1917 Centennial Series: War, Revolution, Socialism, War. Stephen Kotkin

well good afternoon this is what we like to see at the beginning of the term a full house I apologize to those who don't have seats there is an overflow room and at some point some official person will tell us that there's a problem but that won't be me so anyway welcome I'm Daniel Benjamin I'm the director of the Dickey Center and I'm delighted to have you here for the this year's Mary and Peter doll min class of 51 great issues lecture which will be delivered by Professor Steven cocoon of Princeton today professor bill wall fourth will do the honors of formally introducing professor cotton but I wanted to add my personal thanks to him for coming to Hanover for this occasion although it is beautiful outside now and I want to thank all of you for coming to the lecture on an afternoon like this it wasn't so beautiful yesterday at various stops along his route he had to fight off fog at several different junctures on his way to dispelling the fog here so I really want to thank him for not not saying the hell with it after repeated flight delays or cancellations I also want to take this opportunity to thank the dominance again and particularly professor Mary Donovan for her strong support of this subject in this and this lecture William Faulkner famously wrote in one of his novels the past is never dead it's not even past that notion is at the heart of our thinking about this lecture in the series of five other events that will be presented this fall to commemorate the centennial of 1917 this series of events is being sponsored by the Dickey Center together with the Leslie Center for the Humanities the political economy project and the department's of history government russian and film and media studies and i think it's fair to say that all the sponsors agree that this that the extraordinary events of 1917 the Russian Revolution America's entry into World War one had profound and enduring effects on the course of history and on the shaping of our world of 2017 and what's more as we have entered a period of sudden surprising and unnerving fluidity when international structures and arrangement seem much less assured than just a year or two ago and at a time when we see worrisome hiddens that the world may be reverting to earlier perhaps less congenial norms of international politics it's time for a reconsideration of that earlier period when another seemingly stable world came rapidly and disastrously undone the past is never dead but it is sometimes overlooked forgotten or ignored and that's why we thought it was so important to take a break from our usual programming on the issues of the day and to go further upstream to explore events that lie far beyond the challenges we face today so in this centennial year we thought it was time to think anew about the first world war or the Great War as it was long known to reconsider our nation's own halting rise to become a global military political and economic power and to understand how much is at stake today amid the agitation in our politics for a different kind of global role we also need to turn back to the October Revolution which ultimately redrew global politics creating a fundamental opposition between the capitalist West and this new and fearsome communist behemoth an opposition that would define international affairs for from 1945 to 1989 in whose reverberations are again being strongly registered in the tensions we feel today so that's where we will start with Professor Hawkins lecture and with the focus on these pivotal events in the next six or so weeks we'll look at such diverse topics as the revolution in aesthetics brought about by 1917 the experience of African Americans in the war and the experience of Dartmouth our own institution during that period George Kennan surely one of the wiser observers of public events in his time wrote in his memoirs that he came to see quote the first world war is the great seminal catastrophe of this century the event which lay at the heart of the failure and decline of this Western civilization whether you accept canons verdict or not that Western civilization failed in his time I think we can all agree that these events demand a revisiting especially in the centennial year and I hope you enjoy today's lecture and I'd sincerely hope you will join us again for the coming events and with that I yield to Professor wal forth it's bill Wolfe board i'ma depart I'm a professor the Department of Government here teaches international relations and as I stand before you there's two things that are very evident to me one is that you're not here to listen to me and the sooner I get the hell off of the stage and away from this mic the happier we'll be and the second is that the remarkable biography and impressive accomplishments of Stephen kotkin are available to you a tap of your phone or a click of your mouse away you don't need me to go over them the only thing I can do I think in the in the second a few seconds of your time but I'll take standing up here to try to tell you if you don't already know you're obviously yours you're here so you must think that it's worth listening to Stephen kotkin maybe some of you even read some of his numerous award-winning and highly influential books maybe some of you have made a start on and finished his first of the three volumes of Stalin biography that he's now making his obsession and and current life's work but if you haven't why should you come here and here this particular intellectual tell you about a subject as big as a war a revolution socialism war which is a title that obviously is telling you he's going to connect these events of 1917 to the big themes the 20th century and I'll just tell you in a nutshell why I think you should be here it's because here Darwin with one of the things we really really really try to talk with about our students is it difference between opinion and even clever opinion even opinion that it's really smart and clever and opinion that rests upon fundamental deep digging research and thought and the person is gonna come speak to you today is has indeed that cleverness and that smartness and that quickness that we like to see in our pundits in our public intellectuals but in contrast to most of those you read in your daily news feed the judgments he's about to tell you you may agree with him or not the judgment he's about to convey to you about these big themes rest on prodigious fundamental deep digging hard core empirical research just to give you an empirical example of that the first of his projected three volumes of the Stalin biography is 700 pages in length has 200 pages of footnotes and bibliography which are in three columns now that's kind of a stupid way of putting it but I'm trying to convey you quickly if the guy is about to come up here knows what he's talking about so I encourage you all when you have the occasion to google him and then you can see the things that a normal introducer would have told you about him but why don't you just now listen to him and see if I'm right so please join me in welcoming Stephen Hawking from Princeton University [Applause] Thank You director Benjamin for the honor of the invitation Thank You professor Wolff forth in our 33rd year of acquaintance we met obviously when you were very young and welcomed big green this is my second visit it's not often that I'm reinvade 'add after a first visit so I'm pleased as hell to be here and it was hell that I crossed together it turns out that you know just as in New York when we have a half inch of snow and the airport's all closed here in Boston or out here but close by in Boston you have a little bit of fog and the airport closes and it turns out the fog goes and then comes back which is also interesting when you're at the airport all day anyway let's try to have a lecture I'm gonna do my best now the subject is enormous the expectations unfortunately have been raised beyond a reasonable level and so now success seems improbable to me but I'm gonna try if some of this is familiar to you I apologize because you may have read some of my works although some of it is in the forthcoming work that's coming out on Halloween the second volume Istanbul so let's begin with geopolitics 101 geopolitics when our one goes as follows there was a struggle for preeminence between the French and the British that took place over a hundred years and culminated in a British victory around 1815 when Napoleon was defeated this was very improbable because the the French had a larger economy a greater population a much larger state but nonetheless the British won this competition with the friendship that was a hundred years war that wasn't a war every single year but over the course of about a century there was a lot of war and as I said the British won this created the British dominated world the British then went on to create a global economy it was a British led global economy they were responsible for the vast majority of trade most transactions took place in sterling and I could go on and give you all the facts about the British dominated world the French were still a major power but it was clear who was the major power and then two things happened in this British dominated world one was Bismarck's unification of Germany which was an eruption on the continent in the 1870s which created now a great what would become a great continental power Germany went on right after the unification to have a spurt of industrialization which was geared to higher end high value industrialization at the time chemical industry engineering industry precision instruments it was breathtaking what the Germans achieved in the second half of the 19th century the game had changed it was still a British dominated world but the Germans were on the rise and were letting everybody know that they had tremendous aspirations the other thing that happened also around