← The Pete Quiñones Show
The Pete Quiñones Show
The Complete Cold War Series w/ Thomas777 - 2 of 2
06:33:21
6 Hours and 33 Minutes PG-13 Here are episodes 10-16 of the Cold War series with Thomas777. The 'Cold War' Pt. 10 - The Vietnam War Comes to an End w/ Thomas777 The 'Cold War' Pt. 11 - Nixon, Detente, and Their Inevitable End w/ Thomas777 The...
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Today happens to be the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Paris Peace Accords, which ended the Vietnam War. And we couldn't think of anyone better to have on to talk about that than somebody that is gracing me with his presence on my podcast and going through a Cold War series right now. So how you doing?
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B
I'm doing well, thank you. Well, I appreciate you inviting me.
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Here's the first question I wanted to ask because I was. I was writing questions on the last episode we. We did, and I realized the episodes were for the end. So did public opinion help in ending the war?
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I mean, yeah, because the internal situation
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in any state, any modern state, I mean, whether you're talking about a nominal,
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you know, multiparty democracy, I mean, in
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the terms that that signifier was utilizing, the Cold War, or whether you're talking about, you know, the, the communist states, the Eastern bloc
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in a state, in
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a general mobilization especially. But in any, in any, any policy, ongoing policy, initiative or structure that directly affects the population, like public opinion is impactful on. On that policy, you know, no.
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Despite the kind of mythology of democratic peace theory or whatever, there.
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There are not states that exist that
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are just totally at odds with the
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body politic, not any government in existence, nor has there been in the modern era that just has absolutely no mandate. You know, it's. It's completely immune to public opinion. There's not other things work. But what I was saying a moment ago, and I'm going somewhere with this, it's not just like a sequel old guy tangent. I'm listening to Michael Savage and he's got Colonel McGregor on. I know that people don't. I know some People.
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I don't like McGregor either. That's not the point.
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Savage kept on talking about the Russians kind of foibles in Ukraine and saying this is like Vietnam when, you know,
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the Pentagon just wouldn't really fight the war.
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And McGregor was credit corrected. Savage McGregor's like, Look, man, like, Vietnam's a scalp hunt. We killed huge amount of people in Vietnam. It was not this, like, footing around like, hey, we want to be, you know, we. We gotta. We gotta placate world opinion. We. We don't want to like kill any Vietnamese. It was. I mean, pardon my language, it was a gook scalp hunt. Okay? But you don't win wars just by going out and killing as many people as possible. You don't win wars by, you know, manufacturing dead people. If you did, I think throughout 1942, the Vermont had something like a 15 to 1 burn rate and like major engagement with the red ar. Okay. I mean, did this. The greater German Reich exist today?
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Did it win the war because it
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killed a whole lot of people in Russia? No, but the issue with public opinion was that it wasn't so much like the court. History is two things. That's what Michael Savage said, is that, oh, America wasn't really fighting the Vietnam War, you know, or was doing brutal things. But, you know, these things were, you know, not the war was. There wasn't a general mobilization in place and, you know, America wasn't really applying
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force the way it should.
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That's part of the narrative. The other part is, well, the Vietnam War was wrong. So all these people rose up and just forced, you know, evil Mr. Nixon to stop what he was doing. Like, nothing like that happened. And, you know, 70% of combat infantrymen in N. Were. Were guys who enlisted, you know, and the remaining 30% probably, you know, there was some truth. The fact that there was like a poverty draft, you know, when. When the standards were kind of lessened on. On, you know, who. Who would be, you know, considered? I can't remember what the classification scheme was, but, I mean, there was some truth to that. But this idea that there was either this draft revolt or America just became like a country of peace nicks and. And that ended the war. But what it did do, I mean, Johnson was in fact lying to the American people. And what he was saying was not making any sense. And he was getting on TV directly contradicting McNamara on top of that. Unlike, you know, the New Dealers war where Roosevelt would literally have you arrested if you were a media guy who criticized him, his policy, or you engage in defeatism, which constituted everything from saying maybe the war is not a great idea to reporting on, you know, America
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actually like losing in the field.
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I mean that this, I'm not making this up. Like this is comparing the, comparing the, the view of, or the orientation of the executive branch, you know, in 1941-45 and from 1965-73. It's like night and day, you know,
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like if you think Roosevelt would have
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tolerated, you know, Abby Hoffman or so or some counterpart like Dudley pelly know, holding 100,000 ban protest waving National Socialist flags in Washington, like you're dead wrong. Like why this was allowed and like why this kind of nonsense, you know, why, why, why Cronite was allowed to be embedded at IOR and at long been when, you know, NLF like sappers were assaulting it. I mean, that's a whole other issue. But people did realize something was wrong. There was major attrition in Vietnam. Like young Americans were dying in large numbers. And it was clear that, it was
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clear that Johnson was lying.
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Okay, Nixon, who swept the country as we've talked about, and Creighton Abrams, who replaced Westmoreland. Nixon was in fact winning the war. I believe in, in, in military terms. I mean, the political side of it was totally different both in country as well as domestically as regards the internal
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situation in the United States.
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Nixon did do some foolish things, however, like we talked about in our last episode. You know how Kissinger and Nixon, they, they kind of wages personal war on Melvin Laird, the Secretary of Defense. And that's not what you do if you're the President. And then they went huge publicly layered of like leaking the secret bombing of Cambodia. Like, first of all, why are you admitting to that? Because that's terrible pr. Secondly, like, why are you like having this knockdown, drag out, fight in public with Melvin Laird? Like, how does that look? Okay, so even people were enthusiastic about, you know, kind of the policy shift of Nixon, Creighton Abrams and all of that. They're like, okay, why, why are all these conspiratorial intrigues happening?
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What exactly is going on?
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You know, and then the media really, you know, the, I'm sorry if I feel if this seems scared or shot, but I'm trying to present a linear narrative the best I can. You know, the Kent State, maybe a lot of people know this. I, I don't think they do though. You know, the Kent State shooting of those students, the National Guard, that pro does a protest of the assault on Cambodia. Okay. You know, late in the war 1970. The reason why people freaked out about the assault in Cambodia is because to them it indicated a wider war. In a sense it was. But Nixon was not lying. Vietnamization was well underway. There was an active disengagement. The army of the Republic of Vietnam was taking on the brunt of combat duties and Cambodia was key. And we'll get into that if you know, you're willing to. We got the time. Nixon really kind of neutralized the strategic game of Warsaw Pact in Vietnam by affecting the Sino Soviet split wherein China and their proxy, the Khmer Rouge came to be totally at odds with the Soviet Union in Hanoi. And an active proxy war between communist superpowers developed, you know, between the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge. I mean whether Khmer Rouge were evil or not, I mean that, that's another issue. But point being, there was complexities to widen the war in Cambodia that couldn't really be finessed in PR terms. And the fact Nixon, what had been going on with him, Kissinger and Laird, it seemed rotten. These things kind of conspired to really turn public opinion against what was underway. So yeah, it, I mean I realized I was long winded and some of scattershot. But yes, it, there was a huge impact. It was one part the anti war movement which was in part, I mean
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it was a fifth column regardless.
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But in part it actually was funded and organized by agents of Warsaw Pact intelligence services. There was a hostile media apparatus, even those that weren't even those aspects of national media that weren't hostile. Johnson who did a lot of incredibly stupid and kind of incomprehensible things, allowing media to truly be embedded in the field with combat elements in, in a war like Vietnam, I, with free fire zones. I mean that, that's literally insane. You know, it was inevitable. Even if something like Mei hadn't broken at some point some newsman would have, would have had raw footage of gis like wasting like women and kids. I'm not saying his American troops are evil or something at all. I'm saying like that's what happens in
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a free fire zone.
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Okay. And in, in, in good wars like World War I and 2, that happened also. But in Vietnam, going to the peculiar nuances of the strategic environment, that kind of thing happened in alarming earnest, if that makes any sense. But point being. Yeah, so some of this was, some of this was self sabotaged. Some of this was kind of like the peculiar. Some of it was people not really understanding like I mean TV was still new then basically. I mean part of it was, you know, Especially Johnson, you know, who was a guy who was like born in
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the early 20th century, like not really understanding things.
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Part of was Johnson wasn't was insane. Part of it was, you know, the, you had a, you know, you, you had a, you had a domestic situation that had been actively subverted. Which was literally the opposite of you know, the situation the New Dealers confronted, you know, when they mobilized for war. I mean it was. And on top of that too, I
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apply There was incredibly dangerous things afoot. You know, 62 was the Cuba crisis. 73 was the next major crisis in the Middle east which I think in some ways was more dangerous than able. Archer83 okay, but in the interim, you know, you had, there was 5,000 Soviet military personnel on the ground in North Vietnam, you know, intelligence types. You know, some of these guys are training the North Vietnamese on SAM missiles and things. But there was a, you know, there was the constant fear, you know, during
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these operations like linebacker, are we going
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to kill a bunch of Russians? And then you know, we're gonna, is what the, what the, the Kremlin gonna do then? Maybe nothing or maybe they're going to treat as an act of war. This was like incredibly dangerous stuff. And there's the ongoing, you know, issue in Europe where you know, you had, you know, you had, you know, you literally had 300,000 U. S troops nose to nose with the Red army at the fully gap and the north German plane. I mean and say nothing of you know, occupied Berlin. Like it, this people don't realize,
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I mean if you don't realize how.
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I mean you remember because you're old enough and I do, I mean I didn't live through Vietnam but you know, I, I do remember vividly the early 80s and being afraid of, of, of nuclear war. I mean people don't realize like how tense things were and in a day to day capacity. Yeah, that was screwing with people's lives and even, even people who basically were patriotic according to the terms of, you know, the era. And even people that weren't particularly anti government. There was a certain like weirdness of the Cold War sinking in. It's like, okay, like you know, even people who didn't have, you know, teenage kids. Yeah. At least some kid on their block had gotten blown away in Nam or some relative of theirs, you know, they got this constant fear of like nuclear attack. You know, it, the economy was going to like despite what people like Oliver Stone tell you. Like Vietnam didn't like make everybody rich. Like yeah, there's always war profiteers and Zelensky types. Like there were 500 years ago, there
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were 5,000 years ago.
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There weren't 68. There are today. Yeah, there were guys who were profiting from the Vietnam War. But the Vietnam War was killing the American economy. You know, I mean like it was. These were not like good times. Okay. It, that's one of the. And America didn't really write itself until Reagan's second term, honestly. I mean there's other contributing factors, you know, like the energy crisis and the need to like restructure
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like certain aspects
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of America's, of America's consumption, energy consumption
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in order to account for new realities.
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But it, it literally took like a
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decade and a half for like America
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to like unfuck itself from Vietnam like
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in terms of, you know, the national economic profile.
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But so I mean it was all of those things. The big, the big issue with the Paris peace agreements is people.
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Well, let me just, let me just.
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Yeah, go ahead.
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You were, you're talking about the economy and they were almost literally doing two wars because not only are they paying for Vietnam, but now they have this war on poverty that they're having to print money over. And so you, of course you're going, things are going to go to.
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Because when you're also, you're throwing millions
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upon social programs come in.
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You're also throwing millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to develop, you know, ICBM systems that you know, can be super hardened to withstand like first strike. You know, like, you know, keep keeping B52s constantly in the air like with nuclear payloads. Keeping 300,000 men in West Germany, you know, keeping, you know, developing and maintaining like a fleet of Minutemen missiles as a, you know, as the primary deterrent. You know, keeping, keeping nuclear capable submarines in the water. Like this is unbelievably expensive. You know, like one of the reasons why like Reagan went all into win the Cold War wasn't just because, you know, he, you know, he had like balls or something or. Because he, you know, he, you know, he wasn't like a, like Carter or whatever. Like dumb things people think today. And like America, America could wage the Cold War longer than Ivan, but America was running out of money to do it too. You know, like, you can't, you cannot sustain that indefinitely. You're going to go to war or you're going to face some kind of structural crisis like the Soviets did, and then the odds of war happening becomes exponentially more likely. I mean, you know, that this idea somehow like America, like indefinitely, you know, maintains like a 600 ship Navy, you know, could have continuously like fielded like, you know, neuro weapons, you know, like the B2 platform and, and, you know, and, and, and pursue, you know, sdi, which would have become necessary. I know people like to talk about
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it's like some kind of pipe dream,
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you know, people like, you know, Mr. Ted Kennedy in the Epoch. But it wasn't like Jerry Pornell said, like orbital space. Had the Cold War endured in the 1990s, like orbital space had to become what naval warfare platforms were to strategic nuclear planning in the 80s. I mean, at some point the money would have run out. You know, like again, it's. They can't.
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Well, that's also,
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That's also why President Nixon ended Bretton Woods. I mean, it makes it easier if you get off the gold standard and you can, you know, accelerate the money supply too.
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Yeah, very much so. But it's also too. He was genuinely worried. He was genuinely worried about, about, about like a run on the gold reserves. I mean, it's just like a real, that was, that was a real prospect, especially because it's like outside the scope. And we can talk about this in another episode. And I'm not an economist, but I
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do know I, I am something of
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an economic historian and that I, I have like a basic conceptual picture of, of how the, about the structure of
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American economic policy changed and just like
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how globalism kind of gradually became a reality, you know, and how the kind of information age, you know, changed the way financial markets function. Where the r mes the road. And aside from all these things you and I just raised the 1970s. That was the dawn, that was the true dawn of the Information age. Okay. I mean, you could say that like the kind of machines that like touring machines were. I, I don't mean like that. I mean like the digital age, I guess I should say that the dawn of that was the 1970s and things from, from the 1970s to now things changed just rapidly, you know, and that, that was altering the way business is done and the way like money is conceptualized in my opinion, for better and for worse.
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I mean it was, it was, it's not, it was not all negative, although there are many negatives.
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But you know, the, these kinds of punctuated, these kinds of punctuated changes are they, they're, they're stressors, you know, like I, they, they, they, they, they cause, they, they make, they make crises more
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probable of all sorts.
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So yeah, it, you know, but the, the main, what I kind of wanted to emphasize on, you know, I mean like all things related to Vietnam even today, even though kind of the, like the taboo is no longer around the Vietnam War, obviously as it was for, you know, when I was a kid and like when you were a teenager, I'm sure. But people, this is still like ill understood this is the idea of the Paris Peace Talks. Like guys in kind of the mainstream, right, even some guys like on the dissident right, they view it as like, oh well, Congress screwed Nixon over and just, you know, cut off the money supply and you know, the, the tangible military aid to the Republic of Vietnam, you know, so the south couldn't defend itself. And you know, Hanoi was just rubbing its hands together and never meant to like abide the rules of the, or the, the material express conditions of the peace agreement. It's not really true. You know, then there's like other people who, you know, people on the left and kind of like major historians, they just claim that like, well, Nixon was just making, you know, making a fool the American people and like pretending to accomplish peace, that's not true either. This is kind of a. If the view from Nixon and Kissinger and, and across the aisle, you know, Jaap and, and the Hanoi leadership, like the Central Committee, the Communist Party Vietnam, there's like a lack of shared premises writ large. And if you read the statements, what Hanoi was saying to Cosman Cosmic cosvn, that's an acronym, it stands for Central Offices South Vietnam. There's the anglicized acronym for the, what amounts to the Central Committee of the Vietcong, okay, based in South Vietnam. And what they communicated to them was that in their view what the ceasefire meant or what the peace agreement meant was that America would disengage that communists in South Vietnam, like former party members, Vietcong suspects, you know, sympathizers all in sundry, would no longer be treated as enemy combatants. A road map would be implemented as it were, for what was supposed to be implemented in 1954, you know, which was eventually, you know, like countrywide elections, which never actually happened in part because of the constantly, you know, the. The constant changing regime in Saigon never allowed it to happen. Like, that is true. And they wouldn't allow it to happen
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because it would have.
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Vietnam would have gone red. So I understand that completely. But the two regime in Saigon immediately after, like, the ink was dry. Basically. Like a major push happened in key areas, especially border territories, like with. With Cambodia as well as the Quang Train Province, you know, key. Key. Key operational areas of. Of communist control that were like, strategically essential for them to be able to bargain from a position of strength and in advent of hostilities, access logistically what they needed to in Cambodia. And when it became clear that the south was going to. Was going to continue to, you know, try and annihilate what remained of the Viet Cong, the North responded with conventional means. And their reasoning was always, south Vietnam is not a sovereign country. There are not two Vietnams. The north never accepted that. So their notion was, well, kind of like the Provisional ira. And you can say this is in bad faith. Their view was always, you know, we're. We're gonna lay down our arms, but you've basically gotta, like, allow like, you know, full representation the Communist Party. And know, you gotta. You've got to give our people, you know, equality of status at the polls. And, you know, added to that too, obviously there's an epistemological problem with communism because they claim that they're practicing a kind of science. And if you refuse to abide what they claim is the inevitable science of history, you know, which is like advancing socialism, you know, you're basically engaged in some kind of oppression of humanity in general. Like, quite literally, this is like what they'd say, you know, whether you're talking
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about East Berlin, whether you're talking about
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Moscow, whether you're talking about Prague, whether you're talking about Vietnam. So there's like this added. Just kind of like this added, like, inability to come to terms that like, framed like Hanoi's conceptual horizon. However, Nixon basically put Saigon in as good a state as it could have been in terms of political legitimacy and in terms of bolstering their case in the court of world opinion, which actually mattered then in a way. It didn't. It doesn't now. And the 1972 offensive, colloquially called the Easter by, like, you know, military geeks and like historians on sundry that was stopped in its tracks. I mean, American air power devastated North Vietnamese armored columns, but this Army Republic of Vietnam actually stood and fought. And like, I think I made the point some weeks back that they get a bad rap, you know, because they're always kind of panned as like this cowardly force, like crooks and like only full mil jag at the only time you see the ARVIN on screen and some ARVIN captain and he's wearing like some faggoty like silk scarf. He's literally pimping some girl to the Marines. Okay, you want, you want boom, boom and like and that like you literally never see a portrayal of them as like anything but like scumbags or like, and like that's not fair. I mean I'm not a Vietnam veteran, so like I'm sure those guys had their own extra grind with them people, but I'm talking the historical record. Just like as a dude who like writes about historical topics, if nothing else, like the 72 offensive and the fact that it was stopped in its tracks like a quits the Army Republic of Vietnam, okay, that's not all air power. Okay, so yeah, there's that. But that's, that's kind of the way to understand
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the Paris Peace Agreement.
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It wasn't just Kissinger being duplicitous or Nixon, you know, being a snake or I mean, what would Nixon gain from that anyway? Like, because all, if any, anyone knows anything about Nixon knows like Nixon's a guy who, like, he's a rare American who lived historically in absolute terms. Like all Nick's never thought about was his like contribution to history. Like Nixon never, ever, ever would have just like, just like, you know, pulled some kind of ruse and said like the hell with thon, I don't care, you know, this, I'm just gonna, you know, this is how I'm gonna like try and shore up my cred like in the midst of Watergate, like that, this nonsense. But it, but it's also, you know, the Sino Soviet split, Nixon. If you read what Nixon wrote after the war and post Watergate, Nixon disappeared for about five years, but then he made a comeback as a best selling author. And as the Cold War heated up again, you know, people became very thirsty for serious analysis on, on geostrategic things. And Nixon really had the Soviet Union's number in a way that's remarkable. And he wrote a lot about why he went to China. And he said, like, look, you know, I basically realized in 1953, you know, as the stalemate in Korea set in, like we had to decouple Peking from Moscow at all costs. I mean, yeah, we have to make compromises there, but, yeah, you know, a lot of people would suffer in places like Cambodia because of that. You know, you can say it's callous, but Nixon was totally open about that.
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C
But had that not happened, the Communists would have won the Cold War. Absolutely. You know, you'd have a communist world in America, be this kind of garrison state that existed, you know, in, in, in. And it had an ability to project power, kind of like in 19th century terms, like, you know, throughout, like, the Western Hemisphere, probably as far as Greenland or something. But it would, you know, it would. It would basically be this kind of, like, island amidst, like, a hostel, like, Red World. Okay? And that was a very real possibility. Had things not developed what they did, but in a more immediate capacity. Nixon realized he had to court Ma when he did because that neutralized. That neutralized the. The strategic advantage of. Of Soviet victory by proxy in Vietnam because you literally had a communist superstate on the border of, like, you know, their client in Vietnam. And the Khmer Rouge would stand with China no matter what. You know, it didn't matter that, you know, they. They'd. It didn't matter. They clicked up with the Soviets and the Chinese and the National Liberation Front and Hanoi to fight the Americans when, When things. The Khmer never liked the Vietnamese anyway. And when things went bad between Hanoi and. Or between Moscow and Peking, the Khmer Rouge would always be all in with. With China and its will. Okay, so you had. Nixon managed, you know, what. What. What did the Soviets really gain in Vietnam? It's like, okay, yeah, like we talked about Vietnam was. That was where that was. That. That was. That was where the line in the sand was drawn. You know, when. When the free world, as it was called, you know, like, fought, you know, the Communists in open combat, it didn't matter. It could have been anywhere. But that's just where it was.
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It was a political fight.
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It wasn't a struggle for resources and territory. And, yeah, the Communists won that, but it's like okay so now you know, the Soviets have basically like this kind of, they've got, they've got this, they've got this appendage beleaguered by you know, hostile Khmer Rouge Cambodia and like hostile you know, communist China to its north. And that is really interesting too because obviously this at that time the trifecta that truly ruled the Soviet Union in my opinion was USOV and drop off and Grico and you know the Soviet hedge against China was India. You know that's in like true military interdependence develop between Moscow and, and India. And that's when Kissinger went all in with, with Pakistan, you know, in the India. The Indo Pakistan war was very much a cold war proxy resultant directly from the writing on the wall. The Soviets detected from what was happening
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with Nixon in China.
- [31:18]
C
And then when that, I mean that result incredibly brutally. And then the Soviets pushed in Angola like immediately after. That's why the focus shifted to Africa. As if Africa we can win. You know, like what does the west have? You know they've got Rhodesia, Rhodesia is going down. You know, they got South Africa. South Africa is a pariah, you know and plus like they wanted to fight the South Africans, you know and then 50,000 Cubans showed up to fight the SADF, you know and it was hey, we're, you know look at, look, look at this, look at this racist oppressor state. You know, like we're, we're, you know
- [31:50]
B
the, the Warsaw Pack, you know, believes
- [31:52]
C
in liberating people, you know in, in the global south or the colored world. Did your pick. But that, I mean all these, these things are just, these things are just incidental. This is proximately caused by Vietnam and it's proximately caused by the fact that Nixon and Kissinger were able to decouple Peking from Moscow like in absolute terms. You know, I mean I, you know, and it, that to the point that that rift could never be repaired. I mean that, that's remarkable. There would have been, I mean owing to the vagaries of Mao and I think just things intrinsic to the Chinese national and cultural character as well as just kind of racial differences in, in, in geostrategic issues. I think, I think the Sino Soviet alliance have been problematic going forward but it definitely would have held together until at least you know, America slash NATO was like vanquished within you know the Eurasian land mass and the, the Soviets and the shy guns would have handled the rinses later. It, it always entirely to Nixon and Kissinger that the Center Soviet split was that fractious and that permanent. I firmly believe that if that was like two kind of like wide, widely off topic. You wanted to focus more specifically and
- [33:18]
B
concretely in a piece of.
- [33:20]
C
I'm sorry, but I thought it was important to make notes.
- [33:26]
A
Well, here's one thing I wanted to bring up about the accords. Yeah, most, I would say a lot of mainstream historians would say that South Vietnam was basically pressured into accepting an agreement that basically ensured that it was going to collapse.
- [33:47]
C
I mean, I think there's a political problem here. Like we're used to, we're, we're not
- [33:56]
B
way to characterize it.
- [33:57]
C
We're accustomed to, to the Department of State just kind of issuing these ridiculous statements that nobody could possibly derive anything
- [34:06]
B
from but like gross offense.
- [34:07]
C
I mean, in terms of like, you know, the, the foreign regimes are directed at, like in the case of Vietnam, it was a very, it was a very delicate minuet. I mean, first of all, I mean, like I said at the outset of this discussion, you know, we killed a huge amount of people in North Vietnam, I mean, and the south, but particularly, I mean, we, these were not people had warm feelings towards America. You know, I mean, this was a brutal war with racial overtones, frankly. Okay. Secondly, like I said, this wasn't clear cut. I mean, arguably it's always ambiguous if you're talking about national frontiers and you know, like, I know people talk like, you know, the borders of Ukraine are like absolutely sacred, you know, and like more holy than, you know, like some, some prom queen's virginity or something or that. Like, you know, the state of Poland is a sacred thing. I mean, but aside from like the garbage of that, the, the, the status of Vietnam actually was genuinely ambiguous, you know, and the succession of governments, America really kind of mishandled that. You know, it's like, okay, I mean, you know, you had a guy like DM who straight up, you know, who straight up whacked because it was pretty
- [35:24]
B
clear he was just going to go
- [35:25]
C
all in and say, like, hey, look, I'll allow like a national election, you know, basically. And I, I, I, I think him being in the kind of hustler that
- [35:35]
B
he was, was looking to carve out
- [35:37]
C
some kind of, some kind of space in the regime, you know, for, for him and those like himself, you know. But he obviously, you know, America wasn't going to tolerate that. But you know, their successors, you know, he had a guy like two who, who sort of completely a hard line on the communists, but that, that wasn't reasonable either. You know, and they had to come to terms somehow. And I believe Nixon's reasoning was, you know, just strictly like in theater in terms of the military situation and how it impacted the delicate politics. As I said, if, if there'd been a normal political situation in America and if you'd had, you know, if, if there hadn't been like a, quite literally a coup against Nixon, if you hadn't had a Congress that, you know, full of people who were essentially campaigning on, you know, building a career on, you know, condemning the, the promoted evil of Vietnam War, had the Truman Doctrine been abided as intended, I think South Vietnam could have basically held off a Northern assault indefinitely. And as perverse as the logic that body count was particularly as realized, you know, North Vietnam had been at war for decades and they think of the burn rate. They were losing a huge amount of military age males. I mean, at some point the North American news would not have been able to sustain that. You know, at some point. Unless you're talking about some, unless you're talking about some crazy situation like the FARC in Cambodia where you're literally talking about dudes like, living in the jungle, not metaphorically, literally, you know, who are like running, running cocaine and dope and, you know, carrying on some alleged insurgency for 50 years, which probably is more than anything, it's kind of like a cover for their little like, narco trade and their bizarre kind of, you know, anarcho primitive existence. Like, you can't, you can't just carry on, you know, a revolutionary campaign for decades on decades. And we're not talking about a low intensity campaign like the PIRA in, in Belfast. I mean, even that is difficult. But, you know, we're talking about, you know, the North Vietnamese army was actually a crack army. And we're talking about combined arms assaults, you know, where mass numbers of men are dying, you know, where, you know, you're, you're assaulting with, you're assaulting with columns of T54 tanks.
- [38:06]
B
They have to be fueled.
- [38:08]
C
You know, they're being, they're, they're getting close air support from MiG17s that, you know, with pilots, they have to be trained extensively. And when they die, they're hard, it's hard to replace them. You know, you're periodically, you know, your capital city is periodically getting like bombed into the stone Age. You know, I mean, like, this does take its toll over time, you know, I mean, and it, I don't. The Vietnamese initially thought it would probably take them until about 1979, 1980, to win the war like Hanoi, I mean, and there is interesting talk because obviously anyone who spoke in the, on the Central Committee, like pick their language carefully, you know, as people do in government, but particularly governments at war, and especially, you know, the communist regimes, the Cold War, you could tell these guys were nervous, like military and civilian alike. Like look basically beyond 1980, all bets are off. Like translated and reading the lines like we can't sustain this indefinitely, you know, so there is that. But one thing I did want to raise, I made the point that in my opinion, and I'm not a criminologist, I don't speak Russian, but I do know something about the Soviet Union and I believe firmly that the Soviet Union was at its zenith when the shadow executive was the strife effect of usanov Gromiko and, and drop off and drop off really, really had the United States's number, okay? And he, in a way that most Russians don't, in a way, frankly most like eastern block types didn't. And that's one of the reasons why he was so effective and he very much understood that if you can really, really with, you know, the, the internal situation of America and, and carve out a genuine like single issue opposition on a matter of war and peace, you can really, really fubar their system. You know, that was kind of like America's weak point.
- [40:13]
B
Just like solidarity was like the weak
- [40:15]
C
point of these Iron curtain regimes and like in similar, you know, similarly structured things, you know, solidarity of course was, it was like. It was basically a Catholic social teaching movement that was at base, you know, like a labor union, you know, that was demanding what the party was, was always promising but never delivering on. And that was like kryptonite to the, you know, Marcus Leninist cadres that ruled, you know, it. So yeah, there was, it was kind of a perfect storm of things that made, you know, made the situation untenable
- [40:55]
B
vis a vis South Vietnam.
- [40:56]
C
But I also, I mean, and, and again, I, I want to widen the discussion just a bit.
- [41:02]
B
I got to come into the point
- [41:03]
C
again and again because people act like Vietnam is this weird anomaly or this like unique and remarkable evil. You know, like we talked about the reason I raised the issue of CTO, you know, SEATO, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, the 1954 dual accords of Korea and Indochina and the Truman Doctrine. Like this was entirely congruous with US policy after, after the second World War, like the cost of waging the second World War, among other things, was when these primitive as hell third world nations, which in those days truly were Primitive, like people living in huts. When they come under assault by Ivan, you go defend them and your kids go defend them and your tax dollars go defend them and you lose those things. I mean, that, this was very well understood. You know, that was the Cold War that came to an end in part because Washington realized it wasn't tenable. Part was the revolution in military affairs. But part of it was just, it took, it took 30 years for the damage wrought by World War II to be repaired and for these states like Korea to be built into, like, functional client states with a combat capability of their own. I mean, that's, you know, I don't want to see what America could have done within the, I'm not, I, I, I don't think World War II gentleman fought, obviously, but within the boundary rationality. If I'm, if I'm Kennedy or if I'm McNamara or if I'm Nixon in 16, in, in February 69, you know, the office, like, what am I supposed to do in Southeast Asia? Say, okay, the Truman Doctrine's off, the
- [42:44]
B
Cold War is off.
- [42:45]
C
We're not going to defend Vietnam, we're not going to recommitments. You know, we may not even defend West Berlin, I don't know. Because war is bad and just people don't like it and it's messy and people die. I mean, like, what is the other people think should have been done? You know, I mean, that's arguably, that's why it was incredibly aside, the fact you don't genocide your own civilization. It was incredibly stupid to wage World War II because this was the result. You know, I mean, okay, well, now you get, no, not now you get to fight Ivan for the rest of the planet. I mean, you know, and that's what happened. So this I was like, nobody really explained to me it's like it was good to incinerate, you know, it was good to incinerate, you know, 150,000 people at Dresden. But the most evil thing ever was, other than, you know, the quote unquote Holocaust was like, blowing away, like Vietnamese villagers at me lie. I'm not trying to be flippant, because that's, that's horrible. Okay? Like, both of those things are horrible, but nobody can tell me, like, why the latter is like, you know, the day America lost its innocence. But the form was just like something that like, had to be done, you know, like, it doesn't, there's a lot of dishonesty about Vietnam. You know, it's kind of like, it's kind of like the dishonesty of World War II in reverse. You know, like, and this is faded because it's faded historical memory. But, I mean, you remember because you're a little. Just little than me. Like, Vietnam was presented as, like, the worst war ever waged for, like, reasons no one could articulate, you know, like, why. Oh, like, yeah. And the whole thing was very. Was very, very cynical and ideologically driven. But. Yeah.
- [44:27]
A
Well, is that. Because everything after Nuremberg has to have a. A moral component to it.
- [44:33]
B
You know, if you have.
- [44:34]
A
If you apply to a moral component to anything, then if you start with morality, it's a good war, it's a bad war, then you can. I mean, you're basically pulling at the heartstrings of middle America, of Protestant America, church going America, and leave them around like a dog.
- [44:57]
C
Of course. But my point is, it was arbitrary, you know, and it's like the.
- [45:00]
B
Like, it was.
- [45:01]
C
I realized why people were doing this,
- [45:03]
B
and I realized why this fifth column
- [45:06]
C
developed the way it did and why
- [45:07]
B
they focused on Vietnam.
- [45:09]
C
But in absolute terms like, this doesn't make any sense, you know, and like,
- [45:12]
B
I said, Vietnam's exceptionalized.
- [45:14]
C
Like, people. You know, the narrative presented by, you
- [45:18]
B
know, people around Kovac, people like Oliver
- [45:20]
C
Stone, you know, people in the era like Abby Hoffman, was that this is, like, kind of conspiratorial design. It's like, look, man, like, the Truman
- [45:28]
B
Doctrine is very clear.
- [45:29]
C
Like, America deployed in pretty much exactly
- [45:31]
B
the same way in.
- [45:33]
C
In Korea, in the Dominican Republic, in
- [45:35]
B
65,
- [45:39]
C
in Bolivia, to run down Shavara decades later in Nicaragua, in El Salvador, although obviously those weren't, you know, those weren't deep deployments. Like, this is not like America abiding the Truman Doctrine and, you know, realizing it had to fight a Soviet client regime to maintain credibility amidst as. As. As the era. Strategic parody was imminent.
- [46:05]
B
Like, it's not some, like, weird thing
- [46:06]
C
or, like, hard to, like, difficult to decipher.
- [46:09]
B
Like, I.
- [46:09]
C
You know, and again, like, nobody can explain to me why, like, why. Why, like, annihilating Europe and sacrificing your sons, like, on. On Guadalcanal is, like, awesome. But, you know, like, losing your son
- [46:24]
B
at I had drag or KSAN is like this grave evil.
- [46:27]
C
Like, when America lost its innocence. Like, it.
- [46:30]
B
It's just.
- [46:30]
C
It's just. It's just stupid. And, you know, it's.
- [46:34]
B
And it's beyond stupid.
- [46:35]
C
It's, you know.
- [46:36]
A
Well, it turned. Well, they just said that it. It just really became a. A trope, that it. This wasn't the war to Fight that there was nothing good about this war. 68. You know, even Cronkite is saying that the war can't be won.
- [46:55]
C
Well, yeah, and again too, like imagine,
- [46:57]
A
I mean there are.
- [46:58]
C
But, but think about this. Like, imagine in 1943. Imagine after, you know, when the United, the US army didn't meet the Vermont in combat until 43 and they got their asses kicked. The Kasserine Pass. Like, imagine if Walter Winchell had gone on the radio and said, Mr. Roosevelt's a liar. World War II can't be won. You know, victory of, of the Axis is imminent. Like, dude would have been arrested if not disappeared. You know, I mean like it's, it's,
- [47:25]
B
it's, it's a joke.
- [47:26]
C
Like you can't make this up. You know, like people act like this was just some like normal occurrence or just like sound journalism. And again, I mean, Americans have this weird idea. Like I said, the, the two are kind of most puzzling myths to me because it's otherwise like intelligent people, you know, who present this, these things I'm about to raise. You know, it's not just like dumb people repeating moral tropes they've heard. It's like the guys who say what Michael Savage did. I mean, Savage isn't smart, but there are smart say is like, oh, America was like just footing around in Vietnam and we killed him like 3 million people. And it was literally like a scalp hunt, you know. Yeah, nothing say they put shade on the Vietnam army. I've got a lot of respect for them guys and I, but, but I mean, look, man, let's be real. Like we, we killed a huge amount of those people and we were being like, we were, we were being like
- [48:17]
B
doing like cowboy around.
