Sarah Paine — The war for India (lecture & interview)

27:30Get it straight. Does that primary enemy, is that an existential threat for them? So if you've got countries that line up on same primary enemy, existential threat for all around the most unlikely people will cooperate. On the other hand, people who are very likely to cooperate, maybe like the fascists, they all shared this basic ideology, but if they don't have the same primary enemy and the same theater of interest geographically, the same theater, they may not cooperate very well at all. So you can apply this to anything you want to apply to. So back to my game here, if you're looking at the cards people have to play.

28:10The United States has lousy cards because we don't share primary enemies with anybody. So it's a stalemate. You help India, the Pakistanis hate you. You help Pakistanis, the Indians hate you. It's no win. But if you look at India, Indian Russia share a China problem. That's good. They can cooperate on that. And then you have Pakistan and China. They share an India problem. They can, they think to happen over that. So there are pasta cards for them to play in zero from the United States to play. It's just the way it is. So the game, the name of the game in strategy is to get the outcome that you want to have happen.

28:47And it's like, how do you play this game of five person and five country cutthroat billiards to get remotely what you want out of it? So for the English majors among you, I have a metaphor for the rest of you. You can just bear with us. Imagine a game in which every ball can be a cue ball. And players can take turns, come, leave, do whatever at will. Sometimes they'll cooperate some of the time, but they don't necessarily want to pocket the same ball and the same pocket. And so if that's the case, there's going to be no enduring cooperation and understand that your goal is going to be the ultimate shot you want to take, but as you're taking the intervening shots, people are going to try to disrupt it.

29:35How on earth do you get through this game? So this is what the next section is all about. So if you look at this map and where Pakistan's located, it's this very strategic location in the center of, not quite center, but of Eurasia, the center of the Soviets boundary there, and I'm going to give you a map. This is from Halfer McKinder. He's one of the most famous people to publish on geopolitics. This is his 1904 map It's actually quite famous and he talked about how Russia Occupies the heartland and his day was all these railway systems He thought that was the prime piece of real estate in the world and then it's surrounded by this intermarginal crescent Elook or Pakistan's located.

30:15It's right in the center there right up by Russia And it's a really crucial location for before satellite imagery is available to put listening boat posts on Russia, Russia's huge. You've got to have a bunch of listening posts to track their missiles and things. And then if you want access to Afghanistan, which when the Russians go there, we want access. And of course, when we go there, we really want access. So it's a strategic location. For the Pakistanis, the United States was so frustrating to deal with because we'd be on and off interested in them because we don't align on a primary enemy.

30:48So, pre -satellite imagery, we really wanted to cozy up the Pakistanis so we have you two bases, but then there are different technology changes. And before we get facilities in Iran, we want this listening post in Bada Bar, but technology will eventually change. And then for a while, we truly want the Pakistanis to get the mail through to China when we're trying to break China out of diplomatic isolation and then cooperate against the Soviet Union and Pakistan delivers the mail. But then we set up an alternate set up in Paris, go through our embassies that way, and Pakistan is again irrelevant.

31:25And then when Russia's in Afghanistan, Pakistan is essential to get A to insurgents, to cause the Russians trouble. And then of course when we're in Afghanistan, we really wanna cooperate with the Pakistanis. And that works until we cap Osama bin Laden without telling Pakistanis in their territory, a bot a bad and then relations are really not so great. And so it's a very bumpy ride. And in these periods when we really need the Pakistanis, we don't pay attention to human rights or the really big one, nuclear proliferation. And so the proliferation is pretty steady. So if you look at, after the United States having trouble negotiating all this so that whatever you do in the short term doesn't wreck you in the long term, but in order to get to the long term, of course, you've got to go through the short term.

32:18So after the U2 crash in Russia, we're going to shut down, and the Pakistanis are having a heart attack about that. That's when the Pakistanis look to cultivating more better relations with China, because the US relationship is just too potentially costly, and the Americans cut off the military aid. And then when the Pakistanis are being very nice about delivering the mail for Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to line up invitations in Beijing, the United States is ignoring a humanitarian nightmare because all of this, that coincides with the 1971 Bangladesh war for independence. So let me explain what that is to you.

33:01So Pakistan was holding presidential elections. The dominant ethnic group in Pakistan are Punjabis. Sometimes the Bouteho family, I think they're Cindy, but anyway, generally speaking, particularly the army, the Punjabis dominate. Bengalis live in Bangladesh. They won the election. And the Punjabis are furious. So they send the army to start butchering people in East Pakistan to overturn the election. So there are refugees pouring into India. So this is the backdrop of what is going on there. And for anyone who wasn't in the know, the United States is saying nothing about this. The United States, there's this massive humanitarian crisis.

33:44The United States got nothing to say. The United States has something to say about everything. But it had to do with, this is the moment that Nixon is trying to get himself invited to Beijing so that he can talk to Mao about cooperating with the Chinese to over extend the Soviets in the Cold War, which is ultimately what we do, and it's very important to win the Cold War, and this is integral to this. But everyone else is looking, what on earth is going on? So you have Nixon's doing the mediation in the background. We got refugees flying all over the place. India comes the United States and says, look, you need to tell the Chinese not to intervene in this thing.

34:23And the Indians also say, you need to bring this up at the UN, the human rights stuff, because India is literally getting millions of refugees trying to flee this mass. And the United States won't do any of that. And it gets even better. The United States has the gall to blame the Indians for the war. Dream on. So, Indira Gandhi is just furious at this one. And so, the United States had wished that India would see spring a nonaligned in a line with the West. Oh, well, they see spring nonaligned, all right. They sign a military pact with Russia over this. and then they upgrade their relationship with Vietnam, which totally upsets the United States.

35:03And it gets even better. They shut down Indians. They won't give scholars any visas to come to India to study India. So you wonder why US universities didn't have any Indian studies programs. It's all about this. So that explains what is going on with all of that. Total myths. Meanwhile, but for Pakistan, And that's all this is going on. The Chav ran falls in, I think it's like February 1979, and then the Russians invade into Raid Afghanistan in December 1979. And it's suddenly Pakistan is totally essential once again. And the Pakistanis are really getting sick of being kicked around. So when outgoing President Jimmy Carter offers them, I don't know, $400 million or something, This is Zia here going peanuts to the peanut farmer and the incoming Reagan administration then ups it to 3 .2 billion and that money gets funneled through the inter -service intelligence directorate.

36:08It's like the CIA plus plus plus in Pakistan and when you put that kind of money into that kind of bureaucracy you're gonna make them incredibly powerful and then they're the ones who decide how they're going to allocate money to insurgents in Afghanistan and I got it. There weren't any great choices but they're arming some really anti -Western folks in there. Probably some guy named El Sama, last name Bill Madden, but anyway I'm not sure the details on that one but it is going to have 9 -11 follow -on effects and also the Pakistan, the ISI is also taking some of that money and putting it into cashmere which is going to have real problems for India later on.

36:52So there are real ramifications for all of this of needing Pakistan, but actually what is happening anyway. And then throughout, there is the Pakistanis are getting closer and closer to building the bomb. So when the Russians go piling into Afghanistan, here's Spignou, Briginsky, Carter's National Security Advisor telling him, our security policy cannot be dictated by our non -proliferation policy. Really? I thought that was our security policy. And the problem with proliferation is it tends to be a one -way street, whereas Afghanistan has been anything but. And then here, Deng Xiaoping was in town and he told Cardi, well, you applaud your decision to basically toss all these proliferation human rights considerations for Pakistan and just arming them.

37:40No kidding, because the Chinese are providing the nuclear spare parts. So the United States isn't the only country to have trouble navigating this cutthroat billiards. The Pakistanis have their share of boomerangs. Just look how the wars were. So wars create incredible costs. So the 1965 war, the Pakistanis get exactly nothing. And the United States, Pakistan had been the largest aid recipient of the, I'm not sure I've got that right. But anyway, there are huge aid recipients from the United States. Well, after this war, we're not so interested. So that's a lot of money down the tubes. And then in the 1971 war, great guys, you lose Bangladesh, which by the way, has over half your population.

38:26So the Pakistan is no longer the most populous Muslim country, Indonesia is. And if you look at the Cargo war in 1999, this is when Pakistan tries to, again, go below the line of control in Kashmir to try to take some more of Kashmir back. Pakistan has to cross right back and then it gets sanctioned for all of this. So none of these words have actually worked out very well for Pakistan. And then if you think about it, Indian Pakistan are natural trade partners. So if you take all these wars and just add up all the costs and then think of the opportunity cause. If Pakistan had been able to take this money and spend it on road systems, on education, and then all the lost trade, it gives you a sense of the real cost of all of this.

39:14Okay, well, those are Pakistan's problems. India has its own problems. Here you've got Indira Gandhi and Richard Nixon. They really didn't like each other. I mean, look at her. She looks as if she's just been fed bad fish and he looks like he served it up. And they just, they cannot abide by each other. So in the 1940s, when Kashmir is erupting, And Deroghondi thinks, well, no, it's Nayruradad, thinks that the United States should be supporting India because it's secular and it's democracy. And the United States is appalled during the Korean War when India remains non -aligned instead of supporting the United States because it's secular and democratic.

39:56And the Pakistanis are totally outraged because they're looking at this go, okay, these Indians are non -aligned. And we're aligned. We're taking these risks for a Peshawar and stuff with the U2s. And you're helping these people who are about to ally with the Soviet Union. Who are you kidding? So it's a total mess. So the Indians have their own self -inflicted blows. Nehru and his very controversial but his devoted advisor, Krishna Menon and his daughter in Derogati were really good at making these totally insulting remarks to American VIPs. Okay, it hits the target without a doubt, but the ego that has just been hit is huge.

