back to indexStephen Kotkin: Putin, Stalin, Hitler, Zelenskyy, and War in Ukraine | Lex Fridman Podcast #289
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The following is a conversation with Stephen Kotkin,
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his second time on the podcast.
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Stephen is one of the greatest historians of all time,
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specializing in 20th and 21st century history
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of Russia and Eastern Europe.
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And he has written what is widely considered
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to be the definitive biography of Stalin in three volumes,
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two of which have been published.
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And the third focused on World War II
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and the years after he is in the midst of writing now.
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This conversation includes a response
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to my previous podcast episode with Oliver Stone
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that was focused on Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.
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Stephen provides a hard hitting criticism of Putin
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and the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
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weighed and contextualized deeply
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in the complex geopolitics and history of our world,
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all with an intensity and rigor,
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but also wit and humor that makes Stephen
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one of my favorite human beings.
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Please also allow me to mention something
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that has been apparent and has weighed heavy
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on my heart and mind.
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This conversation with Stephen Kotkin
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makes it more dangerous for me to travel in Russia.
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The previous conversation with Oliver Stone
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makes it more dangerous for me to travel in Ukraine.
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This makes me sad, but it is the way of the world.
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I will nevertheless travel to both Ukraine and Russia.
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I need to once again see with my own eyes
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the land of my ancestors, where they suffered but flourished
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and eventually gave birth to say the old me.
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I need to hear directly the pain, anger and hope
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from both Ukrainians and Russians.
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I won't give details to my travel plans
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in terms of location and timing,
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but the trip is very soon.
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Whatever happens, I'm truly grateful for every day I'm alive
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and I hope to spend each such day
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adding a bit of love to the world.
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This is the Lex Friedman podcast.
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And now, dear friends, here's Stephen Kotkin.
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You are one of the great historians of our time
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specializing in the man, the leader,
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the historical figure of Stalin.
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So let me ask a challenging question.
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If you can perhaps think about the echo of 80 years
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between Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Putin,
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what are the similarities and differences
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between the man and the historical figure,
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the historical trajectory of Stalin and Putin?
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It's very nice to be here again with you.
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It's been a while.
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Yeah, good to see you as well.
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You're looking good.
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I see this podcast stuff is doing you right.
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So we can't really put very easily Vladimir Putin
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in the same sentence with Joseph Stalin.
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Stalin is a singular figure
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and his category is really small.
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Hitler, Mao, that's really about it.
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And even in that category, Stalin is the dominant figure,
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both by how long he was in power
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and also by the amount of power,
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the military industrial complex he helped build
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So Putin can't be compared to that.
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However, Putin's in the same building as Stalin.
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He uses some of the same offices as Stalin used.
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On some of those television broadcasts
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that we see of Putin at meetings
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and Putin inside the Kremlin,
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Stalin used to sit in those rooms
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and hold meetings in those rooms.
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That's the Imperial Senate
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built by Catherine the Great in 18th century building.
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Built by Catherine the Great in 18th century building
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inside the Kremlin.
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It's a dome building and you can see it on the panorama,
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the top of the building,
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at least you can see it on the panorama
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when you look over the Kremlin wall
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from many sites inside Moscow.
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So if he's not comparable to Stalin,
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he still works, as I said, in those same buildings,
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those same offices, partly.
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And so therefore, he's got some of the problems
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which was managing Russian power in the world
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from a position of weakness vis a vis the West,
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but from an ambition, a grandiosity, in fact.
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And so this combination of weakness and grandeur, right?
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Of not being as strong as the West,
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but aspiring to be as great or greater than the West.
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That's the dilemma of Russian history
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for the past many centuries.
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It was the dilemma for the Tsars.
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It was the dilemma for Peter the Great.
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It was the dilemma for Alexander.
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It was the dilemma for Stalin.
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And it's the dilemma for Putin.
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Russia is smaller now
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compared to when Stalin was in that Kremlin.
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It's got pushed back to borders
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almost the time of Peter the Great.
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It's farther from the main European capitals now
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than any time since that 18th century.
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And the West has only grown stronger
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in that period of time.
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So the dilemma is greater than ever.
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The irony of being in that position,
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of sitting in the Kremlin,
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trying to manage Russian power in the world,
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trying to be a providential power,
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a country with a special mission in the world,
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a country which imagines itself to be a whole civilization
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and yet not having the capabilities
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to meet those aspirations
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and falling farther and farther behind the West.
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The irony of all of that is the attempted solutions
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put Russia in a worse place every single time.
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So you try to manage the gap with the West.
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You try to realize these aspirations.
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You try to raise your capabilities
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and you build a strong state.
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The quest to build a strong state
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and use coercive modernization
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to try somehow, if not to close the gap with the West,
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at least to manage it.
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And the result is different versions of personalist rule.
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So they don't build a strong state.
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They build a personal dictatorship.
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They build an autocracy.
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And moreover, that autocracy undertakes measures
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which then worsen the very geopolitical dilemma
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that gave rise to this personalist rule in the first place.
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And so I call this Russia's perpetual geopolitics.
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I've been writing about this for many, many years.
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What's important about this analysis
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is this is not a story of eternal Russian
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cultural proclivity to aggression, right?
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It's not something that's in the mother's milk.
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It's not something that can't be changed.
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Russia doesn't have an innate
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cultural tendency to aggression.
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It's a strategic choice
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to try to match the power of the West,
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which from Russia's vantage point is actually unmatchable,
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but it's a choice that's made again and again.
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And Putin has made this choice,
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just as Stalin made the choice, right?
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Stalin presided over the World War II victory,
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and then he lost the peace.
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After he died in 1953,
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there was, of course, other rulers who succeeded him.
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He was still the most important person in the country
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because they were trying to manage that system
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that he built, and more importantly,
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manage that growing gap with the West.
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By the time the 90s rolled around,
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former Soviet troops, now Russian troops,
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withdrew from all those advanced positions
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that they had achieved as a result
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of the World War II victory,
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and it was Napoleon in reverse.
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They went on the same roads,
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but not from Moscow back to Paris,
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but instead from Warsaw and from East Berlin
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and from Tallinn and Riga and all the other places
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of former Warsaw Pact and former Soviet republics
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in the Baltic region.
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They went back to Russia in retreat,
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and so Stalin, in the fullness of time, lost the peace.
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And Putin, in his own way, inheriting some of this,
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attempting to reverse it when, as I said,
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Russia was smaller, farther away, weaker,
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the West was bigger and stronger
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and had absorbed those former Warsaw Pact countries
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and Baltic states,
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because they voluntarily begged to join the West.
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The West didn't impose itself on them.
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It's a voluntary sphere of influence that the West conducts.
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And so that dilemma is where you can put Putin and Stalin
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in the same sentence,
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and the terrible outcome for Russia
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in the fullness of time also has echoes.
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But of course, Putin hasn't murdered 18 to 20 million people
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and the scale of his abilities to cause grief
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with the nuclear weapons aside is nothing like Stalin's.
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And so we have to be careful, right?
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Only Mao put bigger numbers on the board
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from a tragic point of view than Stalin.
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And numbers matter here,
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if we compare these singular figures.
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Yeah, Mao killed more people than Stalin
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because Mao had more people to kill.
