarck's Coulter kof and for those that don't know, you know Bismarck the kind of arch Prussian Protestant. He did

not trust Catholics. He purged Kolics from the kind of civil apparatus which had by that point was quite robust. You know, Prussia was really kind of a modern state. You know, they had they they had the kind of the you know, real pension system if the I mean it's anybody who can make like a kind of welfare state apparatus work against the Germans, and they did. That

can't be argued. I'm not a particularly I'm not some big government uh you know, Keynesian type or anything at all, but even you know, I stipulate that pressure ran with uh with true uh, you know, kind of military efficiency and all the best uh, you know, in all almost a lot of ways. But one of the things Bismarck did was, uh he very very much purged Catholics from

uh positions of authority. And it was it wasn't brutal in the sense of, you know, Catholics weren't rounded up and shot or something and weren't availed U you know that the physical violence, but they really were locked out of out of political and cuffair as well practical purposes. And and this this made it this, this had made a huge impact on the end. Okay, not only because he was a Catholic, but you know, his his family was was very politically engaged, you know, and now himself

obviously this is you know, was his career path. He he considered this, you know, very very unjust and because he actually was devout, you know, and now it was not his Catholicism is not superficial, and it wasn't just it wasn't just you know, kind of a like a perfunctory uh identitarian signifier. You know, he was very very Catholic, and uh he found his way uh to the uh to the center party, you know, way which was the Catholic Party, you know, really of a of thet boch

it was uh nineteen oh five, nineteen oh six. Uh and now he was like the city council Cologne a few years later became the vice mayor of Cologne. You know, he he was considered's not of a political prom okay and he uh he was again too. He wore his Catholicism on his sleeve. But he was respected pretty much by everybody, I mean even by the even even kind of the most you know, kind of by kind of the most dedicated Persian like culture warriors. You know, everybody,

everybody respected him. You know, he was he was a man of of my integrity, Okay he uh. He was adamantly opposed at political extremism, but not in not not in kind of the way that you know, Carl Schmidt disdained, you know, the he was not the kind of the

parliamentarian who believes in endless discussion and supervisial compromises. And now it really did believe that, you know, the cunning of reason and history and you know, the kind of the mind of God is what is what guides politics and and and men are kind of limited participants and in affairs of state it uh you know he uh he was dedicated to rooting out disorder and official and

see irrationality. He was very much a moralist. You know, he had no talent for corruption, but he uh you know he had uh he he had no time for for ideologies of of of the right as well as the left, you know it. Uh I think uh, I think of him as somewhat like uh. I think he had something kind of with people like Dolphus in Austria. Okay, frankly he was a centrist, yeah, yeah, but an authoritarian

when called for. But also again too, I mean very not not at all secularists, you know, very very much you know, Catholic, and his his orientation and and then uh in his evaluation of of them of what you know, the metric is for good government. But uh, I mean his political culture is very different than the one they

had now emerged from. And the uh the kind of the kind of the kind of quasi clericalism of somebody like Dolphus, you know, like and I wasn't running around you know, like like instilling priests and in the city

apparatus or something like that. Okay, but he but he was he was not at all kind of the secularist parliamentary and like I said that that people sort of associate with with with you know, compromisers, the of the of the kaiser Reich and the and the m Era, you know, I mean the uh, the kind of the kind of toxic parliamentarism that that Schmidt lamented. I mean, yeah, obviously reached a zenith and Weimar for obvious reasons. But this kind of thing is you know, like it really

it really did. And that's that's important to bear in my mind. But no, so it became he became nationally known during the Great War. Uh he uh he involved himself, uh you know as as uh as as a merit colone. He involved themself very much and managing never threw remedy, you know, food shortages born of the embargo. Uh it was an eally like uh like sausage derived from soy. You think this these kinds of alternative uh food technologies and power was responsible for getting of found you know,

which which was revolutionary in those days. You know. He uh he worked handled with the army and uh availing colone is uh as as a base of supply and and as a hub, you know, to reconstitute forces and things like this. You know, he uh he really really rose to the occasion, you know, and became something of a hero of figure in the minds of people, not just in Cologne, but uh, you know, he became quite

well about the Reich. Uh however, uh he uh he uh he was somebody who became something an intermediate, something of an intermediary uh between uh, between elements and in Berlin,

which is interesting. And when it became clear that uh, when it became clear that uh, the the French intended to occupy the Prussian Ryeland, he had the Monciulolian notion of dissolving, uh, dissolving the Ryeland and into a new autonomous state kind of like a demilitarized zone that uh would uh you know, with the stipulation that the French would would not occupy it and uh the foreign element would uh set foot on its soil. You know. It's because it being this kind of like you know, nomenal

atime zone. And uh, both the Prussian uh governments and yeah and uh and the Byment regime were totally against I think planned to bring up Russia with the Via regime. This was in nineteen nineteen. Yeah, I mean, I mean before I mean, we have to advocate the what remained of the right government was totally opposed to it, but it was an The point is that was very that was very forward looking in it's thinking and very much uh and very subtle kind of and it's and it's cunning,

and that kind of became characteristic of our Uh. He also too, uh when it was the treaty ever Sai, which was presented formerly in June nineteen nineteen and now we're new as anybody did, it was in the know that some sort of punitive regime was gonna be coming down the pipeline. And uh, I think his idea was that, uh, you know, the less kind of like the more like evolved, uh the Reich was like the harder it would be,

uh you know, to kind of bleed it dry. It's uh you can kind of definitely, uh, you can kind of definitely tie up reparations regime if you know, you have this kind of if you have a kind of bold the sovereignty, you know, in all kinds of ways. So it's uh, he he had Germany's best interest in mind in these things. He was doing what was interesting, is he. Uh he, he very much collided with with good staff Stressman and uh you know, I've I've made

the point before. I think in in our in one of our previous series that Stressman was a compelling guy and I think he's not. I think he's never really given to think of MS is kind of account to Ramsey McDonald. I think it's kind of an unsung figure in British politics. And never looked at stress him as being too Prussian. He looked at him as uh, you know, not uh not not not just no a viable for the chancellorship because Ed now did in fact covid uh

the office. But uh he uh you know, he viewed his vision as fundamentally at odds with what was you know, possible and feasible, and uh that's really kind of sabotage, sabotage and naws designs. The idea was, uh, you know, for the a coalition of the Christian Krants and the and the and the Center Party, you know, uh to uh to constant the ruling quors and and at our true to form, he'd he'd he managed developed good offices

with the Social Democrats as well. He refused to negotiate with the Communists, but he'd managed to decople a lot of key figures of the Social Democrats from the KPD, and this caused a lot of consternation obviously on the left, which was you know, kind of a brilliant play by add an Hour, but it also it ingratiated you know, certain people to him that, you know, moving forward would have facilitated, uh, you know, a real you know, a coalition that actually had legs and trans of its ability

to to pass legislation and and and and take you know, executive take unilateral action when required, and and and had something of a mandate across the aisle, which was remarkable for nineteen twenty six. But uh, his kind of is his personal collisions with uh, with Stressmen ended all of that. I mean that that could be a whole episode into itself. But what's what's segnific again is when uh, you know, the National Socialists uh breakthrough in in nin or breakthroughs

in nineteen thirty and thirty two. And now it wasn't just Marri Cologne, but he was president of the Prussian State Council, you know, and uh, obviously, uh, the National Socialists, one of their key and stituency, not because they had you know, said strong soup around when in elite circles they certainly, but also just I mean, you know, appreciating the political uh you know, the like the political core

of the German Reich. And now said on the Prussian State Council meant that he was either going to have to some kind of something, come to some kind of concord or the National Socialists or step aside. And uh, interestingly it uh went on the night of the Long Knives and now was I actually arrested and uh not allegedly for his own protection. And he wasn't harmed anyway, and he was released after the after the uh you know, after the after the dirty work of the bloody business

of we're out the revolutionaries was done. But he wrote a ten page letter to Gering you know who. But then uh was Galli or Prussia and as well as

the chief of the Prussian police, you know. And he made the point at Geary and he said that, you know, when when the National Socialist Party was banned, I allowed your people to you know, fly your national flags and Prussian buildings I build of uh you know, our public facilities, you know, to the National Socialists, so you to hold your meeting, you know, because I wasn't I was, I wasn't gonna. I wasn't going to exclude German people and you know veteran fighting minute that which most of you

were from the political discussion, you know. And this is how you thank me is by placing me under arrest.

