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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.

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Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.

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Speaker 3: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.

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Speaker 2: Tracy, you know, we did that episode with Arthur Croper recently,

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Speaker 2: and one of the questions that came up is whether

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Speaker 2: you know you could characterize the US and China as

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Speaker 2: being in a new Cold War? Right, But of course

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Speaker 2: that raises the question of what was the Cold War

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Speaker 2: in the first place? Hard to answer, are we in

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Speaker 2: a new Cold War if you actually don't know what

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Speaker 2: the original one was?

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Speaker 3: Joe, I can see through this intro already you're trying

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Speaker 3: to link it to a previous podcast. But I know

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Speaker 3: you've been reading the history books. That's what this is.

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Speaker 3: You read another history book, you want to talk about

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Speaker 3: the Cold War.

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Speaker 2: This is one hundred percent correct, But it is timely

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Speaker 2: for multiple reasons. Obviously, because there's the US China tension,

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Speaker 2: there is the ongoing war in Ukraine, and so you know,

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Speaker 2: and generally, if you want to understand the present, you

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Speaker 2: want to understand how he got here. And you know,

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Speaker 2: it's interesting to me. So I first sort of quote

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Speaker 2: learned about the Cold War. I think in middle school,

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Speaker 2: you know, in high school, and it was like maybe

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Speaker 2: ninety three or ninety four, and that was only a

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Speaker 2: few years after I guess it quote formally ended. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: And yet by the time I was learning about it

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Speaker 2: in high school, it was being taught it might as

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Speaker 2: well have been like Civil.

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Speaker 3: War history, yes, capital age history.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, capital age history, just old history. And I'm trying

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Speaker 2: to learn a little bit more about it these days,

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Speaker 2: and I read some books, but there's still a lot

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Speaker 2: of questions about in my mind what it was really

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Speaker 2: all about.

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Speaker 3: Well, so I also first learned about the Cold War

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Speaker 3: in high school, and I had a realization when I

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Speaker 3: moved from high school to college. So I was doing

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Speaker 3: a sort of American curriculum in Tokyo ap history and

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Speaker 3: ap US history, and then went to London, went to

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Speaker 3: the LSE and did international relations, a big portion of

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Speaker 3: which is history, and it kind of blew my mind

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Speaker 3: how different the interpretations of history actually were. So, for instance,

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Speaker 3: I had learned about the American Revolution right as a

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Speaker 3: lot of Americans did, but in the UK it is,

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Speaker 3: of course the American War of Independence, and so it

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Speaker 3: was just a massive culture shock for me to go

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Speaker 3: from that sort of US oriented curriculum, Yeah, to something

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Speaker 3: more British centric or more international. So one thing I

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Speaker 3: am very curious about is how the Cold War sort

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Speaker 3: of played out from the non US perspective.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and right, like we called it the Cold War,

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Speaker 2: I guess, And so the question is what was it

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Speaker 2: called elsewhere? Well, I'm really excited. We really do have

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Speaker 2: the perfect guest today. He has a new book out

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Speaker 2: on the question of what was the Cold War. We're

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Speaker 2: going to be speaking with Vladislav Zubak. He is the

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Speaker 2: Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics.

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Speaker 2: So doubly perfect. He's the author of the new book

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Speaker 2: The World of the Cold War nineteen forty five to

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one. He's also written several other books sort

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Speaker 2: of in the same general history. A Lot of Soviet

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Speaker 2: History is a prior book that I also highly recommend,

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Speaker 2: came out in twenty twenty one, Collapsed the Fall of

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Speaker 2: the Soviet Union? What really happened there? So Professor Zubach,

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Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on odd Laws.

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Speaker 4: Now, thank you for inviting me, And that's a great

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Speaker 4: moment to talk about great changes in history as we're

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Speaker 4: experiencing now.

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Speaker 2: We are definitely experiencing them now. So I guess if

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Speaker 2: someone had asked me, like a year ago, or you know,

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Speaker 2: a few years ago, and I wasn't really thinking about

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Speaker 2: these things, what was the Cold War? I might have said, well,

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Speaker 2: there's global battle between capitalists, vision and communism, or democracy

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Speaker 2: versus authoritarianism or something maybe something else, But what was

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Speaker 2: the Cold War? Because your book actually does sort of

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Speaker 2: offer a different claim, and it seems to be more

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Speaker 2: about something basic and land and territory and mostly centered

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Speaker 2: on Europe.

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Speaker 4: No, not at all. Yeah, well let me start by.

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Speaker 2: The other and I completely misunderstood the book. But go on,

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Speaker 2: well you can.

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Speaker 4: You're completely misinterpreted my book normal thing, which is a

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Speaker 4: normal thing today. You know, whoever says whatever, it's misinterpretation

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Speaker 4: and fake news. So let me tell you one thing

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Speaker 4: that might amuse you. Sure, you know you started by

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Speaker 4: telling the audience when you learned about the Cold War

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Speaker 4: high school, And so let me tell you when I

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Speaker 4: learned it about it because I grew up in the

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Speaker 4: Soviet Union, basically wondering, well, it was in the midst

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Speaker 4: of a Cold war. It was the you know, the sixties, seventies,

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Speaker 4: and I grew up as a young believer that the

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Speaker 4: future belongs to communism. Don't laugh at me, And I

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Speaker 4: just was surprised why so many people couldn't get it

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Speaker 4: that communism is the way of the future. And then

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Speaker 4: very late in my sort of student years, I began

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Speaker 4: to realize, hey, it's much more complicated. You know, the

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Speaker 4: world is divided and so and so forth, And we

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Speaker 4: were told the world is divided between socialism and capitalism.

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Speaker 4: So when I learned about the Cold War, I mostly

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Speaker 4: learned it from American literature. So it was very much

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Speaker 4: influenced by American books because nothing was written in the

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Speaker 4: Sovigine about the Cold War. Nothing. That's a special, special

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Speaker 4: question why. But you know, I couldn't find a single

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Speaker 4: decent book on the Cold War. So I learned it

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Speaker 4: from American authors like John Lewis Gaddis. Some people may

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Speaker 4: remember there were great books by John Lewis Gaddis in

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Speaker 4: the eighties, and so I read them and totally absorbed them.

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Speaker 4: And so the ironic thing that many years later, thirty

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Speaker 4: years later, I'm coming back to my original kind of idea. Yes,

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Speaker 4: it was the battle between socialism and capitalism, yes, And

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Speaker 4: in a sense, the whole phenomenon of the Cold War

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Speaker 4: should not be understood like, oh, it's a game of

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Speaker 4: great powers. It's about, you know, Europe becoming a vacuum

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Speaker 4: after World War Two to be filled by you know,

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Speaker 4: two great powers, the Soviet Union. In the United States, yeah,

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Speaker 4: it was there. All that was there, and an ideology

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Speaker 4: was there of communism and American liberalism. But for instance,

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Speaker 4: business people hear about ideas, they kind of become a

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Speaker 4: little bit so horrific and they said, just ideas, tell

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Speaker 4: me something more important. So the most important thing it

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Speaker 4: was the battle for the future of capitalism in my view,

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Speaker 4: and you know, for everyone who were in Europe and

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Speaker 4: in Washington and New York, or or in Moscow, whatever,

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Speaker 4: in Tokyo, it was about that because you know, the

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Speaker 4: previous thirty years of capitalism were disastrous. Capitalism discredited itself.

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Speaker 4: So if you were in the late forties in Europe,

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Speaker 4: you would think, hmm, maybe I should become a young communist.

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Speaker 4: So the previous disasters use of capitalism caused the phenomenon

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Speaker 4: Cold War, and it was just geopolitical situation when Europe

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Speaker 4: was out for grabs. Much of Europe thanks to Hitler

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Speaker 4: was up for grabs between the two you know, coalitions

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Speaker 4: between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers. They are

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Speaker 4: so called Angelis Saxons. It gained geopolitical dimensions in this way,

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Speaker 4: but essentially it was about which system would modernize the

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Speaker 4: world better. This is essentially throughout the Cold Warrior had

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Speaker 4: modifications of the same questions until it was answered very

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Speaker 4: much in favor of capitalism in the seventies and the

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Speaker 4: agies particularly, Yes, capitalism is much much better. In fact,

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Speaker 4: that's the only.

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Speaker 2: Way Tracy, I think I'm still half right it was.

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Speaker 2: There is a big geopolitical element about Europe. But I

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Speaker 2: do now have to reread the book to not take

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Speaker 2: away my overly simplistic takeaway from it. Anyway, Tracy go on.

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Speaker 3: Okay, Well, in all honesty, I have not read the book,

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Speaker 3: so I get to ask all the extremely basic questions here.

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Speaker 3: But I think this is relevant to the discussion.

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Speaker 2: At least not missing.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, at least I'm learning about it in real time.

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Speaker 3: But Vlad, I guess my question is how did the

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Speaker 3: US and the Soviet Union come to understand each other's

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Speaker 3: respective positions? So you know, what was the process through

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Speaker 3: which they sort of calcified each other's ideologies and came

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Speaker 3: away with this notion that you know, okay, the US

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Speaker 3: very capitalist. Maybe capitalism requires a lot of expansion, a

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Speaker 3: lot of domination of the world to keep going, whereas

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Speaker 3: the US came away thinking, well, you know, Soviets believe

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Speaker 3: in communism, and communism is going to take over the world.