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The most amazing thing about Mao
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is he watched Stalin do it.
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He watched Stalin collectivize agriculture
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and famine result.
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He watched Stalin impose this communist monopoly,
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and all of those people sent to prison
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or given a bullet in the back of the neck.
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He watched all of that,
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and then he did it again himself in China.
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Do you think he saw the human cost directly
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that when you say he saw,
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do you think he was focused on the policies
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or was he also aware distinctly as a human being
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of the human costs in the lives of peasants
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and in the lives of the working class and lives of the poor?
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I think the prima facie evidence
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is that he didn't value human life.
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Otherwise, I don't think after seeing
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the amount of lives that were taken
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in the Soviet experiment,
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he would have done something similar after that.
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I think the answer, Lex,
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is it's very hard to get inside Mao's head
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and figure out what he was really thinking.
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But if you just look at the results that happened,
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the policies that were undertaken
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and the consequences of them,
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you would have to conclude that there was,
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let's say, no value or little value placed on human life.
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Unfortunately, that's characteristic
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not only of communist dictators, right,
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of post communist dictators as well,
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but the scale of the horrors that they inflict,
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as horrific as they are, just can't compare.
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And so we're in a situation where Eurasia,
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that is to say the ancient civilizations of Eurasia,
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which would be Russia, Iran, China,
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all have some version of non democratic,
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illiberal autocratic regimes,
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and they're all pushing up against
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the greater power of the West in some form.
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Sometimes they coordinate their actions
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and sometimes they don't.
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But this is a very longstanding phenomenon, Lex,
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that predates Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping
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or the latest incarnation of the supreme leader in Iran.
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So we'll talk about this, I think,
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really powerful framework of five dimensions
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of authoritarian regimes that you've put together.
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But first, let's go to this Napoleon
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and reverse retreat from Warsaw back.
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Putin has called, from the perspective of Putin,
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this retreat, this collapse of Stalin
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is one of the great tragedies of that region, of Russia.
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Do you think there's a sense where as Putin sits now
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in power for 22 plus years,
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he really dreams of a return to the power,
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the influence, the land of Stalin?
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So while you said that they're not in the same place
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in terms of the numbers of people
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that suffer due to their regime,
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do you think he hopes to have the same power,
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the same influence for a nation
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that was in the 30s, in the 40s, in the 50s
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of the 20th century under Stalin?
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If he does, Lex, he's deluding himself.
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We don't know for sure.
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Very few people talk to him.
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Very few people have access to him.
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A handful of Western leaders have met with him
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for short periods of time.
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Those inside Russia barely meet with him.
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His own minions in the regime barely have FaceTime with him.
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We don't know exactly what he thinks.
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It could be that he has delusions
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of reconquering Russian influence,
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if not direct control over the territories that broke away,
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but it's not gonna happen.
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Let's talk a little bit about this guy, Nikolai Patrushev.
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Nikolai Patrushev is probably not well known
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to your listeners.
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He's the head of Russia's Security Council.
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And so you could probably call him the second most important
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or second most powerful man in Russia,
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certainly inside the regime.
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Arguably, Navalny is the second most important person
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in the country and Russia is the second most powerful man
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and we'll talk about that later, I'm sure.
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In terms of influence, yes.
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Yes, but Patrushev is a version of Putin's right hand man.
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And Patrushev has been giving interviews in the press.
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You probably saw the interview
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with Nizavisimaya Gazeta not that long ago.
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He writes also his own blog like interventions
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in the public sphere using the few channels that are left.
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And what's interesting about Patrushev,
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and this could well reflect similar thinking to Putin's,
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which is why I'm bringing this up,
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is that he's got this conspiratorial theory
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that the West has been on a forever campaign
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to destroy Russia,
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just like it destroyed the Soviet Union
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and that everything the West does
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is meant to dismember Russia
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and that Russia is fighting an existential battle
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And so for example, the CIA and the American government
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wanted to bring down the Soviet Union.
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Nevermind that the Bush administration,
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the first Bush, the father,
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was trying desperately to hold the Soviet Union together
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because they were afraid of the chaos that might ensue
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and the nukes that might get loose
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as a result of a Soviet collapse.
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And it wasn't until the very last moment
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where Bush decided, his administration decided
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to back those Republican leaders
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who were breaking away from Mikhail Gorbachev
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and the Soviet Union, right?
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So nevermind the empirics of it.
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Nevermind that Bill Clinton's administration
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following George Bush sent boatloads of money,
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Western taxpayer money to Russia.
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We don't know exactly how much
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because it came from different sources.
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People talk about how there was no Marshall Plan.
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It was tens of billions of dollars from various sources,
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from the IMF and other sources.
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And next it disappeared, it's gone.
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Just like the German money that went to Gorbachev
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for unification disappeared
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even before the Soviet collapsed.
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The money disappeared, but the West sent the money.
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So how was that a plot?
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And then you could go all the way, Obama's administration,
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George Bush trying to do business deals
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and reset the relations and Obama administration
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trying to reset the relations
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and doing nothing after the Georgian war
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and slapping Putin on the wrist,
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following the seizure force of Putin.
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And you could go on and you could go on
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all the way through the Trump administration
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telling Putin that he's right.
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Trump believes Putin and doesn't believe US intelligence
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about Russian efforts to interfere
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in American domestic politics.
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So despite all the empirics of it,
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you have Patrushev and likely Putin
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talking about this multi decade Western conspiracy
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to bring Russia down.
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At the same time as that's happening,
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the Germans are voluntarily increasing
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their dependence on Russian energy,
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voluntarily increasing their dependence on Russia.
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So here's the conspiracy to bring Russia down.
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The French who fantasize about themselves
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as a diplomatic superpower are constantly,
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the French leaders are constantly running to the Kremlin
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to ask what Russia needs,
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what concessions from the West Russia needs to be filled
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to feel respected again.
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The British provide all manner of money laundering
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and reputation laundering services
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for the whole Russian oligarchy,
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including the state officials who are looting the state
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and using the West British institutions
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to launder their money.
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So all of this is happening and yet Patrushev imagines
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this conspiracy to bring Russia down by the West.
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And so that's what we've got in the Kremlin again.
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Stalin had that same conspiratorial mentality of the West.
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Everything that happened in the world
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was part of a Western conspiracy
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directed against the Soviet Union
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and now directed against Russia.
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Even though the West is trying to appease,
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the West is offering its services,
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the West is trying to change Russia through investment
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in a positive way, but instead the West is what's changing.
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The West is becoming more corrupt.
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Western services are being corrupted
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by the relationship with Russia.
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So you have to ask yourself,
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who are these people in power in the Kremlin
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who imagine that while they're availing themselves
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of every service and every blandishment of the West,
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while they're availing themselves of this,
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that they're fighting a conspiracy by the West
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to bring them down.
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So this is what they call the Abyssinia in Russian,
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which is a term, as you know,
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that means those who are resentful,
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or you might call them the losers,
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the losers in the transition.
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So when the Soviet Union fell
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and there was a very substantial diminution
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in Russian power and influence in the world,
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a lot of people lost out.
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They weren't able to steal the property.
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They weren't able to loot the state in the 90s.
