Kind: captions
Language: en
the lesson i
would want everyone to take from the
story of the first world war
uh is
that
human life is not cheap
um
that all of the warring powers thought
that just by throwing
more men and more material at the front
they would solve their political
problems with military force
and
at the end of the day in 1918 one side
did win that
but it didn't actually solve any of
those political problems he said that
world war one gave birth to the
surveillance state in the u.s
can you explain
the following is a conversation with
christopher capazola a historian at mit
specializing in the history of politics
and war in modern american history
especially about the role of world war
one in defining the trajectory of the
united states and our human civilization
in the 20th and 21st centuries
this is the lex friedman podcast to
support it please check out our sponsors
in the description and now dear friends
here's christopher capazzola
let's start with a big and difficult
question how did world war one start
on the one hand world war one started uh
because of a series of events in the
summer of 1914
that brought
sort of the major powers of europe into
conflict with one another but i actually
think it's more useful
to say that world war one started at
least a generation earlier
when
rising powers particularly germany
started devoting more and more of their
resources toward military affairs and
naval affairs this sets off an arms race
in europe it sets off a rivalry
over the colonial world and who will
control the resources in africa and asia
and so by the time you get to the summer
of 1914 and in a lot of ways i say the
war has already begun and this is just
the match that lights the flame so the
capacity for war was brewing within like
the the leaders and within the populace
they started accepting
sort of slowly through the culture
propagated this idea
that
we can go to war
it's a good idea to go to war
it's a good idea to expand and dominate
others that kind of thing maybe not put
in those clear terms but just a sense
that military action is the way that
nations operate at the global scale
yes yes and right so yes um there's a
sense that the military can be the
solution to political conflict uh in
europe itself
and the and is that war and military
conflict are already happening right uh
that there's war particularly in africa
in north africa in the middle east you
know balkans conflict is already
underway
and the european powers haven't faced
off against each other they've usually
faced off against an asymmetrical
conflict against much less powerful
states
but you know in some ways that that war
is already underway
so do you think
it was inevitable because world war one
is brought up as a case study where it
seems like a few
accidental leaders and a few accidental
events or one accidental event led to
the war and if you change that one
little thing you could have avoided the
war your senses
the the the drums of war have been
beating for quite a while and it would
have happened almost no matter what or
very likely to have happened yes
historians never like to say things are
inevitable um and certainly you know
there were people who could have chosen
a different path both in the short term
and the long term
but fundamentally there were
irreconcilable conflicts in the system
of empires in the world in 1914
i can't see
you know it didn't have to be this war
but it had it probably had to be a war
so there was the german empire the
austro-hungarian empire
there was france and great britain
us could usp call that empire at that
moment yet
when do you graduate
to empire status um well certainly after
after 1898 with the acquisition of the
former territories of the spanish empire
you know the united states has formal
colonial possessions um and it has sort
of mindsets of of rule and military
acquisition that would define em empire
in a kind of more informal sense so you
would say you would put the blame
or the responsibility
of starting world war one into the hands
of the german empire and kaiser wilhelm
ii
you know
that's a really uh tough call to make um
and you know that deciding that is going
to keep historians in business for the
next 200 years and
i think
there
are people who would lay all of the
blame um on the germans right and you
know who would point toward a generation
of arms buildup you know alliances that
that germany made and promises that they
made to uh to their allies in the
balkans um to the austro-hungarians
um and so yes there's an awful lot of
responsibility there um
there has been a trend lately to say um
no it's no one's fault right that uh you
know that all of the various powers
literally were sleepwalking into the war
right they backed into it inadvertently
i think that lets everyone a little too
much off the hook right and so i think
in between
is uh you know i would put the blame on
the system of empires itself on the
system
but in that system the actor that sort
of carries the most responsibility is
definitely imperial germany so
the
leader of ultra hungarian empire france
joseph the first
his nephews archduke franz ferdinand he
was assassinated
and so that
didn't have to lead to a war
and then
the the leader of the german empire
geyser wilhelm ii
pressured sort of
uh
started talking trash
um and
boiling the water that ultimately
resulted in the explosion
um plus all the other players so what
can you describe the dynamics of how
that unrolled what us what's the role of
the us what's the role of france what's
the role of great britain germany and
also hungarian empire
yeah over the course of about uh four
weeks right following the assassination
of uh of the archduke um in sarajevo
um it sort of triggers a series of
political conflicts and ultimately
ultimatums
sort of demanding
sort of that that one or other power
sort of stand down in response to to the
demands of either
you know britain france or or in turn
germany or russia at the same time that
those alliances kind of trigger
automatic responses from the other side
and so it escalates um and once that
escalation is combined with the call up
of military troops
then none of those powers wants to be
sort of the last one to kind of get
ready for conflict so even throughout it
they are they think they are getting
ready in a defensive
maneuver
and they if they think if there is
conflict well it might be a skirmish it
might be you know sort of a standoff
uh it could be solved with diplomacy
later because diplomacy's failing now um
that turns out not to be the case
diplomacy fails it's not a skirmish it
becomes a massive war and the americans
are watching all of this from the
sidelines they have very little
influence over what happens that summer
how does it go from a skirmish between a
few nations
to a global war
is there a place where there's a phase
transition
yeah i think the phase transition is in
over the course of the fall of 1914
um when the germans make an initial sort
of bold move into france
in many ways they're fighting the last
war the franco-prussian war um of 18 of
and they really do sort of you know kind
of want to
have a quick sort of
lightning strike in some ways against
france um to kind of bring the war to a
speedy conclusion
uh france turns out to be able to fight
back more effectively than the germans
expected
um and then uh the battle lines sort of
harden
and then behind that uh the the the
french and the germans as well as the
british on
the side of the french
start digging in literally right and
digging trenches trenches that at first
are you know
three feet deep to you know to avoid
shelling from artillery then become six
feet ten feet deep you know two miles
wide um that include telegraph wires
that include whole hospitals in the back
and then at that point um you know the
the front is is locked in place and the
only way to break that is sort of
basically dialing the war up to 11.
right sort of massive numbers of troops
massive efforts um
none of which work right and so the war
is stuck in this but that's the
that's the phase transition right there
what were the machines of war
in that case you mentioned trenches
what were the guns used
what was the size of guns what are we
talking about what what did germany
start
accumulating that led up to this war
one of the things that we see
immediately
is the industrial revolution of the
previous 30 or 40 years
brought to bear on warfare
right and so you see sort of machine
guns you see artillery uh you know these
are the kind of the the key weapons of
war on both sides right the vast
majority of battlefield casualties are
from artillery shelling from one side to
another um not you know sort of rifle or
or even sort of you know machine gun
kind of uh attacks
in some ways the weapons of war are
are human beings right um you know tens
of thousands of them poured over the top
in these sort of waves to kind of try to
break through the enemy lines and it
would work for a little while um you
know but but holding the territory that
had been gained often proved to be even
more demanding than gaining it and so
often um you know each side would
retreat back into the trenches and wait
for another day
and how did
russia
how did britain
how did
france get pulled into the war i suppose
the france one is the easy one but what
what is the order of events here right
it becomes a global war yeah so britain
france and and russia uh are at this
time and in there an alliance um and so
the the conflicts you know in the summer
of 1914 that lead uh sort of to the
declarations of war happened sort of one
after another right um at the in august
of in late august of
and all three powers essentially come in
at the same time
because they have promised to do so
through a series of alliances
conducted secretly in the years before
1914 that committed them to defend one
another uh germany austria hungary and
the ottoman empire have their own sort
of set of secret
agreements that also commit them to
defend one another
and what this does is it sort of brings
them all into into conflict at the exact
same moment
they're also for many of these countries
bringing not just their their national
armies uh but also their empires into
the conflict right so britain and france
of course have you know enormous uh sort
of global empires they begin mobilizing
soldiers as well as raw materials
germany uh has you know less of an
overseas empire russia and the ottoman
empire of course have their own sort of
hinterland um you know within the empire
and very soon you know sort of all of
the warring powers are are bringing the
entire world into into the conflict did
they have a sense of how deadly the war
is i mean this is another
scale of death and destruction
at the beginning no but very quickly um
the scale of the devastation of these
sort of massive over-the-top uh attacks
on the trenches is apparent to the
military officers and it very quickly
becomes apparent even at home
you know there is of course censorship
of the battlefield and and you know
specific details don't reach people
but you know for civilians in in any of
the the warring powers they know fairly
soon
how destructive the war is
and to me that's always been a real sort
of um
puzzle
right so that by the time the united
states comes to decide whether to join
the war in 1917 they know what exactly
what they're getting into right they're
not backing into the war in the ways
that the european powers did
you know they've seen the devastation
they've seen photographs
they've seen injured soldiers um and
they make that choice anyway when you
say they do you mean the leaders of the
people did uh
the
the death and destruction reach
the minds of the american people by that
time uh yes absolutely you know the the
we don't in 1917 have the mass media
that we have now but um but you know
there are images in newspapers there are
newsreels that play at the movie
theaters um and of course some of it is
sanitized but
but that combined with
press accounts often really quite
descriptive press accounts gory accounts
reached you know anyone who cared to
read them you know certainly plenty of
people didn't follow the news felt it
was far away
but but most americans who cared about
the news knew how devastating this war
was
yeah there's something that happens
that i recently visited ukraine for a
few weeks
there's something that happens
with the human mind as you get
away from the actual front where the
bullets are flying
like literally one kilometer away you
start to not feel the war there you'll
hear an explosion you'll see an
explosion you start to like get it
assimilated to it or you start to get
used to it and then when you get as far
away from like currently what is kiev
you start to you know the war is going
on everybody around you is fighting in
that war
but it's still somehow distant and i
think with the united states
with the ocean between
even if you have the stories everywhere
it still is somehow distant like the way
a movie is maybe
yeah like a movie or a video game it's
somewhere else even if your loved ones
are going or you are going to fight
yeah that is absolutely the case and in
some ways that's true even for the home
fronts in in europe you know except for
the areas where
you know in belgium and france where the
the war is you know right there in your
backyard
for other people yeah there's a there's
a distance and
soldiers of course feel this very
