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This August, the What the Hell crew brings you a summer reading series! Our first pick is Chip War, a book the NYT hailed as a cross between Mission Impossible and the China Syndrome. Nominally, this is the story of the semiconductor industry, but it is really a forecast of modern grand strategy, great power conflict, and the security of the global economy. It is no mistake that the book's author, Chris Miller, set out to write a book about military strategy – and then realized that military strategy today is defined by applying advanced chips to systems. Beyond just military however, advanced chips make the world as we know it work. They are in your iPhone, your dishwasher, your car… the list goes on. The clincher? Almost all of these highly technical chips are made in Taiwan – one of the most geopolitically tense areas in the world. Chris Miller is an Associate Professor of International History at Tufts University and a Jeane Kirkpatrick Visiting Fellow at AEI. He is also the co-director of the Fletcher School's Russia and Eurasia program and the director of the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In addition to Chip War, Miller's books include We Shall Be Masters: Russian Pivots to Asia from Peter the Great to Putin (Harvard University Press, 2021), Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia (University of North Carolina Press, 2018), and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (University of North Carolina Press, 2016). Chris is an alumnus of Harvard College and holds an MA and PhD from Yale.Download the transcript here.
Chris Miller is Associate Professor of International History at Tufts University, where his research focuses on technology, geopolitics, economics, international affairs, and Russia. He is author of Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology, a geopolitical history of the computer chip. He is the author of three other books on Russia, including Putinomics: Power and Money in Resurgent Russia; We Shall Be Masters: Russia's Pivots to East Asia from Peter the Great to Putin; and The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR. He has previously served as the Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale, a lecturer at the New Economic School in Moscow, a visiting researcher at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research associate at the Brookings Institution, and as a fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Transatlantic Academy. He received his PhD and MA from Yale University and his BA in history from Harvard University. For more information, see www.christophermiller.net.
What led to the remarkable fall of the Berlin Wall nearly thirty years ago and the collapse of the Soviet Union just two years later? What is the legacy and threat of communism as an ideology and a geo-political force? (2:12-1:01:10) In anticipation of the anniversary on November 9th, your hosts Scott Hargreaves and Dr Chris Berg along with historians Dr Richard Allsop and Dr Zac Gorman answer these questions as well as divulge their Berlin Wall themed culture picks including film Barbara set in East Germany, Stephane Courtois' The Black Book of Communism, a documentary on the Pope's role in overcoming communism and John Le Carre's classic The Spy Who Came In from the Cold (1:01:10-1:17:21). Show Notes: The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (The New Cold War History); Chris Miller https://www.amazon.com/Struggle-Save-Soviet-Economy-Gorbachev/dp/1469630176 Culture Picks: Barbara; Christian Petzold https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2178941/ The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression; Stephane Courtois https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/106169.The_Black_Book_of_Communism Liberating a Continent: John Paul II and the Fall of Communism; David Naglieri https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5461680/ The Spy Who Came In from the Cold; John Le Carre https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/19494.The_Spy_Who_Came_In_from_the_Cold
Putin's government is usually associated with incompetence and corruption. Yet, the Kremlin has managed to deploy power so ruthlessly at home and abroad in part because of its ability to muster economic resources. Miller traces the economic policies that underwrite Russia's expansive foreign policy and Putin's continued control over the country's political system.Joining us to discuss Putinomics is Chris Miller. Miller is a Fellow at FPRI’s Eurasia Program where he serves as the editor of the Baltic Bulletin. He is also the Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University. His is the author of The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR.
Putin's government is usually associated with incompetence and corruption. Yet, the Kremlin has managed to deploy power so ruthlessly at home and abroad in part because of its ability to muster economic resources. Miller traces the economic policies that underwrite Russia's expansive foreign policy and Putin's continued control over the country's political system.Joining us to discuss Putinomics is Chris Miller. Miller is a Fellow at FPRI’s Eurasia Program where he serves as the editor of the Baltic Bulletin. He is also the Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University. His is the author of The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR.
