Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pea Show,
Speaker 1: part eleven of the Cold War series.
Speaker 2: How are you doing, Thomas, I'm.
Speaker 3: Doing very well man. Thank you for that you're hosting
Speaker 3: me as always today. I UH an aspect of the
Speaker 3: the later Cold War that that's been kind of neglected
Speaker 3: by a lot of historians. There's one guy in particular.
Speaker 3: His name is Mark Ambinder. It's kind of hard to
Speaker 3: put his politics on the map on some uh and
Speaker 3: some just take some kind of neo connage, something kind
Speaker 3: of like paleoliberal even called like Walter Mondale type liberal.
Speaker 3: He's become something of a presidential historian. He wrote a
Speaker 3: book called The Brink, which was about which is about
Speaker 3: the ABE. It's it's about about half it's about like
Speaker 3: the Able Archer War scare, and the rest is kind
Speaker 3: of about nuclear command and control in the final phase
Speaker 3: of the Cold War, and you know the deeper parodies
Speaker 3: they're in and kind of how this informed policy. And
Speaker 3: it's really fascinating book. But it's about the only guy
Speaker 3: I can think of who's written a dedicated book about
Speaker 3: like the post they taught pre Perastrika Cold War, which
Speaker 3: I don't really understand because that's tremendously important. A lot
Speaker 3: of the technologies we take for granted just in day
Speaker 3: to day life, you know, telecom stuff, it literally like
Speaker 3: came out of that epoch. I mean, this stuff was
Speaker 3: in people's contemplation, you know, in a research and development
Speaker 3: capacity for decades before to it. But the perfection of
Speaker 3: those things, you know, I mean, including the Internet, you know,
Speaker 3: the survivable command and control platform. I mean, this stuff
Speaker 3: all came out of like late Cold War, you know,
Speaker 3: strategic planning, and the degree to which the potentiality of
Speaker 3: and preparation for a general nuclear war kind of shaped
Speaker 3: American life in ways prosaic and profound that really can't
Speaker 3: be overstated. You know, I've people people under about forty five,
Speaker 3: they don't remember that, and even some people are older,
Speaker 3: it didn't like impact them in their daily life in
Speaker 3: concrete terms. So they think I'm overstating it, but I'm not.
Speaker 3: And if you look at the structure of the US government,
Speaker 3: you know, as I'm always coming back to this point,
Speaker 3: it's quite literally like structured to wage the Cold War
Speaker 3: and not much else. And the strategic nuclear dimension of
Speaker 3: that obviously became pre eminent owing to technological and existential realities.
Speaker 3: But you know, what I'm getting at is that this
Speaker 3: is not just some kind of like esoteric, like peculiar
Speaker 3: point of interest these people who you know, right, and
Speaker 3: it's big. It's big not to write about the deep
Speaker 3: State in varying capacities. You know, I guess, I guess
Speaker 3: because uh, William Cristal or whatever like you know, in
Speaker 3: guys of that kind of ilk to right for those
Speaker 3: kinds of publications, because you know, they since they've started
Speaker 3: like banging the term in like the last like five
Speaker 3: ten years now, it's like okay to do so. So
Speaker 3: you know, people write about these things, you know, in
Speaker 3: a very kind of contemporary way. But it's like, okay,
Speaker 3: if you want to understand the Deep State, you've got
Speaker 3: to understand the late Cold War. You know. It's that
Speaker 3: that's that's that's that's why these things exist. I mean
Speaker 3: they some some aspects are are emphasized more than others,
Speaker 3: and you know, in some kind attract budgetary pork more
Speaker 3: than others, you know, in the Postpullar wrapp Buck obviously,
Speaker 3: and like there's been cosmetic changes to a lot of
Speaker 3: these things, but that's just what they are. They're cosmetic changes.
Speaker 3: You know, they they came out of, they came out
Speaker 3: of the uh, the Cold War, and specif they came
Speaker 3: out of the strategic nuclear UH paradigm that uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the regime was was structured to UH wage what's anyway
Speaker 3: post Vietnam. I'm of the belief, uh from you know,
Speaker 3: seventy three to to UH to eighty three approximately, grenade
Speaker 3: Grenado was a was a was a big moral victory
Speaker 3: in addition, you know, being tactically significant in ways that
Speaker 3: I think most people don't really consider. I don't want
Speaker 3: to get into that yet, but the point being, let's
Speaker 3: say seventy three to eighty two, perhaps, I'm of the
Speaker 3: belief America was actively losing the Cold War militarily, Okay,
Speaker 3: politically no, in terms of values if you will, and
Speaker 3: and and and legitimacy, no, But that didn't really matter
Speaker 3: because the bad in the you know, the Cold War
Speaker 3: was the battle of hearts and minds after the after
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, I mean realistically out with the exception
Speaker 3: of Germany, which was owing the unfortunate accident of geography
Speaker 3: and geostrategic reality, you know, they they they had to
Speaker 3: fight a way to deal with the Soviet Union and
Speaker 3: the Communists, but no nobody in Europe. Nobody in Europe
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties was like, you
Speaker 3: know what we want, we want to Marxist Lenini state,
Speaker 3: we want we want to live like people do in
Speaker 3: the East Bloc. Like nobody thought that way, okay, And
Speaker 3: nobody in the developed world that you know, in North
Speaker 3: Asia thought that way. People who did think that way
Speaker 3: were in subsear and Africa, in Latin America, in the
Speaker 3: Middle East, you know, and in the Global South. This
Speaker 3: was still very much an animating principle, okay, and it
Speaker 3: could be foreseen pretty easily. It's like, okay, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter if you know, in in the world in nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty three, you know, it was clear to everybody, and
Speaker 3: you know, kind of in in the free in the
Speaker 3: developed free world, that the Stalinist states just generated a
Speaker 3: lot of misery, created economies of shortage, you know, didn't
Speaker 3: deliver on these promises of of Tulluric utopia and you
Speaker 3: know plenty and really were just kind of uh, you know,
Speaker 3: miserable places to live that didn't matter, like it was
Speaker 3: foreseeable that you know, America could become this kind of
Speaker 3: garrison state literally surrounded by a third world you know,
Speaker 3: including you know, including Mexico and in Latin America that
Speaker 3: basically was solidly in the Soviet Camp, was animated by
Speaker 3: a revolutionary impulse towards Marcus Leninism, and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the United States basically you know what like like like
Speaker 3: meaningful inner dependence as you know, economic or otherwise would
Speaker 3: would would just be cut off, okay, and the only
Speaker 3: meaningful currency would be, you know, the ability to project
Speaker 3: military power. But again, you know, if if if the
Speaker 3: global South and similarly situated developing states were pretty much
Speaker 3: all in the Soviet camp, you know, the ability to
Speaker 3: the ability to project hard power would have been profoundly
Speaker 3: compromised too. So it was foreseeable again, you know, like
Speaker 3: that's that's kind of like what Millis was getting out
Speaker 3: the Red Dawn scenario. Like, yeah, it was silly to
Speaker 3: you know, to to envision you know, Spetsna's parashooting into
Speaker 3: Colorado Springs and shooting up the local high school. But
Speaker 3: the political map that he kind of envisioned like an
Speaker 3: intro where it's like, you know, West Germany becomes this,
Speaker 3: you know West Germany with draws NATO because it's green,
Speaker 3: and so them government you know, decides to like just
Speaker 3: go all into the Soviet Union. NATO falls apart, the
Speaker 3: global South goes all in with Ivan, you know, so
Speaker 3: that you have like America kind of standing alone, you know,
Speaker 3: with a couple of remaining states like the UK and
Speaker 3: Australia that you know, really are kind of you know,
Speaker 3: not meaningful powers in their own right. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's a red world with America as kind
Speaker 3: of this is literally this like Garrison, Okay, I mean
Speaker 3: that was the real risk. By the late Cold War,
Speaker 3: post Vietnam, it wasn't that it didn't matter that you know,
Speaker 3: Marxist Lenini is Marxist Leninism had lost in like you know,
Speaker 3: the the marketplace of ideas or whatever, you know, people
Speaker 3: who still bandy Thomas Paine or whatever and claim that
Speaker 3: you know, through through like the process of reason and
Speaker 3: like meaningful discourse, we all like arrive with the truth.
Speaker 3: Like that doesn't mean anything in the world of power politics,
Speaker 3: and it certainly didn't mean anything amiss, you know what
Speaker 3: a miss you know what, in less delicate times, people
Speaker 3: are fruit. Was the colored revolt, you know, within the
Speaker 3: developing world. You know, I mean this this was very
Speaker 3: this very much could have become reality, and a Soviet
Speaker 3: Union a worse up pact that basically could plunder, you know,
Speaker 3: the the collective capital resources of you know, South Asia,
Speaker 3: SUPs in Africa, Latin America could pretty much like stagger
Speaker 3: on indefinitely. You know, I mean it doesn't matter if
Speaker 3: you know, the the value added in absolute terms to
Speaker 3: their economy is nil. It wouldn't matter if you know,
Speaker 3: they were experiencing you know, like one point two percent
Speaker 3: growth annually. You know, they could they could Certainly, the
Speaker 3: Soviets were certainly going at manufacturing guns, and they could
Speaker 3: and they could have they could poach a enough proverbial
Speaker 3: butter as they needed to if uh, you know, they
Speaker 3: had they had access to the world as they're kind
Speaker 3: of proverbial orchard doesn't work. So I think that's important
Speaker 3: to keep in mind. Okay, this is the world situation, uh,
Speaker 3: after America withdrew from Vietnam. Now Nixon, you know, Nixon
Speaker 3: was the author of the tent. I mean bresnev uh
Speaker 3: obviously had to be receptive to that. But uh, it
Speaker 3: really this, this really was a America was kind of
Speaker 3: determining the course of uh, the conflict paradigm in the
Speaker 3: developing world, because the Truman doctrine was what carried the day,
Speaker 3: and you know, Nixon, the Nixon doctrine superseded the Truman doctrine.
Speaker 3: You know. The next the Nixon doctrine, which was you know,
Speaker 3: announced formally as you know, Saigon as a as A
Speaker 3: as America transferred authority for uh, the defense of the
Speaker 3: Republic of Vietnam. You know, it's a Saigon, you know,
Speaker 3: and Nixon declared that, you know, a no uncertain terms,
Speaker 3: America is not gonna you know, take direct action to
Speaker 3: intervene in states where the internal situation you know, precludes
Speaker 3: those states from you know, resisting communist version from within
Speaker 3: or without you know, on on on their own terms.
Speaker 3: So that gave I think, uh, I mean that was
Speaker 3: just practical number one. I mean, there wasn't there wasn't
Speaker 3: the political will, you know, to wage another Vietnam War
Speaker 3: and subser in Africa or even in Latin America, you know,
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy three. But also, uh, it kind of
Speaker 3: provided an opening to get the Soviets to the table
Speaker 3: without uh, without further compromising American credibility you know, in
Speaker 3: some in some kind of pitiable way. It didn't appear
Speaker 3: to be it. It didn't appear to be uh America
Speaker 3: like folding the flag and quitting the Cold War, or
Speaker 3: even have some hawks like interpreted it that way and
Speaker 3: the Soviets. What's important is the Soviets didn't interpret it
Speaker 3: that way. But the uh, the real uh, the real
Speaker 3: lynchpin of the tent was uh, the Salt Treaty strategic
Speaker 3: arms limitation talks. I'm not gonna bore everybody with, you know,
Speaker 3: the minutia of it. The important details is that it
Speaker 3: limited not just nuclear forces and being and the destructive
Speaker 3: power of existing platforms as regards like you know, how
Speaker 3: many warheads and what kind of throw weight and mega
Speaker 3: tonage could be packed onto those pre existing sets pre
Speaker 3: existing platforms, but it also limited It also limited the
Speaker 3: counter measures you know, deployment as well as purportedly uh
Speaker 3: development of countermeasures. The idea being that you know, emergent
Speaker 3: deeper parodies you know, including things like decoys, you know,
Speaker 3: including things you know like interceptor UH missiles you know,
Speaker 3: and including in including uh including next generation then next
Speaker 3: generation early warning systems. If this kind of tech could
Speaker 3: be frozen, or if not frozen, you know, agreed upon,
Speaker 3: you know, to not be deployed, that this would build
Speaker 3: in some kind of additional stability, which I think is
Speaker 3: incredibly fatuous. But that's a different issue. And then the
Speaker 3: event this was in May nineteen seventy two, UH, by
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy six, UH, a few things that happened to
Speaker 3: undermine this burgining deton regime, which ultimately was was as
Speaker 3: you know, was unceremoniously ended in nineteen seventy nine for
Speaker 3: one reason of material we'll get into in a minute.
Speaker 3: But a couple of a couple of things happened subsequent
Speaker 3: to sult First and foremost, UH, there's the nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: three war. On October sixth, nineteen seventy three, as people know,
Speaker 3: Syrian Egypt preemptively assaulted Israel. The Arab armies, particularly the
Speaker 3: Syrian Army, performed better than anticipated. Frankly, this UH, Israel
Speaker 3: had a real problem on its hands. In tactical terms.
Speaker 3: Israel responded by marrying nuclear war heads to their Jericho
Speaker 3: missile platforms in part to you know, try and terrify
Speaker 3: the Arabs into submission in part as a ployee to
Speaker 3: force a reluctant mixed administration to reprovision and resupply them
Speaker 3: because the Israelis were desperately running short ammunitions and everything
Speaker 3: else they needed. Deploy worked. And then Nixon tapes and
Speaker 3: hear Nixon and Kissinger and Nixon lamenting. You know, Uh,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna repeat the language because they would probably
Speaker 3: upset the YouTube sensors and that sends up on YouTube.
Speaker 3: But you know, Nixon was not happy at the state
Speaker 3: of affairs. The Soviets responded by deploying service warfare frigates
Speaker 3: and amphibious assault craft to the port of Alexandria. And
Speaker 3: this was not publicized at the time, but the White
Speaker 3: House knew those service warfare frigates were carrying nuclear weapons.
Speaker 3: As the IDF surrounded the Egyptian Third Army, uh Brezhnev
Speaker 3: contacted the White House and said that if the Egyptian
Speaker 3: Army were surrounded and destroyed, the Egyptian Third Army were
Speaker 3: surrounded destroyed, and if the Audia have continued to Cairo,
Speaker 3: the Soviets were gonna deploy and intervene directly, you know,
Speaker 3: to save Egypt. Nixon responded UH by ordering death Con
Speaker 3: three alert status, the first time they had been such
Speaker 3: a raised an alert status since UH Cuba in sixty two.
Speaker 3: This was really, this was this was profoundly serious. Alert
Speaker 3: status wasn't what it is like after the Cold War
Speaker 3: in like post nine to eleven. It wasn't this like
Speaker 3: meaningless thing. It had actual It had actual significance and
Speaker 3: it acts it it in material in concrete terms. That
Speaker 3: changed the status of forces. Okay, it indicated real readiness
Speaker 3: to wage war, is what I mean. Okay, at deaf
Speaker 3: Con three. UH. During the Cold War, it meant that
Speaker 3: UH strategic nuclear bomber forces were on alert status such
Speaker 3: that in fifteen minutes they could be scrambled and deployed. UH.
Speaker 3: It meant it meant missilliers in their silos in order
Speaker 3: to strap in to like their command chairs and prepare
Speaker 3: for incoming uh ICDM assault. You know. So I mean
Speaker 3: it was. It was very very serious. The Soviets responded
Speaker 3: in kind the UH. The Soviet defenseman at the time
Speaker 3: was Gretzkoh It was soon to be replaced. He asked
Speaker 3: the Kremlin for seventy thousand troops to be mobilized and
Speaker 3: deployed in proximity to the battle space, which didn't happen. Obviously,
Speaker 3: why that didn't happen is not entirely clear. Did bresn
Speaker 3: have put the brakes on that at deliberately? Did the
Speaker 3: Soviet general staff decide to wait and see, It's not
Speaker 3: clear to me. According to UH, a guy named Andre
Speaker 3: Daniellevich who was a he was a colonel general or
Speaker 3: it's equivalent. I guess that'd be a three star. I
Speaker 3: think in the NAT old tronim like military guys in
Speaker 3: the comments correct me if I'm wrong, and I'm not
Speaker 3: a military fit. His testimony in the nineties that he
Speaker 3: gave to the Wilson Foundation in some of those ngeotypes,
Speaker 3: I think is instructive and I think it's credible. What
Speaker 3: he said was he said that the ninety Sentary three
Speaker 3: crisis exposed real weaknesses in the Soviet commanding control system
Speaker 3: and its ability to respond to crisis in the moment,
Speaker 3: and that the Soviet Union wasn't really capable. Is that
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union couldn't incrementally mobilize in that way. There
Speaker 3: was a binary kind of alert structure, like either you know,
Speaker 3: either you were at war, you were not. And when
Speaker 3: you were at war, either you know, the nuclear trigger
Speaker 3: was cocked and ready or there was no chance of
Speaker 3: that happening. So basically and interestingly, because you know, during
Speaker 3: the Tsarist era, one of the issues that one of
Speaker 3: the issues that uh Hoveg was dealing with in Germany
Speaker 3: and you know, the lead up to the Great War
Speaker 3: is that once like the tsar Is, a mobilization protocol
Speaker 3: was was triggered like very little could stop it, you know,
Speaker 3: and uh to put the brakes on it would mean
Speaker 3: that you know, the the Russian Empire returned to a
Speaker 3: state of uh, you know, of peace time vulnerability. So
Speaker 3: I think that's interesting, Okay, not just for trivial reasons,
Speaker 3: but at any event, the inability, the inflexibility and the
Speaker 3: lack of uh, you know, the lack of a nuanced
Speaker 3: UH alert structure was something that gave the Soviet General
Speaker 3: staff pause. And I mean the Soviet general staff it
Speaker 3: was modeled very much on like, you know, the old
Speaker 3: German general staff, and you know, as was the American
Speaker 3: as wasn't his the American joint She's a staff, So
Speaker 3: I mean these Danielovich was a powerful man and he
Speaker 3: also he was he was kind of the statistics and
Speaker 3: research man on the Soviet general staff. So what he
Speaker 3: did in nineteen seventy six, and this was not accidental
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy six is generally agreed upon some historians and
Speaker 3: some defense intelligence types positive nineteen seventy four or seventy
Speaker 3: five a handful as late in the nineteen seventy seven
Speaker 3: this was when the Soviets truly achieved strategic parody in
Speaker 3: terms of in terms of their nuclear forces and being okay.
Speaker 3: This is when the point at which inarguably the warsaw
Speaker 3: pick could fight a nuclear war against NATO and or
Speaker 3: the United States, you know, jointly or severally on uh on,
Speaker 3: on terms of parody as regards forces and being okay,
Speaker 3: they were always disadvantaged as regarded you know, the strategic
Speaker 3: nuclear forces until then, you know, despite despite you know,
Speaker 3: what the Pentagon claimed, you know, in the run up
Speaker 3: to the ninety sixty election, in spite of what you know,
Speaker 3: subsequent administrations alleged about you know, force levels. This this,
Speaker 3: this was the moment at which the strategic balance became
Speaker 3: you know, one of of true parody. But what Danielovitch
Speaker 3: did was he oversaw the first uh computer analysis scientifically
Speaker 3: structured quantitative simulation of a general nuclear war, okay, coding
Speaker 3: all available inputs, you know. And the Soviet general staff
Speaker 3: was pretty uncorrupted by ideology. You know. This was not
Speaker 3: you know, some kind of cheerleading exercise so that they
Speaker 3: could you know, deliver you know, some kind of hackneyed
Speaker 3: official statement, you know, to the to the General secretary
Speaker 3: and say like, you know, see, comrade, we we we
Speaker 3: can defeat the imperialist It was nothing like that. It
Speaker 3: was very legit. And what Daniellovich's conclusions were was it
Speaker 3: under best conditions and a general nuclear war, the Soviet
Speaker 3: military would be utterly powerless. If the USSR was hit
Speaker 3: with a splendid first strike, they have no ability to
Speaker 3: retaliate effectively. Okay. Even if early warning did perform adequately
Speaker 3: and the Soviets were able to retaliate, at least eighty
Speaker 3: million Soviet citizens would be dead, and god knows how
Speaker 3: many more you know, and more sow packed altes allied
Speaker 3: estates who are also targeted in varying capacities. In the aftermath,
Speaker 3: it'd be virtually impossible for the Soviet military to rebuild
Speaker 3: and reconstitute critical infrastructure, because over three quarters of heavy
Speaker 3: industry would have been just outright annihilated. And finally, Europe
Speaker 3: would would be reduced to a wasteland. Like even if
Speaker 3: you even if you reject the kind of Carl Sagan doomsday,
Speaker 3: you know, hypothesis of nuclear winter and all that kind
Speaker 3: of thing, there's no way Europe could survive a general
Speaker 3: nuclear war, you know, I mean, if you're you're talking
Speaker 3: about literally the death of Europe. And obviously that you know,
Speaker 3: had profound implications from the Soviet Union as well, you know.
Speaker 3: So what uh, what this led to was a couple
Speaker 3: of things. The way to really understand the way to
Speaker 3: really understand why the Soviets invaded Afghanistan owes to what
Speaker 3: I just described in terms of real anxieties about their
Speaker 3: ability to fight a nuclear war and survive, not even win,
Speaker 3: just to survive. Okay, Now, I know nobody likes the
Speaker 3: Russians these days, and I guess most people don't really
Speaker 3: like the Russians anyway. I'm not trying to be like
Speaker 3: Bigott or mean. I mean, it's a fact. Okay, however,
Speaker 3: anyone feels about Russia, whoeverybody felt about the Soviet Union, Russia,
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. In the twentieth century, they lost more
Speaker 3: p led war then all other states combined. Okay, you know,
Speaker 3: in the between ninety forty forty five, like one in
Speaker 3: seven of their population was like died by war attrition, okay,
Speaker 3: or of starvation or in you know, a bombing raider
Speaker 3: in some way proximately caused by hostilities. I mean this
Speaker 3: this this to say this was impactful on their collective psyche,
Speaker 3: I mean doesn't even begin to describe, you know, the
Speaker 3: degree to which this informed policy. But beyond that, by uh,
Speaker 3: by nineteen seventy nine, you know, we're in under conditions
Speaker 3: of strategic true strategic parody. I mean potentially we're we're
Speaker 3: talking about the window of decision making an event of
Speaker 3: a general war of you know minutes, you know, like
Speaker 3: five or ten minutes or in best case scenario, you know,
Speaker 3: fifteen or twenty minutes. And you know, we're dealing with
Speaker 3: weapons systems, and we're dealing with the you know, levels
Speaker 3: of social organizations at scale wherein like human decision makers
Speaker 3: are increasingly being sidelined. You know that that was reality. Okay,
Speaker 3: like this idea that just oh well, if we have
Speaker 3: if we have sensible men, you know at the controls,
Speaker 3: you know, cooler heads will just prevail. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's unthinkable that some general nuclear war would happen. That
Speaker 3: was not the case at all. You can find yourself
Speaker 3: at war before you even realize what's happening. And in the
Speaker 3: case of nuclear war, again, we're talking about being forced
Speaker 3: to render decisions within minutes, you know, Uh, if you
Speaker 3: even realize you've been hit, you know, I mean there's
Speaker 3: that too. It Uh, the possibility of decapitation raises a
Speaker 3: whole new possibility or set of possibilities. You know, if
Speaker 3: the enemy can potentially achieve a splendid decapitation strike, then
Speaker 3: the issue becomes like, well, you know, how do I
Speaker 3: identify imminent indicators of attack before there's even you know,
Speaker 3: before there's even like a mobilization, or before like early
Speaker 3: warning you know, is even is even activated. You know.
Speaker 3: So these are not things that human minds can adequately identify, interpret, contemplate,
Speaker 3: and respond to. So we're talking about incredibly dangerous conditions. Okay,
Speaker 3: now I missed all of this, uh, this whole union
Speaker 3: and to their credit, to the to the credit of
Speaker 3: the General staff, I mean, as I indicated a moment ago,
Speaker 3: they were kind of the best of that system, them
Speaker 3: and probably some of the KGB. I mean, that's where
Speaker 3: I drop off came from. That's where mister Putin you know,
Speaker 3: uh rose to the ranks as well. After after this
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy six UH wargame exercise, the Soviets realized that,
Speaker 3: you know, they had to try and find a way
Speaker 3: to develop a flexible response whereby you know, they had
Speaker 3: the capability to fight and win a nuclear war or
Speaker 3: at least you know, respond to any nuclear assault with
Speaker 3: a devastating counter strike in the form of a survivable deterrent.
Speaker 3: But they realized that they had du they basically the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union by way of a frankly progressive minded general staff.
Speaker 3: They tried to implement their own revolution and military affairs. Okay,
Speaker 3: and this is uh, this is this is significant to
Speaker 3: the final phase of the Cold War. But what remained
Speaker 3: paramount was, uh, you know, was the ability of you know,
Speaker 3: the ability to survive a smudded for a strike or
Speaker 3: to deter it with you know, a survivable a survivable deterrent.
Speaker 3: So another uh, another Soviet military type who offered his testimony.
Speaker 3: You know, in the aftermath of nineteen ninety one was uh,
Speaker 3: a guy named Alexander like Kowski, a major general. Lakowski
Speaker 3: was present pretty much when you know, the the Inner
Speaker 3: polic Bureau, if we can call it that way, convened
Speaker 3: to discuss the invasion of Afghanistan. That's documented. So his
Speaker 3: testimony at least, uh, you know, I see no reason
Speaker 3: to think he's not a credible witness, but it's documented
Speaker 3: that he was present when he stated he was present,
Speaker 3: so you know, he's as much of a from him,
Speaker 3: we get as much of an insider's perspective on the
Speaker 3: decision making process as we're going to get. On December eighth,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy nine, there was a meeting held in Bresnev's
Speaker 3: private office. You know, Bresnev was the General Secretary at
Speaker 3: the time still you know, uh that he would be
Speaker 3: until his death in nineteen eighty two, but he was
Speaker 3: increasingly you know, suffering dementia on a matter of health problems,
Speaker 3: I believe, as I've said before, that and drop of
Speaker 3: Gramco who was the Foreign minister, and Ustinov, who was
Speaker 3: then Secretary of Defense, and he was this big war
Speaker 3: hero like when you think of those guys of Red
Speaker 3: Army generals got like rose and rose and medals, you know,
Speaker 3: and and look like they're you know, they got they
Speaker 3: got like a viscigin looks like it's card out of
Speaker 3: Grantite or something like. Ustanov was that was kind of
Speaker 3: one of those guys. But the issue at hand, uh,
Speaker 3: was the present situation in Afghanistan. And then drop Off
Speaker 3: and Usanov in particular were gravely concerned about it. And
Speaker 3: what like Kowski says is he said that the way
Speaker 3: I drop of and and drop always holding court, it
Speaker 3: wasn't bridgment of and drop Off said that, look the
Speaker 3: efforts undertaken by the US intelligence apparatus, you know, Central Intelligence,
Speaker 3: d I A. You know, elements of the State Department
Speaker 3: that are in fact intelligence, you know oriented. He said that, Uh,
Speaker 3: their big plan is to beef up Herky, you know,
Speaker 3: concede the Turfs, you know, within reason whatever they want
Speaker 3: in Central Asia, you know, so long as the Turks
Speaker 3: are willing to play ball with a NATO war plan.
Speaker 3: And ultimately he said that the goal, the Turkish goal
Speaker 3: is to bring Sunni Moslims on the southern Soviet frontier,
Speaker 3: like into their number or orbit, and the US ambition
Speaker 3: is to encourage that sentiment, you know by what, by
Speaker 3: whatever means possible. Now, the reason for this was, among
Speaker 3: other things, by nineteen seventy nine, Soviet war planners realized
Speaker 3: that if America was going to launch a preemptive assault
Speaker 3: to the Soviet Union, it was going to basically force
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union to fight a two front nuclear war
Speaker 3: if you can think of nuclear wars that in fronts.
Speaker 3: But the point is they're going to assault from the
Speaker 3: Pacific ause what was from the West? Okay, They're gonna
Speaker 3: do that for a few reasons, World War three would
Speaker 3: have been decided by naval weapons platforms and eventually by
Speaker 3: those like an orbital space But by nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 3: Asia would have been key for reasons that I we
Speaker 3: can get into at some point, but it's it's kind
Speaker 3: of too there's kind of too much there to you know,
Speaker 3: de vote with the rest of this episode to that
Speaker 3: and nothing else. But the big Soviet concern also was
Speaker 3: that Soviet Command to control to fight a nuclear war
Speaker 3: was based in Moscow, and it was based in Kazakhstan
Speaker 3: where stars where Star City is, you know, there's space
Speaker 3: Center to this day that's still are Russian space crafter
Speaker 3: launched from. The big concern was that pursing missiles deployed UH,
Speaker 3: you know, in proximity to Kazakhstan, would be targeted at
Speaker 3: Star City. And you know, again like if we I
Speaker 3: mean it's an imperfect descriptor, but if of a two
Speaker 3: front nuclear assault in the Soviet Union, it would be
Speaker 3: blinded and then it would be decapitated and that would
Speaker 3: be the end of it. So why the concern in Afghanistan? Well,
Speaker 3: Amin who was a communist, he was this revolutionary UH
Speaker 3: firebrain in Afghanistan, you know, who'd become uh, who'd become
Speaker 3: the president, and he was a dedicated Marxist Leninist. Oh
Speaker 3: to the kind of peculiarities of uh or are the
Speaker 3: kind of peculiarities of of of the culture there which
Speaker 3: I can't speak to in any kind of you know,
Speaker 3: meaningful capacity, but just generally and this is this is
Speaker 3: what like Kowski he stated, you know, Amen fell back
Speaker 3: a lot on kind of appeal to Islamic pietism and
Speaker 3: couching Marxist Leninists kind of gobbledygook in those terms. The
Speaker 3: Kremlin had a hard time kind of discerning those signals.
Speaker 3: They thought that Amen was likely gonna kind of court
Speaker 3: like an Islamist coalition around like a nominally Marxist Leninis garment,
Speaker 3: and then it was gonna pivot to the West through
Speaker 3: Turkey and become this client regime of the sort that
Speaker 3: America always wanted they ran to kind of become that
Speaker 3: would was gonna welcome, you know, force US to be
Speaker 3: based there, you know, including things like pursing two missile
Speaker 3: platforms and in the end drop of usanov gramco view
Speaker 3: like this was the checkmate scenario in the Cold War.
Speaker 3: And secondarily, a lot of people don't know this, Afghanistan
Speaker 3: actually has fairly stantial uranium deposits. Pakistan was literally at
Speaker 3: war at the time intermittently with the Soviet ally India,
Speaker 3: who was their head against China, which uh in turn,
Speaker 3: you know, uh, mister Kissinger and some of his successors
Speaker 3: and the Chinese accorded Pakistan and started giving them everything
Speaker 3: they needed to wage war with India. You know. Uh.
Speaker 3: So what I'm getting at is that this was this
Speaker 3: was not and drop off being crazy or this was
Speaker 3: not just Soviet paranoia, like this actually was very forward thinking,
Speaker 3: strategic logic, and they were one hundred percent wrong about
Speaker 3: I mean, he had no intention of doing that. He
Speaker 3: was what he appeared to be, which was a basically
Speaker 3: doctrinaire Marxist Leninist, you know, accounting thick out of the
Speaker 3: peculiar cultural nuances of of uh of of his country.
Speaker 3: But UH, Unfortunately what was decided was UH. At the
Speaker 3: conclusion of this meeting, like Cosky said, he was kind
Speaker 3: of sitting there the thing that this was just kind
Speaker 3: of like a typical like intelligence briefing, but and drop
Speaker 3: of just kind of like looked at, you know, every
Speaker 3: man in the room and said, well, you know, our
Speaker 3: plan is gonna be this. You know, we we've got
Speaker 3: to remove I mean, you know, by by way of
Speaker 3: special action, I mean, which everybody understand. Meant, you know,
Speaker 3: he's gonna be whacked. He's gonna be replaced with UH,
Speaker 3: with with Carmel Uh, who was the Soviet Union's preferred
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, the KGB said that this is the man,
Speaker 3: and we can why you know, it was just some
Speaker 3: kind of cipher. I don't know anything about the man
Speaker 3: beyond that, but you know he I believe hen til
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty six. So for Bosth of the Soviet war
Speaker 3: in Afghanistan, like he was at the helm and drop offs. Said, uh,
Speaker 3: in order to preserve you know, he anticipated, you know,
Speaker 3: some kind of smooth transition of power. But uh, you know,
Speaker 3: just in case, you know, he he said, we got
Speaker 3: a plan for the continency of civil unrest, and you know,
Speaker 3: deploy at least some contingent of forces to the ground
Speaker 3: on the ground there. And uh, this was put to uh.
Speaker 3: U said, I put this too, O Garkov, who was
Speaker 3: chief of the General staff, and he was outraged. And
Speaker 3: uh Usandov said, well, to be on the safe side,
Speaker 3: don't worry, We're going to deploy seventy five to eighty
Speaker 3: thousand troops in theater. Gharkov said, that's not going to
Speaker 3: be able to stabilize the situation. And this is the
Speaker 3: conventional military problem anyway, and uh, apparently Usanov said, are
Speaker 3: you saying, you know, comrade, are you suggesting that you
Speaker 3: you are to teach the you are to teach the
Speaker 3: poet girl. And reading between the lines, uh Ogarkhov realized
Speaker 3: that if he continued on this path of you know,
Speaker 3: conscientious resistance, he would be disappeared. If not physically, which
Speaker 3: was very possible. You know, he he would have found himself, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, unpersoned and some and some basic capacity the U.
Speaker 3: This tells you too about the divide between again the
Speaker 3: military leadership and uh the true kind of vanguard, which
Speaker 3: was of the Communist Party, I mean, you know, which
Speaker 3: was uh in drop Off by that point, um Gramco
Speaker 3: and uh Ustanov and uh, this was a totally unofficial
Speaker 3: meeting of hand picked officialdom. You know, this didn't go
Speaker 3: to the Supreme Soviet This, this didn't go to some
Speaker 3: you know, officially convened subcommittee of the polit Burro. There
Speaker 3: wasn't even any record of it other than the notes
Speaker 3: of the meeting that I just referenced when it drop
Speaker 3: Off died. Apparently the notes of this meeting were any safe.
Speaker 3: Every Soviet General secretary had had a personal safe, and
Speaker 3: when he died it was opened, which seems strange, almost
Speaker 3: like mafia lake in my opinion. Like I'm not being corny,
Speaker 3: I mean like quite literally when uh like when Bresnav died,
Speaker 3: I think he had like ten thousand dollars in American
Speaker 3: can which at that time was a lot of money.
Speaker 3: He had, he had he had like he he has.
Speaker 3: He had like some chiefs regal or some kind of
Speaker 3: like mid show off like brand of American liquor, and
Speaker 3: uh like a bunch of personal effects and drop Up
Speaker 3: had a whole lot of he had a whole lot
Speaker 3: of fairly sensitive stuff, including apparently the notes from this meeting,
Speaker 3: which was the only documentation that it even occurred, which
Speaker 3: is crazy because the Soviet Union, the Soviet was brazen.
Speaker 3: The Soviet Union in some ways was uh it did
Speaker 3: did didn't respect convention in the international system, you know,
Speaker 3: stuff like the downing of Flight oh seven and other things,
Speaker 3: but they were obsessed with their own like internal protocol,
Speaker 3: like this is something that just like wasn't done. Like
Speaker 3: you can tell, in my opinion that Soviet Union was
Speaker 3: in trouble at this point that they were doing things
Speaker 3: this way. This wasn't just ordinary. I mean, the Soviet
Speaker 3: was secretive and paranoid, but like not that this isn't
Speaker 3: how they did things, you know, and when uh when
Speaker 3: when even within the the inner party, literally you've got
Speaker 3: that kind of like mistrust, so you're resorting to this
Speaker 3: kind of ad hoc uh decision making, you know, with
Speaker 3: uh with kind of like a mafia coterie of official
Speaker 3: dumb you know who are loyal to like the defect
Speaker 3: though decision maker on more in peace questions like that's
Speaker 3: that that's a very very bad situation. I mean just
Speaker 3: in terms of the potential for you know, the potential
Speaker 3: for you know, uh, catastrophic decision making. But also it means,
Speaker 3: it means the proverbial center cannot hold. And I'm actually
Speaker 3: someone who thinks pretty highly even drop off in the
Speaker 3: bounded rationality of you know, rather the like the a
Speaker 3: moral you know discussion within an am world, purely a
Speaker 3: moral discussion of power politics, I think, and drop it
Speaker 3: was probably the best man the system produced other than
Speaker 3: steal and purely uh, you know, power political terms. But this, uh,
Speaker 3: this is how, this is what underlay the decision to
Speaker 3: go to war in Afghanistan. You know, it was not
Speaker 3: you know, to fight Islamic fundamentalism, like Islamic consciousness definitely
Speaker 3: was an aspect. It was a part of the constellation
Speaker 3: of factors, but not not in the way like people
Speaker 3: think about it. It wasn't because like Osama bin Laden was
Speaker 3: radicalizing people or something, or because the CIA created bin
Speaker 3: Laden or whatever kind of stupid stuff people say it
Speaker 3: very very much absolutely had to do with critical judgment
Speaker 3: relating to the you know, uh related to the nuclear paradigm,
Speaker 3: you know, and then and the need of the Soviets
Speaker 3: to protect at all costs key commanding COTRO infrastructure in
Speaker 3: Asia in order to survive of a bull from the
Speaker 3: blue as salt and preserve a survivable deterrent. And I
Speaker 3: think that's fascinating. I mean not just because I you know,
Speaker 3: I don't think it's just because I have a strong
Speaker 3: interest in the topic. I mean, this is a It
Speaker 3: goes to show you how during the Cold War, you know,
Speaker 3: warfare within very within, very secondary theaters, very peripheral theaters
Speaker 3: head you know, profound significance in a way that you
Speaker 3: know before a sense like just wouldn't like it's not
Speaker 3: emergent within you know, ordinary security paradigms.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you about let me get a subject
Speaker 1: in here. It's probably too much right now to talk about.
Speaker 1: Maybe for a subsequent episode, are you going to talk
Speaker 1: anything at all about what the Carter White House had
Speaker 1: to do with possibly you know, there's that famous, uh,
Speaker 1: the famous line of we're gonna give them, We're gonna
Speaker 1: give Russia their Vietnam by pushing them into the Afghanistan conflict.
Speaker 3: That or ride somewhat later, like as Carter was going
Speaker 3: out movie Charlie Wilson's War. I think it's kind of lame,
Speaker 3: and it makes Wilson himself, I look this great. It
Speaker 3: makes him look at this big like playboy and this
Speaker 3: like great guy as well as like this kind of
Speaker 3: strategic genius to realize that, you know, there's a soft vulnerability,
Speaker 3: as it were in Afghanistan. When it became clear of
Speaker 3: the Afghames we're gonna fight and the Caesar of the
Speaker 3: Grand Mosque by extremists in Saudi Arabia, including a lot
Speaker 3: of guys who ended up joining Bin Laden himself, that
Speaker 3: the Iranian Revolution, ironically, because I mean, you know, the
Speaker 3: first two Islamic republic revolutionary Islamic Republic was like a
Speaker 3: Shia republic that very much inspired Salafi uh muja Hadeen types.
Speaker 3: These things kind of coalesced, and you know, guys from
Speaker 3: far and wide started streaming into Afghanistan to fight the communists.
