The Pete Quiñones Show - The Cold War Series w/ Thomas777 - 1/3

Episode Date: July 6, 2025

5 Hours and 3 MinutesPG-13Here are episode 1-5 of the Cold War series with Thomas777.The 'Cold War" Pt. 1 - The End Informs the Beginning w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War" Pt. 2 - How It Starts, and Bonus Election Talk w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War" Pt. 3 - The Korean War w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War" Pt. 4 - Konrad Adenauer and the Bundesrepublik w/ Thomas777The 'Cold War' Pt. 5 - 'The Cuban Missile Crisis' w/ Thomas777Thomas' SubstackThomas777 MerchandiseThomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 1"Thomas' Book "Steelstorm Pt. 2"Thomas on TwitterThomas' CashApp - $7homas777Pete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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with vouchers from Trump Dunebag. Search Trump Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Thunbiog, Kush Faragea. We embark on a new journey today. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks for hosting me. This one is going to be...

This one's interesting to me because I was alive for part of this. And I was sentient for... I mean, I remember a lot of this. So we had teased about... talking about the Cold War. But you said that you had a, we're going to start at the end and then go back to the beginning.

So what do you got? Well, there's a few things here. I want to explain my rationale before we deep dive into it. I don't want to presume the viewers and the listeners have knowledge that they don't. I mean, I'm not saying

that anybody's not smart or anything, but some of this stuff has become somewhat as ulterior. It's just because the way the news cycle doesn't properly provide context to historical events, particularly where there's military variables involved and political narratives become paramount

to characterize these things. But also, it's just hard to place oneself conceptually in an epoch that has totally passed. You know, I went through that when people, like my parents, they'd talk about the 50s and the 60s and things. You know, I mean, all people go through that.

But, you know, the reason why I indicated, you know, I'm treating this as kind of the end was the beginning. Everything that is happening today in political terms, in foreign policy terms, in terms of the guiding ideology of Washington, and I say ideology, not ideology is plural, because I really do believe that there's a true consensus there. There's no opposition party in Washington at all. I mean, arguably since 1933, there hasn't been real opposition, but in discrete policy terms, there was now that no longer exists. There's an absolute quorum. There's one ideology. There's one strategic vision. There's one, there's one sense of. of when intervention and force is legitimate. And that is totally ideologically driven. It's not driven by strategic variables of a realist or even particularly concrete nature.

It's very much based on very abstract things and ideological things. But you only would understand why that's the case and the only way to understand why Ukraine is the designated battleground. And the only way to understand why Russia, the Russian Federation as it exists today, has been slated for annihilation, is to understand how the Cold War resolved and why it resolved the way it did.

So to begin, I'm going to go back to the last sort of conflict cycle of the Cold War. Very briefly, to speak on detente. Deitante was born at two things. For those that don't know, detente was, it was an explicit and series of implicit agreements between the United States and Soviet Union. Warsaw Pact to not engage in direct strategic competition. Part of this owed to the fact that America was losing the Cold War militarily, not just in Vietnam, but on secondary battlefronts like Angola. The Indo-Pakistan War was very much an attempt to own to the then-Nassad, the Soviet split. The Soviets were interested in hedging China with India, you know, being a huge populist country.

Pakistan was kind of the American response to that, you know, trying to cultivate Pakistan as a proxy. But these things were not going well. And obviously direct intervention, there's this weird period between the end of the military draft and, you know, the kind of full development of the all-volunteer force and the full development and implementables become known as the Revolution and Military Affairs, you know, they entailing them from command and control technology to global position. technology, you know, to smart munitions becoming the norm rather than the exception.

Okay, there's a strange kind of period between those two things where the U.S. Army was operating on a shoestring budget. I mean, not just the army, the whole military, there was no political will in Washington in front of overseas. Communism in the third world, in Europe had become very stagnant. But in the third world, it had this great animating power. And the Soviets were blessed with a great deal of proxies who were already in being you know, in cadre

with a full cadre structure and men under arms that could facilitate military outcomes that very much benefited the Soviets. All they really needed was a constant supply of weapons and the Soviets could kind of take a hands-off approach. So from about 973 onward, you know, this kind of strategic paradigm

reigned. However, during that period the technology that underpins strategic nuclear weapons dramatically improved. You know, owing to the early revolution in computing technology, owing to improve circular error probable from, you know, things like the space program. You know, and just owing to real satellite technology. We'll get into that a minute what I mean. You know, we take for granted that satellite imaging, you know, gives you a real-time picture of the battle space,

but that was not the case until the late 1970s, probably until 1980. Okay, so this endured until 1979. What happened in 19709, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And that really alarmed people, for reasons we went into in a moment beyond the obvious. It was misunderstood why that happened. I know Mr. Trump said it was to fight Islamic terrorism, that doesn't make any sense other people claim that well it was the brezhne of doctrine you know that

being that the soviet union declared that it would intervene on behalf of the socialist community of nation is to preserve socialism okay that was the rationale the pretext what it really was was that outside of moscow the primary command and control hub for soviet strategic nuclear forces was in kazakhstan or uh was yeah it was in kazakhstan okay um and that's why not accidentally that's where star city is you know, where the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation, you know, launched their space vehicles from. So Afghanistan could be flipped or could have been flipped and transformed into a Western client state with basing rights there.

The Soviets have been looking at a situation where their strategic nuclear command of control to be decaditated, you know, at least a substantial portion of it. And that was not acceptable. Now, in drop off, even though Brezhne was at the helm, drop off was really kind of the shadow executive of the Soviet Union. You know, the Soviet political structure was very Byzantine, not just because the party in the state were interstitially combined with one another,

but because who was the true executive, you know, varied. You know, generally it was a man who had a combination of offices, you know, like, he often would be a man who held both the premiership and the general secretary of the Communist Party. Other times, it was far more opaque. And Dropoff reigned formally as the general secretary from 82 to 84. But I'd argue that probably from about 9069, he was a true shadow executive of the Soviet Union. And he was a very brilliant guy. And the world as it's structured today and the fate of the Soviet Union and decisions made therein for better and ill.

Oh, very much to Mr. Andropov. But it was his decision to invade Afghanistan. And he was looking many steps ahead in terms of, you know, the implications for the strategic nuclear balance. And the ability of the Soviet Union to survive abult from the blue nuclear assault, which was a real concern for reasons we'll get into. And it's, it's difficult to emphasize how dangerous it was to have two superpowers fully mobilized, massive nuclear arsenals on hair trigger alert at all time when the technological curve was really moving towards removing human decision makers from the equation you know only to the only with the narrowing temporal window of decision making in the event of nuclear war this was

really becoming out of it was really kind of becoming removed from human hands you know technology has its own momentum and societies at scale we're talking about literally hundreds of millions of people and, you know, thousands upon thousands of aggregate decisions, you know, controlling the trajectory of that massive state, you know, these things can't just easily be moved one or the other. And the proverbial breaks can't just be put on an apparatus of that scope, scale, and complexity.

You know, like, I'm not going to be esoteric. I mean, this is fundamental to understanding the paradigm. Do you think they would? Go ahead. Let me ask, do you think that they did that because of, you know, Daniel Ellsberg put out the doomsday machine, which really shined a light on what he saw in the nuclear policy, what was the way in the late 50s, early 60s, how the, how nukes were being overseen. Do you think that that because of the way that could have turned into a disaster, they possibly, thought that, well, if we turn this over into more of a, even starting to talk about AI and things like that, it would be better than having humans handle this?

Definitely. And the progenitor, like the proverbial father of AI is strategic nuclear war planning. The idea was this, okay? And I'm jumping a little bit ahead because you asked, I want to kind of deal with this now. By the 1980s, you know, where true parity existed within a superpower was in terms of strategic nuclear forces in being as well as capabilities. A bolt from the blue strike, if launched by hypersonic cruise missiles from Europe against the Soviet Union, they would have as little as five minutes to render a decision on retaliation.

The United States would have longer, but we're talking about eight to 15 minutes in the case of the United States. I'm not going to bore people with the details of how they would have played out. It would have involved things like an SLBM, a... assault launched at the depressed trajectory, the spoof, early warning systems, detonating a ground burst detonation, thus an EMP would knock out remaining early warning. But the point is, like, imagine the situation where, okay, you know, if policy is to, you know, even a policy is to launch on warning, not launch on confirmation of assault. It's like, okay, it's two in the morning, you know, American time or in Moscow. You wake up the, you wake up the President of the United States or you wake up the general secretary.

You know, you say, Mr. President, you know, we just received like confirmation, like, incoming assault. He's got eight minutes to decide, like, how he's going to retaliate, if he's going to retaliate, what their retaliation is going to entail, what forces are going to be availed to it, whether it's going to be countervallel, counterforce or not countervalue, whether it's going to be, you know, full-spectrum attack. that it's we're at the point was this is totally academics that's not possible okay so the idea was you've got to be able to discern absolute indicators before you know not not just before launch detection but before even was considered early morning detection and you could code those indicators into into variables that could be rendered as inputs then your AI could tell you when you're facing imminent assault but the problem with that is is like when do you decide, when do you decide to launch?

Is that when there's over a 50% probability of an imminent attack, when it's 80%, when it's anything over 10%, you know, when it's 5%, you know, these deeper parodies make this incredibly difficult. But regardless, there was a secondary issue too, and I'm going to get into this now, because this is a perfect kind of way to kind of slide into it. As Dayton ended, Carter, who gets a bad rap. Now, don't get me wrong, Carter was not a good president, but he was not a terrible man.

He was actually a very moral man, and he did some good things. One of the good things he did was in 1979, Carter attacked William Odom, who was a general, a very brilliant guy. Odom was rare because he kind of had the logistical brilliance of Omar Bradley, but he, He was also a real warrior. He was like a soldier's general. He understood combat. He really understood nuclear weapons. Okay?

I think he's kind of a counterpart. His historical counterpart would be somebody like blackjack pursing. But William Odom went through the presidential decision-making handbook, and literally something existed for nuclear war. And it was incredibly opaque, it was incredibly obtuse. It was not up to space. in terms of the technology of the day, and it didn't give the president any real ability to,

to, it didn't give me any liberty of action respect to the war plan. Now, part of this because this was drafted in literally 1965. So basically what it entailed, and the core of this presidential handbook was the Psiop, not the psychological operation, the SIOP, the single integrated operational plan. Because this day, there's an SIOP, but it is totally different.

And it's changed many times. But as of 1979, it was this arcane document that was no longer relevant. And it basically gave the president a handful of menu options. It was literally listed as response menu. It was counter-value and counter-force assault

against the Soviet Union, all Warsaw Pact states where strategic nuclear forces are based and the same for the People's Republic of China there's another menu option that was the same thing for China but not the USSR and Warsaw Pact there's another menu option that was the reverse there's another one that was just strictly counter

strictly counterforce no counter value a lot of this came from the fact that we were talking about a moment ago about satellites okay until about 1980 or like 1970s78 1980 Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28th to 30th because the Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale is back.

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Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited. Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. US satellites that would provide data on the basing location of enemy forces. There were always several weeks out of date because these satellites would take their pictures. The little film would be deposited in a canister. The canister would fall to Earth and be recovered from the ocean, it would be retrieved, developed, then analyzed. So sometimes they're talking about months out of date information. And one of the things the Soviets did, which was kind of cunning in its simplicity,

rather than availing their land-based ICBMs to superhardened structures, they put them on trucks and mobile launch vehicles. Like everybody's seen the footage. I mean, at least if you were a kid, like when I was, you know, there'd be these ominous as hell. this ominous little footage from the Moscow military parades are these SS19 these huge ICBMs

on these trucks, you know, literally. Okay, they were moving them around every single day. You know, and that despoof enemy targeting. And there's like the totally crazy stuff. Like by the mid-80s NSA satellites and DIA satellites, they were photographing the soil in the Soviet Union and East

Germany to detect tracks from these vehicles because based on the depth you could tell if the payload was something other way of an SS19 or not like it's totally insane like not insane like not insane is it stupid or bad like totally insane like the amount of work and and like man hours that went into this you know uh people can't even can't even see with something like that today but so what Carter and Odom decided was there was another thing too that was disturbing about the SIOP and the entire response plan. It was that by the time, by the state of technology of 1979, it was just accepted that in the event of a Boltona Blue assault

or an unforeseen escalation of conventional war, wherein, you know, the enemy just, you know, goes all in, you know, escalates to countervalue nuclear assault. It was just accepted that the president would be dead. And all civilian decision makers would be dead. So the only people who would be able to manage the response would be strategic air command, based as they were in superhard in places like Cheyenne Mountain, as well as in the looking glass aircraft that was the airborne command post.

That's really disturbing. It's also damn unconstitutional. You can't craft a war plan and be with an article to be parameters that says, well, the president's going to die. So, you know, general powers or general demand. or general so-and-so. He's not a de facto president. You know, he's the Lord of High Executioner

in that he's totally in control of the strategic nuclear forces, but also he's just like the reigning, like, government official who's going to survive. So it all comes down to him. That's a very dangerous situation, among other things. And also, like I said, patently and guys are infusional. Carter said that's unacceptable.

So what Carter did was, he ordered Odom to draft a comprehensive, response plan, basically bring the SIOP up to speed, account for deeper parodies, account for up-to-the-moment intelligence that could be gleaned from, you know, the then-contemporary satellite systems that would allow for, you know, instantaneous retargeting as needed and things like this. Carter demanded that there be, that part of this plan include designated civilian national command authorities. You know, basically the president in his cabinet

would all be issued these ID cards that all had a code, okay? And the code would constantly change. But these men and a handful of women are in the cabinet, the executive cabinet, they'd have to every day they'd have to report on their whereabouts. And if they left the District of Columbia, they have to report like every hour

as to where they were. So they had, and there was a series of military bases and hard structures that they would be designated to travel to wherever they were an event of war. So basically, long story short, a system was put into place. This was not completed until about 1980, 45, but a system

was in place wherein there was no way that every civilian national command authority would be killed. There would always be someone who could manage the war on behalf of the executive and the civilian leadership. There was other things too. But basically what this all came down,

you're taken together, this meant that owing to the technology, of the time and the going to the evolving state of warfare, command and control, smart munitions, everything else, it began, America was planning to, in event of nuclear war to fight and win a nuclear war. This cause all got the consternation from people who didn't really understand deeper parodies, even some people who should have. You know, people had this ongoing kind of delusion that MED, mad was one part kind of talking point, one part kind of talking point, one part to in-joke of within the nuclear fraternity in the earliest days.

Mutually assured destruction is not literally mean the end of everything. Assured destruction is a victory metric in strategic nuclear warfare. It's the point at which an enemy society can no longer reconstitute the wage war. It's basically the point, the attrition point at which you kill an enemy society, which is a horrific metric because in the case of the Soviet Union or America, as in 1970, that entailed about 70 or 80 million people. Okay. but this idea that the only reason nuclear weapons exist is to make sure they are never used like that that's an absurdity

and it's also it just wasn't by the 1970s the end of 1970s you had uh you had multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles you had decoys you had ways to spoof early warning radar you had hypersonic missile platforms that that uh that that that wouldn't you know that didn't even travel on ballistic trajectory Like, it was totally obsolescent. And as William Odom said, he said, look, he said at the time, and he reiterated later to one of his biographers, he's like, I had an obligation that if America was attacked with nuclear weapons, I had an obligation, you know, in concert with the president to fight and win in nuclear war. And he's absolutely right. with the other kind of perverse feature of mad and that kind of whole ethos it's like I'm obligated to commit suicide and so it was like you know 80 million other people because

oh we failed in our effort to maintain peace to the balance of terror like it's there's something crazy about it but that's uh that's basically what ushered in the final phase of the cold war now I want to fast forward a bit to uh what exactly we have to happened when it became clear that not just cracks in the edifice of the Soviet Empire were emerging, but that there was a genuine structural crisis underway. And part of all this developed owes the personalities, quite literally, of George Herbert Walker Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. Now, Mr. Bush, I've got to drop some biographical background on Bush for this to make any sense. I'm not trying to

for anybody. Bush was a very dynamic guy, frankly, and he's not a well-loved individual, and that's fine. I'm not, I'm not saying people should like Bush morally or think that he was like a good man or something, but he had an incredibly in-depth understanding of the nuances of the strategic balance into the Cold War. But he was head of the CIA in 1974 when something very controversial happened. See, um, the uh as i made the point before in a written context the CIA really lost its cachet in the 60s and subsequently with the gates hearings and it wasn't just that people were morally outraged by things like the phoenix program which they put squarely on the shoulders of CIA and really

kind of responsibility if you want to look it that way if you do this as a grave evil kind of arrested equally with army intelligence maccadley saw the pentagon itself but you know one of the reasons this misplaced and people act like CIA is kind of the the seat of the deep state power it's really not and um it was really really loathed by a lot of very hawkish cold warriors so something happened in 1974 um there's something to this day that is that is corralled by uh the intelligence services called the national intelligence estimate it's it's become kind of meaningless now because intelligence and the whole intelligence game is totally different today. And we could do an episode on that if anybody's interested.

But I'm not going to deep down to that because it's just too much kind of collateral stuff. But it was the belief of everybody from, you know, kind of hawkish senators and congressmen, you know, to Pentagon types, to guys in Army intelligence, you know, to Ronald Reagan himself. who, you know, as early as the mid-70s, you know, had his eyes on a White House bid. You know, the believers of the CIA was not feeding, they were not feeding good data to those to whom they were accountable, civilian or military. The claim was that they were consistently underestimating Soviet capabilities, as well as just kind of internal dynamics within the Soviet Union relating to the leadership

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and when confronted with crises, both in and without their sphere of influence. So it was proposed that what was called Team B be corralled as a competitive analysis exercise. Now, what was the mandate of quote-unable Team B? it was commissioned to aggregate and analyze data from diverse sources, basically any available intelligence sources that were then relied upon, okay, to judge the accuracy, comprehensiveness, the predictive value of the national intelligence estimate of the preceding several years. Now, the focus of TMB, it was 16 experts total,

And I'll get into who those men were in just a minute. They were divided into three teams, okay? Or, yeah, teams or classes, if you will. One of them was to study specifically low altitude Soviet air defense capabilities, which, again, I don't want to bore anybody, but this relates to things, you know, stealth technology didn't exist yet,

but it was understood that this was in the wings. and even were it not, platforms like what became the B-1 bomber, you know, the idea was if you can fly below conventional radar and strike superhardened targets with very, very heavy nuclear weapons. You know, that's the most effective way to knock out these counterforce targets.

So even though it seems like overly specific and esoteric, I mean, that's why this was such a, such a priority. Okay, the study of low, effect on the capabilities of low altitude, specifically low altitude, Soviet air defense capabilities, in places like Moscow, in places like Kazakhstan, okay? Another team was a study the accuracy of land-based Soviet and Warsaw Pact ICDMs, okay?

The circular era probable. Traditionally, the Soviets larded their launch vehicles, the warheads that had absolutely massive throw weight. So even if they lost a substantial amount of them, you know, it's a, to ABM technology, those that hit would be absolutely devastating. That's kind of how they resolve the, you know, the issue. I mean, America had every different, Ameri's evil is kind of the opposite. And everybody's idea was eventually, you know, to create basically smart munitions on strategic play, in the strategic arsenal and pepper the target area with sub-megaton warheads, which, which is far, far more devastating than one massive device.

For reasons I don't fully understand, but I'm sure physics guys could, like, should have some light on. And finally, and most importantly, the third, you know, team within Team B, their role was to study Soviet strategic priorities and how this interface with policy orientation. Basically, what's the Soviet, what's the Soviet doctrine on nuclear war? Like, when would they truly escalate? And beyond that, in more kind of global, figuratively, in literal terms, like, what is their grand strategy?

Like, how does the Soviet Union aim to increase its power in this kind of uncertain epoch that we're entering? Now, who was on this team? And you're going to understand why I made a big deal about Bush and, like, Bush the man and his personality. this team was headed by Richard Pipes it included Daniel Graham William Van Cleave 4D. Culler

Seymour Weiss Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Nitz who'd been the creator of the committee on the present danger in 1950 which over time had various iterations all of which basically

it's not really relevant now but that was always kind of the that was always that was going to the political action committee of Cold War Hawks. Now, if you notice from that list that just ticked off, these are like the fathers in neo-conservatism, not philosophically, but in policy terms.

That is not an accident, okay? And these guys basically were saying, well, Bush's CIA is totally incompetent, and they do not know what they're doing. Okay. And thus, when Bush was brought on board as Reagan's VP, Reagan was surrounded with neo-conservatives as advisors, and I would go as far as to argue,

people like Oliver North, people like Poindexter, people like El Hague, who didn't last long, admittedly. These guys were ultra-hawkish, but they were not neocon. However, neocons very much had Reagan's ear, and Reagan himself is something of a neocon, okay? He was a Roosevelt New Dealer who had a kind of Saul in the Road to Damascus moment, in the post-war years. Okay, I mean, that's a whole other issue, but...

So Bush was basically the company man who was Reagan's press admission of the White House, and Bush and Reagan did not particularly like each other. And when Bush found himself, elected president, he was surrounded by men who had gone on to very story and powerful roles. in a policy planning corridors and the national security apparatus who were very hostile to his worldview and who did not view him as particularly competent. Okay.

Bush tried to insulate himself with his own loyalists, and I think he did that in large measure. You know, people like Baker, people like Skowcroft, who's kind of a complicated figure in terms of his values. He had Neo-Connish tendencies, but first and foremost, he was loyal to Bush. and when Bush took office, you know, February 1989, again, not only was this kind of team-be faction that would much later, you become kind of known to the public as, you know, the neocon cabal, some aspect of it, at least. Not only were they insinuated very much into the national security apparatus, but, you know, certain expectations have been raised.

by Reagan. You know, Reagan and Gorbachev had this tremendous rapport. And that was legit, that was real. That wasn't been tried. Bush found the speed of things very alarming. A few months before Bush took, before inauguration day, Bush actually tapped Henry Kissinger, and he asked him to contact Gorbachev's an intermediary. Kaczyner secretly traveled to Moscow, and he met with Gorbachev. And Kisandr explained as ordered that there would not be a seamless transition of administrations from Reagan to Bush. And when Gorbachev was kind of put out by this, as well as taking it back, you know, and Gorbachev said, well, why? What Kizendur articulated was exactly what Bush instructed him to.

He said, look, there's a danger. here of a structural and political nature, you know, a reckless U.S. president could totally derail a transition away from communism. You know, there could be a coup of hardliners, which there was, and we'll get into that, but that was not until it

appeared. There could be open civil war between the nationalities, and that did happen in some theaters. There could be a complete Vimar-style collapse, which also did happen to some degree. what Kissinger relayed in essence was Bush had told him, you know,

an American president could do much to derail the transition away from communism, but could do little to grease the skids to facilitate the process more rapidly. Now, to understand what Bush's vision was, it was a lot like Nixon's after Nixon left office. Now, as you probably remember, it's about my age. Nixon kind of got a second lease on life by the mid to late 1980s.

He wrote some very good books on the strategic situation. He wrote a lot about the Cold War, which frankly was Nixon's like raison d'etra. And he was even tapped by CNN during the Gulf War, like not infrequently. So he died. But Nixon and Bush, their idea was this. Their idea was that we can preserve the Soviet Union

as some kind of benign structure. at least for the time being you know what would have to be paramount is total nuclear disarmament and uh and then gradual uh demobilization of conventional forces until as such that they're drawn down to basically nothing more than a the kind of vimar style you know constabulary force to manage internal strife you know or ethnic conflict or things like this um in bush's case it was very much a kind of, it was very much kind of the vision of Roosevelt that, you know, the United States and the Soviet Union would kind of govern the planet literally with, you know, Moscow's a junior partner, but that, you know, this massively federated structure that took up literally

one-sixth the earth should remain intact because the alternative is just too unpredictable. And it seems unrealistic to us. I mean, regardless of the merit of such things on their own terms or such concepts. How are you talking they are. You catch them in the corner of your eye. Distinctive. By design. They move you.

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When the doors open, the deals go flat. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value. There's a singular fixation among policy planners after Nuremberg of at all costs that preventing armed conflict. And if you look at government as some kind of progressive instrumentality in lieu of living as either a necessary evil

or as a means by which, you know, the posterity and historical mission of a people is present. preserved. You kind of view this as the zenith of government. So the Bush faction, if you want to call it that, contra the neocon or pro-neogon faction, this was their vision, okay? In contrast, the guys who had staffed Team B and who had now become these got Uber Hawks, insinuated the various roles, they viewed the Soviet Union as quite literally evil. Like, that was not hyperbole. That's the way they looked at it. Some of this was some of this was ethno sectarian owing to the background of a lot of these men. Some of it was not.

It was just, you know, guys who were not of that particular background, but who just viewed it as evil incarnate. So their idea was it had to be destroyed. Now, you know, if we destroy the Soviet Union by open warfare, so be it if that's what, you know, God or or a fortune or whatever ordains. or if we destroy it, you know, by by dismantling it through, you know, a detonation strategy of, you know, stirring up the nationalities against against Mother Russia and against each other, you know, if we destroy it by, you know, imposing a kind of looting operation on it that strips of its natural wealth, it strips it of its natural resources and national wealth and control of such commodities they're in, you know, we can just render it prostrate and impotent. that was the competing viewpoint. And this is not hyperbole. These people spoke very openly of this. Dick Cheney went on a record as saying,

quite literally, quote, fuck them, they lost. When confronted with, you know, the kind of Bush-Baker vision. Which seems incredibly reckless regardless of your politics. But this, this is the effect of really kind of driving a wedge between a,

and Gorbachev and this this was a this was exacerbated because one of a one of one of what one of what one of Bush's first acts as president he visited Poland you know and Poland was kind of ground zero of of anti-soviet not just the anti-soviet sentiment but of organized resistance you know like Valenza and the Solidarity Movement Bush did not like Valenza it's I think part of that was kind of inherent snobbery because Valencia was very much a proletarian I think Bush would as a rail arouser. What Bush did was he met

with General Gerald Zelski. And again, if I'm butchering these names, I apologize, I'm very bad with that. I don't, like any Slavic guys or girls listening, like, don't hesitate to correct me in the comments or whatever, but I'm not good with these pronunciations.

But Charles Zelski was an interesting guy. He was the only military man who was a chief estate of a Warsaw Pact state, which is interesting to me at least, because tone deaf as the Soviets were, like, as bad as their optics were, they realized in some basic way that they couldn't just install, you know, these like military, strongmen in the several satellite stakes. But Poland, I mean, Poland was under martial law from 1980,

onward, but Gerald Zelensky was a tragic guy. You know, he looked at ominous because he was in uniform and he'd wear these really dark sunglasses. Gerald Zeltsky's eyes were ruined by snow blindness. He was a Polish National of Noble Birth when the Soviets invaded Eastern Poland in 1939

owing to his parentage and pedigree he was sent to a gulag and spent years at hard labor and the glare off the snow ruined his eyes. But he was telling too that he was that the Soviets had to rely on him.

You know, there were no dedicated Polish communists. You know, it was, it was more of a, the, the communist Poland was more of a contrivance even than the DDR or anything else within the Warsaw Act structure, which is interesting. But Bush and Gerald Zelski

had a certain rapport, and Bush went as far as to convince Gerald Zelsky to stand for president when uh when poland uh had their first multi-party election and bush was criticized roundly and uniformly for that but uh his notion was uh that you know jrelselski once uh once the once moscow's boot is no longer on the neck of the polish nation figuratively and literally a man like jrilleselzky can really rise to the occasion And I understand that, even if that's not realistic in context.

But this was Bush's notion, okay? And in Bush's defense, what he said later in his own words were he wasn't going to go to, he wasn't going to visit the Eastern Bloc and go around thumping his chest and trying to stick it to the Soviets that their system was crumbling. And he also, would loomed really large over U.S. policy, you know, In 1953, in 56, and 1968, the Soviets,

these were Tiananmen Square level interventions or in crackdowns on the people, first in East Germany, then in Hungary, then in Czechoslovakia, there was an

understanding among not just Bush, but among, you know, people on kind of both sides of the divide in terms of how to proceed with the situation developing in the east that if we push this too hard or get too greedy in terms of demanding

demanding too much too soon we may we may see some kind of we may see some kind of Stalin's backlash and a full-scale invasion of Poland and it would be a massacre so I'm not I'm not sitting here saying again that people should

like Bush 41 or should like share that view but I'm just trying to give a balance percent perspective and it was his view was not born of some kind of simpleton's delusion even if it was not realistic but what uh what ultimately did happen was uh was very interesting and really conspiratorial kind of figuratively and literally and again we're going to come back to the CIA and it's incompetence and I know people think I overstate this but consider this William Crowe

he was another general who was kind of he would have been considered something like a minister without portfolio and he served a European government but he was close to Bush 41 and Baker and Spokrod and that whole coterie

he said the CIA literally in mid-1989 he said they were still they were still showing dispatches that spoke about the USSR as if it was 20 years earlier they were claiming that Gorbachev was simply abiding the Brezhneb Doctrine, but, you know, he was reluctant to deploy force because

he was trying to lull the West into a false sense of security. And so they were, in, in, in, in, in, in pro's words, he said it's as if the CIA didn't never see the news. He said it was as if, like, they'd take just kind of official dispatches from East Berlin or Moscow, kind of knock a percentage off the credibility, but then release that is basically, you know, fact. You know, oh, the East Berlin says that, you know, that the regime is stronger than ever. That must be true.

or you know the like borrwitrust the general secretary and he says there's going to be no you know they're not going to they're not going to drop the plane economy and the soviet union will remain so that's that's just a fact i mean i'm not i'm not using hyperbole that this this was literally what they were saying and i mean that anybody again thinks the CIA is like the seat of shadow government or the intelligence community is this got to consider that um defense intelligence really i mean not forgive the tangent but But defense intelligence, the DIA, they really got to became the guts of U.S. intelligence in a basic way. Okay. Them, the NSA, and, you know, a lot of quasi-private entities that, you know, are contracted and things like that. But the, as everybody knows, the great foil to Gorbachev is Yeltsin. But Yeltsin's a sentence. Yeltsin was not this kind of great.

democratizer I mean he he's viewed that way because you know he was kind of the king of the referendum but you know it's not people have this idea I think because it's Byzantine literally but also like memories are short I mean including my own I'm not saying I'm like above this or something people seem to remember this as you know there was a you know the Soviet Union finally held elections Yeltsin beat Gorbachev and then there was some kind of referendum to dismantle the Soviet Union. Like that's not what happened. When Yeltsin seized the power, it's when Gorbachev was kidnapped by the coup plotters.

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regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Declare himself for all practical purposes present to the Russian Federation. upon ascending to that role, and I mean, there was a referendum insinuating him into that role, he declared the Soviet Union to be abolished. So the offices Gorbachev held, such as a general secretary of the Communist Party, ceased to hold any meaning because the entity that Gorbachev held that office in was abolished by Dictot, which is very strange. now who are yeltsin's backers

it was a combination of kind of radical reformers you know these these kind of wild west capitalist types who kind of saw the looming anarchy as an opportunity for great profit potential but it was also a lot of Stalin's hardliners

who hated Gorbachev now why did they back Yeltsum I mean the kind of conventional wisdom as well They just wanted power in the new regime. I don't know if it's that simple, man. I think some of them thought that Yeltsin would rip Gorbachev. Yeah, they'd have to settle for a rough state of just, you know, Russia, basically. But I think they thought that Yeltsin was just going to return things to the status quo after that.

But then he didn't. And why didn't he do that? I think he was basically bought off by, you know, Team B, neocon faction, like, fairly and literally bought off. I can't prove that with Russia. seats but I I've thought about this a lot I've studied a lot and I've read a lot of direct

testimony in the in the epoch I think that's what happened now also you know Putin became Yeltsin's successor I mean Putin had a variety of roles like some

some more prestigious than others and at certain junctr as he was sidelined I mean never in in some disgraceful way but the fact that Putin himself Putin is not some hardliner but he has a product of the old system okay

if Yelton really was this kind of arch liberal I'm using it in these terms and the terms of the regime employs them I don't mean that he that's what he actually is but if Yeltsin's kind of this arch capitalist or former neoliberal ideologue like he would not have had men like

Putin in his orbit he just would not have he would not have taken out a shot or something but these guys would have been pensioned off and and sent far away from from moscow figuratively and literally but again i'm not i don't speak russian or read it and i'm not some kind of expert on the russian people their culture or the soviet union but i am convinced that that's what that's what happened um it uh there's also something that people got to consider the other kind of factor or constellation of factors that roped

Bush's vision and I don't want to go off track because this is its own topic that's very very dense but you know the casting of Slobina Milosevic as this mass murdering nationalist extremist he was the State Department's guy and he was

the guy who was viewed as the moderate they could work with by Washington and Boyce very much wanted to keep you with Slavia together what happened was helmet cole who i think was about as nationalists as any as any uh chance of the buddhist republic could be or can be when uh tuchman's croatian declared independence cole recognized them immediately and then the die was cast there was going to be war in the balkans and that was key to

forming contemporary identities. That's why in a very proximate way, not so indirectly, the Slavic Orthodox identity became paramount again. That's why Bosniaks became very Muslim again. There's a whole lot of a national socialist-in-clined German guys who, like Ingo Hasselbach, he was not an attractive guy, but he was a skinhead, and he was very involved in the right wing,

in the DDR, you know, he and his people recruited a bunch of Germans to go fight for Croatia. And this was very real. This is not some, this is not some Ukraine kind of situation of guys, you know, kind of pretending to be things they're not. And strange kind of propaganda doesn't really make sense. Like, this really was a kind of return to Europe's identitarian status quo. Now, in the way, wake of this uh you know obviously the view that run out was not that one out was not the bush 41 view and you know the what was also in my opinion kind of the nixon view although he had bush

parted ways on key issues what one out was the neocon view literally and what you're seeing in ukraine is the culmination of this kind of 30 year effort of the detonation strategy of radicalizing the nationalities like that's what it is it also has to do with preventing Europe from, from, you know, becoming at all autonomous because a Russian, German Concord is really what is the path that's superpowered them, okay? But, I mean, don't mean wrong, there's many, many guys in Washington

who don't care about Ukraine or Russia, and that's their notion. However, the faction we're talking about, they very, very much have an ancestral hatred of Russia, and they very, very much abide this idea that you know, the structure's rotten, it should be destroyed. If we can utilize Ukraine

as a kind of torpedo, so be it. You know, if we can any way we can any way we can facilitate a real detonation on the frontier, we want to do it.

It's really that simple. But that's, I know it seems like I jumped around a lot, but These are the key developments to understanding what happened. And like I said, next time we'll start out with the Berlin airlift. I think that's a good starting point because I consider that to be the start of the Cold War, okay? And from there, we'll go in like linear terms.

But I thought that this was important. I hope I didn't bore anybody or put anybody off by doing it that way. But that's, I think, we'll stop for now. Let me ask you a question. You'll keep going a little bit. What would have happened if Dukakis would have got elected in 1988? That's a pretty interesting question. And it's interesting you raised that because the other day on Twitter,

I was talking to some of the fellows about the fact that there was an actual policy divide, like a real cleft, you know, between national security hawks and people who thought the time could be preserved. Dukagas was definitely from that latter tenancy and that was held against him. You know, there's that famous people think Dukagas is kind of Harrah-Demean scream moment is when he was riding in a tank,

like looking like an idiot with like a helmet on, like the wrong way. He looked like Snoopy. He looked like Snoopy. Yeah. But I actually think Snoopy is kind of a badass, though. Like, Snoopy fights the Red Baron. Like, yeah. The guy was just took like a fucking jaguar.

but yeah but he looked and even if ducaugas had been more of kind of a like a like a manly like photogenic guy it was so it was so contrived it's him trying to look like yeah i'm tough on defense look at me in this tank you know you know yeah yeah you know to hell with ivan but it's uh but a duccagous cabinet um i mean i think ducagis was uh i think ducagis was a was a tackling dummy who was it was a four-rein conclusion that that people wanted another ragan term and they weren't going to get that obviously and Bush was the closest thing and even though Bush was very very at odds with Reagan people associated

them I mean just I mean you know how voters are especially in those days yeah of course yeah I was one of them any any even a guy like Mondale kind of an old kind of an old line more run-of-the-mill Democrat in Chicago was kind of a weird nominee you know he was like I'm not being pressed but he was like this

ethnic politician frankly even a more traditional kind of Democrat he would have had real problems especially if you had a hospital Congress but it's also the I do believe and Bush made this point too I mean despite everything I just said about Bush's

Bush very very much believed in negotiating the end of the Soviet negotiating with the Soviet Union that ended from a position of very very profound strength okay and I think that was essential I think I think it's really conciliatory executive who'd approach the Soviet Union as, hey, we want

to reestablish detente. That could have been a game changer, maybe. One thing the TMB codery was right about, if they were right about anything, I think Wolfwoods himself, I think, is the source of this, and I agree with it, and I believe I'd say about Wolfowitz at all.

He said that Soviet Union, by 1974, 75, Outside of the Third World, nobody had any respect for Marxist's Leninism. People in Soviet Union, their quality of life was better than the third world, but not by a hell of a lot. Ready for huge savings? We'll mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Liddle items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs. When the doors open, the deals go fast.

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Volkswagen Financial Services Ireland Limited Trading as Cooper Financial Services is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland Nobody believed that the Soviet Union was leaving the world and the sciences or something All the Soviet Union had was arguably the world's mightiest military, arguably the mightiest army that ever existed

if the only thing, the only thing making you a superpower is your military and the fact you've got 8,000 nuclear weapons, that changes things. That means power projection becomes overvalued. It means the entire discourse within the state apparatus kind of orbits around hard power. And that's very... That's what's happened. That's North Korea today. Yeah. It's superpower scale.

I mean, that's, and I, the, so this idea that the Soviet Union was bent on world domination in a very, in a very concrete and brutal way, I believe that. The United States has been on world domination too, but the United States had a way of subverting other societies other than, you know, we're going to level you and decimate you and genocide you. I mean, America would do that too if they had to do, but that wasn't just like the option of first recourse. and I have no doubt, and Gorbachev and Gorbachev and memoirs made this point about every decade, okay, 953, 962, 973, and 83, the world came closer, very, very close to nuclear war

and each time arguably it was like even closer. Like the Cold War had definitely continued, I mean, let's say it continued to like the late 90s, just even. And so like by 1995-95-96, you know, nuclear weapons are based on. you all now with space, you know, and it's okay, like, that was like a three-minute warning time, you know, basically, like, the

Soviets, like, blank, it's like, okay, we've got to destroy them. I mean, like, what would happen then in a crisis? You know, or, like, eventually it would have happened. That doesn't mean the world would have ended, but there would have been probably 40 million people dead or, like, 100 million people dead. And that would have changed everything, man.

That would have changed life on earth forever. Like, not in, like, horror movie terms, like the Terminator, but if, like, a hundred million people died in nuclear war, like the world would never be the same. You know, and it's, in ways we can't even imagine. You know, I mean,

think about that. So, I mean, one of the things of, one of the reasons of Soviet Union, even guys who I think believe, I know this, even guys who believed in the system, they knew they had to find a way out of the Cold War, like they knew it. Because

again, this technology could not be controlled. And people think it's, and I'm not going to say people are dumb or something. They just don't have a comparative basis. People think that's something like the Soviet Union of 1985. It's not like, you know, the office you work at, even have a big company of like 50,000 people.

Like, it's not something like any one man or 100 man or 1,000 men can just control. You know, it's like once the apparatus gets in motion towards kind of a nuclear war vector, that's just what's going to happen. You know, and I mean, that was what was happening.

You know, and this was not some paranoid fantasy or something. You know, I mean, so that's one of the reasons I guess I'm kind of, I've got kind of a, I've got kind of a, like, like, guys in the right say they've got like a soft view of Bush 41. I mean, maybe I do. I don't know, but I mean, whatever, right? I don't care what people think about my takes on, on chief executives of history. But, like, what I described didn't happen, okay? And some of that we owe to people like Bush, okay?

Yeah, the Cold War shouldn't have happened in the first place. You know, World War did not have happened, but it did happen. So that's where we were at. You've got to judge things in their epoch. So that's, I realize that's an incomplete answer, but that's the best I can do. That's a great question. Thank you. Yeah, he, I just remember them selling, oh, he's from Massachusetts,

and they tried to connect them to be like the next Kennedy or something like that. It was just, it was really terrible. I mean, Bush, you know, God love Bush, but other than, that and Bush was actually a great commander-in-chief, and the way he managed the Gulf War with like a Prussian officer of the highest caliber would, okay? But other than that, I mean, Bush was not a man of the people. I mean, that's why he got smoked in the three-way race with Clinton and Perot. But, I mean, the fact that Bush was able to sweep the country against Dukakis, it's like,

look, man, it's like if you're getting, if you're getting smoked by Bush, you know, it's like you've got, you're not a viable candidate. So yeah, Dukakis was a weird, like, a guy like, Greer, Scott Greer, he'd be a good guy to take that up with. He, I mean, he knows, like, electoral politics, like, the bag of his hand. Like, I really don't. I mean, I know the outcome, but I don't have, like, deep takes on that stuff,

generally. But Dukakis was a weird, he was a weird nominee, man. He definitely was. He definitely was. I think this is going to be a great first episode. Give your plugs, and we'll end it. Yeah. Thank you, Pete. The main place people should hit me up is

on my substack. It's real, real Thomas 777 at substack.com. Dot substack.com, I'm sorry. You can find me on Tgram, Telegram at t.m.m. slash the number seven, HMAS 777. I back on Twitter once again, because Elon seems to not be laying the hammer down on people. You know, for the record, man, like, I've never actually violated Twitter in terms of service. Like, I'm not just saying, like, I never have, you know, but I've been banned, like, half a dozen times.

but you can find me there at Triskelian Jihad. The first T is the number seven. But it's posted up in my substack and stuff, so just go there. And I mean, for all I know, in like two days, I won't be there anymore. So it's, and I am launching the damn YouTube channel. Please don't think I'm being a total flake.

I've just had a lot on my plate in terms of content and, like, other stuff. but it is moving forward. I got an announcement I think people will be happy about. I'm debating the JFK assassination in a few days with a guy that I got a lot of respect for and he's actually a college professor of the right kind. He's like a right-wing history guy. But he does agree with me profoundly.

So I think people will dig that. I'm going to do it on a live stream. So I'll hit people to that and that's what I got. And thank you very much, Pete. I really appreciate you hosting me. I really appreciate people watching and commenting and stuff. I really mean that I'm not just being polite. Well, I can't wait until we go back to the beginning because that's where the intrigue of that is.

Oh, yeah. No, it's really, yeah, yeah. No, I'm very excited, man. I'm very, very stoked that you had this notion for us to do this series. So thank you very much again. All right. Thank you. Take care, Thomas.

Welcome everyone back to the Pete Cagnonez show. I got Thomas 777. here. And we're going to get into some stuff not only about the Cold War. Maybe we'll talk some current events. How you doing, Thomas? Very well. Thanks for hosting me again. Yeah, I was thinking, I mean, your point before we went wide, you were talking about the election results. And I agree with you. I think that warrants mentioned, not just because that kind of thing's important, but what's happening in Russia and in Central Europe at present, I believe it's, I believe the current conflict cycle is resolving somewhat peaceably, if not ideally, from my own perspective.

But, I mean, it's going to remain relevant for the foreseeable future, and this is approximately caused by the Cold War. And if we're talking about anything of a foreign policy nature or anything relating to the strategic situation as it stands in 2022, where we're talking about phenomena and events and even personages, like the primary players, are people who, who can only be understood in the context of the Cold War. And also, some of the fellas on Teagram are asking some questions about the topic, and we can get into some of those too.

I mean, there's a lot of stuff that they were asking, some of which is kind of like ahead of where we're at on the timeline, some of which relates more to the revision of stuff we were dealing with a second of world war. But along last, moving forward, we'll cover all of those. but I just briefly I'm not some poll watcher like our friend Scott Greer DJ Scott EG

internet serial thriller and a beltway killer but uh I'm not having fun of him he's a good dude and he's been nice enough to host me on a show a few times and I don't know why anybody would do that if they're a reputable person because I like that it seems like

thanks a lot to believe I really appreciate that no no what I'm saying is like it seems like it would cause you a lot of and like not a lot of benefit. I mean, you're, you're a guy who's, you're not like a fringe guy, but you're a guy who's not afraid to, like, deal with, like, radical things. Not radical things, like, oh, that's awesome and radical, but, like, you know, people have, like, radical tendencies. I don't think I have those tendencies, but I deal with stuff that is a magnet for censorious

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

And I know this morning I got on Twitter, like that, that, that, that slingblade guy in Pennsylvania, like, Bob a Federer person or whatever his name is. or fetter, fetter woman, a fetter person, I don't know, but he, uh, I mean, they're that and like the, he goes, you know, the diabolical Dr. Oz going down in flames made a lot of people upset.

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unless they join the kind of witch hunt against their guy, Mr. Trump. DeSantis turned 10 districts in Miami that are normally blue-red. Yeah, that's insane. I mean, the state of Florida is now like a safe red state, and that's crazy. I mean, not like objectively, but I mean, considering the last 20 years the way things have gone, I mean, I don't see how there's not a win. I mean, were they expecting like some nationwide sweep? I don't, I mean, I, I don't know.

They seem, I think they should be happy, but all I saw, I mean, granted, like, social media is its own thing. And sometimes they forget how weird it is. And as president, I haven't been on it for a minute. But, like, this morning, like, I got all these, like, Twitter alerts of these, like, Republicans-type guys who were, not Scott Greer. He's a very, he's a very, not only is he a sensible guy, but he doesn't go in for that kind of stuff. You had a very balanced view. But a whole bunch of these kind of internet, you know, GOP, cheerleaders, they were acting like, they were acting like, they were acting like, there's some crushing defeat or something.

So I started looking at the returns, I'm like, what the fuck are they upset about me? I'm like, I buy contemporary metrics. That seems like a win. But again, what do I know? I'm a guy who writes about stuff from long ago and speculates about the future. Maybe I don't really,

maybe not plugged into the present date. But I don't know, man. And yeah, the Desanis is a phenom. I'm not pretty impressed with DeSanis. I mean, as a political operator, like, he's dope. He's really good at what, he does. And yeah, it's very impressive the way he's been able to

flip, you know, some key jurisdictions at the local level. But, yeah, I don't, I don't know what they're, I don't know why they're crying in their fucking corn flakes. But again, I'm not, I'm not some poll watcher or some freaking billway expert.

Quite the contrary, you know. What was the move like down in Texas when you were there? Where people were going to fire up about Trump and stuff? Are they just kind of like, whatever? Oh, they just wanted to beat Beto. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they, I mean, there are a lot of people. You know, you go around Austin and you see some Beto signs.

Once you get outside of Austin, once you're in the cities, you'll see some. When you get out of there, out of the cities there, you'll see some every once in a while, but it's mostly, you know, I think most of the people from Texas really don't like Abbott, but they really can't stand Beto. Yeah, Texas is a weird, Texas got of a, I'm not saying bad things about Texas. I like Texas and I like Texas people, but their political culture is kind of strange. You know, like there's a, like Rick Perry, frankly, he's a weird guy. I mean, I know he's not,

I know he's not, you know, I know he doesn't have the cashier that he did, you know, some years back. I mean, like nationally, I never, I never bought the hype that he was going to be impactful on the national stage, but he was a weird guy even for, like, even as, you know, even as a state whole.

Like I, I mean, frankly, W's a sentence he was kind of weird. I mean, I don't think, I don't think it's weird that, I mean, W frankly, had his shit together a lot more when he was younger. But I thought it was weird that, I mean, Texas really liked him. You don't forget that W was actually, he had a very strong rapport with this constituency in Texas. And then in his first term as president, like this idea that, you know, everybody always hated W and he was just this failed politician.

That's not true at all. I mean, nobody has to, I don't like the guy. And nobody, nobody should, but he's, you know, he, he did not. you can't simply buy your way to competitiveness. If anything that might work against you when I say like Texas, okay, a guy like Bush.

So I mean, I, yeah, but I thought it was weird that of all, I thought it was weird. He struck me as like the kind of 21st century version of a Rockefeller Republican, and I'm like, why is Texas like this guy's home base? But I mean, what do I know? And he was big on gun rights and he was big pro-death penalty.

And I mean, back in them days, like, those were issues that were kind of still up for grabs. So I don't know. Back in 2006, somebody had put a video together. It was a split screen video. And it was, it was W in the gubernatorial debate in like 92. And then it was W in the presidential debate in 2004. And it was like 90, right?

Like I didn't see it. Yeah. Oh, in 92, he's just, I mean, no notes, no. I mean, there was no teleprompter. He had everything in his head. And he was right. and then in 2004 it was you know

he seemed like he had um the guy I think Bush had some I think two things I think first of all I'm the last guy I can like put shade on anybody with substance abuse problems so not like saying like oh Bush you know that drove you or they drunk but I think he probably relapsed frankly um I mean he was acting like somebody you did

okay um because yeah I mean the guy it's not like he and I think also like you had some health problems that were not let on do because yeah Yeah, I wasn't just, I mean, so I remember some of his apologists just being like, oh, he, you know, it's just like nerves. He's not used to the office. It's like, and Texas is a huge state, man. And like, he's not, it was not some freshman congressman. He was a fucking governor.

You know, you can't tell him he's like scared of the camera or something. It's, you know, he was not, he was compromised in some way, you know, whether it was health related, or illness or substance abuse or whatever. And again, like I said, I'm not like putting shade on it. I'm the last person to do that. But, yeah, he was like two different people. It was really weird. I'll see you got that footage you're talking about

but we can we can dive into the Cold War because that's something I know a hell of a lot more I know what hell of a lot more about than I do the goings-on in the swamp I kind of wanted to get into you know there's this big debate like to this day and frankly there's actually some decent scholarship

coming out about the Cold War not as much revisionist stuff as I would like and that's kind of one of the things I believe I'm like here on earth to do I mean I'm not being melodramatic I can really believe that because like there's not there's a million guys who are World War II revisionist, and that's dope. That's important.

