 Good afternoon and thank you all for being here. My name is Tony Fox. I'm a professor at the College of Maritime Operational Warfare, and I am today standing in for my colleague and boss, Professor Dave Pallotti, who unfortunately could not make it today. But I'm happy to be able to do this because it gives me the chance to introduce to you Dr. Sally Payne. When I showed her before we began, the copy of the biography I had begun to write about her to introduce her to you, she said, this is way over the top. Well, if it is, it's only because she has done many of the things that I wished I could do when I was a college student. So let me begin. Dr. Sally Payne began teaching in the strategy and policy department here at the War College in 2000. Since that time, she has been regularly honored for her many achievements here, being named the Sims Professor of History and Grand Strategy in 2014, and then, two years ago, appointed a university professor. This is an extremely rare honor to enable War College's most distinguished professional title for a faculty member and just one of many of the awards that she has received over her career. After graduating from Harvard College with high honors, Sally went on to obtain a PhD in history from Columbia University. Over the years, she has studied and done research in such places as Japan, China, Russia, and Australia. And she has published many, many books. Her academic focus has been on relations among China, Russia, and Japan, and on the operational and strategic effects of naval operations to include blockades, raiding, and perhaps most importantly, in some ways, the non-combat uses of navies. Please join me in welcoming Dr. Sally Payne. That was over the top. I paid him. It is my great pleasure to change the slide, yeah. It is my great pleasure to be with you. I'm Sally Payne, the strategy and policy department. And I will give you the promised lecture on what happened to the good old Soviet Union in the end of the day, et cetera. But I have another plan as well. It's to purpose. For those of you who aren't students here, it's to give you a window onto the curriculum here. And this is an old lecture that used to be part of the senior level course. It got changed out because we mix and match lectures every year. And what this one is all about is counterarguments. We ask students to answer questions. And then one of the most difficult things to do is to counter the argument of your most persuasive critic. So what I'm going to do here is we're going to ask the question. This is the assigned question. Why did the Soviet Union lose the Cold War? I'm not going to ask you what lose means. You're just going to accept it. They lost the Cold War. Don't even argue the out that part. And then the student who's assigned this lucky question has to come up with an answer. Typical answer might be that Reagan defeated the Russians. You've heard that one. It's all about Ronald. He did it. That's a thesis. I'm going to give you a whole, I will lay out that argument, but then I'm going to give you all sorts of counterarguments to it. And a whole bunch of them will be like the first one, which are a bunch of external explanations. What did other countries do to the Soviet Union to bring it down? But then I'll turn to a bunch of internal explanations to say, wait a minute, where there's some self-defeating things going on within the Soviet Union, where there's some bad things going on. These would be internal domestic explanations. And then I'm going to turn to some overarching explanations. So for those of you who are students who have trouble doing counterarguments, I can't remember how many are in here, like a dozen plus. Okay, so if you believe, very common thesis that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War, here he is with the Gorbachev. The Ronald Reagan ranch after the end of the Cold War looks really cordial for that kind of explanation. Hmm, what's up? Well, Reagan, as you all know, was a man of words and deeds. He made memorable speeches. Here he is. I think it's actually 1982, that's a typo. He's addressing parliament and says, look, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to take root. But none of them have been able to hold elections. Regimes planted by bannets, they don't acquire legitimacy. And then who can forget the evil empire speech? And it was delivered in Orlando, Florida to the National Association of Evangelicals who gave up a day in Disneyland to hear it. And later you have Reagan here. He's in Berlin in front of the Brandenburg Gate. It's long a symbol of German greatness, but at this time it is a closed gate in the Berlin Wall. And what does he have to say? General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev opened this gate, tear down this wall. Well, here's what Reagan did. He decided he was gonna bankrupt them. And there had actually been a military buildup that had begun under President Carter, but Reagan greatly accelerated it and took things to new aggressive levels. First, he funded any anti-Soviet anything, anywhere all over the world. In addition, he engaged in really aggressive maritime aerial patrolling, reconnaissance missions all over the place. And he enunciated his Reagan doctrine, which was a plan for rolling back the Soviet Union. And the Soviets responded symmetrically. Well, beware of symmetric strategies. They matched us, tried to match us dollar for dollar. Here's the problem with that one. If you take the Western Alliance plus Japan, it has the combined GNP seven times that of the Soviet Union. And let's check out the economic burden of all of this. So while we're doing the Reagan buildup, it's about 8% of the US GNP. Germany at that time was around 6%, Japan much less. If you look at Nazi Germany, it's 55%. So that's a really militarized regime. Well, let's just start in the Soviet Union. While the Cold War was going on, the CIA estimated that the Soviet Union was probably spending 20% of its budget on military things. Afterwards, when people started getting the data and could analyze it better, they're going, no, it was at least 40% or 50% of that economy in peacetime that is being spent on all of this military stuff. And then if you include the military industrial complex with all of the infrastructure that is associated with it in the Soviet Union, big country, lots of far-flung facilities, it may have been as much as 70%. So that it would be economy busting if you do this sort of thing. Okay, I am gonna be quoting many Russians today because they have reflected deeply on what happened to their country. And why not only did the Soviet Union disappear, so they lose the empire, communism disappears, and indeed, life as they knew it disappeared. And here you have Valentin Fallin. He was a Soviet ambassador to East Germany. And here's what he had to say. Look, the American strategy of our exhaustion in the arms race put our economy into this major league crisis where we're not being able to spend money on things like health, education, et cetera, et cetera. And then given the fact that there was the Sino-Soviet conflict going on where Russia's really worried about China and this has to militarize in that direction, the arms race plunged the Soviet economy into a permanent crisis. And here you have Gergiy Abatov and he was their top expert on this country and he's looking at Reagan funding anti-Soviet anything all over the world and particularly in Afghanistan that really got the Soviet government's attention. He goes, it became quite clear that the Afghan war was most advantageous for the United States and we got our Vietnam and we began to realize this. Bad news. Here's Gorbachev speaking to the Politburo a year after he takes office. And he says, Reagan did this strategic defense initiative, his missile shield. And Borogmachev says they're betting, the Americans are betting on precisely the fact that we're gonna be afraid of this missile shield and that's why they're putting all this pressure on us to exhaust us, correct? So some would argue that the U.S. victory in the arms race guaranteed victory in the Cold War. That's one way of looking at it. It's all about Ronald Reagan and his arms race, et cetera, and it all worked. But I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of other arguments, counter arguments, and I'm