this time Pierre it was the Meiji Restoration in Japan now the Meiji Restoration in Japan didn't create a new state like Bismarck unification of Germany did there was already a Japanese state but it significantly reenergized the Japanese state and led them also on a path of self conscious modernization industrialization acquisition of higher level industries and global aspirations power aspirations I could talk also about the victory of the North in the Civil War which happened just a little bit before this which also changed the course of history because it didn't destroy but undermined the slaveholding agrarian Empire of the South which was significantly more wealthy than the north at the time of the Civil War and produced instead a trajectory of the northern manufacturing industry that that we came to know of the United States power which was already the largest economy in the world certainly by 1900 but probably by the 1880s but not yet a global player even though only about 5% of u.s. GDP came from global trade in 1900 even though it was the largest economy in the world so that's looming over the international system but the big pieces are Bismarck or Germany and Meiji Japan and you'll notice that those two new powers new in the sense of not necessarily new countries but only in one case but new in the sense of being a great power player they happen to border the Russian Empire one is on one side of the Russian Empire one's on the other side of Russian Empire so this not only fundamentally transformed the entire world in geopolitics but also impinged on Russia Russian Empire directly because now Russia had borders not with hundreds of small German states but with the Vil hell mine empire and it also had the border with the Japanese in East Asia where Russia was much weaker but also had aspirations so this process right this is the sort of geopolitics one one this is the world in which 1914 to 1918 war is going to take place and the 1917 revolution is going to take place well I'd say the second piece there's two pieces here let's say the second piece and that's the theory of modernization as a geopolitical process modernization is not a sociological process you don't move from traditional society to a modern society what happens is a country that is very powerful has steel ships made of steel engineers trained officers universities and I could go on and they show up at your door uninvited and they tell you you know what we're in charge now we've decided to run your country we've decided to take your natural resources we're you're a colony now this is known as imperialism if you don't want to fall under the boot of those powerful countries you must match them you must have the ships that they have and therefore the steel that they have and you must have the engineers that they have and you must have the officers that they have this is what the Meiji Restoration was about they sent a group of people on a global mission to examine the school systems the banking systems the officer caused it was like a supermarket they went shopping oh the Belgian banking system oh the Prussian officer corps and on it went right so this is modernization modernization is a geopolitical process where the powerful countries can impose their will on you unless you can match them their modern attributes and the modern attributes are not only technological or economics they are also for example cultural a unified polity a political system in which people are willing to participate in a grand enterprise mass politics mass culture in any case this modernization doesn't always take place some countries are incapable of meeting this challenge and if they're not lucky geographically to be far away or to have no natural resources that could be interesting to the great powers they then get caught up in this process so we have these two things going on one is the British dominated world in which Bismarck unifies Germany and the Meiji Restoration happens which transforms the nature of the game and then we have the game itself which is compete with the greatest powers in the attributes that they have or fall under there boom so this is what we sometimes call modern history that's the definition of modern history now this modern history this modern history will lead us into 1914 into the Great War and I could give you all sorts of stories about the Great War I'm sure you you'll be hearing them throughout the course of this series and this year just one thing I want to focus on here in the interest of time nobody ever sleepwalks into war the sleepwalking thesis on war which you may hear again this year because it's a perennial it can't it can't be defeated you can't bring facts to defeat the sleepwalker thesis of war because the sleepwalker thesis of war is close to people's hearts it's about how war is unnecessary how war is a mistake how war is avoidable except we don't perceive that with sleepwalking to it then you get into the archives and you start to see several hundred orders to move horses into place before war breaks out several hundred just to move horses and then there are several hundred orders just to move the hay that the horses are going to eat and you say to yourself how can you sleepwalk into war if over the course of many years you've been issuing orders about the horses in the hay this is just the horses in the hay we haven't gotten to the weapon systems which take many years to produce all right weapons as first you got to create the weapons in the street then you got to put the orders in then you got to produce all of that then there's something called Universal conscription you got to decide that every one of a certain age certain gender is gonna be a soldier and you're going through the archives and you see nothing but decisions being made towards war and somehow this is known as sleepwalking towards war there was no sleepwalking to World War one there was only preparation for war there was nothing but incessant preparation to war because the leaders who were in decision-making positions thought that there were gains to be had from war the British developed a plan before the war broke out to destroy Germany economically yeah there was a British plan usually the Germans are blamed for planning the war in the first place and the British was supposedly just reactive but it was the British who completed and the cabinet approved a war plan to destroy Germany economic financial and economically and this plan went into action it was approved as I said but the United States when it got wind of it said no because the British said we can contain the collateral damage because we're going to destroy Germany economically financially there's going to be destruction of British and by the way American firms and the Americans said you're not we're not doing this you're crazy and the British pulled back and that's when the blockade was introduced the blockade of Germany was the fallback position of British economic warfare British economic warfare was the nuclear option and the blockade was a much lesser option than that so they were just going to starve the Germans to death instead now you've also heard about the Schlieffen plant for example which was a supposed invention of German General to have a wheeling motion first into France and knocked them out of the war then take Russia on and you go into the arc has anybody read the Schlieffen plot anybody here read the Schlieffen it's in every single textbook the Schlieffen plot is a couple of pages long it would take me only about three minutes or so to read it out loud and it was found in the private archives of the Schlieffen family was not in the German war ministry archives and there is that fact mostly from plot I know you don't believe me but go out and read it go get it go online read the Schlieffen Plan not the books about it not the textbooks about World War one but the actual document itself I've read the British economic warfare plan which is very substantial and detailed and I've read the Schlieffen Plan which was a sketch written in the budget battles inside Germany and was had no consequence in terms of war planning there were no war plans attached to the Schlieffen Plan because the Sweden plan wasn't even in with the war plans and so once again these are just facts and facts are never powerful enough visa Vee theories about war and what we want to believe I opened this only up as a parenthesis that the world system and the great powers were predicated on fighting war because there were advantageous dimensions seen in war what happened however was the war proved catastrophic unbelievably catastrophic by the standards of anticipation they didn't anticipate a short war that's also wrong they anticipated not a short war but a longer war but nonetheless the war was more catastrophic than they anticipated the casualties were really high offense didn't work the various technologies that were introduced in break the logjam the Germans won the war on the Eastern Front but then they lost the war on the Western Front but they came very close to winning in any case the war was seen as a catastrophe so the upshot of the international system which was this British dominated world in which Germany and Japan had risen France was still a great power right and Russia was also great power not necessarily of the highest rank but feeding both Britain and Germany before the war broke out in any case it didn't end well right this modernization is geopolitical modernization process went badly and so we then had a sister a situation in which avoiding war became the predominant strategical of the powers not repeating what they had just done because what they had just done didn't work it was seen as a mistake and error now they blamed others besides themselves right they blamed commis letter they blamed rushing interference they blamed lots of different things except their own complicity in the outcome this is