And apparently this really kind of hit Daring hard and according to Spear as well as others, and I don't there to be a valid uh the testimony particularly valid on most matters, but on some things because he didn't no reason to lie about it, I do, and I'm according to Spear, Hitler made the point that Hour was a good man and regardless of our differences within him, our main National Socialists, you know, we we leave him alone,

you know. And that's basically what happened. I mean, he was and now refused to He didn't he not only he refused to join the party, but he he he you know, he basically refused after the rest, he refused to kind of cooperate in any meaningful way. Okay, so he was unceremoniously removed from all you know, his his remaining offices, like appointed offices, you know, and uh, you know told uh, you know, you're free to go by your business, but you know, in nice life, you've got

nothing coming. And and I actually spent uh some time living in a monastery, you know. And in later years he said that this is what he kind of had, you know, he came to certain certain like epiphanies about you know, uh, the German nation and and and what configuration of state was was going to allow it to survive, the German that survives the people and whatnot, which I think is basically true, you know. And now was not some he wasn't some intellectual or some student of history.

He wasn't he wasn't a guy like the Gaul or like Adolf Hitler. You know, he is this kind of guy pole star like we talked about, was his Catholic faith and uh, you know kind of like a kind of a pragmatic sense of of how to of of how to constue to government. You know, that the Germans could live with as a people, you know, but that you know, if not ideal, would would allow their you know,

survival and perennial terms. And at the end of the day, I mean, that's that's what the function of a government

is is guaranty of the posterity of a people. What the and now we're being the man that the Allied occupation authorities essentially chose to lead Germany is fascinating And again it shows you how you know, again, at one time, however, is guided the regime may have been in uh, you know, just in pure in terms of pure competence, like America at one time it had very very strong Department of State, very very tight intelligence apparatus that allowed it to identify

you know who who you know who should be insinuated into these roles. And I think within the bound ration of what America and in the UK and France wanted to accomplish in Germany like now we're the only end I think could have done that. It kind of finally what I now had going for him in their eyes, he was he was. He was constitutionally anti Russian and

anti Soviet. What he did say when one of a few topics he would pientificate elaborately on in theoretical and historical terms was the relationship of Germany to the East and UH specifically, you know, relationship of UH of the German state UH to Russia, and uh, you know, he's said, he talked about the kind of you know what in his view was the love hate affair of Berlin with with with Russia and the Russians, and you know, the kind of kind of machiavilion u wit that you know,

kind of ultimately brings Germany into concord with the Russians and other times than odds, depending on you know, the depending on the characteristics of the extent strategic landscape as well as the internal political situation. And uh and now we're said, you know that that that that ends. Now, you know, the Russians are, if not our enemies there, they're certainly our adversaries. You know, we we we're gonna stand with the West and with Europe and with the

Atlantics concord at all costs. He refused to recognize the d d R at all. He said, it's not a legitimate state, you know, he he denied, uh, he denied

them any diplomatic representation. And I mean that probably is what more than any other single variable, uh is what uh is what kind of made I now were acceptable to the occupation of authorities, but it was it was everything taken together, I mean there was the Soviet Union were at Diamond, you know, ambitious guys who you know hadn't been national socialists, but who hated the Russian I mean, it's it's not like Nower had like a rare resume in that regard, but this kind of that he had

a rare credit and an unusual sort of integrity. I think that, coupled with this sort of unfinitional cold warrior stance made him, uh, you know, kind of like the natural choice. But again, I mean it's in the fact that the fact that the men in charge could demonate that he was a natural choice, uh, is a testament to the fact that, again, at one time America had a highly competent foreign policy establishment. What what what what's

in place now was literally can sleely illiterate? I just I realize gonna make that point again and again people are probably tired of it, but it's something that can't be overstated. But interestingly, two, you know our he uh he said that people need to say, you know, very monck assessed veterans desert to be respected and they're patriots and and he he said that you know, we're not

gonna put like shame on these men. But interestingly, the reason why Auto Reamer and Hans Rudel, who both were uh Reamer, was he still has the Socialist Rights Party, you know, which was which in my name, was the legacy party of the nsd P in real terms. And they they were pro Sovietiet. They were nagatively anti Merican

and pro Soviet. And he, uh, he was, he was very he very derisively referred to ad Now as quote Rabbi ad Nour and uh, there's a lot there's been a German right, the national Socialist right, who absolutely despise ad Hour. But they that uh and I I I understand cletely, like I get it, but it's not it's not as simple as add now. We're as being like I said, Nato Lackey or something or some or some social democrat to uh, you know who saw an opportunity and you spent the war years you know, uh, you

know his toy, the launder. You had to you know, avoiding the front. Well so like avoiding the eye or the authority. And suddenly you know he uh you know, he started you know waving uh waving waving the natal band or as soon as as as soon as uh the Soviets were uh we're in Berlin. You know, he

had genuine entirety. Okay, Uh, I'm not gonna like I obviously mouth went slides with guys like but in his in his I mean, but uh, that's that's uh that that it's I I wanted to decate based this entire episode, and now we're into the senden See because that's I realized something of a dry topic, but it's essential to to understand and it could have very much gone a

different way. And I think the point about reading war kind of building NATO because like and again I really NATO was constant in nineteen forty nine, but there wasn't really much to it then, Okay, and there's still still hasn't even been decided. If you know, Germany was going to be allowed to permitted the you know, re arm at all in any capacity, and then what kind of

became the prevailing uh sensibility. Uh. You know, people make the point a lot that the you know, the the uh the uh western of an army UH had uh such boring uniforms. That was by design because the original a concept thing floated was a European the community wherein uh there'd be a comedy command structure. You know, no one state you know would have would would be dominant and you know in an executive officer roles or in command authorities and UH the you know, the the UN

a forum for the post the multinational force. It was supposed to be devoid of anything that could be affiliated with you know, national chawmanism or or something that could be like identified with any particular UH country or or cultural UH tendency. So you're left with UH. So the the like then is now it's like these guys look like bus drivers or something. It was opposed to, like the Easterman Army even though which are like dope, but it's you know, it's uh it. I think the key take.