gonna start with more external explanations and here's my list. I will start with Ford and Carter, the Helsinki Accords under Ford and the Human Rights Campaign under Carter. So for years and years and years, the Russians really wanted to hold a European wide conference to confirm their expanded World War II borders and they were just itching for this and for years no one was interested but by the 1970s, the Western Europeans are just sick of it and they wanna settle out Europe because they actually have to live there and the United States is not enthusiastic at all but the conference is held anyway and we demand that in these Helsinki Accords that are gonna be a sign that they include all sorts of human rights clauses even though we think the Accords themselves aren't gonna be unimportant and that the Soviets are no way on the planet are they gonna adhere to whatever human rights this and that they sign? Well, unbeknownst to us, dissonant groups throughout the Eastern Bloc and human rights activists throughout the West started holding the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies accountable to the document they signed and they pointed out the disconnect between the liberation that is promised by communism and the actual dictatorship that was delivered and these dissonant groups in the Eastern Bloc sort of took off at a life of their own and here you have Robert Gates a not too long ago secretary of defense but back in the day he was the director of the CIA as a very distinguished career and here's his thoughts on it the Soviets desperately wanted this big European-wide meeting and it laid the foundations for the end of their empire we resisted it for years only discover much much later than it had produced benefits that we could never have imagined go figure turns out that Carter's human rights campaign was effective it resonated most profoundly among Eastern Europeans who were denied precisely the sorts of political rights that he was emphasizing and here you have a commencement address at Notre Dame in 1977 and here's Carter we have reaffirmed America's commitment to human rights as a fundamental tenet of our foreign policy what draws Americans together is a belief in human freedom we want the world to know that our nation stands for more than just financial prosperity we're bigger than that and it's Pavel Palashenko who was the translator for Gorbachev he believed that Carter's human rights campaign was profoundly influential in the Soviet Union where people listened to it and said you know we do need to become more democratic we need to open up we need to liberalize and here you have Edward Shevronadze who was the foreign minister in Russia he's talking to the Communist Party members of the foreign ministry which he runs and here's what he tells them the belief that we're a great country is deeply ingrained in me but great in what? territory, population arms, troubles lack of rights life disorderliness in what do we who have virtually the highest infant mortality rate on the planet take pride it is not easy answering the questions who are you and who do you want to be a country which is feared or a country which is respected a country of power or a country of kindness Vitaliy Ignatenko who was a Russian journalist who covered Gorbachev's rise to power and then the fall of the Berlin Wall he looked at things and said look it was just untenable to try to have a union, a Soviet Union based on an undemocratic ideology it just wasn't gonna last long term and here you have all the Grinevsky who's a Soviet career diplomat who's going look communist ideology is associated above all with the Soviet Union once you dump the ideology that's gonna be it for the Soviet Union and then you have Gorbachev's successor Budis Yeltsin who said look no one wants a new Soviet Union whatever it's gonna be it's gonna be different okay so you could make a perfectly good argument an answer to the original question saying no it's not Ronald Reagan it's the human rights clauses of the Helsinki chords and Carter's subsequent human rights campaign that destroyed communist belief in communism when they no longer believe that the system's done alright another president another counter argument someone argue all that's nonsense the real story is Richard Nixon cold warrior incarnate who decided to play the China card and he's gonna end Mao's complete isolation from the non-communist world and try to gang up with Mao to over extend the Soviet Union others would argue that Mao when he looked at this little picture because he has a very important border conflict with Russia in those two areas and it's rather ugly and he's still gonna decide to play the America card and whichever way it is here's how that goes got a nice picture for you during this border crisis the Soviets approached the United States and asked us whether it would be okay to nuke China and we said no that would not be remotely okay to do that and now figured it out the one that wants to nuke you that's the primary adversary and so you look at Mao recalculating and thinking maybe it's time to gang up with the United States so either way there's this confluence of interests among between the United States and China that rushes their primary enemy and what's gonna go on is the hostility with China will force Russia to militarize this long frontier with China and these aren't just average forces there they're mechanized they're nuclear equipped et cetera really expensive imagine if this country had to maintain that sort of force on both our long Mexican and Canadian borders I believe it would be bankrupting and the Soviet economy was and remains a shrinking percentage of ours so bad news for the Soviets when everyone gets around to this is a lovely poster the Chinese trying to get rid of smash the revisionist with this new plan so someone would argue that US cooperation with China fatally overextended the Soviet Union and that is truly the reason why the Cold War ended the way it did completely different argument now I'm gonna take an additional overarching argument which is gonna look at all US presidents from Nixon to Reagan to say each one open opportunities for the others so you start with Nixon who's gonna play a China card and then his successors are gonna play it with ever greater dexterity you're gonna have Ford who's gonna bring in the Helsinki human rights things that Carter is gonna play even more aggressively he begins a military buildup that Reagan then finishes and there it positions the United States to deal with the Soviet Union from a position of ideological and military strength so PS for those of you who think that US foreign policy is inconsistent think again and think at the strategic level for the entire 20th century virtually there was a consensus between the republican and democratic parties on the objective to keep free trade maintain democracy and contain communism and it doesn't matter which party you are you have different strategies for getting there I got that but the overarching objective was remarkably consistent and rather relentless so you could argue that presidents Nixon through Reagan produced the cumulative presidential effects that finally did in the Soviet Union okay if you don't if you think the great man history kind of explanations aren't where you want to go this is another one you could say all that great man stuff it's nonsense the real story is about a military a particular instrument platform that it was these nuclear submarines that that changed everything all around why what happened is the soviet fear because of our superiority of our nuclear sub-forest that they lacked a credible second strike capacity so that put them on a new a very high-risk first-strike nuclear posture that really made them nervous and here's how they looked at it so Valady Bolding who's this long-time aid of Gorbachev so look at the United States your most powerful strength is a naval fleet and given our country's geographic setup and budgetary setup we aren't about to get one and here's Marshall Yazov for the Americans the main means for atomic attack was the fleet alright this man Marshall Afromeev notice he dies in nineteen ninety one the moment the Soviet Union collapses he commits suicide his life's work had imploded before him but in nineteen eighty seven he was visiting the United States and he was being hosted uh... by jimmy carter an anapolis graduate and also a submariner and under jimmy carter what had happened is we had before had a fairly defensive naval strategy will we go on the offense and we start uh... positioning our subs right outside of their sub bastions and here's what his reaction to this is we know you know where our submarines are but we don't know where yours are and that's destabilizing you the United States Navy are the problem go Navy and here's his host Admiral Trost who's summing up the event afterwards he said look the inability of the Soviet Union to maintain a strong defensive capability led to the demise of the Soviet Union and so that we don't have to worry about them anymore that the Soviets just simply lacked the ability to counter our naval strategy also under Ronald Reagan he'd gotten us up to on six ships short of a six hundred ship Navy that Soviet simply couldn't match it the Soviet Union could not counter technologically or financially the U.S. submarine threat to its retaliatory nuclear forces and so ending the Cold War was the only solution to their problems they're being bankrupted by all of this their economy's imploding and they can't protect themselves it's bad okay all of these preceding explanations have been naval explanations naval it's spelled with an E as in stereo ones own they're all about what the United States did or didn't do at the naval war college we try to encourage students to think beyond their own country look at the other side what are the motivations of others and even if you can scope that out what is the interaction going to look like between us and whomever we're at interacting with and it's a complicated story and clouds who it's who is one of the gurus for those in the strategy war strategy and policy course from the key theorists uh... he's running about war is an interaction that is one of the main themes of his book so if you're going to act you've got a look at the other side Arnold Toynbee was one of the finest historians of the twentieth century he has this fun quotation i like civilizations die from suicide not by murder so i've given you all the murder explanations what other countries did to the soviet union now i'm gonna turn to the suicide what the soviet union did to itself and i'm gonna start with one one could argue that uh... the collapse of the soviet empire uh... was the cause not the result of their loss in the coal war think about the domino theory remember it was all supposed to be how in theory if the united states didn't take enough proactive uh... strategies all over the world countries would sequentially fall to communism right well what actually happened think about it the domino thing of theory applied to the soviet empire those dominoes just all went incredibly rapidly from eighty eighty nine ninety ninety one if you look at the Warsaw Pact countries when demonstrations started for democracy in one country the contagion spread to all of the others and they had unrest in the past but the way to stop it had been to send in tanks and kill lots of people and you will notice that this is what china does at about exactly the same time at tenement square demonstrators what does china do sends in tanks guess what that does to civilians the end that's not what's going on in eastern europe you could still do that but the leaders for whatever reasons didn't have the stomach for the kind of violence it would entail or maybe they didn't see what the consequences were going to be Gorbachev's calls calls for glassness which is openness or liberalization and peristorica which were his big two buzzwords that one's economic reform or rebuilding resonated across eastern europe and russia there are all kinds of demonstrations in russia for greater freedoms and then more demonstrations in eastern europe for freedom from russia and the problem uh... Gorbachev didn't he encouraged actually the demonstrations and he encouraged eastern european governments to reform as he was done doing and he believes that that the soviet union had subsidized them forever they needed to reform and get their economies on their own feet so all sorts of exciting things are happening and the reforms start in poland poland had been the site of numerous occasions when workers rose up they rose up in nineteen fifty six nineteen seventy nineteen seventy six and nineteen eighty eighty one and in the last period this is one of the labor organization solidarity and solidarity became nationally and internationally famous poland is the only eastern block country at that time that had an independent organized opposition and poland's economy was a mess between nineteen eighty eighty seven per capita standards of living had fallen by three point two percent so that when in nineteen eighty eight at the beginning of the year when the government announced it was gonna hike all kinds of prices because that the budget deficit was gaping the workers hit the streets and the government didn't know what to do because they're afraid the economy was going to go into freefall so they went to the illegal labor organization solidarity said okay you get a seat at the bargaining table but you've got to stop got a call for demonstrations because they're worried about uh... an already crippled economy being racked so solidarity went along with that so there's something called before i forgot a step a complicating factor here the communists they're kneeling not with just solidarity and uh... trying to put things back together but the roland catholic church is an institution of poland enormous uh... legitimacy far more so than the communist party or anybody else and also had a partiality for solidarity so the government opens what become known as the round table talks this is where they're meeting with solidarity representatives and here you can see one of the so soviet observers telling some of the polls said look we want to make quick solutions your little country when you make mistakes are gonna be itty bitty mistakes you have to go first cuz we'll learn from you go be a good guinea pig because see if the soviet union makes mistakes they're gonna be really big mistakes on a global scale with secret serious consequences got that one right what the communist party thought is that it had arranged the electoral rule such that it would not jeopardize their control guess again solidarity won every single legislative sleep seat except for one for which it could compete and then all the party designated seats solidarity organized everyone often through congregations at church to make sure that the party preferred candidates didn't make it so only three party preferred candidates make it on the ballot uh... who wins that that ballot uh... the overwhelming winner on the party preferred ballots was the box called none of the above okay the communist party lost its legitimacy overnight and poland was on the road to democracy there was no way of arguing after that election that they had any legitimate if none of the above on every single communist isn't gonna cut it you got a problem four months later in eastern germany massive demonstrations erupt and typically in eastern germany they were at some of the most hardcore of the communists had would have done the tenement solution and send tanks but the guy in question uh... had been fired recently so what you have is seventy thousand people demonstrating in leipzig you have at the point of the fortieth anniversary of eastern uh... europe uh... eastern germany its founding it's more or less late october early november you have one point four million germans in demonstrations in two hundred and ten cities and it is doing nothing but getting worse this guy eric connecker out of the job about two weeks prior he's a guy who had uh... helped trash the east german economy and helped get into the mess so he was out of a job but then look what happens so he's out on the seventeenth of october november seven this is right after all of these big demonstrations the council ministers resigns next day the pollut bureau resigns oh and p.s. in a communist government that is the communist government then whoever is left starts issuing new travel rules on the next day except they don't explain who's gonna enforce them when they go into effect who knows enter fog