Guest: Chris Miller on The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR. The post Perestroika and the Chinese Model appeared first on The Eurasian Knot.
Guest: Chris Miller on The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR. The post Perestroika and the Chinese Model appeared first on SRB Podcast.
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic modernity (and with it prosperity) while the Communist Soviet Union was not? In his excellent book The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (UNC Press, 2016), Chris Miller offers a convincing explanation for the divergent paths of these two Marxist-Leninist powers. Miller shows that Mikhail Gorbachev knew well about the on-going Chinese experiment, and he modeled much of what he attempted to do on it. Yet, as Miller argues, Gorbachev faced much stiffer political and ideological opposition than the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, did. In the USSR, the Party was stronger and there were powerful institutional-economic interests standing in his way. In addition, Soviet socialism had “worked” for masses of ordinary citizens in a way that Chinese socialism had not; many “Soviet people” believed in the Soviet system and were very skeptical about the idea of adopting a new economic order. Caught between powerful elites and relatively satisfied regular folks, both of whom were beholden to the old ways, Gorbachev’s reforms didn’t really stand a chance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic modernity (and with it prosperity) while the Communist Soviet Union was not? In his excellent book The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (UNC Press, 2016), Chris Miller offers a convincing explanation for the divergent paths of these two Marxist-Leninist powers. Miller shows that Mikhail Gorbachev knew well about the on-going Chinese experiment, and he modeled much of what he attempted to do on it. Yet, as Miller argues, Gorbachev faced much stiffer political and ideological opposition than the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, did. In the USSR, the Party was stronger and there were powerful institutional-economic interests standing in his way. In addition, Soviet socialism had “worked” for masses of ordinary citizens in a way that Chinese socialism had not; many “Soviet people” believed in the Soviet system and were very skeptical about the idea of adopting a new economic order. Caught between powerful elites and relatively satisfied regular folks, both of whom were beholden to the old ways, Gorbachev’s reforms didn’t really stand a chance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic modernity (and with it prosperity) while the Communist Soviet Union was not? In his excellent book The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (UNC Press, 2016), Chris Miller offers a convincing explanation for the divergent paths of these two Marxist-Leninist powers. Miller shows that Mikhail Gorbachev knew well about the on-going Chinese experiment, and he modeled much of what he attempted to do on it. Yet, as Miller argues, Gorbachev faced much stiffer political and ideological opposition than the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, did. In the USSR, the Party was stronger and there were powerful institutional-economic interests standing in his way. In addition, Soviet socialism had “worked” for masses of ordinary citizens in a way that Chinese socialism had not; many “Soviet people” believed in the Soviet system and were very skeptical about the idea of adopting a new economic order. Caught between powerful elites and relatively satisfied regular folks, both of whom were beholden to the old ways, Gorbachev’s reforms didn’t really stand a chance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
One of the most interesting questions of modern history is this: Why is it that Communist China was able to make a successful transition to economic modernity (and with it prosperity) while the Communist Soviet Union was not? In his excellent book The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (UNC Press, 2016), Chris Miller offers a convincing explanation for the divergent paths of these two Marxist-Leninist powers. Miller shows that Mikhail Gorbachev knew well about the on-going Chinese experiment, and he modeled much of what he attempted to do on it. Yet, as Miller argues, Gorbachev faced much stiffer political and ideological opposition than the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, did. In the USSR, the Party was stronger and there were powerful institutional-economic interests standing in his way. In addition, Soviet socialism had “worked” for masses of ordinary citizens in a way that Chinese socialism had not; many “Soviet people” believed in the Soviet system and were very skeptical about the idea of adopting a new economic order. Caught between powerful elites and relatively satisfied regular folks, both of whom were beholden to the old ways, Gorbachev’s reforms didn’t really stand a chance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices