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What's up everybody?
My guest today is Dr. Steven Cohen.
Dr. Cohen is professor emeritus of politics
at Princeton university and of Russian studies
in history at NYU.
He's received several scholarly honors over
his lengthy career, including two Guggenheim
Fellowships and a national book award nomination
and was, for many years, a consultant and
on-air commentator on Russian affairs for
CBS news.
Dan Rather, who anchored the CBS evening news
desk from 1981 to 2005, as recently as this
year, referred to Professor Cohen as " One
of, if not the, premier expert on the old
Soviet Union, Russia, and Russian history
in all of what we call Western civilization."
We live in dangerous times, not only in international
relations, but also in domestic affairs.
Right here at home in our news rooms, lecture
halls and university campuses.
There have always been political litmus tests
in America.
During my time as a college student, unabashed
support for the military and categorical denunciations
of anti-Americanism were prerequisites for
any political discussion.
Today, a hefty dose of Russian fear-mongering
and gratuitous insults leveled at Russian
President Vladimir Putin, serve similar functions.
Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, a presidential
candidate on the Democratic side, was recently
accused by former Secretary of State and two-time
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton of
being a "Russian asset."
And Donald Trump is consistently chided for
what his critics assert is the conspicuous
absence of any criticism of Vladimir Putin.
In the years since Russia's occupation and
annexation of Crimea, Dr. Cohen has become
in the words of one writer, the most controversial
Russia expert in America.
He's been openly critical of NATO expansion
for as long as I can remember, and though
this criticism puts him in good company, his
views on Ukraine and what he sees as America's
role in inciting Russian aggression have left
him marginalized and oftentimes disparaged,
as a "Russian apologist."
I can't say I agree with Dr. Cohen on everything,
but I heed his counsel and take his warnings
very seriously.
We are in his view, dangerously close to war
with Russia.
The title that he has chosen for his most
recent book, which consists of a series of
commentaries on Russian affairs, originally
published at The Nation magazine.
He used American foreign policy towards Russia
as not only needlessly antagonistic but recklessly
endangering of American national security,
putting us at the greatest risk of nuclear
war since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Regular listeners to this program know that
I normally record the second half of my conversations
as over time segments, but in this case it
didn't feel right to break it up.
Dr. Cohen provides long, unhurried answers
and this conversation is interspersed with
personal stories and anecdotes from his time
growing up in the Jim Crow South, his employment
as a CBS commentator, as well as his experiences
living in the Soviet Union during the Brezhnev
and Gorbachev eras.
In place of the overtime, I've made available
my recently recorded episode with physicist
Sean Carroll on quantum mechanics that I won't
be releasing for a few more weeks, but the
transcript and rundown to this week's episode
has been made available as usual to our Patreon,
autodidact, and super nerd subscribers.
Again, to quote Dan Rather, "Whenever I'm
around Professor Cohen, I learn a lot," and
I think you will too.
And with that, please enjoy my conversation
with Professor Stephen Cohen.
Dr. Steven Cohen.
Professor Steven Cohen!
How are you?
Welcome to Hidden Forces.
I don't do doctors because I don't make house
calls.
Professor's better.
But you are a doctor of sorts.
It's a formality.
Of sorts.
Kissinger likes to be called Dr. Kissinger,
but that's because he was never a professor.
Is that right?
How well do you know Henry Kissinger?
Not well, but a little.
You know him that's still something.
I know him through family.
It's always interesting to talk to him.
He must be quite a character.
I told you, you were here and we've got some
tea and I didn't want to spill the beans before
we started-
And promised me vodka and I ended up with
a glass of kind of bland tea.
Well we can pour some vodka in there if you
want [laughter].
That was just a reflex, it's okay.
So you were my professor freshman year in
college.
I can't change the grade now.
It's too late.
You actually gave me a really undeservingly
good grade.
Well then you're a preceptor though.
I'm ashamed to say that I cut your class often
and I should not have, but I did only because
I was a freshman and because I was so enthused
with the liberation that comes with living
in a dormitory as an 18 and 19 year old kid,
and I was enjoying NYU a lot.
But your class was one of my favorite classes
ever that I've ever taken and certainly in
college and your lectures were...captivating
isn't strong enough of a word and I feel like
mesmerizing is too much.
Somewhere in between captivating and mesmerizing.
You're an incredible storyteller.
I remember one particular story and I'll share
it later from the lecture, but it was a wonderful
time.
The lecture hall was enormous and this was
part of the core curriculum.
They called it MAP or something like that,
right?
Yeah, something like that.
I wouldn't have taken it otherwise.
It was just wonderful and it's a great honor
to have you in studio.
Well, to gift credit, I taught at Princeton
for 30 years.
And my own mentor, Robert C. Tucker, whom
I regard as maybe the greatest American Russian
expert of all times, in terms of the intellectual
issues he studied.
He didn't live to complete what was projected
to be a three volume biography of Stalin,
but the two volumes on Stalin are just extraordinary.
There's nothing better.
He also has a book of essays called the Soviet
Political Mind, which I think I used in the
past.
Yes, I read chapters from that book.
What made Tucker interesting as a professor
of Russian Studies, is he always left you
with a really strong question to think about.
Most people who talk about Russia write, about
Russia, whether they're academics or journalists
or politicians, are full of answers.
When you run across somebody who's got a good
question about Russia that you haven't thought
about it, you don't know the answer to, that's
where the intellectual fun really begins.
Somebody said to me, he was Russian, actually
a famous Russian historian.
He said, because don't forget, they had lived
under censorship for decades until Gorbachev
came.
So this was the glossiness Gorbachev period.
He said, "Steve, a good question is always
better than any answer."
And I think in some ways intellectually that's
right.
That's interesting.
I also remember a scene in the lecture hall
where you recounted, you often did this, I
mean your love of the Russian people was palpable.
It was clear that you had a lot of deep friendships.
In fact, I think you also mentioned that Russians,
when they don't know you, they can be very
cold, but when they know you, they're very
warm.
I think that might've been something that
you mentioned.
But I also remember you saying how you would
go over to Russia and that your Russian friends
would appear to be so much more informed than
you were.
You mean they were more informed about America
then then I was informed of Russia.
Perhaps, I remember that they were, but I
specifically remember you reenacting your
friends and saying "You Americans, you don't
know how to read the newspaper.
You've got to turn it upside down and look
at the corners."
Is that something that you've done often?
Well, you bring back a lot of memories because
it wasn't my first trip to Russia, but beginning
in 1976, this is a long time ago, right?
This is long before Gorbachev, this was when
there was a lot of censorship.
I went to live in Russia for extended periods,
two, three, four months at a time from 1976-
Brezhnev's period.
That's right, until 1982 when they took away
my visa, they wouldn't allow me in the country.
So from 1982 until Gorbachev came to power
in '85, they'd had enough on me.
And I just couldn't get in the country, but
I have to say that the years I lived there
from 1976 to 1972 I wouldn't say it completely
transform my thinking about the contemporary
Soviet Union completely.
But it changed it so fundamentally, and then
this is sort of when you run into me, and
I began to rewrite all my lectures, I mean
no professor, say you give 24, 28 lectures
a year, wants to write 24 new, 28 lectures
a year.
That's like 24- 28 articles.
Nobody's got that in him.
So what you hope is you've got a core lectures
that you can just keep giving or update them
and then some new ones.
But living in Russia, even though I had studied
it for some time already, at least a decade
during those years, '76 to '82 before they
wouldn't let me come back, everything changed
in the way I thought in this sense.
That everything, this is the metaphor, I borrow
it from somebody, I don't remember.
Everything that had seemed great to me now
became multicolored, and I start using this
word and it was, everything was more complex,
but the reality of how people lived.
You may remember I used to give a lecture
that was a favorite.
People liked it.
It was called "naleva."
So naleva in Russian is not easy to translate,
but it means sort of like under the table,
doing things not by the rules-
I do remember this.
... and involves things like black market.
So what I discovered living in Russia were
things that obviously couldn't know from afar.
For example, how a person got a quality abortion.
You remember I told this story.
And the way people got, because there was
a deficit of quality goods except for the
elite, right?
And quality goods and services would be everything
from apparel, to a safe abortion.
Abortion being the ultimate and regular form
of birth control and Russia, because the other
forms were not readily available.
So I got to know people who had been through
all this process.
And what I discovered is that Marx and Engels
had said communism would be a moneyless society.
Well, the Soviet union of that period wasn't
moneyless, but the money had no value.
It was bartering, that somebody had a service
or a good, that was scarce and somebody else
needed it and they would have to come up with
an equally needed scarce good.
And that's why I began to build this lecture
around naleva society, or the real Russian
society, where people would do things like
literally, I told this in the course, exchanging
tickets to an Elton John concert.
It's a myth that the Beatles were the most
popular at that time.
It was Yelton, as they called him, Yelton,
Yelton.
He gave a big concert, I think it was in Leningrad
now, St. Petersburg.
And it was like the hottest thing.
And I actually knew of a case, that through
intermediaries of bartering on the black,
gray, multicolored market, actually abortion
was obtained for two Elton John tickets.
But how that happened, it wasn't all, that's
sort of funny or sick or depressing in itself.
But it was the process of the way the real
society worked, which had very little to do
with official Soviet society.