- [48:18]
C
It's you know, like so it's like don't pretend that like, you know, don't like killing millions of these people with like firepower that was purpose to fight the Soviet Union. Like it was like some like low key thing that was like not, not real war. But also the like when people claim like, well, Vietnam was just like a stupid war, it's like, look, I mean like I said in part way the mirror shammer on this, you know, like you don't, you know, you don't fight, you didn't fight wars in 1968 you know, to like have access to like more like grain reserves, you know, or like, you know, control the ability to like, you know, ship like silk out of, out of, out of the, you know, out of China, back, back to Europe or Something, you know, like, it didn't matter where Vietnam was, you know, that's where the line to say was drawn. That's where the Reds pushed, you know, and if you're gonna. If you're gonna win the Cold War, like, wherever the Reds push, it might be Bolivia, it might be Iran, it might be Vietnam, it might be Angola. Like, it might be. It might be West Berlin. Like, that's where you fight them.
- [49:20]
D
Tyler redick 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. CTNC21+ sponsored by Chumba Casino.
- [49:35]
C
You know, like, the issue is, like, who's gonna. You know, the Cold War was fought on in every. In every aspect of. Of conceptual political life, you know, like, economically, like, culturally, like, technologically and militarily, you know? You know, you can't, like, pick and choose, like, where you fight, you know, and that's. And plus, like, words like, we talk about war rifle like the seasons. I mean, that's. That's the problem with clause of Witz's dictums. Like, taken to kind of this sort of like. Like.
- [50:06]
B
Like logical extreme. It becomes, like, irrational.
- [50:08]
C
Like, you know, like, you don't just, like, go to war to, like, affect, like, policy ambitions by other means. You know, like, war arrives, like the seasons, and there's a boundary rationality to warfare. Absolutely. And warf is a rational process the way that it's fought. But, like, you don't just go to war because it's like, I. You know, I can't. I don't like the. I don't like the trade arrangements of country. Why I know I'm gonna launch a massive assault on them like that. That's not how things work. That'd be like saying, like, I want
- [50:38]
B
to sell you my house.
- [50:40]
C
Maybe if I go to your house and, like, beat the. Out of you, like, that'll help me, like, get a better deal. I mean, it's, like, not. That's not how people think, you know, like, that's not like, things are done, you know, like. And it's not. I realize that's, like. Sounds silly, but, you know, the. You know, this is a very important point, and that's one of the things. That's one of the race. Sorel. It's not just because, I mean, like, his ideas and aesthetics and things and the way, like, people view, like, labor and the way identitarian Things in. In political life. I mean, he deals with those things
- [51:11]
B
in intelligent ways that we can to people like us.
- [51:14]
C
But it's like ontological view of, like, conflict. Like, this is something that happens. Like, it's not this rational thing. It arrives. Like, it's like why you find, like, a girl attractive. It's like, why.
- [51:24]
B
It's like, why.
- [51:25]
C
It's like, why certain symbols, like, take
- [51:27]
B
root, like, during cultural epochs.
- [51:29]
C
It's like, it's.
- [51:29]
B
It's like why winter comes.
- [51:31]
C
We're at war now. You know, war arrives. I mean, that I realized I was a bit far afield. But,
- [51:38]
B
yeah, I think that's important.
- [51:39]
C
I mean, and as regards Vietnam. But in the case of Vietnam, it's
- [51:43]
B
particularly kind of, like, neglected that, you know.
- [51:45]
C
Yeah, but go ahead.
- [51:46]
B
I'm sorry.
- [51:49]
A
Oh, no problem. Well, we're coming up on the hour, so let me end with this, because I know you could probably go on a little bit about this. The common trope, even till today, is that the United States lost the Vietnam War. What. What is your opinion when you hear somebody say that? What thoughts come into your mind?
- [52:10]
C
I mean, I agree with John Paul Van. For those that don't know, the Van was a really interesting guy and a very troubled guy. He had kind of, like, a horrible upbringing. Like, his mom was literally, like an alcoholic prostitute. Like, didn't know. His father joins the Army Air Corps, gets trained as a pilot. World War II ends before he sees action. When the Air Force made independent service, he wanted to stay in the army,
- [52:40]
B
so he became an infantry officer.
- [52:43]
C
Long story short, he commanded a company and then a Ranger battalion in Korea. David Hackworth, a young David Hack was under his command. And Van became his, like, total badass. Okay. He had problems with alcohol. He got into some with an underage girl. I mean, typical, like, warrior type who was his own worst enemy. But, like, a really brilliant soldier. And when he left the service, he was one of the. Before his last kind of role in uniform. He's one of the first guys deployed Mac V. Okay. Military citizens command Vietnam in 1962. And the reasoning there, like, we talked about those very much a Special Forces war. You know, counterinsurgency, direct action, identifying cadres and eliminating them. Okay. 64. After two years at Mac V, Colonel Van retires. He becomes independent, like, defense consultant. Now, lo and behold, a year later, this, like, massive buildup happens. And Van is like, what the hell are you doing? And Van. So all these friends in the Pentagon, so he was able to get back to Vietnam as a Civilian. And he ultimately died in 1972 in a chopper crash. But he, Van wrote a book called A Bright Shining Light. And this kind of put the Vietnam War in perspective for me in terms when I was a kid. And I highly recommend it to anybody. Van said basically what I, what I, what I stated at the outset of this discussion. I was basically borrowing from Van, like, look, you don't like win wars, work on a condom to see like how many people you can kill, you know, you don't like win a war by
- [54:29]
B
like racking up the biggest body count
- [54:30]
C
or by winning all the battles. You know. You win wars by, by annihilating the enemy's ability to fight, you know, by destroying his infrastructure and his, you know, and his ability to reconstitute and continue to wage war and by breaking his political will to wage war in any number of ways. And some constellation of those things like wins the war. So no, America lost the Vietnam War, but Americans look at this like a
- [54:59]
B
football game or something.
- [54:59]
C
Like, hey, we killed more of those people. Like, okay, great man. Like, like again, the Vermont killed something like their, their burn ratio was something
- [55:10]
B
like 15 to 1.
- [55:11]
C
I'm not exaggerating. Okay. I mean, does that mean, like, does that mean that the German Reich won World War II because they killed 20 million Russians? I mean, it know, and it's not, it's not a football game like saying like, hey, at a Drang, like we kicked North Vietnam's ass, like they didn't
- [55:26]
B
really win or like whatever Westmoreland's cope
- [55:28]
C
was it, you know, the, and, and Van was absolutely right. The problem with America is that it's obsessed with firepower. That's something that America borrowed from the German general staff of old, but with kind of, without the kind of tactical flexibility and intelligence of the German general staff. It's like the American notion is that firepower solves all problems. It doesn't matter what it is. If you throw in a firepower at, it's going to be defeated. Nothing can stand up to American combined arms. That's not true. I mean, yeah, I guess there's no. If you, if you threw enough firepower at Vietnam, you would continue to kill
- [56:09]
B
huge numbers of people.
- [56:10]
C
You could probably turn it into like a non functional country. I mean, especially had one resorted to nuclear and biological weapons. But that's not, you don't wage war to just annihilate countries, you know, that's why the Carthaginian piece has become like this mythological thing. I mean, I assume and not in general. But I do know something. So, no, I mean, America. America lost the Vietnam War because was. I mean again too. It's like, what's your victory metric? I mean, like, the minute. The minute.
- [56:45]
B
The minute those guys, those little yellow guys with.
- [56:48]
C
With red stars on their pith helmets were running into Saigon with their. With their clash. Nikolas. They look too big for them. And these guys were running. They were. They were double timing. These guys have been war. At war for 30 years. Think about that. I mean, that. That's when. That's when Hanoi won that war. Okay? I mean it. So the. The. You know, I. I look at that and if you look at mad when I see that, because again, they got. It's like some pride thing or something. Like, like, I'm making fun of their favorite football team or something, you know? And like I said, I've got. I've got all. I've got huge respect for the Vietnam Army.
- [57:24]
B
You know, that's like my dad's generation,
- [57:26]
C
but they're like fascinating guys. And like, that's when the U.S. army was like, at its best. And plus, it was just like, cool. You had like, that was the only time, like, well, you had like, weirdo in the army too. You had like, weird, like, long hair guys and like.
- [57:40]
B
And like weird rednecky guys.
- [57:43]
C
Like, and like crazy ass. Like, like, dude, like huge Afros. Like, I'm like, being silly, but, like, not, you know, I'm like, I really playing off a trope. But I. I'm the last person who's gonna, like, say anything nasty about, like, the Vietnam Army.
- [57:56]
B
Like, those guys look the best.
- [57:59]
C
They were like, legit. Like, what's cool about America? Like, legit. You know, but going around saying. And it wasn't. I mean, it wasn't their fault. Like, they. Those guys didn't. Those guys fought splendidly. Like, they. They performed very, very well. But no, Mary absolutely did not win the Vietnam War.
- [58:19]
A
No. All right, well, let's end it there. Thomas, please give your plugs and. Yep.
- [58:26]
C
Yeah, man. You can find me on Substack, which is kind of like my permanent home. It's real. Thomas777.substack.com I'm back on Twitter again. But I get. I get. I get news from there, like, all the time. But I mean, if you look for me, like, you'll find me there. But I. It's. Don't be, like, sad if, like, you look for me and I'm gone. And I literally get banned from there
- [58:47]
B
like, every, like, several weeks.
- [58:51]
C
I'M at real capital R e a l Thomas 777 on Twitter I am launching my YouTube channel man. Like and I talk to my long suffering editor and like production guy and he's ready to go. So this weekend I gotta record more with Mr. Pete here and I've got to record my own pod and I got to record
- [59:18]
B
with a couple dear
- [59:19]
C
friends of mine for the channel content that's going to go to my editor and then it's going to launch. So you can find my channel at
- [59:27]
B
Thomas TV on YouTube.
- [59:30]
C
I'll I link it on my.
- [59:33]
B
On my substack and I link it
- [59:34]
C
on my Twitter if you can't find it.
- [59:36]
B
But there's nothing there yet.
- [59:37]
C
But there will be in like a week. Yeah like, like literally in a week. Like at right around the first of. Right on the first week in.
- [59:44]
B
During the first week in February.
- [59:45]
C
But that's what I got. Oh and I, my, my second book
- [59:48]
B
in my Steel Storm series just drop. You should get that at Imperium press.
- [59:52]
C
It's imperium press.org the book is Steel Storm 2. It's the second one of five.
- [59:56]
D
It's Tyler Reddick here from 2311 racing another checkered flag for the books. Time to celebrate with Chumba. Jump in@chumbacasino.com let's Chumba. No purchase necessary BTW group void where prohibited by law CTNCs21+ sponsored by Chumba Casino it's.
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It's Frank Herbert style science fiction and
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I think I've gotten overwhelmingly positive feedback on it. I wouldn't keep writing them so.
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Yeah, and thank you for that everybody. I really really really am honored by that. But yeah, that's all I got man.
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I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Canones Show, Part 11 of the Cold War series. How are you doing Thomas?
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I'm doing very well man. Thank you for. Thank you for hosting me. As always today I an aspect of the. The later Cold War that has become neglected by a lot of historians. There's one guy in particular, his name's Mark Ambinder. It's kind of hard to put his politics on the map and some, some mistakes take some kind of neoconish. Some seem kind of like paleo liberal. Even kind of like Walter Mondale type liberal. He's become something of a presidential historian. He wrote a book called the Brink which was about. Which is about the. It's about about half it's about like the able archer war scare and the rest is kind of about nuclear command and control in the final phase of the Cold War and you know, the deeper parodies therein and kind of how this informed policy and it's really fascinating book, but he's about the only guy I can think of who's written a dedicated book about like the post detent pre perestrika Cold War, which I don't really understand because that's tremendously important. A lot of the technologies we take for granted just in day to day life, you know, telecom stuff, it, it literally like came out of that epoch. I mean this stuff was in people's contemplation, you know, in a research and development capacity for decades before that. But the perfection of those things, you know, I mean, including the Internet, you know, the survivable command and control platform. I mean this stuff all came out of like late Cold War, you know, strategic planning and the degree to which the potentiality of, and preparation for a general nuclear war kind of shaped American life in ways prosaic and profound that really can't be overstated. You know, I've people, people under about 45, they don't remember that. And even some people who are older, it didn't like impact them in their daily life in, in concrete terms, so they think I'm overstating it, but I'm not. And if you look at the structure of the US government, you know, as I'm always going back to this point, it's quite literally like structured to wage the Cold War and not much else. And the strategic nuclear dimension of that obviously became preeminent owing to technological and existential realities. But you know what I'm getting at is that this is not just some kind of like esoteric, like peculiar point of interest. These people who, you know. Right. And it's big, it's big now to write about the deep state and varying capacities, you know, I guess, I guess because William Crystal or whatever, like you know, in guys of that kind of ilk who write for those kinds of publications because you know, they, since they've started like banding the term in like the last like five, ten years now, it's like okay to do so. So, you know, people write about these things, you know, in a very kind of contemporary way. But it's like, okay, if you want to understand the deep state, you've got to understand the late Cold War. You know, it's that, that's, that's, that's, that's why these things exist. I mean they, some, some aspects are, are emphasized more than others and you know, some can attract Budgetary pork more than others, you know, in the post polar epic, obviously. And like, there's been cosmetic changes to a lot of these things, but that's just what they are. They're cosmetic changes. You know, they, they came out of, they came out of the, the Cold War, and specifically they came out of the strategic nuclear paradigm that, you know, the regime was, was structured to wage. What's anyway, post Vietnam. Uh, I'm of the belief, uh, from, you know, 73 to, to. To 83, approximately. Grenade. Grenada was a, was a, was a big moral victory in addition to, you know, being tactically significant in ways that I think most people don't really consider. I don't want to get into that yet, but the point being, let's say 73 to 82, perhaps I'm of the belief America was actively losing the Cold War. Militarily, okay. Politically, no. In terms of values, if you will, and, and, and, and legitimacy, no. But that didn't really matter because the battle in the, you know, the Cold War was the battle for hearts and minds after the, after the 1950s. I mean, realistically, with the exception of Germany, which was owing to unfortunate accident of, of geography and geostrategic reality, you know, they, they had to find a way to deal with the Soviet Union and, and the communists. But no, nobody in Europe, nobody in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s was like, you know what we want to Marxist London estate. We want, we want to live like people do in the east block. Like, nobody thought that way, okay? And nobody in the developed world, you know, in North Asia thought that way. People who did think that way were in Sub Saharan Africa, in Latin America, in the Middle east, you know, in, in the global South. This was still very much an animating principle, okay? And it could be foreseen pretty easily. It's like, okay, it doesn't matter if, you know, in, in the world in 1983, you know, it was clear to everybody in, you know, kind of in, in the free. In the developed free world that these Stalin estates just generated a lot of misery, created economies, a shortage, you know, didn't deliver on these promises of, of telluric utopia and you know, plenty and really were just kind of, you know, miserable places to live. That didn't matter. Like, it was foreseeable that, you know, America could become this kind of garrison state, literally surrounded by a third World, you know, including, you know, including Mexico and, and Latin America that basically was solidly in the Soviet camp, was animated by a revolutionary impulse towards Marxist Leninism. And, you know, the United States basically, you know, like. Like. Like meaningful interdependence as, you know, economic or otherwise would just be cut off. Okay? And the only meaningful currency would be, you know, the ability to project military power. But again, you know, if the global south and similarly situated developing states were pretty much all in the Soviet camp, you know, the ability to. The ability to project hard power would have been profoundly compromised too. So it was foreseeable. Again, you know, like, that's. That's kind of like what Millies was getting out. The Red dawn scenario. Like. Yeah, it was silly to, you know, to. To envision, you know, Spetsnaz parachuting into Colorado Springs and shooting up the local high school. But the political map that he kind of envisioned, like an intro where it's like, you know, West Germany becomes this, you know, West Germany withdraws from NATO because it's green and soaked them. Government, you know, decides to like, just go all in with the Soviet Union. NATO falls apart. The global south goes all in with Ivan, you know, so that you have like, America kind of standing alone, you know, with a couple remaining states like the UK and Australia that, you know, really are kind of, you know, not meaningful powers in their own right. And, you know, it's. It's a red world with America as kind of this. It is. Is literally. It's like Garrison. Okay? I mean, that was the real risk by the late Cold War, post Vietnam, it wasn't that it didn't matter that, you know, Marx is. Lennon is a Marxist. Leninism had lost in like, you know, the. The marketplace of ideas or whatever. You know, people who still bandy Thomas Paine or whatever and claim that, you know, through. Through like the process of reason and like meaningful discourse, we all, like, arrive at the truth. Like, that doesn't mean anything in. In the world of power politics. And it certainly didn't mean anything amidst, you know, what a miss. You know, what in less delicate times people refer to as the colored revolt, you know, within the developing world. You know, I mean, this. This was very. This very much could have become reality and a Soviet Union, a Warsaw Pact that basically could plunder, you know, the. The collective capital resources of, you know, South Asia, sub Saharan Africa, Latin America. It could pretty much like stagger on indefinitely. You know, I mean, it. It doesn't matter if, you know, the. The value added in absolute terms to their economy is nil. It wouldn't matter if, you know, they were experiencing, you know, like 1.2% growth annually. You know, they could. They could certainly. The Soviets were certainly good at manufacturing guns and they could, they, and they could, they could poach enough proverbial butter as they needed to if, you know, they had, they had access to the world as they're kind of proverbial orchard, as it were. So that's important to keep in mind. Okay. This is the world situation after America withdrew from Vietnam. Now Nixon, you know, Nixon was the author of Detente. I mean, Brezhnev obviously had to be receptive to that. But it really, this, this really was a. America was kind of determining the course of uh, the conflict paradigm in the developing world because the Truman Doctrine was what carried the day. And you know, Nixon, the Nixon Doctrine superseded the Truman Doctrine. You know, the next one, the Nixon Doctrine, which was, you know, announced formally as, you know, Saigon as, as America transferred authority for the defense of the Republic of Vietnam, you know, to Saigon. You know, Nixon declared that, you know, no uncertain terms, America's not gonna, you know, take direct action to intervene in states where the internal situation, you know, precludes those states from, you know, resisting communist subversion from within or without, you know, on, on their own terms. So that gave, I think, I mean that was just practical, number one. I mean there wasn't, there wasn't the political will, you know, to wage another Vietnam War in Sub Saharan Africa or even in Latin America, you know, in 1973. But also it kind of provided an opening to get the Soviets to the table without, without further compromising American credibility, you know, in some, in some kind of pitiable way. Didn't appear to be it, it, it didn't appear to be America like folding the flag and quitting the Cold War, even if some hawks like interpreted it that way. And the Soviets, what's important is the Soviets didn't interpret it that way. But the, the real, the real linchpin of detente was the SALT Treaty Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. I'm not going to bore everybody with, you know, the minutia of it. The important details are that it limited not just nuclear forces and being. And the destructive power of existing platforms as regards, like, you know, how many warheads and what kind of throw weight and megatonage could be packed on to those pre existing, pre existing platforms. But it also limited. It also limited counter measures, you know, deployment as well as purportedly development of countermeasures. The idea being that, you know, emergent deeper parodies, you know, including things like decoys, you know, including things, you know, like interceptor missiles, you know, in. Including, including, including next gener Then next generation early warning systems. If this kind of tech could be frozen, or if not frozen, you know, agreed upon, you know, to not be deployed, that this would build in some kind of additional stability, which I think is incredibly fatuous, but that's a different issue. In any event, this was in May 1972. By 1976, a few things that happened to undermine this burgeoning detente regime, which ultimately was, was abs, you know, was unceremoniously ended in 1979 for one reason of a ticket we'll get into in a minute. But a couple, a couple things happened subsequent to salt. First and foremost, there was the 1973 war. On October 6, 1973, as people know, Syria and Egypt preemptively assaulted Israel. The Arab armies, particularly the Syrian army, performed better than anticipated. Frankly, this Israel had a real problem on its hands. In tactical terms. Israel responded by marrying nuclear warheads to their Jericho missile platforms, in part to, you know, try and terrify the Arabs into submission. What's up, fools? Main event J USO here from the wwe. When it's just me between matches, it's day one Ish. And that means it's Chumba time. With hundreds of casino style games and new titles arriving weekly, there's always something fresh to try at Chumba Casino. The daily boost. 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as a ploy to force a reluctant Nixon administration to reprovision and resupply them. Because the Israelis were desperately running short on munitions and everything else they needed. The ploy worked on the Nixon tapes and hear Nixon and Kissinger and Nixon lamenting, you know, I'm not going to repeat the language because that would probably upset the YouTube censors if it sends up on YouTube, but you know, Nixon was not happy at the state of affairs. The Soviets responded by deploying service warfare frigates and amphibious assault craft the Port of Alexandria. And this was not publicized at the time, but the White House knew those service warfare frigates were carrying nuclear weapons. As the IDF surrounded the Egyptian third Army, Brezhnev contacted the White House and said that if the Egyptian army were surrounded and Destroyed, the Egyptian 3rd army were surrounded and destroyed, and if the IDF continued to Cairo, the Soviets were going to deploy and intervene directly, you know, to save Egypt. Nixon responded by ordering DEFCON 3 alert status. The first time there'd been such a raise in alert status since Cuba in 62. This was really, this was, this is profoundly serious. Alert status wasn't what it is like after the Cold War and like post 9 11. It wasn't this like meaningless thing. It had actual, it, it had actual significance and it actually, it, it in material and concrete terms, it changed the stance of forces. Okay. It indicated real readiness to wage war is what I mean. Okay. At DEFCON 3 during the cold War, it meant that strategic nuclear bomber forces were on alert status such that in 15 minutes they could be scrambled and deployed. It meant, it meant missileers in their silos order to strap in to like their command chairs and prepare for incoming ICBM assault. You know, So I mean, it was, it was very, very serious. The Soviets responded in kind. The, the Soviet Defense Minister at the time was Gretchko, who was soon to be replaced. He asked the Kremlin for 70,000 troops to be mobilized and deployed in proximity to the battle space, which didn't happen. Obviously why that didn't happen is not entirely clear. Did Brezhnev put the brakes on that. The Soviet General Staff decide to wait and see? Not clear to me. According to a. A guy named Andre Danielich who was, he was a, a colonel general or its equivalent. I guess that'd be a three star. I think in the NATO paradigm, like military guys in the comments, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not a military. But his testimony in the 90s that he gave to the Wilson foundation and some of those NGO types, I think instructive and I think it's credible. What he said was, he said that the 1973 crisis exposed real weaknesses in the Soviet command and control system and its ability to respond to crisis in the moment and that the Soviet Union wasn't really capable is that the Soviet Union couldn't incrementally mobilize in that way. There was a binary kind of alert structure. Like either, you know, either you were at war, you were not. And when you were at war, either, you know, the nuclear trigger was cocked and ready or there was no chance of that happening. So basically and interestingly because, you know, during the tsarist era, one of the issues that, one of the issues that Hovig was dealing with in Germany and you know, the lead up to the Great War is that once like the czars and mobilization protocol was was triggered, like very little could stop it, you know, and to put the brakes on it would mean that, you know, the. The Russian Empire returned to a state of, you know, of peacetime vulnerability. So I think that's interesting, okay? Not just for trivial reasons, but in any event, the inability, the inflexibility and the lack of, you know, the lack of a nuanced alert structure was something that gave the. The Soviet General Staff pause. And I mean, the Soviet General Staff, it was modeled very much on like, you know, the old German general staff and, you know, as was the American. As was and is the American Joint Chiefs of Staff. So, I mean, these. Danielovich was a powerful man, and he also. He was. He was kind of the statistics and research man on the Soviet general staff. So what he did in 1976, and this was not accidental. 1976 is generally agreed upon. Some. Some historians and some defense intelligence types posited 1974 or 75, a handful as late as 1977. This was when the Soviets truly achieved strategic parody in terms of this. In terms of their nuclear forces and being okay. This is when the point at which, inarguably, the Warsaw Pair could fight a nuclear war against NATO and. Or the United States, you know, jointly or severally on. On terms of parody as regards forces and being okay. They were always disadvantaged as regarded, you know, the strategic nuclear forces until then, you know, despite. Despite, you know, what the Pentagon claimed, you know, in the run up to the 1960 election, in spite of what, you know, subsequent administrations alleged about, you know, force levels. This. This was the moment at which the. The strategic balance became, you know, one of. Of true parody. But what Danielovich did was he oversaw the first computer analysis, scientifically structured quantitative simulation of a general nuclear war, okay, Coding all available inputs, you know, and the Soviet General Staff was pretty uncorrupted by ideology. You know, this was not, you know, some kind of cheerleading exercise so that they could, you know, deliver, you know, some kind of hackneyed official statement, you know, to the. To the general Secretary and say, like, you know, see, comrade, we. We can defeat the imperialist. It was nothing like that. It was very legit. And what Danielovich's conclusions were was that under best conditions in a general nuclear war, the Soviet military would be utterly powerless. If the USSR was hit with a splendid first strike, they'd have no ability to retaliate effectively. Okay? Even if early warning did perform adequately and the Soviets were able to retaliate, at least 80 million Soviet citizens would be dead and God knows how many more, you know, in Warsaw Pact allied, allied estates who were also targeted in varying capacities. In the aftermath, it'd be virtually impossible for the Soviet military to rebuild and reconstitute critical infrastructure because over 3/4 the heavy industry would have been just outright annihilated. And finally Europe would, would be reduced to a wasteland. Like, even if you, even if you reject the kind of Carl Sagan doomsday, you know, hypothesis of nuclear winter and all that kind of thing, there's no way Europe could survive a general nuclear war. You know, I mean, you're talking about literally the death of Europe. And obviously that, you know, had profound implications for the Soviet Union as well. You know, so what, what this led to was a couple of things. The way to really understand, the way to really understand why the Soviets invaded Afghanistan owes to what I just described in terms of real anxieties about their ability to fight a nuclear war and survive. Not even win, just survive. Okay? Now I know nobody likes the Russians these days, and I guess most people don't really like the Russians anyway. Like, I'm, I'm not trying to be like, bigoted or mean. I mean, that's a fact, okay? However anyone feels about Russia, however anybody felt about the Soviet Union. Russia, the Soviet Union in the 20th century, they lost more people at war than all other states combined. Okay? You know, in the between 1941, 1945, like 1 in 7 of their population was like, died by war attrition, okay? Or of starvation or in, you know, a bombing raider in, in some way proximately caused by hostilities. I mean, this, this, this, the sinus was impactful on their collective psyche. I mean, doesn't even begin to describe, you know, the degree to which this informed policy. But beyond that, by, by 1979, you know, we're in under conditions of strategic, of true strategic parity. I mean, potentially we're talking about the window of decision making in event of a general war of, you know, minutes, you know, like five or 10 minutes or in best case scenario, you know, 15 or 20 minutes. And you know, we're dealing with weapon systems and we're dealing with, you know, levels of social organizations at scale wherein like, human decision makers are increasingly being sidelined. You know, that was reality, okay? Like this idea that just, oh, well, if we have, if we have sensible men, you know, at the controls, you know, cooler heads will just prevail. And, you know, it's unthinkable that some general nuclear war would happen. That was not the case at all. You can find yourself at war before you even realize what's happening. And in the case of nuclear war. Again, we're talking about being forced to render decisions within minutes. You know, if you even realize you've been hit. You know, I mean, there's that too. It, the possibility of decapitation raises a whole new possibility or set of possibilities. You know, if the enemy can potentially achieve a splendid decapitation strike, then the issue becomes like, well, you know, how do I identify imminent indicators of attack before there's even, you know, before there's even like a mobilization or before, like early warning, you know, is even, is even activated? You know, so these are not things that human minds can adequately inter, identify, interpret, contemplate and respond to. So we're talking about incredibly dangerous conditions. Okay? Now, amidst all of this, the Soviet Union and to their credit, to the, to the credit of the general staff, I mean, as I indicated a moment ago, they were kind of the best of that system. Them and probably some of the kgb. I mean, that's where a drop off came from. That's where Mr. Putin, you know, rose through the ranks as well. After, after this 1976 war game exercise, the Soviets realized that, you know, they had to try and find a way to develop a flexible response whereby, you know, they had the capability to fight and win a nuclear war or at least, you know, respond to any nuclear assault with a devastating counter strike in the form of a survivable deterrent. But they realized that they had to, they, they basically, the Soviet Union, by way of the, of a frankly progressive minded general staff, they tried to implement their own revolution in military affairs. Okay, and this is, this is, this is significant to the final phase of the Cold War. But what remained paramount was, you know, was the ability of, you know, the ability to survive a smarted first strike or to deter it with, you know, a survivable, a survivable deterrent.
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So
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another, another Soviet military type who offered his testimony, you know, in the aftermath of 1991 was a guy named Alexander Wykowski. A Major General Lakovsky was present pretty much when, you know, the, the Interpolate Bureau, if we can call it that way, convened to discuss the invasion of Afghanistan. That's documented. So his testimony at least, you know, I see no reason to think he's not a credible witness, but it's documented that he was present when he stated he was present. So, you know, he's as much of a, from him, we get as much of an insider's perspective on the decision making process as we're going to get. On December 8, 1979, there's a meeting held in Brezhnev's private office. You know, Brezhnev was the General secretary at the time still, you know, and he would be until his death in 1982. But he was increasingly, you know, suffering dementia and all manner of health problems, I believe, as I've said before, that. And drop off Gromiko, who was the foreign Minister, and Ustinov, who was then Secretary of Defense. And he was this big war hero. Like when you think of those kinds of Red army generals got like rows and rows of medals, you know, and, and look like they're, you know, they got, they got like a visage, looks like it's card out of granite or something. Like Ustinov was, was kind of one of those guys. But the issue at hand was the present situation in Afghanistan and then Drop off and Usinov in particular were gravely concerned about it. And what Lakovsky says is he said that the way and drop off and, and Dropo was holding court, it wasn't Brezhnev. And drop off said that, look, the efforts undertaken by the US intelligence apparatus, you know, Central Intelligence, dia, you know, elements of the State Department that are in fact intelligence, you know, oriented. He said that their big plan is to beef up Turkey, you know, concede to the Turks, you know, within reason, whatever they want in, in Central Asia, you know, so long as the Turks are willing to play ball with the NATO war plan. And ultimately he said that the goal, the Turkish goal is to bring Sunni Muslims on the southern Soviet frontier, like into their penumbra or orbit. And the US ambition is, is, is to encourage that sentiment, you know, by what, by whatever means possible. Now the reason for this was, among other things, by 1979, Soviet war planners realized that if America was going to launch a preemptive assault of the Soviet Union, it was going to basically force the Soviet Union to fight a two front nuclear war. If you can think of nuclear wars, I mean, fronts. But the point is they were going to assault from the Pacific as well as from the West. Okay, they're gonna do that for a few reasons. World War III would have been decided by naval weapons platforms and eventually by those like in orbital space. But by 1979, Asia would have been key for reasons that I, we can get into at some point. But it's, it's kind of too, there's kind of too much there to, you know, devote the rest of this episode to that and nothing else. But the big Soviet concern also was that Soviet command and control to fight a nuclear war was based in Moscow and it was based in Kazakhstan where Star, where Star City is, you know, their space center. To this day, that's still where Russian spacecraft are launched from. The big concern was that Pershing missiles deployed, you know, in proximity to Kazakhstan would be targeted at Star City. And you know, again, like if we can, I mean, it's an imperfect descriptor, but an event of a two front nuclear assault in the Soviet Union, it would be blinded and then it would be decapitated and that would be the end of it. So why the concern in Afghanistan? Well, Amin, who was a communist, he was this revolutionary firebrand in Afghanistan, you know, who'd become, who'd become the president. And he was a dedicated Marxist Leninist, owing to the kind of peculiarities of, or into the kind of peculiarities of, of, of the culture there's which I can't speak to in any kind of, you know, meaningful capacity, but just generally. And this is, this is what Laikovsky stated. You know, Amin fell back a lot on kind of appeals to Islamic pietism and couching Marxist Leninist kind of gobbledygook in those terms. The Kremlin had a hard time kind of discerning those signals. They thought that Amin was likely gonna kind of court like an Islamist coalition around, like a nominally Marxist Lenin as a government and then was going to pivot to the west through Turkey and become this client regime of the sort that America always wanted Iran to kind of become, that would, was going to welcome, you know, forces to be based there, you know, including things like Ping 2 missile platforms and in the end drop off Usinov Grico view. Like this was the checkmate scenario in the Cold War. And secondarily a lot of people don't know this. Afghanistan actually has fairly substantial uranium deposits. Pakistan was literally at war at the time intermittently with the Soviet ally India, who was their hedge against China, which in turn, you know, Mr. Kissinger and, and some of his successors. And the Chinese courted Pakistan and started giving them everything they needed to wage war with India. You know. So what I'm getting at is that this was, this was not and drop off being crazy or this was not just Soviet paranoia. Like this actually was very forward thinking strategic logic. And they were 100% wrong about Amin. He had no intention of doing that. He was what he appeared to be, which was a basically doctrinaire Marxist Leninist, you know, accounting for kind of the peculiar cultural nuances of, of, of, of his country. But unfortunately what was decided was at the conclusion of this meeting, like OSKI said he was kind of sitting there thinking that this was just kind of like a typical like intelligence briefing but and Drop off just kind of like looked at, you know, every man in the room and said, well, you know, our plan is going to be this, you know, we've got to remove Amin, you know, by, by way of special action which everybody understood, man, you know, he's going to be whacked. He's going to be replaced with, with Carmel, who was the Soviet Union's preferred for whatever reason. The KGB said that this is the
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man
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and we can rely, you know, it was just some kind of cipher. I don't know anything about the man beyond that, but you know, he, I believe he until 1986. So for most of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, like he was at the helm and Drop off said in order to preserve, you know, he anticipated, you know, some kind of smooth transition of power. But you know, just in case, you know, he, he said we got a plan for the contingency of civil unrest and you know, deploy at least some contingent of forces to the ground on the ground there. And this was put to us, put this to Ogarkov, who was Chief of the General Staff. And he was outraged. And Usinov said, well, to be on the safe side, don't worry, we're going to deploy 75 to 80, 000 troops in theater. And Ogarkov said that's not going to be able to stabilize the situation and this isn't a conventional military problem anyway. And apparently Usinov said, are you saying, you know, comrade, are you suggesting that you, you were to teach the, you were to teach the polite and reading between the lines.
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Oh.
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Gargov realized that if he continued on this path of, you know, conscientious resistance, he would be disappeared, if not physically, which was very possible. You know, he, he would have found himself, you know, unpersoned some in some basic capacity.
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The,
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this tells you too about the divide between again the military leadership and the true kind of vanguard which was of the Communist Party. I mean, you know, which was. And drop off by that point.
