fOx Hsiao · published 22 h ago ·
found by searching “Europe collapsing without Russian gas”
Why Russia lost the Cold War: Sarah Paine lecture explained
俄羅斯為什麼輸掉冷戰｜蘇聯缺錢的那一年，德國統一還留在北約（Sarah Paine 講座解說）
What the site found
Not propaganda · agenda: NATO prepares war against Russia
Belief the Pravda network pushes: NATO, led by Germany, is preparing for war against Russia with military exercises near its borders.
The video walks through Sarah Paine's lecture on why the USSR collapsed (empire costs, oil price crash, Gorbachev's choices, German reunification in NATO) and checks her figures against documents.
The video says · at 2:46 · quote checked against the transcript
“Forty, fifty, or seventy percent—these figures have no reliable source.”
Forty, fifty, or seventy percent—these figures have no reliable source.
This is a historical explainer that fact-checks the lecturer's numbers and mentions the 1991 Vilnius shootings factually; it does not portray NATO or the Baltics as aggressors, and it does not push the aid-scam or EU-funding agendas.
The Pravda stories it echoes
Closest stories from the Pravda network, by meaning. Each links to the site’s comparison with trusted Lithuanian news.
22 days ago · Michailas Onufrienko: On Thursday, October 22, ten senators representing Republican and Democratic parties signed a joint letter demanding rapid Baltic initiative funding
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29 days ago · Brussels managed to engage in trade wars with Russia, China and USA simultaneously. Spoiler: loses on all fronts
27 days ago · Andrejus Medvedevas: NATO again used Baltic misunderstandings territory for today's strike on St. Petersburg
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Transcript (en, 756 lines)
0:00 On May 31, 1990, at the White House in
0:02 Washington, Soviet leader Gorbachev told
0:04 U.S. President George H.W. Bush that the
0:07 German people should decide for
0:09 themselves which alliance a unified
0:11 Germany would join. Bush initially said
0:13 he completely agreed, but when Gorbachev
0:15 wanted to put this into a joint
0:17 statement, Bush changed the wording. He
0:19 stated that the U.S. explicitly
0:21 supported a unified Germany remaining in
0:22 NATO, though if Germany chose otherwise
0:24 , the U.S. would respect that. Gorbachev
0:26 replied, "I agree, I accept your
0:28 formulation." This was effectively an
0:30 admission that a unified Germany could
0:32 remain in NATO—a military alliance
0:34 formed by the U.S. and Western Europe in
0:36 1949 specifically to counter the Soviet
0:38 Union. Just a year earlier, the Berlin
0:40 Wall was still standing, and Soviet
0:42 troops were still stationed within East
0:44 Germany. Why would a superpower agree to
0:46 such a thing?
0:48 The most popular answer is just two
0:50 words: Reagan.
0:52 How did a superpower in 1990 end up so
0:54 short on cash that it had to ask its
0:56 rival for help, and what did it trade
0:59 away that year?
1:02 American scholar Sarah Paine has a
1:04 theory.
1:06 Paine is a professor of history and
1:08 grand strategy at the U.S. Naval War
1:10 College. In late 2023, she gave a
1:12 lecture on this topic in Washington,
1:15 D.C. On November 13, 2024, she visited
1:17 the Institute of Modern History at
1:20 Academia Sinica in Taipei to give the
1:22 same lecture in Mandarin.
1:24 She opened by saying: "So I'm going to
1:27 pose the question, why Russia lost the
1:29 Cold War, and people have loads of
1:31 different answers to that question.
1:34 So this is going to be a tour of the
1:36 counterarguments.
1:37 I'm going to start with an answer that
1:40 many Americans have, a very simple one:
1:42 Reagan single-handedly defeated the
1:44 Soviet Union."
1:46 >> This video follows her lecture through
1:48 three key questions. First: Why was the
1:50 Soviet Union short on cash? Second: Why
1:53 didn't Gorbachev take action? Third: How
1:55 did West German Chancellor Kohl and
1:57 George H.W. Bush leverage this window of
1:59 opportunity? Paine provides the
2:01 framework, but some figures in her
2:02 lecture don't match the documents. When
2:04 we encounter these, the screen will
2:06 display her claims alongside the figures
2:08 from the documents. Looking at the
2:10 popular answer: Reagan took office in
2:12 1981, expanded the military, deployed
2:14 new missiles in Western Europe, and in
2:16 1983 proposed the Strategic Defense
2:18 Initiative to intercept incoming nuclear
2:20 missiles from space. This narrative
2:22 argues that the Soviet Union tried to
2:24 keep up and collapsed its own economy.