strongly when they uh european soldiers
when they're able to go home on leave
often you know deeply resent the you
know the
what they see as the luxury that that
civilians are living in during the war
so how did us enter the war
who was the president
what was the dynamics involved
and um
could it have stayed out
to answer your last question first yes
right um that the united states could
have uh could have stayed out of the
first world war
as a military power
the united states could not have ignored
the war completely right it shaped
everything right it shaped
it shaped trade it shaped goods and
services agriculture you know whether
you know there was a crop coming whether
there were immigrants coming across the
atlantic to work in american factories
right so the u.s can't ignore the war
but the u.s makes a choice in 1917 to
enter the war
by declaring war right on on germany and
austria
uh and in that sense um
this is a war of choice um but it's it's
kicked off by a series of events
right so uh president woodrow wilson um
has been president through the this
entire period of time
uh he has just run uh in the 1916
presidential election on a campaign to
keep the united states out of war
um but then in early 1917 the germans in
some ways um sort of twist the americans
arms
right the the germans uh sort of high
command comes to understand that you
know that they're stuck
right uh that they you know they're
stuck in this trench warfare they need a
big breakthrough their one big chance is
to kind of as to sort of break the
blockade and to push through uh that
that the british have imposed on them to
break the uh breakthrough against um
against france and so they they do
and along with this they start sinking
ships on the atlantic including american
ships the germans know full well this
will draw the united states into war
but the germans look at the united
states at this moment a relatively small
army a relatively small navy a country
that at least on paper is deeply divided
about whether to join the war
and so they say
let's do it right they're not going to
get any american soldiers there in time
right uh you know it was a gamble
but
i think uh probably the their best
chance
they took that gamble they they lost
right in part because french resistance
was strong in part because americans
mobilized much faster and in much
greater numbers than the germans thought
they would so the american people were
divided the american people were
absolutely divided about whether to
enter this war right from 1914 to 1917
there is a searing debate
across the political spectrum it doesn't
break down easily on party lines
about whether it was in the us interest
to do this whether american troops
should be sent abroad
whether you know
americans would end up just being cannon
fodder for the european empires um
eventually
as americans ships are sunk um first in
the lusitania in 1915 then in much
greater numbers in 1917 um you know that
the tide starts to turn and americans
feel that you know our response is
necessary and the actual declaration of
war in congress is pretty lopsided but
it's not unanimous by any means
lopsided towards so i was entering the
war yeah yeah
well that's really interesting
because uh
there's echoes of that in in later wars
where congress seems to
nobody wants to be the guy that says no
to war
for some reason once you sense that
in terms of sorry in terms of the
politicians
because then you appear weak but i will
i wonder if that was always the case
so you make the case that world war one
is largely responsible for
defining what it means to be an american
citizen
so in which way
does it define the american citizen
when you think about citizenship what it
means is two things first of all what
are your rights and obligations what is
sort of the legal citizenship that you
have as a citizen of the united states
or any other state
and the second is a more amorphous
definition of like what does it mean to
belong right to be part of america right
to feel american to uh you know to love
it or hate it or be willing to die for
it right
and both of those things really are
crystal clear
in terms of their importance during the
war
right so both of those things are on the
table
being a citizen who is a citizen who
isn't
matters so people who had never carried
passports or or you know any anything
before suddenly have to
but also what it means to be an american
right uh to feel like it to be part of
this project is also kind of being
defined and enforced during world war
one so project you know is a funny way
to put a global war right
so uh can you tell the story perhaps
that's a good example of it of the
james montgomery flags 1916 poster
that reads i want you right a lot of
people know this poster
i think
in its original form it's mimified form
i don't know but we know this poster and
we don't know where it came from or most
americans i think
me included didn't know where it came
from and it actually comes from 1916.
does this post represent
the birth of something
new in america
which is a
uh commodification or
i don't know that propaganda machine
that says what it means to be an
american
is somebody that fights for their
country
yeah so the image
it's in fact i think one of the most
recognizable images not only in the
united states but in the entire world
right um and you could you can bring it
almost anywhere on earth in 2022
and people will know what it refers to
right and so this is a an image that
circulated first as a magazine cover
later as a recruitment poster um where
the figure is uncle sam sort of pointing
at the viewer
with his finger sort of pointing and
saying i want you
right and the i want you is a
recruitment uh tool to to join the us
army
and this image you know really kind of
starts as a kind of
like i said a magazine cover in 1916 by
the artist james montgomery flag it
initially appears under the heading what
are you doing for preparedness meaning
to prepare in case war comes to the
united states right at that point in
1916 we're still neutral
in 1917
it's turned into a us army recruiting
poster
um and then it reappears in world war ii
reappears generations after you know
like you said it's now uh gets remixed
memified um it's uh it's all over the
place i think
for me it's a it's a turning point it's
a sort of window into american culture
at a crucial moment in our history
where the federal government is now
embarking on a war overseas that's going
to make enormous demands on its citizens
and at the same time
where sort of technologies of mass
production and mass media
and what we would probably call
propaganda
are being sort of mobilized for the for
the first time in in this new kind of
way well in some sense
is it fair to say that this the empire
is born
the expanding empire is born from the
gnome chomsky perspective kind of empire
that seeks to
have military influence elsewhere in the
world
yes but i think as historians we need to
be at least as interested in what
happens to the people who are getting
pointed to by uncle sam
right rather than just the one you know
whether he's pointing at us um and you
know so so yes he's asking us to do that
but but how do we respond
and the people responded so the people
are ultimately the the machines of
history
the mechanisms of history it's not the
uncle sam
sam can only do so much if the people
aren't willing to step up absolutely
they and you know the american people
responded for sure but they didn't build
what uncle sam asked them to do um in
that poster right um and i think that's
a you know kind of a crucial aspect that
uh you know there never would have been
sort of global us power without the
response that begins in world war one
what was the selective service act of
so one of the very first things that
uncle sam wants you to do right is to
register for selective service for the
draft right um and the the law is passed
very soon after the us enters the war um
it's sort of you know
demanding that all men first between 21
and 30 then between 18 and 45
register for the draft and they'll be
selected by a government agency by a
volunteer organization that's the
requirement to say no it is a legal
requirement to register um not of course
not everyone who registers is selected
but over the course of the war 24
million men register almost 4 million
serve in some fashion what was the
response what was the feeling amongst
the american people to have to sign up
to the selective service act
well have to register yeah this is uh
this is a bigger turning point than than
we might think right in some ways this
is a tougher uh demand of the american
public than entering the war it's one
thing to declare war on germany right
it's another thing to go down to your
local post office
and fill out the forums that that allow
your own government to send you there to
fight
and this is especially important at a
time when the federal government doesn't
really have any other way to find you
unless you actually go and register
yourself right and so you know ordinary
people are participating um in the
building of this war machine
but at least a half a million of them
don't right and simply never fill out
the forms
move from one town to another but you
said 20 million did 20 something yeah
about 24 million uh register at least
500 000 is it surprising to you that
that many registered
since the country was divided
it it is and that's what i i've you know
sort of tried to dig in to figure out
how did how did you get 24 million
people to to register for the draft and
uh it's certainly not coming from the
top down right um you know there are
maybe a hundred uh
sort of agents in what's now called the
fbi
um you know it's certainly not being
enforced from washington it's being
enforced in you know through the the
eyes of everyday neighbors um you know
through community uh surveillance all
kinds of ways
oh so there was like a pressure
there's a lot of pressure interesting
so there's not a significant like uh
anti-war
movement as you would see maybe
later with vietnam and things like this
there was a significant movement before
1917 but but it becomes very hard to
keep up an organized anti-war movement
after that particularly when the
government starts shutting down protests
so as the selective service act of 1917
runs up against
some of the freedoms some of the rights
that are
uh defined in our founding documents
what was that clash like what was
sacrificed
what freedoms and rights were sacrificed
in this process
i mean i think on some level the
fundamental right right
is liberty right um that conscription
sort of demands um you know uh
sacrifice um on the behalf of some for
the for notionally for the protection of
all so even if you're against the war
you're forced to fight yes um you know
and there were small uh provisions for
conscientious objectors um solely those
who had religious objections to all war
right not political objections to this
war
and so you know several thousand were
able to take those provisions but even
then
um they faced uh social sanction they
faced ridicule some of them faced uh
intimidation
you know so those liberty interests um
both individual freedom religious
freedom you know those are some of the
first things to go
so
what about freedom of speech
silencing of the press of the voices of
the different people that will object uh
yes absolutely right and so very soon
after the selective service act is
passed then you get the espionage act
which of course is back in the news in
2022 what's the espionage act the
espionage act is a sort of omnibus bill
it contains about 10 or different
provisions very few of which have to do
with espionage but one key provision
basically makes it illegal to say or do
anything that would interfere with
military recruitment
right
and that that provision is used to shut
down
uh radical publications to shut down
german language publications um and you
know this is really has a chilling
impact on speech during the war
could you put into words what it means
to be an american citizen
that is in part sparked by world war one
so what is what is that
what does that mean somebody that's
should be willing to sacrifice
certain freedoms to fight for their
country
um
somebody that's
willing to fight
to spread freedom elsewhere in the world
spread the american ideals like what
what
um does that begin to tell the story
what it means to be an american
uh i think what we see is a change right
so citizenship during world war one now
includes um uh the obligation to defend
the country right to serve right and to
if asked to die for it right
and we certainly see that and i think we
see
the the close linkage of military
service and u.s citizenship coming out
of this time period
but um you know when you start making
lots of demands on people to fulfill
obligations in turn they're going to
start demanding rights
and we start to see not necessarily
during the war but after
more demands for free speech protections
more demands for for equality for
marginalized groups
and so you know obligations and rights
are sort of developing in a dynamic
relationship oh it's almost like
an overreach of power sparked
a sense like oh crap we can't trust
centralized power
to abuse like to drag us into a war we
need we need to be able to so there's a
the birth of that tension between the
government and the people
it's a a rebirth of it you know of
course that you know that tension is
always there but but uh in its modern