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B
Casino, Gromyko and Ustinov. And this was a totally unofficial meeting of hand picked officialdom. You know, this didn't go to the Supreme Soviet this, this didn't go to some, you know, officially convened subcommittee of the Politburo. There wasn't even any record of it other than the notes of the meeting that I just referenced. When Andropov died, apparently the notes of this meeting were in his safe. Every Soviet general secretary had a personal safe and when he died it was opened. Which seems strange, almost like mafia. Like in my opinion, like I'm not being corny, I mean like quite literally when, like when Brezhnev died, I think he had like $10,000 in American cash, which at that time was a lot of money. Yeah, he had, he had like, he, he has, he had like some Sheba's Regal or some kind of like mid shelf like brand of American liquor and like a bunch of personal effects and drop off at a whole lot of. He had a whole lot of fairly sensitive stuff, including apparently the notes from this meeting which was the only documentation that had even occurred. Which is crazy because the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was brazen. The Soviet Union in some ways was, it didn't respect convention in the international system. You know, stuff like the downing of Flight 007 and other things, but they were obsessed with their own like internal protocol. Like this is something just like wasn't done. Like you can tell, in my opinion the Soviet Union was in trouble at this point that they were doing things this way. This wasn't just ordinary. I mean the Soviet Union was secretive and paranoid but like not that this isn't how they did things, you know, and when, when, when even within the, the inner party literally you've got that kind of like mistrust. So you're resorting to this kind of ad hoc decision making, you know, with, with kind of like a mafia coterie of official dumb, you know, who are loyal to like the de facto decision maker on war and peace questions. Like that's, that's a very, very bad situation. I mean just in terms of the potential for, you know, the potential for you know, catastrophic decision making, but also means, it means the proverbial center cannot hold. And I'm actually someone who thinks pretty highly of Andropoff within the bounded rationality of, you know, Rather the a, like the amoral, you know, discussion within an AM world, a purely amoral discussion of power politics. I think Andropo was probably the best man the system produced other than Stalin and purely, you know, power political terms. But this, this is how, this is what underlay the decision to go to war in Afghanistan. You know, it was not, you know, to fight Islamic Fundamentalism, like Islamic consciousness, definitely was an aspect. It was a part of the constellation of factors, but not, not in the way like, people think about it. It wasn't because, like, Osama bin Laden was radicalizing people or something or because the CIA created bin Laden or whatever kind of stupid stuff people say. It very, very much absolutely had to do with critical judgment relating to the, you know, relating to the nuclear paradigm, you know, and the need of the Soviets to protect at all costs key command and control infrastructure in Asia in order to survive a bull from the blue assault and, and preserve a survival deterrent. And I think that's fascinating. I mean, not just because I, you know, I don't think it's just because I have a strong interest in the topic. I mean, this is. It goes to show you how during the Cold War, you know, warfare within very, within very secondary theaters, every peripheral theaters, had, you know, profound significance in a way that, you know, before sense, like, just wouldn't, like, is not emergent within, you know, ordinary security paradigms.
- [106:01]
A
Let me ask you about, Let me get, get a subject in here. Yeah, it's probably too much right now to talk about maybe for a subsequent episode. Are you going to talk anything at all about what the Carter White House had to do with possibly, you know, there's that famous, the famous line of we're going to give them. We're going to give Russia their Vietnam by pushing them into the Afghanistan conflict.
- [106:32]
B
That arrived somewhat later, like, as Carter was going out. Movie Charlie Wilson's War. I think it's kind of lame. And it makes Wilson himself look this great. Like, it makes him look like this big, like, playboy and this, like, great guy as well as, like this kind of strategic genius to realize that, you know, there's a soft vulnerability, as it were in Afghanistan when it became clear the Afghans were gonna fight. And the seizure of the Grand Mosque by extremists in Saudi Arabia, including a lot of guys who ended up joining bin Laden himself, that the, the Iranian revolution, ironically, because, I mean, you know, the first true Islamic republic, revolutionary Islamic republic, was like a Shia republic that very much inspired Salafi Mujahideen types. These things kind of coalesced and, you know, guys from far and wide started streaming into Afghanistan to fight the Communists. And I don't think people really saw that coming. When that became clear, it was around like Carter was on his way out, Reagan was on his way in. And the Reagan Doctrine, you know, for the minute Reagan took the oath of office, it was clear that, you know, The Team B cotery had won out. And the Reagan Doctrine was like, we're gonna fight Ivan pretty much wherever he's insinuated. And we're going to give the people under arms, we're fighting the Reds, anything they need. What Carter did, what I'm going to get to momentarily, Carter deserves a lot of credit. Carter totally changed the command and control structure and brought it back within constitutional parameters as well as just, you know, putting an end to the kind of garbage that had made America vulnerable in strategic nuclear terms. You know, Carter said that, like, you know, this, you know, this centering debate around, you know, mutually assured destruction, which never was really anything more than a talking point anyway. That's over with. You know, we're gonna. I'll get into that now. Like, it was. The issue was this, okay? By. By the time Carter took office, Carter realized very quickly a few things were afoot. First of all, Strategic Air Command had just decided by that point that in the event of a general nuclear war, the President and all civilian decision makers are just going to be dead within minutes. So why bother, you know, really, like advising the President about nuclear war decision making anyway? Because Strategic Air Command, from the looking glass, AWACS aircraft, we're just gonna, like, fight the war, you know, from that command post. And, oh, well, it sucks the President's dead, but that's just the way it is. Carter said that's not acceptable. Okay, first of all, the President United States is the President United States, you know, he's the sole national representative of the people, of the American people. Secondly, Article 2 confers upon the President, you know, the power of Commander in Chief. It doesn't confer that upon Strategic Air Command or like General Curtis LeMay or General Thomas Powers or General whoever. Okay? That's badly unconstitutional. Finally, what. What the hell are we doing? Just saying, like, you know, we're just gonna, like, throw our hands up and accept that, like, the government is going to die immediately in event of war. Like, it's not. That's not how you prepare to fight and win a war. So what Carter did was. And these measures weren't perfected and implemented until about 85, 86, but a list of designated national command authorities, what's called national command authorities. There were people from the President on down, you know, all the way down, like 40 people total. You know, if like one man, and they're almost always men, is dead, the next one will take up command and control authority. This was pre cell phone and pre gps. So all these people, they were issued ID cards that, you know, were, were where they were given a cipher that upon being contacted, you know, by sick NORAD in event of war, you know, they, they'd be able to reply to a challenge with like the correct, you know, like cipher code or whatever. But the national command authorities were the people who would direct nuclear war like an event that the president and his cabinet are dead and like on down the line, okay, designated safe houses. Some were on military bases, some were purposed structures that were designed and built for this purpose that they could be shuttled due to survive the initial assault. They were to report in to Sec NORAD every day as to what they were, you know, as did their goings, comings and goings when they left town. You know, they had to, they had to report like every six hours or something. I mean this, this is a revolutionary system. Okay, Carter, also that was Presidential Directive 58, PD 59. Carter said that, you know, he reiterated that America will never, you know, will never utilize a nuclear first strike in order to resolve a national security exigency. However, if America finds itself in a nuclear war, and this is in the language of PD59, America will fight to win a nuclear war and it will develop and maintain forces in being to fight and win a nuclear war against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact. And they represented a, that represent this was the end of Dayton. Okay? This is America saying that, you know, if God forbid we go to war with war up packed, you know, and there's escalation to general nuclear war, like America's going to treat nuclear war like it does any other conflict modality, America is going to fight to win a nuclear war. That's also one of the reasons why continuity of government is important. There's nobody to negotiate the end of the war is like, that's not, that's not reasonable, you know. So the idea is, you know, civilian control as intended and demanded by the Constitution is, is going to be guaranteed, you know, through these continuity of government measures. We're gonna spare no expense in maintaining a survivable deterrent. And our strategic doctrine is going to be an event of war. We're going to fight and win. We're going to fight to win a nuclear war. National command authorities are, are going to seek to end hostilities as quickly as possible, if that is possible. But there's nowhere this horseshit of, you know, like, we will not fight a nuclear war and these weapons can never be used. It's like, you know, you threaten us a nuclear weapon, you deploy those weapons, you know, we're we're, we're in a wage total nuclear war against you in kind and drop off who is becoming more powerful, you know, pretty much every day in the final months of the Brezhnev regime. The way he interpreted that, and you could say this is the most punitive possible way, but just in realist terms, if your enemy suddenly and kind of jarringly adopts a, a different strategic posture, that tends to be a war indicator, I mean, not like, not of imminent attack or something, but that's pretty much exactly what the German Reich did, what the Kaiserreich did. What I mean that, I'm not saying oh like the Germans are bad. I'm saying that in the Russian experience when their primary adversary does this, it means that something is afoot, you know, and that something usually is that, you know, the executive of the adversarial power is preparing the population to mobilize for war. Or at least he's doing what he has to do in order to concentrate war fighting authority in his office so that he has that option in order to use as, you know, a, as leverage against the Russians. And there is some truth to that, I'm not going to lie. And that's, that's not good or bad. I mean that's just statecraft. But arguably this caused an escalation in tensions. But again, I mean the Soviet Union had just gone into Afghanistan, you know, I mean it's not. And you know, one of the problems with these treaties, however well intentioned they were like Salt and Salt 2, which was the kibosh was put on that by the invasion of Afghanistan, by the way, and then later the START treaties, I mean, even if you, I, I, I, I think on principle, on principle, I have a problem with that kind of, with those kinds of agreements because, because bargaining away your preferredness and ability to survive is not legitimate. I realized the Cold War was unusual conditions. But I mean even, even if you think that those, that sort of thing is, is the most well intentioned, you know, mechanism for preserving the peace, you can't somehow like stop technology, you know. And I mean the issue with deeper parities is that yeah, a lot of this stuff that made nuclear weapons more accurate, more deadly, more powerful was because guys at Los Alamos or you know, guys that in Kazakhstan and ussr, you know, we're like developing, you know, weapons purpose tech to do that, but other stuff like command and control tech, a lot of that stuff just, it emerges, it's emergent, you know, due to all kinds of endeavors. You know, some Profit driven. Some not. Some military purpose. Some not. I mean, you. You can't just say, like, we're gonna. We're not gonna know things that we come to know because we gotta, like, keep weapons from becoming even more dangerous, you know, so that. And that's really. That's really what SDI was about. And I think we're coming up on about an hour. We'll get into that stuff next time. As well as Evil Archer and Grenada and all that fun stuff. And like I said before, I can't remember if we were recording already or not, but a lot of the fellows, they want us to talk about stuff. Especially, like. Especially a lot of, like the English guys and French dudes, you know, like a lot of Europeans, like, fought in Angola and stuff, and it's just like a cool conflict. We should do a dedicated episode about stuff like the Dominican Republic, about, you know, like, Latin America and the Contra war and about, like, Angola. But I want to do that, like a dedicated episode, if that's cool. I mean, it's your show. I don't want to tell you, like, this is what you should do.
- [118:18]
A
Yeah, Sounds good.
- [118:20]
B
Yeah. But, yeah, thanks, man. I really enjoyed this.
- [118:23]
A
Yeah. Plugs.
- [118:26]
C
Yeah.
- [118:27]
B
For the time being. And find me on Twitter. I don't know how long that'll last. It's at real underscore. Thomas 777. I relaunched a telegram channel. Just look for Thomas 777 or 37 Mafia. You will find it. I'm gonna be more active on. I'm gonna be active on there on the regular starting this weekend. I've got, like, too much going on right this minute, but join the channel. I'm gonna try and get it popping again. You can find me on substack. That's what the podcast is. Real Thomas777.subsect.com I am launching my YouTube channel. I know there's been like, many, many delays. Things are coming together. I got an incredible editor. I've got a lot of people helping me because I frankly, I don't know about video production at all. I. I promise it's coming imminently, hopefully by next week, but it's coming. So that's. And that's Thomas TV on. It's on YouTube. Look for Thomas TV. The first T is a 7. And you will find that's all I got.
- [119:29]
A
All right, until the next time. Appreciate it, Thomas.
- [119:31]
B
Thank you.
- [119:32]
A
Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Picanha show. I've been waiting for this one. Part 12 the Cold War series. What's happening?
- [119:42]
B
Thomas, hi, how are you? Thanks as always for hosting me. It's a great pleasure and a great honor and a privilege. Legit. Thank you very much.
- [119:52]
A
Oh, no problem. I'm glad you're feeling better and. Yeah, let's get down to it.
- [119:56]
B
Yes, sir. I want to talk about the strategic paradigm in Reagan's first term because that's essential to understand really, the final phase of the Cold War and the reason why it. A resolution was truly forced. You know, we'll get into Gorbachev, like next episode when I get back from this weekend trip. We'll, we'll deal kind of more with the Soviet side, you know, just conceptually, but also just in terms of, you know, the factual record, because I realize we haven't dedicated a lot of attention to that yet, but, you know, the, the degree to which human decision makers were becoming less and less significant within the strategic arms race. And I mean, with war fighting in general, if you're talking about, you know, kind of the zenith of. Of of nuclear war technology as it was in, you know, 1981, that can't be overstated. And this idea that, you know, just cooler heads could prevail, you know, to invoke Curtis LeMay's kind of aphorism, that's not really possible when you're talking about, you know, certain. Certain technological variables as well as certain, you know, as well as organization at scale of hundreds of millions of people. Quite literally, you know, it's not. You can't. Even if you're a chief executive or a general who's got a great deal of, of. Of authority, you know, intrinsic not just to his mandate, but, you know, in terms of, you know, key decision makers subservient to him being willing to execute his orders basically without hesitation. It's just not possible. Okay? It's. That's not the way. That's not the way. That's not the way human systems work. And that calls for certain remedies when we're talking about something like nuclear war planning, you know, where quite literally decisions need to be rendered in minutes, you know. But even were that not, you know, a necessary kind of remedial measure, you know, to apply and aim to research and perfect in an ongoing way, it was understood that, you know, the way man related to technology was becoming kind of the key question, not just in terms of fighting future wars, but, you know, in terms of production modalities, in terms of how, you know, people at scale perceive information and, you know, develop. Develop political sensibilities which totally changed with the advent of television, you know, and the ability to broadcast, you know, over and across thousands and thousands of miles, you know, and quite literally turn the world into one place in terms of, you know, the, the, the concepts being, you know, asserted. And early on, kind of the earliest game theorist, I mean he was a game theorist among many other things, but kind of the first public intellectual who really sort of articulated this in, in, in like a very kind of concrete form was, was a guy named Norbert, Norbert Weiner, okay. He published a book called Cybernetics or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. That sounds very strange and almost kind of science fiction like. But I, I Wire was a cosmically serious person. He wasn't some crank. And he coined the term cybernetics. And within Weiner's vernacular, cybernetics quite literally refer to self regulating mechanisms of all kinds. He cited the earliest examples of, you know, servo mechanisms, you know, be them hydraulic, electric or mechanical, that were error sensitive in their feedback, you know, even like something like a Roman aqueduct, you know, in, in a primitive way, not primitive in terms of its construction, but primitive in terms of, you know, the applied technology utilized, you know, was, was, it was an example of, you know, error sensitive machine learning. Okay? Now when you add humans into the equation and you need a human operator at at least, you know, in a, at least to initiate machine processes, you've got to take care, you know, to structure how that relationship ensues and, and how it is sustained throughout the duration of processes, okay? You, there's got to be mutual intelligibility, you know, between what the human mind is telling the machine to do. And the human mind has to be not only comfortable, like literally physically comfortable with the machine that it's operating, but it's also got to be sensitive to, you know, the feedback emergent from the machine. Okay? One of the reasons why, and Weiner was sensitive to this, there was such a revolt of the laboring cast. When there truly was a laboring cast, you know, working on an assembly line of any kind, whether it was a slaughterhouse or whether it was, you know, a, or whether it was a textile mill in the early 20th century was incredibly unpleasant. It was difficult, it was physically painful. There was not a good coupling that had been achieved between the human operator and the machine. You know, the human felt overwhelmed by the machine or the machine was forcing a piece of work, you know, that the human couldn't keep up with without significant pain or sometimes at all. You know, these machines often were dangerous. And even when functioning as intended, you know, they, they harm people, you know, and that's not that that's going to do a couple things. I mean it's going to do more than a couple of things, but first and foremost it's going to create certain inefficiencies and choke points and it's also going to hurt people, which itself is not good. I mean, I think we can all agree on that.
- [126:47]
D
Tyler reddick here from 2311 Racing, Victory Lane. Yeah, it's even better with Jumbo by my side. Race to chumbacasino.com let's Chumba. No purchase NECESSARY BTW Group VOID where prohibited by law ctncs21plus sponsored by Chumba
- [127:01]
B
Casino but also it's gonna really gonna sour the human operator's view of the machine. You know, and even if only subconsially, even if even a very duty bound or conscientious person or a true believer, you know, particularly somebody in a military role who, you know, copies that role they're in, you know, if, if, if this machine causes them pain or difficulty or frightens them or, you know, they, they're always worried that they're going to be somehow harmed or maimed by it, that that's going to compromise their ability to interface and function as intended. So what Weiner did was he said look, you know, these machines need to be accessible, you know, in the ability to initiate and program them in a rudimentary way as intended, you know, at the critical moment required. You know, it's got, it's got to be. He's talking about like he was talking about being user friendly. Okay? I mean nobody used those terms then, but that's, that's what he was talking about. And he also said that, you know, one of the ways not just to kind of guarantee, you know, an appropriate coupling that's both safe and efficient to the human operator, but that also, you know, is going to, is, is, is going to, you know, create a kind of punctuated advance in our ability to develop, you know, machines that truly learn, you know, through error sensitive feedback is, you know, he's like, we've got to start structuring machines like we would a human nervous system. Okay? Not literally and say like, you know, okay, this is the way the brain is structured. You know, I've got to make my, I've got to tweak my babbage device to look more like that brain obviously. But you know, it couldn't be something totally alien and you know, to what I mean at the end of the day, you know, like, the human brain is just an incredibly complicated, highly evolved, like, you know, like, feedback mechanism for the purposes we're talking about. Okay. I mean, it's a lot more than that, but, you know, so making machine thinking or machine learning at that, you know, as it was understood at that time as human, like, as possible in rudimentary terms. Okay. That. That wasn't just a way of, you know, kind of guaranteeing, you know, maximum efficiency, you know, in terms of the. The interface of the human or like the animal, in Whiner's terminology, with the machine. But it also, he said this is the path to kind of, you know, greater development in terms of, you know, in terms of. In terms of our design engineering. Okay. And I think I. I think it goes without saying he's right about that. If you. You kind of like the brass tacks, what guys like Steve Jobs were talking about, you know, I'm not. I'm not a computer guy or a tech guy at all, but I've read a lot about Jobs because for better or worse, he was a very significant personage. And when he talks about design, optics and aesthetics, you can tell he's doing it like the way, like a guy who's not an engineer but is more an engineer than he is like some artist or, like, you know, kind of eccentric, like architecture. I know he tried to convey the image of the latter, but he was the former. And I guarantee you that he said. I guarantee that as a young man, he definitely read cybernetics. And if he didn't, you know, his, like, the stuff he was reading was so insinuated with that kind of ethos, like everybody would describe it, that he very much took that on as his own. Okay. And also just, I mean, Weiner didn't just make these things up. I mean, there's an intrinsic. There's. There's like an intrinsic existential reality to these things he was positing. You know, it's just. That's the way machines work. That's the way humans think and feel. That's the way they interface in very basic terms. And cybernetics and like the postulates therein, that was really the earliest. Those are the earliest discussion of, you know, automated navigation, analog computing in the way that we understand it or understood it, you know, in the later 20th century and, you know, which was the, you know, the forebearer of it as we know it, this is the first time people talked about AI in an applied capacity. It. It led to neuroscientific modeling. And most importantly, Viner Reiner was always, was always, uh, he was always emphasizing the importance of communication and communication regime and also like physical structure, like across distance that was integrated, that was reliable, and most importantly, that was survivable. Okay? And I said most importantly, not, not just as a general proposition, but in the case of nuclear war, I mean, that's everything, you know, so these are things to understand. We're talking about nuclear war when we're talking about the Cold War paradigm, and especially in the, in the final, in the final. In the final phase of, of the Cold War, the Cold War conflict paradigm, okay? It. These things can't be overstated. And it like the desires of, of human decision makers, you know, particularly those, you know, in public roles. It really was not up to them like the course of. Of of events in, in terms of crisis resolution or, you know, the deterioration of. Of. Of remedial strategies, you know, in, in the general war. But the, the. It's very clear too. You know, both. It's even people who, even people who write pretty good histories of the late Cold War, like the guy. What's his freaking.
- [132:52]
A
Yeah.
- [132:52]
B
Mark Ambinder. Sorry, I was having a senior moment. Ambinder. He. He de. Emphasizes the degree to which kind of like the, the trajectory of American policy very much had a nuclear vector. And what I mean by that is that, you know, US Global policy, and not just in hard power terms, but just in general terms, it really orbited around, you know, America's nuclear capability, its ability to wield that it's a credible threat. You know, the response of the Eastern bloc and the Soviet Union as well as China. I mean, despite the fact that China by that point had been courted quite successfully as a strategic ally, this was, this was the variable or set of variables that everything revolved around between the superpowers. Okay? So, I mean, there's that too. Even just the existence of these capabilities and you know, the continuing emergence of new technologies to, to perfect the effectiveness of these things kind of dictated the course of policy between the superpowers. It doesn't matter what anybody's rhetoric was. It doesn't matter what anybody's intentions were or how much they may very well have been committed to peace. You know, I don't, I don't doubt that, you know, some of the things Brezhnev said before he lost his marbles and you know, about the Soviet Union must avoid, you know, a general nuclear war at all costs. I'm sure that he meant that I'm Sure. Reagan like corny and kind of made for sound bite television. And some of the things he said in the matter may have been I, I think he earnestly believed those things. But moving on, the way the Soviet Union responded to this emergent strategic landscape was very interesting. In 1981 the Soviets launched the biggest peacetime dedicated peacetime intelligence operation in its entire history, which says a lot because the Soviet Union for the duration of its existence really was mobilized for war in a way that even you know, even America in the 1980s, which was very much, you know, on a war footing would, would view as extreme and drop off. Who in 1981 was uh, was still a uh, a year away from uh, you know, ascending the role of General Secretary. As I've said before, I believe, I believe he himself, Gromyko and Ustinov were very much kind of the strike effect of the constituted shadow government, but he was the eminence behind the KGB really for the duration of his, of his, of his life. Okay. And on strategic matters, all in sundry in, I can tell you that in 1981, you know, the Andropo was the key decision maker and those in his immediate orbit. What, what this, this intelligence operation was called Project RION or ryan, literally R Y A N. It's an acronym that, for a Russian language phrase which translates to nuclear missile attack or nuclear missile assault or something in that order. I'm not going to try to pronounce it and butcher it and embarrass myself. But the entire purpose of Rayon Rion was this. And drop off addressed key members of the Poet borough as well as the, the general staff. And he said look, you know, we're losing the Cold War on key fronts, you know, political and technological that very much nullify our, the advantages we do have. And one of those fronts was in, in computing I think there was, there was less than a thousand computers in the Soviet Union in 1981. I mean to give you an idea, you know, which is bizarre when you think about it, that the Soviet Union they'd logged far more man hours in, in space flight than the United States had. And you know, they were cranking out these chess masters who you know, were schooled in informal, the kind of formal logic that, that in America like really built you know, like the, you know, kind of like really like analog computing industry. But that's it that warrants, it's a dedicated episode like how the, like how computing in the Soviet Union really was, it really was sabotaged or any like interesting rivalries within the Design bureaus, you know, and you, you can't create a high tech economy, you know, based on a central plan. I mean, I mean, I mean you can't, you can't base a traditional manufacturing economy on, on a central plan. But particularly you're talking about high tech and I t, I mean it's, you're, you know, there's just no, there's just no chance that it's going to produce what's required, you know, in order to meet the, meet the needs of, of, you know, of nuclear war command and control planning. But with what they did have, what, what, what Project Rion aimed to do was anticipate a bolt from the blue nuclear strike by using the computing technology they did have alongside human analysts to monitor indicators, to identify, monitor codable indicators, you know, from the United States and NATO and determine when these indicators
- [138:55]
C
could
- [138:55]
B
be relied upon that, you know, to, to that, that, that, that an imminent nuclear assault was, you know, was afoot such that with the technologies of the day and particularly with submarine launched ballistic missile platforms, you know, as well as intermediate range missiles which, you know, if deployed in theater by NATO would reach their targets, you know, within five or ten minutes, you know, we're, we're talking about, it's not, you know, early warning is not enough. I mean, no matter how sensitive it is, no matter how impossible to speak spoof it it is, you know, like before, before there's any, before there's any commanding control indicator In America in 1981, you know, that Strategic Air Command, you know, is, is going to scramble its heavy bombers, you know, that, that the, the Minuteman missiles are about to emerge from their silos. Like you've got to be able to identify the variables before there's any actual, you know, command and control indicator, which I mean, it says a daunting proposition, I mean doesn't, is almost comically inadequate. But it also, this creates a very dangerous circumstance. You've got to be able to identify imminent assault indicators, you know, based upon, you know, based upon apparently benign events and human behaviors at scale that could very, very easily be misread. I mean, this goes beyond fog of work and stuff. But it also, it raises a difficult question. You know, it's like, okay, let's say, let's say that there could, let's say, let's say attack indicators, you know, codable attack indicators could in fact be reliably identified and that there was a machine that, you know, could pretty reliably evaluate these things and could, I'm still buying this for the sake of counterfactual, you know, spit out a probability ratio of what the likelihood is that you know, these indicators mean, you know, an attack is imminent. If there's a 10 probability, you know, do you preempt it with your own attack? If it's anything over 50%, if it's 1%. Like you see what I mean? Like it where you're, you're entering into a kind of paradigm where increasingly like the winner is going to be the one who just preempts in absolute terms and when he's confident that, you know, he can at least survive a retaliatory strike. Just perverse incentives to attack even when not under imminent threat, if you follow me.
- [141:48]
A
Well, this wasn't anything new at the time. I mean Ellsberg talks, talks in his books about how you know, the, the department he was in in the late 50s and early 60s. They were war gaming this. They, they had already come up with the concept of the nuclear sponge by that point.
- [142:07]
B
I'll tell you what's changed. Parody. It wasn't until 1975 that there was true nuclear parody between NATO and Warsaw Pact. That's why these guys like LeMay and even Thomas Powers who gets kind of. Thomas Powers was actually the model for Jack D. Ripper and Strange love. It wasn't LeMay, but LeMay was kind of similarly lampoon. Lambasted. Their whole notion was that if, you know, eventually, you know, a general nuclear war is imminent with the Soviet Union. We've got to go to war now. If you wait 10 years there's going to be nuclear parity. We can't win that, you know, now yeah, we'll take 50 million dead but we'll survive. They won't. Plus there was one of the reasons why the salt talks kind of became obsolescent. It wasn't just that, you know, this Soviet invasion of Afghanistan meant that the State Department as well as Congress no longer had any interest in you know, pursuing a follow up kind of regime until much later. We'll talk about that later. But like deeper parodies, you know, multiple warheads, you know, being slapped onto existing pre existing platforms, you know, creating like these massive throwaways, you know, increase, like reduced circular error probable, you know, the perfection of penetration aids and decoys, you know, the ability to spoof enemy early warning and the emergence of AI you know, like the, the movie. War Games is actually a great film and it's a smart film. I mean some stuff in it's corny because it's Hollywood and it's you know, a movie that was aimed at like teenagers. But some of it's actually very smart. And the opening, like the opening sequence where you know they're running this command post exercise, you know, and one of the misleads won't turn his key. That was part of the issue by the end of the movie like the civilian adviser, I think it's supposed to be Thomas Shelling. He says like look like why we. We can't. We. We can't wait until you know, it's clear Ivan's going to assault know. We got to know he's going to assault him before he does, you know, which he was. There was like gallows humor. But it's also not entirely inaccurate. I mean that's, that's what was changing things. Plus the, you know, like I said, the. In nuclear war, if you're under being able to identify that an attack is underway, characterize the nature of that attack, then determine a response based on survi. Surviving forces or probable surviving forces and then giving the order to retaliate. In 1960 you probably had about an hour to do that. Okay. 1981 you had 10 minutes to do that. You know, arguably you had five minutes. Like by the time the Soviet Union fell apart, it's basic, it's basic assault strategy was going to be. It always parked two Typhoon class submarines within striking range of the eastern United States. Okay. The idea was that they were going to launch a val. A volley of. Of of submarine launched ballistic missiles at depressed, depressed trajectory that would air burst over the entire east coast and you know, create an EMP blackout, then follow up with a massive volley and basically like annihilate the eastern United States. And you know, if they could do that fast enough and assuming their systems went off without you know, a glitch or whatever, they had a reasonable probability of winning a nuclear war if it was truly like a bolt from the blue attack. You know, stuff like this wasn't possible in Ellsberg's day. He was foreseeing that it would be at some point even if he couldn't foresee the exact platforms. But by 1981 there was parity as regards forces and being. And arguably the Soviet Union had the edge. You know, like I said this in terms of data that since the wall came down it's been verified. It's not just. It wasn't just like missile gap nonsense. You know the kind that people were banning the 1960 election. The you know, create this kind of. To insinuate this idea that you know, there was a gap in American, in, in. In American, in American defense capabilities, you know, vis a vis worse off packed. That's what, that's what changed. And plus the, you know, the, I mean that's the problem with anything else designed to preserve the. That was designed to preserve stability. You know, whether you're talking about like, you know, the strategic arms limitation talks, you know, whether you're talking about these arms reduction agreements, you know, you can't, you can't just freeze technology in situ. You know, it's like. And even if you, if you were. Even if you limit the number of platforms, those platforms will become more efficient, they become more effective. You know, the killing technology will become more and more catastrophically utile. You know, things like this. And plus two, the orbital space, you know, becoming the key kind of emergent battle theater was changing things too because you know, you watch like the outer space treaty, you know, technically banned orbital bombardment platforms, but that didn't mean anything. And also the space shuttle obviously was, what was a. Was, was an orbital bombardment delivery mechanism. I mean it was, it was, it was other things too. But you know, that, that's, that was first and foremost its role. It wasn't, it's really to take, you know, civilian school teachers into space to do experiments on goldfish and zero gravity or so something. But these were the things that were kind of destabilizing what had been. I mean the, the, the paradigm was never truly stable. That's why people say. But it was becoming unmanageable, like owing to these, owing to these variables. This really reached the zenith in 1983. You know, there was the, there's the able Archer command post exercise in, in November 7th.
- [148:54]
C
And
- [148:57]
B
that was really, that was really the way to look at that too. I mean for those that don't know, there's this biannual exercise called reforger, which was short. Military shorthand for return of forces to Germany. It was this, it was this mass military exercise wherein the forces in being
- [149:21]
C
in.
- [149:21]
B
In Germany and there's about 300000 U. S troops. They're backed up by a contingent of about 200000 other NATO elements, contributions by other naval elements. I mean, but the reforger exercise was an event of a general war in Europe with Warsaw pact. How rapidly can we reinforce those forces in being deployed to Europe, you know, before they're totally overrun by Warsaw Pact. Okay, so I mean it was actually important. It wasn't just a make work, fake work thing. I mean it actually on. On the logistics side and the command and control side. This actually was important operationally, and it also demonstrated political will to the Warsaw Pact, and that was important. What able Archer 83 was, was concomitant with Reforger. It was a command post nuclear war simulation. And it included even civilian chief executives. You know, like Margaret Thatcher, like, went to her, you know, went, went to like, the designated, you know, fallout shelter. You know, the helmet coal was similarly like, disappeared from sight. I mean, when you consider Project Rion, when you consider, you know, the kinds of deep parodies that were causing real alarm on, on both sides of the Cold War, this seems incredibly risky, you know, because what you're doing is this command post exercise. And, you know, the, the Russians have been attacked many times under the auspices of, you know, peaceful military exercises by their enemies. So there's that. But then also, pretty much every indicator of an imminent bolt from the blue nuclear assault was emergent in the Able Archer exercise. Okay, now, now, on the one hand, yeah, if you're, if you're, if you're gonna plan a nuclear war, to win it, you've got to run those kinds of exercises, okay? And they've got to be as real as possible. And also, if you want true data on how fast, you know, the Warsaw Pact, you know, you know, in then in existence at that moment, you know, how fast they would respond, you know, to being spoofed, you know, that that's how you corral your data about, you know, what the response time, how fast it's going to be and what steps it's going to entail in a real war situation. So, yeah, I mean, there's, there's, there's a deep internal logic to that, but it also, there's a very good chance that, you know, your enemy will perceive this as, you know, indicators of an actual attack and you could find yourself in a general nuclear war very, very easily that it's both instructive as to, you know, kind of how tense things were.
- [152:30]
D
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. CTNCs21+ sponsored by Chumba Casino.
- [152:45]
B
Know, between, you know, actors, but also it shows you the degree to which, you know, like we were talking about a minute ago, the, the degree to which, you know, conditions of, of absolute peace, you know, could, could become conditions of general nuclear war. I mean, rapidly, you know, there wasn't There wasn't this kind of like, you know, scaled escalation over, you know, over days or weeks or even hours. You know. The second aspect of this was Reagan is, you know, kind of prompted by people like Casper Weinberger and a lot of the team B types Reagan had. Night Reagan, um, he greenlit the deployment of the Pershing too. Intermediate range ballistic missile platform to Europe, to the Bundes Republic, to Italy, to the Netherlands, some of the UK I believe, although I don't think they ever arrived. This would have, this would have given NATO a profound edge on in theater nuclear weapons. And so deployed, they can reach Moscow within minutes. Okay, this really terrified Soviet war planners and for good reason. And there's a nuance here too, that I can't remember if we raise it for or not. But ironically, owing to, you know, politics, NATO is very forward deployed. Like literally the way it was deployed in West Germany, in the Netherlands, in, you know, all, all throughout the, the continent. It was not deployed at all in depth. And specifically in Germany, looking at a map of NATO deployments, US Benelux, British forces were in offensive deployment, okay, like, they can't be denied. So if you're a ring now, some of that had to do with, you know, there's a way kind of placating, you know, people like the Greens who, who literally didn't want, you know, like NATO forces to be seen, you know. And it was a way of kind of mitigating the kind of basic hostility over the fact that Germany quite literally was occupied. There's all kind of kinds of things. But it was also, you know, the understanding was if Warsaw, if and when Warsaw pack moves, you know, like, what difference does it make? We can deploy in depth all we want. They're going to break through, you know, but from the Soviet side, it's like, okay, we've got NATO in kind of permanent offensive deployment. Now they're deploying, now they're deploying these Pershing2 platforms, which are not only not super hard and they're totally vulnerable. I mean, there's no such thing as a truly defensive nuclear weapon. But the only way you can use a Pershing system platform is if you're on the attack. You know, like it's. Because if it's, it's not a survivable platform, you know, so the Soviets weren't being crazy or weren't crying wolf or something. And even, even Robert Gates admitted this kind of later in his memoirs, you know, he said, you know, and anybody who understands these things and understands what the implications Indicators were, you know, anybody looking at this on the Warsaw Pack side would have said, you know, these, these people are basically preparing to wage a nuclear blitzkrieg, you know, and, and there was some truth to that frankly, kind of the genius of Reagan if you want to give him props for something and I'm not any kind of huge like Reagan fan in history, but what, what, what Reagan's State Department did was they said well you know, we'll remove, we'll remove the Pershing Twos from Europe. Oh if all, if all theater based nuclear weapons, you know, NATO pact, if we agree to like remove all of them, you know. But that's, that's the price essentially of, of, of dismantling the system. And I mean to, in defense of Reagan admin. The, the impetus for the deployment of these platforms it was because they're a hell of a good way if you're going to wage November nuclear war to, to do it. But also the Soviet union they'd masked SS19s. Those are one of those does one of those physically huge missile systems, you know that were based on trucks, which is kind of brilliant in its simplicity. Those mobile launch vehicles they had, the Soviets would move them around every day like literally. So
- [157:53]
A
like the one from the movies, like the one from the movie Spies Like Us.
