And so as a result, the only kinds of wars that the United States will fight now is what's called a small war. Because the United States is the only superpower left in the world, there's no more nuclear issues. And now we have a different kind of war called asymmetric warfare.
KAHANER: As I mentioned, you know, we found a new kind of warfare after World War II called blitzkrieg. Explain to me how the AK-47 did this as opposed to just guns or automatic weapons. SEABROOK: In your book, you say that the AK-47 changed the face of modern warfare as much as the atomic bomb did. It's called General Kalashnikov's Vodka and it has a picture of him on the bottle. It's already in Europe and the Middle East. And he also has started a line of vodka, which now will come to the United States next year. He's like a celebrity and he signs photographs and so forth and so on, because the Soviet Union would like to sell more weapons. KAHANER: As a citizen of the Soviet Union, he did it for the glory of the Motherland and did not make one ruble off the whole thing. SEABROOK: But Kalashnikov himself hasn't really received any money from making this oh-so-popular weapon. And that's why it's such an effective weapon for our modern warfare. It fires every time and you can carry a lot of bullets with you. Because it's light, it can carry so many bullets. Somewhere in the middle would be the perfect weapon for blitzkrieg and that weapon is the assault rifle, and that's what Mikhail Kalashnikov invented. On the other side of that you have the machine gun, which you can't really carry around but is so deadly. The only problem is that they don't go very far and they don't really penetrate very well. And the way they did it was they had these machine pistols. You hit the enemy very fast, very hard, and you overwhelm them. KAHANER: It was during World War II, and the Germans had invented an absolutely new form of warfare that no one had ever seen before called the blitzkrieg. SEABROOK: How did he come to invent this weapon? I repeat, I designed them to defend my country's borders.
MIKHAIL KALASHNIKOV (AK-47 Inventor): (Through translator) I never imagined my guns would be used in international conflicts. SEABROOK: The weapon's inventor, Mikhail Kalashnikov, has expressed mixed feelings about his creation. And because anybody can use it, you can have all different kinds of level of soldiers, including child soldiers, which is one of the sad outcomes of having this weapon available. It's very inexpensive, so anybody who feels like they want to start a war can start a war or continue a small war. You can put it under water and it will work every single time. KAHANER: It's so prevalent because it works. But first, explain why this machine gun is so prevalent. SEABROOK: We're going to talk about the history of the AK-47 and its place in popular culture. LARRY KAHANER (Author): Thanks for having me, Andrea. Joining us now is Larry Kahaner, author of "AK-47: The Weapon That Changed the Face of War." There are somewhere between 70 and 100 million of these machine guns in the world and they've been at the bloody center of almost every modern armed conflict: the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia.
It is the Automat Kalashnikova 1947, better known as the AK-47, and few weapons have achieved its level of recognition. JACKSON (Actor): (As Ordell Robbie) AK-47, the very best there is. ICE CUBE (Rapper): (Singing) Today I didn't have to use my AK. This weapon appears on the flags of Mozambique and Hezbollah, as well as the coat of arms of Burkina Faso. It does not store any personal data.Pop quiz. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
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