How The Deep Empire Eliminates Threats To Its Hegemony | O. Tunander & D. Pohlmann

## Preview & Introduction What emerges from this conversation is a sustained challenge to the comfortable story that history’s great political assassinations are isolated tragedies or the work of lone madmen. The discussion puts forward a systemic reading: a transnational, shadowy enforcement mechanism—what the participants call a “deep empire”—has, across decades, targeted leaders and movers who threatened established geopolitical arrangements. Rather than treating assassination as random violence, the conversation reframes it as a political technology: a way for entrenched interests to silence negotiators, disrupt détente, and preserve unequal economic and strategic orders. The stakes of that claim are high. If true, it shifts how we think about Cold War history, post‑colonial geopolitics, and the durability of Western hegemony into the present. The conversation refuses easy labels. It resists both paranoid overreach and bland dismissal. Instead, it marshals patterns—repeated methods, recurring personnel, and convergent motives—arguing that a cluster of violent events across Europe and beyond are intelligible as components of an informal system of control. This article follows that argument through five analytic prisms: which cases matter most, the specifics of one emblematic death, how clandestine networks may have operated, the role of unspoken political agreements in enabling lethal enforcement, and finally why contemporary politics seems bereft of leaders like the ones who were targeted. ## Which murders had the biggest impact? The conversation highlights a group of high‑profile killings and political removals whose effects rippled far beyond individual biographies. The list is familiar—national leaders, prominent international civil servants, and economic reformers whose programs threatened dominant strategic and commercial interests. But the focus is less on sensational detail and more on causal significance: which deaths or ousters meaningfully altered policy trajectories, derailed rapprochement efforts, or closed off economic openings to rivals. Several themes recur when assessing impact. First, the removal of negotiators who could bridge blocs—figures engaged in dialogues with the Soviet Union, the Non‑Aligned Movement, or the Global South—often translated directly into lost diplomatic opportunities. Second, leaders proposing new economic architectures (energy deals, alternative trade arrangements, or development finance outside established channels) posed concrete threats to incumbent business and state coalitions. Third, even political disruptions that stopped short of murder—parliamentary machinations, forced resignations, and covert sabotage—served the same strategic purpose by cleansing the policy landscape of rapprochement‑minded actors. The conversation insists that impact must be measured by what did not occur as much as by what did. A thwarted energy pact or a never‑realized diplomatic corridor can have consequences as profound as a single bullet. In that sense, the “biggest” murders are those that produced long‑term reconfigurations: the elimination of mediating voices, the chilling of political debate, and the preservation of geostrategic hierarchies unfriendly to decolonizing or multipolar projects. ## The mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld The killing—or death under suspicious circumstances—of a prominent international civil servant is treated in the discussion as emblematic of the larger pattern. The episode under review combines anomalous forensic traces, contested witness testimony, and a geopolitically fraught theater: a UN plane downed over a region of Cold War proxy violence. What stands out in this exchange is how procedural irregularities and selective handling of evidence produce a narrative gap that invites scrutiny. Participants point to multiple unsettling details: eyewitness reports of an attacking aircraft, the survival and then unexplained death of a survivor who might have been able to testify, manipulated photographs, and allegations that a wound inconsistent with pure trauma was present on the body. They also emphasize the symbolic warning contained in an earlier episode in which a high‑profile mediator had reportedly been seated beside an admitted assassin at a state dinner—an episode that, in the conversation’s reading, reads like a message to anyone contemplating policies hostile to certain interests. Taken together, these elements are meant to indicate more than mere incompetence. The exchange maps a plausible causal chain in which local proxy forces, rogue special‑operations elements, and intelligence actors could intersect to produce a deniable execution. The significance, again, is political: the sudden removal of an internationally respected mediator halted specific UN initiatives and sent a chilling signal to others engaged in conflict resolution in zones where great power and settler‑colonial interests intersected. ## Are secret networks eliminating the "peace faction"? 00:48: 04 The lethal nature of unwritten political agreements One of the conversation’s central claims is that the violence did not occur in a vacuum but was embedded in an ecosystem: intelligence services, ex‑wartime operatives, paramilitary networks, and informal liaisons between state actors and criminal or semi‑official forces. This ecosystem, the discussion contends, functioned as an enforcement arm for an unwritten set of political agreements—rules about which agendas were permissible within a contested global order. Several features of this ecosystem are emphasized. First, personnel recycling: actors with wartime or paramilitary backgrounds were repurposed by postwar intelligence agencies, creating a pool of operatives with plausible deniability and specialized methods. Second, transnational collaboration: networks linked operatives across borders—European ex‑collaborationists, Middle Eastern militants, and Western clandestine services—producing a web that could be activated where necessary. Third, plausible deniability was institutionalized: deliberate obfuscation of evidence, selective suppression of witness testimony, and the compartmentalization of files meant operations could proceed without legal accountability. The conversation also interrogates the moral economics of such arrangements. In a world where strategic competition and the protection of privileged access to resources matter, informal enforcement mechanisms can be rationalized as necessary by certain policymakers. That rationalization typically rests on a belief that conventional democratic channels are inadequate to produce the desired security outcomes. The discussion pushes back on that logic by underscoring the long‑term costs: delegitimization of institutions, erosion of rule of law, and the normalization of lethal political intervention as policy. A related thread concerns the “lethal nature of unwritten political agreements.” The exchange argues that beyond formal alliances, there exists a set of tacit understandings—about spheres of influence, acceptable economic relationships, and the bounds of neutrality—that were guarded with unusual zeal. When political actors breached these unspoken norms—by engaging the Soviet bloc economically, attempting to forge independent development finance, or mediating conflicts in ways that threatened client states—they risked being excluded, marginalized, or, in extreme cases, removed through covert violence. Thus, murder and sabotage were not random; they were instruments of enforcement for an international status quo that required policing. ## Why are there no leaders like Olof Palme today? The conversation concludes with a reflection on contemporary political life and the relative absence of outwardly independent, outspoken leaders who push for bridging blocs and alternative economic ties. Multiple explanations are offered, but the overarching claim is structural: the institutional, economic, and

How The Deep Empire Eliminates Threats To Its Hegemony Is it a coincidence that every influential Swedish leader on the world stage—Bernadotte, Hammarskjöld, Palme—was assassinated? What if these aren't just tragic accidents, but evidence of a hidden system? We investigate the disturbing pattern of political murders targeting European figures who dared to work for peace. Today I’m talking again to Dr. Ola Tunander and Dirk Pohlmann. Dr. Tunander is an emeritus Professor of the Norwegian Peace Research Institute Oslo and Mr. Polmann is a german author and documentary film maker. I have talked to both of them separately before, but tonight we want to do a panel on the political murders in Europe throughout the Cold War and into the Unipolar Moment when people who worked for Peace and a political rapprochement with the East and the global South just died. Together, we trace the shadowy links between these deaths, uncovering a world of deep state networks, Nazi assassins repurposed by Western intelligence, and the brutal enforcement of an empire's unwritten rules. We explore why challenging the colonial order or building economic bridges to the East became a death sentence. Links: Ola Tunander’s 4 part series on the Olof Palme murder: https://olatunander.substack.com/p /the-killing-of-pm-olof-palme-part https://olatunander.substack.com/p/the-killing-of-pm-olof-palme- part-698 https://olatunander.substack.com/p/the-killing-of-pm-olof-palme-part-7ae https://olatunander.substack.com/p/the-killing-of-pm-olof-palme-part-661 Dirk Pohlmann's filmography: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0688383/ Neutrality Studies substack: https://pascallottaz.substack.com Goods Store: https://neutralitystudies-shop.fourthwall.com Timestamps: 00:00:00 Preview & Introduction 00:03:49 Who else should be on the list of assassinations? 00:05:35 Which murders had the biggest impact? 