Speaker 3: And I don't think people really saw that coming. When
Speaker 3: that became clear, Uh, it was around like Carter was
Speaker 3: on his way out. Reagan was on his way in,
Speaker 3: and the Reagan doctrine, you know, for the minute Reagan
Speaker 3: took the oath of office, it was clear, uh that
Speaker 3: you know, the team b uh Kodian went out and
Speaker 3: the Reagan doctrine was like, we're gonna fight Ivan pretty
Speaker 3: much wherever he's insinuated, and we're gonna give the people
Speaker 3: under arms. We're fighting the reds anything they needed. What
Speaker 3: Carter did, when I'm gonna get to momentarily, Carter deserves
Speaker 3: a lot of credit. Carter totally changed the command and
Speaker 3: control structure and brought it back within constitutional parameters as
Speaker 3: well as just you know, putting an end of the
Speaker 3: kind of garbage UH that UH had made America vulnerable
Speaker 3: and UH strategic nuclear terms. You know. Carter said that
Speaker 3: like you know this, you know, this centering debate around
Speaker 3: you know, mutually assured destruction, which never was anything more
Speaker 3: than a talking point. Anyway, that's over with. You know,
Speaker 3: we're gonna I'll I'm gonna get into that now, Like
Speaker 3: it was. The issue was this okay by by the
Speaker 3: time Carter took office. Carter realized very quickly a few
Speaker 3: things were a foot. First of all, Strategic Air Command
Speaker 3: had just decided by that point that in the event
Speaker 3: of the general nuclear war, the president and all civilian
Speaker 3: decision makers just going to be dead within minutes. So
Speaker 3: why bother you know, really like advising the president about
Speaker 3: nuclear war decision making anyway, because Strategic Air Command from
Speaker 3: the looking glass a wax aircraft, we're just going to
Speaker 3: like fight the war, you know, from that command post.
Speaker 3: And oh well, it sucks the president's dead, but that's
Speaker 3: just the way it is. Carter said, that's not acceptable. Okay.
Speaker 3: First of all, the President of United States is the
Speaker 3: President of United States. You know, he's the sole national
Speaker 3: representative the people of the American people. Secondly, Article two
Speaker 3: confers upon the president, you know, uh, the power of
Speaker 3: commander in chief. It doesn't confer that upon Strategic Air
Speaker 3: Command or like General Curtis Leamy or General Thomas Powers
Speaker 3: or General whoever. Okay, that's parently and constitutional. Finally, what
Speaker 3: what the hell are we doing just saying like, you know,
Speaker 3: we're just gonna throw our hands at and accept that
Speaker 3: like the government is gonna die immediately an event of war.
Speaker 3: Like that's not that's not how you're prepared to fight
Speaker 3: and win a war. So what Carter did was and
Speaker 3: these measures weren't perfected and implemented until about eighty five
Speaker 3: eighty six. But a list of a designated national command
Speaker 3: authorities what's called national command authorities. There are people from
Speaker 3: the president on down, you know, all the way down
Speaker 3: like forty people total. You know, if like one man
Speaker 3: and they're almost aways men is dead, the next one
Speaker 3: will take up a command and control authority. This is
Speaker 3: a pre cell phone and pre GPS. So all these
Speaker 3: people they were issued ID cards that you know, we're
Speaker 3: we're or where. They were given a cipher that upon
Speaker 3: being contacted you know by sick nor ed an event
Speaker 3: of war, you know, they they'd be able to reply
Speaker 3: to a challenge with like the correct you know, like
Speaker 3: the cipher code or whatever. But the nancial command authorities
Speaker 3: with the people who would direct nuclear war, like an
Speaker 3: event that the president and his cabinet are dead, and
Speaker 3: like on down the line. Okay, designated safe houses. Some
Speaker 3: are on military bases. Some were purpose structures that were
Speaker 3: designed and built for this purpose that they could be
Speaker 3: shuttled due to survive the initial assault. They were to
Speaker 3: report in to uh seck nor ed every day as
Speaker 3: to what they're you knows, as did their goings coming,
Speaker 3: some goings when they left town. You know, they had
Speaker 3: to they had to report like every six hours or something.
Speaker 3: I mean this this is a revolutionary system, Okay. Carter
Speaker 3: also that was President's director of fifty eight. Carter said that,
Speaker 3: you know, he reiterated that America will never, you know,
Speaker 3: will never utilize a nuclear first strike in order to
Speaker 3: resolve a national security exceptency. However, if America finds itself
Speaker 3: in a nuclear war, and this is in the language
Speaker 3: of PD fifty nine, America will fight to win a
Speaker 3: nuclear war, and it will develop and maintain forces in
Speaker 3: being to fight and win a nuclear war against the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union Warsaw Pact, and that represented a that represents
Speaker 3: this was the end of daytime. Okay. This is America
Speaker 3: saying that, you know, if God forbid, we go to
Speaker 3: war with Warsaw Pact, you know, and this escalation to
Speaker 3: general nuclear war like America's gonna treat nuclear war like
Speaker 3: it does any other conflict modality. America is gonna fight
Speaker 3: to win a nuclear war. That's also one of the
Speaker 3: reasons why continuity of government is important. That there's nobody
Speaker 3: negotiate the end of the war is like, that's not
Speaker 3: that's not reasonable, you know. So the idea is, you know,
Speaker 3: civilian control as intended and demanded by the Constitution is
Speaker 3: uh is gonna be guaranteed. You know, through these continuity
Speaker 3: of government measures. We're gonna spare no expense in maintaining
Speaker 3: a survivable deterrent and our strategic doctrine is gonna be
Speaker 3: an event of war. We're going to fight and win.
Speaker 3: We're gonna fight to win a nuclear war. National command
Speaker 3: authorities are UH are gonna seek to endstilities as quickly
Speaker 3: as possible, if that is possible. But uh, there's no
Speaker 3: where this horseshit of you know, like we will not
Speaker 3: fight a nuclear war in these weapons can never be used.
Speaker 3: It's like, you know, you threaten those nuclear weapons, he
Speaker 3: can deploy those weapons. You know, we're in a wage
Speaker 3: total nuclear war against you in kind and drop of
Speaker 3: who is becoming more powerful, you know, pretty much every
Speaker 3: day and in the final months of the bresion of regime.
Speaker 3: The way he interpreted that, and he could say, this
Speaker 3: is the most cunitive possible way, but just in realist terms,
Speaker 3: if your enemy suddenly and kind of jarringly adopts a
Speaker 3: different strategic posture that tends to be a war indicator.
Speaker 3: I mean, not like not of imminent attack or something.
Speaker 3: But that's pretty much exactly what the German Reich did,
Speaker 3: what the Kaiser Reich did. What I mean that, I'm
Speaker 3: not saying, oh, like the Germans are bad. I'm saying
Speaker 3: that in the Russian experience, when their primary adversary does this,
Speaker 3: it means that something is afoot, you know, and that
Speaker 3: something usually is that, you know, the executive of the
Speaker 3: adversarial power was preparing the population to mobilize for war,
Speaker 3: or at least he's doing what he has to do
Speaker 3: in order to concentrate war fighting authority in his office
Speaker 3: so that he has that option in order to use,
Speaker 3: as you know, a as leverage against the Russians. And
Speaker 3: there is some truth to that. I'm not gonna lie,
Speaker 3: and that's that's not good or bad. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: just state craft. But arguably this caused an escalation intensions.
Speaker 3: But again, I mean, the Soviet Union had just gone
Speaker 3: into Afghanistan, you know, I mean, it's not and you know,
Speaker 3: one of the problems with these treaties, however well intentioned,
Speaker 3: they were like salt and salt too, which was the
Speaker 3: Cabals put on that by the invasion with Afghanistan by
Speaker 3: the way, and then later the Start treaties. I mean,
Speaker 3: even if you I I think, on principle, on principle,
Speaker 3: I have a problem with that kind of uh, with
Speaker 3: with those kinds of agreements, because because bargaining away your
Speaker 3: preperaatedness and ability to survive is not legitimate. I realized
Speaker 3: the Cold War was unusual conditions. But I mean, even
Speaker 3: even if you think that those that sort of thing
Speaker 3: is the most well intentioned, you know, mechanism for preserving
Speaker 3: the piece, you can't somehow like stop technology, you know,
Speaker 3: and I mean the usued with deeper parodies is that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: A lot of this stuff that made nuclear weapons more accurate,
Speaker 3: more deadly, more powerful was because guys that Los Alamos
Speaker 3: or you know, guys that in Kazakhstan and USSR. You know,
Speaker 3: we're like developing you know, weapons purpose tech to do that.
Speaker 3: But other stuff like commanding control tech. A lot of
Speaker 3: that stuff just it emerges. It's emergent, you know, due
Speaker 3: to all kinds of endeavors, you know, some profit driven,
Speaker 3: some not, some military purpose some not. I mean you
Speaker 3: can't just say like we're gonna we're not gonna know
Speaker 3: things that we come to know because we got to
Speaker 3: like keep weapons from becoming even more dangerous, you know.
Speaker 3: So that and that's really that's really what SDI was about.
Speaker 3: And I think we're coming up on about an hour.
Speaker 3: We'll get into that stuff next time, as well as
Speaker 3: Able Archer and Granada and all that fun stuff. And
Speaker 3: like I said before, I can't remember if we were
Speaker 3: recording already or not, but a lot of the fellows
Speaker 3: they want us to talk about stuff, especially like especially
Speaker 3: a lot of like the English guys and French dudes.
Speaker 3: You're not a lot of Europeans like fought in in
Speaker 3: Goola and stuff, and it's just like a cool conflict.
Speaker 3: We should do a dedicated episode about stuff like the
Speaker 3: Dominican Republic, about you know, like Latin America and the
Speaker 3: Contract War and about like in Gola. I want to
Speaker 3: do that, like a dedicated episode. If that's cool, it's
Speaker 3: your show. I want to tell you, like this is
Speaker 3: what we should do.
Speaker 2: That sounds good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, thanks man, I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, plugs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for the time being. Can find me on Twitter.
Speaker 3: I don't know how long it will lasts at real
Speaker 3: underscore Thomas seven seven seven. I relaunched a Telegram channel.
Speaker 3: Just look for Thomas seven seven seven or three seven Mafia.
Speaker 3: You will find it. I'm gonna be more active on
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be active on there on the regular starting
Speaker 3: this weekend. I've got like too much shit going on
Speaker 3: right this minute. But join the channel. I'm gonna try
Speaker 3: and get it popping again. You'll find me on substick
Speaker 3: that's what the podcast is. Real Thomas seven seven seven
Speaker 3: dot subsec dot com. I am launching my YouTube channel.
Speaker 3: I know there's been like many many delays, things are
Speaker 3: coming together. I got an incredible editor. I've got a
Speaker 3: lot of people helping me because I frankly I don't
Speaker 3: know about video protoc from at all. I promised it's
Speaker 3: coming imminently, hopefully by next week. But it's coming. So
Speaker 3: that's and that's Thomas TV's on YouTube. But for Thomas TV,
Speaker 3: the first T is a seven and you will find it.
Speaker 3: That's all I got, all right, So.
Speaker 1: The next time I appreciate it, Thomas, thank you peg.
Speaker 1: I want to walk on everyone back to the Pekana show.
Speaker 1: I've been waiting for this one, part twelve the Cold
Speaker 1: War series What's happening in Thomas?
Speaker 3: Hi? How are you? Thanks as always for hosting me.
Speaker 3: It's a great pleasure and a great honor and a privilege, legit.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much.
Speaker 2: Oh, no problem.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you're feeling better, and yeah, let's get down
Speaker 1: to it.
Speaker 3: Yes, sir, I want to talk about the strategic paradigm
Speaker 3: in Reagan's first term, because that's essential to understand really
Speaker 3: the final phase of the Cold War and the reason
Speaker 3: why it a resolution was really forced. You know, we'll
Speaker 3: get into gorrichawf like next episode when I get back
Speaker 3: from this weekend trip. Will we'll deal kind of more
Speaker 3: with the Soviet side, you know, just conceptually, but also
Speaker 3: just in terms of you know, the factual record, because
Speaker 3: I realized we haven't dedicated a lot of attention to
Speaker 3: that yet. But you know, the the degree to which
Speaker 3: human decision makers were becoming less and less significant within
Speaker 3: the strategic arms race, and I mean were fighting in general.
Speaker 3: If you're talking about you know, kind of the zenith
Speaker 3: of of of nuclear war technology as it was in
Speaker 3: you know, nineteen eighty one, that can't be overstated. And
Speaker 3: this idea that you know, just cooler heads could prevail,
Speaker 3: you know, to invoke Curtis LeMay's kind of for rism.
Speaker 3: That's not really possible when you're talking about uh, you know,
Speaker 3: certain certain technological variables as well as certain uh you know,
Speaker 3: as well as organization at scale of hundreds of millions
Speaker 3: of people quite literally, you know, it's not you can't
Speaker 3: even if you're a chief executive or a general who's
Speaker 3: got a great deal of of authority, you know, intrinsic
Speaker 3: not just to his mandate, but you know, in terms
Speaker 3: of you know, key decision makers subservient to him being
Speaker 3: willing to execute his orders basically without a centation. It's
Speaker 3: just not possible. Okay, It's that's not the way, that's
Speaker 3: not the way. That's not the way human systems work,
Speaker 3: and that calls for certain remedies when we're talking about
Speaker 3: something like nuclear war planning, you know, where quite literally
Speaker 3: decisions need to be rendered in and it's you know,
Speaker 3: but even where that not you know, necessary kind of
Speaker 3: remedial measure, you know, to apply and aim to research
Speaker 3: and perfect an ongoing way. It was understood that you know,
Speaker 3: the way man related to technology was becoming kind of
Speaker 3: the key question, not just in terms of fighting future wars,
Speaker 3: but you know, in terms of production modalities, in terms
Speaker 3: of how you know, people at scale perceive information and
Speaker 3: you know develop uh developed political sensibilities, which which totally
Speaker 3: changed with the advent of television, you know, and the
Speaker 3: ability to broadcast you know, over across thousands and thousands
Speaker 3: of miles, you know, and it quite literally turned the
Speaker 3: world into one place in terms of you know, the uh,
Speaker 3: the the concepts being you know asserted and early on
Speaker 3: kind of the earliest game theorist, uh, I mean, he
Speaker 3: was a game theorist some of the many other things,
Speaker 3: but kind of the first uh, public intellectual who really
Speaker 3: sort of articulated this and and in like a very
Speaker 3: kind of concrete form was was a guy named Norbert
Speaker 3: Norbert Winer. Okay, he published a book called Cybernetics, or
Speaker 3: Control and Communication and the Animal and the Machine. That
Speaker 3: sounds very strange and almost kind of science fiction like,
Speaker 3: but I wire was a consumately serious person. He wasn't
Speaker 3: some crank, and he coined the term cybernetics, and uh,
Speaker 3: within Winer's vernacular, cybernetics quite literally referred to self regulating
Speaker 3: mechanisms of all kinds. He cited the earliest examples of
Speaker 3: you know, servo mechanisms, you know, be them hydraulic electric
Speaker 3: mechanical that were error sensitive and their feedback you know,
Speaker 3: even like something like a Roman aqueduct, you know, in
Speaker 3: in a primitive way, not primitive in terms of its construction,
Speaker 3: but primitive in terms of you know, the applied technology utilized,
Speaker 3: you know was wasn't It was an example of you know,
Speaker 3: error sensitive machine learning. Okay, Now, when you add humans
Speaker 3: into the equation, I you need a human operator at
Speaker 3: at least, you know, in a at least to initiate
Speaker 3: machine processes. You've got to take care, you know, to
Speaker 3: structure how that relationship ensues and how it is sustained
Speaker 3: throughout the duration of processes. Okay, there's got to be
Speaker 3: mutual intelligibility, you know, between what the human mind is
Speaker 3: telling the machine to do. Uh, and the human mind
Speaker 3: has to be not only comfortable, like literally physically carntible
Speaker 3: with the machine that it's operating, but it's also got
Speaker 3: to be sensitive to you know, the feedback emergent from
Speaker 3: the machine. Okay. One of the reasons why and Whiner
Speaker 3: was sensitive to this there was such a revolt of
Speaker 3: the laboring cast. When there truly was a laboring cast,
Speaker 3: you know, working on an assembly line of any kind,
Speaker 3: whether it was a slaughterhouse or whether it was you know,
Speaker 3: a or whether it was a textile mill. In the
Speaker 3: early twentieth century, it was incredibly unpleasant. It was difficult,
Speaker 3: it was physically painful. The there was not a good
Speaker 3: coupling that had been achieved between the human operator and
Speaker 3: the machine. You know, the human felt overwhelmed by the machine,
Speaker 3: or the machine was forcing a pace of work, you
Speaker 3: know that the human couldn't keep up without significant pain
Speaker 3: or sometimes at all. You know, these machines often are dangerous,
Speaker 3: and even when functioning is intended, you know, they they
Speaker 3: they harm people, you know, And that's not that that's
Speaker 3: gonna do a couple of things. I mean, it's gonna
Speaker 3: do more than a couple of things. But first and foremost,
Speaker 3: it's going to create certain inefficiencies and choke points. And
Speaker 3: it's also gonna hurt people, which itself is not good.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we're gonnall agree on that. But
Speaker 3: also it's gonna really gonna sour the human operators view
Speaker 3: of the machine, you know, and even if only subcasually,
Speaker 3: even if even a very duty bound or conscientious person
Speaker 3: or a true believer, you know, particularly somebody in a
Speaker 3: military role who you know, copies that role they're in.
Speaker 3: You know, if if if this machine causes them pain
Speaker 3: or difficulty or frightens them, or you know, they they
Speaker 3: they're always worried that they're gonna be somehow harmed or
Speaker 3: meaned by it, that that's going to compromise their ability
Speaker 3: to interfere and function as intended. So what Winer did
Speaker 3: was he said, look, you know, these machines need to
Speaker 3: be accessible, you know, and the ability to initiate and
Speaker 3: program them in a rudimentary way as intended, you know,
Speaker 3: at the critical moment required. You know, it's gotta it's
Speaker 3: gotta be. He's talking about like you're talking about being
Speaker 3: user friendly. Okay, I mean, nobody use those terms then,
Speaker 3: but that's that's what he was talking about. And he
Speaker 3: also said that, you know, one of the ways not
Speaker 3: just to kind of guarantee you know, an appropriate coppling
Speaker 3: that's both safe and efficient to the human operator, but
Speaker 3: that also you know, is gonna is gonna you know,
Speaker 3: create a kind of punctuated advance and our ability to
Speaker 3: develop you know, machines that truly learn, you know, through
Speaker 3: irresensitive feedback. Is you know, He's like, we've got to
Speaker 3: start structuring machines like we would a human nervous system. Okay,
Speaker 3: not literally and say like, you know, okay, this is
Speaker 3: the way the brain is structured. You know, I've got
Speaker 3: to make my I've gotta tweak my Babbage device to
Speaker 3: look more like that brain. Obviously, but you know, it
Speaker 3: couldn't be something totally alien and you know, to what
Speaker 3: I mean at the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 3: like the human brain is just an incredibly complicated, highly
Speaker 3: evolved like you know, uh like feedback mechanism for the
Speaker 3: purposes we're talking about. Okay, I mean it's a lot
Speaker 3: more than that. But you know, so uh making machine
Speaker 3: thinking or machine learning at that you know, as it
Speaker 3: was understood at that time as human like as possible
Speaker 3: in rudimentary terms, Okay, that that wasn't just a way
Speaker 3: of you know, kind of guaranteeing you know, maximum efficiency
Speaker 3: you know, in terms of the the interface of the
Speaker 3: human or like the animal in uh liners terminology with
Speaker 3: the machine. But it also he said, this is the
Speaker 3: path that kind of you know, greater development in terms
Speaker 3: of you know, in terms of our in terms of
Speaker 3: our design engineering. Okay, And I think I think it
Speaker 3: goes out saying is right about that if you if
Speaker 3: you cud of like the brass tacks, what guys like
Speaker 3: Steve Jobs we're talking about, you know, And I'm not
Speaker 3: I'm not a computer guy or a tech guy at all,
Speaker 3: but I've read a lot about Jobs because for better
Speaker 3: or worse, he was a very significant personage. And when
Speaker 3: he talks about design, optics and aesthetics, you can tell
Speaker 3: he's doing it like the way like a guy who's
Speaker 3: not an engineer, but he's more an engineer than he
Speaker 3: is like some artists, or like you know, kind of
Speaker 3: eccentric like architect. I know, I tried to convey the
Speaker 3: image of the latter, but he was the former. And
Speaker 3: I guarantee that he said. I guarantee that as a
Speaker 3: young man he definitely read cybernetics, and if he didn't,
Speaker 3: you know, like the stuff he was reading was so
Speaker 3: insinuated with that kind of ethos, but like everybody way
Speaker 3: to describe it, that he very much took that on
Speaker 3: as his own. Okay. And also just I mean Winer
Speaker 3: didn't just make these things up. I mean, there's an
Speaker 3: intrinsic Uh, there's a there's like an intrinsic existential reality
Speaker 3: to these things. He was positive, you know, it's just
Speaker 3: that's the way machines work, that's the way humans think
Speaker 3: and feel, that's the way they interface in very basic terms,
Speaker 3: and cybernetics and like the postulates there in. That was
Speaker 3: really the earliest. That was really the earliest discussion of
Speaker 3: you know, audit, automated navigation, analog computing in the way
Speaker 3: that we understand it or understood it, you know, in
Speaker 3: the later twentieth century, and you know, which was the
Speaker 3: you know, the forebear of it as we know it.
Speaker 3: This is the first time people talked about AI in
Speaker 3: an applied capacity. It uh, it led to neuroscientific modeling,
Speaker 3: and most importantly, uher Reiner was always it was always uh,
Speaker 3: it was always emphasizing the importance of communication and communication
Speaker 3: regime and also UH like physical structure like across distance
Speaker 3: that was integrated, that was reliable, and most importantly, that
Speaker 3: was survivable. Okay, And I said was importantly not not
Speaker 3: just the general proposition, but in the case of nuclear war,
Speaker 3: I mean that's everything, you know. So these are things
Speaker 3: to understand. We're talking about nuclear war, We're talking about
Speaker 3: the Cold War paradigm, and especially in the UH in
Speaker 3: the final UH in the final in the final phase
Speaker 3: of the Cold War, the Cold War conflict paradigm. Okay,
Speaker 3: it these things, UH can't be overstated. And it like
Speaker 3: the desires of of human decision makers, you know, particularly
Speaker 3: those you know in public roles, it really was not
Speaker 3: up to them, like the course of of of events
Speaker 3: in in terms of crisis UH resolution or you know,
Speaker 3: the deterioration of of of remedial strategies you know, in
Speaker 3: in the general war. But the the UH, it's very
Speaker 3: clear too, you know both. It's even people who uh,
Speaker 3: even people who write pretty good histories of the late
Speaker 3: Cold War, like the guy what's his freak, Yeah, Mark Ambinder, Sorry,
Speaker 3: I was having a senior moment, Ambinder. He he deemphasizes
Speaker 3: the degree to which kind of like the trajectory of
Speaker 3: American policy very much had a nuclear vector. And what
Speaker 3: I mean by that is that you know, UH us
Speaker 3: UH global policy and in not just in a hard
Speaker 3: power of terms, but but just in general terms, it
Speaker 3: really orbited around you know, America's nuclear capability. Uh, it's
Speaker 3: ability to wield Dad's a credible threat. You know, the
Speaker 3: response of the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union as
Speaker 3: well as China, I mean, despite the China by that
Speaker 3: point have been courted quite successfully as a strategic ali
Speaker 3: This was the This was the variable or set of
Speaker 3: variables that everything revolved around between the superpowers. Okay, some
Speaker 3: mean there's that too, even Uh. It just the existence
Speaker 3: of these capabilities and uh, you know, the continuing emergence
Speaker 3: and new technologies to to perfect the effectiveness of these
Speaker 3: things kind of dictated the course of policy between the superpowers.
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter what anybody's rhetoric was. It doesn't matter
Speaker 3: what anyboy's intentions were or how much they made very
Speaker 3: well have been committed to peace, you know, I don't
Speaker 3: I don't doubt that. You know, some of the things
Speaker 3: Bredon have said before he lost his marbles, and you
Speaker 3: know about the Soviet Union must avoid you know general
Speaker 3: lookally word all costs. I'm sure that he meant that.
Speaker 3: I'm sure Reagan like corny and kind of made for
Speaker 3: sound by television, as some of the things he said
Speaker 3: in the matter may have been. I think earnestly believe
Speaker 3: those things. But moving on the way the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: responded to this emergent strategic landscape was very interesting. In
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty one, the Soviets launched the biggest peace time, dedicated,
Speaker 3: peace time intelligence operation in its entire history, which says
Speaker 3: a lot because the Soviet Union, for the duration of
Speaker 3: its existence really was mobilized for war in a way
Speaker 3: that even you know, even America in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: which which was very much you know, on a war footing,
Speaker 3: would would would view as extreme. And drop Off, who
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty one was u was still a year
Speaker 3: away from uh, you know, a sending of the role
Speaker 3: of General secretary. As I've said before, I believe, I
Speaker 3: believe he himself, Gramico and ustan Off were very much
Speaker 3: kind of that tried effected the content good shadow government.
Speaker 3: But he was the eminence behind the KGB really for
Speaker 3: the duration of his of his of his life, okay,
Speaker 3: and on strategic matters, oh on Sundry and I can
Speaker 3: tell you that in nineteen eighty one, you know, the
Speaker 3: and drop I was the key decision maker and those
Speaker 3: in immediate orbit, what what what this this intelligence operation
Speaker 3: was called Project Rion or Ryan literally r y a N.
Speaker 3: It's an acronym that uh for a Russian language phrase
Speaker 3: which translates to nuclear missile attack or nuclear missile assault
Speaker 3: or something in that order. I'm not going to try
Speaker 3: to pronounce it and butcher it and embarrass myself. But
Speaker 3: the entire purpose of Rayon or Rion was this. And
Speaker 3: drop of address he members of the poet Gul as
Speaker 3: well as uh, the the general staff, and he said, look,
Speaker 3: you know, we're we're losing the code war on key fronts,
Speaker 3: you know, political and technological that very much nullify our
Speaker 3: are the advantages we do have. And one of those
Speaker 3: fronts was in in computing. I think there's there was
Speaker 3: less than a thousand computers in uh the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty one. I mean to give you an idea,
Speaker 3: you know, which is bizarre. What do you think about it?
Speaker 3: That the Soviet Union and they they logged far more
Speaker 3: man hours in space flight than the United States head
Speaker 3: and uh, you know they were they were crying out
Speaker 3: these chess masters who you know, uh, we were schooled
Speaker 3: in uh in formal the kind of formal logic that
Speaker 3: that in America, like really built, you know, like the
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of like early like analog computing industry.
Speaker 3: But that's that warrantance dedicated episode Like how uh uh
Speaker 3: the uh like, how how computing in the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: really was? It really was sabotaged. Oh, you know, like
Speaker 3: interesting rivalries within the design bureaus, you know. And you
Speaker 3: you can't create a high tech economy, you know, based
Speaker 3: on a central plan. I mean, I mean, I mean
Speaker 3: you can't. You can't base the traditional manufacturing economy and
Speaker 3: on a central plan. But particularly you're talking about high
Speaker 3: tech and I t I mean, it's you're you know,
Speaker 3: there's just no there's just no chance that it's going
Speaker 3: to produce what's required, you know, in order to meet
Speaker 3: the meet the needs of of you know, of nuclear
Speaker 3: war command and control planning. But with what they did have,
Speaker 3: what uh what what Project Rihannim to do was to
Speaker 3: anticipate a bolt from the blue nuclear strike by using, uh,
Speaker 3: the computing technology they did have alongside human analysts to
Speaker 3: monitor indicators, to identify monitor codable indicators you know, from
Speaker 3: the United States and NATO, and uh determine when these
Speaker 3: indicators could be relied upon. That you know to to
Speaker 3: that that that that an imminent nuclear assault was you know,
Speaker 3: was a foot such that uh, with the technologies of
Speaker 3: the day, apparently with submarine launched ballistic missile platforms, you know,
Speaker 3: as well as intermediate range missiles, which you know, if
Speaker 3: deployed in the theater by NATO, would reach their targets
Speaker 3: you know, within fire or ten minutes, you know where
Speaker 3: we're talking about. It's not you know, early warning is
Speaker 3: not enough. I mean, no matter how sensitive it is,
Speaker 3: no matter how possible to spoof it is. You know,
Speaker 3: like before before there's any but there's where there's any
Speaker 3: commanding control indicator in America in nineteen eighty one, you
Speaker 3: know that Strategic Air Command, you know, is going to
Speaker 3: scramble its heavy bombers. You know that that the the
Speaker 3: miniman missiles are about to emerge in their silos. Like
Speaker 3: you've got to be able to identify the variables before
Speaker 3: there's any actual you know, command and control indicator, which
Speaker 3: I mean it says a dawning proposition, I mean, doesn't
Speaker 3: It is almost comically inadequate. But it also it creates
Speaker 3: a very dangerous circumstance. If you've got to be able
Speaker 3: to identify evident assault indicators you know, based upon you know, uh,
Speaker 3: based upon apparently benign events and human behaviors at scale
Speaker 3: that could very very easily be misread. I mean, this
Speaker 3: goes beyond fog of work kind of stuff. But it
Speaker 3: also this is a difficult question. You know, It's like, Okay,
Speaker 3: let's say let's say that there could let's say, let's
Speaker 3: say attack indicators, you know, codable attack indicators could in
Speaker 3: fact be reliably identified, and that there was a machine that, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, could pretty reliably evaluate these things and could
Speaker 3: I'm smollifying this for the saying with counterfactual, you know,
Speaker 3: spit out a probability ratio of what the likelihood is
Speaker 3: that you know, these indicators mean, you know, an attackism
Speaker 3: in it if there's a ten percent probability you know,
Speaker 3: if you preempted with your own attack, if it's anything
Speaker 3: over fifty percent, if it's one percent, like you see
Speaker 3: what I mean, like it where you're you're you're running
Speaker 3: into a kind of paradigm where increasingly, like the winner
Speaker 3: is gonna be the one who just preempts in absolute
Speaker 3: terms and when he's confident that you know, he can
Speaker 3: at least survive a retaliatory strike, just perverse incentives to
Speaker 3: attack even when not in a reminted threat.
Speaker 1: If you follow me, well, this wasn't anything new at
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, Ellsberg talks in his books about how,
Speaker 1: you know, the the department he was in in the
Speaker 1: late fifties and early sixties, they were war gaming this.
Speaker 1: They they had already come up with the concept of
Speaker 1: the nuclear sponge by that point.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you what changed, uh parody. It wasn't until
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy five that there was true nuclear parody between
Speaker 3: natal and Warsaw Pact. That's why these guys like LeMay
Speaker 3: and even Thomas Powers, who gets kind of Thomas Powers
Speaker 3: was actually the model for Jack d Ripper and Strange Love.
Speaker 3: It wasn't le May, but le May was gonna similarly
Speaker 3: Lampoon Lambastard. Their whole notion was that if you know, eventually,
Speaker 3: you know, a general nuclear war is imminent with the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union, We've got to go to war. Now, if
Speaker 3: you wait ten years, there's gonna be nuclear parody. We
Speaker 3: can't win that, you know. Now, Yeah, we'll take fifty
Speaker 3: million dead, but will survive. They won't. Plus, there was
Speaker 3: one of the reasons why the Salt Talks kind of
Speaker 3: became obsolescent. It wasn't just that, you know, this Soviet
Speaker 3: invasion of Afghanistan meant that the State Department and as
Speaker 3: well as Congress no longer had any interest in, you know,
Speaker 3: pursuing a follow up kind of regime until much later.
Speaker 3: We'll talk about that later. But like deeper parodies, you know,
Speaker 3: multiple warheads, you know, being slammed onto existing presisting platforms,
Speaker 3: you know, creating like this, these these massive throw weights,
Speaker 3: you know, create like reduced circular error probable, know, the
Speaker 3: perfection of penetration aids and decoys, you know, the ability
Speaker 3: to spoof enemy early warning, and the emergence of AI
Speaker 3: you know, like the uh, the movie War Games is
Speaker 3: actually a great film, and it's a smart film. I
Speaker 3: Mean some stuff in its corny because it's Hollywood and
Speaker 3: it's you know, uh a movie that was aimed at
Speaker 3: like teenagers, but some of it's actually very smart and
Speaker 3: uh the opening uh, like the opening sequence where you
Speaker 3: know they're running this command post exercise, you know, and
Speaker 3: one of the miss layers won't turn his key. That
Speaker 3: was part of the issue. But then in the movie,
Speaker 3: like the civilian advisor I think's supposed to be Thomas Schelling.
Speaker 3: He says like, look like why we we can't we
Speaker 3: can we can't wait until you know it's clear Ivan's
Speaker 3: gonna assault. You know, we gotta know he's gonna assault
Speaker 3: him before he does, you know, which he was there
Speaker 3: was like gallows humor. But it's also not entirely inaccurate.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's what was changing things. Plus the
Speaker 3: you know, like I said, the in nuclear war, if
Speaker 3: you're being able to identify an attack is underway, characterize
Speaker 3: the nature of that attack, then interminal response based on
Speaker 3: survive surviving forces or probable surviving forces, and then giving
Speaker 3: the order to retaliate. In nineteen sixty you probably had
Speaker 3: about an hour to do that, Okay. In nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 3: you had ten minutes to do that. You know, arguably
Speaker 3: you had five minutes. Like by the time the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union fell apart. It's basic, it's basic assault strategy was
Speaker 3: gonna be it always parked U two typhoon class submarines
Speaker 3: within striking range of the eastern United States. Okay. The
Speaker 3: idea was that they were going to launch a volley
Speaker 3: of of of submarine launched boistic missiles at depressed depressed
Speaker 3: trajectory that would air burst over the entire East coast
Speaker 3: and you know, create an EMP blackout, then follow up
Speaker 3: with a massive volley and basically like annihilate the eastern
Speaker 3: United States. And you know, if they could do that
Speaker 3: fast enough and assuming their systems went off without you know,
Speaker 3: a glitch or whatever, they had a reasonable probability of
Speaker 3: winning a nuclear war if it was truly like a
Speaker 3: bolt from the blue attack. You know, stuff like this
Speaker 3: wasn't possible in Elsberg's day. He was foreseeing that it
Speaker 3: would be at some point, even if he couldn't foresee
Speaker 3: the exact platforms. But by nineteen eighty one there was
Speaker 3: parody as regards forces and being and arguably, uh, the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union had the edge. You know. And like I said,
Speaker 3: this is in terms of data that since the wall
Speaker 3: came down, it's been verified. It's not just it wasn't
Speaker 3: just like missile gap nonsense, you know, the kind that
Speaker 3: people were banning in nineteen sixty election. Uh, you know
Speaker 3: creates this kind of doing cityway just idea Yeah that
Speaker 3: you know, Uh, there there's a gap in American in
Speaker 3: uh in uh, in American in a in an American
Speaker 3: defense capabilities, you know, visa the Warsaw Pact, that's what
Speaker 3: that's what changed. And plus the UH you know the
Speaker 3: I mean, that's the problem with anything else designed to
Speaker 3: preserve the the design to preserve stability. You don't know
Speaker 3: whether you're talking about like you know, the strategic arms
Speaker 3: limitation talks, you know, whether you're talking about these arms
Speaker 3: reduction agreements. You know, you can't you can't just freeze
Speaker 3: technology in situ. You know, It's like and even if
Speaker 3: you you know, you were, even if you live in
Speaker 3: the number of platforms, those platforms have become more efficient,
Speaker 3: but become more effective, you know, uh, the killing technology
Speaker 3: will become more and more catastrophically utile, you know, things
Speaker 3: like this, and uh. Plus to the UH orbital space,
Speaker 3: you know, becoming the key kind of emergent battle theater
Speaker 3: was changing things too, because you know, you launched like
Speaker 3: the Outer Space Treaty, you know, technically banned orbit of
Speaker 3: bombardment platforms. That didn't mean anything. And also the Space
Speaker 3: Shuttle obviously was UH. What was a UH was was
Speaker 3: an orbit of bombardment delivery mechanism. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: it was uh. It was other things too, but you
Speaker 3: know that that's that was first and foremost. Its role.
Speaker 3: It wasn't its rule wasn't to take you know, civilian
Speaker 3: school teachers into space to do experiments on goldfish and
Speaker 3: zero gravity or something. But these are the things that
Speaker 3: were kind of destabilizing what had been. I mean, the
Speaker 3: the paradigm was never truly stable, that's by people say,
Speaker 3: but it was becoming unmanageable, like owing to these owing
Speaker 3: to these variables. This really reached the zenith in UH
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty three. You know, there was the there's the
Speaker 3: Able Archer Command Post exercise in in November seventh, and
Speaker 3: that was really that that was really the way to
Speaker 3: look at that too. I mean, for those that don't know,
Speaker 3: there's this bi annual exercise called reforger UH, which was
Speaker 3: short military short end for Return of Forces to Germany.
Speaker 3: It was this UH. It was this mass military exercise.
Speaker 3: We're in UH the forces and being in UH in Germany,
Speaker 3: and there was about three hundred thousand US troops. They
Speaker 3: are backed up by a contingent of about two hundred
Speaker 3: thousand other natal elements, contributions by the naval omens I mean,
Speaker 3: but the Reforger exercise was an event of a general
Speaker 3: war in Europe with warsaw packs. How rapidly can we
Speaker 3: can we reinforce those forces and being deployed to Europe,
Speaker 3: you know before they were totally overrun by Warsaw pacts. Okay,
Speaker 3: So I mean it was actually important. It wasn't just
Speaker 3: a make work fake work thing. I mean actually on
Speaker 3: on the logistics side and the commanding control side, this
Speaker 3: actually was important operationally, and it also demonstrated UH political
Speaker 3: will to the Warsaw Pact, and that was important. What
Speaker 3: able R Trad three was was UH concombinant with Reforger.
Speaker 3: It was a command post nuclear war simulation, and it
Speaker 3: included even civilian UH chief executives, you know, like Margaret
Speaker 3: Thatcher like went to her uh you know when when
Speaker 3: when went to like the designated you know, UH follog shelter,
Speaker 3: you know, uh the helmet cole was similarly like does
Speaker 3: a beer from sight. I mean, when you consider Project REN,
Speaker 3: I mean you consider, you know, the kinds of deep
Speaker 3: parodies that were causing real alarm on on both sides
Speaker 3: of UH the Cold War, this seems incredibly risky, you know,
Speaker 3: because what you're doing is this command post exercise. And
Speaker 3: you know that the Russians have been attacked many times
Speaker 3: under the auspices of you know, peaceful military exercises by
Speaker 3: their enemies. So there's that. But then also pretty much
Speaker 3: every indicator of an imminent bolt from the blue nuclear
Speaker 3: result was emergent in uh, the able Archer exercise. Okay. Now, now,
Speaker 3: on the one hand, yeah, if you're if you're if
Speaker 3: you're gonnapply on a nuclear ward to win it, you've
Speaker 3: got to run those kinds of exercises, okay, and they've
Speaker 3: got to be as real as possible. And also if
Speaker 3: you want true data on how fast you know, the
Speaker 3: Warsaw Pact, you know, you know, in then in existence
Speaker 3: at that moment, you know how fast they would respond,
Speaker 3: you know, uh to being spoofed. You know that that's
Speaker 3: how you corral your data about you know what the
Speaker 3: response time, how fast it's gonna be, and what stuff
Speaker 3: it's gonna entail in a real war situation. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, there's there's there's a deep internal logic to that.
