Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: Tracy, you know, we did that episode with Arthur Croper recently,
Speaker 2: and one of the questions that came up is whether
Speaker 2: you know you could characterize the US and China as
Speaker 2: being in a new Cold War? Right, But of course
Speaker 2: that raises the question of what was the Cold War
Speaker 2: in the first place? Hard to answer, are we in
Speaker 2: a new Cold War if you actually don't know what
Speaker 2: the original one was?
Speaker 3: Joe, I can see through this intro already you're trying
Speaker 3: to link it to a previous podcast. But I know
Speaker 3: you've been reading the history books. That's what this is.
Speaker 3: You read another history book, you want to talk about
Speaker 3: the Cold War.
Speaker 2: This is one hundred percent correct, But it is timely
Speaker 2: for multiple reasons. Obviously, because there's the US China tension,
Speaker 2: there is the ongoing war in Ukraine, and so you know,
Speaker 2: and generally, if you want to understand the present, you
Speaker 2: want to understand how he got here. And you know,
Speaker 2: it's interesting to me. So I first sort of quote
Speaker 2: learned about the Cold War. I think in middle school,
Speaker 2: you know, in high school, and it was like maybe
Speaker 2: ninety three or ninety four, and that was only a
Speaker 2: few years after I guess it quote formally ended. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And yet by the time I was learning about it
Speaker 2: in high school, it was being taught it might as
Speaker 2: well have been like Civil.
Speaker 3: War history, yes, capital age history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, capital age history, just old history. And I'm trying
Speaker 2: to learn a little bit more about it these days,
Speaker 2: and I read some books, but there's still a lot
Speaker 2: of questions about in my mind what it was really
Speaker 2: all about.
Speaker 3: Well, so I also first learned about the Cold War
Speaker 3: in high school, and I had a realization when I
Speaker 3: moved from high school to college. So I was doing
Speaker 3: a sort of American curriculum in Tokyo ap history and
Speaker 3: ap US history, and then went to London, went to
Speaker 3: the LSE and did international relations, a big portion of
Speaker 3: which is history, and it kind of blew my mind
Speaker 3: how different the interpretations of history actually were. So, for instance,
Speaker 3: I had learned about the American Revolution right as a
Speaker 3: lot of Americans did, but in the UK it is,
Speaker 3: of course the American War of Independence, and so it
Speaker 3: was just a massive culture shock for me to go
Speaker 3: from that sort of US oriented curriculum, Yeah, to something
Speaker 3: more British centric or more international. So one thing I
Speaker 3: am very curious about is how the Cold War sort
Speaker 3: of played out from the non US perspective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and right, like we called it the Cold War,
Speaker 2: I guess, And so the question is what was it
Speaker 2: called elsewhere? Well, I'm really excited. We really do have
Speaker 2: the perfect guest today. He has a new book out
Speaker 2: on the question of what was the Cold War. We're
Speaker 2: going to be speaking with Vladislav Zubak. He is the
Speaker 2: Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics.
Speaker 2: So doubly perfect. He's the author of the new book
Speaker 2: The World of the Cold War nineteen forty five to
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one. He's also written several other books sort
Speaker 2: of in the same general history. A Lot of Soviet
Speaker 2: History is a prior book that I also highly recommend,
Speaker 2: came out in twenty twenty one, Collapsed the Fall of
Speaker 2: the Soviet Union? What really happened there? So Professor Zubach,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on odd Laws.
Speaker 4: Now, thank you for inviting me, And that's a great
Speaker 4: moment to talk about great changes in history as we're
Speaker 4: experiencing now.
Speaker 2: We are definitely experiencing them now. So I guess if
Speaker 2: someone had asked me, like a year ago, or you know,
Speaker 2: a few years ago, and I wasn't really thinking about
Speaker 2: these things, what was the Cold War? I might have said, well,
Speaker 2: there's global battle between capitalists, vision and communism, or democracy
Speaker 2: versus authoritarianism or something maybe something else, But what was
Speaker 2: the Cold War? Because your book actually does sort of
Speaker 2: offer a different claim, and it seems to be more
Speaker 2: about something basic and land and territory and mostly centered
Speaker 2: on Europe.
Speaker 4: No, not at all. Yeah, well let me start by.
Speaker 2: The other and I completely misunderstood the book. But go on,
Speaker 2: well you can.
Speaker 4: You're completely misinterpreted my book normal thing, which is a
Speaker 4: normal thing today. You know, whoever says whatever, it's misinterpretation
Speaker 4: and fake news. So let me tell you one thing
Speaker 4: that might amuse you. Sure, you know you started by
Speaker 4: telling the audience when you learned about the Cold War
Speaker 4: high school, And so let me tell you when I
Speaker 4: learned it about it because I grew up in the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union, basically wondering, well, it was in the midst
Speaker 4: of a Cold war. It was the you know, the sixties, seventies,
Speaker 4: and I grew up as a young believer that the
Speaker 4: future belongs to communism. Don't laugh at me, And I
Speaker 4: just was surprised why so many people couldn't get it
Speaker 4: that communism is the way of the future. And then
Speaker 4: very late in my sort of student years, I began
Speaker 4: to realize, hey, it's much more complicated. You know, the
Speaker 4: world is divided and so and so forth, And we
Speaker 4: were told the world is divided between socialism and capitalism.
Speaker 4: So when I learned about the Cold War, I mostly
Speaker 4: learned it from American literature. So it was very much
Speaker 4: influenced by American books because nothing was written in the
Speaker 4: Sovigine about the Cold War. Nothing. That's a special, special
Speaker 4: question why. But you know, I couldn't find a single
Speaker 4: decent book on the Cold War. So I learned it
Speaker 4: from American authors like John Lewis Gaddis. Some people may
Speaker 4: remember there were great books by John Lewis Gaddis in
Speaker 4: the eighties, and so I read them and totally absorbed them.
Speaker 4: And so the ironic thing that many years later, thirty
Speaker 4: years later, I'm coming back to my original kind of idea. Yes,
Speaker 4: it was the battle between socialism and capitalism, yes, And
Speaker 4: in a sense, the whole phenomenon of the Cold War
Speaker 4: should not be understood like, oh, it's a game of
Speaker 4: great powers. It's about, you know, Europe becoming a vacuum
Speaker 4: after World War Two to be filled by you know,
Speaker 4: two great powers, the Soviet Union. In the United States, yeah,
Speaker 4: it was there. All that was there, and an ideology
Speaker 4: was there of communism and American liberalism. But for instance,
Speaker 4: business people hear about ideas, they kind of become a
Speaker 4: little bit so horrific and they said, just ideas, tell
Speaker 4: me something more important. So the most important thing it
Speaker 4: was the battle for the future of capitalism in my view,
Speaker 4: and you know, for everyone who were in Europe and
Speaker 4: in Washington and New York, or or in Moscow, whatever,
Speaker 4: in Tokyo, it was about that because you know, the
Speaker 4: previous thirty years of capitalism were disastrous. Capitalism discredited itself.
