Butterfly Wings & Hurricanes: The GoodFellows & Andrew Roberts Revisit Historical Counterfactuals | GoodFellows | Hoover Institution - GoodFellows: Conversations from the Hoover Institution

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[MUSIC]

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[APPLAUSE]>> Bill Whalen: It's Thursday,
October 17th, 2024, and welcome backto GoodFellows, a Hoover Institution
broadcast examining social, economic,political, and geopolitical concerns.
I'm Bill Whalen, I'm a Hooverdistinguished policy fellow, and
I'll be your moderator forthe course of the next hour.
Looking forward to a spiritedconversation featuring not one, two, but

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all three of our Goodfellows,as we jokingly refer to them.
That would be the economist John Cochrane,historian Niall Ferguson and
former presidential nationalsecurity advisor, geostrategist, and
all around institutional nice guy,Lieutenant General HR McMaster.
All three are Hoover Institutionsenior fellows.
Now, before we go any further,you notice we have a different look and
feel to this show.
That's because we're recordinglive here at the fall retreat at

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the Hoover Institution, here onthe lovely campus of Stanford University.
Special occasions call for special guests,and that's what we have today.
We're joined by our Hoover colleague,the Lord Andrew Roberts,
prominent historian,expert on Winston Churchill.
And today we're gonna talk about,of all things, historical counterfactuals.
Now, we did an episode similar to thisearly in the spring with the great
Stephen Kotkin.

(01:12):
Audiences liked it, sowe're gonna do it again.
Each gentleman has broughta counterfactual with them.
Before we get into them, though, Niall,
I'd like you to spend a couple of minutesand explain the value of counterfactuals.
Cuz within your profession, andLord Roberts and HR's profession,
you're all historians,this is a bit of a controversial topic.
Some historians think counterfactualsare valuable, others don't.

>> Niall Ferguson (01:31):
What if questions are, I think, part and parcel of life.
And we've spent much of today not reallyknowing what's going to happen in
just a few weeks.
I mean, our experts don't really knowwhat's gonna happen in the election.
So we all living under uncertainty.
There are at least two futures before us,the Harris future and the Trump future.

(01:54):
That's the essence of life, uncertainty.
For some weird reason,professional historians for
centuries have said that we shouldn'tthink about those what if questions.
We shouldn't think aboutthe things that didn't happen.
We should only studythe things that did happen.
And I have been arguing throughoutmy career that that's absurd.

(02:15):
If our goal as historians is to capturewhat it was like to live in the past,
then we have to recapture the uncertaintyof not knowing who's going to win the war,
not knowing who's gonna win the election.
That's the essence of the human condition,that uncertainty.
That's why counterfactual questions,it sounds a bit pretentious,
what if questions, are sointeresting and, I think, important?

>> Bill Whalen (02:38):
Does anyone dare counter?

>> John H. Cochrane (02:40):
I wanna welcome our historians to the world of economists.
>> [LAUGH]>> John H. Cochrane: Because, of course,
what we do is try to study cause andeffect in human affairs.
If you put in a rent control law,here's what will happen.
We digest the many lessons of historyfiltered through some theory, and
that is, of course, what we do as humans.
We try to understand cause andeffect in human affairs, and

(03:01):
that is inherentlythe counterfactual question.

And it's worth adding that I'm sure there are some lawyers here.
You don't need to reveal yourselves.
But at the heart of causation inthe law is the, but-for proposition.
But for this act, the followingthings wouldn't have happened.
So I think in most walks of life,the counterfactual approach is readily
accepted, but professional historianshave a prejudice against it,

(03:27):
including some of our arch enemies,who shall remain nameless.

>> Andrew Roberts (03:32):
I don't mind naming them.

Go on.
Okay.>> [LAUGH]

He's already
drinking.

He's got his martini.
[LAUGH] So he's gonna name the name?

Yeah, no, exactly, do you mind if I name a few names?
Yeah, they're basically the Whigs,the determinists, and the Marxists.
And when it comes to the Marxist,EP Thompson said something about what if
history that I'm not going to mentionin front of the family audience.

[FOREIGN] Is how he described it.
Which is German forsomething terribly rude and unpleasant.

EH Carr denounced it, actually,
Simon Sharma called them parlor games andfairy tales.
And obviously the Whig and determinists
all thought it was a terrible thing to do.
Partly because they all believethat history is going on a path

(04:25):
you're moving towards, well,in the Marxist sense, of course,
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
And if you come up withan alternative thesis,
you are therefore goingagainst the grain of history.
And as I'm sure Niall andI, I know Niall and
I feel there is no such thingas the grain of history.

Before we go any further, there is a very bad UK/US discrepancy on
this stage, Lord Roberts, andyou may not be aware, Sir Niall Ferguson.
Why is that bad?
John doesn't have a title.
HR doesn't have a title.
>> [LAUGH]>> Andrew Roberts: Become British.
>> [LAUGH]>> Niall Ferguson: In the land of
the free,these feudal relics have no significance.

(05:07):
>> [LAUGH]>> Niall Ferguson: But back in England,
he outranks me in a really annoying way.
>> [LAUGH]>> John H. Cochrane: We did fight a little
war about getting rid of all this stuff,I might remind you.
And we won it.>> Niall Ferguson: The segue into
the first counterfactual.
I dubbed the Earl of economics.
I dubbed the baron of Bald.

(05:31):
All right, so let's commence with the counterfactuals.
And the first one comesfrom General McMaster.
[MUSIC]
On this day in 1777, October 17, 1777,
the British army surrenders at whatis called the battle of Saratoga.
A pivotal moment in the revolutionary war,
because the continental army neededa morale boost and Benjamin Franklin and

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Paris needed the talking point toconvince the French to come into the war.
HR's counterfactual is the Britishwin the battle, not the Americans.
So questions for the panel.
If the British win that battle,does the revolution fail?
Question for the panel.
If the revolution fails, is there anotherrevolution over taxation down the road?
Or is there an alternate universe inwhich the United States of America is

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the commonwealth ofAmerica under UK umbrella?
Gentlemen, have at.