2:26 Paine presented a set of figures in her
2:28 lecture: "The CIA thought during the
2:31 Cold War that perhaps Russia was
2:33 spending up to 20%of its GNP on defense
2:35 . After the Cold War ended, when getting
2:38 more accurate statistics, it turns out
2:41 it was 40%and some people say up to 70%
2:44 ."
2:46 >> Forty, fifty, or seventy percent—these
2:49 figures have no reliable source.
2:51 According to the CIA's estimates from
2:53 that era, Soviet military spending as a
2:55 percentage of total national output...
2:57 The Soviet Union first published what it
2:59 called its "true" defense budget in
3:01 1989. Soviet officials claimed it was
3:03 about 9%. The West considered this an
3:05 underestimate at the time, and later,
3:07 more reliable estimates mostly fell
3:09 between 15%and 20%. The Soviet military
3:11 burden was indeed very heavy—much
3:13 heavier than America's—but it did not
3:15 reach the levels often claimed.
3:16 Attributing all the credit to Reagan is
3:18 something even scholars who support this
3:20 view wouldn't do. A more complete
3:22 version includes both Reagan and
3:23 Gorbachev—one applied the pressure,
3:25 while the other decided to stop holding
3:27 on. Paine also listed other external
3:29 factors. In 1975, European nations,
3:31 along with the United States and the
3:33 Soviet Union, signed a security
3:35 cooperation document in Helsinki. It
3:37 contained human rights clauses that the
3:39 Soviet Union signed, giving Eastern
3:41 European dissidents a document they
3:42 could use for reference. In 1972, Nixon
3:44 visited Beijing, forcing the Soviet
3:46 Union to defend itself on both its
3:47 eastern and western fronts from then on
3:49 . After discussing these points, he
3:51 changed his approach.
3:53 And here is Arnold Toynbee, one of the
3:55 finest historians of the 20th century, a
3:58 big multi-volume history of the west, uh
4:00 , and which he
4:04 civilizations die from suicide, not by
4:07 murder. So I discuss the murder, what
4:09 the United States tried to do to the
4:11 Soviets. Now,
4:14 what the Soviets did to themselves.
4:18 A 20 th-century British historian;
4:20 according to this view, everything
4:22 mentioned before was the work of others
4:24 . Next is what the Soviets did
4:26 themselves, which brings us to the first
4:28 issue: why the Soviet Union lacked money
4:30 . First, look at the empire. Usually, an
4:32 empire's heartland is wealthier than its
4:34 colonies, but the Soviet Union's Eastern
4:37 Europe was arguably a
4:42 more educated rich
4:46 empire.