form i think it comes from this
re-intensification of it yeah so what
about you said that world war one gave
birth to the surveillance state in the
u.s
can you explain
yeah so the espionage act um you know
sort of empowers
federal organizations to watch other
americans they are particularly
interested in anyone who is obstructing
the draft
anyone who is trying to kind of
organize labor or strikes or radical
movements
and anyone who might have sympathy for
for germany which basically means you
know all german americans come under
surveillance
initially um you know this is a very
small scale
but
but soon every government agency gets
involved from the treasury department
secret service to the post office which
is uh sort of reading mail to the
justice department which mobilizes 200
000 volunteers yeah and you know it's
it's a really significant enterprise
much of it goes away after the war
but of all the things that go away this
core of the surveillance state is the
thing that persists um most most fully
is this also
a place where government the size of
government starts to grow in these
different organizations or maybe create
some momentum for growth of government
oh it's uh it's it's exponential growth
right that um you know that over the
course of the war
by almost any metric you use right the
the size of the federal budget the
number of federal employees the number
of soldiers in the standing army all of
those things skyrocket during the war
they go down after the war but they
never go down to what they were before
and probably gave a momentum for growth
over time yes absolutely
did world war one give birth to the
military industrial complex in the
united states so
war profiteering
expanding of the war machine in order to
financially benefit a lot of parties
involved
so
i guess i i would maybe break that into
two parts right that um
uh on the one hand yes
the there is war profiteering um there
are investigations of it
um in the years after the war there's a
widespread concern that the profit
motive had played
you know too much of a part
in the war and that's definitely the
case
but i think when you try to think of
this term military industrial complex
it's best you know
to think of it as you know at what point
does the one side lock in the other
right that military choices are shaped
by industry uh stan you know
objectives and and vice versa
and i don't think that that was fully
locked into place during world war one i
think that's really a cold war
phenomenon when the united states is on
this intense kind of footing for for two
generations in a row so industrial is
really important there there is
companies
so before then
weapons of war were created were uh
funded directly by the government were
like
like who was manufacturing the weapons
of war
they were generally manufactured by
private industry um uh there were of
course art well arsenal sort of 19th
century iterations where the government
would produce its own weapons um partly
to make sure that they got what they
wanted um but but most of the weapons of
war for all of the european powers and
the united states are produced by
private industry so why do you say that
the military-industrial complex didn't
start then what was the what was the
important thing that happened in the
cold war
i think
one way to think about it is it it's
the cold war is a point at which it uh
switches from being a dial to a ratchet
right so during world war one uh you
know the relationship between the
military and industry dials up
you know fast and high and stays you
know stays that way and it dials back
down
whereas during um the cold war um sort
of the relationship between the two
often looks more like a ratchet yeah
because it becomes unstoppable it goes
up again
and in the way that you start i think
the way the military-industrial complex
is often involved
um disgust is
as a system that
is unstoppable
right like it expands
it almost i mean if you take a very
cynical view
it
creates war
so that it can make money
it doesn't just
find places where it can help through
military conflict
it creates tensions that directly or
indirectly lead to military conflict
that can then
fuel and make money from
that is certainly one of the concerns um
of both people
um you know who are critical of the
first world war and then also of dwight
eisenhower right when he's uh president
and and sort of in his uh farewell
address where he sort of introduces the
term military-industrial complex and
some of it is about the profit motive
but some of it is a a fear that that
eisenhower had
that no one had an interest in stopping
this
right and that no one had a voice in
stopping it and that the ordinary
american could could really do nothing
um to sort of uh you know to kind of to
dial it to dial things down is it
strange to you that we don't often hear
that kind of speech today with like
eisenhower speaking about the
military-industrial
complex so for example we'll have people
criticizing the spending on the on war
efforts
but they're not
discussing the
yeah the machinery of the
military-industrial complex like the
the basic
way that human nature works that we get
ourselves trapped in this thing they're
saying like there's better things to
spend money on
versus describing a very
seemingly natural process
of when you build weapons of war that's
gonna lead to more war
like it pulls you in
somehow
yeah i would say
throughout the cold war um and even
after the end of it uh there has not
been a sustained conversation um in the
united states um about uh about our
defense establishment right what we you
know what we really need
um and uh you know what what serves our
interest um and
uh and to what extent um sort of other
things like
market forces profit motives um you know
belong in that in that conversation
uh what's interesting is that in the
generation after the first world war
that was that conversation was on the
table right um through a series of
investigations in the u.s the nye
committee um in britain a royal
commission journalistic expose you know
this would have been just
talked about constantly in the years
between about 1930 and 1936
as people were starting to worry right
that storm clouds were gathering in
europe again
yeah but it almost seems like those
folks get
pushed to the fringes
you're made an activist
for versus uh intel like a versus a
thinking leader
those discussions are often marginalized
um framed as conspiracy theory um etc um
and um you know i think it's it's
important to realize that you know uh in
the generation after world war one this
was a serious civic conversation it led
to you know sort of investigations of
defense
sort of finance it led to experiments
in britain and france and public finance
of war material
and i think those conversations need to
be reconvened
now in the 21st century is there any
parallels between
world war one and the war in ukraine
the reason i bring it up is because
you mentioned sort of
there was a hunger for war
a capacity for war that was already
established
and the different parties were just
boiling the uh
the tensions
so there's a case made that america had
a
role to play nato had a role to play in
the current war in ukraine
is there some truth to that
uh when you think about it in the
context of world war one
or is it purely about the specific
parties involved which is russia and
ukraine
i think it's very easy to
draw parallels between world war one uh
and the war in ukraine um
but i don't think they really work um
that you know the first world war
in some ways is generated by
a
you know fundamental conflict uh in the
euro european system of empires right in
the global system of empires
so in many ways if there's a parallel
the war in ukraine is the parallel to
some of the conflicts in
um you know in
the mediterranean and the balkans in
1911 to 1913
um that
um you know
that then later there was a much greater
conflict right and so
i think if there's any lessons to be
learned um for how not to you know let
uh world war iii look like world war one
um it would be to make sure that um you
know that systems aren't locked into
place um that escalate wars out of out
of people's expectations well that's
i suppose what i was uh implying
that this is the early stages of world
war iii
that in the same way that
several wolves are licking their
chops or whatever the expression is
they're they're creating tension they're
creating military
conflict with a kind of unstoppable
imperative for a global war
that's i mean
many kind of
people that are looking at this are
really worried about that now
the the stopping the forcing function to
stop this war is that there's
several nuclear powers involved
which has at least for now worked to
stop
full-on
global war
but i'm not sure that's going to be the
case in fact what's one of the
surprising things to me
in ukraine is that still in the 21st
century
we can go to something that involves
nuclear powers not directly yet but
awfully close to directly
go to a hot war
and so do you worry about that that
there's a kind of
descent into a world war one type of
scenario
yes i mean that that keeps me up at
night and i think it should keep uh you
know the citizens of both the united
states and russia
up at night
um
and i think
again it gets back to what i was saying
in that in the summer of 1914
um even then um things that looked
um
like a march toward war
could have been different right and so i
think it's important for leaders
to
um of both countries and of all of the
sort of related countries you know of
ukraine of the various nato powers and
to really
sort of imagine
off-ramps and to imagine alternatives
and to make them possible
you know whether it's through diplomacy
whether it's through other formats
um you know i think that
you know that that's the only way to
prevent sort of greater escalation
what's the difference between world war
one and the civil war in terms of how
they defined what it means to be an
american but also
uh the american
citizens relationship with the war
um what what the leaders were doing is
there interesting differences in
similarities
besides the fact that everybody seems to
have forgot about world war one in the
united states and everyone still
remembers civil war
i mean it's true um and uh you know
the
the american civil war defines american
identity um uh in some ways along with
the revolution and the second world war
more so than any other conflict
and you know it's it's a fundamentally
different war
right it's one uh because it is a civil
war right because um
you know because of secession because of
the confederacy and you know this is a a
conflict happening on the territory of
the united states between americans and
so the dynamics are are are really quite
different right so you know the the
leaders particularly lincoln have a
different relationship to the home front
to civilians
than they than say wilson or roosevelt
have in the in world war one and two
also the way you would tell the story of
the civil war
perhaps similar to the way we tell the
story of world war ii
there's like a reason to actually fight
the war the way we tell the stories
we're fighting for this idea that all
men are created equal
that the the the war is over slavery
in part perhaps that's a
radic
drastic oversimplification of what the
war was actually about in the moment
like how do you get pulled into an
actual war versus
a uh hot
discussion and the same with world war
ii people
kind of framed the narrative that it was
against evil
hitler being evil
i think the key part of that is probably
the holocaust that's how you can
formulate hitler's being evil if there's
no holocaust perhaps there's a case to
be made that we wouldn't
see world war ii as such
uh quote-unquote good war
uh that there's an atrocity that had to
happen to make it really
uh to be able to tell a clear narrative
of why we get into this war perhaps such
a narrative doesn't exist for world war
one
and so that doesn't stay in the american
mind we try to uh sweep it under the rug
even though
overall 16 million people died
so
so to you the difference is in the fact
that you're fighting for us for ideas
and fighting
on on on the homeland but in terms of
people's participation
you know um
fighting for your country
was there similarities there
yeah i mean i think uh
i mean the civil war in in both the
north and the south uh troops are raised
overwhelmingly um through volunteer
recruitment uh there is a draft in in
both the north and the south but um
uh you know it's it's not significant um
only eight percent of of uh
of confederate soldiers came in through
conscription
um and so in fact you know the
the mobilization for
volunteers often organized locally
around individual communities or states
um create sort of multiple identities
and levels of loyalty
where people both in the north and the
south have loyalty both to their state
regiments
to their sort of community militias and
as well to to the country they are
fighting over the country right over the
united states
and so at the end the union and the
confederacy have conflicting and
ultimately irreconcilable visions of
that
but but you know that sort of
nationalism that comes out of uh
out of the union um after the victory in
the war is a kind of crucial force
shaping america uh ever since so what
was the neutrality period why did u.s
stay out of the war for so long like
what was going on in that
interesting
like
