Sergey Radchenko’s book, To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Bid for Global Power, is a masterwork! In my mind, it’s in pole position for best book of 2025. Sergey takes you into the mind of Soviet and Chinese leaders as they wrestle for global power and recognition, leaving you amused, inspired, and horrified by the small-mindedness of the people who had the power to start World War III.
We get amazing vignettes like Liu Shaoqi making fun of the Americans for eating ice cream in trenches, Khrushchev pinning red stars on Eisenhower’s grandkids, and Brezhnev and Andropov offering to dig up dirt on senators to help save Nixon from Watergate.
Sergey earns your trust in this book, acknowledging what we can and can’t know. He leaves you with a new lens to understand the Cold War and the new US-China rivalry — namely, the overwhelming preoccupation with global prestige by Cold War leaders.
In this interview, we discuss…
- Why legitimacy matters in international politics,
- Stalin’s colonial ambitions and Truman’s strategy of containment,
- Sino-Soviet relations during the Stalin era and beyond,
- The history of nuclear blackmail, starting with the 1956 Suez crisis,
- Why Khrushchev couldn’t save the Soviet economy.
Co-hosting today is Jon Sine of the Cogitations substack.
Outro music: Виталий Марков "Главное, ребята, сердцем не стареть" (YouTube Link)
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