← The Pete Quiñones Show
The Pete Quiñones Show
The Complete Cold War Series w/ Thomas777 - 1 of 2
09:04:56
9 Hours and 5 Minutes PG-13 Here are episode 1-9 of the Cold War series with Thomas777. The 'Cold War" Pt. 1 - The End Informs the Beginning w/ Thomas777 The 'Cold War" Pt. 2 - How It Starts, and Bonus Election Talk w/ Thomas777 The 'Cold War"...
Loading summary
Transcript734 lines
- [00:00]
A
Yeah, maxing is so maxing right now, bro. Get ready for spicy chicken maxing because Carl's Jr. Is saving you big with a 5.99 maxed out double stack double stack double stack spicy chicken sandwich. Seriously, just $5.99 double stack spicy chicken. This is unreal value in the Bromosphere. The new spicy chicken Max wallet friendly Max Tasty only at Carl's Jr available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tax un included. Not valid for use within a combo or a combination with any other offered discount. Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest here and if you're looking for some serious fun, head over to chumbaccasino.com@chumba casino. You can play all your favorite social casino style games for free anytime, anywhere. It's the most fun you can have on your phone or computer. No purchase necessary. BGW Group voidable. Prohibited by law. See terms and conditions 21. Yeah, maxing is so maxing right now, bro. Get ready for spicy chicken maxing because Carl's Jr. Is saving you big with a 5.99 maxed out double stack double stack double stack spicy chicken sandwich. Seriously, just 5.99 double stack spicy chicken. This is unreal value in the bromosphere. The new spicy chicken Max wallet friendly Max tasty only at Carl's Jr available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tact not included. Not valid for use within a combo or a combination with any other offered discount.
- [01:16]
B
We embark on a new journey today. How are you doing, Thomas?
- [01:20]
C
I'm very well. Thanks for hosting me.
- [01:23]
B
The. This one is going to be. This one's interesting to me because I was alive for part of this and I was sentient for. I mean I. I remember a lot of this. So we had teased about talking about the Cold War, but you said that you had a. We're going to start at the end and then go back to the beginning. So what do you got?
- [01:49]
C
Well, there's a few things here. I want to explain my rationale before we deep dive into it. You know, I don't want to presume the viewers and listeners have knowledge that they don't. I mean not. I'm not saying that anybody's not smart or anything, but some of this stuff has become somewhat esoteric. It just because the way the news cycle doesn't properly provide context to historical events, particularly where there's military variables involved and you know, political narratives become paramount to characterize these things. But also it's just hard to place oneself conceptually in an epoch that has totally passed. You know, I went through that when, when, when people like my, my parents, they talk about the 50s and 60s and things. You know, I mean all, all people go through that. But you know, the reason why I indicated, you know, I want to, I, I'm treating this as kind of the end was the beginning. Everything that is happening today in political terms, in, in foreign policy terms, in terms of the, in terms of the guiding ideology of Washington. And I say ideology, not ideologies, plural, because I really do believe that there's a true consensus there. There's no opposition party in Washington at all. I mean arguably since 1933 there hasn't been real opposition, but in discrete policy terms there was. Now that, that no longer exists, there's an absolute quorum. There's one ideology, there's one strategic vision, there's one, there's, there's one sense of when intervention and force is, is, is legitimate and that, that is totally ideologically driven. It's not, it's not driven by strategic variables of, of a realist or even a particularly concrete nature. You know, it's very much based on very abstract things and ideological things. But the only way to understand why that's the case and the only way to understand why Ukraine is the designated battleground and the only way to understand why Russia, the Russian Federation as it exists today has been slated for annihilation is to understand how the Cold War resolved and why it resolved the way it did. So to begin, I'm going to go back to the last sort of conflict cycle of the Cold War very briefly to speak on detente. Detente was born of two things. For those that don't know, detente was, it was a, it was an, it was an explicit and series of implicit agreements between the United States and Soviet Union Warsaw Pact to not engage in direct strategic competition. Part of this owed to the fact that America was losing the Cold War militarily not just in Vietnam, but on secondary battlefronts like Angola. The, the Indo Pakistan war was very much an attempt to, owing to the, owing to the, then NASA Sino Soviet split, the, the Soviets were interested in hedging China with, with India, you know, being a huge populous country. Pakistan was kind of the American response to that, you know, creating, trying to cultivate Pakistan as a proxy. But these things were not going well and obviously direct intervention, this weird period between the end of the military draft and you know, the, the, the kind of full development of the all volunteer force and the full development and implementation become known as the revolution Military affairs, you know, they entailed everything from command and control technology to global positioning technology, you know, to smart munitions becoming the norm rather than the exception. Okay. There's a strange kind of period between those two things where the US army was operating on a shoestring budget. I mean, not just the army, the whole military. There was no political will in Washington for deployment overseas. Communism in the third world, in Europe it become very stagnant. But in the third world it had this great animating power. And the Soviets were blessed with a great deal of proxies who were already in being, you know, in cadre, with a full cadre structure and you know, men under arms that could facilitate military outcomes that very much benefited the Soviets. All they really needed was a constant supply of weapons and the Soviets could kind of take a hands on approach. So from about 1973 onward, you know, this, this kind of, this kind of strategic paradigm reigned. However, during that period, the technology that, that underpins strategic nuclear weapons dramatically improved, you know, owing to the. Owing to the early revolution in computing technology. Owing to. Owing to increase improved circular error probable from, you know, things like the space program, you know, and just owing to, owing to real satellite technology. We'll get into that in a minute. What I mean, you know, we take for granted that satellite imaging, you know, gives you a real time picture of the battle space. But that was not the case until the late 1970s, practically until 1980. Okay, so this endured until 1979. What happened in 1979? The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. And that really alarmed people because for reasons we get into in a moment, beyond the obvious, it was misunderstood why that happened. I know Mr. Trump said it was to fight Islamic terrorism. That doesn't make any sense. Other people claim that. Well, it was the Brezhnev doctrine, you know, that being that the Soviet Union declared that it would intervene on behalf of the socialist community of nation is to preserve socialism. Okay. That was the rationale, the pretext, what it really was was that outside of Moscow, the primary command and control hub for Soviet strategic nuclear forces was in Kazakhstan or was. Yeah, it was in Kazakhstan. Okay. And that's why not accidentally, therefore Star City is, you know, where, where the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation, you know, launched their space vehicles from. So if Afghanistan could be flipped or could have been flipped and transformed into a western client state with basing rights there, the Soviets have been looking at a situation where their com, their strategic nuclear command and control could be decapitated. You know, at least a substantial portion of it, and that was not acceptable now in drop off even though Brezhnev was at the helm and drop off was really kind of the, the shadow executive of the Soviet Union. You know, the Soviet political structure was very Byzantine, not just because the party and the state were interstitially combined with one another, but because who was, who was the true executive? You know, varied. You know, generally it was a man, well a combination of offices, you know, like the, he often would be a man who held both the premiership and the General secretary of the Communist Party. Other times it was, it was, it was far more opaque and, and drop off reigned formally as, as, as, you know, the, the general secretary from 82 to 84. But I'd argue that probably from about 1969 he was a true shadow executive of the Soviet Union and he was a very brilliant guy. And the world as it's structured today and the fate of the Soviet Union and decisions made therein for better and ill. Oh very much to Mr. And drop off but it was his decision to invade Afghanistan and he was looking many steps ahead in terms of you know, the implications for the strategic nuclear balance and the ability of the Soviet Union to survive evolved from the blue nuclear assault which was a real concern for reasons we'll get into. And it's, it's difficult to emphasize how dangerous it was to have two superpowers fully mobilized with massive nuclear arsenals on hair trigger alert at all time when the technological curve was really moving towards removing human decision makers from the equation. You know, only to the, only with the narrowing temporal window of decision making in the event of nuclear war, this was really becoming out of, it was really kind of becoming removed from human hands know technology has its own momentum and societies at scale where you're talking about literally hundreds of millions of people and you know, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of aggregate decisions, you know, control controlling the trajectory of that massive state. You know, the, these, these things can't just easily be moved one way or the other. And, and the proval brakes can't just be put on an apparatus of that scope, scale and complexity. You know, like I, I'm not esoteric. I mean this is, this is fundamental to understanding the paradigm.
- [10:36]
D
Do you think they, go ahead, let
- [10:38]
B
me ask, do you think that they did that because of, you know, Daniel Alsberg put out the doomsday machine which really shined a light on what he saw in the nuclear policy. What was the way in the late 50s, early 60s how the, how nukes were being overseen? Do you think that that because of the way that could have turned into a disaster, they possibly thought that, well, if we turn this over into more of a, even starting to talk about AI and things like that, it would be better than having humans handle this.
- [11:19]
C
Definitely. And the, the progenitor, like the, the proverbial father of AI is strategic nuclear war planning. The idea was this, okay, And I'm jumping a little bit ahead because you asked. I, I want to kind of deal with this now. By the 1980s, you know, where true parody existed within the superpowers in terms of strategic nuclear forces and being as well as capabilities. A a bolt on the blue strike. If launched by hypersonic cruise missiles from Europe against the Soviet Union, they would have as little as five minutes to render a decision on retaliation. The United States would have longer. But we're talking about eight to 15 minutes in the case of the United States. I'm not going to bore people with the details of how that would have played out. It would have involved things like an SOBM assault launched at the depressed trajectory, the spoof early warning systems detonating a ground burst detonation. Thus an EMP would knock out remaining early warning. But the point is like imagine the situation where okay, you know, if, if, if, if policy is to, you know, even a policy is a launch on warning, not launch on confirmation of assault. It's like okay, it's two in the morning, you know, American time or in Moscow you wake up the, you wake up for the United States or you wake up the General Secretary, you know, you say Mr. President, you know, we, we just received like confirmation like incoming assault. He's got eight minutes to decide like how he's going to retaliate, if he's going to retaliate, what that retaliation is going to entail, what forces are going to be availed to it, whether it's going to be countervel, counterforcement, not counter value, whether it's going to be know full spectrum attack that it's. We're at the point where this totally academics that's not possible. Okay. So the idea was you've got to be able to discern absolute indicators before, you know, not, not just before launch detection but before even what's considered early warning detection. If you could code those indicators into, into variables that could be rendered as inputs, then your AI could tell you when you're facing imminent assault. But the problem with that is like when do you decide, when do you decide to, to launch? Is that when there's a, over a 50 probability of imminent attack when it's 80, when it's anything over 10, you know, when it's 5%, you know, these deeper parodies make this incredibly difficult. But regardless, there was a secondary issue too. And I'm going to get into this now because this is a perfect kind of way to kind of slide into it as Dayton ended. Carter, who gets a bad rap now, don't get me wrong, Carter was not a good president, but he was not a terrible man. He was actually a very moral man and he did some good things. One of the good things he did was in 1979, Carter, Carter tapped. William Odom was a general, very brilliant guy. Odom was rare because he kind of had the logistical brilliance of, of Omar Bradley, but he was also a real warrior. You know, he was like a, he was like a soldiers general. He understood combat. He really understood nuclear weapons. Okay, I, I think he's kind of a counterpart, historical counterpart would be somebody like Blackjack Persing. But William Odom went through the Presidential Decision Making Handbook and literally such a thing existed for nuclear war. And it was incredibly opaque, it was incredibly obtuse. It was not up to speed in terms of the technology of the day. And it didn't give the President any real ability to, to. It didn't give any liberty of action respect to the war plan. Now part of that's because this was drafted in literally 1965. So basically what it entailed it and, and the core of this, of this presidential handbook was the, was the psyop, not the psychological operation, the siop, the Single Integrated Operational Plan. To this day there's an siop, but it is totally different and it's changed many times. But as of 1979, it was this arcane document that was no longer relevant. And if they just gave the President a handful of menu options, it was literally listed as response menu. It was Counter value and Counter Force Assault against the Soviet Union. All Warsaw Pack states where strategic nuclear forces are based. And the same for the People's Republic of China. There's another menu option that was the same thing for China, but not the USSR and works out pact. There's another menu option that was the reverse. There's another one that was just strictly counter, Strictly counter force, no counter value. A lot of this came from the fact that we were talking a moment ago about satellites, okay, until about 1980 or like 1978, 1980, US satellites that would, that would provide data on the basing location of enemy forces. There were always several weeks out of date because these satellites would Take their pictures. The little film would be deposited in a canister. The cancer would fall to earth and be recovered from the ocean. It would be retrieved, developed, then analyzed. Some talk about months out of date information. And one of the things the Soviets did which was kind of cunning in its simplicity. Rather than availing their land based ICBMs to and to, to super hardened structures, they, they put them on trucks and mobile launch vehicles. Like everybody's seen the footage. I mean at least if you were a kid like when I was, you know there'd be these ominous as hell there be this ominous little footage from the Moscow military parades. These SS19, these huge ICBMs on these trucks, you know, literally okay they were, they moving them around every single day, you know. And that the spoof disprove enemy targeting and there's led to totally crazy stuff. Like by the, by the mid-80s NSA satellites and DI satellites they were photographing the soil in the Soviet Union and East Germany to detect tracks from these vehicles because based on the depth you could tell if the payload was so you know, was something on the wave of an SS19 or not like it's totally insane. Like not insane as in stupid or bad like but like totally insane. Like the amount of work and, and like man hours that went into this, you know, people can't even see or something like that today. But so what Carter and Odom decided was there was another thing too that was disturbing about the SIOP and the entire, the entire response plan. It was that by the time, by the state of technology of 1979, it was just accepted that in the event of a bol from the Blue assault or, or an unforeseen escalation of, of conventional war wherein you know, the enemy, the enemy just you know goes all in, you know, escalates to counter value nuclear assault, it was just accepted that the President would be dead and all civilian decision makers would be dead. So the only people who would be able to manage the response would be Strategic Air Command based as they were in super hardened places like Cheyenne Mountain as well as in the Looking Glass aircraft that was the airborne command post. That's really disturbing. It's also damn unconstitutional. You can't craft a war plan and be with an Article B parameters that says well the President's going to die. So you know, General Powers or General Lay or, or General so and so he's not the de facto president, you know, he's he, he's, he's Lord High Executioner in that he's totally in control of, of strategic nuclear forces. But also he's just like the reigning like government official who's going to survive. So it all comes down to him. That's a very dangerous situation, among other things. And also, like I said, it's patently unconstitutional. Car said that's unacceptable. So what Carter did was he ordered Odom to draft a, A, a comprehensive response plan. Basically bring this SIOP up to speed, account for deeper parodies, account for up to the moment intelligence that could be gleaned from, you know, the then contemporary satellite systems that would allow for, you know, instantaneous retargeting as needed and things like this. Carter demanded that there be that part of this plan include designated civilian national command authorities. You know, basically the president, his cabinet would all be issued these ID cards that all had a code, okay? And the code would constantly change. But these men and a handful of women or in the cabinet, the executive cabinet, they'd have to, every day they'd have to report on their whereabouts. And if they left the District of Columbia, they have to report like every hour as to where they were. So they, and there was a series of military bases and hardened structures that they would be designated to travel to wherever they were in event of war. So basically, long story short, a system was put into place. This was not completed until about 1984. Five, but a system was in place wherein there was no way that every civilian national command authority would be killed. Okay? There would always be someone who could manage the war on behalf of the executive and the civilian leadership. Okay. There's other things too. But what this, basically what this all came down to. Taken together, this meant that owing to the technology of the time and the kind of the evolving state of warfare, command and control, smart munitions, everything else, it, it began. America was, was, was planning to invent a nuclear war and a fight and win a nuclear war. This caused all kinds of consternation from people who didn't really understand deeper parodies, even some people who should have. You know, people had this ongoing kind of delusion that mad, MAD was one part kind of talking point, one part kind of in joke of within the nuclear fraternity in the earliest days. Mutually assured destruction does not literally mean the end of everything. Assured destruction is a victory metric in strategic nuclear warfare, is the point at which an enemy society can no longer reconstitute the wage war. It's basically the point, the attrition point, at which you kill an enemy society, which is a horrific metric because in the case of the Soviet Union or America, as of 1970s that entailed about 70 or 80 million people. Okay? But this idea that the only reason nuclear weapons exist is to make sure they are never used like that, that's an absurdity. And it's also, it just wasn't by the 1970s, the 1970s, you had, you had multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles, you had decoys, you had ways to spoof early warning radar, you had hypersonic missile platforms. That, that, that, that, that wouldn't, you know, that didn't, didn't even travel on ballistic trajectory. Like it was totally obsolescent. And as William Odom said, he said, look, he said at the time, and he reiterated later to one of his biographers, he's like, I had an obligation that if America was attacked with nuclear weapons, I had an obligation, you know, in con with the President to fight and win a nuclear war. And he's absolutely right. With the other kind of perverse feature of MAD and that kind of whole ethos, it's like I'm obligated to commit suicide and so is like, you know, 80 million other people because, oh, we failed in our effort to make, maintain peace to the balance of terror. Like it's, there's something crazy about it. But that's, that's basically what ushered in the final phase of the Cold War. Now I want to fast forward a bit to what exactly happened when it became clear that not just cracks in the edifice of the Soviet empire re merging, but that there was a genuine structural crisis underway. And part of how this developed owes the personalities quite literally of George Herbert Walker Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. Now, Mr. Bush, I've got to drop some biographical background on Bush for this to make any sense. I'm not trying to bore anybody. Bush was a very dynamic guy, frankly, and he's not a well loved individual and that's fine. I'm not, I'm not saying people should like Bush, like morally or think that, you know, he was like a good man or something, but he had an incredibly in depth understanding of the nuances of the strategic balance into the Cold War. But he was head of the CIA in 1974 when something very controversial happened. See the. As I made the point before in a very different context, the CIA really lost its cachet in the 60s and subsequently with the Gates hearings. And it wasn't just that people were morally outraged by things like the Phoenix program which they put squarely on the shoulders of CIA and when really kind of responsibility, if you want to look at it that way, if you view this as a great evil kind of rested equally with army intelligence, McAfee, SOG, the Pentagon itself. But you know, one of the reasons it's misplaced and people act like CIA is kind of the, the seat of, of deep state power, it's really not. And it was really, really loathed by a lot of very hawkish cold warriors. So Something happened in 1974. There's something to this day that is, that is corralled by the intelligence services called the National Intelligence Estimate. It's, it's become kind of meaningless now because intelligence, the whole, until intelligence game is totally different today. And we could do an episode on that if anybody's interested. But I, I'm not going to deep dive into that because that's just too much kind of collateral stuff. But the, it was the belief of everybody from, you know, kind of hawkish senators and congressmen, you know, to Pentagon types, to guys in Army Intelligence, you know, to, to, to Ronald Reagan himself who, you know, as early as, as the mid-70s, you know, had his eyes on a White House bid. You know, the believers of the CIA was not feeding, they were not feeding good data to, to those to whom they were accountable, civilian or military. The claim was that they were consistently underestimating Soviet capabilities as well as just kind of internal dynamics within the Soviet Union relating to the leadership cast, as well as relating to probable decisions that the Soviets would make and when confronted with crisis, with crises both within and without their sphere of influence. So it was proposed that what was called Team B be corralled as a competitive analysis exercise. Now what was the mandate of quote unquote Team B there? It was commissioned to aggregate and analyze data from diverse sources, basically any available intelligence sources that were then relied upon, okay, to judge the accuracy, comprehensiveness, the predictive value of the National Intelligence Estimate of the preceding several years. Okay? Now the folks at TMB, it was 16 experts total. And I'll get into who those men were in just a minute. They were divided into three teams, okay? Or, yeah, teams or classes, if you will. One of them was to study specifically low altitude Soviet air defense capabilities,
- [27:52]
D
which
- [27:54]
C
again, I don't want to bore anybody, but this relates to things, you know, stealth technology didn't exist yet, but it was understood that this was in the wings. And even were it not platforms like the, like what became the B1 bomber, you know, the idea was if you can fly below conventional radar and strike super hard in targets with, with very, very heavy nuclear weapons, you know, that's the most effective Way to knock, knock out these counter force targets. So even, even though it seems like overly specific and esoteric, I mean that's, that's why this was such a, such a priority. Okay. The study of low effectiveness and capabilities of low altitude, specifically low altitude soy air defense capabilities in places like Moscow, in places like Kazakhstan. Okay. Another team was to study the accuracy of land based Soviet and Warsaw packed ICBMs. Okay? The circular, irreprobable. Traditionally the Soviets larded their, their launch vehicles the warheads that had absolutely massive throwaway. So even if they lost a substantial amount of them, you know, to ABM technology, those that hit would, would be absolutely devastating. That's kind of how they resolve the, you know, the issue. I mean America had a very different. America's evil is kind of the opposite. America's idea was eventually, you know, to create basically smart munitions on strategic play in, in the strategic arsenal and pepper the target area with, with sub megaton warheads, which is far, far more devastating than one massive device for reasons I don't fully understand, but I'm sure physics guys could like shed some light on. And finally and most importantly the third, you know, team within Team B, their role is to study Soviet strategic priorities and how this interface with policy orientation. Basically what's the Soviet, what's the Soviet, what's the Soviet doctrine on nuclear war? Like when would they truly escalate? And beyond that in more in, in more kind of global, figuratively and literal terms like what is their grand strategy? Like how does the Soviet Union aim to increase its power in this kind of uncertain epoch that we're entering now? Who was on this team? And you're going, you're going to understand why I made a big deal about Bush and, and like Bush, the man, his personality. This team was headed by Richard Pipes. It included Daniel Graham, William Van Cleave, uh, 40D Kohler, Seymour Weiss, uh, Paul Wolfowitz and Paul Knits, who'd been the creator of the Committee on the present danger in 1950, which over, over time had various iterations, all of which basically it's, it's not really relevant now. But that was always kind of the, that was always those, it was kind of, that was going on the political action committee of Cold War hawks.
- [31:03]
D
Okay.
- [31:04]
C
Now if you notice from that list I just ticked off, these are like the fathers of neoconservatism, not philosophically, but in policy terms that is not an accident. Okay. And these guys basically were saying well Bush's CIA is totally incompetent and they do not know what they're doing, okay? And thus when Bush was brought on board as Reagan's vp, Reagan was surrounded with neoconservatives as advisors. And I would go as far as to argue. People like Oliver north, people like Poindexter, people like Al Haig who didn't last long in Italy.
- [31:44]
A
Yeah, maxing is so maxing right now, bro. Get ready for spicy chicken maxing because Carl's Jr. Is saving you big with a 599 max T out double stack double stack double stack spicy chicken sandwich. Seriously, just $5.99 double stack spicy chicken. This is unreal value in the bromosphere. The new spicy chicken Max wallet friendly, Max tasty only at Carl's Jr available for a limited time at participating restaurants, tactile included. Not valid for use within a combo or in combination with any other offered discount. Tyler redick here from 2311 Racing Victory Lane. Yeah, it's even better with Chumba by my side. Race to chump a casino. Casino.com let's Chumba. No purchase necessary. VTW Group void where prohibited by law. CTNCS21+ sponsored by Chumba Casino. Yeah, maxing is so maxing right now, bro. Get ready for spicy chicken maxing because Carl's Jr. Is saving you big with a 5.99 maxed out double stack double stack double stack spicy chicken sandwich. Seriously, just 5.99 double stack spicy chicken. This is unreal value in the bromosphere. The new two spicy chicken Max wallet friendly, Max tasty only at Carl's Jr available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tax unincluded, not valid for use within a combo or a combination with any other offered discount.
- [33:00]
C
These guys were ultra hawkish, but they were not neocons. However, neocons very much had Reagan's ear. And Reagan himself is something of a neocon. Okay? He was a. He was a Roosevelt New dealer who you know, had kind of stolen the road to Damascus moment in the, in the post war years. Okay? I mean that's a whole nother issue. But so Bush was basically the company man who was Reagan's price admission to the White House. And Bush and Reagan did not really like each other. And when Bush found himself elected president, he was surrounded by men who had gone on to very storied and powerful roles in policy planning corridors and the national security apparatus, who, who were very, very hostile to, to his worldview and who did not view him as particularly competent. Okay? Boyce tried to insulate himself with, with, with his own loyalists. And I think he did that in large measure. You know, people like Baker, people like Scowcroft, who's kind of a complicated figure in terms of his values. He had neoconish tendencies, but first and foremost he was loyal to Bush. And when Bush took office, you know, February 1989, again, not only was this kind of Team B faction that would much later become kind of known to the public as, you know, the neocon cabal, some aspect of it at least. Not only were they insinuated very much into the, into the national security apparatus, but, you know, certain expectations have been raised by Reagan. You know, Reagan and Gorbachev had this tremendous rapport and that was legit. That was, that was real, that wasn't. Bush found the speed of things very alarming. A few months before Bush took, before Inauguration Day, Bush actually tapped Henry Kissinger and he asked him to contact Gorbachev as an intermediary. Kissinger secretly traveled to Moscow and he met with Gorbachev. And Kissinger explained, as ordered, that there would not be a seamless transition of administrations from Reagan to Bush. And when Gor Gojo was kind of put out by this as well as taken aback, you know, and Gorbachev said, well, why? What Kissinger articulated was exactly what Bush instructed him to. He said, look, there's a danger here of a structural and political nature. You know, a reckless US President could totally derail the transition away from communism. You know, there could be a coup of hardliners, which there was and we'll get into that. But that was not until what it appeared there could be. There could be open civil war between the nationalities. And that did happen in some theaters. There could be a complete Weimar style collapse which also did happen to some degree. What Kissinger relayed in essence was Bush had told him, you know, an American president could do much to derail the transition away from communism, but could do little to grease the skids to facilitate the process more rapidly now to understand what Bush's vision was. It was a lot like Nixon's after Nixon left office. Now as you probably remember, because you're about my age, he, Nixon kind of got a second lease on life by the, by the mid, late mid to late 1980s, he wrote some very good books on the strategic situation. He wrote a lot about the Cold War, which frankly was Nixon's like raison debtor. And you know, and even he was even tapped by CNN during the Gulf War, like not infrequently shortly before he died. But Nixon and Bush, their idea was this. Their idea was that we can preserve the Soviet Union as some kind of benign structure, at least for the time being. You know, what. What has to be paramount is total nuclear disarmament and. And then gradual demobilization of conventional forces until such that they're drawn down to basically nothing more than the kind of Weimar style, you know, constabulary force to manage internal strife, you know, or ethnic conflict or things like this. In Bush's case, it was very much a kind of. It was very much kind of the vision of Roosevelt that, you know, the United States and the Soviet Union would kind of govern the planet literally with, you know, Moscow the junior partner, but that, you know, this massively federated structure that took up literally 1/6 the Earth should remain intact because the alternative is just too unpredictable and it seems unrealistic to us. I mean, regardless of the. The merit of such things on their own terms or such concepts, how utopian they are, there's a singular fixation among policy planners after Nuremberg of at all costs is preventing armed conflict. And if you look at government as some kind of progressive instrumentality in l as either a necessary evil or as a means by which, you know, the posterity and historical mission of a people is preserved, you kind of view this as the zenith of government. So the Bush faction, if you want to call it that, contra the. The neocon or proto Neogan faction, this was their vision, okay? In contrast, the guys who had staffed Team B and who had now become these kind of uber hawks, insinuated the various roles. They viewed the Soviet Union as quite literally evil. Like, that was not hyperbole. That's the way they looked at it. Some of this was ethno. Some of this was ethno sectarian or into the background of a lot of these men. Some of it was. Was not. It was just, you know, guys who are not of that particular background, but who. Who just viewed it as evil incarnate. So their idea was it had to be destroyed. Now, you know, if we destroy the Soviet Union by open warfare, so be it. If that's what, you know, God or Fortuna or whatever ordains. Or if we destroy it, you know, by. By dismantling it through, you know, a detonation strategy of, you know, stirring up the nationalities against Mother Russia and against each other. You know, if we. If we destroy it by, you know, imposing a kind of looting operation on it, that. That strips of its natural. Strips it of its natural resources and national wealth and control of such commodities. They're in, you know, we can just Render it prostrate and impotent. That was the competing viewpoint. And this is not hyperbole. These, these people spoke very openly of this. Dick Cheney went on a record as saying, quite literally quote them. They lost when confronted with, you know, the kind of Bush Baker vision which seems incredibly reckless regardless of your politics. But this, this said the, this is the effect of really kind of, really kind of driving a wedge between Bush and Gorbachev. And this, this was, this was exacerbated because one of, one of, one of Bush's first acts as president, He visited Poland. You know, in Poland was kind of ground zero of, of anti Soviet, not just anti Soviet sentiment, but of organized resistance. You know, like Valencia and the Solidarity movement. Bush did not like Valencia. It's, I think part of that was kind of inherent snobbery because Valencia was very much a proletarian. I think Bush beat him as a rabble rouser. What Bush did was he met with General Gerald Zelski. And again, if I'm butchering these names, I apologize and rebate with that. I don't like any Slavic guys or girls listening, like don't hesitate to correct me in the comments or whatever, but I'm not good with these pronunciations. But Charles Elski was an interesting guy. He was the only military man who was a chief of state of a Warsaw pet state, which is interesting to me at least because tone deaf as the Soviets were like as bad as their optics were, they realized in some basic way that they couldn't just install, you know, these like military strong men in, in the several satellite states. But Poland, that's, I mean Poland was under martial law from, from 1980, 81 onward. But General Zelski was a tragic guy. You know, he, he looked ominous because he was always in uniform and he'd wear these really dark sunglasses. Gerald Zelski's eyes were ruined by snow blindness. He was a, he was a Polish and he was, he was a Polish national of noble birth. When the Soviets invaded eastern Poland in 1939, owing to his parentage and, and pedigree, he was sent to a gulag and spent years at hard labor. And the glare off the snow ruined his eyes. But he, you know, it's telling too that he was, that the Soviets had to rely on him. You know, there were no, there were no dedicated Polish Communists. You know, it was, it was more of a, the, the, the communist Poland was more of a contrivance even than the DDR or any or anything else within the Warsaw. That structure which is interesting But Bush and Gerald Zelski had a certain rapport. And Bush went as far as to convince Gerald Zelski to stand for president when, when Poland had their first multi party election. And Bush was criticized roundly and uniformly for that. But his notion was that, you know, Gerald Zelski once, uh, the, once the, once Moscow's boot is no longer on the neck of the Polish nation. Figuratively and literally a man like Gerald Zelski can really rise to the occasion. And I understand that even if that's not realistic in context. But this was Bush's notion. Okay? And in Bush's defense, what he said later in his own words were he wasn't going to go to, he wasn't going to visit the eastern block and go around thumping his chest and, and trying to stick it to the Soviets that their system was crumbling. And he also would. Loomed really large over U.S. policy. You know, in 1953 and 1956 and 1968, the Soviets, these were Tiananmen Square level interventions or, and crackdowns on the people, first in East Germany, then in Hungary, then Czechoslovakia. There was an understanding among, and not just Bush, but among, you know, people on kind of both sides of the divide in terms of how to proceed with the situation developing in the east, that if we push this too hard or get too greedy in terms of demanding results and demanding too much too soon, you, we, we may, we may see, you know, some kind of, we may see some kind of Stalinist backlash and, and a full scale invasion of Poland and, and, and, and it would be a massacre. So I'm not, I'm not sitting here saying again that people should like Bush 41 or should like share that view. But I'm just trying to give a balanced pers. It was, his view was not born of some kind of simpleton's delusion, even if it was not realistic. But what, what ultimately did happen was, was very interesting and really conspiratorial kind of figuratively and literally. And again we, we're kind of going to come back to the CIA and its incompetence. And I know people think I overstate this, but consider this William Crowe. He was another general who was kind of, he would have been considered something like a minister without portfolio had he served a European government. But he was close to Bush 41 in Baker and spoke rock and that whole coterie. He said the CIA literally in mid-1989, he said they were still, they were still issuing dispatches that spoke about the USSR as if it was 20 years earlier. They were claiming that Gorbachev was simply abiding the Brezhnev doctrine. But, you know, he was reluctant to deploy force because he was trying to lull the west into a false sense of security. It's like they were in, in, in. In Crow's words. He said it's as if the CIA didn't ever see the news. He said it was as if, like, they take just kind of official dispatches from East Berlin or Moscow, kind of knock a percentage off the credibility, then release it as basically, you know, fact. You know, oh, the East Berlin says that, you know, the, that the regime is stronger than ever. That must be true. Or, you know, the. Like Gorbachev, the General Secretary, and he says there's going to be no, you know, they're not going to. They're not going to drop the plan economy and the Soviet Union will remain. So that's, that's just a fact. I mean, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not using hyperbole. This, this was literally what they were saying. And I mean that anybody, again, who thinks the CIA is like the seat of shadow government or the intelligence community is. That's got to consider that Defense Intelligence really, I mean, not. Forgive the tangent, but, But Defense Intelligence, the dia, they really. They really kind of became the guts of US Intelligence in a basic way. Okay? Them, the nsa, and, you know, a. A lot of quasi private entities that, you know, are contracted and things like that. But the. As everybody knows, the great foil to go to Gorbachev is Yeltsin. But Yeltsin's ascendancy. Yeltsin was not this kind of great democratizer. I mean, he, he's viewed that way because, you know, he. He was kind of the king of the referendum. But, you know, it's not. People have this idea, I think, because it's Byzantine, literally, but also, like, memories are short. I mean, including mine own. I'm not saying I'm like, above this or something. People seem to remember this as, you know, there was a, you know, the Soviet Union finally held elections. Yeltsin beat Gorbachev, and then there was some kind of referendum to dismantle the Soviet Union. Like, that's not what happened when Yeltsin seized power. It's what Gorbachev was, you know, kidnapped by the coup plotters. Yeltsin proceeded to raise to the Russian White House, declare himself, for all practical purposes, President of the Russian Federation. Upon ascending to that role. And, I mean, there was a referendum insinuating him into that role. He declared The Soviet Union to be abolished. So the offices Gorbachev held, says a general secretary of the Communist Party, cease to hold any meaning because the, the entity that Gorbachev held that office in was, Was abolished by Dick Todd, which is very strange. Now, who are Yeltsin's backers? It was a combination of kind of radical reformers, you know, these, these kind of, this kind of Wild west capitalist types who kind of saw the looming anarchy as an opportunity for great profit potential. But it was also a lot of Stalinist hardliners who hated Gorbachev. Now, why did they back Yelson? I mean, the kind of conventional wisdom as well. They just wanted power in the new regime. I don't know if it's that simple, man. I think some of them thought that Yeltsin would rip Gorbachev. Yeah, they'd have to settle for a rough state of just, you know, Russia, basically. But I think they thought that Yeltsin was just going to return things to the status quo after that. But then he didn't. And why didn't he do that? I think he was basically bought off by, you know, Team B, neocon faction, like furtively and literally bought off. I can't prove that with receipts, but I, I've thought about this a lot. I've studied a lot, and I've read a lot of direct testimony in the, in the epoch. I, I think that's what happened. Now also, you know, Putin became Yeltsin's successor. And Putin had a variety of roles, like some, some more prestigious than others, and at certain junctures, he was sidelined. I mean, never in, in, in some disgraceful way, but the fact that Putin himself, Putin is not some hardliner, but he is a product of the old system. Okay? If Yeltsin really was this kind of arch liberal, I'm using it in, in these terms and the terms the regime employs them. I don't mean that that's what he actually is, but if, if Yeltsin's got this arch capitalist reformer, you know, neoliberal ideologue, like, he would not have had men like Putin in his orbit. He just would not have, he would have had him take. He would not have had him taken up a shot or something, but these guys would have been pensioned off and, and, and sent far away from, from Moscow, figuratively and literally. But again, I'm not, I don't speak Russian or read it, and I'm not some kind of expert on the Russian people, their culture or the Soviet Union, but I am convinced that that's what, that's what happened. It. There's also something that people got to consider, the other kind of factor or constellation of factors that rooked Bush's vision. And I don't want to go off track because this is its own topic that's very, very dense. But you know the casting of Slobodan Milosevic as this mass murdering nationalist extremist. He was the State Department's guy and he was the guy who was viewed as the moderate they could work with by Washington. And Boyce very much wanted to keep Yugoslavia together. What happened was Helmut Cole, who I think was about as, as nationalist as any as any chance of the Buddhist Republic could be or can be. When Tujiman's Croatia declared independence, Cole recognized them immediately and then the die was cast. There was going to be war in the Balkans and that was key to forming contemporary identities. That's why in, in a very proximate way, not saying directly, the Slavic Orthodox identity became paramount again. That's why Bosniaks became very Muslim again. There's a whole lot of national socialists inclined German guys who, like Ingo Hasselbach, he was not an attractive guy, but he was a skinhead and he was a, he was very involved in, in the, in the right wing, in, in, in the DDR. You know, he and his people recruited a bunch of Germans to go fight for Croatia. And this was very real. This is not some, this is not some Ukraine kind of situation of guys, you know, kind of pretending to be things they're not. And strange kind of propaganda doesn't really make sense like this. This really was a kind of, a kind of return to, to, to Europe's identitarian status quo.
- [53:08]
D
Now
- [53:10]
C
in the wake of this, you know, obviously the view that run out was not that won out was not the Bush 41 view. And you know, the. What was also in my opinion kind of the Nixon view. Although P And Bush parted ways on key issues. What one out was the neocon view literally. And what you're seeing in Ukraine is the culmination of this kind of 30 year effort of the detonation strategy of radicalizing the nationalities. Like that's what it is. It also has to do with preventing Europe from, from you know, becoming at all autonomous because a Russian German concord is, is really what is the path of superpower Dom. Okay, but and I mean don't be wrong, there's many, many guys in Washington who don't care about Ukraine or Russia. That's their notion. However, the faction we're talking about, they Very, very much have an ancestral hatred of Russia. And they very, very much abide this idea that, you know, the structure's rotten, it should be destroyed. If we can utilize Ukraine as a kind of torpedo, so be it. You know, if we can. Any way we can. Any way we can, we can facilitate the real detonation on. On the frontier, we want to do it. It's really that simple. But that's. I know it seems like I jumped around a lot, but these are the key developments to understanding what happened. And like I said, next time we'll. We'll start out with the Berlin Airlift. I think that's a good starting point because that's. I consider that to be the start of the Cold War. Okay. And from there we'll go in, like, linear terms. But I thought that this was important. I hope I didn't bore anybody or put anybody off by doing it that way. But that's. That's. I think we'll stop for now.
- [55:08]
B
Well, let me. Let me ask you a question.
- [55:11]
C
Yeah.
- [55:12]
B
You'll keep going. You'll keep going a little bit. What would happen if Dukakis would have got elected in 1988?
- [55:19]
C
That's a very interesting question. And it's interesting you raise that because the other day on Twitter, I was talking to some of the fellas about the fact that there was an actual policy divide, like a real cleft, you know, between national security hawks and. And people who thought the time could be preserved. Dukakis was definitely from that latter tendency, and that was held against him. You know, there's that famous people. People think Dukakis is kind of Harvey Scream. Scream moment is when he was riding in a tank, like, looking like an idiot with, like, a helmet on, like, the wrong way. You're trying to look like Snoopy. Yeah, but I. I actually think he's kind of a badass, though. Like, stupid fights the Red Baron, like.
- [56:03]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [56:06]
C
But, but, yeah, but he looked. And even if the Cogs had been more of kind of a. Like a. Like a manly, like, photogenic guy, it was so. It was so contrived. It's him trying to look like, yeah, I'm tough on defense. Look at me in this tank, you know? You know? Yeah, yeah. You know, to hell with Ivan. But it's. But if you. Cagus Cabinet. I mean, I think Lukagus was. I think Dukagas was. Was a tackling dummy. He was. He was a foreign conclusion that. That people wanted another Reagan term, and they weren't going to get that, obviously. And Bush was the closest thing. And even though Bush was very, very at odds with Reagan, people associated them. I mean, just, I mean, you know how voters are, especially in those days.
- [56:44]
B
Yeah, of course.
- [56:45]
C
Yeah, yeah. Any, any. Even a guy like Mondale, kind of an old, kind of an old line, more run of the mill Democratic in Chicago was kind of a weird nominee. You know, he was like, like, I'm not being crass, but he was. He's like this ethnic politician, frankly.
- [56:59]
B
Yeah.
- [56:59]
C
Even a more traditional kind of Democrat. He would have had real problems, especially if you had a hostile Congress. But it's also the. I do believe. And Bush made this point too. I mean, despite everything I just said about Bush's, Bush very, very, very much believed in negotiating the end of the Soviet negotiating with the Soviet Union that ended from position of very, very profound strength. Okay. And I think that was essential. I think, I think an overly conciliatory executive who'd approached the Soviet, who'd approached kind of the failing Soviet Union as hey, we want to re. Establish Dayton. That could have been a game changer. Maybe. One thing that TMB coterie was right about, if they were right about anything, I think Wolf W himself, I think is the source of this and I agree with it. And I have nothing to say about Wolfowitz at all. He said that Soviet Union by 1974, 75, outside of the third world, nobody had any respect for Marxist Leninism. People in the Soviet Union, their quality of life was better than the third world, but not by a hell of a lot. Nobody believed that, you know, the Soviet Union was leading the world in the sciences or something. All the Soviet Union had was arguably the world's mightiest military, arguably the mightiest army that ever existed. If the only thing, the only thing making you a superpower is your military and the fact you've got 8, 000 nuclear weapons, that changes things. That means power projection becomes, becomes overvalued. It means the entire discourse within the state apparatus kind of orbits around hard power. And that's very, that's what's happened.
- [58:50]
B
That's North Korea today.
- [58:52]
C
Yeah, it's superpower scale. I mean, that's. And I the. So this idea that the Soviet Union was bent on world domination in a very, in a very concrete and. And brutal way. I believe that the United States has been on world domination too. But the United States had a way of subverting other societies other than, you know, we're going to level you and decimate you and genocide you. I mean, America would do that too. If they had to. But that wasn't just like the option of first recourse. And I have no doubt, and Gorbachev's memoirs made this point. If this, if about every decade, okay, 1953-1962-1973-1983, the, the world came closer, very, very close to nuclear war. And each time, arguably it was like even closer. Like the Cold War, indefinitely continued, I mean, let's say continued to like the late 90s, just even. And so like by 1995, 96, you know, nuclear weapons are basically all now in space, you know, and it's okay. Like that was like a three minute warning time, you know, basically like the Soviets like blank. It's like, okay, we got to destroy them. I mean, like what would happen then in a crisis, you know, or like it would, eventually it would have happened. That doesn't mean the world would have ended, but there would have been probably 40 million people dead or like 100 million people dead. And that would have changed everything, man. That would have changed life on Earth forever. Like not in like horror movie terms like the Terminator, but it, if like 100 million people died in nuclear war, like the world would never be the same, you know, and it's in ways we can't even imagine, you know, I mean, think about that. It. So, I mean, one of the things, so one of the reasons the Soviet Union, even guys I think believe, I know this, even guys who believe in the system, they knew they had to find a way out of the Cold War. Like they knew it because again, this technology cannot be controlled. And people think it's. And I'm gonna think people are dumb or something. They just don't have a comparative basis. People think that something like the Soviet Union of 1985, it's not like, you know, the office you work at, even a big company of like 50, 000 people. Like, it's not something like any one man or 100 men or a thousand men can just control, you know, it's like once, once the apparatus gets in motion towards kind of a nuclear war vector, that's just what's going to happen, you know. And I mean that, that was what was happening, you know, this was not some paranoid fantasy or something, you know. I mean, so that's one of the reasons, I guess I'm kind of, I've got kind of a. I've got kind of a. Like a lot of guys in the right. So you've got like a soft view of boys 41. I mean, maybe I do. I don't know, but I, whatever. I, I don't care what people think about my takes on, on, on chief executives of, of history. But there like what I described didn't happen. Okay. And some of that we owe to people like Bush. Okay. Yeah. The Cold War shouldn't have happened in the first place. You know, World War II not have happened. But, but it did happen. So that's where we were at. You got to judge things in their epoch. So that's. I realize that's an incomplete answer. That's the best I can do.
- [62:03]
D
Yeah, that's a great question.
- [62:05]
B
Thank you. Yeah, it's. He. I just remember them selling, oh, he's from Massachusetts. And they tried to connect him to be like the next Kennedy or something like that.
- [62:14]
C
It was just, it was really swept. I mean Bush, you know, God love Bush, but other than, and Bush was actually a great commander in chief. And the way he, he managed the Gulf War with, with like, like, like a, like a Prussian officer, the highest caliber would. Okay, but other than that, I mean, Bush is not a man of the people. I mean, that's why he got smoked in the three way race with Clinton and Perot. But I mean the fact that Bush was able to sweep the country against Dukakis, it's like, look, man, it's like if you're getting, if you're getting smoked by Bush, you know, it's like you got, you're not a viable candidate. See, Du Cox was a weird, like a guy like Green Scott Greer, he'd be a good guy to take that up with because like he, I mean he knows like electoral politics like the back of his hand. Like I really don't. I mean, I know the outcome, but I don't have like deep takes on that stuff generally. But Dukakis was a weird, he was a weird nominee, man. He definitely was. He definitely was.
- [63:07]
B
I think this is going to be a great first episode. Give your plugs and we'll end it.
- [63:12]
C
Yeah. Thank you, Pete. The main place people should hit me up is on my sub stack. It's real. Real Thomas 777 at substack.com. substack.com Sorry. You can find me on T gram telegram at T me the number 7H1 as 777. I'm back on Twitter once again because Elon seems to not be laying the hammer down on people. You know, for the record, man, like, I've never actually violated Twitter in terms of service. Like not just saying, like I never have, you know, but I've been banned like half a dozen times. But you can find me there at Triskelion Jihad. The first T is the number seven. But I'll, I'll post. It's posted up on my sub stack and stuff. So just go there and I mean, for all I know in like two days I won't be there anymore. So it's. And I am launching the damn YouTube channel. Please don't think I'm being a total flake. I've just had a lot on my plate in terms of content and like other stuff. But I, it is moving forward. I got an announcement. I think people will be happy about him. I'm debating the JFK assassination in a few days with a guy that I got a lot of respect for and he's actually a college professor of the right kind. He's like a right wing history guy. But he disagrees with me profoundly. So I think people will dig that. I'm gonna do it on a live stream. So I'll, I'll hit people to that and that's what I got. And thank you very much, Pete. I really appreciate you hosting me and I really, I really appreciate people watching and, and commenting and stuff. I really mean that. I'm not just being polite.
- [64:47]
B
Well, I can't wait for, until we go back to the beginning because that's where the intrigue of that is.
- [64:55]
C
Oh, yeah, no, it's really mind boggling. Yeah, yeah, no, I'm very excited, man. I mean I'm very, very, I'm very stoked that you, you had this, had this notion for us to do this series. So thank you very much again.
- [65:08]
B
All right, thank you. Take care, Thomas. Welcome everyone back to the Pete Quinonez show. Got Thomas 777 here and we're going to get into some stuff not only about the Cold War. Maybe we'll talk some current events. How you doing, Thomas?
- [65:26]
C
Very well. Thanks for hosting me again. Yeah, I was thinking, I mean, to your point, before we went live, you were talking about the election results and I, I agree with you. I think that warrants mentioned not just because that kind of thing is important, but what's happening in Russia and in central Europe at present. I believe it's, it's. I believe the current conflict cycle is resolving somewhat peaceably, if not ideally from, you know, my own perspective. But I mean, it's going to remain relevant for the foreseeable future. And this is proximately caused by the Cold War. And if we're talking about anything of a foreign policy nature or Anything relating to the strategic situation as it stands in 2022. We're talking about phenomena and events and, and even personages like the primary players are, are people who, who's. Who can only be understood in the context of the Cold War. And also some of the fellas on T Gram are asking some questions about the topic and I. We can get into some of those too. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that they were asking, some of which is kind of like ahead of where we're. Some of which relates more to the revisionist stuff we were dealing with with the Second World War. But at long last, moving forward, we'll cover all of those. But I just briefly, I'm not some poll watcher like our friend Scott Greer, DJ Scotty G, Internet serial Thriller and Beltway Killer. But, but no, I'm not making fun of him. He's a good dude and he's been nice enough to host me on his show a few times. And I don't know why anybody would do that if they're a reputable person because I like.
- [67:08]
B
Thanks a lot, Thomas. I really appreciate that.
- [67:10]
C
No, no, no, what I'm saying is like, it seems like it would cause you a lot of grief and like, not a lot of benefit. I mean, you're, you're a guy who's, you're not like a fringe guy, but you're a guy who's not afraid to like, deal with like radical things. Not radical things like, oh, that's awesome and radical. But like, you know, people have like radical tendencies. I don't think I have those tendencies, but I, I deal with stuff that is a magnet for censorious type of enforcers. That's all I meant. But he's got, you know, he's got a real he. Guys like him and like, and like our guy Paul Fahrenheit. I, I always tap them for kind of their thoughts on, on, you know, on. On during election season because they're really like clued into that. And I am not. However, national elections, I tend to, I tend to pick presidential contest pretty well in primary season. But regardless, I didn't think there's any big surprises, man. And I know this morning I got on Twitter like that, that, that. That sling blade guy in Pennsylvania, like Bubba Fetter person or whatever the. His name is or Fetter Fetter woman Fetter person. I don't know what he. I mean, they're that and like the, the he because you know, the diabolical Dr. Oz going down in flames made a lot of people upset.