40:37And like an elephant is not about to forget. And meanwhile, Pakistan in contrast is just being this welcoming host. So the United States is going in India and Pakistan is better. And it makes really bad trend lines for India because in the 1962 war, the United States supported India. In 1965 war, it's neutral. In 1971 war, it supports Pakistan. That's not great. And then India's own very heavy -handed treatment of solutions to the insurgency of Kashmir. It doesn't make that thing go away. It just gets worse. So they have their own problems. China also has its problems with the interaction. It's complicated.

41:13So on the one hand, on the Sino -Indian War, absolutely China gets the territory. But at what cost? You've got this permanent enemy forever. And as opposed to a teaming up with them, And if they teamed up, they actually would have had incredible leverage for what the global order is going to look like. But that's just not to be. And moreover, if you look at the 1971 war, after the United States won't help with China, India is going, okay, I think we need nuclear weapons, because then we'll be able to protect ourselves against China. And after that war, when Pakistan's lost over half its population, it has to deal with Indian population and territorial just overwhelming superiority, the Pakistan is going to be I think we need nuclear weapons in order to solve this problem.

41:59So it's a proliferation all over the place. But as a result of the 1971 war, where the Pakistan tries to overturn the elections, here you have an Indian defense analyst, Siromanium saying, the Pakistani decision to overturn its elections by deploying the Army to East Pakistan gave Indian opportunity, the like of which will never come again. And what they did is they armed in surgeons in East Pakistan, then sent the conventional army in, and that was it for Pakistan in East Pakistan over. The interaction for Russia works a little better. For Russia and India, it's really quite a good relationship.

42:40What Russia offers to India, not only military and economic aid, but also very useful vetoes on the UN Security Council. India does not want plebiscites and cashmere that it might lose, so it gets, That's the Soviet Union to veto those things. So there are no plebiscites. And then as India is trouncing Pakistan in the 1970s more, 31 war, and the United States wants them to halt. India no way. India wants to finish the job. So it gets the Soviet Union to veto that one. And India does indeed finish the job. And meanwhile for Russia, India is really useful. It's a good counterbalance for China. So there's this rather a beautiful relationship.

43:18They have very cordial relations. Okay. So I think I've now covered the playing field, right? And I've covered the players and teams, and they're problems with interacting, that's very difficult. Now for some of the plays and the instruments of national power, and here's the menu of choices, you can start with the light items, diplomacy, public support, and denial of public support. You can move into more expensive things down the menu. Okay, for one of the things you can do is help negotiate a really useful treaty, which the United States did. It broke this India's water treaty of 1960. It's the only time that I know of, maybe you all know of something, where Indian Pakistan has signed an agreement to the massive benefit of both of them.

44:07What does this agreement do? You can see it's a really dense river system, both India and Pakistan need to irrigate to do that. But efficiently you need dams and both of them were poor and didn't have the dams. They were going to cost a billion dollars. The United States was willing to kick in half that money if they would both sign the treaty and no terrorist event or anything derailed it. So they signed it and this treaty has been operating some of these dams ever since to enormous benefit of both countries. Does the United States get any enduring gratitude from either one of them doing this?

44:39No. Zip. Okay. Okay, next one is the United States tried to exercise diplomacy into convince the Pakistanis and Indians to settle their differences, and it was a total flop. And because if you're going to try to befriend both Indian Pakistan, you wind up becoming the enemy of one or the other. And the United States, this diplomacy was based on certain false assumptions, which are One, that India and Pakistan could be cajoled into settling their differences, and their ideas, anyone who's so stupid as to think that is crazy. And if you're like, well, one of the origins of these differences, partition was brutal.

45:21So the British colonized the Indians of subcontinent, and then they left in 1947, and they left really rapidly so that there was no time to set up any institutional framework and also you're talking millions of people. Pakistan is going to be one thing and then India is going to be the other. Hindus are just flea and Sikhs are fleeing out of Pakistan and Muslims are fleeing out of India going back and forth and millions are killed while this is going on. So this is the origin, at least the modern origin of why Pakistanis and Indians are so bitter. In addition, the United States thought, well, surely the China threat is going to make the Indians come around and realize this not -aligned stuff's nonsense.

46:14Not quite. When India, not, what is it? Aligned. It aligns with Russia, not the United States. So that doesn't remotely work out the way the United States wanted. And then the United States thought, well, hey, we in the West were rich. We give Indians and Pakistanis all this aid. This will force them to be nice to us and be less nice to the Communist. Wrong. Indian Pakistan are really astute and they get lots of aid from everybody. So when the great powers do align, Russia, China, us, or at least two of those along, then you can actually get stuff done. So that's when you get the Tashkant agreement for the 1965 war.

46:55There's the United States and Russia, both on India and Pakistan to cease and to cease and stop blowing each other off the map. And also in the Cargill conflict, when Pakistan is yet again trying to resolve Kashmir by invading and then gets itself into trouble. And this guy, Nawaz Sharif, who is the head of Pakistan, he always gets on a plane with his family It looks like he's coming into exile and he's trying to fly into the United States. The United States go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do you think you're doing? And it says, you're not coming in here until you admit that you crossed the line of control and then you knew to get right back.

47:33And so he agrees to sign the Washington Agreement to go right back, but it's absolutely humiliating to, for the Pakistan, he's going, oh yeah, we went south of the line of control and then, well, I didn't work out. So now we have to go right back. He had gone to China already and pleaded his case to the Chinese and they told him to get right back because There was a lot of nuclear saber rattle and going on and the Chinese were not interested in nuclear war over this So Pakistan had the choice of okay If I didn't if if I didn't get by your Lonsum or Crossback so they cross back and there were other cases in the interco war period when the Great Powers cooperated and tamped things down like terrorists incidents in New Delhi and in Mumbai that didn't go anywhere because the Great Powers told the Indian and the Pakistanis to just dial it back.

48:25All right, another thing you can do is to publicly support someone. And this is what goes on with Goa, which is a Portuguese colony. The Indians wanted it back. The Portuguese said, no way you cannot have it back. and the Indians took it back and the United States supported Portugal. Why? It's a NATO ally and we have very important bases in Portugal. So we kept the bases, but we made the Indians really angry. And there are other areas of public support or are not criticizing people publicly. For instance, in the 1971 Bangladesh War, when the United States refuses to support India by telling China don't enter this place.

49:04But of course, it was December, so the road system would have been a little rough to even try that. But it made the Indians mad. Or if you think during the Cold War, so with Nehru, it's the 1956 Hungarian crisis, where the Russian sent tanks into Hungary. The Indians don't say anything about that. There's a Berlin crisis in 1961, where the Russians are pretty rough. And the Indians don't say anything about that. And then in Derogand, he comes in and one of the Russians sent tanks into Chekzvakia in 1968. the Indians say nothing and then when the Russians invade Afghanistan 79 again the Indians say nothing So this is one way that you make your allies feel better about things Another thing is if you're one of the five veto holders of the at the UN Security Council You can do your public support that way and I've already mentioned these Russian vetoes on cashmary plebiscites that the Indians truly didn't want to happen or short -circening the Indian offensive in Bangladesh.

50:00So that's what Russia did for India, and it was a very valuable thing for them. You can also put money where your mouth is, economic aid. And it's interesting. The United States provided far more economic aid than either the Russians or the Chinese, but still both Pakistanis and Indians prefer China and Russia respectively. And some of the say was really important And during the Bihar famine in 1967, the United States sent 20 % of its weak crop to India. It was worth $1 .5 billion. That's not something to be sneezed at. For I don't know, was it 90 million people? There's a lot of people who might have starved to death.

50:41And that didn't work out well at all. Because Johnson at that point, President Johnson at that point was so mad at the Indians, because from his point of view, they were cuddling up to the North Vietnamese, and the Vietnam War wasn't going well for Johnson. So he was furious. So he probably divided the aid, but he did it always at the last minute, ship to mouth. And Indira Gandhi was furious. He said, I don't ever want us ever to have to beg for food again. And she never did. So the United States got no gratitude for, or enduring anything. Oh, in a whole other piece of it is India's, is not subject to famines anymore.

51:19And part of it's the green revolution and who does that? It's the Ford and Rockefeller foundations who figure out the different strains of grains that you want to grow. And does the United States get any credit for that? No. Zip. And here is Krishna Menon who is Nehru's controversial advisor saying, well, we want to encourage a little competition between the donors. And they did. And India just, even in Dharagandhi who hates Nixon, she's racking up the aid. Your Secretary of State John Foster is saying, well, concerning Indian and Pakistan, it's difficult to help one without making the enemy other.

51:57And of course, the United States tried to help both and angered both of them. Amazing. So another instrument of national power is military aid. It is even more difficult to calibrate than the economic aid. So you can see with the Pactomania event where Eisenhower is building these bilateral relations and treaty organizations to contain the Russians. Formerly, there had been no Cold War in South Asia. But once Eisenhower allies with Pakistan, all of a sudden the Russians are in there too. So that's a bit of a boomerang. Another one. So when the United States provides military aid to Pakistan, that just drives India to seeking in alliance with Russia, which isn't exactly what the United States wanted.

52:45And then when the United States helps India right after the 1962 war with China, that alienates the Pakistanis, and they try to buddy -buddy with China, not remotely with the United States wanted to happen. And then when the United States provides aid to the ISI, the Inter -Services Intelligence Directorate, which is the Pakistanis and are funding things to get the Russians out of Afghanistan, they're also diverting it into So, Kashmir, so in 1989, this insurgency heats up, and it's remained heated ever since. And then you wind up with China providing nuclear help to the Pakistanis. So, it's difficult with these things.

53:26You get a short term thing, but then the long term thing that winds up may not be what you want at all. The other instrument, National Power, if you got one, is a carrier battle group. You can send one of those around, which is what the United States did. Here's enterprise. It was the United States's first nuclear propelled aircraft carrier. And so during the 71 war, the United States sent this into the Bay of Bangalore. The Russian sent some naval assets and no effect on that war. Pakistan lost, right? The Indians were furious. They just regarded this as an absolute threat. And how dare we do this anyway?

53:58And maybe it would have been better to have left Enterprise in their home port rather than doing this. And then of course there are sanctions in embargoes. The United States does this all the time. And if you look at the list of the times we're in bargaining stuff, so at partition, we're in bargaining everybody. And then during the 65 war, we're in bargaining everybody. And then as various people are making nuclear progress and different things, there are these embargoes that come and go. And the Pakistan is really mad because India does a test, an atomic test in 1974, and Pakistan doesn't do anything too much later.

54:36And then it's like, well, why are you sanctioning us on this nuclear stuff? The Indians have actually done this. We haven't. And so if you look at this chart, you can see where the ups and downs of these sanctions go. And clearly they didn't stop proliferation, because in 1998 you have these tit -for -tat nuclear atomic tests by both. And when the United States tries sanctioning, but then it's just too late. They've already tested the stuff. And so the United States basically gives up. And then after 9 -11, of course, we desperately need Pakistan again to deal with Afghanistan. So it's a complicated world out there.

55:14All right. So another instrument of national power is you can trade off your territory if you really want to. Most people don't. But the Pakistanis clearly did that in 1963. And we can all speculate on what they got. I mean, my hunch would be something to do with nuclear things, but hey, it's not as if this information is out there in the public, it isn't. Oh, another thing you can do is go fund me in search and see. So you can, and this is done by the United States, Russia, China, India, Pakistan. Think if you've got a country that you don't like that has some minority people that want to succeed.

55:53And so they're fighting there. Well, you can go fund that insurgency and then the one you don't like is pinned because they're going to be paying attention to that insurgency. And while they're pinned there, they can't probably do things elsewhere that you might care about. So this is the logic of what's going on. So the United States belatedly decided, let's help the Tibetans. And so the CIA is helping them between 57 and 61, but look at the dates. We did the road system, the road system, and Tibet's completed by 1957. It's too late. So all you do is get these people killed because the Chinese have got the road system all set up in there.

56:31So that doesn't exactly work. But for after the 62 war, all the way until 1979, when Deng Xiaoping calls it off, the The Chinese are funding insurgencies of, let's see, the Miso's, the Manipuri and the Nagga people all don't like different aspects of Indian rule and the Chinese are more than happy to stir that pot. And the really big pot to stir are the Naxalites. It's huge. And while as long as the Pakistanis who've got East Pakistan, they can stir some of that up. And by the way, these next lights are still there in India. They have not gone away. It's a serious part of India where they are.

57:15And then of course Pakistan's location right next to Kashmir means they can stir that forever. And the tragedy of what they become are frozen conflicts is the outside power if they are playing their cards, right? They're immoral cards, right? They're not bearing any of the costs. They're pinning someone they don't particularly like. All the costs are borne by the local population who are suffering horrendous deaths, lack of economic growth, you're just hearing warfare where you live. What a total disaster. So that's how it works. Another two complain at this game. So the Indians, according to the Pakistanis, have funded the Balakh people.

58:01They straddle Iran and Pakistan don't particularly like being told what to do. So apparently India's supposed to have put its finger on that scale. The other thing the Pakistani's accused Indians of doing is encouraging a pass -tune insurgency up north. And that would be a way of diverting Pakistani attentions from Kashmir. If they're totally busy with pass -tunes, they can do less in Kashmir. But the result of these things is people are becoming more and more bitter. The hatred is just spike. The economic growth isn't happening. poverty everywhere and it makes these problems more intractable, not less.

58:38So when I think about these, what I've frozen conflicts, there are a number of ones that you know about besides Kashmir, there's Korea, there's Palestine. So if you look at Kashmir, if I've got it right, so you fund that thing and then what's great from China's point of view, if Pakistan is doing that, India is frozen, that it can't do other things because it's constantly paying attention to what's going on in Kashmir as opposed to go, hmm, China, I don't know about this. And or in the Korean War back in the day, if things are all stirred up in Korea, China has to really pay attention to that.

59:21And it delays the rise of China. And in those days that benefited Russia, but these things can change over time as to who the beneficiary is. And then you can play this game and think about how it works in Palestine. And I'm no expert in that part of the world, but I think this frozen conflict veto player works that there are these veto players who are vetoing peace. Very easily. All you have to do is send a certain number of package bombs and peace is not going to happen. So, cut throw billiards. What can you take away from all this? Well, common enemies cannot be conjured. And so check out the alignments of who these common enemies are before you leave the parking lot.

1:00:07And figure it out for all possible players who might want to crash the party. Like, what's their primary objective? Who's their primary adversary? What primary theater are they truly interested in? And then you've got your hunches on how you think this is. And then you should reassess early and often to see if your assumptions are correct. And don't worry about changing your mind. Some people get really hung up about being wrong. Don't worry. Reassessing is a sign of strength. It's like, I got more information. I've changed my mind. Good thing. Don't double down on bad information. And then if you're looking into areas of the world that are ethnically diverse, where people have been at odds for a long time, expect veto players.

1:00:52And real difficulty in settling that matter out. And part of good strategy is recognizing certain, some problems it's not feasible to solve. And then we all have scarce resources. You can't do everything. Focus on those things where you think you can solve. But if the great power is aligned, things can happen. And the stories even better than that, that sure there are a few big powers. But the small and medium powers, if you add them all up, they are far, far, far, far, The aggregate, their aggregate wealth exceeds any one great power. So if the smaller powers agree on what they're up to, then the big powers have to pay attention and that's a positive thing.

1:01:38Before we move on to the interview, I just want to say a quick thank you to today's sponsor, Scale AI. The AI race is the Manhattan Project for the modern age. Whoever wins reshapes the balance of global power. That's why scale partners with the US government to fuel America's AI advantage through their data foundry. The Air Force, Army, Defense Innovation Unit, and Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office all trust scale to equip their teams with AI -ready data and the technology to build powerful applications. Scale recently introduced Defense Lama, scale's latest solution available for military personnel.

1:02:15With defense, Lama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. Whether through its work with the government or with businesses like OpenAI, Google Deep Mind, or Meta, scale is at the forefront of US AI innovation. If you're interested in learning more about how scale powers frontier AI capabilities go to scale .com slash Dwarkech. Alright, back to Sarah. So it seems like the lesson from this lecture, the big lesson, is we couldn't be allies with both Pakistan and India at the same time. We had to choose one.

1:02:50So which one should we have chosen? Well, our primary enemy was pretty much the Soviet Union for the duration of the Cold War. I mean, China was a problem, but the Soviets were the big problem. And so, Indian Pakistan never fit that bill. And so it had to do with whatever the problem of the day was and Pakistan had a very critical location and so we needed it for a whole bunch of things and you can see how that works. So while you need them, you pay a lot of money to them and presumably the money is worth it for them for the hassles of dealing with a difficult tenant. So that's how it worked. But nowadays the relationship with India is changing.

1:03:37In fact, it has changed because their big buddy, Russia, is, well, after the end of the Cold War, instead of being the big friend, it was the big nuisance, not so much for India, but for everybody else. And now for India, its primary avarice is China without a doubt. And the United States, I think, is looking that China poses the primary threat. And to the extent that both of them see it that way, that will make them a line. and Pakistan less so. It sounds like at the time it was right to choose Pakistan as the main ally for the United States. Well, we tried to choose India too, but yeah, we tried to do them simultaneously, but India's further south, right?

1:04:17And so for a long time before we got satellite imagery, you wanna have listening posts and things up in Pakistan. So India just simply doesn't have the location for that. So that was the original reason for interest in Pakistan. I want to better understand why the Soviet Union was such a charismatic example for countries that were decolonizing like India. I think go back and put yourself as a generation of what your life experience was. If your life experience was World War I, the total bitchery of it. So you're telling young men your age go, ah, you're in a trench. I want you to go up and over the edge onto oncoming machine gun fire.

1:04:58We know what's going to happen when that what happens right and they're literally in battles like the psalm They're losing hundreds of thousands people. I don't mean casualties. I mean I mean dead dead and so and then you have the great depression after words and Then add to it India has been colonized by a bunch of really opinionated white people right and transferring a lot of wealth out of India to England and And so you look at Marxism and boy, it sounds plausible, right? It sounds like these evil capitalists, they're just wasting lives. And surely this is the explanation. Now, the technicalities of Marx's labor theory of value don't actually turn to be accurate.

1:05:43It's not just labor that produces value. Like Silicon Valley, you understand what comes up here produces a tremendous amount of value. and Marxist theory doesn't recognize that. And so there are massive flaws in theory. And then when you put communism into practice, if you wanna have equality, which is what they wanted, if you're gonna have equality, you're not gonna have any liberty, right? Because in order to make it equal, you just expropriate and then you divvy it out to everybody and there's no liberty in that, right? And another piece about democracies in even flawed ones, even if they have a semi -free press, a lot of the icky news bubbles up, but in dictatorships it doesn't.

1:06:29So you compare the seamy sides of some democracies that aren't doing that well and then to the public, the PR thing that the dictatorships are presenting. So you can picture Nero of his generation, he's sick of British. Right? And so Fabian's socialism, he's not for killing lots of people to impose socialism. He has a much lighter touch than Stalin. One thing I was thinking about while you were mentioning the Gandhian neighborhood had a big problem with American segregation is at the same time in the 50s, by that point, over 10 % of the Soviet population had at some point been in the Gulags or are currently in the Gulags.

1:07:14And segregation is very bad. Goulogs are even worse. And it's the same proportion of the population that's been the Goulogs. Maybe people just didn't know about the Goulogs back then. I don't think communist let you know those things. Right? This is one for a lot of Russians, because we were, my husband and I, were in the Soviet Union in the 1988 -89 academic year. And that's early Gorbachev before everything totally falls apart. And there's no food. So there wasn't much food, but there was some food. And it was just as the Russians were suddenly being able to read in a fairly free press about the things that had happened and they were appalled about what had gone on under Stalin and they just hadn't realized all of it.

1:08:00One of the reasons that socialism was appealing to these decolonizing countries was because in the preceding decades, in the 20s to 40s, the Soviet Union actually had pretty good growth growth rates. And that those 20 years, their GDP went from 8 % to 18 % of world production. Was that just catch up growth? What was going on back then? Oh, Russia. Well, there was tremendous rebuilding after World War II. There's another piece. It was so weird when we were in Russia in 8889. Anything who was sold at the markets that came from somewhere else, they would market It's important, that means imported.

1:08:35So the idea, and I remember, I think this is really weird, because normally you would say, it's, I don't know, Hungarian, this and that or whatever. And I thought, ooh, this means that anything from somewhere else is better than what we got. That it's a really bad sign. And they had like a, what I would call a donut empire. Normally when you think of an empire, Mother Central is the most developed part. And then there's the periphery where all the natural resources are taken away. That it was an inverted empire. Russia is the donut, the rich places are places like Czechoslovakia, and Poland had been much richer places.

1:09:08And so the Russians, like surfowners, are sucking in all the wealth from these places. And I think that's another reason why the shattering of the Soviet Union, when they lost all of their inserved Eastern Europe, why it was such a mess for Russia, they did not realize, they still don't realize, the degree to which they were living off the wealth produced in the West, the European portions of Russia that since became independent. Who was a last -so -leader who, like, truly believed in communism? Gorbachev was a true believer. He did not believe it was possible to take a U -turn on the road to communism so that when he was doing his reforms, it was to improve communism, make it better.

1:09:55So he absolutely believed in it. When you started your career in Soviet studies and you're trying to figure out like what's going on in the Kremlin all the time, what is the key to figure out Kremlinology? What is the key to figuring out what's happening in the Polyburea? Well, what I did for my doctoral dissertation, so I wrote a history of the Sino, so well, the Russo -Chinese border when it was figured out, which is between 1858 and 1924, this when all this territory went. And what I did is, so most of this isn't Soviet, right? It's 17 to 24. It's a Soviet part. But you go to archives in Russia, you see what they'll let you see.

1:10:33This is when you could go to those archives. They're closed now. And I went to Beijing, saw the archives you were allowed to see. And then in Nanjing, there were some other ones there. And then in Taiwan, the ones they would allow you to see. And then Japan, the ones they would allow you to see. And they're all lying about different things, are covering up different things. So it's a jigsaw puzzle. you sort of put it, you put it together that way. So that was how I did it. And also for the whole Cremlin, Cremlinologist, is pay attention to what dictators say, because they've got to communicate at some level to their own populations.

1:11:10They quite often tell you exactly what they want to do. And you think, that's insane. Who would do that? Well, hello, hello. So read what they have to say and read what others have to say. Then you need to read things in the Russian language. So I read a lot of things. You just read more broadly than whatever your topic is, because the unknown unknowns is what you're after. One of the things that are truly important and you have no idea about. And the only way you get to those is archives or reading broadly where you bump into things. And that turns out to be important. When you're giving the lecture, it seemed like these primary adversaries.

1:11:47Whoever it is, it's like a very prominent and there's some like deep reason why it has to be this way. But if you look at the side of the Soviet split, it's just like they're both communist, they're both Leninist parties, and they have this falling out over, there were a couple of things you mentioned, but it's not clear why somebody has to be somebody else's primary adversary, why you can't turn that around. Well, you can, but Russia and China have these territorial differences, and the issues I listed there of fighting to the last Chinese in the Korean War, Mao didn't really like that. There are a lot of Chinese who die in the Korean War, where the Russians sort of get them in there, and then you're stuck.

1:12:25You have to, for prestige reasons, stay there. And the really big one, I didn't discuss in any detail. So Stalin's really worried about a two -front war, Nazis in the West and Japanese in the East. And so he brokers the second United Front between the Chinese National Center, Shanghai Shack and the Chinese Communist under Mao at a place called Xi 'an in late 1936. And so it's called the Xi 'an incident where Shankai Shek was reputedly kidnapped and up there. But really what's going on is it's setting up the second United Front and then the Japanese go ballistic. And that's when they invade all the down the coast and up the Yangsar River.

1:13:11and that means the Chinese are finding Japanese for you. The Japanese are not gonna launch into Siberia. So that works for Stalin, but the Chinese realized this and they're not appreciated. But then they held the communists get into power in China, right? Like you think they'd be grateful for that? No, he wanted to divide it, China. He's telling me, oh, stop it, the Yangs, stop it, you need breathing space there, and mouse. And keeps on going. If you're the president of the Secretary of State, And you're looking at this where there's these inter -reaving systems of alliances and you give some guy aid because you need something and pisses everybody else off.

1:13:46How the hell are you supposed to keep track of this? Do they have these matrices that you got up there? We have so many wonderful people working in the state department. I've met a number of them because they come at their students at the war college. You should be proud of all the people who work for the Department of State. They're all of these different experts, different parts of the world that get sent around Hither and Yon. very thoughtful people. Also, I've read in the archives many CIA reports because I've gone to these presidential archives starting with the Truman administration all the way up to Bush senior.

1:14:18As you get to the more recent stuff, less of it's been declassified. So I've read most of the CIA reports I've read for earlier periods, whether it's been declassified, it's impressive the level of analysis. And I know that the CIA has several p, there's the analytical part of it. And then there's the send people out to do. We aren't even gonna talk about what they're, which is completely different. But they're very fine analysts. And then we have like the Department of Agriculture has very fine analysts about agriculture of the whole world. So we have a tremendous amount of expertise. And the other thing that presidents get and also the high level bureaucrats get are these daily reports where they're very short because they have to be about what's going on everywhere in the world that people think is important for them to know.

1:15:09So there are tremendous number of smart, well -educated people trying to get information to presidents, secretaries of states, and things. And then you have all these regional desks where there's, I don't know, a camera, exactly. I don't know the organization chart of the State Department, but you can look at it by region of the world. People work there and provide this. So there are wonderful experts that are working on this. You mentioned in the lecture that if China and India had figured out a way to work together, the world order could have looked completely different. It's spelled out the counterfactual for us.

1:15:41How would it have been different? I spent the grand told of a week in India was a trip on the way back from Australia, and that was the amount of time we had. But we went into the Mahatma Gandhi Museum in New Delhi, and there's a whole piece of it where Shankar Shek is giving him things. and it became really clear that Shanghai Shack had a really good relationship with India, deep respect for India. The shared desire of, we want to be independent. We don't want Japanese running around our country. We don't want about our true Westerners running around. We share this with India. And so I think if you get Shanghai Shack winning the Chinese civil war and things, you might have had them team up and had a much more productive relationship.

1:16:25That's interesting because often you think of like when you hear a nationalist you think they're the ones that are really interested in territorial disputes But in fact, you know, they wouldn't have cared about Tibet or something Well, next time you're new Delhi go check out the museum But when I was there was like 20 years ago, but I remember being pressed and go wow There's all and then when Gandhi was assassinated. This is Mahatma not the Endero who's also assassinated no relation that the Chinese, the nationalists sense all sorts of condolences and different things. So yeah, there could have been a different outcome.

1:17:00Well, I wonder if the worst thing about the non -align movement was that because they wouldn't fall under anyone else's nuclear umbrella. They wouldn't lie with the great power that had nukes. In order to keep up deterrence, they had to build nukes themselves. And so then you have this nuclear proliferation. And that was like, it's really important to get people allied with one great power, even if it's not you, just to prevent the New Extreme going wide. I think the 1962 war made Nehru realize that non -alignment was a non -starter. And that's for the reasons you're talking about, it's like, okay, we just got eaten alive by the Chinese.

1:17:36Okay, we need big friend, and we probably need some big missiles eventually. And it's not immediately. The Indians don't come around that we absolutely need nuclear weapons until the Bongo Dash war when China has become more of a threat. By 1971, like, the nearer really think that the Soviet Union might still win the Cold War. Why did you - Wait, Nate was dead in like 64, so it's his daughter. But when did they become allies with the Soviet Union? Well, the official alliance, I'm just defining when an ally, I made up one of the alliances. So I would say it is the security pact that in Deroghondi signs in 1971.

1:18:18Right. So at that point, did they really thought this over you and could have won the Cold War? Like why didn't they just choose the winner in Rick's thing? Oh, oh, well I remember the Cold War vividly. We felt we were losing it most of the way through. And why is that? Well, we always felt, A, because the propaganda, right? Because they're all living beautifully, and then they're quite good, they're very good at propaganda. So the United States had massive racial problems. Think about 1960s. Martin Luther King are pointing out hideous problems with this country. Civil rights demonstrations everywhere, anti -Vietnam war demonstrations everywhere.

1:18:59The women's movement, the environmental movement, there are loads of unhappy people pointing out all of these problems, which is a good thing because then the United States starts working on fixing some of these problems. Of course, they're not fixed, but there's improvement on them. Whereas in Russia, no one can travel so you can't see how unbelievably poor they are. And so you go to Moscow and you think, well, this is a plausible city. Well, there is only one plausible city in the place. Or maybe it's two St. Petersburg, or what, it's with Leningrad in those days. So people didn't realize. But yeah, we felt we were losing the Cold War.

1:19:36In fact, at the very end of the Cold War, so I was in the Bush archives. So Gorbachev's in and Bush, Reagan, and then Bush, I think, well, he just looks like another one of these people. And we're not going to take the propaganda seriously. And then they sort of go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. And then it's in 88 where Bush is going, whoa, maybe it is going to end. And then the United States teams up with Helmut Kohl of Germany to do the fastest, get the Russians out of Eastern Europe ever. But Gorbachev is the one who wants to cooperate with West. One thing you should know about warfare, you think the winners win it?

1:20:17No, actually it's when the losers decide they've had enough. That's when a war ends. Otherwise it doesn't end. So the Russians got sick of it and they quit. I wonder if there's a lesson in here for what people call the Cold War with China today where people think, you know, it's really competitive China might have a bigger economy than us too. And really, if you actually got to see what's happening day to day in China, maybe you might decide like the Soviet Union, there's a bunch of things broken with it. They're not really competitive in the long run economically. And so we're going to win. Well, I don't know when lose, but if they have a much very low per capita standard of living, do the math.

1:20:51You go, yeah, they've got a big economy because they're not a third of the world's population Now, but it's huge. And divide the 1 .3 billion, whatever it is, you come up with a low number for per capita standard living. And I think for human beings, that's the number that matters, right? What is your family income look like? So they got a long way to go on that one. I want to go back to a Kissinger in 1971. So because they want and somebody to like send the message along to China to open up, they shut up about Pakistan's genocide and Bangladesh were numbers very, but somewhere between 300 ,000 three million people died.

1:21:36It's awful. Hundreds of thousands of people were raped. I know they didn't have email back when there was no other way to get the message across. You have to have better genocide in order to get a message across them out. Well, first of all, the Cold War is a misnomer because the bloodshed in the Third World was horrendous. And I will eventually compile the stats on this, not that they're great stats, but it's obscene numbers. I think Congo had a civil war where literally over 10 million people died, and that's only just one of these things. So, the United States cannot deal with all of these.

1:22:13And if you think about it, the time when the United States was really quite idealistic, the Iraq war goes in, think it's a great democracy in this place. It's a massive civil war and then we're blamed for it. So be careful about where you intervene because you may not be able to stop a thing and then you'll get blamed for what's going on. So, Bangladesh is horrible, but it is not our pride. You will get overextended if you intervene in everything under the plan. Also, there's a question of why the United States or anyone should be doing all of it. It shouldn't be through the UN and other things.

1:22:52The really key thing was winning the Cold War. So, Nixon absolutely did prioritize getting the mail through to Mao. He did. So 1971, good ol' Henry Hack, as he's known in the archives, Henry A. Kissinger. He gets his secret trip in there, lines up Nixon's trip in 72, and then it's gonna over extend Russia in the Cold War. Why? Because with this Sino -Soviet split in all the rest of it, Russia has to militarize its entire border with China. It's already militarized its entire border with Europe, right? Think about this. And you're talking about mechanized nuclear armed forces with all the tanks and everything else that goes with them.

1:23:36It is not cheap. Imagine if the United States had to do this on our Canadian and the Mexican borders. Bankrupting, right? And we're a lot richer than they are. So we team up with China. We provide them all kinds of naval technology, which is not going to bother us. They give us listening posts. Again, we love listening posts. You know, right up on the Russian border and the Russians are scared stiff of the Chinese. The Chinese with good military equipment, that wouldn't be a good thing for them. When I was president and he built these bases in Pakistan to have the YouTube plans and go to Russia, we had bases in Turkey, we had bases in Japan, we had bases in a lot of other places in Europe.

1:24:16This like marginal increase in coverage. Was it really worth breaking off the alliance with India or like, kissing off India? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, India. I think at the time people felt we absolutely have to know, be able to cover everything. And I don't know the details of where they had their nuclear, this and that, stored and things and all their testing areas. But I'm sure you needed to have the entire place covered. And so, yeah, it was very serious on these nuclear weapons. They can reach the United States. So we had better know what's going on. So new books about the Cold War are coming out all the time, new books about World War two are coming out all the time.

1:24:58People writing like thousands of papers about this stuff all the time. How much new stuff are we learning every year? All these scholars are still setting this up. What kinds of new things do we keep on our thing? Well, I'm personally sick of writing about World War II. I've done enough of it. And so I'm personally not going in that direction. And yeah, it's endless. I think for a lot of the books of these narrative feel good histories like, I'll tell you about some regiment and all the heroic stuff they did. And it's nice light airplane reading. A lot of people like that stuff. I personally like things where I learn things that are conceptual that I can then apply to other problems which those books wouldn't help me, but that's just me.

1:25:39How did you decide which are the good history books in which aren't? You're just on Amazon. You can't like read it. Yeah, you're just like looking at Amazon. Well, it's hard. What I would say is give it a book, the 32nd test. And what's that? If the book's about another part of the world, flipped to the bibliography, which you can do on Amazon, and zinc through there for about 30 seconds, and see is there anything in the language of the country in question in the bibliography? Like how much? And if there is zip, I would toss it. I mean, how much, I'm curious, how many of you would be interested in reading a book that says it knows everything about the United States and there's not a single English source cited.

1:26:19I think you'd regard the book as garbage. And that Americans do this routinely and it's a problem with political science degrees where it would be very easy to require anyone who's gonna do a specialty in comparative politics or IR, international relations, that hey, you need to pass a language test and don't try Spanish if you think you're gonna talk about the Middle East, right? If it's going to be Middle East, it'd better be something like Arabic, Farsi, Turkic, Hebrew, and better yet, if you're really going to be a serious Middle Eastern expert trial for. Right? I mean, that would be true expertise.

1:26:57And where you can read books in the language and get what other people are thinking about things. So that would be my basic. is find people who aren't playing half -quart tennis all about Team America, get to the other side of the net and try and figure out what other people are thinking. Doesn't mean you have to agree with them, but it means you are making the effort to see where they're coming from. During the Cold War, all these proxy wars was it good that we were just letting off steam in these smaller ways and therefore we could avoid the bigger, great war? It wasn't letting off steam, it was horrendous.

1:27:32I don't know the answer. In fact, my current project is a history of the Cold War, and I've read a lot of things, and I will compile a lot of tables on things like this, or just putting the data together. It'll take a long time. But then when you get the table, it'll be a really quick, really quick skim. So if you've got a civil war turning somewhere in Latin America or somewhere in Africa, so no one's 80, it's fine. Then if you have Russia puts its finger on the scale, then of course we're going to put our finger on the scale So that means the Russians are providing industrial -age weapons. We're providing industrial -age at weapons.

1:28:12What happens? casualties could go through the roof and that's what went on through the Cold War and then there there's magical inter -Ko -war period when all that stopped and that's when you get this tremendous growth across the third world because there aren't these insurgencies just tearing up wealth and then you could see recently look at North Africa. It's a mess right now right? It's both ISIS or whatever it is in there is doing its stuff and then you have Wagner group or whatever they are in there and the other Chinese further south and everybody's feeling everything. You got similar all over the place and then that means military age males want to get out because people kill you right or that either Dragoon you into fighting where you don't want to fight or they'll just kill you outright.

1:28:59So they're all trying to get into boats to Europe, which is destabilizing. It's a mess. We're in the second coal war and this is part of it. What was the biggest, when you're doing this project in the coal war, what were the biggest miscalculations that people were making? Were there two suspicious on the other side? Were there not suspicious enough? Were they too concerned about basis or were they missing? I need to think more about that because I think they're probably all sorts of things. And also, it's impossible to know the right thing to do. And then afterwards, when a pansy guy, well, that was a mess.

1:29:28It's hard to know. But I think it was probably a terrible mistake when Eisenhower thought, here's the Supreme Command Allied Commander of World War II, who knows all about hot wars, doesn't want to do that. When the United States deposes Mosodec in Iran in 1954, I can see Eisenhower's view is, Hey, we're just deposing one guy and we're going to avoid the Russians taking oil fields here, etc. And he thinks that's a better trade off. Well, the Iranians have never forgotten that. They're furious to this day. Wouldn't you be, if you're Iranian? Mosetech was democratically elected. Or another time actually in Vietnam, we didn't push the South Vietnamese to hold elections because we knew Ho Chi Minh would win.

1:30:21He was the only national figure in Vietnam. So the United States is all about free elections. The Vietnamese could have run a free election and Ho Chi Minh went to one. That was our assessment that he would win. Okay, well if you're for free elections, it means you don't get the outcome you want, you. And I wonder if that wasn't a terrible mistake, because if Vietnamese actually can't stand the Chinese, so they were always gonna be a counterbalance to the Chinese. But due to the McCarthy era, we purged all of our China experts, all these children of missionaries who were great to be able to China less so about Vietnam, but at least it's a related cultural group.

1:30:59So we had gotten rid of all that expertise in the McCarthy era. So we're running blind in Asia. What you just mentioned about the fact that we would curtail all kinds of elections you can hold in these countries. after Germany and Japan surrendered, if they tried to elect another fascist party, we wouldn't have been like, all right, well, that's what you guys voted for. They're in charge now. And so, why is the principle different than Vietnam? Because the South Vietnamese would have voted from as well. We've just been fighting a massive war with Japan and Germany. There's no way we're going to let the Germans and Japanese decide anything initially.

1:31:38But what we did do for both Germany, West Germany and Japan, is we did our best to set up democratic institutions that within a cycle or two, they're making their decisions whom they're electing. We are not choosing their leaders. And it was a very generous piece. It was realizing in World War I, ostracizing Germans, ostracizing Russians, it probably does it? You need to bring them back into the family of nations because they're on the planet, they're not leaving the planet. And the generous peace with Germany, look at them, they're the most wonderful allies as are the Japanese, they're terrific.

1:32:19During the Cold War, the USSR is constantly funding these communist parties around the world. And these parties are doing exactly their bidding, whatever Stalin says they'll do. I don't know what that is. Yeah, feel free to clarify. But it doesn't feel like any other country managed to pull this off. There's not like an American party in the French parliament that does exactly what the president would tell them to do. How did they pull this off? I don't think it's that they did exactly what anyone wanted. What the communists have is a really powerful doctrine for how you go from nothing to something in a failing state, how you start out with a bunch of people on some campus.

1:33:00Now literally starts out as a junior librarian in Beijing University. So I don't know, he's there with the librarians, I don't know the ladies, who knows what it is. It's probably guys in those days. And then he's turning these people into cadres and eventually to grill as an eventually conventional army. But they have a really good program that works the world over. And it's very effective for taking power within a broken state, it's lousy at producing prosperity thereafter. Right? And you'll get the Communist Party today. They're really good at staying in power. For a while there under Dungshiao Pangit ran in parallel what the economic reforms needed to produce wealth and what the party needed in order to be more powerful.

1:33:46But now that's running across purposes. Because for the party to maintain its monopoly, well, all these much more educated Chinese these aren't going to be interested in that anymore. And so it's time to lock those people up and then you're going to have trouble with keeping your economic growth rate going. Mau dies and immediately things improve China experiences growth trajectory. Stalin dies and Krustsch has not a teddy bear, but at least you're like cut down the Gulak system. And so it does seem like if you have it especially bad dictator, you do have this sort of regression to the mean where the next guy's probably not as bad as the worst guy who's ever been in charge of the country.

1:34:26And I wonder if that implies that, you know, if we got rid of Kim Jong -un or the Ayatollah or something. The next guy probably won't be as bad. I don't know, but I think iconic leaders like Mao and Stalin, they were canonized by winning their wars. Stalin by winning World War II, the Russians revered him for doing that. And they had experienced every Russian experienced World War II. It was central to their lives to win that thing. So Stalin is canonized for doing that. And now the man who puts Humpty Dumpty Back together again when no one else could and then fights the great powers, Kappel's powers to a stalemate in Korea, he's again been canonized.

1:35:10Whoever comes after them is not going to have that level of prestige. It's just going to devolve that period. And then for the successors of Stalin, they were sick of being terrified about whether they're gonna be perched. He kept putting bullets in people's heads, like Vladimir Putin. You do this long enough that people are horrified and don't wanna have it. They don't wanna live that way anymore. So there's that piece of it as well. I guess I'm not sure the answer is, like if you're on that tomorrow, that Putin is dead, Do you use your estimation that things are going to improve or get worse?

1:35:46Um, my estimation in that kind of system is there's going to be a leadership struggle. That's the problem with dictatorships. They're absolutely brittle and that's what's wonderful about having elections. You just every four years or whatever it is, you have an election, whoever it is, it's going to be whatever it is. But in these dictatorships, no one knows. And so everyone, so Stalin literally, I think, he didn't show up at breakfast. No one wanted to open the door. And then probably they decided, hmm, let's not open the door. Let's just let that door stay shut for a few days. And then when it starts stinking, well, no, perfect.

1:36:25So that's how he dies. So you're going to be guaranteed a free -for -all. So if there's a free for all for something like Ukraine They will probably have to call that off because they got a focus on Moscow That's what happened with the Korean War. Why is the Korean War and Stalin dies Russians wanted over because they got all kinds of unrest. It's various prisons in their own Gulags or having riots. They're having I think some Bulgaria maybe East Germany as well They got problems, so they don't want to deal with the Korean War anymore. It's like, who cares, forget about it. So you would be guaranteed that, which might be highly beneficial for Ukraine, but knowing Putin, he's an evil man, he'll probably stick around forever.

1:37:11While you're starting this called, the word, history, how close to get to a nuclear bomb, some people argue that there were all these close -in decisions, it basically should have happened almost in the sense of like odds. And some people say like, I wasn't mad, I mean, we mad work, it wasn't going to happen. Why would they risk a first strike? Oh, it's a miracle we're all here. I think in the Cuban Missile Crisis, it came down to Soviet sub -Cab. They had like the political commissar and the military commissar. I have to reread this, but I don't know whether you needed a vote of two out of three to launch a nuclear weapon or whether one guy was senior and you have to get him to come along.

1:37:49I have to read the data. but basically someone put their foot down in the Soviet sub -Nottal launch a nuke. Okay, we lucked out of that one. And then I think under Reagan there was an able archer missile test, or we're doing a war game or something. And the Russians looked at it and thought it was the real thing for a while. And that just scared the bejesus out of them. And I think it was after that that Ronald Reagan started moderating his rhetoric. He's like, oh, you don't want to have them on the edge like this. This is not going to be beneficial. So it was quite close. The advantage in the Cold War is all our leaders all the way through Bush Sr.

1:38:32were all veterans of World War II. And one way or another they'd serve. Some of them on the battle line, like Bush Sr. had and others near enough so that they understood how dangerous it was and like all the seen also to people be butchered. So they were cautious. In a way, I don't think Vladimir Putin is. Going back to the lecture, if it's true that you can't get primary adversaries to be friends with each other, and if you want to be friends with one of them, you're going to make enemies with the other ones. I mean, the world is full of people who are enemies with each other. Does that mean that at once American can only be friends with half the world and it's got to be anyways with the half that this half -aids?

1:39:12No. I don't. With Indian Pakistan, it was so intense because of partition of so many people who died, and it was recent, right? 47. And so you wouldn't expect that, those on animosities to die down. And also their new states trying to establish their legitimacy. So that was particularly difficult. I don't know that most countries in the world are necessarily want to kill all of their neighbors. And then you can look at things. Forever Britain and France were going at it. And then Germany became the primary problem between World War I and World War II. So then Britain is teaming up with France.

1:39:50It's former primary enemy and that whole problem goes away. And then you have the generous peace after World War II, not one. World War I was not a generous peace. And also we have the mismanaged Great Depression that allows fascists to rise all over the place. But after World War II, generosity to the Germans, it's over. Look at Europe. If you study European history, they're all trying to butcher each other for centuries and then they realize what a waste Let's just trade play by the rules Should we have cut off Len Lys Aide to Stalin after 1943 when it's obvious that bad idea when it's obvious that they're winning as the Germans if you've done that Then they would have stopped advancing as fast in Eastern Europe I'm looking no no more more of Europe could have been free earlier on no because you're assuming that World War II was not a closely run thing.

1:40:46I think it's a much more closely run thing than you think. And there's no, no one's sure of how it's going to turn out. Everyone knows if it goes longer, it's more of my kids who are dying. So there's no way you are going to cut aid to the army that's fighting World War II. Let's, All right, here's a concept for you. There's a main theater in the war. How do I know what the main theater is? That's where most of the people fighting are. That's the main front, main theater. A Russian fought between two thirds and three quarters of the Nazi army always. That makes the Eastern Front the main theater.

1:41:29So you all think, Pearl, that you all think that the Normandy invasion was a big deal. No, that is a peripheral operation. is peripheral to the main theater. And if the Russians hadn't been doing bugration, this big operation that coincides with Normandy, no way will we ever have gotten on to the continent, and that's in 1944. So cutting of Lenny's aid insane. But you're eliminating the problem of fascism until people have forgotten what fascism meant, but you're left for the problem of communism. By that same logic, look, the main theater in the Pacific War was in China where most of the fighting was happening.

1:42:13Our only say to Chen Kai -shek was 1 % to 2 % of what we're sending to Stalin. In today's dollars, we send Stalin $1 trillion worth of aid. It just tremendous amounts of supplies he used to then instill a communist totalitarianism on Eastern Europe. If we had sent a fraction of that aid to Shanghai Shake and help us with the Japanese, maybe you would still be in power We would not fight as much. We couldn't get it in. It's because if you want to deliver Lin Lee's aid This is a problem in World War One It's why did Russia fall and we're World War One. Why would you ever let that happen? There's no way to get the aid in because Russia hadn't built its Merman's Railway, which goes way up north and It hasn't completed this Trans -Siberian Railway doesn't do those things until where Mermansk was early in 1917 and the Transsebrans in 1916, that's like right before the Zara Falls.

1:43:05And so, couldn't aid Russian World War I, it falls for lack of arms, and then the blockade that the Japanese did was really effective. So, to get aid in, you need railways and you need ports. The Japanese had covered all that and they owned all the railway systems. So the only way we could get stuff in, is they're flying over the hump, the Himalayas. Okay, so you're going to fly in aviation fuel, plus the airplanes, and then you're going to try to bomb Japan from China. Imagine flying in aviation fuel. It's like a non -starter. And I think the best argument you can make is on that, is that rather than getting Shanghai Chi -Shak to do the Burma campaign, 43, 44, and he was dead against it.

1:43:58Let him keep all that equipment. Whatever you got over the hump, instead of sending it over to Burma, which is strategically irrelevant, turns out in this war. Let him keep everything because when the Japanese try to do it, each he goes, they're biggest defense of the war, they're going right down through Central China because the United States is cutting off so much of their maritime stuff. they want to be able to have railways all the way through central China. Anyway, Shanghai Shaq gets wrecked in that maybe if more of the equipment had been available to him, maybe he would have been in better shape to then put on a better showing in the Civil War.

1:44:36Also, not look to the Chinese people as a like a serial loser. And it's not his fault. It's because he's an undusturized country trying to deal with the Japanese. We found very difficult fight, so why wouldn't he find them difficult? But we kept Len Lee's going even after Berlin had fallen, and Stalin used that aid in order to, even after the first atomic bomb has dropped, only then to Stalin start breaking on the Russian pack with Japan and invade Manchuria. So he basically had no moral right to Manchuria. It was the Chinese who had been doing all the fighting, and he gets Manchuria. Should have stopped the Len Lee's by then, right?

1:45:11Just make sure they check us out. I think we stopped it very rapidly at the end of the war. So yeah, the British were appalled how rapidly the Lenese aid stopped because they desperately needed it because they'd been wrecked by the war. So yeah, we did cut it off. But I don't, you definitely want Nazi Germany gone and you want to keep supporting Russia until that happens. Can I try another idea on you? Yeah. So it seems like one of the big achievements of modernity is that we get countries to stop caring about history. The idea is like, look, if you hear people talking about the Israeli Palestinian conflict on both sides, they'll go back to like 2 ,000, 3 ,000 years about who has rights.

