In the international organization, the american journal of political science, journal of politics and security studies, he is already launched on the second book project which is very ambitious which analyzes the role of Sensitive Information and secrecy in international organizations. He received his ph. D from ohio state in 2013 and as i previously mentioned, he was a Summer Research scholar under the title eight program here at the Cannon Institute in 2013. So with that ill turn the floor over to austin. Great. Thanks so much, will. Thanks also to all of you for coming out. It is great to be back here at the Wilson Center and i appreciate the support, the support of the Cold War International history project and shout out to victoria and cindy for all youve done to make it possible to come out here. So i want to start my talk about this book with a simple but i think profound question. Which is how have we as an International Community avoided world war iii. After suffering two catastrophic global conflicts in the first half of the 20th century, we have so far managed to avoid it. And the most common answer is that scholars have given is that it has something to do with the spread of democracy, with the emergence of International Law and Nuclear Weapons and destruction or the International System for much of the post war period of bipolarity. And this is provocative and interesting claim that a nonobvious reason for why weve avoided world war iii is secrecy. Factors like the spread of democracy or Nuclear Weapons are insufficient to prevent disagreements from the major powers of the International System. Smaller wars happen. And interests, opportunistic or defensive remain. And those clashes of interests invite military disputes and invite situations that could escalate to larger and larger scale of conflict. Furthermore limited war as an exercise is very difficult. It is very hard to restrain once self when an adversary may not respect that same form of restraint and limited war is sometimes messy. So in this book secret wars secrecy about military intervention could help keep those clashes of political interest that can emerge and take manifestation on the battlefield and kept those clashes from becoming larger wars. It is a specific use as i said. Hiding external military intervention so the focus is on covert forms of military intervention which ill talk about in more detail and the secrecy dynamics that surround it. And using secrecy allows governments, major powers to conceal as pecks of conflict which would invite reactions or reputational reactions or miscommunicate among the adversaries in a way that would make limited war difficult to maintain. And one of the things i developed in the book is that this process is supported by a surprising and interesting form of collusion. So what youll see later on in my discussion is a presentation of some of the Raw Materials which show the degree to which the United States for example was aware of covert or soviet or Chinese Military involvement in some of the most important wars of the 20th century and despite knowing that chose not to use that information as a political weapon and to stay quiets about that facet of the war. But one thing that this means is that part of how weve avoided world war iii has come at a steep price. What the book lays out doesnt wrestle with a ton but begins a conversation about this required outright deception, misleading disassembling to American Public and other publics. Misleading not about small trivial matters but who was killing whom during those conflicts and i might show you evidence about the truth of the covert side of say the kooern war or the vietnam war but it means the stories we tell about those wars is sometimes just not accurate and something to be wrestled with. So while the book is historical, i think it raises some questions that are of clear relevance for today in a world of cyber conflict for example, where the deniable of acts of aggression or coercion is at the center of debate about what to do about that form of conflict and escalation dynamics remain a challenge for actors that are working in that space. So what i want to cover today is just review some of the main ideas of the book which have two components, a sort of concept youll or theoretical arg and the historical finding and narrative that i draw out in the bulk of the book. And then im going to walk you through some of the archival evidence in part because it showcases some of the what the Wilson Center did for the project which is provide some of the raw material for the claims that i make in the book and also just because it is fun to look at stuff that used to be secret. That is part of where any research is enjoyable. So first i want to lay out the basic argument that i make in the book. I develop a limited war theory of secrecy. And i want to first step back and lay out the basics and define what the book is doing and talking about. So i ask two questions specifically in the book. First, why do governments, major powers inter veen militarily in an ongoing project, why do they do it covertly and overtly. And the second yes is why covert intervention might an adversary collude in keeping that intervention secret. And it is important to clarify, an important point today as much for the past, covertness is the intention to conceal the sponsors identity of a particular policy action such as military intervention. The intention is to keep it secret and not acknowledge it but that doesnt mean the secrecy is 100 e effective. To take an example from the book, the intervention in laos during the war was in american newspapers but when you read the declassified