human nature I do this myself all the time right especially for World War one guilt for example I blame everybody but myself over that it's typical so we're human we're human beings but nonetheless avoiding war became the the geostrategic choice of the great powers however something happened which was an effective political intrapreneur a political intrapreneur arose in the situation galvanized opinion and took over this Bismarck in great state of Germany in fact didn't take it over was handed the state of Germany didn't win an election never won a majority of seats in the the election just before becoming Chancellor had actually declined in the number of votes but the traditional right handed power to the radical right for all sorts of reasons Hitler came to power legally just as Mussolini had been handing power by the king a decade earlier anyway so now we have someone who is proactively attempting to alter the settlement of World War one there is a matter of deception about this dissembling we're not really trying we're not revisionists you know we just the we're just looking for our just do right the Germans we were mistreated we're paying all these reparations we lost all these lands we have all these peoples abroad it's unfair in any case there is proactive revision of the Versailles Treaty by now German power on the continent and this is a problem for those looking to avoid war so our usual story about this is is in my view doesn't comport with the with the facts all the time and this is the way I would describe the British clung to the desire to avoid war at all costs and that's because they had the most to risk they had a global Empire which was very valuable to them they had tremendous risk and they also British strategy is basically fighting everything on the cheap or getting others to fight the wars for you I had the British had a much cleverer strategy than the US has in this regard my British grand strategy fight on avoid get others to do your fighting or fight on the cheap so the British wanted to avoid war at all costs the French also wanted to avoid war at all costs because World War one had taken place where in France they won and they would destroy in winning I'm gonna see this is gonna happen in World War two the winners are also going to beat the places that are destroyed like China and the Soviet Union but in any case so the French don't want to fight and the British don't want to fight and then there's the Soviet Union do they want to fight what's their story in the interwar period now Hitler wants German aggrandizement and he's this political entrepreneur and he's quite successful you know for example if he'd been run over by a car or died of a heart attack in 1938 or 1939 he would be considered a very successful statesman from the German point of view and even beyond him of course he didn't have a heart attack or get run over by a car 1938-39 so the Soviet cases is the more complicated one because the Soviets had a policy of peace we stand for peace right but in practice people didn't interpret that way so now I'm going to do the 1917 piece and put in this a little more content to the Soviet thing and then resume the story that I've been telling so what happened in 1917 a lot happened but what are the key things that we need to know the big takeaways there are two big takeaways from 1917 one was anti capitalism this was an anti-capitalist revolution nobody knew exactly what socialism was because there had never been socialism they had only been discussions of socialism and pamphlets about socialism and arguments about socialism but there hadn't been any socialism in practice right so anti capitalism that's what socialism was going to be if capitalism for example had market socialism couldn't have markets they would have to have planning if capitalism had Odie's I don't know private property socialism would have to have collective property couldn't have private property capitalism had bourgeois Parliament's socialism couldn't have bourgeois Parliament's and on it went right so the anti-capitalist revolution is very very significant the second piece is anti-imperialism right there's a revolt against this colonial world that we're talking about there's a revolt against Western power who was signed the West to take over the world how come the West is forming all these colonies and so you put together the santi capitalism and the anti-imperialism is a very powerful concoction and it's very successful and there's a burst of tremendous chiliastic millenarian right feeling emotion the possibility of a new world the possibility of peace as well as abundance and social justice it's just astonishing the level of emotion outpouring globally not just in Russia about this moment it turns out however that when you eliminate private property markets Parliament's judiciary's and all the rest you don't get freedom abundance social justice self-determination you get tyranny you get tyranny right so it's a tragic the quest is sincere the problems it's a dressing like imperialism war are there the injustice is are real but the solutions are considerably worse but what you get also is it happens in the Russian Empire it happens in what's now Soviet Eurasia and here you got a story which is an identity which is part of Europe and part of Asia but not at home in either its Eurasia or its Europe and Asia or it's above Europe and Asia it's a providential power it's a special mission in the world it's a country that's a civilization on to itself right so it's special in some way and this specialness which is deep in the Russian Imperial culture now takes the form of the anti capitalism and the anti-imperialism this gives a kind of scientific gloss to a deep and fundamental part of the political culture so it has resonance even for people who are not socialists but are Russian Patriots for example it has resonance for people who are not socialists abroad but are anti-imperialists it has global resonance much more so than that for example the Islamic Republic today you're writing an Islamic Republic that has some global residence but this stuff has real global resonance much more widespread and at the same time you have this that you have the anti in capitalism and the anti-imperialism you which has which links up with fundamental structures of political culture in Russia or Asia mouse-over Eurasia at the same time as that you have a similar dynamic as before with the domestic identity and relations to the West so for example you have a non-western which could even be an anti Western identity which wants to be as good as the West or even better than the but different from the West it's this special it's this providential it's this Eurasia but it's in relation to the West and so it's a kind of alternative to the West or self it would like to be an alternative to the West it's a self style time to the West an alternative civilization and world order so you put together the anti capitalism and the anti-imperialism and the Russian political culture and you get the quintessential security dilemma the security dilemma is the Soviets claimed to be for peace but then you look at the facts of who they are and they're anti-capitalist they're anti imperialist they're anti Western there are their own special civilization there an alternative global order that's how they talk about themselves so they talk about being for peace and talk about being an alternative global political order to the existing political order so I mean if you're in the existing political order and someone telling you that they're an alternative to you and in fact if they practice anti capitalism I could talk also about the anti-imperialism the invention of the Soviet Union kuan-yin and how this brilliant innovation which was also done by Stalin put the the imperialism on the defensive because it was a way to be imperialist while claiming not to be imperiously extremely successful instrument that the Soviets had anyway so the other powers are kind of challenged because their security is now threatened because the Soviet Union claims to be the future the movement of history an alternative to you at the same time as it's talking about you know being for peace so what are you going to believe you're going to believe the part that there for peace are you going to believe the part that there are an alternative to you you've got Russian history which has this defensive expansionism where they say they're under threat and so therefore they got to take over the territory next to them right that's Russian history and so here you are and your response is going to be to worry about the Soviet Union as a threat and you're worried about that even though the Soviets are claiming be for peace so you have the Hitler problem gets occluded by the Soviet story the British and the French both want avoidance of war Hitler is clearly pushing to revise the Versailles settlement which would be at British and French expense and the Soviet thing is claiming to be for peace but is also an alternative global order self-described and therefore is creating this quintessential what they call in social science security dilemma for its its neighbors and the other great powers so that's the situation and now we have these figures like Chamberlain Churchill and others who are less household names like dollar da and Mussolini and all of this and so what happens in this picture what happens in this picture we're gonna get to why there's a second world war right I hope that's where we're moving with this story right everybody saw that the first world that the first world war was not an accident that's argument one and and the the consequences of the first world war were nobody wanted the second world war but then somebody did want a second world war and that was Hitler and that became a problem for dealing with the consequences of not wanting a second world right so I know this is a little abstract but just