friction and chance this gentleman gunter shavovsky was an important communist leader he was still in the government one of the few guys there uh... he's going into uh... news uh... press conference and it rather than saying i don't know to a question he was uh... he said all the travel regulations when did they go into fact uh... immediately all great so then what happens is east germans start massing in berlin because that's the easy place to go east west germany because berlin's a divided city they start massing at the six gates and the border guards there at one of the gates decide the discretion uh... is the better part of valor and they open the gates and people pour into west berlin within one week over half of east germany's population had visited uh... west germany and within the month of november one over it's not quite one percent of the population emigrates to the west just picked up their bags and they're gone it's like a hundred and thirty thousand people after this is all over good old gunter here said oh we had a clue that opening the wall was the beginning of the end of the my country really so this is what you're gonna tell everybody oh i had not a clue and little slip up a news conference in the country goes down okay moving around along here the russian many russians were shocked at how rapidly things fell apart and here you have your usual well-educated man belong to the new russian parliament he said all of our former satellites of by compulsion man with a sense of humor cast off from us as fast and as far as possible yes they did and anatoly kovaleov who was long time you can see here deputy foreign minister he said look uh... the soviet union had no confidence whatsoever that when the east german army starts to shoot it's gonna shoot the demonstrators or is it gonna suit the soviet red army and the same a generalization applies to poland and hungry okay with friends like these you don't even need enemies right the your friends have covered that one so some could argue that unrest in the empire is what did in the soviet union that killed it all off there's another way of looking at saying look you wouldn't have had all that unrest etcetera if the satellites had been healthy that there's a uh... underlying more important explanation if you look at the globe here circa nineteen sixty which is one of the says sell a green areas those are all the countries that are about to be decolonized their countries that are so sick as a rule of their western colonizers so when soviet union comes in this is out we have a permanent solution for the west there are many takers in that group so fast forward to circa nineteen eighty and you'll notice all these red places on the map at cetera so the soviet union spent on a roll is that all that looks good well here's the problem many of these places join became up pals of the soviet union are very dependent on resource exports and resource prices tankers big recessions result of oil price hikes and cetera crates recessions and then it has the aftershock by the time you get to seventy nine to eighty three or odd commodity prices are tanking and so this means that new friend newfound power such as uh... if the opiates one of them south yemen nicaragua angola uh... are are just suffering these name place name should be familiar to you right they're still a mess from their dalliance from communism it's it's been a long hard road and the soviet union's problem was by the time you get into the eighties oil prices are tanking and that's what it funds everything for them so they can't really afford all the non-performing pals gets better soviet union has all sorts of nationalities within the soviet union and they all started revolting simultaneously and one of the rules for continental empire is no two-front war as well russia at this point has so many fronts no one can keep count that uh... in fact if you look at where all the the things are going on there were warning signs in eighty four eighty five in kazakhstan in yakutia it begins by the time you get to nineteen ninety you got about seventy six hot spots in this far-flung country nationalities and open revolt so you could argue make a perfectly persuasive answer to why the soviet union lose the cold war because it bankrupted itself in the third world while ignoring its own internal third world and that the simultaneous revolts there's no army in the world that can be in that many theaters all at once so that was that okay another kind of argument you can argue it's not these people it's not the economy uh... well it is the economy actually it's not uh... military things but it's really this non-performing communist economy that does the soviet union and i kid you not this is Siberian road system this is not an unusual picture it's a usual one if you look at soviet growth rates are really good after world war two when they're rebuilding but then bad things start happening so that by the time you get to the eighties really bad things are happening here's how that goes you can just look at it uh... tanking there here's what's going on communist system all the different sub-units in whatever the enterprise is that you're working at are lying to everybody else why to make sure they get enough resources to produce whatever they're producing here's the problem with that that means neither they nor the government has any good economic data everyone's been lying to each other so no one knows what's the real value of labor what's the real value of capital what is our actual productivity rate uh... it's a total uh... total mess so by the time they start realizing there are problems afoot because there have been these gross misallocations of capital labor because no one knows what their value is they're in a deep crisis total mess is on their hands so if you look here you got the eastern block and Russia there so Russia from eighty five which is the year Gorbachev comes in goes over a cliff and then it tanks in nineteen ninety eight long hard uh... shrinking share of world gdp and when Gorbachev's in there all these figures are awful debt deficits of all kinds up up in a way growth has gone double-digit negative it is a total and here you have marshal Yazov said look we simply lack the power to oppose all these really wealthy uh... western nations so we had no alternative but to call off the the cold war and indeed uh... on a totally on a mission who's a foreign service officer said look it began when we left this kind of isolation and we literally exhausted ourselves from this huge arms race militarism opus everyone hated us so that you have to be prepared to fight everybody in their mother and here you have Gorbachev talking to the central committee in eighty six he said look we're in circle of not by invincible armies by superior economies and he repeatedly said living this way it's just it's impossible we've got to do something so some could argue that the soviet union lost the cold war this man alexis de toqueville has written many wonderful books but one of them is about france just before the french revolution trying to explain what happened to the monarchy in france very famous quotation here is the most dangerous moment for bad government is when it begins to reform and of course that's what Gorbachev is doing and if you look at people who are alive at the time living in russia when Gorbachev is making all these very important decisions they all agree whether they disagree with each other on other things they all agree that Gorbachev played an absolutely pivotal role there is a consensus on Russia on that one and it turns out Gorbachev based his decision-making on certain false assumptions and one of them was the irreversible direction of history always forward to communism never you turn back to capitalism and here you have a smart guy that kgb had a foreign intelligence who said look the thought never occurs to the government that it's possible to withdraw from socialism which is precisely what eastern europe did also Gorbachev made false assumptions about his neighbors he assumed that the clock had started when he took office and started making reforms for the eastern europeans the clock had started a long time ago when Stalin had moved in and shot up a lot of people and installed governments that it was a different ball game from their point