- [157:57]
B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah that's so I saw that movie. I saw that in the theater with my mom and a little kid. That's hilarious. But it's actually an awesome movie. But yeah, the, but the Soviet idea was they were threatening Europe with annihilation with, with these deployments and they were doing it to basically decouple Europe's national security policy in the respective NATO states from that of America basically saying like look like you know, if, if, if you avail yourselves to, to NATO and the United States, you know, the United States is nuclear deterrent. You know, you're, we consider you to be a fair target and we're going to continue to target Western Europe as long as it endures. I mean it, it was and you know, deployment of the person too is, was a way of rooking that, that, that ambition. So it's more complicated than just Reagan being, you know, some kind of still kind of hawkish, some kind of reckless hawk. And it's, it's not just a matter of, you know, Pentagon types and, and Defense Intelligence types saying well let's spoof, let's spoof Ivan, you know, to the brink and see what he does. I mean there was an aspect of that too, but it is, it is it is slightly more complicated. I wore this slightly, but it, I got a pause when I dream my water. I'm really dried out. Is that okay?
- [159:30]
A
Go ahead.
- [159:30]
B
Yeah, yeah. Thank you, Pete. And yeah, the, I mean on the one hand I obviously, and I mean this isn't really material for disgusting. I mean obviously my sympathies in history are what you know, Yockies were and I, I realize this is very much a way of holding Europe hostage quite literally to the Cold War. But at the same time, I mean it within the bound rationality of that. Europe was afforded. Europe was ultimately made more secure because again Reagan's ultimatum was, you know, a nuclear free Europe. And that was accomplished. You know, ultimately, I mean wasn't until well into Reagan's second term and after, you know, the kind of concord about Gorbachev. But all these things were a process and you know, like I said, next episode we'll get into the view from the Soviet side quite literally. But there had to the, the crisis, the, the crisis cycle is becoming more and more critical. And if you look at it in you know, the, the Korean War, the Chinese intervention in the Korean War really that very well could have led to a general nuclear war. A 1953-1952-1953-1962 in Cuba, 1973, you know, in the Mideast war, 1983 with you know, Abel Archer Reforger and the emergent, you know, deep parodies that, you know, gave rise to and drop offs Project Rion. Like this is becoming unsustainable and more and more dangerous basically every decade. You know, like I had the Cold War endured into the, you know, another 20 years there probably would have been a nuclear war by the late 1990s. Like I firmly believe that, you know, and Gorbachev gets kind of a bad rap. I mean he was presiding over a structural crisis that I think is basically unprecedented in the modern era. Okay, There the Soviet empire constituted like a one sixth of the planet, okay? Like, and every, the world is literally divided such that, you know, half the world was essentially, you know, the Soviet system was insinuated into it through kind of, I mean, I mean interdependence. And when you're talking about, you know, emergency planned economy is different than, you know, globalism. We know it but you know, about half the planet was reliant in some way, even if it was just, you know, occasional grain deliveries, you know, or, or strictly, you know, military hardware to wage, you know, some, some ongoing, you know, some ongoing localized conflict. You know, about half the, about Half the planet was reliant on the Soviet Union, just as, you know, the. The competing blog is relying on the United States and Europe. I mean, this was. I, you know, in the preceding 500 years. You. There's nothing comparable to that except, you know, the. Except that the fall of the Western Roman Empire and even that wasn't like it's punctuated. I mean, the Soviet Union fell apart like in months, you know, I mean, in that the fact that there wasn't. There was violence. People have forgotten that now, but I mean, you know, the actual learned guy. But the, you know, they're. And you got to look at, you know, you got to look at stuff, you know, not just, you know, in like Shishti and Dagestan, but also like, you know, the Balkan wars is as direct, I mean remote as they were in relative terms from the Soviet Union. I mean, you got to look at those things as. As approximately caused, you know, by the. The punctuated shock of Soviet collapse. But point being that it. This was getting. The conflict dyad was getting. It was getting. It was getting impossible to control. And Gorbachov realized that the Soviet Union needed a way out of the Cold War, okay. And Andropov because. And drop off was the consummate realist. And Drabov realized, you know, what has to contemplate is the way out of the Cold War to, you know, wage a preemptive nuclear war against the United States. And I mean, obviously, I mean, America was thinking that too, you know, and vice versa, you know, is this the way. Is this the way out of the Cold War? But I mean, to say that, to say that this was dangerous brinksmanship, it doesn't even scratch the surface. It's much ridiculous these days. And people like, you know, this. The war in Ukraine, this is like, this is the most dangerous time ever in world history. It's like the. Is the mayor with you? I mean, it's literally insane that people think that way. You know, like the, like the single issue basically in every presidential election for 40 years was, you know, do we have a survival nuclear deterrent? You know, and is the man of the old is going to keep us alive? You know, because there's. There's like a very real possibility that, you know, we might become the mega dead when World War III happens. You know, I mean, that's. I guess people under like 45 or so like can't even conceptualize that, but it's. I'm sure it sounds like a cantankerous old guy, but be as it may. This also, this goes to show you how, how, how critical these, these wars in the periphery were in the 1980s and something. You know, we'll get into this in the next episode. But you know, the, the, the battle for Central America, you know, Nicaragua becoming a pro, literally a proxy regime of the DDR the Soviet Union. You know the, the, the, the proxy were in Chile, you know, which led to you know, Pinochet removing, you know, the Soviets client in Allende, you know, the war in El Salvador. I mean these, the Soviets are trying to rectify the strategic, the strategic imbalance by carving out a communist block continents that would have changed everything. You know, I mean and it's. The Soviet Union was doing some things right. I mean like I said before, I think from 1973 until about 1982, the Soviet Union was winning the Cold War in military terms, in political, sociological, technological terms, they were losing any. In pure military terms were racking up victory after victory after victory. You know, like in Africa, in Latin America, in East Asia. Like you know the, this was not a good thing. I mean however you, whoever you fell on. I'm talking about you know, people who are saying, I'm talking about crazies like Peter Arnett and like the, the, the kind of, the kind of crazy Karen is you know, calling for nuclear disarmament. And I'm talking about people actually sensible. Whether you loved Reagan or not or whether you, or whether you, you know, were particularly on board with the kind of Cold War enterprise, you know, it, this was not the, for the process of the Soviet Union kind of, you know, like we talked about in previous episodes, you know, kind of becoming like the only true superpower because the third world is you know, basically signed on with you know, with Marxist Leninism. So America is this kind of like this kind of like fortress state amidst a hostile world of.
- [167:21]
C
Of.
- [167:22]
B
Of. Of tin pot dictators and, and kind of crazy shake of era types like that would not have been a good thing, man.
- [167:33]
A
Can I ask you something before we go?
- [167:34]
C
Good.
- [167:35]
B
Yeah.
- [167:35]
A
So I, what is NATO today? I hope either what I mean it's not NATO. So what the hell is it?
- [167:46]
B
I mean it's, it's the alibi. America invokes for unilateral aggression. But I mean there's something, even if, even if that's your notion like NATO, those kinds of alliances are obsolete anyway. And it's like I said before, like you know, so America is carrying out terrorist acts against its allies in Germany. Like even before that it's like a Merit like Turkey is. Turkey is the only, probably the only like comet capable like other like NATO member and like America's periodically at war with them like by proxy. So it's like is America obligated to attack itself because it's like its ally Turkey has been attacked and like incident to the NATO charter. It's like an express condition. I mean that's one thing that's a goofy. This was made in the 90s. Like Kissinger said that in the late 90s. I met Kissinger in 1999 and to his credit, you know he was one of the few voices who really was coming out against Clinton's war on Serbia. And the kids are made that point even back then. He's like what? Like what? Like so, so, so like NATO was like to provide a nuclear umbrella of defense against like you know, the great power of Slobodan Milosevic. Like it does, I mean it doesn't like that's not how you. Even if, even if you needed some kind of like in name only, you know, sort of instead of you know, force structuring alliance, you know to allow America kind of like deploy. To deploy river wanted willy nilly. Like it, it doesn't make sense to like may try and maintain the NATO fiction. Like it just doesn't make sense on its face if you're gonna try and do that. I mean that's why the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is actually a pretty forward looking alliance in all kinds of ways. You know. And it, it's, it's got a military aspect, it's got an aspect of economic independence. You know, it accounts for the kind of, the fluid nature of, of the current strategic landscape. Like Russia didn't say like well Warsaw Pack still exists. Yeah. You know, this is Warsaw Pact, you know, you know, any, any, any if any foreign troops like set foot in Kazakhstan, we're going to wage nuclear war on you. I mean that doesn't, you know, it's like even like a principle of law too. Again, aside from the kind of absurdity that in bad faith the concerts NATO any contract and a treaty at the end of the day is just a permissive contract. It, the express conditions of it have to be rational, you know, and there is not. And it's like okay, an attack on, an attack on Hungary is treated as an attack on the United States. Like America is obligated to go to war with itself because it's attacking Turkey which is its ally. Like it doesn't, you know, I mean something I'm being, I'm being a Jig off and deliberately obtuse. And I kind of am. But yeah, it doesn't, it's. It doesn't make any sense. And this. But part of it too is just kind of the foolishness of the bureaucrat. Like this idea that you know, exists for its own sake because it's.
- [170:46]
A
It.
- [170:46]
B
The point of it is to just exist. And like, it's just, it's just this awesome thing for reasons nobody can articulate. You know, it like, it doesn't. It's like over that reasoning. It's like, okay, well. Does that mean that like the America should abide like the express conditions, like the Yalta Agreement? Because, like, that's how America and the Soviet Union won World War II. Like, I mean, should, should Austria start invoking like, countries, you know, entering into the Habsburg Empire? Like, I don't. It doesn't make any sense, but oh man, it's a clumsy way of preserving the fiction that this, this is. That this is some kind of like, you know, that. That there's some sort of like common defense architecture and not just, you know, unilateral aggression. That's. I mean, that's, that's, you know, the short answer.
- [171:39]
A
Well, yeah, I know you got to get out. Yeah, this is really good. I know you got to get out of town. So do some plugs and. Yeah, do it.
- [171:49]
B
Yeah. Thank you, Pete. You can currently find me on bb app twitter that is at realore number 7h777. You find me on substack@real thomas777subsack.com Check out the chat on there because I'm active there. I'm back on T gram. Just search out my name and you'll find the channel. It. Yeah, I got when I'm going out of town the next few days. I get back on Sunday and then Monday I'm gonna start shooting dedicated content for the channel at long last. So that's what I'm gonna be working on and that I will drop that imminently when I get back. But for the next few days, I'm not going to be like, real active content wise, if you got to get a hold of me. Just like, be patient until Sunday, please. That's all I got.
- [172:52]
A
Appreciate it, Thomas. Thank you very much.
- [172:54]
B
Thank you very much.
- [172:56]
A
I want to welcome everyone back to the Pete Quinones Show. What's going on, Thomas? How are you doing?
- [173:03]
B
I'm doing well. I'm getting terrorized by Twitter again. I mean, I report nothing. I just wanted to like, put people on notice about that because when it happens, like people seem to get upset. And I mean, I appreciate that. I appreciate people that care enough about my content that they get upset if they think it's going away. But
- [173:22]
C
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A
car looked in Texas.
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C
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D
Let's Chumba sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary VGW Group void where prohibited by law 21 terms and conditions apply what happened?
- [173:51]
B
I realized what happened. Periodically I complaints are lobbied against my account by the Office of Protection of the Constitution in the Bundes Republic. I mean it's, you think they, I mean realize that's like a make work, you know, Orwellian bureaucracy, but you think there are better things to do than harass a content creator in America. But they've done that before. Every time they do it, Twitter finds some arbitrary reason or no reason at all to suspend me or ban me. They claim that I'm banned for a week. I mean, I'm, I'm trying to disengage from Twitter as much as possible anyway, you know, but I know a lot of people that's kind of still like where they try to find me and stuff. But if I'm not back on Twitter in a week, I mean, just like hit us up on Substack or on T Gram and I launched the channel promo so that people know that, you know, by April 1st I'll have uploaded the first episode, you know, and I, I, I owe a tremendous state of gratitude to my guy Rake, who, you know, he's just incredible with what he can do with, you know, video editing and things like that. And he and I are, are gonna, are gonna bear down on, on filming next week. So I mean, don't. If we're, if, if, if we are like permanently kicked off Burbap again, like it doesn't matter. It's happened like nine times. So. But that's, that's that. I just wanted to, I just, I just wanted to like give people a notice about that.
- [175:35]
A
But yeah, well, one of these days what we should do is we should go over that intro video and just have you detail like where every, I mean, I saw some video drone in there and I Saw a couple. Yeah, A couple other things just to, like, genius and.
- [175:51]
B
Yeah, he just asked me. Yeah, I mean, he's like a movie guy, too. He's like. I mean, he's one of us, you know, like, not just in terms of politics, but, you know, like, cold. He's like a culture guy and, like, an optics guy, and he's into, like, style and stuff and movies, and that's one of the reasons we became, like, good friends. But he basically asked me, like, what kind of movies were my. He's like, I know the kind of you're into, but he's like, give me, like, half. It doesn't. Your favorite movies. It's like, I did, and, like, all of them are in there, and there's like, a bunch of other just, like, crazy stuff. But it. It's. Yeah, it's really incredible, man. I'm not. I'm not just, like. I'm not just, like, stroking myself because, you know, it's like my content. It's, like, really freaking cool. But, yeah, I'm very, very lucky to have him on board, man. And he'll. He'll be in front of the camera sometimes, too, and, like, I. I think people appreciate that because he's. He's. He's a really funny dude. And, uh, you know. Yeah, you'll. So you'll. You. People get to meet him and. And kind of see, like, what he's about. But, yeah, I. The responsible woman has been overwhelmingly positive, and I really appreciate that, and I believe it'll be worth the wait. Not because, like, I'm so great or anything, but I think I've got a sense of what people want to see and hear about, and I'm really, really dedicating kind of like, all my time and energy to, you know, providing that in a quality capacity. So, yeah, I think it'll be very good, man. Well, hyping myself and, you know, all
- [177:15]
A
we have to do is make sure that, you know, people also subscribe to the Odyssey channel, because I think we all know that the YouTube channel is probably not gonna last.
- [177:23]
B
Well, they're gonna. Yeah, I mean, it's. There's go, like, copyright strikes all day, but also, as soon as they figure out what I'm doing, I mean, they're gonna cancel it. But, I mean, that's fine. I'm basically gonna saturate every platform I can. You know, everybody's like, you got to get on cozy. It's like. Well, I don't. I don't know. Nick Fuentes. I mean, I. I Like, like, at all. I've never. I've never spoken to the dude, even by, like, text or something. I'm not gonna, like, presume, like, he wants my on his freaking platform. I'll ask him, you know, I mean, but it's. I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna just, like, assume, like, oh, of course he wants my on his. On his, you know, platform. But even if we don't with Cozy, you know, there's plenty of other. There's plenty of other. Other platforms we can utilize that are. Are friendly or at least neutral. It'll be fine. And you can. You can upload video direct, or you can. You can shoot directly on substack, or you can upload directly pretty much. Unless you're trying to upload, like, an entire freaking movie link thing. I mean, it's like, I. It all fails. I mean, I'd. Yeah, I'd be like, just, you know, uploading my stuff to Odyssey and substitute. I mean, we're gonna say I trade a lot more than myth, but it'll be. I. I realize I'm gonna get yanked from YouTube. The reason I dropped it there is so that people can find us and know about it, but, yeah, it'll be all right, man.
- [178:41]
A
I streamed to YouTube yesterday in the middle of the afternoon, and then, like, as soon as it ended, I immediately deleted the video because, I mean, I just knew what. Some of the stuff. Some of the stuff that we said, and it was just like. It was. It's what I've gotten strikes for before.
- [178:56]
B
I mean, there's this one dude. I don't want to drop his name because I don't want. I mean, he seems like an apolitical guy, and I don't.
- [179:04]
C
I don't want.
- [179:05]
B
I don't want, like, people start terrorizing him. Like, he's like this. He's this kind of like, crazy, like. Like. Like horror and cult movie guy. Like, he gets strikes constantly over just like. Like, total, like, literally, like, it seems like. And he's constantly apologizing to his subs. He's got, like, 20, 000 subscribers. Because, like, it's just constantly getting yanked and it's. It's, you know, I mean, for the most dubious reasons. Like, my point being, I mean, yeah, they're. We're absolutely gonna get terrorized like you are, but that's. That doesn't matter. The whole point is, you know, like, I do have a YouTube channel right now that people kind of like. YouTube's kind of like their first go to for Stuff, but it'll. It'll be fine, man. I mean, I. I built the substack basically with no social media presence because as soon as I launched it, that was like the first time I got permanent from Twitter. I didn't get back on Twitter about nine months. You know, I didn't have an Instagram then. Like, I got on T. Gram, you know, after about six months. But it'll. I mean, it'll be fine. You know, people. People are loyal and they follow us and we've got. We got a good, you know, community of people who, who know how to, you know, kind of like remaining.
- [180:13]
A
Yeah, I've started. I've started streaming when I do my streams to Odyssey and Rumble and immediately upload to bit Shoot, you know, the dark side of the Internet and.
- [180:23]
B
Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.
- [180:26]
A
So I, I don't even know what, what do you want to talk about today?
- [180:31]
B
Today? Last time we covered, you know, Abel Archer and you know, the kind of command and control concerns relating to the deep parodies emergent post detente. Because that, that, that's. That. That's kind of the key. That kind of nexus of. Of events and causes. That's kind of the key juncture of. Of. Of. Of, you know, final Cold War tensions that approached true crisis dimensions. But there's a context to how and why that happened, and I want to get into that today. Like, what happened to detente? We're going to go a little bit backwards. Okay. And as we mentioned, Abel archer happened in October 1983. There was immediate precursors to that, that dramatically exacerbated tensions and really kind of created in, you know, in. It kind of generated a zeitgeist of. Of not war fever. But what, what it. What, what it seemed, you know, unthinkable only a few years before suddenly became very possible again. And there was very much an atmosphere of terrorists. I mean, you remember that because you're a little older than me. I was a little kid, and my mom was singularly terrified of nuclear war.
- [181:58]
C
Okay.
- [181:59]
B
I mean, a lot of people were.
- [182:00]
A
And
- [182:03]
B
my mom always like, I don't want to drop some highly personal weird thing, but my mom was always kind of like apocalyptic in her thinking, quite literally. And this didn't help any. And obviously my dad was re. Insinuated into the Cold War, so it was strange. But everybody, I mean, it was like everybody in the country was like that, I mean, to some degree or another, you know, and I can't emphasize that enough to younger people. And he was a little kid, obviously. I Couldn't. It was. It was a few more years before I could fully understand what this was about. But you. You. You fully. Even as a small boy, I fully grasp that, you know, this was monumentally terrifying. Now, honestly, like, if. If I'd been like a, you know, a. A guy pushing 50 in 1983, I frankly wouldn't really care. I mean, it's not. That's not some edge lord, like legit. I mean, you just, like, learn to, like, you just, like, learn to. You come to terms with things and, you know, the. The kind of frailty of life and things don't seem scary anymore. But, yeah, it's like a kid or like a young person. Like, it was. It was kind of awful. But in any event, let's. Let's dive into it. What preceded Abel Archer by several months was the destruction of Korean Airlines Flight 007. What was KAL Flight 007? KL Flight 007. It was a Korean Airlines flight, obviously from New York City, or. Yeah, from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, which in those days was the common flight pattern. You know, so South Korea was a key kind of Cold War proxy client state. But, you know, this was not the South Korea of the 2000s, you know, the. The ninth largest economy in the world or something, you know, other than. Other than in. In kind of political and military terms. The rehog of Korea was kind of a backwater. So on these flights to Korea, there
- [184:07]
D
tended to be a lot of 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. Chumba Casino. Always good to have you back. No purchase necessary. BMW Group Voidma prohibited by law CTS and CS21 sponsored by Chumba Casino.
- [184:24]
B
A lot of heavy personages from the national security establishment, the diplomatic corps, you know, these kinds of. These kinds of. These kinds of, you know, communities. And. And KL 007 was no exception. What befell KL Flight 007? Well, KL 007 straight into Soviet airspace at about the same time. We're talking like, within, you know, a couple hours of a. Of an American aerial reconnaissance mission. During the late Cold War, America was constantly spoofing Soviet early warning or buzzing it, you know, to see kind of what would cause it to light up proverbially and to kind of gauge what their, you know, what their. What their protocol was, you know, the. Literally the order of operations, you know, when. When hostile aircraft breached their airspace, possibly incident to a Nuclear attack. And unfortunately for the passengers and crew of KL 007, a Boeing 747, even at visual range, looks almost identical to an AWACS aircraft. Okay. And in those days still for certain deployment of certain weapons platforms, you would advance, deploy a, a what's called a massive MSINT aircraft in order to acquire targets, in order to discern, you know, what air defenses were present, as well as to interpret, detect and interpret, you know, any electronic signaling which could then be, you know, deciphered or interpreted to paint a picture of what the state of enemy command and control was within the target area, you know, theater wide. And this was also a particular concern because as we discussed in the last episode, American nuclear war planning by 1982, 83 essentially involved forcing Warsaw Pact to fight a two front nuclear war. If we can even think of nuclear combat as having fronts. Assaulting the Soviet Union hard in the Pacific, knocking out their command and control in Central Asia, you know, and, and then saturating them with you know, with, with, with heavy bombers as, and, and naval based weapons platforms would potentially, you know, would potentially accomplish a splendid first strike in a bowl from the blue scenario or in a uh, in a general war scenario, you know, that would be, that would be the way America would escalate anyway. So this had all the telltale signs of something potentially very, very dangerous in the eyes of, you know, the, the Soviet Union and their people interpreting breaches of their airspace. So the flight was intercepted by a Sukhoi 15 interceptor. It was destroyed. All, all, everybody died. Of course, this was a huge international incident. Okay. It was almost comparable to 9, 11. Not in terms of the attrition and you know, the, the lives lost, but it was incredibly shocking to people. On board the aircraft was Larry McDonald, the U.S. congressman who also was the chairman of the John Birch Society and one of the Ron Paul.
- [188:44]
A
He was Ron Paul's like mentor in Congress.
- [188:48]
B
Yep. And confidant. And he was the last true Southern, he was the last true Dixiecrat. McDonald was viewed as, you know, he's like Mother Jones types who, he was, he was like the man they love to hate and these, these conservative caucus types, he was kind of like their, their, their knight in shining armor and you know, knockout, knock down, drag out, you know, congressional battles. But he was a, he was, he was a Democrat. He ran as a Democrat for the, you know, for the entirety of his career. And he was really the last true like right wing Democrat. But he, you know, again, not only was he a Bircher, but he was, you know, chairman of the Birch Society. And he'd only been nominated to that position a few months before he died. He, you know, again, he was one of the founders of the Western Goals Institute, which the, the. The British Conservative Monday Club was very much affiliated with them, as was the World Anti Communist League. You know, people who know the history of these Cold War packs of. The. Right. Well, these will all be familiar organizational names, but, you know, it's a. Jesse Helms initially was supposed to be on that flight. I mean, this was a big deal. Okay. I mean, not just because, you know, you had these public. You had McDonald and you had some other personages who weren't elected officials but, you know, were very much insinuated into in the belly policy corridors. But, you know, it was. There was something almost kind of like cinematic about it in all the worst ways. You know, here's. This guy's like a lifelong anti Communist. You know, he's been saying his entire professional life, the Soviet Union is dangerous. It only understands force. That's the only currency it can, you know, employ in order to assert it's. It's. It's its vision of, of, you know, of, of political order around in the world. And lo and behold, like, how does he die? You know, he, he dies with, you know, dozens of other people on this. On the civilian airliner that. Yeah, I think there's 269 people. You know, he dies with, like, you know, hundreds of other people on this 747. You know, that's unceremoniously blown out of the sky by, you know, Soviet warbird. Really, really, really upset people. And the Soviets, in typical fashion, you know, went into kind of, you know, went into kind of garrison mode and started claiming that. First they claimed that this didn't happen at all. You know, then they claimed that was a deliberate provocation and the United States wanted this to happen, you know, so that, you know, they could. So that they could, you know, provoke a war. And that, that kind of rhetoric itself, I mean, that. That was grossly irresponsible. I mean, it. This was very, very bad. The, and the, The United States, in turn, Reagan's people said that the Soviet Union was obstructing search and rescue operations, which they probably were. You know, I mean, it got. It got very, very ugly. And this was, this was a couple months prior. There had been Reagan's evil, evil Empire speech, March 8, 1983, just almost exactly 40 years ago, as of a couple days ago. And I don't know if people. It's. It was not a long speech and it hit really, really hard. I, you can find it obviously on YouTube or at least you used to be able to. I don't know if it's. I would assume it's still there, but, you know, in some, There was, there was some of the normal, you know, kind of State of the Union type policy stuff, but the core of it was, you know, Reagan essentially stealing people for the possibility of nuclear war. And I, I know that, you know, for, at the time and then for decades subsequent, it's been kind of a favorite of people on the left. Mind you, I'm not some great Reagan apologist, as I think people know, but it's become. I, I gotta say that this was in fact a great speech and it wasn't corny or misplaced. And I mean, people, people always accusing Reagan of being this kind of his head in the clouds, who was always invoking stuff like Star Wars. Like, you know, that's why, that's why they kind of. It was Ted Kennedy who coined the actual phrase Star wars to describe sdi. I mean, which itself is moronic. But calling the Soviet Union the evil empire wasn't just a, A corny, floating signifier. The actual relevant text is what Reagan said. And I quote, let us pray for the salvation of all those who live in that totalitarian darkness. Pray they will cross over the joy of knowing God. But until they do, let us be aware that while they preach the supremacy of the state, declare its omnipotence over individual man, and predict its eventual domination of all peoples on the earth. They're the focus of evil in the modern world. So in your discussions of nuclear freeze proposals, I urge you to beware the temptation of pride, the temptation of blindly declaring yourself above it all, and label both sides equally at fault. To ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding, thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil. That sounds like a war speech. Okay, I'm not saying that that was misplaced. I think that was entirely appropriate within the boundary rationality of the Cold War. A very, very strong statement had to be made and drop off. Took that to mean that Reagan is planning to sue for war.
- [194:45]
C
And
- [194:48]
B
I, it's, it's, it's understandable in context why he would think that. Okay. And plus, I think this is a damn good speech. Okay, that's, that's not foe. It's not that kind of cringe, soaring language that these, these kind of these beltway types are, are prone to invoke these days. I mean, it was, it didn't, it didn't seem hokey at the time, you know, and, and it always, it was, there was genuine, there's a genuine strategic paradigm shift underway that was profoundly destabilizing. Okay. I mean, I, I, I, I said frankly, the Evil Empire speech is better than any speech Kennedy ever made. Okay? Just in objective terms. And again, I'm not any kind of, I'm not any kind of Reagan lover or something, but that, that can't be denied. It's kind of incredible to me that there'll be those like, they'll be using middling speeches by like Churchill. We're just kind of drunk and like mumbling about, you know, like we will never surrender, you know, or like Martin Luther King with this kind of, just these kind of like nonsense platitudes. You know, people hold this out as like just this kind of incredible example of, of, of, of, of modern oratory. It's like really, man, like the Evil Empire speech is kind of is, is peak. Okay? I mean, not just owing to the, not, not, not just, not just going to the, you know, profundity of the language, but the context in which it was delivered, at least I think so. Like I said, I'm sure people just claim that that's, you know, that's, you know, love for Reagan or something. But again, is, is it, is it
- [196:31]
A
generally accepted that Anthony Dolan wrote it?
- [196:34]
B
I believe so. I mean, that's, Reagan was not. Reagan could shoot from the hip and speak very well. I mean, that's why he was, you know, dubbed the Great Communicator. But Reagan did not write a lot of his own, you know, long form speeches. I believe. I can't, somebody will correct me if I'm wrong. I believe that the 70s, the 76 Republican convention, that was Reagan's other really famous speech. I believe he wrote most of that. And that was remarkable because generally Reagan didn't. That's why, you know, the Bitburg speech, Buchanan wrote that and that was just Nancy Reagan use it as an excuse to throw pattern to the bus. But Buchanan actually wrote that speech like it, it, and that was, you know, in Reagan's era, it wasn't yet at the point where, you know, just, it was part of the chorus for, you know, presidents and candidates for the White House, you know, just to rely on, you know, people to write their, their copy for them. I mean, some people did, some people didn't. But yeah, Reagan generally didn't I remember
- [197:44]
A
the, the bitbird controversy is like it was yesterday.
- [197:50]
B
Yeah, I mean, that's, we'll get into that on the next episode as, as we kind of approach perestroika and stuff. But that, that was entirely appropriate. And how anyone, I mean, first of all, I, I, I got nothing but esteem for the Waffen ss, obviously. I mean those guys were heroes. But even if you completely reject that take, it was entirely appropriate what Reagan said. He said these, he said these men were victims of the war too. And I don't, I don't see how they could be construed as controversial. And Helmut Cole essentially insisted that, you know, the, the war that the German word that be acknowledged. Like if anything, if, if he wanted to throw mud on somebody for purported, you know, fascist sympathies, like Cole would kind of be the guy to hang that on. But I think it was, among other things, it was an excuse to sort of excise you can, from the Reagan, from Reagan's inner circle. Nancy really was in some ways like Priscilla was to Elvis, you know, and the way she just decided that she like hated some guy or hated some guy's wife who was part of the Memphis mafia. So he had to go like Nancy did that too. Like, not that there's a certain kind of woman who does that. I'm not trying to trash females at all, but I mean, everybody knows that's true. And Nancy Reagan was a very strange bird. Like she really was in all kinds of ways. I'm frankly surprised it's, it, it's, I mean, that's a whole other question. It's strange that she was, I mean, she was Reagan's second wife. You know, once he picked her up, well, after he had kind of decided he wanted a political career of some sort. It's very strange, but that's my read on it. And yeah, obviously, you know, we talked about it wasn't nearly as extreme because Reagan truly did have a pretty remarkable mandate for a post.
- [199:36]
D
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- [199:44]
A
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D
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- [200:06]
B
apply for post war president. But there was, there wasn't There was a kind of Reagan derangement syndrome. You remember that? Like. Oh yeah, yeah, if it rains on Sunday, it's because of Reagan. Like if, if your cornflakes don't taste good, it's because of Reagan. Like everything that happened in the world is like some work by Reagan. Like yeah, it. So that, I mean that was part of it. But, but yeah, the. Regardless, like I said, I mean even, even people who you know, were in our cynical about the Cold War, even people don't particularly. Even, even people think Ray was just some kind of like glorified pitch man. I mean that, that was a great speech and you know, it. I don't think it was gratuitous, but again it did it, it did sound like a war speech and, and drop off and you know, Ustinov, Gromiko, Chernenko, I mean all these guys who constituted, you know, the inner, inner party. I mean they'd all, they'd all live through the war with, with the German Reich. I mean they, to say they were sensitive to these indicators, it doesn't even begin to kind of scratch the surface of you know, the kind of depth of their fears of these things. But it's. This is what's important too to keep in mind is as to why this, this, you know, 1979-84 and 85 was so dangerous. You know, like what happened, you know, like what, what happened. What happened to detente? What killed it? What, what constituted Dayton in brass tax terms in terms of policy of you know, the east block and you know, the west slash NATO and what, what kind of treaty if not law? Because I mean we, we can really talk about treaties as binding log. It can never be anything but permissive. But particularly during the Cold War, it was kind of more like a statement of, of good faith than anything. But it did, you know, it did have, it did have moral force. Okay, really what kind of constituted Dayton? Where the rubber met the road. One of its big kind of aims. And for a, for a limited time we're going to get into why this was problematic. As it was constituted, one of its big ambitions was to kind of take off the possibility of war in Europe. Take that off the table. You know, as we talked about, there's basically two issues in strategic terms. You know, there's obviously America and the Soviet Union could come to proverbial blows in, in any number of theaters, although the primary dyad was Europe. But the Soviet Union vis a vis Europe, I mean that was, that was an open ended question. I mean, where did Europe stand the several constituent elements in NATO, like where did they stand individually insofar as they did have, you know, a cognizable, you know, discreet policy independent of the NATO structure. You know, what was their relationship to the Soviet Union in pure geostrategic terms? I mean, this had, this, this had tremendous significance politically, not just for, you know, global stability or and the potential of a crisis dyads, but, but also it was understood by everybody. I mean, even a conventional war
- [203:36]
C
in
- [203:37]
B
Europe with, you know, modern combined arms, it would have been utterly devastating. You know, I mean, that would have been the end of Europe quite literally. You know, it would not have survived, you know, or if it did, it would, it would have been some sort of, you know, it would not have been, it would not have been Europe as we know it anymore. Okay. This kind of brought quite literally every European state exempting Albania, which is always, you know, which, which was under the, which was under the rule of inver hawksa, you know, and they had all their little bunkers, everybody knows, like what the hawks of bunkers. Well, like Albania was protesting like any, anything relating to detente treaty making because they claimed that they supported the People's Republic of China because they were the true, like Marxist Leninist vanguard. But, but other than that, every, every member state in NATO and the Warsaw Pact, plus Norway, plus, you know, plus Spain, which I don't think was a NATO yet because it was 73. They signed on for what came to be called the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was convened in 1973-1975. It was held in Helsinki, Finland. The final phase of it, which came to be called the Helsinki Accords or the Helsinki Declaration between July 30 and August 1, 1975. Now this followed two years of negotiations of this kind of tortured process wherein again, 35 participating states, Plus United States and Canada. Did I, did I disconnect for a minute?
- [205:41]
A
No, you're good.