1:45:56On the Tucker Carlson interview, Putin was talking about things that happened in like 500 BC. And then so the big achievement is just like, look, the past is the past. Whatever the borders are right now, we're going to enforce those. We don't care who claims to have rights to it because it would happen in 1700s or something. That is modern international law. I don't know what, you don't have to be a lawyer, it's probably a lawyer who actually knows of when you decide modern international law begins. But certainly by the time you're getting through world war, we're in modern international law and that's the problem with what Putin's, his magic he's working on Ukraine, is they signed multiple times at the breakup of the Soviet Union and then afterwards what Ukraine's borders were and they're violating all that.

1:46:39We'll have fun with it because the Chinese can play that game in reverse on Siberia and we'll see how happy how happily that one ends. But I think there's this real there is a realization that these disputes go back forever and it's like musical chairs. We're now freezing whatever chair you're in, that's it. And that's modern international law. And it turns out that those countries that focus on territory of ripping it off from someone else or It's negative some you're gonna fight over it. You're gonna destroy it in the process whatever and the Europeans are Great example to us all of just call it a day Let everybody travel go get a rental property somewhere, right?

1:47:23And run your businesses you really don't need to own Luxembourg or whatever it is and And what a hassle. You want to offload their crazy domestic problems anyway and just run your transactions. This is the miracle of the rules -based order. It is the only way to have a rapid compounded growth. You go, well, how's it possible that China had this rapid growth for a while in their dictatorship? How did that work? It's because they had the growth when they cooperated with the international order when they rejoined the family of nations Yeah, it's when they they prospered when now she's Jim Ping is gonna do a you turn on that have fun It'll we will not be enriching you mentioned in the lecture that the real motivation for the CCP is to heap itself in power or some democratic system And if keeping yourself in power doesn't align with making our country rich and therefore staying in the international order If that is a correct mental model, then what's the pitch to G?

1:48:25Why should he abide by the international order? Because we want him to abide by the international order, right? And if the idea is like, well, it's not going to work out for you. Maybe, of course he... I don't think it will work out for him or for the Chinese people. That's not a great sales pitch. But yeah, but there are things that you just cannot convince other people. One of the another key thing in strategy is you can have a very worthy goal, But you need to look at it carefully and go, is it feasible? I don't think it's feasible to make Xi Jinping change his mind. Because he's of a particular background, and this is what he believes.

1:49:00And he has a whole bunch of other Chinese people around him who believe the same thing. And we're going to second -call war. It's going to be a long way to they change their mind. If you think about Gorbachev's generation, they decided, Gorbachev said over and over again, We cannot live like this anymore. That the realization is that their standard of living was lousy compared to the West. So clearly they needed to reform and do things. But that was his decision and his generation's decision to reassess and do something else. It's going to be a long wait until the Chinese reassess or the Russians reassess.

1:49:41So then you have to think about protecting yourself and working with allies, your friends. In the first Cold War, the Sino -Soviet split, getting China to oppose the Soviet Union was a big deal in terms of winning that war. Who plays the role that China played in the first Cold War against China? Oh, they still played. It's interesting. So Putin has Russia lost the Soviet Union's fractured at precisely the time that China is rising. So during the Cold War, China is really weak and Russia is in the dominant position. Well, I guess that's reversed. So Putin is dumping all his ordinance on Ukraine, his whole, his Cold War stockpile.

1:50:25And he is leaving Siberia open, wide open, to Chinese predations. And I believe Siberia has precisely the resources that China covets on lands the Zara Stole. And I think there's a big body water out there called Lake Bicol, is 20 % of the world's surface freshwater. China is chronically short of freshwater. North China, Bicol is the only fix. And I think it's flat enough that you could pipe it around. So I don't think the question is when the, it's not the question of whether the she put in bromance is going to end. it's when. And I assure you the Chinese will pick it pick the moment that is least convenient for Putin.

1:51:09You think they'd actually go to war about it and where they just negotiate. I think that I'll be negotiation of just you get them in the corner and say, okay buddy. This is what we want this this this this this and then he'll want some things from them and. Sounds like was Joe and Lai try to do the Oxygen plateau. Yeah, he offered the deal to neighbor and everyone take it. It's like, okay. I don't think, uh, gives me both nuclear weapons. I don't think that kind of play is probably the play to make, but as long as Putin's desperate for whatever for ordinance and other things, uh, he, Putin's getting himself into a grand old corner.

1:51:57You wrote a text book about Chinese history from 1644 onwards. In Silicon Valley, there's this community called Progress Studies and they're very interested in why the industrial revolution happened, how to increase growth, what is the history of progress been like. And one big question is why didn't China have the industrial revolution first? In 1750, that much higher fraction of the population, much higher fraction of the world output. During this period, why didn't they have higher growth rates and they'll come up with all these technologies. Well, there are whole books on the subject that I haven't read that look into this, but I would flip it around and go, well, the Industrial Revolution starts in Europe.

1:52:36That's the unusual thing. So the question isn't why China didn't, but why Europe did. And I have some guesses, but there are really, there are very thoughtful books on this subject. You can go find them and have fun reading them. But if you look at Europe, it's a peninsula, and then it's got the Mediterranean there. And so the Europeans, and they've got quite a very good river system, the Danube and the Rhine and the Rur, all these different rivers. And so they have always been a lot of trade going on. And then it was no one's ever been able to make a big empire in Europe stick. The Romans did quite well for quite a bit of time.

1:53:18Napoleon tries not so good, Nazis, not so good at all. And I guess the French tried on and off and it didn't succeed. So you have all of these competing countries. And I think a lot of that was essential to the industrial revolution of having your focusing on commerce. And you've got a lot of competing places. You don't have one big empire that can just sit there be fat, dumb and happy. that you have to innovate in order to survive against all these other little states? Earlier talking about how in North Africa, other regions, there's been a bunch of chaos because people are constantly, there's these insurgencies, there's these civil wars, there's these smaller wars happening all the time and that causes chaos.

1:53:58But if you look at Europe throughout this period, these countries are constantly at war with each other and the fact that because of that no one big empire forms apparently helps explain the industrial revolution. So, you know, it seems to imply that we should cheat like a bunch of growth in North Africa or something. It's a tremendous innovation and look at things, long prior like Michelangelo and things, Leonardo da Vinci, it's just a lot of these really bright people. Oh, yeah, it's my guess, it's related to all of this. And I think the Industrial Revolution doesn't begin in England. And the Industrial Revolution isn't strictly industry.

1:54:41Yeah, it's about textiles and steam engines and railroads and things. But it's also about institutions. One of the big things for the British was insurance. So that when you do your trading vessel and the whole thing sinks, you don't bankrupt all your investors because you've got that boat in short. And then banking, banking rules. So you can't just rip off everybody's cash. And so, I'll Britain because it's surrounded with the moat becomes a banking center and because it's unlikely in a war to have some alien army come and just open all the vaults and take everyone's money. So there are these institutional things.

1:55:17And then the British training countries like the Dutch Empire want to have to be able to train peace. So they want people just follow laws. So it's not surprising the founding father of international law is a member of the Dutch Republic you go grotesque and So it's all a piece it's this gravitation The Romans are gravitating towards law and institutions and then These competing places and no one controls. I think the the question is why do these what's special about Europe rather than? Why it should have been somewhere else What's mysterious about China is not only that it doesn't have the industrial revolution first, but its development starts so slow.

1:56:03So Japan copies Western institutions during the major reformation and industrializes almost a century before China is able to do the same thing. And look, their communist for a while, so it makes sense that during the Mao period or during the Civil War, that would impede development. But even during the Qing Dynasty or something, it takes up a 1980 for them to start development that just seems awfully slow. Well, communism is a really lousy system, so they did that. In the 19th century, they have all these peasant rebellions where they're literally losing tens of millions of people that are just devastating the country.

1:56:37So that's why the 19th century is a lost century of all of that going on. So it's hard, and then there's another piece that's hard for the Chinese. If you've been such a successful civilization in Asia the way they had been. They were the center of everything, culturally, science, governmental institutions. You named the area of human achievement and the Chinese were at the top of it all in Asia. With that kind of success, it's pretty hard to reform yourself. And so they also fed themselves the Kool -Aid that the Chinese never absorbed foreign ideas.

1:57:23It Because they were conquered by Manchews and actually absorbed a lot of Manchew institutions, but that's not the story they're telling. Whereas the Japanese are well aware they're absorbing Chinese institutions originally, Western institutions later. And so that isn't antithetical to who the Japanese are. That's interesting. The past civilization will create this, maybe, an impediment to development. Yeah, and it's hard. Well, also because the way they define civilization, there's only one. on everybody else are barbarians, people come in Koutau to China. Okay, great, but this doesn't set you up to learn from others.

1:58:01One of the big dichotomy as you talk about is the difference between limited and total objectives. How does Bismarck illustrate the value of having limited objectives? Oh, limited and unlimited objectives. Yeah, Bismarck does illustrate that. An unlimited objective is the simplest way to look at it is regime change. So if I have an unlimited objective against you, I win the war. You're going to be out of power. And as versus I win the war, and yeah, you lose a province, but you'll be in power. So at Bismarck does, he's very clever. Well, he's operating in an age of kings, and it actually, his achievements illustrates why you truly don't need royal families running the show.

1:58:47It's breathtakingly incompetent. So initially he fights the Danish war, so that's way up north and it's over these two provinces and he wants to set his fingers on the scale of the more northerly province because then that'll give him the rights to march troops, I think, through the more southerly one to cause problems later. So war number one's the Danish war. No one thinks too much about it. The pressure gets an extra province as part of Denmark. It was part of Denmark, no big deal. But then he fights the Austro -Pression War, and then what he's after is there all these little Germanic states and Austria had dominated a bunch of them, and in that war, a whole bunch of them, as a result of that war, he collects a whole bunch of these other states.