Okay, but frankly, there's almost nobody dealing with the Cold War in a critical capacity. So I think we're doing important stuff here in that regard. I mean, we always are, but in any event, there's a scholarly debate going on as like when the Cold War ensued. I mean, you can't, it's tricky because obviously when you're talking about a, a discrete armed conflict, even when it's complicated as the Second World War, you can kind of identify points at which the status of relations fundamentally changed. You know, in September 3rd, 939, you know, the Western Allies declared war on the German right. Okay, that's our starting point. Like, yeah, there's hostilities emergent and active before then, but there's not, there's not any such

point in the Cold War. And the kind of tonal shift, not just in optics and narrative, but in policy, uh from uh between the truman administration the roseville administration was dramatic i don't people on our side don't like truman i mean i i've got i truman was not an evil man he was not uh he was not um a gangster like roosevelt um he didn't have the hubris of roosevelt um i've got mixed feelings about truman i don't think truman should have been president okay but um if we're talking about his moral character and if we're talking about um um um what constituted his policy orientation was the Soviet Union. He was in a very, very difficult position.

And most of the variables that were framing the decisions he had to make had nothing to do with his own sympathies. You know, he quite literally inherited this bizarre situation whereby Germany was occupied by the four powers, the United States, the UK, and then France got a seat at the table. I mean, there's a whole other issue. And the Soviet Union, there was no, not really was there no, permanent status of um of uh of a of you know there was no permanent peace treaty in the running

uh nobody was even talking about it and uh it wasn't even clear like what that would constitute and really the only thing that it set the tenor of relations at yelta or at tyran everybody thinks yelta is kind of where like everything you know everything kind of was set in proverbial stone it was not it was tyran in 43 That's when Roosevelt ceded Berlin to Stalin, which seems crazy, unless you understand the New Dealer ideology, which we delved into in earnest in our whole World War II series. But beyond that, what's fascinating to me is even men who you would think would have known better, like Eisenhower. Okay, Eisenhower, whatever else can be said about him, the guy was something of a savant in terms of logistical and engineering military matter. and he was a protege of Pershing,

Blackjack Pershing, who was an understated figure in contemporary histories. Asin May, Eisenhower said to one of his adjutants, and this was related by Omar Bradley, when there was discussion as the, you know, the issue of allowing the Soviets to take Berlin,

Eisenhower said something effective, oh, my God, like, who would want it? You know, they're going to lose, you know, 100,000 men taking it. and Bradley was stupefied by that. He's like, well, what do you mean? You know, like, how, you know, how can you say that? You know, and Eisenhower's retort was something like, well, as the military objective, it's meaningless.

You know, what significance does it hold? You know, and Bradley said, well, you know, in a few years, that's going to be quite clear. You know, in Molotov, you know, the Soviet foreign minister, old Bolshevik that he was, like a lot of those guys, he actually had a pretty strong sense of geopolitics, and he said, you know, what happens in Berlin decides the fate of Germany. What happens in Germany decides the fate of Europe.

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but those who are inclined to do so, if you look at a map of divided Berlin, it's strange. because the Soviet sector kind of bulges East Berlin extended to Mite which was kind of the historical

core of the Berlin city center. That was like the municipal hub traditionally of Berlin. You know, that's where City Hall was. You know, that's where Parliament was. That's all these other traditional structures and administration and the machinery of government were. So it was obvious why Stalin was making these demands,

okay? I mean, it wasn't, and it wasn't just for prestige or something um Roosevelt had no problem with that but Roosevelt also what he the only the only kind of signaling he'd given to uh Stalin was at Tehran and then

before he died uh apparently according to people at Cordell Hall um he said Roosevelt stated to Stalin as well as to you know um his uh cabinet and the Department of State and in Department of War that, oh, well, you know, American forces,

I can't see them staying in Europe beyond two years. Why would they? You know, which I don't think you can talk about to naivete because Roosevelt was not naive, whatever else we can say about him. And, you know, like we discussed in the, you know, earlier, we discussed a couple times, even before we began a dedicated series on the Cold War.

You know, the New Dealer, division was a permanent concord between the United States and the Soviet Union with the United Nations as kind of a world legislature, you know, the Security Council being, I mean, ultimately this is what developed, but this is what they had in mind, you know, early on. So the security council, it's equivalent being, you know, kind of like the upper house, the General Assembly being the lower house, you know, in America having a monopoly on atomic weapons, you know, therefore, you know, being able to reign in the Soviets when there were, when there was policy disputes, how to govern the world. You know, in America, having a monopoly on atomic weapons, you know, therefore, you know, being able to reign in the Soviets when there was policy disputes, how to govern the war. world. But even that aside, there's no possible outcome where a neutral Germany or demilitarized Germany is tolerated. Okay. You know, the, Truman took the oath of office with a hospital Congress. Even though even the Republicans gutted as they were, because the America First Movement, have been cast into disrepute, and some of these people had actually been prosecuted and hounded and terrorized. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? But Robert Taft still remained like a strong voice on Capitol Hill as kind of the, you know, the opposition. And even people who are interventionists, you know, even like hawkish Republicans who, who are not isolationists, you know, they were demanding essentially that, you know, Germany not be allowed to just fall into the Soviet sphere of influence outright.

So looking ahead, unless Roosevelt's plan quite literally was to simply just seed Europe to the communists, you can't really come to any other conclusion, okay? And it's not me just being like the fanatory making some ideological point. Like what other conclusion can you come to? You know, in one of the, despite what, despite that kind of public face, like pretty much everything, and I'm going to get into the Berlin airlift in a minute and what that signify. but pretty much all the negotiations with Stalin from, from 1945 onward, were in basically bad faith.

We're talking about the Stads of Germany. Because again, I mean, nobody was going to, no, nobody in America, regardless of political strike, was going to allow a neutral Germany, okay? Because that meant that there was absolutely no point in fighting the Second World War. And the Second World War should not have been fought, but within the strategic logic of the war planners in America, um at all cause journey must be prevented from capturing the east whether that's by a concord a peaceable concord relatively between germany and the soviet union whether it's by conquest you know with

hitler at the helm i mean today as we see i mean what what this is one underlies the ukraine war is it not um the fact that uh the fact that the interdependence facilitated by by frail merkle and Mr. Putin was not something that America was going to tolerate, because that's the only way that Europe casts off the shackles of America and the UK and becomes a superpower. Okay, so even, no matter where anybody fell in the political spectrum, you know, they were not just going to allow it demilitarized Germany, but wherein, you know, just by accident geography and proximity,

they were going to be incorporated into the Soviet sphere of influence in some basic way. so there's that i mean probably there's more there than than we have time to cover right now but i i think that that it's not a mystery but it is enigmatic as to what exactly roosevelt's intentions were and especially one considers too that i mean roosevelt no uncertain terms knew that he was not going to live really long okay um

so i what how exactly saw the world developing after he was gone is uh is an open-ended question and again i mean Roosevelt was a lot of things, but he was not Joe Biden. He was not senile. Okay? And he, um, it was really, it wasn't until the final months of his life. He was really compromised and he wasn't really, you know, running, running the country or the war in an executive capacity anyway. But it, uh, but back to, uh, back to, uh, the topic at hand.

Um, what, uh, to give an idea of how kind of slapdash, for lack of a better word, the the other administration that divided Germany was, there was a, what was implemented was called the common, commandatura. And it was representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, the UK, and France, meeting in this kind of mini executive council. And they were supposed to come to,

they were supposed to go to terms on how Berlin was to be administered. You know, in Berlin being, you know, To Moldov's point, you know, Berlin being quite literally, you know, the kind of heart and lungs of Germany and Germany being, you know, the axial pivot of Europe, the idea was, well, once the status of Berlin is resolved, you know, the status of Germany proper will be resolved and then, you know, this will just be a, you know, a done deal. which seems incredible anybody could entertain that possibility is anything realistic. It's time, it's probably past to being clear that not only did the Soviets have absolutely no intention of allowing a Western military presence in Berlin, but the Soviet delegates, the Soviet delegate, neither him nor any of his adjutant spoke English. the American delegation, nobody spoke Russian. A couple people were trying to communicate

in like pigeon French, kind of like across the aisle. Like this whole thing, this whole thing was a ridiculous charade. You know, like the most petty issues would be debated for weeks, sometimes months. The Russians were demanding, they issued something and the, sorry,

and the Wilsonian language is not unintentional. They produce a document called the 14 points, which basically demanded that in the eastern sector of Berlin, there could be like no, no, quote, profiteering at the expensive workers and things like this. You know, like it was basically like a radical socialist manifesto saying that, you know, the only legitimate capital producer in this arbitrarily designated eastern sector in Germany, you know, was Moscow and nobody else.

And finally, this carried on for a good, close to two years. And finally, a clerical staff, some kind of skeleton crew remained at these meetings representing the Soviet Union. But by August 1st, 1948, some representatives, un ceremoniously removed. moved the Soviet flag, took all their files, cleaned out their offices, and the Soviets just never returned. You know, they were, they, they, uh, they, they, they essentially like, it was basically like a soft boycott, um, that killed the enterprise because it had, it had, it had no, it had no, none of the second reason to force of law without all for, uh, representative of all for occupation states present. Um, what's more significant to show you kind of the,

the dysfunctional state of East Germany, I've noticed that a lot of people, I mean, people obviously, I'm talking about court historians, okay? They're obsessed with the perthinages of the Third Reich, generally because they want to cast on those punitive-like possible, but even more sensible, even more sensible people. You know, they fixate very much on the individuals who constituted sort of the control group of the party and of the state. You don't find that at all over with East Germany, okay?

Now, I'm not in any sort of the imagination, suggesting that these men were nearly as dynamic as those who constituted the NSDAP. or that the DDR was, you know, some kind of independent power into itself that they wielded any great. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff, with up to 1,500 euro and gift cards annually, completely tax-free. And even better, you can spread it over five different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try Options Card. Options Card is Ireland's brand-new, multi-choice employee gift card, packed with unique features that your staff will love.

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Authority or power of rejection capability. However, it was in fact part of the German state, okay? Even if that is now people didn't recognize its legitimacy as a sovereign regime, 20 million Germans lived there Berlin was within its borders and it was quite literally at the front lines of the geotrategic divide for 40 years.

Now who came to run the DDR? Well, the Soviets tapped Walter Ubert. Walter Ubrich was an ex-exhaired. member of the KPD um you know he'd been uh even an active revolutionary in the vimar years you know into the uh into the years of the of the third rike and like a lot of communists you know he realized that he was going to be prosecuted and imprisoned if not uh

if not shot and he fled to the soviet union um um oobricks was deployed to berlin uh before the cessation of hostilities he arrived in april 30th what was called the ubrick to drink. There are various, various functionaries, prisoners of anti-fascist, prisoners of war, you know, various guys like Uybrich himself, who'd fought for the Reds in Spain, and then found amnesty in the Soviet Union after the ascendancy of the NSAP. But these guys, and all, and all,

and there was what was called the Akhrman group who was deployed to Saxony, the Sabatka group to to Mecklenburg you know all named after their their cadre leader you know and Anton Ackerman of the the Sto named Ackerman group he was part of the

he was a function of the communist youth movement in Germany in the 20s you know then he joined the KPD he was sentenced to death and absentia you know after 1933 like these guys were basically the whole post-war coterie of of Germany they were the old like

KPD control group so that meant that you know not only they've been gone for 10 sometimes 20 years they hadn't been they hadn't been a home you know so they were it's not like they had

cadres and being on the ground I mean even among the colonies who stayed behind you know people were like who the hell are these guys you know they had no they had no real mandate from people okay I mean arguably you know when you're under occupation by the Soviet Union it can't be said that

um any kind of genuine expression of popular will is possible, but this was especially contrived. And famously when Ubrick arrived, you know, everybody knew who he was, you know, because he was a, you know, he arrived

in, you know, in what had been East Prussia initially. You have to have been liberated by the Soviets. And there were Germans who were some a communist sympathetic who said, oh, you have no idea like what they're doing to us, meaning the Red Army. You know, this rape and this and this pillage and this destruction.

You know, and Ubrich said, you know, that's fascist propaganda. I don't believe that. You know, if you order that again, I'll have you shot. You know, and people were like, who the hell is this guy? You know what I mean? Like, they, so even, what I'm getting at is that even even when you consider that people were not enthusiastic

about, you know, the KPD or its legacy party coming to dominate the state apparatus, Ubrick did a unique, like, lack of credibility. You know, they might as well have just deployed, you know, some, some Russian apparatchik from, from Moscow or from, or from Vladivostok. You know, like, what was even the point? But I believe, in my opinion, it was basically for the benefit of the outside world. Like they were saying, like, hey, look, you know, we're not, we're not afraid of

Germans having, you know, sovereignty over their own affairs. Like, you know, Mr. Ubrick is, you know, he's a German. national you know so that's acrimands or i believe that's what it was all about um and uh i mean the the stories never would have trusted a genuine uh um yeah i mean even a genuine like radical socialist movement that was truly indigenous to germany like that the war had changed all that but i i people are often they often they often say like you know how could the how could the uh how could the soviest think that the people respond to the cd you know it's like well i i i don't i don't I don't think that was the point.

I think the point was, you know, the, it was, it was a kind of, it was a kind of alibi when, um, the objection was raised that, you know, this, this was, uh, nothing but a hostile occupation and all but name. But in any event, um, and then when I see the SED, the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the, in the Soviet occupation sector, there was a, the KPD, uh, declared, uh, it merged with the social Democrats and became the party of socialist unity. Okay, the ruling party of the DDR was not the, the, uh, the KPDR was not the, the, KPD or the SED, okay, just for reference sake. But as this was developing, there was a, in the West, there was not a clear kind of policy trajectory. Now enter George Kennan.

Kenan was the, he was the de facto ambassador to the Soviet Union. he was actually the charge the affairs okay but I mean for all practical purposes he was the ambassador you know what Kenon's what Kenon's known for is

is the long the long memo okay um there was so so named because it was the longest state department dispatch ever sent by telegram it was over 5,000 words um the long telegram

not the long memo um I find this to be the most mischaracterized document or statement of the Cold War, say maybe for crucives, quote, secret speech. Okay? The term containment

was, yes, it was coined by this telegram, but Kenan was not calling for some kind of hawkish military resistance to the Soviet Union. Like, Kenan was profoundly anti-communist. He was horrified by the Soviet Union, but he was not a military man, and he was not

proposing any kind of military doctrine. And what he, when the long telegrams expanded to an essay length, it appeared in foreign affairs, which at one time was a great periodical. I've not looked at it in years. I assume it's kind of woke and silly like everything else. Or it's full of crazy people and want to attack everybody on this planet for no reason. But at one time, it was, it was not just had a lot of prestige behind it, but it had real cachet because it was very serious. but the actual title of the long telegram expanded to proper paper form was sources of Soviet conduct. That's exactly what it was about.

Canada was a rare kind of Occidental man, and I'm not trying to be offensive or say bad things about Russian people. But they're very different. Okay, they're very different than the West. Even the best of times, even when they had a more normal government, it was difficult to decipher their intentions. There was not just linguistic barriers, there's cultural barriers that relate to symbolic psychology and historical experience and all kinds of other things. But Kennan's enterprise was, I've got to try to make the Department of State and the Department of War. And more importantly, Mr. Truman, understand the world through the Soviet's eyes. Now, Kenan said that there's not going to, there's never, you're not going to be able to come to, come to terms of the Soviet.

union okay he said you so get that out of your head right away in policy terms he said the so they're never going to give you what you what what you want they're not gonna either they're not going to abide Roosevelt's vision of you know willing the world with uncle sam as a junior partner um they're not going to accept the united states as a benign influence in europe you know they're not they're not going to view uh any of america's move outside the out of its immediate sphere of influence is legitimate um and that owes to a few things it owes the it owes the the It was the traditional Russian fixation on security in very basic terms. The Russians need defense in depth.

And Russia is a state that is in a nation that is constantly attacked by its enemies. So there's that. Now you add to that the overlay of Marxist Leninist ideology, which at that time was still very much interstitially bound up with kind of the Russian political mind. They view the United States as not much different than the Third Reich. And they view the Third Reich as the distilled essence of evil. And they view the United States and the UK as capitalist states in crisis, who at all costs are going to pursue an adversarial posture with the Soviet Union

because the only way capitalist states can keep from cannibalizing one another is to find an enemy from without. Okay. Now, this is boilerplate Leninism, but the Soviets actually believe that. And Kenneth made the point that, you know, unlike in the only the only, United States, unlike in the UK, you know, where a political discourse is kind of this, it's almost kind of this, it's almost kind of like play acting. The Soviet leaders, like when they say things, they actually mean exactly what they say,

even if it sounds crazy. The Soviet Union is not a little transparent, but the official statements coming from the Kremlin are actually exactly what the Soviets mean. And you can extrapolate that to today, when the Russian government issues a formal statement, that's actually exactly what they mean. Now, don't get me wrong, the Kremlin then is now literally Byzantine.

Russian political culture is totally opaque. It's massively conspiratorial. It's all screwed up. But you don't have like weird actors, you know, just kind of saying things in Russian political life like you do in the West. It's totally different. Employers, rewarding your staff?

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and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. And obviously American political culture then was that nearly as degenerate as now, but there was some of that. And this was a very important point.

and um so kennen's point was what he meant by containment is this he said the way the world's going to be ordered the way this entire planet the fate of this entire planet quite literally in political and structural terms political structural terms and sociological ones is going to be decided by who can win over the developing world and the third world and the soviet union kennin pointed out has a lot of cachet there because the third world is full of people who are already kind of radicalized. They've not had a good experience with the white Western world. Part of that is them scapegoating.

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

we, even in the 1950s, you know, people in America had come to look at Bolshevism and Marxist Leninism outside of, you know, academic corners and things. Like the man in the street viewed it as something that did not really deliver, and he viewed as basically alien. And those who didn't view as basically alien

viewed it as something that, you know, was not, was not, it did not animate him towards, you know, some kind of impassioned defense of, of the ideology, okay? But in the third world, that was not the case at all. I mean, really until the 80s, Marxist Leninism had great cachet in the third world. And if you want to understand the Cold War

and why it endured it for so long, that is why, okay? I mean, long after there was any kind of risk of you know, France, you know, people in France going to the polls and voting in some Stalinist party, you know, long after you know, Gus Hall and his friends had any chance of turning, you know,

the teachers union into a, you know, some kind of communist client, you know, in places like Angola, you know, places like Nicaragua, in places, in places, you know, like Indonesia, there was still cashed to communism. Okay?

So, Kenan said, there's got to be a broad spectrum attack on communism. Particularly, you know, in terms of, in terms of swaying anxieties about

the developmental model of the West. You know, that means not disturbing. and upsetting indigenous cultures where it's not essential to do so in order to create a political culture that, you know, is, is suitable for American goals. You know, that means that, you know, not overreliance on the military aspect of competition, but, you know, demonstrating, demonstrating American systemic superiority that every can see a way. You know, scientifically, culturally, technologically, you know, in the arts. arts, like all of these things. Unfortunately, the people are selective in, especially in policy terms, in what they take from

these kinds of broad-based position statements of inspired people like Kennan. So the way people read the Canon, the Long Telegram and the Canon memo was, oh, we've got to challenge the Soviet Union militarily at all costs, basically like in every theater where they assert themselves. And thus, Kenan, and this was the bane of his existence for his whole life, and he made that clear decade after decade that he was called the quote, father of containment.

But in any event, regardless of the fact that Kenan did not appreciate being forced to go-to-the-court of public opinion to co-sign, you know, what became containment as policy with what was fleshed out in his in his position paper. You know, Truman had a problem. Because Truman was facing an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union that was quite clearly doing everything it could

to lock the West out of Berlin and ultimately locked the West out of Germany at all. And as we said, he had to hostile Congress already. People had become very, very soured on the idea of the Soviet Union, not just as an ally, but as a benign influence in the world. And furthermore, you know, one of the things, speaking of Tehran, the Tehran summit, not, not fleshing out what the status of Berlin and the status of Germany would be moving forward, it didn't indicate anything as to how, what would become in the world where, you know, the UK just simply, you know, just simply declare these people and its dominions, they have, like, you know, they have, like, rights of British citizenship now, you know, and like these police. territories in Africa, you know, that were being, um, that were, they were being seated to indigenous rule and, and divested from, you know, from the, from the French and from the Belgians, you know, like what,

like what, how do we manage these places? You know, like what, moving forward, like, you know, who's going to take the lead here, you know, is it going to be, you know, is it going to be under some kind of like UN jurisdiction? Is it going to be under, you know, the jurisdiction of the former colonial authority? You know, this was not clear. And this caused huge problems. And It led to... Employers. Did you know, you can now reward you and your staff, with up to 1,500 euro and gift cards annually,

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And it would I consider to be kind of the first active crisis of the Cold War? One of the many horrible things we can say about Churchill, and they are many, and I'm not trying to resort to hyperbole. As it became clear post-Yalta in Churchill's mind, that the United States was not going to do anything to preserve the British Empire. Like why, why, it goes to show you the man's fundamental lag understanding under the character of Roosevelt, but of, you know, the emerging kind of geopolitical culture of the epoch. Um, Churchill decided that something had to be done to guard the UK's

fledging interest in the Mediterranean. So he approached Stalin and Molotov without Roosevelt's knowledge, and he drafted, this is an absurd document, what was called the percentages agreement, quite literally where he wrote out what percentage of influence the Soviet Union would be allowed and the UK would be allowed in key territories of the Mediterranean. Like literally writing, well, you know,

the USSR can have 10% influence in Greece and London has to have 90%. Like how any rational person can think that's the way sphere of influence works. And I mean, what that hell is 90% influence in power political terms? The whole thing is absurd. It's crazy. It's literally

crazy. But Greece was the first state post-war really when the Germans withdrew from Greece in 44 a communist insurgency jumped off and it was very complicated like who the players were and everything like that

but it was the UK deployed to prevent the communist takeover people sympathetic to the communists they you refer to it as the second white terror in Greece there's a lot of mercenary action there

it was actually a very it was a bloody conflict okay but the but the point is that uh you know this is also a later led you know a decade subsequent to the suez crisis where and that led eisenhower to kind of you know declaring a status of uh of uh of relations for the middle east you know and shutting uh shutting the french in the the uk in the days too eisenhower's the last president it wasn't a holy bold and he's another issue. But at any event, you know, there was not whatever Truman thought

about containment, you know, however hawkish or conciliatory you felt about the Soviet Union, if he wanted to continue as president, he was going to have to take some kind of firm line, at least what appeared to be such. He was going to have to articulate some kind of policy and make clear, you know,

what the conflict diets were that if the Soviets traversed them, there would inevitably be war. And a lot of that owes the experience of Korea and how NATO was formed. And the next episode is going to be the NATO episode, and it's hugely important, especially today. But I don't want to jump into that now. But to continue, the real kind of key incident, in my opinion, or like series of events, what started the Cold War is the Berlin blockade, okay?

And as people probably imagine, even people who, you know, don't realize out of the Cold War, you know, West Berlin was 110 miles into the Soviet occupation sector, okay? It was, it was, the entirety of Berlin was in

what became the DDR. And the western half, the only way you could access it, civilian or military, vehicles was by dedicated access routes. There's roads for the duration of the Cold War that were literally dedicated access routes for like U.S. military and civilian

and West European traffic, you know, to pass through the DDR, you know, to reach West Berlin and then to return on the dedicated access road. And that was the only traffic permitted there. And that was the case early on. I mean, these routes were later, you know, kind of formalized, like, structurally as a matter of law. But it was, the Soviets weren't

simply allowing, you know, open, ingress and egress of Americans and British and French, civilian or military, in and out of West Berlin. But they weren't, they did not outright blockaded it before.

But what was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back was the, as the United states uh as uh as a as a as a true economic policy kind of took shape i mean just had necessity i mean this just proceeded you know a formal political uh outlook let alone policy on west berlin but uh i mean the economy had to rebuild because people i mean their infrastructure was destroyed you know uh people people weren't being fed um what uh and it became uh it became uh it began uh it began imperative first and foremost introduce a viable currency so the uh the united states introduced the

the dutchmark which is interesting because it's interesting like a lot of people think of the deutch mark because i mean the dutchmark was i mean the strongest currency in europe and which i was saw i'm taking an agent the other day you know the the germans didn't sign the metric treaty because they wanted to get off the dutchmark it was owing to political pressure and other things but But people have an idea of it. It's just kind of, it's kind of at now where, you know, and like the Buddhist Republic, like Deutsche Bank or whatever, just saying like, okay, this is the successor to the Reichs market.

It's not what happened. It was the U.S. occupation authorities who introduced it and very much sold the NASA and West Berlin government on it. But the Soviets went nuts when this happened. And they banned the Deutsche Mark from the Eastern Zone of Occupation. And yes, they were literally arresting people for using it. So in the Eastern Occupation of Berlin, people resorted to using cigarettes as a de facto currency. Like, no lie.

I mean, that quite literally shows you like what a prison society this was from jump, I guess. I mean, I don't even have a particularly punitive view of the DDR. are and i mean that that should be clear to anybody but um the uh the introduction of the new currency uh when when you know before with it would all in the in the course of all the failed four powers uh administrative uh um bodies you know the one thing that the soviets that opposed uh unconditionally was uh you know the introduction of uh of a private enterprise and the eastern occupation though okay because there's no way they could have controlled that i mean obviously and it couldn't have eventually if the soviets had played their cards right i'm talking like years later if not decades

i think they could have made um east berlin kind of like they could have viewed it treated they could have treated kind of like you know the the chycoms treat Hong Kong but i mean that was many years off like they this could not that was not in the in the cards in 946 47 48 especially not by you know the shock therapies the introduction of uh of um of this new currency backed by uh you know back by american dollars okay there's no way but the uh it was uh things changed the the dutch member was introduced on june 17th 948 or june 18th june 18th 98 the next day uh soviet guards suddenly cracked down you know suddenly um suddenly people uh the relatively kind of free ingress into east berlin you know people were being stopped and searched

people were being turned back you know uh trains are being halted uh any freight shipments uh any all water transport uh they had to secure special permission from the soviet authorities not from the east berlin authorities from the soviets themselves um the uh and uh kind of the final uh three days subsequent on the 21st, the Soviets halted a U.S. military supply train to Berlin and set it back. So essentially the Soviets refused resupply of United States Army forces in Europe. And a good idea in Berlin, because Berlin, again, Berlin was 110 miles into the interior of the DDR.

There's only, at that time, there's only about 3,000 U.S. west combat troops on the ground about 2,000 British. The Soviets had a comparable size force in East Berlin, but the Soviets had 300,000 forces in being throughout, you know, Eastern Germany proper. So, I mean, if it came to war, there was those, those guys in West Berlin were dead. You know, they would have been slaughtered.

I mean, so this was an ominous thing, you know. And that same day, the 20th, 2nd of June, the stories announced that they were introducing the East German mark in their own zone of occupation. It was to be the only legitimate only legitimate currency.

And later on, which is really, really weird, in East Berlin, I'm talking like into the 80s. There were specialty shops. They were like duty-free shops where non-East German citizens were visiting. They could buy stuff with foreign currency. like cigarettes or liquor or like other things like food like like specialty food items.

But they were like designated foreign currency shops. I mean, kind of like the hoops that these markets as well and states jump through, they've got to maintain the fiction that their currencies were actually worth something. It's really, really weird. Employers, did you know, you can now reward you and your staff with up to 1500 euro and gift cards annually, completely tax-free and even better. You can spread it over five different occasions. Now's the perfect time to try OptionsCard.

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area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. You know what I mean? It's got like, you know the old movie, Brazil, satire movie with I think, yeah, yeah. Terry Gilliam.

Yeah, it reminds me of that in some basic way. But it was a January 4th, the Soviet severed land and water connections between the non-Soviet zones in Berlin. So all ground rail or water traffic was cut off. Like nobody got in or out of West Berlin. Okay. The, they couldn't cut off obviously like a, electricity and water because that would have been an own goal because i mean berlin was quite literally just divided down the center with this kind of artificial like what like in in it in a battle map

be considered like a salient but it you know there wasn't it was not people sometimes had this idea that there was something like rime or reason to how berlin was divided like there was not so i mean it's not that you couldn't cut off utilities to half of berlin but not the other half but just the same um west berlin at the time uh at the time it was blockaded. It had just over like a month's worth, like it was between like 35 and 45, like days with a food, something like 50 days worth of coal.

I mean, this was like a very critical situation. And the entire, the entire United States Army, just total force is in being. By 1948, it had been reduced to about half a million men. The total force in the western sector were about 8,900 Americans, about 7,600 British, about 6,000 French. There was only 31,000 combat forces in all of West Germany. So, I mean, if it came to war, like a Bolton-Olui Soviet attack,

total Soviet military forces in the Soviet sector were 1.5 million. Now, the United States at that point, at that night's still a monopoly on the atomic bomb. But, I mean, what do you, if communist forces streamed up Berlin, what are you going to do? You're going to launch an atomic assault in Berlin and waste drooling people and all the Berliners. I mean, this was very, very dangerous. And frankly, it was a gamble of the sort that Stalin did not usually take.

But interestingly, it was Lucius Clay. He was the commander of the U.S. occupation zone. you know he said it was voted he said Curtis LeMay interestingly LeMay wanted to do a he wanted to he wanted to mobilize atomic capable B-29s and assault

the Soviet sector like you know like nuke them you know and and mobilized with inventory that were available in West Berlin or in West Germany you know and then to proceed delivery West Berlin with them after after a massive atomic assault on Soviet forces with

with B-29s but uh that uh that that that suggestion was not abided obviously but i i i may was not some kind of madman i'm a i'm i'm quite fond of lemae in history and i think he's kind of unduly characterized as this kind of like jack d ripper type you know like in in um strange love but uh loses clay uh it was uh in concert with uh A lot of civilian types who, you know, were still kind of, we're still kind of insinuated into government and quasi-military roles away to the war only being three years past. US Army Corps of Engineers. US Army Air Forces. The Berlin Air Lift was really, was really kind of an amazing, it was really kind of an amazing.

not just a policy coup, but sort of strategic rooking of Stalin. But it, it, it, it, it, it, it, it demonstrated the feasibility of, uh, of air power. Um, in, uh, and not just in military capacities, I mean, which was obvious, but it, in some ways, weird to sound, it may be more comfortable with the idea of, you know, huge amounts of air traffic in and out of a major city, you know, and there's, there's, there's literally ideas before, like, oh, there's going to be like pollution and noise. and things. Like it, you know, these like thousands and thousands of sorters, um, in and out of Berlin, uh, that, that kind of changed things. Uh, and that's, I mean, honestly, that's like a lot of time how people become habituated to do technologies. It's not any kind of, uh, it's not, it's not any kind of small thing. Um, I mean, there was guys, like LeMay himself and these guys, particularly guys who fought with the Army Air Forces in the Pacific, you know, they developed these,

uh, they, you know, they, you know, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, they, develop these assault routes from the Marianas Islands and things. And, you know, there was the experience of the airlift over the, quote, hump of the Himalayas, you know, from India to China. But it was military guys who kind of understood the potential of air power in broad spectrum application, you know, military and civilian and commercial use. Like the man in the street really didn't. And the Berlin airlift, the Berlin airlift changed that.

but LeMay was he uh in terms of staffing decisions he did up he did him he did end up appointing a lot of most of the key figures in executive roles who uh who made there'll have happened general Joseph Smith not to be confused with like the father of Mormonism he was uh he'd been uh no gold tablet no gold tablets here No. But Smith had been, like, there's a huge amount of guys who served under LeMay during the war, who went on to, like, prestige roles, including Robert McNamara, or, yeah, McNamara. Smith had been LeMay's chief of staff when LeMay had a B-29 command, like in India, and then in the Marianas, you know, loses clay. It wasn't under LeMay's command, but, I mean, they, you know, they made acquaintance during the war. it um but the uh it demonstrated it demonstrated what was possible and it also uh it was such a collaborative

effort between i mean it had to be between the united states and the uk i think for better or worse you know and i'm not trailing the uk you know the uk remained airstrip one in a real way obviously because of this and owing you know like we like we talked about what this is not fDR is kind of inconsistent and frankly coherent signaling about the status of uh uk-u-s-rish relations relations relations relations about the status of uh-u-u-srelates nations post-bellum. It wasn't clear, like, what role the UK would have here or whether or not the United States would raise a finger to defend, you know, key strategic interests, not just the interest of the empire, which nobody related to interest in the United States and preserving for any reason. But, I mean, they're also. I mean, it was, it solidified the quote, I hate that term special relationship, but there's all kinds of, like, things that are far less than admirable, that they're, that they're. that entails but it purely like collaborative strategic terms it solidified you know the us u.s uk um um uh concord particularly as regards uh operational coordination with uh with air forces and that's no small thing and before the revolution in military affairs and decades before contemporary command

of control that was incredibly difficult uh that really can't be overstated i mean the So I know you're Berlin Airlines would be a hell of an operation today. But, I mean, you're talking about, like, you're talking about, like, radios the cutting edge of, like, commanding control technology in 1948. Like, think about that. It's, like, stuff. So it's less reliable than, like, the walkie talkies you played with this kid in, like, the early 80s.

You know what I mean? That, but the, um, the, uh, that was, uh, that was the, uh, that was the, uh, that was the, uh, that was the onset of the Cold War in real terms. And I don't think anybody would I don't think anybody would dispute that. And there were shenanigans too. Like the, there was one single

municipal election for all of Berlin in in 1946. And the Socialist Unity Party, they didn't poll pathetically yourself. They only pulled like 20%. You know, and that's what put the Christian Democrats on the map, not just in

West Berlin, but it's like the Bundes Republic, like conservative party. But the Soviets basically, they're basically they were like, you know, okay, to hell with it. Like we're not, we're not going to pursue a political solution, you know, because obviously they weren't going to, they weren't going to get, you know, because Berlin had been like the, that had been like the communist artland, you know, like in the Vybar years. And people, people pose the question, like, not just curious, like readers, but like historians who like are deep.

people we understand, you know, Russia the era. They're like, why did the Russians do this? And it was just to get the lay the land, I'm telling you. I mean, that's, it makes total sense from Stalin's perspective. Stalin was, if Stalin was a guy, even the personality type today, we consider him like a data junkie. Like, Stalin was obsessed with informational awareness. You know, like, you really was.

And it's, I guarantee you we just said, like, well, let's, I mean, let's see, let's hold the actual election, like a legit election, and let's see what's where we got on the ground. Employers, rewarding your staff? Why choose between a shop voucher or a spend anywhere card when with Options Card you can have both. With Options Card, your team gets the best of both worlds. They can spend with Ireland's favourite retailers

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are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person, so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4.Northwest. okay about 20 20 25% it's fair we can build companies around that but this is never going to happen again you know but that's I think we're coming about an hour I think we'll stop there and uh well uh will deep dive into

I realize this might not have been the most exciting episode but it was important because otherwise we're we're dealing with a huge phenomenon and if being the Cold War we're no actual kind of starting starting point or a catalyst has been identified but well we're going to get into the Korean War, the formation of NATO, and just the Truman Doctrine next episode.

That sounds great. Plugs and we'll end. Yeah, I'm very happy to report that, I mean, you might see that I've got, I've got this cool, like, backdrop. I'm in the apocalypse. I bought my production values. And also, like, I got, I got a video editor to join, like, our production team, and he's great. So the YouTube channel is finally going to launch. I'm back on Twitter now because Elon is apparently given people like me an amnesty.

You can find me at Triskelian Jihad. The first T is a number seven. You can find me on substack at Real Thomas 777. And I mean, you can find me, like I said, when I, in about in a few days when I, when the YouTube channel does launch, I'll upload a lot of this stuff there, and it's Thomas TV in front of these Thomas 777. I know that's corny. It's supposed to be. It's a riff on Dave TV.

If you're old like me, you remember. Well, it's Dave TV. I got Thomas TV. So, yeah. But thank you, Pete. I really, really appreciate it. No problem. We'll pick it up again next week.

Thanks, Thomas. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cignanez Show, part three with Thomas 777. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks for hosting me. There's a few things I wanted to talk about today, and I want people to not be shy if I'm being too scattershot or not focused enough. The Cold War is such a massive topic, and it touches and concerns all kinds of theoretical matters,

which is kind of like my wheelhouse. But it also, you know, in terms of practical affairs and very quantifiable things, you know, it really kind of, it created the contemporary strategic landscape, you know, and it endured for, it endured for a century. So there's so much there, you've kind of got to pick and choose what you emphasize. I'm trying to go in linear order because, you know, that's, and whatever your, whatever you're trying to, whatever, whatever your emphasis is in, in revisionism, You need to be as rigorous as you would in any other historical study. I mean, that doesn't mean just relating facts and documenting events for its own sake. But I don't just want to be ticking off a list of what I consider key events or something.

However, if I'm getting ahead of myself or if there doesn't seem to be a kind of tie that binds to make the narrative listenable or intelligible, please tell me in the comments. I'm not going to get upset. But what was on my mind a lot lately, especially because in the morning, a couple days a week, my dad gives me a ride downtown for stuff I got to do. And, you know, I listen to 8.90 a.m. talk radio, which isn't, it's not garbage like NPR, but it's garbage of a different sort. And they have all these polemical takes from, you know, these like retired, you know, captains and majors, you know, like kind of like third rate want to be more college types. You know, as well as, you know, some of these kind of dissentist-type Republicans or kind of like the token conservatives on the panel on these morning talk radio programs. You know, there's, there's, it's, it's interesting the way these guys talk about Russia, okay, because Russia, kind of like Dar al-Islam, you're still allowed to say basically prejudiced things about it, you know, because it's not, you know, it's not part of that kind of protected, uh, um, it's not conceptually, you know, incorporated into, you know, the, the victimology narrative. Okay. But also, there's even as deracinated as people are in America, you know, especially in terms of these, you know, the kinds of people who populate media, what remains a traditional media at least.

You know, even academic types who couldn't tell you anything about their own heritage and are not very racially conscious at all, there remains this kind of atavistic fear of Russia. And there's not just some kind of hackneyed polemical take that people like Lavrov, you know, drop on the floor of the UN General Assembly in order to make a point or to scandalize people. That really is true. And to understand the Cold War, you've got to really understand why that came about. I've been reading lately, this book by Michael Proudan, and it was released in a review of entitles. The value I've got, it's under the title. the Mongol Empire. There's another one, there's another edition, identical book, you know, called Storm Out of Asia.

But what it's all about is it's all about when the Europeans made first contact with the Mongols, you know, in the 13th century AD. Okay. Now, why was this so significant? Well, you know, the Europeans since 1095 have intermittently been at war with the Saracens, you know, Saladin and his descendants. you know, this was a crusading era, okay? And what was fascinating about that is that it was the only time until, I mean, unless you count, you know, the Napoleonic wars, which were kind of more convenience than, you know,

than a unity of faith, obviously. You know, it's really the only time you had, you know, truly European armies, you know, going off to war, I guess a common civilizational enemy. However, some kind of concord had been reached with the Muslims, okay? I mean, sometimes, you know, sometimes there's relative peace that reigned, you know, in the kingdom of Jerusalem, you know, after that Battle of Hatin and the Muslim conquest, things deteriorated. But, you know, there's just kind of like an ongoing thing. But in the 12, you know, in 1220, suddenly these rumors came about that there was this huge marauding army.

It was just slaughtering everything in its path. And a lot of people at monasteries and monks, they're like, well, you know, this is a scourge of God. He's punishing, you know, the infidel Muslims, but he's also punishing these pagan tribes that populate the step. You know, because all these barbarian people were literally being driven west to the European frontier and saying, you know, there's these men on horses, there's long torsos and they kill everybody. You know, and they, like, those left alive, you know, they take the women as slaves and they, you know, they force the men into, you know, into duty of Janus series, basically, you know, and they drive them, you know, out front. And, you know, they take the first blow when we, when they encounter their enemies. and their enemies are everybody but them. And some people thought this was just nonsense.

These are primitive pagans. They don't know what the hell are talking about. They probably smithersus. Other people said, there were Jews who said, like, well, King David has come back. You know, and he's coming to punish you for the way you've treated the Jews, you know, and he's coming to punish Jews, too, who've, like, forgotten God. Well, obviously, it was none of those things.

There's the Mongols, okay? And the association of the East with this barbarian element that never really left, okay? And, I mean, it never really left in the European cultural mind and conceptual horizon, but it also never really left literally, okay? Like, I'm not saying Russians are a bunch of Mongols or barbarians, but there was this massive, this massive monolithic force emerged from the step. That was just destroying everything in its path,

assimilating everything that was left alive or left standing, like literally into its, into its structure. You know, that's really what the Soviet Union was, okay? And at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, at the, the, uh, the, uh, prouding's book was actually given to officers, okay? Um, and that, that's significant. Himmler didn't assign the, Himmler and Paul Hauser, they didn't have people reading the international Jew, they didn't have people reading Klausowitz.

I mean, people didn't. read claus was for the curriculum but you know the book you got my graduation was this book by proud of both because it's you know it's always saying you know this is your enemy um you know this is what uh you know you're you're a you're a knight of the new uh blood order of of europe you know in the s and this is what we're fighting against you know because we're the we're the we're the watch on the rind okay but also um after you know 300 you know 300 years of the Westphalian paradigm, it, you know, the reality of true total war was emerging again, okay? And that, they cannot be emphasized enough. And even, it sounds corny, but you can glean

things from, you know, you can discern symbolic psychological things, even in kind of trashy media. You know, and I watched, I didn't watch it in years, you know, I liked a lot when I was a little kid, but, you know, Red Dawn. you know, with Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell, you know, the, that's actually kind of an interesting movie, like, as a period piece mostly, but, you know, we're like the black history teacher when, when the town first gets assaulted by, like, the Soviets and the San Anistas and the Cubanos, he's teaching a class about Gangus Khan, okay? And that's, like, not an accident. There's really, like, on the nose, okay? But, so when you consider that, you consider that, you know,

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and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your

community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash northwest. That, you know, that's the way you've got to understand. That's what you've got to understand the Second World War. That's the way you've got to understand, essentially, the entire kind of, the entire European military orientation. And, you know, and, you know, and the, you know, the, the, you know, the, the, the, the, you know the striving eastward of uh of teutonic peoples um and in the cold war this was very much

kind of transposed to america okay there was there was very much a racial component here okay even though there was strange things going on in america you know there was the the fact that the soviet union became you know a superpower and was not annihilated owed to uh oh to the united states align with it to to crush um imperium europea with you know um under the under the german rike but you know nevertheless uh you know these uh these things reemerge again and again um it's it's almost like a it's almost like a natural structural form that like snaps back in a place even when people try to corrupt it or mold it into different configurations but i uh what i want to talk today is the war in Korea.

And this bearers directly what we're talking about. And the Cold War actually was fought in terms of hot war. I mean, all kinds of ledger-d-main, and there was true violence in Europe. But it was all, I mean, there was never, there was never a general war fought in Europe during the Cold War. There was, the Cold War was literally, you were hot in Asia. Okay, the Cold War, where there was lead in the air, between, you know, mass conventional forces. they happen in Asia. And it's not accidental.

And that's not, it wasn't just a matter of, you know, well, you know, this is a place where this is a place, this is a theater where, you know, the Soviets, the Americans respectively can push and not risk triggering, you know, the apocalyptic conflict diet that's going to lead to general nuclear war. And interestingly, in the final phase of the Cold War, which we'll get into later, the real catalyst, behind Reagan's 500, I mean, it's actually James Webb's but I mean the Reagan administration's 600 ship navy

was that they wanted nuclear battle platforms and supporting fleet elements to essentially like force the Soviet Union wars up pack to fight a two front nuclear war. If you can think of nuclear war is having a front, or rather two theater

nuclear war. And this caused a serious problem. from a frame drop off special i mean brezhnev it began really under carter but that that's one of the things that really really kind of rook the soviet ambitions uh it wasn't just the revolution and military affairs and like the technological edge being lost but getting into the korean war um and again i hope that wasn't too like scatter shot we got into the berlin airlift uh last episode you know and the Cold War, you know, the Cold War, the Cold War, it formally kicked off by then, okay?

And then in 19449, the Soviet story has developed their own atomic capability, you know, we can get into the Rosenbergs, maybe next episode if you want. I didn't know if you wanted to cover the X. It's kind of controversial and people strong feelings about it. Oh, I don't know. No, no, we need to cover that. Okay, we'll do that next. Next episode, we're going to deal with the early espionage issues. we're going to deal with like the Cambridge Five and the Rosenbergs and Alger Hiss and Roy Cohn

who prosecuted the Rosenbergs. But I want to stick to the Korean War in the Orient with this episode. So here we are in 1950. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, who he's, there's been a lot of revisionist takes on him that are pretty unflattering. But Ashton was kind of a peculiar. I think he was kind of a feat aristocrat type of the

worst source. But that's just my opinion. There's definitely been worse, cheap diplomats. But Atchison's great blunder, I think it's an arguable. January 13, 1950. You know, mind you, this was as,

we talked about, we talked about, you know, the desire to draw down conventional forces and rely upon the you know the the atomic bomb you know to resolve of basically military exigencies you know in the threat of massive escalation um this was creating problems as you know the cold war uh you know began to heat up in earnest quite literally but there had not yet been an open challenge to uh to truman okay there had not yet been uh i mean other than the berlin blockade which was i i mean that that was not a conventional

provocation, you know, only to the bizarre occupation regime and the fact that, you know, Germany was permanently in limbo as a matter of law, you know, because there, it was quite literally under occupation authority, and there was no, there was no end in sight and no pathway to a permanent peace treaty emergent. But the, you know, the first true kind of challenge to a to American burgeoning American he was the Korean War. And I think of the Korean War and why it happened as somewhat analogous to why the First Gulf War happened. It had to do with incorrect signaling by U.S. diplomats.

Like when I say incorrect, there really is a correct way to not disclose. close intentions, well, at the same time, deterring reckless acts by, you know, by, by national enemies. And that's, the diplomats must have instincts to know when to resort to such measures and must have a basic understanding of how to code their language such that, you know, the signals can be clearly read while still, you know, keeping, keeping potential, of keeping intentions, actual potential, you know, relatively hidden as need be a sustained credibility. But DeNehsson certainly did not do that. What Dean Anderson did on January 13, 1950, he addressed,

he issued a speech to the National Press Club. And what he said was this. When he was asked about, you know, what the policy was towards the communists in Asia, he said, look, you literally said there's a defensive perimeter in Asia. He said it extends from Japan, do the Rikas, islands down to the Philippines and the south. So quite literally, if you look at a map, that constitutes kind of a line through the Pacific, okay? Within which, I mean, obviously, you know, or key, like U.S. sea lanes and things.

But basically, it's, it's like, it's quite literally like a containment barrier, you know, bulwark against the, against the Asian landmass, okay? Now, Stalin was kind of, paying attention to this, as was Mao. And the way they read that was that, well, you know, despite the fact that Korea was under

similar occupation to Germany, you know, you had a, you had a, you know, you had a Soviet occupied North, you had a briefly American and allied occupied South. And in the north, you had this kind of cargo cult, Stalinist regime. And in the South, you basically had a military dictatorship, but the military that was running it was not particularly capable. However, there was not forces in being on the ground in the South. They had left, okay?

And the understanding was that America was not going to defend Korea. Okay? Now, why Stalin and Mao copied Korea is what's significant.

Because Korea was not Germany. And the reason why Korea today remains dysfunctional is because it borders both China and Russia and so then striking distance of Vladivostok. It's a stone's throw away from Japan. Quite literally, nobody wants to United Korea, but the Koreans. You know, America doesn't. The Russians and Chinese will not tolerate it.

Japan would not tolerate it. This both supersedes and transcends Cold War rivalries and now obsolete. lessent, but also, but also is far less of a, of a potential conflict dyad that, that, uh, that could result in true, uh, catastrophic escalation. It became that way because of McCartan. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay. Now, what happened months later, um, was, uh, on June 25th, uh, the North, North Korea launched a massive assault. of the south.

It was a Sunday. President Truman was at home in Missouri away from Washington. Dean Atchison was in Maryland that is at his gentleman's farm. Henry Nitz, who people, the name people were recognized from our earlier episodes. Nitz said was the Secretary of Defense. He was on a fishing trip in New Brunswick. But Nitz said decades later, he was the principal architect of the TNB exercise. He was a huge early neo-conservative.

Okay, massive, extreme Cold War a Hawk. This Black Friday, game, stream, and go full speed with one gig, Sky broadband. And watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing each other. And Ballad of a small player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I've made some mistakes. Right, who hasn't? Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV, and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months.

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Have your say, online or in person, so together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash Northwest. You're the author of National Security Council Paper 68, which was drafted in April of 1950. And that was one of the most important policy blueprints or policy statements of the Cold War. It provided the roadmap for the permanent militarization of America, of both conventional forces and strategic nuclear forces from, you know, from the time it was written in 1950 until, you know, the Soviet Union collapsed, you know, 40 years later. So he was a hugely significant guy, okay, and his first, his first kind of challenge of political nature was, was budding heads with, you know, Mr. George Kennan.

know we we discussed earlier i mean kennin obviously from what we discussed about him and you know from what we've talked about or is it's kind of basic traits of character and it's kind of decency and his basic sense of of caution i mean he believed very much in strong defense but you know the cautious application of force and the service they're in um kennin was one of the few men whatever people can say i mean well get into why this isn't a man but kennin was really savaged in the era in the epoch by his opponents including people like mitza um you know for being you know soft on communism and conciliatory towards the soviets but kennin uh he had been adamant for months prior to uh to the june 25th that there were definite indicators of communist military

activity in asia and that they were going to assault somewhere it was not clear where the theater would be for such activity and what the point of concentration would be and what what would be prioritized they're in. But McCarther's stay up in Tokyo and just did not, they just disregard them entirely. They're like, this guy's an egghead. He's never been in uniform. He doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. And he can't even, you know, provide us an conceptual model of like where this is going to jump off.