4:48 >> The "donut" effect means the outer ring
4:50 was thicker than the center; the Soviet
4:52 Union had to subsidize distant allies
4:54 like Cuba and Vietnam, and in 1979, it
4:56 invaded Afghanistan, fighting for nearly
4:58 ten years. An empire is an asset when it
5:00 makes money, but a liability when it
5:02 loses it. Looking at income, the Soviet
5:04 Union relied on oil and natural gas for
5:06 foreign exchange. In 1985, the average
5:09 cost of imported crude oil in the United
5:11 States was about $ 27 per barrel. In
5:13 1986, it dropped to $ 14—losing nearly
5:15 half its value in one year. Gaidar, who
5:17 later led economic reforms in Russia,
5:19 estimated that the Soviet Union lost at
5:21 least $ 20 billion annually because of
5:23 this. According to Gaidar, the Soviet
5:25 Union was the world's largest grain
5:27 importer at the time. Buying food
5:28 required foreign currency, and without
5:30 it, they had to turn to the West. Then
5:33 there was the planned economy itself; in
5:35 a 1989 report on agriculture, Gorbachev
5:37 admitted that up to 20%of rural
5:39 production was lost due to mismanagement
5:41 , with some items seeing losses of 30%
5:43 to 40%. The financial records of Eastern
5:45 Europe were even uglier. On October 30,
5:47 1989, East German planning officials
5:49 submitted an internal analysis to the
5:50 Politburo. It stated that East Germany's
5:53 debt to the West had surged from $ 2
5:55 billion in 1970 to $ 49 billion. Just to
5:57 keep the debt from growing further, the
5:59 standard of living in 1990 would have to
6:02 drop by 25%to 30%. The report's
6:03 conclusion was that East Germany would
6:05 become ungovernable under those
6:06 conditions. Countries running out of
6:08 money faced crises one after another in
6:11 1989. On June 4th, Poland held semi-open
6:13 parliamentary elections, and the
6:15 opposition Solidarity movement won 99
6:17 out of 100 seats in the Senate. They
6:19 swept all 161 contested seats in the
6:21 Sejm across two rounds of voting. On the
6:24 same day, Tiananmen Square in Beijing
6:26 was being cleared. On the evening of
6:28 September 10, Hungary announced that
6:30 East Germans staying in the country
6:32 could leave. As the night passed, the
6:34 border to Austria opened, and over
6:35 10,000 people left in the first two days
6:37 alone. On October 9, about 70,000 people
6:40 took to the streets in Leipzig, East
6:42 Germany. Paine said tanks weren't
6:44 deployed that day because East German
6:46 leader Honecker had already...in fact,
6:48 Honecker was still in power that day,
6:50 and authorities had mobilized police and
6:52 troops, but ultimately no order to
6:54 suppress was given. He didn't step down
6:56 until nine days later.
6:58 On the evening of November 9, the East
7:00 German government held a press
7:02 conference to announce new travel
7:04 regulations.
7:06 During the Q&A, Gunter Schabowski, one
7:08 of the remaining communists helping run
7:10 the show, was asked a question he didn't
7:13 know the answer to, so he improvised.
7:16 He was asked when the regulations would
7:18 take effect, and he replied, "
7:20 Immediately."
7:22 Well, crowds immediately started
7:24 gathering at the six gates to the Berlin
7:26 Wall, and at one of them, the border
7:28 guards decided that discretion was the
7:30 better part of valor, and they opened
7:32 the gate.
7:38 The Berlin Wall was opened late that
7:40 night.
7:41 By this point, the answer to the first
7:44 question is clear: the Soviet Union
7:46 lacked money because its empire was
7:48 hemorrhaging cash.
7:50 Revenue relied on oil prices, its own
7:52 economy was leaking, and the arms race
7:55 added to the burden—yet all these holes
7:57 were dug by the Soviets themselves.
8:00 As for the second question, why didn't
8:03 Gorbachev act?
8:04 At every turning point in 1989, the
8:06 Soviets had troops stationed in Eastern
8:09 Europe. They sent tanks to Hungary in
8:11 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. During
8:14 the lecture Q&A, the host asked directly
8:17 : the Red Army was still there, so why
8:19 didn't they fire? AD
8:21 >> A generational shift. He said that
8:24 Gorbachev's generation saw Soviet tanks
8:26 roll into Czechoslovakia in 1968 when
8:28 they were young and felt that it was
8:31 wrong. Communism shouldn't be like that
8:33 .
8:35 Beyond not being able to bring
8:37 themselves to act when they came to
8:39 power, Paine also listed several of
8:41 Gorbachev's mistaken assumptions in his
8:43 lecture.
8:46 He thought history would only move
8:48 forward, that socialism would improve
8:50 after relaxing controls, and never
8:52 considered that people would completely
8:54 ...
