WEBVTT - Vladislav Zubok on What the Cold War Actually Was 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:14.080 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:18.600 --> 0:00:22.800 Hello and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.239 I'm Joe Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway. 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:29.240 Tracy, you know, we did that episode with Arthur Croper recently, 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:31.280 and one of the questions that came up is whether 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.319 you know you could characterize the US and China as 0:00:34.360 --> 0:00:37.120 being in a new Cold War? Right, But of course 0:00:37.360 --> 0:00:40.000 that raises the question of what was the Cold War 0:00:40.040 --> 0:00:42.559 in the first place? Hard to answer, are we in 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:44.400 a new Cold War if you actually don't know what 0:00:44.440 --> 0:00:45.479 the original one was? 0:00:45.640 --> 0:00:48.320 Joe, I can see through this intro already you're trying 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:50.320 to link it to a previous podcast. But I know 0:00:50.440 --> 0:00:53.040 you've been reading the history books. That's what this is. 0:00:53.120 --> 0:00:55.080 You read another history book, you want to talk about 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:55.600 the Cold War. 0:00:55.880 --> 0:00:59.720 This is one hundred percent correct, But it is timely 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:04.320 for multiple reasons. Obviously, because there's the US China tension, 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:09.240 there is the ongoing war in Ukraine, and so you know, 0:01:09.360 --> 0:01:12.360 and generally, if you want to understand the present, you 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:14.040 want to understand how he got here. And you know, 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:16.840 it's interesting to me. So I first sort of quote 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:19.280 learned about the Cold War. I think in middle school, 0:01:19.360 --> 0:01:21.440 you know, in high school, and it was like maybe 0:01:21.520 --> 0:01:24.399 ninety three or ninety four, and that was only a 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:27.920 few years after I guess it quote formally ended. Yeah, 0:01:27.959 --> 0:01:29.880 And yet by the time I was learning about it 0:01:29.920 --> 0:01:32.440 in high school, it was being taught it might as 0:01:32.480 --> 0:01:33.680 well have been like Civil. 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.480 War history, yes, capital age history. 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:38.920 Yeah, capital age history, just old history. And I'm trying 0:01:38.959 --> 0:01:40.480 to learn a little bit more about it these days, 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:42.160 and I read some books, but there's still a lot 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:44.280 of questions about in my mind what it was really 0:01:44.319 --> 0:01:44.720 all about. 0:01:44.840 --> 0:01:47.080 Well, so I also first learned about the Cold War 0:01:47.240 --> 0:01:50.080 in high school, and I had a realization when I 0:01:50.120 --> 0:01:53.440 moved from high school to college. So I was doing 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:57.080 a sort of American curriculum in Tokyo ap history and 0:01:57.200 --> 0:01:59.840 ap US history, and then went to London, went to 0:01:59.880 --> 0:02:02.800 the LSE and did international relations, a big portion of 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:06.160 which is history, and it kind of blew my mind 0:02:06.440 --> 0:02:11.200 how different the interpretations of history actually were. So, for instance, 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.680 I had learned about the American Revolution right as a 0:02:14.680 --> 0:02:17.240 lot of Americans did, but in the UK it is, 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:19.960 of course the American War of Independence, and so it 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:22.560 was just a massive culture shock for me to go 0:02:22.680 --> 0:02:25.960 from that sort of US oriented curriculum, Yeah, to something 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.480 more British centric or more international. So one thing I 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.320 am very curious about is how the Cold War sort 0:02:32.360 --> 0:02:35.079 of played out from the non US perspective. 0:02:35.400 --> 0:02:37.800 Yeah, and right, like we called it the Cold War, 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.360 I guess, And so the question is what was it 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:43.840 called elsewhere? Well, I'm really excited. We really do have 0:02:44.040 --> 0:02:47.320 the perfect guest today. He has a new book out 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.239 on the question of what was the Cold War. We're 0:02:50.280 --> 0:02:52.600 going to be speaking with Vladislav Zubak. He is the 0:02:52.680 --> 0:02:57.440 Stevenson Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. 