Speaker 3: But it also there's a very good chance that you know,
Speaker 3: your enemy will perceive this as you know, indicators of
Speaker 3: an actual attack and you can find yourself in a
Speaker 3: general nuclear war very very easily. That Uh it's both
Speaker 3: instructive as to you know, not how tense things were
Speaker 3: between you know, actors, but also uh it shows you, uh,
Speaker 3: the degree to which you know, like we were talking
Speaker 3: about a minute ago, the degree the degree to which
Speaker 3: you know, conditions of of absolute peace, you know, could
Speaker 3: become conditions that general nuclear war. I mean rapidly, you know,
Speaker 3: there wasn't. There wasn't this kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: scaled escalation over you know, over days or weeks or
Speaker 3: even hours. You know. The second aspect of this was Reagan, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of prompted about people like Kasper Weinberger
Speaker 3: and a lot of the Team B types Reagan had. Reagan,
Speaker 3: he Green led the deployment of the person too intermediate
Speaker 3: range ballistic missile platform to Europe, to the Buddhist Republic,
Speaker 3: to uh Italy, to the Netherlands, some of the UK,
Speaker 3: I believe, but I don't think they ever arrived. This
Speaker 3: would have, uh, this would have given NATO a profound
Speaker 3: edge on in theater nuclear weapons and so deployed, Uh,
Speaker 3: they could reach Moscow within minutes. Okay, this really terrified
Speaker 3: Soviet war planners, and for good reason. And there's a
Speaker 3: nuance here too that I can't remember we raised it
Speaker 3: for or not, but ironically, owing to uh, you know, politics,
Speaker 3: NATO was very forward deployed. Like literally the way it
Speaker 3: was deployed in West Germany, in the Netherlands, in you know,
Speaker 3: all all throughout the the continent. It was not deployed
Speaker 3: at all in depth and specifically in Germany. Looking at
Speaker 3: a map of NATO deployment, US, Benelux British forces were
Speaker 3: in offensive deployment, Okay, like they can't be denied. So
Speaker 3: if you're raying now, some of that had to do with,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a way kind of placating, you know,
Speaker 3: people like the Greens who who literally didn't want, you know,
Speaker 3: like NATO forces to be seen, you know, and uh,
Speaker 3: it was a way of kind of mitigating the kind
Speaker 3: of besic hostility over the fact that Germany quite literally
Speaker 3: was occupied. There's all kinds of things, but it was
Speaker 3: also you know, the understanding was if warsaw if in
Speaker 3: one warsaw pack moves, you know, like what difference does
Speaker 3: it make we can deploy in depth a we want
Speaker 3: they're gonna break through, you know. But from the Soviet side,
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, we've got NATO in kind of permanent
Speaker 3: offensive deployment. Now there deploying. Now. Now they're deploying these
Speaker 3: pershing two platforms, which are not only not super hard,
Speaker 3: and they're totally vulnerable. I mean, there's no such thing
Speaker 3: as a truly defensive nuclear weapon. But the only way
Speaker 3: you can use a persing cyst platform is if you're
Speaker 3: on the attack, you know, like it's because if it's
Speaker 3: it's not a survivable uh platform. You know. So the
Speaker 3: Soviets weren't being crazy or weren't crying wolf or something.
Speaker 3: And even even Robert Gates admitted this kind of labor
Speaker 3: in his memoirs, you know, he said, you know, and
Speaker 3: anybody who understands these things and understands what gupl cases
Speaker 3: indicators were. Uh, you know, anybody looking at this on
Speaker 3: the warsaw Pack's side would have said, you know, these
Speaker 3: these people are basically preparing a wage in nuclear blitzkrieg,
Speaker 3: you know. And and there was some truth to that. Frankly,
Speaker 3: kind of the genius of Reagan, if you want to
Speaker 3: give him cross for something. And I'm not any any
Speaker 3: huge like Reagan fan in history. But uh what uh
Speaker 3: what what Reagan's uh State Department did was they said, well,
Speaker 3: you know, we'll remove uh, we'll remove the Pershing twos
Speaker 3: from Europe. Yeah. Oh if all uh if all theater
Speaker 3: based nuclear weapons you know, natalarsaw packed, if we agree
Speaker 3: to move all of them, you know, but that's that's
Speaker 3: the price essentially of of of dismantling the system. And
Speaker 3: I mean two in defensive Reagan had been the the
Speaker 3: impetus for the deployment of these platforms. It was because
Speaker 3: they're a hell of a good way if you're gonna
Speaker 3: wage not a nuclear war to to do it. But also, uh,
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, uh, they'd massd s S nineteen's those
Speaker 3: are one of those those one of those physically huge
Speaker 3: uh missile systems. You know that we're based on trucks.
Speaker 3: It's kind of brilliant in its simplicity. For those mobile
Speaker 3: launch vehicles. The Soviet would move them around every day,
Speaker 3: like literally, so it's would be.
Speaker 1: Like the one from the like the one from the
Speaker 1: movie Spies like us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, that's so I started a movie.
Speaker 3: I saw it in the theater with my mom and
Speaker 3: a little kid. That's hilarious, but that's actually an awesome movie.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the UH, but the Soviet idea was, uh,
Speaker 3: they were threatening Europe with annihilation with UH, with these deployments,
Speaker 3: and they were doing it basically decouple UH Europe's UH
Speaker 3: national security policy and the respective Natal States from that
Speaker 3: of America, basically saying like, look like, you know, if uh,
Speaker 3: if if you avail yourselves to UH, to NATO and
Speaker 3: the United States, you know, the United States is nuclear deterrent.
Speaker 3: You know, you're we consider you to be a fair
Speaker 3: target and we're gonna continue to target Western Europe as
Speaker 3: long as that indoors. I mean it was, it was
Speaker 3: and you know, deployment of the person too, was a
Speaker 3: way of rooking that uh, that that ambition. So it's
Speaker 3: more complicated than just Reagan being you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: it's still gonna hawk ish. Uh, it's still got a
Speaker 3: reckless hawk and it's it's not just a matter of uh,
Speaker 3: you know, Pentagon types and in defense intelligence types saying well,
Speaker 3: let's spoof, let's spoof Ivan, you know, to the brink
Speaker 3: and see what he does. I mean, there was an
Speaker 3: aspect of that too, But it is. It is, uh,
Speaker 3: it is slightly more complicated and more than slightly, but
Speaker 3: it I gotta pause when it to reeth my water.
Speaker 3: I'm really dried out. Is that okay? Yeah, I thank
Speaker 3: THEE and yeah, the I mean, on the one hand,
Speaker 3: I obviously and I mean this isn't really material were disgusting.
Speaker 3: I mean, obviously, my some of these uh in history
Speaker 3: uh uh are are what you know yackys were, And
Speaker 3: I I realized this is very much a way of
Speaker 3: holding Europe hostage quite literally to the Cold War. But
Speaker 3: at the same time, I mean it within the bounded
Speaker 3: rationality of that Europe was afforded. Your Europe was ultimately
Speaker 3: made more secure because again Reagan's ultimatum was uh, you know,
Speaker 3: in nuclear for Europe, and that was accomplished, you know, ultimately,
Speaker 3: I mean it it it. It wasn't until well into
Speaker 3: Reagan's second term and after you know, the kind of
Speaker 3: concuord itcounts with Gruschev. But all these things were a process,
Speaker 3: and you know, like I said, next episode, we'll get
Speaker 3: into the view from the Soviet side quite literally, but
Speaker 3: there had to the crisis. Uh that the crisis cycle
Speaker 3: is becoming more and more critical and if you look
Speaker 3: at it and you know, the uh, the Korean War,
Speaker 3: the Chinese intervention in the Korean War, really that that
Speaker 3: very well could have led to a general nuclear war
Speaker 3: a N fifty three, uh not ninety fifty three, ninety
Speaker 3: sixty two in Cuba ninety seventy three, you know, in
Speaker 3: the Mid East War nineteen eighty three with uh, you know,
Speaker 3: able Archer Reforger and the emergent you know, uh deep
Speaker 3: parodies that you know, gave riseen and drop off some
Speaker 3: project rhon like this was becoming unsustainable and more and
Speaker 3: more dangerous basically every decade, you know, like I, had
Speaker 3: the Cold War endured into the you know, another twenty years,
Speaker 3: there probably would have been a nuclear war by the
Speaker 3: late nineteen nineties. Like I firmly believe that, you know,
Speaker 3: and Gorbachev uh gets kind of a bad rap. I mean,
Speaker 3: he was presiding over a structural crisis that I think
Speaker 3: is basically imprecedented in the modern era. Okay, there the
Speaker 3: Soviet Empire constituted like one of six of the planet. Okay,
Speaker 3: like U and every the world was literally divided such
Speaker 3: that you know, half the world was essentially you know,
Speaker 3: the Soviet system was insinuated into it through kind of
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean interdependence. And when you're talking about
Speaker 3: you know, marginist letter, This planned economy is different than
Speaker 3: you know, globalism. We know it. But you know, about
Speaker 3: half the planet was reliant in some way, even if
Speaker 3: it was just you know, occasional brain deliveries, you know,
Speaker 3: or uh or strictly you know, military hardware to wage
Speaker 3: you know, some Simon gooing, you know, Simon gooing, uh,
Speaker 3: localized conflict you know what about about half the about
Speaker 3: half the planet was reliant on the Soviet Union, just
Speaker 3: as you know the competing blogs relying on the United
Speaker 3: States and Europe. I mean, this was i in the
Speaker 3: in the preceding five dred years. There's nothing comparable in
Speaker 3: that except uh, you know, the except that the fall
Speaker 3: of the Western Roman Empire. And even that wasn't like
Speaker 3: it's punctuated. I mean, the Soviet Union fell apart like
Speaker 3: in months, you know, I mean, and that the fact
Speaker 3: that there wasn't there was violence. People have forgotten that now,
Speaker 3: but I mean, you know, the actually learned guy, but
Speaker 3: the you know, they're and you got to look at uh,
Speaker 3: you know, you got to look at stuff. Uh, you know,
Speaker 3: not just you know, in like chess Fan and Dakistan,
Speaker 3: but also like you know, the bulk At wars as
Speaker 3: direct I mean remote as they were in relative terms
Speaker 3: from the Soviet Union. I mean you got to look
Speaker 3: at those things as as approximately caused you know, by
Speaker 3: the the punctuated shock the Soviet collapse. But point being
Speaker 3: that it, uh, this was getting the conflict diad was getting,
Speaker 3: it was getting, it was getting impossible to control. And
Speaker 3: garbaschewv realized that the sovietnion needed a way out of
Speaker 3: the Cold War. Okay, and and drop off because they
Speaker 3: drop off was the consummate realist. Uh, and drop off
Speaker 3: realize you know, what has to contemplate is the way
Speaker 3: out of the Cold War to you know, wage a
Speaker 3: preemptive nuclear war against the United States. And I mean obviously,
Speaker 3: I mean America was thinking that too, you know, and
Speaker 3: vice versa. You know, is this the way? Is this
Speaker 3: the way out of the Cold War? But I mean
Speaker 3: to say that, to say that this was dangerous, uh branksmanship,
Speaker 3: it doesn't even scratch the service. It's been ridiculous these
Speaker 3: days and people like, you know, this is the world
Speaker 3: you created, This is like this is the most dangerous
Speaker 3: time ever in world history. It's like, the fuck is
Speaker 3: the matter with you? I mean, it's it's literally insane
Speaker 3: that people think that way. You know, like the like
Speaker 3: the single issue basically in every presidential election for forty
Speaker 3: years was, you know, do we have a survival nuclear deterrent?
Speaker 3: You know? And is the man of the old love
Speaker 3: is gonna keep us alive? You know, because there's there's
Speaker 3: like a very real possibility that you know, we might
Speaker 3: become to make it dead when World War three happens,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean that's I guess people under like
Speaker 3: forty five or so like came and conceptualized that, but
Speaker 3: it's I'm trying. It sounds like a cantankerous old guy.
Speaker 3: But because it made this also, this goes to show
Speaker 3: you how how uh how critical of these these these
Speaker 3: wars in the periphery were in the nineteen eighties and something.
Speaker 3: You know, we'll get into this in the next episode,
Speaker 3: but you know, the the uh, the Battle for Central America,
Speaker 3: you know, uh, Nicaragua becoming a prox literally a proxy
Speaker 3: regime of the d d R, the Soviet Union, you know,
Speaker 3: the uh, the the the proxy war in Chile. You know,
Speaker 3: which led to uh, you know, Pinochet removing you know,
Speaker 3: the Soviets client in Alende, you know, the war El Salvador.
Speaker 3: I mean, these the Soviets are trying to rectify the
Speaker 3: strategic the strategic imbalance by carving out comunist blocks that
Speaker 3: would have changed everything, you know. I mean, and it's
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union was doing something's right. I mean, like
Speaker 3: I said before, I think from nineteen seventy three until
Speaker 3: about nineteen eighty two, the Soviet Union was winning the
Speaker 3: Cold War in military terms, in political, sociological, technological terms,
Speaker 3: they were losing. And he's been pure military terms. They
Speaker 3: were racking up victory after victory after victory, you know,
Speaker 3: like in Africa, in Latin America, in East Asia, like
Speaker 3: you know, the this is not a good thing. I mean, however,
Speaker 3: you wherever you fell on. I'm talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: people who are saying I'm not talking about crazy is
Speaker 3: like Peter Ronett and like the the kind of the
Speaker 3: kind of crazy Karens you know, calling for nuclear disarmament.
Speaker 3: And I'm talking about people actually sensible, whether whether you
Speaker 3: love Reagan or not, or whether you or whether you know,
Speaker 3: we're particularly on board with the kind of cold or enterprise.
Speaker 3: You know, this was not the prosect of the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union kind of you know, like we talked about in
Speaker 3: previous episodes, you know, kind of becoming like the only
Speaker 3: true superpower because the third world is you know, basically
Speaker 3: signed on with you know, with Marxist Leninism. So America
Speaker 3: is just kind of like it's kind of like fortress
Speaker 3: scaring state amidst the hostile world of of of of
Speaker 3: tinpot dictators and kind of crazy uh shaku vira types
Speaker 3: like that would not have been a good thing. Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is NATO today? I mean what I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not NATO, So what the hell is it?
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's the alibi America invokes for unilateral aggression.
Speaker 3: But I mean there's something even if even if that's
Speaker 3: your notion like NATO, those kinds of alliances are obsolete anyway.
Speaker 3: And it's like I said before, like you know, so
Speaker 3: uh uh America's carrying out terrorist acts against its allies
Speaker 3: in Germany. Like even before that, it's like Turkey is
Speaker 3: a Turkey is the only probably the only like comment
Speaker 3: capable like other like NATO member, and like America's periodically
Speaker 3: at war with them like by proxy. So it's like
Speaker 3: it's America obligated to attack itself because it's like it's
Speaker 3: ally Turkey has been attacked and like incident to the
Speaker 3: NATO charter, it's like an express condition. I mean that's
Speaker 3: some thing that's like goofy. This was made in the
Speaker 3: nineties or like Kissinger said that and then late nineties
Speaker 3: I met because during nineteen ninety nine and to his credit,
Speaker 3: you know, he was one of the few voices it
Speaker 3: really was coming out against Clinton's war on Serbia and
Speaker 3: the kids that are made that pointium back then. He's
Speaker 3: like what like what like so so so like NATO
Speaker 3: is like, uh to provide a nuclear umbrella of defense
Speaker 3: against like you know, the great power of slovan On Melosovich.
Speaker 3: Like it doesn't, I mean it doesn't. Like that's not
Speaker 3: even if even if you needed some kind of like
Speaker 3: it namely uh you know sort of it's sort of
Speaker 3: you know force uh structuring alliance, you know, to allow
Speaker 3: America kind of like deploy to deploy whatever wanted, uh
Speaker 3: willy nilly, Like it doesn't make sense to like may
Speaker 3: try and maintain the NATO fiction. Like it just doesn't
Speaker 3: make sense. On his face if you're gonna try and
Speaker 3: do that. I mean, that's why the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
Speaker 3: is actually a pretty for looking alliance all kinds of ways,
Speaker 3: you know, and it's it's got a military aspect. It's
Speaker 3: gonna ask an economic independence, you know. It accounts to
Speaker 3: that kind of the fluid nature of the current music landscape.
Speaker 3: Like Russia didn't say, like, well, warsaw packs still exists. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, this is warsaw at. You know, I get
Speaker 3: any you know, any uh and any any uh if
Speaker 3: any foreign troops like set foot in Kazakhstan, We're gonna
Speaker 3: wage nuclear war on you. Like when that doesn't you know,
Speaker 3: it's like even like a principle of law too. Again,
Speaker 3: aside from the kind of absurdity that in bad faith
Speaker 3: the concerts natal and any contract and the treaty at
Speaker 3: the end of the day is just a permissive contract.
Speaker 3: The express conditions of it have to be rational, you know,
Speaker 3: and they're just not. And it's like, okay, an attack
Speaker 3: on an attack on Hungary as Rita as an attack
Speaker 3: on the United States, like America is obligated to go
Speaker 3: to war with itself because of the attagging Turkey, which
Speaker 3: is its ally like it doesn't you know, I mean
Speaker 3: I'm being I'm being a jig off and deliberately up two,
Speaker 3: so I kind of am. But uh yeah, it doesn't.
Speaker 3: It's it doesn't make any sense. And this part of it, too,
Speaker 3: is just kind of the foolishness of the bureaucrat, Like
Speaker 3: this idea that you know name exists for its own
Speaker 3: sake because it's it's at the point of it is
Speaker 3: to just exist, and like it's just it's just this
Speaker 3: awesome thing for reasons nobody can articulate, you know. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's like it doesn't. It's like, well, for that reason,
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, well this does that mean that like
Speaker 3: the America should abide like the express conditions like the Yelta,
Speaker 3: because like that's how America and the Soviet Union won
Speaker 3: World War Two? Like, uh, I mean, should should Austria
Speaker 3: started invoking like cont trees, you know, uh, Entine doing
Speaker 3: the Habsburg Empire Like I don't. It doesn't make any sense,
Speaker 3: but it's a clumsy way of preserving the fiction that
Speaker 3: this this is that this is some kind of like
Speaker 3: you know that that this is some sort of like
Speaker 3: common defense. Uh, architecture and not just you know, unilateral aggression.
Speaker 3: That's I mean, that's that's you know, the short answer.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, you got to get at Yeah, this is
Speaker 2: really good. I know you got to get out of town.
Speaker 1: So do some plugs and uh yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, Pete. You can currently find me on
Speaker 3: burb app uh Twitter that is at real Underscore number
Speaker 3: seven h m as seven seven seven. You find me
Speaker 3: on sub stack uh at real Thomas seven seven seven
Speaker 3: dot subsack dot com. Check out the chat on there
Speaker 3: because I'm active there. I'm back on t gram. Uh
Speaker 3: just search out my name and you'll find the channel
Speaker 3: at Uh. Yeah, well I got when I I'm going
Speaker 3: out of town the next few days. I get back
Speaker 3: on Sunday, and then Monday I'm gonna start shooting dedicated
Speaker 3: content for the channel at long last. So that's what
Speaker 3: I'm gonna be working on and that I will drop
Speaker 3: that imminent leap when I get back. But for the
Speaker 3: next two days I'm not gonna be like real active
Speaker 3: content wise. If you got to get a hold of me,
Speaker 3: just like be patient until Sunday. Please, That's all I got.
Speaker 2: Appreciated, Thomas, Thank you very much.
Speaker 3: Thank you much.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the show. What's
Speaker 1: going on, Thomas, How are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm doing well. I'm getting terrorized by Twitter again, I mean,
Speaker 3: after for nothing. I just wanted to like put people
Speaker 3: on notice about that because when it happens like people
Speaker 3: seem to get upset. And I mean I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: I appreciate people like care enough about my content that
Speaker 3: they get upset if they think is going away. But
Speaker 3: what happened. I realized what happened. Periodically I complaints are
Speaker 3: lobbied against my account by the Office of the Protection
Speaker 3: of the Constitution in the bundest Republic. I mean it's
Speaker 3: you think they I mean realize that's like a make
Speaker 3: work uh you know uh or William bureaucracy. But you
Speaker 3: think there are any things to do than harass a
Speaker 3: kind of creator in America. But they've done that before.
Speaker 3: Every time they do it, Twitter finds some arbitrary reason
Speaker 3: or no reason at all is suspend me or ban me.
Speaker 3: They claim that I'm banned for a week. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to disengage from Twitter as much as possible anyway,
Speaker 3: you know, But I know a lot of people that's
Speaker 3: kind of still like where they try to find me
Speaker 3: and stuff. But if I'm not back on Twitter in
Speaker 3: a week, I mean just like hit us up on
Speaker 3: substick or on t Gram. And I launched the channel
Speaker 3: promo so that people know that, you know, by April first,
Speaker 3: I'll have uploaded the first episode, you know. And I
Speaker 3: I owe a tremendoustetic gratitude to my guy Rake, who
Speaker 3: you know, he's just incredible with what he can do
Speaker 3: with you know, video editing and things like that. And
Speaker 3: he and I are are gonna are gonna bear down
Speaker 3: on filming next week. So I mean blown if we're
Speaker 3: if if if if we are like permanently kicked off
Speaker 3: bourback again, like it doesn't matter. It's happened like nine times.
Speaker 3: So but that's that's that I just wanted to I
Speaker 3: just I just wanted to like get people put people
Speaker 3: in notice about that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well one of these things what we should
Speaker 1: do is we should go over that intro video and
Speaker 1: just have you detail like where every I mean I
Speaker 1: saw some video drone in there, and I saw a
Speaker 1: couple of yeah, I saw a couple of other things
Speaker 1: just to like.
Speaker 3: And yeah, he just asked me, uh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: he's like a movie guy too. He's like, I mean
Speaker 3: he's one of us, you know, like not just in
Speaker 3: terms of politics, but you know, like he's like a
Speaker 3: culture guy and like an optics guy, and he's in
Speaker 3: a like style and stuff and movies and that's one
Speaker 3: of the reasons we became like good friends. But he
Speaker 3: basically asked me, like what kind of movies were Like,
Speaker 3: He's like, I know the kind of Shoot, you're into it.
Speaker 3: He's like, give me, like, have it us in your
Speaker 3: favorite movies. It's like I did, and uh, like all
Speaker 3: of them are in there, and there's like a bunch
Speaker 3: of other just like crazy stuff. But it's yeah, it's
Speaker 3: really incredible. Man. I'm not I'm not just like I'm
Speaker 3: not just like stroking myself because you know, it's like
Speaker 3: my content. I it's like really freaking cool. But uh yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm very very lucky to have him on
Speaker 3: board man. And he'll he'll be in front of the
Speaker 3: camera sometimes too, and like I I think people appreciate
Speaker 3: that because he's, uh he's he's a really funny dude.
Speaker 3: And uh you know, yeah, you'll you'll so you'll you'll
Speaker 3: you people will get to meet him and and kind
Speaker 3: of see like what he's about. But yeah, I the
Speaker 3: responsibilit one has been overwhelmingly positive and I really appreciate that,
Speaker 3: and I believe it'll be worth the way, not because
Speaker 3: like I'm so great or anything, but I think I've
Speaker 3: got a sense of what people want to see and
Speaker 3: hear about, and I'm really really dedicating kind of like
Speaker 3: all my time and energy to you know, providing that
Speaker 3: in equality capacity. So yeah, I think he'll be very
Speaker 3: good man. Well yeah, wiping myself and you.
Speaker 1: Know, all we have to do is make sure that
Speaker 1: people also subscribe to the Odyssey channel, because I think
Speaker 1: we all know that the YouTube channel is probably.
Speaker 3: Not gonna I mean it's there's gonna be like copyright
Speaker 3: strikes all fucking day. But also as soonas they figure
Speaker 3: out what I'm doing, I mean they're gonna cancel it.
Speaker 3: But I mean that's fine. I'm basically gonna saturate every
Speaker 3: platform I can. You know, everybody's like you gotta get
Speaker 3: on Cozy. It's like, well, I don't. I don't know
Speaker 3: Nick flent Days. I mean, I like, like at all,
Speaker 3: I've never I've never spoken to the dude, even by
Speaker 3: like text or something. I'm not gonna like presume like
Speaker 3: he wants my ship on his freaking platform. I'll ask him,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, but it's I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna just like assume like, oh, of course he
Speaker 3: wants my ship on his on his you know platform.
Speaker 3: But even if we don't fuck with Cozy, you know,
Speaker 3: there's plenty of other there's plenty of other other platforms
Speaker 3: we can utilize that are are friendly or at least neutral.
Speaker 3: It'll be fine. And you can you can upload video
Speaker 3: direct or you can you can shoot directly on substack,
Speaker 3: or you can upload the pretty much unless you're trying
Speaker 3: to upload like an entire freaking movie link thing. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's like I all fails. I mean, i'd yeah, i'd
Speaker 3: be like just you know, uploading my stuff to Odyssey
Speaker 3: and substick. I mean, we're gonna say, I trade a
Speaker 3: lot more than myth but it'll be I I realize
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get gangs from YouTube. The reason I dropped
Speaker 3: it dres so that people can find us and know
Speaker 3: about it. But yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: I streamed to YouTube yesterday in the middle of the
Speaker 1: afternoon and then like as soon as it ended. I
Speaker 1: immediately deleted the video because I mean I just knew
Speaker 1: what some of the stuff, some of the stuff that
Speaker 1: we said in it was just like it was, It's
Speaker 1: what I've gotten strikes for before.
Speaker 3: I mean, does this one dude? Uh, I don't want
Speaker 3: to drop his names. I don't want he seems like
Speaker 3: an a political guy and I don't I don't want to.
Speaker 3: I don't want to. Like people are terrorizing him, like uh,
Speaker 3: he's like this he's just kind of like crazy like
Speaker 3: uh like like like like horror and cult movie guy,
Speaker 3: Like he gets strikes constantly over just like like total
Speaker 3: bullshit like literally like it seems like and he's constantly
Speaker 3: apologizing with subs. He's got like twenty dollars subscribers, because
Speaker 3: like it's just caust of getting yanked and it's it's
Speaker 3: you know, uh, I mean for the most dubious a reason.
Speaker 3: It's like my point being, I mean, yeah, there were
Speaker 3: absolutely gonna get terrorized like you are. But that's that
Speaker 3: doesn't matter. The whole point is, you know, like I
Speaker 3: do have a YouTube channel right now that people kind
Speaker 3: of like YouTube's kind of like their first go to
Speaker 3: for stuff. But it'll it'll be fine, man, I mean
Speaker 3: I I built the substick basically with no social media presidents,
Speaker 3: because it seems like I launched it that was like
Speaker 3: the first time got perm band from Twitter. I didn't
Speaker 3: get back on Twitter about nine months, you know, I
Speaker 3: didn't have an Instagram. Then like I got on t
Speaker 3: gram you know, after about six months. But it'll, I mean,
Speaker 3: it'll be fine. You know, people people are loyal and
Speaker 3: they follow us, and we've got we got a good
Speaker 3: you know, community of people who know how to you know,
Speaker 3: kind of like remain in contact.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah, I've started I've started streaming. When I
Speaker 1: do my streams to Odyssey and Rumble and immediately uploads
Speaker 1: a bit shoot, you know, the dark side of the Internet.
Speaker 3: And yeah, no, exactly exactly.
Speaker 1: So I don't even know what what do you want
Speaker 1: to talk about today?
Speaker 3: Today? Last time we covered you know, able Archer and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of command to control concerns relating
Speaker 3: to the deep parodies emergent post a tent because that
Speaker 3: that that's that that's kind of the key that kind
Speaker 3: of nexus of events and causes, that's kind of the
Speaker 3: key juncture of of of of you know, final Cold
Speaker 3: War tensions that approached true crisis dimensions. But there's a
Speaker 3: context to how and why that happened, and I want
Speaker 3: to get into that today, like what happened to day Tant.
Speaker 3: We're gonna go a little bit backwards, okay, And as
Speaker 3: we mentioned, Able Archer happened in October nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 3: there was immediate precursors to that that dramatically exacerbated tensions
Speaker 3: and really kind of created in you know, in I
Speaker 3: kind of generated a zeitgeist of not war fever, but
Speaker 3: what what was What is esteemed you know, unthinkable only
Speaker 3: a few years before suddenly became very possible again. And
Speaker 3: there was very much an atmosphere of terror. I mean,
Speaker 3: you remember the actually little ole than me. I was
Speaker 3: a little kid, and my mom was singularly terrified in
Speaker 3: nuclear war. Okay, I mean a lot of people were,
Speaker 3: and my mom was like, I don't want to drop
Speaker 3: some highly personal weird thing, but my mom was kind
Speaker 3: of like apocalyptic and or thinking quite literally, and this
Speaker 3: didn't help any And obviously my dad was reinsinuated into
Speaker 3: the Cold War, so it was but everybody, I mean,
Speaker 3: it was like everybody in the country was like that,
Speaker 3: I mean, and to some degree or another. You know,
Speaker 3: when I can't emphasize that enough to younger people, and
Speaker 3: even as a little kid, obviously I couldn't. It was
Speaker 3: it was a few more years before I could fully
Speaker 3: understand what this was about. But you you fully, even
Speaker 3: as a small boy, I fully grasped that, you know,
Speaker 3: this was monumentally terrifying. Now. Honestly, like if they, if they,
Speaker 3: if if i'd been like a you know, a guy
Speaker 3: pushing fifty in nineteen eighty three, I frankly I wouldn't
Speaker 3: really care. I mean, that's not that's not some fucking
Speaker 3: edge of the lord shit like legit. I mean, you
Speaker 3: just like learn like you just like learn to you
Speaker 3: come to terms with things, and you know, the the
Speaker 3: kind of frailial life and things don't seem scary anymore.
Speaker 3: But yeah, as like a kid or like a young
Speaker 3: person like it was, it was kind of awful. But
Speaker 3: in any event, let's uh, let's dive into it, but
Speaker 3: proceed did able. Archer by several months was the disruption
Speaker 3: of Korean Airlines flight double O seven. What was KL
Speaker 3: flight OH seven KL flight O seven. It was a
Speaker 3: Korean Airlines flight obviously from New York City, or yeah,
Speaker 3: from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, which in
Speaker 3: those days, uh was the common flight pattern. You know, Uh,
Speaker 3: the sol South Korea was a key kind of Cold
Speaker 3: War proxy client state. But you know, this is not
Speaker 3: the South Korea of the two thousands, you know, the
Speaker 3: ninth largest economy in the world or something, you know,
Speaker 3: other than uh, other than in in in kind of
Speaker 3: political and military terms, the van Korea was kind of
Speaker 3: a backwater. So on these flights to Korea there tended
Speaker 3: to be a lot of a lot of heavy personages
Speaker 3: from the national security establishment, the diplomatic corps, you know,
Speaker 3: these kinds of these kinds of these kinds of you know, communities,
Speaker 3: and and KL double seven was no exception. What befell
Speaker 3: KAL flight O seven, well KL O seven straight into
Speaker 3: Soviet airspace and about the same time we're talking like
Speaker 3: within you know, a couple of hours of a of
Speaker 3: an American aerial reconnaissance mission. During the late Cold War,
Speaker 3: America was constantly spoofing Soviet early warning or buzzing it,
Speaker 3: you know, to see kind of what would cause it
Speaker 3: to light up proverbially and to kind of gauge what
Speaker 3: their uh, you know, what their what their protocol was,
Speaker 3: you know, the literally literally the order of operations, you know,
Speaker 3: when when hostile aircraft reached their airspace, possibly incident to
Speaker 3: a nuclear attack. And unfortunately for the passengers and crew
Speaker 3: of kl O seven, a Boeing seven forty seven, even
Speaker 3: at visual range, looks almost identical to an a wax aircraft. Okay,
Speaker 3: And in those days still for certain UH deployment of
Speaker 3: certain weapons platforms, you would advance deployee a UH a
Speaker 3: what's called a masson M M A S I N
Speaker 3: T aircraft in order to acquire targets in order to discern,
Speaker 3: you know, what air defenses were present, as well as
Speaker 3: to interpret, detect and interpret, you know, any electronic signaling
Speaker 3: which could then be you know, deciphered or interpreted to
Speaker 3: paint a picture of what the state of enemy command
Speaker 3: and control was within the target area, you know, theater wide.
Speaker 3: And this was also a particular concern because, as we
Speaker 3: discussed in the last episode, American UH nuclear war planning
Speaker 3: by nineteen eighty two eighty three essentially involved forcing warsaw
Speaker 3: pack to fight a two front nuclear war, if we
Speaker 3: could even think of nuclear com band is having fronts
Speaker 3: assaulting the Soviet Union hard in the Pacific, knocking out
Speaker 3: their commanding control in Central Asia, you know, and and
Speaker 3: then saturating them U with you know, with with with
Speaker 3: heavy bombers, IS and and and naval based weapons platforms
Speaker 3: would potentially, you know, uh, it would potentially accomplish the
Speaker 3: splendid first strike in a BOT from the Blue scenario
Speaker 3: or in a UH in a general Wars Mario, you know,
Speaker 3: that would be that would be the way America would
Speaker 3: escalate anyway. So this had all the telltale signs of
Speaker 3: something potentially very very dangerous in the eyes of you know,
Speaker 3: the uh, the Soviet Union, and there are people uh
Speaker 3: interpreting uh, the breaches of their airspace. So the flight
Speaker 3: was intercepted by a Sukhoi fifteen interceptor. UH, it was destroyed,
Speaker 3: all all everybody died. Of course, this was a huge
Speaker 3: international incident. Okay, it was almost comparable to nine to eleven,
Speaker 3: not in terms of the attrition and you know, the
Speaker 3: lives lost, but it was incredibly shocking to people on
Speaker 3: board the aircraft. Was UH, Larry McDonald, the US Congressman
Speaker 3: who also was the chairman of the John Birch Society,
Speaker 3: and UH one.
Speaker 2: Of he was Ron Paul's like mentor in Congress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and confidant, and he was the last true Southern.
Speaker 3: He was the last true Dixiecrat. McDonald was viewed as
Speaker 3: you know, these like Mother Jones types who he was.
Speaker 3: He was like the man they love to hate and uh,
Speaker 3: these these uh Conservative Caucus types. He was kind of
Speaker 3: like their their their knight in shining armor and you know, knockout, knockdown,
Speaker 3: drag out, you know, congressional battles. But he was he
Speaker 3: was He was a Democrat. He ran as a Democrat
Speaker 3: for the you know, for the entirety of his career,
Speaker 3: and he was really the last true like right wing Democrat.
Speaker 3: But he you know again, not only was he a Bircher,
Speaker 3: but he was you know, chairman of the Birch Society
Speaker 3: and he'd only been nominated for that position a few
Speaker 3: months before he died. He uh, you know again, he
Speaker 3: was one of the founders of the Western Goals Institute, uh,
Speaker 3: which the the British Conservative Monday Club was very much
Speaker 3: affiliated with them, as was the World Anti Communist League.
Speaker 3: You know, people who know the history of these Cold
Speaker 3: War packs of the right, well these will be familiar
Speaker 3: organizational names. But you know, uh, it's a Jesse Helms
Speaker 3: initially was supposed to be on that flight. I mean
Speaker 3: this was a big deal, okay. I mean not just
Speaker 3: because you know, you had these public you had McDonald
Speaker 3: and you had some other person Jess who weren't elected officials.
Speaker 3: But you know, we're very much insinuated in the in
Speaker 3: the BELWI policy corridors. But uh, you know it was there.
Speaker 3: There was something almost kind of like cinematic about it
Speaker 3: in all the worst ways. You know, here's this guy's
Speaker 3: like a lifelong night communist. You know, he's been saying
Speaker 3: his entire professional life, the Soviet Union is dangerous. It
Speaker 3: only understands force the seeing currency. It can you know,
Speaker 3: deploy in order to assert it's it's it's it's vision
Speaker 3: of of ah, you know, of of of of political
Speaker 3: order around of the world, and lo and beholding. How
Speaker 3: does he die? You know, he he dies with you know,
Speaker 3: dozens of other people on this on the civilian airliner.
Speaker 3: That yeah, I think there are two hundred and sixty
Speaker 3: nine people, you know, he dies with like, you know,
Speaker 3: hundreds of other people on this seven forty seven. You know,
Speaker 3: that's un ceremonials blown out of the sky by you know,
Speaker 3: Soviet warbird. It. Uh it really really really upset people,
Speaker 3: and uh, the Soviets, in typical fashion, you know, went
Speaker 3: into kind of you know what, went into kind of
Speaker 3: garrison mode. Uh, I started claiming that first they claim
Speaker 3: that this didn't happen at all, you know. Then they
Speaker 3: claimed that it was a deliberate provocation and the United
Speaker 3: States wanted this to happen, you know, so that you know,
Speaker 3: they could so that they could uh, you know, provoke
Speaker 3: a war. And then that kind of rhetoric itself, I
Speaker 3: mean that that was grossly irresponsible. I mean it, this
Speaker 3: is very very bad the uh in the United States.
Speaker 3: In turn, Reagan's people said that the Soviet Union was
Speaker 3: obstructing search and rescue operations, which they probably were, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, it got it got very very ugly. And
Speaker 3: uh this was uh, this was a couple months prior.
Speaker 3: There had been a Reagan's uh, evil Evil Empire speech
Speaker 3: March eighth, nineteen eighty three, just almost exactly forty years ago,
Speaker 3: as of a couple of days ago. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if people it's it was not a long speech,
Speaker 3: and it hit really really hard. You can find it
Speaker 3: obviously on YouTube or at least a used to be
Speaker 3: able to do. I don't know if I would assume
Speaker 3: it's still there, but you know, in some there was.
Speaker 3: There was some of the normal, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: State of the Union type policy stuff, but the core
Speaker 3: of it was, you know, Reagan essentially stealing people for
Speaker 3: the possibility of nuclear war. And I I know that,
Speaker 3: you know, for at the time and then for decades subsequent.
Speaker 3: It's been kind of a favorite of people on the left.
Speaker 3: Mind you, I'm not some great Reagan apologist, because I
Speaker 3: think people know, but it's because I got to say
Speaker 3: that this was, in fact a great speech and it
Speaker 3: wasn't corny. You're misplaced. And I mean people people always
Speaker 3: accusing Reagan of being this kind of moron with his
Speaker 3: head in the clouds, who was always invoking stuff like
Speaker 3: Star Wars, like you know, it's why they that's where
Speaker 3: they kind of it was. Ted Kennedy point the actual
Speaker 3: phrase star Wars described Messdi, which itself is moronic, but
Speaker 3: calling the Soviet Union the evil Empire wasn't just a
Speaker 3: corny floating signifier. The actual relevant text is what Reagan said,
Speaker 3: and I quote, let us pray for the salvation of
Speaker 3: all those who live in that totalitarian darkness. Pray they
Speaker 3: will cross over the joy of knowing God. But until
Speaker 3: they do, let us be aware that well they preach
Speaker 3: the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man,
Speaker 3: and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth.
Speaker 3: They're the folks of evil in the modern world. So
Speaker 3: in your discussions of nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you
Speaker 3: to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blankly
Speaker 3: declaring itself above it all, and label both sides of
Speaker 3: equally at fault. To ignore the facts of history and
Speaker 3: the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call
Speaker 3: the arms race a giant misunderstanding, thereby remove yourself from
Speaker 3: the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.
Speaker 3: That sounds like a worst speech. Okay, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: that was misplaced. I think that was entirely a prop
Speaker 3: for you. Within the boundary rationality of the Cold War,
Speaker 3: a very very strong statement had to be made, and
Speaker 3: drop Off took that to mean that Reagan is planning
Speaker 3: to sue for war, and I it's it's it's understandable
Speaker 3: in context why he would think that. Okay. And plus
Speaker 3: I think this is a damn good speech. Okay, that's
Speaker 3: that's not folk. That's not that kind of cringe soaring
Speaker 3: language that these uh, these kind of these these belwey
Speaker 3: types are are prone to invoke these days. I mean,
Speaker 3: it was it didn't it didn't seem a hoky at
Speaker 3: the time, you know, And and it was a it
Speaker 3: was there. There was genuine there's a genuine strategic paradigm
Speaker 3: shift underway that was profoundly destabilizing. Okay, I mean I
Speaker 3: I I I said, frankly, the Evil Empire speech is
Speaker 3: better than these speech Kennedy ever made. Okay, just an
Speaker 3: objective terms. And again I'm not any kind of I'm
Speaker 3: not kind of Reagan lover or something, but that that
Speaker 3: can't be denied. It's kind of incredible to me. That.
Speaker 3: But the other thing, the biggest like middling speeches by
Speaker 3: like Churchill, we're just kind of drunk and like mumbling about,
Speaker 3: you know, like we will never surrender, you know, or
Speaker 3: like Martin Luther King with this kind of just these
Speaker 3: kind of like nonsense platitudes, you know, people hold this out,
Speaker 3: is like just this kind of an incredible example of
Speaker 3: of of of of modern oratory. It's like, really, man,
Speaker 3: like the Evil Empire speech is kind of is is peak, Okay,
Speaker 3: I mean not just going to the not not not
Speaker 3: just not just going to the you know, for fun
Speaker 3: of the other language, but the context in which was
Speaker 3: delivered at least I think so, Like I said, I'm
Speaker 3: sure people just claim that that's you know, that's some
Speaker 3: you know, love for Reagan for something.
Speaker 1: But again, is it generally accepted that Anthony Dollan wrote it?
Speaker 3: I believe so. I mean that's Reagan was not. Reagan
Speaker 3: could shoot from the hip and speak very well. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's why he was, you know, dubbed the great communicator.
Speaker 3: But Reagan did not write a lot of his own,
Speaker 3: you know, long form speeches. I believe, Uh, I can't.