material from the program, they were bending over backwards and engaging in linguistic contortions not to acknowledge the american role in laos. That doesnt mean the role in laos was over in my definitional use of the term, it means it was more of an open secret than an effectively kept secret. And the book is framed by two conventional intuitions or scholarly explanations for what secrecy is doing during war. And one of them is the traditional Operational Security logic, loose lips sink ships. Wartime secrecy is a resource that once i use it at the expense of other side to protect ones forces in the field or engage in surprise military maneuvers. The other admonition in american context is to handle antiwar or sort of reluctance to go to war among the people. So if a leader thinks that the United States reputation or Regional Security interests required an intervention but you have a domestic public is a sleep at the wheel oro posed, secrecy might be a way to get around that. And think there is a lot of truth to both of these. And these logics especially the Operational Security one is consistent with and can accompany the logic im going to lay out. But i think theyre too simplistic at the expense of an adversary. I tell a story in the book that is interesting and certainly doesnt happen all of the time but is one that suggests there is something more complicated going on and also think there is something going on at the domestic level. The reactions are not always a force for restraint and they could be something that makes it very difficult and costly for leaders to act with restraint. So i develop a distinct logic for secrecy that is anchored in the process of fighting limited war. Especially in the modern era. So i use that answer of why what does secrecy do during war, it is a reason why if youre an adversary and it provides a good reason to stay quiet about it as well. So it supports that collusion logic. So boil down the argument in four points that will hopefully stick. Number one, is i start by arguing that large scale military conflict escalation of military conflicts which i define as a regional conventional conflict or above in the current industrialized warfare with Nuclear Weapons and even without them is ruinously destructive and all states all of the time or most states most the time try to avoid conflicts reaching that level. That is the sort of starting point of the argument and i date that particular reality or the perception to world war i which is Chapter Three of the book which kicks off the story that i tell. Secondly, i argue that control of escalation, not just the costliness of escalation in the modern era is very difficult. Modern kinds of politics make starting a controlling war, once you start a war, controlling the scope and scale and it is very difficult and i point to two reasons. The problem of hawks rather than doves. If you were following the news with india and pakistan last week, what specialists of south asia were saying is that part of the force that may have pushed the hand of india or pakistan at that different stages back and forth over kashmir was looking weak. It could be a significant problem if the military in pakistan, say, views a leaders decision as to weak, that could be the end of the government. So once the hostility start and people start dieing it is difrl it is difficult to control. It is difficult to know if would you like engage in limited war whether or not the other side is ready to do so as well. It takes two to tango and if the other side is not willing to play and it is not limited and it is unlimited in a way that very much at your disadvantage. So the book gets into something that hasnt been analyzed in the field of International Relations with as much care as it should be which is how do governments through behavior or words, mostly behavior, communicate their interest in keeping a conflict limited. So theyre willing to get involved with an intervention but want to keep it controlled and limited lets say. How do you communicate that to an adversary. The third point in the sort of argument is that covert methods of intervention address those two escalation control problems. The problems of the domestic hawks and the miscommunication. So if you intervene covertly, one of the things that does is it allows you to provide arms or military personnel to one of the sides of the conflict that you support without hume ill ating a major power on the other side. That is you dont do your intervention in a way creating domestic restraint for those reacting to your intervention. First of all, it helps retain escalation control even as you enter into and put your thumb on the scales of the conflict. The second mechanism is a little bit more subtle and that is that i think that adversaries appreciate that there are other their counterpart has three options in the modern system. They have dont intervene, overtly and covertly intervene as of now. When you witness the other siden gauging in covert intervention, that communicated something to you. Theyre willing to do more than nothing, the first option, but more restrained than doing the maximum. And that communicates a mix of resolve because it is more than nothing and restraint because it is something that is less provocative than the most extreme alternative. And ill show you some evidence in a second about how that interpretation helps support and reinforce and provide a useful signal that one is interested in controlling the scale and scope of war even as one intervenes. And in the theory chapter, if you do pick up a copy of the book, youll see i draw some parallels to every day life. I draw in some sociology and