0:02:57.480 --> 0:03:00.440 So doubly perfect. He's the author of the new book 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.400 The World of the Cold War nineteen forty five to 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.639 nineteen ninety one. He's also written several other books sort 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.440 of in the same general history. A Lot of Soviet 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:12.560 History is a prior book that I also highly recommend, 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:15.160 came out in twenty twenty one, Collapsed the Fall of 0:03:15.200 --> 0:03:18.880 the Soviet Union? What really happened there? So Professor Zubach, 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:21.360 thank you so much for coming on odd Laws. 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:23.920 Now, thank you for inviting me, And that's a great 0:03:23.960 --> 0:03:26.799 moment to talk about great changes in history as we're 0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:27.799 experiencing now. 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:31.200 We are definitely experiencing them now. So I guess if 0:03:31.200 --> 0:03:33.680 someone had asked me, like a year ago, or you know, 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:35.280 a few years ago, and I wasn't really thinking about 0:03:35.280 --> 0:03:37.040 these things, what was the Cold War? I might have said, well, 0:03:37.160 --> 0:03:42.840 there's global battle between capitalists, vision and communism, or democracy 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:46.080 versus authoritarianism or something maybe something else, But what was 0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.560 the Cold War? Because your book actually does sort of 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:52.680 offer a different claim, and it seems to be more 0:03:52.800 --> 0:03:57.640 about something basic and land and territory and mostly centered 0:03:57.680 --> 0:03:58.840 on Europe. 0:03:59.200 --> 0:04:01.920 No, not at all. Yeah, well let me start by. 0:04:01.840 --> 0:04:05.080 The other and I completely misunderstood the book. But go on, 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:06.120 well you can. 0:04:06.800 --> 0:04:13.560 You're completely misinterpreted my book normal thing, which is a 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.920 normal thing today. You know, whoever says whatever, it's misinterpretation 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.159 and fake news. So let me tell you one thing 0:04:21.240 --> 0:04:24.159 that might amuse you. Sure, you know you started by 0:04:24.520 --> 0:04:27.640 telling the audience when you learned about the Cold War 0:04:28.120 --> 0:04:29.960 high school, And so let me tell you when I 0:04:30.040 --> 0:04:32.080 learned it about it because I grew up in the 0:04:32.080 --> 0:04:35.719 Soviet Union, basically wondering, well, it was in the midst 0:04:35.720 --> 0:04:38.800 of a Cold war. It was the you know, the sixties, seventies, 0:04:38.839 --> 0:04:42.080 and I grew up as a young believer that the 0:04:42.120 --> 0:04:46.000 future belongs to communism. Don't laugh at me, And I 0:04:46.120 --> 0:04:49.680 just was surprised why so many people couldn't get it 0:04:49.839 --> 0:04:52.560 that communism is the way of the future. And then 0:04:53.000 --> 0:04:57.239 very late in my sort of student years, I began 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:00.320 to realize, hey, it's much more complicated. You know, the 0:05:00.360 --> 0:05:02.840 world is divided and so and so forth, And we 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:07.080 were told the world is divided between socialism and capitalism. 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.159 So when I learned about the Cold War, I mostly 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.760 learned it from American literature. So it was very much 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:16.240 influenced by American books because nothing was written in the 0:05:16.320 --> 0:05:20.880 Sovigine about the Cold War. Nothing. That's a special, special 0:05:20.960 --> 0:05:23.159 question why. But you know, I couldn't find a single 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.080 decent book on the Cold War. So I learned it 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.800 from American authors like John Lewis Gaddis. Some people may 0:05:28.839 --> 0:05:31.560 remember there were great books by John Lewis Gaddis in 0:05:31.600 --> 0:05:34.720 the eighties, and so I read them and totally absorbed them. 0:05:35.040 --> 0:05:38.080 And so the ironic thing that many years later, thirty 0:05:38.120 --> 0:05:41.720 years later, I'm coming back to my original kind of idea. Yes, 0:05:42.000 --> 0:05:46.960 it was the battle between socialism and capitalism, yes, And 0:05:47.000 --> 0:05:49.680 in a sense, the whole phenomenon of the Cold War 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:52.800 should not be understood like, oh, it's a game of 0:05:53.120 --> 0:05:58.320 great powers. It's about, you know, Europe becoming a vacuum 0:05:58.480 --> 0:06:01.800 after World War Two to be filled by you know, 0:06:01.880 --> 0:06:04.599 two great powers, the Soviet Union. In the United States, yeah, 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:08.480 it was there. All that was there, and an ideology 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:12.680 was there of communism and American liberalism. But for instance, 0:06:12.680 --> 0:06:15.520 business people hear about ideas, they kind of become a 0:06:15.520 --> 0:06:18.680 little bit so horrific and they said, just ideas, tell 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:21.839 me something more important. So the most important thing it 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.120 was the battle for the future of capitalism in my view, 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.760 and you know, for everyone who were in Europe and 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.479 in Washington and New York, or or in Moscow, whatever, 0:06:32.600 --> 0:06:36.040 in Tokyo, it was about that because you know, the 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:42.280 previous thirty years of capitalism were disastrous. Capitalism discredited itself. 