9:00 He. He also assumed that after the
9:02 Warsaw Pact—the military alliance the
9:04 Soviets formed with Eastern Europe—
9:06 dissolved, NATO in the West would also
9:08 dissolve. He thought the U.S. would not
9:10 be happy about a unified, strong Germany
9:12 . None of these four assumptions held
9:14 true. There is a control group for 1989
9:17 : in June 1989, Deng Xiaoping ordered
9:19 the military into Beijing. The Chinese
9:22 Communist Party is still in power today
9:24 . He mentioned in the lecture that some
9:25 therefore believe if the Soviet Union
9:27 had sent tanks in time, the outcome
9:29 would have been different. Historians
9:30 have no consensus on this. Some believe
9:32 the Soviet system could have held on at
9:34 the time, while others argue the Soviet
9:36 Union could no longer afford the price
9:37 of repression. In November 2026 in
9:39 Taipei, an audience member asked about
9:41 this. His answer was that if tanks had
9:43 gone in and fired on people, the regime
9:45 might have lasted, but the result would
9:47 have been a catastrophe. When the Q&A
9:49 later touched on China, he cited the
9:51 example of North Korea, where people are
9:53 starving but the status quo persists;
9:55 the regime remains in power to this day
9:57 , while the country stays long-term
9:59 isolated and impoverished. It’s not that
10:02 there was no bloodshed within the Soviet
10:04 Union; in April 1989, Soviet troops
10:06 dispersed crowds in the Georgian capital
10:08 of Tbilisi, resulting in about 20 deaths
10:10 . In January 1991, Soviet troops opened
10:12 fire in the Lithuanian capital of
10:14 Vilnius, causing 14 deaths. However, in
10:16 Eastern Europe, on the night the Berlin
10:18 Wall fell, the Soviet troops stationed
10:20 in East Germany remained in their
10:21 barracks. In August 1991, hardliners in
10:24 Moscow launched a coup, attempting to
10:26 oust Gorbachev. Armored vehicles rolled
10:28 into the city and three civilians died
10:30 in the conflict, but the troops did not
10:32 attack the Russian parliament building
10:34 where crowds had gathered, and the coup
10:36 collapsed in three days. So, Payne
10:37 presented two overarching perspectives
10:39 in his lecture: one is that with so many
10:41 problems, the collapse of the Soviet
10:42 Union was only a matter of time; the
10:44 other is that every single factor was
10:45 essential, and without even one, the
10:47 outcome would have been different. He
10:48 quoted a Soviet deputy foreign minister
10:50 , saying that if you remove any one of
10:52 these factors, the Cold War might still
10:54 have ended, but the way it ended would
10:55 have been completely different.
10:57 According to this view, the West was
10:59 lucky. With insufficient funds and the
11:01 impossibility of using hardline tactics
11:03 , the only path left was negotiation.
11:05 Next is the 1990 negotiation table.
11:07 Recently, Knowledge Satellite’s AI
11:09 Academy launched an AI proficiency test
11:11 , which is free for the first try. I
11:13 tested at level six myself, so let’s see
11:15 what it’s testing. Dean Hi-Premier
11:16 mentioned in a post that there is no
11:18 shortage of AI courses on the market;
11:19 what is missing is a map to tell you
11:21 where you are now and what you should
11:22 learn next. The test is an AI interview
11:24 , lasting about 10 to 15 minutes. It
11:26 first asks you to choose the approach
11:27 closest to your own from six options,
11:29 then has you provide a recent practical
11:30 example, followed by persistent
11:32 questioning about the details. It looks
11:33 at what you actually do; no matter how
11:35 many tools you've used, your level won't
11:37 be higher. Afterward, two models
11:38 evaluate and compare the results,
11:40 landing at level six, described as
11:42 establishing boundaries for AI systems
11:43 to allow them to self-check, correct,
11:45 and evolve. Completing the test also
11:47 gets you a companion, NBY. If you are
11:49 worried about confidential leaks, the
11:51 official website suggests replacing data
11:52 like client names and amounts first;
11:54 your responses will not be used to train
11:56 their models. If you also want to know
11:58 which level your AI ability is at, I’ve
12:00 placed the free trial link in the
12:01 description; go take 10 to 15 minutes to
12:04 find out. Three things: how did Kohl and
12:06 George H.W. Bush take advantage of this
12:08 window? Payne believes that for the Cold
12:10 War to end on the West's terms, two
12:12 people needed to be in power at the same
12:14 time. George H.W. Bush became U.S.
12:16 President in January 1989. He served as
12:19 a naval pilot, UN ambassador, head of
12:21 the Liaison Office in Beijing, CIA
12:23 director, and spent eight years as vice
12:26 president. Kohl served as Chancellor of
12:28 West Germany starting in 1982,
12:30 eventually holding the office for 16
12:31 years, making him the longest-serving
12:33 Chancellor of the Federal Republic of
12:35 Germany. Paine described Kohl's approach
12:37 . Once,
12:40 he's buying Germany out.