You know, and what, what, what forces it's going to entail, you know, and what, and what, and what, what, what feeder is going to be the primary area of operation. So they totally disregarded it, okay? but um this uh to give you an idea of kind of how fubar the national security establishment was um neither Truman nor uh nits uh nor um etchison it wasn't until they returned to Washington from their respective you know vacations that uh they found out that Korea winner assault because they saw the newspaper headlines okay um there was no structure in place of of you know um notifying national command authorities of a wartime emergency. And granted, I mean, this was the dawn of the atomic age, but it doesn't matter.

I mean, you know, America for better or worse had just come off of a total mobilization and, you know, a massive two-front war. There was unprecedented in scope, scale, and intensity. So impossible to rationalize as it is. That's the way things work. When Kenan arrived, that night, Kenan, Kenan at this point was something of a minister without portfolio. Okay.

He had been dismissed as, you know, the kind of quasi-regent of the Department of State in Moscow. He'd ended his tenure as a special consultant to the National Security Advisor. But he, I mean, Kenan was always in the executive orbit, okay, because he was a brilliant guy. And he was the foremost expert on the Soviet Union and the Russian. and Russian culture, okay? The evening of, I'm sorry, the evening of June 25th, getting double time to the Department of State, and he said, look, he said the critical strategic matter here

is that Formosa, Taiwan has to be defended. He's like, if this is a general push, and it may be able to be, you know, he said, the secondary assaults, the assaults he sold in South Korea, the primary assault is going to be on Formosa, And ultimately, there's going to be a massive assault in Japan. Okay. If the Soviets are going all in Asia and the Chinese, their Chinese process are going all in,

we're going to fight a world war over Japan, okay? Which is very interesting. And Taiwan is interesting because Taiwan is absolutely zero strategic significance today. And it shows you like the raw delusion of these, of these bizarre fucking idiots like like Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Biden that they pretend that it's

1950 and that this matters or that they actually have you know not only there's no stake in Taiwan but this idea that I mean if an American carry group showed up declaring to the Taiwanese in 2012

that we're going to defend you like they'd be totally befuddled and then they laughed in their face you know what I mean it's it's incredible but in 1950 had Taiwan fallen and had that been, you know, like Moscow and Stalin's ambition,

Kenner was absolutely right. And as we will see, as we get deeper into this series, the Soviets put remarkable pressure on Japan. The Soviets were seeking out a weak spot and it's kind of their counterweight to the situation in Berlin, especially, and the inter-German border generally. and that's what underlay cruise shifts on it and the service apparently reckless deployment

of strategic nuclear forces to Cuba which blew up in his face but the finding a finding a if the Soviets had been able to find a soft spot as it were in the Asian defense paradigm

or structure rather wherein they could squeeze Japan with a combination of, you know, hard power threat and soft power, uh, um, uh, incentivization, America would have a real problem in that regard. So Kenner was not just, you know, dropping wild doomsday scenarios. What he was saying was very possible. Um, as it was, I, uh, I think, I think Stalin was, uh, I think Stalin was testing Mao's loyalty. And the Sino-Soviet is complicated.

There's profound cultural variables there as well as political ones. As well as things as simple as, you know, the, like, like, dang, who was, you know, who was the shadow executive, I mean, basically after after the gang of four got eliminated. He was trying to somewhat greedy. And so was his inner coterie. And men like him and men like them can be blocked. but also the reason why it wasn't just

owing to the kind of nascent uh nascent uh nature of the of the Cold War paradigm um during the last years of Stalin's life that

that uh that that that that King was in basically unconditional alliance with Moscow is because they were they were loyal to Stalin. I mean Stalin was a remarkable person. I maintain he was probably the most powerful man whoever lived, okay? Hands down.

But the, as Kenan came to realize, China very much was the Soviet Union's proxy, and they treated them very much like a client state. I mean, a very important client state, one with potentially

great power political potential and military mobilization potential, but nevertheless, they very much treated them like a somewhat inferior race. not to be crass about it, that is the reality of the situation. Ken and maintained, you know, in that same vein. Well, here, first of all, like, how is Truman able to corral this whole coalition effort?

And again, the parallel with the Gulf War stands out here, although the way in which the coalition was corralled was quite different. the USSR was boycotting the United Nations at this point okay now as people probably know the Soviet Union had a permanent seat on the UN Security Council the UN Security Council acts as the de facto higher house of the UN if you want to look at the UN as like a unit camera legislature of nations any permanent member's security council is a veto on any resolution okay the Soviet Union was boycotting the UN so they simply were their seat was vacant. And why were they boycotting the UN? They were boycotting the UN because their proxy

China had not, the UN had not permitted them to be seated. Okay, there was this absurd situation where the Americans were demanding that Chankai Shek's government on Formosa, he recognizes the true government of China. I mean, when you're sitting in Beijing and you've got dominion over 900 million people, you know, declaring like, you know, the guys on that, you know, little island over there or the real government there's something that there's something satirical about that but this is why the soviets were boycotting the u.n thus when Truman uh um through atchison you know said look you know this is this is this is an egregious violation of international law you know uh the the the communists are are you know and in a front of decency and you know

the the you know the the the the mores the civilized community of nations have assaulted korea this this marvelous nascent democracy, you know, we've got a rush to its defense. So that's what happened, okay? Truman wasn't any kind of pure Wilsonian, but he was like a liberal internationalist. So this kind of stuff really got him excited. He really dug that kind of shit.

And frankly, politically it was a savvy move. Okay, I mean, granted, Truman didn't do anything to facilitate it. I mean, it was the Soviets who were, you know, playing typical kind of commie games that, you know, This Black Friday, game stream and go full speed with one gig, Sky broadband. And watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing each other. And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix.

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on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.com. of a political theatrical nature that facilitated it but that's what happened now back to canon

is observing all of this and he's growing very concerned because kennin knows mccarthur pretty well and mccarthur was just a weird guy uh he lived with his parents pretty much his whole life until he was pretty old um he uh he was immature now that he was immature now that the way that Churchill was, like, he wasn't, like, this kind of buffoonish piggy drunk who was playing with Armymen at age, you know, 25, but he, like, MacArthur had this kind of, his father was a Medal of Honor recipient who fought for the Union Army in the World War of Win the States. MacArthur himself, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in this anti-banded action in the Poncho Obia era, but it was strange.

And, like, it seemed very much like MacArthur kind of coveted, this Medal of Honor, and he created circumstances wherein he could grab one by kind of spinning facts in such a way that would appeal to the, you know, to the, to those, you know, commissioning such an award. He was not a very attractive guy. And aside from that, there's a reason why he was sent to the Pacific Theater. The Pacific Theater was a Navy show. Okay.

Now, the grunts there, those guys suffered like nobody else, okay? And they fought harder than anybody else. I'm not saying that at all. But the Army in the Pacific War, they really were not center stage. And that's like... One of the reasons I like the film The Thin Red Line, because it's one of the few reasons that's about the Army in the Pacific War, you know, not the Marine Corps.

and you get a sense of these guys being literally in the middle of nowhere and desertion in the Pacific was almost zero because there's nowhere to desert too you know you're in this green hell a lot of time they weren't getting the gear they needed um you know things have become totally savage by this point but you know all that aside i mean that that that there's enough there to constitute an episode in its own right but The key takeaway is that there's a reason why MacArthur was not given some theater-wide command. There's a reason why he wasn't given an armored corps in Europe. Okay. There's a reason why he was sent to the Pacific where he was basically under the thumb of guys like Nimitz, okay? Because he was a cowboy. He was a glory hound. And by this point, he was basically running Japan like some kind of swaggering Cordillo,

you know, or some kind of like Great White Hunter or something. and what uh what kennan's view was is i don't know what the hell this guy is going to do you know kennan's view as well you know mccArthur is in his element with this uh you know if if if if he sticks the mission orientation of liberating republic of korea caria but if mccarthy decides he wants to collect more medals and mercer of lady vostock he's going to start world war three you know um now i know there's like the stupid cliche of a fucking idiots who were always like

talking about like general officers like oh there's some crazy generals gonna do something. Like not that's that time that's a fucking retarded take but in McCarthur's case McArthur did crazy shit and he didn't

he didn't really respect the chain of command and Kenan what Kenan did was Kenan he began very public saying, look, and this is fascinating because it presages obviously what ultimately resolved the Cold War and what Mr. Nixon and Kissinger did.

Kenan said, look, he's like, we need to give MacArthur a free hand in operational terms so long as the mission remains limited to the liberation of the Republic of Korea and not the Congress in the North. He's like, concomitantly simultaneously, he's like, we need to offer Beijing inducements to not. not cooperate with USSR. You know, he's like, we should even offer them a permanent seat on the UN Security Council if they're willing to formally break with Moscow.

And we should tell them that, you know, a further inducement is we will recognize them unconditionally as a sole representative of the Chinese government. Now, John Foster Dulles went berserk when, when Kennan said this. And people were saying that Kenan was, they were saying he'd been like gotten to by the soviets there's like awful slanderous things he was literally just shouted down um and this really really hurt him okay uh as the Korean War started to go very poorly and uh despite what they I don't I have no idea what the H gets in school about this but the Korean War was incredibly unpopular was incredibly brutal it was incredibly bloody um you know it was uh and not not unlike Vietnam

in all kinds of ways. Okay. I don't want to go through a laundry list of grotesque things that happened and the awful thing is the guys who had to go there suffered through, but there was a lot of commonality, okay? Not just owing to the fact that we're talking about, you know, Asian battle fears. But this really, this really, this really,

Kenan really got kind of sandbagged until the Eisenhower era. And we'll get into that too as we progress also. We're going to come back to Kenyon again and again. Not just because I've got a huge esteem for Kenan, but he's a key player in the Cold War. And like I said, I give Nixon all credit for the facilitating the sign of Soviet split because he's the man who actually facilitated it in an executive role. But conceptually, this was George Kennan's kind of augury and instinct for hard power politics. but as the war dragged on

on Truman did increase naval patrols and just overall naval presence of the Pacific and especially in the Taiwan Strait and hugely a huge significance Truman began basically bankrolling the French war in Indochina against the Vietnam okay and America's involvement in Indochina goes back to the late 40s in some capacity

this idea this kind of Oliver Stone Howard is an idea that, like, you know, Vietnam was a lie, man, and, like, a bunch of of fish, generals and capitalists just decided to fight a war there. Like, that's not true at all. And it's not, okay, and you've got to look at, you've got to look at Korea, you've got to look at Vietnam, you've got to look at this entire paradigm I talked about that ultimately kind of resolved in this sort of massive escalation or, yeah, massive escalation of forces in being in the Pacific, you know, in the Reagan area. You got to look at that it's all part a common paradigm.

You can't look at these things in isolation. Now, what Kenan did do during this time is he started writing a lot in policy journals, okay? And he kind of back in those days, you still had public intellectuals that we

talked about. And Kenan, first and foremost, among social science types and political theorist types, he was the king. day. So Kenneth started kind of making his case to the American people and it kind of like, you know, and kind of like the learned, you know, like top layer of the civilian world. And Kenon's plan for, I mean, we think of history in the rearview mirror because that's inevitable.

Everybody comes a Monday morning quarterback when they're like looking backwards. Kenner was pretty convinced along with everybody else that there's probably going to be, there's probably going to be a world war within several. years and at some point there was going to be a catastrophic nuclear war. That was inevitable in his view. And I understand why he thought that. And frankly, had

Gorbachev and Reagan not found a way to end that paradigm, there would absolutely would have been at some point. You know, being in 1993, 2003, it would have happened eventually.

I'm sorry you're calling it, so it had been on the weather. but the Ken in view was this, okay? This was Kenan's kind of grand design for how to not just de-escalate, but like get out of the Cold War without ceding ground to the point that America's totally compromised.

Okay? He said there's got to be a comprehensive settlement with the Soviets that would terminate hostilities in Korea. Because if hostiles just went on indefinitely, he's like eventually, you know, the Chinese, who by then, we know we're fighting a general war on the peninsula against the U.N. the American-led UN forces.

He's like, eventually they're either going to get the upper hand or we're going to escalate and we're going to find ourselves in a general war with the Soviets and the Chinese. So we've got to find some kind of way of pull a plug on this. And go back to pre-war, you know, presumably go back to pre-war lines of demarcation in a 30th parallel.

He was like, we got to admit that people's republic, China, the United Nations, in some capacity. Okay, even if we're not going to give them a permanent seat on the Security Council. We can't pretend this government is not legitimate. There's a billion people who live under this government. You know, they're the third most powerful state on this planet.

This is ridiculous. He's like, concomitant, we need to allow a plebiscite to determine Taiwan's future. And Kenan's like, don't worry the time when he's going to overwhelmingly vote for independence. But he's like, we've got to do it. And we've got to allow third-party monitors, you know, so that

it's, they can just be said that, you know, These Taiwanese are under the heel of some Cordillo, who in turn is taking orders from the white man or whatever, okay? This Black Friday, gain stream and go full speed with one gig, sky broadband, and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing each other. And Ballad of a Small Player starring Colin Farrell on Netflix. I've made some mistakes, right? Who hasn't?

Get one gig Sky Broadband, Essential TV, and Netflix, all for just 44 euro a month for 12 months, our lowest ever price. Availability subject location, new customers only, 12-month minimum terms, standard pricing thereafter, TV and broadband sold separately. Terms apply for more infoise, east-sky.a-e slash speeds. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in-person.

So together, we can create a more reliable, sustainable, sustainable. sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid. i.e. 4.slash northwest. And finally, and finally, this is most significant, and this is fascinating. Kennan said to prevent massive escalation in the Pacific theater, and to obviate was probably, you know, this paradigm is probably going to result in a nuclear war. He's like, we need to bring about a neutral of demilitarized Japan. No U.S. forces there. You know, no, no, not even a token kind of Japanese army.

You know, he's like, Japan, Japan needs to become just a neutral zone. Okay. And that's the only way moving forward. We're going to keep it off the table as, you know, the, it's kind of like the prize objective in the Pacific. And also, this is long for, gotten to history other than there's a you occasionally

come across copy mostly like grad students come across headlines in the 70s and stuff when the Japanese Red Army faction was killing people because they dropped a lot of bodies but communism had real momentum in Japan it was entirely possible that Japan

would go red okay that's a whole other story but just for contact if it seems weird that Kenan is like emphasizing that look like we got it we've got to basically like take Japan out of the Cold War entirely. That is why. Okay. And in turn, he said, finally,

he said that we're entering into a catastrophe. He's like, we're entering into an arms race with the Soviet Union. He's like, which we can probably win just because we can essentially like indefinitely outspend them on weapons. But he's like, at some point the Soviets are probably going to go all in and assault us, you know, with everything they have rather than just lose. Okay, so he's like, we need to reduce American capabilities to a mixed, like a mixed combined arms force that's capable of dealing, you know, a concentrated and devastating blow on a limited

front, but basically anywhere on this planet. And that was very pressing too, okay, because that kind of thing became dominant by the end of the Cold War definitely and even beyond, although the strategic landscape is totally changed and arguably um um um it arguably the reason why um that that uh that notion has gained legs is for totally different reasons but um i mean there's all kinds of factors and play to that you know like political um technological and others but um canon uh canin uh i guess what i'm getting is this kenned head he wasn't something of auger in light or anything but he will put canon ahead of his peers, particularly in the issue of Korea, but also Asia generally.

You have an understanding of causation in politics. Causality in politics, I mean, causality in human affairs obviously isn't like causality in physics or something. I mean, everybody can see that. But in politics is a peculiar domain of human endeavor. And there's a weird kind of causation in politics. I mean, part of this owes to what men and command rules have to do to maintain credibility. Part of it has to do with the way humans perceive threat at scale. Part of it has to do with just how decisions are made in technology-driven societies

where, you know, that wield such great power over the forces that animate them that, you know, oftentimes once a decision, once a decision making process, set in motion, it literally cannot be stopped. Kenan had instincts for all this stuff, and he kind of

understood the implications that their strategic matters as they were happening. And that's what truly makes a political theorist, particularly like an IR theorist, is you can look at, you can look at affairs as they unfold, and you can

basically disturb the trajectory of of the of war and peace currents. I can't think of a better way to put it. But that's kind of the thing. Go ahead. Have we lost that now, or is it just, we're so far gone with leadership, our leadership being, I mean, why can't we see something like this when it comes to? to NATO? Is it because we're the aggressors? Is it because we're in the wrong? Is it, I mean, what you're describing, I mean, these people, the people you're describing now would be

considered enemies of the, enemies of the regime? What? It's complicated, but a point I made to people again and again, you know, during the Cold War, guys who had the best and the brightest, they were basically corralled into government. I mean, if you were a nuclear physicist, you went to work in Los Alamos. If you're some brilliant game theorist, you know, you got, you got sent to Harvard, and then you got sent to

some Panning on Funded Think Tank to figure out how to wage nuclear war. You know, if you were like a brilliant economist, you know, you'd, you'd meet with the president and you'd say like, okay, like, what's the best way, you know, the Marshall Plan was great for politics, but it didn't do a whole lot for, you know, capital and return on investment.

And for technological development, you know, how can we, how can we build up Korea? How can we build up, you know, Taiwan? You know, how can we build up, you know, these kind of key proxy regimes to fight the Soviet Union? You know, like, nowadays, like, the only people who go to government are real losers. I mean, it's like, it's like weirdos, freaks, like, like, literally, like half-ass actors, you know, like, weird people who have, like, nothing going for them, but they have some desperate need to, like, be famous or something. like any guy any guy with anything going for him is going to have nothing to do with government you know like why would you i mean that's part of it are these people like i have a friend his

son is a genius engineering trying to rathion offered him an insane amount of money and he's like i just can't i can't work for these people is that what's happening now because because basically we have a corporate run government that the best and the brightest are just going straight into the corporations and then they... Well, look at a guy, I mean, look at it, look, okay, like, like 50 years ago or even 40 years ago, like in the early

80s, a guy like Elon Musk, he'd be like working in government. He would have been like making he would have been going on TV debating Carl Sagan saying like, no, this is why we need SDI. You know, no, this is why we need to roll back communism. Like, no, this is why, you know, we need to scrap the ABM treaty and develop weapons platforms that, you know,

truly has split of first right potential. Like, that's what he'd be doing. like now who the hell is going to go who that's going to go debate with aOC about whether like kids should learn about anal sex or not in seventh grade like that like who the hell is going to do that like any normal person that's totally beneath them

and they wouldn't like selling themselves that way but also it's like government is for losers you know it's it's for people like the Bites you know it's it's for it's for people like AOC it's for uh it's for uh or it's for guys or it's for kind of like or it's for kind of like guys like DeSantis who have some kind of

like striver, narcissist need to like, you know, see their face on TV or something. Like, you know, people have something going for them, like aren't going to want anything to have anything to do with it. And I mean, but it's also part of the problem. I mean, like we talked about before, and I'm sure people think that I'm flowing a dead horse here that maybe I overstate my case,

but even aside of the fact that we've got like a hospital, regime that's totally destructive and like an enemy of the people and stuff. Even in a like, let's say you have like a normal regime of like normal people. Like the government is structured. It's only structured to really fight the Cold War and not much else. I mean, it's like why does it even exist? You know, like there's something of a, there's more than a modicum of fraud to it too. You know, and people see through that.

like a highly intelligent guy aside of the fact that there's nothing government's doing that I could possibly interest him now he's not he's not going to go pretend that like you know he's he's actually accomplishing something by working in some idiotic bureaucracy like you know when you

I mean if people want to Jerry Portnell I mean I'm a big science fiction guy so I love Jerry Cornell but you know he uh the the committee on the present danger he really kind of took over that that role. I mean, the committee on the present danger went back to the

50s, but in the 80s. He truly made it into like a, into like a military science like political action committee. Okay, and Pornel was the guy who put like SDI on the map. Okay. That's why the Cold War, I mean, dynamic people were in government because of the Cold War. Okay, that is why they were there.

Like, they weren't there as government is awesome or because they really want to, they want to figure out, you know, how to draft a school, curriculum for like poor kids or because they weren't like past laws like make gay people feel better about themselves i mean like they they were there to fight the cold war and that's it um and uh the cold war was something that comes like a paradigm like that happens once in a thousand years if that and people realize that on some deep level even when it was horrifying and even when people would have done anything to get out of it you know when like in at junctures you know like like like Cuba at 63 or 62, you know, uh, you know, uh, this Black Friday game stream and go full speed with one gig, Sky broadband and watch unmissable shows like all her fault on Sky. These nice people killing each other.

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and like Able Archer, even as horrifying as that stuff was, like, people realize like, you know, these were, these were apoccal, earth shattering events that I'm participating in. That's why. Yeah, I mean, you go back to like, you know, they would send Carl Sagan

out to make an argument for them. Now, who is their scientist now? Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye, guys who can get owned on Twitter by like by people, by anonymous, anonymous accounts. Yeah, like anonymous. And they're like high school kids too.

Yeah. Like I'm not saying, like, there's plenty of support high school kids. The point is, yeah, these guys are going to get embarrassed by just like, like 16 year old John's from the public. There's just no one. It seems like there is no one who's impressive anymore. And if they are impressive, you, like, you know,

it's like, to a certain extent, Elon Musk, I think, is an impressive guy. But he's also, you're also like, what the hell does this guy believe? You know, it's like, you don't know what his ideology is if he has one at all. Yeah, I don't think he does. I mean, generally, business moguls don't. I mean, I defend Musk a lot because, I mean, he's a high-speed, low-draig guy. He's the one who's keeping real space tech alive.

And he's doing an incredible thing. I mean, just the fact, like, the study's done for telecom is incredible, okay? and the things he's he's introduced are game changers. You know, I mean, not just in telecomic across the board. I mean, he has an eccentric weirdo, but I mean, all these guys are. But I mean, I'm glad he's around and he, you know, I, he's a great man and like, not in the sense of I love him, I think he's awesome, but by any objective metric. But that's, you know, government, you know, government, you know, government, going to attract losers when it doesn't

I mean, they were, this is, I don't go too far afield, and I'll wrap it on. I'm sorry. The hour, but it, but I mean, uh, I, government is going to cease to exist as, as we know it today in the next 200 years.

Like, I'm not saying, like, the state will wither, you know, like some utopian anarchist or some, you know, kind of like low-key, uh, uh, like Trotsky or something, but you're not, it's just not going to have, you know, a syndrome now people, stuff like, you know, the 20th century

features that created this regime are to be so remote as to be like not even intelligent anymore. So like a lot of what government does as it's make work business the day to day is just not going to exist anymore. And plus it'll be like a natural

de-evolution. You know, you're going to like localism is going to become just like more and more thing. It already is. But so I think the problem is going to take care of take care of itself in some basic way. but that's that's um there's something i

i can't i thought i thought there was something i wanted to bring up a conclusion but again i swear i'm not going to see you know well i i derailed you it's just that you know when you think back on the cold war there were so many you know it is as psychotic as it was at many points there were so many impressive people out there give you know talking um coming up with technology. I mean, we just don't, I'm not saying we need another Cold War. I'm just saying it's just when you look at what we have today compared to the people that we were looking at then, it's just like, what the hell happened, man? It's like, it's like, it's like, snuck up on us in a decade. No, it's totally nuts. I mean, like I found it jarring. Like, you know, the Clinton administration was jarring because, I mean, Clinton was such a fucking slob.

But these people, like, all, they had something really wrong with them. And it was like, it wasn't even gradual. It was like, okay, I mean, whether you like Bush 41 or not, I mean, he was, he was a high-speed, low-drag guy, you know, and that whole, and James Baker was, when I was a kid, like a teen, like James Baker was like a, like a hero, I really looked up to him, you know. But these, you know, to go from that kind of very heavy, severe, able to good and bad ways regime, you know, to Bill Clinton and it's kind of like merry band, a circus freaks.

like it was bizarre man like it was jarring but I mean that's why like I said it was a joke because boomers were like who like flying to like you know rages about Donald Trump

you know these like the same assholes were like telling us 30 years ago like you gotta get with the times man you're like Bill Clinton is the future like we don't want your white male

stuff anymore like you know it's like you can't like turn around and say like you're outraged at some reality TV show star as the president it's like you guys made this shit

happen. You know, like, you're the ones you said, they're like, we're a bunch of squares and fish just and idiots who, you know, want like, weight meal stuff to rule, man. And, you know, we got to, like, get with the times. So it's like, you know, yeah, yeah. And it's really, and it's really only a matter of time before people start begging for that to come back. Yeah, I mean, I've got my own, I mean, I'm very optimistic, man. I mean, I don't worry about anything. Not because, look, I'm so awesome or, like, fearless, but I, you know, I, I'm, like, a Hellenist and stuff and like I you know like stuff doesn't really bother me and but also like you know I see I see causes for optimism all over the place you know and there's a lot of like horrible things

too but I mean there's always horrible things you know the world is a fallen place man like that that that's that's why you know that's that this you know we're all born in sin but um at any event uh yeah well let's um let's uh let's uh let's wrap up now because I don't want to I don't to go into another big, like, sub-topic, because it's coming up in the hour. But like I said, before we went live, man, I'm a, the fellow's invited me to go with them to the American Renaissance conference this weekend. So that's where I am going. I'm going to Nashville.