Speaker 3: Somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that
Speaker 3: the seventies, the seventy six Republican Convention, that was Reagan's
Speaker 3: other really famous speech. I believe he wrote most of that,
Speaker 3: and that was remarkable because generally Reagan didn't. That's why
Speaker 3: you know, the bit Berg speech. Buchanan wrote that and
Speaker 3: that wasn't just Nancy Reagan. He was in as an
Speaker 3: excuse to throw patter under the bus. But you can't
Speaker 3: actually wrote that speech like it. And that was you know,
Speaker 3: in Reagan's era. It wasn't yet at the point where
Speaker 3: you know, just it was part of the chorus for
Speaker 3: you know, presidents and candidates for the White House, you know,
Speaker 3: just to rely on you know, people to write their
Speaker 3: their copy for them. I mean some people did, some
Speaker 3: people didn't, but yeah, Reagan generally didn't.
Speaker 1: I remember the uh, the Bittburg controversy is like it
Speaker 1: was yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that's well, we'll get into that on
Speaker 3: the next episode, as as we kind of approached Pera
Speaker 3: Streika and stuff. But that that was entirely appropriate and
Speaker 3: how anyway, I mean, first of all, I I I
Speaker 3: got nothing but esteem for obviously, I mean, those guys
Speaker 3: were heroes. But even if you completely reject that take,
Speaker 3: it was entirely appropriate what Reagan said. He said these
Speaker 3: he said, these men were victims of the war too,
Speaker 3: and I don't I don't see how they could be
Speaker 3: construed as controversial and Helmet Cole essentially insisted that you know,
Speaker 3: the the war that the German War, that'd be acknowledged.
Speaker 3: Like if anything, if if people wanted to throw mud
Speaker 3: on somebody for reported, you know, fascist symbo these like
Speaker 3: Cole would kind of be the guy to hang that on.
Speaker 3: But I think it was among gonna think it was
Speaker 3: an excuse to sort of uh excize you can, from
Speaker 3: the Reagan from Reagan's in her circle. Nancy real was
Speaker 3: in some ways like Priscilla was the Elvis, you know,
Speaker 3: and and the way she just decided that she like
Speaker 3: hated some guy or hated some guy's wife who was
Speaker 3: part of the Memphis mathias. So we had to go
Speaker 3: like Nancy did that too. Like I'm not that there's
Speaker 3: a certain kind of woman who does that. I'm not
Speaker 3: trying to trash females at all, but I mean everybody
Speaker 3: knows that's true. And Nancy Reagan was a very strange bird,
Speaker 3: like she really was in all kinds of ways. I'm
Speaker 3: frankly surprised. It's it's i mean, that's a whole other question.
Speaker 3: It's it's strange that she was. I mean, she was
Speaker 3: Reagan's second wife, you know, once he picked her up,
Speaker 3: well after he had kind of decided he wanted a
Speaker 3: political career of some sort. It's very strange, but that
Speaker 3: that's my read on it. And yeah, obviously, you know,
Speaker 3: like we talked about, it wasn't nearly as extreme because
Speaker 3: Reagan truly did have a pretty remarkable mandate for a
Speaker 3: post uh for a post war president. But there was
Speaker 3: there wasn't there was a kind of Reagan derangement syndrome.
Speaker 3: You remember that, Like, yeah, if it rains on Sunday,
Speaker 3: it's because of Reagan. Like if if your corn flakes
Speaker 3: don't taste good, it's because of Reagan. Like everything that
Speaker 3: happened in the world is like some work by Reagan.
Speaker 3: Like yeah, so that, I mean, that was part of it.
Speaker 3: But but yeah, the regardless, like I said, I mean,
Speaker 3: even even people who you know, were in our cynical
Speaker 3: about the Cold War, even people who don't particularly even
Speaker 3: even people think Rag was just some kind of like
Speaker 3: glorified pitch man. I mean that that that was a
Speaker 3: great speech, and you know, I don't think it was pratuitous,
Speaker 3: but again it did it. It did sound like a
Speaker 3: war speech and and drop off and uh, you know
Speaker 3: ustinof Gromico Trenenko, I mean, all these guys who constituted
Speaker 3: you know, the inner Inner Party. I mean they all,
Speaker 3: they all lived through the war with with the German Reich.
Speaker 3: I mean they to say they were sensitive to these indicators,
Speaker 3: it doesn't even begin to kind of scratch the surface
Speaker 3: of you know, the kind of depth of their fears
Speaker 3: of these things. But it's this is what's important too
Speaker 3: to keep in mind is as to why this this
Speaker 3: you know, nineteen seventy nine to eighty four into eighty
Speaker 3: five was so dangerous, you know, like what happened? You know,
Speaker 3: like what what happened? What happened to Dayton? What killed it? What?
Speaker 3: What constituted Dayton? In brass text terms? In terms of
Speaker 3: policy of uh, you know the East Block and you
Speaker 3: know the West slash NATO And what what kind of
Speaker 3: treaty if not law? Because I mean we we cann't
Speaker 3: really talk about treaties as binding law. It can never
Speaker 3: be anything but permissive. But particularly during the Cold War
Speaker 3: or it was kind of more like a statement of
Speaker 3: good faith than anything. But it did you know, it
Speaker 3: did have it did have moral force. Okay, really what
Speaker 3: kind of constituted Dayton? Where rubber met the road? One
Speaker 3: of its big kind of aims and for a for
Speaker 3: a limited time. We're gonna get into why this was
Speaker 3: problematic as it was constituted. One of its big ambitions
Speaker 3: was to kind of take off the possibility of war
Speaker 3: in Europe, take that off the table. You know, as
Speaker 3: we talked about, there's basically two issues in strategic terms.
Speaker 3: You know, there's obviously America and the Soviet Union could
Speaker 3: come to a real blows in any number of theaters.
Speaker 3: Although the primary diad was Europe, but the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: visa of the Europe I mean that was that was
Speaker 3: an open ended question. I mean, where did Europe stand.
Speaker 3: There's several uh constituent elements in NATO, like where did
Speaker 3: they stand in divisi dually and so far as they
Speaker 3: did have you know, a cognizable, you know, discrete policy
Speaker 3: independent of the NATO structure. You know, what was their
Speaker 3: relationship to the Soviet Union in pure geostrategic terms. I mean,
Speaker 3: this had this this had tremendous significance politically, not just
Speaker 3: for you know, global stability or and the potential for
Speaker 3: a crisis diads, but but also it was understood by everybody.
Speaker 3: I mean, even a conventional war in Europe with you know,
Speaker 3: modern combined arms it would have been utterly devastating, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean that there would have been the end of
Speaker 3: Europe quite literally, you know, it would not have survived,
Speaker 3: you know, or if it did, it would it would
Speaker 3: have been some sort of you know, it would not
Speaker 3: have been It would not have been Europe as we
Speaker 3: know it anymore. Okay. This kind of brought quite literally
Speaker 3: every European state, exempting Albania, which is always you know,
Speaker 3: which which was under the which was under the rule
Speaker 3: of inver hawksa you know, and they had all their
Speaker 3: little bunkers everybody knows, like what the hawks of bunkers. Well,
Speaker 3: like Albania was protesting like any anything relating to UH
Speaker 3: de Tante treaty making because they claimed that they supported
Speaker 3: the people's probably in China because they were the true
Speaker 3: like Marxist Leninist vanguard. But other than that, every every
Speaker 3: member state in NATO and the Warsaw Pact plus UH
Speaker 3: Norway plus you know, plus UH Spain, which I don't
Speaker 3: think was a NATO yet because it was seventy three.
Speaker 3: They UH signed on for what came to be called
Speaker 3: the Conference and Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was
Speaker 3: Canadi in ninety seven to ninety seventy five. It was
Speaker 3: held in Helsinki, Finland, the final phase of it, which
Speaker 3: came to be called the Helsinki Accords or the Helsinki Declaration,
Speaker 3: between July thirtieth and August first, nine seventy five. Now,
Speaker 3: this followed two years and negotiations of this kind of
Speaker 3: tortured process. We're in again, uh, thirty five participating states
Speaker 3: plus the United States and Canada. Did I did I
Speaker 3: disconnect from it? It? No, you're good, Okay, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: For some reason, the freaking you're by my my video
Speaker 3: kicked out? Okay. The Helsinki Declaration it cons dude, the
Speaker 3: thirty five participating states, you know, all the all the
Speaker 3: members states in NATO and Warsaw Pact, you know, plus
Speaker 3: UH plus Sweden or plus Norway plus Spain, the United
Speaker 3: States plus Canada. What it can with this, with this
Speaker 3: declaration came to constitute was it was supposed to be basically,
Speaker 3: you know, a kind of a kind of quasi bill
Speaker 3: of rights that was understood to be, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of like represent the fundamental rights of man de Girey
Speaker 3: on both sides of the Iron curtain. You know. It
Speaker 3: was a sovereigny quality, respect for the rights inherent and
Speaker 3: sovereignty of all you know, constituent states of Natal and
Speaker 3: Warsaw Pact refraining from the threat of use of force
Speaker 3: to advanced policy initiatives other than defensively, which I realized
Speaker 3: that's kind of meaningless and existential terms, but it has
Speaker 3: political currency in these kinds of situations. You know, a
Speaker 3: recognition of the territorial integrity estates as existed. Then you
Speaker 3: know with the you know, the post war boundaries that
Speaker 3: have been drawn, the peaceful settlement of disputes, not intervention
Speaker 3: and hostile terms, and you know, the affairs of the
Speaker 3: constituent states either NATO or worse up packed and a
Speaker 3: basic and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. And
Speaker 3: this was a big one, including freedom of thought, conscience,
Speaker 3: and religion. Okay. Now presidentev made a very big deal
Speaker 3: about this, okay, and this was before he was you
Speaker 3: don't really compromised in terms of his mental faculties. And
Speaker 3: so did Eric Honecker. Okay, because Honaker, especially because he's Jeremy,
Speaker 3: always been struggling for legitimacy. You know, they weren't even
Speaker 3: recognized as as as as a state until the seventies
Speaker 3: by you know, a majority of this planet, but the
Speaker 3: worst up packed or the Iron curtain. Rather the states
Speaker 3: find the Iron curt and the constant with the Soviets
Speaker 3: fear of influence. They were always gonna they were always
Speaker 3: clawing for respectability, which you know, in the Cold War
Speaker 3: context was essential because this really was u a battle
Speaker 3: of zeitgeist and which system and which superpower would become
Speaker 3: the world system. You know, this wasn't just cosmetic or something,
Speaker 3: and it wasn't just you know, it wasn't just these
Speaker 3: kind of career statesmen, you know, wanting a feather in
Speaker 3: their cap, you know, so they could like look at,
Speaker 3: you know, their proverbial trophy case and like Admyer, their
Speaker 3: own you know, great career or whatever. It's had like
Speaker 3: actual impact. That's important to keep in mind, but would
Speaker 3: really kind of opened the door to this. What really
Speaker 3: made this possible, what really made the tame possible, was
Speaker 3: the situation between the two Germanys, and specifically the sendencee
Speaker 3: of Billy Brandt. Who is Billy Brandt. Billy brand was
Speaker 3: this crazy, uh kind of sixty eight or socialist and
Speaker 3: he was middle aged by that epoch you know, he
Speaker 3: was of the war generation, but he'd been the governor.
Speaker 3: He's been the governing mayor of West Berlin, and Berlin
Speaker 3: to this day remains like, you know, an independent polity
Speaker 3: like all the several German states or prefectures are. But
Speaker 3: during the Cold War it had special status or like
Speaker 3: or you know when the inner German boards and tags.
Speaker 3: It had special status, you know, because there was a
Speaker 3: quasi protectorate of of you know, the the of of
Speaker 3: of America, France and the UK. It uh, it was
Speaker 3: situated completely within uh you know, the territory of the
Speaker 3: d d R. So the Marror Westbroo, the governing mayor
Speaker 3: of West Berlin. He had unusual clout. Okay Brand was
Speaker 3: the chairman of the Social Democratic Party from sixty four
Speaker 3: to eighty seven and most significantly and to understand his
Speaker 3: kind of contribution to history as it were accidental or
Speaker 3: not or uh you know, uh literally like accidental or not,
Speaker 3: like you know what he kind of what he kind
Speaker 3: of fumbled into. He was the chance of the Buddhist
Speaker 3: Republic from ninety six ninety seventy five. He was this
Speaker 3: big uh you know, he was this big liberal reformer.
Speaker 3: He he really compromised the bon the buds uh comic capability,
Speaker 3: which was a big deal because the BUN was the
Speaker 3: spear point of NATO in the first decades after the
Speaker 3: Day of Defeat. They really were like a crack military force,
Speaker 3: and they had to be because they're opt Fur was,
Speaker 3: you know, the notional volks Army. This should all be
Speaker 3: very clear. You know. There was a slew of other
Speaker 3: you know, kind of brand Brand's apologists and supporters were
Speaker 3: his point in the fact that you know, the the
Speaker 3: number of Germans made the poverty line, you know, like
Speaker 3: fell from you know, two point nine percent to like,
Speaker 3: you know, something totally marginal. But entrepreneurial activity also dropped
Speaker 3: down to zero, you know, I mean it was a
Speaker 3: typical kind of it was the typical kind of like
Speaker 3: socialist stagnation written large, you know. But but hey, you know,
Speaker 3: the and the cope for for for those that defensive
Speaker 3: things are we got this great education system and now
Speaker 3: nobody's poor anymore, I mean everybody. This is a very
Speaker 3: common uh that this was a common occurrence. You know,
Speaker 3: when when when when social democrats are Greens later on,
Speaker 3: you know, gained majoritary and status and any of these
Speaker 3: you know, any of these West European states. But more importantly,
Speaker 3: Brandt's big thing was ostpolitic. He wanted a true like
Speaker 3: reconciliation with East Germany, Okay, and towards that end, starting
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty seven, herestad was diplomatic relations with Romania, He
Speaker 3: entered into a trade agreement Czechoslovakia. You know, he restored
Speaker 3: formal relations with Yugoslavia. This was set back in August
Speaker 3: sixty eight when you know, with the Fremlins invasion in Czechoslovakia.
Speaker 3: But uh, you know, he condemned brand formally condemned the invasion.
Speaker 3: But uh you know he uh he when he basically
Speaker 3: renegotiated the ruling coalition, you know, the Free Democrats and
Speaker 3: you know who bagged to continued approachment with the worst
Speaker 3: up act and that was that was kind of his
Speaker 3: way of finessing you know, what could have been a
Speaker 3: careruning crisis into a way of staying alive. But uh
Speaker 3: it uh, this reached this kind of zena in sixty
Speaker 3: nine when uh he agreed to meet uh he agreed
Speaker 3: agreed to me with Willie Stuff, who was East German premier,
Speaker 3: who was you know in this kind of byzantine DDR system,
Speaker 3: technically the head of of state contra, you know, the
Speaker 3: the head of government you know, to the who was
Speaker 3: you know, the General Secretary of the se uh D,
Speaker 3: which by then was Honiker, but he he agreed to
Speaker 3: meet with Honiker too, and so he basically in one
Speaker 3: fell stroke, he basically you know, gave the d DR
Speaker 3: the legitimacy that it it had been attempting to apture
Speaker 3: really from inception. And this, uh, understandably, this really really
Speaker 3: outraged you know, not just people who had family behind
Speaker 3: the wall, but also uh, you know, people who had
Speaker 3: real concerns about the fact that the Soviet Union worse
Speaker 3: upack that genuine momentum then in military terms and frankly
Speaker 3: in political terms in the Third World, like we talked about,
Speaker 3: you know, like it appeared that Brandt was was uh
Speaker 3: was selling Europe out UH to the Stalnists in a
Speaker 3: real way, owing either to malice or malice or naivete
Speaker 3: it didn't matter. And this, in my opinion, it was
Speaker 3: kind of the zenith of UH a Warsaw pack power politically,
Speaker 3: because what had always been the way Warsaw Pact wins
Speaker 3: is it demilitarized Germany, you know, I mean this was
Speaker 3: the subject of the aid note as we got into
Speaker 3: many moons ago. This is what the Soviets always wanted, okay,
Speaker 3: and it looked like they were gonna get it, albeit
Speaker 3: in some gradual capacity. But what what brought this down
Speaker 3: is fascinating. Willie Brandt's or Billy Brandt's top aid you know,
Speaker 3: his uh and and the and the and the Social
Speaker 3: Democrat Party like secretary was a guy named Guter Gillom
Speaker 3: okay and uh Gillam was a connected with the hip
Speaker 3: to uh to Billy Brandt. And he was just kind
Speaker 3: of he was just kind of he was this kind
Speaker 3: of shifty looking guy. Frankly, you know, always were dark glasses.
Speaker 3: He was always dressed impeccably, but you know, he truly
Speaker 3: was ubiquitous. Like when Brandt went on vacation, you know,
Speaker 3: Gion like went with Brandt and his family too, Like
Speaker 3: they were close and it was believed that basically Brandt
Speaker 3: was a womanizer, you know, he he liked pussy too much.
Speaker 3: He was at drunk like like Brandy Villy was his
Speaker 3: you know, kind of nickname. You know, friends and foes
Speaker 3: alike called him that he relied on Gillam, you know,
Speaker 3: to kind of like hold it together. Okay, Well, in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy four and April twenty fourth, Gillom gets arrested.
Speaker 3: Because Gillam was he was a Stasi officer and he
Speaker 3: had been for his whole life. He's quite literally deployed
Speaker 3: to the Bonus Republic to get close to anybody he could,
Speaker 3: and he got close to Billy Brandt and he quite
Speaker 3: literally made Brandt Chancellor. I mean, I think about that,
Speaker 3: like think about what a coup that is. And Guillam
Speaker 3: was able to steal the uh I is only above
Speaker 3: top secret NATO nuclear war plan from the Chancellor's safe
Speaker 3: and he was able to deliver it to East Berlin.
Speaker 3: And UH, from that point forward, it was never clear
Speaker 3: like what the Stasi knew, you know, and like how
Speaker 3: long they had known, you know. And this was this
Speaker 3: Ode DeMarcus Wolf, who was you know, kind of the
Speaker 3: uh it was kind of the genius of the Ministry
Speaker 3: for State Security. He was the he was the he
Speaker 3: was the chief of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate, the main
Speaker 3: director for reconnaissance. And UH, Guillome was his like like
Speaker 3: the mole that became Guillome. This I mean this was
Speaker 3: his this was his operation, you know, from inception to conclusion.
Speaker 3: And uh Wolf made the point that Gillom's arrest and
Speaker 3: exposure this is really kind of what killed uh the
Speaker 3: ambition of a Warsaw Pact and everything they'd accomplished, because
Speaker 3: after that, the Bonis Republic became basically a police state,
Speaker 3: you know, like they a couple of years subsequent the
Speaker 3: bottom Miindhaw faction, you know, the Red Army faction, you know,
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy seven, Uh, that was the German Autumn
Speaker 3: as it was called. You know, they they kidnapped and
Speaker 3: murdered a number of you know, of of highly of
Speaker 3: highly situated personages, you know, industrialists, consertive politicians, people of
Speaker 3: this nature. You know, the uh it uh this is
Speaker 3: really what facilitated the ascendency of a man like Helmet
Speaker 3: Cole or the chancellorship. And this is one west, this one.
Speaker 3: The Bonis Republic like rejoined the Cold War in earnest,
Speaker 3: you know, and then all bets were off. And it
Speaker 3: also there's something that profoundly sinister about this. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that in like a charny way, but you know,
Speaker 3: the intelligence game, for whatever reason, the Russian the Soviets
Speaker 3: and other Russians are very very good at it. They
Speaker 3: were always way way better at it than NATO and
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, and this was a testament to that.
Speaker 3: You know, about ten years after the Guillaume affair, Hans Tige,
Speaker 3: you know who was the who's the chief of the
Speaker 3: counterintelligence Directorate of West German intelligence. He just literally defected
Speaker 3: the East Germany. Okay, I mean there's nothing there, weren't
Speaker 3: any people going the other way of that static. I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: there's people. There's people like you know Suberov, you know,
Speaker 3: not the super Off, but you know, the guy whose
Speaker 3: pen name was Victor Suvaroff. You know, there's mid level
Speaker 3: Soviet officers, there's even a couple of generals, but nothing
Speaker 3: like this, you know, and that's that. There's entire value
Speaker 3: is written on why that was. But the point is
Speaker 3: that this kind of killed anybody's idea, you know, even
Speaker 3: kind of the most starwart you know, kind of soci
Speaker 3: them like East Block apologists, I mean they realize that,
Speaker 3: like the Communists, truly words aiming to subvert the Buddhist Republic,
Speaker 3: render a defense list, you know, penetrated by any means necessary.
Speaker 3: You know and and and thereby you know, remove Europe
Speaker 3: from the American defense umbrella for all time. Okay, I
Speaker 3: don't want to get into an argument about what the
Speaker 3: implications of that are in like world historical terms, like
Speaker 3: people know my opinion, but that that's not important. We're
Speaker 3: talking with the bound of rationality, the Gold War and
Speaker 3: in it's epoch, how people viewed these things because of
Speaker 3: the tant and the hell stinky course and everything else.
Speaker 3: So you look at that situation and then you know,
Speaker 3: like we talked about last episode, uh, the assault in Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: you know, the uh, the emergency deep parodies, you know,
Speaker 3: and and uh and the Soviets attempt to to remedy that,
Speaker 3: you know, by by deploying uh even more UH weapons platforms,
Speaker 3: the massive throwway in the European theater, you know, and
Speaker 3: Reagan regeway returning the serve was the deployment of intermediate
Speaker 3: range UH nuclear weapons to uh, you know, to to
Speaker 3: the Buddhist Republic, to Italy, to the Netherlands and another
Speaker 3: key theaters. And that's uh, that's basically how I mean.
Speaker 3: You can see kind of like a perfect storm of
Speaker 3: causality leading to the leading to the status of tensions,
Speaker 3: you know, by nineteen eighty three. I don't think that
Speaker 3: there's I don't think that there's a comparable set a
Speaker 3: crisis cycle in the Cold War. I mean there was,
Speaker 3: like I said, there was nineteen seventy three, you know,
Speaker 3: where the Soviets actually they deployed nuclear weapons, you know,
Speaker 3: to the Middle Eastern theater in anticipation of a general
Speaker 3: assault in support of their Egyptian ally. Nineteen sixty two. Obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, there were the world, the United States and
Speaker 3: the Soviet were very close to nuclear war. But that
Speaker 3: was well before that was well before nuclear parody had
Speaker 3: been achieved. So it yeah, okay, I mean I realized
Speaker 3: it sounds like I'm being flippant, but if America took
Speaker 3: twenty million dead, it still would have won. I mean,
Speaker 3: there would have been no more Soviet Union. You know,
Speaker 3: that's got different implications, you know, And it's not it's
Speaker 3: not so much that you know nineteen eighty two to
Speaker 3: eighty four, it's it's not so much that you know,
Speaker 3: it was this punctuated moment like seventy three, when uh
Speaker 3: America reached Defcon three, or like sixty two, when the
Speaker 3: question was, you know, are the stories just gonna you know,
Speaker 3: just gonna run the blockade. It was just kind of ongoing.
Speaker 3: It was it was just kind of it was just
Speaker 3: kind of like never ending state of elevated tension when
Speaker 3: it seemed that at any moment, you know, uh, a
Speaker 3: general crisis could deteriorate, it could deteriorate into nuclear war
Speaker 3: before anybody even knew it was happening, owing a large
Speaker 3: part two to the state of you know, weapons development
Speaker 3: then and commanding control technology, which is essentially neutralized generally warning.
Speaker 3: That's uh, what's important to consider, I believe, because I
Speaker 3: do get asked by people like, well, why was this
Speaker 3: so dangerous? There wasn't some you know, moment like in
Speaker 3: the human missile crisis, So there wasn't some ultimatum issued,
Speaker 3: you know, like when the Soviets declared that you know,
Speaker 3: if the Israelis annihilated you know, the Egyptian army and
Speaker 3: then and then Martina and Cairo that you know, the
Speaker 3: Soviets would intervene and then if if met you know,
Speaker 3: biconoparable American forces that you know, they resort to nuclear
Speaker 3: weapons in order to prevent their own people from you know,
Speaker 3: being surrounded and destroyed similarly. But that's that's kind of
Speaker 3: what I got for today, because I don't want to
Speaker 3: the the GORTROSSI sendency and kind of what ended this
Speaker 3: strategic paradigm is significant. And the roll of Attias rust
Speaker 3: the roosts, you know, the uh the kid who flew
Speaker 3: his uh who flew his prop plane into Red Square.
Speaker 3: That's a fascinating story and it's got huge significance for
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of internal in like for for
Speaker 3: Kremlin intrigues that you know led to a led to
Speaker 3: a real policy shift. Why with the fact that it
Speaker 3: costs many many Stalness hardliners and key rolls their jobs.
Speaker 3: But I that I think we should say that for
Speaker 3: next episode because again I want to deal with, you know,
Speaker 3: the end of the drop of chert Ancle era in
Speaker 3: the ascendency of gorbachhow next episode. So I think that's
Speaker 3: all like.
Speaker 1: A well, let me ask you this, the shooting down
Speaker 1: of zero zero seven. There had to have been close
Speaker 1: calls before, There had to have been planes that flew
Speaker 1: into airspace. Why was it that one? Yeah, not to
Speaker 1: you know, not to put on a tinfoil hat and everything,
Speaker 1: but it you know, and like you said, there was
Speaker 1: always that flight would always have someone on it of significance.
Speaker 1: But why do you think it was just at that
Speaker 1: time it was just that was the perfect storm time.
Speaker 3: That was the perfect storm time. It's not clear why,
Speaker 3: because you know, even in those days there was you
Speaker 3: could recover audio from from from rex like the black Box.
Speaker 3: I guess the Soviets tried to hail this plane and
Speaker 3: like I said, at seven forty seven, Apparently I'm not
Speaker 3: like an aviation guy like I like war birds. I
Speaker 3: think they're cool, but I don't know anything about like
Speaker 3: the you know, particulars of it. Apparently a seven forty seven,
Speaker 3: like I said, looks basically just like an a wax
Speaker 3: of the era, like even at visual arrange. So the
Speaker 3: Soviets are like, you know, why why we're not just
Speaker 3: being spoofed. This is you know, this isn't this isn't
Speaker 3: early They're trying, they're trying to detect their early warning
Speaker 3: and how much it's lit up. They tried to hail
Speaker 3: the pilot on you know, whatever the you know, international
Speaker 3: emergency frequency is, and it was dead silence. This Sukoy
Speaker 3: got on his tail and made clear that like it
Speaker 3: was you know, at attack range you know, and it
Speaker 3: still didn't deviate from its course. You know, the pilot
Speaker 3: who took it down obviously, you know, he was forced
Speaker 3: to lie by the cremlin and stuff. You know, sometime
Speaker 3: in the two thousands, you know, he he he testified
Speaker 3: to this British filmmaker about everything that happened, and uh,
Speaker 3: he's like, yeah, you know, he's like, when I got
Speaker 3: the order to the fire, I didn't hesitate, and he's like,
Speaker 3: I didn't think it was. He's like, I didn't think
Speaker 3: we were gonna He's like, I didn't think it was,
Speaker 3: you know, a precursor to an attack. But he's like,
Speaker 3: I it didn't make sense what it was doing. You know,
Speaker 3: He's like, I thought something wasn't right here. What some
Speaker 3: of these FAA types, some of these like investigator types
Speaker 3: and guys you know aviation claim or like what they think.
Speaker 3: I mean, we take for granted that it's a hell
Speaker 3: of a lot easier I mean, in in aviation and
Speaker 3: anywhere else these days to identify your your true position.
Speaker 3: In those days, it wasn't. The consensus is that these
Speaker 3: Korean pilots were wildly off course. They had no idea
Speaker 3: they were in the Soviet airspace at all. So like
Speaker 3: when a sue who got on their tail ivan does
Speaker 3: their their idea with their nose. Probably ivan does crazy
Speaker 3: things all the time, you know. Uh, they wouldn't even
Speaker 3: occur to them, like we're gonna get blown out of
Speaker 3: the sky. Plus yeah, the fact it was a perfect
Speaker 3: storm of of of concrete tensions, you know, going to
Speaker 3: the global situation. But it's weird, and it's weird that
Speaker 3: McDonald was just having to be on that plane, you know.
Speaker 3: And it's like and then too like a lot of
Speaker 3: Burcher types and stuff and not and and other just
Speaker 3: like right wing guys not even like Bircher cranks were
Speaker 3: like obviously the Soviets are just doing this because they can,
Speaker 3: and they hated McDonald anyway, so they just killed it.
Speaker 3: And I mean, honestly, I can see why people want
Speaker 3: have thought that because it's weird, you know, and I
Speaker 3: mean the Cold War was weird, you know, and it's uh,
Speaker 3: and plus the they the Soviets did grindy ship. I
Speaker 3: mean they you know, in the same epoch, you know,
Speaker 3: they it's clear now like they they retained some freaking
Speaker 3: you know, this this Turk to try and murder the Pope,
Speaker 3: like you know they uh, the uh, these Popular Front
Speaker 3: for the Liberation of Palestine guys were going berserk. You know.
Speaker 3: They were the guys who blew up the Disco tech
Speaker 3: in West Berlin. Like those were those guys were like
Speaker 3: in the in the influence of the Stazi and Operation
Speaker 3: Control of KGB was over the Stazi. It's like they
Speaker 3: you know, obviously it's a different thing that you know,
Speaker 3: to blow a civilian airline around the sky with with
Speaker 3: a war bird. But it, you know, the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: was behaving. It was behaving very much like a lawless actor,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 1: But I mean, but that wasn't top down right, I
Speaker 1: mean with the premiere of that they were gonna do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this is just what happened, was what
Speaker 3: I said. It was was yeah, but I understand. My
Speaker 3: point was I could see why people who weren't crazy
Speaker 3: you could think that, you know, this was this was
Speaker 3: just the Soviets being brutes. I mean that. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it was it was there. There wasn't there's
Speaker 3: not like a deeper there's not deeper lore there. But yeah,
Speaker 3: McDonald was a and I mean it's sad McDonald died.
Speaker 3: I mean I don't. I'm not a fan of the
Speaker 3: Birth Society, but there's some good guys in there. Like
Speaker 3: that is now when McDonald was probably he was not
Speaker 3: the last Congress when it was actually worse shit, he
Speaker 3: was a good dude, you know, I mean it, I
Speaker 3: missed the days when there was like democrats who weren't
Speaker 3: just like not like shit bags and perverts, but they
Speaker 3: actually were like dude who represented their constituents. And McDonald's
Speaker 3: a guy who did that. And arguably, I mean he
Speaker 3: died for him. He wouldn't have been on that stupid
Speaker 3: plane going to South Korea, like if he you know,
Speaker 3: wasn't acting in his official capacity. I mean that, you know,
Speaker 3: in the Cold War, I mean politicians now they're like
Speaker 3: they're like total devans and losers because like, no man
Speaker 3: who's got anything going on in his life like goes
Speaker 3: into politics. But the Cold War was different. You know,
Speaker 3: you had you had like real guys, and you had
Speaker 3: people who had something to offer, who went into who
Speaker 3: went into public life, you know, like McDonald. You know,
Speaker 3: I mean it's and it's it's a tragedy, you know.
Speaker 3: And as we're you know, the right, those other two
Speaker 3: Hudred and six and nine people on board. You know
Speaker 3: when there was like I said it was it was
Speaker 3: multi official types and business people, but you know there
Speaker 3: was still there was a couple of dozen women and kids.
Speaker 3: I mean the thing was fucking awful. But uh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well plugs and we're out here.
Speaker 3: Yeah like again too, like let me terrorized by bourbapps,
Speaker 3: so like, please don't pay it any mind. I I
Speaker 3: guess not. In a week, I'll be back on there,
Speaker 3: but I'm trying to phase it out as we kind
Speaker 3: of transition to the channel. But I mean in the intrum.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can find me on t ram. Uh,
Speaker 3: you'll find me on sub stack real Thomas seven seven seven,
Speaker 3: that's upstack dot com. My YouTube channel is Thomas TV.
Speaker 3: The the trailer uh or the promo is up for
Speaker 3: the channel. The intro. Rather, I'm in the process of
Speaker 3: recording the first episode, as I hope people gleaned from
Speaker 3: the intro that my dear friend and bro Rake created
Speaker 3: for us. I I want this to be very high quality.
Speaker 3: I'm not just like throwing shit out there, you know,
Speaker 3: so it takes time to produce it. I I'm I'm
Speaker 3: I'm piecemeal getting the equipment I need uh to do
Speaker 3: this in a more exponitious capacity. But like, please bear
Speaker 3: with me. I promised by April first we will have
Speaker 3: like actual episodes. But that's that's my that's my jive
Speaker 3: as of today.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I appreciate it. Till the next time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, Pete.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pecana Show. Thomas,
Speaker 1: how are you doing?
Speaker 3: I'm all right? Thanks for hosting me. Yeah. Man, So.
Speaker 1: Last time we talked talked about Yaki and talked about Spangler,
Speaker 1: and it's time to get back to the Cold War
Speaker 1: series episode fourteen.
Speaker 2: What he got for us today?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we left off with the able Archer and the
Speaker 3: and drop b Era. I mean to me, the and
Speaker 3: Droppa of Era was properly from you know, about nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty four until he died. I mean, I you know,
Speaker 3: like I said, I think he was. He was like
Speaker 3: the kind of eminence behind the facade of Soviet power
Speaker 3: that you know, when Breshnav was at the Helm. That's
Speaker 3: not to say Bresnev was was some kind of cipher.
Speaker 3: I when Bresnev became elderly, he was no longer you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, he was no longer mentally commonent the last
Speaker 3: few years of his life. But Bresna was a serious personage,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean, there's a reason why he replaced
Speaker 3: Khrush chief, you know, like he was writing the ship.
Speaker 3: He was writing the ship after the you know, the
Speaker 3: kind of disaster that was crui if in power political terms,
Speaker 3: you know, in Brezhnev was in a lot of ways
Speaker 3: he was kind of a true Stalinist, you know, I mean,
Speaker 3: but the true I mean a state. It's at the
Speaker 3: scale of the Soviet Union, you know, even even accounting
Speaker 3: with the fact that you know, the Russian the Russian
Speaker 3: Russian political areas, sense of constrate power in one man,
Speaker 3: even in times of peace, like in a way that
Speaker 3: seems peculiar in the West. I mean, I'm not even
Speaker 3: saying that punitively. I mean, it's just like an objective
Speaker 3: account of things. But you know, the Soviet Union at
Speaker 3: its zenith, it just was not that the scale and complexity.
Speaker 3: I mean when I parttically would consider you know, the
Speaker 3: the way that Marcius lantin the states were organized, where
Speaker 3: there you know, we're central planning, you know, truly was
Speaker 3: the order of the day, you know, not I mean
Speaker 3: that that's what policy was. That's that's that that's what
Speaker 3: the production is scheme it was. It wasn't you know,
Speaker 3: It's something that they aimed to realize. I mean that
Speaker 3: that's how they They truly had, you know, an economy
Speaker 3: that you know, had abolished the price mechanism and was
Speaker 3: managed by you know, thousands upon thousands upon millions of inputs.
Speaker 3: So I mean, no, what I'm getting at is that no,
Speaker 3: no matter how much of a brilliant uh, you know,
Speaker 3: personage bresident of would have might might might not have
Speaker 3: been like no, no single man could have managed that.
Speaker 3: So I mean the point that kind of the the
Speaker 3: trifecta of Soviet power was really a drop of u
Speaker 3: gram Eco and Ustinov, dmitriy Houston off the field, Marshal
Speaker 3: and uh, you know, particularly on Mayor's a warrant peace
Speaker 3: and drop off was kind of the final authority. And
Speaker 3: you know, the decision to go to war in Afghanistan
Speaker 3: is very much and drop off decision. And I think
Speaker 3: we got into that and the uh, the decline of
Speaker 3: that trifecta, I mean, most frankly, I mean, I drop
Speaker 3: Off died and then Usanov died shortly after. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's that's really what allowed Glassnos and pera strika like
Speaker 3: as policy to become develop and evolved the way it did. However,
Speaker 3: you know, Gerbachev was in drop offs protege, and that's
Speaker 3: the reason why he truly was in drop off successor.
Speaker 3: You know, this idea that Grbachev's like this kind of
Speaker 3: crazy liberal or that he was like this kind of
Speaker 3: yeltsin like buffoon who was just kind of like drunk
Speaker 3: on the prospect of uh, you know, of of of
Speaker 3: kind of like slash and burn capitalism. That's not true
Speaker 3: at all. We'll get into the next episode, which will
Speaker 3: probably be kind of like close to the end of
Speaker 3: our series. That's like why you know, why why the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union went down in flame the way it did.
Speaker 3: But it wasn't because Gorbachev wanted to just like burn
Speaker 3: the structure down or like pull the plug. But when
Speaker 3: it drop off died his immediate his immediate successor was
Speaker 3: Constantine Schernenko, you know, who was kind of like a
Speaker 3: doddering fool in the eyes of the world, and I mean,
Speaker 3: by that point he was totally senile. But the reason
Speaker 3: why that this kind of placeholder was insinuated into the
Speaker 3: General Secretariat was because there was a real battle within
Speaker 3: the Kremlin as to which way the Soviet Union was
Speaker 3: going to go. Not even it wasn't nobody foresaw in
Speaker 3: the early eighties that you know, the East Blocks is
Speaker 3: going to come apart, like nobody, you know, like we
Speaker 3: talked about before. There's people like Kennan and people like
Speaker 3: Yaki himself, you know, who didn't the Soviet Union as
Speaker 3: it existed, you know, in the nineteen fifties and during
Speaker 3: into the twenty first century. But even they did to
Speaker 3: see the whole system just like dissolving, you know, like
Speaker 3: the way it did. So people were suspicious of garbageow Off.
Speaker 3: It wasn't because they thought, like, you know, he's gonna
Speaker 3: he's gonna sell the party down the river or something.
Speaker 3: It was because you know, you had you had these
Speaker 3: discreete personages who you know, to whom kind of like
Speaker 3: the up and coming uh commissars like had had like
Speaker 3: individual loyalty to you know, and garbage Off despite the
Speaker 3: fact that he'd been in drop offs guy, I mean
Speaker 3: it uh that that carried a lot of cloud, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't. It wasn't enough, you know, to just to
Speaker 3: just hand hand him the reins and like an absolute
Speaker 3: capacity without you know, any kind of without any without
Speaker 3: without anything being finessed beforehand, and like you know, promises
Speaker 3: being made and you know and kind of certain uh
Speaker 3: ceremonies being stood upon as a word. But Tarnanko was
Speaker 3: not and his youth, he actually the guy was kind
Speaker 3: of like at pure commissar. I mean, obviously he's sert.
Speaker 3: You know, he's started in the Red Army, you know,
Speaker 3: during the you know, the Russian Soviets and the Russians
Speaker 3: today called the Great Patriotic War. He spent his entire
Speaker 3: career at propaganda and and and and as an ideological cadre.
