Hal Brands on Lessons from the Cold War
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 19 January 2022
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
Bryce Klehm sat down with Hal Brands, the Henry A. Kissinger Distinguished Professor of Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Professor Brands is the author of the new book, “The Twilight Struggle: What the Cold War Teaches Us about Great-Power Rivalry Today.” He is also the author of a new article in Foreign Affairs, “The Overstretched Superpower,” which argues that the United States might have more rivals than it can handle. They covered a range of topics, including the origins of containment, the rise of Sovietology in academia and what the Biden administration could learn from the Cold War.
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | I think that the US domestic situation day is deeply troubling in a lot of respects, and |
| 0:39.8 | I certainly am not as confident in the future of American democracy as I would like to |
| 0:46.0 | be. |
| 0:47.0 | I think though that one of the advantages of being a historian is it gives you a little |
| 0:51.5 | bit of perspective on some of these contemporary debates. |
| 0:54.7 | The US domestic situation now isn't great. |
| 0:59.1 | Is it worse than it was say in 1969 when there were several hundred bombings in the United |
| 1:05.1 | States in the course of a single year? |
| 1:08.1 | Is it worse than it was in the 1930s? |
| 1:10.9 | I don't think the answer is yes. |
| 1:13.3 | I think we faced real severe domestic challenges in the past. |
| 1:18.4 | Is it worse than it was during sort of the peak of Joe McCarthy's influence in the early |
| 1:23.4 | 1950s? |
| 1:24.4 | That was a pretty ugly period as well. |
| 1:27.3 | And so one point I think that the history reminds us of is that our troubles may be great |
| 1:31.9 | but they are not unprecedented and there has been significant resilience in the American |
| 1:36.9 | system before. |
... |
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