1:59:40And no one is really paying attention that he's actually upending the balance of power in Europe. They're just looking at it. It's limited. He's not toppling the Austrian government. He's not toppling the Danish government. And then he fights the Franco -Pression War where he takes Alsace Loren, which are these provinces. If you look at it, it's like a salient into one country or the other. He takes that and the French never forgive him. and that leads into World War I later. But by the time it's over, he's overthrown the balance of power in Europe that all of a sudden Germany, pressure which was the weakest of five great powers, suddenly has a central position, the Germanic states, and it owns the whole thing.

2:00:22And Britain and others who'd been asleep at the switch, like, ooh, because they could have weighed in on the scale at any point in these things to altered outcomes and they didn't. There's a real reason why. And the people who are losing out here They're all monarchies. There's a reason why you don't want to have people inherit offices. They don't tend to be very good at it. Actually, so World War I, I'm not sure how you explain World War I and using limited, and was it ultimate objectives? It's limited or well, I mean, they're different. It's useful and warfare to think about limited versus unlimited objectives.

2:00:58So if you look at Ukraine today, Putin has one of the most unlimited kinds of objectives from Ukraine. He not only wants to topple the Ukrainian government, but he wants to eliminate Ukrainian culture. And if you look up genocide and addiction area, genocide can mean kill everybody, but it can also mean destroy their culture. That also applies to genocide. So Putin has a very unlimited objective. Kiev, on the other hand, does not have an unlimited objective. I mean, as much as they like Putin to go, they just, they want Russia to get out of Ukraine, right? Just get out of Ukraine territory, stay in Russia, that's their objective.

2:01:31So the Ukrainian so limited objective Putin has an unlimited objective. Yeah, in World War I, I mean, maybe other than like the Austrian here in Empire, there's like, like Germany doesn't have a unlimited objective with respect to France or Russia. No, it doesn't. But it still devolves into this, you know, to know that people die. It doesn't, although the effect on Russia is to overthrow the government. In fact, it winds up overthrowing one government after or another, I think as that war goes on and as that you lose a lot of people, then the object has become more unlimited whereas originally was just get back into German territory.

2:02:07After a while, no, we wanna overthrow your government for doing this. On a different topic. So your name is Sarah Payne. Yeah. When I go on Amazon and I find your books, they're not listed as Sarah Payne. They're listed under the author SCM thing. That's correct. Why is that? Well, it's interesting. When I first started out, I just wanted my books to be read by what the content of the book was. I didn't want it to be read, whether I was male or female, just read it for being a book. And then when the first reviews came out, it was he he he he he he he he. And this is by Americans doing this. And I thought, wow.

2:02:47I guess the idea because I wasn't doing women's history and this was a serious topic that you know women don't do serious topics So I guess I'm glad I did it so it looks like I'm I'm a Britain right cuz Britain's love all the the initials And then why do I have all the initials? It's because my dad named all of it got from his side the family And my three older brothers and there's me and my mom felt that some names from her family ought to be dumped on me. And so since she, there were three older brothers, anyway, she had a lot of extra names going around. So she gave them to me. And I had no say in this.

2:03:21When you're training these officers in the US, no work college, and you've done it over many decades, has the quality of these other people you're training has it improved, decreased over time. What's your class of been like? They're wonderful people. And also, I don't, I don't look at people like linear. I just, It's a classroom. It has wonderful people in there, and the next generation, and I will do everything I can for every single one of them to catapult them as far forward as I possibly can. So that's what it is. Do other countries have some equivalent of the New York War College where they have this professional cadre of historians and strategists who are going through the archives, trying to figure out insights for current leaders?

2:04:05Oh, not all my colleagues publish much of anything, So, it varies. The Naval War College has always had a few very a -list people and the most famous person by far ever to work there is Alfred Thierry Mahan. And he's 19th century, well he dies early 20th century. But he's the guy who, when the United States had been doing manifest destiny, a continental because we're expanding, taking territory all the way to the Pacific. And he's the guy who says, hmm, you know, a power and position in the world really is about trade. And he writes these enduring books that have lasted to the present. So they're these occasional people like Alfred Thayer, my hand, who are very special.

2:04:58And as for some cadre of anybody's, we're just professors. as we teach mid -level and senior officers, and then most of them never become flag rank with the kind of leaders you're thinking about. So, I mean, I've talked to the occasional flag officer, but I'm just a minion. I mean. So you started in Soviet studies, and you found yourself in the Soviet Union during its fall in 1889. Why was that the field just started in? Oh, so I grew up during the height of the Cold War and listened to family dinner time conversations all about it. And then you listened, people describing the Russians as being totally evil.

2:05:47And I thought, well, I'll remember about this. I'm curious. And then I realized, whoa, it's just unbelievable how cruel the Russians have been to each other and others. It's like they're a class by themselves. And I don't make it up. So, and then the question is why and learning more about it. And then in history you do a minor field as well. And I think the typical minor field for Russian history would be French or German. And I thought, no, I want to learn about China. And just curious. And then learn about China. And then I realized that Russia and China have relations but then Japan always weighs in.

2:06:22So then I had to learn more about Japan. So that's where all of that led. And then I also thought I don't want to be studying the United States. That's where I'm from. And I want to learn about other countries. Also, my presumption is my bias would be pretty bad about the United States or things I wouldn't see. I thought I'm going to study other places. Because I don't have any family ties. I mean, I'm not a descendant of Russian immigrants or Chinese or Japanese immigrants obviously. So these are places that I'm not related to. And just curious. Yes. What is the answer to that? You said you were trying to figure out why the Russians have been so cruel to each other through history, and then especially, I guess, after the Communist Revolution.

2:07:02Why is it... I don't know the answer, but I know I've just recently read the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenitsin. I should have read it years ago when it came out, but I didn't, so I finally read it. If you read that, look at the level of cruelty. It's mind -blowing. It isn't simply that the prisoners are mean to each other or that the prison guards are mean to the prisoners or the guards are mean to each other all that's true And it's not simply that the civilians outside of the gulag are mean to everybody It's family members who are mean to people who are in the gulag the neighbors are mean to the family members who have anyone who's in the gulag And you start looking at going who's not being mean in this place?

2:07:47They're all being mean and then you look at the Oh, then I haven't got the list of all the words, but then I was reading a lot of Russian stuff last winter and then maintaining a list of words in Russian. Sila, it means strength or coercion in Russia. In English, strength doesn't mean coercion. It just means having power, right? But in Russian, it also means coercion or detente. It comes to the French, which means a relaxation of pressure. The Russian word, what it means, is unloading a gun. So if you look at their language, it's so coercive. And I think probably, if you're living in a really dangerous piece of real estate, which they are, no defensible boundaries, so you're always fighting people, and their answer to surviving that is to be meaner than anybody else.

2:08:42And they just do scorched earth, you mess with them, they kill everybody, and they just don't care. And okay, we have the modern world now, where we can deal with each other with international law. So none of that stuff is necessary. But the Russians have not pulled from that tradition. And you can read in the newspaper how absolutely cruel they are to their men in service. They don't allow any of them to retreat. They've got the execution battalions behind them. So any kid who turns around, they're immediately murdered by their compatriots. Who treats their own people like this? Russians do, but other people don't.

2:09:23I mean, Sreshingson talks in that part about this wasn't the direct result of the communist regime's policy where if there's somebody in orphan because their parents went to the gulags, if you tried to help the orphan, you must be a sympathizer for the criminals And therefore you must also be sent to the Gulagsans. Like, you have these orphans running around. Who's that parents? Actually, the orphans, a lot of them were put into orphanages and then they wound up being set up to join the KGB in other places. So they probably some of the execution -balanced battalion people. I don't know the details, but there's some of that going on.

2:09:58And the cruelty in Russia was remarked by Europeans who are traveling there in the, I don't know, 17th century. So it goes back a long time about the level of, Peter the Great back on the day, he tortured his son to death. Who does that? He didn't have a replacement son either. So I like Stalin. Right. A final question, this new project you're doing on the Cold War. Is it gonna be a book? How will it come out? Oh, slowly. Oh, I've been working on it for years. It'll be a culmination of previous research. It starts in 1917, and it will end in 1991 -ish. Why 1917 is, we may not have noticed that these crazy communists in Russia were serious, but they did declare war on the capitalist order.

2:10:50It is really clear the documentation is just there. And they were trying to fund people to overthrow governments in Europe all around the world immediately. this is in the teens and then certainly in the 20s. So just because they weren't remotely powerful enough to do it, but they were like, what is a Maoist phase one insurgency where people aren't paying attention. They're like below the radar what they're doing stuff. And it's going to be looking at all the strategies that the Russians played, that we played, what medium -plowers played, and what worked and what didn't. And it's going to be organized around concepts to understand these things.

2:11:31So on the one level, if I can do it right, it'll be a history of the Cold War from one year to another year. So there's that. And then there's another one about strategy. Okay, people are trying to achieve objectives. And they're trying different things and integrating different elements of national power. So it'll be that. And then what I found helpful in my own career are these concepts like limited and unlimited or primary adversary, primary theater, or frozen conflict or veto player, I find these things helpful. And so I'm gonna put as many of those things in there as possible. And I'm of a certain age, so it's passing the baton to the next generation, and say, this is what I've managed to figure out in as I go pup, pup, pup, reading in archives, and then others can skim it and see if there's anything worthwhile.

2:12:16If not, I tried, right? I hope you'll come back on the podcast Once the book is ready. Thank you. Hey everybody, I hope you enjoyed that episode with Sarah. This is the first and the three -part series I did with her where she distilled the lessons from a lifetime of deep scholarship. The other two are about Mao and Bushido, and I hope you will tune into those as well. Until then, if you enjoy this episode, please consider sharing it with your friends. It really helps a lot of time. And if you're interested in sponsoring a future episode, please reach out at thwarkeshpatel .com slash advertise.

2:12:51Alright, until the next one, see you guys!