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And they were on the outside.
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They gradually came back in.
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They were the losers in the transition domestically.
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And for them, they wanted to reverse
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being on the losing side.
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And so they began to expropriate, to steal the money,
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steal the property from those first thieves
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who stole in the 90s.
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And the 2000s and on have been about restealing,
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taking the losers in the transition,
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taking the money from the winners
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and reversing this resentment, this loser status.
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Those are your Patrushevs and your Putins.
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But at the same time, this blows out
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to let's reverse the losses, being on the losing side,
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the roiling resentment
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at the decline of their power internationally.
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Let's try to reverse that too.
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So you have a profound psychological whole generation
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of people who are on the losing end domestically
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and reverse that domestically.
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That's what the Putin regime is about.
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Remember Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Yukos?
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Remember all the companies that are now owned
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by Putin cronies because they were taken away
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from whoever stole them in the first place.
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And now they're trying to do that on the international scale.
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It's one thing to put domestic opponents in jail.
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It's one thing to take away someone's property domestically,
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but you're not gonna reverse the power of the West
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with the diminished Russia that you have.
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And so that project, that Patrushev project,
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which we see him expressing again and again,
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he speaks about it publicly.
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It's not something that we need to go looking for,
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a quest, the secret, we can't find it.
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What are they thinking?
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It's right there in front of our face.
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And Putin has spoken the same way for a long time.
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People point to the 2007 speech
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at the Munich Security Conference
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that Putin delivered, and certainly your listeners
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could use a snippet or two of that,
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just like they could use a couple of quotes
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from Patrushev to contextualize what we're talking about.
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But it predates the 2007 Munich speech,
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the reaction to Ukraine's uprising in 2004,
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attempt to steal the election inside Ukraine,
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which the Ukrainian people rose up valiantly
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against and risked their lives and overturned, right?
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So there were public statements from Putin already back then,
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the statements about Khodorkovsky in 2003
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when he was arrested and expropriated.
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This is a longstanding deeply psychological issue,
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which is about managing Russian power in the world,
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as I was saying, the gap with the West,
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but has this further dimension of feeling like losers
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and wanting to reverse that, that's their life experience.
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So there's that resentment that fuels this narrative,
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fuels this geopolitics and internal policy.
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But so resentment is behind some of the worst things
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that have ever been done in human history.
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Hitler was probably fueled by resentment.
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So resentment is a really powerful force, yes.
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Just to maybe not push back,
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but to give fuller context on the West,
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you said there's a narrative from Putin's Russia
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that the West is somehow an enemy,
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you position everything against the West,
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but is there a degree and to what degree
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is the West willing to feed that narrative?
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That it's also convenient for the West to have an enemy.
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It seems like in the place, in the span,
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it seems like in geopolitics,
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having an enemy is useful for forming a narrative.
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Now, having an enemy for the basic respect of humanity
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is not good, but in terms of maintaining power,
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if you're a leader in a game of geopolitics,
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it seems to be good to have an enemy.
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It seems to be good to have something like a cold war.
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We can always point your finger and says,
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all our actions are fighting this evil,
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whatever that evil is.
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It could be like with George W. Bush, the war on terror.
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Terrorism is this evil.
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You can always point at something.
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So you've made it seem that the West is trying.
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There's a lot of forces within the West
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that are trying to reach out a friendly hand,
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trying to help, sending money, sending compassion,
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trying to sort of.
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Trying to integrate Russia into a global institution.
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Which was a longstanding multi decade effort
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across multiple countries
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and multiple administrations in those countries.
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But is there also warmongers on the West?
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Of course you're right about that.
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But let's put it this way.
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People talk about the cold war
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and they usually looking to assign blame for the cold war
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as if it's some kind of mistake, a misunderstanding,
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or a search for an enemy that was convenient
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to rally domestic politics.
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So Lex, there's a coup in Czechoslovakia
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and somebody installs a communist regime in February 1948.
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No reaction to that?
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There's a blockade of Berlin.
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Is that cool by you?
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Where they try to strangle West Berlin
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so that they can swallow West Berlin
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and add it to East Berlin.
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You cool with that?
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How about Korean War, invasion of North Korea,
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invasion of South Korea by North Korea?
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You cool with that?
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How about the murders and the show trials
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up and down Eastern Europe in the late 40s
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after the imposition of the clone regimes?
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You good with that?
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Yeah, it's very convenient to have an enemy.
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But you know, there was some actions, Lex.
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There was some threats to people's freedom.
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There was some invasions.
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There was some aggression and violence on a mass scale,
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like collectivization of Eastern Europe.
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And we could go on, Lex, with the examples.
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I'm just giving a few of them.
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And so the Cold War was not a mistake.
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It was not a misunderstanding.
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We don't have to blame someone for the Cold War.
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We have to give credit for the Cold War.
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The Truman administration deserves credit
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for standing up to Stalin's regime,
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for standing up to these actions,
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for saying, yeah, we're not just gonna take this.
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We're not gonna let this go on.
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We're not gonna let this expand to further territories.
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We're gonna create the NATO alliance.
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And we're gonna rally democratic liberal regimes
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to stand up to this illiberalism,
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this violence, and this aggression.
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And so, yeah, Lex, it's always convenient to have an enemy.
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But there was an enemy.
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Nikolai Leonov, who recently died,
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he died in April 2022, and he had a major funeral.
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He was the last head analyst of the Soviet KGB.
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And Leonov is one of the most important figures
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for understanding the Soviet collapse.
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And he has the best memoir on the Soviet collapse,
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which is known in Russian as Likholetya.
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You will understand that.
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And you'll help your podcast listeners understand.
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There's a singularity to that kind of expression, Likholetya.
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But one of the things, and in fact,
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the people who were supposedly arrested by Putin
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as scapegoats for the Ukraine war,
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the main one, Sergei Beseda, gave the eulogy
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at Leonov's funeral in April 2022,
link |
showing that it's a lie that all of these people
link |
have been arrested and purged
link |
and other nonsense in social media.
link |
But to get back to what Leonov said
link |
and get back to your enemy point, Leonov said,
link |
you know, the West spent all this time
link |
blackening the image of the Soviet Union.
link |
All these resources and propaganda and covert operations
link |
to blacken the Soviet image.
link |
And they did, Lex, the West did do that.
link |
And then Leonov wrote in the next sentence,
link |
and you know what?
link |
We gave them a lot of material to work with
link |
to blacken our image.
link |
Yeah, so you're saying a kind of sobering reality,
link |
which it is possible to some degree to draw a line
link |
between the good guys and the bad guys.
link |
Freedom is better than unfreedom, Lex.
link |
It's a lot better than unfreedom,
link |
and a guy like you understands that really well.
link |
Well, so yes, but those are all, you know,
link |
there's words like justice, freedom.
link |
Love, you can use a lot of words that Hitler himself used
link |
to describe why he is actually creating a better world
link |
than those he's fighting.
link |
So some of it is propaganda.
link |
The question is on the ground,
link |
what is actually increasing the amount of freedom
link |
in the world, human prosperity?
link |
Institutions, Lex, right?
link |
We're not talking about propaganda here.
link |
When we use words like freedom,
link |
we're talking about rule of law.
link |
We're talking about protection of civil liberties.
link |
We're talking about protection of private property.
link |
We're talking about an independent
link |
and well funded judiciary.
link |
We're talking about an impartial, non corrupt,
link |
competent civil service.
link |
We're talking about separation of powers
link |
where the executive branch's power is limited,
link |
usually by an elected parliament.
link |
In fact, yes, let's talk about elections.
link |
Let's talk about freedom of speech
link |
and freedom of the public sphere.
link |
We're not talking about freedom as a slogan here.
link |
We're talking about a huge array of institutions
link |
and practices and norms ultimately, right?
link |
And if they exist, you know, and you live under them.
link |
And if they don't exist,
link |
you fully understand that as well, right?
link |
Ukraine was a flawed democracy before Russia invaded.
link |
It's utterly corrupt, many ways dysfunctional,
link |
especially the elites were dysfunctional.
link |
The gas industry in Ukraine was absolutely terrible
link |
because of the corruption that it generated,
link |
the oligarch problem,
link |
a handful of people stealing the state resources.
link |
And yet Ukraine had an open public sphere
link |
and it had a parliament that functioned.
link |
And so despite its flaws, it was still a democracy.
link |
The regime in Moscow, you can't say that Lex.
link |
It's not a comparable regime to Ukraine.
link |
You could say, oh, well, there were oligarchs in Ukraine
link |
and there were oligarchs in Russia.
link |
There's corruption in Ukraine, there's corruption in Russia.
link |
So really what's the big difference?
link |
And the answer is, well, Ukraine had the open public sphere.
link |
Ukraine had a real parliament.
link |
Can you call Russia's Duma a real parliament?
link |
I don't think you can.
link |
Can you say that there were any checks whatsoever
link |
on the executive branch in Russia?
link |
Can you say that the Russian judiciary had any independence
link |
or really full level of competence
link |
even compared to the Ukrainian judiciary,
link |
which was nothing to brag about?
link |
No, you can't say that Lex.
link |
So we can differentiate between the very flawed,
link |
corrupt oligarchic democracy in Ukraine
link |
and the very corrupt oligarchic autocracy in Russia.
link |
I think that's a fair distinction.
link |
Yeah, we should say that Russia and Ukraine
link |
have the great honor of being the number one
link |
and the number two most corrupt nations in Europe
link |
But there is a fundamental difference,
link |
as you were highlighting.
link |
Russia is a corrupt autocracy.
link |
Ukraine, we can say, is a corrupt democracy.
link |
And to that level, there's a fundamental difference.
link |
Ukraine is not murdering its own journalists
link |
in systematic fashion.
link |
If journalists are killed in Ukraine, it's a tragedy.
link |
If journalists are killed in Russia
link |
or Russian journalists are killed abroad,
link |
it's regime policy.
link |
And the degree to which a nation is authoritarian
link |
means that it's suffocating its own spirit,
link |
its capacity to flourish.
link |
We're not just talking about sort of the freedom
link |
of the press, those kinds of things,
link |
but basically all industries get suffocated
link |
and you're no longer being able to,
link |
yeah, flourish as a nation, grow the production,
link |
the GDP, the scientists, the art, the culture,
link |
all those kinds of things.
link |
Yes, Lex, you're absolutely right.
link |
And so before the invasion, the full blown invasion
link |
of February 2022 into Ukraine, because as you know,
link |
the war has been going on for many years at a lower level
link |
compared to what it is these days,
link |
but still a tragic war with many deaths
link |
prior to February 2022.
link |
Before this latest war, we could have said
link |
that the greatest victims of the Putin regime
link |
are Russian, domestic, that the people
link |
who are suffering the most from the Putin regime
link |
are not sitting here in New York City,
link |
but in fact are sitting there in Russia.
link |
Now, of course, with the invasion of Ukraine
link |
and really the atrocities that have been well documented
link |
and more are being investigated,
link |
we can't easily say anymore that Russians
link |
are the greatest victims of the Putin regime,
link |
but in ways other than bombing and murdering civilians,
link |
children, mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers,
link |
after you include that, then of course,
link |
the larger number of victims of the Putin regime
link |
are not Ukrainians, but ultimately Russians,
link |
and there's how many of them now that have fled?
link |
So your powerful, precise, rigorous words
link |
are then in a stark contrast, I would say,
link |
to my very recent conversation with Oliver Stone,
link |
and I would love you to elaborate this agreement
link |
you have here with his words and maybe words
link |
of people like John Mearsheimer.
link |
The idea is that Putin's hand in this invasion of 2022
link |
was forced by the expansion of NATO,
link |
the imperialist imperative of the United States
link |
and the NATO forces.
link |
You disagree with this point in terms of placing the blame
link |
somehow on the invasion on forces larger
link |
than the particular two nations involved,
link |
but more on the geopolitics of the world
link |
that's driven by the most powerful military nation
link |
in the world, which is the United States.
link |
Yeah, Lex, so let's imagine that a tragedy's happened here
link |
in New York, and a woman got raped.
link |
We know the perpetrator.
link |
They go to trial, and Oliver Stone gets up and says,
link |
The woman was wearing a short skirt,
link |
and there was no option but for the rapist to rape her.
link |
The woman was wearing lipstick,
link |
or the woman was applying for NATO membership
link |
and just had to be raped.
link |
There's, I mean, didn't want to rape her,
link |
but was compelled because of what she was doing
link |
and what she looked like and the clothes she was wearing
link |
and the alliances that she was under international law
link |
signed by Moscow, all the treaties
link |
that sovereign countries get to choose
link |
whatever alliance they belong to.
link |
The treaties that the UN Charter signed by Russia,
link |
Soviet Union, the 1975 Helsinki Agreement
link |
signed by the Soviet Union,
link |
the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe
link |
signed by the Soviet Union,
link |
the 1997 NATO Russia Founding Act
link |
signed by the Russian government, the post Soviet Russia.
link |
All of those documents signed by either the Soviet regime
link |
or the Russian regime,
link |
which is the legally recognized international inheritor,
link |
right, successor of the Soviet state.
link |
All of those agreements are still in force
link |
and all of them say that countries are sovereign
link |
and can freely choose their foreign policy
link |
and what alliances they want to join.
link |
Let's even go farther than that.
link |
I mean, you don't have to go farther than that,
link |
but let's go farther than that, Lex.
link |
Is an autocratic repressive regime
link |
that invades its neighbors in the name of its own security
link |
something new in Russian history?
link |
Did we not see this before?
link |
Is this, does this not predate NATO expansion?
link |
Does this not predate the existence of NATO?
link |
Would Oliver Stone sit here in this chair and say to you,
link |
you know, they had to impose serfdom in the 17th century
link |
because NATO expanded.
link |
They had no choice, their hands were tied.
link |
They were compelled to treat their own population
link |
like slaves because, you know, NATO expanded.
link |
I mean, I could go on through the examples
link |
of Russian history that predate the existence,
link |
let alone the expansion of NATO,
link |
where you have behavior, policies, actions,
link |
very similar to what we see now from the Kremlin.
link |
And you can't explain those by NATO expansion, can you?
link |
And so that argument doesn't wash for me
link |
because I have a pattern here that predates NATO expansion.