Speaker 4: So if you were in the late forties in Europe,
Speaker 4: you would think, hmm, maybe I should become a young communist.
Speaker 4: So the previous disasters use of capitalism caused the phenomenon
Speaker 4: Cold War, and it was just geopolitical situation when Europe
Speaker 4: was out for grabs. Much of Europe thanks to Hitler
Speaker 4: was up for grabs between the two you know, coalitions
Speaker 4: between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers. They are
Speaker 4: so called Angelis Saxons. It gained geopolitical dimensions in this way,
Speaker 4: but essentially it was about which system would modernize the
Speaker 4: world better. This is essentially throughout the Cold Warrior had
Speaker 4: modifications of the same questions until it was answered very
Speaker 4: much in favor of capitalism in the seventies and the
Speaker 4: agies particularly, Yes, capitalism is much much better. In fact,
Speaker 4: that's the only.
Speaker 2: Way Tracy, I think I'm still half right it was.
Speaker 2: There is a big geopolitical element about Europe. But I
Speaker 2: do now have to reread the book to not take
Speaker 2: away my overly simplistic takeaway from it. Anyway, Tracy go on.
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, in all honesty, I have not read the book,
Speaker 3: so I get to ask all the extremely basic questions here.
Speaker 3: But I think this is relevant to the discussion.
Speaker 2: At least not missing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at least I'm learning about it in real time.
Speaker 3: But Vlad, I guess my question is how did the
Speaker 3: US and the Soviet Union come to understand each other's
Speaker 3: respective positions? So you know, what was the process through
Speaker 3: which they sort of calcified each other's ideologies and came
Speaker 3: away with this notion that you know, okay, the US
Speaker 3: very capitalist. Maybe capitalism requires a lot of expansion, a
Speaker 3: lot of domination of the world to keep going, whereas
Speaker 3: the US came away thinking, well, you know, Soviets believe
Speaker 3: in communism, and communism is going to take over the world.
Speaker 3: How did that process actually happen?
Speaker 4: Well, let me start with what I know better about
Speaker 4: the Soviets because I grew up there, and you know,
Speaker 4: I said I was a young Marxist and all that
Speaker 4: I was. You know, you may say, you know, brainwashed
Speaker 4: at the time in high school and all that, But
Speaker 4: by the end of the high school, by the way,
Speaker 4: I began to have doubts. So I was already the seventies.
Speaker 4: So it was very much unclear at the time that
Speaker 4: we would ever build anything called communism already. But you know,
Speaker 4: let me return to your question, and let's say the
Speaker 4: same point to say, let's talk about the start of
Speaker 4: the Cold War, because it was an immensely long contest,
Speaker 4: immensely long confrontation, like for four decades, right, so it's
Speaker 4: very important. I broke up my book into four major sections.
Speaker 4: And if you are in the first section, when the
Speaker 4: Cold War just started in the Soviet Union, they read Lenin,
Speaker 4: and Lenin said, as long as capitalism exists, it would
Speaker 4: produce imperialism, and imperialism is about competition for resources and wars,
Speaker 4: global wars, because capitalism is global. So that's what you
Speaker 4: learn about the other side in the Soviet Union. So
Speaker 4: whenever somebody likes Stalin would say, hey, you know, the
Speaker 4: United States now is a top capitalist power. That means
Speaker 4: that you know, other powers should compete, like the UK should,
Speaker 4: British Empire should compete with Americans. And this is essentially
Speaker 4: the main source of instability and global war. This is
Speaker 4: what you believed in as a matter faith in the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union. If you are in the United States, it's
Speaker 4: much less let's say, theoretical, and more like based on
Speaker 4: experience of dealing with Red Russia or Communist Russia. And
Speaker 4: during the first decade, Americans completely dismissed the existence of
Speaker 4: Red Russia and never granted diplomatic recognition to that country
Speaker 4: because there was, you know, a kind of nonsense for
Speaker 4: Americans to think that people don't believe in private property.
Speaker 4: They reject entrepreneurship, They reject God, atheists and so on
Speaker 4: and so forth. This is just a nonsense. This state
Speaker 4: cannot exist. And then you know, they began to change
Speaker 4: their mind gradually, Oh it should stay and all that.
Speaker 4: But what made them change their mind about the Soviet
Speaker 4: Union above all was the Great Depression and a huge
Speaker 4: crisis of capitalists. Back to my original point about the
Speaker 4: context between capitalism and communism, the very fact that the
Speaker 4: idea of this context entered the American mind, you know,
Speaker 4: and later Americans even began to say, oh, communists have
Speaker 4: taken over the world and all that stuff. It is
Speaker 4: because of their internal insecurity, American internal insecurity, because the
Speaker 4: Great Depression did take place. It was almost ten years. Yes,
Speaker 4: America exited the war as powerful as it never had been.
Speaker 4: But thanks to the war, nobody could say with another
Speaker 4: Great Depression happened after the end of the war. So
Speaker 4: that was immense internal insecurity. Coupled with that American exceptionalism,
Speaker 4: you know, we've done so well before, we should do
Speaker 4: great in the future. That produced American impulse towards the
Speaker 4: Cold War. And I would say, you know, I'm back
Speaker 4: and forth on this question. By the way, you know,
Speaker 4: when you ask who started it in such a complex context,
Speaker 4: between the two ways of light, two ways of modernization,
Speaker 4: you know, it's very difficult sometimes to say who started it.
Speaker 4: But I would say Americans had more sources, and therefore
Speaker 4: they were much more proactive in nineteen forty five, forty six,
Speaker 4: forty seven, when they began to see the Soviets acting
Speaker 4: not as they had expected, strangely, because the Soviets always
Speaker 4: acted as Soviets, they just were expansionists, they were assertive,
Speaker 4: but after forty five they were also extremely weak. They
Speaker 4: lost twenty seven million people during World War Two and
Speaker 4: all that stuff, So Americans knew that, but they also
Speaker 4: saw Soviets being expansionists and decided to take an initiative.
Speaker 4: So much of the Cold War, in a way, during
Speaker 4: its original phases Americans acting, Americans doing the Marshall Plan,
Speaker 4: Americans doing dividing Germany into two parts in reaction to
Speaker 4: the perceived Soviet expansionism and real Soviet expansionism, but also
Speaker 4: realizing we're stronger, we can stop them. We have huge wealth,
Speaker 4: we have atomic bomb and they don't, and we have
Speaker 4: resources to stop communism. But the premise is in the
Speaker 4: America in mind that communism is such a dangerous thing
Speaker 4: that can spread all over the world. And why he
Speaker 4: can spread hello, because capitalism is weak, and particularly in Europe,
Speaker 4: because capitalisms stopped working in Europe, and you know, we
Speaker 4: must reignite it, we must just set it straight and
Speaker 4: you know, make it stand on both feet.
Speaker 2: So arguably, maybe the Cold War formally started with the
Speaker 2: famous long telegram from the US diplomat George Kennan, and
Speaker 2: he talked about, you know, the outlaid the foundation of
Speaker 2: this idea of containment, in this idea that the Soviets
Speaker 2: were a fundamental threat to everything we hold dear in
Speaker 2: the West, in the US, our way of life, our freedom,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And you're dismissive in the book of his
Speaker 2: maybe paranoid views. But on the other hand, you know,
Speaker 2: up until you know there was a Comintern that aimed
Speaker 2: to foment communism around the world. And obviously the Soviets
Speaker 2: moved a missile to Cuba and thought a war in
Speaker 2: Afghanistan and the Gola, et cetera. Why was it so
Speaker 2: unrealistic to think that the Soviet Union did have expansionist
Speaker 2: visions for spreading a specific way of life across the globe.
Speaker 4: Well, I never said that the Soviets didn't have expansionists
Speaker 4: to view, because that was the essence of I continued,
Speaker 4: I continued, I continue, No, no, no, no, you actually you
Speaker 4: have just proved to it that you read the book
Speaker 4: at these parts of the book that tells about the
Speaker 4: canon fascinating character and Canon's long Telegram. My take on
Speaker 4: Canon is, actually, you know, many people read excellent books
Speaker 4: on Canon because he was such a master of words.
Speaker 4: He essentially gave subsequent generations of American liberal historians all
Speaker 4: the words to use, the entire kind of ideological framework
Speaker 4: to use about what Soviet threat was about. He used
Speaker 4: the word virus, malignant parasite, and other helpful things to
Speaker 4: understand Soviet threat. But if we go beyond all this,
Speaker 4: ask a question, okay, malignant parasite on what parasite on
Speaker 4: healthy capitalist liberal society. That again, the thesis is, it
Speaker 4: is liberal capitalism that collapsed in the nineteen thirties and
Speaker 4: above all in Europe, above all in Germany, but also
Speaker 4: in other countries. And maybe America can restore this capitalism
Speaker 4: to its greatness. But maybe not, because at the end
Speaker 4: of the Long Telegram, Canon has doubts. Canon says we
Speaker 4: should contain communists, but not to such an extent that
Speaker 4: we in America would ourselves turn into a garrison state.
Speaker 4: So his theory that in this huge effort to contain communism,
Speaker 4: America might itself change its nature and stop being liberal
Speaker 4: capitalist society and would become a garrison state. So, you know,
Speaker 4: that's a sort of sense of uncertainty. But later this
Speaker 4: sense of uncertainty was dropped, particularly in the sixties with
Speaker 4: this point you know, Kenny diesque kind of message and
Speaker 4: then great Society and so on and so forth. So
Speaker 4: it's very important again I repeat, when you read about
Speaker 4: the Cold War to ask a question when exactly in
Speaker 4: what phase of the Cold War are you and what
Speaker 4: kind of questions you raise about this phase, because it's
Speaker 4: for decades, for decades, so that uncertainty about capitalism began
Speaker 4: to pass in Europe and you have experienced, you know,
Speaker 4: a moment of you know, huge economic wonder at the
Speaker 4: end of the fifties and in the sixties. But then
Speaker 4: the colonization started and that uncertainty what would happen to
Speaker 4: the global South resurfaced. That the fact that all these
Speaker 4: countries like India and China, of course, became communists famously
Speaker 4: in nineteen forty nine. So that always loomed large in
Speaker 4: the imagination of Americans, is that have China turned communism
Speaker 4: and not you know, followed that great, unique and correct
Speaker 4: American way. Maybe others would take this way of misdevelopment.
Speaker 4: It's interesting that all American diplomats and pundits and experts
Speaker 4: use that or misdevelopment when they spoke about Soviet socialism
Speaker 4: during the fifties and the sixties. So when you began
Speaker 4: to pile up, well, what about Afghanistan, what about you
Speaker 4: know this or that you're already kind of continuing into
Speaker 4: extrapolating the timeline into the future. My answer to you
Speaker 4: would be, don't do it, because we have a conflict.
Speaker 4: It started in the late forties. It created a certain
Speaker 4: kind of deadlock, a sense of deadlock, a long battle
Speaker 4: that no one knew how to win. And one horrible
Speaker 4: perspective of that deadlock was the possibility of a nuclear war.
Speaker 4: Don't forget this is why you mentioned the Cuban missile crisis.
Speaker 4: The Cuban missile crisis showed and when both sides faced
Speaker 4: that prospect of a term a nuclear war, both sides,
Speaker 4: No matter how more bombs and missiles and bombers the
Speaker 4: United States had in nineteen sixty two, it had seventeen
Speaker 4: times more than the Soviet Union, no matter that both
Speaker 4: sides preferred to step back, and aside from a confrontation,
Speaker 4: nobody knew how this conflict would end. So this conflict
Speaker 4: continued for decade after decade and after decade, which is
Speaker 4: the nature of any conflict that cannot end in the
Speaker 4: decisive victory, and when both sides have existential reasons not
Speaker 4: to raise up their hands sort of.
Speaker 3: Say, you already anticipated my next question, which was what
Speaker 3: was the role of nuclear weapons in prolonging the conflict?
Speaker 3: So I'm going to skip to something else that you
Speaker 3: just mentioned, but can you talk a little bit more
Speaker 3: about the Cold War experience in a place like India,
Speaker 3: Because again, so much of the focus tends to be
Speaker 3: on the US versus Russia for obvious reasons, but there
Speaker 3: was a lot going on in other parts of the
Speaker 3: world as well, and some would argue that, you know,
Speaker 3: some countries were even successful in sort of exploiting the
Speaker 3: tension between the US and Russia for their own advantage.