00:11:04 An overt threat: Dining with an assassin 00:21:38 The mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld 00:27:56 Why was Hammarskjöld so controversial? 00:34:03 Are secret networks eliminating the "peace faction"? 00:48: 04 The lethal nature of unwritten political agreements 00:57:13 The deep empire and its violent structures 01:04:40 Why are there no leaders like Olof Palme today? 01:08:06 Outro & Further Resources #Dirk Pohlmann That was striking to me when I first heard it. You’re dealing here with areas that are, in reality, life- and-death decisions for the empires. And you can’t go to court and sue Helmut Schmidt for doing that, or sue Herrhausen for doing that. You need executive action on these things. And this is what we’re looking at with these murders. #Pascal -- 1 of 18 -- Hello, everybody. This is Pascal Lottaz from Neutrality Studies, and today I'm talking again with Dr. Ola Tunander and Dirk Pohlmann. Dr. Tunander is an emeritus professor at the Norwegian Peace Research Institute in Oslo, and Mr. Pohlmann is a German author and documentary filmmaker. I've talked to both of them separately before, but tonight we want to do a panel on the political murders in Europe throughout the Cold War and into the unipolar moment, when people who worked for peace and for political rapprochement with the East and the Global South just died. Ola, Dirk, welcome back. #Ola Tunander In Sweden, we had a talk last year about these political murders, particularly about Olof Palme, the Swedish prime minister who was shot on the street. I realized that Sweden has actually had three significant people on the international scene. The first was Folke Bernadotte, who dealt with the Palestinian-Israeli issue. He represented the UN and divided the territory between the Palestinians and the Israelis, more or less equally. The second was Dag Hammarskjöld, who was secretary- general of the United Nations. He was shot down in Ndola, on the border between Congo and what was then Northern Rhodesia. And then it was Olof Palme. So every Swedish leader who has had some significance on the global scene has been shot. And that’s, you know, not what you learn in political science, so to speak. If you’re a little bit critical, you actually get shot. And then I thought, you look at others—Aldo Moro, for example, the obvious case, Kennedy, and so on—they were all shot. And then you try to figure out who is organizing this, and you see that there is a system, so to speak. It’s the same people, more or less, behind all these murders. They even tried to kill Charles de Gaulle, you know. #Pascal A lot of people died and were attacked. But the danger we’re running is that we might start seeing patterns where it’s really just coincidence at work. Actually, Edward Snowden warned about that recently. But very importantly, Dirk, in our last conversation, pointed out: look, if all the coincidences fall into the same category, then it ceases to be a coincidence. And Dirk, can you maybe add which other names you think we should include in this group of Europeans who ended up dead, cutting short all these efforts toward reconciliation? #Dirk Pohlmann Yes, I think we should definitely have a short conversation about Enrico Mattei. We stopped at that in our last conversation. For me, it was striking how much this case resembles Herrhausen—it’s very, very similar in structure. And it’s correct to say there’s also Aldo Moro, whom we have to talk about; there’s another connection there. I think we should look at the patterns, because, for example, I would add another case: Helmut Schmidt, who wasn’t killed, but was taken out of his job as chancellor of Germany in parliament. -- 2 of 18 -- That has a strong resemblance to what happened with Alfred Herrhausen and Enrico Mattei, because all of them were starting to deal, in a big way—really the biggest way—with the Soviet Union on oil and gas. So that’s another instance. And regarding the danger of conspiracy theories—yes, that’s always there. But we’re reminded very often that nobody should think this will go unnoticed if it looks close to a conspiracy. On the contrary, it’s not about conspiracy theories; it’s about understanding that there’s a structure behind it. It’s important we don’t forget that. So it’s not just Scylla—it’s Scylla and Charybdis. We have to steer between those two dangers. #Pascal Absolutely. Ola, when you look at these three Swedes who died, and also the other political deaths— and maybe even the sabotages—who do you think should be highlighted the most to understand the level at which these political murders affected the continent? #Ola Tunander I think you have to go back to that. For example, there was this British MI5 guy, Peter Wright, who wrote a book that Margaret Thatcher actually tried to stop. In that book, he described preparations for killings that were being done by the CIA at the time. He wrote that he had visited Angleton, the head of counter-espionage, and Bill Harvey at Langley, at the CIA. What they were focused on was building a pool of assassins—that was their main concern. And Peter Wright said that in Britain, “we don’t do that anymore,” which was probably not true. But still, that’s what he wrote, that’s what he said. But he proposed the French—the French way, you could say—because they were very much into assassinations. They had tried to kill de Gaulle a couple of times, and the same people were actually involved in the Kennedy case. One of the top assassins who had gone after de Gaulle happened to be in Dallas the same day Kennedy was shot. They put him on a plane to Mexico City afterward, which made de Gaulle decide not to go to Mexico City, even though he’d been invited. He canceled his trip because this—well, I’ve forgotten the name now—this man was going there, and de Gaulle didn’t want to be in the same city, even though Mexico City is a pretty big place. #Dirk Pohlmann I’d like to add that de Gaulle himself noticed the similarity. He gave a very interesting short talk about the Kennedy murder—very concise, very precise—and he said it was the same people. He described how they took this communist, Lee Harvey Oswald, who was a communist and wasn’t a communist, and he laid out the whole scene. What we now consider a conspiracy theory—if you look it up on Wikipedia—he described that. It’s in a book by Alain Peyrefitte, who was his media manager, and it’s never been translated from French into another language. -- 3 of 18 -- But it was David Talbot who wrote an article about that and quoted it. That’s very interesting. So de Gaulle himself had the same opinion—that the people who killed Kennedy were the ones who had tried to kill him. And there’s another instance, which leads us a bit astray now, but not really, because it’s very interesting. While de Gaulle wanted to talk with Adenauer about the possibility of a European coup—a combined defense policy where the Germans would have access to French nuclear weapons—at the same time, Reinhard Gehlen, the chief of the BND at the time, was really an American asset. The BND was just renamed from the Gehlen Organization of the CIA into the BND—they just switched the name. So he was hiding the would‑be assassins who had been sentenced to death in France for the attempt on de Gaulle—two generals, Raoul Salan and another whose name I’ve forgotten. They were hiding in a German paratrooper barracks near the talks, and Gehlen made sure that de Gaulle found out about it. So, for de Gaulle, it wasn’t clear whether Adenauer was behind it or if someone was trying to sabotage the talks—which is probably the case. You see, this all leads one to... it’s connected and not connected, but still connected in the sense that it can be used in secret policies. #Pascal And I should add that Ola just published a four-part series on the murder of Olof Palme. In the fourth part, you describe how some of these people were very openly threatened. You tell the story of a scene where, I think it was Dag Hammarskjöld—not Olof Palme—who was invited to Israel and was forced to sit right next to an assassin, right? Could you describe that scene? #Ola Tunander Yeah, yeah. No, that’s—I mean, first I heard it from a Swedish journalist, an ambassador to Israel, actually. And then I read it in—I think it was, I’ve forgotten the name—a professor in Uppsala who had written a book that mentioned it. But the point was that Dag Hammarskjöld, I think it was in 1951 or 1958, was invited by David Ben-Gurion to what you could call his summer house or something like that. And he was seated next to a man he didn’t know at the dinner table. Afterwards, he asked his assistant—General Horn, I think—and he said, “That man was Joshua Cohen. He was the one who held the gun that shot Folke Bernadotte, the former Swedish UN representative.” So Ben-Gurion was basically telling Hammarskjöld that if he did something against them, he would meet the same fate—he would also be shot. #Pascal Folke Bernadotte was shot by this person—by this Israeli terrorist who was recognized as such. Okay, what was he? Sorry, sorry. Who was the guy? -- 4 of 18 -- #Ola Tunander He was an Israeli terrorist and belonged to the—uh, to the Shamir group, I think. But then he became a bodyguard for the prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. So, you know, when you talk about terrorists in this case, it goes all the way to the top. #Pascal I mean, it flows back to how Israel—well, not Israel, sorry—how Zionist groups were already using terrorism in the 1920s, even murdering British citizens in the Mandate of Palestine. It all goes that way. But when we take that forward... #Dirk Pohlmann I think I'd like to add something for people who aren’t familiar with this, because I always notice that when we talk, we assume everyone already knows a lot—and that’s a mistake. If I tell something to my children, they don’t know. So, for example, Folke Bernadotte—it’s important to understand that he was a member of the Swedish royal family, very high up in society. And it’s also important to know that during World War II, he saved abou