In June, 1941, Germany invaded the USSR. The Red Army simply collapsed in front of them. Stalin himself took days to recover enough to take charge. The Blitzkrieg forced the Soviets out of Moscow a thousand miles inside the USSSR.

All was panic.

But in July of 1941 when all the news was clearly about the end of the USSR, soon to be under the heel of the most anti-Communist group that ever lived, the Soviets appointed a committee that anywhere else would have seemed unbelievable.

A group was assigned to work out what the USSR would later demand at Yalta.

At the time any other government would have considered this insane. But for the Soviets, the war in the headlines was not The War. It was a PHASE of their class struggle.

Stalin later told Roosevelt that the war against the kulaks had been nastier and harder than the war against the Germans.

Logic told the Reds that this German phase of the war could end three general ways: 1) Total defeat, for which they were preparing a last stand in Siberia, and which, if they lost, would be continued by the Communist Party in other lands; 2) some kind of Brest-Litovsk negotiated peace; or 3) Victory.

So they ignored the newspapers and set up a committee for 3), just as they had prepared for 1) and 2). They were coordinating with their agents in the US and other governments for Yalta while the Germans were rolling over them in the field.

I really appreciated this political savvy when I was part of the Reagan Administration when it took over in 1981. It had not the vaguest idea what it should do once it won.

Among others thing, the Reagan Administration lost the 1982 election by compromising with the Democrats on the tax cuts which ended the recession. They were delayed a year, so their effect didn’t hit the economy until after 1982.

Recovery began instantly when the full series of tax cuts began to take effect in 1983. You can see it on the charts.

This is the kind of planning defeatists prevent. They put a thousand times the energy into saying ALL Is Lost that rational people put into “What if we WIN?”

So when I talk about penalizing our enemies by the monetary route, I am not blowing smoke. If I didn’t know it before 1981, I know it now: Arguing whether All Is Lost is sick, it is insane. Planning what to do with victory can decide whether that victory will be permanent.

I do not plan to allow you to turn victory into defeat as America is famous for doing: Winning the war and losing the peace.

What I am talking about is not wishful thinking, it is hard planning, so LISTEN.