Unless the Slavs were taught a hard lesson by reality, they would never know pain. Just like now: only under pressure from Japan had the Soviet Union been forced to lift its restrictions on the Central Asia Highway.
Yosef said, "Comrade Litvinov, handle this matter personally. At the same time, we should discuss with East Africa the economic development along the Central Asia Highway between our two countries!"
Litvinov was currently the Soviet Union's foreign affairs chief. In the original course of history, Yosef should have replaced him this year, but changes in the European situation had instead secured his position even more firmly.
The core of his foreign policy was "Collective Security": the belief that Germany was the Soviet Union's principal threat, and that the Soviet Union had to establish a solid military-political alliance with the Western "democratic" nations to resist and deter Germany.
In his previous life, this idea had failed to take shape because Britain, France, and other nations were hostile toward Soviet ideology, while the Soviet Union had underestimated the German threat.
But now that Germany had directly gone to war with Britain and France, and the Soviet Union and Germany had always been clear enemies, Yosef believed that this foreign policy could still be carried out.
"Yes, Comrade Yosef. But what exactly would our economic cooperation with East Africa involve?"
Litvinov had always supported cooperation between the Soviet Union and East Africa, but Yosef was clearly not only compromising with East Africa over the Central Asia Highway, but also incorporating economic cooperation into the matter more openly. For a moment, Litvinov could not make head or tail of it.
At the mention of this topic, Yosef's expression visibly grew heavy.
"The Central Asia Highway now concerns not only East Africa's military aid to the Far