And of course what happens is Gorbachev comes
forward, declares his policy of Glasnost.
In other words, censorship ended, let's talk
about how we really live and then all of this
became known.
But when I was living there, it was underground
and that's what you heard in those lectures
that I contrived to try to capture what Soviet
society looked like to me.
After all, I had grown up in Kentucky and
Indiana and then ended up in New York or Princeton.
So a lot of this took some figuring out on
my part.
Speaks to the power of the market.
And it's interesting in my amateurish studying
of Russian history, the post-Soviet period
also saw something similar in terms of the
flourishing of the black market, right?
But you mentioned Kentucky.
So from what I understand, you grew up in
Kentucky, this was the Jim Crow South.
Yes.
I'm curious to know what that was like because
you were growing up in the 1940's and '50's.
First, what was that experience like in and
of itself and how did that experience inform
what you ended up doing later in your life?
So the most important thing to keep in mind
about my generation who grew up in the segregated
South is that when we were young, it seemed
perfectly normal, didn't seem wrong, didn't
seem-
The segregation, the racism, everything.
I mean the segregation was absolutely complete.
I mean, I suppose you know this from reading
things.
There was a movie recently that showed some
of it, but I didn't think it captured all
of that.
The one about the pianist who-
The Green Book.
Green book, Yeah.
I didn't feel that really captured the totality.
I mean it was apartheid, it really was.
It was an American form of apartheid.
Everywhere you went, there was bathroom for
the colored, as was written bathroom for the
white.
Everything was divided, color, white.
Where you sat, where you went to school.
Fascinating.
Now there were violations.
I mean I was a basketball junkie and basketball
was in the black neighborhoods, so I did some
mingling.
But there certainly was, you were in great
peril if, there was dating between the races,
this was dangerous.
Klan wasn't very strong in this part of Kentucky,
but it was around, and after all-
And you could feel that, you could feel that.
Well, I went to school with the kids of the
Klan, remember.
I mean, but they were just funny guys who
on holidays rode around in pickups and white
sheets.
Wow.
I mean it wasn't, I think the last lynching
where I grew up was 1937, before I was born.
But the possibility of violence hung over
the society.
So I found that interesting when I began to
study Soviet society before Gorbachev, when
so much was repressed.
And I began to ask myself with the help of
my own professor, Robert C. Tucker, because
I mentioned this to him and this brought me
to the major theme of my academic career.
How repressive societies change, I don't mean
to draw a direct parallel between the end
of segregation and Kentucky or in the Jim
Crow South and the end of repression in the
Soviet Union.
But the way, it did influence how I began
to think about change.
Or maybe even the end of the Civil War, compare
that to the breakup of the Soviet Union.
I have to think about that.
I mean, there was no invasion obviously.
But accounts that I've read, Soviet accounts
of what it was like after the breakup, that
period in the 90s, it was traumatic for a
lot of people.
Some of the accounts that I read from Andrew
Solomon who had spent time in Moscow, particularly
his accounts of the artists in Soviet Russia,
it seems like it was a radical change of life.
Well, it was a tragedy.
I mean Putin once said, and this was held
against him, but it was mistranslated.
Putin once said that the end of the Soviet
Union, I think he used the word "raspat" (распад),
which means something like disintegration,
but the end of the Soviet Union, he was reported
to have said was the greatest catastrophe
of the 20th century and people got all over
him.
They said, "Well, what about the Holocaust?
What about World War II?"
But actually if you go back and look at the
Russian, what he said, he said, it's very
clear there, one of the greatest catastrophes
in the 20th century.
And for the Russian people, to come to your
point, that was true because with the end
of the Soviet Union, the dislocation was so
great.
The economic depression by most indicators
or criteria exceeded the decline of production
services of great American Depression.
Depression.
It was their economic depression was greater
than our Great depression, just to put this
in perspective.
But that had real life consequences.
For a period in the 1990's, men were dying
on average at 57 years.
In the post-Soviet era.
And in Russia-
In Russia.
... because the other components had gone
their own way.
Longevity for women didn't fall as much, and
men still die much earlier than men in the
United States do but the gap is not so great.
But what happened in the 1990's as Putin said,
it was a catastrophe for many Russians, they
died.
I mean, that's a catastrophe.
So when people mock Putin for that, nobody
bothered to go back to the Russian where he
said one of the greatest catastrophes.
But even today, in order to understand Putin
or Putin-ism, if there's such a thing, you
have to begin the story in the 1990's and
the catastrophe.
So I have a lot of questions about your youth
and how you first became interested in Russia
and your first trip to Russia, which I think
was in the late fifties?
1959.
And if we have time we'll get into those.
But since we're already here, I want to begin
our discussion talking about Russia and maybe
how we got to where we are today.
But right before we do that, I do want my
listeners to really have a sense of your stature,
your experience, what it really means to hear
from you.
You mentioned in terms of life, you've grew
up in the 1940's and 50's in Jim Crow South.
Dan Rather, to quote Dan Rather, he's called
you "One of, if not the, premier experts on
the old Soviet Union, Russia and Russian history
in all of what we call Western civilization."
There's actually a great 92nd Street Y conversation
with Dan and your wife Katrina from The Nation.
You consulted for, and we're on-air commentator
for CBS during which period?
Oh-
Certainly.
It was when CBS was CBS.
I mean, Dan Rather was the anchor.
Dan Rather was the anchor.
I don't know if you'd ever did Walter Cronkite-
No.
... before Cronkite left.
No, no.
I met him a few times before he died.
But he was emeritus then and would come around.
No, I was with CBS, I think it was from, I
think briefly what happened was, is that I
was given a contract to be on the Today Morning
Show of NBC.
They didn't have a monkey back then, did they?
No.
They were more serious then, but the idea
was they wanted to build in, because the Soviet
Union was so important, a regular dialogue
between a so-called whatever they call it,
hawks and doves.
And so I was supposed to be the dove and they
produced somebody who was a hawk and they
liked that and I needed to pay the bills,
which you can't do-
Must've been a pretty good salary from CBS.
looking back, it wasn't that great.
Really?
But it helped with the kids.
And then that was NBC and then CBS saw me
and said, "Why are you just doing morning
show?
Why don't you come to us for a full network
contract?"
Which meant that I couldn't go on any other
commercial networks, but they paid me a lot
of money, far more than I was worth.
But that's how Dan Rather and I began to travel
to Russia --
Must have been also cool to be on TV back
then because now everyone's got a camera.
It doesn't mean anything to be on camera.
It was pre-cable or-
Yeah, pre-cable with broadcast.
I get this right, cable was emerging in various
places.
Yeah, early 80's was when Ted Turner, CNN,
but CNN didn't really take off until the Gulf
War, I think.
That's right.
No, it was the case when I was with CBS that
there were three evening news networks that
anybody who wanted to follow news would watch.
ABC, NBC, CBS, and the anchors were really,
really famous.
And it was one half hour, by the way.
It was Roger Mudd, Dan Rather.
Well it changed over the years.
I mean, there was Tom Brokaw, but what was
interesting was if you take the commercial
time out, I think they had something like
24 minutes.
Incredible.
And some enormous proportion of Americans
watched this before or after dinner.
It was a American ritual.
I was struck by, again that 92nd street Y
conversation, listening to Dan Rather unhurried,
and this is a big, I think a really a big
part, I don't think it can be overstated how
detrimental the need to get it out, get it
out, be the first to say something before
you even have any clear idea of what you're
saying, is really hurting our conversation
today.
So we're going to get into all of these different-
Well hold that thought for one second.
What's interesting you see, in part and depressing,
is with the advent of so-called Russia-gate,
the allegations for which I can find zero
evidence that Trump is incriminated or complicit-
Well hasn't he now been effectively, not technically
absolved, but effectively, he certainly wasn't
found guilty of collusion.
The charges against him come so fast and I've
lost track of what they're-
And you were write, you were writing critically
of the investigation before the Mueller Report
came out.
But here's what the point is that I want to
make is that until this happened, you had
to have certain credentials to be regarded
by the media as "a Russia expert."
Now everybody's Russia expert.
Right.
That's got to annoy you.
It doesn't annoy me, it bemuses me because
last night for a few minutes, I was watching
one of the, probably on CNN or maybe MSNBC,
and I mean some woman was going on about Putin
and Russia.
She obviously knew nothing, but it's in the
culture now what you're supposed to think,
and I don't know if it's depressing or amusing,
but it's certainly not good for national security.
There was a time, I don't want to dramatize
it, but I was there.
I was at one of the three major networks for
a very long time.
I knew the people at the other networks because
we would all go to Russia together to cover
big events.
These were very serious people.
And one of the things that the bosses, that
would be the president of the news divisions
and the executive producers didn't want was
BS coming out of the mouths of people that
they were putting on the air.
So if somebody put a blowhard on who clearly
was office perch, right?
I mean, or didn't know what they're talking
about.
Whoever put that person on was going to get
some grief.
That's all you got.
Now it's completely different.
Right, right.
What matters now is that the person gets attention
and he can get eyeballs.
And the fact is, that I know maybe three,
when I would call really informed, fully presentable,
lucid people who were really among the leading
American experts on Russia who haven't been
on any of these TV broadcasts in years because
they don't fit what's needed now.