intuition was from irving golfman was a bizarre place to look for war dynamics but he talked about how the fluidity and the viscosity of social life is not pointing out flaws that other people have, it is looking the other way, it is the art of saving face and i think a lot of what my story about, covertness and secrecy is about is an appreciation for the way that giving both sides an opportunity to save face is one of the ways to avoid the titfortat cycle of escalation. The last point and then ill move on is one of the biproducts of the process that i develop in the book is some unexpected uses of secrecy. One is the collusion. If you are protecting your own leader from a dovish domestic reaction, there isnt a whole lot of reason why the other counterpart, the adversary, should keep a secret about the same covert intervention in they detect it. If they also share a interest in supporting interest but not having the conflict get out of control then there is a good reason to collude in keeping secret an aspect of war which might drive escalation wider. The od by product is the open secrecy. What i argue in the book is seeing your adversary after they are exposed to a certain extent, maintain that fiction they are not involved could become a sort of grammar or communicative meck six to say they want to keep this under control and keep a way out of the conflict so that provides a logic for why even open secrets could be useful. Okay. So in the book i develop a argument and make a historical sort of broad historical claim and a series of chapters devoted to individual conflicts. The coverage of the book starts with world war i, the end point is the u. S. Occupation of iraq about ten years ago is where i end it. World war i i make an argument but how the nature or the appreciation of how escalation works changed after world war i and communication became much more salient and a nonnuclear but conventional global scale conflict was graphically and tragically displayed in that conflict. So that sort of sets the wheels in motion for the development of new ways of intervening in war, which i talk about in the interwar period as a time of experimentation. When governments arent just either declaring war and acting in intervention or staying out but rather doing things without calling them war or doing things covertly. And that period also it showcases the first case study i look at which is the spanish civil war in the late 30s which was a series of interventions by italy, the Su Soviet Union and were actually participating in the war but which never owned their participation, called them volunteers or concealed them. That is the first chapter that analyzed those dynamics. I then pick up the pieces after world war ii and look the at korean war at the external intervention and the secrecy dynamics in that conflict. I have a chapter on the vietnam war. A chapter at the end of the cold war on soviet occupied afghanistan looking not only at the u. S. Covert assistance to afghan rebels but also covert soviet crossborder operations in pakistan for example, some lesser known facets of that war. And i have a short section on the u. S. Occupied iraq and the conclusion chapter. In the two key themes about the Overall Historical arc in these conflicts that i draw out which is that escalation control problems are recurrent issue in each of the conflicts and that most of these the important conflicts of the 20th century have this sort of covert aspect to it which is important to understand. Okay. So now i want to review in highlights from two of the chapters, show you some of the raw material that i work into the narratives in those case studies and im happy to talk about some of the other conflicts that ive discussed in the book but ill focus on the korean and vietnam war for today. So first the korean war. External interventions that i analyze in that conflict are the United States who intervened on behalf of south korea. China which had a it is hard to describe intervention. They called and relabelled the troops the peoples volunteers but they are were clearly visible Chinese Ground forces that entered in november 1950 and the soviet union which kept its role secret and sending pilots to fly the planes that engaged in the air war with the United States. And my focus today in the slides that ill show you is on the soviet role in the air war which is the origins of the book and the dissertation that it is based on and one of the most interesting aspects of it. So i first want to talk about soviet documents that came from the Wilson Center. And one documents we have access to is a translated report by the commander of the soviet air division sent engage in air role during the korean war. And that report included figures, internal report and not for public consumption and accounting purposes in a soviet military bureaucracy, it reported that the soviet air crews which entered in november 1950 and stayed active through the end of the war shot down 1,097 aircraft during the war, being american aircraft. Suffered 319 soviet aircraft lost and 110 pilots that were killed. The missions they were flying were to protect bridges that spanned the river that divides china from north korea. Airfields in that area of northern north korea and hydroelectric station in northern north korea. And so provides a sense of the scale. This is not just for a couple of weeks they flew a few flights. This is a sustained operation for a couple of years. And this included some of the material that includes messages about the logistics of doing a Covert Military intervention which i think are interesting. One of the documents that came from the Wilson Center collection was