>> HR McMaster (06:20):
Yeah, this is why I love what I prefer to call
contingency in history.
By the way, I thought I was doing CivilWar, but I'll pivot back to Saratoga.
I gave too many contingencies.
But I think Saratoga isan immensely important battle.
But what's really important when youconsider contingency in history is to
recognize that it really helpsreassure us that we actually have

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agency over our future.
If you believe only in impersonalforces and a Marxist view of history,
what are we all doing?
What are we doing here at Hoover,trying to do research and
scholarship that can inform policydecisions that build a better future?
So I think what brings historyto life is contingency.
And in this case,in the battle of Saratoga,
it was a battle that quite easily couldhave been lost by the continental army.

(07:08):
[LAUGH] If it wasn't for Benedict Arnold,
who turned out to be notsuper reliable in the future.
>> [LAUGH]>> HR McMaster: Thanks to Peggy Shippen,
supposedly, I mean, because males always,we have to blame women for
everything, right?
So it was Peggy Shippen's fault for
turning him to be an agent of our enemies,the British.
[LAUGH] But he violated house arrest and

(07:30):
led a counterattack during that battlethat really turned the tide of the battle.
And it was this battle that reversedthe narrative that the continental
army was on an inextricablecourse toward defeat, right?
And that led to the success of adiplomatic effort by Benjamin Franklin and

(07:50):
others to bring the French in,quite solidly,
very solidly on the side of the colonials.
And if it was not for the French Support,we could not have won the war.
I mean, I think that's pretty clear,not only from a military perspective,
with the naval support, butthe heavy army support, which Rochambeau,

(08:12):
but then also the financial support,
which you may be able to talk more about,Niall, than I can, or John.
And so I think that it's one of thesegreat examples in history that had it gone
the other way, we might be living quitea different experience in our country.
But really, when I taughtmilitary history at West Point,

(08:32):
I loved using contingencies.
And I sent a whole bunch of these to Bill.
I used the Battle of Gettysburg and itscoincidence with the victory at Vicksburg,
and that is a turningpoint in the civil war.
But of course, with that example, and withSaratoga, when we look at contingencies,
we don't wanna say that that victoryat Saratoga was in itself decisive.
Because if Washington hadn't hada successful attack the previous

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December at Princeton in Trenton,we might not have even gotten to Saratoga.
So it's important tounderstand these periods and
these shifts and the role of individuals.
And I think what that does for
us is help us understandthe complex causality of events.
People wanna reduce our understandingof our experience down to simple

(09:20):
causal factors.
There's never a single causal factor.
And I think it's for this reason thatthe study of history is an exercise in
humility and very important forbuilding our strategic competence today.
Because I think so many of the problemsthat we have today are based on people
assuming that there's a single cause forsomething, or to have a narcissistic view

(09:44):
of the world and believe that the futuredepends on what we do or choose not to do.
And that, of course,
neglects the authorship overthe future that others enjoy.

I think it's a great example that HR has picked,
because in many ways,
the outcome of the American Revolutionis the low probability scenario.
And 20% of Britishcolonists were loyalists,
wanted to stay loyal to George III.
Joseph Galloway was one of them.
He has a terrificquotation from the period.

(10:14):
And I think it's important to go backto documents from the time to recapture
the uncertainty I was talking about.
How then, since the British commander hada force so much superior to his enemy,
has it happened that the rebellionhas not been long ago suppressed?
That the cause, my lord,however enveloped in
misrepresentation on this side ofthe Atlantic, is no secret in America.

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Friends and foes unite in declaringthat it has been owing to want of
wisdom in the plans and of vigor andexertion in the execution.
I.e, the British generalswere bunglers and
Burgoyne was one ofthe bunglers who blew it.
I think it's very plausible thatthe American war of independence fails and

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you end up living in a giant Canada.
>> [LAUGH]>> Niall Ferguson: Which is, of course,
the best illustration ofthe plausibility of the counterfactual.
There is an entire chunk ofNorth America that stayed loyal.
The loyalists mostly moved there.
And it's not such a bad place,I have to say.

But I have to point out, I mean, just I have to take exception to
Niall's interpretation because I thinkthe continental army had something to do
with the outcome as well,not just the British bungling.
And this harkens back to Gettysburg,
which I was going to talk aboutas another counterfactual.
There was this huge debate on who lostGettysburg on the side of the South-

And it was blaming-

Clear me of one of these.
Longstreet, [INAUDIBLE] butPickett famously said,
I think the Yankees hadsomething to do with it.
So [LAUGH] I think also the continentalarmy had something to do with it.

And the French.

Later, for sure.

I want to jump in here and take sort of the next step.
I mean, it's not obvious,even refusing that battle,
the Americans might have refused to loseand we go on for a long guerrilla war.
But let's suppose that the British win.
How does the world look after that?
And here I may channel my distantancestor, [COUGH] Peggy Shippen,
I must have to admit.

Is that right?

Some of us have skeletons in our closet.

She was known as the most beautiful woman in the colonies, and
she was from Philadelphia.

There you go.
That's the most beautiful of the good->> HR McMaster: Now we know [LAUGH].

Would it have been so terrible?
What do you guys see?
And I'll phrase this as a question.
Certainly the United Kingdom would havedevolved power, as they did to Canada,
Australia, New Zealand.
They clearly did so more quickly aftersaying, let's not lose any more.
But that would have happened.
That's the only sensible.
We would have become a partof the large British Empire.

(12:39):
Trade would have been much better.
We wouldn't have fought a war of 1812.
We wouldn't have had big tariffs.
US might have developed more quickly.
Slavery would have certainly goneaway more quickly in the US.
It's not so terrible,at least till you get to 20th century.
On the other hand, we would nothave the first successful republic,
the example that we do not need monarchy.

(13:00):
We would not have ourwritten constitution.
It's that wonderful document.
And our written Bill of Rights, which,when I compare to the UK, I am so
grateful that they thought to write downa few things, like the First Amendment.
So where do you guys see us,the 19th century and
the awful 20th century,if the US had been like Canada?

Okay, sorry, no, the answer is that clearly,
is that if you don't have the AmericanRevolution being successful and
we stay as one country, there is simplyno way that the Kaiser invades Belgium.
Then you don't get the Russian Revolution,the Nazis, or the Holocaust.
It's a much happier world.

(13:40):
>> [LAUGH]>> HR McMaster: Says the man who tried to
rehabilitate George III.
Yeah, I'm [INAUDIBLE] George III.

