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Now listen very carefully. I've had some people ask me

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support me there. And I just want to thank everyone.

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It's because of you that I can put out the

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amount of material that I do. I can do what

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I'm doing with doctor Johnson on two hundred Years Together

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and everything else, the things that Thomas and I are

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doing together on condinal philosophy, it's all because of you.

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And yeah, I mean, I'll never be able to thank

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you enough. So thank you. The pekan Yonashow dot com.

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Everything's there. I want to welcome everyone back to the

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Peking Yona show, Thomas is here and where are going

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to pick up where he left off talking about Camier

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Rouge and poulpot Ta get away.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the reasons why I think this is

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an important area study. It's not just because of the

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obvious factors that it was an incredibly brutal catastrophe and

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a tremendous loss of human life, and that the practice

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of annihilation therapy as ernsonality refer to this phenomenon mass

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homicide at scale, you know, derivative of categorical criteria in

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the course of political practice or ideological warfare. That's keyt

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understanding the twentieth century and the conflict paradigms therein, and

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it's key understanding what the stakes were in existential terms,

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as well as rebutting the dominant myths of the prevailing

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system that was established in the aftermath of the war

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by the International Military Tribunal. But also people have a

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misunderstanding of Marcist Leninism and the peculiar situation that it's

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standard bearers and partisans found themselves in. And this is

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very much laid bare by the situation in Cambodia. I've

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made the point, and I make it in my manuscript

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that Marcus Lenists practice is intrinsically homicidal at masses scale.

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That's not some cheap talking point over some sort of

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moral posture. What I mean is that the place in

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territorial and spatial terms that communism took root and where

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these reelutionary enterprises were successful were places that lacked a

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scaled industrial proletariat, and revolutionary conditions were present because cadres

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were able to sufficiently mobilize to force outcomes and create

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regimes with exclusive access to power according to the revolutionary

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model that they favored, but the historical conditions weren't present

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to facilitate the realization of this mission in a deep

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material and sociological capacities. So there came to be an

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over alliance on the application of naked violent force because

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material shortages hadn't been overcome, Prosperity wasn't taken for granted,

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owing to a highly developed production schema that rendered means

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of exchange and privately held productive means obsolete. These were

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conditions very much of deprivation, and that meant that in

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order to educate the body politic and render it malleable,

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really the only way that could be incentivized is through violence,

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and if the subject population in categorical terms, proved to

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be uneducable, they had to be exterminated. And this is

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what happened again and again, and that's why it's misguided.

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Although this is tangential, not in terms of significance, its

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tangential to this particular discussion. It's misguided when people discuss

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equivalents between the German Reich and the Soviet Union, because

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the causal nexus is interrelated. But the prime move on

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was the Soviet Union, and every political act within that

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conflict paradigm was in response to the Soviet application of

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power according to the conceptual parameters that they had devised

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and that their proxies and clients had devised within their

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own respective territories. And Cambodia was particularly primitive, so that

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meant that there was a reliance on annihilation therapy above

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and beyond even that which was characteristic in the Russian

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situation or called for within the bounded rationality of political

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objectives there and the person of Salasar, who can't even

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known as Paul Pott, his conceptual horizon, his personality and

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his psychological makeup was also an essential component of how

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these things developed. And what I started to get into

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last time was, you know, he held himself out as

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a as a self educated, poor peasant. He was not

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at all. He was the equivalent of a lesser aristocrat,

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and he developed a very deep, understated a Marcis Leninist theory.

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It's misguided when people claim otherwise. Selasar was very, very intelligent,

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and he had a very he was every cosmopolitan person.

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As a young man, he went to France to study

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at the a Cole France. Their their technical program. They

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had a radio, electronics and communications program. He had some

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of his friends ended up studying there. And as we

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discussed Salasar, some of his female relatives were royal concubines

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and some of his male relatives were officers of the

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palace court and things well. Owing to King Monovong's affinity

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for Salassar and the fact of Salasar being friends with

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some of the king's nephews, he had a leg up

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and getting admittance to the cold France. I believe he

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actually arrived there on the day of the successful ascendancy

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of the Chinese Communist Party two absolute power in Pei King,

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which is remarkable for a few different reasons, and Salasar

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he fit in very well in France and among Westerners.

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He became fluent in French, although he always seemed someone

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ill at ease with the French language. I don't know

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how much of that was an affectation on to the

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nationalistic trappings that the Communist party Campuccia outwardly exhibit. Outwardly exhibited,

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which was a substantial aspect of their mandate, was as

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an the nationalist force of of of racial defense, and

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we'll get into that. But he he also he picked

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up an aristocratic girlfriend. Her mother was literally a Cambodian princess.

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Her name, the girl's name was song Son Melly and Uh.

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She and her family lived in genteel poverty because despite

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their noble title and her great beauty, her father was

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a degenerate gambler who squandered the family fortune. But apparently,

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unlike some of these liaisons with palace concubines, as a

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teenager Selasar he took this very seriously and quite clearly

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wanted to marry this woman. So his life in Paris

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was very much that of, you know, a a princely

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type being educated in the West to become you know,

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worldly and to receive a princely education in the Machiavilian sense.

