Patrick Link > Recent Status Updates

Enjoying the build-up to the inevitable fall.

The economic hits the US took to keep its political empire in the 60s and 70s were steep when considering this book and Judith Stein's Pivotal Decade. The trilateral deal Johnson made in 1967 with UK and West German in chapter six is an enlightening example of US frustrations on economic issues being sidelined by political and military ones.

So Gavin hammers again and again that US officials were dead set in thinking that the cause of balance-of-payments problems were due to NATO commitments, particularly ground forces in West Germany. But there is one throw-away line that says many pf the French thought it was an overly expansive domestic budget. Kennedy and non-Treasury types in the admin weren't wedded to keeping the dollar as the one world reserve.

Fascinating review of political economy in the Mid-Cold War.

International Anti-Communist groups? Sounds like the Hole-in-the-Head Gang.

I like how the Japanese were surprised by the M3 Grant tanks on the 1000ft, hills at Nungshigum.

Easy read but the chapter on economy was a bit too apologetic for businesses. The next chapter has a three-and-a-half page explainer for the Cold War that might be the most efficient I've read.

Already can't downplay enough how destructive to labor the change was.