Sarah Paine

So they bought them 20 years to do this.

But there's a cost to all this.

Bush never got credit for his essential role in ending the Cold War on Western terms.

So he was not reelected for a second term.

But anyway, when it came time for Nobel Prizes and why the Cold War ended, Anatoly Atomyshyn, this Soviet Foreign Service officer, said, look, it's difficult to deny the Soviet Union was the one that ended the Cold War.

And Edwin Meese, who was a counselor to Reagan, also his attorney general, said, look, the Cold War began because of the Soviet policies and it ended, in a sense, because of Soviet policies.

And the Nobel Prize Committee agreed.

They awarded the prize to Gorbachev, not to Bush, for his role in liberating Eastern Europe.

So when you're thinking about this question of why Russia lost the Cold War, I hope you will come up with a more complicated answer than, well, Ronnie did it.

There are probably other causes at work as well.

Anyway, thank you for your attention.

That's what I have for you this evening.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

That would be the more important thing.

But there are loads of dysfunctional places all over the planet that have been dysfunctional forever.

And you look, well, why are they dysfunctional?

And to me, that one, in a way, is the example of North Korea.

You go, of all countries that should fall, a place that has ongoing famines in the 21st century, and it used to be the richest part of the Korean Peninsula.

So, these authoritarian regimes are really good at maintaining the coercive powers.