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It was really in nineteen fifty Elo Star got a

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true education in communism. There was an active commun student

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life in Paris, which makes sense obviously considering that, you know, Indo,

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China was an important battle theater, not just because it

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became the forum by what we're for a great power

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procty conflict between you know three, the two superpowers plus

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you know, the the other communist juggernaut of the field

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as well and China. But it's it's a it has

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key maritime significance just on its own terms, and particularly

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as the as naval platforms became developed, you know, acquired

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an outside strategic significance in terms of capabilities. In the

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final a few decades of the Cold War, you know

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that that was a real consideration. Plus there was the

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prestige factor into China is something of the jewel of

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Asia as it was historically viewed, and uh, the Europeans

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were reluctant to sacrifice that prestige in the early Cold

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War and to some degree even in the late Cold War,

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and to some degree even today depending on who we're

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talking about, that's changing and I don't want to spit

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off front of their tangent, but the French effectively having

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no cloud in Africa anymore is remarkable. Whenever it wasn't

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getting old, and so even somebody who spends his time

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studying history and historical phenomena, these sorts of shifts in

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conceptual horizon are remain striking. Nonetheless, it's not just advancing age,

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but nineteen fifty that was a critical year in the

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Cold War, particularly in Asia. But the camer students in France,

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they were very much sort of under the authority of

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a Vietnamese that could dominated the academic culture. And we'll

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get into what the implications that were. Clearly the Indo

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Chinese Communist Party, which technically represented Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam,

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the entirety of Vietnam, which is interesting because later the

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fiction of the Vietnamese Communist Party being a discreete entity

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and to itself that wasn't active in what you know

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south of the seventeenth parallel part of that ode to

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the and you know, a propaganda fiction of presenting the

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NLF as a purely spontaneous phenomenon. But the part of

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it also had to do with this sort of fiction

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that even when the Indo Chinese Communist Party was no

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longer the formal organizational mechanism, the Vietnamese were sensitive to

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sustaining this illusion that there was egal representation as a

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matter of fact as well as charter within the fraternal

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Socialist Parties of South East Asia, and that was not true.

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They were Vietnamese dominated, and that had implications for the

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conflict between the superpowers and ultimately the sound of Soviets

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split as well. But to bring us back in the

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summer nineteen fifty, Salosar had the opportunity, as did all

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freshmen foreign freshmen students who were you know, studying abroad

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at the French, at the Ecole France, say, the opportunity

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to study in another country. There's an entire list where

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they could choose to spend a summer semester. Most of

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these were very costly, the most prestige of which was

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traveling Switzerland. But the Yugoslavian Communists were engaged in a

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we're actively engage in this kind of outreach with the

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in the age of the cadre building, in part because

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you know of the that Tito is animosity towards Moscow,

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but part of it was Yugoslavia never had a particularly

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strong ideological mandate and such that the main three ethnicities

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back the the party state. You know, Tito was a Croatian,

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but the security apparatus was dominated by Serbs. Bosniacts fell

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somewhere in between, but they were afforded a substantial degree

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of cultural liberty and areas where they were the majoritarian population.

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But essentially the real source of the mandate of the

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Yugoslavian Communists was that they were protecting the Bulkans from

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both the Soviets and the Americans. There was sort of

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a deep freeze on power, political activity, and a garrison sensibility.

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But Tito was very aware of the fact that there

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needed to be more depth and relevance to the Yugoslav

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Communist Party, at least superficially speaking, lest it, you know,

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become dust in the proverbial wind. And so they began

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a lot of outreach to try and build cadres, particularly

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with students from Asia, students from Africa, places that where

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the revolutionary conditions on the ground had more to do

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with anti colonialism and nationalist sentiment and heterodox motivations. When

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the Cold War paradigm if you followed him saying, and

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the cultivation of these premier students was no exception. So

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Salasar took a train to Zagreb and he got put

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to work with all these other international students building up

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infrastructure that had been damaged or wiped out during the war,

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you know, literally building roads and stuff and wiring up

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electricity and things into tenements. And this is kind of

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where his political education began in concrete, practical terms. And

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he relayed that the stunning difference. You know, you'd ride

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just for two days on a train from Paris to

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Zagrea when it was it was like night and day.

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And in Eastern Europe the people were very, very impoverished,

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and one wouldn't think that, you know, a partisan culture

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would take root there that was oriented towards revolutionary Marxist Leninism.

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But he said that the fortitude of the people and

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the zealousness with which they were willing to sustain ongoing

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deprivation for the promise of future liberation was He viewed

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it as a you know, as a force multiplier essentially,

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which contained certain discrete potentialities in and of itself. And

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obviously what he had in mind was how this applied

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to the Cambodian situation. And to be clear too, this

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is when the Stalinism had real clout. I mean, the

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East German situation was always complicated. For example, in a

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Hungary there was this so ongoing memory of what a

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monitor the Ross and Kreeg against Bela Kun and his

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cadre versus, you know, the Magyar majority. But elsewhere communism

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had a great deal of momentum, and specifically of an

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orthodox perspective that held out the Moscow model of clittal

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organization and revolutionary exis as being the only revolutionary modality

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you know, and by by the post Vietnam War era,

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you know, I there was still a great deal of momentum,

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but it was basically restricted to the global South, you know,

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which is one reason why Africa and Latin America became

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these key battlespaces. But the world of nineteen fifty was very,

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very very different, you know. And sell of Sar I believe,

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I mean, as to reiterate as I just said a

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minute ago, it's misguided when he's cast as this cynic

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or as some sort of politically illiterate, He's notily those things.

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And you know, I think he understood Mars's Leninism with

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a great deal of intellectual depth and rigorous perception. But

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it's not as he didn't come to this, come of

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the conclusion based on some revolutionary awakening. He wasn't somebody

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like Hi Guavara. He viewed, you know, Cambodia would either

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remain under the boot of the white man, you know,

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I mean, it was clear that the French were going down,

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but you know, they did remain under the boot of

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the Americans, or they'd you know, be able to liberate

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themselves from occidental domination with revolutionary communism as the praxis,

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00:22:36,240 --> 00:22:45,359
you know, Ultimately, democratic Campuccia found itself in the Chinese

238
00:22:45,359 --> 00:22:49,799
camp solidly in substantial measure because there they were totally

239
00:22:49,799 --> 00:22:53,599
incompatible with the Vietnamese for reasons we got into the

240
00:22:53,680 --> 00:22:57,720
last time we convened in this for this discussion. But

241
00:22:57,960 --> 00:23:03,160
also a lot of UH, a lot of these profoundly

242
00:23:03,160 --> 00:23:11,680
primitive societies like Cambodia and UH like UH, some of

243
00:23:11,680 --> 00:23:17,839
these countries in sub sern Africa that gravitated towards the

244
00:23:17,839 --> 00:23:25,240
the Chinese orbit. After the Senta Soviets split the they

245
00:23:25,319 --> 00:23:28,200
viewed UH the Soviet Union as just another is just

246
00:23:28,240 --> 00:23:31,640
another white Western power, you know. They they viewed it

247
00:23:31,680 --> 00:23:36,039
as just a a sort of new Fang literation of

248
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the Russian Empire, the sort of mass of Central Asian

249
00:23:39,720 --> 00:23:43,880
and poor Slavic people with a with with a European

250
00:23:43,960 --> 00:23:48,200
overcast managing it and and lieu of these people being

251
00:23:49,880 --> 00:23:58,119
you know, Varangians or Baltic or Germanic aristocrats. You know,

252
00:23:58,160 --> 00:24:08,119
they were the Belarusian and Ukrainian party functionaries, you know.

253
00:24:09,559 --> 00:24:15,640
And that's something that's kind of underemphasized even in serious

254
00:24:15,680 --> 00:24:24,759
treatments of of the Cold War after nineteen seventy two

255
00:24:24,880 --> 00:24:27,400
or so. I hope to do some more writing on

256
00:24:27,440 --> 00:24:32,640
that in the future in a more dedicate, specifically dedicated capacity.

257
00:24:34,960 --> 00:24:41,279
That's the true, that's that's the true, uh truly significant

258
00:24:41,400 --> 00:24:47,359
racial aspect of the Cold War in the in the

259
00:24:48,960 --> 00:24:53,039
the tent phase and beyond, or rather the post Vietnam

260
00:24:53,839 --> 00:25:03,079
phase and beyond, I believe. But yeah, it was October first,

261
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:12,559
nineteen forty nine, is when Selasar arrived in Paris, Which

262
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:17,839
was the day when Mao stood at the Gate of

263
00:25:17,920 --> 00:25:21,920
Heavenly Peace in Beijing, I guess, which is outside the

264
00:25:22,119 --> 00:25:26,519
early entrance to the Forbidden City. I've seen paintings of it.

265
00:25:26,680 --> 00:25:28,839
I'm sure there's got to be a photograph of it

266
00:25:30,440 --> 00:25:33,279
that these portraits are based off of. But I'm sure

267
00:25:33,279 --> 00:25:38,039
most people have seen it. Who you know, done any

268
00:25:39,319 --> 00:25:46,519
study of the Cold War, even a perfunctory one. And

269
00:25:47,119 --> 00:25:54,400
of course when Selosa arrived in Paris, you know it

270
00:25:54,400 --> 00:25:57,880
would be ADM. Bent fu was still five years away,

271
00:25:57,920 --> 00:26:05,640
but the front already well into the the quagmire that

272
00:26:05,759 --> 00:26:10,759
developed in Vietnam, and they were fighting in Algeria. You know,

273
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:17,119
the war didn't kick off officially until nineteen fifty four,

274
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:19,279
and then you know, the French pulled out. They gall

275
00:26:19,400 --> 00:26:25,200
pulled out in sixty two, but the low intensity conflict

276
00:26:25,319 --> 00:26:27,519
cycle was already underway in earnest. I mean, it was

277
00:26:27,559 --> 00:26:29,480
true that, you know, this was the twilight of the

278
00:26:29,519 --> 00:26:39,759
French Empire, and even more so than in other theaters there.

279
00:26:39,799 --> 00:26:42,079
But part of it was because the French were refusing

280
00:26:42,079 --> 00:26:50,200
to let go, and there wasn't a nuanced model of

281
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:55,519
establishing a proxy political culture that would be willing to

282
00:26:55,559 --> 00:27:01,920
accept you know, French patronage in return or client fealty.

283
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:06,319
The French were gonna fight it out. You know, whether

284
00:27:06,319 --> 00:27:10,640
that was the right player or not is arguable the

285
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:14,279
gall was a perfectest bastard and arguably a race trader.

286
00:27:15,079 --> 00:27:20,519
That's not debatable. But this made it a little more

287
00:27:20,799 --> 00:27:30,599
imperative for these revolutionary cadres in the colored world to

288
00:27:30,640 --> 00:27:40,359
frame the political struggle in naked we anti colonial terms,

289
00:27:40,400 --> 00:27:46,400
and Ho Chi Man had to try a very delicate path.

290
00:27:48,319 --> 00:27:50,960
I mean, he'd always been at pains the obscure, the

291
00:27:51,000 --> 00:27:54,799
reality that again the Indo Chinese Communist Party, which was

292
00:27:54,799 --> 00:27:58,799
really the Southeast Asian representation within the common turn you know,

293
00:27:59,200 --> 00:28:05,200
going way back. You know, he he tried to present

294
00:28:05,240 --> 00:28:09,480
this as an equal partnership between you know, it became

295
00:28:09,519 --> 00:28:16,880
the path at law the Camere and the Vietnamese, and

296
00:28:17,000 --> 00:28:19,640
part and parcel of that was presenting his own struggle

297
00:28:19,680 --> 00:28:24,400
as a nationalist struggle against the colonial oppressor, even though

298
00:28:24,440 --> 00:28:27,400
I don't think he really believed that. But it wasn't

299
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:33,519
just because that's what the conceptual literacy of the body

300
00:28:33,559 --> 00:28:41,799
politic would abide. It was also essential to assuaging what

301
00:28:41,960 --> 00:28:48,720
seemed to be insurmountable obstacles to the diplomatic situation, particularly

302
00:28:49,240 --> 00:28:59,160
visa via the Camere. And uh, they weren't they weren't.

303
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:04,359
They weren't fooling buddy on the Cambodian side, you know,

304
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:08,759
And that was I think we got into briefly at least.