a cable that was sent from stalin to a military official zackaroff in november of 1950 and authorizing and it is in russian so those of it like me that cant read it, i had to had it translated by a Research Assistant but it gives instructions to provide and send troops with secret training manuals approved earlier in 1950 and to, quote, allow the war ministry to send personnel into china in soviet uniforms and change into chinese uniforms and the soviet insignia is to be removed before being sent to china. They would prevent they were the chinese and this was picked up on and noticed by american pilots and i read archive material that this plane was using world war ii era tactics which we didnt know the chinese had but the markings on the plane were north korean or clps. One of the other things that came up, another one from the Wilson Center is from the military commander in charge in northern north korea in september of 1950 to stalin about the initial proposal to send russian pilots who tell stalin and im glad this wasnt me having to do this, at the same time we consider it necessary to report that our pilots work in the skies over pyongyang will be discovered by u. S. Troops right after the first air combat because all of the control and command will be conducted by pilots in the russian language. So here they realize the tell, right. Like in poker. Their communication would be in the russian language and that would be detected by the United States and this is in september of 1950, before you the soviets and stalin made the decision to send pilots which is something they did in november. And funny enough this language issue is one of the sources of one of the funniest anecdotes. After the end of the cold war journalists tried to find veterans and interview them and they said the instructions to speak in chinese while flying combat missions was unrealistic until the first fight in the air when we fought our chinese commands and russian words too except for dirty language. And this language issue wasnt just a joking matter it was detected by the United States as anticipated in the cable so stalin. A lot of the material is still not declassified which is ridiculous to be honest. But a little bit of it snuck out and i found this in a collection of papers that was gathered by the National Security archive at g. W. In which it features an early National Security Agency Analysis of the proportion of the kmooun communication spoken in russian and korean that they were intercepted in the summer of 1952 and in the top row if you could see it, russian, that 90 of the chatter was in russian. 9 was in chinese and. 9 was in korean. So maybe this is a their estimate or inference is that 90 of the flights were being flown by soviet pilots. And one concern one might have is that this is something that was known among those who could hear signals basically. And i was surprised to see references to soviet participation and not just a little bit but significant amount in widely circulated intelligence assessments. This is a National Intelligence estimate from the summer of 52 where it is circulated throughout the Intelligence Community and the policy consumes of intelligence at the time which is attempting to assess and estimate the Community Capabilities in the korean war at the time. And this includes a discussion i need to see this in which the u. S. Assesses that the combat performance of the communist forces is significantly higher than we would expect unless soviet personnel are doing the flying and that including the real kicker, there is so extensive that a de facto air war exists between the u. N. And the ussr. So this was no isolated incident and a sustained air to air combat between the u. S. And soviet personnel at the beginning of the cold war. The cold war. Vietnam war is another chapter that i another conflict that i spend a chapter talking about. I spend all of my time talking about the 1965 to 1968 period of the vietnam war. In part because secrecy plays a different war before and after those periods. It plays an Important Role in the initial justification for the american entry into vietnam as part of the incident and subsequent congressional authorization and secrecy under nixon was a way for nixon to handle antiwar sentiment. But from 65 to 68 the problem was johnson feeling pressure from the right looking too soft in the face of North Vietnamese or vietcong aggression and aggression in southeast asia. So i look at the u. S. , soviet union china and i want to focus on their roles. The chinese sent over 100,000 military personnel into North Vietnam. Most were performing transit reconstruction, the places u. S. Bombed, railroads to ensure supplies get to North Vietnam and airfields but they sent people to protect those personnel. Antiaircraft artillery crews who shot down a bunch of american flight crews. Had a bunch of deadly encounters with the u. S. And one of the interesting things is american intelligence spent a lot of time thinking about what exactly are the chinese doing and what does it mean. So here in intelligence analysis from a state Department Intelligence analyst notes that the Chinese Communist have been in the war, this is a 1967 analysis, in the number of ways avoiding a larger confrontation with the United States. And have done so in a couple of different ways indicated their interest in keeping things limited. And that is, despite the fact that there were 30 to 50,000 troops in North Vietnam and working in construction and engineering roles and the antiaircraft artillery units including the chinese contingent are concerned with protecting the chinese troops which has the same effect as protecting