what made woodrow wilson change his mind
what
what uh what was the interesting dynamic
there i always say that the united
states
entered the war in april of 1917 but
americans entered it right away right
they entered it um you know some of them
actually went and volunteered and fought
almost exclusively on the side of
britain and france
at least fifty thousand joined the
canadian army or the british army and
serve
millions volunteer they sent
humanitarian aid i think in many ways
modern war creates modern
humanitarianism and we can see that in
the neutrality period
and even if they wanted the united
states to stay out of the war a lot of
americans get involved in it by thinking
about it caring about it you know
arguing about it
and
and you know at the same time they're
worried that british propaganda is
shaping their news system
they are worried
that german espionage is undermining
them
um they're worried that both britain and
germany are trying to interfere in
american elections and american news
cycles uh you know there and at the same
time uh a revolution is breaking out in
mexico right so there are sort of you
know concerns about uh what's happening
in the western hemisphere as well as
what's happening in europe
so world war one was supposed to be the
war to end all wars
and it didn't
how did how did world war one
pave the way to world war ii
every nation probably has their own
story in this trajectory towards world
war ii
how did europe
allow world war ii to happen how did the
soviet union russia
allow this to happen and how did america
allow world war ii to happen
in japan
yeah you're right the answer is
different for each country right
that in some ways in germany and the
culture of defeat
and the experience of defeat at the end
of world war one leads to a culture of
resentment recrimination
finger-pointing blame
that um makes german politics very ugly
um as one person puts it brutalizes uh
german politics
um pleases resentment at the core of the
populace and its politics yeah and you
know so in some ways that lays the
groundwork for the kind of politics of
of resentment and hate that that comes
from the from the nazis
um you know for the united states in
some ways the failure to win the peace
um uh you know uh sets up the
possibility for for the next war
right that um that the united states
uh you know through wilson is sort of
crafting a new international order
in order that this will be the war to
end all wars but because the united
states failed to join the league of
nations um you see that the united
states really sort of on the hook for
another generation
uh in asia the story is more complicated
right and i think it's worth bearing
that in mind that that world war ii is a
two-front war um it's it starts in asia
for its own reasons um world war one is
transformative for japan right um it is
a time of massive economic expansion and
a lot of that uh sort of economic wealth
is poured into sort of greater
industrialization and militarization and
so when the military wing
in japanese politics takes over in the
1930s they're in some ways flexing
muscles that come out of the first world
war
can you talk about the end of world war
one the treaty of versailles
um
what's interesting about that dynamics
there
of the parties involved
of uh
how it could have been done differently
to avoid the resentment is there
or again is it inevitable
so the war ends and very soon even
before the war is over um the
the united states in particular is
trying to shape the peace right and the
united states is the central actor um at
the paris peace conference in 1919
woodrow wilson is there
he's presiding um and he knows that he
calls the shots
so he was respected he was respected but
uh
but resentfully in some ways by by the
the european powers britain and france
and italy to a lesser extent who you
know felt that they had sacrificed more
um they had two goals right they wanted
to shape
the the imperial system in order to make
sure that their
you know kind of fundamental economic
structures wouldn't change and they also
wanted to
sort of weaken germany as much as
possible right so that germany couldn't
rise again
what this leads to is a peace treaty
that
you know
maintains some of the fundamental
conflicts of the imperial system
and
makes
bankrupts germany
starves germany and kind of feeds this
politics of resentment that make it
impossible for germany to kind of
participate in a european order so
people like historian neil ferguson for
example make the case that
if britain stayed out of world war one
we would have avoided this whole mess
and we would potentially even avoid
world war ii
there's kind of counterfactual history
do you think it's possible to make the
case for that that there was
a moment especially in that case thing
out of the war for britain that the
escalation to a global war could have
been avoided and one that ultimately
ends
in a deep global resentment so where
germany is resentful not just of france
or particular nations
but is resentful of the entire
i don't know how you define it the west
or something like this in the entire
global world
i wish it were that easy
and
you know i think um
it's useful to think and counter
factuals um you know what if um and
if you believe
as historians do in causation
then if that one thing causes another
then you also have to believe in counter
factuals right that if something hadn't
happened then maybe that wouldn't you
know that would have worked differently
um but uh i think all the things that
led to world war one um are
multi-causal and nuanced and this is
what historians do we make things more
complicated um and so
you know there was no one thing that
could have you know uh
like that could have turned the the tide
of history um you know
and you know oh if only
hitler had gotten into art school or if
only fidel castro had gotten into the
major leagues you know uh
uh those are interesting thought
experiments but few few events in
history i think are that contingent well
hitler is an example somebody who's a
charismatic leader
that seems to have a really
disproportionate amount of influence
on the tide of history
so
you know if you look at stalin you can
imagine that many other people could
have stepped into that role
and the same goes for many other the
other presidents through or even mao
it seems that there's a singular nature
to hitler that you could play the
counterfactual
that if there was no hitler you may have
not had world war ii he
better than many
um leaders in history was able to
channel the resentment of the populace
into a very aggressive expansion of the
military and
i would say
skillful deceit of the entire world
in terms of his plans and was able to
effectively start the war
so
is it is it possible that
i mean could hitler have been stopped
could we have avoided
if he just got into art school right
uh or again do you feel like there's a
current of events that was unstoppable i
mean part of what you're talking about
is uh is hitler the individual as a sort
of charismatic leader who's able to
mobilize you know the the nation um and
part of it is hitlerism right his own
sort of individual
ability to play for example play off his
subordinates against one another to set
up a system and you know of that of that
nature that that in some ways escalates
violence including um you know the
violence that leads to the holocaust
um and some of it is also hitlerism um
as a as a leader cult and we see this in
many other sort of
you know things where where a political
movement surrounds one particular
individual who may or may not be
replaceable
um so so yes the world war ii we got um
would have been completely different
um if a different um sort of uh faction
had risen to power in germany
um but uh but europe you know depression
era europe was so unstable
and democracies collapsed throughout
western europe over the course of the
1930s
you know whether they had charismatic uh
totalitarian leaders or not
have you actually read
one book i just recently
finished i'd love to get your opinion
from a historian perspective there's a
book called blitzed drugs in the third
reich by norman ohler
it makes the case
that drugs played a very large
meth essentially played a very large
role
in world war ii
there's a lot of criticism of this book
saying that it's it's uh kind of to what
you're saying
it takes this one little variable and
makes it like this explains everything
so everything about hitler everything
about the
blitzkrieg everything about the military
the the way the strategy the decisions
could be explained through drugs or at
least implies that kind of thing
um and the interesting thing about this
book because hitler and nazi germany is
one of the most sort of written about
periods of human history
and this was not drugs were almost
entirely not written about
in in this context so here come along
this
semi-historian because i don't think
he's even a historian he's a um a lot of
his work is fiction
um hopefully i'm saying that correctly
so he tells a really
that's one of the criticisms he tells a
very compelling story that drugs were at
the center
of um
of this period and also of the man of
hitler
what are your
sort of feelings and thoughts about
um
if you've gotten a chance to read this
book but i'm sure there's books like it
that tell an interesting perspective
singular perspective on a war
yeah i mean i i have read it and i i
also had this sort of eye-opening
experience that a lot of uh historians
did and they're like why didn't why
didn't we think about this right um and
you know i think uh whether
he's you know the the the author older
is um you know sort of not a trained
academic historian but the joy of
history is like you don't have to be one
to write good history um and i don't
think anyone
uh you know sort of criticizes him for
for that
um i like
the book as a as a window into the third
reich you know of course drugs don't
explain all of it but it helps us see
um you know uh it see helps us see the
people who supported hitler
the ways in which
um you know
it was that
mind altering and performance altering
drugs were used to kind of keep soldiers
on the battlefield and the ways in which
um
you know i think that
we take we don't fully understand the
extent to which the third reich is held
together with like duct tape from um you
know from a pretty early
phase by like 1940 or 41 even you know
it's all smoke and mirrors and
i think that wartime propaganda both
germans trying to say you know we're
winning everything and america trying to
mobilize uh and the other allies you
know to mobilize against germany uh
described a more formidable enemy than
it really was by 1941 and 42.
yeah i mean i could see both cases uh
one is that duct tape doesn't make the
man
but also as an engineer i'm a huge fan
of duct tape
yeah because it does seem to solve a lot
of problems and
i do worry that
this perspective
that the book presents about drugs is
somehow to the mind really compelling
because it's almost like the mind or at
least my mind searches for an answer how
could this have happened
and it's nice to have a clean
explanation and drugs is one popular one
when people talk about steroids and
sports
the moment you introduce the topic of
steroids
somehow the mind wants to explain all
success in the context was because this
person was on steroids lance armstrong
well
it's it like it's a very sticky idea
certain ideas certain explanations are
very sticky and i think that's really
dangerous because then you lose the full
context and also in the case of drugs
it removes the responsibility from the
person
both for the military genius
and the evil
and i think
it's a very dangerous thing to do
because something about the mind maybe
it's just mine it's sticky to this well
drugs explain it if the drugs didn't
happen
uh then it would be very different yeah
it worries me
how compelling it is of an explanation
you know yeah so that's why it's maybe
better to think of it as a window into
the third round yes than an explanation
of it but it's also a nice exploration
of hitler the man
for some reason discussing his habits
especially later in the war
um his practices with drugs
gives you a window into the person it
reminds you that
as a human this is a human being
like a human being get that gets
emotional in the morning gets
thoughtful in the morning hopeful
sad
depressed angry
like a story of emotions of the human
being is that somehow we construct um
which is a pretty dangerous thing to do
construct an evil monster out of hitler
when in reality he's a human being like
all of us i think the lesson there is a
soldier instant lesson which is
all of us
to some degree are capable of evil
or maybe if you want to
make it less powerful a statement
many of our leaders are capable of evil
that this hitler is not truly singular
in history
that uh yeah when the the resentment of
the populace matches the right
charismatic leader
it's it's easy to make the kind of not
easy but it it's possible to frequently
make the kind of uh
initiation of military conflict that
happened in world war
world war ii
by the way because you said not a
trained historian
one of the
one of the most compelling and i don't
know entertaining and fascinating
exploration world war one comes from dan
carlin i don't know if you've gotten a
chance to
listen to his sort of
podcast form telling of the blueprint
for ar armageddon which is the telling