12:45 >> Paine described it as a tourist—a
12:48 tourist—buying up East Germany.
12:51 He cited two examples: West Germany paid
12:53 East Germany hundreds of millions of
12:55 marks for travel concessions, and gave
12:57 Hungary 500 million marks to open its
12:59 borders. That 500 million marks for
13:02 Hungary was traced to loans from two
13:04 West German banks, negotiated in
13:06 September 1989 and signed in early
13:08 October. But the then-Hungarian Prime
13:10 Minister Németh said the loan had
13:11 nothing to do with opening the borders,
13:13 and the minutes of his meeting with Kohl
13:15 in late August made no mention of it. As
13:17 for the money paid to East Germany, the
13:20 documents account for annual transit
13:22 fees and the 100-mark "welcome money"
13:24 given to every East German visitor after
13:26 the wall fell. This money made East
13:28 Germany more dependent on the West, yet
13:30 no document ever recorded it as a
13:32 transaction. Nineteen days after the
13:33 wall fell, Kohl proposed a ten-point
13:35 plan, putting the reunification of the
13:37 two Germanys on the table. Opposition
13:39 didn't just come from Moscow; two months
13:42 prior, British Prime Minister Thatcher
13:44 told Gorbachev directly, "We do not want
13:47 a unified Germany." Paine said Kohl and
13:49 George H.W. Bush split the work: Kohl
13:51 handled the money and appeasing the
13:53 Soviets, while Bush managed the British
13:55 and the French. Over the following year
13:57 , the money and the negotiations moved
13:59 forward together. In February 1990, the
14:01 first payment: with Soviet stores short
14:03 on goods, the West German government
14:05 provided 220 million marks to subsidize
14:07 Soviet food purchases from the European
14:09 Community. On March 18, East Germany
14:11 held its first free election with a
14:13 turnout over 90%, and the Alliance for
14:15 Germany, which advocated for rapid
14:17 reunification, won 48%of the vote. This
14:19 wasn't on Paine’s payment list; the East
14:21 Germans voted for it themselves. Of
14:24 course, the campaign had a clear goal:
14:26 West Germany proposed in February to let
14:28 East Germans use the West German mark,
14:31 as they had already "voted with their
14:33 feet." In the year 1989 alone, more than
14:36 340,000 people moved to West Germany.
14:38 The second payment that May. Kohl’s
14:40 foreign policy advisor flew secretly to
14:42 Moscow with two executives from Deutsche
14:44 Bank and Dresdner Bank to negotiate a 5
14:46 billion mark loan, guaranteed by the
14:48 West German government. On May 22, Kohl
14:50 wrote to Gorbachev, linking the progress
14:52 of this loan directly to the progress of
14:55 the reunification negotiations. On May
14:57 18, U.S. Secretary of State Baker listed
14:59 nine points to Gorbachev at the Kremlin
15:02 in one breath, explaining how the West
15:04 had addressed Soviet concerns. This list
15:07 is known as the "nine assurances,"
15:09 though according to the meeting records
15:11 , Baker’s own term was "nine examples."
15:13 Then came the opening scene on the 31st
15:15 at the White House; according to Soviet
15:17 meeting records, Gorbachev initiated the
15:20 challenge, saying, "You claim to trust
15:22 Germany, yet you are forcing it into
15:24 NATO. Let Germany decide for itself
15:26 which alliance to join." George H.W.