Speaker 4: Well, you mentioned India and excellent studies in India. The
Speaker 4: fact is that Narrow and the first generation of Indian rulers,
Speaker 4: Indian leaders had been very much under the influence of socialists,
Speaker 4: not necessarily stalin like socialists, but they kind of had
Speaker 4: huge apprehension of Western capitalism and they wanted to find
Speaker 4: out a third way of development. That was one of
Speaker 4: major reasons why India, among other countries, joined the non
Speaker 4: aligned movement. They didn't want to participate in that geopolitical
Speaker 4: conflict between the West and the East. But also they
Speaker 4: did seriously expect to get what they wanted, a kind
Speaker 4: of mixed model, something from socialism, something from free entrepreneurship
Speaker 4: and decide for themselves what is best to them. So,
Speaker 4: you know, in the late fifties and in the sixties,
Speaker 4: you see the Indians kind of, you know, turning to
Speaker 4: Moscow and asking Moscow help us with that, for instance,
Speaker 4: to build a steel mill, and turning to America and
Speaker 4: telling Americas, oh it, can you help with that? So
Speaker 4: they played on both sides, and I think it was
Speaker 4: a right choice. So that lasted actually into the early
Speaker 4: eighties until the emergence of the global liberal capitalist system
Speaker 4: that we live with today, which is I think is
Speaker 4: crumbling before our eyes today. But anyway, that system was
Speaker 4: emerging in the seventies and eighties. Read the fourth part
Speaker 4: of my book. It's about that emergence of that system.
Speaker 4: And at that time people of non allied movement, like Indians,
Speaker 4: like Brazilians, like others, they began to feel the pinch
Speaker 4: of that system. And all of a sudden they discovered
Speaker 4: the experiments with expert substitution failed, that there was a
Speaker 4: huge transnational force that dictated them the rules above all,
Speaker 4: the rules of how get resources, how to get money,
Speaker 4: how to get loans and credits, and that was the
Speaker 4: system that they totally associated with American influence, with the
Speaker 4: World Bank, with IMF. But it was broader than that.
Speaker 4: It was a global capitalist system that began to emerge
Speaker 4: during the seventies, something that theorists would call today's Washington consensus.
Speaker 4: And it was also part of the call of the war.
Speaker 4: Like I mentioned several things, that geopolitical context over Europe,
Speaker 4: decolonization and now this and all those huge transnational global
Speaker 4: developments influenced the call war and they influenced the choices
Speaker 4: of countries like India. Of course, I want.
Speaker 2: To ask a question that sort of maybe falls in
Speaker 2: the middle of the story and actually goes back to
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons, you know, the Marxist Leninist escatology, maybe that's
Speaker 2: the right word, is like, eventually the capitalist countries, either
Speaker 2: because of their conflicts or other internal contradictions of the system,
Speaker 2: eventually they'll collapse, and we don't know how long it'll take,
Speaker 2: but eventually communism will win out. To what degree did
Speaker 2: the sort of existence of the nuclear bomb or the
Speaker 2: development of the nuclear bomb undermine that story that history
Speaker 2: will not end. Human will not end necessarily with communist victory.
Speaker 2: History could end with all of humanity simply being erased
Speaker 2: in the nuclear war. And how much did this sort
Speaker 2: of opening up of this other possible path through which
Speaker 2: human history could unfold sort of shake that underlying faith
Speaker 2: and the original story.
Speaker 4: Well that's a great question, by the way, because Lenin
Speaker 4: and Marx wrote the theory at the time that when
Speaker 4: nuclear weapons didn't exist, yeah, okay, when you know, these
Speaker 4: weapons emerged, that kind of canonical Marxist Leninist approach to
Speaker 4: world history had to be adjusted. And it was a
Speaker 4: fascinating process of adjustment because, above all, after Stalin, Understalin
Speaker 4: and after Staalin, the Soviet Union was idiocracy and free
Speaker 4: debate was impossible. And yet there were some elements of
Speaker 4: debate and discussion about nuclear weapons, which I write about
Speaker 4: in my book, from some likely corners, like nuclear physicists,
Speaker 4: who warned, for instance, the leadership in Moscow leadership in
Speaker 4: nineteen fifty four, that the invention of terminnuclear weapons makes
Speaker 4: the end of the entire humanity possible. And the party
Speaker 4: leaders immediately reproached them and squashed the debate because their
Speaker 4: view was, hey, you know, our calonical explanation is that
Speaker 4: it's not humanity, it's capitalism that will perish. But then
Speaker 4: other unlikely candidates like it. Among them a chess champion
Speaker 4: between Nick, who I cited my book, began to write
Speaker 4: to the party leaders, wait a minute, I'm a communist
Speaker 4: member myself, but I don't want humanity to perish. This
Speaker 4: is my way of reconciling the two goals, keeping peace
Speaker 4: and making communism a peaceful outcome of the competition between
Speaker 4: the two systems. So suddenly that guy between, thinking very logically,
Speaker 4: pointed to the main problem of the Marxist Leninist approach
Speaker 4: that it always had preached a violent andent of capitalism,
Speaker 4: some kind of a revolution, and then of course the
Speaker 4: victory of communism as a result of another imperialist war.
Speaker 4: But this imperialist war is no longer possible because of
Speaker 4: the existence of certain nuclear weapons. So ultimately, Schoff, not
Speaker 4: being very theoretical guy but kind of very instinctive politician,
Speaker 4: came up with his solution to this debate and basically said,
Speaker 4: or the forces of socialism was strong enough. He of
Speaker 4: course meant above all the Soviet Union in China strong
Speaker 4: enough to prevent another war that imperialists otherwise want to unleash,
Speaker 4: and therefore we'll proceed to communism, but peacefully. So he
Speaker 4: just basically squared the circle, and then the idiocratic bureaucracy
Speaker 4: followed this lead. And then what you have is Dayton't.
Speaker 4: Then what you have is daytont and arms control. That
Speaker 4: was the major outcome of that ideological reconciliation that the
Speaker 4: Soviet leadership, and particularly the guy after Cruse Schevnev said,
Speaker 4: you know, but we want peace. We don't renounce how
Speaker 4: ideological belief that capitalists would perish and communists would triumph,
Speaker 4: But we have to do it peacefully. Our main duty
Speaker 4: is to struggle for peace, and in the old days,
Speaker 4: let's say, twenty years earlier, such guys like Brezhnev would
Speaker 4: have been denounced as yeah, I don't know he read
Speaker 4: its revisionists, I don't know. But in the seventies that
Speaker 4: was all right. So in a sense, that ideological innovation
Speaker 4: opened the way for Dayton peaceful policies by Brezhnev, and
Speaker 4: with all kinds of good consequences for Europe, with the
Speaker 4: American Soviet Dayton flourishing briefly but flourishing under Nixon, and
Speaker 4: looking backwards, you begin to realize that without this period
Speaker 4: of Breshnev and struggle for peace, otherwise you wouldn't have
Speaker 4: had Garbachev. And of course, without Garbachev in the late eighties,
Speaker 4: from eighty five to nineteen ninety one, you cannot imagine
Speaker 4: the end of such conflict as the Cold War, because
Speaker 4: Garbachev was a major part and then single handedly did
Speaker 4: many things that made the end of this conflict possible thinkable,
Speaker 4: and actually it happened.