The Empire sticks together now.
Now, somebody else mighthave blown up later, but-

Absolutely clearly.
But I don't see anybody ever takingon an empire that is both Britain and
America and Australia, Canada,New Zealand, India, and so on.
The second thing to remember is thatthe key thing about Saratoga, and
you're quite right,it could have been lost so easily.
If Burgoyne had just gone northafter the Battle of Freedman Hill,

(14:15):
you'd have had this fantasticmoment where gates and
Arnold weren't talkingto each other anyway.
There's no reason why he couldn'thave gone back to Canada, and
the germane plan wouldhave stayed in existence.
But what happens when they do win, theAmericans do win in the October of 1777?

(14:37):
You get the French coming in, of course.
The French are alwaysthere when they need you.
>> [LAUGH]>> Andrew Roberts: And then after that,
you get the Dutch coming in in 1779.
Sorry, the Spanish in 1779,the Dutch in 1780.
And suddenly Britain is fighting a worldwar, essentially, everywhere, from sort

(15:01):
of India to the Mediterranean, Gibraltar,and so on, and it becomes unwinnable.
So you are absolutely right.
I think that that's a key moment.

And I would also say, I mean, it may be that the French Revolution
doesn't happen ifthe American Revolution doesn't succeed.
I'm thinking of that great book by RRPalmer, The Age of Democratic Revolution,
and the degree to which those ideas of theAmerican Revolution migrated to France,
largely through those whohad fought in North America.

And the money spent by the French in fighting that war,
if they'd actually managed to keep thatenormous treasury, then Necker and
others would have been able, maybe,to have stopped the French Revolution.

The economist needs to point out the French Revolution was
precipitated by a debt crisis.

Yeah. >> John H. Cochrane

Caused by helping [INAUDIBLE].
That is why this conversation is notsome kind of arcane academic debate.
John mentioned tariff.
In the counterfactual thatthe American Revolution's defeated.
North America remains primarily agrarian.
There's no industrialization of theNortheast because Britain's model was to
make the industry in Britain and the restof the empire produce the commodities.

(16:10):
So it's without the tariffs thatHamilton and others envisioned,
it's not clear that the industrializationof the Northeast would have happened.

Don't you see the resolution of the American Revolution is,
boy, we better treat these peoplemore like British citizens and
not like extractive empire.
And so maybe we need to have the US Buildup as another manufacturing,
free trade between the US AndBritain as well.

But it's not clear that under conditions of free trade there would
have been such rapid industrializationof the Northeast of what had become
the United States.
And that's why this debate about tariffs,which is front and
center in the election today,it has deep historical roots.
The thing that the United States coulddo that it was much harder to do if you
stayed in the British Empire,was have protectionism,

(16:58):
have tariffs, rather than submitto the empire of free trade,
which was what Britainbecame in the 19th century.

Well, there's another counterfactual.
Would the US have industrializedwithout tariff protection?
I think yes, but we'll fight.

We need to move on to quick.

Did Niall just make the case for
a servile relationship betweenthe United States and the United Kingdom?

Well, you would have, at least,
you could have got titles if ithad just been one large Canada.

They were called the Intolerable Acts for
a reason,that's what I was saying.

The great thing about counterfactual history is you can't
be wrong.

Niall, a very quick exit question.
If America is a commonwealth, notan independent nation, do we still have
baseball and football, or is our director,God forbid, have a share of a soccer team?

Well, that's a great question because cricket was being played
in the American coloniesin the late 18th century.
And I think there's no doubt thatAmerica pursues its own sporting path,
partly because it becomespolitically independent.
That gives rise to such perversions asthe game you call American football.

No, but also.

Last word.

George III played baseball and George Washington never did.
There you go.

Okay, [LAUGH].
On to our second counterfactual.
This comes courtesy from Lord Roberts.
It's April 3rd, 1917,Vladimir Lenin steps off a train in St.
Petersburg and he is gunned down.
Question.
Does the revolution continue?
Are the Romanovs still doomed?

(18:32):
Does communism still takeroot around the globe?
Is it possible to haveLeninism without Lenin?

Well, the Romanovs were already doomed, of course,
they had been overthrownin the March of 1917.
So you instead havea Kerensky government that,
as well as the Bolsheviks,don't have Lenin.
But also in the May of 1917,when Trotsky comes back from America,
he's also banged up in the Peter and PaulFortress, as are Cameron, Evans and Av,

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and the whole of the Bolshevik Partyis essentially decapitated politically.
And so instead of this verysmall minority of people
taking over Russia in 1917,you have a republican
form of government that survives andprospers,

(19:24):
especially when it signsthe Brest Litovsk Treaty with the Germans,
and is therefore able to providepeace as well as land and bread.
So instead of having this horrificdystopian world where the Communists
have managed to kill 100 millionpeople in the 20th century,

(19:49):
you have a world where Russiadoes not go Communist and
therefore nobody else does either.

So this is both plausible and implausible, in my view.
It's plausible because, in fact,there were multiple assassination attempts
against Lenin, and one of them,in fact, really impaired his health.
They happened a bit later [INAUDIBLE].

I was about to say, they're too late, though, aren't they?
You need it on in April 1917.

But it's plausible, it was a very,
very dangerous place at that point.
Russia was in a state of turmoil, so
it's very easy to imagineLenin being taken out.
But what's implausible about it, I think,is the notion that the government of
the Provisional Governmentwould have stabilized,
and I think it was profoundly unstable.

(20:35):
And having to sign a treaty likeBrest Litovsk would almost have been
impossible for it.
Indeed, the Provisional Governmentwould have kept fighting.
Remember, the Bolsheviks campaigned.
One of the reasons they came to powerwas that they promised peace, bread and
all power to the Soviets.
So I think what's implausible about thiscounterfactual is that I don't think
the Russian Revolutionentirely hinged on Lenin.

(20:56):
Why?
Because when he was out of the picture,
his health has basically failed by 1920,it kept going.
They won the civil war, and the reallykey figure in the Bolshevik Party came to
power not long after Lenin's death,namely Stalin.

But they'd already overthrown the Provisional Government
by then.
I'm talking about the ProvisionalGovernment not being overthrown.