- [205:43]
B
Okay. I'm sorry. For some reason the freaking. You're My, my video kicked out. Okay. The Helsinki declaration, it constituted 35 participating states, you know, all the, all the member states in NATO and Warsaw Pact, you know, plus plus Sweden or plus Norway, plus Spain, the United States plus Canada. What it kicked with this, what this declaration came to constitute was it was supposed to be basically, you know, a kind of, a kind of quasi bill of rights that was understood to be, you know, kind of like represent the fundamental rights of man de jure on both sides of the Iron Curtain. You know, it was a sovereign Equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty of all, you know, constituent states of NATO and Warsaw Pact. Refraining from the threat. Use of force to advance policy initiatives other than defensively. Which I, I realize that's kind of meaningless in existential terms, but it has political currency in these kinds of situations. You know, a recognition of the territorial integrity of states as existed then, you know, with the, you know, the post war boundaries that have been drawn, the peaceful settlement of disputes, non intervention in hostile terms and you know, the affairs of other constituent states by their NATO or Warsaw Pact. And a basic. And respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. And this was a big one, including freedom of thought, conscience and religion. Okay? Now Brezhnev made a very big deal about this, okay? And this was before he was, you know, really compromised in terms of his mental faculties. And so did Eric Honicker. Okay? Because Honaker especially because he's a Germany, always been struggling for legitimacy. You know, they weren't even recognized as, as, as a state until the 70s by you know, a majority of this planet. But the worst up Pact or the Iron Curtain, rather the states find the Iron Curtain that constituted the Soviet sphere of influence. They were always gonna, they, they were always clawing for respectability which you know, in the Cold War context was essential because this really was a battle of zeitgeist and which system and which superpower would become the world system. You know, this wasn't just cosmetic or something and it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't just these kind of career statesmen, you know, wanting a feather in their cap, you know, with so they could like look at, you know, their proverbial trophy case and like admire their own, you know, great career or whatever. This had like actual impact. So that's important to keep in mind, but would really kind of open the door to this. What really made this possible, what really made the taunt possible was the situation between the two Germanies and specifically the ascendancy of Billy Brandt. Who is Billy Brandt? Billy Brand was this crazy kind of 68 or socialist. I mean he was middle aged by that epoch. You know, he was of the war generation. But he'd been the governor, he'd been the governing mayor of West Berlin. And Berlin to this day remains like, you know, an independent polity, like all the several German states or prefectures are. But during the Cold War it had special status or like, or you know, when the inter German borders and tags, it's special status, you know, because it was this quasi protectorate of, of you know, the the of. Of America, France and the UK it, it was situated completely within, you know, the territory the DDR. So the mirror west for the governing mayor, West Berlin. He had unusual clout. Okay. Brandt was the chairman of the Social Democratic Party from 64 to 87. And most significantly and to understand his kind of contribution to history as it were accidental or not or you know, literally like accidental or not. Like, you know what he kind of, what he kind of fumbled into. He was the Chancellor of the Buddhist Republic from 1969-75. He was this big, you know, he was this big liberal reformer. He, he really compromised the Bundes, the Bundesville's combat capability which was a big deal because the Bundes Fair was the spear point of NATO in the first decades after the day of defeat. They really were like a crack military force and they had to be because they're opt for was, you know, the National Volks Army. This should all be very clear. You know, there's a slew of other you know, kind of brand brands apologists and supporters, right, pointing the fact that you know the, the number of Germans made the poverty line, you know, like fell from you know, 2.9 to like, you know, marginal. But entrepreneurial activity also dropped down to zero. You know, I mean it was a typical kind of, it was the typical kind of like socialist stagnation writ large, you know, but it will, but hey, you know, and the cope for, for those that defend such things are we got this great education system and now nobody's poor anymore. I mean everybody. This is a very common, this was a common occurrence, you know, when, when Social Democrats or Greens later on, you know, gain majoritarian status than any of these, you know, in any of these West European states. But more importantly, Brandt's big thing was Ost Politik. He wanted a true like reconciliation with East Germany. Okay? And towards that end, starting 1967, he reestablished diplomatic relations with Romania, entered into a trade agreement Czechoslovakia, you know, he restored formal relations with Yugoslavia. This was set back in August 68 when you know, with the Kremlin's invasion of Czechoslovakia. But you know, he condemned. Brandt formally condemned the invasion. But you know, he, the, the he what? He basically renegotiated the ruling coalition, you know, with the Free Democrats and you know who back to continued reproachment with the worst up Pact. And that was, that was kind of his way of finessing, you know, what could have been a cring crisis into a, a way of staying alive. But it, this reach is kind of Zena in 69, when he agreed to meet, he agreed to meet with Willie stuff, who was East German premiere, who was, you know, in this kind of Byzantine DDR system, technically the head of. Of state contra, you know, the. The head of government, you know, the who. Who was, you know, the general secretary of the SE D, which by then was Hanukkar. But he, he agreed to meet with Honaker too. And so he basically, in one fell stroke, he basically, you know, gave the DDR the legitimacy that had been attempting to capture really from inception. And this understandably, this really, really outraged, you know, not just people who had family behind the wall, but also, you know, people who had real concerns about the fact that the Soviet Union was unpacked. A genuine momentum. Then in military terms and frankly in political terms in the third World, like we talked about, you know, like, it appeared that Brandt was, Was. Was selling Europe out to the Stalinists in a real way, owing either to malice or any malice or naivete, it didn't matter. And this, in my opinion was kind of the zenith of a Warsaw Pack power politically, because what had always been the way Warsaw Pact wins is a demilitarized Germany. You know, I mean, this was the subject of the Stalin note as we got into many moons ago. This is what the Soviets always wanted, okay? And it looked like they were gonna get it, albeit in some gradual capacity. But what, what brought this down is fascinating.
- [214:26]
D
Willie.
- [214:27]
B
Brandt's or Billy Brandt's top aid, you know, his. And, and the, and, and the Social Democrat Party, like, secretary, was a guy named Gunter Guillaume. Okay? And Guillaume was uh, connected the hip to, uh, to Billy Brandt. You know, he was this kind of. He was just kind of. He was this kind of shifty looking guy, frankly. You know, always wore dark glasses. He was always dressed impeccably, but, you know, he truly was ubiquitous. Like when Brandt went on vacation, you know, Guillaume like, went with Brandt and his family too. Like, they were that close. And it was believed that basically Brandt was a womanizer. You know, he. He liked too much. He was a drunk. Like, like Brandy Villi was his, you know, kind of nickname. You know, friends and foes alike called him that. He relied on Guillaume, you know, to kind of like, hold it together. Okay. Well, in 1974, on April 24th, Guillaume gets arrested because Guillaume was. He was a Stasi officer, and he had been for his whole life. He was quite literally deployed to the Bundest republic to get close to anybody he could. And he got close to Billy Brandt, and he quite literally made Brandt Chancellor. I Mean like think about that, like think about what a coup that is. And Guillaume was able to steal the eyes only above top secret NATO nuclear war plan from the Chancellor's safe. And he was able to deliver it to East Berlin. And from that point forward it was never clear like what the Stasi knew, you know, and like how long they had known, you know. And this was this Oda Marcus Wolf, who was, you know, kind of the, he was kind of the genius of the Ministry for State Security. He was the, he was the, he was the chief of the Foreign Intelligence Directorate or the Main Directorate for reconnaissance. And Guillaume was his like, like the mole that became Guillaume. This, I mean this was his, this was his operation, you know, from inception to conclusion. And Wolf made the point that Guillaume's arrest and exposure, this is really kind of what killed the ambition of Warsaw Pact and everything they'd accomplished. Because after that the Buddhist Republic became basically a police state. You know, like they, uh, a couple years subsequent, uh, the Potter Meinhof action, you know, the Red Army Faction, you know, in 1977, that was the German Autumn as it was called. You know, they, they, they kidnapped and murdered a number of, you know, of, of highly, of highly situated personages, you know, industrialists, conservative politicians, people of this nature. You know, the, it, this is really what facilitated the ascendancy of a man like Helmut Cole the Chancellorship. And this is when Western, this is when the Buddhist Republic like rejoined the Cold War in earnest, you know, and then all bets were off. And it also, there was something just profoundly sinister about this. I'm not saying that in like a corny way, but you know, the intelligence game, for whatever reason, the, the Russian, the Soviets and now the Russians are very, very good at it. They were always way, way better at it than NATO for whatever reason. And this was a testament to that. You know, about 10 years after the Gu affair, Hans Te, you know who was the, who was the chief of the Counterintelligence directorate of West German intelligence. He, he just literally defected to East Germany. Okay. I mean there's nothing, there weren't any people going the other way of that status. I mean, yeah, there's people, there's people like, you know, Suvarov, you know, not the super off, but you know, the guy whose pen name was Victor Suvarov. You know, there's mid level Soviet officers, there's even a couple of generals, but nothing like this, you know, and that's that there's entire values written on why that was. But the point is it this kind of killed anybody's idea, you know, even kind of the most stalwart, you know, kind of social Dem, like East block apologists. I mean, they realize that like the communists truly were just aiming to subvert the Buddhist republic, render it defenseless, you know, penetrate it by any means necessary, you know, and, and, and, and thereby, you know, remove Europe from the American defense umbrella for all time. Okay. I don't want to get into an argument about what the implications of that are in like world historical terms. I think people know my opinion, but that's not important. We're talking about the founder rationality of the Cold War and in its epoch, how people viewed these things vis a vis, and the Helsinki, of course, and everything else. So you look at that situation and then, you know, like we talked about last episode, the assault in Afghanistan, you know, the, the emergence of deep parodies, you know, and, and, and the Soviets attempt to, to remedy that, you know, by, by deploying even more weapons platforms. The massive throwaway in the European theater, you know, and Reagan, Reagan's way of returning to serve was the deployment of intermediate range nuclear weapons to, you know, to, to the Bundes Republic, to Italy, to the Netherlands and, and other key theaters. And that's, that's basically how, I mean, you can see kind of like a perfect storm of causality leading to the, leading to the status of tensions. You know, by 1983, I don't think that there's, I don't think that there's a comparable. Sort of crisis cycle in the Cold War. I mean, there was, like I said, there was 1973, you know, where the Soviets actually, they, they deployed nuclear weapons, you know, to the Middle Eastern theater in anticipation of a general assault in support of their Egyptian ally. 1962, obviously, you know, there were, the world, the United States and the Soviet were very close to nuclear war, but that was well before. That was well before nuclear parody had been achieved. So it, yeah, okay. I mean, I realize it sounds like I'm being flippant, but if America took 20 million dead, it still would have won. I mean, there would have been no more Soviet Union. You know, that's got different implications, you know, and it's not, it's not so much that, you know, 1982-84, it's, it's not so much that, you know, it was this punctuated moment, like 73, when America reached DEFCON 3 or like 62 when the question was, you know, are the stories just gonna, you know, just gonna run the blockade? It was just kind of ongoing it was, it was just gonna. It was kind of like never ending state of elevated tension where it seemed that at any moment, you know, a general crisis could deteriorate, could deteriorate into nuclear war before anybody even knew what was happening. Owing a large part to. To the state of, you know, weapons development then and command and control technology, which is essentially neutralized. Drilling, warning. That's what's important to consider, I believe, because I do get asked by people like, well, why was this so dangerous? There wasn't some, you know, moment like in the Cuban Missile Crisis, so there wasn't some ultimatum issued, you know, like when the Soviets declared that, you know, if the Israelis annihilated, you know, the Egyptian army and then. And then marching in Cairo, that, you know, the Soyuz would intervene and then if. If met, you know, by comparable American forces that, you know, they'd resort to nuclear weapons in order to prevent their own people from, you know, being surrounded and destroyed similarly. But that's, that's kind of what I got for today, because I don't want to. The Gorbachev's ascendancy and kind of what ended this strategic paradigm is significant. And the role of Matthias Rust the roost, you know, the, the kid who flew his, who flew his prop plane into Red Square. That's a fascinating story and it's got huge significance for, you know, the kind of internal, like for Kremlin intrigues that, you know, led to, you know, led to a. A real policy shift. Why were. The fact that it cost many, many Stalinist hardliners in key roles their jobs. But I. That I think we should say that for next episode because again, I want to deal with, you know, the end of the end drop of Cherno era and the ascendancy of Gorbachev next episode. So I think that's all I got today.
- [224:27]
A
Well, let me ask you this. The. The shooting down of. Of 007, there had to have been close calls before. There had to have been planes that flew into airspace. Why was it that one? Yeah, not to, you know, not to put on a tinfoil hat and everything. But it, you know, and like you said, there was always. That flight would always have someone on it of significance. But why do you think it was just at that time, it was just. That was the perfect storm time.
- [224:56]
B
That was the perfect storm time. It's not clear why. Because, you know, even in those days there was. You could recover audio from. From. From Rex, like the black box, I guess.
- [225:12]
D
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- [225:28]
B
The Soviets tried to hail this plane, and like I said, A747, apparently, I'm not like an aviation guy. Like, I like warbirds, I think they're cool, but I don't know anything about, like, the, you know, particulars of it. Apparently a 747, like I said, looks basically just like an AWACS of the era, like, even at visual range. So the Soviets are like, you know, why, why we're not just being spoofed. This is, you know, this isn't, this is an early. They're trying, they're trying to detect our early warning and how much it's lit up. They tried to hail the pilot on, you know, whatever the, you know, international emergency frequency is, and it was dead silence. This Sukhoi got on his tail and made clear that, like, it was, you know, at attack range, you know, and it still didn't deviate from its course. You know, the pilot who took it down, obviously, you know, he was forced to lie by the Kremlin and stuff. You know, sometime in the 2000s, you know, he, he, he testified to this British filmmaker about everything that happened. And he's like, yeah, you know, he's like, when I got the order to the fire, I didn't hesitate. And he's like, I didn't think it was. He's like, I didn't think we were gonna. He's like, I didn't think it was, you know, a precursor to an attack, but he's like, I, it didn't make sense what it was doing. You know, he's like, I thought something wasn't right here. What some of these FAA types, some of these, like, investigator types and guys who know aviation claim or like, what they think, I mean, we take for granted that it's a hell of a lot easier, I mean, in, in aviation and anywhere else these days to identify your, your true position. In those days, it wasn't. The consensus is that these Korean pilots were wildly off course. They had no idea they were in Soviet airspace at all. So, like, when a Suho got on their tail, Ivan does their, their idea, their notion probably. Ivan does crazy things all the time. You know, it wouldn't even occur to them, like, we're gonna get blown out of the sky. Plus, yeah, the fact it was a perfect storm of, of, of concrete tensions, you know, owing to the global situation. But it's weird, and it's weird that McDonald's was just having to be on that plane, you know. And it's like, and then too like a lot of Bircher types and stuff and not, and, and other just like right wing guys, not even like butcher cranks. We're like, obviously the Soviets are just doing this because they can. And they hated McDonald anyway, so they just killed him. And I mean, honestly, I can see why people would have thought that because it's weird, you know. And I mean the Cold War was weird, you know, and it's, and plus the, they, the Soviets did grimy. I mean they, you know, in the same epoch, you know, they, it's clear now like they, they retain some freaking, you know, this Turk to try and murder the Pope. Like, you know, they, the, these Popular Front for Liberation of Palestine guys were going berserk. You know, they were the guys who blew up the discotheque in West Berlin. Like those, those guys were like in this, in the employees of the Stasi and operation control of kgb. He was over the Stasi. It's like they, you know, obviously it's a different thing to you know, to blow a civilian airline around the sky with, with a warbird. But it, you know, the Soviet Union was behaving, it was behaving very much like a, a lawless actor, you know.
- [229:13]
A
Well, I mean, but that wasn't top down. I mean with the premiere of that they were gonna do. Yeah, I mean this is just what happens.
- [229:23]
B
Yeah, but I understand what my point was. I could see why people who weren't crazy could think that, you know, this was, this was just the Soviets being brutes. I mean that. But yeah, I mean it was, it was, there was, there's not like a deeper, there's not deeper lore there. But yeah, McDonald was a. And I mean it's sad McDonald died. I mean I don't, I'm not a fan of the birth society, but there's some good guys in there. Like that is now. And McDonald was probably, he was one of the last congressman who's actually worth. He was a good dude, you know, I mean it, I, I missed the days when there was like Democrats who weren't just like, not like bags and perverts, but they actually were like dudes who represented their constituents. And McDonald's a guy who did that and arguably, I mean he died for him. He wouldn't have been on that stupid plane going to South Korea, like, if he, you know, wasn't acting as official capacity. I mean, it, you know, in the Cold War, it, I mean, politicians now, they're like, they're like total deviants and losers because like, no man has got anything going on in his life, like goes into politics. But the Cold War was different. You know, you had, you had like real guys and you had people who had something to offer who went into, who went into public life, you know, like McDonald, you know, I mean, it's, and it's, it's a tragedy, you know, and as were, you know, the right. Those other 269 people on board, you know, and there was, like I said it was mostly official types and business people, but, you know, there were still. There's a couple dozen women and kids. I mean, the thing was awful, but. Yeah.
- [230:53]
A
Yeah, well, plugs and we're out of here.
- [230:58]
B
Yeah, like again too. Like, I mean, terrorized by Burbank. So like, please don't tear any mind. I, I guess like in a week I'll be back on there. But I'm trying to phase it out as we kind of transition to the channel. But I mean, in the interim. And you can find me at T. Ram you can find me on substack real thomas777.substack.com My YouTube channel is Thomas TV. The, the trailer or the promo is up for the channel. The intro rather than. I'm in the process of recording the first episode as I hope people gleaned from the intro that my dear friend and bro Rake created for us. I, I want this to be very high quality. I'm not just like throwing out there, you know, so it takes time to produce it. I, I, I, I'm piecemeal getting the, the equipment. I need to do this in a more expeditious capacity. But like, please bear with me. I promise by April 1st we will have like actual episodes. But that's, that's my, that's my job as of today. All right, man.
- [232:09]
A
I appreciate it. Till the next time.
- [232:10]
B
Yeah. Thank you, Pete.
- [232:12]
A
I want to welcome everyone back to the Pican Yano show. Thomas, how are you doing?
- [232:17]
B
I'm all right. Thanks for hosting me.
- [232:20]
A
Yeah, man. So last time we talked, talked about Yocky and talked about Spengler and it's time to get back to the Cold war series, episode 14. What do you got for us today?
- [232:34]
B
Yeah, we left off with Abel Archer in the Andropov era. I mean, to me, the Andropov era was properly from, you know, about 1964 until he died. I mean I, you know, like I said, I think he was, he was like the kind of eminence behind the facade of Soviet power that, you know, when Brezhnev was at the helm. That's not to say Brezhnev was, was some kind of cipher. I mean, Brezhnev became elderly. He, he was no longer, you know, I mean he, he was no longer mentally competent the last few years of his life. But Bresna was a serious personage, you know. I mean, there's a reason why he replaced Khrushchev. You know, like he was writing the ship. He was writing the ship after the, you know, the kind of disaster that was Krusha in power, political terms.
- [233:21]
C
You know.
- [233:22]
B
And Brezhnev was, in a lot of ways he was kind of a true Stalinist, you know, I mean, and, but the true, I mean a state, it's at the scale of the Soviet Union, you know, even, even accounting for the fact that, you know, the Russian, the Russian, Russia's political heritage sends a concentrate power in one man even in times of peace, like in a way that seems peculiar in the West. I'm not even saying that punitively. I mean, it's just like an objective account of things. But you know, the Soviet Union at its zenith, it just was not the scale and complexity. I mean, when, empirically, when you consider, you know, the, the way that Marxist Lenin estates were organized, where they're, you know, we're central planning, you know, truly was the order of the day, you know, not, I mean that that's what policy was. That's, that's, that, that's what the production schema was. It wasn't, you know, something that they aimed to realize. I mean that that's how they, they truly had, you know, an economy that, you know, had abolished the price mechanism and was managed by, you know, thousands upon thousands upon millions of inputs. So I mean, no, what I'm getting at is that no, no matter how much of a brilliant, you know, personage Brezhnev would have, might, might or might not have been, like, no, no single man could have managed that. So I made the point that kind of the, the trifecta of Soviet power was really in drop off Gromiko and Ustinov, Dmitry Usinov, the field marshal
- [235:06]
C
and
- [235:07]
B
you know, particularly on mayors of war and peace and drop off was kind of the final authority and you know, the decision to go to war in Afghanistan was very much in drop off decision. And I think we got into that and. The, the decline of that trifecta. I mean, most frankly, I mean, and Drop off died and then Usinov died shortly after. I mean that's, that's really what allowed Glassnose and Perestrika, like as policy to become, develop and evolve the way it did. However, you know, Gorbachev was in drop off's protege and that's the reason why he truly was in Drop off successor. You know, this idea that Gorbachev's like this kind of crazy liberal or that he was like this kind of Yeltsin like buffoon who, who was just kind of like drunk on the, the prospect of, you know, of, of kind of like slash and burn capitalism. That's not true at all. We'll get into the next episode, which will probably be kind of like close to the end of our series as to like why, you know, why. Why the Soviet Union went down in flames the way it did. But it wasn't because Gorbachev wanted to just like burn the structure down or like pull the plug. But when a drop off died, his immediate, his immediate successor was Constantine Chernenko, you know, who was kind of like this doddering fool in, in the eyes of the world. I mean, by that point he was totally senile. But the reason why that this kind of placeholder was insinuated into the, the General Secretariat was because there was a real battle within the Kremlin as to which way the Soviet Union was going to go.
- [236:52]
C
Not even.
- [236:52]
B
It wasn't. Nobody foresaw in the early 80s that, you know, the east block was going to come apart. Like nobody, you know, like we talked about before, there was people like Kenan and people like Yockey himself, you know, the Soviet Union as it existed, you know, in the 1950s and during. Into the 21st century. But even they didn't see the whole system just like dissolving, you know, like the way it did. So the people were suspicious of Gorbachev. It wasn't because they thought like, you know, he's gonna, he's gonna sell the party down river or something. It was because, you know, you had, you had these discreet personages who, you know, to whom kind of like the up and coming commissars, like had had like individual loyalty to, you know, and Gorbachev, despite the fact that he'd been in drop offs guy, I mean, it, that, that carried a lot of clout, but it wasn't, it wasn't enough, you know, to just, to just hand. Hand him the reins in like an absolute capacity without you know, any kind of. Without any. Without. Without anything being finessed beforehand and, like, you know, promises being made and, you know, and kind of certain ceremonies being stood upon, as it were. But Chernenko was not in his youth. He actually. The guy was kind of like a pure commissar. I mean, he obviously, sir, you know, he served in the Red army, you know, during the. With, you know, the Rush Soviets and. And the Russians today called the Great Patriotic War. He spent his entire career in propaganda and.
- [238:22]
C
And.
- [238:22]
B
And. And as an ideological cadre. You know, like I said, the guy was like a pure commissar. You know, it's just like what he did, you know, and he. He was very much an intermediary, like, with the defense establishment, even though he didn't, like, spend a career in uniform, like. And they trusted him and they liked him, you know, so this guy. You can see with the Soviet Union, the fact that they took, you know, every. William Odom, who we'll talk about a little bit later in this episode, you know, an American general and. And probably the preeminent authority on. On nuclear warfare. And. And I'd say. I'd say Thomas Schelling and the civilian side would be entitled to that moniker. But as far as a general officer goes, it was Odom. And William Odom, he was. He was kind of the one, you know, he was kind of the one, like, you know, combat experience, general officer, who was saying in the wake of Abel Archer that, like, look, the Soviet Union is serious. Like, they're not. They're not. They're not pretending to be on high alert. Like, they. They actually are. You know, they actually are on a war footing. And, like, the more you. The more you. You spoof them, you know, the more paranoid you make them and. And the more likely it is that, you know, a real war is going to develop before we even realize what's underway. But. Odom, you know, he. He was right. And the Soviet Union being that it was very much on a war footing and kind of the entire vector of policy, it had, like, a strategic nuclear axis. Sherenko. If you're gonna go to war, Chernenko is a who you'd kind of want in the General Secretariat. Yeah, by that point, he was daughtering and senile. But the fact is, the guy had tremendous esteem from the military, from the uniformed cadres to the design bureaus, you know, to the men who wore suits every day to work, but who were like the kind of military industrial complexes, representatives in the Polit Bureau. Like, Cherno was like, A guy like none of them would have, like, disagreed on. And on the party side, you know, the guy had been basically chief ideologist, like when he was young and had his brains. So.
- [240:42]
D
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- [240:56]
B
Casino it didn't matter. The Churango himself was totally odd. It was it because obviously, like his proteges or people who very much were, you know, viewed as carrying out like his will and legacy. And if it was going to come down to like a general war with NATO, he's kind of a man you'd want there. You would not want to hand the reins to Gorbachev, even if he thought he was a great prodigy. Because, you know, I mean, he was in his 50s. He wasn't like young in absolute terms, but he was like a sprat, like in the Soviet system, like, he was literally like the youngest man, like in the Politburo. But beyond that, much as he'd shadowed and drop off and when drop was final year, when he was, you know, bedridden, basically, Gorbachev would literally stand in for him. That's different than being the actual decision maker, particularly General Secretary in a system like the Soviet Union. So considering the international situation, it wasn't just internal politics and egos and, and kind of literally Byzantine, you know, intrigues that led to Chernenko getting installed as General Secretary there. There's like an internal logic to it. Like, weird as the Soviet system was and kind of strange to us as the Russian system is, but as. As Gorbachev succeeded Chernenko, who died in office just like Andropov did, just like Breznov did, you know. And that hurt the Soviet Union in, in, in terms of their optics in a basic way. In 82, like Brezhnev, you know, dies like a year and 10 months later, like Andropov dies. And then literally 13 months later, like Chernango dies. It's like. So you've got this, you know, the world's. One of the world's, you know, one of the world's only two superpowers, you know, the mighty Soviet Union. It's like they, they've got these doddering old men, like one after the other, like, who just literally keep dying. That's not a good look, you know, and especially contra Reagan, who, I mean, these days Reagan wouldn't seem like purely elderly, but in those days people talk a lot of like, you know, Reagan's just this old man, even though he's only about 70, which was old, I mean in 1980. But Reagan, the guy had like an absurd amount of energy, you know, like almost Trump tried to capture some of that. And Trump is a high energy guy, particularly for a guy he was like pushing 80. But with Reagan it like was not at all like an affectation. So you've got like Reagan who's, you know, Reagan's always got a smile on his face, always got perfect hair. You know, the guy is like sharp as a tack and you know, he's got a sense of humor to rival like, he's got, he's got a dry humor to rival Johnny Carson. You got like him and then you got like literally doddering, shaking Brezonev who's like, you know, dropping dead a week later. You know, you guys replacement, it's even worse. And like, you know, he's, you know, he's dead within, you know, within less than two years. Like it, it indicated like a real, a real structural problem. But that's why, that's why there's so much uncertainty around Gorbachev because like I said, he was, he was the youngest man in the poet bureau. His main rival was a guy named Gregory Romanov who was very much,
- [244:10]
A
it
- [244:10]
B
was very much a hawk on, on strategic matters. He, he staunchly opposed any kind of compromise or intermediate nuclear forces in Europe. As we talked about last episode, that that's what prompted the Pershing 2 deployment was, you know, that was the primary like theater based nuclear weapons platform for the US army and deployed in the Bundes Republic or in Italy or in the Benelux countries. That's a decapitation range of Moscow. And the impetus for that was Soviet deployment of, of SS 19s and SS 20s. Obviously the intention of the Soviets were to decouple European strategic policy from Americas. You know, like if you threaten Europe and nuclear annihilation and tell them like look, in a general war we're going to target you simultaneous the United States. And as long as you're in NATO, like there's no way out of this that changed things. And I believe that's one of the things that really put the Green Party on the map. Okay, like environmental stuff or like social justice stuff. As we think of it today, that was incidental. Like the reason people fly to the Green Party is because Germans are genuinely terrified of, of Germany being the designated like nuclear battle Theater of World War iii. Like, I don't follow them for that. Okay. I've nothing I'd say with the Green Party, but it's easy for people to say now. Like, oh, those guys are all just like. It's like, okay, man. But like, I. You know, some guy in the Buddhist Republic in 1980, like, he wasn't just being a. If he's like, you know, I don't like it. I don't want to be the designated. Like, I don't. My house being, like, a designated, you know, like. Like nuclear battlefield between Ivan and America. Like, you know, it's not. We can't really conceptualize what that was like. And, I mean, it's also, you know, West Germany was like, literally.
- [246:12]
A
People have no idea. People have no idea what it was like there. I mean, my. No, my parents lived there for three years. I was born there. You know, my dad had to go through Checkpoint Charlie.
- [246:23]
B
Yeah.
- [246:23]
A
I mean, it was. He said it. The closest definitions of dystopian that there ever was.
- [246:31]
B
Well, yeah, it's like William Oda. I'm speaking to him, as well as some of these line officers. And, like, even my dad was never, like, deployed there. But, I mean, he was in the Buddhist Republic and he was at the inner German border many times, you know, like, in that era. And he's like. It was like. He's like. It was like. Like a real war. He's like this. It wasn't like.
- [246:45]
C
So he's like.
- [246:45]
B
He's like. He's like the national Volkswagen. These, like, Soviet grunts, they weren't, like, loafing around playing cars. Like, these guys were, like, treating it like they were at war. I mean, so is, like, the Bundeswehr and so is, like, the US army. But it's. This is not. It's not like a joke or something where it's, you know, like, it. I think people imagine almost like an old cartoon where there's, like. Where there's. There's, like, the fox, and he's, like, trying to, like, get the chickens. And there's, like, the sheepdog and they, like. They clock. And he's like, hey, Carl. Like, hey, Sam. You know, and then they kind of, like, pretend to go through the motions.
- [247:14]
C
I mean, I'm sure there were.
- [247:15]
B
I'm. I'm sure there are, like, like, hostile borders like that. But, like, in a German border, like, that was not the case. I mean, like. Yeah, I mean. Yeah, but it. So, you know. But be as it may, like Reagan's. Reagan's like. Like, Reagan's big kind of first like foreign policy coup in like diplomatic terms was, was getting to the Soviets the table of. On the INF treaty. And the way he did it was he said like look like you know, we'll, we'll take the Pershings out and we'll take any, any comparable and like successor systems like off the table. Like what? Basically it's like we can either have a nuclear free Europe or like we're going to be shoving these theater based weapons up your ass at decapitation range like in perpetuity. And the school of conventional diplomacy, like that's not the right way to do things because it's like very, very bitery. But when you're talking about, when you're talking about strategic nuclear conditions of parody, when you're talking about kind of the strange. If you're talking about, if you're talking about the stakes like the Soviets had in this, that actually was like a brilliant move and Reagan deserves like mad credit for that.
- [248:26]
C
But
- [248:29]
B
there was a lot of resistance within the Soviet military establishment, especially from people like Usinov to this happening. So obviously Gorbachev did, you know, like secede Sharon, succeed Chernenko and Romanov, one of his first, one of Gorbachev's first acts of General Secretary was like sideline Romanov. He didn't, he didn't like punish the guy, but he basically like retired him like you know, with, in, in genteel kind of powerlessness. Okay, so but what Gorochov still had was. And then, and then, and then Usinov died almost immediately after. Okay, US died I believe at the very start of 1985. It was late 84, early 85. But within the military itself, like Gordjev had a tremendous amount of opposition and they had clout. I mean in America like the military during the Cold War had a huge clout, but it was like nothing compared to the Soviet Union. Like the defense establishment. Even now in the Russian Federation, they, and I'm not saying there's like punitively or like the way that like neocons say it, like it's some bad thing. It's just a reality like the, the trajectory and I mean Russia also has like existential threats that they face as a country that most states don't. But like the trajectory, the course of policy is set by the defense industry in a way that it's not. In a way that it's not, you know, in a state like, like in like America or like the UK even during the Cold War. But what changed that? What kind of allowed Gorbachev to essentially purge any kind of hostile general officers is really fascinating. And the immediate catalyst of that was, was the flight of a kid, like literally a kidney. Matthias Rust Roost. He was a German kid and he took a Cessna. He didn't have many flight hours. He only had about 50 or 60 like, like hours of flight time. He rented a, a Cessna F172P which is like, you know, like a Cessna like prop plane. Okay, like it. And what he did was he ripped out a bunch of the interior like including all but like the pilot seat, and he replaced them with auxiliary fuel tanks. And what he did was he tested out kind of his chops on long flights. He flew to the Faroe Islands, he went to Iceland. From Iceland, he flew to Bergen. And ultimately he did this because his idea was to fly to the Soviet Union, which seems totally insane. And it was. But what he, what is. No, he, he claimed he did it as like an emissary of peace and to build like a proverbial bridge between the Buddhist Republic and Moscow, which is actually pretty profound. I'll get to that.
- [251:14]
D
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- [251:29]
B
and conditions 21+ and, and kind of how this, this was actually videotaped by a British tourist who was on the ground in Moscow. That's why like everybody saw it. As a little kid, I remember being. This was like a very like awesome event. You know, it was like, it was wild. But Matias Roost, he. He leaves from Helsinki, Finland and he breaches Soviet airspace with the intention, with the intention to reach Moscow. Now how did he do this? Okay, we're talking about kind of a reverse, splendidly kind of like reverse situation of what happened with KL 007, okay, which was, you know, shot down as it was misidentified. Roof was flying this little plaque, this little prop plane that looks at visual range almost exactly like a Yakov 12, which it was used all over the Soviet Union for various purposes.
- [252:25]
C
You know, like in the, in the Siberian wilderness.
- [252:28]
B
They used them because, you know, kind of like Alaska, like that's your basic means of travel in there, like on the open step. Like surveyors and like naturalists would like use them, you know, like party members that use them just kind of like shuttle around. So like the sudden appearance of, of like the Cessna, like, it wouldn't really throw alarms in conventional, in a conventional situation. But Moscow was known to have like the toughest air defenses in the world. Like, it's telling like during linebagger too, you know, when downtown Hanoi was hit, the kind of, kind of final massive strategic air operation against Hanoi. Like downtown Hanoi was considered to be the most fortified city in the world, like the hardest target in the world other than Moscow, and like nothing. And the Soviets very much cultivated this. Not just his image, but, you know, Moscow was supposed to be like the hardest of all targets. So the fact that, the fact that this kid could fly his aircraft into Moscow and he crossed like several designated, like air defense, you know, checkpoints. And apparently at first there was uh, there was a rookie, uh, ground control crew and uh, when they sent the signal out for uh, iff, you know, identification, friend or foe, Ruis like, switched off his, his communication equipment and like, went dark. And not knowing what the proper code was to send out like over the airwaves for like, what the status the aircraft was, these guys, these Russians on the ground, like, dropped the code for like, friendly instead of like unknown, like possibly hostile. Like, so then like when he breached like the next kind of, you know, the, the next kind of hurdle, proverbially speaking, you know, he, he'd already been like, identified as like, as like a friendly aircraft. And then like, as he, as he approached like Moscow, like Moscow Air defense, like, it's like, you know, they saw it looked to be like a yako level like on the, on the gate at the, at the gates of Moscow. Like, they didn't even think twice about it because it's not, it's not a warplane. And if it's here in the first place, obviously it's okay. I mean, so it's, it's this weird kind of like failure, you know. Like I said, it's kind of like the splendid reverse of, of what happened with Ko Flight 007. But, but at the same time again too, like, in, under normal kind of peacetime conditions, this wouldn't really be an issue. But this, this, this had a horrible effect on like, the prestige of the Soviet military. And what Gorbachev did was it gave him essentially the mandate to clear out basically, like anybody in uniform that he did not like. And that's exactly what he did. The, the, like, the officer core of, of the, of the Soviet military was just completely freaking like, smashed roost himself. He literally landed in Red Square. And the footage is crazy because, like, this guy just, like, lands. Like, he landed on a bridge adjacent to Red Square Square in the middle of the afternoon. He gets out and he, like, waves, and he says, you know, like, I'm German. You know, I'm from West Germany. And people like, you know, like, what the. And he said he landed. He said originally he thought about landing in the Kremlin, but he said that then he realized if he did that, like, he'd be arrested by KGB or FS or gru. And, you know, the CR just denied that, like, it happened, you know, so he's like, at least. I mean, he'd have no idea of knowing that. You know, there'd be this, like, this. This. This British tourist, like a video camera, camcorder, but at least it'd be, like, eyewitnesses. It'd be like, hey, I saw this dude land. He, like, this happened. You know, you can't just say it didn't. But he
- [256:28]
C
roost.
