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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

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Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

Conversational account. For work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian. IKEA builder.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 23
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      Luckily the Marshall Plan was enlightened enough to at least aim at win-win unlike the Morganthau plan which was cartoon villainish. FDR was accused in 1934 of finding “the only Jew in the world who doesn’t know a thing about money” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgenthau_Jr ….

      1 reply 0 retweets 16 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 23
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      Wonder if being Jewish made Morgenthau an extremist in wanting to impose a “hard peace” on Germany. Hitler and the Nazis are curiously missing in this whole discussion. I guess the economists wanted to forget that and move on.

      2 replies 0 retweets 10 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 23
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      It’s clear that after Yalta it was already US vs USSR. The last phase of WW2 was about laying out the cold war positions, and cleaning up the Nazis was just a minor loose end. I knew this already but book makes it clear the extreme degree to which that was true.

      4 replies 1 retweet 17 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 23
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      The last 3 months after Yalta must have been surreal. Feb- 11 - May 8 1945, the world was still focused on Nazis but powers-that-be were already continuing the infinite game. The mop-up really was a minor detail.

      1 reply 0 retweets 21 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 23
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      Something similar might happen with Covid. Post-Covid world configuration will be worked out somewhere when the end is in sight but the war is not yet won. Big lesson right now is: Trumpism is more Morganthau than Marshall 😬 Bidenism might be too. And Xi = Stalin role? Crap.

      3 replies 1 retweet 28 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 24
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      By the time Kennan turned his long telegram into an article, he’d shifted from a perimeter containment to a strong-point defense model that demanded much lower economic burden. Congress was suspicious Soviets would drain the US economy through entanglements all along perimeter.

      1 reply 0 retweets 13 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 24
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      Military shrank from 83B in 1945 to 42.7 in 1947 to 12.8B in 1947. Armed forced went from 12m to 1.6m personnel. Army secretary wanted 20% more budget if economic aid was voted down. The plan had to be an economic one. Literal butter over guns choice. Arm

      1 reply 0 retweets 18 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 24
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      Truman and his Republican senate ally Vandenberg were both born in 1884. Freaks me out how such modern events were shaped by people born just before industrial modernity. Electricity was new in 1884. Airplanes didn’t exist. Humans hunted mammoths. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Vandenberg …

      2 replies 2 retweets 22 likes
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    9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 26
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      Kennan begins drafting PPS/1: Policy Planning Staff paper 1. Stark contrast to messy committee output of SWNCC. Lays out clear framework instead of wishful thinking muddle. https://www.russilwvong.com/future/kennan/pps1.html …

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    10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 26
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      Key doctrinal points: - No requirement to trade with East - Grants, not loans (contra Morganthau, lend-lease, IMF) - Anti-Soviet strings attached - (W) Germany to be made strong; France would have to deal - (W) Europe to be integrated; UK would have to deal

      2 replies 0 retweets 14 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 26
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      Western Europe was clearly an American creation. Stalin May have created the Iron Curtain but the US created the difference across it very deliberately

      11:55 PM - 26 Aug 2020
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      1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          Will Clayton returns from Europe with a sense of urgency over Europe on the brink of economic collapse. He’s aligned with Kennan mostly but wants a more assertive US role, not merely financial and advisory.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          As befits a free trader capitalist, he wants proper reconstruction of corporatized, nationalized economies along more laissez-faire lines. Free market via command actions to dismantle command economies.

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          ‘In Acheson’s words, Clayton wanted the plan merely to “appear to come” from Europe...The United States, he said, “must run this show.” Kennan/Clayton = good cop/bad cop. Acheson = ADA Marshall = DA

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          There was basically bipartisan drive towards a “United States of Europe.” Besides Clayton, others like Dulles, Truman, Vandenburg (formerly an isolationist) all got behind it. The EU was the result of the US intentionally reshaping Europe in its own image.

          1 reply 3 retweets 20 likes
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        6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          Ken Anderson final PPS/1 navigates a subtle shift away from communism as cause of problems and focus of plan to core economic/cultural issues, with communism as an opportunistic infection of weakened state. And thus did Truman doctrine finesse Marshall plan into existence.

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          Okay, Kennan has laid out doctrine and strategic logic. Clayton has defined required posture of command. But who’s going to work out the execution model? 🤔

          1 reply 0 retweets 8 likes
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        8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          Enter new actor who will apparently work out the execution logic of the plan: Lucius Dubignon Clay, guy who has already made an appearance on the Berlin tactical chessboard and will soon mastermind the Berlin airlift. Now shit’s getting real https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_D._Clay …

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        9. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 27
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          Damn autocorrect “Ken Anderson” 2 tweets up is “Kennan”

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        10. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 28
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          Clay was son of a 3-time senator, but chose to go into the military. Star student but with conduct problems. Liked authoritah. Cartman, but straight-As type. Rose through logistics and engineering hierarchy without seeing combat until he was running Berlin by... my age right now.