Well there is a litmus test today when it
comes to Russia.
So it's interesting, there are lots of threads
here.
First of all, I think it's my view that certainly
in all of American history that I've lived
through, America has always needed a boogeyman
or two or three.
During the Bush administration, it was Islamic
terrorism, it was Saddam.
Also the one of the litmus tests was saying
that you support the troops.
You could show that without having to say
it, by getting a lapel pin.
There's always a litmus test and we have recently
gone through a period of hysteria with Russia.
And it's really sad and frustrating is that
whenever we go through these periods of hysteria,
once it's over, they just move on to the next
thing.
And what's left behind is sort of wreckage
and there isn't a reflection on what has happened
here.
There can even be a lost generation.
When I came from Kentucky and Indiana, I went
to Indiana University.
And I grew up, as I said in Kentucky, which
was about 130 miles away across the Ohio River.
So I had really grown up in what Russians
would call the American provinces.
I mean, it's not meant to be derogatory, it
just means it's not a capital city, in the
provinces.
So I came in the 60s to Columbia University
to do my Ph.D. And the first thing, I don't
want to say it shocked me because I knew the
history, but the first thing that impressed
me was, is that two of my professors had been
personally called in name by McCarthy as Soviet
agents.
It was completely untrue, ludicrous.
But they had been left as one used to say
to me, "Stevie, I still have a jumpy stomach,
be careful."
That they had been left with a caution, which
they passed on to some of their students.
And the point was that if you want to make
a career studying Russia, then communist Russia,
Russia in general, be careful, just be careful.
Don't get out on a limb.
Don't make yourself a target for people like
McCarthy and his descendants.
So that was meant to be kind, but in fact
it was dysfunctional because what you want
or I want is my best students to think way
outside the box, not simply to find the cautious
turf and stand there.
Why do I mention this?
Because it's back.
It's back.
Not the way as bad as it was during the McCarthy
years, but I know of cases of young scholars
who have chosen, say their dissertation topics,
which you have to write to get a Ph.D, right,
if you want to go on and be a professor, who've
chosen not the topic that really interested
in them most but a safer topic.
And if people begin to speak and write with
any kind of self-censor operating in their
head, that's just not good.
And so we're at risk if this continues and
it's begun again, was before Trump, it began
before Trump, but it's been-
Yeah, we've covered it on this program.
... intensified with Trump, we're going to
lose a whole generation of young scholars
to caution.
No, it is very concerning.
And this is also, this brings up though again
something else that's really underappreciated
and it's hard to appreciate it unless you
already have it to begin with, which is a
familiarity with history.
At least have studied enough history to appreciate
just how little all of us know and all of
us understand.
I want to also emphasize that I do remember
in your lectures, you making that point that
this is your view.
This is your experience of history, but that
we need to engage with this material on our
own and come to our own understanding.
So I want to ask you again, I bring it back
to that question.
You know when I was in your class, spring
semester 2000, this was before the 9/11 attacks,
all right?
This is about six months before September
11th, when really the world changed politically
and after the 9/11 attacks, of course, Vladimir
Putin and Russia were presented, at least
in the media, and he presented himself also,
as our allies, allies in the war against terror,
allies in any adventure we would have in Afghanistan.
But even then before that, in the 2000s and
the 90s, everything in the popular culture,
whether it was images of Bill Clinton and
Boris Yeltsin laughing and being chummy on
the White House lawn.
If it was movies like Independence Day that
featured Americans and Russians working together
to defeat an international race of aliens,
the sense was that the Cold War was over.
We were now buddies and we were going to build
this new future together.
And this was of course a time where the new
conservative movement began its swell.
Neo-conservatism goes back to at least Irving
Kristol, but it was gathering force, right?
Pervading the foreign policy establishment.
So how did we go from this world where that
I was in studying Russian history with you.
There was no controversy around Russia, you
were not controversial.
To now where we are today, where Russia is
seen as a mortal enemy and you are seen as
a controversial person with a controversial
opinion.
Of course we could digress, I won't, and ask
what controversial means.
There was a feature article about me in the
Journal of Higher Education, which is kind
of the Bible of professional educators, which
referred to me as the most, I think I have
this right, I put it on the cover of my new
book War with Russia?, the most controversial
Russia expert in America.
Uh-huh (affirmative).
And I liked that, I didn't mind that at all.
But the question, is what is controversial
mean?
And what they were referring to, because the
guy who came to write the article about me,
I remember the context of the question, was
in 2014 when the Ukrainian crisis began and
I presented an alternative view of its origins
and its dangers and how to resolve it.
That was my new, I had been controversial
before, but now it's starting all over and
that's where I got this tag, " Oh, he's a
Russian apologist or a Putin apologist."
Because I thought we were complicit in the
crisis that unfolded in Ukraine.
But, it comes, I guess with the baggage that
we've already looked at the past, it comes
with studying Russia.
You either take it seriously, well, I take
it seriously, it upsets my wife.
You let it affect what you do and think and
say and right or you don't.
That's the crucial thing.
And I come back to my point, if young people
who see what happened to me after 2014 and
after all I was, established figure pretty
well known.
If they could do that to me, how could they
be safe?
They had no careers, no reputation, but they
had to make career and reputation for the
sake of their family.
I got a lot, I mean I got quite a few emails
or personal contacts of young people saying,
"Well I think as you do, but dare I say so
publicly."
And I told them, no, wait until you got your-
Absolutely.
... get your position and then once you got
your position secured-
Even then we live in a different time and
I can tell you in my position, fielding incoming
on social media, it can be scary.
And what you say can be taken out of context
and it can destroy you.
It is a dangerous time in many different ways.
I want to pose a question because I remember
two particular things from your lectures that
I think, and they basically are ways of asking
a larger question, which is, what don't we
Americans-
... the larger question, which is what don't
we Americans get about Russia?
And the two things that I remember most that
stuck with me, and I realized it only when
I began to prepare for this interview, I realized
I've been channeling Dr. Cohen at least one
of these questions because I've been saying
for years or contextualized in conversations
about Russia in terms of NATO expansion eastward.
I got that from you.
I'm pretty sure I got that from your lecture.
Certainly you've been saying it for years.
The other thing that I remember from your
lecture had to do with the grievance of the
1990s.
The extent to which the experience of the
liquidation of Soviet public assets and the
privatization of the Soviet empire or Soviet
Russia in the hands of the oligarchs, the
extent to which that resentment drives modern
Russian politics.
What don't Americans understand that you think
they need to understand that would change
their overall understanding of our relationship
with Russia?
That its history has been so different from
our own, or at least so different from the
history of the majority of white Americans,
and it's important to make that distinction.
Think a minute about Russia's modern history
in the 20th century.
Don't even go back to serfdom and the rest,
but start occupation in World War I, the Russian
Revolution, three years of a brutal civil
war, in some ways more brutal than our own
Civil War.
In the early '20s, famine.
Imposed collectivization of 125 million peasants
in the late 1920s by Stalin, followed by another
famine.
World War II, about 27 million Soviet citizens
died in World War II.
I mean, we can't imagine-
More Russians died than any other nationality,
right?
During World War II.
Not sure about that.
Probably more than Germans would be the question.
Probably more Russians.
Yeah.
I think 670,000 American died just for proportion.
But to me this was...
And this was also occupation.
I mean, the Nazis occupied a large part.
It was a crucible experience for Russians.
After that comes the collapse of the Stalin
cult, which two generations had been raised
on the belief.
It was taught in the schools, in the popular
culture, in the ideological centers that Stalin
was the kindest and most genius person who
had ever ruled any country, and that was torn
down.
Then come the changes under Khrushchev, then
comes the end of the Soviet Union, followed
by a horrible depression in the 1990s.
So you said, what's the difference between
Russians and Americans?
The easy, cliched and semi correct true thing
to say is what people always say, "Oh, we're
just like Russians.
We love our kids.
We all want to have a successful, satisfying
career.
We want the best for our children, et cetera,
et cetera.
We want good health.
We're just people, why can't we get along?"
This is only superficially true.
The fact is is this is history that I've just
enumerated for you in a very sketchy way.
Means that Russians have been through a crucible
quite different from most Americans and therefore
they see life and its possibilities and it's
dangers, not all of them, but a great many
of them, than do Americans.
One Russian used to like to say to me, he
was a television personality.
This was during Soviet censor time.
Everybody watched him because everybody knew
he'd say something that was forbidden, but
he would sneak it in.
And then the next day, "Did you hear what
Sasha Bolvan said last night?
Oh my God, how'd they get that on the air?"
But he was famous for sneaking something in.
What period was this?
This was the late '70s and early '80s.
And I knew him pretty well, but my friends
would watch him, and I would watch him when
I was in Russia, watch him on TV.
He's a great big guy.
Weighed about 300 pounds.
And he just had the look of a guy...
Had a big walrus mustache and he looked like
trouble.
But they liked him and they kept him on the
air.
He had some trouble, but they kept him on
the air.
But he used to say, and it's important, that
"People can't jump out of their history any
more than you and I can jump out of our skin."
This is fundamental.
I mean, to ask a people simply to become something
other than their history has been, whether
you begin it with their grandparents who told
all the kids and the stories that weren't
permitted by the censored press, or their
parents, you know what your parents went through.