So if you're there, you will see me, if you seek me out. Please don't try to assassinate me or something. Like, but I assume people come up to me at these things that they're, come as friends, but unfortunately, I don't think this is going to come out before the weekends. No, fair enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, no, I, in any event,

plugs? Yeah, I mean, I'm on, I'm on Twitter still, because I mean, apparently, I'm speaking of Mr. Musk, that the, the woke censorship regime is done. I mean, you can find me there. Seekini shall find. I'm on substack at Real Thomas, 77.7.com as my podcast is at.

The sequel to Steelstorm is dropping in January. I promise. I'm sorry for the delay. It was not my fault, nor was it my dear publisher's fault, the period of press. We've had censorship problems on our own and deplatforming problems, but it will be here in January. I'm sorry it cannot be here for the holidays. But that is where I'm at.

I appreciate it. Yeah, until the next time. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Kenyana show, part four of the Cold War series with Thomas 777. How are you doing, Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks again.

What I wanted to get into today, we finished off last week. We taught, or, yeah, more like a week and a half ago, perhaps, but, you know, talking with the Berlin airlift in the Korean War. And I kind of finished up talking about the Korean War. and I wanted to talk about the Bundes Republic and its political culture and how many it developed the way it did. And into that, the listeners will understand what I mean about why that's significant. But, you know, the Korean War, it, you know, like we discussed in the last episode about how it's essential and, you know, containment as policy, you know, not just as some sort of theory abstracted from,

from concrete military decision making, you know, you've really got to understand the Korean War as kind of the first iteration of that, you know, and as well as, you know, what became to great or lesser degrees, you know, policy towards the communists for the next, the next 40 years. And it's also, too, that's when America truly dissinuated into the Vietnam conflict. You know, like I made the point before there's all kinds of lives about the Vietnam War and just misperception, some deliberate, some deliberately confabulated, you know, for polemical biological reasons, support of broad ignorance. But the idea that Vietnam was just kind of an aura of opportunity, you know, owing the designs of, you know, profit years and finance years and things that's nonsense. And the, uh, it, and arguably, you know, the Far East was, it was far more dangerous during the Middle and Lake Cold War than, than the European theater. I mean, obviously, if you come to Europe, that would have been catastrophic because basically a single conflict diad and had it been triggered or traversed the potential for catastrophic escalation was ever present.

But there was many, many diads potentially. And how and where actual warfare would ensue, that was very difficult to predict. And, you know, once hostilities did ensue, it was very difficult. to it was equally difficult to predict what the potential of rescillation was. You know, it's also to the, there was more of a fluidity to sphere of influence and things like this. But that's, you know, that's why Korea is important. And it's also, it's essential to, I think people read kind of the outcome of the Korean conflict, you know, in terms of, this Black Friday game stream and go full speed with one.

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really kind of in disgrace I mean he was he was an odd wherever he was about Truman he was honest he didn't have character issues he wasn't corrupt but

in the toilet the Korean War was incredibly unpopular and you know the the Republic rift between Truman of Carthur which led to McCarthy's dismissal the public

generally sympathized MacArthur not just because you know he was kind of this heroic person that had been very deliberately created by you know by media um but also the view of the view of Truman was that truman's you know as stated were to quote restore peace and security on the Korean peninsula you know there was in the reestablish the state as quote in lieu of victory and in Truman's words you know we're waging the Korean word of you know not just for the sake of um you know deterring aggression and and uh and they're prevailing and and you know and guarding the prevailing peace but to quote protect our forces you know and that's one of the officers in the ground refer to that is an

absurd tautology you know your forces are there to protect your forces i mean that doesn't that that's not why you go to war and you know we're talking about you know not just men's lives uh you know and and and and expecting them to sacrifice their lives um in the national interest you know you really have an obligation to the country, you're not just to those men and their families and relations, but, you know, to the country at large, you know, to wage war to win, you know, not, not to, well, isn't it also an insult to the men on the ground? Oh, we got to drop more forces in there because you guys can't handle it. It's like the whole Afghanistan thing. We have these Afghani troops that we've, that we've trained and, you know, they have platoons, but they can't do it

on their own, so we got to get someone in there. Yeah, yeah. That's a good point. It has the effect of really kind of sapping morale and kind of discouraging and any enthusiasm, you know, for the, for the war effort. And it, so I mean, I, for good, for good reason, you know, Truman was kind of savaged over his prosecution of the war. But also, suddenly, you know, kind of court historians within the right and the left,

they kind of view this as as this real low point for America in the Cold War you know kind of a precursor to what ensued during the detenteer after you know Saigon fell and things but I got a different take on that

I mean that's part of the reason we're doing this is on the you know the earth of provenous perspectives and dealing with the Cold War but in his interest diplomacy he's about the only kind of I mean I said Kissinger a lot because I you know you told about before for whatever reason people kind of on both sides the ideological divide they they love kind of burning

Kissinger at proverbial effigy but he in power political analyses he's really second to none okay and he he made the point uh I go a little bit further than he did but or he does but he made the point that you know the Stalin and then the Soviet Union ended up in pretty and a pretty precarious position only to the Korean War. The, you know, there was a basic ambiguity as to where American sphere of influence stuff in Soviet interests began in the region. America did not have the forces in being, even outside of Japan, really, but even that is our group.

You know, to prosecute a major war in the Far East, or they, you know, those forces weren't present. before the outset of hostilities in 1950. You know, the, in the aftermath of Korea, you know, the Department of Defense, it asked for the defense budget to be tripled and it got its way. And it truly integrated military alliance developed in Europe under American Supreme Command. I mean, that's built in NATO, it was the Korean War. Before that, there was, you know, talking about European defense community. There was real hostility to the, you know, to the, you know, to the,

the idea of an of of american for being in any in any in any real you know numbers remaining in europe but i'm not saying it's a good thing that that this is what happened but in terms of uh you know relative power uh and and it between the united states and and the soviet union and what began the warsaw pact um this really just really changed things uh and skewed the strategic landscape against the interests of the communists i believe um the uh the uh it's It gave the United States a certain credibility in terms of multilateral action, or at least the appearance of it. You know, it basically Congress gave a blank check to Eisenhower subsequently, you know, to beef up these client regimes, you know, in Africa and the Near East and in the Orient, you know, and throw huge amounts of hardware at them. And, you know, this was the catalyst, really, for the, you know, for American Special Warfare.

I don't like Kennedy gets all the credit for that, you know, and that's why, you know, this the, the, the, the, the, the, the spec war centers, you know, literally named for him. But, you know, this was really, like, like, like, spec war and special operations really became a thing, you know, during the Eisenhower era, you know, and this ode to, uh, the experience of Korea and things like that. And Stalin, um, Stalin had been, uh, Stalin really did not want the Korean War to happen. I mean, he had, he didn't have any problem with it. He green lit it when, uh, uh, when, uh, uh, uh, when Mao was able to convince him, when Mao and Kim Il-sung were able to convince him that, you know, victory would be rapid. And initially, I mean, it did appear that that would be the case. You know, the Republic of Korean forces got pushed back to Busan and the perimeter was this tiny little corner, literally, the Republic of Korea. Until, I mean, those guys fought hard.

I'm not putting shade on the South Koreans. But, I mean, you know, they were totally routed. It wasn't until, you know, the in-shan landings, you know, cut the country in half, basically. And, you know, the American and UN forces essentially fought this kind of desperate river action and pushed the communists all the way back, like literally to the Yellow River. I mean, obviously that, you know, that's what triggered intervention by the Red Chinese. But, but, but being, you know, this was not, despite with someone like the, the Cold War Hawks alleged, this is not Stalin, like, you know, sitting in Moscow, you know, trying to, you know, go to America into this Asian war, you know, whereby then, you know, the Soviets would have an opportunity to run Berlin or something. Like that was, and then, but it just, you know, didn't go as planned. Like, it's not what happened at all. But, you know, the, what Stalin was really doing, in my opinion, is Stalin realized that the Soviet Union needed China, okay?

the Soviet Union needed China as much as the United States needed Western Europe because what became the Warsaw Pact, this was not some sort of equivalent to Western Europe or some sort of equivalent to the capital base and resources, human and material that America and the UK had in NATO. Really, all the Warsaw Pact was, with the exception of East Journey, was a defense court on. It was literally space wherein the right army could deploy

in depth to protect itself or to stage you know what they characterized as a preemptive assault against NATO so um occupying occupying Poland with hostility you know uh you know creating like a client regime

in Bulgaria like this these things were not profiting the Soviet Union these things were huge drains okay but what the Soviets had was the Soviets had China and even though China was you know very very underdeveloped at that time in power political terms you know

pure military military terms there's incredible power potential and frankly a uh a communist block that's literally from uh you know from berlin uh uh to uh to uh to haninois contiguously i mean that that's a good that that's about that's about a fifth of this planet okay um just the just the just the raw kind of geostrategic momentum of that is incredible so um this uh this uh this uh that was a lot of what underlay kind of this this the apparently on the service kind of odd posture that Stalin had towards towards the Chinese and the Chinese war against the Americans. But it also, it did lay the foundation for the sign of Soviets split because the Soviets were not generous and their material support of China. And they very much made it clear that, you know, they viewed China as their client regime.

and Stalin would not commit to a proportionate response if if America deployed atomic weapons you know what they were then as is atomic bombs you know against against the Chinese and don't get me wrong I mean Mal himself

who I think was something of a crazy person and somewhat primitive frankly of mind I do believe he was basically plain spoken and he said no and certain terms that, you know, the, you know, the reason why, you know, Peking would not give its loyalty to, to Crucchiev, is because Cruze was not the man that Stalin wasn't, you know, Stalin was a remarkable figure.

I mean, whatever else we can say about him. And, but my point being that, you know, the man with Stalin at the helm, the kind of relationship I just described, you know, characterized by the Chinese being very much subordinate to Moscow, grudgingly the Chinese would have accepted that under Schnolland. They would not accept that under, you know, some... This Black Friday, gain stream and go full speed with one gig, Sky broadband.

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apply for more info cies skydada a slash beads under some under some apparad like crucef or under you know some kind of uh you know under some kind of uh you know octogenarian dictator like the provision of um but that's about outside of scope one i want to cover here um what it did and what it did do on the communist side uh um and in and in kind of like the victory of column as it were I mean China did fight the United States to a standstill and I mean that was no small thing okay I mean yeah the Chinese had certain advantages on the ground but America then had tremendous military might you know it's a huge disparity and technology the Chinese absorbed huge casualties but I mean

that you know that that that emboldened the that emboldened Ho Chi that emboldened Paul Pot, you know, that emboldened, you know, that emboldened 100, uh, um, insurgencies, you know, um, on every continent that, uh, you know, the United States is not invincible, you know, um, and that, uh, I think that, I think they can't really be overstated. And, you know, when people, the people, I kind of substantiate my claim that, you know, the Soviet Union really, you kind of developed a not so subtle credibility problem and in the wake of the Korean war it was it was a year before Stalin died it was March 10th, 1952 you know someone died basically right after cessation of hostilities in Korea and it was a

we talked about the Stalin memo or the Stalin note last time you know what was called the peace note and some of the some European media so later on you know when kind of the comments this weren't publicized but you know Stalin's notion was a demilitarized Germany you know as a neutral zone you know Germany being pertain a kind of nominal military force under under its own authority but you know all all groups you know gone from German soil and a you know and a deirdrary neutrality enforced on Germany how that would be enforced I was never really clear because

negotiate and reached that point I would assume you know some kind of UN man would have would have been you know that it was it was managed but be as it may there's a reason what you don't I mean yeah obviously the Soviet Union their big their their big problem was you know the strategic amount so on the fact that you know NATO was at their doorstep what became NATO and then you know was at their doorstep um i realized natal was was uh incorporated in 1949 but it was about 10 years in my opinion before it became a truly you know like integrated combat at force um other than just uh you know kind of uh you kind of a mandate for you know you know

operate within the borders of these all these nominally sovereign states but uh you know the reason you know the reason you know the reason why Stalin um made the effort when he did did. If the Soviets were in this great kind of position of strength and, you know, in, uh, in power political terms, you know, if the Korean War was, you know, really going their way and really kind of, you know, breaking the face, not just a Truman, but of, uh, of the entire, the entire kind of Cold War apparatus. I mean, that, that would not, that's not what he would have been doing. But, um, the, uh, it's also, too, the fact that, I mean, it was, doomed to fail because i mean this was submitted a mere eight months before the president of election you know

and it uh i realize you know i realize isanhower wasn't any arch war hawk but he was he was a military man and he was he was he was viewed uh you know kind of as uh the soviets were afraid of him number one and that's that's all that's an interesting topic into itself but point being for better or worse regardless what everybody feels about isonauer in history you know like he was he was viewed as the man to wage the Cold War, okay? And that's really what kind of catapulted him into office. But even, even taking Eisenhower to the equation, obviously, obviously eight months out from a, from, from a presidential contest, nobody's going to, you know, nobody's going to be willing to undertake, you know, some kind of shift in, in status of relations with the Soviet Union, you know,

in in 952 of all of all years but um what i want to kind of segue into is the person of conrad adenauer like before i said a recording i said i wanted to get into the culture of the bundus republic and how they came about and why it came about to understand that you got understand aden hour you know adenau was the first uh he was the first post-war chancellor i mean if you if you consider west germany you know like the real germany or whatever and you know the successor state of a of of of the German Reich you know he was he was the first post-war chancellor and if you reject that which I don't think people do with some might I don't I don't consider the current German state you

particularly legitimate but that but in terms of you know linear political um legacy it I think I don't think it's controversial to I don't know if I add now was the you know as the first real post of war executive but he uh I know it was an interesting guy and it's kind of fancying to me that he was the man so did for the role but it makes perfect sense and it goes to show you how America at one time had a real political class of men who who really really understood kind of the nuances of power politics and you know the kind of deeper implications of um of what uh of what of what of what of what of what of of what chiefs of state represent, both the people whom they ruled, but also to, you know, allies and foes alike.

And there was a perfect example of that. And now he was born in 1876. So he took office when he was 73. He stepped down when he was 87. I believe that makes him the oldest European head of state in the modern era. Patan, I think, was 84, 85. And I was a remarkable guy. And I was born in the Catholic Rhineland, okay?

And he was born literally, you know, with the kind of zenith of Bismarck's Kutrachnopf. And for those that don't know, you know, Bismarck, the kind of arch-Prussian Protestant, he did not trust Catholics. He purged Catholics from the kind of civil apparatus which by that point was quite robust.

You know, Prussia was really kind of a modern state. You know, they had, they did kind of the, you know, real pension system. I mean, there's anybody who can make like a kind of welfare state apparatus work, it's the Germans, and they did. That can't be argued. I'm not a particularly, I'm not some big government, you know, Keynesian type or anything at all. But even, you know, I stipulate that.

um pressure ran with uh with true uh you know kind of military efficiency and all the best uh you know in almost laudable ways but um one of the things bismarck did was uh he very very much purged uh catholics from uh positions of authority and um it it was uh it wasn't brutal in the sense of you know catholics weren't rounded up and shot or something and weren't availed uh you know that the physical violence but they really were locked out of political and cut fairs for all practical purposes and and this this made a huge impact on the annar okay um not only because he was a catholic but you know his family was was very politically engaged you know adenauer himself obviously this is you know was his career path um he he considered this you know very very unjust and because he actually

was devout you know um adenar was not um his Catholicism is not superficial and it wasn't just it wasn't just um you know kind of a like a perfunctory uh um identitarian signifier you know he was very very catholic um and uh he found his way uh to the uh to the center party you know way which was the catholic party you know really of uh um of the epoch it was uh 1905 1906 and our he was like the city council of cologne um a few years later became the vice mayor

of cologne um you know he he was going to say it's none of a political prodigy okay and he uh he again too he wore his catholicism on his sleeve but he was respected pretty much by everybody I mean even by the

even even kind of the most you know kind of the most dedicated portion like culture warriors you know everybody everybody respected you know he was he was a man of um of high integrity okay um he uh he was adamantly opposed at political extremism but not in not not in kind of the way that you know karl smit disdained you know the he was not the kind of the parliamentarian who believes in endless discussion

and superficial compromises um edna really did believe that you know the the cunning of reason in history and you know kind of the mind of god is what is what guides politics and men are kind of limited participants in affairs of state. It, you know, he was dedicated to rooting out disorder, inefficiency, irrationality. He was very much a moralist. You know, he had no tolerance for corruption. But he, you know, he had no time for ideologies of the right as well as the left.

You know, I think, I think, I think, him as somewhat like a I think he had something kind of with people like Dolphus in Austria okay um frankly um he wasn't a sensible centrist yeah yeah but an authoritarian when called for but also again too I mean very not not at all a secularist you know very very much you know Catholic in his orientation and and in a in his evaluation of of what you know the metric is for good government but uh I mean Austin political culture is very different than the one um that Adnardom emerged from and um

the uh they kind of the kind of the kind of quasi clericalism or somebody like Dolphus you know like Adnard was running around you know like like it's still in priests and in the civic apparatus or something like that okay but he but he was uh he was not at all kind of the secularist parliamentarian like I said that um that people sort of associate with with with you know compromisers the of the um the other Kaiser Reich and the in the Vymer era you know I mean the the the kind of the kind of toxic parliamentarism that that Schmidt lamented I mean yeah obviously reached Zenith and Vymer for obvious reasons but it this kind of thing

at its root Kaiser Reich you know like it really it really did I mean that's important to bear in mind but He also became nationally known. During the Great War, he involved himself, you know, as a Merrick clone. He involved himself very much in managing whatever's remedy, you know, food shortages, born of the embargo. ago, it was an early like sausage derived from soy and things this, these kinds of alternative food technologies. Edna was responsible for getting that off-round, you know, which was revolutionary in those days.

You know, he worked hand in love with the army. And a bailing Colon as a base of supply and as a hub. you know to reconstitute forces and things like this you know he he really really rose to the occasion you know and um became something of a hero of figure in the minds of people not just in Cologne but you know he became quite well-known throughout the Reich however he uh he uh he was somebody who became something of an intermediate something of an intermediary uh between uh between uh elements and um in berlin um which is interesting and when it became clear that uh when it became clear that uh the the french intended to occupy

the prussian rhineland he had the machiavilla notion of dissolving uh dissolving the rhineland into a new autonomous state, kind of like a demilitarized zone, that would, you know, the stipulation that the French would not occupy it. And the foreign element would set foot on its soil, you know, it being this kind of like, you know, nominal autonomous zone. And both the Prussian governments and, you know, And the Bimar regime were totally against any plan for bringing up Prussia. For the Bimer regime, this was in 1919.

So, yeah, I mean, immediately before, immediately after advocate, what remained of the right government was totally opposed to it. But it was a point is that was very forward-looking in its thinking and very much, very subtle kind of in its cunning. And that kind of became characteristic of Adenauer. But he also too, when it was the Treaty of Versailles, which was presented formally in June 1919. And now we knew, as anybody did, it was in the know that some sort of punitive regime was going to be coming down the pipeline. And I think his idea was that, you know, the less kind of a, like the more like devolved.

the Reich was like the harder would be to you know to kind of bleed it dry um it's uh you can kind of indefinitely uh you can kind of indefinitely uh you can kind of indefinitely type of reparations regime if you know you have this kind of if you have a kind of evolved uh sovereignty you know in all kinds of ways so um it's uh he he had germany's best interest in mind in these things he was doing um What was interesting is he very much collided with Gustav Stressman. And, you know, I've made the point before, I think, in one of our previous series, that Stressman was a compelling guy, and I think he's not, I think he's not really given to it. I think of Emolson's kind of an uncung figure in British politics.

Ednawer looked at Strasseman as being too Prussian He looked at him as You know Not Not just No arrival for the chancellorship Because Ednaur did in fact Covet the office

But he You know he viewed his vision as fundamentally at odds With what was You know Possible and feasible And And that's really kind of sabotage the little kind of sabotage in Norris designs.

The idea was, you know, for the coalition of the Christian crats and the, and the center party, you know, to constitute the ruling quorum. And, and Adnauer, true to forum, he'd manage to develop good office. with the social democrats as well um he refused to negotiate with the communists but he'd managed to decouple a lot of key figures of the social democrats from the kpd and um this caused a lot of consternation obviously on the left which was you know kind of a brilliant play by

an hour but it also it ingratiated you know certain people to him that you know moving forward would have facilitated a you know a real you know a coalition that actually had legs and in terms of its ability to pass legislation and and and take you know executive take unilateral action when required and and have something of a mandate across the aisle which was remarkable for 1926 but it has kind of is this personal collisions with stress men ended all of that I mean that that could be a whole episode into itself but what's some What significant is when, you know, the National Socialists

breakthrough in, or breakthroughs in 1930 and 32, Ednau wasn't just Mayor Colon, but he was president of Prussian state council. You know, and obviously the National Socialists, one of their key constituencies, not because they had, you know, so strong to power out, but in elite circles, they certainly, but also just I mean you know the prussian being the political you know the political the political core of the German Reich defended and I sat on the Prussian State Council meant that he was either going to have to some kind of some kind of

concord of the national socialist or stepped aside and interestingly um It went on the night of the long knives, Adna was actually arrested, and allegedly for his own protection. And he wasn't a harm in any way. And he was released after the dirty work of, or the bloody business of the revolutionaries was done. But he wrote a 10-page letter to Gehring, who by then was Gallaud or Prussia. and as well as the chief of the Prussian police. You know, he made the point of Gary and he said that, you know, when the National Socialist Party was banned,

I allowed your people to, you know, fly your national flags and Prussian buildings. I build up of, you know, our public facilities, you know, to the National Socialists so you can hold your meeting, you know, because I wasn't going to exclude German people. and, you know, veteran fighting men at that, which most of you were, from the political discussion, you know, and this is how you thank me is by placing me under arrest. And apparently this really kind of hit Gearing Hard. And according to Speer, as well as others, and I don't get her Speer to be a valid,

there's testimony particularly valid on most matters, but on some things, because he's no reason to lie about it. I do. and um according to spear hitler made the point that our was a good man and regardless of our differences within him our main national socialists you know we leave him alone you know and that's basically what happened i mean he was uh and now refused to he he didn't he not only refused to join the party but he you know he basically refused after his arrest he refused to kind of cooperate in any meaningful way okay so he was uh unceremoniously removed from all you know his remaining offices like appointed offices you know and uh you know told uh you're

free to go by your business but you know have a nice life you've got nothing coming and and i actually spent uh some time living in a monastery you know um and then later years he said that this is what he kind of had you know he came to certain you had certain like epiphanies about you know uh the german nation and and and what configuration of state was was going to allow it to survive the germans that survives the people and whatnot which i think is basically true you know ednar was not some he wasn't some intellectual or some student of history he wasn't he wasn't a guy like de gall or like adolf hitler um you know he is this kind of this kind of guy

poll star like we talked about was his catholic faith um and uh you know kind of like a kind of a pragmatic sense of of how to of how to constitute a government you know that the Germans could live with as a people you know but that you know if it's not ideal would allow their you know survival in perennial terms and at the end of the day I mean that's that's what the function of a government is is the guarantee of the posterity of a people but the and now being the man that the Allied occupation authorities essentially chose to lead Germany is fascinating and again it shows you how you know again how at one time however misguised

of the aviation regime may have been in uh you know just in pure in terms of pure competence like america at one time it it had very very strong department of state um very tight intelligence apparatus that allowed it to identify you know who who you know who you know should be insinuated into these roles and i think within the boundary rationality of what america and the UK and France wanted to accomplish in Germany. Adonauer was the only man who I think could have done that. And finally, what Adenauer had going for him in their eyes, he was constitutionally anti-Russian and anti-Soviet.

What he did say when a few topics he would contemplate elaborately on in theoretical and historical terms was the relationship of Germany to the east and specifically, you know, the relationship of the German state to Russia. And, you know, he said, he talked about kind of, you know, what in his view was the love,

hate affair of Berlin with, with Russia and the Russians and, you know, the kind of Machiavellian newette, that, you know, kind of ultimately brings Germany into concord with the Russians and other times, they're at odds, depending

on, you know, the depending on the characteristics to the extent strategic landscape as well as the internal political situation and uh and nowra said you know

that that ends now you know the Russians are if not our enemies they're certainly our adversaries you know we we're going to stand with the West and with Europe and with the Atlantis's Concord at all costs

um he refused to recognize the DDR at all um He said it's not a legitimate state. You know, he denied that many diplomatic representation. And, I mean, that probably is what, more than any other single variable is what kind of made, I had not were acceptable to the occupation authorities. But it was everything taken together.