- [256:29]
B
Was, you know, like. Like, two hours later, like, he was arrested.
- [256:36]
A
Let me ask you a question, because there's something. Somebody might ask this question.
- [256:40]
B
Yeah.
- [256:41]
A
Everybody gets the idea that the. The Soviet Union was this place that was actually absolutely locked down. No one went in and out. And you just said that immediately. The first person who confronts him is a British tourist. What was. What was the tourism situation as far as Soviet Union?
- [257:00]
B
I mean, the Soviet Union, actually, I can't remember the name of it, but until. From the 1950s until, literally 1990, the Kremlin published this magazine. It was. It was called something like Moscow Life. And I used to see it at the newsstand sometimes and, like, flip through it when I was, like, a little kid, because. And that was. That was, like, the Kremlin. It was. It was them, like, showcasing, like, why the Soviet Union is good, but also, like, it was supposed to draw, like, tourists. And there's a lot of stuff you couldn't see and a lot of places you couldn't go. And, like, you'd be followed, you know, in. In, like, at least casually, you know, because, like, everybody was. It was like a foreign. There was, like, an entire KGB directorate to, like, keep an eye on, like, foreign visitors. But, I mean, yeah, you could. You could visit the Soviet Union. As long as there's nothing. As long as there was nothing about your background that. That flagged you. Like, the real. These were the Soviet Union is. It was hard to leave. It wasn't hard to go eastward, like, basically, like, throughout the Eastern Block. You could basically go wherever you wanted. But, you know, a citizen of the Soviet Union, he was not going to be able to visit America. He was not able to visit the uk he might be able to visit the Buddhist Republic if he's like a trusted person in relative terms. But that was kind of the issue. And it. Especially during the 60s, there was a lot of guys, like I remember and this was kind of dumb at the time. Like, I, I really despise Bill Clinton. But like Russia, Limbaugh was. I remember when Bill Clinton was running in 92 Russian was like, he visited the Soviet Union as a college student. It's like, okay. But like a lot of guys did. Like, that was Cruise's big thing. Like, hey, if you want to, you know, we're an open book. You know, we want American college students to come see how good the Soviet Union is. And they in turn set some of their exchange students. But these guys were all dudes with like party. You know, their fathers were party men. There's no way these guys are just going to be like, you, I'm defecting, you know. But like, it, I mean, if, yeah, Bill Clinton's a total. But the point is, if you were. If you were like going to Harvard or like Yale or like STANFORD in like 1965, there's like a good chance you would have like visited the Soviet Union because like, they cultivated that. Some of that started to change, you know, kind of like post detent, like a. So you started to look more and more like scary to people, frankly.
- [259:18]
C
And I mean, in the.
- [259:20]
B
I knew a lot of guys who were like five and 10 years older than me, like when I was a little kid who like visited East Germany and been like, oh, it's crazy, but like, nobody really wanted to go to the Soviet Union, frankly. Like, I, I mean, whether that's like ignorant or not, whatever. But you know, by like 1980, you know, it was kind of like why the, you know, that that place is, you know, like, I don't want to go there. But. And like. And again, I think that's, I think that's kind of twisted, frankly. I would have loved to go to the Soviet Union because it would have been pretty awesome, like, not, not cool to like live there, but like to see, you know, like it. But that was kind of the deal. And it. And it's also. And it like depending on like the, you know. But yeah, the, the. It was basically, you know, the Soviet Union like welcomed tourism in its own kind of way. And you know, but the fact Is, you know, the, the kind of splendid absence of like, Soviet citizens here in America. Like, that was exactly why. But it was like nobody had any money. It's like, let's say, like. Let's say I'm like Joe, like, you know, Ivan, you know, in. In the USSR in 19, 1980. Like, even if I was. Even if I was like, educated and had skills, I've got like, no money. And even if, like, somehow it's a miracle I got, you know, like a visa from the Kremlin, like, I'm gonna like, land in Chicago or Philly or like LA and just be like, hey, I've got zero money. I don't really speak English. But, like, give me a job. Like, that's not. I mean, especially in them days too. Like, stuff just didn't work. Work that way. So. Yeah, but. But the Soviets too. Like, even with, even with some in the show, the Americans, which in some ways is hokey, but in some ways it's really dope. The guy and like his wife who.
- [260:58]
A
It's one of my favorite shows of all time.
- [261:00]
B
Yeah, the lady who like, stands in as his wife, you know, like, they. When they show like, what he went through, like as like a kgb, like deep cover operative, like, they're basically making sure, like, he wouldn't defect, you know, and like, just become like, enamored with the American way of life. And that actually is like legit. Like, the guys, the KGB and the gru, lesser degree, had a lot of sleep regions on the ground, like those people in that show, and they basically vetted them to be like, you're not gonna go crazy when, you know, you realize you can like, you know, you can kind of like get stuff in America you can't hear because it's like not. You're either like, you're in a seated and you're totally down for the. The party, or you've just been kind of like, you know, like, it's the kind of the, you know, the kind of fascination such things hold over you. It's kind of been like bred out of you or like smashed out of you. But yeah, it's. It's. Do you ever wonder if they.
- [261:55]
A
Did you ever wonder if they sent any of those over here, like, towards the end of the so and then they're just still here and they're just like. They never went home and they're just. Yeah.
- [262:08]
B
This one guy, the Soviet Union had one and drop off speech during the Abel Archer era. It was kind of like. It was kind of like the and drop a version of the secret speech. He addressed the poet borough. And he said, like, look, he's like, we're act. He's like, in military terms, you know, in key theaters, we're doing well. But he's like, we were losing the cold war, you know, he's like, you know, he's like, our textiles industry is, like, compared to Japan, is like, primitive as hell, you know, he's like, our agriculture, he's like, we're literally dependent from America. And, you know, in a bad harvest, you know, he's like, we've got less than like a thousand, you know, like, computers in America. Like, a computer is a kid's toy. He was just, like, going down the list. Okay, that. So the Soviet Union, one of the things they did was they sent a lot of mathematicians and, like, guys with formal logic knowledge or guys who'd, like, been in western Europe, like, in a formal capacity as, like, an operative. They sent them to America to get jobs, like, in nascent, like, I. T. Firms. And one of the guys who did that, you know, he was like, posing as, like. As like a wet. As like a West German or, like, Polish descent or something. He got a job with, like, this IT firm in New York in, like, 1981. And he'd do, like, dead drops in New York, subway and stuff. And then he said that, like, the last. Basically, after a while, he just, like, stopped reporting, you know. And then, like, he said that, like, a guy came to his apartment and just told him, like, you know, like, he's like, I know what you're doing. And he's like, you know, he's like, basically like, you should probably commit suicide or at some point, like, you're going to be killed, you know, because you're like a loose end. So the guy said that, like, he's like, what should I do? He's like. You thought about, like, mocking up, like, paperwork to say he, like, died of AIDS or something? Because that's like, the AIDS thing was huge. He thought about, like, trying to, like, you know, he thought about, like, just openly defecting, you know, but he's like that. He's like, he didn't have any con. He's like, I'm a deep cover agent.
- [264:01]
C
They're proud.
- [264:02]
B
They're pro. I mean, he's like, they're not gonna be happy about this. You know, it's like, oh, hey, I've been spying on you the past decade, but, hey, can I defect? Because now, like, things went left. But so he basically said he's like, you know, like by that time he had like a wife with like no idea like what's real identity was. I mean it's kind of like a tragic story, but he said he's just like what the am I gonna do? So like I just kept going to work. I just, I just kind of kept waiting for it and then I turned the TV and like the Berlin Walls coming down, you know. And like. So yeah, like this, it was, there was a. The guy got like a write up I think and actually the New Yorker or something like back in like the 90s. I'll see if I can find it. And like so you can like post a link. But it's lovely. There definitely were guys like that. And in the reverse too, there was Jen's Carney. He defect. He defected the other way to the DDR and like nobody ever knew what happened to him. Like it was presumed he defected but he just like disappeared. He was an Air Force guy, you know, he was a, he was, he was um, he had knowledge of like. He was, he was, he was a cryptographer. Okay, but uh, Jen's Carney, like if the wall comes down, he hides out like pretending to be like a Dutchman or something. I think that was ordained. His cover stories that he was a Dane. And then finally some like Bundes Fair or like US army, like MP types like who the is this guy? You know, just when they were kind of like going down the rolls, like who's. Who actually is in the DDR and they're like that's this freaking, that's this guy like you know, a decade back just like, you know, went over, went over the, the wall like the other way, you know, as, as a freaking defector. And he, he got, he got courts martial, he got jammed up for like seven years or something. I mean which I think is kind of up. I mean it's like once the Cold war is over, unless you killed somebody, unless you truly did something horrible like like passing Eyes Only nuclear secrets, they should have just like let it go. But you know, the, the Pentagon doesn't seem inclined to like let things go like that. And the guy was in uniform when he defected. So I mean it's, it's like. Okay, but yeah, there are, there are some very weird stories about that. But yeah, I mean it does beg the question like how many of these guys were there? Like just nobody knew about and they just like kept low key and like, you know, went about their life. Yeah, probably more than people think because I mean I made the point before And a guy named John Caller, he wrote a really good history of the Stasi. You know, the kind of the one way that like the Warsaw Pack like consistently beat NATO was like with their espionage, you know, like it wasn't even close like it. And yeah, they, they put a tremendous emphasis on human intelligence in a way that, you know, like we didn't. And so, yeah, I speculate there was like more of these guys than people thing, you know, or thought. Yeah, it's a fascinating topic.
- [266:40]
C
Yeah.
- [266:42]
B
But Matius rust back. I mean he, what happened became of him is, is rather tragic. He, he was sentenced to four years at hard labor, but he was actually never sent to a labor camp. He was housed in isolation in Moscow and ultimately he was released and then formally pardoned by Gro when the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty was about to be signed as like a jester of goodwill. And he claimed he wasn't mistreated and I believe he wasn't beaten or anything, but there was something was like damaged about him. And he later went to prison in Germany because he had a job in some hospital and there was some girl that he had like an unrequited crush on and he straight up just like stabbed her. And he, this guy had like no history of like violence. I mean, what I'm getting is in the Soviet Union destroyed him like psychically, like whatever they did to him. And you better believe that they didn't just treat him like some kid pulling a prank. I mean the, like I said, I'm not anti Russian at all or anything, but there's, there's a long history of guys who were political prisoners of the Soviet Union and they somehow came back like damaged or like not right. You know what I mean? It's. And you know, there's, I, I speculate the same thing happened to him and after that incident, apparently he never got in trouble again. But he, you know, he seems to have had kind of like a sad life after that. And you know, like I said, I. As a little kid and then later as somebody who spent, spent and spends a lot of time in the Cold War, I, I think roast in some ways what he did was really heroic. I mean it was naive. I mean, he's lucky he, he wasn't unceremoniously, you know, blown out of the sky by a MiG driver or something. But you know, I, I believe he was idealistic in the way that kind of like last Cold War generation of Germans was. And I think he really was like, look, like, I don't, I don't Want to be a casualty of World War III as a counter value, you know, as counter value ashes in the wind. And you know, I, I, I, I've got love and respect for the Russian people and you know, like we should, you know, we should, we, we should, you know, we should find a way out of this paradigm that's going to destroy us all. I, I found it really profound. Is like an 1112 year old kid, you know, I mean maybe that's because I was a little kid, but I maintained there was like something there and it wasn't just like some crazy dude. Like I mean he literally like learned to fly like for this purpose, you know, I mean it's, he had it in mind that it could make it and frankly I think it did, man. You know, like it, you know, I guess, I mean you remember it was a big deal. But the, that, but that I mean obviously the, it shows you too how like discrete events that nobody is intending to have these reverberations. Like literally like if Roost hadn't done that. I can easily see, I can easily see like you know, the Usanov loyalists who were still in uniform. It's like saying like look like Gorbachev is, he's compromising our ability, you know, to defend in depth and you know, he's. We cannot allow the INF treaty to be put to paper like pen people with the paper and some kind of like quasi military regime in the Soviet Union. You know, like either like relegating Gorbachev to the role of cipher or just like outright getting rid of him. I, I mean it's not like they weren't capable of that. It like literally like what Russ did that that allowed Gorbachev to, to, to decideline and sandbag like all of his enemies. And I mean from then on really was his show until like you know, that he was until the challenge from Yelson was emergence. But that's what we should cover next episode. And that, that's an incredibly complicated like people who didn't weren't alive then but also even people who are pretty serious students of the Soviet Union. The intrigues between Gorbachev and Yelson and what Bush and Baker actually wanted, like Bushenbaker didn't want the Soviet Union to cease to exist. Like they wanted it to endure as it's kind of like as, as it's kind of like federated like authoritarian structure that it totally abolished like the party but that was totally disarmed and was kind of like, you know, accountable United States as a junior partner in like ruling the planet. It was basically they wanted to like recreate like the, the New Dealer concept for like how the world would be run and like the TD types who not only hated the Soviet Union, but literally wanted to see like torn apart. Like Yeltsin was their guy. And that's like what's key to understanding this here. And that's why people have mixed feelings about Yelson, I think. But it. And then of course like the, the kind of, the kind of variable that spoof things was that
- [271:33]
C
you know, all
- [271:33]
B
the nationalities like all went crazy, you know. And that's. And that bears up too like what the. It goes. It shows you too like when you know, like what, what, what these fools they call the chicken TF speech where Bush 41 went to Ukraine. He's like look like don't like you're gonna be committing national suicide if you decide you're gonna like fight the Russians. Don't do it. Which of course is like absolutely true. This like idea like you know, Bush was a like how dare he like not back Ukrainian independence. Like what exactly the Ukrainians. What exactly the Ukrainians gotten out of losing like a quarter million people in their country wreck or like awesome things like ensuing from this. I mean it's not like whether you love, hate or a neutral on Ukraine. Like the idea that like Ukraine like provoking a general war with Moscow was like this good thing or like this like base thing. Like it's. It's literally insane. But the. But I In my. Before it became clear like what America and it's NGO affiliates and what have you were doing in Ukraine.
- [272:36]
C
If you're gonna tell.
- [272:37]
B
If you told me like 20 years ago, like yeah, like, you know, in 20 years like where will we like the Russian army like be engaged? I'd be like in the Baltic, like I'd see like some kind of like really bloody, you know, like asymmetrical conflict of them like in the Baltic. Like that's what I thought would happen. Honestly.
- [272:53]
C
I. It.
- [272:55]
B
It frankly surprised me that like the Ukrainians were so incredibly rash. But, but that's, that's the fact that Moss that. The fact that Washington and kind of like the post Reagan foreign policy team, they wanted both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia to endure like you know, they this, this kind of policy of you know, let's try and detonate like every federated structure that exists so then we can kind of like finesse them into. Into like these, these like like fake client regimes. That's like very much like a post abortion kind of thing. Like, I'm not saying Bush 41 had like these great ideas. I think he was the last serious president. But I'm not saying like his kind of, his kind of, his kind of vision of like a Neo, like New Deal was like some kind of like good thing. But there's like an internal logic to it that like makes sense and is like sustainable in a way that like the competing perspective like, was not and is not. But I, I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to deep dive into that yet because that, that, that's going to take like an hour or an hour and a half. So. But that's, that's basically all I got for today. I wanted to go ahead.
- [274:02]
A
Let's, let's talk, let's talk a little bit about the 80s because yeah, of
- [274:06]
B
course I remember it.
- [274:07]
A
And it was a weird, weird time.
- [274:10]
B
It was big time. It was scary.
- [274:13]
A
Okay, so like New York was one
- [274:16]
B
of the, I mean, murder, murder, murder. I assume there were 2,000 homicides a year. Like that's wartime attrition.
- [274:24]
A
Yeah, I'm sure Chicago, I'm sure south side of Chicago was the same way at the time. And but.
- [274:30]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [274:32]
A
But yet you had a great amount of abundance. You had a lot of people getting rich, a lot of people getting wealthy, and then you still had this like nuclear shadow that was always overhead. It was, it was like a time when people were really, a lot of people were really having fun, but there was always this cloud hanging over.
- [274:54]
B
Well, that's what people don't understand either. I try to explain it to people. My earliest memories were being like afraid of the Soviet Union, you know, And I mean I, I lived, I lived literally three miles from Glenview Naval Air Station, which was like a priority counter force target. Like we would have just, we. There was no chance we would have survived, you know, and it, and I mean especially because like my dad was like insinuated into like, you know, like the, the policy planning establishment. I mean, I realized like the Cold War was like talked about in my house more than other people's. Like everybody was like that. And like when those stupid Emergency Broadcasting System tests had come on, like my mom would jump and like everybody would, you know, because it's like that people don't, they don't understand that. That's why they get pissed off when people talk about like the coveted garbage, Even like a 9 11, you know, it's like there's nothing comparable to like what would have been like a General Warsaw pack, like nuclear assault. The United States, like mad is like, Carl Sig is a nuclear winner. Was. But it would have changed like life as everybody knows it. You know, there would have been 100 million people dead. Huge swaths. The country would have been like unlivable. The survivors would have all migrated towards the equator. So you're basically going to have this like. It'd be kind of like a giant wild west with a poison environment that was like America like, no. And like just the fact that again, it'd be like world transform. You can't kill tens of millions of people within hours and not like have everything change, you know. And the fact that this was always a possibility and especially as human decision makers became increasingly sidelined, you know, it became clear like this, this could happen without even anybody intending to. Just because the trajectory of variables is such that like it has to happen according to, you know, the indicators. Yeah, it was, it was, it was like night and day. And I, I think that some of the, some of the, like the murder rate becoming totally lit for like a whole generation and people just like acting kind of crazy. Like, I think part of that, I think part of it was people like, well, there might, this might not exist tomorrow, you know, so like, why, why not?
- [276:56]
D
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- [277:12]
B
I mean, it made people more ballsy, definitely, but it was also like, you know, there's. There was an aspect of like, you know, the apocalypse is like imminent, so like, who gives a fuck? And the. Yeah, it was, it was weird, man. And like, and the immediate aftermath is weird, you know, like I.
- [277:30]
A
Well, yeah, then I was going to bring that up, man. The 90s is like, so the Soviet Union falls apart officially and then all of a sudden New York City gets cleaned up. You know, like the home, the crime rate drops, homeless people are being bust out, 42nd street is bought up by Disney. Basically. It's like, it's a real weird correlation that like that happened.
- [277:57]
B
Well, yeah, that's one of the reasons. I mean, it's one of the reasons. I'm very much like a Hegelian. Well, it's all. That's also the reason why like the early 90s were like anarchy, you know, and then suddenly stabilized and just like Became like, normal again. Like, to your point, around like, 96. Like 95. 96. But like that movie kids, you know, because I'm more. I was born in 76, so I'm, you know, I'm like, I'm like a 90s dude, more than an 80s one. It's like, I was. I grew up in the 80s, but I was like a te. Teen. I'm like the 90s and, like, the only kids are just like, oh, this is like, pornographic and gross. I'm like, yeah, it's both those things, but it's also like on the street in 1993. That's like, what was like. And like, anywhere you went, like, everybody had a chip on his shoulder. Like, like every idiot, his brother was like, gang banging you for, like, no reason. It's not like now we're just like, hood dudes do it because, like, they sell drugs. It's like every idiot was like, yeah, I like, rip this, like, nonsense gang. And oh, like, I. I got like a gun I pack with me for, like, no reason. Just because I'm like a up. Like, that literally was like, the way was. And like, you know, it. And like, all there was like, yeah, man. There's this like. Like the races, like, hated each other. And like, it's, you know. Yeah, man. It's like so like that movie. Yeah, it's like, okay, maybe like, Larry. Larry Clark, I think he's the dude who made that movie. It's like, maybe that dude is a pervert and like, a sick. But, like, what he was, like, portraying was not, like, in his mind. Like, that was real. And I. I was a teenager in that epoch. It was like that, you know, like. And I mean, this particularly made an impact on me, like, psychologically, because it's like, I, you know, I'm. I'm. Despite what people think, man, despite the fact, like, I've had, like, you know, I had like, a heavy drug problem and I'm a pretty, like, square, like, white dude, man. Like, I'm not. I'm not in the way. I'm not into, like, savage. And like, that stuff, like, bothered me, like, as a kid, it's like, it seemed like everybody, like, lost a mind, like, totally, you know, and like, I. Yeah, but, yeah, no, it's. That's. I mean, again, man, that's why there's something too, like, zeitgeist. It's not just like, the random aggregation of, like, pop cultural, like, symbols and. And people's kind of like, you know, the discrete experiences in aggregate, like, you know, of. Of. Of the youthful generation and kind of like, what. What they associate with the times that they're growing up in, like, it's a real thing. There really is, like, a spirit of the age. And. Yeah, like, why. Why was, like, how come for, like, 30 years, everybody was going totally insane, and then suddenly, like, the nuclear specter, like, disappears, and then, like, you know, there's like, three or four years of total chaos, and then, like, suddenly, like, everything's, like, normal again, you know? Yeah. And, like. And 42nd street goes from being this, like, looking like the nice circle of hell to be in, like, Disneyland, like, literally, like. Yeah. You can't just say, like, oh, well, that's because people got tired of crime or something. And it's like, it's not how. I'm not saying. You got to believe in God. Okay, fine. You take God out of the equation. But there is, like, some kind of, like, invisible hand. Like, even if it's just, like, human decisions in aggregate developing some kind of harmonious, like, you know, intent or, like, vector. You can't tell me just. There's just, like, random. That happens for no reason, you know? Yeah, definitely.
- [280:57]
A
Yeah. All right, man. Plug whatever you got.
- [281:01]
B
And, yeah, man, I'm still, like, I dropped on my tea gram the other day. You can find me on T. Grams. I think people really know by now. I'm. I'm trying to get stuff done in earnest and just so I can, like, shoot for my channel and then to get a capacity. But I. I've been kind of swamped with, like, content, work and other stuff lately. But I promise that's why I haven't been really active with stuff. But I promise, that is changing. You can still find me on Twitter.
- [281:28]
C
I don't know.
- [281:29]
B
I could be nuked there at any time. And also, as we get into the summertime, I'm like, disengage there and just kind of, like, with my own website and my channel. But you can find me there for now at, like, real underscore number seven h o m e s 777. My primary home is substack real Thomas. 777.substack.com and my channel is Thomas TV on YouTube. We're gonna saturate when I start uploading like, fresh there on, like, Odyssey and stuff. But for right now, like, if you join the channel on YouTube, like, you'll be hip to it, you know, when, like, new stuff is uploaded there and, like, when we kind of, you know, migrate to other places. But that's All I got. And thanks for hosting me as always. This has been great.
- [282:15]
A
I appreciate it. Thank you, Thomas.
- [282:17]
B
Yeah, man.
- [282:19]
A
I want to welcome everyone back to the Picanono Show. We're almost done with this, aren't we, Thomas? The Cold War series.
- [282:26]
B
Yeah, yeah. And yeah, no, indeed, it's, it's been quite a journey and we've gotten really, really positive feedback, which is great. Not, you know, because I, I, I, I need things to prop up my ego or something, but there's a, you know, everybody, at least even people who aren't particularly plugged into revisionist history, you know, they have an interest in World War II because it's just, you know, the, the kind of symbology of it and kind of the narrative of it is, is all around everybody like the Cold War, like people under, people under about 40. I, they don't, I think that's changing somewhat. Like actually, like, corny as it sounds, like one of the Call of Duty games was like, special. I never played it, but I thought that that was dope, that some of these, some of these game developer types, you know, they were, they're trying to like, plug people into the history of, of the era, like with, with, you know, those kinds of sims. But, you know, the, if you want to, like, literally, if you want to understand everything that's happening in power political terms today, like, you've got to understand how the Cold War was resolved. You know, and it's, I think it's particularly if you identify as right wing, it's particularly impactful in terms of, you know, where we are conceptually and before we went live, like, you know, you're talking about, you mentioned Paul got Reed. Well, yeah, I mean, it's hard, it's hard as hell to find now, which I think is very deliberate. But Godfrey gave a talk, I think it was at, I think it was at the HL Men Club. I don't even know if that's still a thing, but, and his talk was called how the Left Won the Cold War. And it was really fascinating. And you know, and, and, and again, that's why even if one is, even if one's not ideologically situated in the same kind of camp that I am, you know, vis a vis the Cold War and Francis Yaqui and, and that kind of Hegelian view of things, you know, it's, it's funny if you want to understand why blood is being shed in, in Ukraine and on the Russian frontier today, like, you got to understand what, what developed between 1949 and 1980. Nine, particularly how it resolved. So the fact we've gotten like mad feedback is, I. Is very inspiring. I feel like we're actually doing something constructive.
- [284:52]
A
Yeah, I think we get more feedback on this one than we did did on World War II.
- [284:56]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I'm very excited about that. And yeah, moving forward. I. Your idea to cover the Spanish War is, is great and I'm really looking forward to that too. But yeah, we can. What I wanted to get into today a bit, and forgive me if this talk is a little bit. It seems a little bit scattershot. There's a lot of discrete causes to what caused what, what you know, caused the inner German border to literally just come apart, you know, November 9, 1989. Some of those causes were laid, you know, around 1980, 81, when martial law is declared in Poland. And the Soviet response to that, or more probably the lack of a Soviet response to that part of that was kind of the bizarre nature of the DDR government. The East German government was not at all organic. It, you know, East Germany itself, it was, it was literally a fake state. Like, there's no, it's not even like the case of like North Korea where like Northern Korea is like, is culturally different than South Korea in some ways. You know, they got a history of being, you know, a divided, divided kingdom. Like East Germany was literally the border was where the Red army just arbitrarily stopped. You know, I mean, so it's. You have this complete. You have this like rump state that, you know, isn't, isn't precedent in terms of its, in terms of his geographic situatedness. And people forget too that, you know, the guys who became the DDR government, there were some genuine like pipeheaders like Eric Milka who literally wasted a cop in Weimar. And then he ran to this, he ran to Moscow because, you know, he was a KPD street fighter. And then, and, and, and the NKVD trusted him, you know, and you know, he kind of became their man. Speaking of Spain, Eric Milk, it kind of became their man in Spain. He was like a commissar, you know, like fighting on the Republican side. Guys like Eric Honicker, he somehow escaped execution despite being, you know, a pretty high level functionary or cadre in the KPD organization. But he was in prison, you know, by, for the duration of the war. And some people think that he was a double agent. And then he was like, he'd fed intel to, to the Gestapo on the sd, which I don't. It's possible. And then there was Walter Ubricht who was kind of this dour intellectual, you know, kind of humorless, you know, cold, cold hearted kind of functionary, the most cliched or stereotypical sort. You know, he was, he was another guy who spent, you know, time in exile like after, after the National Socialist revolution. It's like all these guys were, they were this cadre element that was at odds literally with their fatherland. Like whether you're an anti FAS or not. The point is like these are the guys who really get odds with Germany. Like their own, you know, cultural milou. You know, they spent, they spent the warriors either literally like fighting with the Red army or in exile in Moscow. And then, you know, when the dust settled in 1945, they were literally just like insinuated into this role. It's like, okay, you know, like you're, you're now like the cadre of the German Democratic Republic. You know, these. And who people are like, who the hell are these guys? You know, it's not the only way they, the only, the only mandate they had was, you know, proceeded from the barrel of, of Soviet guns. And over time a, a kind of party state apparatus did develop in the DDR, particularly like the National Volks army, which was officer and NCO heavy compared to a NATO army. And that was very deliberate because he had a bunch of military careerists whose, you know, fortunes were inextricable. Like personal forces are inextricably tethered to the survival and prosperity, if we can call it that, of the regime, you know, in any, any government that endures for decades, no matter how kind of contrived or unpopular it is. You know, if people are going to become just habituated to do it and you know, people's fortunes are going to become bound up with it in various ways. So I mean that did happen, but it was about the most like artificial, of artificial states. Which is one of the things, one of the reasons I'm always kind of tongue in cheek saying, you know, like East Germany was best Germany. I mean, you know, the DDR, the reason why they did the National Volks army, you know, their uniforms look like Vermont uniforms. They maintain some very into the Prussian drill and the parade ground.
- [289:53]
C
You know, they, a lot of their,
- [289:55]
B
their kind of mythology they drew upon like Florian Gyre and the Peasants War, you know, they, they kept a lot of like, you know, they got a lot of the optics and kind of at least superficial trappings of Prussian statehood, which was really the first kind of like modern welfare state. You know, that's not that can't be denied. But the point is the DDR was kind of con. They're kind of like hyper aware of like their tenuous claim to the man of power and them kind of insinuating themselves into this role ironically and, and, and somewhat perversely. But if, if you're a he Alian, this makes perfect sense. Them kind of insinuate themselves as like the guardian of like what remained of like, you know, the like authentic German culture. That's really interesting. And that I think, I think people responded to that too in some basic way. That's why. And like the decades after the Wall came down, I think East Germans themselves, like ostology, you know, it's like a play on like nostalgia. You know, they, that, that's, that's, you know, kind of a media term that's bandied, you know, about people who grew up in the east to you know, who's still pine for like products you can't find anymore and kind of like the way life was in that era. And you know, I made the point too like Frau Merkel, it's not an accident that she came up through the DDR, you know. And interestingly there's a law, I'd say we, any, any German politician, you know, who, who, who, who, who was a citizen of the DDR, it's literally against the law to talk about their past like in East Germany. So it's, it was a criminal offense and when fraud. Merkel was a chancellor. To talk about her background, a lot of people allege that she was a Stasi asset, which is possible. She was a young pioneer. So I mean she, her folks were like Communist party people or so the solstice, you. There was no Communist party in the DDR as a socialist unity party. But it, but the point being, I mean it wasn't, she wasn't just, you know, she wasn't like an apolitical, you know, like her family was at least like regime loyal and so far as party membership. But that miracle's concord with, with Mr. Putin, you know, and the, the, the Gazprom deal which, which led to the Nord Stream pipeline. All these things like oh, to like the Cold War, okay. And like they owed like you know, what the DDR was and what the inter German border represented and like power political and you know, in, in historiographical terms, you know, it, this stuff isn't just, you know, it's not, it's not just like trivia about you know, a strategic paradigm that's no longer extant. But you know, last, last episode we got into, you know, the kind of thaw, the Gorbachev thaw that was made possible in large part by Matthias Roost's flight. But before that, you know, we talked about, we talked about the NATO dual track strategy which ultimately led to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and why this was a big deal. The Soviet Union drop off had been very aggressively trying to decouple, you know, Europe from the United States in terms of its strategic doctrine and it's, its willingness to wage nuclear war against Warsaw Pact. And the way they did this was, you know, with the deployment of SS19, SS20 ICBM and theater ballistic missile platforms in, in Europe as well as the deployment of the backfire bomber which was a maritime nuclear bomber. Like superficially had, it had things in common with the, with the B1, but it was purposed essentially to, to, to nuke the, the Royal Navy and then like open up the, the Greenland Iceland UK gap which the Soviet Navy had to shoot in order to break out of, you know, uh, the North Atlantic into the open ocean in order to, you know, effectively wage war against the United States. But the, the when I made the point that Reagan's dual track strategy, which was the Reagan administration offered to remove all theater nuclear weapons platforms from Europe, you know, ground launch cruise missiles as well as intermediate range ballistic missiles like the Pershing 2. If the Soviets would abide the same. Okay. If the Soviets wouldn't abide the same, all bets were off. NATO was going to continue to deploy theater nuclear forces. Now arguably this led the Soviets to, to say, well, we've got nothing to lose. And that's why they went all in, in Afghanistan. You can even go a step further and say like as we got into that, this caused terrible anxieties about the possibility of a decapitation strike on, you know, on Moscow. And you know, we talked about how the real impetus for intervention in Afghanistan was, was a proximity to Kazakhstan, which was as important to Soviet command, nuclear command and control as was Moscow. But be as it may, what was going on during this era as kind of the Soviet Union was hardening its stance in power political terms, there was odd things happening between the two Germanies. We talked about the Helsinki Accords, you know, that was when the Warsaw Pact,
- [296:04]
C
you know,
- [296:07]
B
all the signatories declared that, you know, they, they'd honored democratic processes. You know, people would not be discriminated against based on, you know, political affiliation, sect, nationality. I mean basically it was, I, basically the, the Helsinki Accords could not coexist with the bread doctrine, which is what the Soviet Union relied upon with their intervention in Czechoslovakia in 68. You know, this caused a problem because on the one hand the Warsaw Pact was desperate for, you know, like legitimacy and credibility on the world stage. On the other hand, the only thing holding the structure together, particularly after the Sino Soviet split was. Was armed force. You know, the only thing making the Soviet unit superpower was the fact that it had, you know, the world's mightiest military apparatus. The only thing holding is strategic alliance together which it depended upon, you know, in order to, in order to achieve any strategic depth, you know, was the fact that if any, if any of the satellite states try to throw off the shackles of, of, of one party rule, you know, they, the Soviet Union would directly intervene in order to defend socialism, you know, or defend the development and survival of socialism within its sphere of influence. So this was probably, this was, this was very much tested in 1980, 81. That's when Poland came under martial law. Poland was an interesting case because the owing one of the reasons why Carter courted Brzezinski, you know, as a key part of his zigniew. Brzezinski is a key figure in his national security staff.
- [297:52]
D
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- [298:06]
B
see terms and conditions 21/ was like Poland seemed to be the kind of, the kind of. It seemed to be kind of like the natural place to try and you know, create a wedge and Warsaw Pact,
- [298:24]
C
you know,
- [298:27]
B
if it was inorganic to the DDR, it was totally alien to Poland. You know, Poland was basically. It was. It was still a largely in the aftermath of the war, it was still like a largely backwards. I'm not saying that to be punitive or mean, but it was, it was still largely backwards country. People responsibly Catholic, they had a strong hatred of the Russians, you know, like ethnic grounds. So communism really kind of had to succeed in Poland. Okay, if, if the, if for any kind of legitimacy to accrue, not just the regime situated there, you know, it's a worse off egg generally. And towards that end Poland was the recipient of a lot of subsidies which in turn they used to build up infrastructure including one of the. What was at the time like one of the world's most advanced. Like, like, like, like commuter rail stations. Like it, like the, like Warsaw Central Station. Like it's still like it's something like an architectural marvel. And at the time it was like, wow, this is, this is, this is remarkable. But that, that like, like those kinds of public works projects or something like the communists like, seem to do pretty well at. But as it may like, one of the things the polls did with these subsidies is they, they set about to create like a fairly diversified like manufacturing sector. And you know, the idea was that, you know, they could build up equity and you know, create something of a, like an export economy, however, like regionally limited, you know, and, and you know, and, and then, you know, and then become eligible for you know, like long term developmental loans and things and you know, basically become like a, some kind of like modern country or at least like on a par with like East Germany, you know, if not, you know, if not the West. But this obviously didn't work. And you know, the polls found like half the Polish GDP as of 79. I, I think was, was, was, was dead. And the polls, they were dealing with genuine shortages. Things like, things like there was ration cars handed out for like meat and eggs and sugar. Like nobody could get tobacco, like cigarettes that actually were being used as currency by 1981. I mean, this is like prison. Like, it's literally insane.