15:28 Bush replied, "I completely agree, but
15:30 the Germans have already made their
15:32 choice." After a brief exchange, Bush
15:34 said that if Germany did not want to
15:36 remain in NATO, it had the right to
15:38 choose another path, and the Helsinki
15:39 Final Act stated as much. Gorbachev took
15:42 the opportunity to propose writing this
15:44 as a joint position: a unified Germany
15:46 would decide for itself which alliance
15:48 to join. Bush revised the sentence,
15:49 stating that the U.S. explicitly
15:51 supports a unified Germany remaining in
15:53 NATO, but if Germany made a different
15:55 choice, the U.S. would not oppose it and
15:57 would respect it. Gorbachev replied, "I
15:59 agree, I accept your formulation." What
16:01 Gorbachev originally wanted was a
16:03 sentence open to both outcomes; in
16:05 Bush's revised version, the answer was
16:07 already written into the first half of
16:09 the sentence. According to the same
16:11 record, Bush then asked how to handle a
16:13 public statement; Soviet Foreign
16:15 Minister Shevardnadze said not to rush,
16:17 and no joint statement was issued that
16:19 day. However, the words were already
16:21 spoken, and subsequent negotiations
16:23 proceeded from there. On July 1, the
16:25 Deutsche Mark became the currency of
16:27 East Germany, and the two economies
16:28 unified first. On July 6, NATO issued a
16:31 declaration in London, proposing a joint
16:33 declaration between NATO and the Warsaw
16:35 Pact. The two sides were no longer
16:36 adversaries, and they even invited
16:38 Gorbachev to speak at NATO headquarters
16:40 . In mid-July, Kohl flew to the Soviet
16:42 Union to negotiate with Gorbachev in the
16:44 Caucasus Mountains, resulting in an
16:45 agreement: a unified Germany would
16:47 choose its own alliance, and Soviet
16:48 troops would withdraw within three to
16:50 four years.
16:53 As the trades get bigger, the payment
16:55 gets larger.
17:00 This is Paine's theory.
17:09 Documents can confirm a narrower scope,
17:11 but money and negotiation progress were
17:13 indeed tied together.
17:25 As for whether Gorbachev's every
17:27 concession was due to money, the
17:29 documents do not say.
17:35 On August 2, Iraq invaded Kuwait. Paine
17:38 says the ground war the following year
17:40 stopped after 100 hours because the
17:42 Soviet Union drew a red line, forbidding
17:44 the U.S. from toppling the Iraqi regime
17:46 . Bush and his National Security Advisor
17:48 Scowcroft later wrote that the reason
17:50 was that they did not want to change war
17:52 objectives mid-stream, did not want to
17:54 occupy Iraq, and feared the coalition
17:56 would fall apart. The Soviet Union was
17:57 not among the reasons they listed. In
17:59 September, the final and largest
18:01 transaction took place: Soviet troops
18:03 were to withdraw from East Germany.
18:05 Later, regarding the withdrawal plan,
18:06 there were over 540,000 people including
18:09 troops, their families, and civilian
18:10 personnel who had no place to live upon
18:12 returning. Who would pay for this? On
18:14 September 7, Kohl and Gorbachev spoke on
18:17 the phone, but there was no result. They
18:20 spoke again on September 10. Kohl
18:22 offered 11 to 12 billion marks, but
18:25 Gorbachev demanded 15 to 16 billion. The
18:28 final figure was 12 billion, plus 3
18:30 billion in interest-free loans. Germany
18:33 provided 15 billion in Deutsche Marks,
18:35 including building all kinds of new
18:37 apartment buildings for repatriated
18:39 Soviet soldiers going home. Why are you
18:41 doing that?
18:47 >> The total of 15 billion is correct, but
18:50 it needs to be broken down. Of the 12
18:52 billion, 7.8 billion was for housing,
18:53 3.1 billion for the cost of Soviet
18:55 troops stationed there before withdrawal
18:57 , 1 billion for transport, and 200
18:58 million for vocational training. The
19:00 timeline also needs to be pushed back:
19:02 on September 12, the two Germanys, plus
19:04 the US, USSR, UK, and France, signed a
19:07 treaty in Moscow. Germany unified on
19:09 October 3, and the payment agreement was
19:11 not signed until October 9. Looking at
19:13 this year as a whole, what was bought
19:14 was the withdrawal schedule and the
19:16 Soviet Union's agreement not to block a
19:18 unified Germany from remaining in NATO.