305
00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:13,319
And will you conclude this series, I'll explicate this further

306
00:29:13,319 --> 00:29:18,759
because it's important. The America never really understood this degree

307
00:29:18,799 --> 00:29:22,960
of enmity and distance between the Cameer and the Vietnamese,

308
00:29:23,920 --> 00:29:28,440
and I think Kissinger did. I know he did, and

309
00:29:28,440 --> 00:29:30,680
that's you know, I talked about how one of the

310
00:29:30,720 --> 00:29:34,480
many things that people like to claim is evidence of

311
00:29:35,039 --> 00:29:43,079
Kissinger being this boogeyman, is that he recognized the Communist

312
00:29:43,079 --> 00:29:47,599
Party of Campuccia is a legitimate government to be seated

313
00:29:47,640 --> 00:29:53,359
at the UN in lieu of Asa Hanno's government in exile,

314
00:29:53,799 --> 00:29:57,960
which was the correct play, and that was political reality anyway.

315
00:29:58,000 --> 00:30:04,799
But you know it an interesting dynamic came to pass

316
00:30:04,880 --> 00:30:12,839
two as uh. It became clear that French defeat was imminent.

317
00:30:13,400 --> 00:30:19,319
You know, even well before the imben Fu, the Indo

318
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:23,160
Chinese Communist Party, they outlined this statement of purpose and

319
00:30:23,200 --> 00:30:27,599
their core principles, and it was the Vietnamese delegation that

320
00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:34,319
was essentially responsible for devising all the substantive aspects of it.

321
00:30:34,319 --> 00:30:38,039
It declared openly that Moscow is the leader of the

322
00:30:38,039 --> 00:30:41,440
communist world and and they lead the way of the socials,

323
00:30:41,480 --> 00:30:48,960
community and nations, and that the Indo Chinese Communist Party

324
00:30:49,000 --> 00:30:55,920
is unconditionally subservient to Moscow's position essentially, you know, which

325
00:30:55,960 --> 00:31:00,519
is fascinating. And uh, that doesn't just oh to the

326
00:31:00,559 --> 00:31:04,519
fact that there's profound enmity between the Chinese and the Vietnamese.

327
00:31:05,799 --> 00:31:11,759
But uh, it was very clear that Ho Chi Minh

328
00:31:12,000 --> 00:31:19,359
job their entire cadre, who were very sophisticated politically, they

329
00:31:19,359 --> 00:31:23,480
had no confidence in Mao or in the Chinese regime,

330
00:31:24,599 --> 00:31:30,880
and uh, they had absolute confidence in in the Russians.

331
00:31:32,720 --> 00:31:37,880
You know. It was uh something of a mirror opposite

332
00:31:39,160 --> 00:31:47,359
to the view from the view of the Camee. But uh,

333
00:31:48,359 --> 00:31:52,400
I mean, I I go as far as the Hochi

334
00:31:52,440 --> 00:31:54,720
Menh was one of the was one of the best

335
00:31:55,079 --> 00:32:00,599
men that the Communists had, and and and Jop is

336
00:32:00,680 --> 00:32:06,200
along with Ferdinand Shorter, Jop I think is probably the

337
00:32:06,240 --> 00:32:11,079
most criminally underrated twentieth century commander. But Thomas up there too.

338
00:32:11,200 --> 00:32:16,319
But you know, the the Vietnamese were, I mean, obviously

339
00:32:16,359 --> 00:32:28,319
Vietnam was highly underdeveloped even by the standards of the

340
00:32:28,640 --> 00:32:32,680
mid twentieth century. But the areas that were built up,

341
00:32:33,640 --> 00:32:36,319
like Hanoi and like Saigon, and to a less degree

342
00:32:36,359 --> 00:32:41,640
like way you you did have a cosmopolitan class of

343
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:51,720
people which does develop under you know, conditions of traditional

344
00:32:51,759 --> 00:32:55,559
mercantilist colonialism, because you have to you have to curate that.

345
00:32:56,680 --> 00:33:03,039
You know, you're still seeing the effects of this to

346
00:33:03,079 --> 00:33:08,240
this day. Like in the UK that that goof who

347
00:33:08,440 --> 00:33:14,240
succeeded Liz trust Sunk. I mean he's a I realized

348
00:33:14,279 --> 00:33:18,839
he married into some royal family or something in the

349
00:33:18,880 --> 00:33:23,400
old country, but you know, guys like him, he's the

350
00:33:23,440 --> 00:33:29,519
product of the British raj okay And I mean in

351
00:33:29,519 --> 00:33:31,519
his case that's not that's not a particularly good thing.

352
00:33:35,279 --> 00:33:38,000
But in the case of Ho Chi Minh that it

353
00:33:38,119 --> 00:33:43,759
was an example of the kind of effective political soldier

354
00:33:43,839 --> 00:33:47,519
that that system is capable of producing, which is one

355
00:33:47,519 --> 00:33:50,759
of the reasons why colonialism is a dangerous game and

356
00:33:51,000 --> 00:33:54,440
people don't understand colonialism anymore. It's some sort of stand

357
00:33:54,519 --> 00:33:57,319
in for bad things or things I think are mean,

358
00:33:58,200 --> 00:34:01,799
you know, they it doesn't have a parallel in the

359
00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:07,960
in the twenty first century, but it's it's fascinating because

360
00:34:08,039 --> 00:34:16,199
the by necessity a native element needs to be created

361
00:34:16,239 --> 00:34:21,880
in one zone image yet also guaranteed to remain subservient

362
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:27,239
by way of a by way structural mechanisms that make

363
00:34:27,320 --> 00:34:32,519
it self defeating to revolt. And obviously, one of the

364
00:34:32,519 --> 00:34:36,239
reasons the Cold War was so fairly destabilizing is because

365
00:34:37,800 --> 00:34:44,159
the ascendency of Moscow, the superpower status, removed those structural

366
00:34:44,199 --> 00:34:56,159
incentives to not disturb the extant order. But you know,

367
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:00,920
the sociological aspect of this, this stuff is one of

368
00:35:00,920 --> 00:35:08,280
the few ways the Soviets consistently beat United States NATO.

