Fiona Hill

that we should treat very cautiously.

It doesn't mean that history repeats or even rhymes, you know, the old axiom all the time, but there are a lot of things that you can take away differently from putting a different perspective and a different slant on the same set of events.

I mean, I always used to wonder, like, how many books can be written on the French Revolution?

or even on the Russian Revolution.

You know, I studied with Richard Pipes.

I remember he was really offended after he'd written his great Microsopus on the Russian Revolution, two volumes, that other people would, you know, kind of write about the Russian Revolution.

He said, I've written it all.

And I thought, well, actually, maybe you haven't.

It's like there might be some completely different angle there that you haven't really thought of.

And that's Putin.

You know, I remember Peskov saying,

Putin reads history all the time, Russian history, and I thought, well, maybe he should read some world history.

You know, maybe he should, you know, kind of read some European authors on Russian history, not just, you know, reading Lamanosa for, you know, Russian historians on Russian history, because you might see something from a very different perspective.

And look, and the United States made a massive mistake in Vietnam, right?

I mean, they saw Vietnam as kind of weak, manipulated by, you know, kind of external forces, China, Soviet Union.

But the Vietnamese fought for their own country.

They suddenly became Vietnamese.

And Ho Chi Minh became, you know, kind of basically a kind of a wartime fighter and leader, you know, in a way that perhaps people wouldn't have understood either.

Yeah.

I mean, Korea is divided.