link |
I have international agreements, founding documents,
link |
signed by the Kremlin over many, many decades
link |
acknowledging the freedom of countries
link |
to choose their alliances.
link |
And then I have this problem where when you rape somebody,
link |
it's not because they're wearing a short skirt.
link |
It's because you have raped them.
link |
You've committed a criminal act, Lex.
link |
That's a, I think there's a lot of people listening to this
link |
that will agree to the emotion, the power,
link |
and the spirit of this metaphor.
link |
And I was struggling to think how to dance
link |
within this metaphor because it feels like
link |
it wasn't precisely the right one,
link |
but I think it captures the spirit.
link |
I'm not suggesting, Lex, that everything the West has done
link |
has been honorable or intelligent.
link |
Fortunately, we live in a democracy.
link |
We live in liberal regimes.
link |
We live under rule of law,
link |
liberal in the classical sense of rule of law,
link |
not liberal in the leftist sense.
link |
We live in places like that and we can criticize ourselves.
link |
And we can criticize the mistakes that we made
link |
or the policy choices or the inactions that were taken.
link |
And there are a whole lot of things to answer for.
link |
And you can now discuss the ones that are your favorites,
link |
the dishonor or the mistakes.
link |
And I could discuss mine and we could spend
link |
the whole rest of our meeting today
link |
discussing the West's mistakes and problems.
link |
And we won't end up in prison for it.
link |
Yeah, Lex, and so I'm thankful for that.
link |
And I'm thankful that people may disagree
link |
and that people make the argument
link |
that NATO expansion is to blame.
link |
But you see, I'm countering two arguments here.
link |
I'm countering one argument,
link |
which is very deeply popular, pervasive,
link |
about how Russia has this cultural tendency to aggression.
link |
And it can help, but invade its neighbors
link |
and it does it again and again.
link |
And it's eternal Russian imperialism
link |
and you have to watch out for it.
link |
This very popular argument in the Baltic States,
link |
it's really popular in Warsaw.
link |
It's really popular with the liberal interventionists
link |
and it's very, very popular with those
link |
who were part of the Iraq war squad
link |
that got us into that mess.
link |
So I'm against that.
link |
And the reason I'm against it is because it's not true.
link |
It's empirically false.
link |
There is no cultural trait,
link |
inherent tendency for Russia to be aggressive.
link |
It's a strategic choice that they make.
link |
Every time it's a choice made,
link |
it's not some kind of momentum.
link |
Every time it's a choice that we should judge
link |
for the choice that it is for the decision.
link |
And therefore they could make different choices.
link |
They could say, we don't have to stand up to the West.
link |
We don't have the capabilities to do that.
link |
We can still be a great country.
link |
We can still be a civilization unto itself.
link |
We can still be Russia.
link |
We can still worship in Orthodox cathedrals
link |
or we can still be ourselves,
link |
but we don't have to pursue this chimerical pursuit,
link |
this elusive quest to stand up to the West
link |
and be in the first ranks of powers.
link |
So I'm countering that argument.
link |
I'm saying it's perpetual geopolitics.
link |
It's a geopolitical choice rising out of this dilemma
link |
of the mismatch between aspirations and capabilities.
link |
It's not eternal Russian imperialism.
link |
And I'm also countering the other argument here, Lex,
link |
which is to say that it's the West's fault.
link |
It's Western imperialism.
link |
I'm very popular on the left,
link |
very popular with realist scholars,
link |
very popular with some of the people
link |
recently on your podcast.
link |
And so it's neither eternal Russian imperialism
link |
nor is it Western imperialism, right?
link |
The mere fact that the West is stronger than Russia
link |
is not a crime on the part of the West.
link |
It's not a crime that countries voluntarily
link |
wanna join the West, that beg to get in,
link |
either the EU or NATO or other bilateral alliances
link |
or other trade agreements.
link |
Those are voluntarily entered into and that's not criminal.
link |
If the West's sphere of influence,
link |
which is open, an open sphere of influence,
link |
which as I say, people voluntarily join,
link |
if that expands, that's not a crime,
link |
nor is that a threat to Russia, ipso facto, right?
link |
NATO is a defensive alliance
link |
and the countries are largely pacifists
link |
who are members of NATO.
link |
And NATO doesn't attack,
link |
it defends members if they are attacked.
link |
And so the idea that Ukraine, which had the legal right,
link |
might wanna join NATO and the EU,
link |
which was not gonna happen in our lifetimes
link |
and was not a direct threat to the Putin regime
link |
since the Western countries that make up the EU and NATO
link |
decided that Ukraine was not ready for membership,
link |
there was no consensus, it was not gonna happen,
link |
but it's Ukraine's free choice to express that desire.
link |
And if your government is elected by your people,
link |
freely elected, meaning you can unelect that government
link |
in the next election,
link |
and that government makes foreign policy choices
link |
on the basis of its perceived interests,
link |
that's not a crime, Lex, that's not a provocation,
link |
that's not something that compels the leader
link |
of another country to invade you, right?
link |
That is legal under international law,
link |
and it's also a realist fact of life.
link |
The realists like to tell you that Russia here
link |
was disrespected, Russia's interests were not taken
link |
into account, et cetera, et cetera,
link |
but the real world works in such a way
link |
that treaties matter, that international law matters.
link |
That's why people like me were not in favor
link |
of the US 2003 invasion of Iraq, Lex,
link |
because it wasn't legal, in addition to the fact
link |
that we thought it might backfire.
link |
But you know, Lex, like I said, there are a lot of things
link |
about the West that we ought to criticize as citizens,
link |
and we do criticize, but we have to be clear
link |
about where responsibility lies in these events
link |
that we're talking about today.
link |
So you get into trouble, it's largely erroneous
link |
to think about both the West or the United States
link |
from an imperialist perspective and Russia
link |
from an imperialist perspective.
link |
It's better, clearer to think about each individual
link |
aggressive decision on its own as a choice that was made.
link |
So let's talk about the most recent choice
link |
made by Vladimir Putin.
link |
The choice to invade Ukraine, or to escalate
link |
the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022.
link |
Now we're a few months removed from that decision,
link |
initial decision, why do you think he did it?
link |
What are the errors in understanding the situation,
link |
in calculating the outcomes, and everything else
link |
about this decision in your view?
link |
Yeah, Lex, when a war doesn't go well,
link |
it looks like lunacy to have launched it in the first place.
link |
Does it ever go well?
link |
War never goes according to plan.
link |
All war is based upon miscalculation,
link |
but not everybody is punished for their miscalculation.
link |
All aggressive war we're talking about, not defensive war,
link |
is based upon miscalculation.
link |
But you can adjust, you can recalibrate.
link |
You know, when you're driving down the road
link |
and that very annoying voice is telling you
link |
in a thousand feet, make a right,
link |
and you fail to make a right, it recalibrates, right?
link |
It tells you, okay, now go turn around,
link |
or U turn, or make a left.
link |
It doesn't say you're an idiot in turn around
link |
and make a U turn, but it does recalibrate.
link |
So you can miscalculate, and the problem
link |
is not the miscalculation usually,
link |
it's the failure to do that adjustment, right?