of world war one what do you think about
dan carlin are you yourself as a
historian who has studied who's written
about world war one do you
do you enjoy that kind of telling of
history
absolutely and i think
again you know
uh you don't need a phd in history to to
be a historian right um does every
historian agree with that uh he gets
quite a bit of criticism from historians
uh you know i mean
we you know we like to argue with each
other and pick with each other but um
but the one thing i have no patience for
is when we like pull rank on each other
you know i think
um we depend on uh
you know if you're you know a historian
in a university with degrees and
research materials you know you depend
on the work of people in some local
community like recording oral histories
saving documents
and
history is a it's a social science but
it's also a storytelling art
and
you know
history books are the ones you find on
the shelves and bookstores that people
read for for fun and then and you can
appreciate both the the knowledge
production um as well as the
storytelling um and when you get a good
oral storyteller like dan carlin and
there's a reason that
thousands and hundreds of thousands of
people tune in
yeah but he definitely suffers from
anxiety about getting things corrected
it's very it's very difficult
well our first job is to get the facts
the facts correct and then and then to
tell the story off of those
because the the facts are so fuzzy so
it's uh
i mean you have the
probably my favorite telling of world
war ii
is
william shires rise and fall the third
reich
and uh or at least not telling of nazi
germany and that
goes to primary sources a lot
which is
like
i suppose that's the honest way to do it
but it's tough it's really tough to
write that way to really go to primary
sources
always and i think the one of the things
that dan tries to do
which is also really tough to do perhaps
easier in oral history is uh
try to make you feel what it was like to
be there
which i i think he does by trying to
tell the story of like individual
soldiers and
[Music]
do you find that telling
like individual citizens do you find
that kind of telling of history
compelling
yeah i mean i think we need a
historical imagination
and i think
historical imagination teaches something
very valuable which is humility
to realize that
there are
other people
who've lived on this planet and they
organized their lives differently and
you know they made it through just fine
too um and
um
you know i think that that uh that kind
of of
of
meeting other people from the past can
be actually a very useful skill for
meeting people unlike you in the present
unlike you but also like you i think
both are
uh both are humbling one realizing that
they lived in a different space and time
but to realizing that if you if you were
placed in that space and time you might
have done
all the same things whether it's the
brave good thing or the evil thing
yeah absolutely
and you get a also a sense of um
of possibility you know there's this
famous line right that um you know those
who do not learn history are condemned
to repeat it
but i think the other half is true as
well which is those who do not learn
history
don't get the chance to repeat it
right you know that we're not the first
people on this planet to face you know
any certain kinds of problems um you
know other people have have lived
through worlds like this one before
it's like when you fall in love as a
teenager for the first time there's and
then there's a breakup
you think it it's the greatest strategy
tragedy that has ever happened in the
world you're the first person
even though like
romeo and juliet and so on had had this
issue you're the first person that truly
feels the catastrophic
heartbreak of that experience
it's good to be reminded that no
the human condition is what it is we
have lived through it at the individual
in the societal scale
let me ask about nationalism which i
think is at the core of i want you
poster
is nationalism destructive or empowering
to a nation
and we can use different words like
patriotism which is in many ways
synonymous to nationalism but
in recent history perhaps because of the
nazis
has has
slowly parted ways that somehow
nationalism is when patriots and
pictures haven't gone bad or something
like this yeah they're they're different
right um patriotism um
you know patriotism is in some ways best
thought of as an emotion right and a
feeling of of love of country right um
you know literally um
and in some ways that's a necessary
condition to participate in nationalism
you know whether
to me i think nationalism is
crucial
in a world organized around nation
states and you have to sort of
believe
that you are engaged in a common project
together right um and so you know in the
contemporary united states
uh you know uh
in some ways that that question is
actually on the table in ways that it
hasn't been in the past
but you know you have to believe that
you're engaged in a common project that
you have something in common
with the person with whom you share this
nation um and um and that you would
sacrifice for them whether it's by
paying taxes for them or um you know or
going to war to defend them um that's a
vision of you know what we might call
civic nationalism um
that's that's the good version
the question is whether you could have
that
without having
um
exclusionary nationalism you know hating
the other right fearing the other saying
uh yeah you're part of this nation uh
against all others um and
i think there's a long tradition in
america of a very inclusive
nationalism um that is open
inclusive welcoming
um
and you know new people to this shared
project
that's something to be defended
exclusionary nationalism is based on you
know
uh
ethnic hatreds and and others that we
see throughout the world and those are
things to be afraid of
but there is a kind of narrative in the
united states that
a nationalism that includes the big
umbrella of democratic nations
nations that strive for freedom
and everybody else is against
is against freedom and against human
nature and it just so happens that it's
a half and half split across the world
so that's imperialism
that feels like it beats the drum of war
yeah and i i mean i don't want to paint
too rosy a picture and certainly you
know the united states um as a nation
has often found it easier to define
ourselves against something um than to
clarify exactly what we're for
yeah
the cold war
china today
not that's not only united states i
suppose that's us human nature
it's we need a competitor it's almost
like
maybe the success of human civilization
requires
figuring out how to construct
competitors
that don't result in global war
yes or figuring out
how to turn enemies into rivals and
competitors there's a real difference
you know you can you you know you
compete with competitors you you fight
with enemies
yeah with competitors is a respect maybe
even a love
underlying the competition
what lessons what are the biggest
lessons you take away from world war one
maybe we talked about several but you
know you look back at the 20th century
what
as a historian
what do you learn about human nature
about human civilization
about history
from looking at this war
i think they
the lesson i
would want everyone to take from the
story of the first world war
is
that
human life is not cheap
um
that all of the warring powers
thought that just by throwing
more men and more material at the front
they would solve their political
problems with military force
and
at the end of the day in 1918 one side
did win that
but it didn't actually solve any of
those political problems and in the end
the regular
people paid the price of their lives
they did and people who
people who had been told that their
lives were cheap
uh remembered that
right
and it sort of you know reshapes mass
politics for the rest of the 20th
century both in europe and around the
world
yeah the
yeah the cost of a death of a single
soldier is not just
or a single civilian
is not just the cost of that single life
it's the resentment
that the anger the hate that
reverberates throughout one of the
things i i saw in ukraine
is the birth of
at scale of generational hate
not towards administrations or leaders
but towards entire peoples
and that hey
i mean overnight that hate is created
and it takes perhaps decades for that
hate to dissipate
it takes decades and it takes uh
it takes collective effort to build
institutions that divert that that hate
into
into other places
one of the biggest
things i thought was not part of the
calculus
in when the united states invaded
afghanistan and iraq
is
the creation of hate
when you when you drop a bomb
even if it hits military targets even if
it kills
soldiers which in that case
it didn't there's a very large amount of
civilians
what does that do to the
yeah like what
um how
many
years
minutes hours months and years of hate
do you create with a single bomb you you
drop and like calculate that like
literally
in the pentagon have a chart
how many people will hate us
uh how many people does it take do some
science here how many people does it
take
uh when you have a million people that
hate you how many of them will become
terrorists
uh how many of them
uh will do something to
the nation you love and care about which
is the united states will do something
that will be very costly
i feel like there was not a plot in a
chart
it was more about short-term effects
uh yes it's again it's the idea of using
uh military force to solve political
problems um and i think there's a
squandering of of goodwill that people
have around the world toward the united
states um you know that's a
respect for uh you know for its economy
for its consumer products and so forth
and i think that's um uh that's been
lost a lot of that do you think leaders
can stop war
i have perhaps a romantic notion perhaps
because i do these podcasts in person so
on that leaders that get in a room
together and can talk
they can stop war
i mean that's the power of a leader
especially
one with a in an authoritarian regime
that they can
through camaraderie
alleviate some of the emotions
associated with the ego
yes leaders can stop war if they get
into the room
when they understand um from
the masses in their countries that were
something that they want stopped
so the people ultimately have a really
big say they do you know that it was the
it was mass movements by
people in the united states for the
nuclear freeze um in russia pushing for
for openness that brought for example um
ronald reagan and mikhail gorbachev to
reykjavik to sort of debate
um you know and eventually sort of put
caps on on nuclear weapons
you know those two people did you know
made choices in the room that made that
possible
but they were both being pushed
and knew they were being pushed by by
their people
boy
that's a tough one it puts a lot of
responsibility on the german people for
example
in both wars
we fans of history tend to conceive of
history as a meeting of leaders we think
of chamberlain we think of churchill
and the importance of them in the second
world war i think about hitler and
stalin and think that if certain
conversations happen they could have the
war could have been avoided
you tell the story of how many times
hitler
and nazi germany's military might
was not sufficient they could have been
easily stopped
and the pacifists
the people who
believed hitler were foolish enough to
believe hitler
didn't act properly and if the leaders
just woke up to that idea
in fact
um
churchill is a kind of representation of
that but in your conception here it's
possible that churchill was also a
representation of the british people
even though seemingly unpopular
he
that force was
um
they gave birth to somebody like
churchill
who said we'll never surrender right
yes she'll fight in the beaches yeah
and it you know it's a i think uh world
war ii britain is a good example of that
you know it's uh it is clearly a you
know a dynamic leader who has his pulse
on what the people
are want and demand and are willing to
do um and you know it's a dynamic art of
of leading that
uh and shaping those wants at the same
time as as knowing that you're you're
bound by them
well then if we conceive of history in
this way let me ask you
about our presidents
you are taking on the uh impossibly
difficult task of teaching a course
in uh in a couple of years here or in
one year
called the history of american
presidential elections
so if the people are in part responsible
for leaders
how can we explain
um
what is going on in america that we have
the leaders that we do today
so the if we think about the
elections of the past several cycles
i guess let me ask are we a divided
nation are we more of a divided nation
than were in the past
what
do you understand about the american
citizen at the beginning of this century
uh from the leaders we have elected
yes obviously we are a divided country
in our rhetoric
in
our day-to-day politics um uh
but
we are nowhere near as divided as we
have been in other periods in our
history right the most obvious of course
being in the american civil war right
150 years ago
and
the distinction is not just that you
know we haven't come to blows
but
that we
are fundamentally one society one
economy
and sort of you know deeply integrated
as a nation
both
domestically and on the world stage in
ways that you know look nothing like the
united states in 1861.
um you know will there be you know will
political rhetoric um continue to be
extreme of course um
but uh but but we're we're not as
divided as people think we are
well
um
then
if you actually look throughout human
history does it always get so outside
the people do the elections get
as contentious as they've recently been
so there's a kind of perception has been
very close and there's
a lot of accusations a lot of tensions
it's very heated it's almost fueling the
machine of division
has that often been the case it has we
are um
it hasn't it hasn't i mean i do think
right now is is different um and there
it's worth distinguishing
you know are there deep social or
economic divisions which i don't
actually think that there are versus
partisanship in particular sort of the
rivalry between the two parties and it's
very clear that we are in an era of what
we what political scientists call
hyperpartisanship
right and that the two parties have
taken sort of
fundamentally different positions and
moved further
you know apart from one another
and um you know and that is
what i think people talk about when they
say our country is divided so the
country may not be divided even if our
politics are highly partisan
that is uh you know a divergence from
from other time periods in our history
so i wonder if this kind of political
partisanship
is actually
an illusion of division
i sometimes feel like
we mostly all agree
on some basic fundamentals
and and the things that people allegedly
disagree on are really blown out of
proportion and there's like a media
machine and the politicians really want
you to pick a a blue side and a red side
and because of that
somehow i mean families break up over
thanksgiving dinner about who they voted
for there's a really strong pressure to
be the red or blue
and
i wonder if that's a feature or a bug
whether this is just part of the
mechanism of democracy that we want to
even if there's not a real thing to be
divided over we need to construct it
such that you can always have a tension
of id attention of ideas
in order to
make progress to figure out how to
progress as a nation
i think we're figuring that out in real
time right on the one hand it's uh it's
easy to say that it's a feature of uh of
a political system
that has two parties right and the
united states is in some ways unique
right in
in not being a parliamentary democracy
and so in some ways it you would think
that would be the feature that is
causing
uh partisanship and to reach these
heights
that said
um you know we can even see in
parliamentary systems and you know all
around the world that the same kinds of
rhetorics of of irreconcilable division
a kind of politics of emotion
are proliferating around the world
some of that
as you say i think is is
not as real as as it appears on on
television on social media and other
formats
so you know i don't i don't know that
other countries are um that are
experiencing sort of political conflict
i'm not sure that they're deeply divided
either
so
i've uh had the fortune
of being intellectually active through
the george bush versus al gore election
then the obama and just every election
since right
and it seems like a large percentage of
those elections
there's been a claim that the elections
were rigged
that there is some
conspiracy corruption malevolence on the
on the other side i distinctly remember
when donald trump won in 2016
a lot of
people i know said that election was
rigged and there's different
explanations including russian
influence
and then in 2020 i was just running in
in austin
along the river
and somebody said like oh a huge fan
of the podcast and they said like what
do you think about this is just not
right what's happening in this country
that um the 2020 election was obviously
rigged
uh from their perspective
uh in
electing joe biden versus donald trump
do you think there's a case to be made
for and against each claim
in the full context of history
of
our elections being rigged
i think
the american election system is
fundamentally sound
and reliable
and i think that the
evidence
you know is is clear for that um you
know regardless of which uh election
you're looking at in some ways whether
even you know you look at a presidential
election or even a local you know county
election for dog catcher or something
right
that the
um you know the amount of sort of time
and resources and precision that go into
uh voter registration vote counting um
certification processes
are
crucial to
democratic institutions
i think when someone says
rigged
regardless of which side of the
political spectrum they're coming from
um
they're looking
for an answer
that
you know they're looking for that one
answer
for what is in fact a complex system
right so you know on the left when they
say rigged
they may be pointing to a wide range of
of ways in which they think that the
system
um is is tilted um through you know
gerrymandering
you know sort of misrepresentation
through the electoral college um on the
right when people say rigged they may be
concerned uh you know about
about
you know sort of voter security about
ways in which the media pre may you know
mainstream media may control
messages
and in which you know in both cases
the feeling is
my
it's articulated as my vote didn't get
counted right
but the deeper concern is
my my vote doesn't count you know my
voice
isn't being heard
um so
so no i don't think i don't think the
elections are rigged so let me sort of
push back right
there's a comfort to the story that
they're not rigged
and a lot of us like to live in comfort
so people who articulate conspiracy
theories say sure it's nice to be
comfortable but here's the reality and
the thing they articulate is there's
incentives in close elections which we
seem to have non-stop close elections
there's so many financial interests
there's so many powerful people
surely you can construct not just with
the media
and all the ways you describe both on
the left and the right the elections
could be rigged but literally
actually
in a
fully illegal way
manipulate the results of
votes
surely there's incentive to do that
and
i don't think that's
uh that's a totally ridiculous argument
because it's like all right well
um i mean it actually lands
to the question
uh which is a hard question for me to
ask us ultimately as an optimist
of
how many malevolent people out there and
how many malevolent people are required
to rig an election
so how many what is the face transition
for a system to become from like uh
corruption light to corruption
uh to high level of corruption such that
you could do things like regulations
which is what happens
quite a lot in many nations in um in the
world even today
so yes there is interference in
elections and there has been in american
history right and we can go all the way
back into the the you know into the 18th
century um you don't have to go back to
you know texas in the 1960s uh at lbj to
to find examples of of direct
interference in the outcome of elections
and there are incentives to do that
those incentives will only feel more
existential
as hyperpartisanship
makes people think that the outcome of
the elections are um you know are aren't
are a matter of you know black and white
or life and death
um
and um you will see people sort of
organizing sort of um uh every way they
can to shape elections right we saw this
in the 1850s right when settlers you
know pro and anti-slavery sort of
flooded into kansas um to try to sort of
uh you know uh determine the outcome of
an election and we see this in the
reconstruction period right when the ku
klux klan shows up to kind of you know
to block the doors for for black voters
in the south um you know that the with
that this history is not new it's it's
there i think what um
what the reason why i think that the
system is sound is um is not or the
reason when i say i believe that the
election system is fundamentally sound
um it's not um i'm not trying to be
reassuring um or encourage complacency
right i'm saying like you know this is
something that we need to to do and to
work on
so the current electoral mechanisms
are are
sufficiently robust
even if there is corruption even if
there is rigging they're robot like uh
the force that corrects it self corrects
and ensures that nobody gets out of line
is much stronger than the other
incentives which are like the corrupting
incentives and that's the thing i
um talked about corrupt you know
visiting ukraine talking about
corruption
what a lot of people talk about
corruption as being a symptom not if the
system allows
creates the incentives
for there to be corruption humans will
always go for corruption that's just you
have to assume that the power of the
united states is that it constructs
systems that
prevent you from being corrupt at scale
at least i mean depends what you believe
but most of us
if you believe in this country you have
to
you believe in the in the
self-correcting mechanisms of corruption
that uh even if that desire is in the
human heart
the system resists it prevents it
that's that's your
that's your current belief uh
yes as of today
but i do you know i do think that those
um you know the that will require um
oversight by institutions ideally
ones that are insulated as much as
possible from partisan politics which is
very difficult right now
um and it will require uh
the demands of of the american people
and that they you know that they want um
these elections to be
to be fair and secure
and that means you know that means
being willing to lose them you know
regardless of which which party you're
you're in favor of so what do you think
about the power of the media to create
partisanship i'm really worried that
there's a huge incentive speaking of
incentives to divide the country in the
in the media and the politicians i'm not
sure where it originates but it feels
like it's the media maybe it's a very
cynical perspective on journalism but
it seems like if we're angry and divided
as evenly as possible you're going to
maximize the number of clicks
so it's almost like the media wants to
elect people that are going to be the
most uh
divisive maximizing
and
the worry i have
is they
are not beyond
either feeding or if you want to be very
cynical manufacturing narratives
that lead that division like the
narrative of an election being rigged
because if you convinced half the
populace that the election was
completely rigged
that's a really good way
to get a lot of clicks
and and like
the very cynical view
is i don't know if the media machine
will stop the destruction of our
democracy
uh in service of getting more clicks
it may destroy our entire democracy just
to get more clicks just uh because the
fire as the thing burns down
uh will get clicks
is am i putting too much blame on the
media here
um the machine of it you're diagnosing
the incentive structure um you know
you're depicting that with 100 accuracy
but uh i think history teaches that you
might be giving the media too much
sort of causal power
that uh you know that the american
people are smarter than the media that
they consume right and um you know and
even even today we we know that right
people who consume
you know even people who consume just
fox or just msnbc
know what they're consuming right
and you know so i don't think that media
will be
the solution
and i certainly don't think that
returning to
a media structure of the mid 20th
century with you know three
news channels that all tell us one story
is that's no golden age that we're
trying to get back to
uh
for sure well there's a there is a novel
thing in human history which is twitter
and social media and so on
so we're trying to find our footing as a
nation to figure out how to think about
politics how to um yeah how to
maintain
our basic freedoms our sense of uh
[Music]
democracy of our interaction with
government and so on on this new media
where
medium of social media
uh
do you think twitter how do you think
twitter changed things
do you think twitter is good for
democracy
and do you think it has changed what it
means to be an american citizen
uh or is it just the same old media
mechanism it has not changed what it
means to be an american citizen um it
has uh it may have changed the um
the the day-to-day
sound of of being and you know the the
experience of it it got noisier it got
louder
um and it got more
decentered
i think
twitter is a
it's paradoxical on the one hand it is a
fundamentally democratic uh platform
right you know any and in some ways it
democratizes institutions that um you
know that had
had gatekeepers and and you know
authority figures for a very long time
but on the other hand it's it's not a
democratic institution at all it's a
for-profit corporation um and you know
it operates under under those principles
um and so you know that said it's a you
know is an institution of american and
global life
and that the people
of of the united states have uh have the
authority to to
regulate or reshape as as they see fit
both that and and other major media
players so one of the most dramatic
decisions that illustrate both sides of
what you're saying is when twitter
decided to ban i think permanently
the president of united states donald
trump off of twitter
can you
make the case that that was a good idea
and make the case that that was a bad
idea can you see both perspective on
this
yes i think um
i mean the simple fact of the matter is
um
you know twitter is a platform it has uh
rules of service twitter concluded
that president trump had violated the
terms of service and then blocked them
right and if you have roles you have to
enforce them
um
did it have um you know did it have
consequences um
it had
direct and predictable consequences um
you know that
of
creating
a sense among millions of americans that
twitter
had taken aside in politics
um
or confirming their their belief that it
had done so
um will it have unintended consequences
um you know this is where the historian
can come in and say yes
there's always unintended consequences
and we don't know you know sort of what
um what it would mean
for political figures to be excluded
from from
various media platforms
um under sort of under under these
notions right of um that they had
violated terms of service etc so you
know
so
i guess we'll see as i guess well to me
so i'm generally against censorship
but to take twitter's perspective it's
unclear to me
in terms of unintended consequences
whether censoring a human being
from being part of your platform
is going to
decrease or increase the amount of hate
in the world
so
there's a strong case to be made that
banning somebody like donald trump
increases the amount of resentment
um among people
and that's a very large number of people
that support him or even love him or
even see him as a great president one of
the greatest this country has had
and so if you completely suppress this
voice
you're going to intensify the