Yeah, I think it's very,
very hard to imagine the ProvisionalGovernment surviving cuz it couldn't have
made that peace.
It would have kept fighting.
And under those conditions,
I think it would have beenchronically unstable, John?

So there was in Russia before World War I,
there was a lot of movement towardsbecoming A constitutional monarchy towards
liberalization, becomingmore like Western Europe.
I think the question we're asking hereis whether really Lenin himself was
the crucial feature orthe disaster of World War I.
Suppose, as Niall has asked in otherworks, the Germans win, we stop

(21:51):
World War I, then the issue for Russia,is it in some sense ripe for revolution?
And had it not been Lenin,it would have been somebody else.
And we certainly did see Germany andItaly turn towards totalitarianism.
So the ripeness towards a totalitariantakeover does seem to have been there.
And a lot of that is the aftermathof the disaster of World War I,

(22:12):
cuz this whole scenario of Russia becomesa regular constitutional monarchy.
All the nephews and nieces ofQueen Victoria have a parliament.
That's a lovely thing, but that, I think,
none of that happens inthe wake of World War I.

I think what's material to this as well is not only just
the revolution itself.
Would it have happened?
But could the Bolsheviks haveconsolidated power because of the deep
divisions they have within themselves,
as well as the alternative ideas aboutwhat governments should succeed the czar.
So our colleague Stephen Cocken oftenmakes the point that authoritarian regimes

(22:48):
don't need to be that strong,
they just need to be strongerthan any organized opposition.
And the charismatic nature of Lenin, hisability to have to coalesce the movement,
was critical not only to the revolution,but
maybe even especially tothe consolidation of power.

I keep expecting Steve Copen to stand up at the back and
start heckling us.

I know, is he here?

[LAUGH] I'm kind of nervously waiting for that impersonation.
What you don't seem to understand,Lord Roberts [LAUGH].

You could imagine, by the way.

I knew that was coming.

Andrew, What?
But, Andrew,
what is the future of communism ifthe Russian experiment does not work?

Well, there isn't one.
This is the great thing you don't.
I mean, communism today only reallyexists in some portions of Albania and
lots of British and American universities.
And because these ideas are.

(23:47):
They are actually, it's very interestingbecause we're talking about imaginary
futures, which of course,the Marxists constantly denounce, and
they're very much against these kindof histories that we're talking about.
The imaginary Imaginary histories,
but who comes up with the most imaginaryfuture more than the communists?
The idea that we're all gonna be equal,we're all gonna be happy,

(24:09):
there's gonna be liberty,fraternity, and equality.
Despite the fact that you can't have allthree, because if you've got two of them,
then you don't get the third.
So actually, there's somethinginherent in the concept of
communism which ensures that it willnever work in any country ever.

But is the ideology that important?
I mean, there are many other totalitarianmovements who function in many of
the same ways.
The will to power grabs,crazy ideology and
making people repeat obviousnonsense is part of that structure.
So there were fascists too, and they mighthave been a little more competent than

(24:48):
the communists, but looked a lot the same.

Well, you get fascism, of course,
with the whites whoare fighting in the civil war,
there are essentially many of them are notthat different from Avant Oletre fascists.
However, with regard to allof the things that we equate
with communism,the concepts of collectivization and

(25:12):
of the use of enforcedstarvation in Ukraine and so on,
I don't think those happenwithout Lenin and Stalin.

And just on the role of ideology, to go back to
the American Revolution, there is this bigdebate among historians as to whether or
not the war is best understood asa war of American independence and
not that radical, oris it a war that's radical in its idea?
And I believe, and it's an ideology,and I kinda tend to go toward that
Gordon Wood School of the Radicalizationof the American Revolution or

(25:45):
the radical nature.
Because it was based on this new ideathat sovereignty lies with the people,
not with the king, not even withthe parliament, it lies with the people.
And I think that thatwas in the 18th century,
a radical idea that sparkedthe French Revolution as well.

That was an idea percolating up from our British ancestors.

That's right, yeah, going back to the Magna Carta.

Christian for Russia, yes,
it would not have happened withoutthe ruthlessness of Lenin and Stalin.
But could it have happened without Marx?
Would they not have come up with someother ideology to justify exactly the same
barbarism?

No, I do think you need Marx because he comes up with
the underlying conceptsthat they are promoting.
I'm not saying for a moment that youdon't get extremely unpleasant people
come forward in 1917,absent Lenin and Trotsky.
However, what you don't haveis this small cadre of highly

(26:44):
committed andaggressive revolutionaries who are able to
take over the state inthe October of that year, five or
six months after Lenin returnsto the Finland station.

The nightmare scenario of your counterfactual, Andrew,
if one follows it through,is that fascism wins.
Because remember, Marx predicted thatthe revolution would become an industrial
societies, not in a predominantlyagrarian place like the Russian Empire.
It was sort of an accident thatthe Bolsheviks succeeded where they did.
When they had a revolution in Germany, itfailed, they had a revolution in Austria,

(27:20):
it failed.
The left was crushed inEurope in the early 1920s.
And I think your vision of White Russiais more fascist than liberal and
democratic, isn't it?

No, I don't think it is.
Because I think what understoodby people is what actually
Marx understood of Louis Napoleon.
Later Napoleon III, is that the peasants,
essentially a peasant society,which Russia very much was in 1917,
can be conservative if yougive them peace, land bred.

(27:51):
And if Kerensky and Prince Lvovwere able to pull that off between
the assassination of Lenin in April 1917.
And the peace that theymake with the Germans,
then you have a conservativeRussia rather than the fascist.

But you still get the rise of Hitler under that scenario.
And who then resists the Third Reich?
It's not Stalin.

Untune one string, and as Ulysses says in Troilus and
Cressida and Hark, what discord follows?
Everything follows in mere oppugnancy.
A oppugnancy, what a great word,we need to use it more.
>> [LAUGH].
And all it means is opposition, after all.
But the interesting, what Shakespeare'strying to say there is you only need to

(28:39):
untune one string, change one tiny thing.
And, of course, then after thatthe butterflies cause the tsunami.
And what happens with regard to Adolf?

It's a hurricane, butterfly can't cause it tsunami.

Precisely, okay.
Hurricanes, of course, hurricanes,how can I have mistaken one of that.
Don't hurricanes cause tsunamis?