give me a moment here this may come together this may be less disappointing soon than it is right now I'm serious can I be serious at least for a moment so Chamberlain who does the Munich pact and appeasement and has what we call a malodorous reputation and is beyond rehabilitation I mean not to the extent that Hitler is beyond rehabilitation but Chamberlain is right you say something nice about Chamberlain and people are just going to snigger and their opinion of you is is gonna go down even more than it is already right well what was Chamberlain's argument Chamberlain's argument was if I go into a deal with Stalin to fight Hitler and we win how do I then get Stalin out of the middle of Europe I recognize that problem I recognize that problem that was Chamberlain's argument now you can say that he was saying that argument he was looking for excuses rationales not to fight he wanted to cut a deal he wanted to believe Hitler he was naive all that stuff is partly true this is not about Chamberlain's character this is not about whether he was you know a funny looking guy with the beak nose and the umbrella and a top hat talking about peace in our time after he handed over another country for free to Hitler right that's not we're talking about we're talking about what the actual choices were and how what you could have done that was better moreover the Conservatives who criticized Chamberlain for his appeasement policy they couldn't answer this question yeah how do we then get communism out of Central Europe if this policy of teaming up with Stalin against Hitler is successful so Chamberlain's colleagues had no answer and we're over the Labor Party didn't even think it was a problem oh the Soviet Union in Central Europe what's wrong with that that would be a good outcome I don't think it was a good outcome but certainly a large part of the Labour Party was not only pro appeasement of Hitler because they didn't want to pay the costs either of fighting because they were their constituents would have done the actual fighting but they were appeasing Stalin as well or even more abetting this though so that's the environment in which Chamberlain is acting once again this is not an attempt to rehabilitate Chamberlain who's beyond rehabilitation it's just the show what the strategic choices were believing that Hitler might keep to a deal versus facing the question of actually fighting a war with massive casualties and then having communism implanted in Europe right those were the choices that Chamberlain faced now in the end his choice doesn't look that good but once again the burden on us is to say not only what he did wrong but what we could have done that was better okay now the French what was the French position in this the French position in this was we live here you know like the British there on the other side of that channel for the French it was much more immediate you know the old joke the fog in the channel continent isolated alright for the British the British give the weather forecast fog in the channel confidence is now isolated well yeah the British had that they had that channel the French didn't have the channel there was this border and and one side was France and the other side was Germany and then there were these small countries at the top there but they didn't have much buffer qualities in the First World War and nobody thought they would again so the French were hedging their bets they were willing to do a deal with Stalin they hated the guy and Dali da was was not favorably disposed towards the Soviet Union he was the Chamberlain of France at the time and the French establishment and I could go on about how France was not that happy about this as their option and in fact French policy was not to do a serious deal with Soviet Union because once again they didn't want to be in bed with the Communists Stalin was after all a murderer the French wanted to attract the British to an actual Alliance and they thought that if they played around with the Soviets that this might be able to draw the British towards the French they did to a certain extent they got an on tante or an understanding rather than a full-scale alliance the British and the French this was at least something that that the that the French were able to extract from the British but French grand strategy was get a deal with the British and British grand strategy was avoid the war so the Western powers have a certain paralysis here and then Stalin's policy what Stalin's policy in this particular equation well Stalin is not necessarily aggressive like Hitler in proactively trying to revise the international system but if Hitler knocks everything over someone's got to pick up some of the pieces right I mean hey if he's gonna knock over everything maybe we can get this piece and that piece and this piece and this piece right so Stalin has the quintessential let the others bear the brunt of Hitler but if there's anything that to be gained and he spoils to be gained I'll be ready to pick them up okay so this is in a war sometimes known as you know why did we get world war ii argument the reason we got World War two was because Hitler wanted World War two but also because the Soviet Union 1917 the Russian Revolution is a vet massive contributing factor and that's what I want to elaborate in a few more minutes before we go to the question period so just to repeat the argument World War one is no accident avoiding World War two is reasonable or trying to avoid World War two is reasonable being able to avoid World War two is impossible or very difficult because of Hitler but the Soviet variable that's the one that now we're gonna focus a little bit on because the Soviet variable is the one that has scrambled things it has scrambled the coalition against Hitler it has scrambled a larger Imperial question for both France and Britain right and it's very difficult for them to understand for them to look at for them to perceive for them to figure out because it's an opaque political system and it's a dictatorship it it speaks in ways that seem propagandistic to foreigners you don't know how decisions are made on the inside and it's putting out a story that doesn't always correspond to what it's actually doing it's got political parties that it controls inside your democratic Parliament's yeah there's a communist party in the French parliament a I mean this party in a French Parliament and Stalin says the Communist Party should do X and they do that and they're inside the French democratic political system so it has scrambled the picture in ways that we don't always appreciate fully when we make these justified critiques of the French and the British in the interwar period and what their genuine options might be now I should do one more piece here before I finish off on the Soviet piece and that's the Japanese piece which is I left off right we had the Meiji Restoration the Japanese were the other flanking power on the eastern side of the Soviet Union and the Japanese have their own ambitions and the Japanese ambitions are significantly impending on the situation also and they're left out of the story because usually we have European estelle this fantastic story right and the East Asian is there they're like a different tribe and they have their own books and their own journals and everything else and their story is about you know the rise of Japan and then as Japan aggressive or not in Japan confronting the United States and Pearl Harbor and all of this well during the Hitler Stalin pact negotiations in August 1939 the Soviet Union and Japan are fighting a war they're fighting a very significant war we call it a border war because it's a border incident that triggers the war now it's limited in the sense that it doesn't engage fully the entire armies of both countries but it's we don't know that that's going to stay that way it could well be that the Japanese decide that this is it if you're sitting there in the Kremlin trying to figure out what's going on you focused not only on the European theater but also on the East Asian theater we're over for the British Empire right for the British Empire you have tremendous exposure and vulnerability in East Asia right they're these things called Hong Kong Singapore let alone British India right and and and all of that is potentially exposed to Japanese firepower and so the Germans are trying to do a deal with the Japanese that British are trying to figure out what to do with the Japanese the Soviets are trying to figure out what to do with the Japanese so the Japanese are another scrambling factor in the geopolitical picture of how we're going to get to World War two all right so once again more could be said about each one of these pieces but the larger argument I'm trying to make is that socialism itself is a very significant contributing factor to world war two now I know this is not a popular argument and I know that not everyone will agree with this argument so maybe hear me out for I think I got five more minutes before the Q&A is that correct am I good with that all right so this being Dartmouth and this being the Dickey Center I went for a big-picture talk rightly or wrongly but I hope that if need be the big-picture talk can be I can substantiate it in all the instances with the facts as necessary if you want them in the question period alright so we have an age-old debate about Stalin whether he was after security or trying to expand to take over the world did he just want to protect himself was he defensive or was he offensive was he after the this kind of massive expansionism take over the world and now I'm in the position of having read all the surviving documents that Stalin himself produced or signed or were written for him about these kind of questions and so now I have a much better understanding of this question which I remember what was a big issue when we first met 33 years ago unresolved to be still today