It was a very different experience than almost
all Americans, certainly white Americans went
through.
So we are different in the way we perceive
things.
Now that began to change, I guess, with the
end of the Soviet Union, but what you had
mentioned, the disillusionment that kicks
in again in particularly places like the New
York Times.
You can even track this in the columns of
Nicholas Kristof, one of my favorite negative
examples of how to write about Russia.
When he literally wrote that Putin had let
him, Kristof, down, because Putin had not
turned out to be a sober Yeltsin.
Well, what he meant by Yeltsin was Yeltsin,
outwardly at least, went along with this charade
that Bill Clinton enacted in the '90s of this
great Russian-American post-Soviet friendship.
It wasn't true.
It was for public consumption.
And Kristof wanted Putin to be like Yeltsin
in that regard.
That is to be completely deferential to American
interest or what Kristof thought were American
interest.
And when Putin turned out to be different
from Yeltsin, Kristof felt personally betrayed.
So there is an example of what we're expecting
Russian leaders to be, and yet they're coming
out of a completely different history.
Yeah, I do want to talk about that.
I want to bring us back to this point about
NATO.
You recognize this man as George Kennan-
Oh, that's Kennan.
Yes.
George Kennan.
Hold on a second.
Yes.
So I lived and taught in Princeton when George
lived in Princeton and I knew him very well,
but I've never seen this photograph.
And the reason is of course George was much
older when I knew him.
He's quite a young man there.
He looks like he might be in his 40s.
That might've been when he was stationed in
Moscow.
It might've been.
Yeah.
But I knew him when he was already this kind
of wizened, gray elder statesman who had this
up and down career with Washington.
I've mentioned his long telegram often.
Of course, it's one of the sort of foundational
pieces of American foreign policy that anyone
reads who's interested in international relations.
He gave an interview in 1998, I don't know
if you remember this, to Thomas Friedman.
And it was in-
I do remember.
It was in the New York Times.
It was titled Foreign Affairs; Now A Word
From X.
And of course X was because it was-
George had signed the-
Signed X when it was published in Foreign
Affairs-
Anonymously.
Anonymously.
And I want to read some passages from this
article because I find it to be incredibly
prescient to the point that it's disturbingly
prescient.
On Kennan's part, not on Friedman's.
On Kennan's part.
Yeah, no, not on Friedman's part.
I'm going to just take pieces of it because
they really make this point.
He said, I think when referring to the expansion
of NATO, he says-
This is George Kennan?
This is George Kennan speaking.
He's speaking to Friedman.
Yes.
He said, "I think it is the beginning of a
new Cold War.
I think the Russians will gradually react
quite adversely and it will affect their policies.
I think it is a tragic mistake.
It shows so little understanding of Russian
history and Soviet history.
Of course there's going to be a bad reaction
from Russia and then the NATO expanders will
say that we always told you it is how the
Russians are, but this is just wrong."
And he ended the conversation according to
Friedman saying, "This has been my life, and
it pains me to see it so screwed up in the
end."
Wow.
I remember it vividly, and I even remember
George talking to some of us at Princeton
about what he was going to say, and not only
to Friedman, but when he went to Washington
to testify because he was a sought after figure
still.
The takeaway for me is how prescient George
Kennan was, how clear the cautionary warning
he was giving about NATO expansion, and how
little Friedman took away from it personally.
Yes.
Well, he's been a cheerleader of-
That's right.
Because his columns have not been in the spirit
of George Kennan.
A lot of people got carried away.
You know?
I think that's also something that I think
is easily forgotten from that period.
People got swept up.
You're talking about NATO expansion?
Not just NATO...
Yes, in that period, but I mean also people
got swept up in the post Cold War world, this
idea of American exceptionalism, moral superiority,
that America was now basically...
It was the full spectrum dominance idea that
we were going to become the global hegemon,
number one.
We were going to set the international agenda,
we were going to drive it forward and no one
was going to get in our way.
And in fact, I think a couple of years ago
or a year ago maybe it was, or two years ago,
I've got the information in my rundown for
subscribers, these documents were made public
because you'd been talking about this for
years, that Gorbachev who you know very well,
was given assurances by Jim Baker that NATO
would not move an inch, not one inch to the
East.
And some of this information-
Right.
Published-
Yeah, so it's now-
The transcripts of the discussions were made-
A historical fact.
I want to read one more thing though from
Kennan's interview.
He said, "I was particularly bothered," because
you mentioned that he testified before the
Senate, and he referred to the Senate conversation
as superficial and ill informed, the debate
in the Senate.
And he said, "I was particularly bothered
by the references to Russia as a country dying
to attack Western Europe.
Don't people understand our differences in
the Cold War were with the Soviet communist
regime and now we are turning our backs on
the very people who mounted the greatest bloodless
revolution in history to remove that Soviet
regime."
That also really stuck out to me, because
the Cold War lasted how long?
Well, the people [inaudible] that Cold War.
We're in a new cold war-
Yeah, sure.
It lasted a very long time.
The fact that it ended without a shot, it's
one of those things where when you look back,
I think for most of us, I don't think we really
fully appreciate how lucky we are.
And you've made this point time and again
and I think it's so important.
During the Cold War, and I want you to make
it yourself, during the Cold War, Americans,
we were all taught to be afraid of nuclear
war.
It was in the culture, especially in the early
years.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, there was real anxiety
that we could see a nuclear apocalypse.
We have in some ways, we don't have by number
necessarily, but as you've made the point,
we have I think, intermediate range nuclear
missiles now that we didn't have that we got
rid of in the '80s under Reagan and Gorbachev.
In some ways, tensions are higher and we have
less awareness of these weapons and the potential
for this type of war.
Well, look at the so-called discussion or
debate about Ukraine going on in Congress,
driven by people who want to get Trump for
some misdeed he did with Ukraine.
And they're bringing forward all these career
diplomats to testify who are so called Ukrainian
experts, Americans, and who were stationed
there.
But if you read what they say, it's horrifying.
For them, and they say this candidly, the
war against Russian aggression has never ended.
Ukraine is the front line.
We have to stop Russia in Ukraine or it's
going to be, I don't know where, San Francisco.
I mean this is exactly what we were told and
what Kennan was protesting whenever that was,
40 or 50 years ago.
It's all back.
It's preposterous, but it's also really, really
dangerous.
That's why in my book, War With Russia?, I
make the argument this really is a new Cold
War and we need to think about it as such
because there were lessons we learned that
enabled us to survive the preceding Cold War
that we have not learned yet, and things are
really, really dangerous.
I mean, I make the argument in the book that
this new Cold War, this has been my main theme
for the last few years, this new Cold War,
which your generation gets from my generation.
Whereas my generation got the last one from
our predecessors, you get this one from us.
This is more dangerous.
It's interesting how this war it went and
the limits to what you can...
I mean, I've been excluded from mainstream
media now for several years, but nonetheless,
I have an audience, so I'm always curious
to the extent to which I persuaded people
of what I think may need to be persuaded about.
People gradually, there was a lot of pushback
on this when I began this, at least in 2014
if not before, arguing we were now in a new
Cold War with Russia.
People said, "No, no, that's not possible.
I remember Condi Rice said Cohen's got it
all wrong."
And gave the reasons.
I don't think anybody today reasonable would
deny we're in a new Cold War with Russia,
but I go on to make a secondary point that's
more important to me.
This one's more dangerous.
We can't say, "Okay, it's a new Cold War.
We survived the preceding."
So the question becomes, asked to me, "Why
is it more?
In what way?"
Now in my book War With Russia?, I have a
chapter which gives 10 reasons, but that's
too many.
I never should've given that many.
You should get down...
Something for all writers to learn.
B, you're not going to get people 10 reasons
and persuade them.
Give them three or four and you got a good
chance of winning them over, but stop and
think.
Unlike the preceding Cold War, this new Cold
War is on Russia's borders, the epicenter,
the political epicenter, Ukraine and the Baltics.
The preceding Cold War was in faraway Berlin.
Think of the possibilities of mishap and some
of them have already been reported.
Some of them haven't been reported.
Look at these buildups.
I mean massive American NATO buildups on Russia's
borders.
There was nothing like that during the preceding
Cold War.
To the extent that we had combat with the
Soviet Union, the preceding, throughout the
Cold War, it was through proxies in what we
used to call the third world.
Ethiopia.
I mean if something went wrong in Ethiopia,
it wasn't existential.
If something goes wrong in Ukraine or in the
Baltic area, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia,
where NATO is building up, if something goes
wrong militarily, you're talking about war
with Russia.
We're told in a hush way because they don't
want to announce it officially, they have
something called deconfliction is going on.
Have you heard about this?
No.
This means that the Russian generals and the
American generals have a private secret correspondence
where when there's a possibility of military
conflict, they're in touch to be sure there
is none.
So this tells us two things really important.
That the military people themselves see the
risk of military conflict.
American, Russian.
The New York Times may not see it, but the
big military-
Who's reporting this?
Where are you hearing it?
You can read it anywhere.
Google deconfliction talks.
That there is a process, I assume it's...
I don't know if it's on email or in closed
telephone, what the communication is, but
you can even read about in the paper occasionally.
But deconfliction.
Deconfliction.
It was in Syria.
It's in Ukraine.
It's wherever, too many places, that American
and Soviet military power are eyeball to eyeball.
That the generals on both sides have kind
of a constant process.
They alert each other to maneuvers.
If something goes out of whack, they immediately
say, "Please don't attack us.
That was a mistake.
We're sorry, we'll make remedies."
But this tells you that the people who know,
know there's actually a risk unlike that existed
during the preceding Cold War.
So what are we discussing in Washington instead?
This is what Senate hearings should be about.
You mentioned new weapons.
So the Russians have developed something called
hypersonic weapons, missiles.
You heard about them?
Sure.
The history of this is very important for
Americans to recognize.
Once upon a time, there was a wonderful treaty
called the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty,
the ABM treaty.
It prohibited the United States and the Soviet
Union, we were the only...
Well, there may have been other signatories,
but we had the weapons, from deploying an
anti-ballistic missile.
And it was one of the wisest treaties ever,
right?
Because it meant that if planners in Moscow
or in Washington knew that they attack the
other, they were going to get obliterated
too.
It was called mutually assured destruction,
and that protected us for decades.
But now suddenly the United States says it
has a weapon, an anti-ballistic missile, that
can stop anybody from striking the United
States, that makes the Russians think, maybe
we'll do a first strike.
And that's something you never want anybody
to think.
But no one really believes that missile defense
systems actually are credible.
Right?
Certainly not for the type of force that the
Russians can deploy.
Now you get into Dr. Strangelove reasoning.
I assume your listeners are aware of Dr. Strangelove
movie where he said-
It's the Stanley Kubrick-
Yeah, we won't lose more than 40 million and
they'll be replaced by all the women and men
in-
That was Kissinger.
Kissinger I think had written his PhD on limited
nuclear war.
Did he not?
But before we leave this stop and think what
this discussion is about.
Sure.
I mean stop and think about it.
And one reason we should stop and think about
it is that almost none of our political candidates
who want to be President of the United States
are talking about it.
I mean this is what they should be talking
about.
One of the things.
And the reason they don't talk about it, it's
not well reported.
There is no awareness of it.
So the fact that we've come to a point where
military strategists on each side are contemplating
how they could get away with a first strike
and without retaliation, that we're back to
that again, come back.
Something that we thought was behind us.
And it's not being discussed in the political
discourse in a presidential year by the Washington
Post or the New York Times or such newspapers.
That is why, one reason why, I say the new
Cold War is more dangerous because the dangers
of the old Cold War were discussed all the
time and those of the new Cold War are scarcely
recognized.
I have a lot of thoughts about what you've
said.
First of all, you gave 10 reasons, you could
have given 100 reasons.
I mean, you can't possibly get nuanced enough
on this type of a conversation.
I don't know how good a job I will do representing
the opposition or people that would disagree
with you.
So one thing I would recommend is for folks
to check out a Munk Debate that you were part
of with Vladimir Posner on one side, and on
the other side was Gary Kasparov and Anne
Applebaum.
To get that perspective-
That was in Toronto.
That was in 2015.
The famous Canadian format, the Munk Debate.
Yes, it was good.
And I think they made their own set of valid
points.
But the reason that also came up in my mind
now as we're talking is, I was reminded of,
and I understand why, because I think Anne
grew up in Poland, right?
And of course Gary grew up in the Soviet Union.
You know the level of emotion on their end,
and I do understand it, I'm not trying to
suggest that I can't sympathize with it, but
there doesn't seem to be an adequate amount
of reflection.
You know how they say cooler heads...
Let's hope cooler heads prevail?
It doesn't seem like we have a lot of cool
heads.
It seems like we have a lot of hotheads and
people seem unfairly comfortable with the
current state of affairs and don't seem to
appreciate the dangers.
Well that was a point I was trying to make.
We can make it in a bumper sticker, if we're
talking about American-Russian relations,
that the dangers far exceed any awareness
of them.
I mean, this book that I published, War With
Russia?, I never thought I'd ever put a title
like that on a book, War With Russia?.
Partly because I never thought until recent
years that war with Russia was possible, conceivable.
And then working on this book, I began to
think it was.
And since the book is for general readers,
not for my fellow scholars, I wanted to put
a title on the book that got people's attention.
War With Russia?, and it covers the period
since 2013 when I think that danger has developed
and it continued to grow and people know about
Trump and all that stuff, but it began before
Trump, and if Trump goes away tomorrow it's
still going to be there.
And yet again, there's no media awareness
or focus on it.
So, okay.
Another thing that you've said is that, "In
America we've demonized Putin and we've Putinized
Russia."
What is the reason?
Again, this sort of brings back to a question
that I asked a couple of times, which is how
did we get here?
How did we get to this place where Russia
is the enemy without taking away the fact
that I do think you would acknowledge that
Putin is an authoritarian leader and that
Russia, you would know better how you would
describe their government, but it isn't a
system that I would want to live under.
Acknowledging that, how did we get to this
point today where we are moving apart as opposed
to coming together?
By the way, I'm not so sure.
I mean obviously you would not care to live
in Russia instead of here in the United States,
but you might find that if you were transported
there in your current guise that things wouldn't
be so different.
You could have this radio show there.
But could I speak out against the government
the way I can speak out against the government
here?
[crosstalk] every day.
I mean more hateful things are said about
Putin probably, maybe not qualitatively, but
quantitatively, in the Russian media.
I suppose there are things that you can and
can't say.
Well that he's betrayed the country.
He's betrayed Ukraine.
He's capitulated to the Americans.
He's a weak leader.
He sold his soul.
Will that do?
So what will get you in trouble in Russia?
What kind of comments will get you killed?
I mean there've been journalists that have
been killed.
Not by the Kremlin.
This is a bogus lie.
You made the point that they've actually been
by the oligarchs, but you know-
I mean, I don't know who killed all these
people, but there's no logic to the argument.
This whole business about the [Skripols] and
Litvinenko in London and Nemtsov in the sight
of the Kremlin.
Whoever killed these people, Putin had no
motive.
Why would he?
I mean, it's done nothing but tarnish his
own reputation.
Is he trying to kill Bill Browder?
I don't want to say anything about Bill Browder
because I have a grievance with Bill Browder
too.
I know that he's not a popular guy.
And I mentioned to you that he's been on the
show and I understand why he's not popular.
Because he was-
I don't know why you say he's not popular.
He's got access to every mass media in the
United States.
Oh no, he's popular in the US, he's popular
in the Western world.
At CNN they can't get enough of him.
No question about it.
No question about it.
He just doesn't tell the truth systematically,
shall we say.
Well, I think that I understand why Russian
people have an issue with Bill Browder.
I think it has to do with the fact that he
was a foreign investor taking advantage of-
I'm not sure the ordinary Russian has ever
heard the name, but the Russian political
elite.
I got a lot flack from Russian listeners or
Russian people on social media by having him
on.
And I also experienced a surge of pro-US Browder
bots.
What were effectively bots on social media
supporting the episode.
Actually, it's an interesting thing.
When I put that episode out, they got a huge
social media surge, but it didn't reflect
in the listenership, which I thought was very
interesting.
And that suggests to me that it had a lot
of bot support.
We do live in a crazy world with intelligence
services and everything, but what you're saying
now-
I know there's a documentary film about Browder
made by a Russian, very well thought of Russian
filmmaker, who's anti-Putin, by the way, just
to mix things up.
I think his name is Andre [Nimsoft 00:56:27].
You can Google it.
Nimsoft.
I think that's his name.
Went to a lot of trouble to get a either...
I don't know if he's got an English voiceovers
or subtitles, but to make it accessible.
And Browder spent a fortune trying to keep
that film from being shown.
So that tells you all you need to know about
Bill Browder.
He spends a lot of time with lawyers threatening
to sue people if they publish or show anything
that's critical of this myth he's created.
He did make a lot of money in Russia, but
his lawyer also was murdered by one of the
oligarchs or some network of private interests.
I don't want to go into this with you, but
that's not what happened.
All right.
Even Browder doesn't [inaudible 00:57:05].
He said he was murdered by the Russian authorities
and President-
Right, which were working...
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, correct.
He died badly.
Unnecessarily.
He died injustly.
But Browder's version of what happened in
that prison seems not to be true.
And let me remind you that people die in American
prisons all the time from abuse.
Well, we had someone recently that died-
I didn't want to make the connection.
In solitary confinement.
But we have a long history of people dying
of penal abuse in prison.
This is a separate story that Browder spun
to evade charges that he massively stole money
and failed to pay his taxes in Russia.
That's what this is-
He had a convincing story.
Anyway, I only know his side of the story
and-
You're not going to get his positive word
out of me.
Okay.
Except one positive word.
Many years ago when I was teaching in Princeton
and living there several days of the week,
Browder's father, as you may know, was Earl
Browder, who was the head of the American
Communist Party.
Yes I do.
I do remember that.
Earl had retired to Princeton.
He was now an old man and I thought it'd be
cool to go and meet Earl Browder, this famous
former leader of the American Communist Party
in the 1940s.
So I rang up and he said, "Come over."
And I sat around and had an inane chat with
him for about an hour or so.
And I remember a little kid running around
the room.
It could have been his grandkid, it could
have been Bill Browder.
Well that's an interesting story.