0:06:42.320 --> 0:06:45.159 So if you were in the late forties in Europe, 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:48.480 you would think, hmm, maybe I should become a young communist. 0:06:49.120 --> 0:06:52.560 So the previous disasters use of capitalism caused the phenomenon 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:56.640 Cold War, and it was just geopolitical situation when Europe 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:00.000 was out for grabs. Much of Europe thanks to Hitler 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:03.760 was up for grabs between the two you know, coalitions 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.280 between the Soviet Union and the Western Powers. They are 0:07:06.400 --> 0:07:10.560 so called Angelis Saxons. It gained geopolitical dimensions in this way, 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:14.400 but essentially it was about which system would modernize the 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:18.240 world better. This is essentially throughout the Cold Warrior had 0:07:18.280 --> 0:07:22.760 modifications of the same questions until it was answered very 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:26.760 much in favor of capitalism in the seventies and the 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:30.880 agies particularly, Yes, capitalism is much much better. In fact, 0:07:30.920 --> 0:07:31.720 that's the only. 0:07:31.520 --> 0:07:34.200 Way Tracy, I think I'm still half right it was. 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:37.960 There is a big geopolitical element about Europe. But I 0:07:38.040 --> 0:07:41.560 do now have to reread the book to not take 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:45.760 away my overly simplistic takeaway from it. Anyway, Tracy go on. 0:07:45.760 --> 0:07:48.360 Okay, Well, in all honesty, I have not read the book, 0:07:48.400 --> 0:07:51.960 so I get to ask all the extremely basic questions here. 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:54.120 But I think this is relevant to the discussion. 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:54.480 At least not missing. 0:07:54.920 --> 0:07:58.080 Yeah, at least I'm learning about it in real time. 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:00.920 But Vlad, I guess my question is how did the 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:05.400 US and the Soviet Union come to understand each other's 0:08:05.600 --> 0:08:09.800 respective positions? So you know, what was the process through 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:13.880 which they sort of calcified each other's ideologies and came 0:08:13.920 --> 0:08:16.360 away with this notion that you know, okay, the US 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:21.160 very capitalist. Maybe capitalism requires a lot of expansion, a 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:23.800 lot of domination of the world to keep going, whereas 0:08:23.800 --> 0:08:27.280 the US came away thinking, well, you know, Soviets believe 0:08:27.320 --> 0:08:30.720 in communism, and communism is going to take over the world. 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:33.040 How did that process actually happen? 0:08:33.720 --> 0:08:36.160 Well, let me start with what I know better about 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:39.040 the Soviets because I grew up there, and you know, 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.880 I said I was a young Marxist and all that 0:08:41.960 --> 0:08:45.439 I was. You know, you may say, you know, brainwashed 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:47.640 at the time in high school and all that, But 0:08:47.640 --> 0:08:49.120 by the end of the high school, by the way, 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.600 I began to have doubts. So I was already the seventies. 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:54.679 So it was very much unclear at the time that 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.320 we would ever build anything called communism already. But you know, 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:02.120 let me return to your question, and let's say the 0:09:02.120 --> 0:09:04.600 same point to say, let's talk about the start of 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.600 the Cold War, because it was an immensely long contest, 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.959 immensely long confrontation, like for four decades, right, so it's 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.160 very important. I broke up my book into four major sections. 