But also, like I said, was that the UH and we'll get into UH later on in this series two the like ultimately and and in the final phase of the Cold War, the key UH, the key strategic battle strategic battlespace was was the the Pacific, you know, and that that's one of the things that underlay UH the Department of the Navy under Jim Webb, you know, UH and UH Reagan's idea for a ship navy, you know, the idea was, you know, to deploy battle platforms, uh

like survival battle platforms, eff to wave what amount to do a two front nuclear war? We can think of nuclear war as having fronts at all. But that's uh, that's yeah. I mean the fact that the people like uh, people like Kennon uh who talk about, you know, the inherent danger of of the Far East and and they kind of and and you know, again the fleet of

of possible conflict adds, I mean they're proven right. I mean during the Cold War, like Asia was pretty much always at war, and I mean America fought two major wars there and probably have it as on others that you know, we're kind of something short of you know, open conflict, but but but very much not conditions at peace. And I mean the there was a I mean that

that wasn't happening in Europe. I mean, yeah, I realize again as I stated that, uh, there's really only one conflict diet and possible in Europe, and it was a catastrophic one. But that had the Korean War not happened, or had it resolved some other way, uh, the entire

course of subsequents would have been different. And it and it had MacArthur got his way some kind of uh, it's not going to open it at war with uh with And the problem is, I mean, I stipulate that what was referred like we thought the tautology of well, you know, we we we've got to defend Korea because our forces are there, and we're going to fight to defend our forces. I mean, that's nonsense. But if the alternative is, you know, we we've got to push for

a total victory in Korea. But doing that means fighting in China, and fighting China means you know, landing the China goshiks nationalists there, and and and and waging war to the end until you know, until the comments regime falls. Well, if you do that, then you're at war with the Soviet Union, you know, and then when and I mean,

there's this this is not the Cold War. Was it was important, not to not just important, but I mean and it was a next it was a question, it was a next essential reality that uh, the conflict paradigms couldn't just be considered in binary terms. And I mean that even even up through the eighties, there was something too. Uh I'm not talking about like the fools like Uh, the kind of you know, the kind of the kind of peace movement just calling for like you know, Libel

to sun. I mean, but some of the people you know who really kind of like opposed the the the reig and UH and tm B notion. It's it was, you know, they're the Cold War announcing you can just turn off. And it wasn't just a question of you know, persuing a quite like a conciliatory posture or an aggressive posture.

You know, especially by the era of deep parodies, the every every embolicy decision had had very serious consequences that themselves and other consequences, not all of which can be foreseen. You know, it's an incredibly dangerous time. But excuse me, I'm just I'm getting over a flare up. So I realized that sound crummy. I'm sorry, but uh, I'm gonna wrap Uh I think that I think I'm gonna wrap up this, uh this episode. And like I said, I

realized this was a bit dry. It's kind of it was it's essential to lay foundation for some of the you know, for some of the some events we're gonna talk about, and we're gonna get into the Cuban missile crisis, in Vietnam and the next episode. And I think that everybody finds that sort of stuff exciting. I mean, at least I do.

find me on Twitter at triskilli and jahad. Uh the T is a number seven, but if you search for Thomas seven seven seven, you should find me. That's mostly where I active these days. I'm going to transition to YouTube and you know, perhaps uh one or two other video platforms on the first of January and make that kind of the the primary place where I post up content. But for now, that's that's where I can be found.

now what we're doing here. But I'm gonna drop a fresh pod this week and kind of get back on top of stuff. So thank you for being patient. I don't like believe people. I mean, I realize everybody's cool about such things, but I mean people do pay to like read my stuff, so I don't really like to leave them hanging like that. But yeah, today, I wanted to get into the Q and missile crisis today because it's something it's key, not just understanding how the later

Cold War developed. I think of the later Cold War as Bresnev onward. Okay, and Bresnev became General Secretary in nineteen sixty four, okay. But the early Cold War you can think of as you know, Stalin's tenure through mister Krushcheff's regime and not not not not as temporally can we think of that as the early Cold War. But that was before parody set in, you know, strategic parody.

And people bandy a lot about nuclear weapons today, which is another example, in my opinion, of how kind of disengage the public policy UH discourses from the realities of things. Nulear weapons are a practical purpose is obsolete, not not because the technology is obsolete per se, but because they don't really have utility in UH in it tactical or

a strategic sense outstead of a very peculiar paradigm. And unfortunately or fortunately, depending on where you fall on the issue, that that that paradigm emerged splendidly in in the twentieth century, and uh what uh, what's what What's become sort of dogma in terms of in terms of strategic analysis and game theory derived from the precedent of the Cuman missile price.

It's more than any other singular event. This was somewhat uh compromised reliance on the model that I just you know, from relying upon the data derived from the Cuban missile crisis and the models created therein in terms of strategic forecasting and and nuclear war planning and deterrens and things like that. H some of that was itself writered ops a lescdent by the emergence at deeper parodies after ninety seventy three seventy four. But the basic terms remain, and

the basic the basic conceptual model indoors. And I'm gonna get into why it is in a minute, but first we gotta understand understand the Cuban crisis. You can understand the character mister Krushcheff, cruise schief became for a poetical purposes, you know, chief Executive of the Soviet Union in nineteen

fifty eight. You know, I mean, there was always kind of a strange or not always, but in most cases there's an unusual sort of consolidation of offices that kind of asituted the executive seat of power in the Soviet Union. Sometimes that was a trifecta of sourts. Sometimes it came down to the rule of one man. But it's it's superseded. Uh, it's superseded in any single office, okay. And after the death of Stalin in ninety fifty three, there there was a lot of there's a lot of palace intrigues, as

it were. Okay, as well, we could probably imagine between Stalin loyalists, you know, between and reformers as well as uh, you know, between men who represented uh uh sympathies uh common to the same faction, but you know, who had

personal designs on power. And Cruise Chef was emerging a triumphant for a variety of reasons, uh, not the least of which ironically, in the view of the West at the time, I believe, and even in hindsight and even among some revisionists, Cruiseiff really was something of a reformer, you know, he was he was kind of a proto Gorbachev in a lot of ways. People who cited this because his posture was so aggressive and foreign policy as regards efforts directify the strategic and balance. And we'll get

into what I mean by that in a moment. But Krustie, if he is, he wanted to normalize the Soviet Union. Okay. Now this presented a problem for few of the reasons and the one and it was imperative for him to normalize and thought relations with the West because otherwise nothing was gonna get done. Okay. There there was going to be some kind of interdependence between the East Block and

the West, Okay, regardless of what anybody's powerpelitical ambisions were. Okay, that's that was just the reality of of of of nascent globalism. And make no mistake, globalism began uh in the ashes of the Second War. Okay, The fact there wasn't realized until you know, the night of November nineth,

nineteen eighty nine and subsequent is is incidental. This was uh, This was this was the enterprise comment of both Moscow in Washington and and what form that it would all the system would ultimately take once consolidated, was really what underlay the political side of the Cold War. So Cruise I've had to present a face of u of normalcy

or the outside world in some basic sense. However, as we talked about, particularly in the last episode, when we got into you know, the uh the the battleground of the Third world and the need quite literally to you know, to to disway the non like world into one's own camp as a path of victory in the Cold War, the uh the the only way to really animate these these post colonial states and in these in these developing countries, uh, to to take up the cause of Marxist Leninism was

to sell them in a basically radical program. Okay, That's what was resonant with the people on the ground. That's what uh, the cadres had been marinated in that kind of you know, during World War two and after. Frankly, that's what orthodox Marcust Leninism is. You know, it calls for the It calls for the development of a truly revolutionary sensibility where uh, you know, power flows from the

barrel of a gun quite literally. Okay, in tactical terms, somebody like Mao was was far more of an orthodox and Marguist Leninist than you know, the the the Eastern Bloc cadres that uh that succeeded style. And Okay, I'm notwithstanding the fact that I don't believe Mao what any

great understanding of Marxism. I don't think he understood it at all, particularly, but on the tactical sides of political revolutionary as somebody like Mao or probably more probably more precisely Ho Chi Men was exactly what Lenin envisioned when he when he when he when he contemplated you know,

world world socialist revolution. Okay, So there was this weird dichotomy wherein the Soviets had to present a reformist face to their chief advers series in the West, but you know, they had to maintain a kind of a year of uh of orthodox radicalism, you know, to their constituents, if we can think of them, that where their cadres, you know, in the Third World. And this was a very delicate

menuet and uh it. Frankie led the foundation of the sign of Soviet Split, which we'll get into in coming episodes, but that's a bit outside the scope for now. But when Cruisie did take the helm of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union had some pretty substantial momentum technologically, they were arguably winning the space race. You know, Sputnik was uh was the first uh what was the first man made object in orbit? The first man made object in space was a V two rocket, so you can

thank the German Reich for that. But you know, Sputnik was a This was a big deal, Okay, Like a lot of people, uh, the people in the in the nascent Pentagon at the time said well, this is just a stunt. You know, it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't prove anything. It didn't matter if anything or not. And it didn't matter if you know, there's a direct military application, you know, the parking a satellite in orbital space for

a few minutes. The point is that they were the first to accomplish it, and this developed a kind of momentum it zone in terms of perception. Okay, but the Soviets had a real political problem that became a national security problem that was ongoing even despite those victories in this era. We talked about the Berlin Airlift last episode, and you know how that really kind of was the

key initiatory or instigating event of the Cold War. I think if we can identify any singular occurrence between ninety fifty, well over one point five million people emigrated from the Soviet occupied zone to West Germany, and most of these people were young. They were prime working age, a dispportiond an amount of engineers, men with military experience, people educated in the sciences, uh, women of child during age. Yeah,