And I was on TV with Browder a couple times
before things between us got tense, and I
always meant to ask him if it was possible
and that was him, but it didn't happen.
But I don't think Browder is a healthy factor.
So I want to comment on something here, which
is, this is sort of a meta-observation.
I think, again, it's sort of a comment on
what's wrong with our marketplace of ideas,
how we have conversations.
It's not a problem for me what you just said
here about Browder or journalists.
First of all, I don't have a clear opinion,
but I'm also, there's nuance in your words
and I think that today saying what you just
said, if you said that on mainstream media,
I think it would be an awkward moment for
people because-
About Browder?
No.
Oh, about Browder.
Also about your view about Putin not having
been behind the murder of that individual.
What's his name again?
The poisoning of the person in London.
There's the Skripovs, there's Litvinenko,
there's [crosstalk 00:27:39].
Yeah, your words, it's again, it's the point
about the litmus test.
Your words are put through a funnel and when
it comes to Russia in America today, you've
got to have a very clear opinion.
You know?
And that's true for a lot of different things.
You have to have a very clear view and if
you waiver from that a little bit, people
don't know what to do with you.
And you've been called a Putin apologist.
I think actually your point that you made
earlier that in fact you're, or maybe you
made it in a different interview, that you're
actually an American apologist.
And I think conversations in America proceed
from a place of moral assertiveness.
And I think this comes through in spades on
the other side when you listen to Russians,
the frustrations that Russians have.
And it's not just Russians, the Iranians have
this also.
I watched an Intelligence Squared debate where...
I think you were on this.
That's right.
You were on this panel, and the final debate
question was about Iran and the way it was
framed was so ridiculous.
And yeah, I'm going off on a tangent.
Tangents are good.
Sometimes we say what we really want to say.
Self-censorship is bad.
And let me just put a footnote to what you
said.
I've said it before and it goes to why shows
like yours are important.
And the point of it is, is that the discourse
in America about Russia and not only about
Russia, and I mean the discourse coming out
of Washington and our major newspapers and
networks, is so primitive and so uninformed
and so politicized that having alternative
media...
I guess that's what it's called, right?
I mean, my wife is the editor in chief and
publisher of The Nation magazine and has been
for a quarter of a century, Katrina vanden
Heuvel.
And it's considered an alternative medium,
even though it's read in the mainstream, but
the views that it presents and the writers
it uses are not mainstream writers for the
most part.
But to applaud ourselves, and look how democratic
we are, you have your show, there's The Nation
magazine, but the fact is what's the impact
on Washington where policy is made?
These people do very selective reading and
listening.
I know a number of aides to very influential
Senators and members of the House, and the
aides are really the ones who decide what
these people are going to read.
They make sure they have it in their packets.
Sometimes it's a subscription, sometimes it's
a clip from the article.
And you know, the aides tend to be Washington-centric,
comes down to these handful of sources.
So I keep coming back that the dangers are
far greater than the discourse we're having
about them.
That to me is why the new Cold War is more
dangerous than the preceding Cold War.
Ask me what to do about it.
I am not sure.
But clearly in normal democratic circumstances,
a presidential candidate would take up this
cause and it would be covered by the media.
So that's a good way to pivot.
Because we're in a presidential season.
I mean, we don't get it.
It's a good way to pivot to Tulsi Gabbard,
who is one of the Democratic candidates who
has not gotten perhaps the amount of mainstream
coverage that is warranted, at least for her
pacifist views.
How well do you know Tulsi?
Well, I know her and I know her well enough
to say that it's not correct to say she has
pacifist views.
I mean she served in the military.
I don't know how many people she killed, if
anybody, but she's still I think a Colonel
in the Reserve, she goes off and [inaudible
00:31:17].
She's not a pacifist.
What she is is an anti-interventionists, by
which she means that we have been involved
for a long time in a succession of reckless,
unnecessary wars abroad that have done everybody
more harm than good.
Hillary Clinton said that she's a Russian
asset.
Well, it doesn't speak well for Hillary Clinton,
does it?
Why do you think that she said that?
Hillary?
Yeah, and not just Hillary, but she's not
the first person.
This has been a thing with Tulsi.
They've accused her of being-
I don't know.
The first article, big article, that I saw
slurring Tulsi began with me.
It said, "The well known Putin apologist,
professor Stephen...
... it said, the well known Putin apologist
Professor Stephen Cohen, made a financial
donation to Tulsi Gabbard's presidential campaign.
Well, the second half is true.
I did send, I don't know, some bucks to her
to keep her voice in the race, but the business
of being a Putin apologist is something that,
this was nbc.com.
They're particularly anti-Tulsi and they had
been banging away at her.
It's disgraceful.
Why do they do it?
Are they such believers in this war for American
foreign policy that we pursued for decades
that they can't stand the dissent alternative
view she represents?
If that's the case, this is maybe the most
powerful network in America.
Why would a network have such an ideology?
Where's this coming from?
What a question.
I mean, why would a network, as a corporate
entity, aren't they busy over there with sex
scandals?
You'd think they'd have something else to
worry about, but it's unusual, I think, for
a network to go after a presidential candidate
the way NBC has gone after her.
Why?
Why do you think?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
It's interesting.
But, the point of it is, for me, is that the
issue of, I mean put this historical and use
the language of my generation, detente with
Russia, or Cold War.
Detente meaning more cooperation, less conflict.
That was a term.
Had been a factor in many presidential campaigns
before.
Right?
Eisenhower ran, in fact, saying that he would
do something to ratchet down and you saw what
happened.
The shoot down of the U2.
There are powerful forces both in Moscow and
in Washington who are perfectly happy with
this new Cold War and will sabotage it.
There were episodes under Obama where somebody
in the Department of Defense ran a sabotage
campaign against a peace overture by Obama.
You can see what they're doing to Trump, no
matter what you think about Trump, the moment,
and I remember this vividly, during his presidential
campaign, he said, "I think it would be a
good idea to cooperate with Russia."
Yeah.
I remember this vividly, and I remember going
on Larry King, who I guess Larry still has
a show, but he had a show, went on and I said,
"Larry, Trump just put a target on his back
the moment he said he thought it was a good
idea to cooperate with Russia."
And, he's never gotten that off his back.
So, the enemies are strong and it doesn't
surprise me they're coming after Tulsi Gabbard.
It's wild.
You know, Stephen Colbert, for example, I've
heard him multiple times on his show, which
I don't really watch because I don't find
it funny, but I catch clips on it on YouTube,
and on multiple occasions I've heard him complain
to his guests.
He doesn't say, "Why doesn't it say a single
bad thing about Putin?"
Again, it brings us back to this thing about
litmus test.
Also, to your point about Putinizing Russia,
or demonizing Putin and Putinizing Russia.
Can I stop you there?
Yeah.
It would take as many of your hours of your
show to work through this notion that it's
the job of the American president to say bad
things about the president of Russia, or the
leader of the Kremlin.
That's not what the American president is
supposed to do.
And, I don't know how many cases you'd find,
if we started in modern times.
Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and on, that
American presidents spoke ill, in a personal
way, about Kremlin leaders.
Now, stop and think why this is for one minute.
Always hanging over our heads is the possibility
of a new Cuban Missile Crisis, not in Cuba.
So, you may have young listeners, let me remind
them that in 1962 we came close to war with
Russia when Russia installed nuclear installations
in Cuba, and there was a confrontation and
Kennedy, the American president, Khrushchev,
the Soviet leader, negotiated.
The Russians backed down, the Soviet's backed
down.
They withdrew it.
But, what people don't know, and maybe even
to this day, don't know, is that secretly,
we had missiles in Turkey
Just as close to the Soviet Union as Cuba
was to Miami Beach.
Bobby Kennedy negotiated those away.
It was part of the deal.
It was never made known until later because
Kennedy was afraid that he would be seen to
have made such a concession to Khrushchev
to remove the American missiles, he'd have
political problems.
All right.
So, I ask this question.
We have a Cuban Missile Crisis, not in Cuba.
Syria, wherever.
Is Trump free to do that?
To negotiate away from war?
That's it.
I keep coming back to that.
Right?
Because you don't negotiate away from war
by blaming the other side solely.
Each side accepts some responsibility for
the warfare situation you're in, and each
side makes a concession.
But Trump, having been labeled as puppet of
the Kremlin, is he in any position to make
any concession?
So, what's the alternative?
It's war.
War between nuclear powers, which seems to
be lost.
Also, if people just stopped to think about
it, because I'm so acutely aware of the fact
that there will be people that will listen
to this and they will be shifting and saying,
"Why are they making excuses for Putin?"
And, I keep thinking to myself, "If you stop
to think about it, America has, in its recent
history, supported some of the worst people
on the planet."
There is no way that the issues that we have
with Russia are because Vladimir Putin is
authoritarian and because he is a bad actor.
It's got to be something else.
So, what is the reason?
Why?
Why has this man been someone that we have
been unwilling to work with?
Did he get in the way of the process in the
1990s under Yeltsin?
When I gave my, at least partial explanation,
in our discussion before, and again, it runs
as a theme through my book, War With Russia.
When Yeltsin was leader of post-Soviet Russia,
he and Clinton enacted, for almost a decade,
a charade of partnership and friendship.
Behind the scenes, we were treating Yeltsin
very badly.