of view and here you have Anatoly Cheneyev who was an important advisor to Gorbachev saying uh... Gorbachev thought that bringing freedom to eastern european satellites would lead them to adopt socialism with a human face he made an enormous mistake because these countries brutally turned their backs on us if this is brutal what was Stalin and then he continued he said look the politics in connection with our former friends were totally unexpected to us really you move in you occupy their countries you shoot their leadership you impose governments you siphon off their resources for years and you're surprised they don't like you this is a draw jaw-dropping level of lack of self-awareness think about our country nine states nine states runs around all over the world intervening in other people's civil wars left right front center and then it dumps billions of dollars into their economies and then it even leaves and people don't like us why do the Russians think they're so special okay another bad assumption Gorbachev assumed that if there was no Warsaw Pact that's all his alliance system in eastern europe that surely NATO would disappear off the planet as well and with there were no Comicon Comicon is the uh... the trading group of all the eastern european countries if that went that surely the european community european union is the new name european community is the old name that that would disappear too and he's just he tells the polyp here the americans will definitely dissolve NATO because there's going to be no war with the Pact well he doesn't get it the longevity longevity of organizations that are voluntary versus involuntary it's different right they die for different reasons last false assumption that Gorbachev made he assumed that the united states would take a continental powers view which is a very dim view of other strong powers that the united states would not want a strong germany because that's dangerous thing to have around and it would take this somehow trying to keep it weak and he didn't get it that George H.W. Bush was president then and Chancellor Helmut Kohl was running west germany were coordinating to make a unified Germany fully armed fully in NATO so Gorbachev never occurred to him that that would be the goal okay many of his closest advisors when they look back and thought well what happened they blamed his foreign policy mistakes which he said they believe were a function of his domestic policy errors that caused the whole edifice to implode and here you have Vladimir Lukin as this expert on the united states making a rather rye comment well Gorbachev was no dung-shell ping right the man the mastermind of china's very successful reform economic reforms and Giorgi Arbatov he just means no words the stupidity of the leaders i.e. Gorbachev that's what did all did us in okay so you could argue the answer of why the Cold War turned out the way it did is it's suicide by mistake the big bozo was playing playing with plastic bags stuck one on his head and that was that okay so more of what we're looking he's a look in the u.s. people in the west you love Gorbachev because everything happened so easy for you just easy simple like that what wasn't easy and simple for us extraordinarily painful yeah it was painful for russians but you know stalling was even more painful and the time to reassess was long overdue so wasn't that more the problem they dug themselves in i have another counter argument for you for those who need more even for those who don't need more so i've given you all sorts of potential sins of commission uh... well suboptimal things that Gorbachev did another way of looking at it is goes no it's not about the sins of commission it's a big sin of omission right dung-shell ping it sent tanks in solve problem and many officers after uh... everything was over believe it had been a terrible mistake not to send tanks right on in and the problem why it didn't why it didn't happen in the eighty eight eighty nine the ninety one time frame has to do with the field of military prestige was at a low in russia afghanistan had gone horribly and there is not a tradition in russia recently or the twentieth century of military officers running coups on the communist party that's just not what's going on there so it doesn't happen alright so i have an acronym for me for you since many people in the room of military careers love acronym so here's the civilians attempt to help you out uh... someone argue the timely tank deployments tdd would have changed the outcome of the cold war another way of looking at are someone else could argue yeah it's about leadership but it's not about govachev and it's not about the military it's about this guy uh... this is govachev successor who just killed everything what did he do he amended the soviet constitution in nineteen ninety and took away the leading role of the communist party that's no longer guaranteed and then he sealed the deal in nineteen ninety one with a bill of yorja accords one of those russia uh... bill of russia and uh... ukraine signed them and it dissolves the soviet union not only is a communist party no longer getting its guaranteed special place but now all that nationalities can slip the leash and and get independence and that's what killed things off someone argue hey it wasn't suicide by mistake he was suicide very much on purpose okay i'm not going to turn to some overarching counter arguments that take in many of the ones i've already discussed and comes up with something bigger one of them is any of the bob you can take any of the above uh... counter arguments i've given you and there's so many of them it was inevitable that russia would lose the cold war another one takes just the opposite approaches said no no no took every single one of these factors so the west barely one so let's try uh... any of the above don't you love that this is the state of agriculture this contemporary picture uh... to contemporary period i'm talking about uh... somewhat argue is you just look at the sheer number of suboptimal things going on both what's happening to russia what the russians are doing the cells any one of them is a sufficient answer to the question why the rush eluse from all together and they were truly doomed and it these are russians this is their take on it so you have a guy who is really is a rocket scientist you're in chaff who said what it's because the system is just plain rotten it was inevitable tia mora steppartoff is a journalist he said look i think from the beginning the genes of disintegration were contained in the genetics of this governmental political formation communist use of words uh... the ideas of soviet union was destined to lose that's one way of looking at it but there are others who say no that is like a hundred eighty degrees wrong because it took all of these factors if you take any one of them away the cold war ends on something other than western terms it ends differently so here's cobalt off again said look that's all factors merged internal idea ideological economic military in order to arrange for the cold war funeral so the best west bar a barely one the cold war different argument uh... you could take this argument and go one step further and say it took not only every single one of these factors but it also took an overlap in office of these two gentlemen chancellor helmut coal west germany and george bush of the united states who decided who did uh... a brilliant job of war termination bush is bush senior is probably one of the most uh... qualified persons ever to occupy the oval office this is just a highlights of his career starts out as a navy pilot where you're in for the duration right and then he graduates with honor uh... high honors from yale so he's both very fine military officer got good academic record uh... by the time he's middle age he's already become a multi-millionaire from the oil company that he founded he then goes into politics first house of representatives but look where he moves on he becomes u.s. ambassador to the u n he's our representative to china this is when we're normalizing relations with china very important position director of c i a and then he's going to serve as vice president under reagan for eight years that's quite a resume and then you have helmut coal he is the longest-serving chancellor in german history since his illustrious predecessor auto von bizmark he has very fine education he has a phd in political science and history he like bush starts out in business but then in the nineteen sixties he goes into politics at the state level and starts out as a representative and then he moves on to be governor and then he heads the political party which he belongs christian democratic union and he is their head for twenty five years and he decides as soon as he comes into office that he is going to reunite reunite germany one tourist at a time this is how that works east germans love to travel but they always want more always allowed out west germans could always come in or pretty much as things settle down and visit family and things in east germany but the problem with east germans going the other way is they had a habit of staying so the east germans started lightning up and letting a lot more people out of coal was there and you go and the answer would be money he paid all kinds of fancy exit fees to let them come on out and travel and he's going to develop a really brisk uh... trade in tourists because here's what's had happened to east germany eric hannaker the world would be tank man who was booted from office just before the moment to deploy tanks had come he had uh... helped wreck the uh... east germany economy what did he done in order to maintain social stability he had cease making a lot of investments in east germany took out massive foreign loans especially from west germany in order to pay for all sorts of social services and goods if by the time you get to eighty eight eighty nine if you had suddenly gotten rid of all those subsidies and things it would have meant a thirty percent decline in east germans standard of living bad news so helmut kohl thinks ooh this is an opportunity they need money i got money and here are the trades so you get nineteen eighty eight this is when east germany eases travel restrictions ah what goes on with west germany gives them five hundred and twenty five million deutschmarks for the favor then you move into september hungry opens its border to austria see east germans can travel within eastern europe so if they're in hungry and hungry lets them out they're off to austria and into the west what does hungry get five hundred million deutschmarks for letting a bunch of east germans go then you get to the end of november and kohl has his ten point unification program for germany that he's trying to pedal and then he gives the soviet union which has all kinds of unrest a hundred million dollars and all sorts of consumer goods okay it doesn't stop the demonstrations they continue so when you get to be out january nineteen ninety helmut kohl and george bush reassess and they decide they want to do the fastest re-unification possible why because they think or which is going to fall from power and it needs to happen before everything spirals out of control for him economically and politically we got a really step on it if you're going to unify germany in a way that ends a cold war on western terms and here's the problem there are a lot of people don't like that idea let's start with gorbachev the last thing he wants is germany in nato a unified germany nato he's currently got half of germany in nato that's but the last thing he wants is eastern germany in there as well and he's made it really clear that it that is non-negotiable and then you get u.s. state department experts who are saying look you gotta go slow this is just the reality of of the countries we're dealing with it's just a putt-putt kind of solution and then you have this gentleman gensher who's the foreign minister he's unfireable why because he belongs to a different political party from kohl it's a coalition government this guy stays this guy is very skeptical about germany joining nato doesn't like the idea and then you've got britain and france and they hate the idea of a unified germany why because it will eclipse their own countries politically and economically in europe which is precisely what has happened they were correct about that so kohl and bush worked around all of them and they had a division of tasks kohl was gonna work the diplomacy in the finance he was gonna reassure the soviet union and he's gonna arrange for a takeover by stealth of eastern germany and the instrument is not gonna be military instrument that's the only takeovers the soviets and others in the communist block understand it's me a financial takeovers to me through the deutschmark the communists don't understand economics and finance if they did they would not have been in the economic mess that they were in so that's kohl what kohl is gonna do bush has got something else on his hands there are a whole bunch of upcoming meetings that where the western leaders are supposed to get together bush's job is to delay delay delay to let events in eastern and western germany progress as far as possible before you let france and britain are closest allies in on the action because they're gonna try and slow all this stuff down and so what they do is run tag team diplomacy against gorbachev and it just happened so fast his economy is imploding so rapidly that he just can't keep up with it here's how that work in february nineteen ninety you got Gorbachev he's agreeing to german unification look at the payoff numbers are no longer in millions there in billions kohl's promising five billion dollars to gorbachev next thing gorbachev agrees that states can choose their alliances that means they can choose whether to belong to nato or not and the united states offers nine assurances about how that's all gonna work and also a trade agreement that he desperately wanted and then there's this very busy month of july you have the german economic union going to effect this is the one currency takeover by stealth this is taking money right out of the hands of the eastern and uh... government because who's minting that money it wouldn't be east germany so then you get the nineteen ninety uh... london declaration this is all about easing eastern european countries into nato but the payoff for the sub union is they agree to get together immediately to figure out some rapid economic aid to gorbachev who's worried about losing power imminently you have a formal agreement that gorbachev agrees that not only can west germany remain in nato but the fully unified germany not half of it the whole thing is going to be in nato and then immediately germany confirms the polish border which is a big ticket item i'll get to it in a second and look at the money here germany then provides a soviet union fifteen billion dutch marks and a whole bunch of housing for repatriated soldiers what's the housing all about so all these soviet red army troops are coming out of eastern europe they're gonna go back home you don't want them running coups give them new housing which is what the germans do in the off buying furniture and they won't be messing around politics for a while it's how it goes so you have unification of germany it signed in september of nineteen ninety except there's a little event that happened i'll get to the little event i remember i promised to tell you about poland poland uh... moves so under stalling he moved poland way to the west taking away what i've been a third of germany's pre-war territory and this is a big sticking point for the germans to agree to this because during the war about twelve million germans have been uprooted and booted out of this area and other areas in eastern europe and two million of them had died as as it was all going on but germany agrees we're not arguing with about polish borders but this is where i was going to get to a month and a half before that unification agreement is signed this is when saddam launches to move into kawaii and this is a problem kawaii uh... iraq is a very important was very important soviet client state i believe it owed the soviet union then about ten or thirteen billion dollars we've established the soviet union is broke it would really like to have some of that money back and so the russians have there's a great deal of diplomacy with us about this war so it doesn't tank war termination in the big war right think about it uh... the prize is not saddam hussein saddam hussein is no prize piece of work the prize