I mean this, this is a real problem. Okay. A subtext uh to uh to to the issue of uh emmigration across the inner German border a level was never explicitly stated by their camp was uh one of the reason Germany is coveted. It's it's it's not. It's not just because of of of geostrategic accident and kind of where you know Germany is located on the map. Okay. It had to do with it had to do with

the human material. Okay, you can control the German population that literally, the human resources they're in that that you wield tremendous power in terms of your ability to mobilize them for warfare. I mean, that's just a fact, Okay. I mean if people want to say that it's not true, or that the eugenics thinking, Okay, fine, you can label whatever you want. It's a fact. And everybody accepted it. Okay, there's a there's a reason why. There's a reason why the d d R was was the jewel and the

crown of Warsaw pat Okay, And it wasn't. It wasn't just because it was the westernmost point at which at which the Soviets UH sphere of influence stretched. As this went on, another another layer was insinuated into the into the issue of into the issue of divided Germany as the UH, as the four power UH regime fell apart, and it became clear that, you know, demilitarization was not in the cards. The Soviets came to realize that West Germany as a basing hub for for American nuclear weapons

was was going to become the reality. And this had already been accomplished in terms of low yeld tactical nuclear forces. It had escalated beyond that, in part because UH the strategic balance was still unstable. And we'll get into what I mean by that in a moment, But the Soviets were very very aware of this. So the problem was twofold,

you know. The problem was the fact that they were literally hemorrhaging people by the sieve that was Berlin, because the inner German border had been shot since ninety fifty three, but Berlin, being one hundred and ten miles within East Germany, represented a kind of It represented a kind of metaphorical valve, as it were, wherein people could pass rather freely between you know, the Eastern occupations owned in the West and

once in West Berlin. The West Berlin authorities under a under the dominion of you know, of the United States, the UK and France, they considered all German citizens to just be citizens in Germany. They did not recognize East Germany as a sovereign state. So East German people, these German passports made it to West Berlin like they were good to go. They they you know, they be granted full rights of UH, the many bales and the Bonus Republic.

So there's the practical problem of of UH, of the Soviets losing the human material they needed to wage the cold work quite literally, there's the political problem of UH of credibility, you know, UH in that you know, if if you claim to represent the real Germany and the U you know, the will of the working class and the government situated in East Berlin, yet you're hemorrhaging people.

It UH it's a terrible look, frankly, and uh, the entire uh, the the the entire communist enterprise again relied upon the perception, especially in the Third World, you know, to represent a competitive system that was an equitable alternative

to that in the West. And finally, as I just indicated, uh, the permanent division and mobilization of Germany essentially allowed America and the NASA and NATAL alliance to potentially maintain a permanent, splendid first strike capability, you know, if they chose to deploy strategic nuclear forces. At that time, there were no hypersonic cruise platforms available, so we'll get into that later obviously, but the solution of this was somewhat fascinating. There's a

terrible human cost, so I'm not being flippant. But on August thirteenth, nineteen sixty one, at midnight, the East German Border Police, the National Volks Army and elements of the group of Soviet forced in Germany, it began to construction on the Berlin Wall, Okay, and it wasn't clear at first what they were doing. Ubrich had actually suggested this based on analysis from National Voks Army engineers. The Soviets did not think it was possible, and the Pentagon, interestingly

near me cort of engineer said it's probably impossible. But to emphasize the point I just made about, you know, the mentioned material if you will, of Germany, well, the Germans found a way to quite literally wall in West Berlin, which again I'm not making light of a terrible situation, but the Berlin Wall remains an architectural marvel that really I don't think, I don't I don't think anybody could

pull off other than the Germans. And I think we can stand by this statement in confidence so that the effect of lessening tensions, you know, there wouldn't be another Berlin air lift type situation, you know, absent a state

of general war, it was unthinkable that Berlin v blockaded again. However, that didn't obviously accomplished anything in terms of the remedying, you know, the problem of of a basing availability in West Berlin, and I mean the obviously it was key keep in mind is that okay, I mean, the Soviets could base their own nuclear forces in the d d R, and they could threaten Europe with uh, you know, with with with the threat of a cat is driving nuclear assault,

but that that that wouldn't matter. Like when it came down, it was the ability to deter a threat in the United States, and obviously the Soviets had no capability to do that, which is why UH Cuba became so coveted. Now, before we get into the actual development of the crisis, let's get into what prevailing conceptual models were for UH for strategic planning and in the nuclear age. Okay, the two primary models were presented by Hans Morgenthau, who I

think I referenced in the last episode. You know, morgan Tho is a traditional realist. Meerscheimer's a neorealist. You know, as I indicated, he he deals with and dealt primarily in structures and institutional u features and how they affect outcomes as regards us as you know, as regards to terrence and war fighting. You know, Morgan thal would he basically presented an anthropological model buttressed by what he called rational discipline and action. Like what did he mean by that?

He was saying. What he was basically saying is that, you know, the bounded rationality to states at war or political actors generally not they don't even have to be states so the States obviously are the primary, the primary actors in power political affairs. You know, at least from sixteen forty eight to the present. That's changing, but it's still endures, you know, regardless of how prerational or even arguably irrational the origins of war are. Like what it's underway.

You know, war is guided by this bounded rationality. Okay, the waging of it. It begs the question as to how you know, as to how as the on this has been demonstrated in the historical record, like an Accolade Morgan that would say, well, over time, you know, there's there,

there's a remarkable continuity. Okay, if you're talking about great powers at war, where they're talking about the British, the United States, you know, Russian foreign policy, you know, even the lesser regional powers like the Austranguria Empire, you know, in the most failian era, at least over time, this

bears out. Okay, the the competing model, I mean maybe not so much competing and absolute terms, but the uh, the kind of game theory model you know that relies more on codable variables if you were if you will, you know, uh, based upon you know the availability of war fighting technologies was kind of was presented by Thomas Shelling.

Shelling was primarily an economist, but he was a game theorist, and he was a public intellectual of the sort that really, uh really thrived during the Cold War, and I it doesn't really exist anymore, at least not in public life. Shilling's old point was that deterrence is accomplished, you know, not, you know not not not by the propensities of the individual men who are they who are the human decision makers, you know, nor a by that relative balance of forces

on each side. But the stability they're in, and the stability they're in comes down to available technologies, and uh, in the nuclear age that it comes down to the ability of uh each side to basically threaten the other, whether a telecatory strike when attacked that you know, makes a bolt from the blue assault cost prohibitive, you know,

unacceptable damage will be endured. In other words, Okay, showing seminal texts was the strategy of conflict, Okay, throughout the Cold War, this kind of a in foreign policy and so either more either directly or obliquely into literally until nineteen until the night of November ninet nineteen eighty nine, showing is a controversial figure about his influence can't be cannot be denied now based on both base based on either of those models or both of them considered together.

Nineteen sixty two, really ninety sixties ninety sixty three was so dangerous because they're an equilibrium and not yet set in. There's a lack of there's a lack of informational awareness on both sides as the absolute state of forces and being and capabilities. Even uh, even if uh, even even if that awareness had been even if those blinders could be as it were, it could be overcome. I mean, even if there was a situation a total uh information awareness.

