At noon on Monday, Gu Biao borrowed a large pile of related periodicals and monographs from the school library, almost half of the trunk, and drove back to the Potomac Riverside villa he had just bought.

Then, I began to study behind closed doors, researching cutting-edge academic trends, preparing for Friday's presentation, and writing a draft outline of the courseware.

Georgetown University's library is very conscientious and can borrow 80% of the monographs required for the subject as long as you can get your student ID.

The remaining 20% of the content is too cold, and Gu Biao chose to buy it directly - Americans' textbooks are really expensive, and the price in 1981 was easily more than 100 US dollars for a random book. In order to prepare an academic report, Gu Biao spent 1,000 dollars at one time. (Mainly because he just arrived, he has zero foundation in Kissinger's research, and he has to buy everything.) ）

If a graduate student doesn't want to go through the hassle of queuing up for an appointment, it's not uncommon for him to spend thousands of dollars just on books every semester.

Some people may think that this is due to the good protection of intellectual property rights of US imperialism.

But in fact, most of the money in this is not earned by people who write books and lectures, but by a few specialized academic publishing houses.

The author may only get 20%, which is much lower than the share of the blackest online media in later generations, and he simply does not treat scholars as human beings.

For example, the most famous black-hearted Elsevier publishing house, even in 1981, monopolized 15% of the world's top academic papers, and by 2018 it had skyrocketed to one-third of the world's total. The rest are ACS and Iley in New Jersey, which also add up to 10%. (Elsevier is based in Amsterdam, but it's actually an American-controlled publishing house.)

In contrast, outside the United States, even the top academic publishers, such as Springer in Germany and Taylor Francis in the United Kingdom, are not so awesome.

In the final analysis, it is the people of the three major societies in the United States who occupy the right to define "I am qualified to define who is the most powerful in the world, who is the smartest and most cutting-edge in the world". If a top scholar doesn't publish in a journal controlled by their publisher, your work isn't advanced enough.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in history, the discourse power of the three major American societies skyrocketed, because his "right to define" was further improved.

Therefore, the United States seems to be a market economy, and any industry can be entered, but in some industries where the school valve can set thresholds, the monopoly of small circles is very obvious.

Whether it is a doctor, a lawyer, or an academic publisher, whenever there is a particularly expensive industry in the United States, it is mostly because people in the advanced circle can get stuck in the drug.

Make sure that who is the 'red coat' in the follow-up, who is not their own person, who is really worshipping the dock to share the spoils, who wants to mix in and flip the table to reduce the cost of the industry, and then arrange them clearly one by one.

Anyway, after the selection of layers of high-level intellectuals, there are only so many high-level intellectuals who can climb to the bottom of the drug circle, and they can always be divided and co-opted.

It's not the zombie tide of cheap labor.

……

Gu Biao personally experienced the darkness of the American academic monopoly, and complained frantically in his heart.

But it's limited to complaining, anyway, he is a rich man, and he doesn't want to change the status quo.

In fact, academic journals are so brutally expensive that they can help him sift through a group of poor but studious competitors.

Now he is standing in the position of the vested interests of the United States, and it is too late to cover up the social evils, and the more unfair the United States is, the better it will be for him to get his hands on it.

It seems that the professor arranged this topic because he himself is a master of secret diplomacy, so he wants to find out from the students how to maximize the advantages of secret diplomacy under the constraints of the existing system. ”

After reading the first few reviews, Gu Biao covered up the journal and came to a preliminary conclusion in his heart.

First of all, Kissinger is sincere in his studies, and he is also really testing Gu Biao, and there is no contradiction between the two.

Real cattle people are all examined in the process of doing daily real things, and they will not make a twisted nonsense.

Therefore, this achievement is indeed of practical value if it is done well.

Who knows, it is not only beneficial to the United States, but also to those countries that negotiate with the United States.

For example, the case of President Wilson/Secretary of State Lansing's involvement in the Treaty of Versailles, which Kissinger asked everyone to focus on this time, as well as many documents that were declassified 50 years later (deciphered in 1970), show this:

The general situation of the Paris Peace Conference and the Treaty of Versailles should be well known to Chinese readers, and there is not much water, anyway, it was a spoils conference that bullied Germany.

In the case materials given by Kissinger, two points are emphasized:

First of all, although the United States itself participated in the whole negotiation for half a year, in the end it did not sign the "Versailles Treaty" - President Wilson went to negotiate, and the negotiations were very difficult. But when he finally returned to China, he was stuck by Congress and voted to reject the visa.

Second, Secretary of State Lansing repeatedly discouraged President Wilson from personally participating in the negotiations, believing that the president's presence would reduce the room for manoeuvre and increase the probability of a breakdown.

And despite the lay president's insistence on going his own way and setting him up against Congress, Lansing tried to remedy the situation, and secretly made some concessions to the British and French through secret diplomacy. (At that time, Congress opposed the signing of the agreement, and the target was the conditions before the concession, if Britain and France did make concessions, Congress would have no excuse to obstruct, and the United States could sign)

Wilson felt that he had lost his face and international prestige, and insisted on not agreeing to sign the contract on the terms of the concession, and had to sign the contract in the original language he had brought back from Paris, which eventually led to a complete collapse.

This matter may be a little difficult for the layman to understand, but it can be roughly translated in human language like this: Wilson went to the vegetable market as a housekeeper to buy vegetables, negotiated 10 yuan a pound with the vegetable seller, and came back to the Congress to say: pay for it.