North Vietnamese air defense and the chinese presence is sought to be more contribution toward Hanoi Defense than the willingness to get involved in the war in a real meaningful way. So we see that in analyzing the covert form and the limited scope of involvement as part of how the u. S. Was dividing chinese intentions. Now the soviet role was in surface air to Missile Systems they provides after they were bombing the North Vietnamese urban centers and other sites. The surfacetoair missiles were at the top of the line and very sophisticated and not able to be operated by local North Vietnamese for a period of months so in the interim the soviet provided personnel to operate those. And fire on and shoot down american planes. So ill show a couple of quick slides and then wrap up. First a special National Intelligence estimate in which the u. S. Anticipates before these were sent that if the soviet union were to provide sa2s, they would provide the soviet personnel in the guise of technicians which would allow the soviet union to preserve the option of ignoring any soviet casualties. This is the americans anticipating that deniability of soviet involvement would be part of the way that they could not react to american infliction of casualties. President ial daily briefs which were just de classified a few years ago have signals intercept intelligence which denotes, firing of sa2s and reporting on the death after we bombed the sites. Communication and intelligence indicates soviet and vietnamese personnel are jointly Manning Communications complex and involved in a missile activity in september 6th and concludes overall control is still in soviet hands. And then only two months later, a report on the president ial daily brief on North Vietnam notes that yesterdays air strike apparently cost soviet casualties and intercepts conversation refers to one killed and four wounded which in past intercepts was termed comrade which was reserved for soviet personnel. The overall conclusion from those two sort of conflicts is that this level of sustained casualties was something not publicly discussed but was a facet of the war that was an important facet and which one i think showcases the way in which secrecy dynamics were used to communicate war in this interesting way but at the same time led to a distorted understanding of what happens in these wars. So with that, id be happy to hear peoples comments or questions and well be happy to fill in the details of parts of book i wasnt able to discuss. So thanks for listening. Thank you. [ applause ] thanks so much, austin. I dont pretend to be an expert in this area. But my question, initially before we throw it open to the floor, is you talk about the importance of secrecy in terms of limiting the war. And my kind of general understanding is it is not only because there might have been a desire not to escalate, but you dont want to let the other side know what you know. And so that if you publicize that the soviets are very engaged and you highlight the fact that theyre all speaking in russian and that it is easy for to you listen to them, do you not necessarily tip the russians that they have to do a better job in trying to hide their communications. So from a secrecy and intelligence standpoint, is it better to just let your adversary engage in these kind of nonsecure communications and listen to them, or would you rather highlight them and then maybe face the consequences of suddenly not having access to these communications . Sure. Great question. So this is, i think, if i understand right, sort of the sources and methods problems that oftentimes in the u. S. Intelligence community and other intelligence services, and i think im glad you asked because that is the new research im doing on the second book project that focuses on this a lot. What i think youre pointing out there is more than one reason to stay quiet if you have detected the covert activity of a rival. And limited war dynamics are one. Another may be reinforcing one is and well lose that source of detection now or later if we go public with it. So i think that is definitely part of the story that helps support this process. And i think that that if you know that, and youre the covert intervener, i think it only makes it sort of more permissible for you to intervene in a way that is detectible because you know there are two reasons that the other side will keep quiet about it. So in the book i highlight the political rationale but oftentimes the two go hand in hand and the evidence i present tries to make the case that whether there are discussions of this, which are rare, it is in terms of the political register if we go public about this, what do we do about it. If we dont do something severe, were going to look really bad. I cant hear you. Were working on. Speak loudly. Thats better. The way you framed it makes it look like all of these powers or those engaging in covert warfare are doing so more or less on the same in the same Playing Field on the same level. And im just wondering if you look at in the book or in your current project at how different power or actors use covert warfare more or less effectively, is this affected by levels of technology or developments in technology, how is that changing at surveillance or social media and that kind of thing and then the level of degree of openness of a society and how that undermined the effectiveness. Sure. Great question. And id be the first to admit that there is definitely variation in the effectiveness and the feasibility of some of the issues that youre getting at. A variation among countries and the feasibility of conducting the operation tz. In the book i dont get into that a lot. I want to bracket the question, did it meet its goal and try to emphasize instead why do so in this mode of covertness and why support that in that collusive way. But i think some of the issues that you mentioned in your question, there is definitely differences in how this unfolds in open site democracies versus how this can unfold in closed societies. And in the the easiest way to illustrate that though i dont develop it that much in the book is the reality of how the u. S. Could engage in operations in vietnam for example was that they had a free media, they had people knocking on doors and cornering people at the bar in saigon and saying what is up with these reports about munitions being dropped in laos. And that just simply doesnt exist if the press pool is probed and the others, right. So there is a degree to which democracy is engaging this in the historical sort of perspective in the book had to accept the reality of a level of open secrecy that i think was less certain in the case of the closed society. It is a pretty obvious difference. And i think that does flow back to effectiveness. Eventually reporting on u. S. Operations is part of the reason for the sour on the conflict overall and led to greater and greater congressional restraints on what the white house could do. And there are other reasons why the soviets had failures in their covert interventions but unwanted exposure by the free press within the soviet union wasnt one of them. And so i think that is and it is sort of unfortunate from a effectiveness standpoint, the difference in those two types of governments. Thank you. Thank you, natalie bellsy. I kind of have a chicken in the egg problem. Or not problem, question. You stated as far as i understood at the beginning that Nuclear Threat has perhaps been overrated to some extent in explaining these type of conflicts. But i mean isnt there an incense of going hand in hand that it is in fact couldnt one argue that it is in fact the Nuclear Threat that forced soviets and americans and others to operate in this kind of way and do i understand the spanish civil war predated but we do have we have world war ii after world war i so the clearly destruction of world war i was not was then superceded 20 years later in the generation. So can we i guess my question is can we uncouple these given that relationship . That is a great question. I think my goal in the book is not to argue that Nuclear Weapons arent part of fundamentally a part of the story of why escalation is so unacceptable in the modern system but rather to show it is unnecessary to produce the the of escalation caution that i think can give rise to these secrecy dynamics. So i think it is a hand in hand thing. And i think once the threat of mutual annihilation is consummated after world war ii, that provides all the more reason to refine these techniques. But i think the spanish civil war is so interesting because there wasnt that risk. Nobody had Nuclear Technology at that point. In the rhetoric and the discourse of the cables among the capitals of europe is just about a conventional industrialized war in europe. It wasnt even necessarily a world war. And that was seen as so ruinous and to give experimentation and use of covert techniques and secrecy and weird volunteers language that it fostered. I dont think we disagree. I think we completely agree. My analytic point was to show that this isnt a unique species or product of the nuclear era and that nuclear republicaweapo reinforce this but are not necessary to produce it. The implication is that you could find a situation say in the middle east among two countries that do not share Nuclear Weapons and second strike capabilities where you might see a similar resort to covert techniques without that shared Nuclear Threat. Because they feel a regional war with conventional forces would be ruinous. So thats why as a scholar i didnt want my argument to be changed. I agree. I see a lot of hands up. Why dont we take corina and bill. I will try to be quicker. Start with corina in the back. Thank you very much. Thank you very much and i understand to start secret war in the past you need time gap to have archived open. But currently with new media, especially with crowd sourcing of reporting of the information on the ongoing conflicts was reports was being always seen members on the ground, monitors of european union. So what would be your recommendation or how do you see available to do search of russia and ukraine, lessons applied to new sources which available now . Bill here. And then this gentleman in front. You are keeping track of these . Thank you. Did you look at u. S. China Cooperation in the war in afghanistan . U. S. china in afghanistan . Yeah. Down in front, right here. Thanks very much. Look forward to reading the book. My question to you is, is there any sense in which covert intervention could actually signal weakness and invite escalation in the sense of if i intervene covertly, that would seem to suggest that im holding open the hope that i can sneak out without paying a political cost, right, i had a chance to engage in costly signaling and i didnt, right, which then could tempt the other side to, you know, one step up the escalatory ladder and theyre gone, and im curious what you think about that. Great. Those are great questions, all three of them. I will just work backwards. Great question on sort of a different interpretation of the signaling affect of this. I had a long a lot of discussion with my coauthor. We have had a separate article about just looking at the resolve signal that a covert intervention can send. And we had a lot of discussion about