In fact, if you read Strobe Talbott, he was
Clinton's primary advisor on Russia, there's
a passage in his memoirs where Clinton literally
says, and I trust we can say this on your
broadcast, "Well, I guess we'll have to shovel
some more shit in old Boris's face."
They knew exactly what they were doing to
Yeltsin.
And yet, the myth went forward that that's...
Not the myth, but the axiom, I should say,
the belief went forward, that that was a good
Russian leader.
Yeltsin.
The one who gave us what we wanted without
representing these specific Russian interests.
I mean, Russia is a big country, the biggest
territorial country in the world.
It's got national interest, legitimate national
interest, especially along its borders.
So, we can't expect Russia simply to defer
to the United States on every major international
policy.
Right?
So, along comes Putin, and that's basically
what he says.
There's a famous moment where he gives a speech.
What year was it?
I've forgotten.
But, McCain, they're all in Munich, McCain's
sitting on the front row and Putin drills
his eyes right on McCain, who's sitting there
with all these Cold War American senators
and said, "Gentlemen, you have to understand.
Our relationship with you cannot be what you
want.
It cannot be a one-way street."
Was this before McCain called him a thug,
or after?
Not sure, but McCain was loose with his language.
I mean, McCain was not, shall we say, much
of a foreign policy thinker.
Well, he said, "Let's bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.",
in 2008.
Well, he liked it.
He never saw a war that he wasn't prepared
to embrace, even though he was-
It's interesting because he became, and again,
there is nuance everywhere and I don't wish
to speak ill of a man who has passed, who
is not here to defend himself, but he became-
That axiom would prevent us from writing history.
And maybe, perhaps, you as a historian can
do that.
But, he's a perfect example of someone that,
when it was convenient for the narrative of
the time, he came back into vogue, he was
not popular for a period of time.
Actually, he especially wasn't popular during
the K Street scandals in the 1980s and '90s,
right?
But, he's a good example of that.
And Hillary Clinton said that Putin doesn't
have a soul.
And, that's something that, I think, again,
to this point about-
By the way, do you know what Putin said in
return?
She did say that.
And, that disqualified her as a presidential
candidate in my mind immediately because one
of the existential, almost constitutional,
obligations of an American president is to
negotiate with the Kremlin leader to keep
us out of war with Russia.
So, if she begins by saying Putin has no soul,
says it publicly, exactly where is her credibility
to negotiate with him?
To which he replied when he was told, she
had said he, Putin, had no soul.
"Well, at least I have a brain."
She didn't have a brain when she said that-
Well, in fairness.
And, she, then wanting to be president.
In fairness, Trump's negotiating style is
to completely defame the other person, and
then, begin the negotiation process.
I can't be drawn into a situation where I
have to judge other historical figures through
the prism of Trump.
I mean, we'd all be doomed.
Trump is Trump, though I remain, to this day,
the supporter of one Trump policy.
That is, his idea that we need to cooperate
with Russia-
And his policies have not been-
But, we don't know, if he was left alone,
what he would do.
You're absolutely right.
He's taken certain "hard-line" steps against
Russia.
I guess it's to get these Russian allegations
off his back.
I suppose when he decided to give Ukraine
the military assistance that Obama wouldn't
give Ukraine, he thought that would keep people
from calling him pro-Russian, or something.
Again, I bring it back to this question.
I keep harping on it.
Why?
Why?
Why the fixation with Putin?
Why the fixation with Russia?
The first time that it came even into my head
that we had an issue with Russia was during
the 2012 campaign.
I learned about it from Mitt Romney on the
debate stage.
Russia is our greatest geo-political adversary.
He said it then and there.
2012 was the first time I ever heard it, and
I thought to myself, "Where the hell did this
come from?
I thought we were friends."
That's when Obama said to Romney, they were
debating, weren't they?
Yeah, they were debating.
He said, "Governor Romney, the 1970s are calling.
They want their foreign policy back."
Do you remember that?
Yeah, no, I do remember that.
That's so funny.
He was good.
Obama was good.
But now, Romney takes credit, because he says,
"See, I was right."
That's what Romney is running around saying
now because he's offering himself, of course,
to the Republican party, if they decide overthrow
Trump.
He's running around saying, "I was right back
then."
Well, to echo the words of George Kennan that
the NATO expanders would be running around
saying how bad the Russians were and that
they told this, but they're wrong.
I mean, that's the thing.
We're all being told now that Russia is bad.
See?
We told you.
But, how much of that is our policies?
But again, I bring it back to the question,
Dr. Cohen.
Why?
Why?
What is the reason?
Why, why what?
Why the fixation with Russia?
There's got to be a reason.
I'm not saying it's a good reason.
The American fixation.
Well, the consensus.
Why?
You mean the fixation on Russia as an enemy?
As an enemy.
Why?
So, there was a big Soviet Russian, whose
name was Georgy Arbatov, now deceased, but
he was a foreign policy thinker and advisor
to the Kremlin.
And, he said, even when things were going
pretty well between Moscow and Washington,
that the Cold War will come back and we will
be the villains again, we Russians because,
he said, and he paused, "You Americans can't
live without an enemy."
He was generalizing about us.
I think he meant our political class.
Maybe we need to look into that.
Go back and see.
Has there ever been a time when we haven't
had an enemy.
I agree with that also, but why Russia?
Why Russia?
Why not China?
Why not some other country?
Why Russia?
What does Russia have that makes it a country
that deserves, or has attracted, the ire of
the foreign policy establishment?
Again, not to be self-referential, but a major
theme of my little book is, why are we again
in a Cold War with Russia?
It tries to answer your question, and I give
various explanations, and treat various factors,
and look at historical episodes there in a
way we can't do right here.
But, it's very interesting to ask rhetorically.
Did the preceding Cold War ever really end?
Everybody says the cold war ended.
There's some dispute about when historians
should date it.
1989, 1990, or with the end of the Soviet
Union in 1991.
So, the people who played a diplomatic role
like Jack Matlock, who was the American ambassador
to the Soviet Union, argues that the Cold
War ended through negotiations, peacefully,
with no winners and no losers, or rather,
as Jack would say, both sides were winners
in ending the Cold War.
Now, there's been a revisionist interpretation
of how all that ended because after the Soviet
Union, if you would ask, probably, a high
school student who'd been reading some history,
or a college student, they would say the Cold
War ended in 1991 when the Soviet Union ended.
You understand the difference?
In other words, we won it.
But, if you take a different view that we
didn't win it, but it was negotiated.
Both sides negotiated an end.
But, what happened was, after the end of the
Soviet Union, and this began with George Bush,
the first George Bush, and it bitterly upset
Gorbachev who'd been a party to the negotiations
that ended the Cold War.
George Bush began to run against Clinton on
the grounds that he had won the Cold War,
as a campaign slogan.
He knew it not to be true, but for political-
Sure.
But, it entered the bloodstream.
And then, you come into this, what I call
triumphalism, American triumphalism.
What could make you feel better to say that
there had been a 40-year shadowy Cold War
with the Soviet Union and we won it.
It's understandable.
So then, you mentioned earlier however, that
this triumphalism then leads to a certain
kind of foreign policy thinking in Washington
that leads to certain foreign policy.
There's a direct line, surely, between the
view that we won the Cold War and our decision
to attack Iraq.
Would you agree there's a connection there?
Between the end of the Cold War and the second
Persian Gulf war, or the first one?
If we can knock off the Soviet Union, who
can't we knock off?
And, where does our mandate stop?
Nowhere.
We are now the sole surviving super-power.
I think it took some time for that to bake
in.
You may be too young to remember, but in the
'90s, people were running around in Washington
saying, "We're the only super-power now."
Sure.
No, no, I mean-
But, what licensed does that give you if you
think like that?
Well, to be frank, personally, I remember
it because I wasn't politically conscious,
but in my foreign policy classes, required
reading was from that era to help me understand
the foundations of the new conservative movement,
the resurgence of new conservatism, and the
Wolfowitzes, and the Richard Pearls, and Douglas
Feiths.
I don't think it's fair to conservatives to
name those guys as representatives of conservatives.
Sure They were actually, well, they were Fox
kids.
Well, whatever they were, but there are a
lot of conservatives today who would agree
with what I'm saying about American foreign
policy since the end of the Soviet Union,
and some of the people that you've interviewed,
I think, in their own way are conservatives.
So, I will not pose that question again.
Which one?
The question of why?
Why, why, why?
Why Russia?
Why the enemy?
Why the demonization?
I will instead put forward a hypothesis that
I wouldn't feel comfortable putting forward
otherwise because it is conjecturally-based
and not based on much fact, but some sort
of connection of ideas, which is, I wonder
to what extent Putin got in the way of US
businesses that were having their way with
the privatization of Russia.
Did he get in the middle of it?
Did things get screwed up after 1998 after
the collapse of the Russian economy?
I mean, I still don't really understand it
because I think, in my view, we know from
the history of us foreign policy, if an authoritarian
dictator, or whoever it is, is the worst person
in the world, that is almost never important.
What really matters is, do they do Washington's
bidding?
So, clearly he, in some way or other, didn't
do Washington's bidding.
And, again, I'm bringing something back to
my point, when and why did this relationship
go south?
Well, it wasn't due to the American corporate
business community.
They were as eager as ever for the Russian
market, which is a vast market.