Speaker 3: You know. Like I said, the guy was like a
Speaker 3: pure commissar. You know, it's just like what he did,
Speaker 3: you know. And he he was very much an intermediary
Speaker 3: like uh with the Defense establishment, even though he didn't
Speaker 3: like spend a career in uniform like uh. And they
Speaker 3: trusted him and they liked him. You know. So this
Speaker 3: guy you can see with the Soviet Union, the fact
Speaker 3: that they took you know, every William Odam who will
Speaker 3: we'll talk about a little bit later in this episode. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, an American general and and probably the preeminent
Speaker 3: authority on a nuclear warfare. And I say, I'd say
Speaker 3: Thomas Schelling on the civilian side would be entitled to
Speaker 3: the moniker. But as far as the general officer goes,
Speaker 3: it was Odam and William Odum he was he was
Speaker 3: kind of the one, you know, Uh, he was kind
Speaker 3: of the one, like you know, common experience general officer
Speaker 3: who was saying in the wake of Able Archer that
Speaker 3: like Loo, the Soviet Union is serious, Like they're not,
Speaker 3: They're they're not, they're not pretending to be on high
Speaker 3: alert like they they actually are, you know, and they
Speaker 3: actually are in a war footing. And like the more
Speaker 3: you the more you you spoof them, you know, the
Speaker 3: more paranoid you make them, and the more likely it
Speaker 3: is that, you know, a real war is going to develop,
Speaker 3: uh before we even realize what's under way. But Odam, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, he he was right. Uh. And uh, the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union being that it was very much on a
Speaker 3: war footing and kind of the entire vector of policy
Speaker 3: it had had like a strategic nuclear axis. Sharon Anko,
Speaker 3: if you're gonna go to war, Sharon Anko is a
Speaker 3: guy who you'd kind of want in the General secretariat. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but at that point he was dotty in senile. But
Speaker 3: the fact is, uh, the guy had tremendous esteem from
Speaker 3: the military, from the uniform to the design bureaus, you know,
Speaker 3: to the men who were suits every day to work,
Speaker 3: but who were like the kind of military industrial complex
Speaker 3: as representatives of the polit burero like Chernanko was like
Speaker 3: a guy like none of them would have like disagreed
Speaker 3: on and on the party side, you know, the guy
Speaker 3: had been basically chief ideologists like when he was young
Speaker 3: and had his brains. So it didn't matter that Chernanko
Speaker 3: himself was wholly out of it because obviously like his
Speaker 3: proteges or people very much who were you know, viewed
Speaker 3: as carrying out like his will and legacy. And if
Speaker 3: it was gonna come down like a general war with NATO,
Speaker 3: he's kind of a man you'd want there. He would
Speaker 3: not want to hand the reins to borbashaw Off, even
Speaker 3: if he thought he was a great prodigy because uh,
Speaker 3: you know, I mean he was in his fifties. He
Speaker 3: wasn't like young and absolute terms, but he was like
Speaker 3: a sprats like in the Soviet system, like he was
Speaker 3: literally like the youngest man like in the polit Buro.
Speaker 3: But beyond that, as much as he shadowed it drop
Speaker 3: off and when it drop us final year when he
Speaker 3: was you know, bedridden, basically, Garbachov would literally stand in
Speaker 3: for him. That's definitely being the actual decision maker, particularly
Speaker 3: a general secretary in a system like the Soviet Union.
Speaker 3: So considering the international situation, it wasn't just internal politics
Speaker 3: and egos and and kind of literally byzantine, you know,
Speaker 3: intrigues that led to Scheronanko getting installed on a general
Speaker 3: secretary there, there's like an internal logic to it, like
Speaker 3: weird as the Soviet system was and kind of strange
Speaker 3: to us as the Russian system is. But as uh
Speaker 3: As Garbachev succeeded Tcheronenko who died in office just like
Speaker 3: interrop of day and just like bresnav did you know,
Speaker 3: and that and that hurt the Soviet Union in in
Speaker 3: in in terms of their optics in a basic way
Speaker 3: in eighty two, like Bresnev you know, dies like a
Speaker 3: year and ten months later like and drop Off dies,
Speaker 3: and then literally thirteen months later like Cheranngle dies. It's
Speaker 3: like you've got this, you know, the world's one of
Speaker 3: the world's you know, one of the world's only two superpowers,
Speaker 3: you know, the mighty Soviet Union. It's like they've got
Speaker 3: these doddering old men, like one after the other, like
Speaker 3: who just literally keep dying. That's not a good look,
Speaker 3: you know, and especially contra Reagan, who uh, I mean
Speaker 3: these days, Reagan wouldn't seem like pretty elderly, but in
Speaker 3: those days, people talk a lot of shit, like, you know,
Speaker 3: Reagan's just this old man, even though he was only
Speaker 3: about seventy, which was old, I mean in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: But Reagan, the guy had like an absurd amount of energy,
Speaker 3: you know, like almost Trump tried to capture some of that.
Speaker 3: And Trump is a high energy guy pretty lately for
Speaker 3: a guy who's like pushing eighty. But with Reagan, it
Speaker 3: like was not at all like an affectation. So you've
Speaker 3: got like Reagan, who's you know, Reagan's aways got a
Speaker 3: smile on his face, so he's got perfect hair. You know,
Speaker 3: the guy's like sharp as a fucking tack, and you know,
Speaker 3: he's got a sense of humored arrival, like he's got
Speaker 3: he's got a dry humored arrival Johnny Carson. You got him,
Speaker 3: and then you got like literally doddering, shaking Bresnet, who's like,
Speaker 3: you know, dropping dead week later. You know, you have
Speaker 3: to replace me. And it's like even worse. I'm like,
Speaker 3: you know, he's you know, he's dead within you know,
Speaker 3: within less than two years. Like it it indicated like
Speaker 3: a real, real structural problem. But that's why, that's why
Speaker 3: there's so much uncertainty on Garbachew because, like I said,
Speaker 3: he was, uh he was the youngest man in the
Speaker 3: poet Burrow. His main rival was a guy named Gregory Roumanoff,
Speaker 3: who was very much uh it was very much a
Speaker 3: hawk uh on on on strategic matters. He uh he
Speaker 3: staunchly opposed any kind of compromise and intermediate nuclear forces
Speaker 3: in Europe. As we talked about last episode, that that's
Speaker 3: what prompted the person to deployment was uh, you know,
Speaker 3: that was the primary like theater based nuclear weapons platform
Speaker 3: for the US Army and deployed in the Buddhist Republic
Speaker 3: or in Italy or in the Benelux countries that's at
Speaker 3: the cavitation range of Moscow. And the impetus for that
Speaker 3: was a Soviet deployment of of SS nineteens and SS twenties.
Speaker 3: Obviously the intention of Soviets with the decopple European strategic
Speaker 3: policy from America's, you know, like if you threaten Europe
Speaker 3: in nuclear annihilation and tell them like look and in
Speaker 3: general war, we're gonna target you simultaneous United States and
Speaker 3: as long as you're in NATO, like there's no way
Speaker 3: out of this. That changed things, and I believe that's
Speaker 3: one of the things that really put the Green Party
Speaker 3: on the map, Okay, like environmental stuff or like social
Speaker 3: justice stuff as we think of it today, that was incidental,
Speaker 3: Like there is a will fly out of the Green
Speaker 3: Party is because Germans are genuinely terrified of of Germany
Speaker 3: being the designated like nuclear battle theater of World War three,
Speaker 3: and like I don't follow them for that. Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: not thinking, I say, with the Green Party, but it's
Speaker 3: easy for people to say no, like, oh, those guys
Speaker 3: are all just like faggots. It's like, okay, man, but
Speaker 3: like I you know, some guy in the Buddhist Republic
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty, like he wasn't just being a fagot
Speaker 3: if he's like, you know, I don't like it. I
Speaker 3: don't want to be the designated, Like I don't my
Speaker 3: house being like a designated you know, like like nuclear
Speaker 3: battlefield between Ivan and America. Like you know, it's not
Speaker 3: we can't even really be secialize what that was like.
Speaker 3: And I mean it's also you know, West Germany was
Speaker 3: like little like.
Speaker 1: People have no idea, people have no idea what it
Speaker 1: was like there. I mean my parent, my parents lived
Speaker 1: there for three years. I was born there. You know,
Speaker 1: my dad had to go through checkpoint Charlie. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it was He's at the closest definitions of dystopian
Speaker 1: that there ever was.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, it's like William Odom speaking of him as
Speaker 3: well as some of these line officers, and like even
Speaker 3: my dad was never like deployed there, but I mean
Speaker 3: he was in the Buddhist Republic and he was at
Speaker 3: the inner German border many times, you know, like in
Speaker 3: that era, and he's like it was like he's like
Speaker 3: it was like like a real war. It's like this
Speaker 3: it wasn't like so he's like he's like the he's
Speaker 3: like the national evokes are me and these like Soviet runts,
Speaker 3: they were like loafing around playing cars. Like these guys
Speaker 3: were like treating it like they were at war. And
Speaker 3: I mean so it's like the Buddhist fair and so
Speaker 3: was like the US army. But it's there's not there's
Speaker 3: not like a joke or something where it's you know
Speaker 3: like it. I think people imagine almost like old cartoon
Speaker 3: where there's like uh, where there's a there's like the
Speaker 3: fox and he's like trying to like get the chickens.
Speaker 3: Then there's like the sheep dog and they like they
Speaker 3: had clock it. He's like big Carl like Sai, you know,
Speaker 3: and then they kind of like pretend to go through
Speaker 3: the motions. I mean, I'm sure there, I'm sure there
Speaker 3: are like like hostle borders like that, like inner German border,
Speaker 3: like that was not the case. I mean like you know,
Speaker 3: I mean yeah, but it's so you know, but be
Speaker 3: as it may. Like Reagan's Reagan's uh like like Reagan's
Speaker 3: big kind of first like foreign policy coup in like
Speaker 3: diplomatic terms, was was getting to the Soviets the table
Speaker 3: uh on the I n F Treaty. And the way
Speaker 3: he did it was he said like look like you know,
Speaker 3: we'll we'll take the persons out and we'll take any
Speaker 3: any comparable and like successor systems like off the table.
Speaker 3: Like what basically he's like, we can either have a
Speaker 3: nuclear free Europe or like we're gonna be shoving these
Speaker 3: theater based weapons up your assi decapitation range like in perpetuity.
Speaker 3: In the school of conventional diplomacy, like that's not the
Speaker 3: right way to do things, because it's like very freeing Biery.
Speaker 3: But you're talking about when when you're talking about strategic
Speaker 3: nuclear conditions of parody, when you're talking about kind of
Speaker 3: the strange you're talking about it, and we're talking about
Speaker 3: the stakes like the Soviets had in this that actually
Speaker 3: it was like a brilliant move and Reagan deserves like
Speaker 3: mad credit for that. But there was a lot of
Speaker 3: resistance within uh, the Soviet military establishment, especially from people
Speaker 3: like Usanov to this happening. So obviously Gorbachev did you know,
Speaker 3: like succeeded Sharon succeed Sharonenko and Romanov. UH one of
Speaker 3: his first when of Goerrichov's first act of General secretary
Speaker 3: was like sideline Romanov. He didn't he didn't like punish
Speaker 3: the guy, but he basically like retired to him like
Speaker 3: you know with with in in genteel kind of powerlessness. Okay, so,
Speaker 3: but what Gorchov still had was uh and then and
Speaker 3: then and then Usanov died almost immediately after okay Uznov
Speaker 3: died to believe at the restart in nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: It was late eighty four or eighty five. But within
Speaker 3: the military itself, like Goorachov, had a tremendous amount of
Speaker 3: opposition and they had clout, I mean in America, like
Speaker 3: the military during the Cold War had a huge cloud,
Speaker 3: but it was like nothing to bear to the Soviet Union,
Speaker 3: like the defense establishment even now in the Russian Federation
Speaker 3: they I'm not saying it's like cunative leader like the
Speaker 3: way that like Neo Kon say that like it's some
Speaker 3: bad thing. Is that the reality, like the trajector, and
Speaker 3: I mean Russia also was like existential threats that they
Speaker 3: faced as a country that most states don't. But like
Speaker 3: the traject the course of policy is set by the
Speaker 3: defense industry in a way that it's not in a
Speaker 3: way that it's not you know in a state like
Speaker 3: like in like America or like the UK, even during
Speaker 3: the Cold War. But what changed that, what kind of
Speaker 3: allowed Gorbachev to essentially purged any kind of hostile general
Speaker 3: officers is really fascinating. And the immediate catalyst to that
Speaker 3: was the was the flight of a kid, like literally
Speaker 3: a kid named Matthias rusk Roost. He was a German kid,
Speaker 3: and he took Assessma. He didn't have many flay hours.
Speaker 3: He only had about fifty or sixty like like hours
Speaker 3: of flight time. He rented the Assessna one seventy two P,
Speaker 3: which is like, you know, like Assessna like prop plane, okay,
Speaker 3: like it. And what he did was he ripped out
Speaker 3: a bunch of the interior like including all but like
Speaker 3: the pilot's seat, and he replaced him with auxiliary fuel tanks.
Speaker 3: And what he did was, uh, he tested out kind
Speaker 3: of his chops on long flights. He flew to the
Speaker 3: Faroe Islands, he went to Iceland. Uh. From Iceland, he
Speaker 3: flew to Bergen and uh, ultimately he did this because
Speaker 3: his idea was to fly to the Soviet Union, which
Speaker 3: seems totally insane and it was, but what he what
Speaker 3: his note He he claimed he did it as like
Speaker 3: an emissary of peace and to build like a proverbial
Speaker 3: bridge between the Bunus Republic and Moscow, which is actually
Speaker 3: pretty profound. I'll get to that, and and kind of
Speaker 3: how this this was actually videotaped by a British tourist
Speaker 3: who was on the ground in Moscow. That's why, like
Speaker 3: everybody saw it. There was a little kid I remember
Speaker 3: being this was like a very like awesome event, you know,
Speaker 3: it was like it was wild. But Matthias roost he
Speaker 3: uh he leaves from Helsinki, Finland. He had he reached
Speaker 3: the Soviet airspace with the intention, with the intention to
Speaker 3: reach Moscow. Now how did he do this? Okay, we're
Speaker 3: talking about kind of a reverse hispanically, kind of like
Speaker 3: reverse situation of what happened with KL double O seven, okay,
Speaker 3: which was you know shot down as it was misidentified.
Speaker 3: Rust was flying this little plant, this little prop plane
Speaker 3: that looks at visual range almost exactly like a Yakol
Speaker 3: of twelve, which it was used all over the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union for various purposes, you know, like in the UH
Speaker 3: in the Siberian wilderness. They used them because you know,
Speaker 3: kind of like Alaska, like that's your basic uh means
Speaker 3: of travel in there, like on the open step, like
Speaker 3: surveyors and like naturalists would like use them, you know,
Speaker 3: like party members that use them. That's kind of like
Speaker 3: shuttle around. So like the sudden appearance of of like
Speaker 3: the cest now like it wouldn't really throw alarms in
Speaker 3: conventional in a conventional situation, but Moscow was known to
Speaker 3: have like the toughest air defenses in the world. Like, uh,
Speaker 3: it's telling like during Linebacker two, you know, when downtown
Speaker 3: Hanoi was hit, uh, the kind of kind of final
Speaker 3: massive strategic air operation against Hanoi, Like downtown Hanoi was
Speaker 3: considered to be the most fortified city in the world,
Speaker 3: like the hardest target in the world other than Moscow,
Speaker 3: and like nothing in the Soviets very much cultivated this,
Speaker 3: not just his image, but you know, Moscow was supposed
Speaker 3: to be like the hardest of all targets. So the
Speaker 3: fact that the fact that this kid could fly his
Speaker 3: aircraft into Moscow and he crossed like several uh uh
Speaker 3: designated like air defense you know, uh checkpoints and uh
Speaker 3: apparently at first, uh there was a there was a
Speaker 3: rookie ground control crew and uh when they sent the
Speaker 3: signal out for a I f F you know, identification
Speaker 3: friend or foe RUS like switched off his uh his
Speaker 3: communication equipment and like went dark and not knowing what
Speaker 3: the proper code was to send out like over the
Speaker 3: airwaves for like what the status of the aircraft was,
Speaker 3: these guys, these Russians on the ground like dropped the
Speaker 3: code for like friendly instead of like unknown like possibly hostile.
Speaker 3: Like so then like, uh, when he breached, like the
Speaker 3: next kind of uh, you know, the the next kind
Speaker 3: of a hurdle verbially speaking, you know, he he he'd
Speaker 3: already been like identified as like as as like a
Speaker 3: friendly aircraft, and then like as he as he approached
Speaker 3: like Moscow, like Moscow Air Defense, Like it's just like
Speaker 3: you know, they saw it look to be like a
Speaker 3: yacko leb like on the on the gate at at
Speaker 3: the at the gates of Moscow, Like they didn't even
Speaker 3: twice about it because it's not it's not a warplane.
Speaker 3: I think it's here in the first place. Obviously it's okay,
Speaker 3: I mean, so it's it's this weird kind of like failure,
Speaker 3: you know, Like I said, it's kind of like the
Speaker 3: splendid reverse of of what happened with the kale F
Speaker 3: like double O seven, but but at the same time
Speaker 3: again too. Like in under normal kind of uh peace
Speaker 3: time conditions, this wouldn't really be an issue. But this, uh,
Speaker 3: this this had a horrible effect that I'm like the
Speaker 3: prestige of the Soviet military. And what Gorba job did was,
Speaker 3: uh it gave him essentially the mandate to clear out
Speaker 3: basically like anybody in uniform that he did not like.
Speaker 3: And that's exactly what he did. The like the Officer
Speaker 3: corps of of of the the Soviet military was just
Speaker 3: completely freaking like smashed Roust himself. He literally landed in
Speaker 3: Red Square and the footage is crazy because like this
Speaker 3: guy just like lands like and then he landed on
Speaker 3: a bridge adjacent to Red Square in the middle of
Speaker 3: the afternoon. He gets down here like waves and he says,
Speaker 3: you know, like I'm German, you know, I'm from West Germany,
Speaker 3: and people like, you know, like what the fuck? And
Speaker 3: he said he landed. He said originally thought about landing
Speaker 3: in the Kremlin, but he said that then he realized
Speaker 3: if he did that, like he'd be arrested by KGB
Speaker 3: or f S or g r U, and uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the Kremlin just denied that like it happened, you know,
Speaker 3: so He's like at least I mean he had he'd
Speaker 3: have no idea of knowing that, you know, there'd be
Speaker 3: this like this this this British tourist like a video
Speaker 3: camera camp quorder. But at least it'd be like eyewitnesses
Speaker 3: and be like, hey, I saw this dude land he
Speaker 3: like this happened. You know, you can't just say it didn't.
Speaker 3: But he roost was, uh, you know, like like two
Speaker 3: hours later, like he was arrested.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, because there's something somebody
Speaker 1: might ask this question. Yeah, everybody gets the idea that
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union was this place that was actually absolutely
Speaker 1: locked down. No one went in and out. And you
Speaker 1: just said that immediately the first person who confronts him
Speaker 1: as a British tourist, what was what was a tourism
Speaker 1: situation as far as Soviet Union?
Speaker 3: Let I mean the Soviet Union. Actually I can't remember
Speaker 3: the name of it, but until from the nineteen fifties
Speaker 3: until literally nineteen ninety h the Kremlin published this magazine.
Speaker 3: It was it was called something like Moscow Life. And
Speaker 3: I used to see that the newsstands sometimes and like
Speaker 3: flipped through it when I was like a little kid,
Speaker 3: because and that was that was like the Kremlin. It was.
Speaker 3: It was them like showcasing like why the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: is good, but also like it was supposed to draw
Speaker 3: like tourists, and there's a lot of stuff you couldn't
Speaker 3: see and a lot of places you couldn't go, and
Speaker 3: like you'd be followed, you know, uh in like at
Speaker 3: least casually, you know, because like everybody was it was
Speaker 3: like a foreign There was like an entire KGB direct
Speaker 3: direct to like keep an eye on like foreign visitors.
Speaker 3: But I mean, yeah, you could. You could visit the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union as long as there was nothing it was
Speaker 3: as long as there was nothing about your background that
Speaker 3: that fled you. Like the real these were the Soviet
Speaker 3: unions that was hard to leave. It wasn't hard to
Speaker 3: go eastward like basically like throughout the Eastern Block. He
Speaker 3: could basically go where if you wanted. But uh, you know,
Speaker 3: a sist in the Soviet Union, he was not going
Speaker 3: to be able to visit America. If he was not
Speaker 3: gonna be able to visit the UK. He might be
Speaker 3: able to visit the Buddhist Republic if he's like a
Speaker 3: trusted person in related terms, but that was kind of
Speaker 3: the issue, and it especially during the sixties. There was
Speaker 3: a lot of guys I can remember, and this was
Speaker 3: kind of dumb at the time, Like I really despised
Speaker 3: Bill Clinton, but like Russia Limbaugh was. I remember when
Speaker 3: Bill Clinton was running a ninety two was like he
Speaker 3: visited the Soviet Union as a college student. It's like, okay,
Speaker 3: but like a lot of guys did like that. Bark
Speaker 3: cruise is big thing, like hey, if you want to,
Speaker 3: you know, we're an open book. You know, we want
Speaker 3: American college students to come see how good the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union is. And they in turn set some of their
Speaker 3: exchange students. But these guys were all dudes with like
Speaker 3: party you know, their fathers were party men. There's no
Speaker 3: way these guys are just gonna be like fuck you,
Speaker 3: I'm defecting. Yeah, but like it, I mean if yeah,
Speaker 3: Bill Clint's a total shit big But the point is
Speaker 3: if you were if you were like going to Harvard
Speaker 3: or like Yale or like Stanford and like nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 3: there's like a good chance you would have like visited
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union because like they cultivated that some of
Speaker 3: that started to change. Uh, you know, kind of like
Speaker 3: post aton like Asovie Unit started to look more and
Speaker 3: more like scary to people, frankly, And I mean in
Speaker 3: the I know a lot of guys who are like
Speaker 3: five and ten years older than me, like when I
Speaker 3: was a little kid who like visited East Germany and
Speaker 3: then like, oh, it's crazy, but like nobody really wanted
Speaker 3: to go to the Soviet Union frankly, Like I I mean,
Speaker 3: whether that's like ignorant or not whatever, but you know,
Speaker 3: by like nineteen eighty, you know, it was kind of
Speaker 3: like why the you know that that place is fucked,
Speaker 3: you know, like I don't want to go there, but uh,
Speaker 3: and the like and again I think that's I think
Speaker 3: that's kind of twisted. Frankly. I would have loved to
Speaker 3: go to the Soviet Union because it would have been
Speaker 3: pretty awesome, like not not cool to like live there,
Speaker 3: but like to see you know, like it. But that
Speaker 3: was kind of the deal and it and it's also
Speaker 3: and and like depending on like the you know, but yeah,
Speaker 3: the uh the uh it was basically uh, you know,
Speaker 3: the Sovietnion like welcome tourism in its own kind of way,
Speaker 3: and you know, but the fact is, you know, the
Speaker 3: the kind of splendid appsentence of like Soviet citizens here
Speaker 3: in America, like that was exactly why. But it was
Speaker 3: like nobody had any money. It's like let's say, like
Speaker 3: let's say I'm like Joe, like you know, I'm even
Speaker 3: you know in uh in the USSR in nineteen nineteen eighty.
Speaker 3: Like even if I was, even if I was like
Speaker 3: educated at skills, I've got like no money. And even
Speaker 3: if like somehow as a miracle I got you know,
Speaker 3: like a visa from the Kremlin, like I'm gonna like
Speaker 3: land in Chicago or Philly or like la, it just big, Hey,
Speaker 3: I've got zero money. I don't really speak English, but
Speaker 3: like give me a job. Like that's not especially in
Speaker 3: them days too, like stuff just didn't work that way.
Speaker 3: So yeah, but it it. But the Soviets too given
Speaker 3: with even with some in the show the Americans, which
Speaker 3: in some ways it's hokey, but in some ways it's
Speaker 3: really dope. The guy and like his wife, who's yeah,
Speaker 3: the lady who like stands in his wife, you know,
Speaker 3: like they when they show like what he went through
Speaker 3: like as like a kg B like deep Cover operative,
Speaker 3: like they're basically making sure like he wouldn't defect, you know,
Speaker 3: and like just become like enamored with the American way
Speaker 3: of life. And that actually is like legit. Like the
Speaker 3: guys the kgb AT in the g r U Lesser
Speaker 3: Degree had a lot of uh sleep ragents on the ground,
Speaker 3: like those people in that show, and they basically vetted
Speaker 3: them to be like you're not gonna go crazy when
Speaker 3: you know you realize you can like you know, you
Speaker 3: can kind of like get stuff in America. You can't
Speaker 3: hear because it's like not you're either like you're in
Speaker 3: a seating and you and you're totally down for the party,
Speaker 3: or you've just been kind of like you know, like
Speaker 3: it's the kind of the you know, the kind of
Speaker 3: fascination such things hold over you has kind of been
Speaker 3: like bread out of you, were like smashed out of you.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's uh, it's do you.
Speaker 1: Ever wonder if they did you ever wonder if they
Speaker 1: sent any of those over here like towards the end
Speaker 1: of the so and then they're just still here and
Speaker 1: they're just like they never went home and they're just
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 3: This one guy, uh, the Soviet Union had one and
Speaker 3: drop off speech during the able larger era. It was
Speaker 3: kind of like it was kind of like the drop
Speaker 3: up version of the secret speech. He addressed the polit
Speaker 3: Burrow and he said like, look, he's like we're acting.
Speaker 3: He's like in military terms, you know, in key theaters,
Speaker 3: we're doing well. But he's like we were losing the
Speaker 3: Cold War. You know. He's like, uh, you know, he's
Speaker 3: like our textiles industry is like compared to Japan as
Speaker 3: like primitive as hell. You know. He's like our agriculture.
Speaker 3: He's like, we're literally dependent and America from America and
Speaker 3: you know, you know, in a bad harvest. You know,
Speaker 3: he's like we've got less than like a thousand you know,
Speaker 3: like computers in America, like a computers a kid's toy.
Speaker 3: He's just like going down the list. Okay. That so
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union. One of the things they did was
Speaker 3: they sent a lot of mathematicians and like guys with
Speaker 3: formal logic knowledge or guys who'd like bet in Western Europe,
Speaker 3: like in a formal capacity as like an operative. They
Speaker 3: sent them to America to get jobs like in nascent
Speaker 3: like it firms. And one of the guys who did that,
Speaker 3: you know, he was like posing as like uh as
Speaker 3: like at as like a West German of like Polish
Speaker 3: dissent or something. He got a job with like this
Speaker 3: it for him in New York in like nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 3: and he'd do like dead drops and New York subway
Speaker 3: and stuff. And then he said that like the last
Speaker 3: basically after a while they just like stopped reporting, you know.
Speaker 3: And then like he said that, like a guy came
Speaker 3: to his apartment and just told him, like you know,
Speaker 3: like he's like, I know what you're doing. And he's like, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, he's like basically like you should probably commit
Speaker 3: suicide or at some point like you're going to be killed,
Speaker 3: you know, because you're like a loose end. So like
Speaker 3: the guy said that, like he's like what should I do.
Speaker 3: He's like, you thought about like mocking up like paperwork
Speaker 3: to he like died of age or something. Is that's
Speaker 3: like the age thing was huge. He thought about like
Speaker 3: trying to like you know, he thought about like just
Speaker 3: openly defecting, you know. But he's like that, he's like
Speaker 3: he didn't have any con He's like, I'm a deep
Speaker 3: cover agent. They're probably they're probably I mean, he's like
Speaker 3: they're not gonna be happy about this. You know, it's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 3: I've been spying on you to the has a decade,
Speaker 3: but hey, can I defect because now like things went left.
Speaker 3: But so he basically said, he's like, you know, like
Speaker 3: by the time he had like a wife with like
Speaker 3: no idea, like what real identity was. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: kind of like a tragic story, but he said, he's
Speaker 3: just like what what the fuck am I gonna do?
Speaker 3: So like I just kept going to work and I
Speaker 3: just kind of like kept waiting for it, and then
Speaker 3: I turned the TV and like the Berlin walls coming down,
Speaker 3: you know, and like so yeah, like this there was
Speaker 3: there was a the guy got like a write off,
Speaker 3: I think, and actually the New Yorker or something like
Speaker 3: back in like the nineties. I'll see if I can
Speaker 3: find it and like so you can like post a link,
Speaker 3: but it's yeah there there there definitely were guys like that.
Speaker 3: And in the reverse too, there was a Jens Carney. Uh,
Speaker 3: he defect. He defected the other way to the d
Speaker 3: d R and like nobody ever knew what happened to him,
Speaker 3: Like he was presumed he defected, but he just like disappeared.
Speaker 3: He was an Air Force guy. You know, he was
Speaker 3: he was he was he had knowledge of like he
Speaker 3: was he was, he was, he was a cryptographer. Okay,
Speaker 3: but uh Jens Carney like if the wall comes down,
Speaker 3: he hides out like pretending to be like a Dutchman
Speaker 3: or something. I think that was or Dane. This cover
Speaker 3: story is that he was a Dane. And then finally,
Speaker 3: uh some like boon this fair or like US Army
Speaker 3: like MP types like who the fuck is this guy?
Speaker 3: You know, just when they were kind of like going
Speaker 3: down the rolls like who's who actually is in the
Speaker 3: d d R and the like that's this freaking that's
Speaker 3: this guy like you know, a decade back just like
Speaker 3: you know went over uh when went over the the
Speaker 3: wall like the other way, you know, as as a
Speaker 3: freaking defector. And and he he got he got Courtz Marshall.
Speaker 3: He got jammed up for like seven years or something,
Speaker 3: I mean, which I think is kind of fucked up.
Speaker 3: I mean it's like once the coldor was over, unless
Speaker 3: he killed somebody, unless he truly did something horrible like
Speaker 3: like passing eyes only nuclear secrets, they should have just
Speaker 3: let it go. But you know, the the Pentagon doesn't
Speaker 3: seem inclined to like let things go like that, and
Speaker 3: the guy wasn't uniform when he affected, So I mean
Speaker 3: it's it's okay, but yeah, there are there are some
Speaker 3: very weird stories about that. But yeah, I mean it
Speaker 3: does beg the question like how many these guys were
Speaker 3: They're like just nobody knew about and they just like
Speaker 3: kept low key and like you know, went about their life. Yeah,
Speaker 3: probably more than people think, because I mean I made
Speaker 3: the point before and it guy named John Caller, he
Speaker 3: wrote a really good history of the sas you know,
Speaker 3: the kind of the one way that like the worst
Speaker 3: up pack like consistently beat NATO was like with their espionage,
Speaker 3: you know, like it wasn't even close like it. Uh,
Speaker 3: and yeah, they they put a tremendous emphasis on human
Speaker 3: intelligence in a way that you know, like we didn't.
Speaker 3: So yeah, especially it was like more of these guys
Speaker 3: than people think, you know, were thought. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 3: fascinating topic. But Mattias Russ, but I mean what happened
Speaker 3: became a him is rather tragic. He he was sent
Speaker 3: up to four years at hard labor, but he was
Speaker 3: actually never sent to a labor camp. He was housing
Speaker 3: isolation in Moscow, and ultimately he was released and then
Speaker 3: formally pardoned by Gramico when the I intermediately Nuclear Forces
Speaker 3: Treaty was about to be signed as like a a
Speaker 3: getric goodwill and he claimed he wasn't mistreated, and I
Speaker 3: believe he wasn't beaten or anything, but there was something
Speaker 3: it was like damaged about him. And he later went
Speaker 3: to prison in Germany because he had a job in
Speaker 3: some hospital and there was some girl that he had
Speaker 3: like an unrequitted crush on, and he strayed just like
Speaker 3: stabbed her. And this guy like no history of like violence,
Speaker 3: I mean when I'm getting his in the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: destroyed him like psychically, like whatever they did to him,
Speaker 3: and he better believed that they didn't just treat him
Speaker 3: like some kid pulling a prank. I mean, the then,
Speaker 3: like I said, I'm not anti Russian at all or anything,
Speaker 3: but there's there's a long history of guys who were
Speaker 3: political prisoners of the Soviet Union and they somehow came
Speaker 3: back like damaged or like not right, you know what
Speaker 3: I mean. It's and you know there's I speculate the
Speaker 3: same thing happened to him. And after that incident, apparently
Speaker 3: he never got in trouble again, but he you know,
Speaker 3: he seems to have had kind of like a sad life
Speaker 3: after that. And you know, like I said, I as
Speaker 3: a little kid and then later as somebody who spent
Speaker 3: spends and spends a lot of time in the Cold War,
Speaker 3: I I think roast in some ways. But he did
Speaker 3: it was really a heroic I mean it was naive.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's lucky he wasn't unceremoniously, you know, blown
Speaker 3: out of the sky by a MiG driver or something.
Speaker 3: But you know, I believe he was idealistic in the
Speaker 3: way that kind of like last Cold War generation of
Speaker 3: Germans was. And I think he really was like, look
Speaker 3: like I don't I don't want to be a casually
Speaker 3: a World War three as a counter value, you know,
Speaker 3: as counter value ashes in the wind. And you know,
Speaker 3: I I I've got love and respect to the Russian people,
Speaker 3: and you know, like we should you know, we should,
Speaker 3: we we should, you know, we should find a way
Speaker 3: out of this paradigm that's going to destroy us. All
Speaker 3: I found it like profound, as like an eleven twelve
Speaker 3: year old kid, you know what I mean. Maybe it's
Speaker 3: because I was a little kid. But I mean, Taine,
Speaker 3: there was like something there and he wasn't just like
Speaker 3: some crazy dude like I mean, he literally like learned
Speaker 3: to fly like for this purpose, you know. I mean
Speaker 3: it's he had it in mind that it could make it.
Speaker 3: And frankly, I think it did. Man, you know like it,
Speaker 3: you know, I guess, I mean you remember it was
Speaker 3: a big deal. But the that but that, I mean
Speaker 3: obviously the what it shows you too out like discrete
Speaker 3: events that nobody is intending to have these reverberations. Like
Speaker 3: literally like if Rust hadn't done that, I can easily see, uh,
Speaker 3: I can easily see, Like you know, the USAOV loyalists
Speaker 3: who were still in uniform is like saying, like, look
Speaker 3: like Garbaschev is he's compromising our ability, you know, to
Speaker 3: defend in depth. And you know, he's we cannot allow
Speaker 3: the eye M treaty to be put the paper like
Speaker 3: ten be put the paper and some kind of like
Speaker 3: quasi military regime in the Soviet Union, you know, like
Speaker 3: either like relegating gorbachoff to the role of cipher or
Speaker 3: just like outright getting rid of him. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: not like they weren't capable of that it like literally
Speaker 3: like what Russ did that that that allowed Berbachov to
Speaker 3: to decideline in sand bag like all of his enemies,
Speaker 3: and I mean from then on at uh, it's it
Speaker 3: really was his show until like you know that he
Speaker 3: was until the challenge from Yelson was the emergent. But
Speaker 3: that's what we should cover, uh next episode. And that
Speaker 3: that's an incredibly complicated uh, like people who didn't weren't
Speaker 3: alive then, but also even people who are pretty serious
Speaker 3: students of the Soviet Union. The intrigues between Gorbachoff and
Speaker 3: Yelts and and what Bush and Baker actually wanted, Like
Speaker 3: Bush and Baker didn't want the Soviet Union to cease
Speaker 3: to exist, like they wanted it to endure us. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like is it kind of like federated a
Speaker 3: like authoritary structure that it totally abolished, like the Party,
Speaker 3: but uh, that was totally disarmed, and uh was kind
Speaker 3: of like you know, accountable the United States as like
Speaker 3: junior partner and like ruling the planet. It was basically
Speaker 3: they wanted to like recreate like the New Dealer concept
Speaker 3: for like how the world would be run and like
Speaker 3: the tm D types who not only hated the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union but literally wanted to see like torn apart, like
Speaker 3: Yelton was their guy. And that's like what's key to
Speaker 3: understanding this here, and that's why people have mixed feelings
Speaker 3: about Yelson, I think. But it and then of course,
Speaker 3: like the the kind of the kind of variable to
Speaker 3: spoof things was that you know, all that the nationalities
Speaker 3: like all went crazy, you know, and that's and and
Speaker 3: that bears up too, like what the it goes It
Speaker 3: shows you too, like when uh, you know, like what
Speaker 3: what what what these fools they call the Chicken Kiev
Speaker 3: speech where push forty one went to Ukraine is like
Speaker 3: look like, don't like you're gonna be committing national suicide
Speaker 3: if you decide you're gonna like fight the Russians, don't
Speaker 3: do it, which of course is like absolutely true. That's
Speaker 3: the idea of like you know, Boo was a pussy,
Speaker 3: like how dear you like not back Ukraine in dependance
Speaker 3: like what executive Ukrainians like exact of the Ukrainian has
Speaker 3: gotten o a losing like a quarter million people, I'm
Speaker 3: their country wrecked or like awesome things like ensuing from this.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not like whether you love hate or
Speaker 3: a neutral in Ukraine. Like the idea that like Ukraine
Speaker 3: like provoking a general war with Moscow was like this
Speaker 3: good thing or like this like base thing, like it's
Speaker 3: it's literally insane. But the uh, but I in my
Speaker 3: before it became clear, like what America and it's in
Speaker 3: geo affiliates and whatever you were doing in Ukraine. If
Speaker 3: you're gonna tell, if you told me like twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: like yeah, like you know, in twenty years like where
Speaker 3: will where will like the Russian army like be engaged.
Speaker 3: I'd be like in the Baltic, Like I see like
Speaker 3: some kind of like really bloody you know, like asymmetrical
Speaker 3: conflict of them like in the Baltic Like that That's
Speaker 3: what I thought would happen. Honestly, I uh, it frankly
Speaker 3: surprised me that like the Ukrainians were so incredibly rash.
Speaker 3: But but that's that's the fact that Moss. That the
Speaker 3: fact that Washington and uh kind of like the post
Speaker 3: Reagan foreign policy team, they wanted both the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: and Yugoslavia to endure, like you know, they this this
Speaker 3: this kind of policy of you know, let's try and
Speaker 3: detonate like every federated structure that exists, so then we
Speaker 3: can kind of like finesse them into into like these
Speaker 3: these like like fake client regimes. That's like very much
Speaker 3: like a post Busch kind of thing. And like I'm
Speaker 3: not saying Bush forty one had like these great ideas.
Speaker 3: I think it was the last serious president, but uh,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying like his KNNA, it's kind of his
Speaker 3: kind of vision of like a neo like New Deal
Speaker 3: was like some kind of like good thing, but there's
Speaker 3: like an internal logic to it that like makes sense
Speaker 3: and is like sustainable in a way that like the
Speaker 3: competing perspective like was not and is not. But I
Speaker 3: don't want to Uh I don't. I don't want to
Speaker 3: deep dive into that yet because that that that's going
Speaker 3: to take like an hour or an hour and a half.
Speaker 3: So that's uh, that's basically I got for today. I
Speaker 3: want to go.
Speaker 2: Let's let's talk.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the eighties because yeah,
Speaker 1: of course I remember it, and it was a weird,
Speaker 1: weird time it was. It was okay, so like New
Speaker 1: York was one of the murder I mean, murder, murder, murder,
Speaker 1: I assumed that.
Speaker 3: There were two thousand homicides a year like that. That's
Speaker 3: wartime attrition.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm sure Chicago. I'm sure southside of Chicago is
Speaker 1: the same way at the time.
Speaker 3: And but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: But yet you had a great amount of abundance, You
Speaker 1: had a lot of people getting rich, a lot of
Speaker 1: people getting wealthy, and then you still had this like
Speaker 1: nuclear shadow that was always overhead. It was it was
Speaker 1: like a time when people were really a lot of
Speaker 1: people were really having fun, but there was always this
Speaker 1: cloud hanging over Well.
Speaker 3: I tink people understand either, and I tried to explain
Speaker 3: it to people. My earliest memories would were being like
Speaker 3: afraid of the Soviet Union, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: I lived I lived literally three miles from Glenview Naval
Speaker 3: Air Station, which is like a priority counter worse target,
Speaker 3: like we would have just there was no chance we
Speaker 3: would have survived, you know. And it uh and I
Speaker 3: mean especially because like my dad was like insinuated into
Speaker 3: like you know, like the the policy planning establishment. I
Speaker 3: mean I realized, like the Cold War was like talked
Speaker 3: about in my house one than other people's, Like everybody
Speaker 3: was like that. And like when those stupid emergency broadcasing
Speaker 3: system tested come on, Like my mom would jump, and
Speaker 3: like everybody would, you know, because it's like the people
Speaker 3: don't they don't understand that. That's why I get pissed off.