No, butterflies cause hurricanes.

Got it.
>> [LAUGH]>> Andrew Roberts: Anyhow,
the key thing is to go back to Shakespearerather than chaos theory of history
is that you can't go on to Hitler cuzthat happens 1933 is years after 1917.
And so, the key thing aboutcounterfactuals is that you can untune one
or two strings.

(29:23):
You can't do the whole of history.

Can we sell our book briefly, 30 years ago,
you won't believe it was 30 years ago.
30 years ago, Andrew and
I collaborated to produce a book calledVirtual Alternatives and Counterfactuals.
And it contains essays,some of which we're alluding to here,
which I highly recommend.

Fabulous, what a plug, by the way, no,
hang on, if he's gonna do his plug.
I also edited a book called whatMight Have Been, also a series of essays.
This is the most shameless plugthat I've ever come across.

So I wanna take the Andrew Roberts side of this.
If without Lenin, without communism,you asked, who defends against Stalin?
If I can remind you, Stalin,sorry, who defends against Hitler?
Stalin was all with Hitler until justabout the moment the troops kept going
across the Polish border.
So a healthier, more prosperous,whether fascist or

(30:20):
whether developing sortof along Western lines,
Russia they might have founda Winston Churchill in there
somewhere [LAUGH] who might wellhave defended against Hitler.

I think the ghost of historians past,
including historians of the left, wouldrise up at this point and say, there's
no way that Russia would have been able toindustrialize the way it did under Stalin,
under any conceivable form of governmentarising from Andrew's counterfactual.

Well, no capitalists could have done it.
Capitalists taking over in 1917, by 1933,
would have been able to have createda really impressive Russian economy.

And Steve Kotkin is here to tell us capitalists did it.
>> [LAUGH].
So his wonderful book on the steel mill.
Says, they brought in US industrialists,said,
here's how you build a steel mill andWestern capitalists.

Let's move on to our third counterfactual, all right,
this comes from Sir Niall.
[MUSIC]
It's November 22nd, 1963, and John Kennedy, like Donald Trump in
Butler, Pennsylvania, is shot at andreceives only a minor wound to his ear.

(31:33):
So, the Kennedy presidency goes on,so for the panel to discuss,
John Kennedy survives as president.
What happens to Vietnam?
John Kennedy, let's assume as a secondterm he is not Lyndon Johnson when it
comes to coercing Congress.
Does he get a voting rights bill?
Does he get a Civil Rights Act?
And the 1960s,absent that jarring incident,
is the 1960s still is countercultural.

Well, I've been thinking a lot about assassinations
funnily enough.
Nothing illustrates betterthe way history can turn
on a dime than the closenessof the shot that brushed,
indeed, cut,Donald Trump's ear earlier this year.
What if Lee Harvey Oswaldhad been as bad a shot and

(32:17):
had just missed with his two shots,John F.
Kennedy's head?
Now, Kennedy,subsequent to his assassination,
was in some ways deified bythe liberals of the time.
And we still in a sense, have thisafterglow of Camelot affecting the way
we think history would have been ifKennedy hadn't been assassinated.

(32:41):
There are even movies like Oliver Stone'swhich imply that there was
a kind of sinisterconspiracy to off Kennedy.
The interesting thing is that if you lookclosely at Kennedy's record on civil
rights and on Vietnam, it's very clearthat the civil rights legislation that
subsequently was passed by Lyndon Johnsonwould not have prospered under Kennedy.

(33:07):
Kennedy was far less committed tothe cause than Lyndon Johnson was.
And in fact, the Dixiecrats stood inthe way of major civil rights legislation.
It's not clear to me that if Kennedy hadsurvived, he would have been anything like
as committed to pushing throughthe civil rights legislation.
The other fascinating thing isthat Kennedy is the one who begins

(33:27):
the escalation in Vietnam.
And HR of course,is an authority on this subject.
But Kennedy createsthe task force in Vietnam.
He sends Lyndon Johnson to South Vietnam.
There's a report that recommendsincreased involvement.
The number of military advisersgoes up from 3,000 to 9,000 and
then finally to 16,000.

So 800 when he took office.

Right. So Kennedy, despite the mythology,
in fact, if he lived, would not havedelivered a radically different or
better future for the United States.
In some ways, it might have been worse.

HR how does Vietnam play out under Kennedy and not Johnson?

Yeah well, I think there are a lot of historians and people who
were initially around Kennedy who wrotethat it would have been a fundamentally
different course that Kennedy wouldhave selected or chosen on Vietnam.
But I'm persuaded by historians likeFred Logoval, who point out what Niall has
pointed out, that Kennedy deepened ourinvolvement there quite significantly.
And of course, it's not justKennedy doing this on his own.

(34:26):
It's very important, I think, to rememberthe interactive nature of history.
It wasn't until 1959 that the communistplenum and Ho Chi Minh presiding over
it decided to intensify their support forVietnamese Communists in the South.
So Kennedy takes office as the Vietnamesecommunist insurgency is intensifying
with much greater support from the northas the situation deteriorates,

(34:51):
Kennedy authorizes the deploymentof advisors to South Vietnam.
Beyond the number that was allowed underthe Geneva Accords that ended the first
Indochina War in 1954.
That's 800 by the time,
as Niall pointed out of Kennedy'sassassination in November of 1963.
There are 16,500 advisers in Vietnam and

(35:11):
they're doing a heck of a lot asmuch fighting as they are advising.
Really a lot of people have made argumentsthat Kenny was going to withdraw because
he reduced the number of forces inVietnam just before his assassination.
He was doing this as kind of leaningtoward the election in 1964 ploy.
What he essentially did is broughttemporary duty people back

(35:34):
from South Vietnam to give the impressionof a reduction in the force.
So I'm in the school that the coursewould not have been reversed by Kennedy.
Specific decisions could have beentaken much differently by Kennedy.
We don't really know how he would dealwith the Gulf of Tonkin, for example.
But I also agree with Niall thatprobably the civil rights legislation

(35:58):
would not have gotten passed forthe reasons that Neil cited, but
also because Lyndon Johnson'spersuasive nature.
The fact that he had theserelationships with Richard Russell and
others who were the main obstructionistswere the Southern Democrats.
And he also had the partnership withRepublicans like Everett Dirksen,

(36:18):
who was very critical in getting thatcivil rights legislation passed.
So I think it would havebeen a lot different.
I don't know exactly how, butit would have been different in 63 and 64.
But not, I don't think,
a fundamental difference in ourapproach to the Vietnam War.