0:09:15.640 --> 0:09:17.480 And if you are in the first section, when the 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:21.199 Cold War just started in the Soviet Union, they read Lenin, 0:09:21.760 --> 0:09:25.600 and Lenin said, as long as capitalism exists, it would 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:31.240 produce imperialism, and imperialism is about competition for resources and wars, 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:35.240 global wars, because capitalism is global. So that's what you 0:09:35.480 --> 0:09:39.120 learn about the other side in the Soviet Union. So 0:09:39.520 --> 0:09:42.480 whenever somebody likes Stalin would say, hey, you know, the 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:46.480 United States now is a top capitalist power. That means 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.920 that you know, other powers should compete, like the UK should, 0:09:49.960 --> 0:09:54.360 British Empire should compete with Americans. And this is essentially 0:09:54.400 --> 0:09:57.480 the main source of instability and global war. This is 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:01.200 what you believed in as a matter faith in the 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.480 Soviet Union. If you are in the United States, it's 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:08.880 much less let's say, theoretical, and more like based on 0:10:09.000 --> 0:10:13.600 experience of dealing with Red Russia or Communist Russia. And 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:17.679 during the first decade, Americans completely dismissed the existence of 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:22.280 Red Russia and never granted diplomatic recognition to that country 0:10:22.320 --> 0:10:24.439 because there was, you know, a kind of nonsense for 0:10:24.559 --> 0:10:27.720 Americans to think that people don't believe in private property. 0:10:28.080 --> 0:10:32.280 They reject entrepreneurship, They reject God, atheists and so on 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.480 and so forth. This is just a nonsense. This state 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:37.720 cannot exist. And then you know, they began to change 0:10:37.720 --> 0:10:40.480 their mind gradually, Oh it should stay and all that. 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:44.200 But what made them change their mind about the Soviet 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:47.120 Union above all was the Great Depression and a huge 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.040 crisis of capitalists. Back to my original point about the 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:53.040 context between capitalism and communism, the very fact that the 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.440 idea of this context entered the American mind, you know, 0:10:56.520 --> 0:10:59.080 and later Americans even began to say, oh, communists have 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:01.920 taken over the world and all that stuff. It is 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:08.240 because of their internal insecurity, American internal insecurity, because the 0:11:08.240 --> 0:11:12.040 Great Depression did take place. It was almost ten years. Yes, 0:11:12.080 --> 0:11:15.680 America exited the war as powerful as it never had been. 0:11:15.800 --> 0:11:18.640 But thanks to the war, nobody could say with another 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.439 Great Depression happened after the end of the war. So 0:11:21.480 --> 0:11:27.120 that was immense internal insecurity. Coupled with that American exceptionalism, 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.200 you know, we've done so well before, we should do 0:11:30.440 --> 0:11:35.199 great in the future. That produced American impulse towards the 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:38.080 Cold War. And I would say, you know, I'm back 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:39.960 and forth on this question. By the way, you know, 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:44.079 when you ask who started it in such a complex context, 0:11:44.120 --> 0:11:46.559 between the two ways of light, two ways of modernization, 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:49.679 you know, it's very difficult sometimes to say who started it. 0:11:49.760 --> 0:11:54.120 But I would say Americans had more sources, and therefore 0:11:54.400 --> 0:11:58.439 they were much more proactive in nineteen forty five, forty six, 0:11:58.520 --> 0:12:03.360 forty seven, when they began to see the Soviets acting 0:12:03.880 --> 0:12:07.959 not as they had expected, strangely, because the Soviets always 0:12:07.960 --> 0:12:12.160 acted as Soviets, they just were expansionists, they were assertive, 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:16.959 but after forty five they were also extremely weak. They 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:19.640 lost twenty seven million people during World War Two and 0:12:19.720 --> 0:12:23.240 all that stuff, So Americans knew that, but they also 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:27.719 saw Soviets being expansionists and decided to take an initiative. 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.640 So much of the Cold War, in a way, during 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:36.840 its original phases Americans acting, Americans doing the Marshall Plan, 0:12:37.160 --> 0:12:43.160 Americans doing dividing Germany into two parts in reaction to 0:12:43.400 --> 0:12:48.640 the perceived Soviet expansionism and real Soviet expansionism, but also 0:12:48.760 --> 0:12:53.200 realizing we're stronger, we can stop them. We have huge wealth, 0:12:53.240 --> 0:12:56.320 we have atomic bomb and they don't, and we have 0:12:56.440 --> 0:12:59.679 resources to stop communism. But the premise is in the 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:02.679 America in mind that communism is such a dangerous thing 0:13:02.720 --> 0:13:05.679 that can spread all over the world. And why he 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:10.280 can spread hello, because capitalism is weak, and particularly in Europe, 0:13:10.320 --> 0:13:14.240 because capitalisms stopped working in Europe, and you know, we 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:17.600 must reignite it, we must just set it straight and 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:19.400 you know, make it stand on both feet. 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.040 So arguably, maybe the Cold War formally started with the 0:13:39.080 --> 0:13:42.840 famous long telegram from the US diplomat George Kennan, and 0:13:42.880 --> 0:13:45.040 he talked about, you know, the outlaid the foundation of 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:48.559 this idea of containment, in this idea that the Soviets 0:13:48.559 --> 0:13:51.400 were a fundamental threat to everything we hold dear in 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:53.640 the West, in the US, our way of life, our freedom, 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:58.040 et cetera. And you're dismissive in the book of his 0:13:58.480 --> 0:14:01.600 maybe paranoid views. But on the other hand, you know, 0:14:01.760 --> 0:14:05.040 up until you know there was a Comintern that aimed 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:09.440 to foment communism around the world. And obviously the Soviets 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:12.160 moved a missile to Cuba and thought a war in 0:14:12.200 --> 0:14:16.320 Afghanistan and the Gola, et cetera. Why was it so 0:14:16.480 --> 0:14:21.960 unrealistic to think that the Soviet Union did have expansionist 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:26.160 visions for spreading a specific way of life across the globe. 0:14:26.560 --> 0:14:29.920 Well, I never said that the Soviets didn't have expansionists 0:14:29.920 --> 0:14:32.120 to view, because that was the essence of I continued, 0:14:32.720 --> 0:14:36.040 I continued, I continue, No, no, no, no, you actually you 0:14:36.080 --> 0:14:37.640 have just proved to it that you read the book 0:14:37.680 --> 0:14:40.400 at these parts of the book that tells about the 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:45.720 canon fascinating character and Canon's long Telegram. My take on 0:14:45.880 --> 0:14:49.000 Canon is, actually, you know, many people read excellent books 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:52.000 on Canon because he was such a master of words. 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:57.760 He essentially gave subsequent generations of American liberal historians all 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:01.200 the words to use, the entire kind of ideological framework 0:15:01.240 --> 0:15:05.200 to use about what Soviet threat was about. He used 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:10.320 the word virus, malignant parasite, and other helpful things to 0:15:10.440 --> 0:15:13.800 understand Soviet threat. But if we go beyond all this, 0:15:14.840 --> 0:15:20.120 ask a question, okay, malignant parasite on what parasite on 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:25.520 healthy capitalist liberal society. That again, the thesis is, it 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.840 is liberal capitalism that collapsed in the nineteen thirties and 0:15:30.880 --> 0:15:33.960 above all in Europe, above all in Germany, but also 0:15:33.960 --> 0:15:40.120 in other countries. And maybe America can restore this capitalism 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:42.960 to its greatness. But maybe not, because at the end 0:15:43.000 --> 0:15:47.480 of the Long Telegram, Canon has doubts. Canon says we 0:15:47.640 --> 0:15:52.480 should contain communists, but not to such an extent that 0:15:52.640 --> 0:15:58.360 we in America would ourselves turn into a garrison state. 0:15:58.880 --> 0:16:03.600 So his theory that in this huge effort to contain communism, 0:16:03.640 --> 0:16:09.440 America might itself change its nature and stop being liberal 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:12.760 capitalist society and would become a garrison state. So, you know, 0:16:12.840 --> 0:16:15.720 that's a sort of sense of uncertainty. But later this 0:16:16.000 --> 0:16:19.680 sense of uncertainty was dropped, particularly in the sixties with 0:16:19.840 --> 0:16:23.280 this point you know, Kenny diesque kind of message and 0:16:23.320 --> 0:16:26.520 then great Society and so on and so forth. So 0:16:26.600 --> 0:16:30.320 it's very important again I repeat, when you read about 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:33.640 the Cold War to ask a question when exactly in 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:37.480 what phase of the Cold War are you and what 0:16:37.560 --> 0:16:40.000 kind of questions you raise about this phase, because it's 0:16:40.040 --> 0:16:45.080 for decades, for decades, so that uncertainty about capitalism began 