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Speaker 3: How did that process actually happen?

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Speaker 4: Well, let me start with what I know better about

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Speaker 4: the Soviets because I grew up there, and you know,

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Speaker 4: I said I was a young Marxist and all that

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Speaker 4: I was. You know, you may say, you know, brainwashed

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Speaker 4: at the time in high school and all that, But

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Speaker 4: by the end of the high school, by the way,

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Speaker 4: I began to have doubts. So I was already the seventies.

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Speaker 4: So it was very much unclear at the time that

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Speaker 4: we would ever build anything called communism already. But you know,

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Speaker 4: let me return to your question, and let's say the

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Speaker 4: same point to say, let's talk about the start of

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Speaker 4: the Cold War, because it was an immensely long contest,

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Speaker 4: immensely long confrontation, like for four decades, right, so it's

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Speaker 4: very important. I broke up my book into four major sections.

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Speaker 4: And if you are in the first section, when the

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Speaker 4: Cold War just started in the Soviet Union, they read Lenin,

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Speaker 4: and Lenin said, as long as capitalism exists, it would

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Speaker 4: produce imperialism, and imperialism is about competition for resources and wars,

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Speaker 4: global wars, because capitalism is global. So that's what you

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Speaker 4: learn about the other side in the Soviet Union. So

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Speaker 4: whenever somebody likes Stalin would say, hey, you know, the

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Speaker 4: United States now is a top capitalist power. That means

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Speaker 4: that you know, other powers should compete, like the UK should,

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Speaker 4: British Empire should compete with Americans. And this is essentially

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Speaker 4: the main source of instability and global war. This is

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Speaker 4: what you believed in as a matter faith in the

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Speaker 4: Soviet Union. If you are in the United States, it's

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Speaker 4: much less let's say, theoretical, and more like based on

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Speaker 4: experience of dealing with Red Russia or Communist Russia. And

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Speaker 4: during the first decade, Americans completely dismissed the existence of

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Speaker 4: Red Russia and never granted diplomatic recognition to that country

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Speaker 4: because there was, you know, a kind of nonsense for

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Speaker 4: Americans to think that people don't believe in private property.

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Speaker 4: They reject entrepreneurship, They reject God, atheists and so on

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Speaker 4: and so forth. This is just a nonsense. This state

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Speaker 4: cannot exist. And then you know, they began to change

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Speaker 4: their mind gradually, Oh it should stay and all that.

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Speaker 4: But what made them change their mind about the Soviet

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Speaker 4: Union above all was the Great Depression and a huge

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Speaker 4: crisis of capitalists. Back to my original point about the

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Speaker 4: context between capitalism and communism, the very fact that the

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Speaker 4: idea of this context entered the American mind, you know,

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Speaker 4: and later Americans even began to say, oh, communists have

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Speaker 4: taken over the world and all that stuff. It is

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Speaker 4: because of their internal insecurity, American internal insecurity, because the

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Speaker 4: Great Depression did take place. It was almost ten years. Yes,

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Speaker 4: America exited the war as powerful as it never had been.

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Speaker 4: But thanks to the war, nobody could say with another

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Speaker 4: Great Depression happened after the end of the war. So

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Speaker 4: that was immense internal insecurity. Coupled with that American exceptionalism,

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Speaker 4: you know, we've done so well before, we should do

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Speaker 4: great in the future. That produced American impulse towards the

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Speaker 4: Cold War. And I would say, you know, I'm back

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Speaker 4: and forth on this question. By the way, you know,

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Speaker 4: when you ask who started it in such a complex context,

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Speaker 4: between the two ways of light, two ways of modernization,

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Speaker 4: you know, it's very difficult sometimes to say who started it.

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Speaker 4: But I would say Americans had more sources, and therefore

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Speaker 4: they were much more proactive in nineteen forty five, forty six,

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Speaker 4: forty seven, when they began to see the Soviets acting

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Speaker 4: not as they had expected, strangely, because the Soviets always

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Speaker 4: acted as Soviets, they just were expansionists, they were assertive,

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Speaker 4: but after forty five they were also extremely weak. They

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Speaker 4: lost twenty seven million people during World War Two and

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Speaker 4: all that stuff, So Americans knew that, but they also

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Speaker 4: saw Soviets being expansionists and decided to take an initiative.

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Speaker 4: So much of the Cold War, in a way, during

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Speaker 4: its original phases Americans acting, Americans doing the Marshall Plan,

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Speaker 4: Americans doing dividing Germany into two parts in reaction to

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Speaker 4: the perceived Soviet expansionism and real Soviet expansionism, but also

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Speaker 4: realizing we're stronger, we can stop them. We have huge wealth,

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Speaker 4: we have atomic bomb and they don't, and we have

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Speaker 4: resources to stop communism. But the premise is in the

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Speaker 4: America in mind that communism is such a dangerous thing

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Speaker 4: that can spread all over the world. And why he

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Speaker 4: can spread hello, because capitalism is weak, and particularly in Europe,

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Speaker 4: because capitalisms stopped working in Europe, and you know, we

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Speaker 4: must reignite it, we must just set it straight and

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Speaker 4: you know, make it stand on both feet.

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Speaker 2: So arguably, maybe the Cold War formally started with the

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Speaker 2: famous long telegram from the US diplomat George Kennan, and

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Speaker 2: he talked about, you know, the outlaid the foundation of

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Speaker 2: this idea of containment, in this idea that the Soviets

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Speaker 2: were a fundamental threat to everything we hold dear in

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Speaker 2: the West, in the US, our way of life, our freedom,

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Speaker 2: et cetera. And you're dismissive in the book of his

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Speaker 2: maybe paranoid views. But on the other hand, you know,

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Speaker 2: up until you know there was a Comintern that aimed

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Speaker 2: to foment communism around the world. And obviously the Soviets

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Speaker 2: moved a missile to Cuba and thought a war in

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Speaker 2: Afghanistan and the Gola, et cetera. Why was it so

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Speaker 2: unrealistic to think that the Soviet Union did have expansionist

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Speaker 2: visions for spreading a specific way of life across the globe.

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Speaker 4: Well, I never said that the Soviets didn't have expansionists

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Speaker 4: to view, because that was the essence of I continued,

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Speaker 4: I continued, I continue, No, no, no, no, you actually you

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Speaker 4: have just proved to it that you read the book

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Speaker 4: at these parts of the book that tells about the

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Speaker 4: canon fascinating character and Canon's long Telegram. My take on

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Speaker 4: Canon is, actually, you know, many people read excellent books

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Speaker 4: on Canon because he was such a master of words.

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Speaker 4: He essentially gave subsequent generations of American liberal historians all

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Speaker 4: the words to use, the entire kind of ideological framework

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Speaker 4: to use about what Soviet threat was about. He used

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Speaker 4: the word virus, malignant parasite, and other helpful things to

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Speaker 4: understand Soviet threat. But if we go beyond all this,

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Speaker 4: ask a question, okay, malignant parasite on what parasite on

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Speaker 4: healthy capitalist liberal society. That again, the thesis is, it

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Speaker 4: is liberal capitalism that collapsed in the nineteen thirties and

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Speaker 4: above all in Europe, above all in Germany, but also

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Speaker 4: in other countries. And maybe America can restore this capitalism

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Speaker 4: to its greatness. But maybe not, because at the end

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Speaker 4: of the Long Telegram, Canon has doubts. Canon says we

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Speaker 4: should contain communists, but not to such an extent that

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Speaker 4: we in America would ourselves turn into a garrison state.

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Speaker 4: So his theory that in this huge effort to contain communism,

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Speaker 4: America might itself change its nature and stop being liberal

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Speaker 4: capitalist society and would become a garrison state. So, you know,

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Speaker 4: that's a sort of sense of uncertainty. But later this

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Speaker 4: sense of uncertainty was dropped, particularly in the sixties with

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Speaker 4: this point you know, Kenny diesque kind of message and

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Speaker 4: then great Society and so on and so forth. So

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Speaker 4: it's very important again I repeat, when you read about

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Speaker 4: the Cold War to ask a question when exactly in

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Speaker 4: what phase of the Cold War are you and what

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Speaker 4: kind of questions you raise about this phase, because it's

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Speaker 4: for decades, for decades, so that uncertainty about capitalism began

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Speaker 4: to pass in Europe and you have experienced, you know,

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Speaker 4: a moment of you know, huge economic wonder at the

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Speaker 4: end of the fifties and in the sixties. But then

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Speaker 4: the colonization started and that uncertainty what would happen to

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Speaker 4: the global South resurfaced. That the fact that all these

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Speaker 4: countries like India and China, of course, became communists famously

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Speaker 4: in nineteen forty nine. So that always loomed large in

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Speaker 4: the imagination of Americans, is that have China turned communism

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Speaker 4: and not you know, followed that great, unique and correct

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Speaker 4: American way. Maybe others would take this way of misdevelopment.