Speaker 2: Tracy, I just want to say one thing, One area
Speaker 2: where I think the Soviet Union was objectively better is
Speaker 2: that it's a country where a chess grandmaster is so
Speaker 2: politically influential. I would like to live in such a
Speaker 2: you know that was one writes a letter.
Speaker 4: Well, well, well at that cultural small cultural note for
Speaker 4: the audience. I mean, and not everybody played chess in
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union, that's to begin with. So when c I,
Speaker 4: a experts or somebody else would point out that the
Speaker 4: Soviets are so devious because they all played chess and
Speaker 4: all out fox us in the West, it's not true
Speaker 4: because the po liberal leadership played domino, which was simple game.
Speaker 4: They played domino, they were lot much more premiate.
Speaker 2: They got the domino theory from anyway, Tracy go.
Speaker 3: Right, okay, well, vlad As you keep repeating, this is
Speaker 3: such a sprawling period in history, and I have so
Speaker 3: many questions, but one I want to make sure we
Speaker 3: actually get to is just sort of bringing everything up
Speaker 3: to date. And Joe mentioned at the beginning of this
Speaker 3: podcast that one of the reasons we wanted to talk
Speaker 3: to you is because one thing you hear nowadays pretenses
Speaker 3: see one of the pretenses other than he read the book,
Speaker 3: is this idea of the US and China being in
Speaker 3: a cold war. So when you hear someone say, oh,
Speaker 3: this is the new Cold war between the US and China.
Speaker 3: What is your immediate reaction.
Speaker 4: No, I don't believe that it's a cold war between
Speaker 4: the US and China. Well, unless you want to, you know,
Speaker 4: let me rephrase it. You know, it may be called
Speaker 4: the Cold War if you take very superficial or rather
Speaker 4: abstract theoretical take on what the Cold War is. So
Speaker 4: it's just a competition between great powers that for some reason,
Speaker 4: primarily because of the existence of nuclear weapons, never turn hot. Well,
Speaker 4: if you take this kind of abstract, generic approach, then
Speaker 4: you may say, oh, you're not a cold war, and
Speaker 4: probably because of the existence of nuclear weapons, if we're lucky,
Speaker 4: we'll have a series of the Cold War into eternity. Right.
Speaker 4: But I'm not a fan of this approach. I'm much
Speaker 4: more into specific historical interpretation of the Cold War, which
Speaker 4: I said was above all a contact between the two
Speaker 4: ways of modernization capitalism and non capitalism called socialism and
Speaker 4: a capitalist one that you know, all rounds of that
Speaker 4: competition handily, and this is why essentially the Cold War
Speaker 4: ended the way it ended. But where are we now
Speaker 4: between the United States and China. It's much more narrow
Speaker 4: in really more geopolitical context. Who would be the top
Speaker 4: in the hierarchy of capitalist powers. Yes, somebody would say, oh,
Speaker 4: it's about freedom versus lack freedom of authoritarianism in China.
Speaker 4: But it's a much weaker argument really in my view.
Speaker 4: A because China evolves in its own way, you know,
Speaker 4: through hundreds and hundreds of years. But nobody said that
Speaker 4: ultimately China would not begin to vote and have political parties.
Speaker 4: Who knows, maybe in two hundred years China will develop
Speaker 4: into some sort of democracies. I would never say no
Speaker 4: to that. My approach is more specific that for now,
Speaker 4: I don't believe we are facing as profound, as dangerous,
Speaker 4: as essentialist and existential conflict as the Cold War had been,
Speaker 4: particularly in the first two decades of the Cold War
Speaker 4: between nineteen forty seven, let's say, nineteen sixty two, sixty
Speaker 4: sixty eight, whatever. So this is my answer to the question.
Speaker 4: There as a conflict, but I would hesitate to call
Speaker 4: it the Cold War. However, however, we should all learn
Speaker 4: from forty years of Cold War history to make this
Speaker 4: Sino American conflict manageable or at least more manageable. And
Speaker 4: I have a few ideas about this. By just looking
Speaker 4: at this Soviet American interaction during the previous major conflict.
Speaker 4: One idea is, of course diplomacy should work. And I'm
Speaker 4: always struck how important was diplomacy even at the worst
Speaker 4: moments of the Cold War, even at the time of
Speaker 4: McCarthyism in the United States, even at the time, not
Speaker 4: to mention, the time of the Cuban Missi crisis, when
Speaker 4: Kennedy and Khrushov exchanged all those famous messages that ultimately
Speaker 4: led to the peaceful outcome of the crisis. So diplomacy
Speaker 4: is hugely important. At the second point I want to
Speaker 4: make about the Sino American confrontation today that the danger
Speaker 4: of tunnel vision. People should learn to think outside the box.
Speaker 4: There was in the Cold War so many people who
Speaker 4: said they cannot be any way of talking to those Communists,
Speaker 4: to those Ruskies, And there were many hardliners in the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union who never wanted to trust to talk to
Speaker 4: the Americans. And yet there were always people thinking outside
Speaker 4: the box and finding cultural, diplomatic and other ways of interaction.
Speaker 4: That's really important. At third observation, some people would say tariffs,
Speaker 4: economic sanctions, and arms race would solve this conflict today
Speaker 4: between China and the United States. I would say the
Speaker 4: entire Cold War actually shows that it was nonsense. Arms
Speaker 4: race did not solve political sources of confrontation between the
Speaker 4: Soviet Union and the United States. The development of capital
Speaker 4: and the development of what global economy solved that conflict,
Speaker 4: the fundamental underlining issues of that conflict. So if the
Speaker 4: United States wants to out spend China more sophisticated weaponry
Speaker 4: AI intelligence to manage the weaponry, that's another deadlock. That's
Speaker 4: that's like forgetting fundamental lessons of history. And finally, you know,
Speaker 4: look at the cover of my book Falling Domino. One
Speaker 4: major problem of Cold War mentality, particularly on the American side,
Speaker 4: but also on the Soviet side of course, was thinking,
Speaker 4: once we make this one concession anywhere, there will be
Speaker 4: the falling Domino effect, and that will be the end
Speaker 4: of our credibility, the end of our position, That will
Speaker 4: be the end of our whole global position in the world,
Speaker 4: in our cap So what did the Americans get by
Speaker 4: following this falling Domino theory? They ended up in Vietnam.