I mean, there was, you hated the Soviet Union and redignment, you know, ambitious guys who, you know, hadn't been national socialist, but who hated the Russians. I mean, it's not like an hour had like a rare resume in that regard, but this kind of, um, he had a rare credit, um, and an unusual sort of integrity, I think that coupled with his, this sort of unconditional Cold Warrior stance, um, made him, uh, you know, kind of like the natural choice. But again, I mean, it's, in fact that, um, the fact that, um, the fact that the men in charge could divinate that he was a natural.

choice is a testament to the fact that again at one time America had a highly competent foreign policy establishment. What's what's in place now was literally considerably illiterate. I just I realize I'm going to make that point again and again people are probably tired of it but it's something that can't be overstated but interestingly to you know our he said that people need to receive you know Vermock and SS veterans deserve to be respected and their and he said that you know we're not going to put like shame on these men but interestingly the reason why um Otto Reamer and Hans Rudel who both were uh reamer was uh

he stands the socialist right party you know which was uh which in my opinion was a legacy party the NSDP in real terms and um they uh they were pro-soviet they were nakedly anti-American and pro-soviet and he he was very derisively referred to Adnauer as quote rabbi Adnauer

and there was a lot there's a German right the National Socialist right who absolutely despise Adnauer but they that and I understand completely like I get it

but it's not it's not as simple as Adnauer just being like some natal lackey or some or some or some social democrat who saw an opportunity and who spent the war years, you know, you know, he was toying a longer where he had to, you know, avoiding the front. We also like avoiding the ire or the authority and suddenly, you know, he, you know, he started, you know, waving,

waving a, waving a NATO banner as soon as, as, as soon as the Soviets were in Berlin. you know you he had genuine integrity okay I'm not gonna like I I I obviously my ultimate slides with guys like Reamer but in history I mean but uh that's um that's that's uh that it's I wanted to dedicate basis this entire episode and now we're into the sentencing because that's I realize something of a dry topic but it's essential to to understand and it could have very much gone a different way and I make the point about Korean War kind of building NATO. Because again, I realized NATO was constituted in 1949,

but there wasn't really much to it then, okay? And it still hadn't even been decided if, you know, Germany was going to be allowed to, permitted to, you know, rearm at all in any capacity. And then what kind of became the prevailing sensibility, you know, people make the point a lot that the you know the the the uh the uh um west german army uh had uh such boring uniforms that was by design because um the original a concept inflated was to be a european defense unity

um wherein uh there'd be a common command structure you know no one state you know would have uh would would be dominant and um you know an executive officer roles or in command authorities and uh the you know the the uniform for the post the multinational force it was supposed to be devoid of anything that could be affiliated with you know national sovinism or or something that could be like identified with any particular uh country or or cultural uh tendency so you're left with uh um so the uh the bundes fair like then is now it like these guys like bus drivers or something you know as opposed to like the East German Army even which like dope you know he always died like so but it's um you know it's uh it's uh it um I think

the key take I also like I said was that the uh I'll get into uh later on um in this series to the uh like ultimately in in the final phase of the Cold War, the key strategic battle, innovative strategic battle space was the Pacific. You know, and that's one of the things that underlay the Department of the Navy under Jim Webb, you know, and Reagan's idea for a citizenship Navy. You know, the idea was, you know, to deploy battle platforms,

like survival battle platforms to wage what amounted to a two-front nuclear war. If we can think of nuclear war as having front at all. But that's that's yeah, I mean the fact that

people like people like Kenan who talk about the inherent danger of the Far East and they kind of and you know getting a flutty of possible conflict I mean they were proven

right. I mean during the Cold War like Asia was pretty much always at war and I mean America fought two major wars there and probably half a dozen others that, you know, were kind of something short of, you know, open conflict, but, but very much not conditions at peace. And I mean, there was that that wasn't anything in Europe. I mean, yeah, I realize again, as I stated, that there was really only one conflict diet impossible in Europe. And it was a catastrophic one. But that had the Korean War not happened or had it resolved.

some other way, the entire course of Subson limits would have been different. And it, and had MacArthur got his way, some kind of, it's not going to open it at war with, and the problem is, I mean, I stipulate that what was referred, like we thought, what was referred to the tautology of, well, you know, we've got to defend Korea because our forces are there and we're going to fight to defend our forces. I mean, that's nonsense, but if the alternative is, you know, We've got to push for a total victory in Korea, but doing that means fighting China. And fighting China means, you know, landing the China-Gar-Sheikhs nationalists there and, and waging war to the end until, you know, until the communist regime falls.

Well, if you do that, then you're at war with the Soviet Union. You know, and then when, I mean, there's this, this, it's not, the Cold War was, it was important not to, not just important, but I mean, and it was a question, it was an existential, it was an existential, reality that conflict paradigms couldn't just be considered in binary terms and I mean that

even up through the 80s there was something too I'm not talking about like the fools like um who caused you know the kind of peace movement just calling for like

unilateral disarmine I mean but some of the people you know who really kind of like opposed the the Reagan um uh

and team b notion um it's the you know there the cold war's not something you can just turn off and it was there's a question of you know pursuing a court like a conciliatory posture and aggressive posture you know especially by the era of deep parodies um the every every policy decision um had had very serious consequences that themselves and other consequences not all of which could be foreseen you know it was an incredibly dangerous time but um excuse me i'm just i'm getting over a flare-up so i realize that sound crummy i'm sorry but uh um i'm gonna wrap uh i think that i think i'm gonna wrap up this uh this episode and like i said i realized it was a bit dry it's kind of it's essential to lay foundation um for some of the you know for some of the summit events we're gonna talk about and we're gonna get into the Cuban missile crisis in vietnam in the next episode and i think that everybody finds that sort of stuff exciting i mean i least i do but you had also mentioned talking about

McCarthy yeah yeah we'll take that up next episode too because yeah obviously we're getting to yeah we'll get into Eisenhower into Kennedy era

into Kennedy era and yeah about McCarthy yeah all right sounds great give your plugs and we'll get out of here

yeah for sure thank you Pete you can find me on substack real Thomas 7777 substack.com that's where you can access

the podcast. We drive a podcast every other week on the same kind of stuff revisionism and mostly political theory kind of topics but you know I take up current events too particularly war and peace kind of stuff when it's timely to do so

you can find me on Twitter at Triscallian Jihad the T is in number seven but if you search for Thomas 777, you should find me. That's mostly where I'm active these days. I'm going to transition to YouTube and, you know, perhaps one or two other video platforms on the 1st of January

and make that kind of the primary place where I post up content. But for now, that's where I can be found. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Cignon-as show, continuing talking about the Cold War, I know a lot of people are going to be really interested in this one. Thomas 777. How you doing, Thomas? I'm very well. Thanks. Yeah, I hope so. And I wanted to get some housekeeping stuff because I haven't addressed people directly for a minute. I mean, not like I've got this huge audience or something, but I do have some paid subscribers who are dope because they make what I do possible. Not much has gotten done the last couple of weeks

because I was sick and stuff, and I think some of you noticed. But obviously, I'm getting back to dropping fresh stuff now. I mean, literally right now, what we're doing here. But I'm going to drop a fresh pod this week and kind of get back on top of stuff. So thank you for being patient. I don't like to leave people.

I mean, I realize everybody's cool about such things. But, I mean, people do pay to, like, read my stuff. So I don't really like to leave them hanging like that. But, yeah, today I wanted to get into the Cuban Missile Crisis today because it's something it's key not just understanding how the later cold war developed um i think of the later cold war is brezhnev onward okay and brezinev became general secretary in uh in 1964 okay but uh the early cold war you can think of as uh you know schalin's tenure um through Mr. Cruistiff's regime.

And not just temporally, can we think of that as the early Cold War, but that was before parity set in, you know, strategic parody. And people bandy a lot about nuclear weapons today, which is another example, in my opinion, of how kind of disengaged the public policy discourses from the realities of things. Nuclear weapons are of practical purposes, is obsolete.

Not because the technology is obsolete per se, but because they don't really have utility in a tad or strategic sense, outside of a very peculiar paradigm. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on where you fall on the issue, that paradigm emerged splendidly in the 20th century. And what's become sort of dog,

in terms of in terms of strategic analysis and game theory derived from the precedent to the Cuban Missile Crisis, more than any other singular event. This was somewhat compromised reliance on the model that I just, you know, from relying upon the data derived from the Cuban Missile Crisis and the models created therein in terms of strategic forecasting and nuclear war planning. and deterrence and things like that. Some of that was itself rendered obsolescent by the emergence of deeper priorities after 11973-74, but the basic terms remain and the basic, the basic conceptual model indoors. And I'm going to get into why it is in a minute. But first, we got to understand the Cuban crisis, you got to understand the character of Mr. Khrushchev.

crucift became for all practical purposes, you know, chief executive of the Soviet Union in 1958. You know, I mean, there was always kind of a strange, not always, but in most cases, there was an unusual sort of consolidation of offices that constituted the executive seat of power in the Soviet Union. Sometimes that was a trifecta of source.

Sometimes it came down to the rule of one man. But it superseded in a single office. Okay. And after the death of Stalin in 1953, there was a lot of, there's a lot of palace intrigues, as it were, okay, as one I could probably imagine. Between Stalin loyalists, you know, between and reformers, as well as, you know, between men who represented some of these common to the same faction, but, you know, who had personal designs on power. And cruise ship was emerging triumphant for a variety of areas. reasons, not the least of which, ironically, in the view of the West at the time, I believe, and even in hindsight, and even among some revisionists, you know, Crucciv really was something of

a reformer. You know, he was kind of a proto-gorbachev in a lot of ways. People who cited this because his posture was so aggressive in foreign policy as regards efforts to rectify the strategic imbalance. And we'll get into what I mean by that in a moment. But Crucciv, He wanted to normalize the Soviet Union. Okay. Now, this presented a problem were a few of our reasons. On the one hand, it was imperative for him to normalize and thought relations with the West, because otherwise nothing was going to get done. Okay, there was going to be some kind of interdependence between the East Block and the West,

okay, regardless of what anybody's power political ambitions were. Okay, that was just the reality of nascent globalism. And make no mistake, globalism began. in the ashes of the second war, okay? In fact, it wasn't realized until, you know, the night of November 9th, 1989, and subsequent is incidental. This was the enterprise common to both Moscow and Washington and would form that the system would ultimately take

once consolidated was really what underlay the political side of the Cold War. So, Cruz had to present a face of normalcy of the outside world in some basic sense. However, as we talked about, particularly in the last episode, when we got into, you know, the battleground of the third world, and the need quite literally to, you know, to sway the non-aligned world into one's own camp as a path to victory in the Cold War. the only way to really animate these post-colonial states and these developing countries to take up the cause of Marxist Leninism

was a cell limit of basically radical program okay that's what was resonant with the people on the ground that's what the cadres had been marinated in that kind of thought you know during World War II and after frankly that's what Orthodox marquisite leninism is you know it calls for the it calls for the development of a truly revolutionary sensibility where uh you know power flows from the barrel of a gun quite literally okay um in tactical terms somebody like mao was was far more an orthodox marquis's leninist than

you know the the the eastern black cadres that uh that succeeded stalin okay so i'm notwithstanding the fact i don't believe ma with any great understanding of marxism i don't think you understood it at all particularly. But on the tactical side of political revolutionary, somebody like Mao, or probably more precisely Ho Chi Men, was exactly what Lenin envisioned when he when he when he when he when he when he when he contemplated you know world world socialist revolution. Okay. So there was this weird dichotomy wherein the Soviets had to present a reformist based to their chief adversaries in the West. But you know, they had to maintain a kind of

of a veneer of orthodox radicalism you know to their constituents if we can think of them that or their cadres you know in the third world and um this was a very delicate minuet and uh it frankly led the foundation of the sign of soviet split um which we'll get into in coming episodes but that's about outside the scope for now but um when cruci did uh take the helm of the soviet union the so union had some pretty substantial momentum technologically they were arguably winning the space race. You know, Sputnik was the first, uh, was the first manmade object in orbit. The first manmade object in space was a V2 rocket. So you're going to thank the German Reich for that. But, you know, Sputnik was a, this was a big deal. Okay. Like a lot of

people, uh, people in the, in the nascent Pentagon at the time said, well, this is just a stunt. You know, it doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't prove anything. It didn't matter if it proved anything or not. It didn't matter if there was a direct military application, you know, the parking a satellite in orbital space for a few minutes. The point is that they were the first to accomplish it. And this developed the kind of momentum all its own in terms of perception. Okay. But the Soviets had a real political problem that became a national security problem

that was ongoing, even despite those victories in this era. We talked about the Berlin airlift last episode. and you know how that really kind of was the key initiatory or instigating event of the Cold War I think if we can identify any singular occurrence between 945 and 1950 over 1.5 million people emigrated from the Soviet occupied zone to West Germany and most of these people were young they were prime working age a disproportionate amount of engineers men with military experience people educated in the sciences, women of childbearing age. I mean, this is a real problem, okay? A subtext to the issue of immigration across the inter-German border, a level was never explicitly stated by their camp, was one of the reason Germany's coveted,

it's not just because of geostrategic accident and kind of where Germany is located on the map, okay? had to do it had to do with the human material okay you can control the german population um that literally the human resources they're in um that that you wield tremendous power in terms of your ability to mobilize um for warfare i mean that that's just a fact okay i mean if people want to say that's not true or that that's eugenics thinking okay fine you can label it whatever you want it's a fact and everybody accepted it okay there's a there's a reason why um there's a reason why the dDR was was the you won the crown of Warsaw hat, okay?

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

and this had already been accomplished in terms of low-yield tactical nuclear forces it hadn't escalated beyond that in part because the strategic balance was still unstable and we'll get into what I mean by that in a moment. But the Soviets were very, very aware of this. So the problem was twofold. You know, the problem was the fact that they were literally hemorrhaging people by the sieve that was Berlin. Because the inter-German border had been shut since 1953, but Berlin being 100,000,000,

110 miles within east of Germany represented a kind of, it represented a kind of metaphorical valve, as it were, wherein people could pass rather freely between, you know, the eastern occupation zone in the West. And once in West Berlin, the West Berlin authorities under the dominion of the United States, the UK, in France, they considered all German citizens. It would just be citizens at Germany. They did not recognize East Germany as a sovereign state. So if people with East German passports made it to West Berlin,

like they were good to go. They, you know, they'd be granted full rights of the many of Bales in the Bundes Republic. So there's the practical problem of the Soviets losing the human material they needed to wager the cold war quite literally. There's the political problem of credibility. you know, in that, you know, if you claim to represent the real Germany and the will of the working class and the government situated in East Berlin, yet you're hemorrhaging people, it's a terrible look, frankly. And the entire communist enterprise, again, relied upon the perception, especially in the third world, you know, to represent a competitive system that was an.

equitable alternative to that in the West. And finally, as I just indicated, the permanent division and mobilization of Germany essentially allowed America and the NASA-Natal alliance to potentially maintain a permanent splendid first-strike capability. you know if they chose to deploy strategic nuclear forces. At that time there were not hypersonic cruise platforms available, so we'll get into that later, obviously. But the solution

of this was somewhat fascinating. There was a terrible human cost, so I'm not being flippant, but on August 13th, 1961 at midnight, the East German border

police the National Volks Army and elements of the group of Soviet forces in Germany. It begins construction on the Berlin Wall. And it wasn't clear at first what they were doing.

Ubrich had actually suggested this based on analysis from National Volks Army Engineers. The Soviets did not think it was possible. And the Pentagon, interestingly, the Army Corps of Engineers, said it's probably impossible.

But to emphasize the point I just made about the mentioned material, if you will, of Germany, well, the Germans found a way to quite literally wall in West Berlin, which, again, I'm not making light of a terrible situation, but the Berlin Wall remains an architectural marvel that really, I don't think, I don't think anybody could pull off other than the Germans. And I think we can stand by that statement and confidence. So that had the effect of lessening tensions.

You know, there wouldn't be another Berlin airlift type situation. You know, absent a state of general war, it was unthinkable that Berlin would be blockaded again. However, that didn't obviously accomplish anything in terms of remedying, you know, the problem of, of basing availability in West Berlin. And, I mean, the obviously what's key to keep in mind is that, okay, I mean, the. Soviets could base their own nuclear forces in the DDR and they could threaten Europe with the threat of a catastrophic nuclear assault. But that wouldn't matter. Like what it came down to was the ability to deter a threat in the United States. And obviously, the Soviets had no capability to do that, which is why Cuba became so coveted. Now, before we get into the actual

development of the crisis. Let's get into what prevailing conceptual models were for strategic planning in the nuclear age, okay? The two primary models were presented by Hans Morgenthau, who I think

I referenced in the last episode. Morgan Thao is a traditional realist. Mearsheimer is a neorealist. You know, as I indicated, he deals with and dealt primarily in structures and institutional features and how they affect outcomes as regards as regards deterrence and war fighting.

You know, Morgenthau, he basically presented an anthropological model, buttressed by what he called rational discipline and action. Like, what didn't he mean by that? He was saying, what he was basically saying is that, you know, the bounded rationality to states at war or political actors generally. they don't even have to be states. States obviously are the primary actors in power political affairs,

at least from 1648 to the present. That's changing, but it's still indoors. Regardless of how pre-rational or even arguably irrational the origins of war are, like when it's underway, you know, war is guided by this bounded rationality, okay, the waging of it. It begs the question is to how,

how, you know, as the how, as the way this has been demonstrated in the historical record, like an Aguilada Morgan that I would say, well, over time, you know, there's, there's a remarkable continuity. Okay. If you're talking about great powers at war, whether you're talking about the British, the United States, you know, Russian foreign policy, you know, even less of regional powers like the Osphungarian Empire, you know, in the Westphalian era at least over time, this bears out, okay? the competing model, I mean, maybe not so much competing in absolute terms, but the kind of game theory model that relies more on codable variables, if you will, based upon the availability of warfighting technologies was presented by Thomas Schelling. Shelling was primarily an economist, but he was a game theorist and he was a public intellectual of the sort that really really thrived during the Cold War. And it doesn't really exist anymore, at least not in public life. Schelling's old point was that deterrence is accomplished, you know, not by the propensities of the individual men who are the human decision makers, you know, nor by the relative balance of forces on each side. but the stability they're in,

and the stability they're in comes down to available technologies. And in the nuclear age, that it comes down to the ability of each side to basically threaten the other, with a retaliatory strike when attacked, that, you know, makes a bolt from the blue assault cost prohibitive. You know, unacceptable damage will be endured, in other words. showing seminal text was the strategy of conflict

throughout the Cold War this kind of a informed policy and some either more either directly or obliquely and literally until 19 until the night of November 9,

1989. Shelling's a controversial figure about his influence cannot be denied now based on both based on either of those models or both of them

considered together 1962 really 1960 to 1963 was so dangerous because there an equilibrium had not yet set in there's a lack of

there's a lack of informational awareness on both sides as the absolute state of forces in being and capabilities um even uh even if uh even if that awareness had been um

Even if those blinders could be, as it were, it could be overcome. I mean, even if there was a situation, a total information awareness, there's the availability of delivery mechanisms and whether, you know, their operational status would have caused a situation where it could have served either side's interest to strike first without waiting for, you know, an intelligence reveal, you know, as the absolute status of forces on the opposing side. One can you think of two men blindfolded, and neither is aware of the arm into the other,

and whether trying to draw a bead, you know, to threaten the other to deter future hostile acts, but neither is capable of seeing, you know, his opponent, you know. And that's really what, in part, created, you know, the danger. the Cuba situation. Now, how it first came about, like, why Cuba, again, and more to do with the accident in geography. As early July, 1962, Raul Castro, who was Fidel's brother and was, in some ways, the shadow foreign policy executive of Cuba throughout the Cold War.

Summer 1922, he visited Moscow, and it's believed that this is when the Soviet Union began, large-scale shipments of technical and... military aid to Cuba, including men who were qualified to operate, you know, to operate, you know, strategic nuclear platforms. August 1962 is probably when, it's probably when the actual missile platforms arrived in Cuba. They were not yet operational, but this is when, you know, This is when the disassembled components first arrived on the island. September, interestingly, the Kennedy administration declared that if QA became a base for Soviet nuclear weapons, it would be viewed as an act of war. So this was on everybody's mind before the crisis ensued and before the crisis ensued and before the

reveal of the actual basing of weapons on the island. This gives you an idea of the dangerous game Cruciff was playing, frankly, okay? Now, it was Sunday October 14th. That's when the famous or infamous YouTube reconnaissance flight took the photographs that ultimately led to the reveal.

It was a subsequent Monday, the 15th, that conclusively at the National Photographing Interpretation Center the YouTube film was analyzed and medium-range ballistic missiles were identified

near San Cristobo, without a doubt. Now, thus ensued the most dangerous phase of the crisis. Tuesday, October the 16th, Kennedy and his principal foreign policy cabinet were briefly on the situation and discussions began immediately on how to respond now obviously there's two

principal courses i mean there's three i'll get into that in a minute but in terms of action the two principal courses were you know a massive a massive air assault um possibly including nuclear forces and a subsequent invasion of the island um you know the uh the destruction of the the weapons platforms, the overthrow of, you know, the defeat and utter annihilation of the Cuban army, the overthrow of the Castro regime and the occupation of Havana, which undoubtedly would, you know, lead to the deaths of, you know, 100,000 of people, including, you know, any Soviet soldiers on the ground, or alternatively, sort of a naval quarantine blockade and the threat of future military action. Now, interestingly, McNamara was the man who had the third position.

if you want to look at it that way. McNamara said, don't do anything. This doesn't matter. Why doesn't it matter? Because, you know, these intermediate range platforms are going to be obsolete in six months. And, which was true.

You know, and America was about to replace their own Jupiter missiles with the Polaris system, you know, which was a submarine-launched ballistic missile platform. And even with it not the case, McNamara said you know despite despite propaganda

of the contrary and despite cruci of his own statements you know the Soviet Union probably has between 30 and 80 viable warheads okay we get into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union we can annihilate them I mean yeah you know 20 million Americans

may die but that's a war the Soviets can't win do nothing but that wasn't really the issue the issue was a issue is twofold I mean, there's the Monroe Doctrine, obviously, and that always is controlling on questions of power political affairs. Just on principle, you can't allow a rival actor to deploy within the Western Hemisphere.

I mean, if you do so, you're essentially making hash with your own line in the sand, as it were. it doesn't matter that you know the I mean even if even if even if the weapons deployed

are already obsolescent it you know it doesn't matter and secondly you know as a matter of a political will

if America won't if America won't fight 90 miles off its own coast to prevent the deployment of strategic nuclear forces a credibility gap develops as to whether America is going to fight and sacrifice 100,000 men to defend West Berlin. You know, I mean, God love McNam era, but there's, you know, there's a calculus beyond the

merely strategic that matters in these things, and particularly in the Cold War, which was as much political as it was, you know, a military contest and, you know, about, you know, who could accomplish what within, you know, the proverbial balance of terror. on October 17th before a formal policy decision was reaped, Kennedy ordered what we consider to be rapid reaction forces to be moved to bases in the southeastern U.S. Further U-2 flights and the photos derived therein indicate additional sites. and a total of 16 to 32 missiles. So in other words, even taking with McNamara said at face value,

which I believe, which Kennedy did, and which I believe we can, and, you know, upon reflection, obsolescent or not, if those missiles are operational, that's the potential for an utterly devastating countervalue strike

was definitely there. You know what I mean? This was not an loser. threat, however anyone feels about it. And the character of Castro is relevant too. You know, Castro, whatever can be said about him, was a true revolutionary in the purest sense. And he repeatedly stated that, and this was revealed later, in communications between himself and the Soviet foreign ministry and Proustiff's office, it's

that in the United States assaulted Cuba, the Soviet Union should go all in and just treated as an act of war against the communist bloc and launch other missiles within operation. Decades later, at the height of the conflict in Nicaragua,

Castro was convinced that the United States was going to directly intervene, which might trigger a theater-wide conflagration, and he reiterated that the Soviet Union and the wars up pact should consider a, you know, waging preemptive nuclear war against NATO. I mean, he really believed this. You know, this wasn't, you know, it's easy to dismiss that as so much bluster in the case of many men. Like, Cassio absolutely meant that, you know, I mean, I have no doubt about that. So consider that. There's a question as to whether or not,

you know what the soviet response would have been if there was a massive invasion of cuba i mean there's there's it's more than a real possibility that you know they would have they would have responded by launching whatever munitions that were currently operational okay and again even if that you know even if that even if that even if that was a war the soviet union could not win that that would that would that would that would that would that would meant 20 to 30 million dead americans you know um within hours uh thursday october 18th kennedy was visited by the soviet foreign minister grameko who uh asserted that uh sovieti to cuba was purely defensive kennedy had not yet revealed that he knew uh of the existence of the missiles um he reiterated

his public warning uh of uh the previous september you know that uh deployment to cuba strategic nuclear forces would constitute an act of war, basically it was signaling to give Grameko an out, I believe. Okay. And this also raised the question as to why why didn't

why didn't Cruz should have been clear that Kennedy was signaling through a kind of you know, would pass for secret diplomacy in the post-Norberg era? Why didn't why didn't why didn't why didn't

why didn't try and deescalate the situation. I've got my own ideas on that. But what's an arguable is why Prussia deployed these weapons in the first place, when, as we just acknowledged, you know, and as McNamara at the time observed, you know, this actually didn't rectify the strategic balance, imbalance on its own terms, and it had the potential for catastrophic escalations. So why did he do that? I believe that this was supposed to be his Trump card as regards Berlin. I believe that Khrushchev was going to demand on the open floor of the United Nations

that NATO abandoned West Berlin. And when and when Stevenson or whoever, you know, haughtily, would just say, you know, it's laughable. Of course, we're not going to do that. At that moment, Cruciff would reveal, well, you know, we've got operational weapons platforms in Cuba 90 miles off your coast.