And, I may have the number wrong, but about
160 significant American corporations doing
business, and profitable business, in post-Soviet
Russia, and that's part of their balance sheet
and they don't want to lose it.
So, when Putin comes to power, he had to look
pretty good to them.
He was sober as Kristoff pointed out.
Sober Yeltsin.
Sober Yeltsin.
He professed to be a capitalist.
He professed to want business relations.
And, in fact, if you look at his...
Putin is a fluent German speaker.
He was stationed in Germany during his years
in the KGB, and he has a special affinity
for Germany.
And, I think, I may have the number wrong,
but something like 9,000 significant-sized
German businesses do business in Russia.
Stop and think about that.
So, here we ought to introduce something that
is hard for us because we're provincial people.
You and I, I mean, America is a provincial
country.
Putin thinks of himself as a European man,
and he thinks of Russia-
That's interesting.
Yeah, it's important too.
He thinks of himself as a European man.
He lived in Europe.
He speaks fluent German.
It's unusual for a Russian political leader.
The old Bolsheviks spoke foreign languages.
But, since then, it's been unusual for a Kremlin
leader to speak a foreign language.
And by the way, his English seems to be pretty
good.
He's been studying English.
He stops the translator whenever he feels
like it.
That's right.
He knows enough-
You can tell that he knows what's going on.
And, listen to him do his rendition of Fats
Domino.
He plays the piano and sings.
In English, his rendition of Fats Domino's
On Blueberry Hill is a lark, but Putin thinks
of himself as a European man.
The interesting question I ask myself is,
does he think of Russia as a European country?
Because, historically, we all know that Russia
has straddled Europe and non-Europe to the
East.
Russia has been of Asia and been of Europe,
both geographically and politically, intellectually,
culturally, spiritually.
And so, Putin comes to power after an episode
of, please let us in the West, the Western,
the Yeltsin thing with Clinton, and all of
that.
But, during which Russia collapsed, and men
died at 57.
We've talked about this.
So, here comes Putin, a European man.
And, to go back to something that you mentioned,
immediately after 9-11 Putin was the first
person to call president George Bush, right?
This is the second George Bush, and say, whatever
we can do to help.
Oh, I remember that,
And now, that was not empty.
They had something we didn't.
Well, first of all, he said, "you can have
all of the flyover Russia you want to get
to Afghanistan."
But, they had a fighting force.
Soviets had built a fighting force, which
still calls up and it was called the Northern
Alliance that was in Afghanistan, a good fighting
force made up of Afghan fighters, but with
Russian commanders.
And, he said, "It's yours."
So, how many lives, American lives, did Putin
save by the assistance he and Russian...
And, he gave us Russian intelligence, which
was far better than our own in Afghanistan,
for obvious reasons.
And yet, despite that act of generosity, and
he was opposed, by the way, it's a matter
of record that his own generals, a lot of
his own intelligence people said, "You can't
give the Americans this information.
You can't do this."
He went ahead, and yet he's ended up to be
one of these great villains.
So, the question you ask, why this?
Let me put it to you, a rhetorical question.
Oh, come on.
Well, we're having-
I hope it's rhetorical.
So, let me make it rhetorical.
Why was it okay, and even more than okay,
they were applauded and elected, for previous
American presidents to negotiate extensively
on the most sensitive strategic issues with
Kremlin leaders who were declared communists,
correct?
Soviet communists, and not with Putin, who's
an anti-communist and who States his anti-communism
all the time?
I don't know.
That's why I'm asking you.
I'm genuinely perplexed.
Well, the answer, then, has more to do with
us than with Russia.
And what is that answer?
I'm supposed to be an expert on Russia, not
America.
Well, people have said we need an enemy, and
it's handy.
I think it goes back to what I've talked about.
There was this assumption that when the Cold
War ended, we won it.
That was a mistake.
It was negotiated.
But, it's believed that we won it, and therefore,
like defeated adversaries, say Japan and Germany
after World War II, Russia should have done
what we told it to do and accommodated us.
And, when it didn't-
I see.
... we felt something between grave disappointment
and betrayal.
A sort of cascading...
Well, people thought, because you could hear
this and it was written, that the end of the
Cold War was analogous to the end of the World
War II.
We had won.
Yeah.
But, if that was true, stop and think about
this now for a minute, and we occupied Japan
and Germany, right?
And, they did what we told them, at least
for a few decades, then Russia should have
been in the same subservient position, and
yet it wasn't.
And, we also put together the Marshall Plan
after Europe.
We treated the defeated Nazi-
That became another.
I agree.
Nazi Germany, in a very different way than
we did the Soviet Union.
There people who think, like Jeffrey Sachs,
whom you probably know, had we given Russia
a gigantic Marshall Plan package after the
end of the-
Well, I don't know if could have afforded
to do that, but-
Well, if we had given them really substantial,
instead of loans that they had to repay, that
the political relationship would have turned
out differently.
I don't believe it for a minute, but it's
an argument at least.
So, you mentioned this.
I think that was your first lecture in the
class.
It was, or at least mentioning it to us about,
is Russia an Eastern country or is it a Western
country?
Is it a part of Europe, or is it part of the
East?
And, I think your argument was, "Well, it's
really neither."
I think what I did and I always had trouble
finding a reading to give, but I think toward
the end I found a short reading, is the point
of it is, it's not for us to answer the question.
I wanted to say it's a question that Russians
have grappled with for centuries, right?
And, it remains important, and now, becomes
geopolitically important to put the knot on
this unraveling conversation we're having.
That seems to be going here and yon.
We haven't really talked about relations between
China and Russia today.
The single most important bipartisan relationship
that's emerging in the world today is between
Moscow and Beijing.
There's no question about it.
These humongous countries, rich in population,
resources, and space have gone from a hostile
relationship to a wary kind of liberate relationship,
to a crazy partnership, to what looks to be
merging now as an all out alliance.
This is a transformation in geopolitics, and
it's all because of the United States and
the policies that we pursued.
It doesn't mean they're going to be hostile
to the United States, but think of the sway,
economic if only, with the whole belt road
and Chinese projects that are Moscow, Beijing,
and I mean partnership and friendship.
There's conflicts, to be sure, but if that
becomes a reality of modern geopolitics, it's
a major change.
And, Europe becomes, shall we say, considerably
less significant.
In the conversations I've had on this program,
foreign policy-related, I've come away with
the view that the United States, to the extent
that we have a geopolitical rival, it seems
to me to be China, and China, I think, shares
much less in common with America than Russia.
And, it seems to me, again, that in this world,
in this complicated world we live in, we have
to make compromises, and I don't see how it's
in our interest not to find a way to work
with Russia, to work with the Russian government,
to work with Putin.
And, I'm not putting any details there, but
it seems to me that, just given the complexity
of the world, we cannot pick fights with everyone
and fight every battle everywhere.
And, there are things, specifically, about
the Chinese communist party that I find...
I don't know how we can work together with
that government.
I just don't.
And, it seems to me that we need to work on
our alliances, and try to work with countries
where we can.
Certainly, I don't know enough about China
to have deep-felt views, but I certainly endorse
what you said about Russia.
There is no reason, other than things we've
imagined, and conflicts we've dreamt up, why
the relationship between the United States
and Russia should not only be good, but a
kind of international security relationship.
That should have happened in Syria.
It should have happened in Syria.
But, there are other places where it's necessary.
I think that one of the issues that ought
to be debated among the democratic would-be
nominees is whether they would pursue a rivalry
or a partnership with Russia in international
affairs.
So, far as I know, only Tulsi Gabbard, on
her own, has said this.
I was horrified when our own mayor, during
his brief appearance in a debate, when asked
what was the gravest international threat
to the United States, de Blasio, said Russia.
Yeah, he's ridiculous.
Where that was coming from-
Who know.
I don't even know if he knows.
I don't know.
Let's not even talk about that-
But, it's out there.
Yeah.
That idea.
And, I agree with you that it's not only a
fraudulent idea, it's not in our national
security interest, and it would be very easy,
and the last word.
None of us were supposed to say anything kind
about Trump, but I can't be quite so categorical.
From the beginning, and continued, this instinct
Trump has to cooperate in a detente way with
Russia is in our national interest.
Would that he be free to do it.
Now, he may screw it up.
He may not know how to do it, and the people
around him are nothing to write home about,
but nonetheless the instinct is right.
So, for listeners, normally we do overtimes.
I have made a decision in the middle of this
conversation not to do one because I felt
like we didn't get to all the things I wanted
to in the full episode.
However, there is, as always, a rundown.
Not only is there a rundown, but, in fact,
there is a very beautiful picture of a beautiful
young lady in Moscow in this rundown.
And, I also shared some parts of my syllabus
from my class with Dr. Cohen, titled Russian
History Since 1917.
I think that's-
Russia Since 1917.
Russia Since 1917 was the name of the class,
and there will, of course, also be a transcript.
Those are available at patrion.com/hidden
forces.
As always, you can find a link to that in
the description to this week's episode.
Dr. Cohen.
It was wonderful having you here.
I appreciate you giving me a good grade despite
the fact that I missed some of your classes,
but your lessons have remained with me.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me on.
Today's episode of Hidden Forces was recorded
at Creative Media Design Studio in New York
City.
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