support that he has
from just the regular support for
another human being who ran for
president
to
somebody that becomes an almost heroic
figure for that
set of people
now the flip side is
removing
a person from a platform like donald
trump
might lessen the megaphone of that
particular person might actually
level
the
the democratic notion that everybody has
a voice so basically removing the loud
extremes
is helpful for giving
the center
the calm
the thoughtful voices more power and so
in that sense that teaches a lesson that
don't be crazy in any one direction
don't go
full don't go lenin don't go
uh hitler don't don't
like you have to stay in the middle
there's divisions in the middle there's
discussions in the middle but stay in
the middle
that's sort of the steel man the case
for uh for censoring
but i
boy is censorship a slippery slope
and also boys twitter becoming
a thing that's more than just a company
it seems like it's a medium of
communication that we use
for um
for information for
for knowledge for wisdom even
you know during the period of kovid
we used it to gain an understanding of
what the hell is going on what should we
do what's the state of the art science
science fundamentally transformed during
the time of code because you have no
time for the full review cycle that
science usually goes through and some of
the best sources of information for me
from the conspiracy theory to the the
best doctors with twitter
uh the data the stats all that kind of
stuff and
that feels like like more than a com
more than a company and then twitter and
youtube and different places took a
really strong stance on kovid
which
is the lazy stance in my opinion which
is we're going to listen to whatever
cdc or the institutions have said
but the reality is
you're an institution of your own now
you're kind of the press
you're like there's a there's a
um
yes it's a really difficult position
it's a really really difficult position
to take uh but i i wish they have
stepped up and take on the full
responsibility and the pain
of fighting for the freedom of speech
yes they need
they need to do that
but
you know i'm struck by some of the
things that you said ways in which um
you know uh twitter
has the power to shape the conversation
um
and i don't think in a democratic
society uh
democratic polities should cede that
power
um to to for-profit uh companies do you
agree that it's possible that
twitter
has that power currently do you sense
that it has the power is that my sense
is twitter as the power star wars
like tweets have the power to start wars
to to
yeah to to change the direction of
elections
maybe in the sense in the ways in which
uh you know a wave has the power to wash
away sand right um you know it's it's
the meat it's still the medium right
it's not um
it's not in itself an actor it's how
actors use the platform
which requires us to scrutinize the
structure of the platform and access to
it unfortunately it's not maybe as
similar to the wave it's not just a
medium
it's a
it's a medium plus
it's a medium that enables virality
that benefits from virality of
engagement and that means
singular voices
uh can
can have a disproportionate impact
like uh not even voices singular ideas
dramatic ideas can have a
disproportionate impact and so
that actually threatens
it's almost like i don't know what the
equivalent is in nature but it's a it's
a wave that can grow exponentially
because of the intensity of the
the initial
intensity of the wave
i don't know how to describe this as a
dynamical system but it feels like
it feels like there is a responsibility
there not to excel not to accelerate
voices just because they get a lot of
engagement you have to have a
proportional representation of that
voice
um but you're saying that
a strong democracy should be robust to
that
uh a strong democracy uh can and should
and and will be i mean i think the other
thing a historian will tell you about
twitter is that this too shall pass
right
yeah
but um but i do think you know the
structures of of the of the platform of
the algorithm of of this and other major
players
are are
eligible for scrutiny by by democratic
institutions
so
in preparing to teach the course the
history of american presidential
elections leading up to the 2024
elections
so one of the lessons of history is this
too shall pass so don't make everything
about
this is this is going to either save or
destroy our nation that seems to be like
the message of every single election um
as i'm doing trump hands um
do you think donald trump what do you
think about the 2024 election do you
think donald trump runs
do you think the the tension
[Music]
will grow
um or was that a singular moment
um
do you think you'll be like aoc versus
trump or whoever whatever the most maxim
drama maximizing thing or will things
stabilize uh
i think i can i can you know historians
don't like to predict the future but i
can predict this one that it will not be
a calm and and stabilized election
um i think as of you know the time that
we're talking in 2022 we don't there are
too many um you know sort of open
questions particularly about whether joe
biden will run for re-election he says
he will but
you know but uh the jury i think is out
on that
you know i i can't predict whether
donald trump will run for for election
uh or not i think um
uh
you know we do know that that that
uh president trump doesn't like to
to start things he can't win
and if the polling data suggests that
he's not a credible candidate he might
be reluctant to to enter the race and
might
might find more appealing a kind of the
kind of sideline uh kind of king maker
role that he's been crafting since he he
left the white house
um
you know i think there are plenty of
people who are
uh
you know dreaming that there's some sort
of centrist candidate um you know uh you
know
whether it's a conservative democrat or
a liberal republican who will you know
save us from from uh from all of this
um either within the party or in a third
party run i don't think that's likely
why are we getting them why don't you
think it's likely what's the explanation
this seems to be a general hunger for a
person like this you would but the
system sorts it out right you know that
the the the primary systems and the
party uh you know party candidate
selection systems you know will favor
sort of more you know more partisan
views right more conservative
republicans more liberal democrats
um as the kind of central candidates
it seems like the system prefers
mediocre
executive mediocre leaders
mediocre partisan leaders
if i to take a cynical look but maybe
i'm romanticizing the leaders of the
past
and maybe i'm just remembering the great
leaders of the past
and uh yeah i can assure you there's
plenty of mediocre partisans in the 19th
century okay
and the 20th
um
well let me ask you about platforming
um
do you think
donald it's the twitter question but i i
was torn about whether to talk to donald
trump on this podcast
as a historian what would you advise
i think uh i mean you know this is uh
this is a difficult question right um
for for historians who want um you know
sort of want
uh to make sure that they know sort of
what americans are thinking and talking
about um you know uh four centuries
later so one of the the things that you
know at least my understanding is that
when uh president trump was banned from
twitter his account was also deleted
um and that
is one of the most valuable sources that
historians will use um to understand
that the era and parts of it were sort
of you know uh archived and
reconstructed but uh you know but in
that sense i think that that is also a
real
loss to the historical record
and
i mean i think that uh your podcast
shows you'll you'll talk to you'll talk
to anyone and so
i'm here right right right um so you
know i'm not in the business of saying
you know don't don't don't talk don't
talk that's one of the difficult things
when i think about hitler i think um
hitler stalin i don't know if world war
one quite has the same intensity
of
controversial leaders
but one of the sad things from a
historian perspective is how few
interviews hitler has given or stalin
has given
and
that's such a difficult thing because
it's obvious that talking to donald
trump
that talking to xi jinping
talking to putin
is really valuable from a historical
perspective to understand
but then
you think about the momentary impact of
such a conversation and you think
well depending on how the conversation
goes you can steer
or
flame
what does it feed the flame
of war or conflict or um
abuses of power and things like this
and that's i think the tension between
the journalists and the historian
because when journalists interview
dictators for example
one of the things that strikes me
is they're often
very critical of the dictator
they're they're like
they're basically attacking them in
front of their face
as opposed to trying to understand
because what i perceive they're doing is
they're signaling to
uh the other journalists that they're on
the right side of history kind of thing
but that's not very productive and it's
also why
the dictators and leaders often don't do
those interviews
it's not productive to understanding who
the human being is to understand you
have to empathize
um because
few people i think few leaders do
something
from a place of malevolence i think they
really do think they're doing good
and not even for themselves not even for
selfish reasons i think they're doing
great for the
they're doing the right thing
for their country
or for whoever the group they're leading
and to understand that you have to
and and by the way a large percent of
the country often supports them
i bet if you pull
legitimately poor people in north korea
they will believe that their leader is
doing the right thing for their country
and so to understand that
you have to empathize so that's the
tension of the journalist i think and
the historian because obviously the
historian doesn't doesn't care they
really want to but they care obviously
deeply but they they know that history
requires deep understanding of the human
being in the full context
yeah it's a tough decision to make yeah
well i think it's uh both for
journalists and historians um the
challenge is not to be too close to your
subject right um and you know not to be
um overly influenced and used by them
right you know when you're talking to a
living subject which historians do you
know um too
um you know it's it's a matter of making
sure that you triangulate their story
with with the the rest of the record
right um
and that may paint a different picture
of of the person than um and will
prevent you as a journalist or a
historian from kind of you know just
telling someone else's story
and so and historians also have the
benefit of going back you know 30 40
years and finding all the other stories
and figuring out you know uh
playing two truths and a lie you know
which parts are you know which parts are
accurate which are which are not and
journalists do that work in a day-to-day
basis but historians um you know we get
a little more time to think about what
we're doing
well i i personally also think it's
deeply disrespectful to the populace
to people
to
um censor and ignore a person that's
supported by a very large number of
people
like that
you oh
i personally feel
like
you owe the citizens of this country
a deep
uh empathy and understanding of the
leaders they support
even if you disagree with what they say
i mean that's the the
to me i'm much more worried about the
resentment of the censorship um
that it's
to having a good conversation with
donald trump is ultimately valuable
because he i think
especially in this case i agree with you
that donald trump is not a singular
person
he is a he represents a set of feelings
that a large number of people have and
whatever those feelings are
you can try to figure out by talking to
people but also talking to the the
the man
and then seeing the interplay there what
does this really represent
in this period in history in this
slice of the world um yeah ultimately
understanding i think leads to
compassion and love and unity which is
how this whole thing progresses the
tension between the different sides
is useful to um
have a good conversation but ultimately
coming up with the right answer and
progressing towards that answer is how
you make progress
do you think a pure democracy can work
so we have this representative democracy
with these contentious elections and so
on
when we start a civilization on mars
which becomes more and more realistic
technologically we can have a more
direct access to be able to vote on
issues and
vote for ideas do you think it can work
i don't think we have to go to mars uh
to do it right um
uh i think um
the answer is not you know to flip a
switch and uh turn on something called
pure democracy um uh when people are not
ready for it when their uh incentive
structures are not um sort of uh
structured for it
but you can um you know experiment with
more democratic forms of governance one
after another right whether it's
uh you know sort of experimenting with
um technology to find new ways of sort
of of getting uh greater
rates of participation in democracy
um i think that we see some experiments
and sort of more complicated systems of
voting um that in fact might actually be
more reflective of people's choices than
simply picking one candidate right sort
of ranked choice voting or
runoffs other kinds of things
and you know i think that we can think
more
creatively about something like
participatory budgeting right in which
um you know
we put all this money into the
government um and then um you know we we
um you know should as a as a people
there are more democratic ways of sort
of of how we spend it and i think the
most urgent in some level is a more uh
democratic form of foreign policymaking
right the foreign policy making
decision-making um about the military
about foreign policy
is is very ways insulated from from
popular participation um in in modern
american history
and i think
you know they're
technology is not the the
going to solve this you know it's a
combination of technology and and human
creativity but i think um
you know i think we can start heading
that direction
whether we get there before we get to
mars i don't i don't know
what interesting lessons and thoughts if
you look at the fundamentals
of the history of american elections
do you hope to reveal when you try to
teach the class
and
how will those fundamentals be met
by the by the students that received
that wisdom
so
what do you think about this dance
especially such an interesting idea and
now i hope you do go through with this
kind of idea is look at the history
while the next one is happening
yes
i think
you know it's worth remembering right
that the students
who are
typical american student who's in
college right now
right has lived their entire life