Speaker 3: And people talk about like the COVID garbage, even like
Speaker 3: a nine to eleven, you know, it's like there's nothing
Speaker 3: comparable like what would have been like a general warsaw pack,
Speaker 3: like nuclear salt the United States like mad bullshit, like
Speaker 3: Carl SIGs nuclear winners bullshit. But it would have changed
Speaker 3: like life as everybody knows it. You know, there would
Speaker 3: have been one hundred million people dead, Huge swaths of
Speaker 3: the country would have been like unlivable. The survivors would
Speaker 3: all migrated towards the equator, So you're basically gonna have
Speaker 3: this Like it'd be kind of like a giant Wild
Speaker 3: West with a poison environment that was like America, like
Speaker 3: no shit, and like just the fact that it'd be
Speaker 3: like again, it'd be like world transform. You can't kill
Speaker 3: tens of millions of people within hours and not like
Speaker 3: have everything change, you know, And the fact that this
Speaker 3: was always a possibility, and especially as human decision makers
Speaker 3: become increasingly sidelined, you know, it became clearly like this
Speaker 3: this could happen without even anybody intending to, just because
Speaker 3: the trajectory of variables is such that like it has
Speaker 3: to happen according to you know, the indicators. Yeah, it was. Uh,
Speaker 3: it was. It was like night and day. And I
Speaker 3: I think that some of the some of them, like
Speaker 3: the murder rate becoming totally lit for like a whole generation,
Speaker 3: and people it's like acting kind of crazy, Like I
Speaker 3: think part of that that. I think part of it
Speaker 3: was people are like, well there might this might not
Speaker 3: exist tomorrow, you know, so like why why not? I
Speaker 3: mean it made people more ballsy definitely, But it was
Speaker 3: also like, uh, you know, there's there was an aspect
Speaker 3: of like, you know, the apocalypse is like imminent, so
Speaker 3: like who gives a fuck? And uh the uh yeah
Speaker 3: it was. It was weird, man, And like and the
Speaker 3: immediate Aftermaen is weird, you know, like I.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah then I was going to bring that up.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: The nineties is like, so the Soviet Union falls apart
Speaker 1: officially and then all of a sudden New York City
Speaker 1: gets cleaned up. Yeah, like the home the crime rate drops,
Speaker 1: homeless people are being bust out forty second Street is
Speaker 1: brought up by Disney. Basically, it's like it's a real
Speaker 1: weird correlation this shit like that happened.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's one of the reason. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: one the reason I'm very much like a Hey Gaelien,
Speaker 3: It's all. That's also the reason why like the early
Speaker 3: nineties were like anarchy, you know, and then so many
Speaker 3: shit stabilized that just like became like normal again, like
Speaker 3: to your point around like ninety six, like ninety five,
Speaker 3: ninety six, but like that movie Kids, you know, because
Speaker 3: I'm more I was born in seventy six, so I'm
Speaker 3: you know, I'm like, I'm looking at nineties dude, more
Speaker 3: than an eighties war. It's like I was, I grew
Speaker 3: up in the eighties, but I was like a teen
Speaker 3: in like the nineties, and like people like kids are
Speaker 3: just like, oh, there's just like pornographic and grow So
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, it's both those things. But it's also
Speaker 3: like on the street in nineteen ninety three, that's like
Speaker 3: what shit was like, and like anywhere you went, like
Speaker 3: everybody had chip on his shoulder, like like every idiot
Speaker 3: and his brother was like gangbanging for like no reason.
Speaker 3: It's not like now we're just like hood dude to
Speaker 3: do it because like they sell drugs. It's like every
Speaker 3: idiot was like, yeah, I like wrap this like nonsense
Speaker 3: gang and oh like I I got like a gun.
Speaker 3: I packed with me for like no reason, just because
Speaker 3: I'm like a fucked up asshole. Like that literally was
Speaker 3: like the way shit was and like uh you know,
Speaker 3: and like all there was like yeah, man, there's this
Speaker 3: like like the races like fucking hated each other and
Speaker 3: like it's you know, yeah man, and it's like so
Speaker 3: like that movie. Yeah, it's like okay, maybe like Larry
Speaker 3: Larry Clark, I think he is the dude who made
Speaker 3: that movie. It's like maybe that dude is a pervert
Speaker 3: and like a sick fuck but like what he was
Speaker 3: like portraying was not like in his mind, like that
Speaker 3: ship was real and I I was a teenager in
Speaker 3: that epoch. It was like that, you know, like uh
Speaker 3: and I mean this particularly made an impact on me,
Speaker 3: like psychologically because it's like I you know, I'm i'm
Speaker 3: I'm I'm I'm just fun people think. Man. It's by
Speaker 3: the fact like I've had like you know, I had
Speaker 3: like a heavy fucking drug prof and shit, I'm a
Speaker 3: pretty like square, like fucking white dude. Man, Like I'm
Speaker 3: not I'm not into I'm not into like fucking savage shit,
Speaker 3: and like that stuff like bothered me like as a kid.
Speaker 3: It's like it seemed like everybody lost the fucking mind,
Speaker 3: like totally, you know, and like a yeah, but yeah, no,
Speaker 3: that's that's I mean again, man, that's why there's something
Speaker 3: too like zeitgeist, not just like the random aggregation of
Speaker 3: like pop cultural like symbols and the people's kind of
Speaker 3: like uh, you know, the discrete experiences and aggregate or
Speaker 3: like you know, of of of of the youthful generation
Speaker 3: in and kind of like what they associate with the
Speaker 3: times that they're growing up in. Like it's a real thing.
Speaker 3: It really is like a spirit of the age. And yeah,
Speaker 3: like why I was like every haalking for like thirty years.
Speaker 3: Everybody was going totally insane and then suddenly like the
Speaker 3: nuclear specter like disappears, and then like you know, there's
Speaker 3: like three years or four years of total chaos and
Speaker 3: then like suddenly everything's like normally in you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and like in forty second Street goes from being this
Speaker 3: like looking like a nice circle of hell to be
Speaker 3: in like Disneyland, like literally like yeah, you can't just
Speaker 3: say like, oh, well, that's because people got tired of
Speaker 3: crawing for something. It's like it's not how I'm not
Speaker 3: saying you gotta believe in God. Okay, fine, you think
Speaker 3: God out of the equation, But there is like some
Speaker 3: kind of like invisible hand, like even if it's just
Speaker 3: like human decisions and arrogate developing some kind of harmonious
Speaker 3: like you know, in intent or like vector that you
Speaker 3: can't tell me. There's just like random shit that happens
Speaker 3: for no reason, you know, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, man, plug whatever you got.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I'm still Uh. I dropped on my t
Speaker 3: gram the other day. You can find me on t Gram.
Speaker 3: I think people are like, no, why no, I'm I'm
Speaker 3: trying to get stuff done in earnest and just so
Speaker 3: I gonna like shoot for my channel and I didn't
Speaker 3: get a capacity, but I I'm gonna swamp with like
Speaker 3: content work and other stuff lately. But I promise that's
Speaker 3: why I haven't been really active with stuff. But I
Speaker 3: promise that it's changing. You can still find me on Twitter.
Speaker 3: I don't know I could be nukelere at any time.
Speaker 3: And also as we get into the summertime, I'm gonna
Speaker 3: like disengage there and just kind of like fuck with
Speaker 3: my own website and my channel. But you can find
Speaker 3: me there for now at like real underscore number seven
Speaker 3: each one as seven seven seven. My primary home is
Speaker 3: substack real Thomas seven seven seven dot substack dot com,
Speaker 3: and uh my channel is Thomas TV on YouTube. We're
Speaker 3: gonna saturate when I started uploading like fresh shit there
Speaker 3: on like Odyssey and stuff. But for right now, like
Speaker 3: if you join the channel on YouTube, like you'll be hipped,
Speaker 3: would you know when like new stuff is uploaded there
Speaker 3: and like when we kind of you know, migrate to
Speaker 3: other places. But that's all I got, And thanks for
Speaker 3: hosting me as always, this has been great.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it. Thank you, Tom's.
Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to the Pea Show.
Speaker 1: We're almost done with this, aren't we, Thomas the Cold
Speaker 1: War series?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, and yeah no, indeed, it's it's been quite
Speaker 3: a journey and we've gotten really really positive feedback, which
Speaker 3: is great, not you know, because I need things to
Speaker 3: prop up my ego or something, but there's a you know, everybody,
Speaker 3: at least even people who aren't particularly plugged into revisionist history,
Speaker 3: you know, they have an interest in World War Two
Speaker 3: because it's just you know, the kind of symbology of
Speaker 3: it and kind of the narrative of it is all
Speaker 3: around everybody. Like the Cold War, like people under people
Speaker 3: under about forty they don't. I think that's change somewhat
Speaker 3: like actually like Corneas, it sounds like one of the
Speaker 3: Call of Duty games was like special Work. I never
Speaker 3: played it, but I thought that was dope that some
Speaker 3: of these some of these game developer types, uh you know,
Speaker 3: they were they were trying to like plug people into
Speaker 3: the history of of the era, like with with you know,
Speaker 3: those kinds of sims. But you know, the if you
Speaker 3: want to like literally, if you want to understand everything
Speaker 3: that's happening in power political terms today, like you've got
Speaker 3: to understand of the Cold War result, you know, And
Speaker 3: it's I think it's particularly if you identify his right wing.
Speaker 3: It's particularly impactful in terms of you know, uh, where
Speaker 3: we are conceptually and before we went live, like you
Speaker 3: know you're talking about you mentioned Paul Gotfreid. Well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean it's hard. It's hard as hell to find now,
Speaker 3: which I think is very deliberate. But Godfred gave a
Speaker 3: talk I think it was at I think it was
Speaker 3: at the h. L. Mancoln Club. I don't even know
Speaker 3: if that's still a thing, but uh, and his talk
Speaker 3: was called how the Left won the Cold War? And
Speaker 3: it was really fascinating, and uh, you know, and and
Speaker 3: and and again. That's why even if when it is,
Speaker 3: even if one's not ideologically situated in the same kind
Speaker 3: of camp that I you know, Visa via the Cold
Speaker 3: War and Francis Yaki and and that kind of hy
Speaker 3: Gaelian view of things, you know, it's it's fun of
Speaker 3: me if you want to understand why blood is being
Speaker 3: shed in in Ukraine and on the Russian frontier today,
Speaker 3: like you've got to understand what what developed between ninety
Speaker 3: forty nine nineteen eighty nine, particularly how it resolved. So
Speaker 3: the fact we've gotten like mad feedback is I it
Speaker 3: is very inspiring. I feel like we're actually doing something constructive. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think we get more feedback on this one than
Speaker 1: we did did a World War two.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, and that that I'm very excited about that. And yeah,
Speaker 3: moving forward. Uh I uh, your idea to cover the
Speaker 3: Spanish War is great and I'm really looking forward to
Speaker 3: that too. But yeah, we can what I wanted to
Speaker 3: get into today a bit. And forgive me if this
Speaker 3: talk is a little bit it seems a little bit
Speaker 3: scatter shut. There's a lot of discrete causes to what
Speaker 3: caused what you know, caused the Inner German border to
Speaker 3: literally just come apart, you know, November nine, nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 3: Some of those causes were laid you know, around nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty eighty one when martial law is declared in Poland
Speaker 3: and the Soviet response to that, or more probably the
Speaker 3: lack of a Soviet response to that. Part of that
Speaker 3: was kind of the bizarre nature of the d DR government.
Speaker 3: The East German government was not at all organic it
Speaker 3: you know, East Germany itself. It was literally a fake state.
Speaker 3: Like there's no it's not even like the case of
Speaker 3: like North Korea, where like Northern Korea is like is
Speaker 3: culturally different in South Korea in some ways. You know,
Speaker 3: they got a history of being you know, divided divided
Speaker 3: kingdom like East Germany was literally the border was where
Speaker 3: the Red Army just arbitrarily stopped, you know. I mean,
Speaker 3: so it's you have this completely you have this like
Speaker 3: rump state that you know isn't isn't precedent in terms
Speaker 3: of it's in terms of the geograhic situated in this.
Speaker 3: And people forget too that, you know, the guys who
Speaker 3: became the d DR government. There was some genuine like
Speaker 3: pipe hitterers like Eric Milk who literally wasted a cop
Speaker 3: in Weimar and then he ran to this He ran
Speaker 3: to Moscow because uh, you know he was a KPD
Speaker 3: street fighter and uh then and and and the NKVD
Speaker 3: trusted him, you know, uh, and uh you know, he
Speaker 3: kind of became their man. Speaking of Spain, Eric Milk,
Speaker 3: it kind of became their man in Spain. He was
Speaker 3: like a commissar, you know, like fighting uh on the
Speaker 3: Republican side. Guys like Eric Honecker, he somehow escaped execution
Speaker 3: despite being uh you know, uh a pretty high level
Speaker 3: functionary or cadre and the KPD organization. But he was
Speaker 3: in prison, you know by uh for the duration of
Speaker 3: the war. And some people think that he was a
Speaker 3: double agent. And then he was like he'd fed intel
Speaker 3: to to the Gestapo on the s D which I
Speaker 3: don't know that it's possible. And then there was Walter Ubrick,
Speaker 3: who was kind of this dour intellectual you know, kind
Speaker 3: of humorless uh you know, cold cold hearted, uh, kind
Speaker 3: of functionary, the most cliche or stereotypical sort, you know
Speaker 3: he was. He was another guy who spent you know,
Speaker 3: time in exile like after after the National Socialist Revolution.
Speaker 3: It's like all these guys were there were this cadre
Speaker 3: element that was at odds literally with their fatherland, like
Speaker 3: whether whether in NI phase or not. The point is like,
Speaker 3: these are the guys who will like get odds with
Speaker 3: Germany like their own you know, cultural uh a little.
Speaker 3: You know. They spent they spent the warriors either literally
Speaker 3: like fighting with the Red Army or in exile in Moscow.
Speaker 3: And then you know, when the dust settled in nineteen
Speaker 3: forty five, they were literally just like insinuated into this role.
Speaker 3: It's like okay, you know, like you're you're now like
Speaker 3: the cadre of the German Democratic Republic. You know, these
Speaker 3: and who people like, who the hell are these guys?
Speaker 3: You know, it's not the only way they the only
Speaker 3: the only mandate they had was uh you know, proceeded
Speaker 3: from the barrel of Soviet guns, and UH, over time,
Speaker 3: UH a kind of party state apparatus did develop in
Speaker 3: the d DR, particularly like the National volks Army, which
Speaker 3: was officer in NCO heavy compared to a NATO army,
Speaker 3: And that was very deliberate because he had a bunch
Speaker 3: of military career as who's you know, fortunes were inextrict,
Speaker 3: like personal force, They're inextriguarly tethered to the survival and prosperity,
Speaker 3: if we can call it that of the regime. You know,
Speaker 3: in any any government that endures for decades, no matter
Speaker 3: how kind of contrived or unpopular it is, you know,
Speaker 3: if people are going to become just habituated to it,
Speaker 3: and you know, the people's fortunes are going to become
Speaker 3: bound up with it in various ways. So, I mean,
Speaker 3: that did happen, but it was about the most like
Speaker 3: artificial of artividual states, which is one of the things
Speaker 3: one of the reasons I'm always kind of tongue in
Speaker 3: cheeks saying, you know, like East Germany, he was best Germany.
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, the d D are the reason
Speaker 3: why they did the National Volks Army, you know, their
Speaker 3: uniforms look like Rmack uniforms. They maintained some very into
Speaker 3: the Prussian drill in the parade ground. You know, they
Speaker 3: a lot of their their kind of mythology they drew
Speaker 3: upon like Florian Geyer in the Peasants War. You know,
Speaker 3: they they kept a lot of like you know, they
Speaker 3: got a lot of the optics and kind of at
Speaker 3: least super visial trappings the of Prussian statehood, which is
Speaker 3: really the first kind of like modern welfare state. You know,
Speaker 3: that's not they can't be denied. But the point is
Speaker 3: the d d R is kind of cant They they're
Speaker 3: kind of like hyper aware of like your tenuous claim
Speaker 3: to the mantle of power and them kind of insinuating
Speaker 3: themselves into this role ironically and and and somewhat perversely.
Speaker 3: But if if you're a Gelien, that this makes perfect sense.
Speaker 3: Them kind of cinema themselves as like the guardian of
Speaker 3: like what remained of like you know, the like authentic
Speaker 3: German culture. That's really interesting and that I think I
Speaker 3: think people responded to that too in some basic way.
Speaker 3: That's why, in like the decades after the Wall came down,
Speaker 3: I think East Germans themselves like ostalgy. You know, it's
Speaker 3: like a play on like nostalgia. You know, they that
Speaker 3: that's that's you know, kind of a media term that's bandied,
Speaker 3: you know about people who grew up in the East
Speaker 3: to uh, you know, who's still pining for products you
Speaker 3: can't find anymore and kind of like what life was
Speaker 3: in that era. And you know, I made the point too,
Speaker 3: like uh Proud Miracle, it's not an accident that she
Speaker 3: came up through the d DR, you know. And interestingly,
Speaker 3: is a law I see any any German politician you
Speaker 3: know who uh who who who who is a citizen
Speaker 3: of the d d R. It's literally against the law
Speaker 3: to talk about their past, like in East Germany. So
Speaker 3: it's it was a criminal offense. And when prow Miracle
Speaker 3: was a chancellor to talk about her background, a lot
Speaker 3: of people allege that she was a Stazi asset, which
Speaker 3: is possible. She was a young pioneer, so I mean
Speaker 3: she her folks were like Communist party people or so
Speaker 3: that souls that there was no Communist party in the
Speaker 3: DDR as the Socialist Unity Party. But it uh, but
Speaker 3: the point being, I mean it wasn't she wasn't just
Speaker 3: you know, she wasn't like an apolitical you know, like
Speaker 3: her family was at least like regime loyal and so
Speaker 3: far as already membership. But that miracles concord with with
Speaker 3: mister Putin, you know, and uh, the the the gas
Speaker 3: Prom deal which which led to the nord Stream pipeline,
Speaker 3: all these things like oh to, like the Cold War, okay,
Speaker 3: and like they oh to like you know, what the
Speaker 3: d DR was and what the inner German border represented
Speaker 3: in like power political and you know, in in his
Speaker 3: story of graphical terms, you know, this stuff isn't just
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's not it's not just like trivia
Speaker 3: about you know, a strategic paradigm that's no longer extant.
Speaker 3: But you know, last uh, last episode, we got into
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of thaw, the Gorbachev thaw that
Speaker 3: was made possible in large part by Matthias Roost's flight.
Speaker 3: But before that, you know, we talked about, uh we
Speaker 3: we talked about the NATO Dual Track uh strategy, which
Speaker 3: ultimately led to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and why
Speaker 3: this was a big deal. The Soviet Union and drop
Speaker 3: off had been very aggressively trying to decopple you know,
Speaker 3: Europe from the United States in terms of a strategic
Speaker 3: doctrine and it's it's willingness to wage nuclear war against
Speaker 3: Warsaw Pact. And the way they did this was, you know,
Speaker 3: with the deployment of SS nineteen, S S twenty ICBM
Speaker 3: and theater ballistic missile platforms and in Europe as as
Speaker 3: the point of the Backfire Bomber, which was a maritime
Speaker 3: nuclear bomber like superficially it had u add things in
Speaker 3: common with the with the B one, but it was
Speaker 3: purposed essentially to the nuke the Royal Navy and then
Speaker 3: like open up the the Grainland Iceland UK Gap which
Speaker 3: the Soviet Navy had to shoot in order to break
Speaker 3: out of you know, uh the North Atlantic into the
Speaker 3: open Ocean in order to you know, effectively wage war
Speaker 3: against the United States. But the uh the when uh
Speaker 3: I made the point that Reagan's uh dual track strategy,
Speaker 3: which was the Reagan administration offered to remove all theater
Speaker 3: nuclear weapons platforms from Europe, you know, ground launched cruise
Speaker 3: missiles as well as intermediate range ballistic missiles like the
Speaker 3: person too. If the Soviets would have bided the same, Okay,
Speaker 3: if the Soviets wouldn't have buid the same we'll bets
Speaker 3: were off. UH, NATO was going to continue to deploy
Speaker 3: theater nuclear forces. Now arguably this led the Soviets to
Speaker 3: UH to say, well, we've got nothing to lose, and
Speaker 3: that's why they went all in Afghanistan. You can even
Speaker 3: go a step further and say, like, as we got
Speaker 3: into that, this caused terrible anxieties about the possibility of
Speaker 3: a decapitation strike on you know, on on Moscow and UH.
Speaker 3: You know, we talked about how the real impetus for
Speaker 3: intervention in Afghanistan was was a proximity to Kazakhstan, which
Speaker 3: was as important to the Soviet Command, nuclear command and
Speaker 3: control as was Moscow. But as it may, what was
Speaker 3: going on during this era as kind of the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union was hardening its stance in power political terms, there
Speaker 3: was odd things happening between the two Germanys. We talked
Speaker 3: about the hell Sinki Accords, you know that was UH,
Speaker 3: when the Warsaw Pact, you know it all the signatories
Speaker 3: declared that, you know, they they'd honored democratic processes, you know,
Speaker 3: people would not be discriminated against based on you know,
Speaker 3: political affiliation sect nationality. I mean basically it was uh,
Speaker 3: basically the Helsinki Accordus could not coext this with the
Speaker 3: Bread doctrine, which is what the Soviet Union relied upon
Speaker 3: with their intervention in Czechoslovakia on sixty eight. You know,
Speaker 3: this caused a problem because on the one hand, the
Speaker 3: wars Up Pact was desperate for, you know, like a
Speaker 3: legitimacy and credibility in the world stage. On the other hand,
Speaker 3: the only thing holding the structure together, particularly after the
Speaker 3: sound of Soviets split was, uh, what was armed force.
Speaker 3: You know. The only thing making the SOVIETI as superpower
Speaker 3: was the fact that it had, you know, the world's
Speaker 3: mightiest military apparatus. The only thing holding a strategic alliance together,
Speaker 3: which it depended upon, you know, in order to the
Speaker 3: achieve any strategic depth, you know, was the fact that
Speaker 3: if any if any of the satellite states tried to
Speaker 3: throw off the shackles of of of one party rule,
Speaker 3: you know, they the Soviet Union would directly intervene in
Speaker 3: order to defend socialism, you know, or defend the development
Speaker 3: and survival of socialism within its sphere of influence. So
Speaker 3: this was probably this was this was very much tested
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty eighty one, that's when Poland came under
Speaker 3: martial law. Poland was an interesting case because the uh
Speaker 3: owing Uh. One of the reasons why Carter courted Brazinski,
Speaker 3: you know, as a key part of his ZIGNA. Brzinski
Speaker 3: is a key figure in his national security staff was
Speaker 3: h like Poland seemed to be the kind of the
Speaker 3: kind of it seem it seemed to kind of like
Speaker 3: the natural place to try and you know, create a
Speaker 3: wedge and warsaw pact. You know, if us it was
Speaker 3: inorganic to the d d R. It was totally alien
Speaker 3: to Poland. You know, Poland was basically it was it
Speaker 3: was still a largely in the amand of the war.
Speaker 3: It was still like a largely backwards and not saying
Speaker 3: that the punitive or mean, but it was it was.
Speaker 3: It was still largely backwards country people westach Catholic, Uh.
Speaker 3: They had a strong hatred of the Russians, you know,
Speaker 3: like ethnicran So Communism really kind of had to succeed
Speaker 3: in Poland, Okay, if if the if for for any
Speaker 3: kind of legitimacy to improve, not just to the regime
Speaker 3: is situated there, you know, with to a Warsaw Pact
Speaker 3: generally and uh towards that end, Poland was the recipient
Speaker 3: of a lot of subsidies, which, in turn they used
Speaker 3: to build up infrastructure, including one of the what was
Speaker 3: that that, I'm like one of the world's most advanced
Speaker 3: uh like like like like commuter rail stations like it
Speaker 3: like the like Warsaw Central station. Like it's still like
Speaker 3: it's something like an architenttional marvel. And at the time
Speaker 3: it was like, wow, this is this is this is remarkable.
Speaker 3: But that that you like, like those kinds of public
Speaker 3: works projects or something like the communists like seem to
Speaker 3: do pretty well hit but he as it may. Like
Speaker 3: one of the things the polls did with these subsidies
Speaker 3: is they they set about to create like a fairly
Speaker 3: diversified like manufacturing sector. And you know, the idea was
Speaker 3: that you know, they could build up equity and you know,
Speaker 3: create something of a like an export economy however like
Speaker 3: regionally limited you know, and and and you know and
Speaker 3: and then uh you know, and then become eligible for
Speaker 3: you know, like long term developmental loans and things, and
Speaker 3: you know basically become like a some kind of like
Speaker 3: modern country or at least I got a par with
Speaker 3: like easy Germany, you know, if not you know, if
Speaker 3: not the West. But this obviously didn't work, and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, the Poles found like half the Polish GDP
Speaker 3: as of seventy nine. I think was was was was
Speaker 3: debt and uh the Poles, Uh, they were dealing with
Speaker 3: genuine shortages things like things like that there was raffic
Speaker 3: cards handed out for like meat and eggs and sugar,
Speaker 3: like nobody could get tobacco like cigarettes and actually were
Speaker 3: being used as currency by nineteen eighty one. I mean
Speaker 3: this is like prison like it's literally insane. And one
Speaker 3: of the big one of the big problems in terms
Speaker 3: of rendering the legitimacy crisis was, uh Polish Polish workers
Speaker 3: were being saddled with you know, like increasing demands in
Speaker 3: order to you know, shore up again to look like
Speaker 3: Poland was still gambling on this idea that you know,
Speaker 3: they could they could create like a viable manufacturing sector
Speaker 3: like fit for export. It's like Polish workers are being
Speaker 3: sad to look like more and more and more hours,
Speaker 3: you know, for like diminishing returns, and they couldn't even
Speaker 3: get like the bay is to consumer necessity is a life,
Speaker 3: you know, like cigarettes, like sugar. I mean in a
Speaker 3: socialist state. I mean, this is this is preposterous. You know.
Speaker 3: So that was basically the impetus for solidarity. And you
Speaker 3: can't you can't take a labor union in a communist
Speaker 3: state where like, hey, we're you know, we are the
Speaker 3: proletariat and you know we're not we're having our surplus
Speaker 3: labor literally robbed of us. You can't like take those
Speaker 3: people out and shoot them, okay. I mean, like you
Speaker 3: could like a bunch of Catholics, or a bunch of
Speaker 3: a bunch of Fascists, or a bunch of you know,
Speaker 3: people protesting the party. I mean, so this, this is
Speaker 3: a very tricky situation. The way it was resolved in
Speaker 3: Poland was Jerald Zelski Uh became a general secretary and
Speaker 3: he was a tragic figure. You know. He there's this
Speaker 3: kind of visage of him as a sinister guy. He
Speaker 3: was just you know, Polish military officer. He always wore
Speaker 3: these dark sunglasses. The reason why is because he was
Speaker 3: a lesser of lesser noble birth than when he was
Speaker 3: a teenager when Poland was invaded by the Red Army,
Speaker 3: he his whole family I sent to a gulag, and
Speaker 3: he became his eyes were destroyed by the glare of
Speaker 3: the sun off the snow in the labor camp he
Speaker 3: was in, so like he couldn't stand light, so like
Speaker 3: he'd he'd were sunglasses all the time. And I mean
Speaker 3: it tells you something too, like this guy was literally
Speaker 3: a kid who was like destroyed by the gulegg system,
Speaker 3: like physically in some way and mentally, like he became
Speaker 3: this kind of like this kind of military talent in
Speaker 3: these blocked like it there's something kind of like Shakespeare
Speaker 3: about that. But it's also it tells you something about
Speaker 3: the way like Poland was brutalized by by Communism. It's like,
Speaker 3: you know, there there there was no there weren't even
Speaker 3: there weren't there wasn't even the equivalent of of of
Speaker 3: like the d d Ar Cadre in Poland. You know,
Speaker 3: for them to kind of insinuate us as the ruling cast,
Speaker 3: you know, they took this guy who was literally, you know,
Speaker 3: somebody destroyed by the gulag, you know, like and yeah,
Speaker 3: I just find it fascinating. But so Poland stands alone
Speaker 3: is the only it was the only it was the
Speaker 3: only East plex satellite state that was under the direct
Speaker 3: rule of a military man and it was literally under
Speaker 3: martial law. Now, as this developed first under Carter then
Speaker 3: under Reagan's first term, it raised an interesting question because
Speaker 3: according to the if if Poland went into open a revolt,
Speaker 3: the president of the President of Doctrine dictated that, you know,
Speaker 3: the Soviet army would invade, you know, to to preserve
Speaker 3: the regime and uh and drop off. You can tell
Speaker 3: it was react with anxiety that this is what was
Speaker 3: going to happen. That's something that's clear from you know,
Speaker 3: the notes of uh you know meetings, uh, not just
Speaker 3: the Presidium, but of you know, like the kind of
Speaker 3: inner inner polt Burrow, like the facto, like you know,
Speaker 3: the the cadre that made the decision to a celt Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: like we talked about the other week. But simultaneous to
Speaker 3: this going on, East and West Germany were uh engaged
Speaker 3: in this kind of delicate minuet of UH of reproach
Speaker 3: and Eric Honecker, uh, you know, stal War as he
Speaker 3: was as as as a Marxist Leninist, he'd always pined for, uh,
Speaker 3: you know, for Eastern Men to be recognized as like
Speaker 3: the truly sovereign state, you know, with with with a
Speaker 3: somewhat independent foreign policy. And it was bizarre because on
Speaker 3: the one hand, on the one hand, the d d
Speaker 3: R they reviewed UH as kind of too Stalinist, like
Speaker 3: even prior to Gorbert shaw Off, but they were simultaneously
Speaker 3: viewed as being too cozy and friendly with West Germany.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's there's something bizarre about that. But in
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty seven, Honaker finally got permission for a state
Speaker 3: visit to the bundis Republic. And he've been trying to
Speaker 3: accomplish this. Uh, he'd been trying to accomplish this UH
Speaker 3: for for for for like a decade, and UH initially
Speaker 3: in UH in nineteen eighty four, when he first put
Speaker 3: it to UH, the Soviet Poloit Burrow and the Foreign
Speaker 3: Ministry Sharon Anko said, you know, make a mistake. You
Speaker 3: know that this is not a visit aimed at approachment. UH,
Speaker 3: it's to established lines of demarcation, which is like a
Speaker 3: typically like Soviet answer. It's like both like obnoxious and
Speaker 3: obtuson hostile, but also it doesn't really make any sense
Speaker 3: and like uh, but uh, so there's this weird arrangement
Speaker 3: where Honeker goes to visit the Budist Republic and uh
Speaker 3: the uh they flew like the DDR flag, but they
Speaker 3: full the d DR flags slightly lower than like the
Speaker 3: Booms Republic flag, and like uh they'd uh the uh.
Speaker 3: He like like a band greeted him, like a military band,
Speaker 3: like when he disembarked, you know in Bond, but like
Speaker 3: nobody would salute him as he would like ahead of state.
Speaker 3: It was like this goofy like half measure and there's
Speaker 3: this really striking photographs like a helmet. Cole who uh
Speaker 3: he and Merkele whatever their respective faults, and they are many.
Speaker 3: I mean they they were the really the only post
Speaker 3: war German chancellors who did anything really to restore German
Speaker 3: sovereignty and in various capacities. Cole was a like a
Speaker 3: huge man. He was like this huge, like bear looking guy,
Speaker 3: you know, like this kind of like big Bavarian kind
Speaker 3: of like a Herman Garring type, you know, like big
Speaker 3: loud dude, you know, like uh, just like a huge person.
Speaker 3: And like Honiker Honker was kind of like this creepy
Speaker 3: like nerdy eye, you know, like kinda kind of how
Speaker 3: you like imagine like you know, the kind of communists
Speaker 3: from metal casting this kind of like this kind of
Speaker 3: like profest storial dickhead who like nobody likes. It's like
Speaker 3: there's this photo like you know, like huge like comet cold.
Speaker 3: He's gotta get big grin in his face. There's this
Speaker 3: like pissed off with a like Conker and like an
Speaker 3: east Block suit who's like you know, five five even
Speaker 3: like it's it's like he's like being dwarfed by like
Speaker 3: you know, it was like kind of like you know,
Speaker 3: metaphor that seemed really resident. I thought that as like
Speaker 3: a little kid, and then just the other week when
Speaker 3: I came across it in uh In uh in this
Speaker 3: book in the nineteen eighty nine Revolutions, I'm like, wow,
Speaker 3: that's really striking. I wasn't sure if it was just
Speaker 3: like Mandela effect me like remembering it as being more
Speaker 3: like profound than that. But the what ultimately happened, you know,
Speaker 3: the convergence of all these things it became, it became
Speaker 3: at some point unthinkable, even notwithstanding for the the intrigues
Speaker 3: of a of a you know, within within the Kremlin
Speaker 3: that out Garbachev to kind of rook his enemies, and
Speaker 3: and and in sideline any true uh, you know, hard
Speaker 3: liners aim to sabotage parastrike on policy terms. It at
Speaker 3: some point became unthinkable for the Soviet Army to deploy
Speaker 3: you know, in Poland or in you know, East Germany,
Speaker 3: but came to that and and do what they've done
Speaker 3: in Hungary and fifty six and the Czechoslovakia on sixty eight.
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, zeitgeist is a real thing, man.
Speaker 3: I mean, like, I think people who take historical revisionism seriously,
Speaker 3: I don't think any of them would disagree with this.
Speaker 3: But the but uh, even if you're not you know,
Speaker 3: prone to kind of hay gaily and interpretations of these
Speaker 3: things and the pressure of you know, like world moral consensus,
Speaker 3: that's a real that is a real thing. It's not
Speaker 3: just something that like in a history liberals bandy about.
Speaker 3: And what was possible in nineties sixty eight or ninety
Speaker 3: seventy eight or even nineteen eighty one was no longer
Speaker 3: possible by like nineteen eighty six, nineteen eighty seven. I mean,
Speaker 3: it just it just wasn't thinkable. And I that's why
Speaker 3: when people post the question as the you know, well
Speaker 3: why why wasn't there at Kienman Square. Moment, It's like, well,
Speaker 3: considera like this what actually happened at the inner German border.
Speaker 3: And in the moment it was happening, I I A
Speaker 3: lot of people didn't even fully realize what the precipitating
Speaker 3: catalysts were. In April of eighty nine, really the first
Speaker 3: chink in the uh in the iron curtain, like the
Speaker 3: physical structure of the hardened border was the Hungarian garment
Speaker 3: finally shut off the electric fences that saturated the Austria
Speaker 3: Austria Hungarian border. Uh. The guard towers remained, they were
Speaker 3: still manned, but uh, there literally was an electric fence
Speaker 3: like running the perimeter, you know it. Uh you know,
Speaker 3: I mean and uh by may uh the boy the
Speaker 3: border guards. Uh, there's this, there's this big deal. Uh.
Speaker 3: The border guards uh in Hungary like met with their
Speaker 3: like Austrian counterparts and uh began dismantling like sections of
Speaker 3: the barrier, you know, and they like they the Autionans
Speaker 3: obviously invited you know, like Western news crews and stuff.
Speaker 3: And uh, this is the first kind of indication that
Speaker 3: you know, the like Warsaw Pact could no longer exist
Speaker 3: as it as it had you know, for decades, taking
Speaker 3: its que from that. The Hungarian communists and I know
Speaker 3: that Hungarians, may Garrets, are really great people and they're
Speaker 3: really proud people, and they were actually at the forefront
Speaker 3: of the anti communist resistance. And I'm not praising the
Speaker 3: communist regime there at all, but to their credit, Uh,
Speaker 3: Hungary's foreign minister horn Uh realized that, you know, travel
Speaker 3: restrictions had to be lifted, even if his motives were cynical,
Speaker 3: and that you know, he he was operating with an
Speaker 3: eye to preserve the party state apparatus. The point is that,
Speaker 3: you know, the it was, it was the Hungarian regime
Speaker 3: that really first, you know, kind of gave way, you know,
Speaker 3: and they they had a long they had a long
Speaker 3: history post fifty six a compromise. And again I'm not
Speaker 3: saying because they were good men or something or principled.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of it old, you know, the
Speaker 3: existential reality that in Hungary especially, they wouldn't have survived
Speaker 3: if they hadn't made certain concessions. But people forget that.
Speaker 3: You know, the Hungary the Austro Hungarian border is really
Speaker 3: where where you know, the kind of thaw began and
Speaker 3: what's fascinating too, at least I think so, because I've
Speaker 3: got kind of a fascination, a fascination with a Habsburg
Speaker 3: in Vienna, because i think some people know who like
Speaker 3: follow my content during the summer season, and there was
Speaker 3: always a lot of East German tourists in Hungary and
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine was no exception, because you know, Hungary
Speaker 3: is Hungry is a beautiful place, I'm sure, and as
Speaker 3: such it has such a reputation. But you know, if
Speaker 3: you were East German, Hungary is one of the places
Speaker 3: you could visit, you know, like on vacation. And the
Speaker 3: uh An idea which was hatched by Ottovon Habsburg, who
Speaker 3: was the last he was he was the last crown
Speaker 3: prince of the hats for Empire, you know he uh
Speaker 3: he said, uh, let's invite uh let's let's let's invite
Speaker 3: our German friends to a picnic on the uh Austro
Speaker 3: Hungarian border. And of course, you know, like there're these
Speaker 3: these East German you know, tourists swarm to the border,
Speaker 3: which was then opened ups. They could you know, travel
Speaker 3: to Austria and then from there, you know, they could
Speaker 3: get you know, to the Bundus Republic. And this totally
Speaker 3: neutralized uh, you know, the inner German border and its
Speaker 3: ability to plug the verbial see that you know, had
Speaker 3: led to their hemorrhaging of population. And from that point on,
Speaker 3: uh and and and you know, unless unless the East
Speaker 3: Germans were truly willing to the open fire on their
Speaker 3: own people. And and I can't think of anybody who
Speaker 3: would have been willing to take responsibility for that. You know,
Speaker 3: there's nothing short of that would have uh what have
Speaker 3: uh would have changed things. And like I said, even
Speaker 3: before Gorbachev, the uh whatever, I I think it was
Speaker 3: already unthinkable. You know again, like hard line is uh
Speaker 3: the d drop of Sharon Anco regimes were I think
Speaker 3: it was kind of the same regime as I've vindicated
Speaker 3: for reasons I've neigated before. It was clear even by
Speaker 3: then that you know, the prison of Doctionri was dead
Speaker 3: for practical purposes, and the Soviet Union was a superpower.
Speaker 3: Like people forget that sometimes you're not talking about Sam's Iraq,
Speaker 3: you're not talking about you know, you're not, uh, you're
Speaker 3: you're not You're not talking about North Korea. You're not
Speaker 3: you know you were you weren't talking about you you're
Speaker 3: you're even talking about a place like two Gemount of Croatia,
Speaker 3: like which I think was a great regime. But my
Speaker 3: point is, you know, this thing, the Soviet Union still
Speaker 3: was accountable in some basic way, you know, as a superpower.
Speaker 3: I mean they they they their territory spanned one six
Speaker 3: of the planet, and the sphere of influence was, you know,
Speaker 3: in territorial terms, exceeded even that of the United States,
Speaker 3: I mean outside of you know, the Soviet Empire proper.
Speaker 3: But what uh, what I think is key with respect
Speaker 3: to the uh, how the Cold War ended, is what
Speaker 3: was happening in Washington and how uh Bush forty one
Speaker 3: and James Baker proceeded. That's the only thing that facilitated
Speaker 3: Gorbachev's like the realization of his and Edward chevit Nardza
Speaker 3: I always butchered the pronunciation of that name. He was
Speaker 3: the foreign minister who succeeded rom Eco later became President
Speaker 3: of Georgia. But in foreign policy terms, Schev Knadze was
Speaker 3: he He was really kind of the go between in
Speaker 3: some ways between the Kremlin and the US foreign policy establishment.
Speaker 3: And as we talked about Team b and they kind
Speaker 3: of hold they had over the trajectory of policy in
Speaker 3: the Reagan administration. They've been somewhat sidelined by the Bush
Speaker 3: forty one administration. Shaney was kind of their man who
Speaker 3: remained in proximity to you know, to the sovereign lever
Speaker 3: of power. But Baker and Bush, as I've discussed before,
Speaker 3: their vision was not the Soviet Union being dismantled. Quite
Speaker 3: the contrary. They at least wanted the Soviet Union to
Speaker 3: endure until total disarmament was realized, you know, total nuclear
Speaker 3: disarmament and almost total you know, reduction of conventional forces
Speaker 3: and being and moving forward even from that, I believe, yeah, no,
Speaker 3: please do.
Speaker 1: Would that be coming from the same faction uh that
Speaker 1: today is responsible for wanting to topple Putin.