is winning the cold war the really big ticket item and focusing on how to do that and also understand that the red army is not going to be out fully out of east uh... east germany in the eastern block places where it doesn't belong until nineteen ninety four until that happens cold war termination isn't actually confirmed so there's some delicate diplomacy going on a lot of conversations between us and the soviets um... gorbachev sends his personal emissary avgeny primakov multiple times to bag dead after the first trip primakov gets all soviet hostages after the second trip he gets all western postages out third trip not so lucky he's there when we start dropping bombs all over the place he was really non-plus by that but imagine during the bombing campaign human shields our human shields had gone down with every target it is the russians who make sure that does not happen it's also interesting that we're coordinating with the russians to have the russians coordinate to deal with the chinese and the russians understand we're gonna take unilateral that we are going to do something about iraq one way or the other and they would prefer to have it go through the security council and not the unilateral because look uh... it answered our interest for everything which takes place in the world be sanctioned by the security council where we have a vote what's more than a vote we have a veto the russians talk to the chinese and say don't you also want to have everything run through the security council where you also have a veto and the chinese said gotcha that's what they do but there's an understanding here back to kovalyov the deputy foreign minister he said to uh... he said we must support the territorial integrity of iraq this was our sacred position we must not permit the division of iraq so for those of you wonder what's what's what's about why did the united states stop after a hundred hours of ground combat this is the reason why we got a deal with the soviets which says get him out of kovalyov but you don't get to go into iraq that's the deal he's out of iraq and not the rest of it bush got it he understands that if he goes starts heading up towards bagdad that's going to be on going beyond the culminating point of victory in the cold war it is going to jeopardize everything that's going on in europe stupid move so he doesn't do it now if we had done this margaret thatcher prime minister of great britain and president france want me to run of france would have loved it they really don't want to see germany unified they're scared of it and a totally unhappy now france on the wrong uh... he eventually find solace in being a really central figure in negotiating the european union that's going to include both eastern and western europe and the mastic treaty that makes it all happen but margaret thatcher was never reconciled she just she said look germany will be uh... the japan of europe but worse than japan i guess she hadn't visited japan lately uh... the germans will get in peace what hitler couldn't get more and her plan was to leave soviet troops in germany forever okay imagine if that's what we were dealing with what we're dealing with today when you've got putin who's doing a number in different places in europe uh... bush and coal left a germany that is large enough to counterbalance this man and they currently germany currently has a very distinguished chancellor who's been working on it uncle america who grew up in east germany and knows all about this guy uh... bush as a result understanding what was going on he promised col that i won't be my chest and dance on the berlin wall the idea is that he was never going to brag about how uh... he his strategy had had won the cold war uh... or the war termination had been so very very clever why because if he had done that a it depends when he does it if he doesn't immediately gober chaff falls from power earlier and also the hardliners probably would have come to power sooner what happens in the event is that the soviet union becomes so self-absorbed that they're ignoring eastern europe for twenty years and it takes uh... putin is twenty years plus for him to consolidate power to become a problem and this gives an aperture for all these newly independent countries to integrate with the west politically militarily economically allow the glue to set but there's a cost for this so bush never brags he doesn't get a second term americans hardly get it that this is the guy who uh... did a masterful job of war termination and it's only on mission would say look you're all crazy talking about about bush it's all about gober chaff look it's the soviet union that put an end to the cold war that the guys who quit and edwin meese who was a special counselor special advisor to uh... ronald reagan as well as attorney general so yeah you know the cold war began because of the soviet politics in a sense it ended because they changed their politics and here you can see gober chaff winning the nobel peace prize for his liberation of eastern europe and his own people okay i'm gonna leave it to you to decide uh... which one of these arguments that you find appealing or a combination but i hope i've convinced you that a good answer to the question of why russia lost the cold war is more than this monothematic ronald reagan did it anyway thank you very much you own me if there are any questions i really enjoyed your presentation thanks alex carter us army senior class you didn't mention anything about the marshal plan i think if we go way back i'm thinking you know with the trajectory of the soviet union was there a point much earlier on when we could have slowed it slowed down the uh... the growth of the expansion of communism and was was a direct challenge to the marshal plan a possibility would have had effect in term in terms of for example the soviet union coming up with their own version of the marshal planning counteracting it with what the americans did well the marshal plan is based on having a free enterprise economy right you're funding all these enterprises and people put money around in different places and my explanation about all these stuff the problem with communism is when you're dealing with something as large as the soviet union and all the subunits are lying to each other it just is not gonna work out well but to go back to the marshal plan because i was in the truman archives this loads of fun we understood, my definition of fun is different from yours it's interesting it's hungry in rumania that fall first to the red army so that's a nineteen forty four and what is set up is there basically i don't remember the word for it but it's basically military commissioners so there's one soviet one there's one from us and i think there's one from the british because i don't think the french figure initially because they're still under however it works but there are at least three of them and we already knew in forty four bad news that the soviets they promised they were gonna do this and the other thing but they were just taking over everything and we watched how they took over all of the how they eliminated all the non-communist parties they went right into the police the ministry of the interior that gives you the police in the courts and into the our agriculture because then you're gonna um collectivize all the land right and then you divvy it out to your friends if you control court system that the military and the agriculture you've really got people and they just do it really rapidly so there in eastern europe and there to stay and they keep the red army there forever right gorbachev pulls the red army and then things are gone and you can see it's very if you want to occupy someone right well we can stay in a rack forever right it's very expensive proposition and uh... that one of the things for those of you who are students here to consider is so our country has this wonderful position of relative sanctuary and there are problems the world over and we can technically may not be a smart thing to do interview everywhere right but it's really expensive so you want to think very cautiously about where is it necessary to do this because it's as we all know it's easy to get in and it's really hard to get out this is the thing to think about and the russians of course is it's the opposite case