19:20 As for this result, the choices made by
19:22 the East Germans themselves played a
19:24 large part. As for not sending in troops
19:26 , Gorbachev had already decided that
19:27 before things started; the entire window
19:29 of opportunity existed because of this
19:31 decision. Historians have varying
19:33 opinions on the relative weight of these
19:35 reasons. He emphasizes the relationship
19:37 between Kohl and Gorbachev. If you like
19:39 the topics chosen here, you are welcome
19:41 to join as a member to support us. By
19:43 joining the "Little Fox" tier, you get
19:45 exclusive member badges and emojis, your
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19:49 videos a day early, and the "
19:51 Nine-Tailed Fox" tier will have your
19:53 name read at the end of the video. The
19:55 instructions for joining are in the
19:57 description box. Join us. The bill was
19:59 paid, the treaty was signed, but there
20:01 are three things that followed. The
20:03 first thing, which wasn't mentioned in
20:05 the lectures but is the most contentious
20:07 today, is that Russia has claimed for
20:08 years that the West promised NATO would
20:10 not expand one inch eastward. This
20:12 statement has a source. On February 9,
20:14 1990, Baker told Gorbachev in the
20:16 Kremlin that if US troops remained in
20:18 Germany under the NATO framework, NATO's
20:21 jurisdiction would not extend one inch
20:23 to the east. However, three points must
20:25 be clarified: Baker used a conditional
20:27 clause followed by a question; he was
20:29 asking Gorbachev which kind of Germany
20:31 he preferred. At the time, they were
20:33 discussing a unified Germany, and other
20:35 Eastern European countries were still in
20:37 the Warsaw Pact. Moreover, this sentence
20:39 was not written into any treaty. The
20:41 only thing that is truly binding is the
20:43 treaty signed in September, where
20:44 Article 5 stipulates that after the
20:45 Soviet troops withdraw, no foreign
20:47 troops or nuclear weapons will be
20:48 deployed on the territory of the former
20:50 East Germany. Article 6 clearly states
20:52 that a unified Germany has the right to
20:54 join the alliance. Regarding whether
20:56 countries other than Germany can join
20:57 NATO, the treaty does not stipulate a
20:59 single word. Experts are still divided
21:01 to this day. Kramer and Sarotte believe
21:03 the West never made promises about
21:05 NATO's future; what was said was limited
21:07 to East Germany. The Western camp
21:09 believes that although there was nothing
21:11 in writing, U.S. officials did indeed
21:12 give the Soviet Union informal
21:14 assurances. Satter, who wrote the book,
21:16 stands in the middle. He says Baker was
21:18 offering a hypothetical deal to
21:20 Gorbachev. Gorbachev himself said both
21:22 sides in a 2014 interview. He said the
21:25 topic of NATO expansion was never
21:26 discussed back then, yet added that
21:28 later eastward expansion violated the
21:30 spirit of those 1990 assurances. There
21:33 are only three things both sides agree
21:35 on. Verbal words were spoken, but these
21:37 words were not written into the treaty;
21:39 nine years later, NATO expanded eastward
21:41 anyway. The real question is whether
21:43 those words count as a commitment. In
21:45 1999, Poland, the Czech Republic, and
21:48 Hungary joined NATO as the second matter
21:51 . On August 31, 1994, the last troops
21:54 left Germany, four months ahead of the
21:56 treaty deadline. Kohl mentioned at the
21:59 farewell ceremony in Berlin that Germany
22:01 had provided funds to help build 45,000
22:03 new housing units. The third matter: the
22:05 Soviet Union ended itself. After the
22:07 failed coup in August 1991, various
22:09 constituent republics declared
22:10 independence one after another. On
22:12 December 1, Ukraine held a referendum
22:15 with an 84%turnout, and over 90%of valid
22:17 votes supported independence. Most
22:19 lectures do not cover this referendum.
22:21 Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy
22:23 considers it the key. He argues that
22:25 Ukrainians voted for their own
22:27 independence, not to dissolve the Soviet
22:29 Union, but a union without Ukraine had
22:31 no meaning for Russia. One week later,
22:33 the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and
22:35 Belarus signed an agreement declaring
22:38 that the Soviet Union no longer existed
22:40 . On December 25, Gorbachev resigned.
22:43 There was an interval of more than 14
22:45 months between German reunification and
22:47 the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
22:49 During this time, George H.W. Bush and
22:52 Kohl made a choice. And Bush said to
22:54 Kohl at the end of it, he said, "Look,
22:56 I'm not going to beat my chest and dance
22:58 on the Berlin Wall." Both of them were
23:00 very careful never to humiliate
23:02 Gorbachev about the Soviet loss of the
23:04 Cold War. Why? Because they didn't want
23:07 to, they knew that if they did that, he
23:09 might fall from power sooner rather than
23:11 later. And the newly
23:16 independent countries in Eastern Europe
23:18 needed those 20 years to integrate
23:20 militarily, politically, and
23:22 economically with the West, so that the
23:24 cement could set before you got the
23:26 Russians trying to destabilize them.