link |
People I know who are hedge fund traders,
link |
I ask them, you know, what's your favorite trade?
link |
And the line from the mall, and this is a cliche,
link |
is my favorite trade is when I made a mistake,
link |
but I got out early before all the carnage.
link |
So their favorite trade is not when they made
link |
some brilliant choice, but it's when they miscalculated
link |
but they reduce the consequences of their miscalculation
link |
by recalibrating quickly, right?
link |
So let's talk about the calculation
link |
and miscalculation of February.
link |
Let's imagine, Lex, that you've been getting away
link |
with murder, I don't mean murder in a figurative sense.
link |
I mean, you've been murdering people,
link |
you've been murdering them domestically,
link |
and you've been murdering them all across Europe,
link |
and you've been murdering them not just with, for example,
link |
a car accident, a staged car accident,
link |
or using a handgun, you use Novichok,
link |
or you use some other internationally outlawed
link |
And let's imagine that you did it
link |
and nothing happened to you.
link |
It wasn't like you were removed from power,
link |
it wasn't like you paid a personal price.
link |
Sure, maybe there was some sanctions on your economy,
link |
but you didn't pay the price of those sanctions.
link |
Little people paid the price of those sanctions.
link |
Other people in your country paid the price.
link |
Let's imagine not only were you murdering people literally,
link |
but you decided to entice the idiotic ruler of Georgia
link |
into a provocation that you could then invade the country.
link |
And you invaded the country
link |
and you bit off these territories,
link |
Abkhazia and South Ossetia,
link |
and what price did you pay for that?
link |
And then you decided, you know,
link |
I think I'll now invade Crimea and forcibly annex Crimea,
link |
and I'll instigate an insurrection in the Donbass
link |
in Eastern Ukraine.
link |
In Luhansk. Let's imagine you did all that
link |
and then you had to stick out your wrist
link |
so that, you know, it could be slapped a couple of times.
link |
And you said, you know, I can pretty much do what I want.
link |
They're putting a sanction here and there
link |
and they're doing this and they're doing that.
link |
And you know what?
link |
They're more energy dependent on me than before.
link |
I got better money laundering and reputation services
link |
Maybe the Middle East and the Chinese would disagree with you
link |
that you have better than them, but yours are pretty good.
link |
And the Panama Papers get released,
link |
revealing all of your offshoring and your corruption
link |
and what happened, nothing happens, Lex.
link |
So the first and most important consideration here is,
link |
in your own mind, you've been getting away with murder,
link |
literally, as well as figuratively,
link |
and you think, you know,
link |
I probably should have done that.
link |
You think, you know, I probably can do something again
link |
and get away with it.
link |
And so the failure to respond at scale,
link |
in fact, the indulgences,
link |
the further dependencies that are introduced,
link |
the illusion that trade is the mechanism
link |
to manage authoritarian regimes.
link |
You know, that great German cliche,
link |
Wandel durch Handel, right, change through trade
link |
or transformation through trade,
link |
one of Angela Merkel's favorite expressions, right?
link |
You're gonna get the other side to be better
link |
rather than confront them in a Cold War fashion
link |
where you stand up to their aggressions
link |
and you punish them severely
link |
in order to deter further behavior.
link |
So that's the first and most important part
link |
of the calculation, miscalculation.
link |
There are a lot of other dimensions.
link |
So can we pause on that really quick?
link |
So this is kind of idea of it's okay to crack a few eggs
link |
to make an omelet, which is a more generous description
link |
of what you're saying,
link |
that you don't incorporate into the calculation
link |
the amount of human suffering that the decisions cause,
link |
but instead you look at sort of the success
link |
based on some kind of measure for you personally
link |
and for the nation, not in terms of in a humanitarian sense,
link |
but in some kind of economic sense
link |
and a geopolitical power sense.
link |
Yeah, you're not sentimental, Lex.
link |
You say to yourself, the cause of Russian greatness
link |
is greater than any individual life.
link |
Russia being in the first rank of the great powers,
link |
Russia realizing its mission to be a special country
link |
with a special mission in the world,
link |
a civilization unto itself,
link |
the first rank of the great powers,
link |
maybe even the greatest power.
link |
That's worth the price that we have to pay,
link |
especially in other people's lives, right?
link |
We have a lot of literature on the Putin regime,
link |
which talks about the kleptocracy,
link |
the place is a kleptocracy, and it is a kleptocracy.
link |
We all can see that, and anybody in London,
link |
living the high life, servicing this kleptocracy
link |
can testify that it's a kleptocracy,
link |
and not only in London, of course,
link |
right here in the United States, in New York.
link |
But you know, it's not only a kleptocracy, Lex.
link |
That was the problem of the Russian studies literature.
link |
It wasn't just about stealing, looting the state.
link |
It was about Russian greatness.
link |
You see those rituals in the Kremlin,
link |
right in the Grand Kremlin Palace,
link |
in the St. George's Hall,
link |
some of the greatest interiors in the world,
link |
and you see award ceremonies, and you see marking holidays,
link |
and all of these looters of the state
link |
have their uniforms on with their medals,
link |
and someone's given a speech or singing
link |
a ballad, and their eyes are moist.
link |
Their eyes are moist because they're thieves and looters?
link |
No, Lex, because they believe in Russian greatness.
link |
They have a deep and fundamental passionate commitment
link |
to the greatness of Russia,
link |
which in unsentimental fashion,
link |
they're all sentimental to the max.
link |
That's why their eyes are moistening.
link |
But they imagine unsentimentally that any sacrifice is okay,
link |
a sacrifice of other people's lives,
link |
a sacrifice of their conscripts in the military,
link |
a sacrifice of Ukrainian women and children and elderly.
link |
That's a small price to pay for those moist eyes
link |
about Russian greatness and Russia's position in the world.
link |
Well, that human thing, that sentimentality,
link |
is the thing that can get us in trouble
link |
in the United States as well,
link |
and lead us to wars, the illegal wars and so on.
link |
But the United States,
link |
there's repercussions for breaking the law.
link |
You're going to pay for illegal wars in the end.
link |
You're saying that in authoritarian regimes,
link |
the sentimentality can really get out of hand,
link |
and you can, by charismatic leaders,
link |
they can take that to manipulate the populace to make,
link |
that in the span of history led to atrocities,
link |
and in today's world, lead to humanitarian crises.
link |
It's not just the kleptocracy, it's a belief system.
link |
It's passion, it's conviction.
link |
It's, you can call them illusions,
link |
you can call them fantasies,
link |
whatever you want to call them, they're real.
link |
They're real for those people.
link |
And so yes, they're looting that very state
link |
that they're trying to make
link |
one of the great powers in the world.
link |
And they resent the fact that the West
link |
doesn't acknowledge them as one of those great powers.
link |
And they resent that the West is more powerful.
link |
People talk about how Putin doesn't understand the world
link |
and that he gets really bad information.
link |
Lex, if you're sitting there in that Kremlin,
link |
and you're trying to conduct business in the world,
link |
and you're getting reports from your finance minister
link |
or your central bank governor,
link |
your whole economy, everything that matters,
link |
somehow all your trade is denominated in dollars and euros.
link |
Do you have any illusions
link |
about who controls the international financial system?
link |
I don't think so, Lex.
link |
You're looking over your industrial plan for the next year,
link |
and you're looking over how many tanks you're gonna get,
link |
and how many cruise missiles you're gonna get,
link |
and how many submarines you're gonna get,
link |
and fill in the blank.
link |
And you know what?
link |
It says right there in the paperwork
link |
where the component parts come from,
link |
where the software comes from,
link |
comes from the West, Lex.
link |
Your whole military industrial complex
link |
is dependent on high end Western technology.
link |
And let's say you're in Beijing, not just in Moscow,
link |
and you go to a meeting in your own neighborhood.
link |
You're the leader of China.
link |
You go to a meeting with other Asian leaders.
link |
Do they all speak in Chinese with you?
link |
No, Lex, they don't speak Chinese.
link |
You go to an international meeting as the leader of China,
link |
and guess what language is the main language of intercourse?
link |
Yes, the same one you and I are speaking right now.
link |
And so you live in that world.
link |
You live in the Western world,
link |
and it's very hard to have illusions
link |
about what world you live in.
link |
When you're under that, you need those Western banks.
link |
You need that foreign currency, right?
link |
You need that high end Western technology,
link |
that technology transfer.
link |
You're speaking, or you're forced to speak,
link |
or your minions are forced to speak
link |
at international gatherings in English.
link |
And I could go on.
link |
All the indicators that you live in.
link |
And so Putin lives in that world.
link |
Well, to push back, isn't it possible that,
link |
as you said, the minions operate in that world?
link |
But can't you, if you're the leader of Russia,
link |
or the leader of China,
link |
or the leader of these different nations, still put up walls
link |
where actually when you think in the privacy of your mind,
link |
you exist not in the international world,
link |
but in a world where there's this great Russian empire,
link |
or this great Chinese empire,
link |
and then you forget that there's English,
link |
you forget that there's technology and iPhones,
link |
you forget that there's all this US keeps popping up
link |
on all different paperwork.
link |
That just becomes the blurry details that dissipate,
link |
because what matters is the greatness of this dream empire
link |
that I have in my mind as a dictator.
link |
I would put it this way, Lex.
link |
After you absorb all of that from your minions,
link |
and it impresses upon your consciousness where you live,
link |
you live in a Western dominated world,
link |
that the multipolar world doesn't exist.
link |
Your goal is to make that multipolar world exist.
link |
Your goal is to bring down the West.
link |
Your goal is for the West to weaken.
link |
Your goal is a currency other than the dollar and the euro.
link |
Your goal is an international financial system
link |
that you dominate.
link |
Your goal is technological self sufficiency
link |
made in China 2035, right?
link |
Your goal is a world that you dominate,
link |
not that the West dominates.
link |
And you're gonna do everything you can
link |
to try to attain that world,
link |
which is a Russian centric world,
link |
or a Chinese centric world,
link |
or what we could call a Eurasian centric world.
link |
And it's not gonna be easy, Lex,
link |
just for the reasons that we enumerated before.
link |
But maybe you're gonna get a helping hand.
link |
Maybe the West is gonna transfer
link |
their best technology to you.
link |
They're gonna sell you their best stuff.
link |
And then you're gonna absorb it,
link |
and maybe copy it, and reverse engineer it.
link |
And if they won't sell it to you,
link |
maybe you'll just have to steal it.
link |
Maybe the West is gonna allow you to bank,
link |
even though you violate many laws
link |
that would prohibit the West
link |
from extending those banking services to you.
link |
Maybe the West is gonna buy your energy,
link |
and your palladium, and your titanium,
link |
and your rare metals like lithium,
link |
because you're willing to have your poor people
link |
mine that stuff and die of disease at an early age.
link |
But Western governments, they don't wanna do that.
link |
They don't wanna do that dirty mining
link |
of those very important rare earths.
link |
But you're willing to do that
link |
because it's just people whose lives you don't care about
link |
as an autocratic regime, right?
link |
So that's the world you live in
link |
where you're trying to get to this other world.
link |
You're at the center of the other world.
link |
You dominate the other world.
link |
But the only way to get there, Lex,
link |
is the West has to weaken, divide itself,
link |
maybe even collapse.
link |
And so you're encouraging, to the extent possible,
link |
Western divisions, Western disunity,
link |
a Western lack of resolve, Western mistakes,
link |
and Western invasion of the wrong country,
link |
and Western destruction of its credibility
link |
through international financial crises,
link |
and one could go on.
link |
So if the West weakens itself through its mistakes
link |
and its own corruption, you're gonna survive
link |
and maybe even come out into that world
link |
where you're the center.
link |
And so Russia's entire grand strategy,
link |
just like China's grand strategy,
link |
Iran, it's hard to say they have a grand strategy
link |
because they're so profoundly weak.
link |
But Russia's grand strategy is, we're a mess.
link |
We don't invest in our human capital.
link |
Our human capital flees, or we actually drive it out.
link |
It goes to MIT, like you did,
link |
or it goes to fill in the blank, right?
link |
We can't invest in our people.
link |
Our healthcare is terrible.
link |
Our education system is in decline.
link |
We don't build infrastructure, Lex.
link |
We don't improve our governance.
link |
We don't invest in those attributes of modern power
link |
that make the West powerful.
link |
We can't because when we try, the money is stolen.
link |
We try these grandiose projects of national projects,
link |
We're gonna invest in higher ed.
link |
We're gonna invest in high tech.
link |
We're gonna build our own Silicon Valley
link |
known as Skolkovo.
link |
We're gonna do all those things, and what happens?
link |
They can't even build an airport
link |
without the money disappearing.
link |
The Sochi Olympics, Lex,
link |
officially cost them $50 billion.
link |
You look around at the infrastructure that endured
link |
from that $50 billion expense, and you're thinking,
link |
that's like the Second Avenue subway.
link |
You get almost nothing for your money.
link |
And so, yeah, it's corruption, Lex,
link |
but it's also because they don't wanna do that.
link |
They don't wanna invest in their people.
link |
They couldn't do it if they wanted to,
link |
and when they try, it doesn't work.
link |
But why invest in your own people?
link |
Invest in your hardware, your military hardware, right?
link |
Invest in your cyber capabilities.
link |
Invest in all your spoilation techniques and your hard power,
link |
and invest in further corrupting, and further weakening,
link |
and further dividing the West, because as I said,
link |
if the West is weak, divided, lacking resolve,
link |
you don't invest in your people,
link |
you don't build infrastructure,
link |
you don't improve your governance,
link |
but you'll muddle through.
link |
That's Russian grand strategy.
link |
So invest in the hard power, weaken the West.
link |
Those combined together means you're going to be
link |
heavily incentivized to escalate
link |
any military aggressive conflicts that are around you,
link |
or create new ones, or just.
link |
If you can get away with murder.
link |
But what happens, Lex,
link |
if it's a Harry Truman like response?
link |
What happens if somebody says,
link |
you know, we're gonna stand up to this?
link |
We're not gonna allow this to happen.
link |
We're not gonna launder your money anymore.
link |
We're not gonna be dependent on you for energy
link |
in the long term, we're gonna make a transition.
link |
We're gonna punish you for that kind of behavior instead.