369
00:35:09,239 --> 00:35:12,400
But I mean that's the intelligence game is the other

370
00:35:12,480 --> 00:35:19,559
area at both both which are derivative of deep sociological

371
00:35:21,199 --> 00:35:25,039
altitude and understanding, which tells us something about the Slavic

372
00:35:25,400 --> 00:35:41,760
character obviously, but that's a discussion for another day. Interestingly, however, China,

373
00:35:42,320 --> 00:35:48,119
China was for a time was North Vietnam's primary patron.

374
00:35:49,599 --> 00:35:54,159
On January eighteenth, nineteen fifty, China became the first they think,

375
00:35:54,239 --> 00:35:59,119
my first government to recognize Ho Chiman's regime in North Vietnam.

376
00:36:00,480 --> 00:36:06,679
Moscow followed suit immediately, you know, as did the Eastern Bloc,

377
00:36:11,480 --> 00:36:26,280
and it was after the French defeats the Chinese, trained, armed,

378
00:36:26,280 --> 00:36:33,039
and equipped at least six divisions of the People's Army

379
00:36:33,079 --> 00:36:37,000
of Vietnam. And like we talked about the other week,

380
00:36:37,280 --> 00:36:41,880
if memory serves, I mean the point that three of

381
00:36:41,960 --> 00:36:49,760
the long term POWs who were freed, you know, in

382
00:36:49,840 --> 00:36:53,960
after the Paris Piece Accords, and it came home during

383
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:57,440
operational homecoming in seventy three. Three of those guys had

384
00:36:57,440 --> 00:37:02,800
been held in China because they'd been shot down, you know,

385
00:37:03,000 --> 00:37:07,480
well north of the seventieth Parallel where Triple A was

386
00:37:07,559 --> 00:37:13,119
manned by the People's Liberation Army, you know, and just

387
00:37:13,159 --> 00:37:16,480
a few years later, you know, half a decade later,

388
00:37:16,800 --> 00:37:19,119
it would have been it would have been unthinkable for

389
00:37:20,599 --> 00:37:25,760
an armed Chinese element to be in North Vietnam without

390
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:38,039
being treated as you know, a hostile and and engaged appropriately.

391
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:43,440
There's a really great book that I highly recommend to

392
00:37:43,480 --> 00:37:46,800
people who've got an interest in the subject matter and

393
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:51,159
the Vietnam War generally. It's by this uh It's called

394
00:37:51,280 --> 00:37:57,280
Report from Hanoi. This guy, Harrison Salisbury is you can

395
00:37:57,280 --> 00:38:00,679
probably tell from his name, he was one of these

396
00:38:00,760 --> 00:38:03,840
old wasp newsman types, you know, kind of like a

397
00:38:06,599 --> 00:38:09,360
he was sort of a like a moderate liberal version

398
00:38:09,360 --> 00:38:12,039
of Lothrop Stoddard, like that same kind of guy, you know.

399
00:38:14,639 --> 00:38:22,119
He he was embedded in Hanoi before Tet and his

400
00:38:22,239 --> 00:38:28,400
book mostly deals with nineteen sixty six into early sixty seven,

401
00:38:28,480 --> 00:38:32,159
I believe, But there was there there was a couple

402
00:38:32,159 --> 00:38:36,960
of constant fears he relayed, of the North Vietnamese, as

403
00:38:37,000 --> 00:38:41,039
well as of Western journalists in the ground and and

404
00:38:41,239 --> 00:38:49,880
Soviet advisors and everybody else. Those were that, uh, the Chinese,

405
00:38:49,880 --> 00:38:53,440
we're gonna we're gonna intervene directly as they had in

406
00:38:53,519 --> 00:39:01,840
Korea when Ewan forces crossed the Yellow Or, and then

407
00:39:03,360 --> 00:39:08,000
there's gonna be a state of general war, which very

408
00:39:08,039 --> 00:39:15,079
probably would escalate to general nuclear war. The other fear

409
00:39:15,199 --> 00:39:19,920
was that because at that time, that was before the

410
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:28,440
moratorium unbombing the North was implemented by executive order, there's

411
00:39:28,480 --> 00:39:32,840
this big fear that some Soviet hanchos were gonna die

412
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,440
in a bombing raid. You know, God forbid, Brethern would

413
00:39:36,440 --> 00:39:38,400
be on the ground in Hanoor or something in US

414
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:45,280
and so would have flobbed it. And you know, the

415
00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:48,760
Soviet General Secretary get is blown up by enough four.

416
00:39:51,159 --> 00:39:54,000
But I raised that not just because it's interesting and

417
00:39:54,199 --> 00:39:59,639
it shows the real stakes that were involved. But really,

418
00:39:59,800 --> 00:40:07,039
in until really, until Nixon took the oath of office,

419
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:13,039
there was grave concern that, you know, the viet the Chinese,

420
00:40:13,039 --> 00:40:20,559
We're gonna force a confrontation on the ground with US

421
00:40:20,559 --> 00:40:27,519
forces thus deployed, you know, and and by nineteen sixty nine,

422
00:40:27,599 --> 00:40:30,760
I mean that really was unthinkable, you know, And that

423
00:40:30,840 --> 00:40:41,320
owes to the real uh para political brilliance a Kissinger

424
00:40:41,400 --> 00:40:47,000
and Richard Nixon. But you know, the Vietnamese were in

425
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:52,400
an odd They were being cultivated by both Moscow and

426
00:40:52,440 --> 00:40:58,280
pig King. You know at this time that uh Ho

427
00:40:58,480 --> 00:41:05,800
Chi Minh was trying to play cap all these discrete

428
00:41:07,000 --> 00:41:13,800
elements both you know, within uh the Southeast Asian theater

429
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:30,360
and without and uh the UHH the fact of I