Speaker 4: And what did the Soviets gain by going along this line?
Speaker 4: They actually collapsed at the end of it. So it's
Speaker 4: not a good way. It's not a good way to
Speaker 4: resurrect the falling domino mentality by saying, if God forbid,
Speaker 4: if China moves against this island somewhere, you know, and
Speaker 4: we do not defend this island by military force, then
Speaker 4: that's the end of the world. We know, it's a
Speaker 4: falling domino. It's a classic falling domino theory.
Speaker 2: When I was growing up, terms like human rights, it
Speaker 2: never would have occurred to me when I was younger
Speaker 2: that these could be loaded terms, that there could be
Speaker 2: anything bad about a human rights group or a human
Speaker 2: you know, whatever it is, or minority rights or so forth.
Speaker 2: I thought these were just unalloyed goods. And one of
Speaker 2: the things, you know, I've been thinking about it recently
Speaker 2: again actually in current geopolitical context, because just a week
Speaker 2: or two ago, Trump was in the golf and he,
Speaker 2: you know, made all these agreements and we're gonna sell
Speaker 2: lots of semiconductors to golf countries and so forth. You know,
Speaker 2: Saudi Arabia still does a lot of executions by beheading
Speaker 2: and things that would horrify people in the United States.
Speaker 2: All kinds of things in the human rights realm that
Speaker 2: would horrify people in the United States, but we could
Speaker 2: still do business with them. We could still sell them
Speaker 2: a lot of semiconductors, by their oil and so forth.
Speaker 2: One of the things you point out in your book
Speaker 2: is the role of human rights groups at times throughout
Speaker 2: this story of undermining, det haunt and sort of when
Speaker 2: we were having these sort of softer moments that ultimately
Speaker 2: the human rights groups in the West, they were not
Speaker 2: helpful on that front. Could this be a more productive,
Speaker 2: peaceful path in the United States to perhaps be more
Speaker 2: willing to just accept, you know what, we can do
Speaker 2: business with countries. We can sell arms and chips, and
Speaker 2: we don't have to worry. It's just not our business
Speaker 2: how they conduct their internal affairs.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, this is one of those moments during
Speaker 4: the long Cold War when Americans played very proactively in
Speaker 4: Americans who were in a vibrant society, let me use
Speaker 4: this loaded term free society, unlike the Soviets. But ironically,
Speaker 4: American human rights movement was ignited by something that was
Speaker 4: happening inside the Soviet Union. To begin with, there was
Speaker 4: a group, very small groups of human rights defenders called
Speaker 4: dissidents in the Soviet Union that evoked huge admiration in
Speaker 4: American societies as sort of good Russians versus evil Russians.
Speaker 4: You know, people whose names were household names at the
Speaker 4: time and few people remember them now, like you know,
Speaker 4: Alexander Soldier, Niitsen, Andre Sacharov and another, you know, great
Speaker 4: names at the time. And then came the issue of
Speaker 4: Jewish Emmy Grace, who wanted to leave the Sovie Union
Speaker 4: to go to Israel or to go to other countries,
Speaker 4: and American Jewish groups who faced discrimination at home and
Speaker 4: wanted to sort of resert themselves. At the same time
Speaker 4: at home, they found a great cause, a good cause
Speaker 4: inside the Soviet Union to help their brethren to emigrate
Speaker 4: from the Soviet Unions. So that was the true emergence
Speaker 4: of the human rights movement in the United States. That
Speaker 4: conflated without a great currents that already been there, like
Speaker 4: civil rights movements and anti racist movements and feminist movements,
Speaker 4: you know, and environment movements. That was a great moment
Speaker 4: in American history. So what happened. I think it would
Speaker 4: be foolish on anybody's part to blame human rights movements
Speaker 4: for undermining the tent Because Dayton was very shaky and
Speaker 4: very very fragile thing to begin with. But Dayton was
Speaker 4: in a sense that Soviets were doubly unlucky during the
Speaker 4: seventies because they thought that with a sheer agreement on
Speaker 4: the equality of armaments and the agreement tongue like taming
Speaker 4: the arms race, they would create the foundation for the
Speaker 4: ecton And that was really really naive to think so,
Speaker 4: because again back to one of my points, arms races
Speaker 4: or taming arms races, taming arms racist is good, but
Speaker 4: arms racists in asums, they're crucial to solving real political issues.
Speaker 4: So these arms are agreements that the sovice were so
Speaker 4: proud of, Well, they didn't play any role in the end.
Speaker 4: What played the role was human rights, a movement inside
Speaker 4: the United States that legitimized Acton in the eyes of
Speaker 4: millions of Americans. Plus of course there were other issues
Speaker 4: dealing to decolonization in Africa of all of the Portuguese Empire.
Speaker 4: And so it's jumped in immediately, guided by their Marxist
Speaker 4: Leninist kind of fraternity, solidarity, mentality and error and American
Speaker 4: herdliners that you see they unchanging, they keep roiling it,
Speaker 4: you know, they keep on the mining global stability and
Speaker 4: whatever they can. And there were other things as well,
Speaker 4: so which sadly led the Soviets to their own falling
Speaker 4: Domino mindset and overreaction in Afghanistan that you mentioned. So
Speaker 4: everything was a reaction to something, but I would place
Speaker 4: the rise of human rights in context. What indubitably happened, however, then,
Speaker 4: was that people like President Carter and then President Reagan
Speaker 4: quickly realized that this is a moral cause to follow,
Speaker 4: and it also was expedient course politically because by championing
Speaker 4: global human rights campaigns, the United States were back as
Speaker 4: a leader of the free world, and they were back
Speaker 4: with much more credentials, like finally being not only the
Speaker 4: leaders of the free world, but the leaders of the
Speaker 4: just world, which was the usually the clay is something
Speaker 4: claimed by the Soviet Union right in earlier years. You know,
Speaker 4: the Soviet Union always was against the racism, against the
Speaker 4: Jim Crow, you know, colonialism, And suddenly the United States
Speaker 4: grabbed all of that and redirected it against the Soviet
Speaker 4: unter set. And you Rooskies are actually you know, he
Speaker 4: colonizes you authoritarians. You know, you don't let your people
Speaker 4: emigrate and all that. So it was a decisive ideological
Speaker 4: turning point in the Cold War, which the Soviets at
Speaker 4: first didn't realize was that way, and then later they
Speaker 4: became pathetically defensive and just couldn't find a good way
Speaker 4: to deal with that until Gorbachev finally said during his presidency,
Speaker 4: let's not be afraid of human rights. Let's basically accept
Speaker 4: that we also can be free in just society, and
Speaker 4: he began to liberalize the Soviet society with the outcome
Speaker 4: that we already know.
Speaker 3: I want to go back to something you said very
Speaker 3: early on in the conversation, but you mentioned that the
Speaker 3: Cold War wasn't really written about in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: I guess when you were living there, when you were
Speaker 3: studying and in school. And I'm really curious about personal
Speaker 3: experiences during the collapse of the Soviet Union. One of
Speaker 3: the best books I ever read on the subject was
Speaker 3: by Svetlana Alexovich. I want to say secondhand Time, which
Speaker 3: is a sort of oral history of Russians experiencing this
Speaker 3: transition from communism to capitalism. So I'm just very curious
Speaker 3: what your personal experience was, and I guess what the
Speaker 3: sort of messaging was to the Russian population about that
Speaker 3: huge transition and transformation.
Speaker 4: Well, that was, as you said, unexpected, a huge transition
Speaker 4: that amounted to the complete loss of identity. And you
Speaker 4: may say that by that time very few people seriously
Speaker 4: took ideological promise. Is if the rival of communist and
Speaker 4: many people far began to think that life in the
Speaker 4: West was not awful, but actually much more superior. In
Speaker 4: that particularly turning point in the eighty nine nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 4: when the Soviet press, liberated by Gorbatrov, began to beam
Speaker 4: to Soviet audience through television. It wasn't like, you know,
Speaker 4: something that foreign stations did. It was the Soviet television
Speaker 4: began to convey this information about the much better life
Speaker 4: in the West. So all pillars of Soviet mindset, sort
Speaker 4: of Soviet worldview, began to collapse simultaneously, and it led
Speaker 4: to several faithful consequences. First was that sense of cynicism,
Speaker 4: dejection of any certainty, any moral, any kind of ethical
Speaker 4: certainties in the society, which was accompanied by huge ways
Speaker 4: of domestic crime and you know, violence, and mostly economic violence. Second,
Speaker 4: that was this kind of realization, well, if capitalism is
Speaker 4: the only way for humanity to exist and evolve. Anything
Speaker 4: to gain money, to make profit is allowed. So again
Speaker 4: the combination of collapse of ethical norms with sudden spread
Speaker 4: of capitalist practices led to that you know, wild East mentality,
Speaker 4: much more so than the Wild West was in America,
Speaker 4: I would say, And ultimately the void was filled by
Speaker 4: nationalism or some kind of at least, and I wouldn't
Speaker 4: say totally filled, but you know, some kind of expectation
Speaker 4: that if everything collapses around me, it means that either
Speaker 4: I choose my family and myself as the only sort
Speaker 4: of bulwark in the future, or I would believe in
Speaker 4: another super ego, which is nation nationalists. And so the
Speaker 4: nationalist and ethnic conflicts sprung up immediately as Gorbachev began
Speaker 4: to dismantle the old sort of the old mentality, see
Speaker 4: the old system and the Soviet Union. And it was
Speaker 4: highly dangerous and highly destructive, and of course, in part
Speaker 4: those nationalists humilitated against the past and past grievances in
Speaker 4: you know, all the people killed by Stalin and Lenin
Speaker 4: and you know all that, But they also kind of
Speaker 4: satisfied the new need for a renewed sense of identity.
Speaker 4: So I used to think that the Soviet Collapse was
Speaker 4: relatively peaceful until the current war in Ukraine. Because clearly,
Speaker 4: you know, this new wave of Russian nationalism and is
Speaker 4: linked to the continuing lack of idea, continuing void in
Speaker 4: the heart of Russia. Why so many changes happened and
Speaker 4: what's the meaning of those changes? So it was possible,
Speaker 4: as it turned out, as I'm saying with deep sadness,
Speaker 4: for the leader of Russia to fill that tremendous vacuum
Speaker 4: with another refurbished idea of Russian imperial, imperial and national domination.
Speaker 2: So I just have one last question. And we could
Speaker 2: talk for a long time and have lots of things,
Speaker 2: including we could talk about the war in Ukraine and
Speaker 2: how actually Kennon himself predicted that that could be a
Speaker 2: consequence of Clinton's NATO expansion and things like that. But
Speaker 2: you know, I want to ask one last question. The
Speaker 2: way you depicted and also, especially in your previous book Collapse,
Speaker 2: you're pretty hard on Gorbachev and you sort of castigate
Speaker 2: him at times for his unwillingness to use force at times.
Speaker 2: But you know, one of the things that you could
Speaker 2: see in this book is that the collapse of the
Speaker 2: Warsaw Pact there was a big economic element. The Soviet
Speaker 2: Union could no longer supply cheap oil to East Germany
Speaker 2: and other countries and so forth, and that the economic
Speaker 2: dysfunction of the Soviet Union played a significant role in
Speaker 2: the failure to keep those military allies on the other
Speaker 2: side of the Iron Curtain. But then you sort of say,
Speaker 2: Gorbachev unilaterally disarmed more or less the USSR. There was
Speaker 2: an unforced collapse, that it was sort of an internal choice.
Speaker 2: Why shouldn't we assume that the economic dysfunction that led
Speaker 2: to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, which you acknowledge,
Speaker 2: would not have eventually led to the disintegration of the
Speaker 2: USSR itself and the emergence of all these countries pursuing
Speaker 2: some conception of freedom and national identity.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I keep struggling with the same question, because
Speaker 4: history is never linear and it can go different ways.
Speaker 4: And of course, you know, those who look back at
Speaker 4: the history of the twentieth century and in fact the
Speaker 4: nineteenth century see the immense force of nationalism and national
Speaker 4: cell determination. But this is one way to say that
Speaker 4: the collapse of the Soil Union was inevitable and that
Speaker 4: it was just a matter of time for all those
Speaker 4: different nations to find their road to the statehood and
Speaker 4: sovereignty and all that. But in other ways, to look
Speaker 4: back at history and see the perils and danger of
Speaker 4: sudden collapses, sudden collapses of empires, we see essentially the
Speaker 4: tremendous instability in Europe paving the way too fascist and
Speaker 4: Nazi dictatorships rooted in a sudden collapse of empires as
Speaker 4: a result of World War One. So the suddenness of
Speaker 4: this collapse, the fact that they create this immense vacuum
Speaker 4: and destroy the old common identities and common links, immense
Speaker 4: common links between different ethnic groups and across different ethnic groups.