this in part through reviewer comments. We sort of landed on the side of it depends on what your Reference Point is. If before you witness this covert intervention you thought for various reasons the interveners interve interveners action was to stay out and you see covert intervention, you say, they are willing to put skin in the game, take on risk, you are right theyre not doing it in a way that invites maximum political cost but it invites more political cost than if they sat on their hands. If instead your baseline is they have othintervened, but here th are doing it covertly, they must not give a hoot about this particular one. I think its about track record, your assessment of their constraints. I want to make the case that it displays a mix of resolve and restraint. But i think a weakness signal is possible if you had a more extreme expectation. The question about u. S. China Cooperation in afghanistan. I saw hints of this but i did not get into a lot of depth. I would have loved to. My sense was that the u. S. And china had at least some coordination of we will be supporting the afghan rebels but were not going to necessarily do it in a synthesized way. I never saw any indication of it. If you look at the chapter, theres about four interventions, covert one before, covert soviet intervention before they inva invaded, the overt soviet intervention. I had to draw a line. I think its an interesting aspect. If you want to talk offline if you have historical nugget u. S want to share. Methods in the modern area of crowd sourcing, we dont have to wait as long. I think i agree the media environment is different. There are some real meaningful access to information which reduces the degree to which governments can bottle this up. I think your example of ukraine and russian involvement in ukraine is an example where that stuff is getting out faster than it used to. I think, yeah, it opens up opportunities to be able to diagnose and describe covert interventions earlier than we used to. They are made visible. Theres also a sort of affect that makes collusion tougher if you are unable as a reactor to that intervention, unable to affect the environment. It creates less interest or incentive to try to engage in that deception. I have been thinking about that practical consequence. You have to be careful with crowd sourced information. It hasnt been validated in the same way. The crowd sourcing is validation. That invites its own way of understanding whether something is accurate or not. Down in front here. I wonder if part of the problem isnt that covert intervention is really a part of continuum thats very hard to differentiate. You take the chinese pilots, you train them, you give them the planes and they take them back. Then you have your technicians sitting there fixing the planes for them and finally, you are talking about the unusual situations. You send somebody put them in the cockpit. The pilot. In the cockpit. The period that might have been interesting to look at is right before the outbreak of world war ii when, again, we were trying, for example, in asia, we and the british were trying to help the chinese within the limits of what we could do right. Under neutrality law. We had marines there. Again, in the other side is the germans before they invaded poland already supporting paramilitary groups which once they crossed the border opened up. So the question is, is sending a couple hundred pilots in really so different . Then we have the other issue, which is you are talking about very clear cases where there are two forces. Whats typically is the case, as just the thing with pakistan, pakistan says its a rogue group of terrorists, we cant control. India says, you can control it. Legally, of course, you are responsible to control it. I wonder if you dont have to put covert conflict into that context. Are there any other questions . I will take this question right here then. I was wondering about allies in covert intervention. You have some of these trilateral and the space gets messy and you need to coordinate. Even if you have allies and theyre not intervene, when do you let them in . That might be something you are working on right now in the second project. Great. Okay. The first set of comments, first on the spectrum, all but combat operations, is it really that different to sort of put them in the cockpit versus not . Two comments on that. Number one, i think this is part of what keeps people up at night, i imagine. I dont know. Im not part of the intel community. Part of what makes it difficult to establish what exactly whether that threshold has been crossed. The fact you can go up to it and not cross that threshold is not that easy to tell whether thats happened from afar. I see discussion of that. Are there advisory or combat operation . We think they are but were not sure. Some of that going on in some of the cases. Its a problem of observers and their inferences. Number two, i think one thing thats interesting that informed thinking about this is thomas shelling, shoutout to him in a discussion like this, shelling has a discussion in his sort of conce conceptualization of limited war, the lines are conventions, they dont have a lot of meaning or substantive difference. Detonate nuclear weapon, do the same with ice picks, a horribly graphic example. Its in our head that Nuclear Weapons are different. I think thats whats an interesting part of what my research showed is this combat versus noncombat roles is not an american obsession. It matters for legalagization l authorization in our country. So when the soviets do that in afghanistan, thats when intel reporting picks up on a covert intervention. It