You know, if you want them to be removed, you know, you'll seed Berlin to unconditionally our sphere of influence. Which seems like a craziest hell idea, but Crucif was a gambler. You know, for all of his, for all of his tendencies towards reform, and a conciliatory posture in absolute terms.

His, uh, he viewed none of this as being truly possible in power political terms, unless the Soviet Union could negotiate, you know, from a position of, uh, if not absolute, you know, than relative strength. That's what underlay all of this. It was always a political, uh, ploy. more than a strategic move, if that makes any sense. And that's key not just understanding the Soviet Union in its epoch, but I think the kind of Russian national character.

Like, I don't speak Russian. I've never visited there. I'm certainly not an expert on Russian people, their culture, their affairs, but I do know something about power politics. and I think I think that's I think this is key

okay Putin himself is something of an unusual executive even for Russia but generally in structural terms what the Kremlin does reflects this same kind of tendency in common I don't I think that's constant

it doesn't change Oh Go ahead Have you going to say something? No. No. Okay. October 20th,

Kennedy finally decides on the quarantine. Plants are drawn up to blockade the island of Cuba, notify the American people, and prepare for war. If, you know, the Soviet Union ops to sue for war to break the blockade. during this time

Curtis LeMay maintained evociferously objected and I made the point again and again about you know, Lamee being really kind of a towering figure in you know

in in a you know really really throughout the Cold War but especially just to divorce the man's personality and I mean think about Kennedy you would basically he was wading an uphill battle to kind of win the respect to the military establishment.

I mean, he was a veteran and a war hero, but he was even something of a punk rich kid on the beltway by many. And back in those days, I mean, you had a lot more serious people who, you know, kind of carved out niches for themselves and the national security apparatus. You know, what we view is the deep state today. You know, you got Curtis LeMay, you know, demanding, you know, demanding Kennedy given assault order, you know, backed up really by, you know, the entire Pentagon apparatus. And in those days, you know, strategic air command was king, you know, it had very much eclipsed the army in terms of its, you know, cloud and policy, and policy authority, you know, things like this. You know, I mean, whatever, I'm not some great fan of Kennedy at all. I think anybody should kind of instinctively discern who's at all familiar with my content.

But, you know, the guy did, Kennedy did have balls and he did have backbone. Okay, they can't be denied. What really solidified Kennedy's position, though, he consulted with General Walter Sweeney of a tactile air command who you know uh and and you know going back to the second world war you know the fighter mafia and strategic air command like had had this kind of ongoing rivalry i there's military guys who claim well yeah there's you know obviously you know Kennedy tapped sweeney because he wanted to foil a lame i don't think that's true i think it was because Sweeney was the man who uh such that experts existed in those days on you know how to knock

out um on how to knock out uh strategic nuclear platforms um you know Sweeney was it um and Sweeney said that you know that even even with the best possible mission outcome he cannot guarantee 100 percent destruction of the missiles. Okay. So again, you know, this raised the question as to, well, I mean, there's a possibility that's not, you know, and it's greater than a slim possibility that the moment Cuba came under assault if these platforms were in fact operational, the launch order would be given, you know, and who even knew the situation on the ground? I mean, one would hope that the Soviet army technicians responsible for the deployment would have ultimate authority, but I mean, who's to say, you know, that can't be guaranteed.

and in a proverbial fog of war situation, expressly delegated authority doesn't always carry the day anyway. Monday, October 22nd, Kennedy consulted former President Hoover, Truman, and Eisenhower, briefed them on the situation, asked for their support if in fact the country was going to go to war. He received, you know, absolute blessing from all three men.

He formally established, Kennedy did, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, young assisting of McNamara, McGorgetta, Bundy, Curtis LeMay, Bobby Kennedy, who probably should not have been in on the conversations. He was the president's brother, and there's a conflict of interest there, but, you know, he was, for better or worse. but that's you know the the smoke-filled room with all the personalities

mentioned I just mentioned present you know you see this like dramatized on like history channel stuff like that's that's what they're depicting they're depicting the executive committee of the National Security Council okay ultimately um

Kennedy Kennedy wrote directly to Khrushchev which uh seems like a brief with protocol, but the Cold War was strange in this regard. You know, this really, in my opinion, I said the president, too.

You know, there's like people talk later in the Cold War by the Carter era. It was the quote, you know, like bat phone or the red phone in the White House. That was the hotline of the Kremlin and vice versa. You know, this idea of heads of state directly contacting one another across across the enemy divide in a potential crisis like it seems improper in the traditional

kind of laws and customs of war but the Cold War in some ways was a breach of precedent but regardless of that the merit of that or the efficacy of that or the effectiveness of neutralizing potential crises

it was probably the correct move for Kennedy to directly write to Crucia by Telegram. And he did him, he did this prior to addressing the American people by Televitt and which was frankly, like, you know, a sign of respect

and allowing Cruces to save face. You know, and the key phraseology of the telegram was, quote, I have not assumed

that you were any other sane man would in this nuclear age and liberally plunged the world into war. What he was saying again was basically, you know, deployment to Cuba is an act of war and I'm giving you an out here. Okay, when I'm well within my rights as President of the United States simply to, you know, assault the island, neutralize the threat,

and ask questions later. And regardless of whether it's correct for Kennedy directly addressed, crucially the man himself, and not go do diplomatic channels, that was the correct statement, I believe. So again, we've got to give credit recruited as due to Mr. Kennedy, however else anybody feels about him. 7 p.m. that evening, October 22nd, that's when Kennedy speaks on television, revealing the existence of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, announcing the establishment of the quarantine,

and declaring that, you know, until the missiles are removed unconditionally and completely, you know, the quarantine will not be lifted and failure to do so, you know, will constitute an act of war. Secretary of State Dean Rusk formally notified the Soviet ambassador, which, again, that's not a, not just part of good offices. It indicated the severity of Kennedy's statement. That's essentially what you do when, uh, um, incident, you know, proceeding a formal declaration of war, okay. Um, so that's another thing to consider as well also. Like, we talked a lot about, even though I don't really accept the mere summer model about institutions, uh, determining, you know, the course of, uh, power political events and crisis outcomes, there is a momentum to, you know, the apparatus of government, particularly

as regards war and peace. And once kind of the mechanism of war mobilization is in place, it's very, very difficult to put the brakes on it. Okay, the fact that Kennedy was entirely serious about going to war, waging nuclear

war over Cuba, that itself created conditions of escalation. I'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do at all. Quite the contrary, is the right thing to do, but this added to the danger at every step. decisions that are made that lead to real world outcomes in the national security apparatus and a state of readiness and deployment it creates an elevated

great an elevated danger okay there's there's a sociological question there there's a complex question of you know man's relationship to technology I a lot of that stuff is like far beyond my abilities or okay to analyze, but what I just stated is indisputably true. Tuesday, October 23rd, the following day, Assistant Secretary of State Martin, he sought a resolution from the Organization of American States. And the OAS, I mean, these days we think of it as primarily like a trade block and things like that.

during the Cold War, obviously, it had profound dear strategic significance, you know, because if you were going to wage war in Latin America, which was a very real possibility throughout the duration of the Cold War, a quorum of support from friendly regimes they were in was absolutely essential for obvious reasons. the Soviets proceeded to deploy submarines to the Caribbean to the Caribbean Sea which were facing off immediately opposite the the US Navy blockade vessels which again too the indicated in indicated a a Soviet willingness to fight and to keep, you know, to fight at least defensively if Cuba was assaulted, you know, I mean, it became clear immediately that the Soviets were intending to fight for Cuba. Like, to what degree they're going to do that, whether the missiles were operational or not, you know, the Soviet Navy was going to fight. And that added another, that added a, that added a, that added a, that, another um wrinkle as it were because even if uh even if uh even if the ballistic even if the nuclear

capable platforms were not operational a uh conventional war in cuba with the soviet union obviously there was going to be some sort of response in berlin okay i mean and then it's you know you're you're you're you're dealing with a potential conflict diet that will result in the third world war at some you know down um down um down a down a down a range of uh of uh of uh of hostilities um wednesday october 24th cruciv responded to the kennedy uh to the kennedy telegram stating that uh the soviet union does not respond to ultimatums under threat um you know uh uh stating quote if we react we ask these demands it would mean guiding oneself and one's relations with other countries not by reason or by submitting to arbitrariness you are no longer appealing to reason but wish to intimidate us um Thursday October 25th uh was when the crisis could be said to have broke in some ways Soviet freighters that have been bound for

Cuba turned back to Bucharest. The UN Secretary General, the UN Secretary General called for a, a quote, cooling off period, during which the embargo would be temporarily lifted, and only non-military prongs would be permitted to pass through. This is rejected outright by the Kennedy administration on grounds that would leave the missiles in place.

the removal of which was an express condition of any negotiation. Friday, October 26th, with the date of the infamous casual letter, urging cruise shift to initiate a first strike against the United States an event of invasion of Cuba. Whether a cruise if responded or not, or whether Romico responded, whether the ambassador to Cuba had any sort of formal response to the Kremlin, it's not clear.

But again, there's an inference that can be drawn here, I believe. Not only the Cubans not have the authority to launch the missiles. I don't believe they were capable of it. there's an entire protocol to launching a nuclear missile it's not just a question of pushing a button or having the right code you know it like in the movies so the odds of a uh of just a general like counter value assault nuclear assault if cuba had been invaded i think it's somewhat remote um

I don't think I'm reading too much into this statement by Castro. I mean, this was a private communication at Crucciv. Why would Castro be, you know, flexing in that kind of private capacity? Like, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense otherwise. You know, you know what I mean? Like it... Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

But it, um, the, uh, finally and finally, uh, resolution ultimately came when, um, cruciv wrote a long rambling letter a second letter a few drafts of which when the Soviet archives were open were found and leading a lot of people to believe that Cruceau was drunk when he wrote or dictated it which is probably true. It's not just

some kind of punitive revisionist account. Like Cruzeff really was drunk and the execution of his official duties a lot. You know, which owes in part owes to his apparent instability. This was the source of the quote,

demand that America pledged to not invade Cuba. Like what in power politics, what just some open-ended pledge to not invade another country amount? I mean, that doesn't amount to anything. Even as a face saving measure, it doesn't really make any sense.

This is immediately followed up by a second letter from Moscow, which probably came, from Grameko or from somebody in the Politburo standing committee or its equivalent. This second letter demanded actual conditions be met, primarily the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Now, Turkey and Italy were these Jupiter missiles were intermediate range ballistic missiles that have been deployed in, I think, 957. 57-58 around there maybe as late as 59 but I'd have to double check that I'm sure somebody in the comments will rate me over the calls if I'm misstating the date they're deployed in Italy and deployed in Turkey as I said at this at this point there were not strategic nuclear forces based in west Germany but the Soviets made much of this at the UN in their own propaganda and formalization

objections to Department of State. But these Jupiter missiles were on the cost of being obsolete. You know, like we talked about earlier, the Polaris submarine system was due to be launched within months. And it was ultimately fielded in

63, 64. And so, I mean, this is basically meaningless. I mean, okay, as a face saving gesture, maybe it carried some weight, but I, I think the Soviets were

still very much lagging in terms of the technological gap as regards strategic nuclear delivery systems that changed dramatically in the 70s for reasons we'll get into in subsequent episodes but this was

the source of this was the source of the concession if you want to look it like that to remove to remove the missile from Turkey. And that that night,

Robert Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador and they reached a basic understanding that the Soviet Union would withdraw their strategic nuclear platforms from Cuba under United Nations supervision. In addition to an American pledge, you know, this pledge,

to invade Cuba and a secret understanding as it was referred to to, you know, to remove the Jupiter missile from Turkey. And this too, I believe, substantiates what I just said about the Soviets not really realizing that the Jupiter

platform was going to be obsolete because like if it was just a face saving measure, why wouldn't they make it public? Like they thought these platforms were viable and they thought they were getting something. You know, it because the fact that it was the fact that it was not an above-board concession that defeats the entire purpose of any

of any political theater that, you know, might have been utilized by way of it of such a gesture. Now, the problem with, the problem was this in the view of people like LeMay, but also in the minds of people like Shelling and frankly even people,

like Herman Kahn, there was a sense that eventually conflict with the Soviet Union was inevitable. Okay, and owing to the precedent of the 20th century, that seemed reasonable. That wasn't just a warmonger's kind of fantasy, and it wasn't just, you know, something that, you know, cynical careerists in the national security establishment like to say or bandy about it, because it rationalized, you know, the kind of clout they had. I mean, yeah, there was some of that. But if you were, if you were, if you were, if you were a middle-aged man in 1962, um, who, who, whose entire, uh, career had been as a, you know, in public service, um,

directly insinuated in, in the national security establishment, like your entire, your entire professional life have been characterized by, by, by, by negotiating crises of, uh, of, of, of, of, of a basic national security and conditions of general warfare or crises short of, but approaching general warfare. You know, this just seemed to be the reality of the 20th century strategic landscape. So that being said, if eventually, you know, conflict is inevitable, you've got an obligation, you know, to defend the United States at all costs. And if that means preemptively, you know, waging a nuclear war against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, you know, to absolutely defeat them before strategic nuclear parity is accomplished, then that is in fact, you know, not just the moral thing to do, but that is what you're obligated to do incident to, you know, your office and the duties incumbent therein. And that was really kind of the, this underlay a lot of what was going on in, you know, the proverbial war. room, okay, around Kennedy.

It wasn't just, you know, it wasn't, you know, like the way people like Oliver Stone characterize it, like these kind of crazy Cold Warhawk warmongers and, you know, these kinds of men of, like, better nature, you know, saying, no, we're not going to go to war. Like, it's not,

it's entirely the wrong way to conceptualize it. I mean, yeah, again, I don't have any illusions about a lot of these people at all. Like, there were personalities, you know, insinuated in in roles the highest authority in the Cold War who definitely were like that, you know, who definitely did not have the national interest in mind.

Or they thought they did, but, you know, they were clouded by, you know, matters of pride or whatever. I mean, I think a Thomas Power is being one of those types, frankly. This is, but that's what's essential to keep in mind, but even, like I said, even people are somewhat, you know, sympathetic to, you know, politics of the right or you know revisionist perspectives you know they continue to cast people like

they're going to cast people like LeMay as what I just said these kinds of strange love or Jack D. Ripper type characters but it forgiving me if this was kind of dry it was essential to um

kind of explain like how that entire paradigm developed of the Cuba crisis and it's the shadow of it loomed large. I don't just mean, like, in metaphorical terms, but in terms of how policy was conducted as regards deterrence and the strategic balance

in the Cold War. And this really endured until 1983. In 1983 was so dangerous. You know, I mean, that's the Able Archer era. That's the way kind of Cold War historians think of it. but what preceded able Archer and one of the things that you know created the conditions that that led to the war scare was a threatened deployment of the Pershing 2 platform in west Germany you know which really was a game changer and you know the the end of detot really kind

of shattered the assumptions that it underlay you know deterrence from the Cuban missile crisis onward but it's a complicated issue but we'll get into uh we'll get into uh johnson vietnam and nixon next episode um nixon's going to take more than one episode but i will at least like get into uh nixon's first term um next time uh incident toward discussion of uh of johnson and vietnam and right i mean we'll see depending on how long you're willing to go but yeah we'll We'll get into some of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. And again, forgive me if this was a dry episode.

It was essential to kind of lay a foundation for what comes subsequent. No, I think this is a topic of interest for a lot of people. I can't let you go without mention and having you mentioned the Bay of Pigs. Yeah, I think what the Bay of Pigs owes to more than anything. I mean, the traditional kind of discourse on it, you know, it's like, do we blame, like, you know, CIA and Department of State, or do we blame the president of the national security establishment? It's not that simple. There's a lot of, there's a long history.

I was reading about Angola a lot some years back, and, you know, one of the reasons why those poor guys who ended up serving under Callan got massacred. mean by the Cubans and by the Angolan out forces like Holden roberto he basically sold british intelligence and cia bill of goods you know about the reality of like forces and being on the ground and what they were capable of the anti-castro cuban lobby similarly they had their shit together a lot more than somebody like mr roberto but they had a lot more money and they had a lot more flash and they had a lot more kind of clout than they did actual capabilities okay um even in the intelligence community, and I've got nothing nice to say generally about, you know, the CIA of the era.

But I think they had, I think they had good intentions within the down irrationality of what they were trying to accomplish. And I think, yeah, it was naive. Maybe it was naive to think that they could accomplish what they set out to with what amounted to a skeleton crew of a cowboy-type mercenary, and self-styled and self-styled counter-revolutionaries.

But they also, they, they underestimated the strength of, of Castro and the gameness of the Cuban army. And this wasn't entirely clear until later. Like speaking of Angola, you know, the Cubans deployed 50,000 deep to Angola. They fought the South African defense

forces, which was a crack army. You know, and they met him head on. You know, the Cubans, the Cubans were basically constantly deployed throughout the Cold War, you know, like, they really believed in the margans won in its cause. Did, uh, would air cover have made a difference? I mean, I, it wouldn't hurt any, but I mean, I don't, this idea, too, it's like, okay, let's say, you know, let's say, uh, let's say this, uh, let's say this kind of like,

you know, a mercenary army, you know, had, uh, had ground assault aircraft and an air cover all day. You know, Cuba, Cuba wouldn't have just, like, Tommy's Cube wouldn't have just, like, falling apart the minute, like, these guys marched on, on Havana. I mean, the, Cuba still was, I mean, Cuba, they were down for the cause.

I mean, in this day, as much as anybody can be. I mean, it, it, uh, I mean, I read it like that. I don't think it was realistic. It, the only, the only, uh, yeah, I don't, I don't think there's a military solution to the Cuba problem. You know, like they're, I just don't. I mean, that's my take on it, like, at a glance.

And we can do a dedicated episode on it if you want. There's a lot there, but that's just, you know, I, my point is it's like, I mean, even one of the reasons that, you know, and, like, jump to go a little bit outside the scope, but, you know, let's say, let's see the counterfactual develop that, you know, we, I kind of touched on, you know, like, let's say that, you know, let's say America did assault Cuba in 1962, okay, and the, the nukes weren't operational, and the Soviets didn't do anything in Berlin, and it didn't escalate. It was just, you know, the Marines and U.S. Airborne

Corps, or 18th Airborne Corps, and, you know, and the U.S. Air Force pounding the hell out of Cuba, you know, and killing half million people. you know like what would that were you I mean affecting some permanent hostile occupation of Cuba like would have been a blood bath you know like think like think about that like that would that would have been a complete freaking mess you know like I don't

I don't I don't think there was a I don't think there was a political I don't think it was a military solution to it one of the reasons why you know I'm one of the few people even though I'm far from any kind of like Cold War Hawk

in the study of history as I think you know. But I consistently praise I, you know, US efforts in, uh, in,

in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in,

in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, in, warsaw pact,

ingress, because that was absolutely essential. Because that would have, in military terms, America was actively losing the cold war in the final phase okay and if uh if latin america had truly gone red um in these key locations um that would have that that would that would that would have totally changed things but notice what nixon and then later reagan administration didn't do is didn't go in heavy you know they

made it they went with a very small footprint okay and they developed very effective counter-illusionary cadres. You know, I'm saying that the contras weren't like nice guys or something, okay? Like, Dubuisin was not a nice guy. Neither was general finishing. But they were effective guys, and they weren't just guys who were in it to, you know, get paid and advance their own, you know, kind of cloud and status. I mean, but my point is that, you know, the American national security apparatus

treated it as a political problem, not as this, like, military exigency, you know, like we're gonna go to Nicaragua with 50,000 Marines and kill everybody. Like that, no, that that doesn't work. So that's my, but it's complicated and I'm not a military guy. But again, I don't, I don't think what I'm suggesting can be disputed in any kind of absolute sense. But yeah, that's just, that's my take on it at a got a bad glance, or in short, rather. One thing you said early on about the million and a half, basically Soviets pouring into West Germany. Yeah.

Those who hate Germany and want to destroy her have never stopped that attack, have they? Of just pouring foreigners into there to this. No, I don't. And that's what's key is that the... And that was, I mean, that was Yaki's old point about the Cold War, okay? Yachtes' old point was that, look, yeah, East Germany is, is, is a horrible regime. In some ways, it's, you know, in, in some ways it's literally dystopian. But it's not going to be here forever.

And it's not, it's not destroying, you know, the cultural and, and, like, racial foundation of the country. You know, like, you can weather that storm. Like, you can't weather the storm of, you know, the U.S. NATO socially. engineering Germany out of existence. I mean, that's what we're seeing today. You know, and that's what I constantly like, I constantly brush up against people, you know, not just online, but I mean that this happens to me in person

when I'm in, at venues where, you know, the issues being discussed. Like, I think I'm like defending Stalinism or something. Like, I'm not, okay, but that's not the point. You know, like, I don't see how this can be disputed anymore, okay? It's like, you think, you think, um, you know, I mean, it's like how, How can anybody dispute that? You know, I mean, it's just like the state, I mean, that's, that, that's, that's the, you know,

Yaki was a, was a genius because he was, you know, he was writing about this in, you know, in, you know, in, you know, in 1958, 59 or whatever, like even before, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't some guy like me, like, you know, looking at history in the interview mirror, you know, I mean, but look at, I mean, look at, look at the former east block. Okay, yeah, those states have terrible problems today, but, they don't have the problems of some you know some crazy of some crazy Zionists or

you know elite or these or these kinds of Davos types you know declaring that you know they you know they you know we need to import as many you know third world populations as possible because you know this country is you know

too orthodox or too Catholic or you know or too white or too German I mean that that's that's an existential problem that can't be overcome if you got a fucked up government in Romania or Croatia, it's like, well, yeah, okay, government's not part of the world or he's fucked up. There's different than having, you know,

a social engineering regime with endless resources that's trying to annihilate you as a culture and as a people. You know, like one you can handle the other you can't. I mean, but I mean, I guess that's a topic for another episode or series entirely. But yeah, I mean, that's the issue with the Cold War. or nobody's, I mean, maybe there's some people claim that, you know, the, the East Block regimes were good regimes. I mean, I'm sure you can find some Marxist fossil at some college saying that. I'm certainly not saying that, but that's not the point, you know.

You've got to look at these things. There's nuance there. Yeah, there's nuance there when you're. Yeah, yeah, yeah, say the least. Yeah. When you read, when you read Yaki, especially when you read the end. enemy of Europe, you're experiencing nuance. No, exactly.

And it's also, let's too, bear in mind, like the Cold War by design wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, whether it's like, okay, even if you're this arch kind of like anti-communist and everything, it's like, well, okay. You know, the Cold War happened basically because the Concord fell apart between Washington and Moscow. You know, and the idea was, you know, everybody in Washington who, you had any meaningful authority was perfectly okay with, you know, essentially half the planet being, you know, being under the heel of Stalinism. So it's either here or there. You know, like whether somebody like me in the historical record is defending or condemning that system. I mean, you know, like the fix was in, like by America.

Like, it's, these regimes didn't emerge out of nowhere. And we're not for America. The, you know, communism would have, would have, would have been annihilated from this planet in, in 1941. But yeah, yeah, exactly. That's a great way to end it. Give your plugs we get out of here. Yeah, for sure, man.

It, uh, I, you can find the podcast and some of my long forum on the substack. real Thomas 777.7.7.com. And once again, forgive my absence from producing fresh stuff the last couple of weeks. But I'm back in the saddle, I promise. We'll be back to the regular kind of bi-weekly schedule. You can find me on Twitter at Triskelian Jihad. The T is the number seven. It's one word otherwise.

I'm going to launch the YouTube channel January 1st. I know that that's been long in coming. I decided to push it back to January a few weeks back because I want to do it right. And I've got a great production team helping me, which is what I needed because I'm kind of a tech retard. And at long last, Imperium Press and I found a printer for stuff. Steelstorm 2, so that is going to drop in January. And that's what I got. Awesome.

Thank you, Thomas. Till the next time, I can't wait.