after
uh the election of 2000 and bush v gore
right um and after 9 11 probably and
yeah absolutely yes after all of after
all of these things right and and
um
so on the one hand they take um
partisanship and contentious elections
for granted
um
they don't i think share um you know
sort of some
vision that things were you know things
used to be different right they don't
remember
a world that had like lots of moderate
democrats and liberal republicans and uh
you know sort of running around in it
um but um
you know so in some ways it's a way of
of looking back into the past to find
other ways of of of organizing our
politics
uh it's also a way of of
reassuring students that we have been
through contentious and even um sort of
violent elections before in our history
and you know that people have
defended the right to vote right people
have risked their lives to vote
you know i think they will they will
understand that that as well
and maybe
knowledge of history here can help
de-escalate the emotions you might feel
about one candidate or another
and
uh from a place of calmness
you can more easily arrive at wisdom
uh that that's my hope um yeah
uh just as a brief aside you
breathe aside but nevertheless you wrote
the book bound by war
that describes a century of war in the
pacific
so looking at this
slice of geography
and power
so most crucially through the
partnership between the united states
and the philippines
can you tell us some aspects of the
story
that is often perhaps not considered
when you start to look more at the
geopolitics of europe and soviet union
and the united states what how did the
the war
in in the pacific define the 20th
century
yeah i
came to this book bound by war um from a
sense that um that our stories were too
lopsided toward toward europe right that
american history when viewed from the
pacific
specifically in the 20th century
helps us understand american power
in some new ways right uh not only
american uh projection of power into
asia right but also the ways in which
american power affected uh people in
asia right um either
as you know in places like the
philippines where the united states had
a colony for almost 50 years or asian
americans people who had migrated over
their descendants in the united states
and those linkages between the united
states and asia
particularly
the u.s philippine connection i think
were something that needed to be traced
across the 20th century because it's a
way
kind of a new way of seeing american
power you know from from a different
angle
you see it in in that way
what are some aspects that define
america from from
when you take the perspective of the
pacific
what military conflict
and and the asymmetry of power there
right so i start in uh in 1898 um you
know with the us invasion of the
philippines um uh its conquest and
annexation
uh and i think in many ways this is a
defining conflict of the 20th century
that's often completely overlooked we're
described
i think incorrectly as merely a war with
spain right that the war in the
philippines um is our uh our first
extended overseas conflict our first
conflict um in what would come to be
called the developing world or third
world it's a form of counter insurgency
um you know this is the us army sort of
learning lessons that are then repeated
again in the second world war in korea
vietnam and and even after 9 11. as the
philippines our friends or enemies in
this history
well that's the interesting part right
is that uh the book focuses in
particular on filipinos uh who fight
with the americans who fought you know
sort of in the us army and navy
over the course of the 20th century and
they are in a fundamentally ironic
position right they are they are from
the philippines and they're fighting for
the united states um which is the
colonial power uh occupying their
country
um and i think that that irony persists
right um so if you look at sort of
polling data where they ask people all
around the world you know you know do
you think positively or negatively about
the united states um that the highest
responses are from the philippines right
filipinos view the united states
more favorably than people from any
other country in the world including
america
right that they're more think more
favorably of americans than americans do
and so you know sort of unpacking that
irony is is part of what i'm trying to
get at in the book what was the people
power revolution and what lessons can we
learn from it you kind of assign
an important
uh a large value to it in terms of what
we can learn
for the uh the american project
yeah so in 1986 um the the president of
the philippines ferdinand marcos is
overthrown by a popular revolution known
as people power um
in the wake of a contested and probably
almost certainly rigged election
um that that sort of uh you know kind of
confirms his his his rule
um when that is over overturned through
sort of mass movements in the
philippines it's also
sort of confirmed in many ways by the
the reluctance of the united states to
intervene to prop up a cold war ally
ferdinand marcos had supported american
policy throughout his administration
um the reagan administration ronald
reagan's president at the time basically
chooses not to support him that's a
personally wrenching decision for for
reagan himself um but it it he's being
shaped in many ways by the emerging
voices of neoconservative political
foreign policy voices in particular uh
paul wolfowitz and the state department
and others who see
sort of movements for democracy and
democratization that then kind of take
fire in the late 20th century in latin
america um in south korea in eastern
europe um and you know all around the
world until it hits the wall in
tiananmen square in june 1989.
well what's that wall
yeah what's what's the what's the what
do you mean by it hits the wall so there
are you know there are global movements
for pot for democratization uh for for
uh opening up you know throughout the
world um starting in the 1980s
and you know obviously they continue um
in eastern europe with the fall of the
berlin wall in 1989. um you know i say
it hits the wall in in in china um in
with the protests in tiananmen square
and that are that are blocked and that
are crushed and i think represent
uh a real sort of turning point in the
history of of democratic institutions
on a global scale in the late 20th
century
so there's some places where the fight
for freedom
will work in some places not
and that's the kind of
lesson from the 20th
to take forward to the 21st century
uh no i think the lesson is is maybe one
that that you know we talked about
earlier that there's this dynamic dance
between um between leaders whether uh
totalitarian leaders or leaders of
democratic movements and the people that
they're leading
and some you know sometimes it works and
sometimes sometimes it doesn't let me
ask a big ridiculous question because we
talked about uh sort of presidential
elections
um now this is objectively definitively
you have to answer one person who's the
greatest president in american history
oh that's easy yeah abraham lincoln
is that easy not george washington um
you know washington had his uh had the
statesman qualities he understood his
power as as uh as the first president
also relinquished power he was willing
to relinquish power um he you know uh
but
but lincoln has the combination
of personal leadership
um a fundamental moral character
and um and just the ability to kind of
uh to fight the the fight of politics to
play the game of it and to get where
he's going to play the short game and
the long game
um to kind of you know make to
uh you know to work with his enemies to
to block them when he had to
um and you know i mean he
gets the united states through the civil
war so you gotta give him some credit
for that and he's pretty good at making
speeches
uh it you know obviously it helps that
he's uh
a remarkable speaker um and able to
convey those kinds of visions um but um
you know buddy but he is first and
foremost a politician um and probably
the best one we have
both getting elected and ruling
in some ways better better at the doing
than at the getting elected right um you
know that he uh
you know the election of 1860 is a
it's just a hot mess um you know that
that could have worked out um many
different ways
and even the election of 1864
you know when we have a presidential
election in the middle of a civil war
um it was not a foregone conclusion that
lincoln would be re-elected um so you
know both times he sort of um
you know he's not a a master campaigner
by by any means but he he was a master
politician as a as a governor
do we have leaders like that today
is is that so one perspective is like
leaders aren't
ain't what they used to be
and another perspective is well we
always romanticize stuff that happens in
the past
we forget the flaws and remember the
great moments
yeah uh both of those things are true
right um on the one hand um
you know we we don't uh we are not
surrounded by people of of lincoln's
caliber
right now
that feels like the case um and i think
that i think we can say that with some
certainty
but um
you know i i always like to point to
president harry truman
who
left office with you know some truly
abysmal uh
presidential ratings um was dismissed as
a throughout his presidency as a you
know as a
as unqualified as not knowing what he
was doing etc and then you know turns
out um uh with hindsight we know that he
was better at the job than anyone
understood better at getting elected
right you remember that sign dewey
defeats truman right he showed them
right and better better at holding power
and better at sort of
you know kind of building the kind of
institutions that long after he was gone
um demonstrated that he he
he won the long game
and some of that is the victor's do
write
the story and um
i ask myself very much how will history
remember vladimir zelinski
it's not obvious and how will history
remember putin
that too
is not obvious
um
because it depends on how
the role the geopolitics
the how the nations how the history of
these nations unravel unfold rather
so
it's very interesting to think about and
the same is true for
donald trump joe biden
obama
george bush
bill clinton
and so on
i think it's a probably unanswerable
question of which of the presidents will
be remembered as a great president from
this time you can make all kinds of
cases for all kinds of people and they
do but it's unclear it's fascinating to
think about
when the robots finally take over uh
what which of the humans they will
appreciate the most
uh let me ask for advice do you have um
advice for for young folks
as they uh
uh because you mentioned the the folks
you're teaching they don't even they
don't know what it's like to have waited
on the internet for the for the thing to
load up
for every single web page is that
suffering they don't know what it's like
to not have the internet and have a dial
phone that goes
and then the joy of getting angry at
somebody and hanging up with a physical
phone they don't know any of that
uh so for those young folks that look at
the contention election contentious
elections they look at our contentious
world
our divided world what advice would you
give them
of how to have a career they can be
proud of let's say they're in college or
in high school
and how to have a life they can be proud
of
oh man that's a big question um
yeah i've never given a graduation
speech
this is like warm up let's look for like
raw materials before you write it uh if
i did um
i think um
i think i would
advise students that history teaches
that you should be
more optimistic than um
than your current surroundings suggest
right and i think
it would be very easy as a young person
today to think um there's there's
nothing i can do about this politics
there's nothing i can say
to this person on the other side of the
aisle there's nothing i can do about you
know the planet um
etc and just sort of give up
um and i think history uh
teaches that um you know uh
you know we don't know who the winners
and losers are in the long run but um
but we know that the people who give up
are always the losers right um so don't
give in to cynicism or apathy yeah
optimism paves the way uh yeah because
human beings are deeply uh resilient and
creative even under um far more
difficult circumstances than
you know than we face right now well let
me ask a question that you don't even
need to that you wouldn't even dare
cover in your graduation uh
commencement speech
uh what's the meaning of life
why are we here
this whole project that history studies
and analyzes as if as if there's a point
of the whole thing
what is the point
all the wars
all the presidents
all the struggles to discover what it
means to be human of or reach for a
higher ideal why
why do you think we're here
i think this is where
there
is often a handoff from the historian um
to
the clergy
right
um you know who
but in the end um
uh
it's less of there's less distance
between the two than you think
right that
you know if you think about some of the
kind of
answers to that question what is the
meaning of life that are given from
religious traditions
often they have
a fundamentally historical core right
it's about
you know unifying the past and the
present
in some other
you know non-earthly um sort of
dimension
and you know so i think there is that i
think even for people who who don't have
uh religious belief um
there's a way in which history
um is about the shared the shared human
condition um and
i think historians aspire to telling all
of that story right um you know we
we drill down on the on the miseries of
of war and depressions and
and so forth but um but you know the
story is not complete without
you know blueberries and butterflies and
and and all the rest uh that that go
with it
so
both the humbling and the inspiring
aspect that you get by looking back at
human history that uh we're
in this together
christopher this is a huge honor this is
amazing conversation thank you for
taking us back to a war that uh not
often discussed but in many ways defined
the 20
the 20th century and then the century we
are in today which is the first world
war
the war that was supposed to end all
wars but instead defined the future wars
and defines our struggle to to try to
avoid world war three
so it's a huge honor you talk with me
today this is amazing thank you so much
thank you
thanks for listening to this
conversation with christopher capazzola
to support this podcast please check out
our sponsors in the description
and now let me leave you with some words
from woodrow wilson in 1917
about world war one
that haunted the rest of the 20th
century
this is a war to end all wars
george santana a spanish-american
philosopher responded to this quote in
1922 by saying
only the dead have seen the end of war
thank you for listening i hope to see
you next time