There's the availability of delivery mechanisms and uh, whether you know they're their operational status would have caused a situation where it could have served either side's interests to strike first without waiting for you know, an intelligence reveal, you know, as the absolute status of forces on the opposing side.

What one what one can think of two men blindfolded, uh, and neither's aware of the armament of the other, and whether they're trying to draw a bead, you know, the threatened the other to deter future hostile acts, but neither's cable of seeing you know, his opponent, you know, and that's really what in part created, you know, the the danger of the Cuba situation. Now, how it first came about, like why Cuba again, and more to do with the

accident of geography. As early as you'rely nineteen sixty two, Raouel Castro, who UH was Fiddil's brother and was uh in in some ways the shadow foreign policy executive of Cuba throughout the Cold War, so we're not even two. He visited Moscow, and it's believed that this is when the Soviet Union began the large scale shipments of the tech of technical and military aid to Cuba, you know, including UH the men who were qualified to uh, you know,

to operate you know, strategic nuclear platforms. UH. August nineteen sixty two is probably when UH is probably when the actual plant missile platforms arrived in in in Q. They were not yet operational, but this is when, you know, this is when that disassembled components first arrived on the island. September. Interestingly, the UH, the Kennedy administration declared that if Q became a base for Soviet nuclear weapons, UH it would it

would be viewed as an active war. So this is on everybody's mind before the crisis, before, but before the crisis ensued, and before the reveal of UH, of the actual basing of weapons on the island. This gives you an idea of UH the dangerous game cruise if was playing. Frankly, okay, now, it was Sunday, October fourteenth, that's when the famous or infamous YouTube were Constance Flight took the photographs that you

know ultimately led to their reveal. It was a subsequent Monday the fifteenth that conclusively, at the National Photographic Interpretation Center, the YouTube film was analyzed and medium range ballistic missiles were identified in your san crystal Ball without a doubt. Now, thus ensued the most dangerous phase of the crisis. Today, October the sixteenth, Kennedy and his UH and his principal foreign policy Cabinet were briefed on the situation and discussions

began immediately on how to respond. Now, obviously there's two principal courses. I mean, there's three, you'll get into that

in a minute. But in terms of action, the two principal courses were, you know, a massive, a massive air assault, possibly including nuclear forces, and a subsequent invasion of the island, you know, the the destruction of the weapons platforms, the overthrow of you know, the defeat and utter annihilation of the Cuban army, the overthrow of the Castro regime, and the occupation of Havana, which undoubtedly would you know, lead to the deaths of you know, one hundred of thousands

of people, including you know, any Soviet soldiers on the ground or alternatively sort of a naval quarantine blockade, and the threat of future military action. Now interestingly, macnimer was the man who had the third position, if you want to look at it that way. Mcnamerr Said, don't do anything.

This doesn't matter. Why doesn't it matter, because you know, these intermediate range platforms are going to be obsolete in six months, and which was true, you know, and America was about to replace their own Jupiter missiles with the polar System, you know, which was a submarine launch ballistic

missile platform. And even whether they're not the case, mac namara said, uh, you know, despite despite propaganda of the contrary and despite Cruise of it's own statements, you know, the Soviet unions, the Soviet Union probably adds between thirty and eighty viable warheads. Okay, we get into a we get into a nuclear with the Soviet Union, we can annihilate them. I mean, yeah, you know, twenty million Americans may die, but that's a war the Soviets can't win.

Do nothing. But that wasn't really the issue. If it was, the issue was twofold. I mean, this the Minroe doctrine, obviously, and that always UH is controlling on questions of the power political affairs. Just on principle, you can't allow UH a rival actor to deploy within the Western hemisphere. I mean, if you do so, it's you you you're essentially making hash with your own line in the sand, as it were.

It doesn't matter that, you know the I mean, I mean even if even if the weapons deployed are already obsolescent, it you know, it doesn't matter. And secondly, UH, you know, as a matter of a political will, if America won't UH, I, America won't fight ninety miles off its own coast to prevent the deployment of UH strategic nuclear forces. The credibility gap develops as to whether America is gonna fight and

sacrifice one hundred thousand men to defend West Berlin. You know, I mean, God love macnamara, but there's you know, there, there's a calculus beyond the beyond the merely uh strategic that matters in these things, and particularly in the Cold War, which was as much political as it was, you know, a military contest, and you know about you know, who can accomplish what within you know, the proverbial balance of terror.

On October seventeenth, before uh A, uh, before a formal policy decision was reached, Kennedy ordered a what we consider to be rapid reaction forces to be moved to bases in the southeastern US. Further, YouTube flights and the photos derived therein indicate additional sites and in total of sixteen

to thirty two missiles. So, in other words, even taking with McNamara said a face value, which I believe, which Kennedy did, and which I believe we can and you know, and upon reflection, obsolescent or not, if those missiles are operational, that's the potential for for an utterly devastating counter value strike was definitely there, you know, I mean, this was not an illusory threat, however anyone feels about it, and

the character of cashtro is UH is relevant too. You know, Cashro whatever gonna be said about him was it was

was a true revolutionary in the purest sense. And he'd repeatedly stated that, and this is revealed later and UH communications between himself and UH and the Soviet Foreign Ministry and proused of office itself that UH, in the United States assaulted Cuba, the Soviet Union should go all in and you know, just treated as an act of war against the Communist block and and and and and the launch of our missiles with an operational decades later, UH,

at the height of the conflict in Nicaragua, Casher was convinced that the United States was going to directly intervene, which might trigger a theater white conflagration, and he reiterated that the Soviet Union, in the war's uppack, you know, should consider UH, you know, a waging prempted nuclear war against against NATO. I mean, he really believed this, you know, this wasn't you know, it's easy dismiss that it's so

much bluster. In the case of many men like Cash, it absolutely meant that, you know, I mean, I I have no doubt about that. So consider that there's a question as to whether or not, you know, what what the Soviet response would have been if there was a massive invasion in Cuba. I mean, there's there's it's more than a remal possibility that you know, there would have there they would have responded by launching whatever munitions that

were currently operational. Okay. And again even if that, you know, even if that, even if that was a war, the Soviet Union could not win that that that would have that would that would have meant I need to thirty million dead Americans, you know. Within hours, uh Thursday, October eighteenth, Kennedy was visited by the Soviet Foreign Minister Gramico, who asserted that the soviety to Cuba was purely defensive. Kennedy had not yet revealed that he knew of the existence

of the missiles. He reiterated his public warning of the previous September you know that deployment to Cuba strategic nuclear forces would constitute an active war. Basically was signaling and to give Gramco an out, I believe, okay it And this also raised the question as to why why why why didn't why didn't cruise to try to de escalate when it should have been clear that Kennedy was signaling through a kind of you know, would pass for secret

diplomacy in the post and number of era. Why why didn't why what why didn't Why didn't Cruise your trying to de escalate the situation. I've got my own ideas on that, But what's an arguable is why, uh, why Cruise it deployed these weapons in the first place, when as we just acknowledged, you know, and as as mac and at the time observed, you know, that this actually didn't rectify the strategic balance imbalance on its own terms, and it had the potential for catastrophic escalations. So why

why did he do that? I believe that this was supposed to be as trump card as regards Berlin. I believe that Kruse Scheff UH was going to demand on the open floor of the United Nations that UH NATO abandoned West Berlin and UH and UH and and UH. And when Stevenson or whoever you know, haughtily would just say, you know, it's laughable. Of course we're not going to do that. At that moment, Cruise Shift would reveal, well, you know, we've got operational weapons platforms in Cuba ninety

miles off your coast. You know, if you want them to be removed, you know you'll you'll, you'll see Berlin unconditionally our sphere of influence, which seems like the craziest hell idea. But Cruise Shift was a gambler, you know, for all of his for all of his tendencies UH towards reform and a constill literatory posture and absolute terms his uh, he viewed none of this as being truly possible in power political terms, unless the Soviet Union could negotiate,

you know, from a position of uh. If not absolute, you know, then a relative strength. That's what underlay all of this. It was always a political uh ploy more than a uh strategic uh move, if that makes any sense. And that that's key, not just understanding the Soviet Union in it's epoch, but I think the kind of Russian national character. Like I don't speak Russian, I've never visited there.

I'm certainly not an expert on Russian people, their culture or their affairs, but I do know something about power politics, and uh, I think, uh I I I think that's I think, I think I think this is key. Okay, Putin himself is something of an unusual executive uh, even for Russia, but generally in structural terms, what the Kremlin does reflects this same kind of tendency in common. I don't I think that's constant. It doesn't change. H. Yeah, up,

go ahead, we're gonna say something. Okay. October twentieth, UH Kennedy UH finally decides on the quarantine plants are drawn up, UH to blockade the island of Cuba, notified the American people, and UH prepared for war if uh, you know, the SOT Union opts to sue for war to break the blockade the UH. During this time, Curtis la May maintained

evociferiously objected. And you know, I I've I made the point again and again about you know it may being really kind of a towering figure in uh, you know in in uh, you know, really really throughout the Cold War, but especially he just to force the man's personality and I mean think about Kennedy. You basically it was waiting up feel bad to kind of win the respect to

the military establishment. I mean, he was a veteran and a war hero, but he was given something of a punk rich kid on the beltweigh by many and back in those days, I mean you had a lot more serious people who you know, kind of carved out niches for themselves, and the National security apparatus, you know, what we do was the deep state. Today, you know, you got Curtis LeMay, Uh, you know, demanding uh, you know, demanding Kennedy give an assault order, you know, backed up

really by you know, the entire Pentagon apparatus. And in those days, you know, Strategic Air Command was king. You know, it very much eclipsed the Army in terms of its you know, uh cloud and policy and in policy authority, you know, things like this. You know, I mean whatever, I'm not some great fan of Kennedy at all. I think anybody kind of instinctively discern who's h at all familiar with my content? But uh, you know the guy did Kennedy did have balls, and he needed that have backbone. Okay,

that can't be denied. What really what we're really solidified Kennedy's position, though he consulted with uh, General Walter Sweeney of a tact the Layer Command, who you know, uh and and you know, going back to the Second World War, you know, the fighter Mafia and Strategic Air Command liked at this kind of ongoing rivalry. I there's there's military guys who claim, well, yeah, there's you know, obviously, you know, Kennedy tapped Sweeney because he wanted to foil to a A.

I don't think that's true. I think it was because Sweeney was the man who such that experts existed in those days on you know, how to knock out on how to knock out strategic new clear platforms. You know, Sweeney was it. And Sweeney said that, you know, even if even with the best possible mission outcome, he cannot

guarantee one hundred percent destruction of of the missiles. Okay, So again you know, this raise the question as to well, I mean, the moment, there's a possibility that's not you know, and it's it's greater than a slim possibility that the moment Cuba came under result, if these platforms were in fact operational, the launch order would be given, you know,

and who even knew the situation on the ground. I mean, one would have hope that the Soviet Army technicians responsible for the deployment what have ultimate authority, But I mean, who's to say, you know, that can't be guaranteed and in a a proverbial fog of warst situation. Expressly, delegate authority doesn't always carry the day anyway. Monday, October twenty second,

Kennedy consulted the former presidents Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower. Briefed them on the situation, you know, asked for their support if in fact the country uh you know was uh what what was going to go to war. He received his He received, you know, absolute blessing from all three men. He formally established Kennedy did the Executive Committee of the National Security Council Young insisting of mc namara, McGeorge, Bundy, Curtis Lamey, Bobby Kennedy, who probably should not have been

in on the conversations. He was the President's brother and there's a conflict of interest there, but you know he was for better or worse. But that's uh, you know, the the smoke filled room, uh with all the personalities mentioned they I just mentioned present. You know, you see this like dramatized on like History Channel stuff like that's that's what they're depicting, the depicting the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. Okay, ultimate A. Kennedy Kennedy wrote

directly to Khrushchev, which seems like a breach of protocol. Uh. But the Cold War was strange in this regard. You know, it's it's really in my opinion, said the President too. You know, there's like people that people talk later in the Cold War, by the by the Carter era, it was the quote you know, like bat phone or the red phone in the White House that was the hotline

of the Kremlin and vice versa. You know. Uh, this idea of of of of heads of state directly kindacting one another across uh, across across the enemy divide and a potential crisis like it seems improper and the traditional kind of laws and customs of war. But the Cold War and in some ways was you know, a breach of precedent. But in then regardless of of that, that the merit of that, or the efficacy of that, or

the effectiveness of of a neutralizing potential crises. Uh, it was probably the correct move for Kennedy to directly right to cruise if by telegram, and he did him. Uh, he did this prior to addressing the you know, the American people by television, which was frankly like you know, a sign of respect and say allowing cruise to safe face, you know. And uh, the key uh, the key phraseology of the telegram was quote, I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would, in this nuclear

age liberally plunge the world into war. What he was saying again was basically, you know, deployment to Cuba as an act of war. And I'm giving you an out here, okay when I'm well within my rights as President United States simply to you know, assault the island, neutralize the threat, and ask questions later. And uh, regardless of whether is correct for Kennedy directly addressed crews with the man himself and not go the diplomatic channels. Uh that that that

was the correct statement, I believe. So again, we gotta we've got to give credit recruited to do it to

mister Kennedy, however else anybody feels about him. Seven pm that evening October twenty second, That's when Kennedy speaks on television revealing the existence of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, announcing the establishment of the quarantine and declaring that you know, and until the missiles are removed unconditionally and and and completely you know, the the the the quarantine will not be lifted, and failure to do so, you know, we'll

constantly with an active war Secretary of Stateton Dean and rusk Uh formally notified the Soviet ambassador, which again, uh, that's not just part of good office, is it indicated the severity of Kennedy's statement, that's essentially what you do when incident, you know, preceding a formal declaration of war. Okay,

So that's another thing to consider as well. Also, like we talked a lot about, even though I don't really accept the mere Sermi model about institutions determining you know, the course of power, political events and crisis outcomes, there is a momentum to the apparatus of government, particularly as regards war and peace, and once kind of the mechanism of war mobilization is in place, it's very, very difficult

to put the brakes on it. Okay. The fact that Kennedy was entirely serious about going to war, waging nuclear war over Cuba, that itself created conditions of escalation. I'm not saying that's the wrong thing to do at all. Quite the contrary, is the right thing to do. But this added to the danger. At every step decisions that are made that lead to UH real world outcomes in the national security apparatus in a state of readiness and deployment,

it creates an elevated UH. It creates an elevated danger. Okay, there's there's a sociological question there, there's a comics question of you know, managed relationship to technology. I A lot of that stuff is like far beyond my abilities, okay to analyze. But what I just stated is indisputably true. Susay, October twenty third. The following day, Assistant Secretary of State Martin he Uh start a resolution from the Organization of

American States and the oas UH. I mean, these days we think of it as you know, primarily like a trade block and things like that. During the Cold War, obviously it had it had it had profound UH geostrategic significance, you know, because any if you're gonna wage war in Latin America, which was a very real possibility throughout the duration of the Cold War, a quorum of support from friendly regimes they were in was absolutely essential for obvious reasons.

The the Soviets proceeded UH two UH to deploy submarines UH to the Caribbean Sea, which were facing off immediately opposite the the the US Navy blockade vessels, which again to the UH and indicated UH a Soviet willingness to fight and to keep uh, you know, to fight at least defensively if Cuba was assaulted, you know, I mean, Uh, it became clear immediately that the Soviets were intending to fight for Cuba, like to what degree they're going to

do that, whether the missiles were operational or not. You know, the the Soviet Navy was going to fight, and that added another uh, that ended another wrinkle, as it were, because even if, even if, even if the Bliss, even if the nuclear capable platforms were not operational, a conventional war in Cuba with the Soviet Union, obviously there was gonna be some sort of response in Berlin, Okay, I mean, and then it's you know, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're

dealing with the potential conflict diad that were result in the Third World War at some point, you know, down down down range of of of hostilities. Wednesday, October twenty fourth Cruiser responded to the Kennedy UH, to the Kennedy telegram stating that, uh, the Soviet Union does not respond to ultimatums under threat, you know, uh, stating quote, if we react we as these demands, it would mean guiding oneself and one's relationship with other countries, not by reason.

By submitting to arbitrariness, you are no longer appealing to reason, but wish to intimidate US. Thursday October twenty fifth was when the crisis could be said to have broke in some ways. Soviet freighters that have been bound for Cuba turned back to Bucharest UN Secretary General. The UN Secretary General called for a quote cooling off period during which the embargo would be temporarily lifted and you know, only

non military product would be permitted to pass through. This is rejected outright by the Kennedy administration and grounds they would leave the missiles in place the removal which was an express condition but a negotiation. Priday, October twenty sixth, with the date of the infamous cashiw letter urging cruise shift to initiate a first strike against the United States

an event of invading of Cuba. Whether Cruth did responded or not, or whether Ramigo responded whether the ambassador to Cuba had any sort of formal response in the Kremlin, It's not clear. But again there's an inference that can be drawn here. I believe not only the Cubans not have the authority to launch the missiles, I don't believe they were capable of it. There's an entire protocol to

launching a nuclear missile. It's not just a question of pushing a button or having the right code, you know it, uh, like in the movies. So the odds of ah of just a general like counter value AsSalt nuclear result if Cube had been invaded, I think it's somewhat remote. I don't think I'm reading too much into this statement by Castro.

I mean, why this was a private communication at cruise if like, well, why would cash will be you know, flexing in that kind of private capacity, Like it doesn't It doesn't make sense otherwise, you know, you know what I mean, like it yeah, yeah, yeah, but it the uh finally and finally, UH resolution ultimately came when the cruise schiff wrote a long, rambling letter a second letter, a few drafts of which, when the Soviet archives were open, were found and leading a lot of people to believe

the cruiser was drunk when he wrote or dictated it, which is probably true. It's not just you know, some kind of punitive revisionist account like cruise Iff really was drunk and in the execution of his official duties a lot, you know it, uh, which oh was in part ohs you know, to his his apparent instability. This is the source of the of the quote, you know, demand that America pledged to not invade Cuba, Like what in power politics? What is some open ended pledge and not invade another

country amount? I mean that that doesn't amount to anything, even as a face saving measure. It doesn't really make any sense. This is immediately followed up by a second letter from Moscow, which probably came from gram Ego or from somebody in the Politburo Standing Committee or it's equivalent. This second letter demanded actual conditions be met, primarily the

removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Now Turkey and Italy were these Jupiter missiles were intermediate range ballistic missiles that have been deployed in I think nineteen fifty seven, fifty seven, fifty eight around there, maybe as late as fifty nine, but I'd have to double check that. I'm sure somebody in the comments will wrake me over the colls if I'm misstating the date they were deployed in Italy and

deployed in Turkey. As I said, by this, at this point they were not strategic nuclear forces based in West Germany. But the Soviets made much of this at the UN in their own propaganda and formal objections to Department of State. But these Jupiter missiles were on the cust of being obsolete, you know, like we talked about earlier, the Polaris submarine system was due to be launched within months, and it was ultimately fielded in sixty three sixty four. And so

I mean this is basically meaningless. I mean, okay, as a safe face, as a face saving gesture, maybe it carried some weight, but I I think the I think the Soviets were were still very much lagging and in terms of the technological gap as regards strategic nuclear delivery systems, that changed dramatically in the seventies for reasons we'll get into in subsequent episodes. But this was the source of

this was the source of the concession. If you want to look at it like that to UH remove to remove the missiles from Turkey, and that UH that night, UH Robert Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador and they reached a basic understanding that the Soviet Union would draw their their strategic nuclear platforms from Cuba under United

Nations supervision. In addition to UH an American pledge, you know, this pledge not to invade you, and a secret understanding, as it was referred to two, you know, to remove the Jupiter MISSIALI from Turkey. And this too, I believe, substantiates what I just said about the Soviets not really realizing that the Jupiter platform was going to be absolutely because like if it was just a face saving measure,

why wouldn't they make it public? Like they thought these platforms were viable and they thought they were getting something, you know it because the fact that it was UH, the fact that it was not an above board concession that the defeats the entire purpose of any of any political theater that you know, might have might might have

been utilized by way of it of such a gesture. Now, the problem with UH that the problem was this, and in the view of people like LeMay but also in the in the minds of people like Shelling and Trank, even people like Herman Khan, there's a sense that eventually conflict with the Soviet Union was inevitable, okay, and owing

the precedent of the twentieth century, that seemed reasonable. That wasn't just a warmonger's kind of fantasy, you know, it wasn't just you know, something that you know, cynical career is in the national security establishment, like to say, or bandy about, because it rationalized, you know, the kind of cloud they had. I mean, yeah, there was some of that.

But if you were if you were, if you were a middle aged man in nineteen sixty two, who who whose entire career had been as a you know, in public service, directly insinuated in the national security establishment, like your entire your your entire professional life had been characterized by by by by negotiating crises of a of of of of basic national security and and and and conditions of of general warfare or price short of but approaching general warfare. You know this this just seemed to be

the reality the twentieth century strategic landscape. So that being said, if eventually, you know, conflict is inevitable. You've got an obligation, you know, to defend the United States at all costs.

And if that means preemptively, you know, waging a nuclear war against the Soviet Union and we're so upacked, you know, to absolutely defeat them before strategic nuclear parody is accomplished, then that is, in fact, you know, not just the moral thing to do, but that is what you're obligated to do incident to you know, your office and the

duties incumbent they're in. And that was really kind of the This underlay a lot of what was going on in you know, the proverbial war room, Okay, around Kennedy. It wasn't just you know, it wasn't you know, like the way people like Oliver Stone characterize it, like these kind of crazy cold warhawk warmongers, and you know, these kinds of men of like better natured you know, saying no, we're not going to go to war, Like it's not

that's entirely the wrong way to conceptualize it. I mean, yeah, again, I don't have any illusions about a lot of these people at all. Like there were there were personalities, you know, insinuated in and rolls the highest authority in the Cold War who definitely were like that, you know, who definitely did not have the national interests in mind, or they thought they did, but you know, they were clouded by you know, matters of a of a pride or or whatever.

I mean. I think I think Thomas Power as being one of those types. Frankly, but this is uh, but that's what's essential to keep in mind, particularly because like I said, even people, even people are somewhat you know, sympathetic to you know politics, the right or you know, revisionist perspectives. You know, they continue to cast people like, uh, they can cast people like as what I just said, these kinds of strange love or Janette Ripper type characters.

But uh, it uh, forgiving of this was kind of dry. It was essential to kind of explain like how that entire paradigm developed of the Cuba crisis, and it's uh, the shadow of it loomed large. I don't just mean like in metaphorical terms, but uh, in terms of how policy was conducted as regards to Terrence and and uh and the strategic balance and the Cold War, and this really endured until nineteen eighty three and nineteen eighty three was so dangerous, you know, I mean that's the Able

Archer era. That's the way it kind of Cold War storians think of it. But but preceded Able Archer. And one of the things that you know, created the conditions that that that that led to the war scare was uh that threatened to play event of the person two platform in West Germany, you know, which really was a game changer, and you know, the the end of day Todd really kind of shattered the assumptions that underlay uh, you know, deterrence uh from the Cuban missile crisis onward.