- [68:25]
A
Yeah. Maxing is so maxing right now, bro. Get ready for spicy chicken maxing because Carl's Jr. Is saving you big with a 5.99 maxed out double stack double stack double stack spicy chicken sandwich. Seriously, just 5.99 double stack spicy chicken. This is unreal value in the bromosphere. The new spicy chicken Max wallet friendly Max tasty only at Carl's junior Home. Available for a limited time at participating restaurants. Tacked on, included. Not valid for use within a combo or combination with any other offered discount. Bubba Wallace here from 23 XI racing on the track.
- [69:00]
C
My car's look is everything. But today I'm talking about more than just paint schemes. I'm talking about my favorite games at Chumba Casino. Check out exclusives like Stampede Fury and my own King Croc Fury. It's just as wild as my car looked in Texas. With over 200 games and new ones weekly. Play for free at chumbacasino.com let's Chumba.
- [69:19]
A
Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW group Void where prohibited by Law21. Terms and conditions apply. Looking for excitement? Chumba Casino is here. Play anytime. Play anywhere.
- [69:31]
C
Play on the train.
- [69:32]
A
Play at the store. Play at home. Play when you're bored. Play today for your chance to win and get daily bonuses when you log in. So what are you waiting for? Don't delay. Chumba Casino is free to play.
- [69:42]
C
Experience social gameplay like never before.
- [69:44]
A
Go to Chumba Casino right now to play hundreds of games, including online slots,
- [69:48]
C
bingo, Slingo and more. Live the chumba life@chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary.
- [69:53]
A
VGW Group void where prohibited by law 21/ Terms and Conditions apply.
- [69:58]
C
But the Republicans, they. They won huge in Florida, like statewide. And J.D. vance captured Ohio. I mean, granted, I'm out of the loop, but I like, look at those things as like a win, man. I mean, I like if. Unless I'm missing something like, that's.
- [70:11]
D
That's a win.
- [70:12]
C
And they obviously got 2020. They got the White House 2024. Unless they join the kind of witch hunt against their guy. Mr. Trump.
- [70:21]
B
DeSantis turned 1010 districts in Miami that are normally blue. Red.
- [70:30]
C
Yeah, that's insane. I mean, the state of Florida is now like a safe red state. And that's crazy. I mean, not like objectively, but I mean, considering the last 20 years, the way things have gone, I mean, that I don't see how there's not a win. I mean, were they expecting like some nationwide sweep? I Don't. I mean, I, I don't know. They seem, I think they should be happy, but all I saw, I mean, granted, like, social media is its own thing and sometimes I forget how weird it is, and especially because I haven't been on it for a minute. But, like, this morning, like, I got all these, like, got all these Twitter alerts of these, like, Republican type guys who were not, not Scott Greer. He's a very, he's a very. Not only is he a sensible guy, but he doesn't go in for that kind of stuff. He had a rebalance with you, but a whole bunch of these kind of Internet, you know, GOP cheerleaders, they were acting like they were acting like this is some crushing defeat or something. So, like, I started, like, looking at the returns, I'm like, what the. Are they upset about me? And like, I, I, I buy contemporary metrics. That seems like a win. But again, what do I know? I'm, I'm a guy who writes about stuff from long ago and speculates about the future. Maybe I don't really plugged into the present day, but I, I don't know, man. Like that. And yeah, the, the sand, the Sanders is a phenom. I, I'm not really impressed with the Santas. I mean, it's not as a political operator. Like, he's dope. He's very good at what he does. And yeah, it's very impressive the way he's been able to flip, you know, some key, some key jurisdict jurisdictions at the local level. But, yeah, I, I don't, I don't know what they're, I don't know why
- [71:58]
D
they're crying in their cornflakes.
- [72:00]
C
But again, I'm not, I'm not some poll watcher or some freaking beltway expert. Quite the contrary. You know, like down in Texas, when you were there, where people are fired up about Trump and stuff, are they just kind of like, yeah, whatever.
- [72:13]
B
Oh, they just wanted to beat Beto.
- [72:15]
C
Yeah, yeah.
- [72:15]
B
That's all they want.
- [72:16]
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [72:17]
B
They, I mean, there are a lot of people. You know, you go around Austin and you see some Beto signs. Once you get outside of Austin, once you're in the cities, you'll see some. When you get out of there, out of the cities there, you'll see some every once in a while. But it's mostly, you know, I think most of the people from Texas really don't like Abbott, but they really can't stand Beto.
- [72:39]
C
Yeah, Texas is a weird Texas kind of. I'm not saying bad things about Texas. I like Texas and I like Texas people, but their political culture is kind of strange. You know, like, there's like, Rick Perry, frankly, is a weird guy. I mean, I know he's not, I know, I know he's not. You know, the, I know he's not. He doesn't have the cashier that he did, you know, some years back and like nationally. I never, I never bought the hype that he was going to be impactful on the national stage, but he, he was a weird guy. Even for, like, even as, you know, even as a state call. Like, I, I mean, frankly, W's ascendancy
- [73:09]
D
was kind of weird.
- [73:10]
C
I mean, I, I don't think I, I don't think it's weird that, I mean, W, frankly, had his together a lot more when he was, when he was younger, but I thought it was weird that. I mean, Texas really liked him. You don't forget that. W was actually, he had a, he had a very strong rapport with his constituency in Texas. And then in his first term as president, like this idea that, you know, everybody always hated W. And he was just this failed politician. That's not true at all. I mean, nobody has to. I don't like the guy and nobody, nobody should. But he's, you know, he, he, he did not. You can't simply buy your way to, to competitiveness, you know, even, especially if anything that might work against you in a city like Texas. Okay, A guy like Bush. So, I mean, I, Yeah, it's. But I thought it was weird that of all I, I thought it was weird. He struck me as like the kind of 21st century version of a Rockefeller Republican. And I'm like, why, why is Texas like this guy's home base? But I mean, what do I know? And he was big on, he was big on gun rights and he was big pro death penalty. And I mean, back in them days, like, those were issues that were kind of still up for grabs.
- [74:09]
D
So, I don't know,
- [74:12]
B
back in 06, somebody had put a video together. It was a split screen video and it was, it was W in the gubernatorial debate in like 92. And then it was W in the presidential debate in 2004.
- [74:29]
C
Right. Like, I didn't see. Yeah.
- [74:31]
B
Oh, in 92, he's just, I mean, no notes. No, no. I mean, there was no teleprompter. He had everything in his head and he was right. And then in 2004, it was.
- [74:44]
C
The guy. I think Bush had some. I, I think two things I think, first of all, I'm the last guy I can, like, put shade on anybody with substance abuse problems. I'm not like, saying like, oh, boy, you know, that drug. You're that drunk. But I think he probably relapsed, frankly. I mean, he was acting like somebody who did okay, because. Yeah, I mean, the guy, it's not like he. And I think also, like, he had some health problems that were not let on to. Because, yeah, it wasn't just. I mean, so I remember some of his apologists just being like, oh, he. You know, it's just like nerves. He's not used to the office. It's like Texas is a huge state, man. And like, he's not. He was not some freshman congressman. He was a governor. You know, you can't tell him. He's like scared of the camera or something. It's, you know, he was not. He. He was compromised in some way, you know, whether it was health related, going to illness or substance abuse or whatever. And again, like I said, I'm not like, putting on him. I'm the last person to do that. But. But yeah, he was like two different people. It was really weird.
- [75:37]
D
I'll see.
- [75:37]
C
Got that footy you're talking about. But we can. We can dive into the Cold War because that's something I know I have a lot more. I know a hell of a lot more about than I do the goings on in the swamp. I kind of want to get into. You know, there's this big debate and like, to this day, and frankly, there's actually some decent scholarship coming out about the Cold War. Not as much revisionist stuff as I would like. And that's kind of one of the things I believe I'm like, here on Earth to do. I mean, I'm not. I'm not being melodramatic. Like, I really believe that because, like, there's nothing. There's a million guys who are World War II revisionists, and that's dope. That's.
- [76:09]
D
That's important.
- [76:10]
C
Okay. But frankly, there's. There's almost nobody dealing with the Cold War in. In a critical capacity. So I think we're doing important stuff here in that regard, and we always are. But in any event, there's a scholarly debate going on. It's like when the Cold War ensued. I mean, you can't. It's tricky because obviously when you're talking about a discrete armed conflict, even when it's complicated as. As the Second World War, you know, you can kind of identify points at which the status of relations fundamentally changed. You know, September 3, 1939, you know, the Western Allies declared war on the German.
- [76:50]
D
Right.
- [76:50]
C
Okay, that's our starting point. Like, yeah, there's hostilities emergent and active before then, but there's not. There's not any such point in the Cold War. And the kind of tonal shift, not just in optics and narrative, but in policy from between the Truman administration, the Roosevelt administration was dramatic. I know people on our side don't like Truman. I mean, I, I've got. I. Truman was not an evil man. He was not. He was not a gangster like Roosevelt. He didn't have the hubris of Roosevelt. I've got mixed feelings about Truman. I don't think Truman should have been president. Okay. But if we're talking about his moral character and if we're talking about what constituted his policy orientations was the Soviet Union, he was in a very, very difficult position. And most of the variables that were framing the decisions he had to make had nothing to do with his own sympathies. You know, he quite literally inherited this bizarre situation whereby Germany was occupied by the four powers. United States, UK and then France got a seat at the table. I mean, that's a whole other issue. And the Soviet Union, there was, there was no, not only was there no permanent status of, Of, of, you know, now there's an opponent peace treaty in the running. Nobody was even talking about it. And it wasn't even clear like what that would constitute. And really the only thing that had set the tenor of relations at Yalta or at Tehran. Everybody thinks Yalta is kind of where like everything, you know, everything kind of was set in proverbial stone. It was not. It was Tehran in 43. That's when Roosevelt ceded Berlin to Stalin. Which seems crazy unless you understand the New Dealer ideology which we've. We delved into in earnest in our whole World War II series. But beyond that, what's fascinating to me is even men who you would think would have known better, like Eisenhower. Okay, Eisenhower, whatever else can be said about him, the guy was something of a savant in, in terms of logistical and engineering military matters. And he was a protege of Pershing. Blackjack Pershing, who's an under. Understated figure in Gandhi histories.
- [79:13]
D
Visit me.
- [79:14]
C
Eisenhower said. Eisenhower said to one of his adjutants, and this is laid by Omar Bradley, you know, when there was discussion as the, you know, the issue of allowing the Soviets to take Berlin, Eisner said something the effect of, oh my God, like, who would want it? You know, they're gonna lose, you know, a hundred thousand men taking it. And Bradley was stupefied by that. He's like, well, what do you mean? You know, like, how. You know, how can you say that? You know. And Eisenhower's retort was something like, well, as a military objective, it's meaningless. You know, what. What significance does it hold? You know. And Bradley said, well, you know, in. In. In a few years, that's going to be quite clear, you know, in Molotov, you know, Soviet foreign minister, old Bolshevik that. He was like a lot of those guys, he actually had a pretty strong sense of geopolitics. And he said, you know, what happens in Berlin decides the fate of Germany. What happens in Germany decides the fate of Europe. So if you look at a map of. I mean, I can't pull it up now, but those who are inclined to do so. If you look at. If you look at a map of divided Berlin, it's strange because the Soviet sector kind of bulges. East Berlin extended, uh, to Mitte, which was kind of the historical core of the Berlin city center. That was like the municipal, like, hub traditionally of Berlin. You know, that's where city hall was. That's what parliament was. That's all these other traditional structures and administrations, the machinery and the machinery of government were. So it was obvious why Stalin was making these demands. Okay, I mean, it wasn't. It wasn't just for prestige or something. Roosevelt had no problem with that. But Roosevelt also, what he.
- [81:08]
D
The only.
- [81:09]
C
The only kind of signaling he'd given to Stalin was at Tehran. And then before he died, apparently, according to people at Cordell hall, he said Roosevelt stated to Stalin, as well as to, you know, his cabinet in the Department of State and in Department of War, that, oh, well, you know, American forces, I can't see them staying in Europe beyond two years. Why would they? You know, which I don't think you can chalk it up to naivete because Roosevelt was. Roosevelt's not naive, whatever else we can say about him. And, you know, like we discussed in the, you know, earlier, we discussed a couple times even before we began a dedicated series on the Cold War, you know, the New Dealer vision was, you know, a con, a permanent concord between the United States and the Soviet Union with the United nations. That's kind of a world legislature, you know, Security Council being. I mean, ultimately, this is what. What. What developed, but this is what they had in mind, you know, early on even, you know, so the Security Councilor's equivalent being, you know, kind of like the upper House, the General assembly being the lower house, you know, in America, having a monopoly on atomic weapons, you know, therefore, know, being able to reign in the Soviets when there were. When there was policy disputes on how to govern the world. But even that aside, the. You. There's no possible outcome where. Where. Where a neutral Germany or demilitarized Germany is tolerated. Okay. You know, the Ro. Truman took. Truman took the oath of office with a hostile Congress. The. Even though even the Republicans, gutted as they were, because the America first movement had been cast into disrepute and some of these people had actually been prosecuted and hounded and terrorized. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? But Robert Taft still may remain like a strong voice on Capitol Hill as kind of the, you know, the opposition. And even people who are interventionists, you know, even like hawkish Republicans who. Who. Who are not isolationists, you know, they were. They were demanding essentially that, you know, Germany not be allowed to just fall into the Soviet sphere of influence outright. So looking ahead, unless Roosevelt's plan quite literally was to simply just seed Europe to the Communists, you can't really come to any other conclusion. Okay? And it's not me just being, like, defamatory or making some ideological point. Like, what other conclusion can you come
- [83:45]
D
to,
- [83:47]
C
you know, in one of the. Despite what. Despite the kind of public face, like, pretty much everything. And I'm going to get into the Berlin airlift in a minute and. And what that signifies. But pretty much all the negotiations with Stalin from. From 1945 onward were. Were in basically bad faith about. We're talking about the status of Germany, because again, I mean, nobody was gonna. No, no, nobody in America, regardless their political strikes, was going to allow a neutral Germany, okay? Because that meant that there was absolutely no point in fighting the Second World War and the Second World should not have been fought. But within the strategic logic of the war planners in America, at all costs, Germany must be prevented from capturing the east, whether that's by a concord, a peaceable concord, relatively, between Germany and the Soviet Union, whether it's by conquest, you know, with Hitler at the helm. I mean, today, as we see. I mean, what. What. This is what underlies the Ukraine war, is it not the fact that the fact that the interdependence facilitated by. By Frau Merkel and Mr. Putin was not something that America was going to tolerate because that's the only way that Europe casts off the shackles of America and the UK and becomes a superpower. Okay? So even no matter where anybody fell on the political spectrum, you know, they were not just going to allow a demilitarized Germany, but wherein, you know, just by accident, geography and proximity, they were going to be incorporated into the Soviet sphere of influence in some basic way. So there's that, I mean probably there's, there's more there than, than we have time to cover right now. But I, I, I think that, that it's not a mystery, but it is enigmatic as to what exactly Roosevelt's intentions were. And especially one considers too that, I mean Roosevelt knowing certain terms knew that he was not going to live very long. Okay, so I, what, how, how exactly he saw the world developing after he was gone? Is, is, is an open ended question. And again, I mean Roosevelt was a lot of things, but he was not Joe Biden. He was not senile, okay? And he, it was really, it wasn't until the final months of his life where he was really compromised and he wasn't really, you know, running, running the country or the war in an executive capacity anyway. But it, but back to, back to, back to the topic at hand. What to give an idea of how kind of slap dash, for lack of a better word, the Allied administration that divided Germany was there was implemented, was called the common commentator and it was representatives of the United States, the Soviet Union, the UK and France meeting in this kind of mini executive council. And they were supposed to come to, they were supposed to come to terms on how Berlin was to be administered. You know, and Berlin being, you know, to Moldov's point, you know, Berlin being quite literally, you know, the, the kind of heart and lungs of Germany and Germany being, you know, the, the axial pivot of Europe. The idea was, well, once the s of Berlin is resolved, you know, the, the, the stands of Germany proper will be resolved and then you know, this, this will just be a, you know, a, a done deal. Which seems incredible anybody could entertain that possibility as anything realistic
- [87:20]
D
as time, as
- [87:21]
C
time passed, it being clear that not only did the Soviets have absolutely no intention of, of allowing a Western military presence in Berlin, but the Soviet delegates, the Soviet delegate, neither him nor any of his, nor any of his adjutants spoke English. The, the American delegation, nobody spoke Russian. You know, a couple people were like trying to communicate like pigeon French kind of like across the aisle. Like this whole thing, this whole thing was, was a ridiculous charade. You know, like the most petty issues would be debated for weeks, sometimes months. The, the Russians were demanding they issued something and the sorry and the Wilsonian language is not unintentional. They, they produce a document called the 14 points which, which basically demanded that in the eastern sector of Berlin there could be like no, no quote, profiteering at the expense of workers and things like this. You know. Like it was, it was basically like a radical socialist manifesto saying that, you know, the, the, the only, the only. The only legitimate capital producer in, in this arbitrarily designated eastern sector of Germany, you know, was Moscow and nobody else. The. And finally this carried on for uh, a good uh, close to two years. And finally a clerical staff, some kind of skeleton crew remained at, at the, at these, at these meetings representing the Soviet Union. But on, by August 1st, 1948 some, some representatives unceremoniously removed the Soviet flag, took all their files, clean out their offices and the Soviets just never returned. You know, they were, they, they, they essentially like. It was basically like a soft boycott that killed the enterprise because it had, it had no, it had no. None of the SEGA is enforce a law without all four representative, all four occupation states present. What's more significant to show you kind of the, the dysfunctional state of East Germany. I've noticed that a lot of people, I mean people obviously I'm talking about court historians, okay, they're obsessed with the personages of the Third Reich generally because they want to cast on the most punitive light possible. But even more sensible, even more sensible people, you know, they fixate very much on the individuals who constituted sort of the control group of the party and of, and of the, you know, the state. You don't find that at all with East Germany. Okay? Now I'm not in any sort of imagination suggesting that these men were nearly as dynamic as those who constituted the NSDAP or that the DDR was, you know, some kind of, you know, independent power unto itself that they wielded any
- [90:15]
A
great how to have fun anytime, anywhere. Step one, go to chumbacasino.com chumbacasino.com Got it. Step two collect your welcome bonus.
- [90:24]
C
Come to papa. Welcome bonus.
- [90:25]
A
Step 3. Play hundreds of casino style games for free. That's a lot of games all for free.
- [90:30]
D
Step four.
- [90:31]
A
Unleash your excitement.
- [90:32]
C
Woo hoo choo choo choo choo Chumba
- [90:34]
A
Chumba Casino has been delivering thrills for over a decade. So claim your free welcome bonus now and live the chumba life.
- [90:39]
C
Visit chambaccasino.com no purchase necessary vgw group
- [90:43]
A
void where prohibited by law 21 terms and conditions apply.
- [90:47]
C
Authority or power rejection capability. However, it was in fact part of the German state. Okay? Even if you don't even if even if then is now, people didn't recognize its legitimacy as, as a sovereign regime. It, you know, 20 million Germans live there. Berlin was within its borders and it was, it was quite literally at the front lines of, of the geostrategic divide for 40 years now. Who, who came to run the DDR? Well the Soviets tapped Walter Ubert. Walter Ubert was even an exiled member of the kpd. You know, he'd been even an active revolutionary in the Weimar years, you know, into the, into the years of the, of the Third Reich. And like a lot of communists, you know, he, he realized that he was going to be prosecuted and imprisoned if not, if not shot. And he fled to the Soviet Union. Ubricht was deployed to Berlin before the cessation of hostilities. He arrived on April 30. What was called the Ubert Group. You're various various functionaries, prisoners, anti fascist prisoners of war, you know, various guys like Uber themselves who'd, who'd fought for the Reds in Spain and then, and then, and then found amnesty in, in, in the Soviet Union after the ascendancy of the nsdap. But these guys and, and all, and, and all, and there was uh, what was called the Ackerman group was deployed to Saxon either SATA group to, to, to Mecklenburg, you know, all named after their, their cadre leader, you know, Anton Ackerman of the Sony a group he was part of the, he a functionary of the Communist Youth movement in Germany in the 20s, you know. Then he joined the KPD. He was sentenced to death in absentia, you know, after 1933. Like these guys were basically the whole post war cotery of, of Germany. They were the old like KPD control groups group. So that meant that you know, not only they've been, they've been gone for 10, sometimes 20 years. They hadn't been, they hadn't been a home, you know. So they were, it's not like they had cadres and being on the ground, I mean even among the commies would stay behind. You know, people were like who the hell are these guys? You know, they had no, they had no real mandate from people. Okay? I mean arguably, you know, when you're under occupation by the Soviet Union, it can't be said that any kind of genuine expression of popular will is, is possible. But this was especially contrived and famously when Ubrik arrived, you know, everybody knew who he was, you know, because he, he was, you know, he, he arrived in, in, you know, in, in what had been East Prussia initially. You have to have been, you know, like liberated by the Soviets. And there were Germans who were. Some of communist sympathetic who said, oh, you have no idea, like what they're doing to us, meaning the Red army, you know, this, this rape and this, and this, this pillage and this destruction, you know, And Uber said, you know, that that's fascist propaganda. I don't believe that. You know, if you utter that again, I'll be shot. You know, people were like, who the
- [94:05]
D
hell is this guy?
- [94:06]
C
You know, I mean, like he, they. So even. What I'm getting at is that even, even you consider that people were not enthusiastic about, you know, the KPD or its legacy party coming to, Coming to dominate the state apparatus. Ulbricht had a unique, like, lack of, of credibility. You know, they might as well have just deployed, you know, some, some, some Russian apparatchik from, from Moscow or from, or from Vladivostok, you know, like, why, what was even the point? But I believe, in my opinion it was basically for the benefit of the outside world. Like they were saying, like, hey, look, you know, we're, we're not, we're not afraid of Germans having, you know, sovereignty over their own Affairs. Like Mr. Uich is, you know, he's a German national, you know, so's Ackerman. So I believe that's what it was all about. And I mean, the story is. Never would have trusted a genuine, I mean, even a genuine like radical socialist movement that was truly indigenous to Germany, like that the war had changed all that. But I would. People are often, they always say, like, you know, how could, how could the, how could the Soviets think that the people respond to the sed? You know, it's like, Well, I, I don't, I don't, I don't think that was the point. I think the point was, you know, they, it was, it was, it was a kind of, it was a kind of alibi when the objection was raised that, you know, this, this was nothing but a hostile occupation in all but name. But in any event, and then when I say the sed, the. In the, In. In the, in the Soviet occupation sector, there was a. The KPD declared it merged with the Social Democrats and became the Party of Socialist Unity. Okay? The ruling party of the DDR was not the kpd, it was the sed. Okay, just for reference sake. But as this, as this was developing, there was, in. In the west, there was, There was not a clear kind of policy trajectory. Now enter. Enter George Kennan. Kenan was the, he was the de facto ambassador to The Soviet Union. He was actually the charge, the affairs. Okay, but I mean, for all practical purposes, he was the ambassador. You know what Kenan's. What Kenan's nose known for is, uh, is. Is the long, uh, the long memo, okay? It was so. So named because it was the longest State Department dispatch ever sent by Telegram. It was over 5, 000 words. The long telegram, not the long memo. I find this to be the most mischaracterized document or statement of the Cold War, save maybe for cruise ship's, quote, secret speech. Okay, the term containment was. Yes, it was coined by this telegram, but Kennan was not calling for some kind of hawkish military resistance to the Soviet Union. Like, like Kennan was profoundly anti communist. He was horrified by the Soviet Union, but he was not a military man and he was not proposing any kind of military doctrine. What he. When the Lawn Telegram was expanded to an essay length, it appeared in Foreign affairs, which at one time was a great periodical. I've not looked at it in years. I assume it's kind of woke and silly like everything else, or it's. Or it's full of crazy people who want to like, attack everybody on this planet for no reason. But at one time it was. It was. It. It was not just had a lot of prestige behind it, but it had real cachet because it was very serious. But the. The actual title of the long telegram, expanded to proper paper form was Sources of Soviet Conduct. That's exactly what it was about. Kenan was a rare kind of occidental man. And I'm not trying to be offensive or say bad things about Russian people, but they're very different, okay? They're very different than the West. Even the best of times, even when they had a more normal government, it was difficult to decipher their intentions. And there was not just linguistic barriers. There's. There's cultural barriers that relate to symbolic psychology and historical experience and all kinds of other things. But Kenneth's enterprise was. I've got to try to make the Department of State in the Department of War and more importantly, Mr. Truman, understand the world through the Soviet's eyes. Now, Kenan said that there's not gonna.
- [98:40]
D
There's never.
- [98:41]
C
There's no one. You're not gonna be able to come to. Come to terms with the Soviet Union, okay? He said you. So get that out of your head right away. In policy terms, he said, the Soviets are never going to give you what you. What. What you want. They're not gonna. They're not going to abide Roosevelt's vision of, you know, ruling the world with Uncle Sam as a junior partner. They're not going to accept the United States as a benign influence on Europe. You know, they're not, they're not going to view any of America's move outside the. Outside of its immediate sphere of influences as legitimate. And that owes you a few things. It owes the. It was the, it was the Russian, traditional Russian fixation on security in, in very basic terms, the Russians need defense in depth. And Russia is a state that is in a nation that is constantly attacked by its enemies. So there's that. Now you add to that the overlay of Marxist Leninist ideology, which at that time it still very much was. Was still very much interstitially bound up with kind of the Russian political mind. They view the United States as, as not much different than the Third Reich. And they view the Third Reich as the distilled essence of evil. And they view the United States and the UK as capitalist states in crisis who at all costs are going to pursue an adversarial posture with the Soviet Union, because the only way capitalist states can keep from cannibalizing one another is to find an enemy from without. Okay, now this is boilerplate Leninism, but the Soviets actually believe that. And Kevin made the point that, you know, unlike in the United States, unlike in the uk you know, where political discourse is kind of. This is almost kind of this. It's almost kind of like play acting in the Soviet. Soviet leaders, like when they say things, they actually mean exactly what they say, even if it sounds crazy. The Soviet Union is not a little transparent, but the official statements coming from the Kremlin are actually exactly what the Soviets mean. And you can extrapolate that to today when the Russian government issues a formal statement. That's actually exactly what they mean. Now don't get me wrong, the Kremlin then is. Now is literally Byzantine. Russian political culture is totally opaque. It's massively conspiratorial. It's all screwed up. But you don't have like weird actors, you know, just kind of saying things in, in Russian political life like you do in the west is totally different. And obviously American political culture then was not nearly as degenerate as now, but there was some of that. And this was a very important point. And so Ken's point was what he meant by containment is this. He said, the way the world's going to be ordered, the way this entire planet, the fate of this entire planet, quite literally in political and structural terms, political Structural terms and sociological ones is going to be decided by who can win over the developing world and the third world. And the Soviet Union, canon pointed out, has a lot of cachet there because the third world is full of people who are already kind of radicalized. They've not had a good experience with the white western world. Part of that is them scapegoating. Part of that is, you know, just kind of the tragedy of when traditional societies, especially primitive ones, and again, I'm not saying that punitively, that's just an accurate assessment, you know, collide with modernity, you know, and the, and, and the double edged sword of technology, you know, and you know, the quote unquote, we view as progress, but what they view as, you know, very, very traumatic processes. And beyond that, the just within, you know, we, we, we. Even in the 1950s, you know, people in America had come to look at Bolshevism and, and Marxist Leninism outside of, you know, academic quarters and things like the man in the street viewed it as something that did not really deliver and he viewed it as basically alien. And those who didn't view it as basically alien viewed it as something that, you know, was, was, was not, was, was not. It did not animate him towards, you know, some kind of impassioned defense of the ideology. Okay, but in the third World that was not the case at all. I mean really until the 80s, Marxist Londonism had great cachet in the third world. And if you want to understand the Cold War and why it endured for so long, that is why, okay, I mean, long after there was any kind of risk of, you know, France, you know, people in France going to the polls and voting in some Stalinist party, you know, long after, you know, Gus hall and his friends had any, any chance of turning, you know, the Teamsters Union into a, into some kind of communist client. You know, in, in places like Angola, you know, places like Nicaragua, in places, in places, you know, like Indonesia, there was, there was still cache to communism. Okay? So Kenan said there's got to be a broad spectrum attack on communism, particularly, you know, in terms of, in, in terms of swaging anxieties about the developmental model of the West. You know, that means not disturbing and upsetting, uh, indigenous cultures where it's not essential to do so in order to, uh, in order to create a political culture that, you know, is, is, is, is suitable for American goals. You know, that means that, you know, not over reliance on, on the military aspect of competition, but, you know, demonstrating, demonstrating American systemic superiority in Every concealable way, you know, scientifically, culturally, technologically, you know, in the arts, like all these things. Unfortunately, people are selective in, especially in policy terms in what they, what they take from these kinds of broad based position statements of, of inspired people like canon. So the way people read the canon, the Long Telegram and the canon memo is, oh, we, we've got to challenge the Soviet Union militarily at all costs, basically, like in every theater where, where they assert themselves and that. And then, and then thus Kenan, and this was, this was the bane of his existence for his whole life. And he made that clear decade after decade that he was called the quote, father of containment. But in any event, regardless of the fact that Kenan did not appreciate being forced and got in the court of public opinion to co sign, you know, what became containment as policy with what was fleshed out in his, in his position paper, you know, Truman had a problem because Truman was facing an increasingly aggressive Soviet Union that was quite clearly doing everything it could to lock the west out of Berlin and ultimately lock the west out of Germany at all. And as we said, he had a hostile congress already. People have become very, very soured on the idea of the Soviet Union not just as an ally, but as a benign influence in the world. And furthermore, you know, one of the things we, speaking of Tehran, the Tehran summit, not, not fleshing out what the status of Berlin and the status of Germany would be moving forward. It didn't indicate anything as to how, what would become of the world where, you know, the UK just simply, you know, just simply declared these people in its dominions. They have like, you know, to, they have like rights of British citizenship now, you know, and like these, these territories in Africa, you know, that were being, that were, they were being ceded to indigenous rule and, and divested from, you know, from the, from the French and from the Belgians, you know, like what, like what, how do we manage these places? You know, like what moving forward? Like, you know, who's going to take the lead here? You know, is, is it going to be, you know, is it going to be under some kind of like UN jurisdiction? Is it going to be under, you know, the jurisdiction of the former colonial authority? You know, this was not clear and this caused huge problems and it led to, it led to.
- [106:38]
A
Hey guys, it is Ryan. For years, Chum has been setting the bar for online social casino fun. And it just keeps getting better. With new games released every week and daily bonuses to click collect, the fun never stops. So claim your welcome bonus now@chumbac casino.com no purchase necessary BMW terms and conditions
- [106:53]
C
21/plus and what I consider to be on the first active crisis of the Cold War, one of the many horrible things we can say about Churchill, and they are many, and I'm not trying to resort to hyperbole. As it became clear post Yalta in Churchill's mind that the United States was not going to do anything to preserve the British Empire. Like why? Why? It goes to show you the man's fundamental lack of understanding onto the character of Roosevelt, but of, you know, the emerging kind of geopolitical culture of, of the epoch. Churchill decided that something had to be done to guard the UK's fledging interest in the Mediterranean. So he approached Stalin and Molotov without Roosevelt's knowledge, and he drafted this is an absurd document, what was called the percentages agreement, quite literally where he wrote out what percentage of influence the Soviet Union would be allowed and the UK would be allowed in key territories in the Mediterranean. Like literally writing, well, you know, the USSR are gonna have 10 influence in Greece and London has to have 90%. Like how any rational person. I think that's the way sphere of influence works. And what that was 90 influence in power. Political terms, the whole thing is absurd.
- [108:13]
D
It's.
- [108:14]
C
It's crazy. It's literally crazy. But Greece was the first state post war, really. When the Germans withdrew From Greece in 44, a communist insurgency jumped off and it was very complicated, like who the players were and everything like that. But it was the UK deployed to prevent a communist takeover. People sympathetic to the communists, they. You refer to it as the second white terror in Greece. There's a lot of mercenary action there. Very. It was, it was actually a very, it was a bloody conflict. Okay, but the, but the point is that, uh, you know, this is also a later lead, you know, a decade subsequent to the Suez crisis. And that led Eisenhower to kind of, you know, declaring a status of, of. Of relations for the Middle east, you know, and shutting. Shutting the fr. The French and the UK out of it permanently. And in those days too, Eisenhower was the last president. He wasn't holy beholden Israel, that's another issue. But in any event, you know, there was not what, what, whatever Truman thought about containment, you know, however hawkish or conciliatory he felt about the Soviet Union. If he wanted to continue as president, he was gonna have to take some kind of firm line, at least what appeared to be such. And he's gonna have to articulate some kind of policy and make clear, you know, what, what the conflict dyads were that if the Soviets traversed them, there would inevitably be war. And a lot of that owes the experience of Korea and how NATO was formed. And the next episode is gonna be the NATO episode and it's hugely important, especially today, but I don't want to jump into that now. But to continue. The, the, the real kind of key incident, in my opinion, or like series of events, what started the Cold War is the Berlin blockade, okay? And as, as people probably imagine, even people who, you know, don't realize the Cold War, you know, west Berlin was 110 miles into the Soviet occupation sector. Okay? It was, it was. The entirety of Berlin was in what became the DDR and the western half. The only way you could access it, civilian or military vehicles, was by dedicated access routes. There's roads for the duration of the Cold War that were literally dedicated access routes for like US military and civilian and West European traffic, you know, to pass through the DDR, you know, to reach West Berlin and then to return on the dedicated access road. And that was the only traffic permitted there. And that was the case early on. I mean they, they, these routes were later, you know, kind of formalized, like structurally as a matter of law. But it was the, the Soviets weren't, weren't simply allowing, you know, open ingress and egress of Americans and British and French civilian or military in and out of West Berlin, but they weren't, they did not outright blockaded it before. But what was kind of the straw that broke the camels back was uh, the, as the United States as, as, like as a true economic policy kind of took shape, I mean, just out of necessity. I mean this just preceded, you know, a formal political outlook, let alone policy on West Berlin. But uh, I mean the economy had to be rebuilt because people, I mean their infrastructure was destroyed. You know, uh, people, people weren't being fed what. And it became, it became imperative first and foremost introduce a viable currency. So the, the United States introduced the, the Deutsche mark, which is interesting because it's interesting like a lot of people think of the Deutsche mark because I mean the Deutsche park was, I mean the strongest currency in Europe. And we, I saw him, the economic agent, the other day. You know, the, the Germans didn't sign the matric treaty because they wanted to get off the Deutsche mark. It was owing to political pressures and other things. But people have an idea of it. It's just kind of, is like it's kind of Adenauer, you know, and, and like the, in like the Buddhist republic, like Deutsche bank or whatever. Just just saying like okay, this is the successor to the rice market. It's not what happened. It was u. S. Occupation authorities who, who, who introduced it then and very much sold the nascent West Berlin government on it. But the Soviets went nuts when this happened and they banned, they banned the deutsche mark from the, from the, the eastern zone of occupation. And yes, they were literally arresting people for, for, for using it. So in the eastern, in the eastern occupation sector, Berlin people resorted to using cigarettes as a de facto currency. Like no lie. I mean that quite literally shows you like what a prison society this was from, from jump I guess. I mean I don't even have a particularly punitive view of the DDR and I mean that that should be clear to anybody. But the, the introduction of the new currency when, when you know before with, when all in the, in the course of all the failed four powers administrative bodies, you know the one thing that the Soviets that opposed unconditionally was you know, the introduction of a private enterprise in the eastern occupation zone. Okay, because there's no way they could have controlled that. I mean obviously they couldn't have eventually if the Soviets had played their cards right, I'm talking like years later, if not decades, I think they could have made East Berlin kind of like they could have viewed it treated. They could have treated kind of like, you know, the, the chicoms treat Hong Kong. But I mean that was many years off. Like they, this could not, that was not in the, in the cards in 1946, 47, 48. Especially not by you know, the shock therapies, the introduction of of of this new currency backed by you know, backed by American dollars. Okay, that there's no way but the, it was things changed. The, the deutsche fight was introduced on June 17, 1948 or June 18, June 18, 1948. The next day Soviet guards suddenly cranked down, you know, suddenly, suddenly people the relatively kind of free ingress into the, into East Berlin. You know people were being stopped and searched. People were being turned back. You know trains are being halted. Any freight shipments, any old water transport. They had to secure special permission from the Soviet authorities, not from the east Berlin authorities, from the Soviets themselves. The and uh, kind of the final uh gotta got an appointed no return. Three days subsequent on the 21st, the Soviets halted a U. S. Military supply train to Berlin and sent it back. So essentially the Soviets refused resupply of United States army forces in Europe and the UNID in Berlin because Berlin again Berlin was 110 miles into the interior of the DDR there's only at that time there's only about 3000 U. S combat troops on the ground, about 2000 British. The Soviets had a comparable size force in East Berlin, but the Soviets had 300000 forces in being throughout, you know, eastern Germany proper. So I mean if it came to war, there's those, those guys in West Berlin were dead. You know, they, they would have been slaughtered. I mean so this was an ominous thing, you know. And that same day, 22 June, the stories announced that they, they were introducing the East German mark in their own like zone of occupation. It was to be the only, only legitimate, only legitimate currency. And oh, later on, which is really, really weird in East Berlin, I'm talking like into the 80s, there was specialty shops. They were like duty free shops where non East German citizens were visiting. They could, they could buy stuff with foreign currency, like cigarettes or liquor or like, or like other things like food, like, like, like specialty food items. But, but they were like designated foreign currency shops. I mean kind of like the, the hoops that these Marxist len estates jump through. They got to maintain the fiction that their currencies were actually worth something is really, really weird. You know, I mean I, it's, it's called like you know the old movie, Brazil satire movie with I think. Yeah, yeah, like Terry Gilliam. Yeah, it reminds me of that in some basic way.
- [117:39]
D
But
- [117:43]
C
it was on June 24, the Soviets severed land and water connections between the non Soviet zones in Berlin. So all, all ground rail or water traffic was cut off. Like nobody, nobody got in or out of West Berlin. Okay. The, the, they couldn't cut off obviously like electricity and water because that would have been an own goal. Because I mean Berlin was quite literally just divided down the center with this kind of artificial like what like on a battle might be considered like a salient but it, you know, there wasn't, it was not. People sometimes had this idea that there was something like rhyme or reason to how Berlin was divided. Like there was not. So I mean it's not that you couldn't cut off utilities to half of Berlin, but not the other half, but just the same West Berlin at the time, at the time it was blockaded, it had just over like a month's worth. Like it was between like 35 and 45 like days worth of food, something like 50 days worth of coal. I mean this was like a very critical situation and the entire, the entire United States army just total forces being by 1948 have been reduced about half a million men. The total force in the western sector were about 8, 900Americans, about 7, 600 British, about 6,000 French. There was only 31, 000 combat forces in all of West Germany. So I mean, if it came to war, like a bolt Soviet attack, total Soviet military forces in the Soviet sector were 1.5 million. Now the United States at that point, at that time still had a monopoly on the atomic bomb. But I mean, what do you, if, if, if, if communist forces fe to Berlin, what are you going to do? You, you're gonna, you're gonna, you know, launch an atomic assault on Berlin and waste drone people and all the Berliners. I mean this, this, this was, this was very, very dangerous. And frankly it was a, it was a gamble of the sort that Stalin did not usually take. But interestingly, it was Lucius Clay. He was a commander of the U.S. occupation zone. You know, he said it was fun. He said Curtis LeMay. Interestingly, LeMay wanted to, he wanted to, he wanted to mobilize atomic capable B29s and assault the Soviet sector. Like you know, like, like nukem, you know, and, and, and mobilize what inventory there were available in West Berlin or in West Germany, you know, and then to proceed to liberate West Berlin with them after, after this. Yeah, after a massive atomic assault on Soviet forces with, with B29s. But that, that, that, that suggestion was not abided obviously, but I, I la. Was not some kind of madman. I'm, I'm, I'm quite fond of LeMay in history and I, I think he's kind of unduly characterized as this kind of like Jack D. Ripper type, you know, like in, in str. Lucius Clay. It was in concert with a lot, a lot, a lot of civilian types who, you know, were still, were still kind of, we're still kind of insinuated into government and quasi military roles owing to the war only being three years past. US Army Corps of Engineers U. S. Army Air Forces The Berlin airlift was really, was really kind of an amazing, it was really kind of an amazing, not just a pal, not just policy coup, but sort of strategic rooking of Stalin but demonstrated the feasibility of,
- [121:51]
A
of
- [121:51]
C
in and not just in military capacities, I mean, which was obvious. But it in some ways, weird as it sounds, it may be more comfortable with the idea of you know, huge amounts of air traffic in and out of a major city, you know, and there's, there's literally ideas before like oh, there's going to be like pollution and noise and things like it, you know, these like thousands and thousands, thousands of sorties in and out of Berlin. That, that kind of changed things. And that's, I mean honestly that's like a lot of time how people become habituated through technologies. It's not any kind of, it's not, it's not any kind of small thing. I mean there's guys like LeMay himself and these guys, particularly guys who fought with the Army Air Forces in the Pacific, you know, they develop these, they, you know, they develop these, these, these assault routes from the Marianas Islands and things. And you know there was these previous periods of the airlift over the quote hump of the Himalayas, you know, from India to China. But it was military guys who kind of understood the potential of air power in broad spectrum application, you know, military and civilian and commercial use. Like the man in the street really didn't. And the Berlin airlift, the Berlin Airlift changed. But LeMay was he, in terms of staffing decisions, he did end up, he did, he did end up appointing a lot most of the key figures in executive roles who, who made airlift happen. General Joseph Smith, not to be confused with like the Father of Mormonism. He was, he'd been uh, no gold
- [123:37]
B
tap, no gold tablets here.
- [123:41]
C
But Smith had been like there's a huge amount of guys who served earlier, served under LeMay during the war who went on like prestige roles, including Robert McNamara or. Yeah, McNamara. Smith had been Lemay's chief of staff. Uh, when Lemay had a B29 command like in India and then in the Marianas, uh, you know, loses Clay, uh, wasn't under Lane's command but I mean they, you know, they made acquaintance during the war. It, but the, it, it demonstrated, it demonstrated what was possible and it also, it was such a collaborative effort between, I mean it had to be between the United States and the uk. I mean for better or worse, you know, and I'm not trashing the U.K. you know, the U.K. remained Airstrip One in a real way obviously because of this and owing, you know, like we, like we talked about when it's not fdr, it's kind of inconsistent and frankly in coherent signaling about the status of UK US relations post bellum, it wasn't clear like what role the UK would have here or whether or not the United States would raise a finger to defend, you know, key strategic interests. Not, not just the interest of the empire, which nobody really had any interest in the United States and in preserving for any reason. But I mean they would also. I mean it was solidified the quote. I hate that term special relationship and there's all kinds of like things that are. Are far, far less than admirable that that entails. But it purely like collaborative strategic terms. It solidified, you know, the US UK Concord, particularly as regards operational coordination with. With air forces. And that's no small thing. And before the revolution in military affairs and decades before contemporary command and control, that was incredibly difficult. That really can't be overstated. I mean something really to be a hell of a, A hell of an operation today. But I mean you're talking about like, you're talking about like radio is the cutting edge of like commanding control technology in 1948. Like think about that. It like stuff so this like, it's. So it's less reliable than like the walkie talkies you played with his kid in like the early 80s. That. But the, the. That was, that was the, that was the. That was the onset of the Cold War in uh, in. In real terms. And I don't, I don't think anybody would. I don't think anybody would dispute. Would dispute that. And there were shenanigans too. Like the, There was one single municipal election for all of BERLIN in, in 1946. And the, the. The Socialist Unity Party, they didn't pull pathetically or something. They only pulled like 20, you know, and that's what put the Christian Democrats on the map. Not just in West Berlin, but it's like the Buddhist Republic, like Conservative Party. But the Soviets basically, they basically they were like, you know, okay, to hell with it. Like we're not, we're not going to pursue a political solution, you know, with. Because obviously they weren't gonna, they weren't going to get, you know, because I mean Berlin had been like the, that had been like the, the communist heartland, you know, like in the vibe our years. I. And people. People pose the question like not, not as curious like readers but like historians who like are deeply understand, you know, Rush of the era. They're like why the Russians do this? And it was just to get the lay of the land. I'm telling you. I mean that that's. It makes total sense from Stalin's perspective was a guy, he was a personality type. Today we consider him like a data junkie, like style was obsessed with informational awareness. You know. He really was. And it's. I guarantee you just said like well let's, I mean let's see. Let's hold actual election like a legit election and let's See what's more we
- [127:32]
D
got on the ground.
- [127:33]
C
Okay, about 20. 20, 25. That's fair. We can build cadres around that. But this is never gonna happen again. You know, but that's. I think we're going about an hour. I think we'll stop there and well, well, deep dive into. I realized this might not have been the most exciting episode, but it was important because otherwise we're. We're dealing with a huge phenomenon that being a Cold war where no actual kind of starting. Starting point or catalyst has been identified. But, well, we're gonna get into the Korean War, the formation of NATO, and just the Truman Doctrine. Next episode.
- [128:10]
B
Sounds great. Plugs and we'll end.
- [128:14]
C
Yeah, we're. I'm very happy to report that. I mean, you might see that I've got. I've got this cool, like, backdrop. I'm in the apocalypse. I. I bought my production values and also, like, I got. I got a video editor to join, like, our production team, and he's great. So the YouTube channel is finally gonna launch. I. I'm back on Twitter now because Elon is apparently giving people like me a amnesty. You can find me at Triskelion Jihad. The first T is a number seven. Uh, you can find me on substack, uh, at real Thomas 777. And I mean, you can find me, like I said, when I In. In. In. In about. In a few days when I. When the YouTube channel does launch, I'll upload a lot of this stuff there. And it's Thomas TV in front of these Thomas 777. I know it's corny. It's supposed to be. It's a riff on Dave tv. If you're old like me, you remember. Well, his Dave tv. I got Thomas tv. So. Yeah. But thank you, Pete. I really, really appreciate it.
- [129:21]
B
No problem. We'll pick it up again next week. Thanks, Thomas. I want to welcome everyone back to the P. Quinones Show Part 3 with Thomas 777. How are you doing, Thomas?
- [129:33]
C
I'm very well. Thanks for hosting me. There's a few things I wanted to talk about today, and I want people to not be shy if I'm being too scattershot or not focused enough. The Cold War is such a massive topic, and it touches and concerns all kinds of theoretical matters, you know, which is kind of like my wheelhouse. But it also, you know, in terms of practical affairs and very quantifiable things, you know, really kind of. It created the contemporary strategic landscape, you know, and it Endured for, it endured for half a century. So there's so much there. You've kind of got to pick and choose what you emphasize. I'm trying to go in linear order because, you know, that's, and whatever your. What, whatever you're trying to. What, what, whatever your emphasis is in, in, in, in revisionism, you know, you need to be as rigorous as you would in any other historical study. I mean, that doesn't mean just, you know, relating, relaying facts and, and documenting events for its own sake. But I don't just want to be taking off a list of, you know, what I consider key events or something. However, if, if I'm, if I'm getting ahead of myself or if there doesn't seem to be a kind of tie that binds to make the narrative listenable or intelligible, please tell me in the comments I'm not going to get upset. What was on my mind a lot lately, especially because in the morning a couple days a week, my dad gives me a ride downtown for stuff I gotta do. And you know, I listen to 8:90am Talk radio, which isn't, it's not garbage like NPR, but it's garbage of a different sort of, and they have all these polemical takes from, you know, these like retired, you know, captains and majors, you know, like kind of like third rate wannabe work college types. You know, as well as, you know, some of these kind of Desantis type Republicans who are kind of like the token conservatives on, on the panel on these morning talk radio programs. You know, there's, there's, it's interesting the way these guys talk about Russia, okay, because Russia kind of like darl Islam, you're still allowed to say basically prejudice things about it, you know, because it's not, you know, it's not part of that kind of protected, it's not conceptually, you know, incorporated into, you know, the, the victimology narrative, okay? But also there's even as, even as deracinated as people are in America, you know, especially in terms of these, you know, the kinds of people who populate media, what remains traditional media at least, you know, even academic types who, who couldn't tell you anything about their own heritage and are not very racially conscious at all, there remains this kind of atavistic fear of Russia. And that's not just some, that's not, that's not just some kind of hackneyed political take that people like Lavrov, you know, drop on the, on the floor of the UN General assembly in order to make a Point or to scandalize people. That really is true. And to understand the Cold War, you got to understand. You've got to really understand why that came about. I've been reading lately, There's a Spoke by Michael Prouden, and it was released in a few different titles. The. The volume I've got, it's under the title the Mongol Empire. There's another one. There's another edition, identical book, you know, called called Storm out of Asia. But what it's all about is. It's all about when the Europeans made first contact with the Mongols, you know, in the 13th century A.D. okay, now why was this so significant? Well, you know, the Europeans since 1095 and intermittently been at war with. With the Saracens, you know, Salahuddin and his descendants. You know, this was the crusading era, okay? And what was fascinating about that is that it was the only time until, I mean, unless you count, you know, the Napoleonic wars, which were kind of more convenience than. Than. Than, you know, than a unity of faith, obviously. You know, it's really the only time you had, you know, truly European armies, you know, going off to war against a common civilizational enemy. However, some. A kind of concord had been. Had been reached with the Muslims. Okay? I mean, sometimes, you know, sometimes there's relative peace that reigned, you know, in. In the Kingdom of Jerusalem. You know, after the Battle of Hatim and the Muslim conquest, things deteriorated. But, you know, there's just kind of like an ongoing thing. But in the 12, you know, in the 1220s, suddenly these rumors came about that there was this huge marauding army. It was just slaughtering everything in its path. And a lot of people in monasteries and monks, they're like, well, you know, this. This is the scourge of God. And he's. He's punishing, you know, the infidel Muslims, but he's also punishing these pagan tribes that populate the step, you know, because all these barbarian people really literally being driven west to the European frontier and saying, you know, there's these men on horses with long torsos, and they kill everybody, you know, and they, like those left alive, you know, they take the women as slaves and they, you know, they force the men into, you know, into. Into duty as janissaries, basically, you know, and they. And they drive them, you know, out front and, you know, they take. They take the first blow when we. When they encounter their enemies, and their enemies are everybody but them. And some people thought this was just nonsense. Like, these are primitive pagans. They're, you know, they who. They don't know what the hell they're talking about. They probably smith the Saracens. You know, other people said there were Jews who said, like, well, you know, King David has come back, you know, and he's coming to punish you for the way you've treated the Jews, you know, and he's coming to punish Jews too, who've like, forgotten God. Well, obviously it was none of those things. It was the Mongols, okay? And the association of the east with this barbarian element that never really left, okay? And I mean, it never really left in the European cultural mind and conceptual horizon, but it also never really left literally, okay? Like, I'm not. I'm not saying Russians are a bunch of Mongols or barbarians, but there was this. This massive. This massive monolithic force emergent from the step that was just destroying everything in its path, assimilating everything that was left alive or left standing, like, literally into its. Into its structure. You know, that's. That's really what the Soviet Union was, okay? And at the, at the, at the, at the ss, the. The Prouding's book was actually given to officers, okay? And that. That's significant. Himmler didn't assign Himmler and Paul Hauser. They didn't have people reading the International Jew. They didn't have people reading Clausewitz. I mean, people did reclass. With. For the curriculum. But, you know, the book you got, my graduate graduation, was this book by Proudham. Both. Because it's, you know, as always is saying, you know, this is your enemy. Know, this is what. You know, you're. You're. You're. You're a knight of the New Blood Order of, of. Of Europe, you know, in the ss. And this is what we're fighting against, you know, because we're the.