23:30 So they bought them years to do this.
23:33 >> Regarding that "dancing" remark, Payne
23:36 says Bush said it to Kohl, but according
23:38 to Soviet records, Bush said the exact
23:41 same thing to Gorbachev in a meeting on
23:43 May 31. He said that when the wall came
23:45 down, his critics scolded him for not
23:47 being enthusiastic enough; he replied
23:49 that he did not intend to dance on the
23:51 ruins of the Berlin Wall like a little
23:53 boy. He also told his opponent directly
23:55 that he would not humiliate him. The
23:57 party that studies this moment most
23:59 intently may not be in Europe. In
24:01 December 2012, just after Xi Jinping
24:03 took over as General Secretary of the
24:05 CCP, he inspected Guangdong; official
24:07 reports spoke only of reform and opening
24:09 up. A month later, reporters wrote about
24:11 a speech circulating within the Party,
24:13 where Xi Jinping asked why the Soviet
24:16 Union dissolved and why the CPSU
24:18 collapsed.
24:19 He said that the proportion of Soviet
24:21 Party members was even higher than ours
24:23 , yet in the end, no one stood up to
24:25 resist.
24:26 Pan talked about something he heard
24:28 during a Q&A session in Taipei. In 2013
24:30 , he was a visiting scholar at Stanford
24:33 University. At that time, a top Chinese
24:36 expert on the Soviet Union visited,
24:38 telling those present that after taking
24:40 office, Xi Jinping summoned experts on
24:42 the Soviet Union to ask why it collapsed
24:45 , taking notes while they spoke. One of
24:47 the answers was that the Soviet Union
24:49 divided republics by ethnicity, each
24:51 with its own language, customs, and
24:53 culture; once the center collapsed,
24:56 these ready-made units could become
24:58 independent. Next was Pan's own
24:59 perspective.
25:01 He believes that was when Xi Jinping
25:03 decided the genocide would be inflicted
25:06 upon China's Muslims, starting with
25:08 Tibet.
25:08 "Genocide" is the term he used. He said
25:11 people blocking the way were killed,
25:13 many men were imprisoned, and children
25:15 were sent to schools that were
25:16 essentially orphanages. He compared this
25:18 to what the U.S. once did to Native
25:20 Americans—it was about severing people
25:22 from their own culture. He said it was a
25:24 disgrace when the U.S. did it, and it is
25:26 a disgrace for China to do it now. He
25:28 added that China is hunting down Uyghurs
25:31 and Tibetans abroad who criticize China
25:33 , believing the lesson Xi learned was to
25:35 never take the path of openness;
25:37 economic reform can go so far, but the
25:40 priority is maintaining the Communist
25:42 Party's monopoly on power. In Taipei, he
25:44 provided a different conclusion,
25:46 focusing on the methodology. Start with
25:48 an argument, find counterarguments, then
25:50 refute those refutations. When evidence
25:52 arrives, adjust your view. He said this
25:54 is a strength.
25:55 This video uses that exact method with
25:57 his numbers—reading his framework
26:00 alongside these documents.
26:02 The Soviet Union collapsed from within,
26:04 but someone dared to turn a crack into a
26:06 breach before it fell.
26:09 So when thinking about why Russia lost
26:11 the war, I hope you will come up with
26:13 more complex answers.
26:18 >> Between the three forces, which one do
26:20 you think was the most critical? Was it
26:22 the Soviet Union's lack of money,
26:24 Gorbachev's inaction, or Gorbachev and
26:26 Bush seizing the window of opportunity?
26:28 Thanks to IpsCmax, Inzaghi, HealthyPrade
26:31 , Chunxuan, and Shunfeng Precision for
26:33 becoming our nine-tailed fox members.
26:37 I’m Fox; if you like this video, please
26:39 subscribe to the channel.
26:41 See you next time.
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