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:47.720 to pass in Europe and you have experienced, you know, 0:16:48.120 --> 0:16:52.120 a moment of you know, huge economic wonder at the 0:16:52.240 --> 0:16:55.280 end of the fifties and in the sixties. But then 0:16:56.320 --> 0:17:00.800 the colonization started and that uncertainty what would happen to 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.960 the global South resurfaced. That the fact that all these 0:17:04.960 --> 0:17:08.960 countries like India and China, of course, became communists famously 0:17:09.000 --> 0:17:12.040 in nineteen forty nine. So that always loomed large in 0:17:12.119 --> 0:17:15.400 the imagination of Americans, is that have China turned communism 0:17:15.680 --> 0:17:19.520 and not you know, followed that great, unique and correct 0:17:19.600 --> 0:17:24.520 American way. Maybe others would take this way of misdevelopment. 0:17:24.800 --> 0:17:28.880 It's interesting that all American diplomats and pundits and experts 0:17:28.960 --> 0:17:32.960 use that or misdevelopment when they spoke about Soviet socialism 0:17:33.320 --> 0:17:36.879 during the fifties and the sixties. So when you began 0:17:36.960 --> 0:17:40.879 to pile up, well, what about Afghanistan, what about you 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:43.960 know this or that you're already kind of continuing into 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:47.800 extrapolating the timeline into the future. My answer to you 0:17:47.840 --> 0:17:50.840 would be, don't do it, because we have a conflict. 0:17:51.119 --> 0:17:55.160 It started in the late forties. It created a certain 0:17:56.359 --> 0:18:01.160 kind of deadlock, a sense of deadlock, a long battle 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:05.320 that no one knew how to win. And one horrible 0:18:05.359 --> 0:18:09.480 perspective of that deadlock was the possibility of a nuclear war. 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:13.160 Don't forget this is why you mentioned the Cuban missile crisis. 0:18:13.280 --> 0:18:16.399 The Cuban missile crisis showed and when both sides faced 0:18:16.400 --> 0:18:20.040 that prospect of a term a nuclear war, both sides, 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:24.040 No matter how more bombs and missiles and bombers the 0:18:24.160 --> 0:18:27.040 United States had in nineteen sixty two, it had seventeen 0:18:27.080 --> 0:18:30.480 times more than the Soviet Union, no matter that both 0:18:30.520 --> 0:18:34.920 sides preferred to step back, and aside from a confrontation, 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:38.320 nobody knew how this conflict would end. So this conflict 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:42.720 continued for decade after decade and after decade, which is 0:18:42.760 --> 0:18:45.760 the nature of any conflict that cannot end in the 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:50.520 decisive victory, and when both sides have existential reasons not 0:18:50.640 --> 0:18:52.800 to raise up their hands sort of. 0:18:52.760 --> 0:18:56.119 Say, you already anticipated my next question, which was what 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.920 was the role of nuclear weapons in prolonging the conflict? 0:19:00.160 --> 0:19:02.159 So I'm going to skip to something else that you 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:04.400 just mentioned, but can you talk a little bit more 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:08.400 about the Cold War experience in a place like India, 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:10.760 Because again, so much of the focus tends to be 0:19:10.880 --> 0:19:14.640 on the US versus Russia for obvious reasons, but there 0:19:14.760 --> 0:19:16.320 was a lot going on in other parts of the 0:19:16.320 --> 0:19:18.520 world as well, and some would argue that, you know, 0:19:18.640 --> 0:19:22.679 some countries were even successful in sort of exploiting the 0:19:22.760 --> 0:19:25.639 tension between the US and Russia for their own advantage. 0:19:26.520 --> 0:19:30.040 Well, you mentioned India and excellent studies in India. The 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.320 fact is that Narrow and the first generation of Indian rulers, 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:39.880 Indian leaders had been very much under the influence of socialists, 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.880 not necessarily stalin like socialists, but they kind of had 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:50.159 huge apprehension of Western capitalism and they wanted to find 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:53.520 out a third way of development. That was one of 0:19:53.640 --> 0:19:56.920 major reasons why India, among other countries, joined the non 0:19:56.960 --> 0:20:01.119 aligned movement. They didn't want to participate in that geopolitical 0:20:01.240 --> 0:20:04.720 conflict between the West and the East. But also they 0:20:04.760 --> 0:20:09.440 did seriously expect to get what they wanted, a kind 0:20:09.480 --> 0:20:13.720 of mixed model, something from socialism, something from free entrepreneurship 0:20:13.880 --> 0:20:16.560 and decide for themselves what is best to them. So, 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:20.520 you know, in the late fifties and in the sixties, 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:22.919 you see the Indians kind of, you know, turning to 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:26.560 