          1 reply 0 retweets 10 likes
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        11. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 28
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          Clay’s orders were to run Berlin by the punitive/vindictive Morganthau Plan, which was both impossible in a devastated economy and something he didn’t want to do. So he used “disease and unrest” appropriations to run the show in more humane ways, thwarting the plan’s intent.

          1 reply 1 retweet 11 likes
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        12. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 28
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          “There is no choice between becoming a communist at 1500 calories and a believer in democracy at 1000” — Clay in a 1946 cable to Washington.

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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        13. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 28
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          JCS 1067, the original occupation directive https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/JCS_1067 

          1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
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        14. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 28
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          Replaced by JCS 1779 which I can’t find online

          1 reply 0 retweets 4 likes
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        15. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 28
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          Clay blamed the French more than the Russians for the recovery quagmire, and thought Kennan was a dangerously dogmatic theory guy. Interesting tension there since he himself was on the theory side of the military in a way (didn’t get to see combat despite trying)

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        16. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          Marshall unveils plan in a carefully drafted commencement speech at Harvard, centering humanitarian aid and inviting Europe to make an opt-in cooperative request for US aid. Language designed to nominally allow the Soviets to join but really intended to smoke out true intentions.

          1 reply 1 retweet 9 likes
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        17. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          Truman didn’t see even the draft of the speech. He stayed arms length away and called in the Marshall Plan rather than the Truman Plan so Republicans could comfortably vote for it.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        18. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          Stalin surprised by the move. He still thought cooperyon his terms was possible and that his stalling and delaying tactics via Molotov were working. The Marshall-Stalin negotiations almost look like management-labor negotiations. He didn’t think the US had a BATNA. He was wrong.

          1 reply 0 retweets 15 likes
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        19. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          Kremlin correctly guesses the intent to keep the Soviets out and blame them for the schism. Decides to try to join the Plan to scuttle it from the inside, which appears to have been a Stalin gambit. Molotov joins talks and signals rest of nascent eastern bloc to do so too.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        20. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          Interesting that just as the US had a tradition of Kremlinology starting with Kennan, the Soviets had a tradition of Beltwayology trying to analyze US thinking. The two sides of the Cold War did understand each other.

          1 reply 0 retweets 12 likes
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        21. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          The Soviet view of the US as imposing economic imperialism to control Europe is not wrong. Marshall’s crew sought to do exactly that. The plan was nominally European in origin but the content was dictated by the US. “You set the valuation I’ll make the term sheet” basically.

          1 reply 0 retweets 11 likes
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        22. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          The Soviets fundamentally underestimated American economic strength. They thought the US would be forced to deal to save itself from an economic crisis caused by loss of trade. They didn’t realize the US had already written Eastern Europe out of the economic calculations.

          1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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        23. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          The US needed an economically strong Germany to rebuild Europe and restart the world economy to serve American business interests, but not so badly that they’d compromise with the Soviets over it.

          1 reply 1 retweet 14 likes
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        24. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          The Soviets really did drink their own kool-aid. Their negotiating stance was based on the assumption that America was on the verge of economic collapse due to loss of export markets. Because of course capitalism was destined to collapse any day now as foretold by doctrine.

          1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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        25. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 29
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          Stalin was supposedly the greatest strategic negotiator of his time. Molotov was a master of stalling and other tactics. Yet doctrine compromised them.

          2 replies 1 retweet 12 likes
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        26. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
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          If the US used dollar diplomacy to force a unified economic zone in the west, and suppress bilateral ism, the Soviets used bilateralism in the East to sort of divide and conquer their zone. The description reads like a tyrannical pater familias ruling brood by 1:1 intimidation

          1 reply 0 retweets 9 likes
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        27. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
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          It’s interesting that labor leaders in UK and France reluctantly went along with the US despite communist sympathies. Stalin lost much of the ideological goodwill that Russia had earned from the global communist movement in previous decades.

          2 replies 1 retweet 13 likes
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        28. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
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          The Soviets wanted a unified Germany to milk for reparations (maximizing their share) to build their own empire, and a fragmented Europe. The US wanted a unified Western Europe and a fractured Germany, to force an economic schism, because it had kinda ceded the East already.

          1 reply 1 retweet 13 likes
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        29. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
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          Soviets bluffed thinking the US could be dragged into a long negotiation slide into a compromise that they could dominate. The US called the bluff and triggered the schism the Soviets were using as a threat. This feels familiar. Putin’s geopolitics are also “drag from weakness”

          1 reply 1 retweet 16 likes
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        30. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
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          The US does not come off looking too good here, but there was a core of generosity and goodwill behind the dollar authoritarianism. The Soviets though were fundamentally acting out of self-interest and bad faith and assumed the US was too.

          1 reply 1 retweet 12 likes
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        31. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr Aug 30
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          There’s a sense of “it’s okay to lie and cheat in dealings with evil capitalists” to their whole posture. We’re now at the breakdown point. Stalin has received spy intel that confirms US motives and he orders Molotov to back out of Marshall Plan talks.

          1 reply 1 retweet 17 likes
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