and I've I've come to the conclusion that a Stalin like I said unlike Hitler was not a proactive revisionist but was much more of an opportunist although he had a big appetite in the opportunism if somebody was going to create the opportunities he was going to seize them he had a geopolitical theory he invented his own geopolitical theory in fact the socialism in one country piece that he wrote which was not about socialism in one country was about socialism in one country first because that's how history had happened should we build socialism in the one country in which it happened first on the way to socialism for the whole world and the answer was yet we're not gonna walk give up the revolution of 1917 the socialism in one country first argument had been made by Lenin and had been made by Trotsky and then it's made by Stalin but Stalin created this you wouldn't know because we have this Trotsky critique of Stalin socialism in one country which is not based upon what Stalin wrote in socialism own country was based upon what Trotsky said Stalin rode in socialism in one country so Stalin argued that imperialist war produced the possibility of revolution unlike the Leninist theory or the Marxist theory even more where you know revolution was a product solely of class struggle Stalin acknowledged that the war had been decisive and differentiated Russia from other cases and this is why the working class in his words was more radical in the Russian case because the war had radicalized the situation and made socialist revolution possible and so therefore socialist revolution was not going to happen in every case but with imperialist war if imperialist war were repeated as he expected it to repeat then socialism was again a possibility so there could be additional revolutions provided provided there was imperialist war provided the imperialist war didn't destroy the Soviet Union in the process see that was the problem you could want the imperialist war to give you more socialist revolution but the imperialist war could give you the end of the socialist revolution in one country like for example Germany could destroy the Soviet Union so the imperialist war was dangerous too be careful situation opportunity may be but danger also so you needed an imperious thwart to be diverted directed at others and you needed it to happen for example against the French and against the British or against anybody else but not against you but that was not so easy to do so this is Stalin's machinations right the calculation that imperialist war is good but also bad the possibility that socialism could spread but also could be destroyed the fact that he wanted more revolution but didn't want to lose the whole revolution in the process so it's not as if it's because he's a cautious person by nature like Hitler is actually much more insane than Stalin in geopolitical terms because Hitler doesn't calculate risk and reward the same way Hitler is a gambler a tremendous gambler without calculating risk he's much more like Lenin Hitler or Steve Bannon for example then he is like Stalin Stalin is more calculating in his risk-taking less insane in the rest I mean he's he's just as big a mass murderer don't get me wrong he's a sociopath but I'm just talking in the geopolitical terms so he's got this geopolitical theory and he's living in this geopolitical theory so it's all about trying to not fly too close to the Sun but fly close to the Sun that's Stalin's geopolitics Indian War period and that of course is what worries the French and the British in addition to the other things they're worrying about so the idea of them doing a deal with Stalin against Hitler at any point is very difficult to fathom let's add the fact that Stalin is murdering loyalists it's very hard to know he's that kind of person going to keep his word for example we all now look back in retrospect and say Hitler we never who thought Hitler would ever keep his word but we're talking about Stalin keeping his word was that obvious that Stalin would keep his word was he the kind of guy that inspired trust I have a chapter on the Finnish war and how Stalin tries to negotiate with the Finns short of war and the Finns just don't believe that he's sincere he's making these sincere offers of territorial exchange you give me this I can protect Leningrad I'll give you this he's offering more territory square miles in exchange for the territory he wants the Finns to see to him and the Finns don't trust him they don't believe him he's got a credibility gap with the Finns because he's just Stalin and the other things that he's doing right diminish your desire to take him at his work so this is a major contributing factor to the outbreak of World War two in addition Stalin does have significant appetites you see because when he begins to take advantage of the Hitler Stalin pact in August 1939 the Hitler Stalin pact in August 1939 allows Hitler to destroy Poland and Stalin takes that piece of Poland right he takes the eastern piece of bone as part of the deal but then Hitler goes and fights his war in the West and beats France in six weeks and we all know that story but in the meantime Stalin has decided to annex the Baltic States annex the Bessarabia and Bukovina from Romania and these things are not granted by the pact with Hitler these are steps that Stalin takes additionally they don't say anything about yeah you can annex and create clone regimes it says that their predominant spheres in your interest your your sphere is this sphere but it doesn't say you can annex and take a create a clone regime so Stalin's appetite begins to grow in this process of taking advantage when Hitler's delivering these things to him and so his opportunism is very significant but his opportunities was not driving the story but it begins to drive the story in his fight visa vie Hitler right so Hitler now who is will end with Hitler is that okay we'll end with Hitler I think I did the Stalin piece I could do much more on the Stalin piece but I want to end with the Hitler piece so what the hell was Hitler doing what was Hitler up to if Stalin was this opportunism whose appetites grew in the apathy in the eating and Hitler provided the opportunity if Stalin was the one who scared the French and the British legitimately as he fence he contributed to the destabilization in the onset of World War two even though he didn't think he was doing that I what about the Hitler piece and here this is just a fantastic story so Hitler believed in the master race theory he believed that the German master race could only survive in a zero-sum world if it destroyed the other empires it had a destroy Jewry of course but it couldn't survive if the British Empire endured now we think of this is huh right there was a lot of world to divvy up Hitler won the second world war he had the entire continent either under his control or direct control or loyalists to him there were only two neutral countries the Soviet Union was observing the the pact with Hitler and Britain across the channel had no beachhead on the European continent and no ability to cross and land on the continent and dislodge Hitler so Hitler had won the Second World War as of 1941 you would think this would be enough right I mean imagine Napoleon hadn't achieved this I wish I had brought a map to show you but take my word for it Hitler had won the Second World War but it wasn't enough and it wasn't enough because he believed in this master race zero-sum social Darwinist my idea which meant that he had to prepare for war to destroy the British Empire which meant to destroy the Americans as well because certainly the the British would rely on the Americans Americans would help the British out and in the meantime the Soviet Union had to be destroyed because he needed the resources to take on the global British Empire so handlers grant strategy was to destroy the Soviet Union Britain in the United States that's what he was preparing for and you say to yourself my god that's that's insane it and that's why I say Stalin was not insane geopolitically he had big appetites but not this kind of big appetite the idea that he would prepare for war to destroy you know Germany Britain and the United States simultaneously anyway and then you of course we had this Japanese think that's eating at him so in the end right in the end as much as socialism is a contributing factor as much as Stalin as a contributing factor it's really this German thing and so your your your understanding of the situation is on the one hand Hitler's personality on the other hand the structures that are in place these moving structures that are in place the geopolitics of the British dominated world the rise of Germany on the confident the rise of Japan the modernization where you're in this rivalry to keep up with the other great powers and the technologies and instruments that they have the first world war catastrophe right and the consequences of that can the rise of socialism and socialism threat is an international order the idea that the second world war was somehow preventable just like the first world war was a sleep Walker war it's very difficult for me to understand given what I just laid out for you it's preventable in what sense Hitler is assassinated there are multiple assassination attempts on Hitler and they don't succeed but they come very close there's not a single assassination attempt against though not one in all the years and three decades of his power there's not a single genuine legitimate assassination attempt against though that's remarkable right but Hitler there's sometimes ten eleven in a single year assassination attempts against him and in 38 just in in November 38 they almost get him misses by just a few minutes anyway so you can either blame the Hitler factor or which is very significant I'm not downplaying it or you can see the structures that are in place here and then if you if you take the structural approach that I've now taken which is very difficult to avoid the war that's coming for the reasons that I've laid out if you take that structural approach then you think about America America's picture in this right so America is looming on the International System and has never been responsible for it a major player in it there have been arguments that if the Americans had taken responsibility after World War one we wouldn't have the Second World War they could have been the hegemon the peace enforcer parks Americana they could have supported the international financial system right they could have fixed everything but weren't ready weren't up to the task shrink from the task and a contributing factor also whether you take that argument or not the Second World War problem is clearly going to draw American power it's going to draw American power reluctantly or willingly into the picture you've got the Japanese story which is going to be a direct attack we can argue about the extent to which America would help provoke that attack on Japan but that showdown in East Asia and then the showdown in Europe over the Hitler peace which is also going to draw the United States in thank so it's hard for me even to see it's hard for me even to see the the u.s. not becoming a global power it's hard for me to see us having a u.s. which more like looks like 1900 or 1910 or even 1925 or 1935 compared to the u.s. we see today so the only piece the only piece that therefore I could see this scenario not playing out is to go back to 1917 go back to 1917 and remove some things that happened and so this is where the lecture 1917 is a maybe has some punch so one can then talk about the things that happened in 1917 and if they didn't happen what might what might be the kick the consequences Germany doesn't put Lenin on the train and let him go back to Russia think about that Germany doesn't conduct the submarine warfare the unrestricted submarine fort and doesn't provoke the u.s. entry into the war and therefore Germany doesn't lose the war on the Western Front the Kerensky government doesn't push for an offensive in June 1917 after the downfall of the Czar when all the soldiers think the war should be over and they're beginning to leave the front and Karen ski instead enforces an offensive on the Russians with the Russian army which is disastrous right so we begin to see contingencies written in to the 1917 story the Gamble's that Germany takes the actions that happen in Russia the failures of the political class in Russia we could talk about the provisional government and its failures which happens just between march 1917 and october 1917 we can talk about how Lenin could have been prevented how the Mensheviks might not have walked out for example of the Soviet how the Constituent Assembly in 1910 uary 1980 might have been defended by the SRS and there's all sorts of fantastic contingencies that don't give you success of socialism and German defeat in the First World War and that then pulls the thread it takes the sweater away you pull some of those threads and then you don't get the structural situation that you've gotten now so contingency is a really big deal but those things happened and it produced the structures that we have and those structures that we have are very very vast they're like big tectonic plates moving and those tectonic plates those moving to stop them right think about it what would you have done if you had been Chamberlain think about the dilemma that he now faced the part of it is his own causing I agree so once these structures are put in place the Second World War the rise of US power right so this 1917 is a hinge moment in some ways not exactly the way that we've always thought about it at least that's what I'd like to argue in today's lecture thank you very much [Applause] do I call on them or do you call I don't know the people's names though so yes sir for their next yeah that's that's the question isn't it I like that question so the answer is Chamberlain had a policy of deterrence and appeasement appeasement meant just negotiation conciliation and deterrence meant build a bomber fleet build a navy up the problem was is that they didn't feel that they could afford the deterrence because it was too costly it would bankrupt them after all this is the Great Depression there's fragility in the British economy and so the deterrent piece was left out or de-emphasized which made the conciliation piece even more conciliatory than it would have been so in dealing with the Hitler question you had to have both the negotiation but also the deterrence we often go into negotiations even America today which is a superpower without sufficient deterrence and people talk about how Trump is crazy dumb what he's provoking potential global war when he talks about a military option right but if you don't talk about a military option when you have one and you go into the negotiation and they don't believe you have a military option it's not going to be an easy negotiation is it so if Hitler doesn't feel that the wrath of British bombers the wrath of the Royal Air Force is legitimately going to rain down on him for behavior that he undertakes right so what happens you know the the Mussolini incident when dolfe who's you know Dolph who's he's the leader of Austria and Hitler helps not only but the Nazi Party in Germany helps instigate an attempt that Nazi push in Austria in the mid-30s and though Foose is close to was lenient Mussolini's not aligned with Hitler at this time and Dolphus is murdered in Vienna and Dahl forces family is Mussolini's guest at the time in Italy when he when the Nazis murder him in this attempted push and melissa weenie moves the Italian armies up to the pass ready to go unless the Nazis back off the attempted push in Austria and what does Hitler do he backs off he backs off Mussolini is the only person who deters Hitler in the period 1933 right onward that's it now you say to yourself Mussolini could deter Hitler it seems improbable doesn't it huh first of all we all associate Mussolini Hitler was allies but that doesn't happen until the [Music] Abyssinia 1935 Abyssinian war when Mussolini is critiqued for bombing and burning those villages in Abyssinia Ethiopia for Italian imperialism purposes and then of course the Spanish Civil War where they where they become much closer right but before that Mussolini is not necessarily aligned with Hitler because when Cellini has interests in Austria that Hitler is impinging upon so there's evidence from Mussolini of all people that Hitler is did terrible so that's what you got to do you got to actually move the armies you got a bomb the bridges you got to do stuff you got to do stuff that shows that you're for real and then when you go into the negotiation you're not negotiating from a position of weakness and also if he doesn't keep his word you're going to punish him right so you need to determine though the deterrent aspect can be expensive there's nothing wrong with negotiation provided it's negotiation from strength so I mean that option was on the table for but once again he wants to avoid the war he wants to protect the Empire he feels precarious economic and every the whole country wants to avoid war who in Britain wants to fight like I said the Labour Party is a pro appeasement almost all of the Tory party is pearled peaceful there's the only minority in the Tory party that is worried about the Hitler thing and the Foreign Office is also partly appeasement and then the banking system is deeply engaged in appeasement also right but you need the deterrence aspect it's the same thing today with North Korea it's the same thing today with Iran when they're afraid of you because they actually believe that there'll be consequences that you know you have the wherewithal to smash them in the face and they believe that then you can negotiate from a different position once you hand Hitler Czechoslovakia however then you really up the creek sea because there's the ver Mach doesn't really exist before the take over Czechoslovakia Czechoslovakia has modern industry modern army mechanized divisions the Skoda works alone one of the great the Skoda works was using Czech side not the Slovak side and which Hitler gets for free with no compensation in the Munich pact and one of the things that Stalin does with Hitler is to make sure that Stalin's contracts with the Skoda works are still fulfilled even if the Munich pact excuse me because they're so valuable the stuff that's really empowering to Hitler to grab that piece for free it transforms the ver mocked you know when they go into Austria there are schools with Austrian March 38 this is by now Mussolini's on the other side and acquiescence in this the German tanks run out of gas I don't even have petrol to make it to Vienna they're buying the German tanks are buying petrol on the roadside and even then a lot of tanks don't make it but the French don't have a military at the shake in Vienna at the time because the French governments are just toppling there's so many French governments they got no military to say nobody sees the fiasco of the ver macht in Austria in March 38 and they don't know that the Germans are really not for real yet and so the failure to use deterrence as well as negotiation I mean it's a longer story and there are some details there and it wasn't simple because if it had been simple he would have done it right but you know the the the Churchill piece becomes also more complicated when you fit the facts into the story which is something I do in this volume too I think we had the gentleman up here thank you so we're Italy in China at all players on the national stage or were they really insignificant China and Italy yeah okay so a good question the China story I left out the China story is really big in another complicating factor another structural problem that's going to give you momentum