Peter Kuznick
speaker
151 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard Jan 2025
Peter Kuznick’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
What else is new? We've been going after Russia since 1917. We're mad at them. Well, in World War I, Lenin and Trotsky pulled Russia out of the alliance and had the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where they gave away a massive amount of Russia to Germany in order to get peace at that point. And what does the United States do with the Brits and the Japanese and others?
We send troops into the Soviet Union in 1918. There were 15,000 American troops there. And Churchill wanted to overthrow the new Soviet government. He said, we should strangle Bolshevism in the cradle. So this goes way back to then. We didn't even recognize the Soviet Union until Roosevelt was in power in 1933. And then during the war, they became our ally.
And in fact, they were the ones who won the war in Europe. But I asked my students, who won the war in Europe? You know, people grew up believing that the Americans won the war in Europe. It's not true. It's not even close to the truth. We certainly contributed a lot during World War II,
But the Soviets, throughout most of World War II, the US and the Britain were confronting 10 German divisions between the two of us, while the Soviets were confronting more than 200 German divisions on their own. That's why...
That's why everybody understood what Kennedy says in his great 1963 American University commencement address, what the Soviets suffered in World War II is the equivalent of the entire United States east of Chicago having been wiped out. You know, so you would think that we would be friendly with them afterwards, and Roosevelt had a vision for that.
In fact, Roosevelt promised Stalin in May of 1942 that we would open up the second front before the end of 1942. He asked Stalin to send over Molotov and a trusted general for that meeting in the White House in 1942. And we made that promise. We don't open up the second front till June of 44. And by that point, we had lost all the diplomatic initiative.
The Soviets were defeating Germany largely on their own with the support of US materiel. And so they were pushing back the Germans over Central Europe and Eastern Europe. And so the idea that Roosevelt gave away anything at Yalta that the Soviets didn't already have is nonsense. The Soviets had that area. And that's 44, 45. Then unfortunately, Roosevelt died.
And even more unfortunately, Truman became president instead of Henry Wallace, which is another story I hope we can get into, because Oliver and I do a lot about that in Untold History. And we argue that had Wallace become president on April 12th, 1945, instead of Truman, there would have not only been no atomic bombings in World War II, there would have likely been no Cold War.
History could have been so, so different. But instead, we developed this enmity toward the Soviet Union. Instead of seeing our allies who suffered so greatly and showing some largesse and generosity, we begin to vilify them after that. And the crackdown that happens in Eastern Europe doesn't happen immediately. That takes place over the next couple of years. It's a much gradual process.
They allowed a good degree of democracy in most of Eastern Europe till really the the Truman Doctrine in 1947, really. And then after that, then the Cold War is on. But Kennedy was the one who saw it differently. And we can go into that too. Anyway, I'm giving you a lot of history very, very quickly.
But it actually starts earlier because when the Soviet Union collapsed 1989, 1990, 1991, during that period, we had a chance to actually reach out in a more positive way. But it's in 1990 that Charles Krauthammer, the neocon theorist, says the Soviet Union has collapsed, says this is America's unipolar moment. He says, we're the only force in the world that can dictate world events.
And he said, the unipolar moment is likely the last 30 or 40 years. It was in 1992 that we've come out with the defense planning guidance, which is a much more elaborate plan of how we're going to dominate the world. And then in 1997, the Project for a New American Century takes shape, and that really fleshes it out much greater.
And they say in that 2000 report that we're not going to be able to rebuild our defenses as quickly as we want unless we have a new Pearl Harbor. And they got that in 2001 with 9-11. And so then we invade Afghanistan. Then Krauthammer revisits. Let me ask you the question.
I think they saw it as a tragedy and an opportunity. You know, I think they... So you're not suggesting they knew about it? No, I'm not suggesting that.
He caved in during the Cuban Missile Crisis. So his hawks wanted to get rid of him for being too weak. But let me go back to what Oliver's saying, because in October of 1962, right after the Missile Crisis, two weeks later, Khrushchev writes an incredible letter to Kennedy. in which he says, from evil, some good must come. Our people have both felt the burning flames of thermonuclear war.
We have to use this now to eliminate every conflict between us that could lead to a new crisis. And Kennedy and Khrushchev, slowly on Kennedy's part, more rapidly on Khrushchev's, they began working together in 63. Norman Cousins was the intermediary, and he met with Khrushchev twice and made it clear that the United States really did want to have a peaceful reconciliation.
And had Kennedy lived, I mean, his AU commencement address that I mentioned is, I think, the most important presidential address of the 20th century.
Well, and Norman Cousins came back from Russia and said, Khrushchev needs some obvious signal that you're serious. And Norman Cousins actually wrote the first draft. And then Kennedy took it, and they didn't let the CIA, the State Department, or the Pentagon even see it beforehand. which is why Kennedy was able to, it was called the strategy for peace speech.
And what he says there, among other things, is that the relation between the US and Soviets is tragic. Why should we be enemies? Why should we see them as enemies? What Kennedy could do, and he doesn't have speech, is see the world through the eyes of America's adversaries. When was the last time we had a leader who could do that? I mean, Carter maybe for a minute, Obama maybe for a minute, but...
almost nobody else. So what Kennedy says is so relevant to today, he says, to put a nuclear adversary in a position of either suffering a humiliating defeat or using nuclear weapons is either a colossal failure of statesmanship or a collective death wish for humanity, which is exactly what Biden is doing at this point.
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