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Speaker 4: It's interesting that all American diplomats and pundits and experts

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Speaker 4: use that or misdevelopment when they spoke about Soviet socialism

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Speaker 4: during the fifties and the sixties. So when you began

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Speaker 4: to pile up, well, what about Afghanistan, what about you

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Speaker 4: know this or that you're already kind of continuing into

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Speaker 4: extrapolating the timeline into the future. My answer to you

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Speaker 4: would be, don't do it, because we have a conflict.

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Speaker 4: It started in the late forties. It created a certain

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Speaker 4: kind of deadlock, a sense of deadlock, a long battle

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Speaker 4: that no one knew how to win. And one horrible

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Speaker 4: perspective of that deadlock was the possibility of a nuclear war.

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Speaker 4: Don't forget this is why you mentioned the Cuban missile crisis.

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Speaker 4: The Cuban missile crisis showed and when both sides faced

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Speaker 4: that prospect of a term a nuclear war, both sides,

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Speaker 4: No matter how more bombs and missiles and bombers the

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Speaker 4: United States had in nineteen sixty two, it had seventeen

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Speaker 4: times more than the Soviet Union, no matter that both

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Speaker 4: sides preferred to step back, and aside from a confrontation,

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Speaker 4: nobody knew how this conflict would end. So this conflict

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Speaker 4: continued for decade after decade and after decade, which is

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Speaker 4: the nature of any conflict that cannot end in the

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Speaker 4: decisive victory, and when both sides have existential reasons not

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Speaker 4: to raise up their hands sort of.

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Speaker 3: Say, you already anticipated my next question, which was what

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Speaker 3: was the role of nuclear weapons in prolonging the conflict?

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Speaker 3: So I'm going to skip to something else that you

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Speaker 3: just mentioned, but can you talk a little bit more

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Speaker 3: about the Cold War experience in a place like India,

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Speaker 3: Because again, so much of the focus tends to be

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Speaker 3: on the US versus Russia for obvious reasons, but there

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Speaker 3: was a lot going on in other parts of the

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Speaker 3: world as well, and some would argue that, you know,

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Speaker 3: some countries were even successful in sort of exploiting the

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Speaker 3: tension between the US and Russia for their own advantage.

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Speaker 4: Well, you mentioned India and excellent studies in India. The

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Speaker 4: fact is that Narrow and the first generation of Indian rulers,

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Speaker 4: Indian leaders had been very much under the influence of socialists,

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Speaker 4: not necessarily stalin like socialists, but they kind of had

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Speaker 4: huge apprehension of Western capitalism and they wanted to find

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Speaker 4: out a third way of development. That was one of

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Speaker 4: major reasons why India, among other countries, joined the non

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Speaker 4: aligned movement. They didn't want to participate in that geopolitical

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Speaker 4: conflict between the West and the East. But also they

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Speaker 4: did seriously expect to get what they wanted, a kind

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Speaker 4: of mixed model, something from socialism, something from free entrepreneurship

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Speaker 4: and decide for themselves what is best to them. So,

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Speaker 4: you know, in the late fifties and in the sixties,

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Speaker 4: you see the Indians kind of, you know, turning to

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Speaker 4: Moscow and asking Moscow help us with that, for instance,

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Speaker 4: to build a steel mill, and turning to America and

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Speaker 4: telling Americas, oh it, can you help with that? So

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Speaker 4: they played on both sides, and I think it was

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Speaker 4: a right choice. So that lasted actually into the early

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Speaker 4: eighties until the emergence of the global liberal capitalist system

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Speaker 4: that we live with today, which is I think is

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Speaker 4: crumbling before our eyes today. But anyway, that system was

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Speaker 4: emerging in the seventies and eighties. Read the fourth part

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Speaker 4: of my book. It's about that emergence of that system.

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Speaker 4: And at that time people of non allied movement, like Indians,

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Speaker 4: like Brazilians, like others, they began to feel the pinch

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Speaker 4: of that system. And all of a sudden they discovered

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Speaker 4: the experiments with expert substitution failed, that there was a

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Speaker 4: huge transnational force that dictated them the rules above all,

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Speaker 4: the rules of how get resources, how to get money,

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Speaker 4: how to get loans and credits, and that was the

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Speaker 4: system that they totally associated with American influence, with the

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Speaker 4: World Bank, with IMF. But it was broader than that.

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Speaker 4: It was a global capitalist system that began to emerge

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Speaker 4: during the seventies, something that theorists would call today's Washington consensus.

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Speaker 4: And it was also part of the call of the war.

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Speaker 4: Like I mentioned several things, that geopolitical context over Europe,

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Speaker 4: decolonization and now this and all those huge transnational global

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Speaker 4: developments influenced the call war and they influenced the choices

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Speaker 4: of countries like India. Of course, I want.

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Speaker 2: To ask a question that sort of maybe falls in

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Speaker 2: the middle of the story and actually goes back to

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Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, you know, the Marxist Leninist escatology, maybe that's

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Speaker 2: the right word, is like, eventually the capitalist countries, either

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Speaker 2: because of their conflicts or other internal contradictions of the system,

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Speaker 2: eventually they'll collapse, and we don't know how long it'll take,

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Speaker 2: but eventually communism will win out. To what degree did

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Speaker 2: the sort of existence of the nuclear bomb or the

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Speaker 2: development of the nuclear bomb undermine that story that history

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Speaker 2: will not end. Human will not end necessarily with communist victory.

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Speaker 2: History could end with all of humanity simply being erased

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Speaker 2: in the nuclear war. And how much did this sort

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Speaker 2: of opening up of this other possible path through which

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Speaker 2: human history could unfold sort of shake that underlying faith

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Speaker 2: and the original story.

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Speaker 4: Well that's a great question, by the way, because Lenin

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Speaker 4: and Marx wrote the theory at the time that when

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Speaker 4: nuclear weapons didn't exist, yeah, okay, when you know, these

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Speaker 4: weapons emerged, that kind of canonical Marxist Leninist approach to

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Speaker 4: world history had to be adjusted. And it was a

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Speaker 4: fascinating process of adjustment because, above all, after Stalin, Understalin

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Speaker 4: and after Staalin, the Soviet Union was idiocracy and free

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Speaker 4: debate was impossible. And yet there were some elements of

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Speaker 4: debate and discussion about nuclear weapons, which I write about

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Speaker 4: in my book, from some likely corners, like nuclear physicists,

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Speaker 4: who warned, for instance, the leadership in Moscow leadership in

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Speaker 4: nineteen fifty four, that the invention of terminnuclear weapons makes

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Speaker 4: the end of the entire humanity possible. And the party

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Speaker 4: leaders immediately reproached them and squashed the debate because their

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Speaker 4: view was, hey, you know, our calonical explanation is that

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Speaker 4: it's not humanity, it's capitalism that will perish. But then

402
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Speaker 4: other unlikely candidates like it. Among them a chess champion

403
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Speaker 4: between Nick, who I cited my book, began to write

404
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Speaker 4: to the party leaders, wait a minute, I'm a communist

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Speaker 4: member myself, but I don't want humanity to perish. This

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Speaker 4: is my way of reconciling the two goals, keeping peace

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Speaker 4: and making communism a peaceful outcome of the competition between

408
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Speaker 4: the two systems. So suddenly that guy between, thinking very logically,

409
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Speaker 4: pointed to the main problem of the Marxist Leninist approach

410
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Speaker 4: that it always had preached a violent andent of capitalism,

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Speaker 4: some kind of a revolution, and then of course the

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Speaker 4: victory of communism as a result of another imperialist war.

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Speaker 4: But this imperialist war is no longer possible because of

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Speaker 4: the existence of certain nuclear weapons. So ultimately, Schoff, not

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Speaker 4: being very theoretical guy but kind of very instinctive politician,

416
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Speaker 4: came up with his solution to this debate and basically said,

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Speaker 4: or the forces of socialism was strong enough. He of

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Speaker 4: course meant above all the Soviet Union in China strong

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Speaker 4: enough to prevent another war that imperialists otherwise want to unleash,

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Speaker 4: and therefore we'll proceed to communism, but peacefully. So he

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Speaker 4: just basically squared the circle, and then the idiocratic bureaucracy

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Speaker 4: followed this lead. And then what you have is Dayton't.

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Speaker 4: Then what you have is daytont and arms control. That

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Speaker 4: was the major outcome of that ideological reconciliation that the

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Speaker 4: Soviet leadership, and particularly the guy after Cruse Schevnev said,

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Speaker 4: you know, but we want peace. We don't renounce how

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Speaker 4: ideological belief that capitalists would perish and communists would triumph,

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Speaker 4: But we have to do it peacefully. Our main duty

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Speaker 4: is to struggle for peace, and in the old days,

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Speaker 4: let's say, twenty years earlier, such guys like Brezhnev would

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Speaker 4: have been denounced as yeah, I don't know he read

432
00:26:07,960 --> 00:26:12,000
Speaker 4: its revisionists, I don't know. But in the seventies that

433
00:26:12,080 --> 00:26:15,080
Speaker 4: was all right. So in a sense, that ideological innovation

434
00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:20,399
Speaker 4: opened the way for Dayton peaceful policies by Brezhnev, and

435
00:26:20,480 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 4: with all kinds of good consequences for Europe, with the

436
00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:29,080
Speaker 4: American Soviet Dayton flourishing briefly but flourishing under Nixon, and

437
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 4: looking backwards, you begin to realize that without this period

438
00:26:33,480 --> 00:26:37,639
Speaker 4: of Breshnev and struggle for peace, otherwise you wouldn't have

439
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:41,959
Speaker 4: had Garbachev. And of course, without Garbachev in the late eighties,

440
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:45,919
Speaker 4: from eighty five to nineteen ninety one, you cannot imagine

441
00:26:46,520 --> 00:26:49,359
Speaker 4: the end of such conflict as the Cold War, because

442
00:26:49,359 --> 00:26:53,520
Speaker 4: Garbachev was a major part and then single handedly did

443
00:26:53,560 --> 00:26:57,399
Speaker 4: many things that made the end of this conflict possible thinkable,

444
00:26:57,560 --> 00:26:58,720
Speaker 4: and actually it happened.

445
00:27:13,920 --> 00:27:16,639
Speaker 2: Tracy, I just want to say one thing, One area

446
00:27:16,680 --> 00:27:20,119
Speaker 2: where I think the Soviet Union was objectively better is

447
00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:23,199
Speaker 2: that it's a country where a chess grandmaster is so

448
00:27:23,240 --> 00:27:26,080
Speaker 2: politically influential. I would like to live in such a

449
00:27:26,359 --> 00:27:30,640
Speaker 2: you know that was one writes a letter.

450
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:34,159
Speaker 4: Well, well, well at that cultural small cultural note for

451
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,800
Speaker 4: the audience. I mean, and not everybody played chess in

452
00:27:36,840 --> 00:27:39,600
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union, that's to begin with. So when c I,

453
00:27:39,680 --> 00:27:42,480
Speaker 4: a experts or somebody else would point out that the

454
00:27:42,520 --> 00:27:45,679
Speaker 4: Soviets are so devious because they all played chess and

455
00:27:45,760 --> 00:27:48,600
Speaker 4: all out fox us in the West, it's not true

456
00:27:48,640 --> 00:27:52,320
Speaker 4: because the po liberal leadership played domino, which was simple game.

457
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:55,359
Speaker 4: They played domino, they were lot much more premiate.

458
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:57,600
Speaker 2: They got the domino theory from anyway, Tracy go.

459
00:27:57,720 --> 00:28:02,280
Speaker 3: Right, okay, well, vlad As you keep repeating, this is

460
00:28:02,320 --> 00:28:05,520
Speaker 3: such a sprawling period in history, and I have so

461
00:28:05,560 --> 00:28:07,639
Speaker 3: many questions, but one I want to make sure we

462
00:28:07,760 --> 00:28:10,720
Speaker 3: actually get to is just sort of bringing everything up

463
00:28:10,760 --> 00:28:13,000
Speaker 3: to date. And Joe mentioned at the beginning of this

464
00:28:13,080 --> 00:28:14,960
Speaker 3: podcast that one of the reasons we wanted to talk

465
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:18,080
Speaker 3: to you is because one thing you hear nowadays pretenses

466
00:28:18,119 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 3: see one of the pretenses other than he read the book,

467
00:28:20,720 --> 00:28:23,560
Speaker 3: is this idea of the US and China being in

468
00:28:23,600 --> 00:28:27,440
Speaker 3: a cold war. So when you hear someone say, oh,

469
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:31,160
Speaker 3: this is the new Cold war between the US and China.

470
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:32,520
Speaker 3: What is your immediate reaction.

471
00:28:33,280 --> 00:28:35,560
Speaker 4: No, I don't believe that it's a cold war between

472
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 4: the US and China. Well, unless you want to, you know,

473
00:28:38,880 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 4: let me rephrase it. You know, it may be called

474
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:45,600
Speaker 4: the Cold War if you take very superficial or rather

475
00:28:45,840 --> 00:28:50,280
Speaker 4: abstract theoretical take on what the Cold War is. So

476
00:28:50,440 --> 00:28:56,040
Speaker 4: it's just a competition between great powers that for some reason,

477
00:28:56,200 --> 00:29:01,320
Speaker 4: primarily because of the existence of nuclear weapons, never turn hot. Well,

478
00:29:01,400 --> 00:29:05,600
Speaker 4: if you take this kind of abstract, generic approach, then

479
00:29:05,640 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 4: you may say, oh, you're not a cold war, and

480
00:29:08,120 --> 00:29:11,760
Speaker 4: probably because of the existence of nuclear weapons, if we're lucky,

481
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:15,160
Speaker 4: we'll have a series of the Cold War into eternity. Right.

482
00:29:15,720 --> 00:29:19,200
Speaker 4: But I'm not a fan of this approach. I'm much

483
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:23,240
Speaker 4: more into specific historical interpretation of the Cold War, which

484
00:29:23,280 --> 00:29:26,640
Speaker 4: I said was above all a contact between the two

485
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:32,680
Speaker 4: ways of modernization capitalism and non capitalism called socialism and

486
00:29:32,760 --> 00:29:35,760
Speaker 4: a capitalist one that you know, all rounds of that

487
00:29:35,800 --> 00:29:39,160
Speaker 4: competition handily, and this is why essentially the Cold War

488
00:29:39,280 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 4: ended the way it ended. But where are we now

489
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,200
Speaker 4: between the United States and China. It's much more narrow

490
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:51,880
Speaker 4: in really more geopolitical context. Who would be the top

491
00:29:52,680 --> 00:29:57,760
Speaker 4: in the hierarchy of capitalist powers. Yes, somebody would say, oh,

492
00:29:57,800 --> 00:30:02,840
Speaker 4: it's about freedom versus lack freedom of authoritarianism in China.

493
00:30:02,920 --> 00:30:07,440
Speaker 4: But it's a much weaker argument really in my view.

494
00:30:07,720 --> 00:30:11,880
Speaker 4: A because China evolves in its own way, you know,

495
00:30:12,120 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 4: through hundreds and hundreds of years. But nobody said that

496
00:30:15,400 --> 00:30:19,560
Speaker 4: ultimately China would not begin to vote and have political parties.

497
00:30:19,600 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 4: Who knows, maybe in two hundred years China will develop

498
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:26,160
Speaker 4: into some sort of democracies. I would never say no

499
00:30:26,280 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 4: to that. My approach is more specific that for now,

500
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:35,400
Speaker 4: I don't believe we are facing as profound, as dangerous,

501
00:30:35,720 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 4: as essentialist and existential conflict as the Cold War had been,

502
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 4: particularly in the first two decades of the Cold War

503
00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:49,040
Speaker 4: between nineteen forty seven, let's say, nineteen sixty two, sixty

504
00:30:49,560 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 4: sixty eight, whatever. So this is my answer to the question.

505
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:56,760
Speaker 4: There as a conflict, but I would hesitate to call

506
00:30:56,840 --> 00:31:01,720
Speaker 4: it the Cold War. However, however, we should all learn

507
00:31:02,040 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 4: from forty years of Cold War history to make this

508
00:31:06,560 --> 00:31:13,600
Speaker 4: Sino American conflict manageable or at least more manageable. And

509
00:31:13,720 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 4: I have a few ideas about this. By just looking

510
00:31:17,400 --> 00:31:22,000
Speaker 4: at this Soviet American interaction during the previous major conflict.

511
00:31:22,360 --> 00:31:26,360
Speaker 4: One idea is, of course diplomacy should work. And I'm

512
00:31:26,560 --> 00:31:31,960
Speaker 4: always struck how important was diplomacy even at the worst

513
00:31:32,000 --> 00:31:34,160
Speaker 4: moments of the Cold War, even at the time of

514
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,280
Speaker 4: McCarthyism in the United States, even at the time, not

515
00:31:37,360 --> 00:31:39,920
Speaker 4: to mention, the time of the Cuban Missi crisis, when

516
00:31:40,000 --> 00:31:44,720
Speaker 4: Kennedy and Khrushov exchanged all those famous messages that ultimately

517
00:31:44,800 --> 00:31:48,880
Speaker 4: led to the peaceful outcome of the crisis. So diplomacy

518
00:31:49,080 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 4: is hugely important. At the second point I want to

519
00:31:53,640 --> 00:31:59,080
Speaker 4: make about the Sino American confrontation today that the danger

520
00:31:59,120 --> 00:32:05,160
Speaker 4: of tunnel vision. People should learn to think outside the box.

521
00:32:05,560 --> 00:32:08,600
Speaker 4: There was in the Cold War so many people who

522
00:32:08,680 --> 00:32:13,560
Speaker 4: said they cannot be any way of talking to those Communists,

523
00:32:13,600 --> 00:32:16,640
Speaker 4: to those Ruskies, And there were many hardliners in the

524
00:32:16,640 --> 00:32:19,800
Speaker 4: Soviet Union who never wanted to trust to talk to

525
00:32:19,880 --> 00:32:23,320
Speaker 4: the Americans. And yet there were always people thinking outside

526
00:32:23,360 --> 00:32:28,440
Speaker 4: the box and finding cultural, diplomatic and other ways of interaction.

527
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:34,120
Speaker 4: That's really important. At third observation, some people would say tariffs,

528
00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 4: economic sanctions, and arms race would solve this conflict today

529
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:45,080
Speaker 4: between China and the United States. I would say the

530
00:32:45,240 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 4: entire Cold War actually shows that it was nonsense. Arms

531
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:56,520
Speaker 4: race did not solve political sources of confrontation between the

532
00:32:56,560 --> 00:32:59,880
Speaker 4: Soviet Union and the United States. The development of capital

533
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:04,320
Speaker 4: and the development of what global economy solved that conflict,

534
00:33:04,320 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 4: the fundamental underlining issues of that conflict. So if the

535
00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:16,320
Speaker 4: United States wants to out spend China more sophisticated weaponry

536
00:33:16,800 --> 00:33:22,720
Speaker 4: AI intelligence to manage the weaponry, that's another deadlock. That's

537
00:33:22,960 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 4: that's like forgetting fundamental lessons of history. And finally, you know,

538
00:33:27,800 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 4: look at the cover of my book Falling Domino. One

539
00:33:31,280 --> 00:33:36,960
Speaker 4: major problem of Cold War mentality, particularly on the American side,

540
00:33:36,960 --> 00:33:40,040
Speaker 4: but also on the Soviet side of course, was thinking,

541
00:33:40,440 --> 00:33:45,360
Speaker 4: once we make this one concession anywhere, there will be

542
00:33:45,440 --> 00:33:48,080
Speaker 4: the falling Domino effect, and that will be the end

543
00:33:48,120 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 4: of our credibility, the end of our position, That will

544
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:55,040
Speaker 4: be the end of our whole global position in the world,

545
00:33:55,040 --> 00:33:59,000
Speaker 4: in our cap So what did the Americans get by

546
00:33:59,040 --> 00:34:03,280
Speaker 4: following this falling Domino theory? They ended up in Vietnam.

547
00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 4: And what did the Soviets gain by going along this line?

548
00:34:07,160 --> 00:34:10,919
Speaker 4: They actually collapsed at the end of it. So it's

549
00:34:11,000 --> 00:34:13,040
Speaker 4: not a good way. It's not a good way to

550
00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:18,360
Speaker 4: resurrect the falling domino mentality by saying, if God forbid,

551
00:34:18,440 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 4: if China moves against this island somewhere, you know, and

552
00:34:23,160 --> 00:34:26,279
Speaker 4: we do not defend this island by military force, then

553
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:28,440
Speaker 4: that's the end of the world. We know, it's a

554
00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:32,480
Speaker 4: falling domino. It's a classic falling domino theory.

555
00:34:33,200 --> 00:34:37,040
Speaker 2: When I was growing up, terms like human rights, it

556
00:34:37,120 --> 00:34:39,880
Speaker 2: never would have occurred to me when I was younger

557
00:34:39,920 --> 00:34:41,920
Speaker 2: that these could be loaded terms, that there could be

558
00:34:41,960 --> 00:34:45,320
Speaker 2: anything bad about a human rights group or a human

559
00:34:45,520 --> 00:34:48,399
Speaker 2: you know, whatever it is, or minority rights or so forth.

560
00:34:48,440 --> 00:34:51,840
Speaker 2: I thought these were just unalloyed goods. And one of

561
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:54,120
Speaker 2: the things, you know, I've been thinking about it recently

562
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:58,799
Speaker 2: again actually in current geopolitical context, because just a week

563
00:34:58,920 --> 00:35:02,239
Speaker 2: or two ago, Trump was in the golf and he,

564
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:05,280
Speaker 2: you know, made all these agreements and we're gonna sell

565
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:09,879
Speaker 2: lots of semiconductors to golf countries and so forth. You know,

566
00:35:10,080 --> 00:35:13,760
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia still does a lot of executions by beheading

567
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,719
Speaker 2: and things that would horrify people in the United States.

568
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:19,080
Speaker 2: All kinds of things in the human rights realm that

569
00:35:19,160 --> 00:35:21,399
Speaker 2: would horrify people in the United States, but we could

570
00:35:21,440 --> 00:35:23,279
Speaker 2: still do business with them. We could still sell them

571
00:35:23,280 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 2: a lot of semiconductors, by their oil and so forth.

572
00:35:26,960 --> 00:35:29,000
Speaker 2: One of the things you point out in your book

573
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:32,720
Speaker 2: is the role of human rights groups at times throughout

574
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:37,600
Speaker 2: this story of undermining, det haunt and sort of when

575
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:40,320
Speaker 2: we were having these sort of softer moments that ultimately

576
00:35:40,360 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 2: the human rights groups in the West, they were not

577
00:35:43,360 --> 00:35:46,719
Speaker 2: helpful on that front. Could this be a more productive,

578
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:51,520
Speaker 2: peaceful path in the United States to perhaps be more

579
00:35:51,920 --> 00:35:54,719
Speaker 2: willing to just accept, you know what, we can do

580
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:58,200
Speaker 2: business with countries. We can sell arms and chips, and

581
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:01,000
Speaker 2: we don't have to worry. It's just not our business

582
00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:03,000
Speaker 2: how they conduct their internal affairs.

583
00:36:03,719 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 4: Well, you know, this is one of those moments during

584
00:36:06,680 --> 00:36:11,319
Speaker 4: the long Cold War when Americans played very proactively in

585
00:36:11,400 --> 00:36:15,719
Speaker 4: Americans who were in a vibrant society, let me use

586
00:36:15,719 --> 00:36:20,719
Speaker 4: this loaded term free society, unlike the Soviets. But ironically,

587
00:36:20,840 --> 00:36:25,560
Speaker 4: American human rights movement was ignited by something that was

588
00:36:25,560 --> 00:36:28,799
Speaker 4: happening inside the Soviet Union. To begin with, there was

589
00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:32,160
Speaker 4: a group, very small groups of human rights defenders called

590
00:36:32,239 --> 00:36:36,520
Speaker 4: dissidents in the Soviet Union that evoked huge admiration in

591
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:40,920
Speaker 4: American societies as sort of good Russians versus evil Russians.

592
00:36:40,960 --> 00:36:44,400
Speaker 4: You know, people whose names were household names at the

593
00:36:44,480 --> 00:36:47,000
Speaker 4: time and few people remember them now, like you know,

594
00:36:47,200 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 4: Alexander Soldier, Niitsen, Andre Sacharov and another, you know, great

595
00:36:51,760 --> 00:36:54,799
Speaker 4: names at the time. And then came the issue of

596
00:36:55,360 --> 00:36:58,040
Speaker 4: Jewish Emmy Grace, who wanted to leave the Sovie Union

597
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:00,319
Speaker 4: to go to Israel or to go to other countries,

598
00:37:00,600 --> 00:37:05,719
Speaker 4: and American Jewish groups who faced discrimination at home and

599
00:37:05,880 --> 00:37:09,839
Speaker 4: wanted to sort of resert themselves. At the same time

600
00:37:09,880 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 4: at home, they found a great cause, a good cause

601
00:37:13,280 --> 00:37:16,320
Speaker 4: inside the Soviet Union to help their brethren to emigrate

602
00:37:16,640 --> 00:37:19,320
Speaker 4: from the Soviet Unions. So that was the true emergence

603
00:37:19,360 --> 00:37:22,000
Speaker 4: of the human rights movement in the United States. That

604
00:37:22,280 --> 00:37:26,040
Speaker 4: conflated without a great currents that already been there, like

605
00:37:26,160 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 4: civil rights movements and anti racist movements and feminist movements,

606
00:37:31,080 --> 00:37:33,399
Speaker 4: you know, and environment movements. That was a great moment

607
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:36,680
Speaker 4: in American history. So what happened. I think it would

608
00:37:36,680 --> 00:37:40,200
Speaker 4: be foolish on anybody's part to blame human rights movements

609
00:37:40,239 --> 00:37:43,719
Speaker 4: for undermining the tent Because Dayton was very shaky and

610
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:47,719
Speaker 4: very very fragile thing to begin with. But Dayton was

611
00:37:47,840 --> 00:37:51,400
Speaker 4: in a sense that Soviets were doubly unlucky during the

612
00:37:51,520 --> 00:37:55,680
Speaker 4: seventies because they thought that with a sheer agreement on

613
00:37:56,120 --> 00:38:00,719
Speaker 4: the equality of armaments and the agreement tongue like taming

614
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:05,000
Speaker 4: the arms race, they would create the foundation for the

615
00:38:05,040 --> 00:38:08,360
Speaker 4: ecton And that was really really naive to think so,

616
00:38:08,480 --> 00:38:11,360
Speaker 4: because again back to one of my points, arms races

617
00:38:11,920 --> 00:38:14,840
Speaker 4: or taming arms races, taming arms racist is good, but

618
00:38:15,120 --> 00:38:18,880
Speaker 4: arms racists in asums, they're crucial to solving real political issues.

619
00:38:19,120 --> 00:38:21,840
Speaker 4: So these arms are agreements that the sovice were so

620
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,400
Speaker 4: proud of, Well, they didn't play any role in the end.

621
00:38:25,480 --> 00:38:28,640
Speaker 4: What played the role was human rights, a movement inside

622
00:38:28,640 --> 00:38:32,160
Speaker 4: the United States that legitimized Acton in the eyes of

623
00:38:32,200 --> 00:38:35,760
Speaker 4: millions of Americans. Plus of course there were other issues

624
00:38:35,920 --> 00:38:39,800
Speaker 4: dealing to decolonization in Africa of all of the Portuguese Empire.

625
00:38:39,840 --> 00:38:43,160
Speaker 4: And so it's jumped in immediately, guided by their Marxist

626
00:38:43,239 --> 00:38:47,960
Speaker 4: Leninist kind of fraternity, solidarity, mentality and error and American

627
00:38:47,960 --> 00:38:52,040
Speaker 4: herdliners that you see they unchanging, they keep roiling it,

628
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:54,960
Speaker 4: you know, they keep on the mining global stability and

629
00:38:55,080 --> 00:38:57,960
Speaker 4: whatever they can. And there were other things as well,

630
00:38:58,239 --> 00:39:01,920
Speaker 4: so which sadly led the Soviets to their own falling

631
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:08,680
Speaker 4: Domino mindset and overreaction in Afghanistan that you mentioned. So

632
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:11,800
Speaker 4: everything was a reaction to something, but I would place

633
00:39:12,320 --> 00:39:18,480
Speaker 4: the rise of human rights in context. What indubitably happened, however, then,

634
00:39:19,080 --> 00:39:22,840
Speaker 4: was that people like President Carter and then President Reagan

635
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,680
Speaker 4: quickly realized that this is a moral cause to follow,

636
00:39:27,880 --> 00:39:33,799
Speaker 4: and it also was expedient course politically because by championing

637
00:39:34,080 --> 00:39:38,960
Speaker 4: global human rights campaigns, the United States were back as

638
00:39:39,000 --> 00:39:41,880
Speaker 4: a leader of the free world, and they were back

639
00:39:42,160 --> 00:39:45,239
Speaker 4: with much more credentials, like finally being not only the

640
00:39:45,320 --> 00:39:47,560
Speaker 4: leaders of the free world, but the leaders of the

641
00:39:47,680 --> 00:39:51,600
Speaker 4: just world, which was the usually the clay is something

642
00:39:51,640 --> 00:39:55,440
Speaker 4: claimed by the Soviet Union right in earlier years. You know,

643
00:39:55,520 --> 00:39:58,920
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union always was against the racism, against the

644
00:39:59,040 --> 00:40:03,360
Speaker 4: Jim Crow, you know, colonialism, And suddenly the United States

645
00:40:03,360 --> 00:40:06,560
Speaker 4: grabbed all of that and redirected it against the Soviet

646
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:10,799
Speaker 4: unter set. And you Rooskies are actually you know, he

647
00:40:11,120 --> 00:40:15,360
Speaker 4: colonizes you authoritarians. You know, you don't let your people

648
00:40:15,400 --> 00:40:18,760
Speaker 4: emigrate and all that. So it was a decisive ideological

649
00:40:18,840 --> 00:40:21,960
Speaker 4: turning point in the Cold War, which the Soviets at

650
00:40:22,000 --> 00:40:25,319
Speaker 4: first didn't realize was that way, and then later they

651
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:29,359
Speaker 4: became pathetically defensive and just couldn't find a good way

652
00:40:29,400 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 4: to deal with that until Gorbachev finally said during his presidency,

653
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,720
Speaker 4: let's not be afraid of human rights. Let's basically accept

654
00:40:36,760 --> 00:40:39,840
Speaker 4: that we also can be free in just society, and

655
00:40:39,880 --> 00:40:43,560
Speaker 4: he began to liberalize the Soviet society with the outcome

656
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:44,440
Speaker 4: that we already know.

657
00:41:00,200 --> 00:41:02,000
Speaker 3: I want to go back to something you said very

658
00:41:02,000 --> 00:41:05,200
Speaker 3: early on in the conversation, but you mentioned that the

659
00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:09,040
Speaker 3: Cold War wasn't really written about in the Soviet Union.

660
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 3: I guess when you were living there, when you were

661
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:14,880
Speaker 3: studying and in school. And I'm really curious about personal

662
00:41:14,960 --> 00:41:18,799
Speaker 3: experiences during the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of

663
00:41:18,800 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 3: the best books I ever read on the subject was

664
00:41:21,880 --> 00:41:26,479
Speaker 3: by Svetlana Alexovich. I want to say secondhand Time, which

665
00:41:26,520 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 3: is a sort of oral history of Russians experiencing this

666
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:34,160
Speaker 3: transition from communism to capitalism. So I'm just very curious

667
00:41:34,200 --> 00:41:36,840
Speaker 3: what your personal experience was, and I guess what the

668
00:41:37,040 --> 00:41:40,879
Speaker 3: sort of messaging was to the Russian population about that

669
00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 3: huge transition and transformation.

670
00:41:43,760 --> 00:41:47,560
Speaker 4: Well, that was, as you said, unexpected, a huge transition

671
00:41:48,120 --> 00:41:52,239
Speaker 4: that amounted to the complete loss of identity. And you

672
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:55,200
Speaker 4: may say that by that time very few people seriously

673
00:41:55,239 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 4: took ideological promise. Is if the rival of communist and

674
00:42:01,320 --> 00:42:04,400
Speaker 4: many people far began to think that life in the

675
00:42:04,440 --> 00:42:08,600
Speaker 4: West was not awful, but actually much more superior. In

676
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 4: that particularly turning point in the eighty nine nineteen ninety one,

677
00:42:12,080 --> 00:42:16,200
Speaker 4: when the Soviet press, liberated by Gorbatrov, began to beam

678
00:42:16,320 --> 00:42:19,640
Speaker 4: to Soviet audience through television. It wasn't like, you know,

679
00:42:19,760 --> 00:42:22,840
Speaker 4: something that foreign stations did. It was the Soviet television

680
00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:26,440
Speaker 4: began to convey this information about the much better life

681
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:31,479
Speaker 4: in the West. So all pillars of Soviet mindset, sort

682
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:38,160
Speaker 4: of Soviet worldview, began to collapse simultaneously, and it led

683
00:42:38,200 --> 00:42:43,120
Speaker 4: to several faithful consequences. First was that sense of cynicism,

684
00:42:43,880 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 4: dejection of any certainty, any moral, any kind of ethical

685
00:42:49,120 --> 00:42:53,719
Speaker 4: certainties in the society, which was accompanied by huge ways

686
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:59,920
Speaker 4: of domestic crime and you know, violence, and mostly economic violence. Second,

687
00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:03,719
Speaker 4: that was this kind of realization, well, if capitalism is

688
00:43:03,719 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 4: the only way for humanity to exist and evolve. Anything

689
00:43:08,280 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 4: to gain money, to make profit is allowed. So again

690
00:43:12,280 --> 00:43:16,400
Speaker 4: the combination of collapse of ethical norms with sudden spread

691
00:43:16,440 --> 00:43:21,160
Speaker 4: of capitalist practices led to that you know, wild East mentality,

692
00:43:21,719 --> 00:43:24,320
Speaker 4: much more so than the Wild West was in America,

693
00:43:24,360 --> 00:43:27,839
Speaker 4: I would say, And ultimately the void was filled by

694
00:43:27,920 --> 00:43:31,320
Speaker 4: nationalism or some kind of at least, and I wouldn't

695
00:43:31,320 --> 00:43:35,200
Speaker 4: say totally filled, but you know, some kind of expectation

696
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:40,399
Speaker 4: that if everything collapses around me, it means that either

697
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:43,000
Speaker 4: I choose my family and myself as the only sort

698
00:43:43,040 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 4: of bulwark in the future, or I would believe in

699
00:43:46,600 --> 00:43:51,360
Speaker 4: another super ego, which is nation nationalists. And so the

700
00:43:51,840 --> 00:43:56,760
Speaker 4: nationalist and ethnic conflicts sprung up immediately as Gorbachev began

701
00:43:56,960 --> 00:44:00,239
Speaker 4: to dismantle the old sort of the old mentality, see

702
00:44:00,239 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 4: the old system and the Soviet Union. And it was

703
00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 4: highly dangerous and highly destructive, and of course, in part

704
00:44:07,760 --> 00:44:12,600
Speaker 4: those nationalists humilitated against the past and past grievances in

705
00:44:12,680 --> 00:44:15,640
Speaker 4: you know, all the people killed by Stalin and Lenin

706
00:44:15,800 --> 00:44:18,160
Speaker 4: and you know all that, But they also kind of

707
00:44:18,200 --> 00:44:22,879
Speaker 4: satisfied the new need for a renewed sense of identity.

708
00:44:23,120 --> 00:44:25,600
Speaker 4: So I used to think that the Soviet Collapse was

709
00:44:25,640 --> 00:44:30,120
Speaker 4: relatively peaceful until the current war in Ukraine. Because clearly,

710
00:44:30,400 --> 00:44:35,160
Speaker 4: you know, this new wave of Russian nationalism and is

711
00:44:35,239 --> 00:44:40,360
Speaker 4: linked to the continuing lack of idea, continuing void in

712
00:44:40,840 --> 00:44:44,239
Speaker 4: the heart of Russia. Why so many changes happened and

713
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:48,160
Speaker 4: what's the meaning of those changes? So it was possible,

714
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:50,880
Speaker 4: as it turned out, as I'm saying with deep sadness,

715
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:55,120
Speaker 4: for the leader of Russia to fill that tremendous vacuum

716
00:44:55,280 --> 00:45:01,560
Speaker 4: with another refurbished idea of Russian imperial, imperial and national domination.

717
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:05,520
Speaker 2: So I just have one last question. And we could

718
00:45:05,560 --> 00:45:07,360
Speaker 2: talk for a long time and have lots of things,

719
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,040
Speaker 2: including we could talk about the war in Ukraine and

720
00:45:10,040 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 2: how actually Kennon himself predicted that that could be a

721
00:45:12,600 --> 00:45:16,080
Speaker 2: consequence of Clinton's NATO expansion and things like that. But

722
00:45:16,200 --> 00:45:17,920
Speaker 2: you know, I want to ask one last question. The

723
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:21,640
Speaker 2: way you depicted and also, especially in your previous book Collapse,

724
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 2: you're pretty hard on Gorbachev and you sort of castigate

725
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:29,440
Speaker 2: him at times for his unwillingness to use force at times.

726
00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 2: But you know, one of the things that you could

727
00:45:31,840 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 2: see in this book is that the collapse of the

728
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:38,320
Speaker 2: Warsaw Pact there was a big economic element. The Soviet

729
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:42,920
Speaker 2: Union could no longer supply cheap oil to East Germany

730
00:45:42,920 --> 00:45:46,279
Speaker 2: and other countries and so forth, and that the economic

731
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 2: dysfunction of the Soviet Union played a significant role in

732
00:45:50,400 --> 00:45:53,680
Speaker 2: the failure to keep those military allies on the other

733
00:45:53,719 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 2: side of the Iron Curtain. But then you sort of say,

734
00:45:56,760 --> 00:46:01,040
Speaker 2: Gorbachev unilaterally disarmed more or less the USSR. There was

735
00:46:01,040 --> 00:46:05,120
Speaker 2: an unforced collapse, that it was sort of an internal choice.

736
00:46:05,280 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 2: Why shouldn't we assume that the economic dysfunction that led

737
00:46:09,200 --> 00:46:12,280
Speaker 2: to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, which you acknowledge,

738
00:46:12,520 --> 00:46:16,040
Speaker 2: would not have eventually led to the disintegration of the

739
00:46:16,120 --> 00:46:20,120
Speaker 2: USSR itself and the emergence of all these countries pursuing

740
00:46:20,440 --> 00:46:22,600
Speaker 2: some conception of freedom and national identity.

741
00:46:23,239 --> 00:46:25,640
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I keep struggling with the same question, because

742
00:46:25,719 --> 00:46:29,400
Speaker 4: history is never linear and it can go different ways.

743
00:46:29,520 --> 00:46:32,759
Speaker 4: And of course, you know, those who look back at

744
00:46:32,760 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 4: the history of the twentieth century and in fact the

745
00:46:35,960 --> 00:46:40,800
Speaker 4: nineteenth century see the immense force of nationalism and national

746
00:46:40,920 --> 00:46:45,520
Speaker 4: cell determination. But this is one way to say that

747
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:47,960
Speaker 4: the collapse of the Soil Union was inevitable and that

748
00:46:48,160 --> 00:46:50,120
Speaker 4: it was just a matter of time for all those

749
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 4: different nations to find their road to the statehood and

750
00:46:54,920 --> 00:46:57,480
Speaker 4: sovereignty and all that. But in other ways, to look

751
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 4: back at history and see the perils and danger of

752
00:47:00,920 --> 00:47:05,759
Speaker 4: sudden collapses, sudden collapses of empires, we see essentially the

753
00:47:06,160 --> 00:47:09,800
Speaker 4: tremendous instability in Europe paving the way too fascist and

754
00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:14,759
Speaker 4: Nazi dictatorships rooted in a sudden collapse of empires as

755
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 4: a result of World War One. So the suddenness of

756
00:47:18,000 --> 00:47:22,000
Speaker 4: this collapse, the fact that they create this immense vacuum

757
00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:26,520
Speaker 4: and destroy the old common identities and common links, immense

758
00:47:26,560 --> 00:47:30,880
Speaker 4: common links between different ethnic groups and across different ethnic groups.

759
00:47:30,960 --> 00:47:34,640
Speaker 4: This is a huge dangerous moment. And in fact I

760
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:38,560
Speaker 4: tried to strike a balance and collapse, looking at both sides,

761
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:43,640
Speaker 4: but sort of probably knowing what would follow after Garbachev.

762
00:47:44,040 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 4: Maybe I overdo the second. I'm hard on Garbachev because

763
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:53,920
Speaker 4: he raised expectations tremendously, and I was among his followers,

764
00:47:53,920 --> 00:47:56,960
Speaker 4: and millions of people looked up to him full leadership.

765
00:47:57,400 --> 00:48:03,040
Speaker 4: And when particularly he tremendous changes in the late eighty

766
00:48:03,120 --> 00:48:05,759
Speaker 4: eight eighty nine, not right away, you know, the first

767
00:48:05,760 --> 00:48:09,560
Speaker 4: two years were very kind of, very frustrating. I remember that.

768
00:48:09,760 --> 00:48:14,240
Speaker 4: But then he made that huge leap forward, hugely forward,

769
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 4: and that leap forward contained elements of the future collapse

770
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:22,960
Speaker 4: because it had many disguided premises. He believed in Leninism,

771
00:48:23,040 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 4: he believed in that sort of many things that he

772
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:28,880
Speaker 4: should believed in, but he did. But then by taking

773
00:48:28,920 --> 00:48:33,319
Speaker 4: this sleep, Gorbachev kind of got frozen. In the process

774
00:48:33,400 --> 00:48:38,040
Speaker 4: of this sleep, he suddenly lost his initiative. He became

775
00:48:38,640 --> 00:48:43,280
Speaker 4: a famously you know, slow or infamously slow in taking

776
00:48:43,600 --> 00:48:47,440
Speaker 4: other steps. So with such tremendous changes, you have to

777
00:48:47,520 --> 00:48:50,360
Speaker 4: maintain a momentum or you lose it to others. And

778
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:53,800
Speaker 4: he lost that momentum to the Yeltsin, to the Russian

779
00:48:53,840 --> 00:48:58,400
Speaker 4: sort of leader who essentially pulled Russia from under Gorbachev

780
00:48:58,520 --> 00:49:02,120
Speaker 4: and and destroyed the so Union, not the Balls, not Georgian,

781
00:49:02,120 --> 00:49:04,799
Speaker 4: it's not Ukraine. He has destroyed so Uni Elson did

782
00:49:04,840 --> 00:49:07,920
Speaker 4: in my view, So by looking at this story, I

783
00:49:07,960 --> 00:49:11,239
Speaker 4: sort of I'm harsh on the later Gorbachev because the

784
00:49:11,280 --> 00:49:15,399
Speaker 4: book is mostly about three years eighty nine nineteen ninety one,

785
00:49:15,760 --> 00:49:19,480
Speaker 4: during which Gorbachev had already done his greatest kind of

786
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:24,600
Speaker 4: leap into the future and got scared someone you know,

787
00:49:25,520 --> 00:49:29,360
Speaker 4: got you know, outgunned by his arrival. So my harshness

788
00:49:29,400 --> 00:49:32,200
Speaker 4: on Gorbachev, maybe he's guided by the fact that I

789
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:36,560
Speaker 4: would very much preferred him to succeed because other options

790
00:49:36,680 --> 00:49:40,359
Speaker 4: were very, very very clear for us. Now what other

791
00:49:40,400 --> 00:49:43,680
Speaker 4: options led to, you know, for those who admired and

792
00:49:43,880 --> 00:49:48,399
Speaker 4: Washington people admired Jelson and thought that Gorbachev was still

793
00:49:48,400 --> 00:49:52,200
Speaker 4: a Communist. True, Elson turned into anti communists, but look,

794
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:57,320
Speaker 4: it was Elson who gave us the current Kremlin leader.

795
00:49:57,560 --> 00:49:58,200
Speaker 4: After all.

796
00:49:58,680 --> 00:50:01,000
Speaker 2: A lot of loves you, bog This was fantastic. You

797
00:50:01,000 --> 00:50:03,320
Speaker 2: can talk for a long time. After I read Collapse.

798
00:50:03,360 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 2: I sort of thought, by the way that garbage sort

799
00:50:07,160 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 2: of seems like an Obama type character, Nobel Prize winner.