towards World War two the China factor is there is not an imperialist takeover not a colony China's nobody's colony but there's what we call informal imperialism where outside powers dictate or in some policies and impinge upon the sovereignty of China the Soviet Union is one of them the Soviet Union has created Chiang kai-shek and the Guam and on to a very great extent they are the ones bankrolling it Stalin for example paid for the Chinese army not the Red Army not the Communist Chinese army they right that's just a ragtag guerillas you don't have to pay for that he paid for the officer corps and the training of the Chiang kai-shek Wolman dog or nationalist China and he continued to pay for that even after Chiang started slaughtering communists and going back on the deal and betraying Stalin Stalin didn't betray Chiang in fact Chiang kai-shek has taken hostage in the interior and Stalin is the one who forbids Mao from executing chiang kai-shek otherwise a chiang kai-shek would have been gone long before it's an incredible story that is also in volume two if Stalin was only about vengeance and Chiang kai-shek had crossed him and betrayed him and then Chiang was taken hostage in a plot by Chinese Communists with one of the Warlord's from Manchuria if Stalin had been only about vengeance he would have been only too happy to allow Chiang to be executed but instead he forced the them to back down and to release Chiang which they did do and in any case so that the Chinese story is a very big part of the story it's got its own momentum and dynamism related to its revolution in 1911 you know the fall of the dynasty the attempt to create a republic the civil war the Warlord's the territories break off the Soviet Union snatches Shin Jung de-facto not formally doesn't an exit but the fact it was in control of that the Japanese snatch Manchuria and create this puppet state manchu quo right so the Chinese are another copy the China is another very big complicating factor in the momentum towards war because the Japanese like the Germans have grandiose unbelievably grandiose aspirations which have to do with displacing China as the Middle Kingdom in East Asia which requires the Japanese to garrison China I don't know anybody who thinks that they can garrison China given its size and population but the Japanese think they can do that so it's a good question the Italy stuff I could answer that too but the short answer is yes as I just pointed out Mussolini is a big factor in switching from anti-hitler to pro-hitler or constraining of Hitler to abetting of Hitler and that changes the equation for the French British in the song yes good question thank you we got any other questions we're gonna go over there and then over here or one wasn't caused by sleepwalking but is it really possible that you find a British war plan and that that is a decisive element when you're there are so many other plans when the Germans were much better prepared to go to war and the British were really feebly prepared in terms of attacking German in a Germany in any serious way yeah that's a big question I get it that you know there there's more that needs to be told for anybody to be persuaded about the view that I briefly lay it out here about World War one I get that so the Germans are a land army right there are land based power there's a land army so if you're a land army you look like you're more ready for a land war than if you're a sea power or a naval a an air power I so the British are a naval power in an air power so it doesn't look like they're ready for a continental war whereas the Germans are a land fall in fact one of the reasons why Hitler can't do the channel invasion but thinks he can do the Barbarossa invasion of the Soviet Union he thinks he can do that because he's a land-based power my German forces have a bias towards land forces and the British are a sea and naval naval and air power and so their ability to defend the channel is much greater than their ability to fight a land war on the continent they have not prepared to fight a land war on the continent they have no intention of fighting a land war on the continent but they are a very capable military power that can use this financial and economic leverage to defeat Germany while also being able to defend themselves with the the Navy and the Air Force right the Royal Air Force in the world Navy I wouldn't have traded the German Luftwaffe and the German Navy for that for the British one never but then again we have it's a land-based power so once you factor that in once you understand that the reason Germany looks like it's ready to fight a land Wars because Germany is a land power ready to fight a land war right and so you that I'm not saying Germany's not culpable they're obviously culpable right they give the blank check to austria-hungary you know that old saw is actually true and the Germans look to gain they look they they perceive strategic advantage in the outbreak of war they think that their troops actually need the exercise you need to harden their people and harden their army by combat experience I mean you know state prestige is on the line territorial gain there's a calculus on the German side which is pro war there also is a calculus about how the Russia is gaining in strength and is never gonna be as weak as it is this is a perennial thing about attacking Russia right the Hitler would say the same thing that Russia may look weak now but if we wait it's going to be too strong so we got to do preventive war right now the Germans make that argument in 1914 and that Hitler makes that argument again in 1940-41 all right so this is I meant to imply nothing about an absence of German culpability or preparation I only meant to imply that a lot of people were prepared for war and the reason there was war was because there was a strategic calculus that war could deliver gains and and that is true across the belligerents without making all the belligerents equally responsible or culpable that's not an argument I need to engage in right now my only argument is that World War one is the product of the system that I've described and not some kind of freak that could have been easily prevented like you know this crazy assassination of the Habsburg air in Sarajevo well let's think about that for a second he goes to Sarajevo but they've annexed Bosnia the Hopps Berg's have annexed Bosnia and he goes to sorry oh sorry evil on the Dogon with Serbian national holiday that's the day they pick on purpose to go there so it's not as if they're innocent it's a provocation it's a provocation organized by the Bosnian governor and of course the Hopps Bergere Archduke is complicit and that's because he's agreed to do this and so once again you know it's not like this some kind of accident over there there were decisions that were taken and those were provocative decisions and then there were additional provocative decisions that were taken in consequence of that original provocative decision but the table had been set already they weren't chain gangs into the war because they had a bad Alliance system and you need to avoid alliances all right they've been doing nothing but preparing for war and then the war came and they fought it and then they said oh there's not what we expected we didn't expect millions of people to die for no reason no territorial gain stalemate trenches right that wasn't part of the plan so that's when the aversion to war kicks in but the aversion to war is not really predominant prior to 1914 it's quite the opposite and that's true on the British side but that doesn't mean that the Brid I'm making the British responsible for the war okay I think we had over here in 2017 with two nuclear superpowers and seven other nuclear powers what what are the geopolitical factors that you see adding to the danger of war of war implicating those nuclear weapons and which ones do you see as as retarding that danger yeah that was very simple I agree with you yeah and it's perfect just before the six hour car ride back to Princeton because on that car ride I could maybe think of an answer but right now I got three minutes to think of an answer so World War two was incredible you thought World War one was a big deal World War one turned out to be a fairy tale I had a little nothing a short story compared to the novel of World War two it got fifty five million dead in World War two fifty five million I mean I can't even what does that mean fifty five million herefore that is the Soviet Union and they won you got another ten to 13 million is China they were on winning side - so you got 40 million between the Soviet Union in China that you got a couple million in India and they're not even in the textbooks and then you got things you know like Mangala and the Holocaust and the Japanese biological program and it's just you can't believe this even though you know you know it's true and you read it and you read it again and it still is unfathomable but it happened but hasn't been repeated right the first one that they didn't want a second one then they got the second one because they put all these structures in place they get a second one well hoping to avoid it they were nonetheless stepping on the gas sometimes without realizing it right but now with the second one it's maybe one too many and the realization after the second one that the first one was a mistake and the second one was even a bigger mistake changes the picture you get of course you get the United States drawn into the picture and you get the Europeans and the Japanese understanding that they're culpable and wanting to move beyond it okay so reluctant it's difficult but nonetheless the achievement of West Germany and Japan post-world War two is astonishing what they became gigantic free economies free societies democratic rule of law I mean this is Nazi Germany in here oh he does Japan so it's just it astonishes me to see what happens so