is and it isnt. It doesnt have practical affect. It has symbolic significance. You mentioned preworld war ii cases. Those are ones i would have looked at. I saw tidbits of what seemed like a covert intervention. I didnt have time. Its a great idea. I think you are right about this more than two actors. Hezbollah or the jem in south asia, you have this similar dynamic. I would say thats you get die n denying through an intermediary that you have some degree of control over. I think that does travel over. I think i will do an event which will do some of that experimentation of transporting it to that context. Question about allies, so, yeah, one small thing i wanted to figure out was which our allies in the korean war knew about soviet participation. For practical reasons, i had to not allow myself to not get bogged into. Coalition warfare raises Security Issues because if you allow that information to reach more actors, theres more chances of leaks. You get more input on whether you should do something about it. I think that would be an interesting spinoff of the project to look at differences in the degree to which coalition or noncoalition warfare is taking place and the feasibility of doing these things covertly or keeping secrets about others covert intervention. I think its a great idea. Right here. [ inaudible ] your comments about u. S. Involvement on the african continent now. It would seem to me that major states with large intelligence operations are aware of the efforts of the u. S. And people on the ground who see the u. S. Forces probably not concealed are aware theres an intervention. But where the conflict is secret is more often from the American People and the extent to which we are engaged until it reaches a Tipping Point of sorts where either additional troops have to be placed there or the public begins to ask about it. What are your comments on that . Great question. The question, in case anyone didnt hear, was about u. S. Special forces and other operations in africa right now and what is what are my comments on that . As i said early on, i have two foil es in the book. Secrecy, especially in a democracy, is useful when you have a public thats not enthusiastic about or actively opposed to intervention. Im building my story about these escalation domestic public as a source of escalation. I think these are classic cases of that other alternative reason. I think you are right that the sense of diplomat sorry, the public sensitivity related to Public Information is primary domestic u. S. Domestic public. The concern being it might turn into a political crisis or Something Like that. I dont think theres a lot of escalation stuff to worry about there. Theres no cold war anymore. At least we dont not yet anyway. In the african continent there isnt this kind of competing major powers, sort of polarization, which is what characterizes all the other conflicts i look at in my book. I dont think theres an escalation story going on there. I think its more a dmoomestic story and how secrecy does have different uses, especially for democracies. To my view would be its better to have an understanding of what those are and match them up better person to answer what that the question of its essentialness to that particular country. What i would say about little green men. First of all, i would distinguish between implausible and plausible deniability. One of the things i talk about in the book is that you dont even have to have plausible deny built and there can be use to not owning what you are doing. These are truly open secrets. Everybody with half a brain knows those are Russian Military personnel with some modifications. But that can have a diplomatic affect, maybe domestic of not owning it. At least why are they trying to ÷ it doesnt . Are they trying to number one, what different kinds of deniability. The modifications, as i show in the book, thats something that happens over and over but in these crusty old cases. He reached into that bag of tricks in this intervention in a way i think shows theres almost an Institutional Knowledge that probably he picked up on and has used. The last thing i have said when i have been asked about this particular issue is, we shouldnt overreact, i think, to the meaning of this kind of activity. In some ways i think that kind of operation is a reflection of weakness. I sometimes get this alarmist sense, this hybrid warfare, implausibility. We should be happy that were talking about these pretty modest incursions with limitations and no insignia. Thats better than some alternatives. I sometimes try to emphasize that this is an indication not necessarily of escalation caution but a caution of some kind. Thats well worth noting along with the other stuff. Thank you so much, austin. I want to again thank the title a program. I also want to again thank the Cold War International history project. The book is secret wars. Its available outside. Thanks so much for coming. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. [ applause ] you are watching a special edition of American History tv, airing weekdays. Tonight beginning at 8 00 eastern, programs on dwight d. Eisenhower. He is being remembered as see pre supreme allied commander. American history tv, now and over the weekend on cspan3. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. The deepest cause where we will find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the American People. Were going to talk about both of these sides of the story here. The tools, the techniques of slave owner power. We will also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. 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