Just one tiny data point.
Great quotation.
The speech that Kennedy nevergave on 22 November 1963,
said Americans, quote,dare not weary of the task of supporting
South Vietnam, no matter how risky andcostly it might be.
And they have a great example ofsomething that nearly happened.

(36:53):
That was the speech that hewas going to give that day.
Certainly not indicating anychange of direction in Vietnam.

So if I may, I don't less about Vietnam, but
just let's think aboutthe alternative history.
Clearly Kennedy, he was at the peak.
We all know what happenslater in any administration.
Things kind of settle down andare not as Camelot as beginning Johnson.
It's not just persuasion.
The Johnson biographies are wonderfulabout what the Johnson treatment involves.

(37:24):
To call it persuasion isbeing very polite about it.
He also, he was Southern.
So it took Nixon to go to China.
Sometimes it takes a Southernerto get the civil rights through.
But civil rights,
the federal civil rights legislationwould undoubtedly have been stalled.
But civil rights was clearly sucha strong moral imperative in the U.S.

(37:46):
i cannot imagine Jim Crow wouldhave gone on 20 more years.
And in fact, had it been voluntarythree years later, under the tremendous
opprobrium of the world and the restof the US perhaps it might have stuck
a little bit better rather thanimposed from the federal government.
Johnson also, so undoubtedly Nixon mightwell have won the next election or

(38:08):
it might have gone Republican.
So we would not have had Johnsonwinning the next election.
The Great Society is much less obviousthat Johnson would have passed it through.
And from an economist, this expansion ofthe welfare state as large or larger than
what Franklin Roosevelt put through was,you know, that the tension of Vietnam was.

(38:32):
There was a budgetary tension ofthe Great Society and the Vietnam War.
That is usually considered whatled to inflation, malaise,
the tearing apart of our society in 1968.
We think things are partisan andwell, they may get worse this fall.
But 1968 was a really bad year andyou know,
had a Republican won the election andwe hadn't had the Great Society and

(38:56):
the tearing apart, you know, that couldhave all come out far, far differently.

Yeah, it's important to remember that if Kennedy had lived,
he would have probably won in 64,but the interest.

Less overwhelming.
It would have been a small majority.
We would have been stilltalking to each other.
There would have been much more back andforth.
Certainly he would not havegotten through a Great Society.

But to just address one of Bill's questions, the 60s would still
have happened despite all of this becauseit was really invented in Britain.
The Beatles had nothing to do,nothing to do with the United States.
The Beatles would still have happened andso the 60s would still have happened.

Do you agree, Lord Roberts?
The music, he's a big Beatles.
The music would have happenedall except give peace a chance.
Because there may not havebeen the anti war movement.

No, no, there would have been the war with Kennedy.
The war would have still have happened.
It might have been a bit different,but it would still have happened.
And so all of that,I think would have been much the same.

Most importantly, but most importantly,
tell us we'd still haveAustin Powers movies.

Yeah, baby.

You might not have got.
I tell you what, you might not have gotone of the The things great blights,
I think, in modern American politics,and British to a lesser extent,
is the endless conspiracytheories that are causing so
much trouble in politics today.
And without the who shot JFK?

(40:18):
Did JFK get killed by Lee Harvey Oswald?
Was it a group of people, Jack Ruby,
all of those endless,endless conspiracy theories,
you wouldn't havenecessarily have had them.
And also, therefore, you wouldn'thave had RFK junior in this election,

(40:40):
who we heard earlier, didn't we,
this morning about the effect ofwhere his votes go to and so on.
None of that would have happened.
And we're assuming also that therefore RFKmight not have been assassinated, as well.
And so I think that terrible period inthe 1960s of American assassinations and

(41:00):
the knock on effects thatare still seen today in politics,
of that terrible day in Dallas inNovember 1963 would not have happened.

And that reminds us, doesn't it,
just how close we came this yearto a terrible political disaster?
I do not like to think where the countrywould be today if Donald Trump
had been killed in Butler, Pennsylvania.
It is an almost unimaginable nightmare.
Can you imagine how toxic politicswould have become in the wake of that?
I shudder every time I think of how closewe came to another reprise of that cycle

(41:34):
of violence thatcharacterized the mid-1960s.
And the role of contingency in history,right?

Exactly.

Okay, let's roll onto our fourth counterfactual.
This comes from the earl of economics,John Cochrane.
It is December 1978, and
the 3rd plenum of the 11th Congress ofthe Chinese Communist Party's underway.
Deng Xiaoping decides to use this occasionto announce that rather than reforming
China's economy, that he wantsto go in the other direction.

(42:04):
He wants to turn his nationinto a supersized North Korea.
So to be discussed,the impact on America's economy, John, and
the world economy.
What happens to Chineseambitions around the world?
I assume there's no Belt andRoad initiative.
Who's making cheap goods?
Do we still have a Walmart and Amazon?
is there still a showdownin Tiananmen Square?
Niall, is there still Cold War II?

So I'll start with, I had a hard problem with this cuz our game
turned not just intocounterfactual history, but
find one little butterflywing that caused a hurricane.
Those are clearer in military affairs.
In political affairs, you know,a bullet goes two inches right or left.
Those are harder to identifyin economic affairs.

(42:47):
So, yeah, China did open up internally andexternally.
This was the greatest improvement inhuman well being in all of history
that I know of.
A billion people are rescuedfrom abject poverty.
I mean, imagine yourself and a billionother people trying to scratch out

(43:08):
a living from a quarter acre plotthat you plant with rice by hand.
And the commissarsare always coming along.
$200 a year of GDP now up to,on average middle income level,
$20,000 a year with parts of it thatlook a lot more modern than the US.
So it's really a remarkable thingthat has happened inside China.

(43:30):
It has also been good for the US.
Now we're going to start up the Chinatrade strategic fight that we always have.
Is trade good or bad?
I looked up, some of the estimatesare typically on the range of 5% of GDP
benefit to the United States.
I think the benefitsare actually larger of trade.