that's a really big great story after the catastrophe on top of the catastrophe we get to a better place now it doesn't look like a better place everywhere you know if you were in Afghanistan you were in Vietnam you were in the Congo and we could go on right I mean there are a hundred plus Wars real wars during the Cold War yeah a hundred plus real wars during the Cold War so it is not exactly a peaceful time but there are no great power wars because the great power wars those are the problems right it's a big problem in Vietnam when that when there's a war the get me wrong but when there's a war between the United States and the Soviet Union would have nuclear weapons that's a different order magnitude problem and we don't have that so that's a great story and we have to figure out how to tell that story and then it turns out that the Soviet Union which won the second world war literally loses the peace it loses the peace and it retreats the same along the same roads as Napoleon but only in the opposite direction 650,000 troops including 400,000 troops from Germany go home and they lose all that territory that dates from Peter the Great onward all that fantastic frontage that great real estate that they've got in Europe let alone the satellite stuff we're talking about just the the home territory so they lose the peace that's a really big loss it was built into the nature of their regime it was built into the world system and American power and this sort of once again there's a structural determined to this it wasn't like they just turned left when they should have turned right or they did that earlier but but they was structurally determined that they were on a losing side of the peace so we came out of them losing the peace relatively okay right I'm still here to try to or fail to answer your question and I actually think that that's improbable given the Arsenal that the Soviet Union possessed given the nature of that regime given our understanding of that regime and given how big imperial ventures go down usually they don't go down saying okay we lost we're done we'll go home in fact we'll go to a smaller home they say you're coming down with me we're all coming down together out of spite right they don't do that so that's a really big deal we have to appreciate that so we have this fantastic story with caveats of post-world War two and then we have the Soviets losing the peace mostly peacefully that's a Wow that's another well and now we have the world we have today and the problem with the world we have today is in part cable TV right it's cable TV now you're smart people I'm I'm gonna venture that everybody in this room is a smart person and I'm also gonna venture that you watch CNN some of you do some of you willingly turn it on like for example if if you are under torture if you were handcuffed and they turned it on that would be I would understand that that would be something that would not of your own volition but you stand there and you turn it on and you sit there and watch it okay so we have a problem which is both what the world actually looks like and how we perceive the world and the relationship between what the world looks like and what the strategy opportunities and the dangers are so the perception of that has shifted radically and it shifted radically because of this 24/7 problem can you imagine cable TV during the early years of the Cold War the Berlin crisis can you imagine cable TV and the Cuban Missile Crisis and I could go on right it's it's a very significant factor now that it wasn't before I'm not saying that it's all lies and all wrong some of it is good I'm just saying that it's changed now how we're able to understand what's out there and what's going on and how we're able to measure threats and measure responses is the world more dangerous today than it was when the Soviet Union in the United States could have annihilated the planet many times over I wonder if that's actually true the perception the cable TV perception is that it's more uncertain now more dangerous now than ever don't know what to do more difficult to manage and frankly I don't know what's more difficult than the Soviet Union necessarily with the the possibility of nuclear Armageddon chemical and biological warfare and all of that kind of stuff so that's a that's an important question I'm not necessarily going to give you the detailed empirical answer that you're looking for I just like to a point out that is it's harder to disc now than than before it's harder to understand whether perception is driving whether a news cycle and business model of cable TV is driving this and whether over bureaucratize ation to win the Cold War we had to create a massive security bureaucracy and that massive security bureaucracy is now a hindrance on our ability to be nimble responsive clever strategic right we we somehow occupied Japan and Germany simultaneously can you imagine we occupied Japan and Germany simultaneously and we we didn't even have a national security bureaucracy yet and the Pentagon didn't have civilians yet the Pentagon didn't really have civilians to a great extent until the Vietnam War which is birthed the door open and made the Pentagon's giant civilian bureaucracy in addition to a military bureaucracy so we have some things which are are difficult in the way to understand the world that we live in my understanding of the world that we live in now is that this is going to be primitive but then again you've been here for an hour and a half so you're not gonna be surprised it's gonna be very primitive but my understanding of the world that we have today is we don't know if the Chinese thing is resilient or not because the Chinese haven't had a massive crisis yet we know the u.s. is resilient the institutions are really strong the economy is unbelievably dynamic and strong we had the global financial crisis and here we are on the other side of it and you could say there was injustice you can say there were a lot of bad things and but it didn't destroy the system the Chinese and the Russians both expected the global financial crisis to be the end of the West and the end of American power they were gloating about it and they were planning as if that was it but it didn't turn out to be the case and the Trump ting was Armageddon except you know you look at the Trump thing and the system is pretty incredibly responsive there's a lot going on in the American system to show you that the American system for all its flaws and we could talk about its flaws you know till we're blue in the face also has some advantages I don't know about the Chinese system so your understanding of the world now hinges it pivots absolutely on your understanding of the degree of resilience or not in the Chinese system when a crisis hits we project Chinese power going forward when of the Chinese going to have the bigger economy when any of the Chinese gonna have the bigger Navy yada-yada-yada the Chinese system could be very fragile when a crisis hits a very significant crisis which will be unforeseen until the next day after the crisis when everyone will have predicted the crisis on CNN or MSNBC I don't want to be partisan here but if you watch red army TV fine that's fine by me but I'm just saying I didn't want to single out CNN s sir but I'm just saying that the Chinese could go down that whole thing could be a house of cards or it could be incredibly resilient in ways that we don't understand in which case those projections forward makes sense so you tell me what you think about the Chinese resilience problem you know it's the old thing about the tide going out and then you see who's naked or not I write that famous expression that's the thing with a crisis or as we say in New York all doctors are good until you get sick and as soon as you get sick it's like oh my god this doctor can't diagnose well my problem is it's not a very good doctor we will have big great conversations great bedside manner fantastic you know person great medical school and now I actually need a doctor for something for a problem for the crisis that's it and the doctor doesn't work right there are different problems with doctors in New York if a doctor is willing to take you on as a patient you don't want to go there the only doctors you want to see are the ones that have no appointments left because those are the ones that are that's separate but so the Chinese piece of Chinese resilience the Chinese experts that the scholars of China are on both sides of the fence on this resilience question you can read foreign affairs and think that the great magazine which brings together a alternative points of view and you can think that China is this is strong and gonna endure or you can think that the Chinese system is this house of cards and very fragile so until we know the answer to that the world today is very difficult to navigate and understand because the Chinese are a house of cards all you got to do is blow a little bit on it or you just stay and watch on the outside and let it tumble right but if the Chinese are resilient if that system is here for good if they're on a run that's going to be a multi century run then you need a whole different strategy from the one you're playing out or you're on a capitulation game without fully understanding that you're in the capitulation game right so there are other issues that one could discuss the Russia peace the Middle East and Washington itself and all of that kind of stuff but my view is that everything pivots on your your belief or not in the resilience of the Chinese system anyway are we good thank you for your attention [Applause]

Channel: Dartmouth

Views: 120,329

Rating: 4.7703848 out of 5

Keywords: John Sloan Dickey Center, Leslie Center for the Humanities, Political Economy Project, Dartmouth College, Stephen Kotkin

Id: rcE3jaMuuy8

Length: 91min 48sec (5508 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 02 2017