Speaker 3: That's the team the legacy that those guys are, the
Speaker 3: legacy of Team B and in some places the very
Speaker 3: sane people, because like Bush and Baker, their idea was like, okay,
Speaker 3: they basically wanted to like reinstitute what it been, kind
Speaker 3: of like the New Deal idea, like the New Deal
Speaker 3: concord of like the world ruled by the United States,
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, or like something like a Commonwealth of
Speaker 3: Independent states like succeeding it as like junior partner Kane,
Speaker 3: he was on a records literally saying like fuck them,
Speaker 3: I mean the sty Union they lost. You know, let's
Speaker 3: detonate it. Let's let's basically detonate like all the all
Speaker 3: the republics, you know, the nationalities. You know, let's tear
Speaker 3: the sovieni apart. Let's like loot what we can keep
Speaker 3: Russia permanently down, you know, let's surround it based you know,
Speaker 3: we'll turn it. We'll we'll turn Ukraine into like a
Speaker 3: garrison state, will turn Georgia into a garrison state. You know.
Speaker 3: Uh and basically you know, keep our basically you know,
Speaker 3: Morgan foul play in Russia. Okay, those are the guys
Speaker 3: who went out from Clinton administration onward. I mean Clinton
Speaker 3: was a complete buffoon in foreign policy. Like he literally
Speaker 3: was just like a fucking buffoon. He was basically he
Speaker 3: basically was. He was basically a machiavilion on on the
Speaker 3: order of LBJ like his in terms of his politicking,
Speaker 3: he was like a manchafule politician, like what he I
Speaker 3: think that's like a lot of what or not kind
Speaker 3: of depends on your perspective. But he had like the
Speaker 3: zero interest, no understanding of foreign policy, like none, so
Speaker 3: uh basically it was like available to highest bidder, you know.
Speaker 3: And that's why everything all the goodwill like achieved by
Speaker 3: the Bush Baker concord was just like it was just
Speaker 3: like you know, nuke to like proverbially subsequently. And then
Speaker 3: you know the uh, the uh the assault on Serbia,
Speaker 3: you know, which was deployed a strategic logic other than
Speaker 3: basically just to say, like you know, we're gonna like
Speaker 3: we're gonna break Ivan's face and get him out of
Speaker 3: the Balkans, Like like why would you even do that?
Speaker 3: But I mean it's some you know that. Uh, those
Speaker 3: those the two that's that's what's underway today. That's why
Speaker 3: these like neo con types and and like they're they're
Speaker 3: kind of a sentence. They they still this day like
Speaker 3: Rake Bush forty one over the close but believe the
Speaker 3: Chicken Kief speech like how dare he? Like and modern
Speaker 3: the Ukrainians not to wage some like suicide suicidal war
Speaker 3: against Moscow for no reason. I mean like it's but
Speaker 3: that's uh yeah, I mean that's a post understand me too,
Speaker 3: Like I'm not saying Obviously, anybody who's not a freaking
Speaker 3: idiot should realize that I'm not advocating like some kind
Speaker 3: of like new deal or revision of the world like
Speaker 3: two point zero. But what Bush and Baker accomplished was
Speaker 3: truly masterful. The golfer a coalition is unprecedented, you know.
Speaker 3: And the fact that basically like Busch forty one like
Speaker 3: at the whole world like like freaking in the palm
Speaker 3: of his hand, like that's crazy, you know, and he uh,
Speaker 3: he courted the Arab world in a way that was
Speaker 3: with an eye towards genuinely like normalizing you know, the
Speaker 3: Middle East and and kind of defanging uh Desigonist lobby.
Speaker 3: Like that's not just again, I'm not saying Bush forty
Speaker 3: one was like our guy like at all, but he
Speaker 3: represented something very different than the neo cons and different
Speaker 3: from like even you know, even most like Rhino types
Speaker 3: you know, like that, and same thing with Baker, like
Speaker 3: these guys were like the old you want to, like,
Speaker 3: like the old Protestant establishment the last time they were
Speaker 3: like at the Helm like that was it okay? So
Speaker 3: and frankly like in some basic way, like those guys
Speaker 3: are like my teen like even though like class divides
Speaker 3: us like it, I'm I'm not gonna sit here and
Speaker 3: like out and out like trash them because frankly, like
Speaker 3: their vision was like far better than anybody else's, like
Speaker 3: post war like now withsaying the fact, you know, the
Speaker 3: war shouldn't have happened. But that's that's what I want
Speaker 3: to get into next week. And the Gulf War. Uh,
Speaker 3: the Golfer is like an Adam Dam to the Cold War,
Speaker 3: like it really is, and like the even you know,
Speaker 3: uh black Horse Regiment Armored cavalry you know who patrolled
Speaker 3: the full the gap like they fought like at the
Speaker 3: seventy three East thing. That's where Darelas McGregor like he
Speaker 3: was a black Horse regiment. Like there's all kinds of
Speaker 3: plus two. I mean, it's that's that's where you got
Speaker 3: to see the you know, the bay like the post
Speaker 3: revolution in military affairs like US Army, which I believe
Speaker 3: was like the US Army at Zenith like at that
Speaker 3: that can be argued you know, fight against like warsaw
Speaker 3: pack weapons platforms and and just and the political climate
Speaker 3: globally like it's just something that like has never been
Speaker 3: seen before and will like like will never be duplicated,
Speaker 3: you know, And that's and and that that was. So
Speaker 3: it's not just I it's not just an addendum because
Speaker 3: it was post November ninete eighty nine, but pre you know,
Speaker 3: uh pre uh dissolution of the the USSR. It like
Speaker 3: you've got to really understand that it's kind of not
Speaker 3: just the zenith of American power and absolute terms, but
Speaker 3: also kind of like the realization of like the Bush
Speaker 3: and Baker kind of a vision of a of of
Speaker 3: of of foreign policy moving forward, other of globalism rather
Speaker 3: like which was you know, burn to the ground within
Speaker 3: half a decade by by uh by the foods like
Speaker 3: Clinton and you know people who would uh you know
Speaker 3: who would would place h they're pretty you know, kind
Speaker 3: of ancestral hatreds overall over a meaningful you know, historical development.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that's what all I got for today.
Speaker 2: Man, Well, let me ask you this before we go.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was watching I was watching it on
Speaker 1: TV on November ninth. Wasn't anything that you know, I
Speaker 1: expected then. We didn't have the internet, we couldn't keep CNN. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so how did that? How did that happen? Because
Speaker 1: you you can go on YouTube now and you can
Speaker 1: watch there's videos of seeing people pouring over the border,
Speaker 1: ladies like you know, screaming at at East German officers
Speaker 1: saying just let me go, let me go.
Speaker 3: Well, what happened at UH, what happened at the East
Speaker 3: German border was the UH. As the situation in Hungary,
Speaker 3: he kind of became like more and more unmanageable, you know,
Speaker 3: with like East Germans just UH, you know, hopping over
Speaker 3: to UH Austria and then to you know, and then
Speaker 3: and then UH and then to the West German Embassy
Speaker 3: and then like onward, you know, the Buddhist Republic, the UH,
Speaker 3: the the Volkes commer Well, first of all, Eric Honecker.
Speaker 3: Honeker stepped down because there was you know a lot
Speaker 3: of these protests that were underway in easter in the
Speaker 3: d d R. We're demanding that Honeker resign among other things.
Speaker 3: Honeker steps down. The Volkes Comma UH appoints Egon Krenz,
Speaker 3: which was who was like the air apparent anyway, he
Speaker 3: was the guy who was like being groomed like as
Speaker 3: you know, successor Krans Uh ordered UH the Interior Ministry
Speaker 3: to draft UH regulations that were less uh that were
Speaker 3: less uh less oppressive unless byzantine that would allow people
Speaker 3: exit visas, you know, which it was totally arbitrary and capricious,
Speaker 3: like who would be a grand one and who wouldn't
Speaker 3: be like like it didn't make any sense. But uh,
Speaker 3: the uh credsass Gerald Gerhard Gerhard Gerhard Louder, who was,
Speaker 3: among other things, uh, the volks Politici chief who were
Speaker 3: responsible for you know, border checkpoint security among other things,
Speaker 3: he heard the hymn to order the Interior Ministry you know,
Speaker 3: to draft some kind of workable uh you know, like
Speaker 3: visa applications some that in there. What they were hoping
Speaker 3: was that people who were political unreliable, they could basically
Speaker 3: just like send them away to West Berlin, you know,
Speaker 3: with good riddance. But you know they could uh find
Speaker 3: some way you know to grant visa the people that
Speaker 3: appeared like nominally like democratic, but you know, would would
Speaker 3: there there'd still be incentives them to like remain in
Speaker 3: you know, not not defect basically generally that would be
Speaker 3: you know, to not like the only like you have
Speaker 3: a ford like one member of a family, like a visa,
Speaker 3: you know, stuff like that. But the way this was
Speaker 3: communicated was Uh you had people already like massing at
Speaker 3: the checkpoints, you know, in anticipation of like what the
Speaker 3: new like law would be, like awaiting the announcement, and
Speaker 3: uh you had louder and uh these Interior Ministry officials,
Speaker 3: you know, who are being bombarded with with questions, not
Speaker 3: just from like d d R state media, but although
Speaker 3: from like Western uh television and radio reps. And finally, uh,
Speaker 3: this spokesman uh for the Interior Ministry, he read aloud,
Speaker 3: uh the statement from the Vogues Comma about the status
Speaker 3: of the new law, which was that private travel restriction
Speaker 3: was now permitted. And it's not clear if this was
Speaker 3: a broken memo or like you know, uh tell whatsoever,
Speaker 3: or if it was just poorly drafted. But then a
Speaker 3: reporter said, could you repeat that? Does that mean that
Speaker 3: there's no longer any travel restrictions? And when does this
Speaker 3: go into effect? And uh this this this spokesman said, well,
Speaker 3: I believe it goes into effect immediately. And then the
Speaker 3: people the checkpoints I started charging the border. Now, nobody
Speaker 3: was willing to open fire on these people, so the
Speaker 3: or cops like overwhelmed. After a while, they just like
Speaker 3: threw open the gate, you know, because like what are
Speaker 3: they gonna do. It's like they were they gonna get stampeded.
Speaker 3: They's either gonna be a riot or there's gonna be
Speaker 3: a riot, or you know, the Stasi was going to
Speaker 3: deploy like you know, the internal security troops and start
Speaker 3: you know, like killing people. And like none of these
Speaker 3: guys wanted any part of that, I mean, if not
Speaker 3: for ethical objections, because they didn't want to be held responsible.
Speaker 3: So it was basically just like the momentum of of
Speaker 3: you know, the will to kind of make this happen,
Speaker 3: you know, like corneys. It sounds like people power if
Speaker 3: you can get me, just sounding like a forgetting hippie
Speaker 3: or something. But that's basically what went down.
Speaker 1: And then and then forty days later, remaining had decided
Speaker 1: that it was u.
Speaker 3: Romania is kind of horrifying, man, like, not not the country.
Speaker 3: It did. Romania is freaking awesome. It's like fascinating. But
Speaker 3: Usescu was the one man, the one of the final
Speaker 3: warsaw packed summits. Romania is fascinating because Sescu he played
Speaker 3: both sides of the aisle. He got Kennedy to take
Speaker 3: Romania off the target list for strategic nuclear weapons and uh.
Speaker 3: He basically drew down the Romanian Army to like nothing
Speaker 3: but like an internal like it means an internal oppression
Speaker 3: for all practical purposes. He quit Warsaw Packed. Okay, you
Speaker 3: know it was uh, it was not despite beings. That's
Speaker 3: kind of arch Stalinist. He was not pretty clarly cozy
Speaker 3: with the Kremlin. But he during the final October eighty
Speaker 3: nine and the final Warsaw Packed summit, where internal security
Speaker 3: was obviously on everybody's mind, he said, like we've got
Speaker 3: to do with the Chinese comrades did at Tim and
Speaker 3: even Honeker apparently looked at him. He was like, what
Speaker 3: the hell is the matter with you? At least don't
Speaker 3: say that out loud, like you know, like that's uh.
Speaker 3: But yeah, the uh, we'll get into that too, because
Speaker 3: that's fascinating and it's it's the outlier. Yeah, and I
Speaker 3: mean for all kinds of reasons, but yeah, the uh,
Speaker 3: the uh And then then and then mister and missus,
Speaker 3: I saw that when I was in my aunt's house
Speaker 3: and Mentura that Christmas, and I seeing that Cescu was
Speaker 3: getting getting blown away like on TV and that and
Speaker 3: this is this is like young people understand. This is
Speaker 3: like you know, consumer internet was basically where you can
Speaker 3: see video was like ten years away, fifteen years away.
Speaker 3: Like this was like that's freaking crazy. It's like and
Speaker 3: it's it's I shook me up as like a young team.
Speaker 3: Then he killed his wife too, because there was like
Speaker 3: I mean, she was she was a terrible person, but
Speaker 3: like she was an old lady. They just like wasted
Speaker 3: her like and I remember like one of the guards
Speaker 3: they were leading leading them to the you know, the
Speaker 3: to uh to the courtyard to be shot, Like the
Speaker 3: one guard like put his hand in his album and
Speaker 3: she just like shakes it off like that. I mean,
Speaker 3: she was like a hard lady. But it's like the
Speaker 3: point is she was like an old woman. I mean
Speaker 3: it's like that kind of shocked me as a kid man.
Speaker 3: But yeah, we'll uh well, uh yeah, we'll we'll cover uh,
Speaker 3: we'll cover that. We'll cover Gulf War and bush Baker
Speaker 3: in uh the final episode, we'll get into like Borwich
Speaker 3: offers Yelton too, and so yeah, we we might go
Speaker 3: a little bit longer next time. And that's okay with you,
Speaker 3: but I think that'll be great.
Speaker 2: All right plugs.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean for the time being, I'm still on Twitter,
Speaker 3: so seek me out there. Uh it's Thomas seventh number
Speaker 3: seven hl A S seven seven seven. It's official Underscore
Speaker 3: Thomas seven seven seven. My primary home right now is
Speaker 3: sub stack. Uh real Thomas seven seven seven. That's subset
Speaker 3: dot com. I'm back on Instagram, I am. I I
Speaker 3: gotta go out of town end of April, but May
Speaker 3: first week in May, I promise. The channel is we're
Speaker 3: shooting dedicated content like my crime partner and my my
Speaker 3: my erstwhile editor who is is a is a prince
Speaker 3: of the realm. I swear like the he's the reason
Speaker 3: why all this stuff gets done because I I'm freaking
Speaker 3: illiterate with this stuff. But I uh, we're we're we're
Speaker 3: we're cranking out like fire ship, like I promise, But
Speaker 3: I am like he and I really a two man
Speaker 3: freaking operation. I mean, it's a lot of work, and
Speaker 3: I I'm not being a murder. I'm an incredibly lucky person.
Speaker 3: But that coupled with these manuscripts I'm trying to finish,
Speaker 3: coupled with keeping up with all this other ship, I mean,
Speaker 3: it's it's it's a freaking lot of work, man, But
Speaker 3: it's come and I promise, man, Yeah, that's what I got.
Speaker 2: Yep, appreciate it's all the next time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, Pete.
Speaker 1: All right, I don't want to welcome everyone to the
Speaker 1: uh the Q and a wrap up show for the
Speaker 1: Cold War series with Thomas seven seven seven.
Speaker 3: You don't I'm very well, thanks and yeah, thanks for
Speaker 3: commentating this format. Like I said, it just seems to
Speaker 3: make sense. And I know that a lot of the
Speaker 3: subscribers have been eager to you know, ask questions and
Speaker 3: stuff and kind of get a more discussion based format going.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's great, man.
Speaker 2: Can I can I start with a question for me?
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, all right.
Speaker 2: Cool. We talked about this in the Yaki Spangler episode.
Speaker 2: I did.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people who have just start hearing
Speaker 1: about Yaki here that Yaki was, uh, you know after
Speaker 1: World War Two and especially you know from after nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty ish, he took the side of the Soviet Union
Speaker 1: over America.
Speaker 2: Can you explain why he would do that?
Speaker 3: I mean, in geostrategic terms, it it's the perennial principle
Speaker 3: that the only way that Europe is truly going to
Speaker 3: be an autonomous actor. The only way it's going to
Speaker 3: be able to compete as a superpower is if some
Speaker 3: sort of concord is accomplished with Russia. You know this. Uh,
Speaker 3: some people suggest that this is the Kinders world island
Speaker 3: hypothers this, I mean, it isn't. It isn't. It's not. Uh,
Speaker 3: it's not as so much a geography as destiny calculus.
Speaker 3: It Uh, it has it has to do with power potential,
Speaker 3: not just of material resources, but you know of uh
Speaker 3: of mentioned material as you know that Germans used to
Speaker 3: refer to, you know, human population. It's not just in
Speaker 3: terms of their biology, but in terms of their capacity
Speaker 3: to bear culture and things like that. Europe as this
Speaker 3: kind of rump peninsula, you know, forever on an enemy
Speaker 3: footing with Russia, artificially instigated and maintained by the United States,
Speaker 3: is never even if the United States withdrew its forces
Speaker 3: and being from Europe, but that status quo remained, Europe
Speaker 3: would never ever be able to you know, emerge again
Speaker 3: as as as a true power political actor of any
Speaker 3: of any significance and hard power terms, I mean obviously
Speaker 3: in economic terms and in cultural terms. You know, your
Speaker 3: Europe is always you know, the kind of the center
Speaker 3: of the world. Okay, and in many respects, but so
Speaker 3: there's that part of it. Secondly, YACKI not incorrectly he identified, uh,
Speaker 3: what the Cold War is basically and in house controversy
Speaker 3: in ideological terms. You know, it was the the New
Speaker 3: Dealer alliance with Moscow. Wasn't just a sort of alliance
Speaker 3: of convenience because Europe was in the third right, which
Speaker 3: is so evil like on his face, that doesn't make
Speaker 3: any sense. You know, what this was is it was uh,
Speaker 3: competing viewpoints of a global socialist order, you know, one
Speaker 3: being the New Dealer perspective, the other being the marcis
Speaker 3: leninst perspective, colluding in order to annihilate fascism and any
Speaker 3: competing iteration of political order that would uh, you know,
Speaker 3: come to dominate the twentieth century and in all centuries subsequent.
Speaker 3: So you know what, one was not superior to the other.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not like America represented the West. Contrary,
Speaker 3: you know, the the alien Soviet Union or the Socialist
Speaker 3: Soviet Union and America and a lot of it is
Speaker 3: more insidious because it had an ability to insinuate itself
Speaker 3: in the European cultural life. You know, I missed the
Speaker 3: occupation regime. I mean in a way that the Soviet
Speaker 3: just we're not able to. And finally, there was just
Speaker 3: a difference there. There was there was a divergence of intent.
Speaker 3: The Soviet Union wasn't trying to socially engineer you know,
Speaker 3: white Europe out of existence, you know, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 3: Marcius Leninism was a horrible system. It was brutal. It
Speaker 3: persecuted people, It was hostile to religion, it was it Uh,
Speaker 3: it persecuted people who were who were deemed politically unreliable.
Speaker 3: It was anti human. I'm not acquitting that at all.
Speaker 3: But again, it didn't aim to tear out the root
Speaker 3: of cultural life and carry out uh a programmatic genocide
Speaker 3: quite literally, you know, by annihilating uh, by annihilating European
Speaker 3: culture at the root. And that's exactly what America aimed
Speaker 3: to do, and in more concrete terms and in more
Speaker 3: crude terms, not crude in terms of you know, disreputable
Speaker 3: or something, but just in in kind of more basic terms. Also,
Speaker 3: so you know, Yaki pointed to the Prague trials, uh,
Speaker 3: the Prague trial relating to what came to be known
Speaker 3: as the Doctor's plot, you know, where these twelve, these
Speaker 3: twelve medical people were were tried for treason and conspiring
Speaker 3: against you know, the Communist Party UH in Czechoslovakia, and
Speaker 3: eleven of twelve of these people were Jews. Okay, a
Speaker 3: lot of them were involved as Zionism, you know, they
Speaker 3: it was obviously the Warsaw what was to become the
Speaker 3: Warsaw Pact, the East Bloc. It was obviously them purging,
Speaker 3: you know, the Jewish element from their leadership cast. And
Speaker 3: they weren't doing it on some quote unquote racial basis
Speaker 3: or some kind of sectarian basis, and their alibi was, well,
Speaker 3: you know, it's it's incidental that these people are Jewish.
Speaker 3: You know, we we can't abide this kind of counter
Speaker 3: revolutionary treason, this activity. You know, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 3: you know, it hurts people's feelings that you know, there's
Speaker 3: certain certain ethnic groups are concentrated in the ranks of
Speaker 3: these these undesirable elements. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna realize,
Speaker 3: you know, justice no matter what. But it was obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, a deliberate effort to purge Jewish influences from
Speaker 3: from the ranks of the of of Fadres and in
Speaker 3: in the Eastern Bloc. So if your notion is that,
Speaker 3: you know, as Jackey's was, you know that that Europe
Speaker 3: has to be liberated from enemy influences if it's going
Speaker 3: to survive, let alone thrive. And if your idea is that,
Speaker 3: you know, the traditional enemy of the West is UH,
Speaker 3: you know is the Jewish dias for, and that that
Speaker 3: dias for is is that their world of social existence
Speaker 3: is the progenitor of UH. You know, the most the
Speaker 3: the ideological tendencies most in nymical to Western survival. And finally,
Speaker 3: again if if you view Europe's path to salvation and
Speaker 3: paraplitical terms as you know, a concord with Moscow, I
Speaker 3: mean all those things, you know, all the worlds need
Speaker 3: to Moscow, if you'll allow the metaphor, I mean that
Speaker 3: was Yaqui's perspective, you know, the and that's basically shouldn't
Speaker 3: be controversial. I mean, the reason why the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: was dangerous, the reason why it was insidious wasn't because
Speaker 3: it was it was going around doing the kinds of
Speaker 3: things that like the American government does today. You know,
Speaker 3: it's not it wasn't trying to. It wasn't going around
Speaker 3: declaring that like gender doesn't exist, or that, you know,
Speaker 3: you everybody needs to breed, you know, the everybody needs
Speaker 3: to breed into like one kind of like non race,
Speaker 3: and you know, you know, all all all kind of
Speaker 3: historical existences need to be eradicated, you know, so that
Speaker 3: some kind of like equity can be achieved, or like
Speaker 3: nobody has a historical memory, so we're all the same.
Speaker 3: Like that that would never occur to the sol Union. Okay,
Speaker 3: that doesn't make them good guys, but it makes them
Speaker 3: far far less dangerous to uh, you know, racial survival
Speaker 3: and and and kind of human culture in any in
Speaker 3: any form than that. In America wasn't his you know,
Speaker 3: and I I homatize that people that what what what
Speaker 3: the American regime does today? This isn't something of like
Speaker 3: recent vintage. You know, it's not like it's not like
Speaker 3: the US government was like doing good things or wasn't
Speaker 3: insane until like nineteen ninety or something, or until like
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, like they've always been. I mean, the New
Speaker 3: Deal regime from inception, it was totally insane, and it's
Speaker 3: totally insane ideas. It it was always sexually perverted. It
Speaker 3: always it always wanted to eradicate people's understanding themselves as
Speaker 3: as cultural you know, as culturally situated like it it uh,
Speaker 3: it literally plotted to genocide Europe and you know, and
Speaker 3: drafted up entire treaties. Is I don't even like the
Speaker 3: sexual habits of Germans and how we can work. You
Speaker 3: utilize this to undermine their potential to breed. I mean
Speaker 3: they're like this really really sick stuff, you know, and
Speaker 3: I mean some people can't accept that. I mean whatever, Okay,
Speaker 3: if people have some like vestigial attachment to America, like
Speaker 3: as a government, I I I don't care, but they're
Speaker 3: they're not people I have any common cause with, and
Speaker 3: I think they're incredibly diluted if they insist on retaining
Speaker 3: that sensibility, will also insisting that they're somehow right ing
Speaker 3: or opposed what is going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah's when somebody will bring up like you'll talk about
Speaker 1: I'll do cha, and somebody will post the picture of
Speaker 1: him hanging upside down, and this person is like somebody
Speaker 1: who's like pro America, pro you know, what would seemingly
Speaker 1: be on our side. I remind them that the people
Speaker 1: who did that to him are the people who are
Speaker 1: ruling over you today. They're the they're the same people,
Speaker 1: and you're you're just basically cheering on the people who well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a bunch of guys. It wasn't
Speaker 3: like a bunch of like good old southern guys who
Speaker 3: were like, we don't like Mussolini because he's a socialist
Speaker 3: and he's not keen to the Second Amendment. Like they
Speaker 3: were like, yeah, they were like out and out communists.
Speaker 3: I'm not just out and out communists, but you know
Speaker 3: of the kind of the kind of a Dorno and
Speaker 3: Gramsey type who were you know, very much quote cultural Marxists.
Speaker 3: I find it to be a troubling term. I don't
Speaker 3: like it. But just for the sake of coherence, you
Speaker 3: know that that's that's like the verdicular. But yeah, I don't,
Speaker 3: I don't, Yeah, I don't understand how. I mean, Like,
Speaker 3: it's like even even if even if you've got no
Speaker 3: affinity for you know, kind of like European ideological tendencies,
Speaker 3: or even if you know you you don't like national
Speaker 3: socialism or fascism, like if you don't like any of
Speaker 3: this stuff like why why would you celebrate this destruction,
Speaker 3: Like why would you celebrate like Europe being literally annihilated
Speaker 3: by by uh by cop I mean this and by
Speaker 3: these like crazy new dealers want to like eradicate the
Speaker 3: concept of race from this planet and and and do
Speaker 3: like man as some kind of like instrumentality to serve
Speaker 3: like good government. I mean that's completely perverted. But like
Speaker 3: I said, I think it's that there really is uh
Speaker 3: like a bougie kind of fixation, like really an obsession
Speaker 3: with like respectability. And there's people they want to like
Speaker 3: purge them people. People are like ambitious in the wrong ways.
Speaker 3: They want to like purge their own minds of like
Speaker 3: unclean thoughts and and and and and and not hating
Speaker 3: fascism is an unclean thought. So they try and cope
Speaker 3: by saying like, yeah, like I hate the regime, but
Speaker 3: you know I hate you know, Hitler even more and
Speaker 3: and and that's the worst thing ever, Like I I mean,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I try. I I think I'm I
Speaker 3: think I'm somewhat empathetic in terms that I I'm pretty
Speaker 3: good at putting myself in the position of other people.
Speaker 3: I mean just in in like practical terms. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's there's a heavily psychological aspect to political life, you know.
Speaker 3: And so I'm not saying I've got like great insights
Speaker 3: or something, but I've thought about this a lot, and
Speaker 3: I believe what I just indicated is like the source
Speaker 3: of a lot of that foolishness. I got another.
Speaker 2: I got another question that was submitted before I do that.
Speaker 1: If anybody is watching on YouTube and they want to
Speaker 1: go up to the pin comment, that connects you to
Speaker 1: entropy and you can do super chats there. All right,
Speaker 1: someone asked you mentioned a couple of times but didn't
Speaker 1: get into it. Can you do a quick overview of
Speaker 1: the Red Army Faction.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Red Army Faction or the Bottom miine Hoff Gang.
Speaker 3: They they were kind of unique because they were emergent
Speaker 3: in night like in nineteen sixty eight. I mean a
Speaker 3: lot of things happened of a revolutionary nature, including splintering
Speaker 3: within the socialist camp. You know, that's when we talk
Speaker 3: about cultural Marxism. That's really with under the euro Communists
Speaker 3: and and socially radical element kind of split off from
Speaker 3: orthodox Marxist Leninism. Well, the Bottom Meinhoff Faction they kind
Speaker 3: of had one foot in both camps. And as it
Speaker 3: turned out, they were very much a client, uh actor
Speaker 3: of UH the Eastern Ministry, Ministry for State Security, and
Speaker 3: they were they were very much kind of like the Branchell,
Speaker 3: the Marcus Wolf, who was an incredibly dangerous individual and
Speaker 3: he was the best intelligence man that Warsaw Facts had,
Speaker 3: in my opinion, in he's the best intelligence man and
Speaker 3: the best intelligence organization probably field by anybody in the
Speaker 3: Cold War. But the bottom Mine Off faction they uh,
Speaker 3: their their notion was to basically render the Buddhist Republic
Speaker 3: ungovernable through terrorist activity, you know, just in kind of
Speaker 3: conventional the kind of conventional terms that that nacate the
Speaker 3: actors under arms, especially during the Cold War, like going
Speaker 3: to the unique paradigm they're in like proceeded. But they
Speaker 3: also that was during the period when uh, you know,
Speaker 3: Billy Brandt was uh was seeking genuine reconciliation with East Germany,
Speaker 3: and UH the idea was uh, it was, it was,
Speaker 3: it was. It was very layered, okay, because on the
Speaker 3: one hand, UH, on the one hand, the idea was
Speaker 3: very simply like strike a blow against you know, like
Speaker 3: America and the and uh and the bundes and UH
Speaker 3: and and and sympathetic forces you know, within the Federal Republic.
Speaker 3: But secondly, it also gave people like Brandt like an
Speaker 3: alibi like, see, these are extremes, you know, we have
Speaker 3: We're nothing like them. You know, we want an approachment
Speaker 3: with the d d R and the Soviet Union for Peace.
Speaker 3: So this kind of thing will no longer be happening
Speaker 3: like which is really kind of brilliant. But they they
Speaker 3: were very effective and they uh, they had they had
Speaker 3: substantial contacts with a Popular Front for the Liberation of
Speaker 3: Palestine General Command. They uh, I think they probably were uh.
Speaker 3: I think they probably had contacts with the Provisional IRA,
Speaker 3: although some people the ass debatable and I don't want
Speaker 3: to I don't want to start some sort of argument
Speaker 3: with people who have those kinds of sympathies. But that
Speaker 3: was basically the Red Army faction and they folded their
Speaker 3: flag like officially in nineteen ninety I mean, which which
Speaker 3: goes to show and people acting like this was strange
Speaker 3: at the time, but I mean the Epochet it should
Speaker 3: have made sense that it's like, well, I mean, these
Speaker 3: this isn't some fake organization. I mean they hit. They
Speaker 3: did have grassroots support, especially among you know, the student
Speaker 3: population and younger people, but they very much were like
Speaker 3: at operational terms, they were very much like an organ
Speaker 3: of the Sazi and horse to Maller interestingly, u uh,
Speaker 3: he wasn't a direct action element within the bottom Minehoff gang,
Speaker 3: but he was a lawyer who worked closely with them.
Speaker 3: He became he ended up going to prison for quote
Speaker 3: Holocaust denial and quote promoting racial hatred, you know, a
Speaker 3: few years back. And because like immediately after the wall
Speaker 3: came down, like he he took up with the the NPD,
Speaker 3: you know, which is the legacy party of the Socialist Party.
Speaker 3: So I mean there you go, and like people like
Speaker 3: their Spiegel, which says incredibly stupid things with alarming regularity.
Speaker 3: They were like, see this man's insane. He was a
Speaker 3: communist and now he's anti Semitic. But it's like anybody
Speaker 3: with like a fucking brain, Like it's like we're just
Speaker 3: like explicated about you know, uh, why a pro Soviet
Speaker 3: disposition is what any like you know, quote unquote neo
Speaker 3: fascist would basically you know, be be disposed to. I
Speaker 3: mean that's and I that that's I mean that that
Speaker 3: it's just a case in point. I mean, it shouldn't
Speaker 3: surprise anybody, but I they they were interesting. They were
Speaker 3: an interesting case and an interesting element within the Cold War.
Speaker 3: But that's the good film about him, called The Bottom
Speaker 3: Off Complex. I highly recommend it. It's got Bruno gans
Speaker 3: and it's Bruno Ganz. He's the guy who played Adolf
Speaker 3: Hitler in Dirt Untergang.
Speaker 1: All right, Uh, Muzio Savola over here, five dollars super chat.
Speaker 1: What does Thomas think of Stalin's War by McMeekin.
Speaker 2: Have you read it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's shockfull of data and that data is
Speaker 3: well sourced. Other than that, I it's it's typical court
Speaker 3: history that was written in deliberate uh Houstle dialogue with
Speaker 3: uh with Suvarov and Yackham Hoffman, and it came out
Speaker 3: at the same time as Hoffman's book Memory Serves. You know,
Speaker 3: it's just the the implication. Obviously, somehow the Soviet Union
Speaker 3: created the world's first like truly modern like warfare state.
Speaker 3: It created like the mightiest war machine the world has
Speaker 3: ever seen, arguably will ever see. Yet this was exclusively
Speaker 3: for peaceful purposes or for no reason? You know, when
Speaker 3: the Germans attacked for no reason because they're evil. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's I mean that. I maybe it's just me becoming
Speaker 3: cantanker as an old but I think it's just me
Speaker 3: becoming a more rigorous and discriminating historical writer and researcher.
Speaker 3: Anybody who accepts that conceptual narrative is it taints the
Speaker 3: entire rest of their research, even if they're facts and
Speaker 3: their data, like the rot data is good and well,
Speaker 3: so it's nothing wrong with citing those kinds of sources.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure people who dislike me or dislike the
Speaker 3: kinds of things that right will turn around and say, like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, you're just you're abolishing the fact value distinction
Speaker 3: in your own way, and you know you're you're reducing
Speaker 3: a history of polemic No, I'm not, But you don't
Speaker 3: have to be like pro fascists or anything to accept that.
Speaker 3: The Soviet Union was what I just said. It was
Speaker 3: the first fully realized warfare state that was totally mobilized
Speaker 3: for war. It was animated by a doctrine of revolutionary
Speaker 3: warfare and exporting revolution, and it was the single most
Speaker 3: powerful military actor on the world stage. On the eve
Speaker 3: of Barbarossa. And this is the only way to understand
Speaker 3: the Second World War that was, that was the catalyst,
Speaker 3: you know, And as any military type will tell you, capabilities,
Speaker 3: let alone forces and being are not are never benign.
Speaker 3: You know, they only have one purpose, and that is
Speaker 3: to wage war. And the capability to weigh. The capability
Speaker 3: to wage war equates to power in uh it most
Speaker 3: distilled sense and is the currency of politics. That's the
Speaker 3: only currency olypics. Everything else is drestling. So I state
Speaker 3: that is always such a degree as the Soviet Union was.
Speaker 3: Not only is it never tweet be nine, it is
Speaker 3: actually the precise opposite.
Speaker 1: So Jmr Cowboy asked, was that the same Red Army
Speaker 1: wrangles White Army fought against or.
Speaker 2: A different one.
Speaker 3: What we're talking about the Red Army faction.
Speaker 2: That's what I'll wait and see, but I'm gonna take that.
Speaker 2: I'll take a question.
Speaker 1: I'll take a question off of off of Twitter from
Speaker 1: under your Europe posts, he said, So, I would like
Speaker 1: to hear mention of a James Gregor brought up in
Speaker 1: Faces a Janus the possibility that instead of Gorbachev, the
Speaker 1: USSR would end up with a version of what basically
Speaker 1: could be called Russian fascism.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't accept that, and Russia's conceptual pole stars
Speaker 3: are totally different. That's why I try to explain to
Speaker 3: people when Moscow talks about you know, when when Moscow
Speaker 3: calls its enemies Nazis. I mean, first of all, Ukrainians
Speaker 3: are are idiots, So I mean they they they'll they'll
Speaker 3: run around like slaughtering slobs and the order with some
Speaker 3: like crazy jew and claim they're doing it like for
Speaker 3: the white race or something, because they're they're fucking crazy
Speaker 3: and they're morons. But beyond that, the uh, the Russians
Speaker 3: lost thirty million people fighting the Third Reich. So like
Speaker 3: they they're they're they call people Nazis and fascists as
Speaker 3: like a stand in for enemy. It's not because like
Speaker 3: they're they're pink haired, fat girls who are into like lesbianism.
Speaker 3: It's not because they're it's not. It's not because they're
Speaker 3: like a bunch of crazy Jewish people. It's not. It's
Speaker 3: not because you know, they they listen to dead Kennedy's records.
Speaker 3: Like it makes conceptual sense the way a kind of
Speaker 3: a kind of nationalist authoritarian Russia that would definitely be possible,
Speaker 3: but it wouldn't It wouldn't look like it would It
Speaker 3: wouldn't look like Mussolini's Italy, did you know, transpose the
Speaker 3: twenty first century, and it wouldn't even look like uh,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't even look like this, you know, the Syrian
Speaker 3: bath rule in Syria. Like it'd be like weirdly Russian.
Speaker 3: Its optics would even if only superficially, be very much
Speaker 3: bound up with Orthodox Christianity. The uh, the uh. The
Speaker 3: military would have disproportionate clout, you know, more than like
Speaker 3: you know, the political cast, which would kind of like
Speaker 3: neutralize any like truly political projects of an ongoing nature,
Speaker 3: you know, Like it'd be it'd be kind of like
Speaker 3: it'd be kind of like ten miles wide and like
Speaker 3: one inch thick. Okay, Like it's not to say it
Speaker 3: be like a weak state, but I'm talking in terms
Speaker 3: of like an ideological chalist there just like wouldn't be
Speaker 3: much there, Okay. I think Russia is Frankly, I think
Speaker 3: when Putin goes, either because he dies or or he
Speaker 3: actually finds a successor that you're not in Russia can
Speaker 3: live with, That's probably what you're going to have Okay,
Speaker 3: but it's not. It's not gonna be it's not gonna
Speaker 3: be fascistic in any meaningful way. And it's not it's
Speaker 3: not gonna be some weird like Eurasianism like Alexander Dugan
Speaker 3: like fantasizes about, like this is not that would have
Speaker 3: no currency, you know, and and if there's something like
Speaker 3: they had to take off the former Soviet republics in
Speaker 3: Central Asia, like the stands to be kind of colloquial
Speaker 3: and like dumb about it, like they'd have to be
Speaker 3: looking to Moscow for their cues like culturally, politically, and
Speaker 3: and and strategically, and they're like not doing that at all,
Speaker 3: you know, Like Eurasianism doesn't have any legs, you know,
Speaker 3: like it's like something cool that Russians like to talk about,
Speaker 3: and that it's like as a thought experiment. It's certainly
Speaker 3: like not impossible, but that the Eurasian moment was the
Speaker 3: Soviet Union, okay, and like that's gone, it's not ever
Speaker 3: coming back.
Speaker 1: Here's another question from Twitter. How brutal was so Vi
Speaker 1: occupation of Eastern Europe. It always seemed to me that
Speaker 1: Stalin's crimes from the post war era get brushed over
Speaker 1: by mainstream historians.
Speaker 3: No, that's a great question. And yeah, I saw that
Speaker 3: on my timeline earlier this morning, and it was stuck
Speaker 3: in my mind. There were the true true Soviet brutality,
Speaker 3: true communist brutality in the Soviet Union as well as
Speaker 3: in the states that emulated the Soviet Union reached zenith
Speaker 3: and the revolutionary phase. Uh Soviet Union exterminated around ten
Speaker 3: million people before a shot was fired in the Second
Speaker 3: World War. You know, these were political unreliables, These were
Speaker 3: ethnic groups that the regime didn't like. You know, these
Speaker 3: were people who, as kind McDonald exhaustively researched and pointed
Speaker 3: out in his paper Stalins Willing Executioners, which was very
Speaker 3: cleverly returning to serve a Goldhagen. You know, when you
Speaker 3: something like seventy percent of the NKVD like direct action
Speaker 3: meant was Jewish during like the the the height of
Speaker 3: the revolutionary phase. And these people were just like suddenly
Speaker 3: account so like people they didn't like, you know, whether
Speaker 3: they were Kulos, whether they were like you know, Belarusians,
Speaker 3: whether you know, they there were people who you know
Speaker 3: a lot of radicalized, very very vicious, you know, Jewish
Speaker 3: people under arms didn't like, I mean, this was what
Speaker 3: it was was it was neither it was neither truly organized,
Speaker 3: nor was it truly scattershot. But that's that's really where
Speaker 3: the bodies got stacked up. And there really wasn't there.