That's a complicated issue, but we'll get into uh, we'll get into uh Johnson, Vietnam and Nixon next episode. Nixon is gonna take more than one episode, but I will at least like get into uh Nixon's first term next time, UH incident, our discussion of uh of Johnson and Vietnam and all right, I mean we'll see, depending on how long your own to go, but yeah, we'll we'll we'll

get into some of that stuff. Uh yeah, yeah, And again, forgive me if that was a if this was a dry episode, it was essential to kind of lay foundation for what comes subsequent No.

long history. Uh. I was reading about Angola a lot some years back, and you know, one of the reasons why those poor guys, uh who ended up a servant under callon a guy got got massacred, I mean by the Cubans and by the by the Angolan out forces. Like holding Roberto. He basically sold British intelligence and CIA a bill of goods, you know about the reality of like forces and being on the ground and what they

were capable of. The anti Castro Cuban Bobby Similarly, they either shipped together a lot more than somebody like mister Roberto, but they had a lot more money, and they had a lot more flash, and they had a lot more kind of cloud than they did actual capabilities. Okay, I think there's a lot of people even in the intelligence community, and I've got nothing nice to say generally about, you know, the CIA of the era. But I think they had I I think, I think they had good intentions within

the irrationality of what they were trying to accomplish. And uh, I think, uh I, I yeah, it was nive. Maybe maybe it was naive to think that they could accomplish what they set out too with what I'm onted to a skeleton crew of of cowboy type mercenaries and UH and self styled uh uh you know, and self styled uh counter revolutionaries. But they also they underestimated the strength of UH of of Castro and the gameness of a

of the Cuban army. And this was entirely clear into later Like speaking of Angola, you know, the Cubans deployed fifty thousand deep to Angola. They fought the South African Defense Forces. It was with the Crack army, you know, and they they met him head on, you know, the Cubans. Uh, the Cubans were basically constantly deployed throughout the Cold War, you know, like they they really believed in the margins Len and his cause did Uh would air cover have

made a difference? I mean, I it wouldn't have hurt any But I mean I don't this idea too. It's like, okay, let's say, you know, let's say uh, let's let's let's say this. Uh, let's say this kind of like you know, mercenary army, you know, had uh had ground assault air craft and and air cover all day. You know, Cuba cub would have just like Commy's cub wouldn't just like fallen apart the minute like these guys marched on on Havana. I mean, the Cuban still was. I mean, the Cuba

they were. They're down for the cause. I mean, in this day as much as anybody can be. I mean it, uh, I mean I read it like that. I don't think it was realistic, the only the only Uh yeah, I don't. I don't think there's a military solution to the Cuba problem, you know, like there, I just don't. I mean that's my take on it, like at a glance, And we can do a dedicated episode on it if you want.

There's a lot there, but that's just you know, I my point is it's like, I mean, even one of the reasons that you know, and like jump to go a little bit outside the scope. But you know, let's say, let's say the counterfactual developed that you know, we I I kind of touched on. You know, let's say that you know, let let's take let's say America did assault Cuba in nineteen in nineteen sixty two, okay, and then the nukes weren't operational, and the Soviets didn't do anything

and lynn and it didn't escalate. It was just you know, the Marines and us Aeerborne Corps or eighteen Airborne Corps and you know, uh and uh in the us araforce pounding the hell out of Cuba, you know, killing half

million people. You know, like what what then where you I mean affecting some permanent hosta ogervation at Cuba like would have been a bloodbath, you know, like think like think about that, like that would that would have been a complete freaking mess, you know, Like I don't, I don't uh, I don't think there was a I don't think there was a political there. I don't think it

was a military solution to it. One of the reasons why, you know, I'm one of the few people, even though I'm far from any kind of like like Cold War hawk in in the study of history as I think, you know, but I consistently praise I, you know, us efforts uh in uh in, you know, in in the Cone of South America and then later you know in uh in in Central America and the Panama Canal zone, you know, to resist uh warsaw packed ingress because that

was absolutely essential, because that would have in military terms, America was actively losing the Cold War in the final phase, okay. And if if Latin America had truly gone red in these key locations, that would have that that that would that would that would have totally changed things. But notice what Nixon and then later Reagan administration didn't do is didn't go in heavy you know, they made they went into a very small footprint, okay, and they developed very

effective convolutionary cadres. You know what I'm saying that the conferences weren't like nice guys or something, Okay, like the Bison was not a nice guy. There was neither general finish, but they were effective guys, and they weren't they weren't just guys who were in it to you know, get paid and advanced their own you know kind of cloud and status. I mean, but my point is that, you know, the the American uh national security apparatus treated it as

a political problem. Not is this like military exigency, you know, like we're gonna we're gonna going to Nicaragua with fifty thousand marines and kill everybody like that. No, that that that that doesn't work. So that's my But it's complicated. Then I'm not a military guy. But again I I don't. I don't think what I'm suggesting can be h disputed in any kind of absolute sense. But yeah, that that's that's just that's my take on it. At UH got to bed a.

foundation of the country. You know, like you can weather that storm, like you can't whether the storm of you know, the US NATO socially engineering Germany out of existence. I mean, that's what we're seeing to the you know, and that's what I constantly, like I constantly brush up against people, you know, not just online, but I mean that this happens to me in person when I'm in at venues

where you know, the issue is being discussed. Like I think I'm like defending Stalinism or something like I'm not okay, but that's not the point, you know, Like I don't see how this can be disputed anymore. Okay. It's like you think, uh, you think you know, I mean, it's like,

how how can anybody, how can anybody dispute that? You know, I mean it well, I mean it's just like the this this state, I mean that that that's that's the you know, Yaqui was a was a genius because he was you know he was he was writing about this and night and you know in nineteen fifty eight, fifty nine or whatever, like even before you know, he wasn't.

He wasn't some guy like me, like you know, looking at history in the interview mirror, you know, I mean, but look at I mean, look at look look at

the former East Block. Okay, yeah, those states have terrible problems today, but they don't have the problems of some you know, some some crazy of some crazy Zionists or uh you know, elite or or or these are these kinds of DeVos types, you know, declaring that you know, they would you know they you know, when we need to import as many you know, thritable populations as possible because you know, this this this country is you know too orthodox or too Catholic, or you know, or too

white or too German. I mean that that's that that's a that's an existential problem that can't be overcome. Okay, Like if you've got fucked up government in Romania or Croatia, it's like, well, yeah, okay, governments that part of the world where is fucked up. It's different than having, you know, a social engineering regime with endless resources that's trying to annihilate you as as a culture and as a people. You know, like one you can handle, the other you can't.

I mean, but I mean, I guess that's a topic for another UH episode or series entirely. But yeah, I mean, that's that's the issue with the Cold War. Nobody's I mean, maybe maybe there's some people claim that, you know, the the the East Bloc regimes were good regimes. I mean, I'm sure you can find some Marxist fossil at some college saying that. I'm certainly not saying that. But that's not the point. You know, you got to look at these outcomes.

the concord fell apart between Washington and Moscow. You know, the idea was, you know, everybody in Washington who you had any meaningful authority, was perfectly okay with you know, essentially half half the planet being uh, you know, being under the being under the heel of Stalinism. So it's it's either here or there, you know, like whether somebody like me and in the historical records defending or condemning that system. I mean, you know, it's like the fix

was in like by America. Like it's these regimes didn't emerge out of nowhere and were not for America, the uh you know, communism would have u would have uh what would have been annihilated from this planet and in nineteen forty one. But the but yeah, yeah, exactly.

the YouTube channel, uh January first. I know that that's been one and coming. I decided to push it back to January a few weeks back because I want to do it right and I've got a great production team helping me, which is what I needed because I'm kind of a tech retard and at long last Imperium Press and I found a printer for steel Storm two, so that is going to drop in January, and that's what I got.