- [136:33]
D
We're the.
- [136:34]
C
We're. We're the watch on the rind, okay? But also after, you know, 300 years of, of the Westphalian paradigm, it, you know, the reality of true total war was. Was emerging again, okay? And that they cannot be emphasized enough. And even. It sounds corny, but you can glean things from. You know, you can. You can discern symbolic, psychological things even in kind of trashy media, you know, and I watch. I didn't watch it in years. You know, I liked a lot when I was a little kid, you know, Red dawn, you know, with, uh, Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell, you know, the. That's actually kind of an interesting movie, like as a period piece mostly, but know, like the Black History teacher, when. When the. When. When. When the Town first gets assaulted by like the Soviets and the sand anistas and the Cubanos. He's teaching a class about Genghis Khan, okay. And that's like, not an accident. That's really like on the nose. Okay? But so when you consider that, you consider that, you know, Europe is literally this kind of indefensible peninsula.
- [137:41]
A
Ryan C. Crest here. So every great barbecue takes a little patience. And while the food does its thing thing, you can enjoy a little Chumba Casino. The perfect recipe. Chamba Casino. Always good to have you back. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void or prohibited by law. CTS and CS21+ sponsored by Chumba Casino
- [137:57]
C
that you know it. That. That's the way you got to understand. That's the way you got to understand the Second World War. That's why you've got to understand essentially the entire. The entire kind of. The entire European military orientation and the, you know, and. And the. The, you know, the. The striving eastward of. Of Teutonic peoples. And in the Cold War, this was very much kind of transposed to America. Okay? There was. There was very much a racial component here. Okay. Even though there was strange things going on in America, you know, there was the. The fact that the Soviet Union became, you know, a superpower and without annihilated ODU or to the United States along with it to. To crush Imperium Europa where you know, under the. Under the German Reich. But you know, nevertheless, you know, these. These things reemerge again and again. It's. It's almost like a. It's almost like a natural structural form that like snaps back into place even when people try to corrupted or molded into different configurations. But I. What I want to talk about today is the war in Korea and this be directly what we're talking about. And the Cold War actually was fought in terms of hot war. I mean all kinds of ledger main. And there was. There was true violence in Europe of. But it was all. I mean it was never. There was. There was never a general war fought in Europe during the Cold War. There was. In the Cold War was literally grew hot in Asia, okay, The Cold War where there was lead in the air between, you know, mass conventional forces. They happen in Asia. And it's not accidental and that's not. It wasn't just a matter of, you know. Well, you know, this is a place where. This is a place. These are. This is a theater where, you know, the Soviets, the Americans respectively can push and not risk triggering, you know, the. The apocalyptic conflict dyad that's going to lead a general nuclear war. And interestingly or fascinatingly in the final phase of the Cold War which we'll get into later, the real catalyst behind Reagan's 500 or I mean it's actually James Webs but I mean The Reagan administration's 600 ship Navy was that they wanted, they wanted nuclear battle platforms and, and supporting fleet elements, you know to essentially like force, force. The Soviet Union was up pack to fight a two front nuclear war. If you can think of nuclear wars having a front rather two theater nuclear war. And this, this caused a serious problem from frame drop off especially I mean Brezhnev. It began really under Carter but that, that's one of the things that really, really kind of rooked Soviet ambition. So it wasn't just the revolution in military affairs and, and like the technological edge being lost but getting into the Korean War and again I hope that wasn't too like scattershot.
- [141:10]
B
It's all right.
- [141:10]
C
We got into the Berlin airlift last episode, you know and, and the Cold War, you know the Cold War. The Cold War it formally kicked off by then. Okay. And then in 1949 the stories developed their own atomic capability. You know we can get into the Rosenbergs maybe next episode if you want. I, I, I didn't know if you wanted to cover that because it's kind of controversial and people strong feelings about it.
- [141:33]
B
Oh, I don't know. No, we need to cover that.
- [141:36]
C
Okay, we'll do that next, next episode we're going to deal with the early espionage issues. We're going to deal with like the Cambridge Five and, and the Rosenbergs and Elder Hiss and Roy Cohn who prosecuted the Rosenbergs. But I want to stick to the Korean War in the Orient for this episode. So here we are in 1950. Secretary of State Dean Atchison who, he's, there's been a lot of revisionist takes on him that are pretty unflattering. But Ashton was kind of a peculiar, I think he was kind of an effete aristocrat type of the sort of the worst sorts. But I mean that's just my opinion. I, there's definitely been worse chief diplomats. But Atchison's great blunder I, I think it's inarguable on January 13, 1950. You know mind you, this was as we talked about, we talked about you know the desire to draw down conventional forces and rely upon the, you know the, the, the atomic bomb, you know to resolve basically military exigencies, you know in the threat of massive escalation this was creating problems as, you know, the Cold War, you know, began to heat up in earnest quite literally. But there had not yet been an open challenge to. To Truman. Okay? There had not yet been. I mean, other than the Berlin Blockade, which was. I, I mean that, that. That was not a conventional provocation, know, owing to the bizarre occupation regime and the fact that, you know, Germany was permanently in. In limbo as a matter of law, you know, because there. It was quite literally under occupation authority and there was no. There was. There was no end in sight and no pathway to a permanent peace treaty emergent. But the, the, you know, the first true kind of challenge to. To. To American Burgundy. American hegemony was the Korean War. And I think of the Korean War and why it happened as somewhat analogous to why the first Gulf War happened. It had to do with incorrect signaling by. By. By U.S. diplomats. Like when I say incorrect, there really is a correct way to not disclose intentions. Well, at the same time deterring reckless acts by, you know, by. By national enemies. And that's. Diplomats must have instincts to know when to resort to such measures and uh, must uh, have a basic understanding of how to code their language such that, you know, the signals can be clearly read while still, you know, keeping, uh. Keeping potential. Keeping intentions, actual potential, you know, relatively hidden as need be to sustain credibility. But the nerves and certainly did not do that. What the United did on January 13, 1950, he addressed. He issued a speech, the National Press Club. And what he said was this. When he was asked about, you know, what the policy was towards the communists in Asia, he said, look, he literally said there's a defensive perimeter in Asia. He said it extends from Japan through the Reus Islands down to the Philippines in the south. So quite literally, if you look at a map, that constitutes kind of a line through the Pacific, okay. Within which I mean, obviously, you know, key like US ceilings and things, but basically it's, It's. It's like a. It's quite literally like a containment barrier, you know, bulwark against. Against the. Against the Asian land mass. Okay? Now Stalin was paying attention to this as was Mao. And the way they read that was that, well, you know, despite the fact that Korea was under similar occupation to Germany, you know, you had a. You had a. You know, you had a. You had a Soviet occupied north, you had a briefly American and Allied occupied south. And in the north you had this kind of cargo cult Stalinist regime. And in the south you basically had a military dictatorship. But the military that was running it was not fairly capable. However, there was not forces in being on the ground in the South. They had, they had left. Okay? And the, the, the understanding was that America was not going to defend Korea. Okay? Now why Stalin and Mao copied Korea is, is what's significant because Korea was not Germany. And the reason why Korea today remains dysfunctional is because borders both China and Russia, it's within striking distance of Le Vock. It's a stone's throw away from Japan. Like, quite literally, nobody wants a united Korea but the Koreans. You know, America doesn't. The Russians and Chinese will not tolerate it. Japan would not tolerate it. This both supersedes and transcends Cold War rivalries. Now obsolescent, but also, but, but also is far less of a, of a, of a potential conflict dyad that, that that could result in true catastrophic escalation. It became that way because I'm a Carthan. We'll get to that in a minute. Okay? Now what happened months later was on June 25, the North, North Korea launched a massive assault of, of the South. It was a Sunday. President Truman was at home in Missouri, away from Washington. Dean Atchison was in Maryland at his. At his gentleman's farm. Henry Nitzer, who people. The name people will recognize from our earlier episodes. Nitza was the secretary of Defense. He was on a fishing trip in New Brunswick. But Nit said decades later he was the principal architect of the Team B exercise. He was a huge early neoconservative, okay, massive extreme Cold War hawk. He was the author of national security council paper 68, which was drafted in April of 1950. And that was one of the most important policy blueprints or policy statements of the Cold War. It provided, it provided the roadmap for the permanent militarization of America of both conventional forces and, and strategic nuclear forces from, you know, from the time it was written in nineteen nineteen fifty, until, you know, the Soviet Union collapsed, you know, forty years later. So he was a hugely significant guy. Okay. And his, his first, his first kind of challenge political nature was, was, was butting heads with, with, you know, Mr. George, Ken. And we, we discussed earlier, I mean, canon, obviously from what we discussed about him and you know, from what we've talked about, whereas it's kind of basic traits of character and it's kind of, it's kind of decency in his basic sense of, of caution. I mean, he believed very much in strong defense, but, you know, the cautious application of force and the service they're in. Kenan was one of the few Men, whatever people can say, I mean, we'll get into why this isn't a minute. But Kenan was really savaged in the era, in the epoch by his opponents, including people like Nitza, you know, for being, you know, soft on communism and conciliatory towards the Soviets. But Kenan, he had been adamant for once prior to, to the June 25 that there were definite indicators of communist military activity in Asia and that they were going to assault somewhere. It was not clear where the theater would be for such activity and what the point of concentration would be and what would be prioritized therein. But MacArthur Stam in Tokyo just did not, they just disregard him entirely. They're like, this guy's an egghead. He's never been in uniform. He doesn't know what the he's talking about. And he can't even, you know, provide us conceptual model of like where this is going to jump off, you know, and what, what, what kind of forces it's going to entail, you know, and what, and, and what, what, what feeder is going to be the primary area of operation. They totally disregarded it. Okay, but this to give you an idea of kind of how fubar the national security establishment was neither Truman nor N nor Atchison. It wasn't until they returned to Washington from their respective, you know, vacations that they found out that Korea was under assault because they saw the newspaper headlines, okay? There was no structure in place of, of, you know, notifying national command authorities of a wartime emergency. And Brandon, I mean this was, this was the dawn of the atomic age. But it doesn't matter. I mean, they, you know, America, for better or worse, had it just come off of a total mobilization and you know, imagine two front war that was unprecedented in scope, scale and intensity. So impossible to rationalize as it is. That's the way things were when Kenan arrived that night. Ken and at this point was something administer without portfolio, okay? He, he was, he'd been dismissed as, you know, the kind of quasi regent of Department of State in Moscow. He'd ended his tenure as a special consultant to the national Security Advisor. But he, I mean Ken was always in the executive orbit, okay, because he was a brilliant guy and he, he was, he was the foremost expert on the Soviet Union and the Russian, and the Russian culture.
- [151:50]
D
Okay,
- [151:52]
C
the evening of, I'm sorry, the evening of June 25, Ken and double time for the Department of State. And he said, look, he said a critical strategic matter here is that Formosa, Taiwan has to be defended. He's like if this is a general push, and it may very well be, you know, he said the secondary assault is the assault in South Korea. The primary assault is going to be on Formosa and ultimately there's going to be a massive assault in Japan. Okay, if, if the Soviets are going all in in Asia and the Chinese, their Chinese proxies are going all in. We're. We're gonna, we're gonna be. We're gonna fight a world war or Japan, okay, Which is very interesting. And uh, Taiwan is interesting because Taiwan is absolutely zero strategic significance today. And it shows you like the raw delusion of these, of these, of these bizarre idiots like, like Mrs. Pelosi, Mr. Biden, that they pretend that it's 1950 and that this matters or that they actually have, you know, not only is there no stake in Taiwan, but this idea that, I mean, if an American carrier group showed up declaring to the Taiwanese in 2022 that we're gonna defend you, like, they'd be totally befuddled. And then they laugh in their face. You know, I mean it's, it's incredible. But in 1950, had Taiwan fallen and had that been, you know, the, like Moscow and Stalin's ambition. Kenny was absolutely right. The. And as we will see as we get deeper into this series, the Soviets put remarkable pressure on Japan. The Soviets are always seeking out a weak spot as kind of their counterweight to. To. To the situation in Berlin especially, and, and the inner German border generally. And that's what underlay cruise ships on it. The serves incredibly reckless deployment of strategic nuclear forces to Cuba which blew up in his face. But the fighting of finding a. If the Soviets had been able to find a soft spot as it were in the Asian defense paradigm or structure rather, where they could squeeze Japan with a combination of, you know, hard power threat and, and soft power, uh, incentivization, uh, America would have had a real problem in that regard. So Ken was not just you know, dropping wild doomsday scenarios that what he was saying was very possible as it was. I, I think. I think Stalin was. I think Stalin was testing Mao's loyalty. And the sinosophie is split is complicated. There's profound cultural variables there as well as political ones as well as simple as well as things as simple as, you know, the like. Like dang. Who was, you know, who was the shadow executive. I mean, basically after Ma and after the Gang of Four got eliminated, he was trying to get somewhat greedy and. And so were. And so was his inner codery and, and men like him and men like them can be blocked. But also the reason why it wasn't just owing to the kind of nascent, nascent nature of, of the, the Cold War paradigm during the last years of Stalin's life that, that, that that Pig king was in basically unconditional alliance with Moscow. It's because they were, they were loyal to Stalin. I mean, Stalin was a remarkable person. I, I maintain he was probably the most powerful man who ever lived, okay, Hands down. But the, as Kenan came to realize, uh, China very much was the Soviet Union's proxy. And they treated it very much like a client state. I mean, a very important client state, one with potentially great power, political potential and military mobilization potential, but nevertheless, they very much treated them like, like a somewhat inferior race.
- [156:13]
D
Okay?
- [156:14]
C
Not to be crass about it, that
- [156:16]
D
is the reality of the situation.
- [156:20]
C
Canon maintained, you know, in that same vein. Well, here, first of all, like, how, how, how is Truman able to corral this, this whole coalition effort? And again, the parallel with, with the Gulf War stands out here, although the way in which the coalition was, was corralled is quite different. The USSR is boycotting the United nations at this point. Okay? Now, as people probably know, the Soviet Union had a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, the U. S. Security Council. Access the defecto higher house of the U.N. if you want to look at the U.N. as like a unicameral legislature of nations, any permanent member Security council is a veto on any resolution. Okay? The Soviet Union report was boycotting this, the UN So they simply were. Their seat was vacant. And why were they boycotting the U.N. they were boycotting the U.N. because their proxy, China had not, the U.N. had not permitted them to be seated. Okay? There was, there's this absurd situation where the Americans were demanding that Chiang Kai Sheck's government down from OSA be recognized as the true government of China. I, I mean, I, I mean, when you're sitting in Bei King and you've got, you've got dominion over 900, 900 million people, we, you know, declaring like, you know, the guys on that, you know, little island over there are the real government or something, that there's something satirical about that. But this is why the Soviets were boycotting the UN Thus when Truman through Atchison, you know, said, look, you know, this is, this is, this is an egregious violation of international law. You know, the, the communists are, are, you know, in an affront of decency and you know, the, you know, the, the moors, the civilized community of nations have assaulted Korea this marvelous nascent democracy. You know, we, we've got to rush towards defense. So that's what happened. Okay? Truman wasn't gonna, wasn't any kind of pure Wilsonian, but he was like a liberal internationalist. So this, this kind of stuff really got him excited. He really, he really dug that. And frankly, politically, it was, it was a savvy move. Okay? I mean, granted, it's. Truman didn't do anything to facilitate it, and it was the Soviets who were, you know, playing typical kind of commie games that, you know, of a political theatrical nature that facilitated it, but that's what happened. Now back to Kenan. Kenan is observing all this and he's growing very concerned because Kenan knows MacArthur pretty well. And MacArthur was just a weird guy. He lived with his parents pretty much his whole life until he was pretty old. He, he was immature, not in the way that Churchill was like. He was, he wasn't like this kind of buffoonish piggy drunk who was playing with army men at age, you know, 25. But he, like MacArthur, had this kind of. His father was a, a Medal of Honor recipient who fought for the Union army in the War between the states. MacArthur himself, he was awarded the Medal of Honor in this, in this anti bandit action in the Pancho Villa era. But it was strange and like, it, it seemed very much like MacArthur kind of coveted this Medal of Honor and he created circumstances wherein he could, he could, he could grab one by kind of spinning facts in such a way that would appeal to the, you know, to the, to those, you know, commissioning such an award. He was not a very attractive guy. And aside from that, there's a reason why he was, he was sent to the Pacific Theater. The Pacific Theater was a, was, was a Navy show, okay? Now the grunts there, those guys suffered like nobody else, okay? And they fought harder than anybody else. I'm not saying that at all. But the army in, in the Pacific War, they really were not center stage. And that's like some, if you. One of the reasons I like the film the Thin Red Line, because it's one of the few movies that's about the army in, in the Pacific War, you know, not the Marine Corps. And you get a sense of these guys being literally in the middle of nowhere. And desertion in the Pacific was almost zero because there's nowhere to Desert 2. You know, you're in this green hell. A lot of time they weren't getting the gear they needed. You know, things have become totally savage by this point. But, you know, all that aside, I mean, that, that, that, that there's enough there to constitute an episode on its own, right? But the key takeaway is that there's a reason why MacArthur was not given some theater wide command. There's a reason why he wasn't given an armored core in Europe, okay? There's a reason why we sent the Pacific where he was basically under the thumb. A guy, he's like Nimitz, okay? Because he was a cowboy, he was a glory hound. And by this point, he was basically, he was basically running Japan like, like, like some kind of swaggering C, you know, or some kind of like Great White Hunter or something. And what, what Kenan's view was, is I don't know what the hell this guy is going to do. You know, Kenan's view as well. You know, MacArthur is in his element with this, you know, if, if, if, if he sticks the mission orientation of liberating Republic of Korea, but MacArthur decides he wants to collect more medals. Immersive Lady Vostok. He's going to start World War iii. You know, now I know there's like the stupid cliche of idiots who are always like, talking about like, you know, talking about like general officers, like, oh, there's some crazy general's gonna do something like nine out of ten times. That's a take. But in MacArthur's, in MacArthur's, case, MacArthur did crazy and he didn't, he didn't really respect the chain of command. And Kenan, what Kenan did was canon. He began very publicly saying, look, and this is fascinating because it presages obviously what ultimately resolved the Cold war and what Mr. Nixon and Kissinger did. Kenan said, look, he's like, we need to give MacArthur a free hand in operational terms so long as the mission remains limited to the liberation of, of the Republic of Korea, not the Congress in the North. He's like, concomitantly, simultaneously, he's like, we need to offer Beijing inducements to not cooperate with U.S.S.R. you know, he's like, we should even offer them a permanent seat on the UN Security Council if they're willing to formally break with Moscow. And we should tell them that, you know, further inducement is we will recognize them unconditionally as a sole representative of the Chinese government. Now, John Foster Dulles went berserk when, when Kenan said this, and people are saying that Kenan was there. They were, they were saying he'd been like, gotten to by the Soviets there, like awful slanderous things. He was literally just shouted Down. And this really, really hurt him, okay? As the Korean War started to go very poorly, and despite what they. I have no idea what the heat she gets in school about this, but the Korean War was incredibly unpopular. It was incredibly brutal. It was incredibly bloody. You know, it was. And not. Not unlike Vietnam in all kinds of ways, okay? I don't want to go through a laundry list of grotesque things that happened and. And the awful things the guys who had to go there suffered through, but there was a lot of commonality, okay? Not just owing to the. Owing to the fact that we're talking about, you know, Asian battle fears, but this. This really. This really canon. Canon really got kind of sandbagged until, uh, until the Eisenhower era. Well, we'll get into that too, as we progress. Also, we're gonna come back to Kenan again and again, not just because it. I, I've got huge esteem for Kenan, but he's a key player in the Cold War. And like I said, it, I. I give Nixon all credit for the. Facilitating the Sino Soviet split because he's the man who actually facilitated it in an executive role. But conceptually, this was. This was George Kenan's kind of augury and instinct for. For. For hard power politics. But as the war dragged on, Truman did increase naval patrols and, and just overall naval presence in the Pacific and especially in the Taiwan Strait, and hugely, a huge significance. Truman began basically bankrolling the. The French war in Indochine against the Viet Minh, okay? And, you know, America's involvement in Indochina goes back to the late forties in some capacity. You know, this idea, this kind of Oliver Stone Howard, is an idea that, like, you know, Vietnam was a lie, man. And like a bunch of fish generals and capitalists just decided to fight a war there. Like, that's not true at all. And it's not okay. And you've got to look at. You got to look at Korea, you've got to look at Vietnam. You've got to look at this entire paradigm I talked about that ultimately kind of resolved in the sort of massive escalation or. Yeah, massive escalation of forces. And being in. In the Pacific, you know, during the Reagan era, you gotta look at it as all part of, like a common paradigm, okay? You can't look at these things in isolation. Now what Kenan did do during this time is he started writing a lot in. In policy journals was okay. And he kind of. Back in those days, you still had public intellectuals that we talked about. And Kenan first and foremost among. Among social among social science types and political theorist types, I, he was the king. Okay. So Ken started kind of making his case to the American people and it kind of like, you know, and kind of like the learned, you know, like top layer of the civilian world and Kenan's plan for, I mean we, we think of history, the rear view mirror because that's inevitable. Everybody wants a Monday morning quarterback when they're like looking backwards. Ken was pretty convinced along with everybody else that there's probably gonna be, there's probably gonna be a world war within several years and at some point there's going to be a catastrophic nuclear war that was inevitable in his view. And I understand why you thought that and frankly had, had Gorbachev and Reagan not found a way to end, end that, that paradigm, there would actually would have been at some point, you know, be it in 1993, 2003, 2033, it would have happened eventually. But I'm sorry you called me, so I've been under the weather. But the canon view was this, okay, this was, this was Ken's kind of grand design for how to not just de escalate but like get out of the Cold War without, without seeding ground to the point that America is totally compromised.
- [167:40]
D
Okay.
- [167:42]
C
He said there's got to be some kind of comprehensive settlement with the Soviets that would terminate hostilities in Korea. Because, because if, if hostilities went on indefinitely, he's like, eventually, you know, the Chinese who by then were, you know, were fighting a general war on the peninsula against the, the un, the American led UN forces. You know, he's like, eventually they're either going to get the upper hand or we're going to escalate and we're going to find ourselves in a general war with the Soviets and the Chinese. So we've got to find just some kind of way of pull a plug on this and go back to pre war, you know, presumably go back to pre war lines of demarcation in the 30th parallel, you know, we got to admit the People's Republic, China, the United nations in some capacity, okay? Even if we're not going to give him a permanent seat on the Security Council, we can't pretend this government is not legitimate. There's a billion people who live under this government. You know, they're, they're the, they're the third most powerful state on this planet. This is ridiculous. He's like, coman, we need to, we need to allow a plebiscite to determine Taiwan's future. And Ken's like, don't worry, the Taiwanese are going to overwhelmingly vote for independence. But he's like, we've got to do it and we've got to allow third party monitors, you know, so that it's. They can't just be said that, you know, these Taiwanese are, are under the heel of some cardillo who in turn is taking orders from the white man or whatever.
- [168:58]
A
Okay, Ryan Seacrest here. So every great barbecue takes a little patience. And while the food does its thing, you can enjoy a little Chumba Casino. The Perfect Recipe Champa Casino. Always good to have you back. No purchase necessary vgw group board prohibited by law cts and cs21 plus sponsored
- [169:14]
C
by cha casino and fine. And finally, this is, this is most significant and this is fascinating. Kenan said to prevent massive escalation in, in the Pacific theater and to aviate was probably, you know, gonna. This paradigm that's probably going to result in a nuclear war. He's like, we need to bring about a neutral and demilitarized Japan. No, no US forces there, you know. No, no, not, not, not even a token kind of Japanese army. You know, he's like, Japan, Japan needs to become just a neutral zone, okay? And that's the only way moving forward we're gonna keep it off the table. As you know, the, it's kind of like the prize objective in the Pacific. And also this is long forgotten to history other than there's a. You occasionally come across copy mostly when like grad students come across headlines from the 70s and stuff when the Japanese Red army faction was killing people because they dropped a lot of bodies. But communism had real momentum in Japan. It was entirely possible that Japan would go red. Okay, that's a whole another story. But just for context, if it seems weird that Kenan is like emphasizing that look like we got it. We've got to basically like take Japan out of the Cold War entirely. That is why.
- [170:41]
D
Okay.
- [170:46]
C
And in turn he said, finally he said that we're entering into a Castro. What's going to. He's like, we're going to an arms race with the Soviet Union. He's like, which we can probably win just because we, we can essentially like indefinitely outspend them on weapons. But he's like, at some point the Soviets are probably going to go all in and assault us, you know, with everything they have rather than just lose. Okay? So he's like, we need to reduce American capabilities to a mix, like a mixed combined arms force that's capable of dealing, you know, a concentrated and devastating blow on a limited Front, but basically anywhere on this planet. And that was very prescient too. Okay, because that, that kind of thing, it became dominant by the end of the Cold War, definitely and even beyond, although the strategic landscapes totally changed. And arguably it, arguably the reason why that, that that notion has gained legs is, is for totally different reasons. But I mean there's all kinds of factors that play into that, you know, like political, technological and others. But Canon, Canon hit. I guess what I'm getting is this. Can I hit her? He wasn't some kind of auger and light or anything, but he. But put Canada ahead of his peers, particularly in the issue not of the, of Korea but also Asia generally. You have an understanding of understanding of causation and politics. Causality in politics. It, I mean, cause causality in human affairs obviously isn't like causality in physics or something. I mean everybody can see that. But in politics is a peculiar domain of human endeavor. And there's a weird kind of causation in politics. I mean part of this owes to what men in command roles have to do to maintain credibility. Part of it has to do with the way humans perceive threat at scale. Part of it has to do with just how decisions are made in, in, in technology driven societies where, you know, where that, that, that, that, that wields such great power over the forces that animate them that you know, uh, oftentimes once, once a decision, once the decision making process set in motion, it literally cannot be stopped. Canon had instincts for all this stuff and he kind of understood the implications of the strategic matters as they were happening. And that's what truly makes a political theorist, particularly like an IR theorist is you can look at, you can, you can look at affairs as they unfold and you can basically discern the trajectory of, of, of, of the, of war and peace currents. I can't think of a better way to put it. But that's kind of the.
- [173:46]
D
Go ahead.
- [173:49]
B
Have we lost that now? Or is it just we're so far gone with leadership, our leadership being. I mean, why can't we see something like this when it comes to NATO? Is it because we're the aggressors? Is because we're in the wrong? Is it? I mean the, what you're describing, I mean these people, the people you're describing now would be considered enemies of the enemies of the regime.
- [174:21]
C
What it is, it's complicated. But a point I made to people again and again, you know, during the Cold War, guys who had the best and the brightest, they were basically corralled into government. I mean, if you were a nuclear physicist, you went to work in Los Alamos, if you're some brilliant game theorist, you know, you, you got, you got sent to Harvard and then you got sent to some Pentagon funded think tank to figure out how to wage nuclear war. You know, if you were like a brilliant economist, you know, you'd, you'd, you'd meet with the President and you'd say like, okay, like what's the best way? You know, the Marshall Plan was great for politics, but it didn't do a whole lot for, you know, capital and return on investment and for technological development. You know, how can we, how can we, how can we build up Korea? How can we build up, you know, Taiwan? You know, how can we build up, you know, these, these kind of key proxy regimes to fight the Soviet Union, you know, like nowadays, like, the only people in a government are real losers. I mean, it's like, it's like weirdos, freaks, like, like literally like half ass actors, you know, like weird people who have like nothing going for them, but they have some desperate need to like be famous or something. Like any guy, any guy with anything going for him is gonna have nothing to do with government. You know, like, why would he? I mean, that's part of it.
- [175:39]
B
Are these people, like, I have a friend, his son is a genius engineering, trying to Raytheon or offered him an insane amount of money and he's like, I just can't, I can't work for these people. Is that what's happening now? Because, because basically we have a corporate run government that the best and the brightest are just going straight into the corporations. And then the.
- [176:03]
C
Look at a guy. I mean, look at it. Look, okay, like, like, like 50 years ago or even 40 years ago, like in the early 80s, a guy like Elon Musk, he'd be like working in government. He would have been like making, he would have been going on TV debating Carl Sagan, saying like, no, this is why we need sdi, you know. No, this is why we need to roll back communism. Like, no, this is why, you know, we need to scrap the, the ABM treaty and develop weapons platforms that, you know, truly exploded first. Right? Potential. Like that's what he'd be doing. Like now who the hell is gonna go, who the hell's gonna go debate with AOC about whether like kids should learn about anal sex or not in seventh grade? Like that? Like, who the hell is gonna do that? Like any normal person that's totally beneath them. And they wouldn't like, selling themselves that way. But also, it's like, government is for losers. You know, it's. It's for people like the Bidens, you know, It's.
- [176:52]
D
It's for.
- [176:53]
C
It's for people like aoc. It's for. It's for. Or it's for guys or. Or for kind of like. Or it's for kind of like, you know, guys like Desantis who have some kind of like. Like, striver, narcissist need to, like, you know, see their face on TV or something. Like, you know, people have something going for them, like, aren't. Don't want anything. Have anything to do with it. And I mean. But it's also part of the problem. I mean, like, we talked about before, and I'm sure people think that I. I'm flowing a dead horse here, that maybe I overstate my case. But even aside from the fact that we've got, like, a hostile regime that's totally destructive and like, an enemy of the people and stuff, even in a. Like, let's say you have, like, a normal regime or, like, of, like, normal people, like, the. The government is structured. It's only structured to really fight the Cold War and not much else. I mean, it's like, why does it even exist? You know, like, there's something of a. There's. There's more than. There's more than a modicum of fraud to it, too. You know, it. And people see through that. Like, a highly intelligent guy, aside from the fact that there's nothing government's doing that could possibly interest him now, he's not. He's not gonna go. He's not gonna go pretend that, like, you know, he's.
- [178:06]
D
He's.
- [178:06]
C
He's actually accomplishing something by working in some idiotic bureaucracy. Like, you know, what do you. I mean, if people want to. Jerry Portnell. I mean, I'm a big science fiction guy, so I love Jerry Pornell, but, you know, he. The. The Committee on the Present Danger, he really kind of took over that. That role. I mean, the Committee on the Present Danger went back to the 50s, but in the 80s, he truly made it into, like a. A. Into, like a military science, like, political action committee, okay? And Ponell was a guy who put, like, SDI on the map, okay? That's why the Cold War. I mean, dynamic people were in government because of the Cold War, okay? That's. That is why they were there. Like, they weren't there. Government is awesome. Or because they really want to. They really want to figure out, you Know how to draft a school curriculum for like poor kids because they want to like pass laws like make gay people feel better about themselves. I mean like they, they were there to fight the Cold War and that's it. And the Cold War was something that comes like a paradigm like that happens once in a thousand years, if that. And people realize that on some deep level, even when it was horrifying and even when people would have done anything to get out of it. You know, when like and, and at junctures, you know, like, like Cuba in 63 or 62, you know, you know, the 73 war and like Abel Archer. Even, even, even as horrifying as that stuff was, like people realize like, you know, these were, these were apocal, earth shattering events that I'm participating in. That's why. But I mean you go back to
- [179:46]
B
like, you know, they would send Carl Sagan out to make an argument for them. Now who, who is their scientist now? Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye? Guys. Guys who can get owned on Twitter by like. Yeah, by people. Anonymous. Anonymous accounts.
- [180:05]
C
Yeah, like, like anonymous. And they're, they're like high school kids too. Yeah, it's like not saying like there's plenty of smart high school kids. The point is, yeah, these guys are getting embarrassed by just like, like 16 year old John.
- [180:16]
B
There's just no one, it seems like there is no one who's impressive anymore. And if they are impressive, you like, it's like to a certain extent Elon Musk I think is, is an impressive guy, but he's also, you're also like what the hell does this guy believe? You know, it's like he, you don't know what his ideology is, if he has one at all.
- [180:35]
C
Yeah, I don't think he does. I mean generally business moguls don't. I mean I defend Musk a lot because I mean he's a high speed, low drag guy. He's the one who's keeping real space tech alive and he's doing incredible things. Just the fact like the stuff he's done for telecom is incredible. Okay. And you know, he's, he's, the things he's, he's introduced are, are game changers, you know, I mean not just in telecom, like across the board. I mean he is an eccentric weirdo, but I mean all, all these guys are, but I mean, glad he's around and he, you know, I, I, he's, he's a great man and like not in the sense of I love him and think he's awesome. But. And by any objective metric but that's you know government. You know government is going to attract losers when it doesn't. I mean this is. I don't go too far afield and I'll wrap it up in the hour but it, but I mean I. Government is going to cease to exist as. As we know it today in the next 200 years. Like I'm not saying like the state will wither, you know like some utopian anarchist or some you know, kind of like low key like Trotsky or something. But you're not. It's just not going to have you know, a century of now people stuff like you know, the 20th century features that. That created this regime are to be so remote as to be like not even an intelligent one anymore. So like a lot of what government does as its make work business the day to day is just not going to exist work. And plus it'll be like a natural de evolution. You know you're gonna like localism is going to become just like more and more thing it already is. But so I think a problem's gonna take care of. Take care of itself in some basic way. But that's, that's. I. There's something I. I can't. I thought. I thought there was something I wanted to bring up in conclusion. Again. I swear I'm not going to senile but.
- [182:32]
B
Well, I. I derailed you. It's just that you know, when you think. Yeah. When you think back on the Cold War there were so many, you know, as. As psychotic as it was at many points. There were so many impressive people out there give. You know, talking coming up with technology. I mean it. We just don't. I'm not saying we need another Cold War. I'm just saying it's just when you look at what we have today compared to the people that we were looking at then, it's just like what the hell happened man? It's like idiot. You know, it's like idiocracy. It like snuck up on us.
- [183:07]
C
Yeah.
- [183:08]
B
In a decade.
- [183:09]
C
No, it's. It's totally nuts. I mean like I said I. I found it jarring. Like you know, the Clinton administration was jarring because I mean Clinton was such a slob. But these people like. Oh, they had something really wrong with them and it was like. It wasn't even gradual. It was like okay. I mean whether you like Bush 41 or not, I mean he was. He was a high speed low drag guy, you know. And that whole. And James Baker was when I was a kid, like a teen. Like, James Baker was like, like a huge. I really looked up to him, you know. But these, you know, to go from that kind of very heavy severe in both good and bad ways, regime, you know, to Bill Clinton, then it's kind of like Mary Band is circus freaks. Like, it was bizarre, man. Like, it was jarring. But I mean, that's why, like I said, I can't.
- [183:52]
A
I.
- [183:52]
C
It was a joke on. The boomers were like, who, like, fly into, like, you know, rages about Donald Trump, you know, these, like, the same were like, telling us 30 years ago, like, you're gonna get with the times, man. You're like, bill Clinton is the future. Like, we don't want your white male stuff anymore. Like, you know, it's like you can't, like, turn around and say, like, you're outraged that some reality TV show stars is the president. It's like, you guys made this happen, you know, like, you're the ones who said, like, we're a bunch of squares and fascists and idiots who. You don't want, like, white male stuff to rule, man. And, you know, we gotta, like, get with the times. So it's like it, you know. Yeah, yeah, but it's really.
- [184:29]
B
And it's really only a matter of time before people start begging for that to come back.
- [184:34]
C
Yeah, I mean, I've got my own. I mean, I'm very optimistic, man. I mean, I don't worry about anything. Not because, look, I'm so awesome or, like, fearless, but I, you know, I, I, I'm like a Calvinist and stuff. And like, I, you know, like, stuff doesn't really bother me and, but also, like, you know, I, I see, I see causes for optimism all over the place. You know, I mean, there's a lot of, like, horrible things too, but I mean, there's always horrible things, you know, the world is a fallen place, man. Like, that, that's, that's why, you know, that's that, that's, you know, we're all born in sin, but at any event. Yeah, well, let's, let's, let's wrap up now because I don't want to, I don't want to go into another big, like, subtopic because it's coming up in the hour. But like I said before I went live, man, I'm, I'm. The fellas invited me to go with them to the American Renaissance Conference this weekend. So that's where I am going. I'm going to Nashville. So if you're there, you will see me if you seek me out. Please don't try to assassinate me or something like. But I, I, so I assume people come to me at these things, that they're, they come as friends.
- [185:42]
B
But unfortunately, unfortunately, I don't think this is going to come out before the weekends.
- [185:47]
D
No.
- [185:47]
C
Fair enough. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, I, in any event, plugs. Yeah, I mean I'm on, I'm on, I'm, I'm on Twitter still because I mean apparently I'm speaking of Mr. Musk that, that the uh, the woke uh, censorship regime is done. I mean you can find me there. You'll seek and e find. I'm on substack@real Thomas 777 substack.com as my podcast is at the my the sequel to Steel Storm is dropping in January. I promise I'm sorry for the delay. It was not my fault. Nor was was it my dear publisher's fault. Imperium Press. We've had censorship problems on our own and deplatforming problems, but it will be here in January. I'm sorry it cannot be here for the holidays. But that is, that is where I'm at.
- [186:39]
B
I appreciate it. Yeah. Till the next time. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete kenyana show, part four of the Cold War. Cold War series with Thomas 777. How are you doing, Thomas?
- [186:55]
C
I'm very well, thanks again. What I wanted to get into today, we finished off last week. We talked or yeah, more like a week and a half ago perhaps. But you know, talking about the Berlin air, Berlin airlift in the Korean War and I kind of finished up talking about the Korean War and I wanted to talk about the Buddhist Republic and its political culture and how it developed the way it did. And into that the listeners will understand what I mean about why that's significant. But you know, the Korean War, it, you know, like we discussed in the last episode about how it's essential and you know, containment as policy, you know, not just as some sort of a theory abstracted from, from concrete military decision making. You know, you've really got to understand the Korean War as kind of the first iteration of that, you know, and as, as well as, you know, what became to greater or lesser degrees, you know, policy towards the communists for the next, Next, the next 40 years. And it's also too, that's when America truly into the Vietnam conflict. You know, like I made the point before. There's all kinds of lies about the Vietnam War and just miss and just Kind of misperceptions, some deliberate, some deliberately confabulated, you know, for polemical ideological reasons, supportive, raw ignorance. But the, that Vietnam was just kind of opportunity, you know, owing to the designs of, you know, profiteers and financiers and things. That's nonsense. And the arguably, you know, the Far east was there. It was far more dangerous during the middle and late Cold War than, than the European theater. I mean, obviously if we come to Europe that would have been catastrophic because basically a single conflict dyad and had it been triggered or triggered, the potential for catastrophic escalation was, was, was ever present. But there was many, many click dyads potentially and how and where you know, actual warfare would ensue, that was very difficult to predict. And you know, once hostilities did ensue, it was, it was equally difficult to predict, you know, what the potential for escalation was. You know, it's also too the. There, there's, there's more of a fluidity to sphere of influence and things like this. But that's, you know, that's why Korea is important then. It's also, It's essential to, I think people are kind of the outcome of the Korean conflict, you know, in terms
- [189:33]
A
of looking for a little Hollywood style fun. Check out Ryan Seacrest 10K Ways exclusively at Chamba Cassandra Casino. There's 10,000 ways to play get spinning for free@Champacasino.com no purchase necessary. BMW Group void. We're prohibited by law. CTS and C is 21 plus sponsored by Chumpa Casino.
- [189:50]
C
It's pretty much Truman came under, you know, Truman left office really kind of in disgrace. It's not, I mean he was about Truman. He was honest, he didn't have character issues, he wasn't corrupt. But he was in the toilet. The Korean War was incredibly unpopular and you know, the, the republic rift between Truman of Carthor which led to MacArthur's dismissal. The pug generally sympathized with MacArthur not just because, you know, he was kind of this heroic person that had been very deliberately created by, you know, by media, but also the view, the view of Truman was that Truman's objects, you know, as stated were to quote, restore peace and security on the Korean peninsula, you know, basically to re. Establish the stands, quote in lieu of victory. And in Truman's words, you know, we're waging the Korean War, you know, not just for the sake of, you know, deterring aggression and, and, and the prevailing, and you know, in guarding the prevailing peace, but to quote, protect our forces. You know, and that's. One of the officers on the ground referred to that as an absurd tautology. You know, your forces are there to protect your forces. I mean, that doesn't, that's not why you go to war. And, you know, we're talking about, you know, not just men's lives, you know, and, and, and expecting them to sacrifice their lives in the national interest. You know, you, you really have an obligation to the country, not just to those men and, and their families and relations, but, you know, to the country at large, you know, to wage war to win, you know, not, not, not to.
- [191:30]
B
Isn't it also an insult. Isn't it also an insult to the men on the ground? Oh, we got to drop more forces in there because you guys can't handle it. It's like the whole Afghanistan thing. We have these Afghani troops that we've, that we've trained and, you know, they have platoons, but they can't do it on their own, so we got to get someone in there.
- [191:48]
C
Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. It has the effect of really kind of sapping morale and, and, and kind of discouraging any enthusiasm, you know, for the, for the war effort. And it, so I mean, it. I, for, for good, for good reason. You know, Truman was kind of savaged over his prosecution of the war, but also suddenly, you know, kind of court historians within the right and the left, they kind of, they kind of view this as, as this real low point for America in the Cold War, you know, kind of a, a precursor to what ensued during the detente era after, you know, Saigon fell and things. But I got a different take on that. I mean, that's part of the reason we're doing this is, is owing to, you know, dearth of rivenist perspectives and dealing with the Cold War. But in Kissinger's diplomacy, he's about the only kind of. I mean, I say Kissinger a lot because I, I, you know, you talked about before, for whatever reason, people kind of on both sides of the ideological divide, they, they love kind of burning Kissinger proverbial effigy buddy in in power political analyses, he's really second to none. Okay. And he, he made the point. I go a little bit further than he did, but. Or he does, but he made the point that, you know, the Stalin and, and the Soviet Union ended up in pretty, in a pretty precarious position owing to the Korean War. The, the, the, you know, the, There's a basic ambiguity as to where American sphere of influence stopped And Soviet interest began in the region. America did not have the forces in being even outside of Japan really, but even that is arguable, you know, to prosecute a major war in the Far east. Or they, or they, you know, those forces weren't present before the onset of hostilities in 1950. You know, the, in the aftermath of Korea, you know, the, the Department of Defense, it, it asked for the defense budget to be tripled and it got its way and it truly integrated military alliance developed in Europe under American supreme command. I mean that's built NATO. It was the Korean War. Before that. There was, you know, talk of a European defense community. There was real hostility to the, you know, to the, the idea of an, of, of American force being in any, in any, in any real, you know, numbers remaining in Europe. And I'm not saying it's a good thing that, that, that this is what happened, but in terms of, you know, relative power between the United States and, and the Soviet Union and what became the Warsaw Pact, this really, this really changed things and, and skewed the strategic landscape against the interests of the Communists. I believe the, it'll gave the United States a certain credibility in terms of multilateral action or at least the appearance of it. You know, basically Congress gave a blank check to Eisenhower subsequently, you know, to beef up these client regimes, you know, in Africa and the near east and in the Orient, you know, and throw huge amounts of hardware at them. And you know, this was, this was the catalyst really for the, you know, for, for American special warfare. I know like Kennedy gets all the credit for that, you know, and that's why, you know, this, the, the spec war centers, you know, literally named for him. But you know, this was really like, like spec war and special operations really became a thing, you know, during the Eisenhower era, you know, and this ode to the experience of Korea and things like that and Stalin. Stalin had been. Stalin really did not want the Korean War to happen. I mean, he had, he didn't have any problem with it. He green lit it when, when Mao was able to convince him now and Kim Il Sung were able to convince him that, you know, victory would be rapid. And initially, I mean, it did appear that that would be the case. You know, the, the Republic of Korean forces got pushed back to Busan and the perimeter was this tiny little corner, literally the Republic of Korea until I mean those guys fought, fought hard. I'm not putting shade on the South Koreans, but I mean, you know, they were, they were, they were totally routed. It wasn't, it wasn't until, you know, the, the Incheon landings, you know, cut the country in half basically. And you know, the American and UN forces essentially fought this kind of desperate rear action and, and pushed the Communists all the way back like literally to the Yellow River. And I mean, obviously that, you know, that's what triggered intervention by the, the Red Chinese. But, but, but pointing, you know, this was not. Despite what someone like the, the, the. The Cold, the Cold War hawks alleged. This is not Stalin like, you know, sitting in Moscow, you know, trying to, you know, goad America into this Asian war, you know, whereby then, you know, the so voice would ever have an opportunity on Berlin or something like that. What. And then. But it just, you know, didn't go as planned. Like that's not what happened at all. But you know, the, what Stalin was really doing, in my opinion is Stalin realized that the Soviet Union needed China, okay? The Soviet Union needed China as much as the United States needed Western Europe. Because what became the Warsaw Pact, this was, this was not some sort of, you know, equivalent to Western Europe or some sort of equivalent to the, you know, the capital base and, and resources, human material that, you know, America and the UK had in NATO. Really all the Warsaw Pact was, with the exception of East Germany was, was the defense cordon. You know, it was literally space wherein, you know, the Red army could deploy in depth to protect itself or to stage, you know, what they characterized the preemptive assault all against NATO, you know, occupying, occupying Poland with hostility, you know, you know, and you know, creating like a client regime in Bulgaria. Like this. These things were, these are not profiting the Soviet Union and these things were huge drains.
- [198:00]
D
Okay?
- [198:01]
C
But what the Soviets had was the Soviets had China. And even though China was, you know, very, very underdeveloped at that time in power political terms, you know, pure military terms, there's incredible power potential and frankly a communist block that's literally from, you know, from Berlin to, to Hanoi contiguously. I mean that, that's a good, that that's about, that's about a fifth of this planet. Okay. Just the, just the raw kind of geostrategic momentum of that is incredible. So this, this, that was a lot of what underlay kind of this, this. The apparently on its, on the surface kind of odd posture that Stalin had towards, towards the Chinese and, and the Chinese war against the Americans. But it also, it did lay the foundation for the Sino Soviet split because the Soviets were not generous and there's in their material support at China and they very much made it clear that you Know, they viewed China as their client regime and they would not. Stalin would not commit to a. A. A proportionate response if. If America deployed, you know, atomic weapons, you know, what they were. There's atomic bombs, you know, against. Against the Chinese. And don't get me wrong. I mean, Mao himself, who I think was something of a crazy person and somewhat primitive, frankly of mind, I. I do believe he was basically plain spoken and. And he said no uncertain terms that, you know, the, you know, the reason why, you know, Peyton would not give its loyalty to. To Khrushchev is because Crucial was not the man that Stalin wasn't. You know, Stalin was a remarkable figure. I mean, whatever else we can say about him. And. But my point being that, you know, the man with Stalin at the helm, the kind of relationship I just described, you know, characterized by the Chinese being very much subordinate to Moscow grudgingly, the Chinese would have accepted that under shin. They would not accept that under, you know, some. Under some. Under some apparat like. Like cru. Sh or under, you know, some kind of, you know, under some kind of, you know, octarian dictator like Veri.
- [200:23]
D
Of.
- [200:24]
C
But that's a bit outside the scope of what I wanted to cover here. What it did in. What. What it did do on the communist side, um, In.
- [200:34]
D
In.
- [200:34]
C
In kind of like column, as it were. I mean, China did fight the United
- [200:40]
D
States to a standstill. And I mean, that was no small thing.
- [200:43]
C
Okay. I mean, yeah, the Chinese had certain advantages on the ground, but America then had tremendous military might. You know, it's a huge disparity, and the Chinese absorb huge casualties. But I mean, that, you know, that. That. That emboldened. That emboldened Ho Chi. That emboldened Paul Potter, you know, that emboldened, you know, that emboldened 100 insurgencies, you know, on every continent that, you know, the United States is not invincible, you know, and that I think that. I think I can't really be overstated. And, you know, when people. People kind of substantiate my claim that, you know, the Soviet Union really, you know, kind of developed a not so subtle credibility problem. And in. In the wake of the Korean War, you know, it was. It was a year before Stalin died. It was March 10, 1952, you know, died basically right after cessation of hostilities in. In Korea. And it was.
- [201:55]
D
We talked about the Stalin memo or
- [201:56]
C
the Stalin note last time, you know, what was called the key snot and some of the. In some European media. So later on, you know, when kind of the comments this Weren't publicized. But, you know, Stalin's notion was a. A demilitarized Germany, you know, as a neutral zone. You know, Germany being retained a kind of nominal military force under. Under its own authority. But, you know, all. All troops, you know, gone from German soil and a, you know, and this jury neutrality enforced on Germany. How that would be enforced, I was never really clear because negotiating reached that point. I would assume, you know, some kind of UN mandate would have. Would have been, you know, that it was. It was managed. But be as it may, there's a reason why you don't. I mean, yeah, obviously the Soviet Union, their big. Their. Their big problem was, you know, the strategic amount. So the fact that, you know, NATO
- [203:00]
D
was at their doorstep.
- [203:01]
C
What became NATO and then, you know,
- [203:03]
D
was at their doorstep.
- [203:05]
C
I realized NATO was. Was incorporated in 1949, but it was about 10 years, in my opinion, before it became a truly, you know, like integrated combat force on other than just, you know, kind of a kind of mandate for, you know, operate within the borders of these at least nominally sovereign states. But there's a reason, you know. You know, the reason why Stalin made the effort when he did. You know, if the Soviets were in this great kind of position of strength and you know, in. In power political terms, you know, if the Korean War was, you know, really going their way and, and really kind of, you know, breaking the face not just a Truman, but of. Of the entire. The entire kind of Cold War apparatus. I mean that, that, that would. Not. That that's not what he would have been doing, but the. It's also too. The fact that, I mean, it was doomed to fail because I mean, this was. This was submitted a mere eight months before the president election. You know, and it. I realize, you know, I realized Eisenhower wasn't any arch warhawk, but he was. He was a military man and he was. He was viewed, you know, kind of as a. The Soviets were afraid of him, number one.
- [204:22]
D
And that's. That's all.
- [204:23]
C
That's an interesting topic unto itself. But point being, for better or worse, regardless what everybody feels about Eisenhower in
- [204:30]
D
history, you know, like, he was.
- [204:31]
C
He was viewed as the man to
- [204:32]
D
wage the Cold War, okay?
- [204:33]
C
And that. That's really what kind of catapulted him into office. But even. Even taking Eisenhower, the equation obviously, obviously eight months out from. From. From. From a presidential contest, nobody's gonna, you know, nobody's gonna be willing to undertake, you know, some kind of shift in. In. In status of relations with the Soviet Union, you know, in. In 1952 of all years. But what I want to kind of segue into is the person that Conrad Adenauer like before I started recording, I said I wanted to get into the culture, the Bundes Republic and, and how that came about and why it came about.
- [205:17]
A
Tyler reddick here from 2311 Racing Victory Lane. Yeah, it's even better with Chumba by my side. Race to chumbacasino.com let's Chumba. No purchase necessary VTW Group void where prohibited by law Law CTNC's 21/plus sponsored
- [205:31]
C
by Chumba Casino to understand that you gotta understand and our, you know, Edna was the first, he was the first post war Chancellor. I mean if you, if, if you consider West Germany, Ben, you know, like the real Germany or whatever and you know the successor state of, of, of, of the German Reich, you know, he was, he was the first post war Chancellor. Right. If you reject that, which I, I don't think people do, some might, I mean I don't, I don't consider the current German state to be particularly legitimate, but that, but in terms of, you know, linear political legacy, it, it, I, I, I think, I don't think it's controversial to, if I add now as the, you know, as the first real post war executive. But he ad is an interesting guy and it's kind of fancy to me that he was the man selected for the role, but it makes perfect sense
- [206:27]
D
and it goes to show you how
- [206:29]
C
America at one time had a real political class of men who, who really, really understood kind of the nuances of power politics and you know, the kind of deeper implications of, of, of what, of what, of what chiefs of state represent both the, the people whom they ruled, but also to you know, allies and foes alike. And there was a perfect example of that. And now we're. He was born in 1876, so he took office when he was 73. He stepped down when he was 87. I believe that makes him the oldest European head of state in, in the modern era. Patan I think was 84, 85. So I mean, and there was a remarkable guy and he, and now was born in the Catholic Rhineland. Okay. And he was born literally, you know, at the kind of zenith of Bismarcks Kulterkampf. And for those that don't know, you know, Bismarck, the kind of arch Prussian Protestant, he did not trust Catholics. He, he purged Catholics from the kind of civil apparatus which by that point was quite robust. You know, Prussia was really kind of modern state. You know, they had, they had the kind of, you know, Real pension system. If. I mean, is anybody who can make like a kind of welfare state apparatus work, it's the Germans. And they did. That can't be argued. I'm not a particularly. I. I'm not some big government, you know, Keynesian type or anything at all. But even, you know, I stipulate that Prussia ran with. With true, uh, you know, kind of military efficiency in all the best, you know, in almost laudable ways. But one of the things Bismarck did was he very, very much purged Catholics from positions of authority. And it.
- [208:32]
D
It was.
- [208:33]
C
It wasn't brutal in the sense of,
- [208:34]
D
you know, Catholics weren't rounded up and
- [208:36]
C
shot or something and weren't availed, you know, the physical violence, but they really were locked out of political and cult fairs for all practical purposes.
- [208:45]
D
And.
- [208:46]
C
And this. This made it. This had made a huge impact on an hour, okay. Not only because he was a Catholic, but, you know, his family was. Was very politically engaged, you know, and now himself, obviously, this is, you know, was his career path.
- [209:01]
B
He.
- [209:02]
C
He considered this, you know, very, very unjust. And because he actually was devout, you know, Edna was not. His Catholicism was not superficial.
- [209:12]
D
And it wasn't just.
- [209:14]
C
It wasn't just, you know, kind of a. Like a perfunctory identitarian signifier. You know, he was very, very Catholic. And he found his way to the. To the center party, you know, which was the Catholic Party, you know, really of. Of the epoch, it was 1905 or 1906. Ed Nau. He was elected the city council of Cologne. A few years later, he became the vice mayor of Cologne. You know, he was considered son of a political prodigy, okay? And he. He again too. He wore his Catholicism on his sleeve, but he was respected pretty much by everybody. I mean, even by the. Even. Even kind of the most. Kind of the most dedicated person, like culture warriors, you know, everybody. Everybody respected him. You know, he was. He was a man of. Of high integrity, okay? He. He was adamantly opposed to political extremism, but not in. Not. Not in kind of the way that, you know, Carl Schmitt disdained, you know, the. He was not kind of the parliamentarian who believes in endless discussion and superficial compromises. Ed now really did believe that, you know, the. The cunning of reason in history and, you know, kind of the mind of God is what. Is what guides politics and. And. And men are kind of limited participants in. In affairs of state.
- [210:46]
D
It.
- [210:48]
C
You know, he. He was dedicated to rooting out disorder, inefficiency, irrationality. He was very much a moralist. You know, he had no tolerance for corruption, but he, you know, he had,
- [211:00]
D
he had no time for, for ideologies
- [211:02]
C
of, of the right as well as the left. You know, it. I think, I think of him as somewhat like. I think he had something in common with people like Dolphus in Austria. Okay.
- [211:19]
B
Frankly, he wasn't a sensible centrist.
- [211:24]
C
Yeah, yeah. But an authoritarian when called for. But also again too, I mean, very not, not at all a secularist, you know, very, very much, you know, Catholic in his orientation and, and in, in his evaluation of, of the, of what, you know, the metric is for good government. But I mean Ausch's political culture is very different than the one that had never emerged from. And the, the kind of, the, the kind of. The kind of quasi clericalism of somebody like Dolphus, you know, like Adnar wasn't running around, you know, like, like instilling priests and in the civic apparatus or something like that.
- [212:03]
D
Okay.
- [212:04]
C
But he, but he was, he was not at all kind of the secularist parliamentarian, like I said, that, that people sort of associate with, with you know, compromisers. The, of the, of the Kaiser Reich and the Weimar era. You know, I mean, the, the, the, the kind of, the kind of toxic parliamentarism that that Schmidt lamented. I mean, yeah, obviously reached zenith and Weimar for obvious reasons, but it, this kind of thing in its root is a Reich, you know, like it really, it really did and that's, that's important to bear in mind. But he became financially known during the Great War. He, he involved himself, you know as, as a, as, as a merit clone. He involved himself very much in managing Everest remedy, you know, food shortages born of the embargo. It was an early like, like sausage derived from soy and things this, these kinds of alternative food technologies. Adenauer was responsible for getting that off ground, you know, which, which was revolutionary in those days. You know, he, he worked hand in with the army and a Valent Cologne as a base of supply and, and as a hub, you know to reconstitute forces and things like this. You know, he, he really, really rose to the occasion, you know and became something of a heroic figure in the minds of people not just in Cologne, but you know, he became quite well
- [213:53]
D
known throughout the Reich.
- [213:56]
C
However, he, he, he was somebody who became something of an intermediate, something of an intermediary between, between elements and, and Berlin, which is interesting. And when it became clear that uh, when it became clear that uh, the, the French intended to occupy the Prussian Rhineland, he had the Machiavellian notion of dissolving. Dissolving the Rhineland into a new autonomous state, kind of like a demilitarized zone that would you know, the stipulation of the French would. Would not occupy it and the foreign element would.
- [214:48]
D
Would set foot on its soil.
- [214:49]
C
You know, as good as it being this kind of like you know, nominal autonomous zone. And both the Prussian governments and, and and and the Weimar regime were totally against. Against any plan to bring up Russia with the vibrant regime. This. This was in 1919. Yeah. I mean immediately before. Immediately after abdicating the what remained of the right government was totally opposed to it. But it was a. The point is that was very. That was very forward looking in its thinking and very much and very subtle kind of in its. And it's cunning. And that kind of became characteristic of an hour. It he also too when it was the Tree of Versailles which was presented formally in June 1919 and now or knew as anybody did, it was in the know that some sort of punitive regime was gonna be coming down the pipeline. And I think his idea was that you know, the less kind of like the more like devolved the Reich was like the harder it would be to you know, to kind of bleed it dry. It's. You can kind of indefinitely. You can kind of indefinitely tie up reparations regime if you know you have this kind of. If you have a kind of sovereignty, you know in all kinds of ways.
- [216:21]
D
So it's.
- [216:24]
C
I. He had Germany's best interest in mind in these things he was doing. What was interesting is he. He very much collided with. With Gustav Stressman. And you know, I've. I made the point before I think in. In our. In one of our previous series that Stressman was a compelling guy and I think he's not. I think he's not really given to you I think of him also kind of accountable to Ramsey McDonald who I think is kind of an unsung figure in British politics. It never looked at Stressman as being too Prussian. He looked at him as, you know, not, not. Not just, you know, a rival for the Chancellorship because Edna did in fact covet the office. But he you know, he viewed his vision as fundamentally at odds with what was you know, possible and feasible. And that's really kind of sabotaged
- [217:33]
D
sabotage and narrowest designs.
- [217:36]
C
The idea was, you know for the. A coalition of the Christian Crats and the. And the. And the Center Party, you know to, to. To constitute the ruling quorum and. And add an hour. True to forum. He'd. He. He managed to develop good offices with
- [217:58]
D
the Social Democrats as well.
- [218:00]
C
He refused to negotiate with the communists, but he'd managed to decouple a lot of key figures of the Social Democrats from the kpd. And this caused a lot of consternation
- [218:12]
D
obviously on the left, which was, you
- [218:14]
C
know, kind of a brilliant play by Eden Hour. But it also, it ingratiated, you know, certain people to him that you know, moving forward would have facilitated, you know, a real, you know, a coalition that actually had legs in terms of its ability to, to pass legislation and, and, and take, you know, executive, take unilateral action when required and, and have something of a mandate across the aisle, which was remarkable for 1926. But it has kind of is just personal collisions with, with Stressman ended all of that. I mean that, that could be a whole episode unto itself. But what's, what's significant is when you know, the National Socialist breakthrough in breakthroughs in 1930 and 32. Ed Narrow wasn't just mayor of Cologne, but he was president of Prussian State Council. You know, and obviously the National Social is one of their key constituencies. Not because they had, you know, such strong support, but in elite circles they certainly. But also just, I mean, you know, Prussia being the political, you know, the like the political core of the German Reich defended and sat on the Prussian State Council meant that he was either
- [219:45]
D
going to have to.
- [219:46]
C
Some kind of, some come to some kind of concord of the National Socialists or step aside. And interestingly, it went on the night of the Long Knives. Edna was actually arrested and not allegedly for his own protection and he wasn't harmed in any way. And he was released after the, after the, you know, after the, after the dirty work of. Or the, the bloody business of the, the revolutionaries was done. But he wrote a 10 page letter to Gearing, you know, who by then was galley to Prussia and as well as the chief of the Prussian police. You know, he made the point of Gary, he said that, you know, when, when the National Socialist Party was banned, I allowed your people to, you know, fly your national flags and Prussian buildings I build with of, you know, our public facilities, you know, to the National Socialists so you could hold your meeting, you know, because I wasn't, I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna exclude German people and you know, veteran fighting minute that which most of you were from the political discussion, you know, and this is how you thank me is by placing me under arrest. And apparently this really kind of hit Gearing hard and according to Speer as well as others, and I don't ear to be a valid testimony, particularly valid on most matters, but on some things, because he'd have no reason to lie about it. I do. And according to Speer, Hitler made the point that An Hour was a good man. And regardless of our differences within him, our main National Socialists, you know, we leave him alone, you know, and that's basically what happened. I mean, he was. And now refused. He didn't. He not only refused to join the party, but he. He. You know, he basically refused. After his arrest, he refused to kind of cooperate in any meaningful way.
- [221:50]
D
Okay.
- [221:50]
C
So he was unceremoniously removed from all, you know, his remaining offices, like appointed offices, you know, and, you know, told, you know, you're free to go about your business, but, you know, have a nice life. You've got nothing coming. And Adnar actually spent some time living in a monastery, you know, and in later years, he said that this is what he kind of had. You know, he came to certain. He had certain, like, epiphanies about, you know, the German nation and, and. And what configuration of state was, was going to allow it to survive. The German survives the people and whatnot, which I think is basically true. You know, Adonara was not some. He wasn't some intellectual or some student of history. He wasn't. He wasn't a guy like de Gaulle or like Adolf Hitler. You know, he is this kind of guy. Polestar, like we talked about was his Catholic faith and, you know, kind of like a. Kind of a pragmatic sense of how to constitute a government, you know, that the Germans could live with as a people, you know, but that, you know, if. If not ideal would. Would allow their, you know, survival in perennial terms. And at the end of the day, I mean, that's. That. That's what the function of a government is, is to guarantee the posterity of a people. But the Eden Hour, being the man that the Allied occupation authorities essentially chose to lead Germany is fascinating. And again, it shows you how, you know, again, at one time, however misguided the regime may have been in, you know, just in pure. In terms of pure competence, like America, at one time, it. It had very, very strong Department of State, very, very tight intelligence apparatus that allowed it to identify, you know, who. Who, you know, who should be insinuated into these roles. And I think within the boundary rationality of what America and the UK and France wanted to accomplish in Germany, like, Adnauer was the only man who I think could have done that. And kind of finally, what I had now had going for him in Their eyes. He was, he was, he was constitutionally
- [224:11]
D
anti Russian and anti Soviet.
- [224:14]
C
What he did say when, when a few topics he would pontificate elaborately on in theoretical and historical terms was the relationship of Germany to the east and specifically, you know, the relationship of the German state to Russia. And you know, he said, he talked about kind of, you know, what in his view was the love hate affair of Berlin with, with, with Russia and the Russians and you know, the kind of, kind of Machiavellian yout that you know, kind of ultimately brings Germany into concord with the Russians and other times they're at odds depending on you know, the, depending on the characteristics of the extant strategic landscape as well as the, the internal political situation. And Ad Nara said, you know, that, that, that, that ends now. You know, the Russians are if not our enemies, they're, they're certainly our adversaries. You know, we, we, we're going to stand with the west and with Europe and with the Atlanticist concord at all costs. He refused to recognize the DDR at all. He said it's not a legitimate state. You know, he, he denied, he denied them any diplomatic representation. And I mean that probably is what more than any other single variable is what is what kind of made an hour acceptable to the activation authorities. But it was, it was everything taken together. I mean there was Soviet Union were a diamond, you know, ambitious guys who drew McIntyre here from WWE.
- [225:52]
A
Wielding the Claymore can be a life of chaos.
- [225:54]
C
But I'm not dominating in the ring.
- [225:56]
A
Chumba Casino is how this warrior takes a wee break. With hundreds of online social media games
- [226:01]
C
and new weekly releases, there's always something
- [226:03]
A
fresh to try and those daily boosts next level. Even my free time feels like Valhalla. So when life feels like a battle, kick up your feet, have some fun and let's Chumba. No purchase necessary vgw group void we're prohibited by law. CTS and C's 21 plus sponsored by Chumba Casino.
- [226:19]
C
You know, hadn't been National Socialist but who hated the Russians. I mean it's, it's not like Adnauer had like a rare resume in that regard, but this kind of. He had rare credit beef and an unusual sort of integrity. I think that coupled with his sort of unconditional cold warrior stance made him kind of like the natural choice. But again, I mean it's the fact that the fact that the men in charge could divinate that he was a natural choice is a testament to the fact that again at one time America had a highly competent foreign policy establishment. What, what's, what's in place now is literally considerably illiterate. I just, I realize I made that point again and again. People are probably tired of it, but
- [227:10]
D
it's something that can't be overstated.
- [227:13]
C
But interestingly too you know our he, he said that people need to, he said you know, Vermont NSS veterans deserve to be respected and they're patriots. And, and he said that, you know, we're not going to put like shame on these men. But interestingly the reason why Otto Reamer and Hans Rudolph both were Reamer was he stabbed the Socialist Right Party, you know which was, which in my opinion was a legacy party of the NSDAP in real terms. And they, they were pro Soviet, they were negatively anti American and pro Soviet. And he he, he was very, he very derisively referred to Adenauer as quote Rabbi Adnauer. And there was a lot, there's been a German right, the National Socialist right who absolutely despise Adenauer. But they, that and I, I, I, I understand completely like I get it but it's not, it's not as simple as Adnover just being like some NATO lackey or some you know, or some, or some social democrat who, you know, who, who saw an opportunity and who spent the war years, you know
- [228:31]
D
you
- [228:31]
C
know, just toying a lot where you had to you know, avoiding the front. Well it's like avoiding the eye or the authority. And suddenly you know, he you know, he started you know, waving, waving, waving the NATO banner as soon as, as soon as the Soviets were were in Berlin. You know, he had genuine integrity. Okay. I'm not gonna like, I, I obviously my ultimate slides with guys like Reamer but in his, in history I mean but uh. That's, that's uh. That, that it's. I, I wanted to dedicate basis this entire episode and now we're into the semincy because that's I really something of a dry topic but it's just essential to, to understand and it could have very much gone a different way and I make the point about Korean War kind of building NATO because like again I really. NATO was constituted in 1949 but it, there wasn't really much to it then. Okay. And there's still, it still hadn't even been decided if you know, Germany was going to be allowed to, permitted to you know, rearm at all in any capacity and then what kind of became the prevailing sensibility. You know people make the point a lot that the you know, the, the The West German army had uh, such boring uniforms. That was by design because uh, the original I concept floated was being a European defense community wherein there'd be a common command structure. You know, no one state, you know, would have. Would be dominant in you know, in executive officer roles or in command authority. And the, you know, the, the uniform for the post, the multinational force. It was supposed to be devoid of anything that could be affiliated with, you know, national chauvinism or, or something that could be like identified with any particular country or cultural tendency. So you're left with. So the, the Bundeswehr like then is now like these guys look like bus drivers or something, you know, as opposed to like the East German army, which are like dope, you know, But it's, you know, it's, it. I think the key takeaway also like I said was that the, as we'll get into later on in this series too the, like ultimately in, in the final phase of the Cold War, the key, the key strategic battle is strategic battle space was, was the Pacific, you know, and that, that's one of the things that underlay the Department of the Navy under Jim Webb, you know, and Reagan's idea for a ship Navy, you know, the idea was, you know, to deploy battle platforms like survival battle platforms to wave what amounted to a two front nuclear war. We can think of nuclear war as having fronts at all. But that's, that's. Yeah, I mean the fact that people like, people like Kenan who talk about, you know, the inherent danger of the Far east and, and the kind of, and, and you know again the flu of, of possible conflict, I mean they were proven right. I mean during the Cold War like Asia was pretty much always at war. And I mean America fought two major wars there and probably half a dozen others that you know, were kind of something short of, you know, open conflict but, but, but very much not conditions at peace. And I mean the, there was a, I mean that wasn't happening in Europe. I mean. Yeah. I realize again as I stated that there's really only one conflict dyad in possible in Europe and it was a catastrophic one. But that had the Korean War not happened or had it resolved some other way, the, the entire course of subsequents would have been different. And it, and had MacArthur got his way some kind of, some kind of open ended war with, with. And the problem is, I mean I stipulate that what was referred, like we talked was referred to as the tautology of well, you know, we, we've got to defend Korea because our Forces are there and we're going to fight to defend our forces. I mean, that's nonsense. But if the alternative is, you know, we, we've got to push for total victory in Korea. But doing that means fighting China and fighting China means, you know, landing the China guy, Sheikh's nationalists there and, and
- [233:29]
D
waging war to the end until, you
- [233:31]
C
know, until the communist regime falls. Well, if you do that, then you're
- [233:34]
D
at war with the Soviet Union, know.
- [233:36]
C
And then, and I mean there's this. It's not. The Cold War was. It was important not to. Not just, I mean, and it was an, it was a question. It was an existential reality that conflict paradigms couldn't just be considered in binary terms. And I mean that even, even up through the 80s, there was something too. I'm not talking about like the, the fools, like kind of, you know, the kind of peace movement just calling for like unilateral discernment. I mean, but some of the people, you know, who, who really kind of like opposed the, the, the, the Reagan and Team B notion, it's, it was, you know, there. The Cold War is not something you
- [234:24]
D
could just turn off.
- [234:25]
C
And it wasn't just a question of, you know, pursuing a court like a conciliatory posture or an aggressive posture. You know, especially by the era of deep parodies, the. Every policy decision had. Had very serious consequences that themselves, other consequences, not all of which could be foreseen. You know, it was an incredibly dangerous time. But excuse me, I'm just, I'm getting
- [234:50]
D
over a flare up so I really. I sound crummy.
- [234:52]
C
I'm sorry, but I'm gonna wrap, I think that, I think I'm gonna wrap up this, this episode. And like I said, I realized it was a bit dry, just kind of. Right. It was. It's essential to lay foundation for some of the, you know, for some of the summer events we're going to talk about. And we're going to get into the Cuban missile crisis in Vietnam in the next episode. And I think that everybody finds that sort of stuff exciting. I mean, at least I do. But
- [235:21]
B
you had also, you had also mentioned talking about McCarthy.
- [235:27]
C
Yeah, let's, let's. We'll take that up next episode too because yeah, obviously we're getting into. Yeah, getting. We'll get into Eisenhower era in the Kennedy era. Yeah, about McCarthy.
- [235:37]
B
Yeah, all right, sounds great. Give your plugs and we'll get out of here.
- [235:42]
C
Yeah, for sure. Thank you, Pete. You can find me on substack real thomas777substack.com that's where you can access the podcast. We drive a podcast every other week, you know, on the same kind of stuff, you know, revisionism and, and mostly political theory kind of topics. But, you know, I, I take up current events too, particularly war and peace kind of stuff when it's timely to do so. You can find me on Twitter at Triskelian Jihad.
- [236:15]
D
The T is a number seven.
- [236:17]
C
But if you search for Thomas 777, you should find me. That's mostly where I'm active these days. I'm going to transition to YouTube and, you know, perhaps one or two other video platforms on the 1st of January and make that kind of the. The primary place where I post up content. But for now, that's. That's where I can be found.
- [236:45]
B
I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Quinones show, continuing talking about the Cold War. I know a lot of people are going to be really interested in this one. Thomas 777. How you doing, Thomas?
- [236:57]
C
I'm very well, thanks. Yeah, I hope so. And I wanted to get some housekeeping stuff because I haven't addressed people directly for a minute. I mean, not like I've got this huge audience or something, but I do have some paid subscribers who are dope because they make a lot what I do possible. Not much has gotten done the last couple weeks because I was second stuff. I think some of you noticed. But obviously I'm. I'm getting back to dropping fresh stuff now. I mean, literally right now, what we're doing here. But I, I'm gonna drop a fresh pod this week and kind of get back on top of stuff. So thank you for being patient. I don't like to leave people. I mean, I realize everybody's cool about such things, but I mean, people do pay to like, read my stuff. So I, I don't really like to leave them hanging like that. But yeah, today I wanted to get into the Cuban Missile Crisis today because it's something, it's key, not just understanding how the later Cold War developed. I think of the later Cold War as Brezhnev onward. Okay. And Brezhnev became General secretary in, in 1964. Okay. But the early Cold War, you can think of as, you know, Stalin's tenure through Mr. Khrushchev's regime, and not just temporarily. Can we think of that as the early Cold War? But that was before parody set in, you know, strategic parody. And people bandy a lot about nuclear weapons today, which is another example, in my opinion. Of how kind of disengaged the public policy discourses from the realities of things nuclear weapons are. A practical purpose is obsolete not, not because the technology is obsolete per se, but because they don't really have utility in, in a tag or strategic sense outside of a very peculiar paradigm. And unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on where you fall on the issue, that that paradigm emerged splendidly in, in the 20th century. And what. What's. What what's become sort of dogma in terms of. In terms of strategic analysis and game theory derived from the precedent of the Cuban Missile Crisis. More than any other singular event, this was somewhat compromised reliance on the model that I, I just, you know, from relying upon the data derived from the Cuban Missile Crisis and the models created therein in terms of strategic forecasting and, and nuclear war planning and deterrence and things like that. Some of that was itself rendered obsolescent by the emergence of deeper parodies after 1973, 74. But the basic terms remain and the basic, the basic conceptual model endures. And I'm going to get into why that is in a minute. But first we got to understand, to understand the Cuban crisis, you got to understand the character of Mr. Khrushchev. Khrushchev became, for all practical purposes, you know, chief executive of the Soviet Union in 1958. You know, I mean, there was always kind of a strange, or not always, but in most cases, there's an unusual sort of consolidation of offices that constituted the executive seat of power in the Soviet Union. Sometimes that was a trifecta of source. Sometimes it came down to the, the rule of one man, but it superseded, it superseded any single office, okay? And after the death of Stalin in 1953, there, there was a lot of. There's a lot of palace intrigues, as it were, okay? As one could probably imagine, between Stalin loyalists, you know, between. And reformers as well as, you know, between men who represented sympathies common to the same faction, but, you know, who had personal designs on power. And Khrushchev was emergent triumphant for a variety of reasons, not the least of which, ironically, in the view of the west at the time, I believe, and even in hindsight, and even among some revisionists, you know, Khrushchev really was something of a reformer. You know, he was. He was kind of a proto Gorbachev in a lot of ways. People lose sight of this because his posture was so aggressive in foreign policy as regards efforts to rectify the strategic imbalance. And we'll get into what I mean by that in A moment. But Khrushchev, he wanted to normalize the Soviet Union, okay? Now this presented a problem for a few different reasons. On the one hand, it was imperative for him to normalize and thaw relations with the west because otherwise nothing was going to get done. Okay? There, there was going to be some kind of interdependence between the east bloc and the west, okay? Regardless of.
- [241:56]
A
Hey, it's Ryan Seacrest here. And I have discovered a fun new escape from the daily grind. Chumba Casino. Chumba Casino has hundreds of social casino style games. It's all free to play anytime, anywhere with daily bonuses. So get to chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary bgw group void we're prohibited by laws e terms and conditions 21 plus what
- [242:12]
C
anybody's power political ambitions were.
- [242:16]
B
Okay?
- [242:16]
C
That's, that was just the reality of, of, of nascent globalism. And make no mistake, globalism began in the ashes of, of the second war, okay? The fact it wasn't realized until, you know, the night of November 9th, 1989 and subsequent is, is incidental. This was, this was, this was the enterprise common to both Moscow and Washington. And, and what form that it would all the system would ultimately take once consolidated was really what underlay the political side of the Cold War. So Cruise have had to present a face of, of normalcy of the outside world in some basic sense. However, as we talked about particularly in the last episode when we got into, you know, the, the battleground of the third world and the need quite literally to you know, to, to, to sway the non alike world into one's own camp as a path to victory in the Cold War. The, the. The only way to really animate these, these post colonial states and these in these developing countries to, to. To take up the cause of Marxist Leninism was to sell them in a basically radical program, okay? That's what was resonant with the people on the ground. That's what the cadres had been marinated in that kind of thought, you know, during World War II and after. Frankly, that's what orthodox Marxist Leninism is. You know, it calls for the development of a truly revolutionary sensibility where you know, power flows from the barrel of a gun quite literally. Okay? In tactical terms, somebody like Mao was far more of an orthodox Marxist Leninist than you know, the Eastern bloc cadres that succeeded Stalin, okay? Notwithstanding the fact that I don't believe Mao had any great understanding of. Of Marxism, I don't think he understood it at all particularly. But on the tactical side, as A political revolutionary, somebody like Mao, or probably more probably more precisely Ho Chi Minh was exactly what Lenin envisioned when he, when he, when he, when he contemplated, you know, world, world socialist revolution. Okay? So there was this weird dichotomy wherein the Soviets had to present a reformist face to their chief adversaries in the West. But you know, they had to maintain a kind of veneer of, of, of orthodox radicalism, you know, to their constituents, if we can think of them that way, or their cadres, you know, in the third world. And this was a very delicate minuet and it frankly led the foundation of the Sino Soviet split, which we'll get into in coming episodes, but that's a bit outside the scope for now. But when crucial did take the helm of the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union had some pretty substantial momentum technologically. They were arguably winning the space race. You know, Sputnik was, was the first, was the first man made object in orbit. The first man made object in space was a V2 rocket. So you're gonna thank the German Reich for that. But you know, Sputnik was a, this was a big deal, okay? Like a lot of people, the people in the, in the nascent Pentagon at the time said well, this is just a stunt. You know, it doesn't, it, it doesn't prove anything. It didn't matter if it proved anything or not. It didn't matter if, you know, there was a direct military application, you know, to parking a satellite in orbital space for a few minutes. The point is that they were the first to accomplish it. And this developed a kind of momentum all its own in terms of perception, okay? But the Soviets had a real political problem that became a national security problem that was ongoing even despite those victories in this era. We talked about the Berlin airlift last episode and you know, how that really kind of was the key initiatory or instigating event of the Cold War. I think if we can identify any singular occurrence. Between 1945 and 1950, over 1.5 million people emigrated from the Soviet occupied zone to West Germany. And most of these people were young. They were prime working age. A disproportionate amount of engineers, men with military experience, people educated in the sciences, women of childbearing age. I mean this was a real problem, okay? A subtext to, to, to the issue of immigration across the inter German border, although it was never explicitly stated by their camp, was one of the reasons Germany's coveted. It's, it's not, it's not just because of, of geostrategic Accident and kind of where, you know, Germany is located on the map, okay? It had to do with, it had to do with the human material. Okay? You can control the German population that literally the human resources they're in that, that you wield tremendous power in terms of your ability to mobilize for warfare. I mean that's just a fact, okay? I mean if people want to say that it's not true or that that's eugenics thinking, okay fine, you can label it whatever you want. It's a fact and everybody accepted it, okay? There's a, there's a reason why, there's a reason why the DDR was, was the Jew on the crown of Warsaw pet.
- [247:40]
D
Okay?
- [247:40]
C
And it wasn't, it wasn't just because it was the westernmost point at which, at which the Soviet sphere of influence stretched. As this went on, another, another layer was insinuated into the, into the issue of, into the issue of divided Germany as the, as the four power regime fell apart and it became clear that, you know, demilitarization was not in the cards. The Soviets came to realize that West Germany as a basing hub for, for American nuclear weapons was, was going to become the reality. And this had already been accomplished in terms of low yield tactical nuclear forces. It hadn't escalated beyond that in part because the strategic balance was still unstable. And we'll get into what I mean by that in a moment. But the Soviets were very, very aware of this. So the problem was twofold. You know, the problem was the fact that they were literally hemorrhaging people by the sieve that was Berlin because the, the inner German border had been shut since 1953. But Berlin being 110 miles within East Germany represented a kind of, it represented a kind of metaphorical valve as it were, wherein people could pass rather freely between, you know, the eastern occupation zone in the west and once in West Berlin, the West Berlin authorities under, under the dominion of, you know, of, of the United States, the UK and France, they considered all German citizens to just be citizens of Germany. They did not recognize East Germany as a sovereign state. So if Eastern, if people, these German passports made it to West Berlin like they were good to go, they, they, you know, they'd be granted full rights of the many bales in the Bundest republic. So there's the practical problem of, of, of the Soviets losing the human material they needed to wage the Cold War. Quite literally there's the political problem of, of credibility, you know, in that, you know, if, if you claim to represent the Real Germany and the, you know, the will of the working class and the government situated in East Berlin. Yet you're hemorrhaging people. It, it's a terrible look, frankly. And the entire, the, the, the entire communist enterprise again relied upon the perception, especially in the third World, you know, to represent a competitive system that was an equitable alternative to that in the West. And finally, as I just indicated, the, the, the, the permanent division and mobilization of, of, of of Germany, uh, essentially allowed America and the NASA NATO alliance to potentially maintain a, a permanent splendid first strike capability. You know, if they chose to deploy strategic nuclear forces at that time, there were not hypersonic cruise platforms available. So we'll get into that later, obviously.
- [251:10]
D
But
- [251:13]
C
the solution to this was somewhat fascinating. There's a terrible human cost. So I'm not being flippant, but on August 13, 1961, at midnight, the East German border police, the national Volks army and elements of the group, the Soviet force in Germany, they begin construction on the Berlin Wall, okay? And it wasn't clear at first what they were doing. Ulbricht had actually suggested this based on analysis from national Volkswagen engineers. The Soviets did not think it was possible. And the Pentagon, interestingly near me, corps of engineers said it's probably impossible. But to emphasize the point I just made about, you know, the mentioned material, if you will, of, of Germany. Well, the Germans found a way to quite literally wall in West Berlin, which again, I'm not making light of a terrible situation, but the Berlin Wall remains an architectural marvel that really, I don't think, I don't, I don't think anybody could pull off other than the Germans. And I think we can stand by the statement in confidence. So that had the effect of lessening tensions. You know, there, there wouldn't be another Berlin airlift type situation. You know, absent a state of general war, it was unthinkable that Berlin would be blockaded again. However, that didn't obviously accomplish anything in terms of remedying, you know, the problem of, of basing availability in West Berlin. And I mean, the, obviously what's key to keep in mind is that, okay, I mean, the Soviets could base their own nuclear forces in the DDR and they could threaten Europe with, you know, with, with, with the threat of a catastrophic nuclear assault. But that, that, that wouldn't matter like what it came down. It was the ability to deter and threaten the United States. And obviously the Soviets had no capability to do that, which is why Cuba became so coveted. Now, before we get into the actual development of the crisis, let's get into what prevailing conceptual models were for. For strategic planning in in the nuclear age.
- [253:42]
D
Okay.
- [253:44]
C
The two primary models were presented by Hans Morgenthau, who I think I referenced in the last episode. You know, Morgenthau was a traditional realistic. Mearsheimer is a neorealist. You know, as I indicated, he, he. He deals with and dealt primarily in structures and institutional features and how they affect outcomes as regards as, you know, as regards deterrence and war fighting. You know, Morgan Thau, he basically presented an anthropological model buttressed by what he called rational discipline in action. Like what did he mean by that? He was saying. What he was basically saying is that, you know, the bounded rationality to states at war or political actors generally not. They don't even have to be states. States obviously are the primary, primary actors in. In par. Political affairs. You know, at least from 1648 to the present. That's changing, but it's still endorsed, you know, regardless of how pre rational or even arguably irrational the origins of war are. Like what it's underway, you know, war is guided by this bounded rationality. Okay. The waging of. Begs the question as to how, you know, as to how, as to whether this has been demonstrated in the historical record, like an agalite of Morgan. That would say, well, over time, you know, there's, there's a remarkable continuity, okay? If you're talking about great powers at war, whether you're talking about the British, the United States, you know, Russian foreign policy, you know, even lesser regional powers like the Austro Hungarian Empire, you know, in the Westphalian era, at least over time this bears out, okay, the, the competing model. I mean, maybe not so much competing in absolute terms, but the, the kind of game theory model, you know, that relies more on codable variables. If you were, if you will, you know, based upon, you know, the availability of war fighting technologies was kind of. Was presented by Thomas Schelling. Schelling was primarily an economist, but he was a game theorist and he was a public intellectual of the sort that really, really thrived during the Cold War. And I. It doesn't really exist anymore, at least not in public life. Schelling's old point was that deterrence is accomplished, you know, not, you know, not, not, not by the propensities of the individual men who are the, who are the human decision makers, you know, nor by the relative balance of forces on each side. But the stability they're in. And the stability they're in comes down to available technologies. And in the nuclear age that it comes down to the ability of each side to basically threaten the other with a retaliatory strike when attacked that you know, makes a bolt from the blue assault cost prohibitive. You know, unacceptable damage will be endured. In other words, okay, showing seminal tax was the strategy of conflict okay throughout the Cold War. This kind of informed policy in some either more either directly or obliquely literally until 19 until the night of November 9, 1989. Shelling's a controversial figure about his influence can't be, cannot be denied. Now based on both, based on either of those models or both of them considered together. 1962 really 1960 to 1963 was so dangerous because they're an equilibrium had not yet set in. There's a lack of, there's a lack of informational awareness on both sides as the absolute state of forces and being and capabilities. Even, even if, even, even if that awareness had been. Even if those blinders could be as it were could be overcome. I mean even if there was a situation a total information awareness, there's the availability of delivery mechanisms and whether you know, their operational status would have caused a situation where it could have served either side's interest to strike first without waiting for, you know, an intelligence reveal, you know, as the absolute status of forces on the opposing side. One could think of two men blindfolded and neither's aware of the armament of the other and whether trying to draw a bead, you know, threaten the other to deter future hostile acts. But neither is capable of seeing, you know, his opponent, you know, and that's really what in part created, you know, the danger of the Cuba situation now how it first came about, like why Cuba again and more to do with accident and geography. As early as July 1962, Raul Castro, who was Fidel's brother and was in some ways the shadow foreign policy executive of Cuba throughout the Cold War. Summer 1952, he visited Moscow and it's believed that this is when the Soviet Union began large scale shipments of the tech of technical and military aid to Cuba. You know, including men who were qualified to, you know, to, to operate, you know, strategic nuclear platforms. August 1962 is probably when. Is probably when the actual PLAT missile platforms arrived in, in Cuba. They were not yet operational. But this is when, you know, this is when the disassembled components first arrived on the island. September. Interestingly, the, the Kennedy administration declared that if Cuba became a base for, for Soviet nuclear weapons, it, it would, it would be viewed as an act of war. So this was on everybody's mind before the crisis, before, before the crisis ensued and before the reveal of, of the actual basing of weapons on the island. This gives you an idea of the dangerous game Khrushchev was playing, frankly. Okay, now it was Sunday, October 14th. That's when the infamous or infamous U2 reconnaissance flight took the photographs that, you know, ultimately led to the reveal. It was a subsequent Monday the 15th, that conclusively, at the National Photographic Interpretation center, the YouTube film was analyzed and medium range ballistic missiles were identified near San Cristobal, without a doubt. Now thus ensued the most dangerous phase of the crisis. Tuesday, October 16th. Kennedy and his and his principal foreign policy cabinet were briefed on the situation and discussions began immediately on how to respond. Now obviously there's two principal courses. I mean, there's three. I'll get into that in a minute. But in terms of action, the two principal choruses were, you know, a massive, a massive air assault, possibly including nuclear forces and a subsequent invasion of the island. You know, the, the destruction of the weapons platforms, the overthrow of, you know, the defeat and utter annihilation of the Cuban army, the overthrow of the Castro regime and the occupation of Havana, which undoubtedly would, you know, lead to the deaths of, you know, hundreds of thousands of people, including, you know, any Soviet soldiers on the ground, or alternatively, sort of a naval quarantine or blockade and a threat of future military action. Now, interestingly, McNamara was the man who had the third position, if you want to look at it that way. McNamara said, don't do anything. This doesn't matter. Why doesn't it matter? Because, you know, these intermediate range platforms are going to be obsolete in six months. And which was true, you know, and America was about to replace their own Jupiter missiles with the Polaris system, you know, which was a submarine launched ballistic missile platform. And even were that not the case, McNamara said, you know, despite, despite propaganda to the contrary and despite Khrushchev's own statements, you know, the Soviet Union's pro. The Soviet Union probably has between 30 and 80 viable warheads. Okay, we get into a, we get into a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, we can annihilate them. I mean, yeah, you know, 20 million Americans may die, but that's a war the Soviets can't win. Do nothing. But that wasn't really the issue
- [263:14]
D
was,
- [263:14]
C
the issue was twofold. I mean, there's the Monroe Doctrine, obviously, and that always is controlling on questions of our political affairs. Just on principle, you can't allow a rival actor to deploy within the Western hemisphere. I mean, if you do so, it's you, you're essentially making hash with your own line in the sand, as it were. It doesn't matter that, you know, the, I mean, I mean, even if, even if the weapons deployed are already obsolescent, it, it, you know, it, it doesn't matter. And secondly, you know, as a matter of political will, if America won't, if America won't fight 90 miles off its own coast to prevent the deployment of strategic nuclear forces, a credibility gap develops as to whether America is going to fight and sacrifice a hundred thousand men to defend West Berlin. You know, I mean, God love McNamara, but there's, you know, there's a calculus beyond the, beyond the merely strategic that matters in these things and particularly in the Cold War, which was as much political as it was, you know, a military contest and you know, about, you know, who could accomplish what within, you know, the proverbial balance of terror. On October 17, before A, before a formal policy decision was reached, Kennedy ordered what we consider to be rapid reaction forces to be moved to bases in the southeastern U.S. further YouTube flights and the photos derived therein indicated additional sites and a total of 16 to 32 missiles. So in other words, even taking what McNamara said at face value, which I believe, which Kennedy did and which I believe we can in, you know, in, upon reflection, obsolescent or not,
- [265:33]
D
if those
- [265:33]
C
missiles are operational, that's the potential for, for an utterly devastating counter value strike was definitely there. You know, I mean this was not an illusory threat. However anyone feels about it. And the character of Castro is, is, is relevant too. You know, Castro, whatever can be said about him was, it was, was a true revolutionary in the purest sense. And he repeatedly stated that, and this was revealed later in communications between himself and, and the Soviet Foreign Ministry and Khrushchev's office itself, that if the United States assaulted Cuba, the, the Soviet Union should go all in and you know, just treat it as an act of war against the communist block and, and, and, and launch river missiles within operational. Decades later, at the height of the conflict in Nicaragua, Casher was convinced that the United States was going to directly intervene, which might trigger a theater wide conflagration. And he reiterated that the Soviet Union, the Wars Up Pact, you know, should consider, you know, waging preemptive nuclear war against, against NATO. I mean he really believed this. You know, this wasn't, you know, it's easy to dismiss that as so much bluster in the case of many men like Castro. Absolutely meant it. You know, I mean I, I have no doubt about that. So Consider that there's a question as to whether or not, you know, what, what the Soviet response would have been if there was a massive invasion of Cuba. I mean, there's, there's, it's more than a remote possibility that, you know, there would have, they would have responded by launching whatever munitions that were currently operational.
- [267:29]
D
Okay.
- [267:30]
C
And again, even if that, you know, even if that, even if that was a war the Soviet Union could not win, that would have, that would, that would have meant 20 to 30 million dead Americans, you know. Within hours, Thursday, October 18, Kennedy was visited by the Soviet Foreign minister Gromiko, who asserted that the Soviet aid to Cuba was purely defensive. Kennedy had not yet revealed that he knew of the existence of the missiles. He reiterated his public warning of the previous September, you know, that deployment to Cuba strategic nuclear forces would constitute an act of war. Basically was signaling to give Gromico and out, I believe. Okay, it. And this also raises the question as to why, why, why didn't, why didn't Cruiser try to de escalate when it should have been clear that Kennedy was signaling through a kind of, you know, would pass for secret diplomacy in the post Nuremberg era? Why, why didn't, why, why didn't, why didn't Cruiser try and de escalate the situation? I've got my own ideas on that, but what's inarguable is why, why cruise ship deployed these weapons in the first place when as we just acknowledged, you know, and as McNamara at the time observed, you know, that this actually didn't rectify the strategic balance imbalance on its own terms, and it had the potential for catastrophic escalation. So why, why did he do that? I believe that this was supposed to be his trump card as regards Berlin. I believe that Khrushchev was going to demand on the open floor of the United nations that NATO abandoned West Berlin. And when, and, and uh, and when Stevenson or whoever, you know, haughtily would just say, you know, it's laughable, of course we're not going to do that. At that moment, cruise shift would reveal, well, you know, we've got operational weapons platforms in Cuba, 90 miles off your coast. You know, if you want them to be removed, you know, you'll, you'll, you'll seed Berlin to unconditionally to our sphere of influence, which seems like a crazy as hell idea, but Khrushchev was a gambler. You know, for all of his, for all of his tendencies towards reform and a conciliatory posture, in absolute terms,
- [270:19]
D
his.
- [270:22]
C
He viewed none of this as being truly possible in power political terms, unless the Soviet Union could negotiate from a position of, if not absolute, then relative strength. That's what underlay all of this. It was always a political ploy more than a strategic move, if that makes any sense. And that. That's key. Not just understanding the Soviet Union in its epoch, but I think the kind of Russian national character, like, I don't speak Russian. I've never visited there. I'm certainly not an expert on Russian people, their culture, or their affairs, but I do know something about power politics, and I think I. I think that's. I think. I think. I think this is key. Okay. Putin himself is. Is something of an unusual executive, even for Russia. But generally, in structural terms, what the Kremlin does reflects this same kind of tendency in common. I. I don't. I think that's constant. It doesn't. Oh, go ahead. We gonna say something?
- [271:43]
B
No. No.
- [271:44]
C
Okay. October 20th. Kennedy finally decides on the quarantine. Plans are drawn up to blockade the island of Cuba. Notify the American people, and, uh, prepare for war if, you know, the Soviet Union opts to sue for war to break the blockade. The. During this time, Curtis LeMay maintained. He vociferously objected. And, you know, I. I made the point again and again about, you know, may being really kind of a towering figure in, you know, in. In, you know, really, really throughout the Cold War, but especially just to force the man's personality. I mean, think about Kennedy. You. Basically, it was waging an uphill battle to kind of win the respect of the military establishment. I mean, he was a veteran and a war hero, but he was viewed as something of a punk rich kid on the Beltway by many. And back in those days, I mean, you had a lot more serious people who, you know, kind of carved out niches for themselves and the national security apparatus. You know, what we view as the deep state today. You know, you got Curtis LeMay, you know, demanding, you know, demanding Kennedy give an assault order, you know, backed up really by, you know, the entire Pentagon apparatus. And in those days, you know, Strategic Air Command was king. It had very much eclipsed the army in terms of its, you know, clout and. And policy and. And policy authority. You know, things like this. You know, I mean, whatever. I'm not some great fan of Kennedy at all. I. I think anybody should kind of instinctively discern who's at all familiar with my content. But, you know, the guy did. Kennedy did have balls, and he did have backbone, okay? That can't be denied. What really, what really solidified Kennedy's position though, he consulted with General Walter Sweeney of Tactical Air Command, who, you know, and, and you know, going back to the Second World War, uh, you know, the fighter mafia and Strategic Air Command like had had this kind of ongoing rivalry. I, there's military guys who claim, well, yeah, there's, you know, obviously, you know, Kennedy tapped Sweeney because he wanted a foil to a may. I don't think that's true. I think it was because Sweeney was the man who such that experts existed in those days on, you know, how to knock out, on how to knock out strategic nuclear platforms. You know, Sweeney was it. And Sweeney said that, you know, even, even with the best possible mission outcome, he cannot guarantee 100 destruction of, of the missiles. Okay, so again, you know, this raised the question as to, Well, I mean the mo. There's a possibility that's not, you know, and it's, it's greater than a slim possibility that the moment Cuba came under assault, if these platforms were in fact operational, the launch order would be given, you know, and who even knew the situation on the ground? I mean one would hope that the Soviet army technicians responsible for the deployment would have ultimate authority. But I mean, who's to say, you know, that can't be guaranteed? And in a proverbial fog of war
- [275:27]
D
situation,
- [275:30]
C
expressly delegated authority doesn't always carry the day anyway. Monday, October 22nd. Kennedy consulted former Presidents Hoover, Truman and Eisenhower, briefed them on the situation, you know, asked for their support if in fact the country, you know, was, was going to go to war. He received his, he received, you know, absolute blessing from all three men. He formally established, Kennedy did the executive committee of the National Security Council,
- [276:06]
D
you
- [276:06]
C
know, consisting of McNamara, McGeorge, Bundy, Curtis LeMay, Bobby Kennedy, who probably should not have been in on the conversation because he was the President's brother and there's a conflict of interest there, but you know, he was for better or worse. But that's, you know, the, the smoke filled room with all the personalities mentioned. I, I just mentioned present. You know, you see this like dramatized on like History Channel stuff like that's, that's what they're depicting, they're depicting the executive committee of the National Security Council. Okay, ultimately Kennedy, Kennedy wrote directly to Khrushchev, which seems like a brief of protocol, but the Cold War was strange in this regard. You know, this really, in my opinion, said the President too. You know, there's like people, people talk later in the Cold War, by the, by the Carter era It was the, quote, you know, like bat phone or the red phone in the White House that was the hotline of the Kremlin and vice versa. You know, this idea of, of, of. Of heads of state directly contacting one another across, across, across the enemy divide in a potential crisis like it seems improper and the traditional kind of laws and customs of war.