Congress said: It's too expensive, 9 yuan to buy, 10 yuan is not to be discussed!

Then Lan Xin, as the assistant of the housekeeper, secretly ran to the vegetable seller and said: My master told the housekeeper that only 9 yuan will buy 10 yuan without talking, or you will have to pay some more blood for 9 yuan.

As a result, the British and French vegetable sellers were all recognized by Lansing, and agreed to 9 yuan. When the housekeeper Wilson heard about it, he was furious: Didn't Lao Tzu negotiate 10 yuan, and you went to bargain and cut it into 9 yuan, this is not to hurt Lao Tzu's face. It seems that you, a housekeeper's assistant and the master of the family, are better than me, a genuine housekeeper! Lao Tzu does not sign! Lao Tzu must be true to the vegetable seller's word, and no one else is allowed to bargain twice!

In the final analysis, this is a process in which vegetable sellers are willing to reduce prices, but the handlers have to accept the price reduction for the sake of their own face.

However, in this matter, the second mediation of the butler's assistant Lansing, strictly speaking, could not be regarded as harming the interests of Britain and France - if he did not mediate, the United States would not sign it directly, and secretly mediated, although Britain and France lowered the price, but at least the business was done.

It's just that Lan Xin didn't expect to keep it secret not only from the outside world, but also from the master, and take care of the master's face.

However, Kissinger's emphasis on this case is clearly not intended to allow us to discuss the executive question of 'how to do the best job of secrecy in the next secret diplomacy'. That's too trivial and doesn't belong to the construction of the institutional level.

The tragedy he is talking about is a bit like Plato's lamentation of the system in The Death of Socrates...... That is, how to ensure the flexibility of follow-up after the secret diplomacy part is exposed, rather than taking sides with life or death, and how to make a second adjustment and repair within the scope of the constitution, rather than a direct vote. ”

After reading a lot of books and thinking hard, Gu Biao came up with such an experience.

Wilson's iniquity, a bit like Socrates, is the death of an unrealistic idealist.

What Kissinger wanted to think about was how to prevent this kind of person from crashing to death and give him a chance to faint and thin the mud.

Historically, before Socrates was sentenced to death by Athenian democracy, he actually had countless opportunities not to die, and in the end he forced himself to die - this was not black, but the most admired protégé Plato's own handwriting.

In The Death of Socrates, Plato described it this way: At first, Socrates was accused of "corrupting the Athenian youth and heresy."

Whether it is really corrupt or not, let's just talk about the trial process. The democratic trial system in ancient Athens was only two rounds of debate and voting, that is, the first round of the prosecution and defense first debated whether they were guilty or not, and then the 501-member group voted, and the side with more than 251 votes won.

If the first round concluded "not guilty", then there is no second round. If the first round is "guilty", there will be a second round of "sentencing debate".

That is, the prosecution and defense each say a punishment scale, which is generally the prosecution's scale and the defense's scale, and then the two sides argue and vote, and the sentence with more than 251 votes is established.

But there is also a very rigid aspect of this system, that is, the 501-member group is not allowed to propose a compromise sentence, and must only choose between the two options given by the prosecution and defense. And anything in between and dilute mud is not allowed under Athenian law.

It is not difficult for people with some thinking skills to find that even if the defense loses in the first round, as long as the punishment scale proposed in the second round of sentencing is more sincere, then the possibility of winning back is relatively large, because you realize your mistake. Even if the prisoners lost 300 votes in the first round, it is very common for many of them to win the sympathy of the 501-member group and get the sentencing opinions after giving in the second round.

And what was Socrates like when he died? In the first round he lost by 221 votes to 280, and he was judged to be indeed a "corrupt youth", which is not a huge difference.

It shows that there are 220 people who already feel that he should not be punished, and if he pulls 30 more people over in the second round, he will win. Even Plato recorded that among the 280 people, more than 30 people on the spot said: Socrates, you give in and pay a fine of 100 drachmas, and this matter is over, if you don't have money, there is a big tyrant here who is willing to help you pay 100 drachmas.

But Socrates chose to state that the sentence was, "Not only do I not deserve to be punished, because what I am saying is not heresy, but on the contrary I have enlightened the wisdom of you Athenians, so you should reward me with 100 drachmas."

The prosecution's sentencing request is "death penalty".

That is to say, let the group of 501 people choose between "a fine of 100" and "death penalty", most people will definitely choose "fine", they do not want to kill Socrates, as long as he relents, admits that he is a heresy, and eliminates his philosophical influence, these people's goal will be achieved.

However, if you choose between "reward 100" and "death penalty", the result immediately collapses, and 400 people choose "death penalty" because they feel that this Socrates is too arrogant, that is, the result of the "sentencing debate" is even more disparity than the "guilty debate", which can be called the only one in the history of Athens.

Then Socrates drank a cup of poison hemlock juice and killed himself.

In this, we can see how harmful the rigid practice of forcing one of the two to choose one or the other is "only allowed to vote, not to amend".

If the Athenian 501 had the right to make a compromise decision on their own, they would not have to choose between "reward 100" and "death penalty", and I believe they could get intermediate sentences such as "fine" and "exile".

If the US House of Representatives and the president still have the opportunity to temporarily revise and pull people when they vote, instead of completely fighting to the end, then it is possible that as far as the "Versailles Treaty" and as close as the "Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty" can be properly bridged.

The crux of Kissinger's question is how to add a layer of security and improve the efficiency of the secret efforts to fine-tune the either/or hard voting process, or to protect it from retaliation and face-saving in case it is exposed.