(43:51):
Yes, there was cheap stuff in Walmart thatreally helped lower income Americans.
This doesn't look like a Walmart crowd.
Go to Walmart sometime.
It is just amazing.
And even [LAUGH] I just learned thatTrump's bibles are printed in China
because they cost 50 centsto print in China and
he sells them for 50 bucks a year.
MAGA hats are made in China.

(44:13):
And when you don't just denigrate consumergoods, which I think is a mistake.
The average drill, the AAA batterypowered drill is a wonderful device.
In 1990 they cost a lot of money.
Now they're cheap.
And, you know, that is a devicethat comes in and then makes,
you know, building a house cheaper.
So the intermediate goodsare where it's really.

(44:36):
But I'm just gonna defensive cuz I knowwe're gonna get to how terrible it was.
This was great for China, great for world,the biggest decline in inequality you've
ever seen if you worryabout that sorta thing.
And I think great for the US andthe western world as well,
subject to certain strategicgeopolitical issues that these.

You're being very defensive,
but I think it's a great counterfactual,John, because- Actually it's really
surprising that Deng Xiaopingis even alive in [LAUGH] 1978.

Well, let me get to that.

Never mind in a position of power.

The possibility, of course is China turns into North Korea,
which they easily could have done.
And I thought of that as a moregood possibility to consider.
Imagine still incredibly poor,
probably with nuclear weaponsif North Korea can do it.
Well, China already had them.
So we have a poor and bellicose nation,undoubtedly still is bellicose.

(45:29):
And who knows if theycould go after Taiwan.
But they could certainly causetrouble in the South China Sea.
All in all, a very dismal look.
Now, was that just one man's decision?
We sorta thoughts on our discussions.
But then I remembered, of course, FrankDecoder's wonderful book I just read about
the end of the cultural revolutionthat said, basically this was
not Deng Xiaoping from on top saying,capitalism, let them have capitalism.

(45:50):
It was inevitable.
He was facing a revolution.
And basically they had to give upon the cultural revolution anyway.
Now, maybe they didn't have toliberalize as much as they did, but
it's not obvious they couldhave created North Korea.
And now here I have historians whoknow more about China than I do.
But was some liberalization,some opening, inevitable, or
was this one decision thatreally saved a lot of people?

I love it. I don't think it's inevitable at all.
I mean actually that Deng Xiaopingis able to do reform and
opening up is completely against the grainof the way most communist regimes evolved.
The interesting thing is that the openingto China by the United States would still
have happened because itpredated Deng Xiaoping's reforms.
It's in 71, 72 that Kissinger,then Nixon go to Beijing.

(46:34):
So in your scenario, this kind ofpermanently crazy north korean style
China is still in a relationshipwith the United States because, and
this is a really interesting feature ofthe cold War, the really big schism of
the cold War is not betweenthe United States and the Soviet Union.
It's been between the Soviet Union andthe People's Republic of China.
So I think that geopolitical shift wherethe US and China would have found common

(46:58):
ground against the Soviets,that would have happened anyway,
even if none of the economic reformshad happened from the late 70s onwards.
But you're right,it's definitely a poorer world because
a billion plus people are a lot poorer fora lot longer.
I agree with that.

Andrew.

I think the really surprising thing is that in 1945,
at the end of the Second World War,Chiang Kai shek and
the Kuomintang have all of the big cities.
They have an army five to sixtimes larger than the Maoist army.

(47:35):
They have a huge amount of weaponrythat they've taken off the Japanese and
still they managed tolose that war by 1949.
And so the really surprising thingis that the communists even win
the Chinese Civil War, which, of course,
would never have taken place if Leninhad been shot in the Finland station.

Or if Burgoyne had won at Saratoga.

[LAUGH] Exactly.

Or if Caesar had not crossed the Rubicon.

[LAUGH] Okay, you've made my point.

I would just like to qualify this a little bit.
I mean, I think this is one ofthe benefits of contingency in history,
is to try to really examine causality.
I would not credit Deng Xiaoping or
the Chinese Communist Party with the greatachievements of the Chinese people.
And I think this is one of the pointsthat comes out in one of the themes,
actually through all five volumes ofFrank Decoder's magisterial study of

(48:32):
the Chinese Communist Party, is that a lotof these reforms, the lifting of people
up from poverty, happened despitethe Chinese Communist Party,
not because ofthe Chinese Communist Party.
And I think that's been a fundamentalmisinterpretation that has led to a lot of
our reluctance to compete more effectivelyagainst a hostile authoritarian regime

(48:54):
that is actively weaponizing its state asmercantilist economic model against us.

I just wanna emphasize what you said.
The Chinese Communist Partydidn't direct a reform.
They just got a little bit out of the way.
They said, farmers can selltheir stuff in the city and
farmers start planting more and selling.
You can start a little.
You just got out of the way.
It was not a state directed reform.

Or they just disobeyed the CCP directives to not allow the market.

Well, some of it was inevitable.
What I got out of Dakota is that the partywas losing its power to control.
And they understood that if we tell peopleto do stuff and they are able to violate
it, then that's worse for us than ifwe say, you're allowed to do it now.

But then the surprising counterfactual becomes 1989.
Because really, the odd thing is thatwhereas the communist regimes in
Europe collapsed in 89,and then in Russia itself,
the thing that didn't happen wasthe collapse of communism in China.
And I look back on that time when I wasworking in Oxford and traveling often

(50:00):
to Germany, I thought so much moreabout what was happening in Russia and
what was happening in Eastern Europe.
And I paid far too littleattention to Tiananmen Square.
But with the benefit of hindsight,Tiananmen Square is the really decisive
event that shapes our era because it's thefact that the CCP does all that economic
reform, brings people out of poverty,but it doesn't lose its grip on power.

(50:22):
It doesn't go the way ofthe Russian Communists.
That's actually the criticalhinge moment of [CROSSTALK].

Gorbachev was visiting at the same time in China during the time of
Tiananmen Square.
And of course, then the Chinese CommunistParty becomes obsessed with not doing what
Gorbachev did.

And I think they are still obsessed.
They're still obsessed.
When they talk about a China dream,I've realized, going recently to Beijing,
I was there in May, when Xi Jinpingtalks about the China dream,
he really means the China nightmare.
And the China nightmareis being Gorbachev,
is being the dissolution of the regime.