Speaker 4: This is a huge dangerous moment. And in fact I
Speaker 4: tried to strike a balance and collapse, looking at both sides,
Speaker 4: but sort of probably knowing what would follow after Garbachev.
Speaker 4: Maybe I overdo the second. I'm hard on Garbachev because
Speaker 4: he raised expectations tremendously, and I was among his followers,
Speaker 4: and millions of people looked up to him full leadership.
Speaker 4: And when particularly he tremendous changes in the late eighty
Speaker 4: eight eighty nine, not right away, you know, the first
Speaker 4: two years were very kind of, very frustrating. I remember that.
Speaker 4: But then he made that huge leap forward, hugely forward,
Speaker 4: and that leap forward contained elements of the future collapse
Speaker 4: because it had many disguided premises. He believed in Leninism,
Speaker 4: he believed in that sort of many things that he
Speaker 4: should believed in, but he did. But then by taking
Speaker 4: this sleep, Gorbachev kind of got frozen. In the process
Speaker 4: of this sleep, he suddenly lost his initiative. He became
Speaker 4: a famously you know, slow or infamously slow in taking
Speaker 4: other steps. So with such tremendous changes, you have to
Speaker 4: maintain a momentum or you lose it to others. And
Speaker 4: he lost that momentum to the Yeltsin, to the Russian
Speaker 4: sort of leader who essentially pulled Russia from under Gorbachev
Speaker 4: and and destroyed the so Union, not the Balls, not Georgian,
Speaker 4: it's not Ukraine. He has destroyed so Uni Elson did
Speaker 4: in my view, So by looking at this story, I
Speaker 4: sort of I'm harsh on the later Gorbachev because the
Speaker 4: book is mostly about three years eighty nine nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 4: during which Gorbachev had already done his greatest kind of
Speaker 4: leap into the future and got scared someone you know,
Speaker 4: got you know, outgunned by his arrival. So my harshness
Speaker 4: on Gorbachev, maybe he's guided by the fact that I
Speaker 4: would very much preferred him to succeed because other options
Speaker 4: were very, very very clear for us. Now what other
Speaker 4: options led to, you know, for those who admired and
Speaker 4: Washington people admired Jelson and thought that Gorbachev was still
Speaker 4: a Communist. True, Elson turned into anti communists, but look,
Speaker 4: it was Elson who gave us the current Kremlin leader.
Speaker 4: After all.
Speaker 2: A lot of loves you, bog This was fantastic. You
Speaker 2: can talk for a long time. After I read Collapse.
Speaker 2: I sort of thought, by the way that garbage sort
Speaker 2: of seems like an Obama type character, Nobel Prize winner.
Speaker 2: But then you know, in the wake of it, maybe
Speaker 2: some lost momentum we could talk for a long time
Speaker 2: about all this. Really appreciate you so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: Everyone should read your book. I will reread it again
Speaker 2: because I apparently missed the entire point. But really, thanks
Speaker 2: for coming on Outlaws.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you very much for talking about history. It's
Speaker 4: a rare moment.
Speaker 2: Cherlsey, I really do have to reread the book. I
Speaker 2: I apparently I was like, I love this book, and
Speaker 2: then I missed the entire point.
Speaker 4: How did that happen?
Speaker 2: I am I reading comprehension. Isn't that great? Well, see, Joe,
Speaker 2: how do you read so many books? The answer is
Speaker 2: by now paying attention to the words on the page.
Speaker 3: Well, good thing, we're not basic bunch of podcast episodes
Speaker 3: on your reading and understanding of history books. Okay, that
Speaker 3: was fascinating. I did think, well, first of all, I
Speaker 3: keep recommending that book secondhand time, and I really think
Speaker 3: you should. And I think one of the important takeaways
Speaker 3: from that conversation and from other conversations that we've had
Speaker 3: in the past, is this idea of like, just how
Speaker 3: big an existential crisis the collapse of the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: actually was for Russia and Vlad's point that you ended
Speaker 3: up replacing the communist ideology with nationalism. I mean, we
Speaker 3: are still living through the consequences of all of that.
Speaker 2: No, we totally are. We didn't really get into it
Speaker 2: too much. And she sort of ends the book and
Speaker 2: talk about the US China relationship, and one of the
Speaker 2: points that he makes, where is the US Soviet relationship
Speaker 2: was really something that was always handled at the diplomatic level.
Speaker 2: The US China relationship has, especially in the last you know,
Speaker 2: thirty years, forty years whatever, has really been driven by
Speaker 2: the business community, yeah, specifically, which sort of makes it
Speaker 2: a very different story to the Cold War, and it
Speaker 2: just has not been about that sort of ideological blog
Speaker 2: per se.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In fact, it was a really good article. I think
Speaker 2: it was in the Financial Times last year. There was
Speaker 2: like Cuba is asking China for some advice on economic growth,
Speaker 2: and I think the Chinese leader is like, well, you
Speaker 2: could try introducing market competition. You maybe give that a shot.
Speaker 2: So while you know, obviously China wants to expand its influence,
Speaker 2: it seems like, you know, it does it by building
Speaker 2: factories and stuff like that and expanding its economic footprint
Speaker 2: much more than asking its trading partners to you know,
Speaker 2: commit to its specific model.
Speaker 3: Well, speaking of building factories, one episode I do want
Speaker 3: to do, because this keeps coming up, is why were
Speaker 3: communists so obsessed with steel? And you know, Vlad mentioned
Speaker 3: the idea of like India asking Russia for help and
Speaker 3: building some steel factories, And it feels like, sometimes I
Speaker 3: think the Cold War could have been you know, we
Speaker 3: could have avoided the Cold War. If we just had
Speaker 3: some sort of steel manufacturing off competition between the great
Speaker 3: world powers, and whoever made the best steel would be
Speaker 3: declared the winner and their economic model would be, you know,
Speaker 3: embraced by the rest of the world. We should have
Speaker 3: gone down that route.
Speaker 2: Did you know that the name Stalin was a nom
Speaker 2: de guerre that means man of steel?
Speaker 3: I did actually know that, so I you know, Steele,
Speaker 3: you could tell a really good story about the Cold
Speaker 3: War just through the medium of steel. Someone should write
Speaker 3: that book.
Speaker 2: Odd Lots series The History of the Cold War As
Speaker 2: Told as that might be a little in niche.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a little Okay, shall we leave it there?
Speaker 2: Let's leave it there.
Speaker 3: This has been another episode of the ad Thoughts podcast.
Speaker 3: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me at Tracy Alloway.
Speaker 2: And I'm Jill whysent Thal. You can follow me at
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