or continental power and they've been invading people forever it's terribly expensive and it hasn't helped their economy and i i i don't think any marshal plan would save them right because they fundamentally have to reform how their economy works and if you compare china so gorbachev does political reforms and then he thinks once you do that then you do economic reforms chinese watchin and also uh... russia never had the commercial tradition that china has russia always operate like under czarist monopolies and things but china had a vibrant for thousands of years commercial economy so that they go after the economy first but now we're in a period where economic reform and political reform in china no longer run parallel but at cross-purposes so we're in different territory but i i digress there's another question here uh... good evening uh... my name's marcus carcia like alex i'm a student here and i too enjoyed your presentation uh... you've presented a very nuanced and complex interplay of possible reasons for the collapse does it provide a lens at all for a grand strategy on how to deal with china i mean given your given your uh... your experience in what you just mentioned about that would be my question well first of all you don't control china's decisions so i would think don't kid yourself that you do and they may do horrifically self-defeating things china's best bet is just to join the party they have benefited so enormously for opening up but be aware there's about seven point five percent of china's population are members of the communist party they want to keep the racket running it's not about the welfare of all the chinese uh... it's about keeping the communist party in power and economic reform no longer is in the party's political benefit because their reforms have reached a point where you really do need to open up things allow private businesses to take off and what's going on right now the princelings who are they in china they are the descendants here we're talking about we're doing classes in a classless society ho ho ho so the princelings are descendants of people whose daddy granddaddy's were on the long march and those are the ones like shijin ping who control the state-run enterprises even if those things don't really make money that's the trust fund those are the things they control so for a while they allowed all what what made china grow is all the private enterprises right well now it's reached the point where they got problems political problems and they don't like having all this extra money out there that they don't control and oh by the way the economy's not doing so well now so where you gonna poach you're gonna poach on the private side and now they're closing down on information and uh... if you're running a private the internet speeds in china are apparently are just abysmal because they're going through so many firewalls with uh... the communist party checking every last emoji on your email to see if it's you know doing something wound the ten-ter sympathies of shijin ping that they're in trouble they're in trouble because their economy is is uh... heading over and they're gonna have a recession right and because they're a denial it's gonna be a bigger recession it's unclear what the timing is so uh... it's you don't have to uh... if you're in the navy i know you have wonderful equipment and you like the idea of going right in you don't like the access denial stuff but understand understand all those nasty cluttered seas around china you don't they do they do and their economic containment's great their economic strategies such as sanctioning the bejesus out of them if it comes to that and think about it people say oh sanctions don't work it's because they're in it they don't get it you know how compounded growth works it's kind of amazing well let's do compounded growth that doesn't happen let's say i cut china's growth rate one or two percent per year and a lot of engineers here can do the math and then i run that for ten or twenty years and then my growth just goes putt putt i believe times on your side if that goes on and this is very much what our strategy was with the soviet union so i get it you can do all sorts of evil things to the chinese oh another thing that you should this is important information for you if you get at this level understand china's a face society and you must it's like you're in this respect i'm not trying to be insulting the chinese but it's like with your kids sometimes when you have someone has enough sleep you gotta get an off ramp for them in china they are face society it's gonna be easy to back them up against the wall and that doesn't make them fun it can make them leafily dangerous you're gonna have to think of an off-ramp for them a face-saving off-ramp that does not involve nuclear weapons being flung around because that happens i don't care who gets hit whatever the world as we know it will change in a bad way another thing to realize because we're a maritime country relative sanctuary you do not have to solve china you just don't it just give them a massive time out so i think i'm gonna i think i'm gonna die i will sure any other questions ah someone i recognize i paid him hey doctor pain thanks very much for the presentation really appreciate it uh... do you see any of the uh... whether they were the external factors internal factors the self defeating mechanisms that plague the soviet union applying to the united states of the west today that we need to be cautious of yeah uh... i look at what's going on now in our country and it looks like we're doing things that are tremendously self-destructive to ourselves it was devout this lecture i can't remember how many i guess it was like two thousand thirteen fourteen because that's why i i was at the hoover archives reading all this stuff and when i was reading uh... the carters human rights speeches to me they resonate now that we've forgotten who we are and the carter wasn't a particularly effective president in many ways uh... i'm with them we're more than just being a bunch of rich people and we've forgotten that and there's a whole level of mean in this country and another thing about the arguments and counter-arguments that really is important to education instead of vilifying someone who disagrees with you or dismissing them as an idiot listen to them like all of these arguments what i did is i just went through all the things i've read there are a bunch of their mutually exclusive but i thought they were honest these are different russians and this is their take on it and in a way it's the totality of it all it gives you a more total uh... experience but the important thing is so you disagree with each other why do we disagree well on many really portentious issues like why the cold war and the data is incomplete it's like an aggregate of soviet decision-making where would i ever get the data on that one i don't know and then another piece which is another reason not to vilify others is we have different priorities for instance it was fun we lived in australia for uh... a year and if you think of liberty and equality being on a trade-offs like if you have a completely uh... equal society everyone's got exactly the same stuff you can have precious little liberty right but if you allow total liberty you're probably gonna have a lot of inequality going on so if you look at this country if you continue them we're way out towards the liberty end of the spectrum if you go to australia a wonderful country they're much more towards equality and what they taught a real emphasis in australia is on the fair go you want to give all of your neighbors a fair go so who's right who's wrong you know this is a a value a preference the australian say and it's a consensus pretty much there that they want to spend much more money on social welfare and evening things out etc and our country's made a different decision so to me these uh... there's a value to your education here respecting what other people have to say and uh... well maybe uh... we will remind ourselves when we stop being so mean to each other and i think that's at Pollyanna's done thank you all very much for being here our next lecture will be on april second when professor john jackson will talk about robots and unmanned systems hope to see you then thank you