The ambition derives from fear, I believe.
The extreme ambition is relatedto the obsessive kind of fear of
losing the exclusive grip on power.
The party's exclusive grip of power.>> John H. Cochrane: You
are exactly right.
Russians have lost faith intheir own state religion.
People understood this was all nonsense.
And sothe ideological campaign makes sense and

(51:19):
also makes sense of whereChina is stuck right now.
There's a limit to how you can grow somuch while keeping power over people.
And in 1989, they realized,we gotta clamp down on power.
And they're realizing now, again,if we let them get any richer,
they won't tolerate this anymore.
And that's why their economy is stalling.
And that's the conundrum ofrunning a totalitarian regime.

(51:41):
If they grow wealthy in the tech sector, for example, or
in the tutoring sector, then they couldbe an alternative source of power.
So let's crack down on what's generatingeconomic growth, or the zero COVID policy.

But that means you crack down on growth.
You cannot have economic growth [LAUGH]unless you let people innovate and
create wealth and then they startto demand their representation.

This is why, sorry, this is why counterfactual history has got
a profound moral element,because you can't disassociate it.
You can't say que sera, sera,you have to actually act.
On a moral basis,you can't just sit back and
allow things to happenbecause you have a profound

(52:25):
responsibility to history andthe future to do something.

So we all believe in human agency on this platform.
We all regard human decisions, not justthe decisions of great leaders, but
also the decisions ofordinary Chinese farmers.

Cuz that's what history is.

Yeah, absolutely. >> Andrew Roberts
the decisions, hundreds of decisionstaken every day by billions of people.

But you observe this sort of like predestination versus free
will, an argument that our ancestors had.
And we're all on the side of free will.

Yes. >> John H. Cochrane
march of history thatwould happen everywhere.

Yeah, free will is one.

Every little decision, every business that gets made,
every innovation that gets made,those are all.
And they're all interacting amongstthe other billions of people every day
as well.

And I think that's a profoundly liberating concept.

I think so, too.
And just so
you know what kind of conversationshappen here at Hoover routinely,
I was with Jonathan Bew today, [LAUGH]talking about contingency in history, and
he brought up Machiavelli and virtue andthe idea that we do have agency.
And it's not just the handthat we're dealt or
the impersonal forces that we can.

He's also worked for four British prime ministers.
So if you don't believe in Machiavelli,then what the hell do you.
>> [LAUGH]>> Bill Whalen: So
our producer is waving two fingers,which means we have two minutes left.
So let's just quicklyget on the panel here.
What did we learn today?
HR what did you learn today?

Hey, I think that we learned about the value of history and
the importance of contingency in historyand how exciting contingency is,
and it can make historyaccessible to people.
I'm thinking of MacPherson's [LAUGH] book,which,
again, I should have boned upa little bit more on Saratoga.
I remember one of my advisors atUNC Chapel Hill, the fantastic historian,

(54:06):
Don Higginbotham.
When I finished my exams, he said,
congratulations, H.R., you now knowmore history than you will ever know.
>> [LAUGH]>> HR McMaster: [LAUGH] And so
I boned up on the wrong war.
But I had picked up an oldbook by John McPherson,
the great historian of the Civil War,called Drawn with the Sword.
And there are some really great essaysin there about contingency history,

(54:28):
much like along the same thing of Niall'sand Andrew's book, Virtual History.

Niall,
the Hoover Institution is about historyas it was always intended to be.
That's why we have an archive.
That's what this place is about.
And the fact that we can gather here andhave a conversation like this.
Yes, I know you're ready fordinner, but we're nearly done.
That's what this institution is about.
Thinking about historical decision making,thinking about it in terms not

(54:57):
only of the past, but about the presentand the future, and realizing that our
decisions as individuals as well as asleaders simply do shape the future.
We're not at the mercy of the vastimpersonal forces that the left has for so
long fantasized about.

John.

I will just advertise what I think my field of economics is,
is simply a way of organizingthe lessons of history about cause and
effect in human affairs.
And that's why I lovehanging out with historians.
What have I learned?
I think your last point was the bottomline, which I just want to celebrate.
That we are not part of an inexorablemovement gives us each opportunity and

(55:37):
responsibility.
Everything we do counts.
We might flap our wings and change theworld in a way that the Marxists deny us.
That's a deep, deep insight.
Thank you.

Well, Roberts, you get the last word.

Thank you.
I'm gonna take all this very,very much further down intellectually by
mentioning the movie Sliding Doorswith Gwyneth Paltrow.
And in that show,you see when the doors slide and
she doesn't catch her boyfriendin bed with her best friend,
you see the difference between whathappen, what nearly happens, what doesn't.

(56:14):
Every single day you can bifurcatewith decisions, decisions, decisions,
or luck, as in the Sliding Doors.
And the key thing is to remember thisconcept of individual responsibility.
As you say, it's soeasy to just assume that there are,
as T.S. Eliot called them,vast impersonal forces.

(56:37):
But also we know from our own lives,if you hadn't gone to that party,
you might not be married to your spouse.
If you hadn't gone to that orspice, you know though-
>> [LAUGH]
[LAUGH] Spicy spouse.

Spicy spouse, that makes it better and better, doesn't it?

Exactly, if you hadn't picked up the newspaper that day and
looked through the situation of and Colin,you might not be doing the job you do.
The whole thing is down to luck andchance and contingency,
which is why we've gotto be better people.

And I've learned something important.
We can actually do a show on time andhave a very hungry audience get to dinner.
So that's it forthis episode of GoodFellows.
I'd like to thank my colleagues fora great conversation.
>> [APPLAUSE]>> Bill Whalen: On behalf of my
colleagues, Niall Ferguson, John Cochrane,HR McMaster, the Lord Andrew Roberts,
if you can hear me out there,we appreciate your watching the show,

(57:29):
your support over the years.
Take care.
We'll see you soon.
>> [APPLAUSE]>> Presenter: If you enjoyed this show and
are interested in watching morecontent featuring HR McMaster,
watch Battlegrounds,also available at hoover.org.

>> Austin Powers (57:46):
Yeah, baby [LAUGH]

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