- [277:24]
A
Ready to put a little spin on your day? Then check out Chumba Casino's new online social casino game. Ryan Seacrest 10K ways. It's free and packed with 10,000 ways to play only at chumbacasino.com no purchase necessary. BGW Group void. We're prohibited by law. CTS and CS21 plus sponsored by Chumba Casino.
- [277:40]
C
But the Cold War in some ways was, you know, a breach with precedent. But regardless of that, the merit of that or the efficacy of that or the effectiveness of neutralizing potential crises, it was probably the correct move for Kennedy to directly write the cruise ship by telegram. And he did him. He did this prior to addressing the, you know, the American people by television, which was frankly, like, you know, a sign of respect and allowing cruisers to save face, you know, and the key, the key phraseology of the telegram was, quote, I have not assumed that you or any other sane man would in this nuclear age, deliberately plunge the world into war. What he was saying again was basically, you know, deployment to Cuba is an act of war. And I'm giving you an out here, okay? When I'm well within my rights as President United States simply to, you know, assault the island, neutralize the threat, and ask questions later. And regardless of whether it's correct for Kennedy to directly address CRU at the man himself and not go through diplomatic channels, that, that, that was the correct statement, I believe. So again, we gotta, We've got to give credit where credit is due to Mr. Kennedy, however else anybody feels about him. 700pm that evening, October 22nd, that's when Kennedy speaks on television revealing the existence of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, announcing the establishment of the quarantine and declaring that, you know, until the missiles are removed unconditionally and completely, you know, the quarantine will not be lifted. And failure to do so, you know, will constitute an act of war. Secretary of State Dean Rusk formally notified the Soviet ambassador, which, again, that's not just part of good offices. It indicated the severity of Kennedy's statement. That's essentially what you do when incident, you know, preceding a formal declaration of war. Okay, so that's another thing to consider as well. Also, like we talked a lot about, even though I don't really accept the nearest term model about institutions determining, you know, the course of power, political events and crisis outcomes. There is a momentum to the apparatus of government, particularly as regards war and peace. And once kind of the mechanism of war mobilization is in place, it, it's very, very difficult to put the brakes on it.
- [280:36]
D
Okay.
- [280:38]
C
The fact that Kennedy was entirely serious about going to war, waging nuclear war over Cuba, that itself created conditions of escalation, I'm not saying that was the wrong thing to do at all, quite the contrary, it was the right thing to do. But this added to the danger at every step, decisions that are made that lead to real world outcomes in the national security apparatus and its state of readiness and deployment. It creates an elevated, creates an elevated danger. Okay, there's, there's a sociological question there, there's a comics question of you know, man's relationship to technology. I, a lot of that stuff is like far beyond my abilities. Okay, to analyze, but what I just stated is indisputably true. Tuesday, October 23rd. The following day Assistant Secretary of State Martin, he sought a resolution from the Organization of American States and the oas. I mean these days we think of it as, you know, primarily like a trade block and things like that. During the Cold War, obviously it had, it had, it had profound geostrategic significance, you know, because any, if you're going to wage war in Latin America, which was a very real possibility throughout the duration of the Cold War, a quorum of support from friendly regimes they were in was absolutely essential for obvious reasons.
- [282:18]
B
Um,
- [282:22]
C
the, the Soviets proceeded to, to deploy submarines to the Caribbean Sea which were facing off immediately opposite the, the US Navy uh, blockade vessels which uh, again to the uh, And indicated a Soviet willingness to fight and to keep, you know, to fight at least defensively if Cuba was assaulted. You know, I mean became clear immediately that the Soviets were intending to fight for Cuba. Like to what degree they're going to do that, whether the missiles were operational or not. You know, the, the Soviet Navy was going to fight and that added another, that added another wrinkle as it were. Because even if, even if, even if the ballista, even if the nuclear capable platforms were not operational, a, a conventional war in Cuba with the Soviet Union, obviously there was going to be some sort of response in Berlin. Okay. I mean, and then it's, you know, you're, you're, you're dealing with a potential conflict dyad that will result in the third World War at some point. You Know, down, down. Down range of, of uh, of hostilities. Wednesday, October 24. Cruz have responded to the Kennedy, to the Kennedy telegram stating that the Soviet Union does not respond to ultimatums under threat. You know, stating quote, If we were acquiesced these demands, it would mean guiding oneself and one's relations with other countries not by reason or by submitting to arbitrariness. You are no longer appealing to reason but wish to intimidate us. Thursday, October 25th was when the crisis could be said to have broken in some ways. Soviet freighters that have been bound for Cuba turned back to Bucharest. UN Secretary General. The UN Secretary General called for a quote, cooling off period during which the embargo would be temporarily lifted and you know, only non military products would be permitted to pass through. This is rejected outright by the Kennedy administration on grounds they would leave the missiles in place, the removal of which was an express condition of any negotiation. Friday, October 26th was the date of the infamous casual letter urging cruise shift to initiate a first strike against the United States in event of invasion of Cuba. Whether CRU responded or not, or whether Romigo responded, whether the ambassador to Cuba had any sort of formal response from the Kremlin, it's not clear. But again, there's a, an inference that can be drawn here. I believe not only the Cubans not have the authority to launch the missiles. I don't believe they were capable of it. There's an entire protocol to launching a nuclear missile. It's not just a question of pushing a button or having the right code. You know, it like in the movies. So the odds of a,
- [286:49]
D
of just
- [286:49]
C
a general like counter value assault, nuclear assault if Cuba had been invaded, I think it's somewhat remote. I don't think I'm reading too much into this statement by Castro. I mean why this was a private communication at cruise ship. Like why would casual be, you know, flexing in that kind of private capacity? Like it doesn't, it doesn't make sense otherwise, you know, you know what I mean? Like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's the finally and finally resolution ultimately came when Khrushchev wrote a long rambling letter, a second letter, a few drafts of which when the Soviet archives were open were found and leading a lot of people to believe that Crucho was drunk when he wrote or dictated it, which is probably true. It's not just, you know, some kind of punitive revisionist account like Khrushchev really was drunk in, in the execution of his official duties.
- [287:50]
D
A lot.
- [287:50]
C
You know, it which Owes in part owes you know, to his apparent instability. This was the source of the, of the quote, you know, demand that America pledge to not invade Cuba. Like what in, in power politics? What is some open ended pledge and not invade another country? I mean that, that doesn't amount to anything. Even as a face saving measure. It doesn't really make any sense. This is immediately followed up by a second letter from Moscow which probably came from Gromigo or from somebody in the Politburo Standing Committee or its equivalent. The second letter demanded actual conditions be met primarily the removal of Jupiter missiles from Turkey. Now Turkey and Italy were the, these Jupiter missiles were intermediate range ballistic missiles that have been deployed In I think 1957, 57, 58, around there, maybe as late as 59, but I'd have to double check that. I'm sure somebody in the comments will raise me over the calls if I'm misstating the date. They were deployed in Italy and deployed in Turkey. As I said by this, at this point there were not strategic nuclear forces based in West Germany. But the Soviets made much of this at the UN in their own propaganda, informal objections to Department of State. But these Jupiter missiles were on the cusp of being obsolete. You know, like we talked about earlier. The Polaris submarine system was due to be launched within months and it was ultimately fielded in 63, 64. And so I mean this is basically meaningless. I mean, okay, as a safe face, as a face saving gesture, maybe it carried some weight. But I, I think that, I think Soviets were, were still very much lagging. And in terms of the technological gap as regards strategic nuclear delivery systems that changed dramatically in the 70s for reasons we'll get into in subsequent episodes. But this was the source of, this was the source of the concession, if you want to look at it like that, to remove, to remove the missiles from Turkey. And that that night Robert Kennedy met secretly with the Soviet ambassador and they reached a basic understanding that the Soviet Union would withdraw their strategic nuclear platforms from Cuba under United nations supervision in addition to an American pledge, you know, this pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret understanding as it was referred to, to remove the Jupiter missiles from Turkey. And this too I believe substantiates what I just said about the Soviets not really realizing that the Jupiter platform is going to be obsolete. Because if it was just a face saving measure, why wouldn't they make it public? Like they thought these platforms were viable and they thought they were getting something. You know, it because the fact that it was, the fact that it was not an above board concession that defeats the entire purpose of any, of any political theater that, you know, might have, might, might have been utilized by way
- [291:34]
D
of it of such a gesture.
- [291:39]
C
Now the problem with that, the problem was this. In the view of people like LeMay, but also in, in, in the minds of people like Schelling and frankly, even people like Herman Kahn, there was a sense that eventually conflict with the Soviet Union was inevitable.
- [292:00]
D
Okay?
- [292:00]
C
And owing to the precedent of the 20th century, that seemed reasonable. That wasn't just a warmonger's kind of fantasy, you know, it wasn't just, you know, something that, you know, cynical careerists in, in the national security establishment like to say or bandy about because it rationalized, you know, the, the kind of clout they had. I mean, yeah, there was some of that, but if you were, if you were, if you were a middle aged man in 1962 who, who, whose entire career had been as a, you know, in public service directly insinuated in, in the national security establishment, like your entire, your entire professional life have been characterized by, by, by, by negotiating crises of, of, of a basic national security and, and, and, and conditions of general warfare or, or crises short of, but approaching general warfare. You know, this, this just seemed to be the reality of the 20th century strategic landscape. So that being said, if eventually, you know, conflict is inevitable, you've got an obligation, you know, to defend the United States at all costs. And if that means preemptively, you know, waging a nuclear war against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact to absolutely defeat them before strategic nuclear parity is accomplished, then that is in fact, you know, not just the moral thing to do, but that is what you are obligated to do incident to, you know, your office and the duties incumbent therein. And that was really kind of the, this underlay a lot of what was going on in, you know, the proverbial war room, okay, around Kennedy. It wasn't just, you know, it wasn't, you know, like the way people like Oliver Stone characterize it, like these kind of crazy Cold War hawk warmongers and you know, these kinds of men of like, better nature, you know, saying no, we're not going to go to war. Like, it's not, that's entirely the wrong way to conceptualize it. I mean, yeah, again, I, I don't have any illusions about a lot of these people at all. Believe like there were, there were personalities, you know, insinuated in, in, in worlds the highest authority in the Cold War who, who, who definitely were like that. You Know, who definitely did not have the national interest in mind, or they thought they did, but, you know, they were clouded by, you know, matters of, of, of pride or whatever. I mean, I think, I think a Thomas Power is being one of those types, frankly. But this is, but that's what's essential to keep in mind, particularly because, like I said, even people, even people are somewhat, you know, sympathetic to, you know, politics, the right or, you know, revisionist perspectives. You know, they continue to cast people like, they can cast people like LeMay
- [294:54]
D
as, as what I just said, these
- [294:55]
C
kinds of strange love or Jack D. Ripper type characters. But it, forgive me if this was kind of dry. It was essential to kind of explain like, how that entire paradigm developed of the Cuba crisis and it's. The shadow of it loomed large. I don't just mean like in metaphorical terms, but in terms of how policy was conducted as regards deterrence and, and, and the strategic balance in the Cold War. And this really endured until 1983. In 1983 was so dangerous, you know, I mean, that's the Abel Archer era. That's the way kind of Cold War historians think of it. But what preceded Abel Archer and one of the things that, you know, created the conditions that, that, that, that led to the war scare was the threatened deployment of the Persing 2 platform in West Germany, you know, which really was a game changer. And, you know, the, the end of Dayton really kind of shattered the assumptions that it underlay, you know, deterrence from the Cuban Missile Crisis onward. But it's a complicated issue. But we'll get into, we'll get into Johnson, Vietnam and Nixon next episode. Nixon's gonna take more than one episode, but I will at least like, get into Nixon's first term next time. Incident or discussion of, of Johnson in Vietnam and. Right. I mean, we'll see, depending on how long you're willing to go. But yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll get into some of that stuff. Yeah, yeah. And again, forgive me if that was a, if this was a dry episode. It was essential to kind of lay a foundation for what comes subsequent.
- [296:52]
B
No, I think this is a topic of interest for a lot of people. I can't let you go with that mention and having you mentioned the Bay of Pigs.
- [297:02]
C
Yeah. It, I think what the Bay of Pigs owes to more than anything. I mean, the traditional kind of discourse on it, you know, is it's like, do we blame like, you know, the CIA and Department of State or do we blame the President, the national security establishment, it's not that simple. There's a lot of, there's a long history. I, I was reading about Angola a lot some years back and you know, one of the reasons why those poor guys who ended up serving under Kellen got, got, got massacred I mean by the Cubans and by the, by the Angolan forces like Holden Roberto, he basically sold British intelligence and CIA ability goods, you know, about the reality of like forces and being on the ground and what they were capable of. The anti Castro Cuban lobby, similarly, they had their together a lot more than somebody like Mr. Roberto, but they had a lot more money and they had a lot more flash and they had a lot more kind of clout than they did actual capabilities. Okay. I think there's a lot of people even in the intelligence community and I've got nothing nice to say generally about you know, the CIA of the era, but I think they had, I, I, I, I, I think, I think they had good intentions within the found irrationality of, of what they were trying to accomplish. And I think I, I, yeah it was nai maybe, maybe it was naive to think that they could accomplish what they set out to with what amounted to a skeleton crew of, of cowboy type mercenaries and, and self styled uh, uh, you know, and self styled uh, counter revolutionaries. But they also they, they underestimated the strength of uh, of, of Castro and the gameness of the Cuban army. And this wasn't entirely clear until later. Like speaking of Angola, you know, The Cubans deployed 50,000 deep to Angola. They fought the South African Defense Forces which was a crack army. You know, they met him head on. You know the Cubans, the Cubans were basically constantly deployed throughout the Cold War. You know, like they, they really believed in the MER's Leninist cause. Did Would air cover have made a difference? I mean I, it wouldn't have hurt any. But I mean I don't this idea too, it's like okay, let's say, you know, let's say, let's say this, let's say this kind of like you know, mercenary army, you know, had, had ground assault aircraft and an air cover all day. You know, Cuba, Cuba wouldn't have just like Communist cube wouldn't have just like fallen apart the minute like these guys marched on, on Havana. I mean the, Cuba still is, I mean Cuba, they're, they're down for the cause. I mean to this day as much as anybody can be. I mean, I mean I read it like that. I don't think it was realistic. It the only, the only Yeah, I don't, I, I don't think there's a military solution to the Cuba problem. You know, like they're, I, I just don't, I mean, that's my take on it, like at a glance and we can do a dedicated episode on it if you want. There's a lot there. But that's just, you know, I, my point is, it's like, I mean even one of the reasons that, you know, and like jump to go a little bit outside the scope. But you know, let's say, let's see the counterfactual develop that, you know, we, I, I kind of touched on. You know, like, let's say that, you know, let's say, let's say America did assault Cuba in 19, in 1962, okay? And, and the, the nukes weren't operational and the Soviets didn't do anything in Berlin and it didn't escalate. It was just, you know, the Marines and U. S. Airborne Corps or 18th Airborne Corps and you know, and, and the U. S. Air Force pounding the hell out of Cuba, you know, and killing half a million people. You know, like what, what then were you, I mean, affecting some permanent hostile occupation in Cuba, like would have been a bloodbath, you know, like, like think about that. Like that would, that would have been a complete freaking mess. You know, like, I don't, I don't, I don't think there was a, I don't think there was a political there, I don't think it was a military solution to it. One of the reasons why, you know, I'm one of the few people, even though I, I'm far from any kind of like, like cold war hawk in, in the study of history as I think, you know, but I consistently praise I, you know, u. S. Efforts in, in, in the cone of South America and then later you know, in, in, in, in Central America, in the Panama canal zone, you know, to resist Warsaw packed ingress because that was absolutely essential because that would have, in military terms, America was actively losing the cold war in the final phase, okay? And if, if Latin America had truly gone red in these key locations, that would have, that, that, that would, that would, that would have totally changed things. But notice what Nixon and then later Reagan administration didn't do is didn't go in heavy. You know, they made, they went in with a very small footprint, okay? And they developed very effective counter revolutionary cadres. You know, I think that the contras weren't like nice guys or something, okay? Like the Weissen was not a Nice guy. Neither was general finisher, but they were effective guys. And they, they weren't, they weren't just guys who were in it to, you know, know, get paid in advance. Their own, you know, kind of cloud and status. I mean, but my point is that, you know, the, the American national security apparatus treated it as a political problem, not as this like military exigency. You know, like we're gonna, we're gonna go into Nicaragua with 50,000 Marines and kill everybody like that. No, that, that, that, that doesn't work. So that's my, but it's complicated and I'm not a military guy. But again, I, I don't know. I don't think what I'm suggesting can be disputed in any kind of absolute sense. But yeah, that's my take on it. Kind of at a glance, or in
- [303:27]
B
short, rather one thing you said early on about the million and a half basically Soviets pouring into West Germany.
- [303:37]
C
Yeah.
- [303:39]
B
Those who hate Germany and want to destroy her have never stopped that attack, have they? Of just pouring foreigners into there to this.
- [303:52]
C
No, I don't, I, I, and that's what's key is that the, and that was, I mean, that was Yaki's whole point about the Cold War. Okay. Yahi's whole point was that, look, yeah, East Germany is, is a horrible regime in some ways. It's, you know, in, you know, in some ways it's, it's literally dystopian. But it's not going to be here forever. And it's not, it's not destroying, you know, the cultural and, and like racial foundation of the country. You know, like, you can weather that storm. Like you can't weather the storm of, you know, the US NATO socially engineering Germany out of existence. I mean, that's what we're seeing today, you know, and that's what I constantly, like, I can't see brush up against people, you know, not just online. But I mean, this happens to me in person when I'm in at venues where, you know, the issue's being discussed. Like, I think I'm like defending Stalinism or something. Like, I'm not. Okay, but that's not the point, you know, Like, I don't see how this can be disputed anymore. Okay. It's like you think, you think, you know, I mean, it's like how, how can anybody, how can anybody dispute that? You know, I mean, it, well, I mean, it's just like the, this day. I mean, that, that, that's, that's the, you know, Yaki was a, was a Genius. Because he was, you know, he was writing about this in. Night in, you know, in 1958, 59 or whatever, like even before, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't some guy like me, like, you know, looking at history in the rearview mirror, you know, I mean, but look at, I mean, look at, look, look at the former east block. Okay, yeah, those states have terrible problems today, but they don't have the problems of some, you know, some, some crazy, of some crazy Zionist or, you know, elite or, or these, or these kinds of devils types, you know, declaring that, you know, they would, you know, they would, you know, we, we need to import as many, you know, third world populations as possible because, you know, this, this country is, you know, too Orthodox or too Catholic or, you know, or too white or too German. I mean, that, that's, that, that's, that's an existential problem that can't be overcome. Okay. Like if you got a up government in Romania or Croatia, it's like, well, yeah, okay, Government's not part of the world, always up. That's different than having, you know, a social engineering regime with endless resources that's trying to annihilate you as, as a culture and as a people. You know, like one you can handle, the other you can't. I mean, but I mean, I guess that's a topic for another episode or series entirely. But. Yeah, I mean, that's, yeah, that's the issue with the Cold War. Nobody's, I mean, maybe there's some people who claim that, you know, the, the, the east block regimes were good regimes. I mean, I, I'm sure you can find some Marxist fossil at some college saying that. I'm certainly not saying that. But that's not the point.
- [306:41]
D
You know, it,
- [306:44]
C
you gotta look at these things.
- [306:45]
D
Outcomes.
- [306:46]
B
Yeah, there's nuance there when you.
- [306:48]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [306:49]
D
Say the least.
- [306:51]
C
Yeah.
- [306:51]
B
When you read, when you read Yaki, especially when you read the Enemy of Europe, you're, you're experiencing nuance.
- [307:00]
C
No, exactly. And it's also plus to bear in mind, like the Cold War by design wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, whether it's like, okay, even if you're this arch kind of like anti communist and everything, it's like, well, okay, you know, the, the, the Cold War happened basically because the concord fell apart between Washington and Moscow. You know, and the idea was, you know, everybody in Washington who you had any meaningful authority was perfectly okay with, you know, essentially half, half the planet being, you know, being under the, being under the heel of Stalinism. So it's either here nor there. You know, like whether somebody like me in in the historical record is defending or condemning that system. I mean it, you know, it like the fix was in like by America. Like it's these regimes didn't emerge out of nowhere and were it not for America, the, you know, communism would have, would have would have been annihilated from this planet in, in 1941.
- [308:04]
B
What the.
- [308:05]
C
But yeah, yeah, exactly.
- [308:08]
B
That's a great way to end it. Give your plugs we'll get out of here.
- [308:14]
C
Yeah, for sure man. It I. You can find the podcast and some of my long form on the sub stack. It's real. Thomas777.substack.com and once again forgive my absence from producing fresh stuff the last couple weeks, but I'm, I'm back in the saddle. I promise we'll be back to the regular kind of bi weekly schedule. You can find me on Twitter at Triskelion Jihad. The T is the number seven. It's one word.
- [308:47]
D
Otherwise
- [308:50]
C
I'm gonna launch the YouTube channel January 1st. I know that that's been long in coming. I decided to push it back to January a few weeks back because I want to do it right and I've got a great production team helping me, which is what I needed because I'm kind of a tech and at long last, Imperium Press and I found a printer on for Steelstorm 2. So that is going to drop in January and that's what I got.
- [309:23]
B
Awesome. Thank you, Thomas. Till the next time. I can't wait. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Quinones show continuing the Cold war series with Thomas777. How are you doing, Thomas?
- [309:36]
D
I'm well, thank you, man.
- [309:38]
C
Today I wanted to get in the
- [309:44]
D
get them as a somewhat difficult topic to address. I mean not, not for the usual reasons people bandy that but because there's
- [309:51]
C
so many misconceptions both on the left
- [309:53]
D
and the right and then kind of sensible center. I'm talking about historians. I mean and there's still a lot
- [309:57]
C
of people still have a lot of
- [309:58]
D
strong feelings about it. Be that as it may, there's a
- [310:04]
C
basic lack of understanding even among a
- [310:06]
D
lot of revisionists of the kind of broader political context of the war, both in strategic terms and in ideological ones.
- [310:13]
C
And what I think of as apocal terms. I think people who watch our content,
- [310:18]
D
they've, they've kind of become habituated to some of my, my cons, my vocabulary. When I talk about Epochal events. You know, I'm not just trying to draw up on highfalutin language or trying to create my own kind of, you know, revisionist Esperanto. I, I can't think of a better way to describe what I'm talking about.
- [310:36]
C
And that's a rough translation of a
- [310:39]
D
phenomenon that Ernst Nolte describes, you know,
- [310:42]
C
and it,
- [310:44]
D
understand it, it's kind of practical zeitgeist, you know, but that's. I just wanted to kind of can clarify that.
- [310:52]
C
And you know, as I've talked about
- [310:53]
D
before, much as, as much as I esteem guys like Mearsheimer, they're kind of
- [311:00]
C
locked, they're kind of boxed in to
- [311:03]
D
the kind of like the clause of Witzian conceptual cube, as it were.
- [311:09]
C
You know, like a guy like Mirror Shimer.
- [311:11]
D
If, if one wants to understand predict
- [311:15]
C
in terms of predictive modeling, I think there's nobody better than him. And like, for example, like in the
- [311:19]
D
run of the 91 Gulf War, nobody modeled the outcome of that conflict with more accuracy than he did. And in fact, most people were totally off base. He's a clause of Witzian thinker through
- [311:32]
C
and through in ways both praiseworthy as,
- [311:37]
D
as well as not so praiseworthy. But he's so fixated on, on conceptual
- [311:45]
C
modeling and on identifying like concrete variables
- [311:48]
D
that can be insinuated into that sort of modeling that he, he really misses apocal, like variables of apocal significance. Okay. Nowhere is that more clear than in his discussion of the Vietnam War. Miriam is one of these guys on
- [312:06]
C
the political right, like at the time
- [312:07]
D
and subsequent, you know, he was constantly, he was constantly issuing the assertion that Indochina was, was strategically without value. You know, he's got this idea that the global north, you know, Western Europe, you know, the United States and Canada, Japan, Korea and some of the, some of the upper Pacific Rim.
- [312:35]
C
That, that's, you know, in the Middle
- [312:36]
D
east, that's basically, that's basically geostrategic terms.
- [312:42]
C
Those the only.
- [312:42]
D
There's a location of the only stakes worth fighting for. But that's not why people go to war anymore, okay?
- [312:48]
C
And in fact
- [312:51]
D
states going to war over, over commodities or over, you know, to dominate trade routes and sea lanes, that's really, that really reflects kind of a narrow
- [313:05]
C
like, like a narrow, a
- [313:08]
D
kind of narrow piece of.
- [313:10]
A
Looking for a little Hollywood style fun. Check out Ryan Seacrest 10k ways exclusively at Chumba Casino. There's 10, 000 ways to play play get spinning for free at champacasino.com no purchase necessary. VGW Group void we're prohibited by law. CTs and Cs 21 plus sponsored by
- [313:25]
C
Champa Casino of the modern era, you
- [313:28]
D
know, wherein that kind of power, political competition, you know, translated very much to the concrete, the need to capture sort of concrete resources. You know, so it didn't, it didn't matter that Vietnam, the Vietnam War happened in Vietnam. You know, if it had happened in Nicaragua, if it had happened in, you know, if it had happened in, in Greece, if it had happened in, in Borneo, like it would, it would not have mattered. You know, that's that, that's where the communists pushed.
- [314:01]
C
That's where politics kind of conspired and
- [314:04]
D
intrigued, you know, for, for, for great powers to come together in hostile terms. And that's where America staked the line in the sand. So it didn't matter. All right, this is where communism fought, you know, the, the American led opposition.
- [314:23]
C
You know, what it, what, what it
- [314:24]
D
would that self identified as the free world. And that's what people like, that's what people in the right. Ms. Okay, I think people on the left, in contrast, you know, they teach college kids, you know, promulgated by people like Chomsky or by people like Howard Zinn, where they claim that like, well, the Vietnam War was just, you know, the Pentagon like murder machine profiting. That's not really true. I mean, the, the, there, there was a kind of, the logic of the body count did become kind of a
- [314:59]
C
incentive into itself.
- [315:00]
D
And that's perverse in all kinds of ways, but that's kind of the case
- [315:03]
C
in, in modern war in the 20th century. And I, I, I'm getting into that
- [315:08]
D
in the manuscript I'm writing right now about Nuremberg because about half of it gets into the, the 20th century generally. And yeah, there was, you know, there
- [315:15]
C
was all anytime there's, anytime there's a
- [315:17]
D
general war on and, and Vietnam was a general war, okay? You had a draft, you know, you had real casualties. You know, America was mobilized anyway owing to the situation in, in Europe and the ongoing, the ongoing strategic challenge presented by the, the Warsaw Pact.
- [315:39]
C
But I mean, anytime, and anytime you're
- [315:41]
D
dealing with a general war situation or conditions, you know, with, with, on that spectrum, there's gonna be, there's gonna be people and, and agents and, and, and, and companies that profit from that. Okay, but that's not, that's not, that's not the incentive, okay?
- [315:57]
C
Like, you know, America didn't, America didn't
- [316:01]
D
kill 3 million people and, and, and, and lose 60,000 of their own, you know, and eventually like impose like a decade long recession on itself just so that it could like sell helicopters to the Pentagon, you know, or so that cold could, you know, manufacture the arma light.
- [316:17]
C
And everybody makes money from, you know,
- [316:19]
D
outfitting the US army with the, that it needs. Like that's, that's just a very basic view of things and that's not, that's not reality and something I emphasize the people too. And it's hard for people to put themselves in, in this kind of conceptual mindset because, you know, the Cold War is like receding, like out of living memory. But there was real stakes to warfare in the 20th century. I mean, that's not to say there weren't reckless decisions made. And that's not to say that during the Cold War, you know, men in the Pentagon in command roles and in the Department of State then intriguing inspire, you know, to, to go to war when it, it wasn't absolutely the, you know, essential course of action, but this was taken very seriously because it was real consequences. But also you had a real coterie of public intellectuals shaping defense policy, you
- [317:15]
C
know, and you really did a lot
- [317:17]
D
of the best and the brightest putting their minds to the waging of warfare, you know, on the technical side
- [317:23]
B
at
- [317:23]
D
Los Alamos would be the zenith of that, you know, and people quite literally developing, you know, more and more effective nuclear weapons.
- [317:32]
C
But you know, you had, you like, I made the point people a lot.
- [317:36]
D
If this was 1970 or 1980, a guy like Elon Musk would be working on SDI. You know, you'd have guys who are going to work on Wall street now. It's quants. You know, they'd be working for the Pentagon or the Department of State or they'd be working for these NGOs, you know, to figure out how to, how to wage World War iii. You know, you didn't just have these idiots and these, these lose these like abject losers like, like, like Pete Buttigieg or whatever the, his name is, you know, these other, these other freaks that, you know, he's had in Washington since 1993. You know, just kind of, just kind of deciding that, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna generally deploy in some theater for no particular reason, mean that that did not happen in, in the Cold War because it couldn't happen and it just wouldn't have, it would have been like unthinkable. You know, the degree to which there's a paradigm shift in, in the public mind. It can't be overemphasized.
- [318:30]
C
But what I want to get into today.
- [318:32]
D
I want to get into the. The political background of Vietnam and why it became such a critical theater. And then next episode, like I said before, went live.
- [318:42]
C
You know, we'll.
- [318:42]
D
We'll get into the battlefield situation because that's an important topic. It's not just. I mean, I'm not a military guy and I mean, it's not really my wheelhouse, but I do know something about military science topics in a very like, abstract sense. I mean, obviously I don't. I don't have experience like, like grunts do or something, and I would not purport to. But the, but the kind of competing. I want to get into Westmoreland vs. Creighton Abrams and their kind of tactical orientation.
- [319:10]
C
I want to go to a guy
- [319:10]
D
named John Paul and Van and David Hackworth, you know, both of whom had had profound I ideas that they contributed on asymmetrical warfare. And, you know, I want to get into why the US army really, really couldn't adapt itself. It started. I single out the army because Frank in the Marine Corps as well as the Air Force, like, they did adapt free well. And the Air Force case, that's pretty remarkable because the Air Force was totally purposed to essentially like drop nuclear ordinance on the Warsaw Pact at that time
- [319:43]
C
and you know, to.
- [319:45]
D
To repurpose their aircraft, you know, for essentially, you know, like, like, like fire support, you know, and a conventional bombing role.
- [320:01]
C
But today we're gonna.
- [320:02]
D
We're gonna talk about politics, which isn't as sexy as is a battlefield kind of stuff, but it's essential to understanding it. And in the case of Vietnam, I think. I think it's. I think it's. I think it's paramount or the military side of things. The siege of the Indochina wars, which,
- [320:21]
C
I mean really, we.
- [320:22]
D
We could say that it. It go. It's. It. You know, things come as in 1931. I mean, when. When the j. Imperial army assaulted China. But for our purposes, what's convinced. What's conventionally viewed as the Indochina wars is, you know, the French. The French war against the Viet Minh that kicked off in 1946. You know, there was the storied defeat that die in Ben Fu. You know, the Foreign Legion got, you know, surrounded and annihilated. You know, and then the American war, which traditionally is viewed as commencing in 65 because that's when there was the mass conventional buildup. You know, he was. Involvement ended in 73. Saigon fell in 75. I'd include. I'd include the. The. The Khmer Rouge conquest of Cambodia within that same like, conceptual paradigm too, as well as the 1979 war that Vietnam fought against the People's Republic of China, which is fascinating. And that the latter event informs the strategic landscape today in profound ways. I find it fascinating, but actually sensible. And I, I attribute this to Robert Gates also, who was a rare like sensible man in, In.
- [321:39]
C
In.
- [321:39]
D
In power in. In policy corridors, you know, post 93. But he. Obama, like in my opinion, owing to Gates' lifted remaining restrictions on arm sales to appeals Republic of Vietnam. Very obviously, you know, employ Vietnam as a military hedge against the People's Republic of China, which is very smart, honestly. That's, that's. It jumped out of me because it was one of the few, one of the, one of the few power political moves that not only made sense, like rational sense, but actually was, Was. Was strategically sound. And you never really see US government engage in anything sensible anymore. But Indochina, you know, it really, it really was kind of the jewel of Southeast Asia. You know, there's a reason why the French hung on to it and it wasn't just prestige and clout the way they did. You know, Vietnam was not just this backwater. It's a comparatively huge country, you know, very large population. And it was, it was a cosmopolitan place. Okay. And in geostrategic terms, like I said, again, that wasn't paramount. But the French Indochina, according to guys who spent a lot of time. Spent a lot of time with geopolitics, you know, beginning in, really in the 19th century, like on Crimean War. Yeah.
- [323:07]
C
Probably around like 1812, final Napoleonic era
- [323:11]
D
as that kind of closed out and
- [323:15]
C
Europeans started thinking a lot about.
- [323:17]
D
About the, you know, the then contemporary battlefield, people generally associated Indochina with kind of the eastern third of the mainland of Southeast Asia. Okay. And they viewed it as essential in that regard. Like, you know, not just as like a hedge against, you know, powers emergent within the interior. But you know, there's, it's, it's, you know, it's got, it's got c. Access obviously, you know, on this extensive coast, you know, things like that. So it's. Americans tend to be kind of geo. Strategically illiterate and they, They've also got this time to kind of dismiss everywhere as some backwater. And that's, that's particularly misguiding as a Vietnam. Like, yeah, Vietnam was largely backwards in 1965, but most of this planet was backwards in 1965. And those places that weren't like a lot of them were still like in ruins because 20 years before, like you know, the world had gone to hell in a hand basket. And, you know, and there were some places, including in Europe, mostly behind the wall, but not exclusively that. I mean, still, like until 1980s, like, you know, there was visible, like, battle damage from, you know, combat 40 years previously. So that's something to keep in mind. The Ho Chi Minh himself was. Well, actually, the milu that Ho Chi
- [324:44]
C
Minh came out of, the Vietnamese were
- [324:48]
D
looking for an identity in peculiar ways. And Vietnam is a complex society. It wasn't like North Korea. There's something. I don't know if people know the history particularly well. It's strange, but, you know, Kim Il Sung, you know, who. Who. Who became Stalin's protege, he was one of the Soviet Koreans. You know, bar Stalin's, you know, issue with the nationalities was, you know, not just, you know, genocidal pogroms against people that he considered to be, you know, politically unreliable, but also trying to assimilate populations that he considered to be useful, like into kind of the Soviet sphere of influence and his Soviet life. Well, the Koreans and the Soviet Far east, he considered to be one of these populations. And Kim Il Sung really had no interest or understand or under. Nor understanding of communism. And if you look at North Korea today, like, they. This, you know, it's. It's this kind of, like, pastiche of like, 1950s Stalinism and, and. And kind of cargo cult, military dictatorship type of the 1980s or something.
- [326:00]
B
It's also a hereditary. It's like a hereditary dictatorship. Yeah, which.
- [326:05]
D
Yeah, exactly.
- [326:06]
B
I think Stalin had told them, you can't. You can't do that. And they were like, screw you.
- [326:12]
D
Yeah, you're gonna do what we want. Yeah, exactly. But it's.
- [326:16]
C
But people have this, like. People tend to send it to, like, transpose that.
- [326:20]
D
That. Those kinds of tendencies to places like Vietnam, which is very, very misguided. And like, among other things, I'm sure.
- [326:26]
C
I'm sure some people are going to
- [326:27]
D
claim that this is me being like a chauvinistic white man or whatever. I mean, I obviously don't care, but I. I colonized peoples. They tend to take on the characteristics of their colonizers, okay? And the French are very sophisticated people. Okay.
- [326:43]
C
Now, I'm not saying that the Vietnamese
- [326:45]
D
otherwise would be stupid or something.
- [326:46]
C
I. I find the Vs actually to
- [326:48]
D
be very interesting thing. That's why this people. I've included. Vietnam features heavily in my fiction as people will see you when the second book drops.
- [326:59]
C
But,
- [327:01]
D
you know, so Vietnam, like any place, whether it's Algeria or Vietnam, or anywhere or Morocco that was, you know, colonized by the French. It was. It was not gonna. It was not gonna be some bad water like North Korea. Okay? I mean, regardless, even if what the German would call the mention material was. Was not particularly. I'm trying to be delicate here. It was not particularly capable human stock, okay? But the Vietnamese, you know, they're. They're.
- [327:29]
C
They're a relatively creative people.
- [327:30]
D
And Ho Chi Minh himself, he was the son of a Confucian scholar
- [327:39]
C
and
- [327:39]
D
he was a mysterious guy.
- [327:40]
C
His birth year is generally accepted as 1890, but that's.
- [327:43]
D
That's never been verified conclusively.
- [327:46]
C
A lot of sources both within Vietnam
- [327:49]
D
and without, like, claim other years.
- [327:53]
C
His father and his family, like, lived in Central Vietnam, which was kind of
- [327:58]
D
like a hub of culture as well as political activity. And this endured through, like, the American war in Vietnam. But it. Owen to his dad is on to his father's prestige, you know, not just as an. Not just as an intellectual, but he was this. He was a kind of like. He was an imperial magistrate, like the aft. When Vietnam became technically an empire, like after the Japanese deposed, like the. The French in 1945.
- [328:31]
C
This is before the war ended.
- [328:32]
D
It was the Vichy regime and.
- [328:36]
C
And the 13th Emperor of Vietnam, who.
- [328:40]
D
Who stepped down, who advocated 1955. But be as it may, there was an imperial court. And Ho Chi Minh's father, he was. He was like this. He was like one half like cop, one half judge, kind of. And he was demoted because for. For abuse of power after some influential local honcho was. Was. Was availed the summary punishment in. In Ho's father's core. And he was sentenced to something crazy, like a hundred lashes with a cane,
- [329:10]
C
you know, and he. And the guy died.
- [329:13]
D
Okay?
- [329:13]
C
So.
- [329:14]
D
So Ho Chi Minh's dad was. I mean, this. He was something.
- [329:18]
C
I mean, he loomed large to say the least.
- [329:20]
D
And he was. He was basically a judge and an intellectual and a Confucian. A judge intellectual and a priest kind of. I mean, Confucianism is kind of confusing to the Western mind, including my own. But, you know, this was not. Ho Chi Minh was not some guy peasant stock. Like, quite the contrary. Hoiman did kind of rewrite his biography, as communists all kind of did. And I mean, to be fair,
- [329:47]
C
partisans
- [329:48]
D
all do that to some degree.
- [329:50]
C
Even Cromwell did that.
- [329:53]
D
He claimed. Ho Chi Minh claimed that he was radical allies in 1908 when. Because he was. He was sent to Hui City to study. Okay? And he said he came across this demonstration of these poor peasants who. Who were bound in this kind of peculiar form of serfdom that existed in Southeast Asia. I can't remember what the French word is for it, but it was. It was basically like.
- [330:18]
C
Like think of a.
- [330:19]
D
Think of a serf who's bound to the land and who's not compensated for his labor, but he's like, you know, paying rent on his occupation of the land which he can't leave. This was a big deal in Vietnam especially. And there was this. There was this. There's this demonstration that. That the Imperial Court cracked out on violently. And, you know, the social justice types
- [330:42]
C
of the day, including a lot of
- [330:43]
D
Catholics because, you know, obviously, you know, Catholic missionaries, very active in Indochina, one of the French regime, but as well as. Well, it's kind of the Socialist International.
- [330:57]
C
This was like a big deal.
- [330:58]
D
And Ho claimed, like, well, this is when I realized, like, I was a communist. Okay. I mean, well, that's true. Or not. Who knows? But he was mired in a revolutionary environment
- [331:08]
C
owing to the fact.
- [331:10]
D
Owing to his family's downward mobility in no small measure because of the scandal with his father and. And this. This caning victim who died. Ho realized that he wasn't going to be able to.
- [331:21]
C
He wasn't going to be able to get a job, you know, with.
- [331:25]
D
With this. With the Imperial Court. And he said he refused to. To. To try and work, you know, as in the. In the colonial administration, because he refused to serve the French. And that's probably true. So what he did do was he applied to work on a French merchant ship when he got. From.
- [331:44]
C
When he.
- [331:45]
D
When he got to saigon. And in 1911, he traveled first to France, and then he ended up in Dunkirk. He hopped back and forth between the UK and Marseille for a few years, and then from 1913 to 1919, he was in London. It's disputed by some these days, but there's actually a plaque in the New Zealand house in London, you know, which is.
- [332:12]
C
Which houses literally, you know, like the
- [332:13]
D
New Zealander Diplomatic Mission that said that, like, Ho Chi Minh worked here as, like, some kind of pastry chef. Okay? So, I mean, he was moving in pretty elite circles, you know, albeit in.
- [332:24]
C
In a.
- [332:25]
D
In a kind of. In a. In a kind of menial role. But, I mean, he was a young guy, so it wasn't something that would have been seen as improper for a guy of his station. And he wouldn't just be viewed as, like, a coolie, you know, because he was. I mean, he was even.
- [332:40]
C
He was very young.
- [332:41]
D
Okay. Even though, you know, he was a teenager in early 20s. I mean, even though we don't know his precise birthday, I mean, how much is clear. In 1919 he returned to France in part because a, a French Socialist named Marcel Kashin. I'm sure I'm butchering that pronunciation as I often do. Excuse me. He was an activist in the Socialist Party in of France. What Kashin essentially convinced ho of was he said, look, you know, the, the Versailles, the Versailles summit. This is our chance to approach the allied leaders, you know, about freedom for, for Indochina, you know, because now they'll be receptive, you know, not owing to any particular, you know, interest in our cause, but because, you know, something's gonna have to, something, something's gonna have to, you know, replace the imperial regime. And like even they have to see that, you know.
- [333:49]
C
And part of this, part of this
- [333:51]
D
was kind of rigid Marxist, you know, thinking deterministic rather thinking like, you know,
- [333:57]
C
this, this is, you know, like reading
- [333:59]
D
the proverbial signs, you know, like, like an auger would like. Obviously this is, you know, a, a crucial moment in, in the advance of history. You know, we've got to get the attention of these men because, hey, it's Ryan Seacrest here.
- [334:10]
A
And if you're looking for some serious fun, head over to Chumbac casino.com@chumba casino. You can play all your favorite social casino style games for free, anytime, anywhere. It's the most fun you can have on your phone or computer. No purchase necessary. BMW terms and conditions 21 +.
- [334:25]
D
Capitalists though they are, you know, oppressors as they, though they are, you know, they're they're nonetheless, you know, they're nonetheless serving the cause of history as all men are. You know, I mean, this is already clear to people who kind of understand Marxist ontology such that it can be said to exist. Ho Chi Minh subsequently claimed that what drove Drew to Paris initially was that he'd, was that he, he, he joined the group of Vietnamese patriots. That's what it translated to the I again, I can't, I, I can't pronounce the, the French moniker, but it was this group that had coalesced in Paris, you know, most clear within university environs. But they all, they did have some power within the cynic, within, within the cynicalist unions that had, and there's a number of Asian workers like, who were present on the ground. I mean, obviously because you know, the French empire was always, was always, was always hungry for menial labors, menial laborers from the outer dominions. But this, this particular faction. It included basically the guys who became kind of like the core of the Vietnamese nationalist movement, okay? Including Fan Shu, Trinity, Fan Van Trong.
- [335:54]
C
These names probably don't mean anything to
- [335:56]
D
anybody today, but they, they were. In the inter war years and into, into the French Indochina war, these guys
- [336:06]
C
constituted an early cadre of, of the
- [336:10]
D
political leadership cast resisting uh, resisting French control political and military. Some these were like heavy. These were heavy people, okay? And I mean, undoubtedly Ho was able to finagle that like owing to his background, you know, I mean he downplayed his, his privilege and everything like that. But he, I mean he was a guy who was, I mean again, he, his father was, was, was a very esteemed individual as well as owing to Ho's Confucian education. You know, he would have had to be. He would have had to have mastered colloquial Vietnamese in a way that most people just would not. You know, he developed aptitude in French. You know, he knew Chinese letters because you had dude and study Confucian text. You know, I mean, he was, he was very, very well situated to take it to, you know, to, to make contact with revolutionary cadres, particularly in, particularly in, in, in interwar France. But and Ho and his, uh, his comrades, they actually, they formally sent their letter to, uh, to the allied delegation, you know, Clement, so Woodrow Wilson. They were unable to obtain any consideration. But what it did do was it. I, I triggered this. The fact that Ho was very, he was comfortable with Westerners, he was familiar with them as well as his, his French was, was, was beyond competent. It was probably not absolutely fluent, but it was far more so than, you know, your average, your average Oriental at that time that, you know, you'd run into in Europe. Ho Chi Minh became identified as the leader of the anti colonial movement in vi Better or worse. And we've discussed in the course of our, you know, of our discussions and I made the point myself repeatedly in my POD and my long form, a lot of what role any man becomes insinuated into, regardless of his aptitude or ambition. I'm talking politically, particularly as revolutionary. If people decide that, you know, you are the leader, well then you are in some real sense, okay? And this, the Versailles delegation identifying Ho, even though they effectively snubbed him, the fact that they identified him as the leader of the Vietnamese resistance, I, I'd say that that's what launched his career as a, as a professional revolutionary.
- [338:53]
B
Is there, is there, is there any evidence of like who he was reading, who he was most inspired inspired by
- [339:02]
D
that's a good question. I speculate, despite the fact, and this is going to seem strange, particularly because most people, you know, who are familiar with the French left, not just younger people, I mean, even people might as a little bit older. They do. The French left is kind of the driving force behind the 68ers and the kind of break with the Warsaw Pact and, you know, the kind of, you know, the new left was literally founded by Foucault, at least in. In academe. However, in the inner war years, particularly at the time of Versailles, the. The French. The French Communists were very, very orthodox Marxist Leninists. They, they very much believed in the common turn and its orthodoxy, probably even more so than anybody, probably even more so than the Germans, because there was, you know, one of the reasons why the. So, you know, the sed, not the kpd begin the ruling party in East Germany was because the Social Democrats and, And the Marxist Leninists could never come to the table. France did not really have that problem. Yes, France was. I'm gonna say France was a house divided quickly. I mean, would be a gross understatement. But the French Communist, whatever reason they. I owe it to, I. I owe this phenomenon to very strong cadre building. They were very, very much united. And I would speculate and again, I'd have to deep dive into it, and it would be very hard, I think. I mean, it could be done, but it would take time to kind of tease out real data on what the primary sources were. But whether we're talking about Paul Pot or Ho Chi Minh or. Or Giap, who. Who Ho Chi Minh had met at Hui when he was a student there, all these guys, either owing to the fact that they were in France or, you know, owing to the French influence upon their cadre structure, like in Indochina, they. They'd be reading Marks and Lenin, you know, and they, and they. And they'd be reading, you know, they, they'd be reading Hagel and they, you know, they would have become familiar with Aristotle and, and, and, and they would have become. And Thomas Paine and Locke. But they, but they, they, like Marks and Lenin would be their, you know, their Bible, as it were. But yeah, that's a great question. And it's kind of a fascinating subject. Especially like, again, you know, like we just mentioned, it's like, like amazing. The French left is kind of like the standard bearer of, know, rigid orthodoxy is. Is kind of hilarious. But. But I mean, that's. That, that's. That's the way it was. Excuse me. The.
- [341:55]
C
This is actually what gives rise the myth? I don't know.
- [341:58]
D
I don't know how much this is bandied about by court historians these days, because frankly, I don't read a lot of court history on, on either World War I or on the Cold War, I mean, anymore.
- [342:11]
C
I mean, I do it for like,
- [342:13]
D
for dedicated purposes, like in my writing and research. You know, like, if I say, like, okay, well, you know, I'll like, refresh my recollection with what, you know, with what kind of like the mainstream historians of the day were saying about, like, say, like, the French war in Algeria, you know, and then, you know, so not, not just for the sake of like, teeing off on the ad, but just kind of, you know, get a sense of what people take for granted in terms of kind of the. Not, not just, not just the key events that they identify as, as being essential to understanding the conflict, but also kind of like, you know, what, what sort of values are insinuated into the narrative, you know, in, in hinds and deliberate hindsight. But when I was, like, when I was, when I was high school age, if you read like a college textbook or like, if you took like, you know, an international relations class in your high school, it say that, oh, you see, you know, in 1919, there was this Wilsonian moment where, you know, Ho Chi Minh, he could have adopted a pro American stance if only Wilson had paid attention to him. But you know, because, because, you know, these like, mean white men were just like, being mean and racist, like, this didn't happen. Like, I think that that's nonsense for all kinds of reasons. I mean, first of all, it's, it's like condescending and stupid, but also
- [343:34]
B
it
- [343:34]
D
really kind of sells people like Ho Chi Minh. Short, Ho Chi Minh wasn't there to be a coolie and like, gravel for, you know, token concessions. He, he, he, he basically said. He basically penned this document. And Owen was, uh. And under the influence of, of kind of his French patrons who were experienced revolutionaries, he. They seem to think that Wilson would recognize. Wilson and Clemenceau would recognize. They didn't know China was going to be a significant potential battle theater. Okay? There was nothing friendly about this communication, you know, and then this idea that everybody, if you, if, if you give Ho Chi Minh a Coke in a Snickers bar or Hershey or at him on the head, he'll like, you know, give you a bucktooth grin and say, I love G.I.
- [344:20]
C
joe Coca Cola.
- [344:21]
D
Like, that's way more quote unquote, racist than anything in Wilson's mind, this brings us to.
- [344:29]
C
I realize I'm jumping around a lot,
- [344:31]
D
but I, as we get into this further, like, I. I think I shall be redeemed because people will understand and I want to get this out of the way now reference a lot of these things as we get into kind of the hard and fast strategic analysis, the conflict. And I don't have to like, keep jumping back and saying, well, this is what this was.
- [344:52]
C
People talk all the time about how
- [344:54]
D
Vietnam was like this grave kind of failure of collective security. And why do they say that? Well, they said because of CETO S C A T O. Like what was ceto? See, it was the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization. And if you think it sounds a lot like NATO, you'd be right because that's what. That's. That's what its whole notion was, is created by the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, also known as the Manila Pact, that was signed in September 1954, and you guessed it, Manila, the Philippines. Now who. Who's the driving force behind cedo? It was Vice President Nixon, who upon
- [345:30]
C
returning from Asia 1953, said, look, we need some kind of collective security arrangement
- [345:35]
D
in Asia that, you know, tantamount to NATO. The. There was far more confidential conflict diets in Asia. The strategic landscape was a lot more fluid.
- [345:48]
C
But.
- [345:49]
D
And Nixon realized that. But at the same time he said
- [345:53]
C
that, you know, one of the reasons
- [345:54]
D
it's impossible to, you know, develop a meaningful kind of strategic posture moving forward is because it's uncertain. Like what any. What, if anything, you know, anyone's willing to commit and what, what they're willing to stand on as, you know, essential interests. And this creates a credibility problem. George Kennan also was very much behind this idea, if not CEDO itself. He said there's got to be some kind of collective security structure of a formal nature. Now, I make this point a lot as people for a few reasons. People act like NATO was this magical thing that. I mean, obviously like anybody who claims NATO actually still exists as a. But also such that it does exist, it's profoundly destabilizing. But we don't know if NATO was, was effective or not. What we do know is that there was basic credibility behind it. And the Soviet Union considered America, you know, to represent a credible threat. You know, if, if, if, if the primary conflict dyad in Europe was triggered, you know, which was obviously the inter German border. But at the same time, America periodically had to meet Soviet efforts to decouple European collective security from American strategic interests was one reason why America maintained Intermediate nuclear forces in Europe. That's another question. And we'll, that's a complicated issue. We'll get into that.
- [347:29]
C
But my point is that foreign.
- [347:32]
D
It's not treaties themselves that, that, that promote stability. It's the, it's, it's the willingness of the signatories, you know in order to. It's the willingness of the signatories. I say there's credibility therein. Okay. And this should be obvious where the signatories to sito it was Australia, France, New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, the United Kingdom and the U. S. Say okay, I might add this. Out of those signatories, Australia, New Zealand came show up, showed up to fight the Vietnam war. Okay. France had just fought the Viet Minh for eight years and been defeated. Thailand was definitely a combatant in the Vietnam War. If for no if. I mean they, this was very much below board in terms of special operations forces who were very effective. But Thailand unconditionally availed their, their bases and their airspace to do anything that the allies needed. The UK the, the UK Just this caused great consternation. Anthony Eden profoundly offended US Department of State of the era and by essentially making it clear, uh, that the, the UK Would not come into any kind of collective security arrangement as regards Indochina. Why they put pen to paper on the Manila Pact, that's another question that's kind of complicated. I, it owed the kind of the weasel words in inherent to, to diplomats, I think. I'm not, I don't have some kind of hatred of, of uh, of. I don't know, some kind of hatred of diplomats in and of themselves. But there is, there's a kind of lawyer ball they play about, you know, qualifying their willingness to honor treaty obligations. And in the case of the UK Deciding on with cedo it. It had a lot to do with claims of. Well, this is, this is a quote defensive alliance, I mean which is meaningless. In war and Peace, as Carl Schmidt taught us, there's no such thing as an offensive or defensive war. All wars are both offensive and defensive. But that's a bit outside the scope.
- [349:49]
C
In any event, Drew McIntyre here from WWE.
- [349:53]
A
Wielding the Claymore can be a life of chaos.
- [349:56]
C
When I'm not dominating in the ring.
- [349:57]
A
Chumba Casino is how this warrior takes a wee break. With hundreds of online social games and new weekly releases, there's always something fresh
- [350:05]
C
to try those daily boosts.
- [350:07]
A
Next level. Even my free time feels like Valhalla. So when life feels like a battle,
- [350:12]
C
kick up your feet, have some fun
- [350:14]
A
and let's chuma no Purchase necessary VGW Group VOID where Prohibited by law CTS and C's 21+ Sponsored by Chumba Casino
- [350:21]
D
it was Cedar was headquartered in, in, in Bangkok Thailand incidentally too. And again Dulles, John Foster Dulles was 100 behind it too. In fact he could be viewed as kind of the primary architect. Like I said Nixon, Nixon was, was convinced a formal collective security arrangement was necessary, modeled roughly on NATO. Dulles was the one who pushed for CEDO as the answer to that. And it was Dulles who, who, who, who was profoundly offended by Eden's Anyone gets to commit which is interesting. It goes to show you too that like the quote, special relationship between the United states and the UK. I mean there were people in the UK who had fag realized the UK lost World War II and Eden's a complicated figure and a year later in 1955 like Eden became Prime Minister. But that's, he's, he's one of the more interesting post war British executives I think. But be as it may like he, he made it clear that the UK was, was, was going to sit out anything that happened in, in, in Southeast Asia. And it's an interesting question. You know, I mean the, obviously neither Eden nor anybody else was in an auger, but you know, war literally came to the UK's doorstep in Northern Ireland and the revisional IRA's efforts were very much perceived as, as part of the anti colonial movement. Okay. I mean I don't, I don't want to start some big controversy with people. I'm not sitting here saying that Canadians are all bunch of communists or something like that, okay? But it point being everything else aside, even if, even if even there've been some kind of hawkish like proto Thatcher type at Downing Street, I don't. The situation that they actually developed in the UK in the 60s, I, I don't think they were in a position to be. They'll be fighting some general war against, against you know, North Vietnam and you know, halfway across the planet. But it's interesting counterfactual. The, the background of what, the, what immediately gave rise to sito. From April 26th until July 20th, 1954, there's a Geneva conference on the status of Indochina. Like why was this convened? Well, the French had, you know, just taken a defeat by the Viet Minh at Dien Ben Fu, which I would say was other than Singapore, you know, where the, where the Japanese Imperial army just, just like smashed the United Kingdom. That Singapore was most devastating defeat ever levied to a white Western power by a A rising, a rising non western state. Diemben Fu was the second. Okay. The psychological impact on this was devastating. And the Viet Minh showed that they were a martial race. Okay. They manhandled artillery up the mountainside and, and bombarded the French positions. You know, the, the, the Vietnamese have a genuine, they've got a genuine aptitude for war. We'll get into that in the next episode as we get into the kind of battlefield realities of the war. But that aside, the characteristics of the Viets themselves, aside, you know, France, France was a real military power in those days. Okay too. They weren't slouches, you know, they weren't, they weren't, you know, The France in 1954 wasn't the France of today. You know, these, this wasn't some half ass army of, of mercenaries or something either. I mean it was the French Foreign Legion, you know, and these were crack troops, you know, highly motivated. Arguably, arguably the best equipped army on the planet at that point. You know, I was comparable, you know, the United States, it was the gear
- [354:47]
C
they was comparable with the United States
- [354:48]
D
was fighting with in Korea, you know, after, after mobilization kicked off in earnest. But be as it may, the Geneva conference and assessment of China, half of it was, it was, it was purpose, half of it was purpose to deal with issues resolving from the Korean War, you know, in the. And um, and then the armistice. And half was to kind of resolve the French, you know, China situation which is the recipe for disaster to begin with. Okay. Like you don't take that approach to, you don't just say yeah, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna knock out two birds, one stone with this like great conference and you know, we're just gonna figure out, you know, basically the whole status of Egypt by you know, putting the right, you know, put it, you know, putting the right, putting the right paperwork together. I mean the whole thing's ridiculous. Delegation, the delegations represented on the status of Korea. It was the Soviet Union deals Republic of China, north and South Korea and the USA and the Indochina side of the, the conference was France, the Viet Minh, although a non state actor. You know, they had uh, formal representation, uh, the ussr, the usa, the People's Republic of China, the UK and the nascent. The maybe not maybe the believer, I should say like successor government in Vietnam to what, what had been the Vichy regime that was deposed by Japan, which as I indicated at the start of this conversation, at the start of this talk, only had a year to remain in 1955. There was the, there's a referendum. And the emperor stepped down and Bao Dai was the emperor to be replaced by DM. What was the status of Vietnam in 1954? Well, there was two regimes in Vietnam. There's a Democratic Republic of Vietnam led by the Communist Workers Party and the State of Vietnam again led by Emperor Bai. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam was strongest in the north and in the center of the country, but it had some followers in the south as well. So basically you're talking about is, you're talking about a country that's almost, it's a political map of. It looks almost like leopard spots at this point. Okay. And the, the, the seat of sovereignty that's claimed by the emperor is, is really a sovereign in name only. Okay. At the time of the French defeat, 65000 documented members of the Workers Party lived south of the 17th parallel, which is what became the divider between north and South Vietnam in the Mekong Delta Regional Loan, which is in, in, in northern South Vietnam. So I mean a key strategic piece of real estate. There was 30, 000 party members concentrated.
- [358:07]
C
In addition there was hundreds of thousands
- [358:09]
D
others in the south were, you know, sympathize with the Viet Minh or who were, you know, just you know, card carrying communists of varying stripes. In short, the, the, the, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam which, whose sole representative was the communists. They, they could claim membership throughout the entire country. Okay. The, the formal state of Vietnam led by the Emperor. Part of the problem with this was. What was part of the problem that was characteristic of those resisting the communist movement globally? You're looking at a house divided. You know, the war had World War II. It destroyed the right for all time. There was no, there was no real political right anymore. Okay. There's reactionary elements. You know, who backs people like Emperor Bow Dai, you know, in various monarchists, you know, there was people who didn't really have a, a political consciousness but
- [359:16]
C
they, you know, they, they were hostile
- [359:19]
D
to communists for self interested reasons. You know, there wasn't, there wasn't. There's not really corralling these people, you
- [359:25]
C
know, like you can't build a movement,
- [359:27]
D
particularly when you're facing off against dedicated cadres. You can't just build an, you can't just build a political, you can't, you can't build a political army based on opposition to something.
- [359:40]
C
You know what I mean?
- [359:40]
D
That was that more. Nowhere was that more evident than Vietnam. And I think that can't really be overstated because the, the Vietnamese who resisted the communists really do get kind of a bum rap. You know, they're either, they're either cast as, as cowards or, or just you know, you know, these kind of, these kind of third world kleptomaniacs or, or just you know, pitiable kind of lackeys and coolies. Like that's not the case at all. I mean they were a mixed bag. But there were, they, they, they had disadvantages from jump and the people who should have been looking out for their interests most aggressively were not doing so. I think on, on the military side, I think, I think they were the, there was, there's plenty of American commanders and South Korea and South Korea really came to fight in the Vietnam War. They deployed their, their force levels were around 50, 000 men for a country the size of Korea. It's a major deployment. But on the military side you had some very game commanders who, who very much wanted you know, to give the, the, the south enemies what they needed to win and, and led these guys into combat very bravely and these guys performed well with. But on the political side, you know, it's like what, what's, what, what do you have in south, what do you have in what became South Vietnam? It's like okay, you got, you got a cadre of like kind of upperly
- [361:18]
C
mobile or a code.
- [361:19]
D
We're kind of like upwardly mobile Catholic types which the French were still here.
- [361:24]
C
You know, you got, you, you, you
- [361:26]
D
got, you got guys are basically small businessmen who don't like the commies to take their stuff. You know, you got. The Buddhists were kind of like put upon by everybody. You know, you got various minorities like Amanda Yards on sundry who you know, realize their numbers off if the communists win. But I mean there's, I know it probably sounds like I'm somebody who's like
- [361:45]
C
totally fixated owing to you know, kind
- [361:49]
D
of the, the central emphasis of my research being Nuremberg and kind of the, the political theoretical trajectory of, of things subsequent. But America's problems in the Cold War really can be chalked up with the fact that, you know, it's like, well, you know, if you waging, waging a war of extermination against the political right. Like it's not that, that doesn't, you're not living a whole lot when you're
- [362:14]
C
trying to draw upon your own cadres
- [362:16]
D
to defeat the communists. And in Vietnam that's a topic that's not particularly emphasized. But I, I, I think it's more important than in some theaters like legit I, I it and as we'll get into like later in the series. America learned his lesson in part by the final phase of the Cold War. And that's one of the reasons why the, the, that the Contras are so effective in places like Nicaragua where, uh, honestly, um, the uh, the Sand Regime, the. So probably invested more in that regime than any other since, since the Vietnam era. I mean, as a client regime outside their immediate sphere of influence. I mean, but it, in any event,
- [363:12]
C
the,
- [363:15]
D
the,
- [363:20]
C
The,
- [363:24]
D
the Geneva Conference, basically all, all it, all it did was it formalized. Formalized the division that was already burning, you know, even in, even before the French had been, had been defeated at Dien Bin Fu. But what it did was it created this kind of arbitrary dividing line to create kind of the fiction there. You know, there was, there was two sovereign states here that were at war. And like that was never, that was never the case. I mean, the Vietnam War was a civil war. I mean, it's not me, there's not me having sympathy for the devil or,
- [364:01]
C
or, or, or, you know, trying to
- [364:03]
D
simplify the political strategic situation. A civil war doesn't seem to be a civil war because great powers, you know, converge and, and, and, and draw like an imaginary line on the center of the country. That's quite literally what happened. The fact, the fact that you had, you know, we'll get into this too. You know, North Vietnam was a crack army. It was an incredibly game forest as well as like a truly conventional army. This idea that Vietnam is this kind of like weird guerrilla war, like that's. Yeah, there's aspects of asymmetrical war, particularly in the Mekong Delta and particularly early on. Make no mistake, the reason why Vietnam was so bloody and so brutal is because it was a conventional war where firepower carried the day. The North Vietnamese, the only way that. The only way that they could accomplish their political objectives was through a conventional military victory. And they knew that this is one of the reasons why America deployed so heavily the way that they did was that misguided, not in and of itself, but we're going to get into why that didn't produce the results that it had to. But this is a, this is also
- [365:32]
C
another example of how this, you know,
- [365:37]
D
whether or not we accept the kind of, whether or not we accept that, quote, democracy is utilized at present. And even during the Cold War, when it actually had, you know, some kind of identifiable meaning, even if it was only like contra Marxist Leninism, I return to kind of the Schmittian notion that it doesn't do you any good at war to have this kind of ongoing discussion in policy terms, because even if people are doing so in good faith, which they never are, because this becomes another means of exploiting divisions within the electorate for some sort of competitive advantage. But even if that were not the case, you know, you don't endlessly debate military questions as if they're, you know, ordinary policy matters. And the fact that that's what a general war became led to some really perverse outcomes, both on the battlefield and in terms of what can be considered a success in political terms. And I think Vietnam was a rare situation where the political and the military was. Questions were basically synonymous, And the Pentagon on some level, recognize that, but the way they proceeded in actual policy terms, whereas if these were two discrete things that had success metrics independent of one another, if that makes any sense. I'm going to warn more of what I mean in the next episode when some concrete examples emerge as to how this phenomenon played out.
- [367:22]
C
But ultimately, and I'm going to wrap
- [367:24]
D
this up in a minute, what the Geneva Accord led to was this fiction of two Vietnams, okay? And it created a pathway or at least a road map to, to unification that was supposed to obviate any potential crisis of authority, but was contingent upon. It was contingent upon, in plain language, you know, both purported sovereign governments advocating any use of armed force in order to affect a political outcome and dominate the future state by way of a single party regime. And obviously, you know, the Hanoi government always claimed that the Viet Cong or the National Liberation Front was, was, was independent of, of, of their authority. It was the spontaneous uprising. There was some true to that. But obviously Hanoi cadres were operationally insinuated into the nlf. The Saigon regime always maintained that, you know, the NLF was nothing but a direct client of Hanoi and that so long as it existed, it constituted a terrorist threat to the, to the universe, to the unification process. And so none of the terms of the Geneva agreement had to be honored. So, I mean, this, this outcome was entirely predictable, Okay? I mean, there's, there's basically no way that. There's basically no way that any other, any other outcome would have been emerging. But that's, that's why the kind of political foundation was so murky and, and kind of unworkable. You know, it. And also got to show you that, you know, I make this point a lot.
- [369:22]
C
There's, I generally don't engage people because
- [369:24]
D
it's, it's just like bad faith. But people without knowing what they're talking about, like those who look, you know, they want to be about colonialism and how bad this was. It's like, okay, so you really think what I just described here, like, you really think that's superior to having like the French administering Vietnam? Like, I, I mean, like in what way, shape or form? You know, and you could say that, well, that was just another example of, you know, white Westerners imposing this paradigm. Like, it really wasn't man. I mean, the reason why it was so dysfunctional and fubar is because you did have that, you did have Beijing like having their say. You did Moscow having their say. And obviously, you know, in having their say, they were deliberately sabotaging the seedings and creating conditions wherein, you know, a, a cadre based movement could, you know, effectively sabotage any government that emerge in the south. But you can't, you can't, you can't just, you can't just shut down the conversation by saying, oh, that's just like something the white man imposed on Indochina, you know, so it's, everybody's always. People act like this kind of, you know, people act like the 19th century regime that endured really till 19, 1920s, 20 of, you know, like, you know, Britain, France, Germany, you know, dividing up the world. In these key theaters. Like, was this like a bottom situation. It's like, what's your alternative? They're like, they never, they never have one. You know, it, it's like this idea like the world kind of exists and sitsu. And like it's, it's like a place of plenty and peace. But then people screwed up just by like imposing politics upon it. It's like, I think ontologically, like, I think people just like, don't. Like, a lot of people, even people aren't particularly dumb. They just like, can't grasp like the ontological reality of politics. I mean, I, I don't know. But in any event, let's, let's, let's wrap up for now because I, I want to shift gears with what we get to do next.
- [371:21]
C
And I realized this might have been a little bit dry, but again, like
- [371:24]
D
I said, I'm gonna reference all this stuff when we get into the, the, the, you know, discussing the battlefield situation and, and kind of the political maneuverings of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Johnson, Mr. Nixon, so it becomes important. But yeah, I, I hope, I hope this didn't bore people to death. I hope they got something out of it relating to the topic.
- [371:47]
B
So just run through your, uh, anything you want to promote and we'll go.
- [371:52]
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah, indeed. I mean, good Things are happening. Um, we, you know, like I said, within the next week or so, we're launching the YouTube channel at one last.
- [372:03]
C
Steel Storm 2 is dropping this month, so be on the lookout for that. I got some big stuff happening on
- [372:09]
D
the podcast, but I'm going to announce that formally on. On the next pod episode, which are going to become more frequent. But you'll, you'll. I. I don't want to.
- [372:21]
C
I want to get into that, like on the pod. But, yeah, that's all I got.
- [372:24]
D
You can find me on Twitter at Triskelion Jihad. The T is a 7. Find me at substack real thomas777.substack.com Thomas, I appreciate it.
- [372:38]
B
Until the next time.
- [372:40]
D
Yeah, likewise. Thank you, people.
- [372:42]
B
This is part seven of the Cold War series. Thomas 777, how are you doing?
- [372:47]
C
Hello, everybody. I'm okay, man. Today, the issue with the Vietnam conflict, as we kind of got into last episode, it's not just that the sort of controversy around it that endures to this day, you know, in terms of ethics and in terms of policy critiques, I mean, some of that is contrived, some of it's not. But even if we take people's sort of values and partisan ideas out of the equation entirely, the Vietnam conflict straddled, for lack of a better way to characterize it or describe it, in multiple epochs in. In terms of political and military affairs, you know, as Vietnam jumped off in earnest, as we'll get into what, which was very much during the Kennedy administration. I know some people have this sort of like, you know, this, this, uh, this revisionist notion that, oh, Kennedy was trying to disengage from Vietnam. That's not true at all. But even regardless of that, the. A paradigm shift in military affairs was underway from the post new Look Eisenhower era, you know, which was kind of bookended by the Cuba crisis, which, you know, put an end to that kind of thinking, you know, and, and from. That's kind of like the first phase of the American war, you know, like 62 to 65, I guess you could say, represented. You know, that is sort of a gray area between, you know, sort of policy orientations. The, the kind of revolutionary period in the third World where like, you know, the colored revolt, if you want to look at it like that, was an underway full swing, you know, what. The. What. What remained of the Western powers were still engaged. You know, Spain, Portugal, France, who just, you know, been issued crushing defeat at the mbinfu. You know, they were trying to. They're Trying to find a way to, you know, utilize firepower and the technological edge that they enjoyed in order, in order to, in order to advantage them and counterinsurgency warfare. Vietnam ended in the 1970s as the era of true strategic parody was emergent from the United States and the Soviet Union and major powers were disengaging from the third World in indirect capacities like owing. Not just the fact that interdependence was causing more and more conflict dyads to emerge where escalation could have brought the superpowers into direct collision like in 1973 in the middle east, but also just because, you know, there's a certain weariness for, you know, this kind of constant engagement in active combat in, in multiple, in multiple theaters. So Vietnam's important for all those kinds of reasons, but also just it. There's. Because of all those things I just described and kind of the, you know, the historical situatedness of the conflict in like temporally. I mean there was, there's a lot of data to be derived from it about, about warfare, you know, where the river meets the road in terms of combat and things and technology and how these things impact, impact the modern battlefield. But also you can extrapolate things about the American system and how particularly, particularly wartime administrations politics is very much insinuated into the decision making process. I don't mean high politics, although that is the case too. I mean these kind of like domestic intrigues spill over into the decision making process as regards, you know, war and peace decisions. And that's very, very bad. And obviously this, this gained a lot of momentum, you know, during the kind of me, you know, the, the rise of, of, of the, you know, the modern or contemporary, not modern, contemporary like news cycle which really began in the 60s and 70s, you know, like reaching into zenith, you know, in like 1990, 1991, where you had the true 24 hour news cycle and the Gulf War on TV. I mean now obviously that's done. I mean there's certain like, like media is ubiquitous like in a way never they said, remember before. But there's not this bully pulpit of like the news media, you know, the terrestrial news media. That's what everybody watches and that controls, you know, narratives and the parameters of discord course. Like that's what I was talking about. But to dive into the topic there. There's nobody who's more associated with Vietnam than, than Robert McNamara, okay. And Errol Morris, who I'm a great, I've got great esteem for. I mean he's this weird nebish type. But he, he makes great films. You know, he did a documentary on Fred Loiter, you know, who authored the report. He did a documentary on Donald Rumsfeld, you know, his, I mean, not to go too far afield from our topic, but Errol Morris really pioneered the documentary style of filmmaking in a way that's become convention. And him letting his subject and his, you know, obviously his primary, his primary efforts are biographical, of historical personages or of people he's just interested in, like in the case of Leuchter, but putting the camera on the subject and letting the subject just testify. And Morris asking his questions off camera or the, you know, the filmmaker or the interviewer asking his wisdom off camera. Like Morris invented that style. But he, I highly recommend anybody. The Fog of War, I think it was released in 2003. That's a pretty good kind of capsule summary of McNamara's career from, you know, it's the testimony of McNamara himself. But because it's only like a two and a half hour film, obviously a lot of things are left out. But it, I, I highly recommend that to anybody who wants to learn more about McNamara. So let's talk about the man himself, Robert S. McNamara. The S stands for Strange. His middle name was strange. Robert Strange McNamara. He was the longest serving Secretary of Defense, sense, to this day, from 1961-68. Nowadays, even administrations that have a comparatively strong mandate, you know, they play musical chairs with their cabinet postings. But even, even, even in Magnum epoch, it was unheard of for a Secretary of Defense to serve that long. Okay, like why did he serve this long? Well, McNamara came from humble origins. He was born in San Francisco in 1916. His father was the sales manager of some kind of wholesale firm that literally made shoes and other things like this. Okay, like shoes and boots for, you know, like nurses and factory workers. So I mean, like part of the upper kind of like the lower middle class, upper working class. He, he, he proved himself to be a prodigy of sorts with mathematics. What we consider to be logistics and data management or, well, I mean, logistics exist in those days, we consider to be like data management today. He graduated 37 from Berkeley, went out of the Harvard business school in 19th and graduate 1939. Obviously right around this time, you know, the, the new dealer's war was, was jumping off. It was only about, you know, two years away. And when Magnum found himself in uniform, he ended up in the Army Air Corps. And guys of his kind of caliber and intellect tended to be shuttled that way for obvious reasons. And he he came to the army as a captain in 43. He served under Curtis Lame, who then was a colonel when McNamara and Lay. And it's interesting because McNair and Lay and, and, and McNamara gets into this in the in the Fog award documentary. Like, McNair is probably the closest thing Lame had like a friend, but like, McNamara was, you know, and he's like, I, I, I, I, I felt like I didn't really know the man very well, you know, at all. And then it's like when, when LeMay died, apparently LeMay's widow kind of McNamara and is like, yeah, Curtis said, you know, he loved you. He said all these great things about you. And McNamara is like, really like, I, I hardly heard the guy say more than one word. But in any event, Matt Demers, as a young officer, kind of a de facto adjutant to LeMay, he, he kind of demonstrated his chops for, for military logistics and just kind of, you know, applied, applied analysis of, of, of, of, you know, the mission at hand and in terms within the, you know, rationale of what, of what the Army Air Corps is charged within the Pacific. LeMay and Magnum, they came up with a way to assault the Japanese mainland from the Marianas Islands instead of having to, you know, jump the Himalayas. This has been, this had been done and this owed to things I don't quite understand like, you know, fuel consumption versus load, you know, versus, you know, travel within or above or below the jet stream and all these kinds of things. You know, the, the complex, the complex calculus of the then nascent science of military aviation. Okay, so the guy really was a polymath. Okay. I mean, he, and he demonstrated that really by the time he was about 30 years old, when Magnum got discharged, he ended up at the Ford Motor Company in 1946. And the Ford Motor Company. It seems strange these days because like a college reason really mean anything, but in those days when it was a rare credential and when, unless you were one of these kind of rich boys went to Yale or something, if you went to college on merit, it's because you were a guy who really, really knew his stuff. There was very few, there's, there's, there's a dearth of, uh, of managers and, and executive officers at Ford Motor Company were college educated. So guys like McNamara was in demand. He got recruited there in the, as a manager of planning and financial analysis. He, he, he advanced rapidly. By 1960, when he was in his early, when, yeah, it was in his late, yeah, it was in his early 40s. It would have been like 43, 44. He became the first president of Ford Motor Company outside the Ford family. Okay. Which was a huge deal. And this was November 9th, which is a date that I think we're all familiar with. And if you were not before, I hope that after watching the stuff that Pete Canones and I do, you're familiar with it. Now. November 9, 1960 was when he became first president of Ford. This was one day after, after JFK was elected. And during his, during his tenure at Ford, both as what we now consider a quant and like a corporate accountant. And during his like brief tenure as president, he's credited with basically like making Ford competitive in the post war period, like after like the government pork like went away obviously. And this in the 1950s and early 60s, like a huge amount of American automakers like just cease to exist. Okay. I mean the, all these kind of iconic brands, some of them endured like AMC endured to like the 70s or 80s. But like there's a huge number of, of, of automotive brands that went under during the 1950s. It was, I mean that, I mean it's one part, one part market corrective, one part, it just, you know, just the scaling back of, of the subsidies they'd enjoy, you know, during the kind of stellar days of the New Deal for, for big manufacturing firms. But in any event, jfk, whatever we can say about him, and I don't want to, I don't want to get into a discussion on the man's merit or character or that of his politics. One thing that's indisputable is that he, he, with the exception of, of the kind of naked nepotism in the case of his brother. But I consider that to be more
- [385:22]
D
of a matter of self preservation, you
- [385:24]
C
know, with installing him and as the Attorney General, with the exception of that Kennedy or andor's advisors, they had a remarkable eye for cabinet talent and Kennedy's. Kennedy's first choice for Secretary of Defense was Robert A. Lovett, who'd been the Secretary of Defense under truman, interestingly from 51 to 53 height of the Korean War. Hey, it's Bubba Wallace from 2311 Racing. You know what it feels like forever sitting on a plane waiting for takeoff. Good thing I've got Jumba Casino with daily boost and social casino games on tap. This is the kind of fun that makes time fly. Why not turbocharge your downtime play now@jumbacasino.com
- [386:09]
A
let's Jumbo sponsors by Champa Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group void where prohibited by law, 21 terms and conditions apply.
- [386:19]
C
So obviously, Kennedy was looking at, for a man who had served as a wartime Secretary of Defense, okay. Which indicates the kind of hard realism pre Cuba that Kennedy's not conventionally credited with. But that I think is clear if people know how to read between the lines. But the reason why he approached Love at first is because he didn't. He. He. Nobody thought that man the mirror would leave Ford Motor Company. So it's like it wasn't even. It wasn't even like within consideration. Not. Not on grounds as merit or anything. It's just that, you know, the guy was a freaking all Star. And Love it also been a protege of George Marshall. And I. I don't think the Marshall Plan was this great policy coup. I don't think it accomplished much of anything other than. Other than putting some shine on the occupation regime, which really. Which needed to be rehabilitated in order to get the Buddhist republic to play ball the way the Truman and Eisenhower and the Truman and later Eisner administrations needed it to. But that's another story. George Marshall had tremendous clout in those days. And aside from the fact, again, that he, you know, he'd. He cut his teeth as a wartime Defense Secretary, coupled with the fact that prior to that, he'd served as Marshall's under Secretary of Defense, and he was very much a protege of the guy, but a lot of it declined. He's like, you know, out of raw fatigue, I think. But also he said, you know, I, you, you should. You should. You should poach McNamara, because I'll probably take it. And Kennedy went through Sergeant Shriver and offered him the. The Secretary of Defense position or the Secretary of the Treasury. McNamara immediately accepted the appointment of Secretary of Defense. Was McMurray knowledgeable about defense matters? Well, I mean, I mean, compared to. Compared to anybody since Cheney. Let me qualify that. I mean, I, I know people think not. Not in krav, that Cheney's a total piece of. When Cheney was Secretary of defense under Bush 43, I think he very much had a sense of what needed to be done in the transition era from the. From the. From the. As the Cold War is literally ending. Okay. And I only invoked him because regardless of the guy's character, which I think we can agree is not something laudable, and whatever other issues he has, he was a highly qualified Secretary of Defense. No, he did not come up through the military, but he was something of a polymath and he understood military matters as regards policy, where the remains the road in a really splendid way. Subsequently, I think the Secretary of Defense these days is something, is, is kind of, it's almost like, it's almost like Kremlin ology. You got to look through the kind of a pig. There's always like sinecures that don't mean anything anymore and people's titles don't actually indicate what their roles in fact are like. I think, I think Robert Gates was the de facto like shadow foreign policy President. I also think that Secretary of Defense has become Secretary of State in a real way, which is very strange. But in the Kennedy era, these cabinet positions carried a lot more weight and there was a lot more transparency in terms of the man who said, who held the office was very much the decision maker with some narrow exceptions. You know, there it. When you have an executive who was as much of a, who is as, as much of a, a hands on, sort of authoritarian as fdr, yeah, they're very much for some people who reciphers and key roles because he, he simply didn't want them to do anything. But exempting that, you know, you, if you got appointed Secretary of Defense, you were a pretty heavy hitter and Magnumer was one of the fourth Secretary of Defense because until, you know, the, until Nuremberg was Secretary of War was the cabinet posting. But that's, that's, there's a lot to unpack there, frankly. But that's, that's outside our scope. But in any event, macro is kind of a perfect choice for this era, okay. Because the technology and I mean this was, this was the dawn of the information age, okay? Like computing as we know it was very much just kind of beginning then. It had begun during the Second World War, but in an applied capacity. It was emergent. McNamara understood logistics better than anybody. He understood highly scaled systems and management of those systems and how to identify variables and the bounded rationality of the system in question and what it was purpose for. You can identify like what was most essential to production. And that's an odd skill set. That's kind of like what management comes down to in the Burnham sense of managerialism. I mean, when I say management, I don't mean some dick who like manages a Home Depot. And I don't mean like the way eight like fat HR ladies talk about management. I mean in terms of, you know, actual actually knowing how to, knowing how to optimize the performance of, of both the human element and, and, and the autonomous element within some highly scaled structure, you know, with all kinds of variables,
- [391:43]
D
some of which are more essential than
- [391:44]
C
Others, you know, but the core ones that facilitate productivity in the most concrete ways, you know, need be identified. Like most people can't do that. And particularly, you know, Mac members, they. Yeah, as I just indicated, you know, this was like the dawn of the information age. And you know, technology, there's got a punctuated equilibrium of technology. I think we can all agree on that. You know, at it 10, like once there's, there'll be one innovation and then, you know, that, that, that leads to others, you know, in a very kind of, in a very kind of, in a very kind of rampant capacity. This was under this, what was underway. But you didn't have at your disposal like all this kind of, you know, you didn't, you didn't have consumer tech that we take for granted in big business in those days. You know, like you didn't. You, you, you're basically like using like a pen and paper and atticus, like proverbially and sometimes literally, you know, to handle like massive reams of data. So the kind of like the right man in the role and they were almost always men, not for conspiratorial reasons, but for anthropological ones, you know, that it was this, this was more essential then than even today, although it still like, remains essential. But McNamara's philosophy, in his own words was he said the Secretary of Defense in the then current era had to take an active role. He said, you know, he aimed to provide aggressive leadership, questioning, suggesting alternatives, proposing objectives and stimulating progress, just as he had done at Ford Motor Company. That might sound corny on its face or like corporate PR. I mean like McNamara is the constant company man, but in his case I think he really believed that. And honestly, I think in a lot of respects that's like what he accomplished. He rejected radical organizational changes like I just indicated. There was, there was a lot of people both within the military establishment and also within the policy establishment. And this was very incestuous in some cases too. But on Capitol Hill there's all kinds of people who are trying to force, you know, these kind of top down changes to the military apparatus. You know, the command structure, you know, the way forces and being organized, you know, at, at that division level and you know, and, and what weapon systems were going to get privilege over others There even. There's always that. There was, there was, there was debate about the draft and its future. Okay, this, there was a committee, I cannot remember the name of it, I'm sorry, headed by a Senator, uh, Stuart Symington. He wanted to his committee with him leading the charge, they wanted to abolish the, the discrete military departments. They wanted to replace the Joint Chiefs, the single Chief of Staff and you know, not, and, and, and, and give him dominion over. They wanted like an inner service command structure. Okay. You know, you'd abolish discrete ranks between the services. You'd have like this unitary command structure that went to this one man who in turn was accountable only to the President and his national security captain, which in my opinion is a terrible idea. But like this, this was kind of thing, among other stuff that was being taken seriously then, you know, America Mirror. As soon as he took office, he's like, no, that, that shit's over with. You know, like, shut the up. That's not happening. You know, we're not. Well, we may very well be. You know, we, we maybe will be fighting World War III at, you know, in a few years. We're probably going to be at war, you know, in, in a secondary theater, you know, within months. We're not, we're not going to completely upset the, we're not going to fully upset the wagon and, or the apple cart, you know, and start playing games with, you know, with, with force structure, organization. And that was, and that, and that actually, that, that was, that, that, that was huge. Okay. Because things would have. I, I. Simon's idea was particularly stupid, I think, but there was all kinds, there was all kinds of stuff being bandied about that would have really, that would have really kind of upset the ability of, of the entire defense establishment to react. And really from, from after the Cuba crisis, I mean, in, in 73 and then in 83, I mean, yeah, there was, there was the punctuated crises of a strategic nature that were truly critical. But about every two years, like, in between, like you, there was some kind of like, what you can think of as like brush fire. Crisis of a secondary, in a secondary theater that, that nonetheless, you know, like required an active response. And this, ultimately, this is one of the things that led to like the creation of Special Operations Command, but that's outside the scope too, you know, like a unitary command or Special Operations Forces. Unfortunately, a lot of disasters happened for that to become implemented, but that's kind of always the way it is, not just with the military, but what was Kennedy's polity policy vision? If you want to understand Vietnam's escalation, they don't just mean the punctuated escalation that was yielded or exploited, depending on your perspective, by the Gulf of Tonkin resolution. Vietnam, true engagement with Vietnam when began with Eisenhower, okay, In a real capacity. And when Kennedy took the oath of office, there was. There was Special Operations forces types on the ground who, who were directly engaged with the communists. Okay? So, I mean, it's this, this idea that, you know, this idea that, you know, like I said before we went live, oh, Kennedy was trying to disengage from Southeast Asia. But then, you know, Johnson, this, this bad guy, you know, just engaged us, engaged the mirror, engaged the country at war. Said he could, you know, make money by, you know, Bell helicopters selling. Selling stuff to the Pentagon or whatever. The Oliver Stone and Howard's in claim that did not happen. Kennedy in his, in his speech to Congress on March 28th. The. The core emphasis of the speech was defense. It was Cold War. It was, uh, it was war and peace. It was power politics stuff in part because, you know, Nixon was always not just kind of on the campaign trail. I mean, Nixon was not just always trying to portray Kennedy as some. As some punk rich kid who's wet by the ears. He was. He's basically. He basically was always calling him a. You know, and saying, like, he's soft on communism. You know, he's a rich kid. He. He doesn't. He does not have the presence to command, nor does he have like, the knowledge, you know, which is ironic because Kennedy was a lot of things, but he was like. And he went to. They stay in the Kennedys. He was a gangster's son and he was a war hero when he served in the brown water. Like, the dude was kind of a badass, you know.
- [399:05]
D
Like.
- [399:06]
C
Yeah, like, yeah, he wasn't like a big or whatever. I mean, yeah, but the, But I mean, politics is politics and being what it is, that's, you know, it's. And I mean, it wasn't just Nixon. Other people too. They, you know, Kennedy, he had kind of like a boyish charm, like our phony, you might think that is. Like, he did not, you know, he didn't come off as this, like, heavy personage. And especially succeeding Eisenhower like this. Like, the Soviets were genuinely afraid of Eisenhower, and I think for good reason. Like, I'm not. I. I don't think Eisenhower was this rare genius like some people do. And I think in some ways he was an ugly guy in terms of his character, but he, he was a ruthless S.O.B. you know, and he. He definitely had a kind of command presence. I mean, that goes without saying. But carry outline to. To the March 28, 1961 speech. What he outlined is, he said, look, massive retaliation of the doctrine. He's like that's over. Okay? He's like, so is the new look as it's been, you know, as it was euphemistically assigned. You know, he's like we're not, we're not going to rely on, on first, on splendid first strike capability nor we're just going to rely on the nuclear deterrent, you know, in lieu of conventional forces. Like that's not realistic. It's totally inflexible. And, and frankly it's, and frankly it's, it's totally, it's, it's, it's, it's morally bankrupt. You know, you don't, you don't, you don't keep the peace by threatening the several states of the world with like massive like genocidal counter value assault, you know, like as a standing policy. But it, I would have been somewhat facetious, but there really was like they're the kind of millieu that Herman Khan came out of. And I think Herman Khan was great and I'm not putting on him at all, but lieu of Khan and Van Neumann, like there were guys like, like genuinely autistic guys who'd you know, come up through academia and game theory and stuff who, who were suggesting things that, you know, made sense in terms of, you know, the, the raw variables of, of balance of forces and capabilities. But we're just like grossly moral offensive, morally offensive in terms of like, in terms of policy orientation. But I mean like Dr. Strange Love. Like yeah, it's like, it seems like over the top ridiculous, like some kind of pieceic movie. But it was like ragging on like a real phenomenon, you know, like, which is, which is kind of funny but also kind of up. But the, he Kennedy also to his credit, and this wasn't realized until Carter and Presidential Directive 58 and 59 and obviously the technology of that point, it made it far more critical for human decision makers to assert control over nuclear arms and commanding control. But things were already moving in that direction whereby not only were, were, were human decision makers being sidelined, but the, the military and specifically Strategic Air Command was very much taking control of these processes. And, and Kennedy, you know, said that's got to stop, you know, and, and Magna Mirror was exactly the man to kind of see to that, you know, in terms of structuring forces and protocol, strategic forces. I mean to, to obviate the threat of, of civilian control and the commander in chief role being appropriated by, by a military elementor. I believed in more to obviate that than anybody until Carter. And as we get into The Carter era. We're going to talk about like all that cool stuff. At least I think it's cool and fascinating. By the late Cold War and the kind of strategic nuclear paradigm and, and artificial intelligence therein. I, some people probably think that's boring as, but I think it's really cool. But in any event, what's key about Kennedy's policy speech on defense was he said, quote, we, we need to operate with an eye to, to quote, prevent the steady erosion of the free world through limited wars. Now this is the crux of why America went to war in Vietnam. Okay? The way you gotta look at the Cold War is that obviously there's the ongoing strategic nuclear threat of, you know, a total war between Warsaw Pact and NATO, which would be catastrophic. I mean, that goes without saying. But the real issue as a basic stability ensued between the superpowers. It could be imagined and the team
- [404:15]
B
be
- [404:18]
C
the, you know, the, the Team B exercise and the men who, the men who organized and facilitated it and who were instrumental in getting Reagan elected. Frankly, the scenario these guys painted was like, look, imagine in America where essentially all of Asia save South Korea and Japan, all of Latin America save Mexico, all of Africa save like a handful of the Arab states who are nonetheless like, so we aligned, you know, goes communist or becomes basically sympathetic to the communist perspective and is either staked out, you know, a position of absolute neutrality in the Cold War or as a veil itself is a Soviet proxy. Like, yeah, America would survive in those circumstances, but it'd basically be this garrison state that was kind of second rate power within the Western hemisphere, you know, surrounded by a hostile. Like, that's a very, that's a very dangerous world to live in. And a lot of the things we, even if, even if some kind of perennial peace could be achieved, a lot of the things we take for granted just would not exist. You know, that would have kind of frozen American tech and American wealth at a certain point because just by virtue of dominating the rest of the planet, you know, like the Soviet Union could have kind of like remade the world in its own image. Kind of like how America like remade the world in its own image after 1989, which is not a good thing. But my point being, like, people who act like the Cold War was this kind of like ridiculous paranoid fantasy or that it was like this excuse to like sell munitions and helicopters, you know, by defense contractors. Like it was in fact a real thing. And this was the, this was a potential outcome really until, until Gorbachev and until the Soviets folded their Flag it wasn't this binary thing like either, you know, total war or peace or you know, oh, this oh, communism quote doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't work. That doesn't matter. All kinds of doesn't work that, you know, nevertheless, like indoors or shuffles on like, like some, like, like some Frankenstein's monster or something like that. That was a very real possibility. And Kennedy's. What he was saying here is, look, if we ignore, if, if we ignore theaters like you know, China, if we ignore theaters, it's up there in Africa. If we ignore especially you know, developments in their own backyard, I mean that's two folds on their own doctrine. But that aside from in it, you know, it's like we're gonna die like a death by a thousand cuts as regards our ability to, you know, influence the course of politics on the rest of this planet. You know, if you do you really want to be like a garrison state, albeit a continent sized garrison state that's largely self sufficient, but you really want to be like, like the American island in like the red world. I mean that, that was, that was not only poignant, but it was very realistic. And I give 10 of the audit props for that, for that speech. Like I said, I'm reading when the lines as he intended Congress to read when the lines. But that's, that's. I'm not a Kennedy fan or apologist at all. But not only does that.
- [407:35]
D
Go ahead, I'm sorry, let me ask.
- [407:37]
B
Okay, you said that the Cold War was a very real thing. Is that because of, was it a continuing ideological war between the neoconservatives and who started them and the Soviet Union that whole time?
- [408:02]
C
Well, there's wars within, there's wars within that camp. I mean, if you want to know what I think I agree with Yaqui's perspective that the doctor's plots, like that epoch, not that incident itself, but that incident was demonstrative, like a break within the communist camp, like the leadership cast. Okay. And that's also one of the reasons why like Israel often just became like massively anti communist, like all of a sudden. Okay, so yeah, there was that. The Soviet Union became this kind of strange thing. Like yeah, it was, it was a, it, it, it, it clung to revolutionary socialism till the end of its life. But like was it a Marxist Leninist state? Like as much as such things existed, it was. But you know, what the Soviet Union really had going for it was the kind of Soviet DDR model that was really appealing in the people in the third world. You know, like Oliver north when he was undercover, like, doing very shady things. When he landed in Managua airport, he relayed back under like, like State Department cover if you liked their telex or whatever. He's like, I'm at Managua Airport. It's a mirror. It's. He's like. It's a mirror image of Checkpoint Charlie in the inner German border. You know, he's like these. There's a bunch of Nicaraguans running around acting like they're the Stazi. You know, he's like, this is. And I mean, that spoke for itself.
- [409:26]
D
So.
- [409:26]
C
Even when. Even when Stalinism, Even when the. Even when. Even when the war's up pad. Kind of like even after 68 and I mean, even before. But like putting 68 has gotten the formal breach, you know, with the new left. Even when, like nobody in France, nobody in the Netherlands, like, even commies. I mean, like, look to like the Soviet Union for inspiration. Like, you better believe that like hundreds of millions of people in Africa and Latin America, you know, in Indonesia, like they did, you know, like, that's. They looked at that as like, wow, this is a great model for progress. And, you know, where we don't need to suffer, you know, the. We don't need to suffer the pain of exploitation to reach, you know, the bounty of. Of technology and plenty and. And modern productive, productive techniques. You know, all we have to do is like, sign on with the Soviet block and we'll get all those things. And plus, like, you know, they're gonna. They're gonna lead us. They're gonna lead us to this telluric utopia because eventually we're gonna fight America. I mean, like, that's. And yeah, within that, like the. The godfathers of neo conservatism, like, they became like, on that target list list ironically, like, that's why, like, communism, like a Frankenstein monster. Like a lot of people who are like, called. Which is a medium was term, but a lot of people are called like anti Semitic people. Like, oh, how can you say that? You know, communism was, you know, emerged from the Jewish world of social existence. The Soviet Union hated Jews. It's like, well, there's such a thing as, like, you know, there's such a thing as, you know, a golem of Prague. Okay? Like, you create something and it gets out of control or it turns on you, but it's also too, like, ideologies aren't any, like, one thing. It's like, you can't say, like, oh, communism was Jewish or just not Jewish or that, you know, the coalition that created it in Russia, you know, consisted of like XYZ kind of people and nobody else. The Soviet was a weird coalition of like indigenous Slavs, you know, who. Who hated the European overcast. You know, they were aligned with a slightly more cosmopolitan element, you know, of Ashkenazi Jews who hated that same overcast for different reasons. And these people in particularly like each other, but they had common enemies and common interests. And when that fell apart in large measure, because the situation of the Jewish people internationally totally changed after Nuremberg, after the Belfort declaration. Yeah, they. They stopped keeping up appearances at all. And yeah, I agree with Yaki, basically that if you were on the right after, after about 1953, 54, 55, and you were running around like a John Bircher, like calling for the death of Ivan, you're. You're a idiot. I mean, basically because it. Russians definitely like the Soviet Union definitely wasn't it? And Russia honestly is not really your favorite friend if you're a white Western man. But they're not really your enemy either. I mean, and it's. They as. As a hedge against people who really are your enemy. It's better that they exist than they not exist. But that's probably a subject for a different episode. But yeah, the. But the Cold War, the way to understand it in very raw terms, especially in the Kennedy era before things got a little bit more complicated through the taunt. And then like when the Cold War jumped off again in earnest in 1979, 80.
- [412:56]
D
But
- [412:58]
C
it's not, it's not reductions to say that there really was a, quote, colored revolt underway. This was the question of the day in power, political and military terms. It was very much led from Moscow. It was facilitated by war off arms, logistics, equipment, food stuffs, technology, manpower, everything. And that's what was on the table. Yeah, there was other, like, deeper nuances to like the ideology that had created it. But in. In as the world understood when Kennedy took the oath of office, like the Cold War was what I just described. And that was a very real thing. You know, like I said, there were. Yeah, guys like Yaki, guys like Otto Reamer. Yaki was dead by then. But what he'd been saying before and what Reamer was saying until the day he died was, you know, you. If you're a European, you know, who's under occupation, which. All. Which they all were. I mean, it's still this day, but in those days, you know, the Red army was also in Berlin. But you know, I said, you need to be very careful about what you wish for and in, in and in advocating that, you know, the Soviet Union should be destroyed because it's really the only hedge against the traditional enemy of Europe. And I agree with that. But for our purposes, I emphasize the world situation as it was when Kennedy the oath of office. Because I gave up this idea like, oh, you know, what a bunch of horseshit. We got to go fight the communists and n for or they'll be over here. Like, that was not what was on the table. That's not what anybody thought. And the quote, domino theory wasn't this like crazy thing that John Bircher thought or that crazy general's thought, like this was actually happening. Like huge swaths of the planet were going red, okay? Stalinism had real cachet and you know, a huge in, in, in among huge percentage of the global population. And the entire like, raison d' supposedly of Nuremberg was, we're going to create this world society. And oh, we even have a United Nations. It's like, okay, well if, like, you know, at that, at that time, I think there was about, like, I, I think there's about like 5 billion people in the world. It's like, well, if like 4 billion of those 5 billion people, like, think that communism's great, you got a problem. Okay? I mean, that's what the Cold war was about. It wasn't about. You know, when I walk outside Terry Ode, Indiana, you know, there's gonna be some, there's gonna be some Chinaman with a red star in his head and a bayonet, you know, who's gonna like, you know, charge me and, and like, you know, turn me into sashimi and like enslave my wife and, you know, make everybody go to the drive in and watch like shitty communist movies nobody likes. Like, that's not what people thought. Maybe some people thought that, but that's not, you know, like that, that's not what underlay a cold war. And like people like McNamara.
- [415:53]
B
Well, let me, let me ask you another question. It almost, it almost makes it sound like you could, like somebody would say that they're reactionaries, you know, you know how people on the right are always just, we're all reactionaries. It makes it sound like if the, if the third world is turning red and these dominoes are falling, there's a reason why they're doing it and they're reacting to what they're seeing happening to Europe, basically.
- [416:25]
C
Yeah, that's the case too. And that's why, I mean, today there's something interesting. I spent a lot of time. I spent a lot of time reading about and kind of studying as much as I can what, what, what, what some of these like Middle Eastern Nazi actors are doing. And a bunch of these guys like the Popular Front, Liberation of Palestine General Command, like who, who are big time alive with Warsaw Packs, like they flipped Islamic like very profoundly, okay. And like very immediately later the wall came down and like some people be like, oh, you know those, those guys are just being mercenary and doing what they have to do to keep, you know, money and weapons flowing. I don't think it's that simple, man. I think to your point, a lot of these guys, they were basically, they basically had contempt for like the features of capitalist modernity that they consider to be like most offensive. You know, whether it was like sexual licentiousness or you know, like the erosion of, of, of meaningful roles for men and women or you know, like mixing between races or you know, pornography. And I there, there is a certain puritanical aspect to communism as it manifested in the third world. But even otherwise, you know, like that was one of the things.
- [417:38]
A
Ready to put a little spin on your day? Then check out Chumba Casino's new online social casino game. Ryan C crest 10k ways. It's free and packed with 10000 ways to play only at Chambaccasino.com no purchase necessary. VGW group void. We're prohibited by law. CTS and C is 21 plus sponsored by Chumpa Casino.
- [417:54]
C
The. That was a, that was a constant refrain. I, There was like all kinds of up vice and stuff in the DDR. You know, like, I mean there was like, not like narcotics but like prostitution and sex stuff and, and all kinds of really crummy social ills. But at least the official line was that this stuff's nasty. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's deplorable. This is the kind of thing characteristic of the capitalist west. Like we don't have any truck with that and, and this kind of thing should, should be identified and stopped out wherever we find it. So yeah, I think there's an aspect to that and, and yeah, that's, but that was, that was Yagi's old point and some of the people he inspired subsequent, like H.D. thompson and like, and like James Maddow who a lot of people think was a crank, I actually hold them in a lot of steam. They, that, that was the whole point. This, the whole point was that Washington and New Yorker are in Los Angeles Are, are a Hell of a lot more, you know, quote unquote red and Moscow and East Berlin ever were or will be. So yeah, there's an aspect of that that's a complicated question and it's like, it's like a question. Is it quite, it's like a theoretical, philosophical aspect to it, like we just raised, but there's also like a practical aspect in, in concrete terms, the way people were like leading their lives. You know, like you raised two. That's what, that's why I raised the issue of these Middle Eastern peoples and stuff because I also think they're kind of like a bellwether for sort of radical tendencies. But I mean, that's, that's my, I got my own thoughts on that. And that's, that is like way too far outside the school. But yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll try, I'll try and get to the point and like wrap this up because I realize I've been rambling for a minute,
- [419:36]
B
but the, I, I can ask questions that get people doing that.
- [419:41]
C
No, no, I, I, I appreciate you asking questions, man. Like, I appreciate that like the give and take. I mean you, I mean you always, you always insinuate like meaningful stuff that I'm, a lot of time I haven't thought about. But also it just, it helps me because I, I worry sometimes that like I go out too many tangents because my brain just sort of works that way. But yeah, I wait energetic, whatever you want and don't. I, I, I'm not gonna feel excited or something, but the, the, the, yeah, Kennedy's basically, I mean, what basically underlay all this too, in, in, in kind of like raw strategic terms too, like without, I mean, aside from the politics, Kennedy realized that you, you need a lot of you for lack of. I, I, forgive me if it sounds like flippant or silly, but you need like a number of menu options in military affairs in terms of your response. Okay. It can't just be either like massive assault, massive counter value assault, or something like inglorious retreat or doing nothing. You know, I mean that's, it's like Heinlight said the starship troopers like this, which is like a thinly veiled metaphor. I think we feel critique of, of like Eisenhower, Truman and Eisenhower era military thinking. Like some young officer candidate says, like this grizzled like imagery Captain, like what the hell? What the hell do we need conventional infantry for? And the captain's like, let me ask you something. Like if a child's misbehaving do you cut his head off or you spank him? You know, like you, you don't, you don't just like maintain a hatchet like behead a misbehaving child, you know, that's. Which seems like macabre and kind of silly, but it's actually poignant. And yeah, that's something we take for granted as the way things develop, particularly through the Reagan era and in terms of military affairs, I mean. But in the 19, in the, in the 1950s really through like 59, 60, people were literally talking that way, like hey, we've got nuclear arms. We can threaten anybody with, you know, basically like counter value genocide. Like why, why do we need. Why do we need to mess around with conventional forces? You know, and that's. That seems crazy, but that, but it wasn't just another talking about like. I'm not just talking about like goofballs like in, in the media or something like the equivalent of like Internet guys in the day. Like, I mean like, like actual guys would clouded policymaking circles, you know, and guys who had, who had a chest full of ribbons and, and, and a hat full of brass, like you know, talking this way, man. But it mc. And that's why we'll get into this like as we, as we proceed in our series. But the roots of the revolution in military affairs are here with Magnam and Magnam, one of the things he diligently worked towards. I mean the Vietnam War end up taking off like a huge amount of his time and labors, but obviously, but developing a conventional capability not just for the purpose of flexible response, but to really make like a devastating conventional capability. The kind of spear point of American power that very much came from McNamara. And he realized the way the world was going. And part of it was he realized, you know, what we just talked about that, you know, nuclear arms are purpose for a very, very specific exigency that almost never, ever, ever occurs. But also just, you know, the dawn of the information age, the, you know, the, the kind of rapid punctuated development of all these applied technologies. You know, like things were becoming possible in the battlefield that were unthinkable even you know, 20 years ago. You know, in, in. In. In the, in the then present at the. And McNamara Magnara's fortunes really during the Kennedy administration. I mean if you need any more evidence that Kennedy really did it, kind of marrying the U.S. the Republic of Vietnam in terms of, in terms of, you know, global security policy. It was, it was Magnum who, who put together really the first military advisory Group that landed in Vietnam, like in, in real depth. I mean, yeah, going back to Eisenhower, there'd been, you know, advisors on the ground. What became Military Assistance Command in Vietnam. You know, Mac V. It was, it was during. Was when Kennedy was still alive. It was during the last, you know, like, year and a half of his life whatever whatever. The McNamara raised forest levels to about. From a few hundred to about. To about 17, 000. Okay? I mean, this was well before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, okay? In August 1964, after Mr. Kennedy was dead, of course. But the, The. And the Golf of Tongan is a tricky issue too. Like, I, I don't know how to approach that because it warrants more attention than I'm giving it right now. But people talk about it like, I, I know that I'm gonna get, like, hate messages for this because I do anyway from libertarians. But libertarians have this idea about the, about. About Article 1 and Article 2, like expressly delegated powers. They do these things. Like, they do the gold standard, like some of, like they're sacrosanct and never, ever change or something, but formal declarations of war between powers that enjoy equality, the status, and a multipolar world where the entire planet's, like, divided up, you know, between these aforementioned powers and where, like, a change in the status of relations comes from, like, a formal declaration of war. And this is a recognized policy instrument that doesn't happen anymore. Maybe that's bad, maybe it's not, but it doesn't happen anymore. And since Nuremberg, it's not thinkable for that to happen anymore. So for guys to come out and be like, well, actually it requires a declaration of war. Like, no, that's not how things work, okay? And I'm not gonna, like, bore everybody with an exposition for the next hour and, like, why it doesn't work that way, but it doesn't. And you've got to take my word for that, okay? And Article 2, an expressly delegated power that is not negotiable and does not change with the times is the President being the commander in chief, okay? And the President's ability to command forces is not Contingent upon a 19th century style declaration of war. Okay? However, considering Congress controls the purse strings, it's a good idea to make your case for why you should get, you know, endless money and cargo to wage the war. That's what the Gulf of Tonkin was about. Okay, Was it a ruse? Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. It doesn't matter. Joshua was going to get his war somehow or his mandate somehow, wasn't Johnson's war. Congress had to find a way to give him the. Give him the. The. The. The tabular rasa to do so and also signal the Pentagon that they were willing to. They were willing to foot the bill. And this is the way it came together, you know, basically, to protect the record, you know, because America, I mean, he's the fiction of, oh, we're always fighting defensive wars. Hey, we were attacked. And finally, like we talked about in the last episode, there was a lot of fictions that went into the drawing of the map in Indochina after 1955 and whether north and South Vietnam are truly sovereign states. That wasn't even really clear because the only the 70th parallel was supposed to be a stopgap measure pending, you know, pending countrywide elections whereby there'd be a single seat of government. And that didn't happen. And the. And. And the DM government claimed initially that that was because the nlf, you know, the Viet Cong, you know, had resorted to violence in order to. In order to sway. In order to sway, you know, opinion in their favor. The terror. So these elections were definitely postponed. So, I mean, it's not as simple as. Well, you know, the Republic of Vietnam's a sovereign country and it's under assault, and we have an obligation to them, moral as well as juristic. Like, what I'm getting at is that it's not. It's not so simple to say, like, the Gulf of Tonkin incident or the alleged incident, and the resolution was like some ruse by evil Mr. LBJ to, you know, get a war mandate for someone to lie. And, oh, by the way, that's illegitimate anyway, because there was no declaration of war. Like, it's 1840. Like, not. That's not the way to approach it. And like I said, I know people are gonna send me, like, you messages. I don't care. I'm right and you're wrong, but that's important. And I. I'm. I'm the last person who's gonna defend LBJ in the record. But whether it been Kennedy, whether it have been Ike, whether it had been Mr. Nixon, they probably would have finessed it a little better than LBJ did, but they would have gotten their War Man Day in some similar way. Okay. They just would have. Okay, that's. That's not arguable. Obviously, after the Gulf of Tonkin resolution was. Was rushed through, That's basically the. The escalation over Vietnam, like, quite literally began, like, with the air war Initially with massive retaliatory airstrikes against naval targets and, and, and targets within North Vietnam proper that were said to, you know, be facilitating it's, it's, it's, it's blue water Navy capability, which, you know, supposedly is what had brought, you know, American vessels under assault. But from there, I mean, the, the kind of fix was in. And people can, I mean, I, the fix was in is the wrong way to characterize it. Like I said, I believe within the boundary rationality of the Cold War. The Vietnam War had to be fought, okay? And I, I stand by that position. But Magna Mirror, even had that not
- [430:12]
D
been the case,
- [430:15]
C
you know, man, if it doesn't defense, you know, like any cabinet officer, I mean, you're, you're accountable to Commander in Chief, okay? I mean, it's not, it's not like Magna Mirror heady, you know, first of all, you can't, you can't be some conscientious objector and fulfill your obligations of the Office of Secondary defense. But whatever McNamara did or didn't do, I mean, he was executing the orders of the Commander in Chief and policy does not originate with the Secretary of Defense's office or at the Department of the army or with the Pentagon, frankly. However, as we get into McNamara's successor, his true successor, Melvin Laird, I think, I think, I think, I think the, the career of Laird and kind of the trajectory of his tenure and his machinations against Nixon and Kissinger, I think that was kind of the origin of the true, like modern deep state as we think of it. There's always been shadow government. Shadow government's not the deep state. That's something that was emergent in my opinion, really interest around the 1970s. But in, in any event, magma. Anyway, he, he, you know, Magnar visited Vietnam repeatedly, like in person, you know, I mean, he, and not just, not just diplomatic meet and greets, you know, where he revisit, you know, DM or 2 and go to, go to some embassy part party and then, you know, take some like, handshake shots of some general. I mean, he, he visited Mac V. He, he spent time at Long Bend asking junior officers like, what's going on here? Exactly. You know, he spent time pouring over, you know, the body count statistics. They were coming from battalion headquarters, you know, in the field, you know, like Docto or whatever, and saying like, you know, this, this isn't right. This is not possible. This idea was just like this kind of ghoulish warmonger, just like signing off on everything or, you know, Somehow enriching himself. I mean, Magnum era. We don't need to sit here and like feel sad for Magnum error. He ended his. He ended up at the World Bank. Subsequently, you lived a very good life, you know, but I, but the fact is in public life, he was ruined. You know, it's like what, what great stuff did Magnara get from you know, this kind of 70 years of managing the Vietnam War. Like it's not, it's not like he got like some great benefits from this. You know, it's not like he pulled up Zelinsky and like was pocketing a billion dollars and when he would have been a nobody before. Like this was like a huge step down, you know, Like Magnum didn't get anything by. By waging the Vietnam War on behalf of Johnson. Like he really didn't. But we're coming up in the hour here. Let's. I'm gonna get into Melvin Laird and the rest of McNamara next episode and we can do that. Whatever you want. Like even this week. And I'll. I realize I gotta cut to the chase. It's just somebody is a personage that's kind of towering as a Magnum area. It warrants a lot of attention. Like more so than some, than some people and even some presidents. But. Yeah. So I hope I didn't. I hope, I hope I didn't drag it out too long for your. Okay, great. Yeah, yeah, I figured you would like kind of reign me in if I was like going to far on tangents, but yeah, no, thank you, Pete. This was really great.
- [433:32]
B
Yeah, I mean the only reason I interrupted was I had questions.
- [433:36]
C
So I, I want to take off that question proper too. Like in a dedicated episode. Maybe it was like the bookend when he finished the Cold War. That's like a hugely important question. And to me especially like I spent a lot of time with it, you know, just owing to my own kind
- [433:49]
D
of interests and things. So.
- [433:50]
C
Yeah, no, I interject. Whatever you want, man. Like please do like. It helps me organize my thoughts.
- [433:56]
B
All right, do quick plugs and we'll get out.
- [433:59]
C
Yeah, man. As people might have noticed because I tweeted it out as well as I announced on my sub stack chat like steelstorm2, you know, my second science fiction novel. It's been printed. It's. It's in. It's in the hands of Imperium Press. I gotta touch base on my dear friends there anyway. But they physically had it, so I'm gonna get word from them when it's going to go up for sale. On imperiumpress.org and I'll drop word of that. In the meantime, you can find me. You can find my podcast and some of my long form at substack.
- [434:33]
D
It's real.
- [434:34]
C
Thomas777.substack.com you can find me on Twitter at Triskelion Jihad. The T is a number seven. But if you seek me on Twitter, you should. You probably shall find or just like search Thomas777. That's basically where I'm at, where I'm active right now. I am launching the YouTube channel by the end of the month, I promise. I know it's been delayed and delayed, but by the last day in January, I mean before then, but by the end of January, like the channel will launch. So please look for that too. It's Thomas TV on YouTube.
- [435:09]
B
I appreciate it. Till the next time.
- [435:11]
C
Likewise, man. Thank you very much.
- [435:12]
B
Thanks, man. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Canyone show for part seven. Is this eight or seven? Eight of the Cold War series. Thomas 777. How you doing, sir?
- [435:28]
D
I'm very well, man. Thanks for hosting me as always.
- [435:33]
C
Don't feel bad.
- [435:34]
D
I only know that it's part ocho because that was indicated when I joined the meeting that is Cold War with Thomas Part eight. You know, like, like Jason Takes Manhattan. What is. It's just like Thomas Fox on Zoom. But be as it may, we're going to continue to flesh out, you know, the career of Robert McNamara in the Vietnam conflict. Not just because McNamara is a key personage, you know, in understanding the Cold War. I mean, he represented a certain type truly, you know, people derisively would refer to people like McNamara and Thomas Schelling, who will talk about probably the episode after next. He was another brilliant shelling. I mean, he was not a brilliant polymath. He was instrumental in Cold War strategic planning and, you know, gaming scenarios that that were wherein, you know, a strategy could meaning meaningfully be incorporated into X technology and weapons platforms. And the degree to which this shape policy at every level, like cannot be overstated. I mean, I guess on the one hand that's obvious because we're talking about, you know, I mean, I mean, I mean the essence of the political is war and peace.
- [436:48]
C
You know, kind of the zenith of
- [436:49]
D
war fighting technology is a general nuclear war. Even if, you know, we stipulate that a lot of the kind of hysteria around nuclear weapons is just that hysteria. But, you know, the shelling was far less of a public figure than McNamara. I mean, for a Few reasons, not that that I think are obvious. You know, Schelling didn't preside over an active war wherein, you know, American
- [437:18]
C
Americans
- [437:19]
D
were dying in theater. But McNamara kind of became that a figure that the, the left kind of loved to burn an effigy, you know, proverbially speaking. And I think he.
- [437:36]
C
I think he kind of like embodies
- [437:37]
D
that era, like the, the era of the technocrat. And I don't, I don't mean that in punitive terms. I mean, certainly that there's a lot of men who. That, that kind of. That, that kind of sociological structure produced that were not attractive people and that were. We're lacking in. In a grounded morality and, and we're not, you know, were not the kind of men who one would want sort of guiding policy in concrete ways. But, you know, McNamara himself was a complex person. And I make the point again and again. Like, McNamara was not this guy who aspired to be Secretary of Defense. He wasn't like one of these kinds of. He wasn't one of these guys who really had no way of kind of like, capturing clout other than going to Washington and capitalizing on connections. You know, they asked him. He didn't ask them. And like we talked about, it's not like McNamara resigned in disgrace or something. You know, I mean, he, he went on to. He went on to be the chairman of the World bank, but at the same time, you know, his name became synonymous with, with the kind of gruesome calculus of the body count, you know, with, you know, the kind of. The, the kind of. Of that they came to surround the pen papers, you know, so it's not like, it's like Mary Demer somehow, like, profited immensely from his tenure as Secretary of Defense. And, you know, his, he. Even when even public opinion precipitously turned against the war post Tet, you know, it's. Magnamara didn't simply exit stage left when things went bad. And I, I can't, I can't emphasize enough too, you know, the fact that he served for seven years, that's an eternity for a cabinet post, particularly for Secretary of Defense and particularly during a wartime administration. You know, so like I said, I, I'm sure a lot of people are gonna just claim that I'm some kind of McNamara apologist owing to, you know, owing to, you know, either, like, emotional factors or, you know, some kind of hero worship. Like, neither of those things are true, but I, at all, anyone who hasn't seen it, I, like I said, I, I, I highly Recommend you watch the Errol Morris biopic on, on McNamara where I mean you, he, he interviews the man himself, you know, because that's what man, what, what Morris does. Um, I'd reserve judgment until one views that Magnumera recorded himself incredibly well. And, and compare that to one of Morris's subsequent biopics about Donald Rumsfeld who just, who came off just as really kind of, I mean just really, just a really, really just nasty person, you know. I mean in every sense of the word. You know, I think, I think compared to, I think compared to those who followed who were either clowns or just, you know, kind of, you know, cynical creeps like Rumsfeld. And I think, I think McNamara looms very large in, in mostly positive terms. But we've left off last episode, I
- [440:56]
C
believe, talking a bit about the Gulf
- [440:57]
D
of Tonkin resolution and the incident itself. I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to rehash the entire debate as it were, that still surrounds the incident that gave rise to the congressional revolution that, you know, gave Johnson the tabula rasa to escalate. Essentially. I, I just made the point then, as I'll reiterate now, that for better or worse, and I understand the libertarian argument against this precedent and I very much understand the kind of constitutionalist objection to it, but for better or worse, this is how the business of war and peace is conducted and this is how it's finessed in policy terms, okay? If some kind of incident is identified as a clear and present danger or
- [441:49]
C
constituting a necessity,
- [441:53]
D
you know, demanding intervention, you know, Congress affords the executive, the, the ways and means in budgetary terms and in command terms to accomplish, you know, the mission in general terms and, and, and, and, and then you know, it's, it's the legislature bows out of the decision making process in large, in, in large part, you know, they're in,
- [442:23]
C
in, in, in a form,
- [442:26]
D
you know, until, until, until something happens or a series of, of occurrences ensue that you know, brings it back within their direct purview, you know, either owing to, you know, revolt of the, the body politic as it were, or you know, some kind of perceived malfeasance on, on the, on the part of the executive in terms of the conduct of the war. But we're not here to have a discussion on abstract constitutional theory. You, nor on you know, war power and, and what it, what and what its significance is in the, in the post nerver era. I just wanted to make the point that the Westphalian practice of literally declaring war as a change of status and relations between equals like that, that's totally obsolete. And it doesn't matter if we think that's good or bad. That's the way it is. So the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution doesn't stand out as this uniquely, you know, kind of corrupt way of. Of a rather morally, you know, compromised executive procure a war man date. I'm not gonna sit here and say Jocelyn was. Was. Had any redeeming characteristics. But even like. Like if Kennedy had been in the White House, he would have pursued.
- [443:47]
A
He would.
- [443:47]
D
He would have proceeded in much the same way as would Nixon. Okay. As would, you know, Reagan had he been in the White House. I mean, this is something important to keep in mind, but I won't belabor that point anymore. But what the resolution represented was that.
- [444:02]
C
And I. I'm gonna.
- [444:06]
D
I'm gonna jump backwards a little bit as we proceed to talk about Colonel John Paul Van, who I think is very important. Important. His analysis of the Vietnam War, like, as it was underway, I think is essential to understanding the battlefield situation and, you know, kind of the tactical shortcomings of particularly of Mac V. But I don't want to get into that yet. But what's important to keep in mind in discussing the escalation that was facilitated by the Tonkin Resolution is that Military Assistance Command Vietnam, it arrived in country in 1962, and from 62 to 65, there was a proper counterinsurgency campaign underway against the Viet Cong. And this really, you know, Army Special Forces was very much purposed for that, you know, and that we talked earlier about, you know, Kennedy's, you know, Kennedy's strategic orientation towards secondary theaters, you know, and the need to, you know, not surrender these contested territories to the Communists, you know, for not. Not just for, you know, on grounds of military necessity, but, you know, owing. Owing to profound political implications a communist victory, you know, in these. In these developing countries. You know, the. And the fact that he. Kennedy was such a champion of Special Operations Forces is inextricably bound up with that policy vision. But Vietnam pre Tonkin Gulf.
- [445:50]
B
So Kennedy in 62 and 63 was commander in chief guiding these missions.
- [445:57]
D
Yeah, essentially. And I mean, he had. It was. It was McNamara and it was, you know, he. Kennedy had a lot of talent around him, you know, who were. Who are helping him identify kind of the concrete variables and others translated to actual war fighting. But so, I mean, obviously this wasn't just emergent from the mind of Kennedy. But Kennedy did understand military matters reasonably well. You know, I mean he had been in pretty heavy action in the Navy. You know, he wasn't, he, he wasn't just some like civilian neophyte who had no idea of, you know, what, what,
- [446:33]
C
of what this constituted and what the
- [446:35]
D
difference was between the heavy army, you know, organized around, organized around armor, you know, and that, that, that had a very, very closet woodsy in view of war fighting, you know, as the advance of fire. I mean this really did like rule the day, you know. And I mean for good reason frankly, because the, the, the Army's most probable military mission was to fight the Red Army. I mean, but the, the kind of tactical flexibility that early special operations forces represented. This really was like a revolutionary idea. You know, like people under like 45 or so when they think of the
- [447:17]
C
army, they, or they want to think
- [447:19]
D
of the military establishment, they think of special operations forces. That's completely the opposite of the way things were during the Cold War, okay? And it, and there's a lot of, there was a lot of institutional resentment of the army towards special Operations. And I mean that's a whole other issue. That's fascinating. But point being there's kind of this mischaracterization among court historians that okay, in Vietnam there's this guerrilla war underway and you know, Johnson, you know, being the, you know, being the kind of fool that he was and you know, the army being, you know, trigger happy as they are, they just like looked over the situation and said, you know what? We're going to deploy in massive, in massive depth and we're going to throw like as much firepower as we can at the Vietcong. Like that's not what happened. You know, there's a years long counterinsurgency, low intensity war against the National Liberation Front by the army of the Republic of Vietnam. You know, by, by the Arvin Ranger element which was kind of their quasi special forces elements. And like we talked about, the southern enemy's army does get a bad rap because there were elements among them that fought hard and were and were very game.
- [448:30]
A
Looking for a little Hollywood style fun? Check out Ryan Seacrest 10k ways exclusively at Chumba Casino. There's 10000 ways to play get spinning for free at Chambaccasino.com no purchase necessary bgw group void we're prohibited by law cts and cs21 plus sponsored by trump a casino fighters.
- [448:49]
D
But yeah, there, there's actually a fascinating old movie called Go Tell the Spartans which is about Exactly. This topic, it's about, you know, the, like the Kennedy era Vietnam War and these Green Berets of this kind of forlorn outpost, you know, as they realize the kind of tactical situations changing and obviously in the back of their mind they're terrified, although they'd never like, let on. This is the case that of. Of. Of like the North Vietnamese army one day showing up and just like sweeping through, you know, out of nowhere. And I mean, things like that did happen, you know, later on, like against. Against the purported, you know, in. In contrast to what army intelligence was claiming were the capabilities extent of, you know, Hanoi to deploy in the South. But be as it may as a. As the. As. As things that are going bad in the south. And as. As DM made it clear that he was willing to negotiate. You know, we talked about the kind of murky political status of Vietnam, you know, and there was. There was a lot of. There was. There was great concern that DM was just going to, you know, quote, unquote, sell out the west and come to. Come, you know, come to terms with. With Ho Chi Minh and with Hanoi, you know, incorporate, you know, not just the nlf, but, you know, the Communist Party of Vietnam into, you know, into. Into the ruling apparatus. And I mean, obviously that was unacceptable because that, you know, that, that the. The precedent that that would set would be completely. Would be completely at odds with what, you know, America was trying to accomplish in the developing world. And you know, we talked about how again, like, you know, the.
- [450:41]
B
The.
- [450:42]
D
It was. It was at base. We're talking about a political conflict. It doesn't matter that, you know, they're, they're. They're. That. That Indochina is not, you know, a bounty of natural resources. It doesn't matter that, you know, there's not. There's not some absolutely essential, you know, maritime port of call that, you know, has. Has profound military significance there. You know, the line in the sand was. Was Vietnam. And that's, that's where the Communists challenged. And that's, you know, the challenge of everyone. That challenge was going to be met or it was not. And the Communists had great momentum in the third world even really up until up until the late 1980s. You know, like, long after, you know, long after like Stalinist type rule, you know, and Marxist Leninist revolutionary ambition and the kind of. And kind of the armed insurgency culture or political culture around that, long after that, like, lost its luster, you know, for anybody but, you know, total diehards, you know, like the kind of people who Joined like the Potter Meinhof gang, you know, in the Western world. This kind of thing had an incredible power to animate people in the third World, you know. And I mean Ho Chi Minh was, himself was a testament to that. You know, like we talked about, the hoe was not some, it wasn't some bumpkin or some, or some ignorant, you know, farmer or something. He, you know, he was, he was, he was highly educated, you know, his family was, was wealthy and well situated and very insinuated into the indigenous political structure, you know, and in Vietnam. So, you know, he was not, he was not an outlier nor was he an anachronism. But be as it may it, the, the mass escalation. I mean. Yeah, part of that was owing to the fact that the, the post, uh, new look army, you know, once, once conventional forces, you know, kind of became once again in vogue, for lack of a better way to describe it, the army, the army remained obsessed with, with firepower, you know, and the idea that, you know, combined arms and a lot of these nascent technologies, you know, and the precursor to smart weapons, you know, and as well as like the technologies immediately preceding the revolution and military affairs that allowed command and control to truly direct higher. Like, like the, the, the destructive capabilities of these things was just awesome. So there was in fact a sense in the Pentagon that like, look, you know, asymmetric warfare. Yeah, there's, you know, there's considerations emergent, you know, within that paradigm and that's got to be accounted for within the battle space itself and within, you know,
- [453:33]
C
and, and, and, and it's got to
- [453:35]
D
inform decision making of
- [453:38]
C
how forces are
- [453:39]
D
structured and deployed in country. But at the same time, you know, if you can blast the hell out of everything, you're going to get a lot done, you know. And, and how can, you know, how can the National Liberation Front, you know, no matter, it doesn't matter how hard they are, it doesn't matter, you know, what kind of, what kind of civilian support they have, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, kind of how it doesn't matter that they've got this kind of mass youthful male population to draw upon. You know, if you, if, if you apply this kind of pressure in the form of, you know, just relentless and massive firepower against the adversary, he's gonna just crumble. I mean there was, there was more than, you know, like a modicum of, of that sort of thinking. I mean, obviously, however, it was clear, you know, in 1959 and 1969 all the way to, you know, 1974, 75, when the People's army of Vietnam launched its final offensive, it was clear that Hanoi was not going to prevail without a massive conventional assault on the South. Vietnam's a comparatively huge country. The National Liberation Front had the capability to dominate the countryside very effectively. Thus this is what was responsible for the kind of, you know, hearts and minds campaign, all of that, and, and the idea of free fire zones and strategic hamlets, and we'll get into some of that later. But the, but, but, but key urban centers, the Vietcong could not, not only could not capture, but they couldn't, you know, and there was a dearth of, of, of necessary civilian support, you know, which was the true kind of like infrastructure of the Vietcong. You know, like any guerrilla movement, that's what they have to draw upon. But even like their big coup was when they, their big battlefield coup was when the NLF captured Hawaii City, you know, and that's, you know, and, and there's those dramatic shots of the U.S. marines, you know, like raising the American flag like over the citadel in, in Hue, you know, I mean, because it was this horrible, like pitched battle, but I mean, just really, really raw. That's why I think it's cool that Full Metal Jacket like focuses on Hui, you know, and, and Gustav Hasford made Hue the focus of the battlefield segment of his novel for, for a reason. But the point is like, you know, they couldn't hold it. You know, it's not like, it's not like, it's not like the NLF took away incident to this massive push on Tet 68, you know, and then, and then the civilian population, he came out in droves, you know, allow them to consolidate that, that their presence there, you know, quite the contrary. So it was clear that South Vietnam either was going to have to develop a competent conventional capability butcherest by or facilitated by rather you know, modern combined arms and hardware as well as the training other people, you know, to operate these, these weapons systems and weapons platforms, or there's gonna have to be direct intervention, you know, by CETO ideally. And we got into CTO the other day or some constellation of, you know, American allies in order to, in order to stave off this, this, this imminent assault until, until the south could stand on its own. And that's what I just said, that's what became grand strategy in Vietnam. You know, and as any military man will tell you, you know, you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't wait until the exigency is afoot and then respond to it, you know, just like, just as you anticipate capabilities, you know, not, you don't just consider, you know, probable action in terms of, in, in terms of judging and you know, a potential opposing force, you, you, you preempt, uh, the ambitions of that opposing force. You know, you don't, you don't, you don't wait until the People's army of Vietnam is assaulting across the 17th parallel, you know, in, in, in, in, in depth, you know, with, with combined arms, you know, to decide like how are you going to react to that? Okay, so this was the, this was, this was the logic behind the massive escalation. And there had been at its peak pre Tonkin Gulf, I think it was between 17,018, 500 approximately
- [458:34]
C
American forces on
- [458:35]
D
the ground in Vietnam. This is, by the end of 1967, this had swelled to 485, 000 troops. And by the peak, which was the summer of 1968, it was, it was over half a million. It was something like 530, 000. Okay. The, and obviously, you know, as, as the casualties mounted and as, and as the situation, you know, kind of like restricted the, the tactical environment and what was, and, and what was permissible according to the rules of engagement, you know, commanders on the ground down to the company level, you know, their, their constant refrain was like basically we need more manpower. You know, we need, we, you know, we need to be able to apply more, apply more pressure now. And, and why, why was it kind of boiled down to that metric? Okay, well, you know, we talked, we, we, we talked when we first kind of scratched the surface of, of, of the atomic age, I mean like it's advent and what the implications were in policy terms as well as military ones. And obviously I can speak a lot more about the former than the latter because I, I, I'm not a military man and I, I, I, you know, that's not really my wheelhouse, but I do know something about policy as it interfaces with military decision making and the needs of, you know, the needs of the military establishment to accomplish stated policy goals as directed by the civilian executive. There came the ability to the, the ability to corral data and the ability to interpret data, the ability to apply data to all kinds of problems at scale. You know, whether you're talking about, you know, whether you're talking about the best way to offset liability if you're, you know, if, if you're manufacturing automobiles, you know, and thus that was, that was the, you know, unsafe at any speed. That was like the Ralph Nader book about, you know, the auto industry and it's, it's macabre calculus of, you know, how many, how many deaths going to products, liability issues were acceptable, you know, vis a vis. What would be the cost of remedying these design defects? I mean, everybody's familiar with that. Okay, this, this was something that was emergent, just like across the board, you know, in, in the private sector, in government, you know, in, in social planning, the military in the Cold War, it.
- [461:26]
C
What, you know, what the, what the
- [461:28]
D
victory metric was in these secondary theaters, you know, where the primary challenge was a political one, you know, not a military one, you know, a comparable situation would be what the British were facing in Northern Ireland. Okay. I mean, that, that, that conflict developed very differently. But identifying, you know, not just what, what the tactical orientation should be in order to neutralize the opposing force, but what the performance metric is, you know, of those forces in theater. Well, what this came boiled down to was, you know, the, the. The ability to manufacture enemy dead. Quite literally, the logic of the body count became the performance metric. So there'd be demands from a battalion level, you know, originating with. Originating, you know, at, at long Bin, you know, and, and trickling down to company and then platoon level, you know, like, you need to produce bodies, you need to produce enemy dead. And as a standalone metric, that's problematic. I mean, aside from the fact it's macabre and all that. And I realize it's. It's kind of a gross thing to talk about that makes people uncomfortable, but
- [462:55]
C
this is very much like, I mean, this is, this, this is the stuff
- [462:58]
D
of modern warfare, okay? But it took on a significance into itself in Vietnam owing again to the kind of, to the kind of. The culture of strategic planning. But it wasn't just spillover from, you
- [463:13]
C
know, the, the kind of.
- [463:19]
D
The data revolution spearheaded by IBM and it's got the proto computers, you know, that were utilized in the Second World War and, and, and, and you know, thereafter, obviously, you know, the victory metric of. In nuclear war is very much distilled down to, you know, the ability to the, like, the ability to yield, you know, enemy dead at beyond, like a certain tipping point. You know, that's, that's literally what the term, you know, like mega death indicates and assured destruction. Megadeth was not just, you know, the name of like, kind of a got, you know, a, like, like a heavy metal man. You know, like, it actually, it actually was a term of art, if not nuclear war. Studies and game theory. But be it as it may, there is something to, there is something to this logic of the body count. I mean, if you're, if the burn rate that, that you're, that you're imposing upon the opposing force, you know, far exceeds the population of military age males, you know, who can be trained, equipped and fielded, you know, to replace those losses, at some point, you know, the insurgency is going to fall apart or it's at least not going to be able to mount operations, you know, beyond, you know, like platoon level or something. And this did work in a sense. I'm one of the few defenders you'll find of the Phoenix program. We'll get into that at another date. And people who don't really understand it, like, even people are otherwise sensible, like it's become this kind of, it's become this kind of horror story that they like to bandy about, you know, that, you know, it's kind of synonymous in their mind or, you know, it's taking on kind of the, the characteristic of, of. It's become kind of like the exemplar of, of, of executive overreach and, and violence therein, you know, but it, Something like that. Identifying enemy cadres, I mean, if you have a reliable system of, of, of identifying these people and targeting them for annihilation with a minimum of collateral damage where possible, that's basically how you fight counterinsurgency warfare or how you wage counterinsurgency warfare. And that's what the British army started doing by the late 90s in Northern Ireland. The way they did it obviously was, or by the late 80s. I mean, sorry, but not the late 90s. But the, this,
- [466:26]
C
this, this, this was
- [466:27]
D
underway in Vietnam at the same time that, you know, there was this kind of, this is kind of like body count driven effort in, in, you know, being waged by, you know, conventional forces, you know, just to rack up the body count. I mean, obviously this led to all kinds of problems, you know, wherein these, these numbers were confabulated. You know, civilians were counted as, as, as enemy combatants. You know, like really very, very corrupt things happen, you know, of a moral and a material nature.
- [467:04]
B
But that happens in every war, right?
- [467:08]
D
Yeah, exactly.
- [467:09]
C
And it's also, this didn't like somehow
- [467:10]
D
emerge with Magnum or Magnum, this ghoulish guy. It was like, oh, well, I have an idea. You know, let's, let's transform, let's transform the military apparatus into this kind of corpse manufacturing enterprise, you know, because that's just a great thing to do. I mean, this was, this was the thinking at the time. And frankly too, I mean it, there's again, the Cold War was strange. I mean in some ways this commonality to all, you know, to, to, to all conflicts where there's at, you know, where there's, where there's certain variables present, you know, that, that, that cause, you know, combat to resolve in similar ways, you know, adjusting for technology and things, you know, like with it within disparate theaters and across, you know, across, you know, the temporal divide and stuff. But there were strange things about the Cold War that limited what was possible. Not just because the threat of escalation, you know, even in, even in a very secondary theater, excuse me, it was always present. But also, again, if you're fighting a primarily political war, you know, we're not just talking about, we're not talking about the, the enemy's ability to field military age males, you know, who can be trained as infantry or sappers or whatever. Not every man is going to make it as a Viet Cong that requires a certain radicalism within, you know, like
- [468:49]
C
within, you know, the quote, heart and
- [468:50]
D
mind of that individual. You know, I mean, it's not, if you're, if you're looking to build an insurgent army, particularly in a situation like what the Vietnamese called the American War where you know, basically there's like an 80 chance you're gonna die. Like, you're not, it's not like being drafted into the US army and you know, to go fight the Korean War, like a very different thing. You know, like you, you, every man pretty much needs to be a partisan and. Yeah, you know, there were, there, there were, there were NLF fighters, you know, who were basically like press ganged and you know, like joining the Viet Cong and stuff. But that, that was the minority because you don't get results out of people like that, you know, I mean, so it,
- [469:31]
C
the, the idea that we've got
- [469:33]
D
to kill as many of these people as possible in a targeted capacity and you know, killing them is a, is an end in itself because that's a victory metric in order to kind of alter, you know, the political conditions on the ground and how these conditions translate to, to military power, you know, albeit in an asymmetrical way like that, that is a real thing and that's, that's, that's a legit analysis. Like, I'm not saying legit and you
- [470:00]
C
know, moral terms, whatever.
- [470:01]
D
I mean, I'm not rendering decision on that one or the other. But in terms there, there is a tactical logic to that. That's not, you know, insane or something or totally off base or the. Nor is it the kind of 1960s, you know, technocrat version of Chateau generalship. And I think that that's important. It. But moving on, McNamara became very, very skeptical of administration policy. Not just because Johnson, as we, as we talked about, you know, Johnson viewed escalation and the threat of escalation as a kind of political bargaining ship, which is not how you wage a war, okay? I mean, that's not. And I mean, first of all, you're playing with the lives of the men, you know, who, who are charged with fighting that war. But also, it just doesn't, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't work. You know, that's not the kind of thing that yields concessions. And it, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't instill fear in the opposing force. You know, it basically tells them that, you know, eventually you're going to be willing to compromise because otherwise, at the end of the day, you know, if you. If that was not the case, you know, you'd be fighting this war. There'd be no, like, no restraint on the rules of engagement. Like, don't get me wrong, you know, the. Despite. Despite the kind of. The kind of canaria, like, oh, America was like fighting the Vietnam War with one hand tied around his balls or something. I mean, we killed a huge amount of people in Vietnam, okay? Like some real cowboy was going on.
- [471:34]
B
I'm not.
- [471:35]
D
I'm not trashing the war effort at all, okay? Like, unlike World War II, I think within. Within the boundary rationality of the Cold War. I, Like I've said, Vietnam had to be fought, okay? But there was a lot of. There, there was. There's a lot of wholesale killing of human beings, okay, according to pretty loose criteria. You know, the, the tactical restraints there was, you know, the, the literally the parameters that were imposed on the operational environment. Like, yeah, that had a. That. That rendered victory problematic, okay? Like, no doubt about it. But it.
- [472:26]
C
But the.
- [472:28]
D
But, but this. I. But they say. But this idea that, you know, America was like, hesitating to drop bodies in Vietnam, going to crazy roi Roe, like, that's. That. That's that's completely fast soil. But the boat magnumer realized was that, you know, the dropping more and more, deploying more and more men to Vietnam was not going to solve the problem. You know, nor was. Nor was. Nor was the problem that, you know, there. The bombing campaign wasn't intense enough or something. You know, like, he. He basically reached the conclusions, you know, that, that we're going to talking about now. And like a lot of like, like
- [473:07]
C
a lot of what I'm drawing upon
- [473:08]
D
to describe his mindset and describe some of the extant challenges of.
- [473:13]
B
Of.
- [473:13]
D
Of the Secretary of Defense in his epoch.
- [473:17]
B
I'm.
- [473:17]
D
I'm drawing upon his own direct testimony, you know, I mean, among other things obviously. But back to mirror in winter 1967, Magnar went as far as this is just freezing truth levels and it basically to prepare. Magnum said like within, you know, we don't, we don't have infinite. We don't have an indefinite timetable, you know, to make South Vietnam like combat ready in terms of their forces and being, you know, to stand on their own against the North. You know, it like basically you said that the situation is not going to improve on the ground other other, you know, either the army of the Republic of Vietnam can fight now or it's. Or, or, or, or it can't fight. You know, two years from now. The situation is not gonna. Is not going to be radically different. This was rejected outright by Johnson and that's, you know, it was November 29th of 67 that magnumer announced his pending resignation. He didn't retire until February 68th or resign rather. But that, I mean that was. That. That thing was a straw that brought the camel's back. Okay? I think McNamara gave it his all in Vietnam for years. He risked his reputation. He probably risked like a lot of his, A lot of his moral. He probably compromised a lot of his, A lot of his, A lot of his moral commitments too, frankly. I'm not gonna sit here and make
- [474:45]
C
a martyr out of him.
- [474:46]
D
He took the job. And I mean if you're a secondary defense, I mean you're, you're dealing with the deaths of human beings, you got to be okay with it. But the, you know, he, for, for this is what he did for, for seven years almost. And when, when he, when he approached his commander in chief and said like this is a situation as it stands. I mean Johnson Bass just like waved him off, like dismissed him. You know, I mean I, and I'm not saying that Magnum are quit because you know, on grounds like masculine ego or something at all, but I can't even imagine being in that role particularly consider like what, what was underway in the country, you know, and, and your secretary Defense, like literally the man who, who you know, who you rely upon more than any singular figure, I mean in that administration, you know, to, to give you the straight story on, on the strategic situation like he tells you exactly that, you know, and exactly what, what, what you know what, what, what the, what your options are as, as Commander in Chief, you know, and you simply dismiss him because like that, that, that doesn't comport with like your own conceptual prejudices. I mean it's incredible. But LBJ was just a terrible person and a terrible chief executive. You know, it's. But that, that doesn't need to be rehashed. But who succeeded, who succeeded? McNamara was Clark Clifford very briefly.
- [476:20]
C
That's not like a Yalie,
- [476:23]
D
like you know, like old, old America, like name. I don't know what is. But he, he was kind of a placeholder. The true successor to McNamara was a guy named Melvin Laird who's kind of forgotten the history. But Melvin Laird loomed really large over the late Cold War. His deputy. What was not worth about Clifford was one of his. One like one of his chief like assistants was Paul Nitzer, you know, and Paul Nitzo was, you know, he was the co founder of Team B. And you know, until he was like quite elderly, like he, he like NHTSA was even like he was, he was, he was drafting, he, he was drafting policy statements on behalf of the Project for New American Century. You know, like as, as late as the early 2000s. You know, like he, he's, he's, he's one of these, he's one of these kinds of, I mean not to sound
- [477:21]
C
melodramatic, he's one of these.
- [477:21]
D
Nitsu's kind of one of these shadowy figures of the defense establishment, you know, who, who really was, you know, who really was kind of like a hidden eminence. But that's really all that's remarkable about Clifford Laird. Laird was interesting. And there was how long, how long we've been going here. I don't know if I should, I don't know, I should dive into. I don't know, I should dive into. Yeah, we'll get started on Melvin Laird and, and then what began the Nixon doctrine. And then like we'll, we'll well like deep dive properly into like Nixon's war next episode if that's cool. Because it, it requires. I'm not intentionally dragging this out, but it, there, there's just like a lot here but Melvin Laird. Some people, some people talk of him like he was a hands off secretary Defense either owing to you know, Nixon being an imperial executive who bullied his cabinet. Like that's, that's complete nonsense. Other people cast Laird as this guy who you know, in, in, in deliberate ever to strike a contrast to McNamara, you know, was, was, was averse to you know, setting a policy course in like, you know, in its own right emergent from the Secretary Defense's office. It's not, I, none of those things are, are correct. Um, Laird actually was, uh, was very much engaged in the course of policy and he very much became an enemy of Nixon and Kissinger. And this had implications for Watergate, which in my opinion was, you know, just a coup against Nixon by what we view today is the state. You know, I, this certainly was a kind of government in those days.
- [479:16]
B
You broke up there. You broke up there for a second. Were you referring to it as you said that the people who would have carried out Watergate would have been comparable to today what we call the deep state?
- [479:30]
D
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. It's just that the, it like the like government was different in the Cold War in certain key ways. But I mean so like I'm not, I mean. Yeah, okay, we get, I mean if you want to talk about in linear terms, like. Yeah, I get we can, we can look at it as in, as kind of, you know, the phenomena in common. But the, but Laird. Yeah the. I think Laird's hostility to Nixon and Kissinger, it took on a very personal tenor, which is strange. I mean I think it, but in pure policy terms, Larry's vision, I think he was wrong, but he wasn't totally off base if you, if you, he viewed Vietnam as essentially weakening the United States. Not just in material terms, but he said that, you know, essentially he's like, you got a war weary country now. You know, then like that they're now being 1969. You know, he's like if a general war broke out, you know, broke out with Warsaw pack tomorrow, you know, I, I, you know, would the country really have the political will, you know, to fight worse, to fight the Soviet Union worse? I packed in Central Europe. You know, it's sacrifice like a million and a half young people, you know, on the, on, on the heels of what we've already endured in Southeast Asia. Secondly, he's like, you know, the, the, the Soviet Union was advantaged as we talked about before, in terms of the fact that you know, basically had pre existing cadres on the ground throughout the third World. Oh in large part, you know, to kind of the anti colonial movement and other things and like a basic hostility, you know, to the west in, in, in, in profound terms, not just superficial ones and, but also like a lot of these, A lot of these movements like including the National Liberation Front itself, you know, they'd been engaged in combat either against the Axis or, you know, against, or against the Portuguese, the French or the English or, you know, any of these, any of these fading, you know, colonial powers. The Soviet Union was able to really kind of spare its, its own blood and treasure. Meanwhile, it really kind of had the United States's number in terms of its war fighting doctrine, in terms of its strengths and weaknesses, you know, and while America was, you know, while America was taking heavy casualties in Vietnam, you know, and, and, and uh, and, and, and people were losing confidence in the dollar and things, you know, the Soviet Union was, really was, was, was, was under, had undertaken its own kind of revolution in military affairs, you know, but it had done so without, you know, like paying any cost in blood. And Laird had a good point there. And this became very evident post detente, I think. And that's one of the reasons why when Reagan took the oath of office, you know, a decade later, there really was a sense that Warsaw Pack constituted a clear and present danger that wasn't, it wasn't just propaganda or, you know, a precursor to war fever or something, or a, or an iteration of war fever or what have you. What Lear did do was he said, you know, his big thing, we're, we're where he and Nixon converged. He said that, you know, we've, we've got to be, we got to be more assertive in, in foreign affairs. We got to be, we got to strengthen, you know, US Influence, you know, over the, over what was then the European Community, you know, because the EU didn't exist yet. You know, he's like, we got to consolidate. We, we, we've got to consolidate, you know, the hold we have on Japan and Korea, you know, to make sure that's permanent, you know, and, and he said that, you know, absolutely credible nuclear deterrence is essential to. Essential. It's not foreign policy. But he said that strong conventional defense is, is, is just as important, you know, and the, he came back to this point again and again. Like I said, he's like, you know, you're, you're gonna basically turn people against the military establishment if we're constantly engaged in these brush fire wars wars. And I understand, I understand that point, but I don't accept it. But it, you know, my point is, like I said, like, it wasn't, it wasn't some crazy idea.