800
00:50:10,680 --> 00:50:13,120
Speaker 2: But then you know, in the wake of it, maybe

801
00:50:13,160 --> 00:50:15,960
Speaker 2: some lost momentum we could talk for a long time

802
00:50:16,000 --> 00:50:18,880
Speaker 2: about all this. Really appreciate you so much for coming on.

803
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:21,759
Speaker 2: Everyone should read your book. I will reread it again

804
00:50:21,800 --> 00:50:25,440
Speaker 2: because I apparently missed the entire point. But really, thanks

805
00:50:25,440 --> 00:50:26,360
Speaker 2: for coming on Outlaws.

806
00:50:26,840 --> 00:50:29,319
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much for talking about history. It's

807
00:50:29,360 --> 00:50:30,120
Speaker 4: a rare moment.

808
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:45,720
Speaker 2: Cherlsey, I really do have to reread the book. I

809
00:50:45,719 --> 00:50:48,520
Speaker 2: I apparently I was like, I love this book, and

810
00:50:48,560 --> 00:50:49,760
Speaker 2: then I missed the entire point.

811
00:50:49,920 --> 00:50:50,720
Speaker 4: How did that happen?

812
00:50:50,800 --> 00:50:54,480
Speaker 2: I am I reading comprehension. Isn't that great? Well, see, Joe,

813
00:50:54,520 --> 00:50:56,400
Speaker 2: how do you read so many books? The answer is

814
00:50:56,400 --> 00:50:58,600
Speaker 2: by now paying attention to the words on the page.

815
00:50:58,680 --> 00:51:01,480
Speaker 3: Well, good thing, we're not basic bunch of podcast episodes

816
00:51:01,520 --> 00:51:04,400
Speaker 3: on your reading and understanding of history books. Okay, that

817
00:51:04,480 --> 00:51:07,520
Speaker 3: was fascinating. I did think, well, first of all, I

818
00:51:07,600 --> 00:51:11,040
Speaker 3: keep recommending that book secondhand time, and I really think

819
00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:14,839
Speaker 3: you should. And I think one of the important takeaways

820
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:18,399
Speaker 3: from that conversation and from other conversations that we've had

821
00:51:18,400 --> 00:51:21,560
Speaker 3: in the past, is this idea of like, just how

822
00:51:21,719 --> 00:51:25,160
Speaker 3: big an existential crisis the collapse of the Soviet Union

823
00:51:25,280 --> 00:51:28,879
Speaker 3: actually was for Russia and Vlad's point that you ended

824
00:51:28,960 --> 00:51:33,880
Speaker 3: up replacing the communist ideology with nationalism. I mean, we

825
00:51:33,960 --> 00:51:36,480
Speaker 3: are still living through the consequences of all of that.

826
00:51:36,760 --> 00:51:38,840
Speaker 2: No, we totally are. We didn't really get into it

827
00:51:38,920 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 2: too much. And she sort of ends the book and

828
00:51:41,239 --> 00:51:43,520
Speaker 2: talk about the US China relationship, and one of the

829
00:51:43,560 --> 00:51:46,719
Speaker 2: points that he makes, where is the US Soviet relationship

830
00:51:46,840 --> 00:51:50,920
Speaker 2: was really something that was always handled at the diplomatic level.

831
00:51:51,400 --> 00:51:55,359
Speaker 2: The US China relationship has, especially in the last you know,

832
00:51:55,400 --> 00:51:58,719
Speaker 2: thirty years, forty years whatever, has really been driven by

833
00:51:58,760 --> 00:52:02,560
Speaker 2: the business community, yeah, specifically, which sort of makes it

834
00:52:02,600 --> 00:52:05,040
Speaker 2: a very different story to the Cold War, and it

835
00:52:05,160 --> 00:52:09,280
Speaker 2: just has not been about that sort of ideological blog

836
00:52:09,360 --> 00:52:09,600
Speaker 2: per se.

837
00:52:09,840 --> 00:52:10,000
Speaker 4: Yeah.

838
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:11,600
Speaker 2: In fact, it was a really good article. I think

839
00:52:11,600 --> 00:52:13,880
Speaker 2: it was in the Financial Times last year. There was

840
00:52:13,920 --> 00:52:18,040
Speaker 2: like Cuba is asking China for some advice on economic growth,

841
00:52:18,200 --> 00:52:20,319
Speaker 2: and I think the Chinese leader is like, well, you

842
00:52:20,320 --> 00:52:25,040
Speaker 2: could try introducing market competition. You maybe give that a shot.

843
00:52:25,280 --> 00:52:28,280
Speaker 2: So while you know, obviously China wants to expand its influence,

844
00:52:28,360 --> 00:52:30,760
Speaker 2: it seems like, you know, it does it by building

845
00:52:30,800 --> 00:52:34,320
Speaker 2: factories and stuff like that and expanding its economic footprint

846
00:52:34,560 --> 00:52:38,200
Speaker 2: much more than asking its trading partners to you know,

847
00:52:38,320 --> 00:52:40,120
Speaker 2: commit to its specific model.

848
00:52:40,280 --> 00:52:43,759
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of building factories, one episode I do want

849
00:52:43,760 --> 00:52:46,480
Speaker 3: to do, because this keeps coming up, is why were

850
00:52:46,520 --> 00:52:51,360
Speaker 3: communists so obsessed with steel? And you know, Vlad mentioned

851
00:52:51,360 --> 00:52:54,120
Speaker 3: the idea of like India asking Russia for help and

852
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:57,759
Speaker 3: building some steel factories, And it feels like, sometimes I

853
00:52:57,840 --> 00:53:00,160
Speaker 3: think the Cold War could have been you know, we

854
00:53:00,200 --> 00:53:02,520
Speaker 3: could have avoided the Cold War. If we just had

855
00:53:02,560 --> 00:53:06,920
Speaker 3: some sort of steel manufacturing off competition between the great

856
00:53:06,960 --> 00:53:09,840
Speaker 3: world powers, and whoever made the best steel would be

857
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:13,480
Speaker 3: declared the winner and their economic model would be, you know,

858
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:15,480
Speaker 3: embraced by the rest of the world. We should have

859
00:53:15,480 --> 00:53:16,400
Speaker 3: gone down that route.

860
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:19,319
Speaker 2: Did you know that the name Stalin was a nom

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00:53:19,400 --> 00:53:21,280
Speaker 2: de guerre that means man of steel?

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00:53:21,440 --> 00:53:25,080
Speaker 3: I did actually know that, so I you know, Steele,

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00:53:25,239 --> 00:53:28,440
Speaker 3: you could tell a really good story about the Cold

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00:53:28,440 --> 00:53:31,799
Speaker 3: War just through the medium of steel. Someone should write

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00:53:31,840 --> 00:53:32,640
Speaker 3: that book.

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00:53:32,880 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 2: Odd Lots series The History of the Cold War As

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00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:39,040
Speaker 2: Told as that might be a little in niche.

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00:53:38,760 --> 00:53:40,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a little Okay, shall we leave it there?

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00:53:40,760 --> 00:53:41,480
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.

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Speaker 3: This has been another episode of the ad Thoughts podcast.

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00:53:44,120 --> 00:53:47,320
Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.

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00:53:47,040 --> 00:53:49,200
Speaker 2: And I'm Jill whysent Thal. You can follow me at

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00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:52,440
Speaker 2: The Stalwart. Follow our guest Bluttist Loves Zubach He's at

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00:53:52,480 --> 00:53:56,520
Speaker 2: Bloodist Love Zubac one, and definitely check out his new book.

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00:53:56,280 --> 00:53:57,479
Speaker 4: The World of the Cold War.

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00:53:57,800 --> 00:54:01,080
Speaker 2: Follow our producers Carman Rodriguez at Kerman armand dash Ol

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00:54:01,080 --> 00:54:05,360
Speaker 2: Bennett at Dashbot and Kelbrooks at Kelbrooks. For more Oddlots content,

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00:54:05,440 --> 00:54:07,759
Speaker 2: go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd Lots, where we

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00:54:07,800 --> 00:54:10,480
Speaker 2: have a daily newsletter and all of our episodes, and

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00:54:10,520 --> 00:54:12,640
Speaker 2: you can chat about all of these things twenty four

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00:54:12,640 --> 00:54:17,000
Speaker 2: to seven, including books including history in our discord Discord

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00:54:17,080 --> 00:54:19,000
Speaker 2: dot gg slash od Loots.

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00:54:19,120 --> 00:54:21,839
Speaker 3: And if you enjoy odd Thoughts, if you like it

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00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:23,919
Speaker 3: when we talk about the history of the Cold War,

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00:54:24,000 --> 00:54:26,560
Speaker 3: then please leave us a positive review on your favorite

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00:54:26,600 --> 00:54:30,120
Speaker 3: podcast platform. And remember, if you are a Bloomberg subscriber,

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00:54:30,200 --> 00:54:33,280
Speaker 3: you can listen to all of our episodes absolutely add free.

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00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:35,480
Speaker 3: All you need to do is find the Bloomberg channel

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00:54:35,520 --> 00:54:38,719
Speaker 3: on Apple Podcasts and follow the instructions there. Thanks for

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00:54:38,800 --> 00:55:04,920
Speaker 3: listening the