- [300:49]
C
And one of the big, one of
- [300:51]
B
the big problems in terms of rendering the legitimacy crisis was Polish, Polish workers were being saddled with you know, like, increasing demands in order to, you know, shore up again too. Like, Poland was still gambling on this idea that, you know, they could, they could create like a viable manufacturing sector, like fit for export. It's like Polish workers are being stabbed with like more and more and more hours, you know, for like diminishing returns. And they couldn't even get like the basic consumer necessities of life, you know, like cigarettes, like sugar and I mean, in a socialist state. I mean this, this is, this is preposterous. You know, so that was basically the impetus for solidarity. And you can't, you can't take a labor union in a communist state who are like, hey, we're, you know, we are the proletariat and you know, we're not, we're having our surplus labor literally robbed of us. You can't like take those people out and shoot them. Okay? I mean, like you could like a bunch of Catholics or a bunch of, a bunch of fascists or a bunch of, you know, people protesting the party. I Mean, since this is a very tricky situation, the way it was resolved in Poland was Gerald Zelski became a general secretary and he was a tragic figure.
- [302:10]
C
You know, he.
- [302:11]
B
There's this kind of visage of him as this sinister guy. He was this, you know, Polish military officer. He always wore these dark sunglasses. The reason why is because he was a lesser. Of lesser noble birth. And when he was a teenager, when Poland was invaded by the Red army, he has a family, got sent to a gulag and he became his. His eyes were destroyed by the glare of the sun off the snow in the labor camp he was in. So like, he couldn't stand light. So like he'd. He'd wear sunglasses all the time. And I mean, it tells you something too. Like, this guy was literally a kid who was like destroyed by the gulag system, like physically in some way and mentally. Like, he became this kind of, like this kind of military talent in these block. Like it. There's something kind of like Shakespearean about that, but it's also. It tells you something about the way like Poland was brutalized by. By communism. It's like, you know, there. There was no. There weren't even. There weren't. There wasn't even the equivalent of. Of like the, the DDR cadre in Poland, you know, for them to kind of insinuate as. As the ruling cast, you know, they. They took this guy who was literally, you know, somebody destroyed by the gulag, you know, like. And yeah, I just find that fascinating. But. So Poland Stands Alone is the only. It was the only. It was the only east block satellite state that was under the direct role of a military man and it was literally under martial law.
- [303:37]
A
Now
- [303:41]
B
as this developed first under Carter, then under Reagan's first term, it raised an interesting question because according to the. If Poland wanted to open revolt, the President. The Brezhnev doctrine dictated that, you know, the Soviet army would invade, you know, to. To preserve the regime and. And drop off. You can tell was react with anxiety that this is what was going to happen. That's something that's clear from, you know, the notes of, you know, meetings not just of the presidium, but of, you know, like the kind of inner. Inner poet borough, like de facto, like, you know, that the cadre that made the decision to assault Afghanistan, like we talked about the other week, but simultaneous to this going on, east and West Germany were engage in this kind of delicate minuet of. Of reproach. And Eric Honaker, you know, stalwart as he was as, As a Marxist, Leninist. He'd always pined for, you know, for East Germany to be recognized as like a truly sovereign state, you know, with, with a somewhat independent foreign policy. And it was bizarre because on the one hand, on the one hand the DDR they reviewed as kind of too Stalinist, like even prior to Gorbachev, but they were simultaneously viewed as being too cozy and friendly with West Germany. I mean there's, there's something bizarre about that. But in 1987, Hanukkah finally got permission for a state visit to the Bundest republic. And he'd been trying to accomplish this, he'd been trying to accomplish this for, for, for, for like a decade. And initially in uh, in 1984 when he first put it to uh, the Soviet Poet Bureau and the Foreign Ministry, Cherno said, you know, make no mistake, you know, that this is not a visit aimed at reproachment. It's to establish lines of demarcation, which is like a typically like Soviet answer. It's like both like obnoxious and obtuse and hostile, but also. Doesn't really make any sense. Like, but so there's this weird arrangement where Hanukkah goes to visit the Bundest republic. And the. They, they flew like the DDR flag, but they flew the DDR flag slightly lower than like the Buddhist Republic flag. And like they'd. The. He like like a band greeted him like a military band, like when he disembarked, you know, in bond, but like nobody would salute him as he would like hit a state. It was like this goofy like half measure. And there's this really striking photograph because like Helmut Cole, who. He and Merkel, whatever their respective faults, and they are many. I mean they, they were the really the only post war German chancellors who did anything really to restore German sovereignty in, in various capacities. Cole was a, like a huge man. He was like this huge like bear looking guy, you know, like this kind of like big Bavarian, kind of like a Herman Gehring type, you know, like big loud dude, you know, like, and just like a huge person. And like Hanukkah was kind of like this creepy like nerdy guy, you know, like kind of kind of how you like imagine like you know, the kind of communists from central casting. This kind of like this kind of like professorial who like nobody likes. It's like there's this photo like you know, like huge like helmet Cole, he's got like a big grin on his face. There's this like pissed off looking like Hanukkah and like an east block suit who's like, you know, 55 and like it's like he's like being dwarfed by like, you know, it was like kind of like you know, metaphor that seemed really resident. I thought that as like a little kid. And then just the other week when I came across it in, in, in this book in the 1989 revolutions, I'm like wow, that's really striking. I wasn't sure if it was just like Mandela effect me like remembering it as being more like profound than that. But the, what ultimately happened, you know, the convergence of all these things, it became, it became at some point unthinkable even notwithstanding for the, the intrigues of, of you know, within, within the Kremlin that allowed Gorbachev to kind of rook his enemies and, and, and sideline any true, you know, hardliners looking for a
- [308:30]
D
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- [308:44]
B
casino aim to sabotage Paras strike on policy terms it it, it at some point became unthinkable for the Soviet army to deploy, you know, in Poland or in you know, East Germany if it came to that. And, and do what they've done in, in Hungary in 56 and in Czechoslovakia in 68. You know, I mean zeitgeist is a real thing, man. I mean like I, I think people who take historical revisionism seriously, I don't think any of them would disagree with that. But, but even if you're not, you know, prone to kind of Hegelian interpretations of these things, the, the pressure of you know, like world moral consensus, that's a real, that is a real thing. It's not just something that like end of history liberals bandy about. And what was possible in 1968 or 1978 or even 1981 was no longer possible by like 1986, 1987. I mean it just, it just wasn't thinkable. And I, that's why when people pose the question as the, you know, well, why, why wasn't there a Tiananmen Square moment? It's like well consider like this what actually happened at the inter German border in, in the moment it was happening. I, I, a lot of people didn't even fully realize what the precipitating catalysts were in April of 89 really the first chink in the, in the Iron Curtain, like the physical structure of the hardened border was the Hungarian government finally shut off the electric fences that saturated the Austria Austria Hungarian border. The guard towers remained. They were still manned, but there literally was an electric fence like running the perimeter. You know, it, you know, I, I mean, and by may bore the border guards, there was this, there was this big deal. The border guards in Hungary like met with their like auction counterparts and uh, began dismantling like sections of, of the barrier, you know. And like they, the Austrians obviously invited, you know, like Western news crews and stuff. And this is the first kind of indication that you know, the like Warsaw Pact could no longer exist as it, as it had, you know, for decades. Taking its cue from that, the Hungarian communists. And I know that Hungarians Magyars are really great people and they're really proud people and, and they were actually at the forefront of anti communist resistance. And I'm not praising the communist regime there at all, but to their credit, Hungary's Foreign Minister Horn realized that, you know, travel restrictions had to be lifted, even if his motives were cynical and that, you know, he, he was operating with an eye to preserve the party state apparatus. The point is that, you know, the, it was, it was the Hungarian regime that really first, you know, kind of gave way, you know, and they, they had a long, they had a long history. Post 56 a compromise.
- [312:30]
C
I.
- [312:30]
B
And again, I'm not saying because they were good men or something or principled. I think a lot of it owed to, you know, the existential reality that in Hungary especially they wouldn't have survived if they hadn't made certain concessions. But people forget that, you know, the Hungary, the Austro Hungarian border is really where. Where you know, the kind of thaw began. And what's fascinating too, at least I think so because I, I've got kind of a fascination, a fascination with Habsburg Vienna, as I think some people know who like follow my content during the summer season. And there was always a lot of East German tourists in, in Hungary and 1989 was no exception because, you know, Hungary is. Hungary is a beautiful place. I'm sure it has such a. It has such a reputation. But you know, if you're East German, Hungary is one of the places you could visit, you know, like on vacation. And the. An idea which was hatched by Otto von Hapsburg, who was the last. He was the last crown prince of the Habster Empire.
- [313:40]
C
You know,
- [313:44]
B
he, he said let's invite, let's, let's invite our German friends to a picnic on the Austro Hungarian border. And of course, you know, like there are these, these East German, you know, tourists swarmed to the border which was then opened up so they could, you know, travel to Austria and then from there, you know, they could get, you know, to the bundest republic. And this totally neutralized, you know, the inner German border and its ability to plug the proverbial sieve that, you know, had led to their hemorrhaging of population. And from that point on
- [314:29]
C
and, and
- [314:30]
B
you know, unless, unless the East Germans were truly willing to, to open fire on their own people. And I, I can't think of anybody who would have been willing to take responsibility for that. You know there nothing short of that would have, would have, would have changed things. And like I said even before Gorbachev the when it I, I think it was already unthinkable, you know, again like hard line is the and drop of Cheronenko regimes were. I think if it's kind of the same regime as I've indicated for reason I've been negated before. It was clear even by then that you know, the president of doctrine was dead for practical purposes. And it the Soviet Union was a superpower. Like people forget that sometimes you're not talking about Saddam's Iraq. You're not talking about,
- [315:30]
C
you know, you're
- [315:31]
B
not, you're not, you're not talking about North Korea. You're not, you know, anywhere. You weren't talking about, you weren't even talking about a place like two Jamatas Croatia like which I think was a great regime. But my point is, you know, this thing. The Soviet Union still was accountable in some basic way, you know, as a superpower. I mean they, they, their territory spanned 16 of the planet and their sphere of influence was, you know, in territorial terms exceeded even that of the United States. I mean outside of you know, the Soviet empire proper. But what, what I think is key with respect to the how the cold war ended is what was happening in Washington and how Bush 41 and James Baker proceeded. That's the only thing that facilitated Gorbachev's like the realization of his and Edward Chevit Nardza. I I always butcher the pronunciation of that name. He was the foreign minister who succeeded Gromico later became president of Georgia. But in foreign policy terms, Chevronadz was he. He was really kind of the go between in some ways between the Kremlin and the U. S Foreign policy establishment. And as we talked about Team B and the kind of hold they had over the trajectory of policy in the Reagan administration. They'd been somewhat sidelined by the Bush 41 administration. Cheney was kind of their man who remained in proximity to, you know, true to the sovereign, lover of power. But Baker and Bush, as I've discussed before, their vision was not the Soviet Union being dismantled. Quite the contrary. They at least wanted the Soviet Union to endure until total disarmament was realized. You know, total nuclear disarmament and almost total, you know, reduction of conventional forces in being and moving forward even from that, I believe.
- [318:03]
A
Can I answer. Can I answer up?
- [318:04]
B
Yeah, yeah, no, please do.
- [318:05]
A
Would that be coming from the same faction that today is, you know, responsible for wanting to topple Putin?
- [318:16]
B
That was the team, the leg. Those guys are the legacy of Team B. And in some ways, this is the very same people because, like Bush and Baker, their idea was like, okay, they basically wanted to like, re. Institute what had been kind of like the New Deal idea. Like the New Deal concord of like, the world ruled by the United States, the Soviet Union, or like something like the commonwealth independent states, like, succeeding it as like, junior partner. Cheney was on record is literally saying, like, fuck them. I mean, the Soviet Union, they lost. You know, let's detonate it. Let's basically detonate like, all the. All the republics, you know, the nationalities, you know, let's tear the Soviet Union apart. Let's like, loot what we can keep Russia permanently down. You know, let's surround it, basically. You know, we'll turn it. We'll. We'll turn Ukraine into like a garrison state. We'll turn Georgia into a garrison state, you know, and basically, you know, keep our. Basically, you know, Morgan, foul play in Russia, okay? Those are the guys who won out from Clinton administration onward. I mean, Clinton was a complete buffoon in foreign policy. Like, he literally was just like a buffoon. He was basically. He basically was a. He was basically a Machiavellian on. On the order of lbj, like, in terms of his politicking, he was like a manageable politician. Like, what do you think that's like, laudable or not? Kind of depends on your perspective. But he had like, zero interest nor understanding of foreign policy. Like, none. So basically it was like, available, the highest bidder, you know, and that's why everything. All the goodwill, like, achieved by the Bush Baker Concord was just like. Was just like, you know, nuked like, proverbially subsequently. And then, you know, the, The. The assault on Serbia, you know, which was devoid of strategic logic other than basically just to say, like, you know, we're gonna, like. We're gonna break Ivan's face to get him out of the Balkans. Like. Like, why would you even do that? But, I mean, it's. You know, that those that you. That's. That's what's underway today. That's why these, like, neocon types and. And, like, they're. They're kind of descendants. They still this day, like, rake push 41 over the coals for verbal. For the chicken TF speech. Like, how dare he, like, admonish the Ukrainians not to wage some, like, suicide, suicidal war against Moscow for no reason? I mean, like, it's. But that's. Yeah, I mean, that's. FPM is understanding me too. Like, I'm not saying. Obviously anybody who's not a freaking idiot should realize that I'm not advocating, like, some kind of, like, New Dealer vision of the world, like, 2.0. But what Bush and Baker accomplished was truly masterful. The Gulf War coalition is unprecedented. You know, the fact that basically, like, Bush 41, like, at the whole world, like, like, in the palm of his hand, like, that's crazy, you know, and he. He courted the Arab world in a way that was with an eye towards genuinely, like, normalizing, you know, the Middle east and kind of defanging the Zionist lobby. Like, that's not just. Again, I'm not saying Bush 41 was, like, our guy, like, at all, but he represented something very different than the neocons and very different from, like, even, you know, even most, like, rhino types, you know, like that. And same thing with Baker. Like, these guys were like the old. You want to. Like, like the old Protestant establishment. The last time they were, like, at the helm, like, that was it. Okay, so. And frankly, like, in some basic way, like, those guys are like, my team. Like, even though, like, class divides us, like, it. I'm. I'm still not gonna sit here and, like, out and out, like, trash them because frankly, like, their vision was, like, far better than anybody else's. Like, post war, like, now I was saying the fact, you know, the war shouldn't have happened, but that's. That's what I want to get into next week. And the Gulf War, the Gulf War is like an addendum to the Cold War. Like it really is. And, like, to the. Even, you know, Black Horse Regiment, Armored Cavalry, you know, who patrolled the full. The gap. Like, they fought, like, at 73 Easting. That's where D. McGregor, like, he was with Black Horse Regiment. Like, there's all kinds of. And plus, too. I mean that's, that's where you got to see the you know, b. Like the post revolution and military affairs like U.S. army, which I believe was like the U.S. army at Zenith like that. I think that can be argued, you know, fight against like worse off packed weapons platforms and, and just. And the political climate globally. Like it's, there's something that like has never been seen before and like, like will never be duplicated, you know. And that's, and, and that, that was. So it's not just. I, it's not just an addendum because it was post 11-9-89, but pre, you know, pre dissolution of the, of the ussr. It like you've got to really understand that it's kind of not just the zenith of American power in absolute terms, but also kind of full like the realization of like the Bush Baker kind of vision of, of. Of. Of foreign policy moving forward of their, of globalism rather like which was you know, burned to the ground within half a decade by, by. By buffoons like Clinton and you know, people who would, you know, who would place their petty, you know, kind of ancestral hatreds over a, over a meaningful, you know, historical development. But yeah, that's about all I got for today, man.
- [324:02]
A
Well, let me ask you this before we go. I mean I was watching, I was watching it on TV on November 9th.
- [324:09]
D
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- [324:40]
A
Wasn't anything that, you know, I expected then we didn't have the Internet. We couldn't keep up.
- [324:45]
B
No, I watched it on cnn.
- [324:47]
A
Yeah, and so how did that, how did that happen? Because you, you can go on YouTube now and you can watch. There's videos of seeing people pouring over the border, ladies like you know, screaming at, at East German officers saying just let me go, let me go.
- [325:03]
B
Well, what happened at. What happened at the East German border was the, as the situation in Hungary kind of became like more and more unmanageable, you know, with like East Germans just you know, hopping over to Austria and then do you know and then, and then. And then to the West German Embassy and then like onward, you know, to the Buddhist Republic, the, the. The Volkscommer. Well, first of all, Eric Honaker. Honaker stepped down because there was, you know, a lot of these protests that were underway in Easter in the DDR were demanding that Hanukkah resign. Among other things. Hanukkah steps down. The. The Volkscomer appoints Egon Krens, which was. Who was like the heir apparent anyway. He was the guy who was like, being groomed, like, as, you know, successor. KZ ordered the Interior Ministry to draft regulations that were less. That were less. Less oppressive and less Byzantine, that would, uh, allow people exit visas, you know, which. It was totally arbitrary and capricious. Like, who would be a granted one and who wouldn't be. Like it. Like it didn't make any sense but the Krebs ass. Gerald Gerhard Gearhold. Gerhard Louder, who was, among other things, the Volkspolitzai chief who were responsible for, you know, border checkpoint security. Among other things. He ordered. He ordered him to order the Interior Ministry, you know, to draft some kind of workable, you know, like, visa application system that in their. What they were hoping was that people who were political unreliables, they could basically just like, send them away to West Berlin, you know, with good riddance. But, you know, they could find some way, you know, to grant visas to people that appeared like, nominally like, democratic but, you know, would. Would. There'd still be incentives them to like, remain in, you know, not. Not defect, basically. Generally that would be, you know, to not like, to only like, hey, give. Afford like one member of a family, like a visa, you know, stuff like that. But the way this was communicated was you had people already like, massing at the checkpoints, you know, in anticipation of like, what the new, like, law would be like, awaiting the announcement. And you had. Louder and these Interior Ministry officials, you know, who are being bombarded with. With questions not just from like, DDR state media, but all from like, Western television and radio reps. And finally, the spokesman for the Interior Ministry, he read aloud the statement from the Volkscomer about the status of the new law, which was that private travel restriction was now permitted. And it's not clear if this was a broken memo or like, you know, tell whatever or if it was just poorly drafted. But then a reporter said, could you repeat that? Does that mean that there's no longer any travel restrictions? And when does this go into effect? And this, this, this spokesman said, well, I believe it goes into Effect immediately. And then the people, the checkpoints just started charging the border. Now, nobody was willing to open fire on these people, so the cops, like, overwhelmed. After a while, they just, like, threw open the gate, you know, because it's like, what are they gonna do? It's like, they're really gonna get stampeded. There's either gonna be a riot or there's gonna be a riot, or, you know, the Stazi was gonna deploy, like, you know, the internal security troops and start, you know, like, killing people. And, like, none of these guys wanted any part of that. I mean, if not for ethical objections, because they didn't want to be held responsible. So it's basically just like the momentum of. Of, you know, the will to kind of make this happen. You know, like, corny as it sounds, like people power, if you forgive me for sounding like a freaking hippie or something. But that's basically what went down.
- [330:02]
A
And then. And then 40 days later, Romania decided that it was.
- [330:08]
B
Romania is kind of horrifying, man. Like, not. Not the country. Romania is freaking awesome. It's, like, fascinating. But Chesky was the one man. The. One of the final Warsaw Pact summits, Romania is fascinating because Chescu, he played both sides of the aisle. He got Kennedy to take Romania off the target list for strategic nuclear weapons, and he basically drew down the Romanian army to, like, nothing but, like, an internal. Like a means of internal oppression. For all practical purposes. He quit Warsaw Pact. Okay. You know, and was. It was not. Despite being this kind of arch Stalinist, he was not particularly cozy with the Kremlin. But he. During the fight 10/89, at the final Warsaw Pact summit, where internal security was obviously on everybody's mind, he said, like, we've got to do what the Chinese comrades did at Tiananmen, and even Hanukkah apparently looked at him, was like, what the hell's the man with you? Like, at least don't say that out loud. Like, you know, like, it's. But, yeah, the. We'll get into that, too, because that's fascinating. And it's. It's the outlier. Yeah. And I mean, for all kinds of reasons, but, yeah, the. The.
- [331:23]
C
And then.
- [331:24]
B
And then Mr. And Mrs. Chusescu. I saw that when I. I was in my aunt's house in Ventura that Christmas, and I. Seeing the chances get. Get blown away, like on tv, that. I mean, this is. This was like, young people understand. This is like, you know, consumer Internet was basically where you can see video was like, 10 years away, 15 years away. Like, this is like, that's freaking crazy. And it's like, and it's, it shook me up as like a young teen that he killed his wife too. Because it was like, I mean she was, she was a terrible person. But like, she was an old lady. They just like wasted her. Like. And I remember like one of the guards they were leading, leading them to the, you know, the, to the courtyard to be shot. Like the one guard like put his hands, elbow. And she just like shakes it off like that. I mean, she was like a hard lady. But it's like the point is she was like an old woman. I mean, it's like that kind of shocked me as a kid, man. But, but yeah, we'll, we'll. Yeah, we'll, we'll cover, we'll cover that. We'll cover Golf, War and Bush Baker in final Episode. We'll get into like Gorbach offers Yelton too. And so yeah, we, we might go a little bit longer next time. That's okay with you, but I think that'll be great.
- [332:38]
A
All right. Plugs.
- [332:41]
B
Yeah, I mean for the time being, I'm still on Twitter, so seek me out there. It's Thomas 7. Number 7, HMAS777. There's official underscore. Thomas 777. My primary home right now is substack real thomas777.subsect.com I'm back on Instagram. I am, I, I gotta go to town end of April, but May, first week in May, I promise. The channel is, we're shooting dedicated content like my crime partner and my, my erstwhile editor who is, is a, is a prince of the realm. I swear, like the, he's the reason why all this stuff gets done because I, I'm freaking illiterate with that stuff. But I, we're, we're, we're cranking out like fire. Like, I promise. But I am like, he and I, we're like a two man freaking operation. I mean, it's a lot of work and I, I'm not being a murderer.
- [333:38]
A
Right.
- [333:38]
B
I'm an incredibly lucky person. But that coupled with these manuscripts I'm trying to finish, coupled with keeping up with all this other. I mean it, it's, it's, it's a freaking, A lot of work, man. But it's coming. I promise, man. Yeah, that's what I got.
- [333:53]
A
Yep. Appreciate it. Till the next time.
- [333:55]
B
Yeah. Thank you, Pete. All right, I want to welcome everyone
- [333:59]
A
to the, the Q A wrap up show for the Cold war series with Thomas 777. How you doing, Thomas?
- [334:08]
B
I'm very well, thanks. And yeah, thanks for accommodating this format. Like I said, it just seems to make sense and I, I know that a lot of the subscribers have been eager to, you know, ask questions and stuff and kind of get a more discussion based format going, so. Yeah, that's great, man.
- [334:30]
A
Can I, can I start with a question from me?
- [334:32]
B
Yeah, of course. All right, cool.
- [334:35]
A
We talked about this in the Yocky Spengler episode.
- [334:38]
B
I did.
- [334:39]
A
But a lot of people who have just started hearing about Yaqui hear that Yockey was, you know, after World War II and especially, you know, from after 1950ish, he took the side of the Soviet Union over America. Can you explain why he would do that?
- [335:00]
B
I mean in geostrategic terms, it, it's the perennial principle that the only way that Europe is truly going to be an autonomous actor, the only way it's going to be able to compete as a superpower is if some sort of concord is accomplished with Russia. You know, this, some people suggest this kinder's world island hypothesis. I mean it is and it isn't. It's not. It's not as so much a geography as destiny calculus has. It has to do with power potential, not just of material resources, but you know, of, of mentioned material as, you know, the Germans used to refer to, you know, human population. It's not just in terms of biology but in terms of their capacity to bear culture and things like that. Europe as this kind of rump peninsula, you know, forever on an enemy footing with Russia artificially instigated and maintained by the United States is never, even if the United States withdrew its forces and being from Europe, but that status quo remained, Europe would never ever be able to, you know, emerge again as, as a true power political actor of any, of any significance in hard power terms. I mean obviously in economic terms and in cultural terms, you know, Europe is always, you know, the kind of the center of the world. Okay in, in many respects, but so there's that part of it. Secondly, Yaqui, not incorrectly he identified what the Cold War is basically an in house controversy. In ideological terms, you know, it was the, the New Dealer alliance with Moscow wasn't just this sort of alliance of convenience because Europe was in the Third Reich was just so evil like on his face. That doesn't make any sense. You know what this was is it was competing viewpoints of a global socialist order. You know, one being the New Dealer perspective, the other being the Marxist Leninist perspective, colluding in order to annihilate fascism and any competing iteration of political order that would, you know, come to dominate the 20th century and all centuries subsequent. So, you know, one was not superior to the other. You know, it's not like America represented the west contrary, you know, the alien Soviet Union or the socialist Soviet Union. And America in a lot of ways are more insidious because it had an ability to insinuate itself into European cultural life, you know, amidst the occupation regime. I mean, in a way that the Soviet just were not able to. And finally there was just a difference. There was a divergence of intent. The Soviet Union wasn't trying to socially engineer, you know, white Europe out of existence. You know, I mean, yeah, Marxist Leninism was a horrible system. It was brutal. It persecuted people, it was hostile to religion. It was persecuted people who were, who were deemed politically unreliable. It was anti human, I'm not acquitting that at all. But again, it didn't aim to tear out the root of cultural life and carry out a programmatic genocide, quite literally, you know, by annihilating, by annihilating European culture at the root. And that's exactly what America aimed to do. And in more concrete terms and in more crude terms, not crude in terms of, you know, disreputable or something, but just in, in kind of more basic terms also, you know, Yaki pointed to the, the Prague trials. The Prague trial relating to the, what came to be known as the doctor's plot, you know, where these 12, these 12 medical people were, were tried for treason and conspiring against, you know, the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia. And 11 of 12 of these people were Jews. Okay. A lot of them were involved with Zionism. You know, they, it was obviously the Warsaw, what was to become the Warsaw Pact, the East Bloc. It was obviously them purging, you know, the Jewish element from their leadership cast. And they weren't doing it on some quote unquote racial basis or some kind of sectarian basis. And their alibi was, well, you know, it's incidental that these people are Jewish. You know, we, we can't abide this kind of counter revolutionary treasonous activity. You know, it, it doesn't matter if you know it. It hurts people's feelings that, you know, there's certain, certain ethnic groups are concentrated in the ranks of these, these undesirable elements. You know, we're gonna, we're gonna realize, you know, justice no matter what. But it was obviously, you know, a deliberate effort to purge Jewish influences from, from the ranks of the ofres. In, in, in the Eastern bloc. So if your notion is that, you know, as Yaquis was, you know, that Europe has to be liberated from enemy influences if it's going to survive, let alone thrive. And if your idea is that, you know, the traditional enemy of the west is, you know, is, is the Jewish diaspora and that, that diaspora is, is the, their world of social existence is the progenitor of, you know, the most, the, the ideological tendencies most inimical to Western survival. And finally, again, if, if you view Europe's path, salvation in parapolitical terms as, you know, a concord with Moscow, I mean all those things, you know, all roads lead to Moscow, if you'll allow the metaphor. I mean that was Yaki's perspective. You know, the, and that's basically shouldn't be controversial. I mean it, the reason why the Soviet Union was dangerous, the reason why it was insidious wasn't because it was, it was going around doing the kinds of things that like the American government does today. You know, it's not, it wasn't trying to, it wasn't going around declaring that like gender doesn't exist or that, you know, you, everybody needs to breed, you know, them, everybody needs to breed into like one kind of like non race and you know, you know, all, all kind of historical existences need to be eradicated, you know, so that someone like equity can be achieved or like nobody has a historical memory so we're all the same. Like that would never occur to the Soviet Union. Okay, that doesn't make them good guys, but it makes them far, far less dangerous to, you know, racial survival and, and kind of human culture in, in any form than, than America was and is. You know, and I, I emphasize the people that what, what, what the American regime does today, this isn't something of like recent vintage. You know, it's not like, it's not like the US Government was like doing good things or wasn't insane until like 1990 or something or until like 2016. 16. Like they've always been. I mean the New Deal regime from inception, it was totally insane. It had totally insane ideas. It, it was always sexually perverted. It always, it always wanted to eradicate people's understanding of themselves as, as cultural, you know, as culturally situated. Like literally plotted the genocide Europe and you know, and drafted up entire treatises. I mean like the sexual habits of Germans and how we can work. You utilize this to undermine their potential to breed. I mean like this really, really sick stuff, you know, and I mean some people can't accept That, I mean, whatever, okay, if you have some like, vestigial attachment to, to America, like as a government, I, I, I, I don't care. But they're, they're not people I have any common cause with. And I think they're incredibly deluded if they insist on retaining that sensibility while also insisting that they're somehow right wing or opposed. What is going on?
- [343:44]
A
Yeah, it's when somebody will bring up like, you'll talk about Il Duce and somebody will post the picture of him hanging upside down. And this person is like somebody who's like, pro America, pro, you know, would, would seemingly be on our side. I remind them that the people who did that to him are the people who are ruling over you today. They're the, they're the same people. And you're just basically cheering on the people who.
- [344:11]
B
Oh yeah, yeah. It wasn't a bunch of guys, it wasn't like a bunch of like, good old Southern guys who were like, we don't like Mussolini because he's a socialist and he's not keen to the Second Amendment. Like, they were like, yeah, they were like out now communists. And not just out now communists, but you know, of the kind of, the kind of Adorno and Gramsey type who were, you know, very much quote, cultural Marxists. I find that to be a troubling term. I don't like it. But just for the sake of coherence, you know, that, that's, that's like the vernacular. But yeah, I don't, I don't, yeah, I don't understand how, I mean, like, it's like, even, even if, even if you've got no affinity for, you know, kind of like European ideological tendencies or even if, you know, you, you don't like national socialism or, or, or fascism, again, if you don't like any of this stuff, like, why would you celebrate its destruction? Like, why would you celebrate like, Europe being literally annihilated by, by, by communists and by these like, crazy New Dealers who want to like, eradicate the concept of race from this planet and, and, and view like, man as some kind of like, instrumentality to serve, like, good government? I mean, that's completely perverted, but like I said, I think it's there, there really is like a bougie kind of fixation. Like, really an obsession with like, respectability. And there's people, they want to like, purge them people, People are like, ambitious in the wrong ways. They want to like, purge their own minds of like, unclean thoughts and, and, and, and, and, and not Hating fascism is an unclean thought. So they, they try and cope by saying, like, yeah, like I hate the regime, but, you know, I hate you off Hitler even more. And, and, and that's the worst thing ever. Like, I, I mean, I don't know. I try. I, I think I'm, I, I think I'm somewhat empathetic in terms that I, I'm pretty good at putting myself in the position of other people. I mean, just in, in like practical terms. I mean, that's, there's a heavily psychological aspect to political life, you know. And so, I mean, I'm not saying I've got like great insights or something, but I have thought about this a lot and I believe what I just indicated is like the source of a lot of that foolishness.
- [346:25]
A
I got another, I got another question that was submitted before I do that. If anybody is watching on YouTube and they want to go up to the pinned comment that connects you to entropy and you can do super chats there. All right. Someone asked, you mentioned a couple times, but didn't get into it. Can you do a quick overview of the Red Army Faction faction?
- [346:47]
B
Yeah, the Red Army Faction or the Badder Meinhof gang. They, they were kind of unique because they were emergent in night, like in 1968. I mean, a lot of things happened of a revolutionary nature, including splintering within the socialist camp. You know, that's when we talk about cultural Marxism that's really within the euro Communist and, and socially radical element kind of split off from orthodox Marxist Leninism. Well, the Bader Meinhof faction, they kind of had one foot in both camps. And as it turned out, they were very much a client actor of the Stasi, the East German Ministry for State Security. And they were, they were very much kind of like the brainchild of Marcus Wolf, who was an incredibly dangerous individual. And he was the best intelligence man that Warsaw Effect had, in my opinion, in. He was the best intelligence man and the best intelligence organization probably fielded by anybody in the Cold War. But the Bad or Minoff faction, they, their, their notion was to basically render the Buddhist Republic ungovernable through terrorist activity. You know, just in kind of conventional, the kind of conventional terms that, that non state actors under arms, especially during the Cold War, like going to the unique paradigm they're in, like preceded. But they also. That was during the period when, you know, Billy Brandt was, was seeking genuine reconciliation with East Germany. And the idea was, it was, it was, it was very layered. Okay. Because on the one hand, on the one hand, the idea was Very simply, like strike a blow against, you know, like America and the Bundeswehr and sympathetic forces, you know, within the Federal Republic. But secondly, it also gave people like Brandt like an alibi. See, these are extremists. You know, we have, we're nothing like them. You know, we want a rapprochement with the DDR and the Soviet Union for peace. So this kind of thing will no longer be happening. Like, which is really kind of brilliant. But they, they were very effective and they, they had, they had substantial contacts with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command. They, I think they probably were, I think they probably had contacts with the Provisional ira, although some people. That's debatable. And I don't want to, I don't want to start some sort of argument with people who have those kinds of sympathies. But that was basically the Red Army Faction and they folded their flag like officially in 1990. I mean, which, which goes to show. And people acted like this was strange at the time, but I mean the epoch should have made sense that it's like, well I mean these, this, this isn't some fake organization. I mean they had, they did have grassroots support, especially amongst, you know, the student population and younger people. But they very much were like, in operational terms, they were very much like an organ of the Stasi and Horse to Maller.
- [350:06]
D
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- [350:38]
B
He wasn't a direct action element within the Badder Meinhof gang, but he was a lawyer who worked closely with them. He became, he ended up going to prison for quote, Holocaust denial and quote, promoting racial hatred, you know, a few years back. And because like immediately after the wall came down, like he, he took up with the, the npd, you know, which is the legacy party of the socialist. So I mean, there you go. And like people like Der Spiegel which says incredibly stupid things with alarming regularity, they were like, see, this man's insane. He was a Communist and now he's anti Semitic. But it's like anybody with like a brain, like, it's like we just like explicated about, you know, why a pro Soviet disposition is what any like, you know, quote unquote neo fascist would basically, you know, be, be disposed to. I mean, that's. And then I, that that's, I mean that, that it's just a case in point. I mean it shouldn't surprise anybody, but I, they, they were interesting. They were an interesting case and an interesting element within the Cold War. But that's a good film about him called the Bottom of Complex. I highly recommend it. It's got Bruno Gans in it. Or Bruno Gans. He's the guy who played Adolf Hitler in. In.
- [352:01]
A
All right, Muzio Savola over here. Five dollar super chat. What does Thomas think of Stalin's War by McMeeken? Have you read it?
- [352:09]
B
Yeah, it's. It's chock full of data and that data is well sourced. Other than that, I, it's. It's typical court history that was written in deliberate hostile dialogue with, with Suvarov and Yakim Hoffman. And it came out at the same time as Hoffman's bog memory serves. You know, it's just the, the, the implication obvious that somehow the Soviet Union created the world's first like, truly modern, like, warfare state. It created like the mightiest war machine the world has ever seen, arguably will ever see. Yet this was exclusively for peaceful purposes or for no reason. You know, when the Germans attacked for no reason because they're evil. I mean, that's, I mean that. I. Maybe it's just me becoming cantankerous and old, but I think it's just me becoming a more rigorous and discriminating historical writer and researcher. Anybody who accepts that conceptual narrative is. It taints the entire rest of their research, even if their facts and their data, like the raw data, is good and worthwhile. So there's nothing wrong with citing those kinds of sources. And I'm sure people who dislike me or dislike the kinds of things I write will turn around and say like, well, you know, you're just, you're abolishing the fake value distinction in your own way and, you know, you're reducing history to polemic. No, I'm not. But you don't have to be like pro fascist or anything to accept that the Soviet Union was what I just said it was the first fully realized warfare state that was totally mobilized for war. It was animated by a doctrine of revolutionary warfare and extreme sporting revolution. And it was the single most powerful military actor on the world stage on the eve of Barbarossa. And this is the only way to understand the Second World War. That was, that was the catalyst, you know, and as any military type will tell you, capabilities, let alone forces and being are never benign. You know, they only have one purpose, and that is to wage war. And the capability to wait. The capability to wage war equates to power in its most distilled sense. And power is the currency of politics. It's the only currency. Everything else is wrestling. So a state that is mobilized to such a degree as the Soviet Union was not only is it never truly benign, it is actually the precise opposite.
- [354:54]
A
So JMR cowboy asked, was that the same Red army wrangles, White army fought against or a different one?
- [355:03]
B
What we're talking about, the Red army faction?
- [355:06]
A
That's what I'll wait and see.
- [355:08]
B
But I'm gonna take it.
- [355:11]
A
I'll take a question off of, off of Twitter from under your Europe post. He said someone would like to hear mention of a James Gregor brought up in Faces of Janice. The possibility that instead of Gorbachev, the USSR would end up with a version of what basically could be called Russian fascism.
- [355:34]
B
Yeah, I don't accept that. And Russia's conceptual Polestars are totally different. That's what I try to explain to people when Moscow talks about, you know, when, when Moscow calls its enemies Nazis. I mean, first of all, Ukrainians are, are idiots. So I mean they, they'll run around like slaughtering Slavs on the order of some like crazy Jew and claim they're doing it like for the white race or something because they're, they're crazy and they're morons. But beyond that, the, the, The Russians lost 30 million people fighting the Third Reich. So like, no matter, they call people Nazis and fascists as like a stand in for enemy. It's not because like they're, they're pink haired fat girls who are into like lesbianism. It's not because they're, it's not, it's not because they're like a bunch of crazy Jewish people. It's not, it's not because, you know, they, they listen to Dead Kennedy's records like it makes conceptual sense the way a kind of, a kind of nationalist, authoritarian Russia. That would definitely be possible, but it wouldn't, it, it wouldn't look like it would, it wouldn't look like Mussolini's Italy did, you know, transpose the 21st century and it wouldn't even look like it wouldn't even look like this. You know, the Syrian bath rule in Syria. Like, it'd be like, weirdly Russian. Its optics would, even if only superficially, be very much bound up with Orthodox Christianity. The, the, the military would have disproportionate clout, you know, more than like, you know, the political cast, which would kind of like neutralize any, like, truly political projects of an ongoing nature. You know, like, it'd be, it'd be kind of like, it'd be kind of like 10 miles wide and like 1 inch thick. Okay. That's not to say it'd be like a weak state, but I'm talking in terms of like an ideological chaos. There's like, wouldn't be much there. Okay. I think Russia is, frankly, I think when Putin goes, either because he dies or, or he actually finds a successor that united Russia can live with, that's probably what you're going to have. Okay. But it's not, it's not going to be. It's not going to be fascistic in any meaningful way. And it's not, it's not going to be some weird, like, Eurasianism like Alexander Dugan like, fantasizes about. Like, they're just not. That would have no currency, you know, and, and if there's something like that to take off the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, like, the stands to be kind of colloquial and like, dumb about it. Like, they'd have to be looking to Moscow for their cues, like culturally, politically, and, and, and strategically. And they're like, not doing that at all. You know, like, Eurasianism doesn't have any legs, you know, like, it's like something cool that Russians like to talk about and that it's like a thought experiment. It's certainly not impossible, but that the Eurasian moment was the Soviet Union. Okay. And like, that's gone. It's not ever coming back.
- [358:33]
A
Here's another question from Twitter. How brutal was Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe? It always seemed to me that Stalin's crimes from the post war era get brushed over by mainstream historians.
- [358:46]
B
No, that's a great question. And yeah, I saw that on my timeline earlier this morning. And this is stuck in my mind. The, the true, true Soviet brutality, true communist brutality in the Soviet Union as well as in the States that emulated the Soviet Union reached its zenith in the revolutionary phase. The Soviet Union exterminated around 10 million people before a shot was fired in the Second World War. You know, the. These were political Unreliables. These were ethnic groups that, that the regime didn't like, you know, these were people who as Kevin McDonald exhaustively research and pointed out in his paper, Stalin dwelling executioners, which was very cleverly returning a servant. Goldhagen, you know, when you. Something like 70 of. Of the NKVD, like direct action element was Jewish during like the, the, the height of the revolutionary phase. And these people just like suddenly accounts of like people they didn't like, you know, whether they're kulaks, whether they were like, you know, Belarusians, whether, you know, they, they were people who, you know, a lot of radicalized, very, very vicious, you know, Jewish people under arms didn't like. I mean this was what it was. It was neither, it was neither truly organized nor was it truly scattershot, but that, that's really where the bodies got stacked up and there really wasn't there. There truly was, as Robert Conquest documented, you know, a Soviet death camp system. I'm not being colloquial or using, you know, hysterical language or something. The really brutal aspects, kind of programmatic aspects. After the day of defeat in 1945, the. Then the, the American authorities were just as bad. You know, they, they starved out millions of Germans. Like was endemic, you know, and, and, and, and, and if not encouraged, you know, like just, just tolerated more than tacitly, you know, the, the Morgan Plan, in a sense very much was implemented, although not realized to its full extent as an vision owing to a strategic situation. But I'd say and the kind of four corners of it, the, the forced population transfers, the, the literal ethnic cleansing Germans, you know, of millions of German people from lands that they had occupied in some cases for a thousand years. That was very much something Washington encouraged, in some ways participated in the planning of directly. But operationally it was the Soviet army and, and, and police who made that happen. My opinion is that's the most kind of, that's kind of the most like. That's the strongest example of like naked brutality. And I mean, people will come back and say like, well, you know, the, the Germans were ethnically cleansing, you know, the Soviet Union, and they were. But it was a race war, okay? And there's a difference between that sort of activity underway, terrible as it is incident to a total war, and you know, just perpetuating a programmatic campaign of ethnic violence after cessation of hostilities. You know, there's, I, I don't really think that the latter can be justified in any absolute sense. And it's, it's not, it's only what about ism? Oh, but the Germans did bad things as any place. And also finally. And I know nobody asked, but I'm going to see my own take anyway. You know, if you're a man of the west, if you're pro white, and if you want your race to survive, even if. Even if the Third Reich was literally the most evil regime that ever existed, you don't. You don't. You don't cheer on the ethnic cleansing of your own people. I mean, this is. This is a brass tax stuff, you know, and one doesn't need to be some sort of diagonal Machiavellian to understand aside from that, that, you know, politics, power politics does take place somewhere beyond, beyond good and evil, if you'll allow the overused, you know, kind of. Kind of reference.
- [363:22]
A
So we got a question here. What was the deal with the Rosenbergs? You said you'd talk about them in one episode, but never got around to it.
- [363:31]
B
Oh, I totally forgot about that. Yeah, no, we can. I thought about having like, just a dedicated, like, atomic age episode, you know, like beginning with the proliferation of the bomb in 1949. 48. 49. You know, going through the. The early Cold War and the new look and. And, you know, kind of when. When. When every. Everybody in the national security apparatus said, like, you know, atomic weapons on the brain, like through, you know, detente, and then finally sdi. The Rosenbergs are basically what they appeared to be. I think. I certainly don't. They certainly should have been executed, I think. Ellie. Julius Rosenberg. I think Ethel Rosenberg wasn't like.
- [364:23]
C
I'm not.
- [364:23]
B
I'm not saying she was just like a stupid woman or something. There's plenty of women who, particularly in radical politics, were very smart and very dangerous. I think Ethel Rosenberg was not one of those. I think she was kind of along for the ride. Okay. That doesn't excuse her whole liability. But Julius Rosenberg, he was kind of like an Orthodox, like, Jewish radical. Not Orthodox Jewish. I mean, like an Orthodox radical who was Jewish. Okay. But he. I think. I think in some ways, though, his. From what? By. From his own testimony,
- [364:57]
C
just to his
- [364:57]
B
own intimates, not under oath or anything. I believe his notion was somewhat like that of Chris Boyce, the guy who's the subject of the Falcon and the Snowman. Although Boyce obviously is a far more sympathetic character. I believe, aside from Rosenberg's own kind of socialist leanings, he believed that in order for stability to reign, you know, the burgundy kind of bipolar system and prevent, you know, the onset of another round of. Of. Of. Of just massive, you know, interstate violence, there would have to Be, you know, a true balance of forces between the superpowers. And that could only be achieved if. If, If Moscow had the moment, you know. And again, like I said, like I. He didn't say this in open court or something, or, you know, he didn't, he didn't raise this to the judge, you know, in the hopes that he'd be spared the gallows. These are kinds of things he said to like his friends, you know, like reading between the lines. That was why the Rosenbergs became these kind. Why the Rosenbergs became these people who are held out by the usual suspects as. See this, this horrible anti Semitic lynching of these people. That's incredibly weird because they're about the least sympathetic defendants I can think of. But that's, there's like, not really anything there. I mean, it's like Leo Frank like, like Leo Frank was. Leo Frank was a child molester and a murderer. But like, you're supposed to feel bad that he got lynched because apparently it was like, terrible that this guy who like, victimized little kids got lynched. Like, I don't, I don't quite understand that, but it's something. It goes to some of the kind of like, moral bankruptcy of the other people who, who come to the defense of these, of these personages in history. Like, I'm not, I'm not saying that like, lynching is good and he's a Frank. I mean, I, I believe in due process in a real sense. But I, I also don't feel bad if child molesters and people who harm children get killed. Okay? And anybody who makes it out like this is some terrible, you know, terrible instance of, of, of. Of rough justice. I mean, I'm not, and I'm not comparing selling nuclear secrets to molesting kids at all. Like they have nothing at all in common. Okay? And I can easily see myself like, passing nuclear secrets not to Ivan, but, you know, and the last man is going to sit here and, and act like, prissy about such things. But, you know, if there's. In the modern era, there's really no clearer case of high treason than what the Rosenberg did. Than what the Rosenbergs did, except maybe for the Cambridge Five, just in terms of the sheer kind of like, gravity of, of of their ongoing espionage. But yeah, there you go. I realized I was long winded. But the short answer is like, there's. There's nothing there. It's exactly what it appears to be. You're supposed to feel bad for Jewish Communists for some reason because, you know, any, anytime they face consequences. It's because of mean anti Semitism or something.
- [368:00]
A
Right. I just want to remind people that in the pinned comment in the chat there, you can do super chats over on entropy, but let's get another question from Twitter. In one episode you mentioned the Marine Corps and Air Force were able to adapt to Vietnam, but not the Army. Can you elaborate?
- [368:20]
B
Sure, that's a great question. The Air Force was interesting and it was very dynamic in that era. We'll start with the Air Force first. Okay. They became an independent service branch. People like Billy Mitchell, even before, you know, the Second World War pushed for that because there was an understanding that, you know, army thinking had become kind of stagnant. Okay. And also it just. The army was not particularly comfortable with, with, with new technology. They just weren't. That's not a political take, that's a fact. But it's also too. It was like the, the science of aviation and particularly military aviation. It was something everybody was learning by doing, you know, like when Curtis LeMay first started flying in, you know, in the inner warriors, that's when pilots were still like flying by like visual sight of like, you know, terrestrial land features and things, you know, and trying to match it up to like a paper map. Okay. Now the Air Force obviously by, by the time, via. But by the time the, the real escalation got underway In Vietnam in 65, the. There was, you know, the Air Force, they'd been. Their bread and butter was Strategic Air Command. And that also is what they owed not just their lobbying power to, but also their kind of preeminent position in, in the, in the kind of American defense establishment structure. They were able to pretty rapidly repurpose to a conventional role, but a conventional role that was, was difficult to realize. You know, these Arc light bombers, these B52s, those were, those were purpose, those were, those were, those were purpose to attack with nuclear weapons. Okay. In a strategic capacity, switching them to a conventional, repurposing them to a conventional role, you know, in a conflict like Vietnam where frankly until, you know, 1972, you didn't even really have like true combined arm set piece battles where they could really kind of shine. The fact that they were able to, you know, kind of wreak so much havoc on the ability of the North Vietnamese to not just reconstitute forces, but, you know, to, to sustain infrastructure, not just command and control, but, you know, any, any and all kind of basic infrastructure relating to the war effort. That's pretty remarkable. And it's also the, it was More, more naval aviators, but some Air Force aviators too. They got engaged over the battle space tactically. And Vietnamese pilots were pretty good. And there obviously were Soviet pilots, like flying sorties too. That's what brought dog fighting back. You know, that. That's the whole reason why. Why, why, you know, Tagal Air Command, like, you know, got.
- [371:41]
C
Got a.
- [371:42]
B
A boom. And that's why. And that's why in the naval side, like, you know, Top Gun got created in the first place. That's what I meant about the Air Force. And it gets. In the Marine Corps, the Marines, they were used to doing more with less just because of the nature of their missions and deployments. You know, the Small Wars Manual was. Was written by, you know, officers and NCOs who've been fighting in Nicaragua like in the 20s and things. The Marines better understood how to, like, you know, the need for, you know, kind of like in the field diplomacy with indigenous elements like stuff like that. And the, the U.S. army, you know, after World War II, it was just like singularly obsessed with firepower, you know, and like, look what they did in Vietnam. It's like, you know, let's. Let's show up as heavy as possible. Let's have guys wearing fatigues that we'd have them wearing in the inner German border, you know, like carrying around like rations and metal cans, you know, and toting like £60 worth of gear on their back and like 110 degree tropical heat. Like, that's not. I mean, that's. The whole thing's absurd. Like, Army Special Forces totally shined, you know, but that's. But this was before, like, SOCOM was like. Was like bros with like goofy beards and sleeved hats who like, think that they're the police or something. Like, this was when, like, these guys were like genuine weirdos who were like, kind of like their own branch of the military. And they were really. They were really up on some progressive and dynamic, like tactical doctrines. That's what I meant. And I think that the 1960s army was actually pretty squared away. Okay, they were very, very well suited to fight Warsaw pet, but they were not. They just lacked like, operational flexibility in the. With that in. In a way that was needed. But it's just. I mean, the U.S. army. The U.S. army had a hell of a time in the, in the Far East. One of the reasons I like to move the Thin Red Line, like, nobody likes that movie movie, but I think it's a dope movie. Not just I love Terrence Malik, but It's about the U.S. army in the Pacific and like nobody thinks about that. And you know it's all about the Marines and the Navy and I mean which, and that's where like a lot of naval and marine world legends were made. But the U. S started. The Pacific was fubar and like, like in all kinds of ways. Not just because it was viewed as the secondary theater, but it's just because like the army was up like fighting in Asia, you know, like, and they were, it's they, they were not ex, like at the command level. I'm not talking about, you know, the guys in the field like doing, you know, not talking about the actual infantry men who were game as but like the guys making operational decisions. It's like they didn't, it like didn't compute that you know, this was not. We're not, we're not, we're not, we're not fighting Verdun or Bella Wood. You know, just with, against, against the jabs, you know, it's not all the same. You know that's what I meant. But I'm not, I'm not a military man. So I mean look at me obviously, okay, but I, I'm sure that military types will say I don't know what the hell I'm talking about but I, I, I mean whatever, okay, I mean that's, that's my position. I think I can back it up.
- [374:55]
A
So over here on YouTube, Viva Cristo Rey is he has a comment and then a question says. I saw, I saw a B1 Lancer flying low over Chicago the other day. Thought Red dawn was happening, but it was just opening, it was just opening day for the Cubs.
- [375:12]
B
No, they're, they're that, that aircraft as you know, I mean that was meant, that was, that was, that was meant to, to go in low, go in fast and strike super hardened targets. And in the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. It was, it was a bad. And the B2 was the B2, it was its immediate successor. It was a B1 on steroids with stealth capability. Yeah, it's, it's a fascinating aircraft. And the Ivan's answer to that was the backfire. Or what NATO called the backfire. It was its actual names the Tupolev something. But yeah no, that's. You see, you see some, you see some cool aircraft over over Chicago.
- [375:56]
A
Man.
- [375:57]
D
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- [376:13]
A
So his question was, why was the Soviet Union and company so hostile to Freemasonry and why was this sentiment shared with their right Hegelian enemies?
- [376:25]
B
I'm not an expert on Freemasonry at all. What I do know about it is that people on the right always hated Freemasonry. Like in America, Freemasonry like is nothing. I know some people in the comments are going to be like, oh, like they wrote everything or whatever like it. There's, I can maybe like half a dozen like fraternal organizations that have way more cloud than is now than the Freemasons in America. Like the Masons are actually viewed as kind of like lower bougie kind of true trashy stuff here by a lot of people. Okay, they are. I'm just telling you what I'm not saying. I think that I'm telling you that's the way like a lot of people look at it, especially like social register types back when they had clout in Europe is a totally different story. The, the Freemasons reviewed by, by, by the Third Reich as like Rosa Crucian types. You know, they're like these fifth columnists who are, you know, they're degenerate. They're, they're, they're neither loyal to race nor king, nor country, nor kin. You know, they're, they're, they're, you know, they're basically, they're basically like a bourgeois fraternal society that's intrinsically subversive, you know, and that is, you know, these, these people, these people can't be relied upon because their only loyalty is to, is this kind of like odd set of beliefs which in reality often is nothing deeper than kind of COVID for you know, ambush ambitious social climbers to pretend as if there's, you know, some kind of deeper ethos to their, you know, to their covetousness of station and things. Okay. In terms of the Russians, I don't have a good understanding of Russian culture at all. I don't read or speak Russian. I, I think I've got a good understanding of their political heritage and how their decision making process in war and peace terms plays out. But I, I cannot tell you like what the Russian take is on Freemasonry really. Why the Ivans like viewed them as insidious, like why, why, why the Germans viewed them that way. And this preceded like the, you know, the, the National Socialist revolution. But why, why the why the Third Reich in particular like viewed them as like a, A. An undesirable element. Like that's why there was a dedicated. There's. There's a dedicated police creeple department or directorate dedicated to like spying on Freemasons and like I think in some capacity like it endured after the war. Like if memory serves, like when uh, when. When the West German when the Bundes Republic like national police were restructured and like that's when like GSG9 became this like badass special ops force. Like I think I remember reading something like they were still like spying on Freemasons and with them and they made a bunch of people mad. Like oh this is like you know, nuts use of redux. Like how dare you. Like. But yeah, I don't, I don't have any insight in that, man. Like you'd have to talk to the Russian fellows in our circles or some of the European guys.
- [379:36]
A
Where was the. One of the other questions was can you give your opinion of Yuri Bezmanoff?
- [379:47]
C
I don't.
- [379:47]
B
I don't really have one because I haven't. I haven't like read enough of his stuff. Like what. What like what specifically? Like his take on purest striker and glass nose or like character or what. Honestly, I'm not. What's it.
- [380:01]
A
There's a famous video in 1982. 83 where he. He's talking about how it was a Soviets who subverted the. Subverted the. Yep. The institutions and everything that basically. Everything.
- [380:17]
B
Okay. Yeah yeah, yeah. He's one of those guys who. He. The He. The guys who. Yeah, the Perestrika deception. Like the guys. The same guys were to. That like said him a lot. I don't. The Soviet Union was basically what it appeared to be man from, from especially from Fresno onward. Like Khrushchev was kind of a wild card in like policy terms. I don't mean like in ideological terms but it. I mean like the, the subversion such that was coming from Moscow.
- [380:48]
C
It.
- [380:50]
A
In.
- [380:50]
B
In the.
- [380:51]
C
In the.
- [380:52]
B
In the. When the labor movement was. Was truly a national phenomenon with, with political cloud manufacturing economy, you know, terrestrial manufacturing, like national economics was the order of the day, you know really. Until. Until 1960 thereabout. Yeah. You better believe that. You better believe the common term and later common form. They were. They were totally insinuated into that, you know. And there was major unions that were shot through with like Soviet influence. Okay. Got the last gas. That was like the Welsh minor strike. The. So like the Kremlin was pouring a bunch of money into Those efforts. Okay, but that's the reason why. And again, I, I view it as a very imperfect signifier for all kinds of reasons. But I understand why people invoke cultural Marxism. Traditional Marxist Leninism does not emphasize culture. Everything is superstructure. It's all labor, it's all production, it's all capital. You know, it's all. It's all how people's conceptual horizons and social behavior and, and. And. And class and cast structuring, like, derives from labor and production schema. You know. So like, if you asked like even the most radical kind of like traditional Marxist Leninist in 1950, if you like asked him about stuff like homosexuality or like feminism or like, about race relations, he just like tell you, like, none of that is important. Like, these are bourgeois fixations or concerns and you know, only the alienation of. Of the. Of, you know, not just the, not just the exploited proletariat, but, you know, the people who profit from it. You know, they exist also in debased circumstances and you know, not, not being. Not being invested in actual like, you know, power processes of production as humans need to be, you know, to live, you know, psychologically healthy lives. You know, they're. They're drawing upon, you know, these. These kind of super structural, meaningless like ephemera like that surrounds like human life. These are. These things don't matter. Like, that's literally what their take would be like. They'd have no. They have no inference. They either have no interest in these kinds of culture comp. Aspects that we are so familiar with, or they'd say, you know, that's just not important. You know, okay, maybe it's interesting, maybe it's useful, maybe it can be exploded to some discrete purpose, but it's just not important. You know, that's. That's the key difference. So when these Bircher types would talk into the 80s about how like everything bad that happens is coming from Moscow, I mean, that was like a up perspective for all kinds of reasons. And it's just like, I mean, not.
- [383:37]
C
Not
- [383:39]
B
sensible and pregnant reasons and obvious ones. But that's also just like, not. That's just not what like Sovietism was about. You know, it just wasn't.
- [383:50]
A
Talk a little bit about. Talk a little more about Latin America and how. Why was the Marxism of Moscow. Why was the way Moscow ran things, run, run things so attractive to so many in Latin America?
- [384:13]
B
I mean, because the whole Marxist Leninist, particularly Lenin's imperialism, the process that he describes, like in today's terms, the legacy of Marxism is. Is global Systems theory, you know, like Emmanuel Wallerstein kind of stuff. Okay. Even after Marxist Leninism kind of like lost its animating power and kind of context in much of the world world, it still, and especially kind of some of its successor iterations captured sort of the, the fascination of, of Latin Americans because very much was contextual there, okay? Like Latin America was and is kind of this hyper exploited primitive economic backwater, you know, that's like resource rich in terms of things like agricultural commodities
- [385:09]
A
and
- [385:10]
B
not really owing to any kind of conspiracy, but owing definitely to kind of structural design. It remains mired in this kind of primitiveness, you know, owing to the kind of odd racial dynamics. There's like this incredibly sharp caste distinction, you know, like, there's like pretty much every kind of cliche that you know from the Leninist, specifically the Leninist kind of playbook of history that's described, that describes capitalism in punitive terms, you know, is like very, is like plainly evident in Latin America, okay? And again, not, not for conspiratorial reasons, but for, you know, the peculiar and kind of somewhat tragic heritage of the region. That's why it's, and it's interesting you raised that. I was reading the, the Wilson center, which I, I think is kind of abominable in a lot of ways, but their archives are very useful and very interesting. When Bush and Scowcroft, Bush 41 obviously, and Baker and Helmut Cole, you know, were negotiating with Gorbachev, particularly as regarded specifically what, you know, the Art treaty, but generally, you know, the kind of excellencies related to ending the Cold War. Something that Coal and Bush and Scowcroft also, to Gorachovs like, look like however we leave this, you know, assuming that, you know, we can come to terms on, on nuclear weapons, assuming we can come to terms on, you know, a basically complete drawdown and forces and being in Europe, you know, he's like, we need your guarantee that your satellites in Latin America are going to stop exporting revolution. You know, and obviously they couch this in like the language of diplomacy and in the language of American propaganda, you know, like subverting the democracies in, in Latin America. But this is very much on their mind, which is fascinating and this makes sense, but that's, that's why. And, but there's also, I mean, like Latin peoples are, they're, they're, they're, they're political romantics, man. You know, I'm not saying that like to make fun of them or in a negative way, like quite the contrary. It's like it makes Them like effective partisans, you know, so you're gonna, you're going to be able to get. You're going to be able to get a bunch of Cubanos or a bunch of Argentines or a bunch of Salvadorians. You're going to be able to get them to kind of export the revolution in a way that you wouldn't. A bunch of North Koreans. Okay. I mean, let's be honest. I mean, it's like all those things. It's like historical, it's anthropological, it's, it's, it's cultural. It's, dare I say, racial. I mean, that's why.
- [387:46]
A
Well, you had mentioned before we started going live that there were a couple things you might want to comment on yourself. Is there anything you. You wanted to get out there?
- [387:58]
B
I just. Yeah, I want to. And we'll, we'll deal with this more in a dedicated pass in a more current events discussion. But I. The degree of which the. What people like Bush 41, Scowcroft, Baker, Nixon himself, and I mean, make a mistake. Like, Nixon played a key role in ending the Cold War. Like the vision that they had for world order, obviously, you know, I don't agree with that vision, but there was something noble about it and something both pragmatic and, and developed about it. The degree to which this was just utterly sabotage, deliberately thrown in the trash so that, you know, we could have, you know, we could have this kind of free for all in. In these criminal states like Ukraine, and they can be turned against Russia as these kind of like suicide torpedoes, you know, with the ultimate purpose in mind of, you know, ultimately deteriorating Russia's ability to defend itself from such attacks. The point that, you know, it. Russia can be stripped of its net and natural wealth and looted. I mean, that's incredibly grotesque, man. Like, everything. Everything about how what developed subsequent to, you know, the Bush Baker regime is just grotesque. That's the only word for it. And it really is. It's. It's. It's. It literally is criminal. You know, and that should, that's why I get so offended when these idiots, like, wave these, like, Ukrainian flags. Like, like what they're cheering on. Like, you're, you're cheering on destruction and mass homicide literally for no reason, you know, for the profit of a handful of incredibly evil people. You know, like this. The fact that anybody can look at that as, like, some good thing or that that's, like, preferable to, like, what was accomplished in 1990, it's just unconscionable. Okay? And I realize it's A board of ignorance. Because these people don't know anything, but it's. It. That doesn't make it any less disgusting. You know, when I. I behoove people, I want to do a dedicated Gulf War episode because that, That's a. That's a natural kind of like, bookend to the Cold War. Not just, like, in linear terms, but, like, in conceptual ones. And that I want people to understand why I defend Bush 41 a lot. I don't defend Bush 41 because I like. I like these Yale. Or because, like, I have something in common with social register types. I get tired of that too. Like, I don't like when people call me, like, a quote, wasp. It's like, look at me. Like, don't be basic. Do I look like a WASP to you? Like, even if I wanted to be a wasp, which I don't like, I would never, ever be allowed, like, in their environs. Okay. Like, the fact, you know, yeah, there is, like, some sort of, like, tribal commonality between people like me and the Bushes. But it's like, I'm gonna.
- [390:53]
C
I'm not.
- [390:53]
A
I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna out you right now, but your last name is, like, Norman Dynasty.
- [391:00]
B
No, I mean, that's true. Like, but I. I've got some people in my lineage who are, like, incredibly, like, respectful, prestigious, but are also, like, unbelievably trashy. Same, same, same. But, like, my point is, like, if I showed up at. If I showed kinds of places that, like, the Bushes hang around, like, even if I was, like, flush with money, like, I'd be, like, showing that door. Like, even if I was, like, even if I was. Even if I wasn't, you know, like, you know, even if I, like, got a haircut and was, like, behaving myself, I guess that's kind of my point. But aside from all of that, like, you know, we. We don't need to agree with, you know, the kind of conceptual perspective of, like, Nixon or Bush 41, but these guys were motivated by good intentions, you know, at least as much as intentions can be good, like in power, political matter. And even if they weren't, I mean, like, let's say. Let's play devil's advocate and say there's nothing good about this and, like, moral training terms. But it was. It was incredibly ambitious. And it was, you know, it. It was world transforming in a way that is laudable and on for, you know, the, The. The kind of impactfulness of things like that, I think is. Is it represents, like, a Good in its own terms. And the, the fact that that was immediately succeeded by these, like, you know, by, by these conceptual illiterates and, and just, you know, like, like literal, like bandits, you know, just, like, just, just like bandits. Mafiosi, like you know, just kind of like the lowest of the low. Like, like kind of human carry on animals, eaters of the dead. Literally. I mean, that, that's unconscionable. And that's. And also, it also. I mean, it forces a question as to what, you know, what, what I mean, you know, people. People fought and died waging the Cold War. I'm not talking. I'm not talking about these fools in Washington. I mean, like regular guys, you know, and this was, this was, this was in the time when you got. You got a draft card, you got forced to do it. You know, we didn't have, like, this, like, police department for an army, you know, like, it was, you know, like, what. Basically, like all the sacrifices that those guys made, you know, and they were. They were a bunch of white Christian guys mostly, that was essentially like, completely neutralized among everything else by this. By this kind of, like, you know, Semitic crusade against, you know, Byzantium. But, yeah, no, that's all. Yeah, this was really great, man. I hope everybody.
- [393:34]
A
We got one. We got a late que. We got a late question, if you're okay with that. Yeah, it's from William S. Over on Entropy.
- [393:43]
C
Yeah.
- [393:43]
A
Would NATO, Would NATO have been able to hold West Germany in a Seven Days to the Rhine scenario?
- [393:51]
B
No, I don't think so. No, definitely not. And that's what that was. There is an interesting point. I. I gamed that scenario many, many times with a couple. With. With a couple different game platforms that I think are. Are basically the variables. Are the variables they chose to code, the way they coded them are basically accurate. No, the only thing that, that was William Odom's big concern because the only thing that would have stopped that onslaught is. Is theater nuclear weapons. Okay? And to hold. If to hold the whole Warsaw bag, armor in, say, 1985 in the north German plane and the fold, a gap. You know, if you're gonna. You're gonna start. You're, you know, you wouldn't have had to start hitting them with Grunch and Pershing twos. Okay? And what would the Soviets do? You know, would they, like, would they escalate? I mean, to counter value assault? I mean, I don't know. But even if they didn't, it's like, okay, well, now. Now the Bundes Republic Is is a nuclear battlefield field. You know I mean that's, and that's somewhat pure but I don't, no I don't think, I don't think no I they wars up Pact would have, Warsaw Pact would have reached, would have reached the Ryan in five to seven days and, and, and nothing could have stopped them. The the idea was NATO war planning was like late in the game. I'm talking like kind of the final iteration of of, of NATO war gaming was that the American, British and, and Benelux uh, tankers like the British and the Benelux guys, they were responsible for the north German plane. Like American uh, like a, like black horses to fold a gap. Basically. They the idea was that if they get a hold Warsaw pack for 72 hours NATO could be rapidly reinforced and presumably like stage you know a counter offensive that you know under best of circumstances uh, would have been able to hold uh, the enemy at the north at the inner German border. But it's a fascinating question. I highly recommend Russell Stoffel's uh, stuff on, on NATO and he, he gamed a lot of this stuff with a bunch of former Vermont officers. It's really freaking cool. But yeah, that's a great question man. I mean I love that kind of stuff.
- [396:43]
A
Yeah. Robert in the comments says 7 days they would have been in Rotterdam and
- [396:46]
B
Antwerping 100 they would have been chilling on the Riviera like, like whistling at girls.
- [396:55]
A
All right man, do your plugs and we'll end this. I, we really appre, I know everyone appreciate this. We got 100, 126 people watching on a, on a last minute unannounced stream.
- [397:06]
B
So no freaking awesome man. No, I, I, yeah, again sorry man. Like I was feeling crummy since I got, I feel a lot better now. I just feel crummy since I got back from Lynchburg and I should have announced like check with you if you want to do this sooner but I, I, I'm stoked that, I'm stoked that people were, were happy with this kind of change in format. It seemed appropriate. But you can find me on substack@realthomas777.substack.com probably most of the people who tune in regularly know that the channel is on track. I, I, I've been apologizing for being kind of inert lately because I've been, I've needed time to get back to people because I was feeling really shitty. But every like we're on track for like production and stuff and a bunch of A bunch of people have been donating to like help exploit the process. Like, which is awesome. And I mean, like I said, I included the caveat, like if we raise $0, that is totally fine. Like, no, nobody should feel obligated to, you know, to, to, to donate, you know, hard earned cash just for the sake like expediting like content production. Like, there's something's important in this world that we do. There's something's not so important. Like our content is not one of those more important things. But like a bunch of people have donated and that is that. That's like incredible, man. And that like that this is dope. But don't anyone ever feel obligated, man? Like 100. Like I'm not just being like gracious, but we're still on burb app. I'm gonna disengage as the summer goes on. But right now, that's right, drop a lot of stuff. Just kind of like housekeeping stuff as well as like, you know, notifying people. We're doing. It's real. All caps. Real. Understood. Score number 7H1 as 777. I'm still on T gram. I'm gonna up my T gram game and get more active there, especially as I kind of like slide back from Burbat. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Tick Tock. I know Tick Tock is like. But like a lady friend of mine, like, she, she had the idea that like I can make some funny Tick Tock videos and I'm gonna start like experimenting with that some and see how long it takes them to like nuke me for like, you know, any number of things. But yeah, that's where we're at right now, man. And you know, and then June 9, unlike some people who go unnamed who like organize like really gay events where gay things go on and they like charge people like half a stack to like go hear about gay stuff. Hey, like once a year or so, like, I just see if people like convene in Shy town to hang out. And like last year we want to see craft work and it was awesome. Like this year we're gonna go see the Murder Junkies at Reggie's in on the South Loop. If you're gonna like scrounge up like 15 and get here, like, you can go. It's like 15 bucks at the door. But a lot of people are, are excited about that from what I gleaning from the feedback. So that's June 9th. So if you want to go like, save the date. And like I said last year, we had a lot of fun, man. And we'll. We'll hang out and stuff, too, like before and after the show, but that. Yeah, that's. That's all I got, man, for my plugs. All right, man.
- [400:16]
A
I'm gonna stop the recording now and then YouTube afterwards, so thanks a lot. Until the next time.
- [400:22]
B
Yeah, thank you, man.
- [400:26]
C
All right.
- [400:27]
A
I want to thank everyone on YouTube who showed up to. At the last minute. I mean, this was more than we expected at the last minute. And thank you for the. The couple people who dropped Drop super chats. I really appreciate that, especially since YouTube is basically taking away all my monetization and everything. So.
- [400:48]
B
No, that's. That's. Yeah, they're. They're freaking vultures, man. But no, this. This was great, man. Again, thanks. Thanks for abiding the. The kind of change in format. Yeah, just like I said, a lot of people, I mean, not just lately, but like, since we started the series, they. They wanted like a Q A kind of format, so I figured that it would. This would be like a good time for it. So. Yeah, this was. This was great, man.
- [401:12]
D
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