Moscow and asking Moscow help us with that, for instance, 0:20:26.560 --> 0:20:29.840 to build a steel mill, and turning to America and 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:32.960 telling Americas, oh it, can you help with that? So 0:20:33.000 --> 0:20:35.320 they played on both sides, and I think it was 0:20:35.359 --> 0:20:40.359 a right choice. So that lasted actually into the early 0:20:40.720 --> 0:20:46.000 eighties until the emergence of the global liberal capitalist system 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:49.119 that we live with today, which is I think is 0:20:49.160 --> 0:20:52.919 crumbling before our eyes today. But anyway, that system was 0:20:52.960 --> 0:20:56.080 emerging in the seventies and eighties. Read the fourth part 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.480 of my book. It's about that emergence of that system. 0:20:59.840 --> 0:21:03.800 And at that time people of non allied movement, like Indians, 0:21:03.880 --> 0:21:07.639 like Brazilians, like others, they began to feel the pinch 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:10.920 of that system. And all of a sudden they discovered 0:21:10.960 --> 0:21:15.520 the experiments with expert substitution failed, that there was a 0:21:15.640 --> 0:21:21.040 huge transnational force that dictated them the rules above all, 0:21:21.480 --> 0:21:25.520 the rules of how get resources, how to get money, 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.280 how to get loans and credits, and that was the 0:21:28.359 --> 0:21:32.399 system that they totally associated with American influence, with the 0:21:32.400 --> 0:21:35.800 World Bank, with IMF. But it was broader than that. 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:39.000 It was a global capitalist system that began to emerge 0:21:39.280 --> 0:21:45.720 during the seventies, something that theorists would call today's Washington consensus. 0:21:46.080 --> 0:21:48.440 And it was also part of the call of the war. 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:52.240 Like I mentioned several things, that geopolitical context over Europe, 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:58.040 decolonization and now this and all those huge transnational global 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:01.800 developments influenced the call war and they influenced the choices 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:04.359 of countries like India. Of course, I want. 0:22:04.240 --> 0:22:06.320 To ask a question that sort of maybe falls in 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:09.280 the middle of the story and actually goes back to 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:14.880 nuclear weapons, you know, the Marxist Leninist escatology, maybe that's 0:22:14.960 --> 0:22:18.760 the right word, is like, eventually the capitalist countries, either 0:22:18.800 --> 0:22:23.040 because of their conflicts or other internal contradictions of the system, 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.800 eventually they'll collapse, and we don't know how long it'll take, 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:31.160 but eventually communism will win out. To what degree did 0:22:31.200 --> 0:22:34.119 the sort of existence of the nuclear bomb or the 0:22:34.160 --> 0:22:39.159 development of the nuclear bomb undermine that story that history 0:22:39.200 --> 0:22:44.120 will not end. Human will not end necessarily with communist victory. 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:48.360 History could end with all of humanity simply being erased 0:22:48.440 --> 0:22:51.080 in the nuclear war. And how much did this sort 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:54.640 of opening up of this other possible path through which 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:59.800 human history could unfold sort of shake that underlying faith 0:22:59.840 --> 0:23:01.000 and the original story. 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.040 Well that's a great question, by the way, because Lenin 0:23:05.119 --> 0:23:08.280 and Marx wrote the theory at the time that when 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:12.120 nuclear weapons didn't exist, yeah, okay, when you know, these 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:17.199 weapons emerged, that kind of canonical Marxist Leninist approach to 0:23:17.680 --> 0:23:21.399 world history had to be adjusted. And it was a 0:23:21.440 --> 0:23:26.680 fascinating process of adjustment because, above all, after Stalin, Understalin 0:23:26.720 --> 0:23:30.480 and after Staalin, the Soviet Union was idiocracy and free 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:34.520 debate was impossible. And yet there were some elements of 0:23:34.640 --> 0:23:38.040 debate and discussion about nuclear weapons, which I write about 0:23:38.080 --> 0:23:42.680 in my book, from some likely corners, like nuclear physicists, 0:23:42.760 --> 0:23:46.320 who warned, for instance, the leadership in Moscow leadership in 0:23:46.400 --> 0:23:51.280 nineteen fifty four, that the invention of terminnuclear weapons makes 0:23:51.480 --> 0:23:55.960 the end of the entire humanity possible. And the party 0:23:56.359 --> 0:24:01.400 leaders immediately reproached them and squashed the debate because their 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:04.880 view was, hey, you know, our calonical explanation is that 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:09.920