Speaker 3: There truly was as a rubber conquest documented you know,
Speaker 3: a Soviet death camp system. I'm not being colloquial or
Speaker 3: using you know, hysterical language or something. They're really brutal aspects,
Speaker 3: programmatic aspects. After the Day of Defeat in nineteen forty five,
Speaker 3: the uh, then the uh, the American authorities were just
Speaker 3: as bad, you know, they uh, they starved out millions
Speaker 3: of Germans. Was endemic, you know, and and and and
Speaker 3: and and if not encouraged, you know, like just just
Speaker 3: tolerated more than tacitly. You know. The the Morgans out
Speaker 3: plan in a sense very much was implemented, although not
Speaker 3: realized to its full event as a vision owing to
Speaker 3: the strategic situation. But I'd say back to your question
Speaker 3: and the kind of four corners of it, the uh,
Speaker 3: the force population transfers, the literal ethnic cleansing from and
Speaker 3: you know of millions of German people from lands that
Speaker 3: they had occupied in some cases for a thousand years.
Speaker 3: That was very much something Washington encouraged in some ways
Speaker 3: participated in the planning of directly, but operationally it was
Speaker 3: the Soviet army and and and police who made that happen.
Speaker 3: My opinion is that's the most uh kinda that's gone
Speaker 3: of the most like that's the strongest example of like
Speaker 3: naked brutality. And I mean people will come back and say, like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, the the Germans were ethnically cleansing you know, uh,
Speaker 3: the Soviet Union, and they were, but it was a
Speaker 3: race war, okay, And there's a difference between that sort
Speaker 3: of activity underway terrible as it is, it's into a
Speaker 3: total war and you know, just perpetuating a programmatic campaign
Speaker 3: of ethnic violence after a cessation of hostilities. You know,
Speaker 3: there's I I don't really think that the latter can
Speaker 3: be justified in any absolute sense. And it's it's not
Speaker 3: it's what about ism o. But the Germans did bad
Speaker 3: things as any place. And also finally, and I know
Speaker 3: nobody asked, but I'm gonna see way my own take. Anyway,
Speaker 3: you know, if you're a man of the West, and
Speaker 3: if you're pro white and if you want your race
Speaker 3: to survive, you even if, even if the Third Wig
Speaker 3: was literally the most evil regime that ever existed, you
Speaker 3: don't you don't. You don't cheer on the ethnic cleansing
Speaker 3: of your own people. I mean, this is this is
Speaker 3: uh brass tax stuff, you know, and one doesn't need
Speaker 3: to be something of died in the little Machiavellian to
Speaker 3: understand aside from that that, uh, you know, politics power,
Speaker 3: politics does take place somewhere beyond beyond a good and
Speaker 3: evil if you'll allow the overused you know kind of
Speaker 3: kind of reference.
Speaker 1: So you've got a question here, what was the deal
Speaker 1: with the Rosenbergs. You said you'd talk about them in
Speaker 1: one episode, but never got around to it.
Speaker 3: I totally forgot about that. Yeah, no, we can. I
Speaker 3: thought about having like just a dedicated like atomic age episode,
Speaker 3: you know, like beginning with the proliferation of the bomb
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty nine, forty eight, forty nine, you know,
Speaker 3: going through the the early Cold War and the New
Speaker 3: Look and and you know kind of when when when
Speaker 3: every everybody in the national security of Paratus had like
Speaker 3: you know, atomic weapons on the brain, like through you know, deatons,
Speaker 3: and then finally SDI the Rosenbergs are basically what they
Speaker 3: appeared to be. I think, uh, I certainly don't. They
Speaker 3: certainly should have been executed. I think, uh, at least
Speaker 3: Julius Rosenberg. I think Ethel Rosenberg wasn't like I'm not
Speaker 3: I'm not saying she was just like a stupid woman
Speaker 3: or something. There's plenty of women, particularly in radical politics
Speaker 3: through wherever he's smart and very dangerous. I think Ethel
Speaker 3: Rosenberg was not one of those. I think she was
Speaker 3: kind of along for the ride. Okay, that doesn't excuse
Speaker 3: her whole liability. But Julius Rosenberg, he was kind of
Speaker 3: like an Orthodox like Jewish radical. Not Orthodox Jewish, I mean,
Speaker 3: like an Orthodox radical who was Jewish. But he I
Speaker 3: think I think in some ways though his from what
Speaker 3: by from his own testimony, just to his own intimate,
Speaker 3: it's not under oath or anything, I believe his notion
Speaker 3: was somewhat like that of Chris boys the guy who's
Speaker 3: the subject of The Falcon and the Snowman, although Boyce
Speaker 3: obviously is a far more sympathetic character. I believe, aside
Speaker 3: from Rosenberg's own kind of socialist leanings, he believed in
Speaker 3: order for stability to reign you know, the burgening kind
Speaker 3: of bipolar system and prevent you know, the honset of
Speaker 3: another round of of of of just massive you know,
Speaker 3: interstate violence. There would have to be you know, a
Speaker 3: true balance of forces between the superpowers, and that can
Speaker 3: only be achieved if if, uh if Moscow had the
Speaker 3: mom you know. And again, like I said, like I
Speaker 3: he didn't say this in open quart or something, or
Speaker 3: you know, he didn't he didn't raise us to the judge,
Speaker 3: you know, in the hopes that he'd be spared the gallows.
Speaker 3: These kinds of things he said to like his friends,
Speaker 3: you know, like reading between the lines. H m. That
Speaker 3: was why the Rosenbergers became these kinds why the Rosenbergers
Speaker 3: became these people who were held out by the usual
Speaker 3: suspects that see this, this horrible anti semitic lynching of
Speaker 3: these people. That's incredibly weird because they're about the least
Speaker 3: sympathetic defendants I can think of. But that's there's like
Speaker 3: not really anything there. I mean, it's like Leo Frank,
Speaker 3: like like Leo Frank was uh, Leo Leo Frank was
Speaker 3: a child molester and a murderer, But like you're supposed
Speaker 3: to feel bad that he got lynched, because apparently it
Speaker 3: was like terrible that this guy who like victimized the
Speaker 3: little kids got lynched. I know, I don't know, I
Speaker 3: don't quite understand that, but it's something, uh it goes
Speaker 3: to some of the kind of like moral bankruptcy of
Speaker 3: the of the people who who come to the defense
Speaker 3: of these of these personages and history. Like I'm not,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying that like lynching is good. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's a frank I mean, I I believe in due
Speaker 3: process in a real sense, but I also don't feel
Speaker 3: bad if child molesters and people will harm children get killed, Okay,
Speaker 3: And anybody who makes it out like this is some terrible,
Speaker 3: you know, terrible instance of uh of of of rough justice.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm not, I'm not And I'm not comparing
Speaker 3: selling nuclear secrets some listing kids at all, like they
Speaker 3: have nothing at all in common, Okay, And I can
Speaker 3: easily see myself like Pat passing nuclear secrets, not the ivan,
Speaker 3: but uh, you know, and the last man is gonna
Speaker 3: sit here and and and I like fucking prissy about
Speaker 3: such things. But you know, if there's in the modern
Speaker 3: era there's really no clear case of high treason than
Speaker 3: what the Rosenberg did and what the Rosenbergs did, except
Speaker 3: maybe for the Cambridge five just in terms of they
Speaker 3: share kind of like gravity of of of their ongoing espionage.
Speaker 3: But yeah, there you go. I realized that was long winded.
Speaker 3: But the short answer is like, there's there's nothing there.
Speaker 3: It's exactly what it appears to be. You're supposed to
Speaker 3: feel bad for Jewish communists for some reason because you know,
Speaker 3: any anytime they face consequences, it's because of med anti
Speaker 3: Semitism or something.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: I just want to remind people that in the pinned
Speaker 1: comment and the chat there, you can do super chats
Speaker 1: over on entropy. But let's get another question from Twitter.
Speaker 1: In one episode, you mentioned the Marine Corps and Air
Speaker 1: Force were able to adapt to Vietnam but not the Army.
Speaker 3: Can you elaborate, sure, that's a great question. The Air
Speaker 3: Force was interesting and it was very dynamic in that era.
Speaker 3: We'll started the Air Force first, okay, they became an
Speaker 3: independent service branch. People like Billy Mitchell even before or
Speaker 3: you know, the Second World War. I pushed for that because, uh,
Speaker 3: there was an understanding that you know Army thinking had
Speaker 3: become kind of stagnant, Okay. And also it's just the
Speaker 3: Army was not particularly carptible with with with new technology.
Speaker 3: They just weren't. That's not a polemical take, that's a fact.
Speaker 3: But it's also too it was like the the science
Speaker 3: of aviation, and particularly military aviation, it was something everybody
Speaker 3: was learning by doing. You know, like when Curtis Lamay
Speaker 3: first started flying and you know in the Inner Warriors, Uh,
Speaker 3: that's when pilots were still like flying by like visual
Speaker 3: sight of like you know, terrestrial land features and things,
Speaker 3: you know, and trying to match it up to like
Speaker 3: a paper map. Okay. Now, the Earth Force obviously by
Speaker 3: uh by the time via but by the time the
Speaker 3: real escalation got underway in Vietnam in sixty five, the
Speaker 3: UH there was uh, you know, the Air Force. Uh.
Speaker 3: They'd been their bread and butter was Strategic Air Command.
Speaker 3: And that also is what they owed not just their
Speaker 3: lobbying power too, but also there kind of pre eminent
Speaker 3: position in in the UH, in the kind of American
Speaker 3: defense establishment structure, they were able to pretty rapidly repurpose
Speaker 3: to a conventional role. But a conventional role that was Uh,
Speaker 3: it was difficult to realize. You know, these arc light bombers,
Speaker 3: these BFFD two's, those were those were purpose those were
Speaker 3: those were those were purpose to attack with nuclear weapons, okay,
Speaker 3: and a strategic capacity switching them to a conventional repurposing
Speaker 3: them to a conventional role, you know, in a conflict
Speaker 3: like Vietnam where frankly until uh, you know, nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: you didn't even really have like through combin or of
Speaker 3: set piece battles where they could really kind of shine
Speaker 3: the fact that they were able to, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of wreak so much havoc on uh, the ability of
Speaker 3: the North Vietnamese uh, not just reconstitute forces, but you know,
Speaker 3: to uh sustain infrastructure, not just command and control, but
Speaker 3: you know any any know, all kind of basic infrastructure
Speaker 3: relating to the war effort. That's pretty remarkable. And it's
Speaker 3: also the uh it was more more naval aviators, but
Speaker 3: some air force aviators too. They got engaged over the
Speaker 3: battlespace tactically, and uh, Vietnamese pilots are pretty good and
Speaker 3: you're obviously we're Soviet pilots like flying sorties too. As
Speaker 3: it brought dog fighting back, you know that that's the
Speaker 3: all reason why why uh why you know Tagle Air
Speaker 3: Command like uh, you know, got got a boom and
Speaker 3: that's why. Uh, And that's why in the naval side,
Speaker 3: like you know, top gun got created in the first place.
Speaker 3: That's what I meant about the Air Force and against
Speaker 3: the Marine Corps. The Marines, they were used to doing
Speaker 3: more with less just because of the nature of their
Speaker 3: missions and deployments. You know. The Small Wars Manual was
Speaker 3: uh was written by uh, you know officers and n
Speaker 3: c o s who've been fighting in nicaraguall like in
Speaker 3: the twenties and things. The Marines better understood how to
Speaker 3: like you know that the need for you know kind
Speaker 3: of like in the field diplomacy with indigenous elements like
Speaker 3: stuff like that. And the the US Army, you know,
Speaker 3: after World War Two, it was just like senerally obsessed
Speaker 3: with firepower, you know, and like look what they did
Speaker 3: in Vietnam. It's like, uh, you know, let's let's show
Speaker 3: up as heavy as possible. Let's have guys wearing fatigues
Speaker 3: that we don't wearing in the inner German border, you know,
Speaker 3: like carrying around like rations and metal tns, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: and toting like sixty pounds worth of gear on their
Speaker 3: back and like one hundred and ten degree tropical heat.
Speaker 3: Like that's not I mean that that's the whole thing's absurd.
Speaker 3: Like Army Special Forces totally shined, you know. But that's
Speaker 3: but this was before like SOCOM was like it was
Speaker 3: like bros with like goofy beards and sleeved hats who
Speaker 3: like think that they're the police or something like. This
Speaker 3: was when like these guys were like genuine weirdos who
Speaker 3: were like kind of like their own branch the military,
Speaker 3: and they were really they were really up on some
Speaker 3: progressive and dynamic, like tactical doctrines. That's what I meant.
Speaker 3: And I think that in the nineteen sixties Army was
Speaker 3: actually pretty squared away. Okay, they were very very well
Speaker 3: suited to fight Warsaw Pact, but they were not. They
Speaker 3: just lacked like operational flexibility in the with that in
Speaker 3: a way that was needed. But it's just I mean
Speaker 3: the US Army, the US Army had a hell of
Speaker 3: a time in the in the Far East. One of
Speaker 3: the reasons. I like the way The Thin Red Line,
Speaker 3: Like nobody likes that movie, but I think it's a
Speaker 3: dope movie that is like love Terrence mal like, but
Speaker 3: it's about the US Army in the Pacific and like
Speaker 3: nobody thinks about that, and you know it's all about
Speaker 3: the Marines and the Navy, and I mean which and
Speaker 3: then that's where like a lot of naval and marine
Speaker 3: re legends were made. But the U. S R. And
Speaker 3: the Pacific was fubar and like uh like in all
Speaker 3: kinds of ways, not just because it was view as
Speaker 3: the secondary theater, but it's just because like the army
Speaker 3: was fucked up, like fighting in Asia, you know, like
Speaker 3: and they were, it's they they they were not like
Speaker 3: at the command level. I'm not talking about you know,
Speaker 3: the guys in the field like doing you know, not
Speaker 3: talking with the actual infantry man where game is fucked,
Speaker 3: but like the guys making operational decisions. It's like they
Speaker 3: didn't it, like didn't compute that. You know, this was
Speaker 3: not we're not We're not We're not we're not fighting
Speaker 3: Verdun or bellow Wood, you know, just against the against
Speaker 3: the jabs. You know, it's not all the same. Yeah,
Speaker 3: That's what I'm meant. But I'm not I'm not a
Speaker 3: military man, so I mean look at me obviously, okay,
Speaker 3: but I I'm sure that military will say, I don't
Speaker 3: know what the hell I'm talking about, but I I
Speaker 3: mean whatever, Okay, I mean that's that's my position. I
Speaker 3: think I can back it up.
Speaker 1: So over here on YouTube Viva Crista re Is, he
Speaker 1: has a comment and then a question says, I saw
Speaker 1: I saw a B one Lancer flying low over Chicago
Speaker 1: the other day. I thought Red Dawn was happening, but
Speaker 1: it was just opening It was just opening day for
Speaker 1: the Cubs.
Speaker 3: Now they're they're, uh that that aircraft, as you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, that was meant. Uh, that was that was
Speaker 3: that was meant to go in low, going fast, uh
Speaker 3: and strike super hard on targets and in the Soviet
Speaker 3: Union with nuclear weapons, it was. It was a bad bitch.
Speaker 3: And the B two was the B two. It was
Speaker 3: a it's immediate successor. It was a B one on
Speaker 3: steroids with stealth capability. Yeah, it's uh, it's a fascinating aircraft.
Speaker 3: And the Ivan's answer to that was the backfire, or
Speaker 3: what NATO called the backfire. It was, uh, its actual
Speaker 3: name is the TUPELIV something. But yeah, no, that's you see, uh,
Speaker 3: you see some uh you see some cool aircraft over
Speaker 3: orger Chicago game.
Speaker 1: So his question was why was the Soviet Union and
Speaker 1: Company so hostile to freemasonry and why was the sentiment
Speaker 1: shared with their right Hegelian enemies.
Speaker 3: I'm not an expert on freemasonry at all. What I
Speaker 3: do know about it is that uh people on the
Speaker 3: right always hated freemasonry, and like in America, Freemasonry like
Speaker 3: is nothing and all some people in the commerce are
Speaker 3: gonna be like O bullshoot like they wrote everything or whatever,
Speaker 3: like there's I can like you have. It wasn't like
Speaker 3: fraternal organizations that have way more cloud than is now
Speaker 3: than the Freemasons and America, like the Masons are actually
Speaker 3: viewed as kind of like lower bougie kind of trashy
Speaker 3: stuff here by a lot of people. They are I'm
Speaker 3: just telling you what I'm not saying. I think that
Speaker 3: I'm telling you that's the way like a lot of
Speaker 3: fucking people look at it, especially like social registered types
Speaker 3: back when they had clout in Europe as a totally
Speaker 3: different story. The uh the Freemasons are reviewed by uh
Speaker 3: by by the Third Reich as like Roasta Crucian types,
Speaker 3: you know, they're like these fifth columnists, who are you know,
Speaker 3: they're degenerate. They're they're they're neither loyal to race, nor king,
Speaker 3: nor country nor kin. You know, they're they're they're you know,
Speaker 3: they're they're basically, uh, they're basically like a bourgeois fraternal
Speaker 3: society that's intrinsically subversive, you know, and that is you know, uh,
Speaker 3: these these these people, these people can't be relied upon
Speaker 3: because they're only loyalty is to is this kind of
Speaker 3: like odd set of beliefs which every reality often is
Speaker 3: nothing deeper than kind of cover for uh, you know, ambition,
Speaker 3: ambitious social climbers to pretend as if there's you know,
Speaker 3: it's some kind of deeper ethos to their you know,
Speaker 3: to their convetousness of station and things. Okay, In terms
Speaker 3: of the Russians, I don't have a good understanding of
Speaker 3: Russian culture at all. I don't readers speak Russian. I Uh,
Speaker 3: I think I've got a good understanding of their political
Speaker 3: heritage and how their decision making process in war and
Speaker 3: peace terms plays out. But I I cannot tell you,
Speaker 3: like what the Russian take is on Freemasonry, Like why
Speaker 3: the Ivens like viewed them as insidious, like why why
Speaker 3: why the Germans viewed them that way? And this proceeded
Speaker 3: like the you know, the the national social revolution, but
Speaker 3: why why the why the Third Reigen in particular like
Speaker 3: viewed them as like a a an undesirable element, Like
Speaker 3: that's why there's a dedicated Uh, there's a there's a
Speaker 3: dedicated police uh creeple department or directorate, uh, dedicated to
Speaker 3: like spying on Freemasons. And like I think in some capacity,
Speaker 3: like it endured after the war, like a memory serves
Speaker 3: like when, uh, when when the West German when the
Speaker 3: Buddhist republic like national police were restructured, and like that's
Speaker 3: when like GSG nine became this like badass special ops force.
Speaker 3: Like I think I remember reading something like they were
Speaker 3: still like spying on Freemasons and fucking with them, and
Speaker 3: they made a bunch of people mad, like oh, this
Speaker 3: is like you know nuts use some rebooks like godar
Speaker 3: you like uh, but yeah, I don't, I don't have
Speaker 3: any insight in on that man, Like you'd have to
Speaker 3: talk to the Russian fellas in our circles or or
Speaker 3: some of the European guys.
Speaker 1: Where was the one of The other questions was, can
Speaker 1: you give your opinion of Yuri Besmanoff.
Speaker 3: I don't. I don't really have one because I haven't
Speaker 3: I haven't like read enough of his stuff, like what
Speaker 3: what uh like specifically like his take on Peristrika and
Speaker 3: glass nos or like character or what it's honestly, what's it?
Speaker 1: There's a famous video in nineteen eighty two eighty three
Speaker 1: where he he's talking about how it was a Soviets
Speaker 1: who subverted the subverted the yeah, the institutions and everything
Speaker 1: that basically every.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, yeah, you know, yeah, he's one of those
Speaker 3: guys who he the guys who yeah, the Peristrika deception,
Speaker 3: like the guys the same guys who were to that,
Speaker 3: like cite him a lot, I don't. The Soviet Union
Speaker 3: was basically what it appeared to be man from UH
Speaker 3: from especially from President of Onward. I cruised if was
Speaker 3: kind of a wild card in like policy terms, I
Speaker 3: don't mean like ideological terms, but it I mean like
Speaker 3: the the subversion something was coming from Moscow. It UH
Speaker 3: in the in the in the in the the labor
Speaker 3: movement was UH was truly a national phenomenon with with
Speaker 3: political cloud manufacturing economy, the terrestrial manufacturing, like national economics
Speaker 3: was the order of the day, you know, really until uh,
Speaker 3: until nineteen sixty they're about, Yeah, you better believe that.
Speaker 3: Uh you better believe the common term in later common
Speaker 3: form they were. They were totally insinuated into that, you know.
Speaker 3: And there was major unions that were shot through with
Speaker 3: like Soviet influence. Okay, last gas at was like the
Speaker 3: Welsh minor strike, so like the Kremlin was pouring a
Speaker 3: munch money into those efforts. Okay, But that's the reason why.
Speaker 3: And again I view it as a very imperfect signifier
Speaker 3: for all kinds of reasons. But I understand why people
Speaker 3: about cultural Marxism. Digital Marxist Leninism does not emphasize culture.
Speaker 3: Everything is superstructure. It's all labor, it's all production, it's
Speaker 3: all capital, you know, it's all it's all how people's
Speaker 3: conceptual horizons and social behavior and and and and and
Speaker 3: class and cast structuring like derives from labor and production
Speaker 3: to schema. You know. So like if you asked, like
Speaker 3: even the most radical kind of mark like traditional Marxist
Speaker 3: lenin Is in nineteen fifty, if you like ask them
Speaker 3: about stuff like homosexuality, or like feminism or like about
Speaker 3: race relations. You just like tell you like, none of
Speaker 3: that is important, Like these are bourgeois fixations or concerns,
Speaker 3: and you know, over to the alienation of of the
Speaker 3: of you know, not just the not just the exploited proletariat,
Speaker 3: but you know the people who profit from it. You know,
Speaker 3: they exist also in debate circumstances and you know, not
Speaker 3: not being not being invested in actual like you know,
Speaker 3: power processes of production, as humans need to be you know,
Speaker 3: to live, you know, psychologically healthy lives. You know, they're
Speaker 3: they're drawing upon you know, these these kind of super
Speaker 3: structural meaningless like ephemora, like the surrounds, like human life.
Speaker 3: These are these things don't matter. Like that's literally what
Speaker 3: their take would be, Like they'd have no they have
Speaker 3: no interest. They either have no interest and these kinds
Speaker 3: of culture aspects that we are so familiar with, or
Speaker 3: they'd say, you know, that's just not important. You know, Okay,
Speaker 3: it was interesting, maybe it's useful, maybe it can be
Speaker 3: exploded to some discreete purpose, but it's just not important.
Speaker 3: You know. That's that's the key difference. So when these
Speaker 3: Bircher types would talk into the eighties about how like
Speaker 3: everything bad that happens is coming from Oscow. I mean,
Speaker 3: that was like a fucked up perspective of all kinds
Speaker 3: of reasons. And it's just like, I mean not not
Speaker 3: sensible and pregnant reasons and obvious ones. But that's also
Speaker 3: just like not that is not what like Sowetism was about.
Speaker 3: You know, it just wasn't.
Speaker 1: Talk a little bit about talk a little more about
Speaker 1: Latin America and how why was the Marxism of Moscow?
Speaker 1: Why was the way Moscow ran things ran things so
Speaker 1: attractive to so many in Latin America, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, because the whole Marxist Leninist uh, particularly Leninist you
Speaker 3: read Lenin's imperialism, the process that he describes like in
Speaker 3: today's terms, the legacy of Marxism is is global systems theory,
Speaker 3: you know, like a manual Wallerstein kind of stuff. Okay,
Speaker 3: even after Marxist Leninism kind of like lost its animating
Speaker 3: power and kind of context and much of the world still,
Speaker 3: especially kind of some of its successor iterations captured sort
Speaker 3: of the the fascination of Latin Americans because it it
Speaker 3: very much was contextual error. Okay, like Latin America was
Speaker 3: and is kind of this hyper exploited, primitive economic backwater,
Speaker 3: you know that's like resource rich in terms of things
Speaker 3: like agricultural commodities and not really owing to any kind
Speaker 3: of conspiracy, but gowing definitely to kind of structural design.
Speaker 3: It remains mired in this kind of primitiveness, you know,
Speaker 3: owing to the kind of odd racial dynamics. There's like
Speaker 3: this incredibly sharp cast distinction, you know, like there's uh
Speaker 3: like pretty much every kind of cliche that uh, you know,
Speaker 3: from the Leninists, specifically the Leninist kind of play bulk
Speaker 3: of history that's described, uh that describes capitalism and punitive terms,
Speaker 3: you know, is like very is like plainly evident in
Speaker 3: Latin America. Okay, and again not not for conspiratorial reasons,
Speaker 3: but for you know, the peculiar and kind of somewhat
Speaker 3: tragic heritage of the region. That's why it's it's interesting
Speaker 3: you raised that. I was reading the Wilton Center, which
Speaker 3: I think is kind of abominable in a lot of ways,
Speaker 3: but their archives are very useful and very interesting. When
Speaker 3: Bush and Scowcroft Bush forty one obviously, and Baker and
Speaker 3: Helmet Coal, you know, we're negotiating with Garbagehew, particularly as
Speaker 3: regarded specifically as you know, the art Tree, but generally,
Speaker 3: you know, the kind of extancies related to ending the
Speaker 3: Cold War, something that Coal and Bush and Scowcroft also
Speaker 3: to Gorrishev was like, look like, however, we leave this,
Speaker 3: you know, assuming that you know, we can cut terms
Speaker 3: on a nuclear weapons, assuming we can come to terms
Speaker 3: on you know, a basically complete drawdown and forces and
Speaker 3: being in Europe. You know, he's like, we need your
Speaker 3: guarantee that your satellites in Latin America are gonna stop
Speaker 3: exporting revolution, you know. And obviously they couch this in
Speaker 3: like the language of diplomacy and in the language of
Speaker 3: of of of American propaganda, you know, like subverting the
Speaker 3: democracies in Latin America. But this is very much on
Speaker 3: their mind, which is fascinating, and this makes sense. But
Speaker 3: that's that's why. And but there's also I mean, like
Speaker 3: Latin people's are they're uh, they're they're they're political romantics, man.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not saying that like to make fun
Speaker 3: of them or in a negative way, like quite the contrary.
Speaker 3: It's like it makes them like effective partisans, you know,
Speaker 3: so you're gonna you're gonna be able to get You're
Speaker 3: gonna be able to get a bunch of Kubanos. There
Speaker 3: are a bunch of Argentines or a bunch of Salvadorans.
Speaker 3: You're gonna be able to get them to kind of
Speaker 3: export the revolution in a way that you wouldn't a
Speaker 3: bunch of North Koreans. Okay, I mean, let's be honest.
Speaker 3: I mean it's like all those things. It's like historical
Speaker 3: as anthropological, it's it's it's cultural, it's dare I say racial?
Speaker 3: I mean that's why.
Speaker 1: Well do you had mentioned before we started going live
Speaker 1: that there were a couple of things you might want
Speaker 1: to comment on your self.
Speaker 2: Is there anything you uh he wanted to get out there?
Speaker 3: I just yeah, I want to. I want to and
Speaker 3: we will deal with this more in a dedicated pass
Speaker 3: and more kind of events discussion. But I the degree
Speaker 3: of which the uh what people like Bush forty one, Scowcroft, Baker,
Speaker 3: Nixon himself, and I mean make mistake like Nixon Platt
Speaker 3: a key role in ending the Cold War, like the
Speaker 3: vision that they had for world order. Obviously, you know
Speaker 3: I don't agree with that vision, but there was something
Speaker 3: noble about it and something both pragmatic and uh and
Speaker 3: developed about it, the degree to which this was just
Speaker 3: utterly sabotaged, deliberately thrown in the trash, so that uh,
Speaker 3: you know, we could have you know, we can have
Speaker 3: this kind of free for all uh in in these
Speaker 3: states like Ukraine, and they can be turned against Russia's
Speaker 3: as these kind of like suicide torpedoes, you know, with
Speaker 3: the ultimate purpose in mind of you know, ultimately deteriorating
Speaker 3: Russia's ability to defend itself from such a text the
Speaker 3: point that you know it it Russia can be stript
Speaker 3: of its natural wealth and looted. I mean that's incredibly grotesque, man,
Speaker 3: Like everything everything about how what developed subsequent term you know,
Speaker 3: the bush Baker regime is this grotesque. That's the only
Speaker 3: word for it. And it really is. It's it's it's
Speaker 3: it literally is criminal, you know, and that should That's
Speaker 3: why I get still offended when these idiots like wave
Speaker 3: these like Ukrainian flags, like like what they're cheering on,
Speaker 3: Like you're you're you're cheering on destruction and mass homicide
Speaker 3: literally for no reason, you know, for the profit of
Speaker 3: a handful of incredibly evil people, you know, like this,
Speaker 3: the fact that anybody can look at that is like
Speaker 3: some good thing or that that's like preferable to like
Speaker 3: what was accomplished in UH nineteen nine. It's just unconscionable, Okay.
Speaker 3: And I realized it's a board of ignorance because these
Speaker 3: people don't know anything, but it's that doesn't make it
Speaker 3: any less disgusting, you know, And I I behoove people.
Speaker 3: I want to do a dedicated Gulf War episode because
Speaker 3: that that's a that's a natural kind of like bookend
Speaker 3: to the Cold War, not just like in linear terms,
Speaker 3: but like in conceptual ones, and that I want people
Speaker 3: to understand why I defend Bush forty one a lot.
Speaker 3: I don't defend Bush forty one because I like, I
Speaker 3: like these fucking Yale assholes, or because like I have
Speaker 3: something to common with social registered types. I get tired
Speaker 3: of that too. Like I don't like when people call
Speaker 3: me like a quote wasp. It's like, look at me, like,
Speaker 3: don't be fucking basic. Do I look like a wasp
Speaker 3: to you? Like, you know, if I wanted to be
Speaker 3: a wasp, which I don't like, I would never ever
Speaker 3: be allowed like in their environs. Okay, Like de fact. Uh,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, there is like some sort of like
Speaker 3: tribal commonality between people like me and the bushes, but.
Speaker 1: It's I'm gonna I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna out
Speaker 1: you right now. But your last name is like Norman dynasty.
Speaker 3: No, I mean that's true. Like, uh, but I I've
Speaker 3: got some people in my LEAs were like incredibly like prestigious,
Speaker 3: but we're also like unbmolievably fucking trashy.
Speaker 2: Same, it's same, same, But like my point is, like.
Speaker 3: If I showed up at if I showed kinds of
Speaker 3: places that like the boishes hang around like, un if
Speaker 3: I was like flush of money, like I'd be like
Speaker 3: showing the door, even if I was, like even if
Speaker 3: I was, you know, if I wasn't you know, like
Speaker 3: you know, even if I like got a haircut and
Speaker 3: was like behaving myself. I guess that's kind of my point.
Speaker 3: But aside from all of that, like you know, we
Speaker 3: we we don't need to agree with you know, the
Speaker 3: kind of conceptual perspective of like Nixon or forty one.
Speaker 3: But these guys were motivated by good intentions, you know,
Speaker 3: at least as much as intentions can be good like
Speaker 3: in power political manner. And even if they weren't, I mean,
Speaker 3: even like let's say let's play Devil's abac and say, oh,
Speaker 3: there's nothing good about this and like moral terms, but
Speaker 3: it was, it was incredibly ambitious and it was you know,
Speaker 3: it was world transforming in a way that is laudable
Speaker 3: and for it, you know, the the uh, the kind
Speaker 3: of impactful list of things like that I think is
Speaker 3: is it represents like a good and its own terms.
Speaker 3: And the uh, the fact that that was immediately succeeded
Speaker 3: by these like you know, by by these conceptual literates
Speaker 3: and and just you know, like like literal like bandits,
Speaker 3: you know, say, just just like bandits MAFIOSI, like, you know,
Speaker 3: just kind of like the lowest of the low, like uh,
Speaker 3: like kind of human carrion animals, eaters of the dead. Literally.
Speaker 3: I mean that that's uncomfortable and that's and also it
Speaker 3: also I mean it forces a question as to what
Speaker 3: you know, what what I mean you know, people people
Speaker 3: fought and waging the Cold War. I'm not talking I'm
Speaker 3: not talking about these fools in Washington. I mean like
Speaker 3: regular guys, you know, and this was this was this
Speaker 3: wasn't the time, and you got you got a draft card,
Speaker 3: you got forced to do it. You know what we
Speaker 3: didn't have like this like Dickhead police department for an army,
Speaker 3: you know, like it was you know, like what basically
Speaker 3: like all the sacrifices that those guys made, you know, uh,
Speaker 3: and they were they were a bunch of white Christian
Speaker 3: guys mostly. Uh. That was essentially like completely fucking neutralized
Speaker 3: among everything else by this by this kind of like
Speaker 3: you know, uh Semitic crusade against you know, Byzantium. But yeah, no, yeah,
Speaker 3: this was really great. Man.
Speaker 1: I hope we got one. We got an we got
Speaker 1: a lake if you're okay with that. It's from williams
Speaker 1: over on Entropy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, would NATO.
Speaker 1: Would NATO have been able to hold West Germany in
Speaker 1: a seven days to the Rhine scenario?
Speaker 3: No, I don't think so. No, definitely not. And that's
Speaker 3: what that was. That is an interesting point a game
Speaker 3: that scenario, like many many times with a couple with
Speaker 3: with a couple of different game platforms, and I think
Speaker 3: are are basically the variables are the variables they chose
Speaker 3: to code and when they code and are basically accurate. No,
Speaker 3: the only thing that that that was William Odom's UH
Speaker 3: A big concern because UH, the only thing that would
Speaker 3: have stopped that onslaught is UH is theater nuclear weapons, Okay,
Speaker 3: and to hold UH if to hold UH, to hold
Speaker 3: warsaw bag armor and say nineteen eighty five in the
Speaker 3: North German plane and the fold the gap. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're gonna you're gonna start, You're you had to
Speaker 3: start hitting them with miss and Pershing Two's okay, And
Speaker 3: what would the Soviets do? You know? UH? Would they like?
Speaker 3: Would they escalate, I mean to counter value with salt?
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know. But even if they didn't,
Speaker 3: it's like, okay, well, now now the Bones Republic is
Speaker 3: is a nuclear battlefield, you know. I mean that's and
Speaker 3: that's somewhat pure. But I don't no, I don't think UH,
Speaker 3: I don't think no. I they War's up Pact would
Speaker 3: have UH War's up pack would have reached UH what
Speaker 3: would have reached the Ryan in five to seven days
Speaker 3: and UH and and nothing could have stopped them. The
Speaker 3: the idea was NATO war planning was like late in
Speaker 3: the game. I'm talking like kind of the final literation
Speaker 3: of UH of of NATO war gaming was that uh
Speaker 3: the UH American, UH, British and UH and Benelux UH
Speaker 3: tankers like the British and the Benelux guys, they were
Speaker 3: a response for the North German plane like American uh
Speaker 3: and like a look like black horses the fold the gap. Basically,
Speaker 3: they the idea was that if they could hold warsaw
Speaker 3: pack for seventy two hours, NATO could be rapidly reinforced
Speaker 3: and uh uh presumably like stage uh you know, a
Speaker 3: counter offensive that uh you know, under best of circumstances,
Speaker 3: uh would have been able to hold uh the enemy
Speaker 3: at the north at the inner German border. But it's
Speaker 3: a fascinating question. I highly recommend Russell Stofeley's uh stuff
Speaker 3: on UH on NATO and he he gained a lot
Speaker 3: of this stuff with a bunch of former Wehrmacht officers.
Speaker 3: It's really freaking cool. But yeah, that's a great question, man,
Speaker 3: I mean, I love that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Year Robert in the comments as seven days they would
Speaker 1: have been in Rotterdam and antwarpon, they would.
Speaker 3: They would have been chilling on the river era like
Speaker 3: like whistling rooms.
Speaker 1: All right, man, do your plugs and we'll end this.
Speaker 1: We really appreciate I know everyone appreciate this. We got
Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty six people watching on a on
Speaker 1: a last minute unannounced stream, So.
Speaker 3: No, awesome man, no I I yeah again, sorry man,
Speaker 3: like I was feeling probably since the guy, I feel
Speaker 3: a lot better now, I feel from you, since I
Speaker 3: got back from Lynchburg, and I should have announced, like
Speaker 3: check with you if you want to do this sooner,
Speaker 3: but I I I'm stoked that I'm stoked that people
Speaker 3: were happy with this kind of change in format. It
Speaker 3: seemed appropriate. But you can find me on substack at
Speaker 3: real Thomas seven seven seven that substack dot com. Probably
Speaker 3: most the people who tuned in regularly know that the
Speaker 3: channel is on track. I uh, I've been apologizing well
Speaker 3: being kind of inerd lately because I've been I've needed
Speaker 3: time to get back to people because I was feeling
Speaker 3: really shitty. But every like we're on track for like
Speaker 3: production and stuff, and a bunch of a bunch of
Speaker 3: people been donating to like help explain the process, like
Speaker 3: which is awesome. And I mean, like I said, I
Speaker 3: included the caveat, like if we raise zero dollars that
Speaker 3: is totally fine. Like nobody should feel obligated to you know,
Speaker 3: to to to donate, you know, harder in cash, just
Speaker 3: for the sake like exciting, like content production, like the
Speaker 3: something is important in this world that we do something
Speaker 3: is not so important, like our content is not one
Speaker 3: of those more important things. But like a bunch of
Speaker 3: people have donated and that is that that's like incredible, man,
Speaker 3: and that like that just is dope. But don't anyone
Speaker 3: ever feel obligated, man, like one hundred percent, Like I'm
Speaker 3: not just being like gracious, but we're still on burb app.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna disengage as the summer goes on, but right now,
Speaker 3: that's right, drop a lot of stuff just kind of
Speaker 3: like housekeeping stuff as well as like you know, notifying
Speaker 3: people we're doing. It's real all caps R E A
Speaker 3: L underscore number seven h m as seven seven seven.
Speaker 3: I'm still on t gram. I'm gonna up my t
Speaker 3: gram game and get more active there, especially as I
Speaker 3: kind of like slide back from Burbap. I'm on Instagram.
Speaker 3: I'm TikTok, and TikTok is like fucking retarded, but like
Speaker 3: a lady friend of mine, like uh uh she had
Speaker 3: the idea that, like I can make some funny TikTok
Speaker 3: videos and I'm gonna start like experimenting with that some
Speaker 3: and she only takes them to like nuke me for
Speaker 3: like you know a number of things. But uh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's where we're at right now, man, and you know,
Speaker 3: and then June ninth, uh Unlike some fucking people who
Speaker 3: will go a named who like organize like really gay
Speaker 3: events where gay things go on, and they like charge
Speaker 3: people like fucking half a stack to like go hear
Speaker 3: about gay stuff like once a year or so, Like
Speaker 3: I just see if people like convenient shytown to hang out.
Speaker 3: And like last year, we want to see craft work
Speaker 3: and it was fucking awesome. Like this year, we're gonna
Speaker 3: go see the murder junkies at Reggie's in on the
Speaker 3: South Loop. If you're gonna like scrounge you up like
Speaker 3: fifteen dollars and get here, like you can go. It's
Speaker 3: like fifteen bucks at the door. But uh, a lot
Speaker 3: of people are are excited about that from what I'm
Speaker 3: leaning from the feedback. So it's June nights if you
Speaker 3: want to go, like save the date, And like I said,
Speaker 3: last year, we had a lot of fun, man, and
Speaker 3: well will you hang out and stuff too, like before
Speaker 3: we enter the show. But that yeah, that's that's all
Speaker 3: I got man for Mike Flugs.
Speaker 1: All right, man, I'm gonna stop the recording now and
Speaker 1: then uh YouTube afterwards.
Speaker 2: So uh, thanks a lot until the next time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you, man.
Speaker 2: I want to thank.
Speaker 1: Everyone on YouTube who showed up to uh at the
Speaker 1: last minute, I mean, this was more than we expected
Speaker 1: at the last minute. And uh, thank you for the
Speaker 1: the couple people who dropped dropped super chats. I really
Speaker 1: appreciate that, especially since YouTube has basically taken away all
Speaker 1: my monetization and everything.
Speaker 3: So no, that's that's uh yeah, they're they're freaking vultures, man,
Speaker 3: But no, this this was great man. Again, thanks thank
Speaker 3: some thanks for abiding the kind of change in format.
Speaker 3: Just like I said, a lot of people, I mean
Speaker 3: not just lately, but like since we started the series
Speaker 3: they wanted like a Q and a kind of format,
Speaker 3: so I figured that it would this would be like
Speaker 3: a good time for it. So yeah, this was this
Speaker 3: was great man.