430
00:41:30,400 --> 00:41:32,719
make a point a lot that Mao was something of

431
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:37,239
an idiot, and he was, but there were some cunning

432
00:41:37,320 --> 00:41:42,480
aspects to what he did, particularly on the military side

433
00:41:42,519 --> 00:41:48,760
of things, I mean, which is how we I realized

434
00:41:48,800 --> 00:41:58,239
that Uh Chang's forces were catastrophically weakened by combat with

435
00:41:58,239 --> 00:42:00,880
the Japanese Imperial Army. But it's not the whole story,

436
00:42:01,719 --> 00:42:11,360
but he it's pretty obvious that uh he uh thought

437
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:14,960
that he that enmity between the Camere and the Vietnamese

438
00:42:15,039 --> 00:42:20,760
was so great, and that uh, the Camie was so

439
00:42:22,000 --> 00:42:26,360
hostile about the Vietnamese and suspicions of the Soviets, that

440
00:42:26,639 --> 00:42:33,639
he could exploit this enmity by arming and equipping Vietnam

441
00:42:33,639 --> 00:42:37,679
to stoke the fears of uh, you know, the racial

442
00:42:37,800 --> 00:42:41,119
enemy in the minds of the Camee, but at the

443
00:42:41,159 --> 00:42:47,320
same time not catastrophically alienating them because there was really

444
00:42:47,360 --> 00:42:49,639
no chance at the Camere being driven into the hands

445
00:42:49,639 --> 00:42:53,920
of the Soviets. That uh, that suggests a real sophistication

446
00:42:55,360 --> 00:43:02,960
that not just the American military and intelligence establishment lacked,

447
00:43:03,000 --> 00:43:09,880
but I mean most well, most of the relevant players

448
00:43:10,559 --> 00:43:17,800
representing the engaged actors lacked, you know, and it was

449
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:26,480
uh as time went on, the situation sort of took

450
00:43:26,559 --> 00:43:38,360
care of itself because as Ho Chiman realized that Vietnam

451
00:43:38,400 --> 00:43:42,280
would stand or fall based on how events we have

452
00:43:42,519 --> 00:43:47,280
resolved in h Laos and Cambodia, he'd given up on Thailand,

453
00:43:47,880 --> 00:43:51,119
and uh, in the view of the Vietnamese, the ties

454
00:43:51,159 --> 00:43:56,079
were just basically, you know, a corrupt mercantile race who

455
00:43:56,519 --> 00:44:01,400
never give up at at least a formal and and

456
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:10,559
cosmetic belief in the monarchy and things. Plus, uh, they

457
00:44:10,599 --> 00:44:20,280
were geographically distant enough that even if America could base

458
00:44:21,519 --> 00:44:24,679
forces there in a perennial capacity, it wouldn't constitute a

459
00:44:26,119 --> 00:44:28,760
catastrophic threat, or at least no greater a threat than

460
00:44:29,559 --> 00:44:36,599
you know, the surface warfare vessels in in the this

461
00:44:36,679 --> 00:44:40,440
so I'm trying to see and what have you. But

462
00:44:48,760 --> 00:44:56,960
the uh, well as as America took on the role

463
00:44:57,679 --> 00:45:07,519
of you know, per the Truman doctrine of holding the

464
00:45:07,559 --> 00:45:10,400
line of the seventeenth parallel to preserve the status quo,

465
00:45:12,119 --> 00:45:17,800
and you know, getting commitments from the Republic of Korea

466
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:24,639
as well as Cito. Superficial as that alliance proved to

467
00:45:24,760 --> 00:45:34,199
be in in terms of its military capabilities and political

468
00:45:34,239 --> 00:45:39,480
will therein it had, it had significance in terms of

469
00:45:40,480 --> 00:45:46,800
what was viewed as a legitimate application of force by

470
00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:51,920
America in a theater that theretofore had not been viewed

471
00:45:51,920 --> 00:45:58,800
as within its precedent of sphere of influence. You know,

472
00:46:01,119 --> 00:46:06,360
this delicate minuet was something that Ho didn't really have

473
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:11,920
to continue because by default you were in the Soviet camp.

474
00:46:13,039 --> 00:46:18,800
If you were resisting the United States, and you didn't

475
00:46:18,840 --> 00:46:34,000
need really declare allegiance to commitments beyond that. And as

476
00:46:34,800 --> 00:46:41,480
Pey King gravitated towards Washington, and as early as sixty eight,

477
00:46:42,159 --> 00:46:45,840
late sixty eight, early sixty nine there have been skirmishes

478
00:46:46,039 --> 00:46:51,920
between the People's Liberation Army and Soviet forces on the frontier.

479
00:46:55,199 --> 00:47:04,760
It was no longer a concern of trying to rationalize

480
00:47:05,119 --> 00:47:15,360
Hanoi's welcoming of Moscow's patronage, you know. And that's a

481
00:47:20,199 --> 00:47:24,400
fascinating aspect to this, which, as we talked about last time,

482
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:27,360
led to what amounted to a proxy war between the

483
00:47:27,400 --> 00:47:33,280
communist juggernauts in the Vietnam, you know, the v which

484
00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:38,079
culminating the Vietnamese assault a democratic Campuccia was the People's

485
00:47:38,159 --> 00:47:44,280
Army of Vietnam occupied until nineteen ninety and an attempt

486
00:47:44,280 --> 00:47:52,000
to mitigate the strategic loss they absorbed in seventy nine

487
00:47:52,320 --> 00:47:58,719
owing to the defeat of the Khmune Rouge. Obviously, China

488
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:07,440
assaulted Via and Vietnam really broke their face, which is remarkable.

489
00:48:08,199 --> 00:48:11,719
You know, the the Vietnamese are a genuine mercial race

490
00:48:11,760 --> 00:48:16,440
in my opinion, and uh, one thing I found really

491
00:48:16,440 --> 00:48:23,480
interesting I mean, the point before, in my opinion, Robert

492
00:48:23,599 --> 00:48:28,760
Gates was the shadow was the shadow president at least

493
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:34,599
done foreign policy and more in peace matters. You know,

494
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:40,199
it was Gates, you know, through you know, uh Obama,

495
00:48:40,280 --> 00:48:45,719
because Obama was, you know, formally the president. You know,

496
00:48:46,800 --> 00:48:56,639
we arm and equipped Vietnam with some pretty serious hardware,

497
00:48:57,440 --> 00:49:01,079
especially cutting edge commanding control stuff. And uh, you know,

498
00:49:01,280 --> 00:49:06,039
the Vietnamese were American helmets. Now you know, they they

499
00:49:06,039 --> 00:49:09,360
ditched those pith helmets that were so iconic like now

500
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:12,039
they now the People's Army of Vietnam looks like the

501
00:49:12,079 --> 00:49:16,039
South Korean Army or something. And I don't even think

502
00:49:16,079 --> 00:49:22,480
they pack AK seventy fours anymore. They don't. They don't

503
00:49:22,559 --> 00:49:26,400
use an ArmaLite platform. But it's some it's it's some

504
00:49:26,480 --> 00:49:32,800
kind of ancient k or pseudo or some sort of

505
00:49:32,840 --> 00:49:35,599
like knockoff European rifle. One of the one of the

506
00:49:35,599 --> 00:49:38,400
gun guys in the comments will know. But you know,

507
00:49:38,440 --> 00:49:43,880
I found that fascinating. But and that's actually that's one

508
00:49:43,920 --> 00:49:46,960
of I can count in the last thirty years. I

509
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:51,800
can count the number of rational things that the US

510
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:54,880
defensive stablishmen has done literally on one hand. That's one

511
00:49:54,920 --> 00:50:06,119
of them. America should be cultivating henoi, you know, and

512
00:50:06,159 --> 00:50:08,920
they're uh. And in Vietnam's are really big country. I

513
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:11,440
think people have this idea. Oh and it's on that

514
00:50:11,480 --> 00:50:16,400
poemic around the war when they read history books, or

515
00:50:16,440 --> 00:50:18,480
because it's remote and people know much about it, they

516
00:50:18,480 --> 00:50:20,400
have this idea of something like little country. It's not.

517
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:24,280
It's huge, you know. And I think I think the

518
00:50:24,360 --> 00:50:27,400
population now is about one hundred million people.

519
00:50:29,559 --> 00:50:31,880
Speaker 1: Oh. By the way, Yo, I looked it up. I

520
00:50:31,920 --> 00:50:35,840
actually kind of knew this. The Vietnam uses the STV.

521
00:50:36,599 --> 00:50:40,000
What all it is. It's it's just an it's an

522
00:50:40,039 --> 00:50:42,519
AK platform seven sixty two by thirty nine.

523
00:50:42,760 --> 00:50:51,320
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, But something really interesting happened to in nineteen fifty.

524
00:50:51,400 --> 00:50:59,000
This was the final sort of formal meeting of the

525
00:50:59,000 --> 00:51:04,840
Indo Chinese Commune Party where all factions were represented, you know,

526
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:10,880
the Vietnamese, the Camie, and the Lotians. It was a

527
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:15,679
ten day meeting near the Cambodian border in a town

528
00:51:15,719 --> 00:51:25,119
called High Ten. The Vietnamese delegation dominated the proceedings. The

529
00:51:25,199 --> 00:51:30,400
keynote speech was by a man named When Fansun, who

530
00:51:30,519 --> 00:51:37,079
was a close comrade of General Jiop and Jeop had

531
00:51:37,119 --> 00:51:38,559
gone as far as the place I'm in charge of

532
00:51:38,599 --> 00:51:44,199
Cambodian affairs and the subject of his speech. He made

533
00:51:44,280 --> 00:51:50,960
four main points, the first being that there wasn't that

534
00:51:51,360 --> 00:51:57,760
a Cambodian proletariat did not exist, so the Kremure Revolution

535
00:51:58,960 --> 00:52:05,760
it had to be base on the peasantry as the

536
00:52:05,800 --> 00:52:13,880
as the partisan element and the overriding priority. The second

537
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:20,599
point had to be to train Cambodian cadres to carry

538
00:52:20,639 --> 00:52:26,920
out political action among the premier masses and educate them

539
00:52:26,960 --> 00:52:38,320
adequately to support the communist party camp with Chia such

540
00:52:38,400 --> 00:52:43,639
that the party can move within the population according to

541
00:52:43,719 --> 00:52:51,199
Maoist doctrines of asymmetrical warfare. He made the point that

542
00:52:51,239 --> 00:52:55,920
the Vietnamese could help and will arm and equip these cadres,

543
00:52:56,559 --> 00:52:59,519
but ethnic camer need to take a lead, otherwise there

544
00:52:59,559 --> 00:53:04,159
will be no legitimacy and is the third point is

545
00:53:04,199 --> 00:53:08,519
really fascinating. He said, the best way to win camer sympathy,

546
00:53:08,920 --> 00:53:12,920
you know, the hearts and minds, was through Buddhist monks,

547
00:53:13,639 --> 00:53:18,719
because Buddhist monks after the king wilded the most authority

548
00:53:19,440 --> 00:53:26,400
and the minds of of camer villagers. So some by

549
00:53:26,440 --> 00:53:33,679
some means or some combination of incentivization and threats and cajoling.

550
00:53:35,639 --> 00:53:38,400
The Buddhist monasteries had to be brought in line with

551
00:53:38,519 --> 00:53:47,559
the revolutionary cause that had mixed success as the situation resolved.

552
00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:59,280
And finally, and this was actually very forward looking, the

553
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:06,880
Vietnamese idea of communism and the Soviet idea of Marxist

554
00:54:06,920 --> 00:54:11,639
Leninis practice for that matter, it had to be dramatically

555
00:54:11,719 --> 00:54:22,679
modified to make it conceptually intelligible to the camere, and

556
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:29,880
it had to be tailored to reflect Cambodian political and

557
00:54:29,960 --> 00:54:36,599
social reality. There's a particular emphasis on not attacking the

558
00:54:36,719 --> 00:54:41,599
king and Sahanok's bizarre relationship with the Khmer Rouge as

559
00:54:41,599 --> 00:54:43,920
well as the Vietnamese as well as the Americans as

560
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:50,599
well as Beijing. As a testament to this, Cambodians wouldn't

561
00:54:50,599 --> 00:54:54,880
follow anybody who who identified the king as an enemy

562
00:54:55,119 --> 00:55:00,199
or as an obstacle to national liberation. What job his

563
00:55:00,320 --> 00:55:09,480
delegation and his and is Uh and the Vietnamese cadre

564
00:55:09,679 --> 00:55:14,840
representatives at this conference said, the coruct sloan needs to

565
00:55:14,880 --> 00:55:18,559
be something on order of we must, we must liberate

566
00:55:18,639 --> 00:55:23,320
our king from the colonial yoke, you know, because the king,

567
00:55:25,119 --> 00:55:29,000
our king has been maimed for all practical purposes by

568
00:55:30,119 --> 00:55:38,440
the occidental oppressor, and that suggests a very very deep

569
00:55:38,480 --> 00:55:47,480
insight into the reality of revolutionary praxis in theater. And

570
00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:50,519
I believe Look, I mean one of the things that

571
00:55:50,559 --> 00:55:59,480
separates me from court historians. It's not just the fact

572
00:55:59,519 --> 00:56:04,519
that they're ideologically compromised and they're not really studying history

573
00:56:04,559 --> 00:56:12,360
either're just presenting political narratives, but this idea that historical

574
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:19,440
occurrences are derived from intentional conspiracies. And I mean that's nonsense.

575
00:56:19,719 --> 00:56:24,280
I mean, that's beyond nonsense. It's preposterous and suggests a

576
00:56:24,360 --> 00:56:33,760
total conceptual literacy. But the way that political warfare is

577
00:56:35,400 --> 00:56:43,000
pursued and developed and implemented as practice absolutely owes to

578
00:56:43,599 --> 00:56:51,239
discrete decision making by command and control elements, and that

579
00:56:53,039 --> 00:57:00,760
malability that was taken for granted, or that need for

580
00:57:00,880 --> 00:57:08,840
unconventional solutions to exigencies presented by the unique situation of Cambodia,

581
00:57:09,159 --> 00:57:15,840
and frankly primitiveness and the lack of educability of the

582
00:57:15,840 --> 00:57:19,159
body politic going to the absence of a proletariat that

583
00:57:20,519 --> 00:57:25,599
was whose lives and conceptual horizon was being molded and

584
00:57:25,639 --> 00:57:33,000
informed by historical forces. I think this was a perfect

585
00:57:33,400 --> 00:57:41,039
storm of factors that made possible homicide and absolutely massive

586
00:57:41,079 --> 00:57:48,280
scale that in percentage terms, obviously not in raw numbers,

587
00:57:48,920 --> 00:57:52,480
but as persiatrician as a percentage of the overall population.

588
00:57:53,440 --> 00:57:57,000
What happened in Cambodia in three short years, I mean

589
00:57:57,039 --> 00:58:05,599
it dwarfed even the sot megaside from nineteen seventeen until

590
00:58:07,480 --> 00:58:13,159
nineteen thirty three, approximately. I realized I talked more about

591
00:58:13,199 --> 00:58:16,800
the Vietnamese and Hochi Minh than I did Paul Pott.

592
00:58:17,440 --> 00:58:22,840
It was a simple foundation I believe in context. I'll

593
00:58:22,920 --> 00:58:25,559
conclude next episode, and I promise we'll get into the

594
00:58:25,599 --> 00:58:29,000
nitty gritty of the killing fields and the Battle of

595
00:58:29,079 --> 00:58:33,519
Ko Tang and these things. The feedback on the first

596
00:58:33,519 --> 00:58:37,360
episode was very positive, at least from what the subs

597
00:58:37,480 --> 00:58:40,599
related to me, and I mean, I'm very honored by that.

598
00:58:40,679 --> 00:58:45,199
But also I want to make sure that people are

599
00:58:44,760 --> 00:58:49,199
are you know, benefiting from this. So I worry sometimes

600
00:58:49,239 --> 00:58:53,199
that I'm not emphasizing the subject matter addequately, because I

601
00:58:53,199 --> 00:58:59,280
get bogged down in foundational aspects. You know, that's kind

602
00:58:59,280 --> 00:59:03,719
of them that that's that's something that I think a

603
00:59:03,800 --> 00:59:07,199
lot of historical writers fall pray too, but yeah, that's uh,

604
00:59:07,840 --> 00:59:08,519
that's only good.

605
00:59:09,760 --> 00:59:12,239
Speaker 1: Well, knowing the subs, I think that if they were

606
00:59:13,159 --> 00:59:16,360
if they were displeased with anything you were presenting, they

607
00:59:16,400 --> 00:59:17,719
would certainly let us know.

608
00:59:17,880 --> 00:59:19,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'd probably call me up and say, m A

609
00:59:19,480 --> 00:59:20,239
fagut or something.

610
00:59:22,280 --> 00:59:28,119
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, Go to Thomas's substack well Thomas seven

611
00:59:28,199 --> 00:59:31,320
seven seven at substack dot com. Go to his website

612
00:59:31,760 --> 00:59:35,079
Thomas Thomas seven seven seven dot com. It's he's a seven.

613
00:59:35,719 --> 00:59:38,119
Check out everything Thomas has got there. You'll be able

614
00:59:38,159 --> 00:59:42,320
to click with them there and yeah, until the next time, Thomas,

615
00:59:42,559 --> 00:59:43,519
thank you very much.

616
00:59:43,639 --> 01:00:17,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you man,