- [484:25]
C
Drew McIntyre here from WWE.
- [484:28]
A
Wielding the Claymore can be a life of chaos when I'm not dominating in the ring. Chumba Casino is how this warrior takes a wee Break with hundreds of online social games and new weekly releases. There's always something fresh to try and
- [484:41]
C
those daily boosts next level.
- [484:43]
A
Even my free time feels like Valhalla. So when life feels like a battle, kick up your feet, have some fun and let's Chumba. No purchase necessary VGW Group void where prohibited by law CTS and C's 21 plus sponsored by Chumba Casino it's
- [484:59]
D
the Vietnamization regime. You know, Nixon's policy of disengagement with the south, you know, well, well, buttressing its forces in being, you know, in material terms as well as. As well as in terms of morale and you know, transfer. Transform the army of the Republic of Vietnam into something combat capable. That very much, that policy course very much came from Nixon. But Melvin Laird or the Rubber Met the Road, you know, kind of saw to it being implemented. So he deserves props for that. The one of the early riffs between Laird and, and, and, and Nixon and Kissinger, I mean basically the entire like executive. Basically entire executive national security staff of the White House like you know, other than himself in 69, that's when the secret bombing of Cambodia began. You know, Cambodia was officially neutral. I mean they were engaged in their own like bloody civil war. There was all kinds of intrigues there. And what's fascinating is that as the Sino Soviet split kind of set in, there's very much a proxy war between the Soviet Union and Red China in Cambodia, you know, between the, between the Soviet client North Vietnamese, like later just, you know, the Vietnamese army and the Khmer Rouge. But that makes an increasingly sidelined Laird in these key decisions. And that's. There's an interesting parallel I with. With Iran Contra there which, which warrants mentioned. I won't deep dive into that now because obviously we'd be here all afternoon. But it's Laird, Laird understood. Laird said basically, look, like this wasn't a matter of pride. He's, you know, it's not a matter of me being affronted that, you know, despite the fact I'm a secret defense, I'm being left out of these decisions. But he said there's an inevitable. There's an evidence. There's going to be an inevitable disclose public disclosure of. Of these bombings and public outrage, authentic or not, cultivated or not, by. By hostile elements is. Is gonna, it is gonna harm. The harm wrought by that is going to neutralize any tactical advantage by hitting these north, these North Vietnamese sanctuaries in Cambodia. And Laird was actually right about that. And again, I mean, may. What. What, what was the anti war movement and was, it, was its focus on these discret policy decisions, you know, like the secret bombing in Cambodia. Was that like authentic outrage?
- [487:52]
C
I don't.
- [487:53]
D
No. Okay. Not at all. It was, it was, it was the, it was the 1968 equivalent of Soros Inc. You know, color revolutioning the American street against Mr. Nixon in the Vietnam War with, of course, the help of Warsaw pack intelligence agencies. But that didn't matter. The point is that's what it would be a catalyst for. And of course, I mean, the. I, you can almost hear the Nixon rebuttal of that, of, you know, we're not, we're not going to let these, like, we're not gonna let some like, commie in Berkeley like, dictate, like the course of policy, particularly not, you know, the course of war and peace decisions because, you know, bombing nominally neutral states that are actually communist sanctuaries is bad pr. But Laird was absolutely right, okay? And, you know, you, if you're the President, United States, you know, you're presiding over the political culture that you're presiding over, and misguided as it may be, you know, like comically improper as it may be, you know, you are dealing with a hostile media. If you're a Mr. Nixon or Mr. Trump, that's going to do everything in his power to remove you from office. And these things must be considered. Now, that does not mean that you refrain from assaulting Cambodia if it's a, if it's, if it's a tactical necessity. What it does mean is that you finesse it the right way and, you know, you don't do it in secret and cut the Secretary of Defense out of the equation. But that, that really kind of, that really, that really was kind of the nail in the coffin, the relationship between Laird and, and, and Nixon and Kissinger. And later when, when it was disclosed, when the bombing in Cambodia was disclosed and these mass protests broke out, which were the precursor to the, to the Kent State tragedy, which, I don't know, people. I, I didn't know that until fairly recently. I mean, I knew like when the. I knew when they came. I knew when the Cambodia bombings occurred. I knew when Kent State happened.
- [489:59]
C
I didn't realize that like, that at
- [490:01]
D
least the nominal pretext for the big protest was, was the bombing in Cambodia. But when this was disclosed in media, Nixon, through Kissinger very publicly accused Laird of, of leaking it. You know, just. Which is a pretty, which is a pretty, pretty serious allegation. I haven't deep dived into the issue. I Can't really comment on that. I would have been surprised if that was the case. Somebody. Laird was a serious guy. However you or I feel about his politics, he wouldn't have compromised. A guy like Laird wouldn't have compromised the, you know, an active war effort, you know, to stick it to Mr. Nixon or to score points with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with, with Woodward and Bernstein types. I, I just can't see that happening. But be as it may, this was yet another,
- [491:06]
C
I mean this, this was
- [491:07]
D
yet another dysfunction of the Nixon White House. And I mean don't get me wrong, I think Nixon was actually fighting the Vietnam War to win it. And
- [491:18]
C
next episode we'll also get into
- [491:19]
D
the man of Creighton Abrams, General Creighton Abrams who succeeded Westmoreland. And I, I think of Westmoreland almost, almost, almost like a McClellan of his era, you know, like very much, very much, very much a bean counter or like a lesser or like a middle level executive and, and not particularly innovative company, you know, in, in, in, in, in. In an army uniform. How Westmoreland advanced the way he did remains a mystery. But again, I, I don't. There's obviously not a hell of a lot I can add. There's not obviously not a whole lot of insight I have into, into the U. S. Military culture and I mean having not seen it from within. But the Laird. We'll wrap up here in a minute. So that. Because the next kind of sub topic I'm going to get into is, is huge. But the, if there's a legacy to Laird, I think he was very much the last kind of like Secretary of defense that had any real independence in policy matters. Not because he was such an incredible dynamic guy, but because subsequent presidents did not make mistake that Nixon did. Your secretary of defense during the Cold War, in my opinion was, was arguably as important as, as, as one's selection for attorney general. But that's, that's a, that could be, I guess that could be argued a number of different ways, but I think this might be a kind of a natural stopping point.
- [493:08]
B
I, you can do your, you can do your plugs. You can also announce that Twitter is being Twitter again, you know.
- [493:16]
C
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [493:17]
D
I think it's old self.
- [493:20]
B
I'm on my seventh or eighth account. You know, I, I was, yeah, yeah, I was suspended from Twitter the week Elon took over.
- [493:29]
D
It's just bizarre. And like Ace, they suspended him and Ace is a legit guy. He's afraid to speak his mind. Like what, what, what. He doesn't he has he, like, blogs about. I mean, he's. He's like kind of a manga guy, but what the hell is he dropping that's offensive to Twitter, you know, like, it's just totally random.
- [493:46]
B
Except his love for docking back for the attack. That's the only thing that really.
- [493:52]
D
But it, like, makes no sense. Like, even, like. Like the things that even usually throw, like, their triggers, like he. Or whatever, like, he. Like, why ban him? But it's. But the. But, yeah. I mean, and it's. I. I boohoo people. Not every time does this happen. Literally a dozen times it happens like, every several weeks. Every time it happens, people act like I die or something.
- [494:13]
C
It's like I do a lot of
- [494:14]
D
just like, goofy posting on Twitter. I drop some serious stuff there too. But that's like, it's kind of a big nothing, man. Like, I use it to promote what we're doing so that our people can find us, you know, and tune in for, like, the stuff we're doing here. This idea that it's like this awesome platform that we need. We don't need that. Like, I built my brand when I was on no social media at all. Okay. I do have an account there that is active, but I. I'm gonna be low key about it because, like, I. I don't know. I. Who the hell knows, like, what they're. You know, what. What the. Kind of. One can never tell, like, what. What the lay of the land is in terms of, you know, the. I mean, who can predict arbitrary and capricious action, which is by definition, is arbitrary and capricious? But I'm transitioning to YouTube. That's like, my primary platform. I'm gonna back it up on Odyssey and stuff. Yes, I realize YouTube is censorious as well, but I mean, I mean, we're kind of. We're kind of leaving Twitter behind anyway. But, yeah, so I don't want people acting like this is, like, the end of the world. Like, it just. It bothers me when people act that way. But the. But the. Yeah, I mean, find me on substack. Real thomas777.substack.com I'm on Instagram just at, like, number seven. Hws777. The YouTube channel is launching at the end of the month. Like I said, I'm very excited about it. Like, I really am it. I. There's a lot of potential there. Um, and I think people will be very happy with it. And I've got. I'm very blessed to have Some really great people helping me produce it because I. I certainly would be pissing into the wind on. On the production side or not for them, but. Yeah. And Steel Storm 2 is available at Imperium Press. That's the second installment in my science fiction series. So, yeah, please check it out if you're a fan of my work product and. Or science fiction. And that's. That's all I got.
- [496:17]
B
Well, once again, thank you. And until the next time, I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete quinones Show, Part 9 of the Cold War series. How you doing, Thomas?
- [496:30]
D
I'm very well, thanks. Today I wanted to talk about something that's sort of a forgotten addendum to the Vietnam War.
- [496:36]
B
And
- [496:38]
D
like I raised before we went live, there's some. There's some pretty haunting things about Vietnam. I don't want to sound a little dramatic, and I don't mean in the way that is presented in most court history narratives, but there are. There's a lot of dishonesty about the conflict, particularly among, you know, in the accounts of men who served in the executive branch. Now, if you go to the Vietnam War Memorial, you know, the wall in Washington, D.C. and I didn't notice this until 2005, you know, these. The black marble or granite, whatever it is. I'm not a big fan of the memorial, honestly. Like, the. The way it's designed, I think it's kind of morbid. But as it may, each section is designated by conflict year. You know, so it's like all the men who died in 1967 and hostile action, you know, they'll. They'll be like their names. The final panel is 1975. So I figured, okay, that's probably. I didn't think there were any casualties of the embassy, Marines or. Or whatever during occupation or operation. I think it was Enduring Wind, the evacuation of Saigon. But I noticed there's like 38 or some names on it. And I'm like, that's not right. And lo and behold, the men who died on Kotang, the battle of Kotang island against the Khmer Rouge, where it's kind of as an afterthought tacked onto the Vietnam War wall, which doesn't make any sense. The battle of Kotang was not the final battle of the Vietnam War. It was against an entirely. It was against, you know, it was waged against an entirely different regime in an entirely different country for totally unrelated reasons. And I. I found that to be kind of grotesque. But some years later, Rumsfeld wrote a couple of books, okay, he wrote his autobiography and then he wrote his memoirs. And Rumsfeld really cut his teeth in government as the White House chief of Staff during the Ford administration. And he talked about the Battle of Kang like it was this great operation. And you know, there was only, I think he said there was only three casualties, which is perverse. And we'll get into why. It was just like an out lie. And this disturbed me. I mean, I suppose the rebuttal would be, well, you know, Rumsfeld was recalling things then that were, you know, 35 years in the past. Rumsfeld had a photographic memory. He used to brag about that. And my dad made the point. When my dad got out of the army, he went to work for McGeorge Bundy. And they developed kind of a rapport, you know, and my dad used to drive him around and stuff like that. And, uh, my dad met Rumsfeld during his tenure with Bundy. You know, my dad was just like a nobody, you know, so there was no reason for Rumsfeld to remember him. And then decades later, my dad ran to Rumsfeld at some like CFR thing. And Rumsfeld addressed him by his first name because he just. That's the way the guy is. So Rumsfeld. What I'm getting is Rumsfeld did not forget what the casualties were at Kotang. And he didn't just get confused. Confused about, you know, what actually happened there.
- [500:19]
A
Bubba Wallace here from 2311 Racing on the track. My car's look is everything but today
- [500:25]
C
I'm talking about more than just paint schemes. I'm talking about my favorite games at Chumba Casino. Check out exclusives like Stampede Fury and my own King Croc Fury. It's just as wild as my car looked in Texas. With over 200 games and new ones weekly play for free. Free@chumbacasino.com let's Chumba.
- [500:42]
A
Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group Fordware prohibited by law 21 terms and conditions apply.
- [500:48]
D
Nor do I believe that somebody ghost wrote the book and Rumsfeld didn't fact check it. So I mean, that's, I, I guess what, what kind of jumped out at me is that this, this was still being kind of swept under the rug like decades later. So what was the Mayagas incident and why is it important? Well, on May 12, 1975, a. An American cargo ship, SS Mayagas, it had a crew at 39. It was, uh, off the territorial coast of Cambodia, you know, which was then, um, which was then ruled by the Khmer Rouge, you know, weeks before it, uh, that had conquered the capital. They got captured. The Khmer Rouge claimed that they were in territorial waters. The captain of the Miagas subsequently claimed, like they were fired upon by t. By beats, by PT boats and, you know, corralled into Cambodian territory. Regardless, this whole crew was seized. This had echoes of when the North Koreans had seized the Pueblo, which was a Navy intelligence vessel in 1968. And the North Koreans grabbed the Pueblo at the height of the Tet offensive. And being that it was an intelligence ship, the North Koreans were able to seize encryption equipment. And it's believed that. It's believed that John Walker, not John Walker land a different John Walker who became associated with infamy and treason. He was this naval officer who, as it turned out, was spying for the Soviet Union for decades. And it's believed that, you know, the North Koreans conveyed this naval encryption equipment to Moscow. Walker then provided Moscow with, like the, with the ciphers that they could, you know, so the Soviets could, Could decode, you know, the encrypted language. So, I mean, this was, this was a big deal, you know, and, And it, it, you know, there, even if Johnson had a stronger mandate and even if the Vietnam War was going better, the United States wasn't really in a position, you know, open up another front in Asia and, you know, wage war with North Korea. But there's evidence that in part, the North Koreans, via the Chinese, were very much trying to facilitate that, but that's
- [503:30]
C
a little bit outside the scope.
- [503:31]
D
But in any event, Ford was not going to allow a repeat of the Pueblo incident. So immediately, obviously, you know, the, the, the National Security Council convened. Secretary of Defense, which at the time was Schlesinger, who I've got nothing nice to say about people who remember him at all, generally remember him for some incredibly slanderous things that he said about President Nixon. But he, you know, Nixon played musical chairs with his Cabinet kind of like Mr. Trump did. Although there was. Obviously there was more kind of rhyme and reason to. To Nixon's staff decisions. But Schlesinger had succeeded Elliot Richardson. Elliot Richardson had succeeded Melvin Laird. Like, none of these men, like, stir for more than several months, okay? But he was a holdover from the Knicks administration, for better or worse. So is Kissinger, who is Secretary of State at the time it. And what's important, what's important to keep in mind during this time is that there was no Special Operations Command. US Military was kind of a mess. You know, this was only. This was less. This was Less than a year and a half after the draft had, had ended, the all volunteer force was being implemented. There's a, there's a, there's a, the draw down in, in the number of division sized combat capable formations. So basically the, the Cold War flashpoints in Europe and in Asia were really being manned by a skeleton crew as it were. And there was not this like rapid deployment capability and there was no special operations command. So you know, the kind of instinctive response people have in reading about the miagas is like well why didn't, you know, why didn't SOCOM or its predecessor just like deploy Navy seals or something like that? Infrastructure didn't exist. And also, and as the crow flies, I think the closest combat capable force to, to Cambodia would have been located in Okanawa 1975. Okay. Like this was, this was, this was height of the Cold War, you know, this was not. America did not have you know, forward deployments all over this planet. You know that and it didn't have the command and control nor the forces in being, you know, to, to respond to something like this instantaneously. I mean it seems short sighted I guess to people today, but that's history in the rearview mirror. Like this was not, this kind of thing was not really within a contemplation of, of, of the Department of Defense either. It was not, it was not the kind of exigencies that were emergent in 1975 in any, in any kind of regular or predictable capacity. But be as it may, like we talked about, like we talked about last couple of episodes. Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge was absolutely a client regime of the People's Republic of China. This created some strange intrigues as you know, P. King was decoupled from Moscow in a real way and this was, you know, solidified by the efforts of a. Nixon and Kissinger. America had to tread somewhat lightly to, in order to preserve that just a, an immediate kind of broad spectrum assault on, on Khmer Rouge Cambodia which they had, they were calling democratic campuchia. That would have caused real problems and that could have, that wouldn't have the, this, the Sinusoviet split by that point was the, the chasm was too great. Proverbially that wouldn't have driven the Chinese back into the arms of Warsaw Pact, but it definitely would have generated momentum in that direction. Okay, so that's kind of the subtext of this and that's one of the reasons why I think it's an important, it's not just you know, like a footnote of history. It's something that deserves to be talked about, not just because the men that were lost there and, and three of them in particular suffered an utterly horrible fate that we'll get into. But it's imperative to understand, you know, how complicated and how strange the late Cold War became. And obviously later, you know, in 1979, the Hanoi government quite literally went to war with China. And concomitantly, you know, the, the Vietnamese assaulted into Cambodia, deposed the Khmer Rouge and, and this, you know, decades long, uh, conflict ensued, you know, between the Vietnamese occupiers and, and the Khmer Rouge have been driven off into the bush, which was very much a proxy war between the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. Which I mean not to be flippant about it because I mean, you know this, the, the cost in human suffering was immense. But creating, generating that conflict was kind of a masterstroke of the Nixon White House and subsequent administrations who continued to cultivate that divide and conquer strategy. But there's some, there's some evidence if one knows what to look for. The Chinese had absolutely no interest in sabotaging the kind of strategic alliance with America which was then still pretty fresh. But at the same time, you know, China was not America's friend and they were just as prone to intrigues as, as ever. I believe that the Chinese probably directed the Khmer Rouge to seize them, to seize the miagas or at least once it happened, you know, they, they, they, they, they endorsed that move. And I think the, I think the long game for Pey King was that then they could intervene as like negotiator. It would be a way to kind of bloody Uncle Sam's nose in terms of global credibility. You know, cast China as you know, kind of the arbiter of, of, of war and peace affairs in the Orient. And plus it would generate goodwill, at least in Peyton's mind with you know, whatever government replaced the Ford administration. And that sounds totally backwards and strange, but that's the way that the Chinese think and thought it is, it's an arguable. Examples are myriad. If people think I'm just, you know, kind of mouthing off. They don't like the Chinese or whatever. But this was a delicate situation is what I'm getting at. You know, beyond the obvious fact that it, any kind of hostage rescue operation is, is, is kind of the worst possible in operational terms circumstance to emerge. You know, one doesn't need to be, one doesn't need to be some high speed military type to recognize that. But. The way it played out in
- [511:45]
C
operational terms was for Ford was informed of
- [511:47]
D
the seizure of the make of the miagas at his morning briefing on the 16th. Like I said, the National Security Council was convened. Brent Scowcroft, who as I'm sure people will recognize you know, later went on to play a major role in the Reagan administration, particularly Reagan's first term. You know, he, he basically early on in the crisis was, was the one who, you know, convened what ultimately became, you know, the parties who, who determined what, what the, what the operational response would be. For better or worse. The, the, the big concern. I mean, obviously, aside from the, you know, the issues I just indicated relating to. Relating the U. S. Chinese relations and everything else, America had a major credibility problem. And like we talked, you know, owing to the fall of Saigon and as we talked about, I think last episode, I'm not just overstating that because it's kind of my peculiar emphasis as a revisionist. This was in the Cold War, particularly as a strategic parody set in which in the later version of era was, I mean was, was kind of the, you know, what was, was the height of that kind of paradigm shift. The United States enjoying credibility and its ability to project power successfully, you know, in the third world. That's basically what the entire Truman Doctrine hinged upon. And the, the entire American Cold War strategy in, in military terms hinged on the Truman Doctrine. Okay, so coming off of. Coming off a defeat in Saigon despite, you know, however much that had been mitigated by the Sino Soviet split in pure military and strategic terms, if America had proven unable or lacking in the will to respond to the seizure, that Mayag isn't its crew in, you know, military operational terms. That would have, that would have had real world consequences. And, and, and that, that's, that's really what was on the minds of, you know, Ford himself and everybody in his national Security Cabinet. Ford immediately issued a statement declaring that the seizure of the vessel was an act of piracy. Which is interesting language which wasn't really precedented and the context understand that statement within. It wasn't just him. It wasn't just the president relying upon, you know, kind of cringe polemic. What he was saying was, I mean this, this was the era when people were banding that, you know, the president had to have, you know, approval from Congress before he, you know, acted in the Article 2 Commander in Chief role. And like nonsense like the War Powers act was being floated. Okay, I don't want to start a constitutional debate, but that kind of stuff was emergent from the hangover over the Vietnam conflict that that does not have a leg to stand on according to the letter of the Constitution. But because that was the tenor of discourse for it to send some kind of message that, you know he was not going to. He, he was not going to, he was not going to await some kind of congressional debate and whether or not, you know, he was authorized to use force against the Khmer Rouge. You know he's saying like you know, this is outside of the bounds of, of of ordinary international relations and you know, I'm going to respond where I see fit. That's reading between the lines. I find that very interesting. I can't think of a more unenviable position to be in than, you know, the American president in the aftermath of Watergate being faced with, you know, a, a kind of asymmetrical national security crisis like this that calls for, you know, immediate decisive action that I mean that's never a particularly desirable situation to find oneself in. But in that era and in specifically in that moment, you know, weeks after the fall of Saigon, like I can't even imagine but Secretary of State Schlesinger, what he did immediately was he directed the Joint Chiefs to order their people in theater to locate the miagas and at all costs prevent the vessel's movement to mainland Cambodia employing all necessary munitions required to do that but obviously taking care not to harm, you know, the, the hostage crew. Kissinger and this is fascinating immediately went into action but he didn't contact the Khmer Rouge or attempt to. What he did was he contacted the Chinese liaison office in Washington and he immediately demanded the release the mayague is and to convey that message to the Khmer Rouge on the ground the whoever the formal diplomatic representative of Peking was refused to accept the note saying basically I can't take responsibility for this gets injured. Then tapped George Herbert Walker Bush who at that time was leading the counterpart liaison office in Peking. He delivered the note personally to the Chinese Foreign Ministry and he according to Bush himself and I don't see why he would lie about this he conveyed orally that if there was not, you know, if the immediate release of, of the Myaga's crew was not, you know was not realized that the Khmer Rouge would be held responsible collectively and there'd be a massive shock and awe assault on Phnom Pen. And again the this wasn't just diplomatic protocol that both Kissinger and then Bush approached China. I mean it goes to show you what was underway behind the scenes and that this obvious Lee the most charitable view to take of it is that, well, you know, the Khmer Rouge, they, they were paranoid psychos and it was this kind of backwards revolutionary regime. They grabbed the Mayages just because they were paranoid. Then when they realized, you know, that it was a US flag vessel, they freaked it out and didn't know what to do. The most kind of punitive view of it is that, you know, what I, the possibility I raised a moment ago was that the Chinese orchestrated this as, you know, part of a Machiavellian kind of intrigue drama which they've done in the past, frankly, and continue to do so today, albeit unless punctuated in violent terms. But regardless, Washington obviously was aware that, you know, China was either responsible for this in proximate causal terms or had the power to force a resolution. And that tells you everything you need to know about the relationship between the Khmer Rouge, the Vietnamese, the Soviet Union, China and the United States. Subsequently, the Khus tried to do exactly that. Release the M's crew unharmed, which we'll see. And I think that further substantiates, you know, my kind of spitball analysis. But I, like I said, I'm not, I'm not just speculating or conspiracy theorizing. I think anyone who spends time with the factual record and you know, kind of read between the lines of American diplomacy speak, I think this becomes clear. Okay, Back to the kind of practical operational side of it though. The it was on the. The following day it was confirmed that the Miagas was off the coast of Kotang, which is an island in Cambodian territorial waters which the Khmer Rouge had fortified after their. After Phnom Penh fell which it later became clear that they'd done so in anticipation of a Vietnamese naval assault because their big fear was that it would be used as a staging ground, you know to assault the mainland presumably as, you know, a secondary theater to divert Khmeru's forces and being from, you know, whatever across border.
- [521:06]
A
Ready to put a little spin on your day then check out Chumba Casino's new online social casino game Ryan Seacrest 10k ways it's free and packed with 10000 ways to play only at champacasino.com no purchase necessary. BGW Group Void we're prohibited by law CTs and Cs 21 plus sponsored by Champa Casino
- [521:24]
D
Loca I had been the, you know the, the sphere plank does it were of. Of the Vietnamese of potential Vietnamese assault. I can't speak to how probable that would have been because I mean who knows. But it wasn't. Was entirely reasonable to you Know, anticipate that at the time and with what was underway. I mean ultimately the Vietnamese did. I mean that's what the pos. The Khmer Rouge was a Vietnamese attack. So I mean this was not just, this was not just an alibi of, of the regime, whatever else we can say about it and its credibility. The absence of combat cable American forces in theater again was the big problem. The closest truly convocable element was the 2nd Battalion 9th Marines who were then engaged in a training exercise on Okinawa. And on the night of the 13th of May, which was the day after the, the seizure of the, the vessel itself, they were ordered to return to camp and prepare for departure by air on May 14th. It, the problem was this was a heavy. I mean this is this, this was not this, this was the proverbial operation where one needs to go in light. I mean like again, these days it, we would think of it as like a SEAL Team 6 or like a Delta Force kind of operation. And this is not really what people were training for at that time. And there was an. By 1975 there was, there was a handful of officers with 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines who you know, been under fire in Vietnam, but virtually none of the enlisted men or NCOs had, you know, the, the idea taken. I mean however tough these guys were, and I'm sure that they were like a hard dudes taking, you know, taking a Marine element that had not been in combat before and you know, kind of breaking their proverbial sherry, you know, by having them assault a ship that had been taken hostage in this, in a kind of anti counter terrorist operation like that seems like a recipe for disaster. Would ultimately put the kibosh on that planned operation was a guy named General Burns. Yeah, Burns, he was commander of the 7th Air Force. He weighed in and said look, you know, it's very possible that, you know, the crew has already been, you know, taken landslide either on kotang itself or is being shuttled to the mainland regardless. He's like, you're gonna need more firepower than just, you know, then, then, you know, can be, can be brought to bear, you know, by dropping, by dropping by dropping Marines, you know, by chopper onto uh, out of the vessel itself, you know, with you know, kind of like light covering fire from whatever these. I assume like, I assume like Huey. I don't know if Huey Cobras were fielded then yet, but. Yeah, yeah, they would have been. But I mean, point being, you know, it Burns to his credit was thinking ahead and his idea was bring the bear. Air Force Gunships and choppers to be able to, you know, saturate the. The island with firepower if need be. And the, you know, the, the hostage rescue element. He suggested the 56th Security Police Squadron. These are like the Air Force guys who like guard like air bases at that. At that time that's what they were like. These days the Air Force has like a high speed like, like spec war like element. But in those days they basically had. These guys were somewhat like more high speed like mps, you know. And again like that's not really, that's not really, you know, the element you want for something like this. But his view at least was more kind of in line with what was to develop than, than, than that. Than that which was floated previously. And, and this operation was actually implemented. It and the U Topo Air base in Thailand, which I believe is still in use. Like the idea was that these gunships and these and these Air Force mps, you know, who are the hostage rescue element. They were going to be shuttled from the Philippines to Utapo in Thailand to be. And then from there they were going to assault Kotang. On the way to Thailand there was um, there was a chopper crash and like 18 of their number were killed. Um, so as you can see this, uh, it was 18. 18, the security police and five crewmen. So I mean as, as you can see they're just getting like more and more fubar by the moment. In operational terms.
- [527:06]
B
Sounds. It sounds like trying to go into Iran and get the hostages.
- [527:09]
D
Yeah, exactly. And yeah, no, that's. That you're exactly right. And that this coupled with Desert one one and you know, with which the aborted Iranian rescue mission and the lack of integrated command and control at Grenada, that's really what created socom, you know, because the need for it became recognized.
- [527:32]
B
Well, there was only one lost in Grenada, right? Was there one? I think there was only one casualty in Grenada, right?
- [527:39]
D
No, there was a number. And what, what happened was these Navy SEALs who were. There was a bunch. There was a few. There's like, you know, there's an army command element, a marine command element, and then there was these seals who ended up somehow dropped in the wrong place and then they ended up drowning because they weren't retrieved. Oh geez.
- [527:59]
C
Yeah, it was a whole mess and
- [528:00]
D
like it had to do. It was literally totally avoidable and it was like a Command and control.
- [528:04]
B
19 dead. 19 dead, 150 wounded.
- [528:07]
D
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [528:08]
C
I mean grenade is.
- [528:09]
D
We'll get into grenade in one of the later episodes because it's in political terms it it bore directly on the. The Sandinist revolution and there was. There was North Koreans on the ground there. I mean obviously it was the Cuban element. There's a couple of East Germans like it's fascinating and it very much. It very much was what the. I mean however anybody feels about the Reagan administration and you know some of its alleged overreach the Grenada actually was. It was. It was being purposed to rapidly reinforce Nicaragua and and friendly proxies like in theater. You know that was the, the. The only thing to build in Grenada was an air strip for that purpose. And that's exactly what they were building. But be it as it may after this out of this after this after this disaster with you know when at Utapo for convenient another National Security Council meeting on on May 14,
- [529:16]
C
the a
- [529:18]
D
communication link had been established with 7th Air Force elements that had departed from Hawaii and were then circling Kotang.
- [529:27]
C
And in these in those days those
- [529:29]
D
are closer you get to like real time communications. I mean that's another thing we take for granted today. But obviously then like you were. There was quite literally like blindness and theater. If you were the command element in in the White House, you know, trying to direct military operations through the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And then they in turn, you know, any, any. Any data they were getting from the battle space was you know, minutes at least minutes and probably hours out of date. The these fighters they were trying to. What they didn't realize was that the crew by this time of the miagas had been shuttled in this fishing boat which was then attempting to transport them to the mainland, this coastal city called Kampong Som. These guys their credit these pilots who were circling in theater, they recognize that's probably what's going on. They requested a. Permission to try and shoot the rudders off of the ship that was conveying them and like assault the PT boats that were escorting it. Ford intervened and said that you know, the use of those kinds of munitions would be would present too great a risk to the crew. So he put the gabosh on that. The. At the same time the National Security Council they got word they got word back that the Chinese Foreign Ministry in Beijing had refused to pass any kind of formal communication on the Khmer Rouge. But Bush said that in his But Boyce said that he could all but guarantee that the Chinese are putting pressure on the Khmer Rouge to comply with whatever American demands were. But like obviously, even if. I mean like I said I've got my own theory on this that this was very much orchestrated by Peking. But whether it was or not, obviously the situation was rapidly, you know, spiraling out of control. And Bush, whatever, whether your view of him is charitable or whether it's you know, not particularly so. Bush was a serious guy and he very much understood the Chinese and had a rapport with them. And I mean he was a career intelligence man. If you relayed that in my belief, you know this has been conveyed and this is what's happening. I, I, I think you know that was, I, I think, I think, I think that was as good as gold. But the, the acting Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was a guy named uh, was a guy named David Jones. What he presented and this was ultimately followed through in operational terms he presented the arrange of military officer, National Security Council and he said you know, look like we're not even sure where the Miagas crew is at this point, you know, whether they're shipboard, whether they're landside and if they're land side where they're actually located. And he's like obviously like they are, you know rescuing them on harm needs to be our priority. But he's like we basically gotta like waste the Khmer Rouge because like we can't just like let this slide. You know, he's like we gotta, this is a credibility issue above all else. You know, aside, you know obviously you know we're not going to disregard the lives of our people but you know we've gotta, we've got to lay as much hurt on the Khmer Rouge as we can. And from that point forward that was basically accepted by the White House. It came down to three possibilities. Some intelligence suggested that they were still on the Mayagas, some suggested they were on Kotang island, others suggested that they were on the fishing boat itself route bound for the mainland and the, you know, the coastal city of Kampong Som, which is what these Air Force pilots relayed, which turned out to be true incidentally. But what was ultimately decided was National Security Council decided to, they decided to deploy the marines to take the Miagas itself, assault Kotang island and together with a massive assault on Cambodia itself, particularly its shipping and it's, it's shipping infrastructure, you know, any and all like, you know, naval military targets and escalating the Phnom Pen itself, you know like any other kind of like counter value targets of opportunity that presented themselves, you know if, if, if, if within you know, 24 or 36 hours or whatever, you know there wasn't resolution to the crisis. The fishing boat on which The Miagas crew actually was. It did arrive at Kampong some. The Khmer Rouge commander at Campong Som either, either he had either been. Either the Chinese had gotten to him or he just understood what was underway. He issued an order to his men like, you know, under. No, you know, do not harm these hostages, you know, under any circumstances. You know, he asked these hostages, you know, he's like, you know, I mean, I mean by that point I've been established obviously it was an American flag ship, you know, and he, he asked him if the radio equipment was, was operable, you know, so that they could. Yeah, he's like, look, we're releasing you, you know, like, can you call off this assault? And it was, it turned out the radio equipment was not operable. But the, as it, as it turned out later, like one of the, one of the, one of the guys later just closed. He's like, he's like, I didn't know if we'd be able to reach like any of the aircraft in the air, but he's like by that point, like I wanted, he's like, he's like I wanted to come here ruse get their ass kicked.
- [535:27]
C
So he's like I, you know, he's
- [535:28]
D
like I, I wouldn't have transmitted it anyway. Which frankly was the right call, I think. But that, but by that point the die was cast. The,
- [535:43]
A
the.
- [535:45]
D
It was at the, it was at around just past dawn on May 16, Kotang itself was assaulted. But as it, as it turned out, intel suggested that there was only about 20 or 30 Khmer Rouge fighters on the island. It turned out that there's over a hundred. And again they, they, they, they had a lot of heavy machine guns among them and like, and cruiser like squad weapons because you know, like we talked about a moment ago, they'd fortify the island and anticipation of a Vietnamese assault which never came. But you know, these, the Khmer Rouge, whatever you can say about them, these guys were, were incredibly game. Fighters says. Pitched battle ensued between the Marines and the Khmer Rouge. The, the, the, the crew of the Miagas was safely conveyed back from this fishing boat, like back to Miagas itself. And uh, and, and they were, they were, they were safely conveyed away from the battle space. But when it became clear that the crew had been released and was safe, it. The Marines were ordered to withdraw and they began uh, affecting a uh, tactical withdrawal, like a fighting retreat, as it were. Um, but uh, the Marine commander on the ground, there was two beachheads at the eastern. The commander of the easternmost operational area, he Conveyed like, look, unless we're like rap. Unless we're rapidly reinforced, like we're going to be overrun. So the reinforcements that have been called off were then directed back to Kotang to reinforce the Marines on the ground. You know, this. In this kind of chaotic withdrawal that ensued, there was a machine gun team of three marines that. In this kind of craggy, they. In this kind of craggy area, like on the beach itself, like just outside of the ever kind of shrinking perimeter, you know, they'd. They'd set up a, an ad hoc machine gun nest and they'd been left behind in the wake of the withdrawal. And one of the, one of these guys, platoon mates had said on board the chopper, like, you know this, there's at least three men on the ground there.
- [538:45]
C
For some reason.
- [538:46]
D
This wasn't, this wasn't abided. And I realized like in the middle of a hot lz, like in the midst of a firefight, I mean, I, I'm sure things are confused, but this as it happened, these guys who were left behind managed to radio a passing US Naval vessel. And apparently some intelligence officer said that's probably like a Khmer Rouge trick. And they're like, I mean, it seems ridiculous. It seems like something like a Cordy old movie, like some Khmer Rouge saying like, yo GI Joe, you'll send them all. You'll send more marine or what?
- [539:24]
C
I mean, like I would.
- [539:26]
D
I mean that's, I'm not making light of a horrible situation with that. It seems to me by that point probably everybody was looking to cover their own ass as it became clear that, you know, they're like their head probably been men left behind. These three guys are left behind. This became this like enduring kind of myth almost. And I remember before I knew anything about the miagas, before I'd like, I mean, I was always fancy by Vietnam and I mean, ever since I could read, I was reading about, you know, about the Cold War and things. But I knew this guy in the early 90s. He was kind of a sad guy, you know, he's kind of like the troubled Vietnam vet of myth and lore, you know, like he had a drug problem and stuff. But he, you know, became pretty tight because like we worked together, like we delivered pizzas together, you know, and he, he, he. I talked about Vietnam and he was really into the POW MIA movement, you know, and I kind of just looked at him as like a sad guy who was troubled by the war and other things. But he kept coming back to Koh Tang and saying, you know, they left guys behind, you know, in Cambodia, you know, that means they left other guys behind. And like, like, I'm not saying he was right about all these things he claimed, but he wasn't just like talking, you know, like, and he, that's a, this, as it turns out, the, these guys were abandoned on Ko Tang. That, that fed a lot of the speculation that the, that the kind of POW movement, you know, derived their claims from. But it came out years later. These three guys, they were just kids I think like, and they were like, I think they were like 18, 19 and 21 respectively. They were on the island for a week and the Khmer Rouge realized that like some of their rice stores had gone missing and that, you know, boot prints that obviously weren't, you know, Khmer Rouge sandals were found. The commuters tracked these guys and they found them. They were uh, shuttled in the mainland. Uh, you know, I mean, God knows what they were subjected to do by Khmer Rouge torturers, but after several days they were, or according to this, they're jailers. They were beaten to death with the butt end of a B40 rocket launcher. I mean, I can't even imagine that man. Like being, being, being, being abandoned by, by your own forces and then falling into the hands of the Khmer Rouge, like literally on this like God forsaken island. I mean that's, that's beyond. Not a lot of stuff frightens me like at my age and frankly I've had some kind of awful experiences but that, that, I mean I, I find that just like horrifying even, even to think about, you know, and they're kids,
- [542:13]
B
they should, their kids, they should be home in the driveway working on a
- [542:16]
D
car they just bought. Yeah, yeah, man. And it's like of all people of being captured by the premier ruse. About the most horrifying thing I can think of because like it's not just like the Khmer Rouge really were animals. Like, it's not, they were, I mean, like. Yeah, yeah. It's not, it's not some just like propaganda or something like it, I mean there's a lot of cases where, you know, if, if you're, if you surrender, if you're captured at war, I mean you're, you're dealing with that poem. You're dealing with an OP4 that are just guys like you. Like in the case of Khmer Rouge, like these, these guys were barbarians, but
- [542:49]
B
the, yeah, they, they seem like the, the descendants of the, the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War.
- [542:59]
D
Yeah, they, yeah. And there's just, there's like horrible Stuff like the, there actually were like document incidences of like cannibalism just like terrorize people and stuff and like they, you know, they, it's, it's one of the few instances again we're kind of. The truth is, the truth is worse than a lot of the propaganda that came out. But it, but it's also too like
- [543:18]
C
I think, I think a lot of
- [543:21]
D
this was suppressed for the reasons I said. It was like this, it was this bizarre like messy political and diplomatic situation relating to the, you know, the intrigues incident of the Sino Soviet split. You know a lot of the, the ongoing hangover as it were from the Vietnam conflict and you know like I said just, even the way it's treated is bizarre. Thank you. To having the fact like this was just, this was just, you know, it's just kind of like as an afterthought like slapped on to the Vietnam War Memorial was oh this was, you know that this happened sort of in theater and sort of you know within the same decades. So you know, why not just, you know, why not just treat it as part of like the same part of the same kind of like nucleus of, of of conflict events. But it, yeah, I, that's the, that's the, that's, that's the story of Kotank man and that's the, and that's the time. That's the.
- [544:24]
C
I believe, and I've written about this
- [544:26]
D
in my fiction like I believe that I believe the U.
- [544:30]
C
S and get, I believe U.
- [544:31]
D
S forces engaged the Khmer Rouge like fairly regularly. I don't see how they could not have like they were, you know, they were running around Cambodia for years prior to 1970. And then in the aftermath, you know, even, even when, even when the US And China like came to terms and the US Began cultivating the Khmer Rouge against you know, the pro Vietnamese element. I, there's no way that, there's no way that American soldiers did not engage the Khmer Rouge in, in hostile action in theater. But that's the only time it happened above board. I mean this was like a real firefight, you know and it, that's, you know, like I said it, I, I, I try and raise the people because I think as a historical writer I think it's important, you know, to honor the memory of people like these guys who were there. But it's also, it shows you how, it shows you how strange the Cold War got really after 69, 70, 71 when it became really like a three way kind of contest with the United States kind of like nominally allied with China in strategic terms, you know, and pursuing the kind of interdependence, the, the results of which, you know, we. We kind of see today in the globalist structure. But it's, it was far from. It was far from some kind of, like, clean alliance. And, you know, the, the way. What the Chinese view is kind of sound policy in terms of how to intrigue against others is incredibly weird. You know, like, and I'm telling you, like, creating this incident for the sake of trying to exploit, you know, the, the ensuing chaos for some kind of political and diplomatic cachet that might seem crazy to, like, the Western mind. That's exactly the way the Chinese think.
- [546:29]
C
If you read about the, the pointless
- [546:30]
D
border war that Mao provoked with, with Moscow. Mao basically risked a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, said he could go around humiliating Brezhnev, you know, for a few weeks and acting like he'd scored
- [546:49]
C
some kind of victory
- [546:52]
D
so that domestically, like, you know, he could shore up his kind of fledging personality cult credibility. And like, no, like, even a totally unhinged Western,
- [547:03]
C
you know, tyrant, like, wouldn't
- [547:05]
D
think that way or wouldn't do that. But that's, that's the kind of stuff characteristic of the regime and from.
- [547:11]
C
I mean, in the lifetime of people
- [547:13]
D
like me and yourself, I mean, yeah,
- [547:15]
C
the, the kind of chaos of, Of
- [547:17]
D
Mao when in the aftermath is something we didn't experience firsthand. But even, even, even Dang was kind of credited as like this great reformer and this kind of moderating influence. I mean, the, the stuff that he would orchestrate in order to, in order to advantage himself or advantage, you know, Peyton, in his eyes, vis a vis the West. It doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. So that's kind of the last tragic chapter and in the history of what was Indochina. There's, I mean, there was. There was the Chinese. There was the. There was the Sino Vietnamese border war in 79. And there was again too. There was the. There's the occupation of Cambodia, you know, from 79 until. Until the wall came down, China, Chinese
- [548:14]
B
and Vietnamese forces fired on each other like four years ago.
- [548:18]
A
Yeah.
- [548:18]
D
Yeah. No, and that's why one of the really interesting things, you know, Obama was. One of the last things he did in office was he. He lifted any remaining restrictions on. On military tech transfers to Vietnam. Like the, the people in the Pentagon who aren't conceptually illiterate, and there's very few of them who aren't. They're like literally morons. But the. They. They Realize that Vietnam's like an essential hedge against the People's Republic. And it is. And Vietnam's got a real comic capability. I mean, they're hard people. They've got a real military. And Vietnam's comparatively huge country. It's got like 60 million people. You know, like people think. It's not like people think it's like. Like Americans. They think all these countries, like the size of Albania or something. Like Vietnam's, you know, as a. As a geo. Strategic hedge. Yeah. Vietnam's incredibly important. Important. And an alliance that would make sense.
- [549:17]
C
And now that alleviates some of the
- [549:18]
D
pressure of America having to, you know, kind of play between Tokyo and Seoul, you know, which is increasingly, you know, causing consternation in. In relation to both countries as well as their relationship to China. Like, what would be intelligent would be to. To the cultivate countries like Vietnam and some kind of like, American version of. Of what the Russians are trying to accomplish with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Like. Like n. Not only is NATO, like, destabilizing and pointless, but it's also not how you structure military alliances in the 24th century. It's like structurally obsolescent as well as. As well as politically anachronistic. That's kind of a subject another show. But I hope I didn't. I wouldn't like, bore people with just kind of like relaying the battle of Kang. Like I said, I.
- [550:09]
B
Fascinating.
- [550:10]
C
Yeah.
- [550:11]
D
Yeah. And I would.
- [550:12]
C
Next time, what I want to get into.
- [550:13]
D
I want to get into President Carter's modernization of the command and control aspect of American strategic nuclear forces and how, you know, the advent of AI as well as, you know, the. The onset of strategic parity, wherein the window of decision making, you know, was reduced in some cases, you know, to five to eight minutes or something. It had just been accepted for a time that the president would die immediately and event a nuclear war. So Strategic Air Command would be acting as the Article 2 executive. And I mean, that's patently unconstitutional, number one. Number two, that just like, ethically, that's not right. You know, like the United States Air Force and, you know, Strategic Air Command is that then existed. They don't. They don't get to decide, you know, like, who lives and who dies. They don't. They don't get to decide, you know, when and how we wage war. But also, it raises a fascinating issue. I'm always telling people too, like guys like Harlan Ellison, you know, when they
- [551:16]
C
were, you know, Harlan Ellison actually came
- [551:18]
D
up with the idea for Skynet and like James Cameron like ripped them off. Like Cameron rips off everything. But this wasn't just like some kind of horror movie trope. The, the removal of human decision makers from strategic nuclear war fighting, that was a real thing. And by the 1980s, it was becoming. And when there's. When. When launching, even on warning, when there, when. When the window of decision making, temporally speaking, becomes so narrow that even launching on warning is too late, like, what do you do? It's like, well, you know, you defend yourself by finding ways to code variables that indicate, you know, that indicate imminent assault. Like before though, you know, before there's even like conventional like launch indicators and mobilization indicators. But then it's like, okay, but then, like, when do you attack? When there's like a 10 probability of assault. When there's like a 50, anything over 50, 50%, you know, when there's 90%, when there's anything over 1%, you know, and it's not, you know, that. That's a kind of like machine thinking that becomes inevitable, you know, when technology becomes totally just positive of outcomes, but also the amount of data that has to be managed in a strategic landscape like that, like humans can't do it, you know, so were looking at a situation where the Cold War endured. Like, machines would have been the decision maker, you know, and you'd have to hope that, you know, the, the, the coded indicators, you know, were correct or at least like, couldn't be spoofed, you know, by, by man or by fate. But that, yeah, that's. I, I'll.
- [553:08]
C
I'll save it for the.
- [553:09]
D
When we get into that. But that's, that's, that's kind of the, that's kind of the key feature of the Carter presidency, I think. And I mean, I, I'm a lot friendlier to Carter in, you know, the way I, I view the. His epoch and most people. So we'll, we'll get into some of these strategic nuclear command and control issues, some of these war tech issues, and, and, and we'll deal with like, Carter, the man himself, the next episode. And like, again, I really, really appreciate people supporting the series and I wanted to give Koh Tang it's due and the, you know, the men who were there, it's due because like I said, it's. It's something nobody really talks about. And that's part of the reason for these series is so we can deep dive into stuff that people don't really talk about in more mainstream sources. So that's all I got. And thank you.
- [553:56]
B
Yeah, of course. Two quick plugs.
- [553:59]
D
Yeah, you can find me on Twitter. That probably. That'll probably change in the next few weeks, but I'm on there again. You can find me at real underscore Thomas 777. I'm recording for my YouTube channel on Friday with my dear friend Carrie. And I'm gonna upload that next week sometime. So I'll. I'll make sure to hype it. So Everybody knows my YouTube channel. There's nothing there yet, but there will be. Is Thomas tv. You can find me on Substack, which is kind of my permanent home. It's real thomas777.subsect.com I'm gonna relaunch a telegram channel because everybody who supports us, they really like telegram. I mean telegram really treated me badly. So I wasn't real keen to doing business with them again. But I will launch a channel for the sake of the subscribers and our friends. But I'm. I'm gonna do that sometime this weekend and I'll. I'll plug that when we're back on there. But right now I just have like a private channel. But I'm going to relaunch a public one. That's all I got.
- [555:06]
B
Awesome, man. Till the next time. Thank you. Thomas.
- [555:09]
A
Hello, it is Ryan. And I was on a flight the other day playing one of my favorite social spin slot games on jumbaccasino.com I looked over the person sitting next to me and you know what they were doing? They were also playing Chumba Casino. Everybody's loving having fun with it. Chumba Casino is home to hundreds of casino style games that you can play for free anytime and anywhere. So sign up now@chumbacasino.com to claim your free welcome bonus. That's chumbacasino.com and live the Chumba life. Sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group. Void where prohibited by law 21/ Terms and Conditions apply.