link |
And the West is now switched to that
link |
only because of the courage
link |
and ingenuity of the Ukrainian people.
link |
The Ukrainian resistance to Russian aggression
link |
was one of the greatest gifts the West has ever received.
link |
The sacrifices that the Ukrainians are making,
link |
right now as we speak,
link |
meaning they're fighting a war by themselves
link |
against a major military power, their neighbor Russia.
link |
Nobody's fighting it with them.
link |
Yes, we are giving them weapons
link |
so they can conduct self defense,
link |
which by the way is legal under international law.
link |
Unlike the Russian invasion,
link |
which is illegal under international law,
link |
Western supply of weapons, including heavy weapons,
link |
including offensive weapons to Ukraine
link |
for its self defense in the invasion by Russia
link |
is actually legal under,
link |
and so thank God the Ukrainians surprised everybody.
link |
They surprised me, they surprised Putin and the Kremlin,
link |
they surprised the Biden administration,
link |
they surprised the European Union,
link |
not with the fact that they would resist.
link |
We had the Orange Revolution in 2004,
link |
we had Maidan in 2013, 14,
link |
where they rose up against a domestic tyrant
link |
and they were willing to die
link |
on behalf of their country then,
link |
let alone against a foreign tyrant
link |
invading their country, right?
link |
So we knew they would resist.
link |
We didn't know just how successful,
link |
certainly I didn't know,
link |
they would be on the battlefield.
link |
It's been breathtaking to watch.
link |
That sacrifice, that gift enabled the West
link |
to rediscover itself, to rediscover its power,
link |
to revive itself, to say to hell with this energy dependence
link |
to hell with this money laundering and reputation laundering,
link |
to hell with this running back and forth to Moscow
link |
to try to see what Putin needs
link |
in order for him to feel respected,
link |
what appeasement he needs, right?
link |
So we'll see if it endures,
link |
but this shift comes from the Ukrainians.
link |
And so it's no longer getting away with murder, Lex,
link |
and we thank the Ukrainians for that.
link |
The people and the leadership
link |
and the separate factions that make up Ukraine uniting,
link |
it's the unification, the uniting against the common enemy
link |
and standing up before anyone knew
link |
that they would be backed by all of these other nations,
link |
by this money and all this kind of stuff,
link |
standing there, especially with the president Zelensky,
link |
where it makes total sense to flee, he stood his ground.
link |
Let's take that point that you just raised,
link |
which is a deep and fundamental point,
link |
and I thank you for that.
link |
Do you guys hear that?
link |
I think that was a compliment.
link |
Zelensky or unification, what do you say?
link |
I'm sitting here in front of you.
link |
And it's a mutual honor.
link |
So, Ukraine before the war
link |
is run by a TV production company, right?
link |
You're one guy running this fantastic, incredible podcast.
link |
There's 20 guys or so running a country the size of Ukraine.
link |
And one's a producer and one's like a makeup person
link |
and one's a video editor.
link |
And they're fantastically talented people
link |
if your country is a TV production.
link |
So before the war, Zelensky had what, 25% approval rating
link |
and he couldn't get much done and it wasn't working.
link |
He got elected with 73%, as you know,
link |
and then he was down to 20, that's a pretty big drop.
link |
And so you're thinking maybe having a major,
link |
large size, 40 million plus population European country
link |
run by a TV production company is not the best choice.
link |
And then what do we see?
link |
We see President Zelensky decides to risk his life
link |
on behalf of his country, Ukraine.
link |
He decides to stay in the capital.
link |
He's not gonna flee, they're gonna stay and fight.
link |
And he could be killed, he can die.
link |
It's a decision where he put his life on the line.
link |
Obviously, he's Jewish descent,
link |
Russian speaking childhood and upbringing,
link |
Russian speaking Jewish descent puts his life on the line
link |
for the country of Ukraine.
link |
It's a pretty big message, don't you think?
link |
And it turns out not only that, Lex,
link |
but they're good at TV.
link |
They're good at information war.
link |
And in a war, it's a TV production company
link |
and a TV personality, that's exactly what you want
link |
running a country because they're crushing
link |
in the information war.
link |
And he's spectacular, European Parliament,
link |
US Congress, Israeli Parliament.
link |
There's no room on Zoom, let alone in person
link |
that he can't win over, he's just so effective.
link |
You know, this is the first time reality TV
link |
has been about reality instead of fake.
link |
Reality TV is just this completely fake nonsense.
link |
But Zelensky, this is real reality TV.
link |
And he means it and the nation is behind him
link |
and they're just as courageous and just as ingenious
link |
in many ways and it's spectacular.
link |
And so, yeah, who saw that coming?
link |
I didn't see that coming, Lex.
link |
In fact, the Biden, we talk about Putin's miscalculation.
link |
The Biden administration, as you alluded to,
link |
offered him an exit from the country.
link |
They didn't say, you know, you wanna stand and fight,
link |
They said, we'll get you out, you wanna come now?
link |
And famously, you know that quote, right?
link |
What he said about how he doesn't need a ride.
link |
Remember that moment?
link |
The Biden administration was poised
link |
to do another Afghanistan moment.
link |
That ignominious exit from Afghanistan
link |
was almost what happened in Ukraine
link |
when Biden administration offered him
link |
that ride out of there.
link |
And fortunately, he declined and helped rally
link |
and the people from below also rallied
link |
to stop the invader without the presidency
link |
and without the government in Ukraine,
link |
saving the Biden administration
link |
and the European leaders who latched on.
link |
Fortunately, they had the presence of mind
link |
to latch onto this gift,
link |
this bravery and ingeniousness of Zelensky
link |
and the rest of the Ukrainians and flipped
link |
and decided to support Ukraine's resistance,
link |
you know, first with 5,000 helmets only
link |
as the Germans initially promised
link |
and now with really heavy weapons.
link |
And so that's something that wasn't foreseen.
link |
I certainly didn't foresee that.
link |
I foresaw the Ukrainian society being courageous
link |
and resisting, but I didn't foresee
link |
a television production company being exactly
link |
what you want to run a country in a war,
link |
a president Zelensky willing to sacrifice,
link |
lay down his life and rallying others
link |
in the country to do that.
link |
And then the country being so effective,
link |
not just at a courage, but at battlefield resistance
link |
to the Russian invasion.
link |
So I stand corrected by the Ukrainians
link |
and I'm ecstatic that I was wrong,
link |
that I was proven wrong.
link |
And like I said, there's clear factions
link |
of the West and the East of Ukraine
link |
and here's a person that, like you said,
link |
was in the high 20s, low 30s percentage approval
link |
in the country before the war
link |
and now was able to use in the 90s.
link |
He's in the 90% approval rating.
link |
I mean, I think they stopped doing the polling.
link |
Once he hit 91% or whatever it was in the previous poll,
link |
I think they all understood that for now
link |
they didn't need any more polling,
link |
that it's pretty clear the nation.
link |
So 25% to 90 something percent.
link |
And just like the 25% was deserved,
link |
the 90 something percent is also deserved, fully deserved.
link |
And the question is how that all stabilizes, it feels
link |
like this set of events,
link |
I may be paying attention to Twitter too much,
link |
which is a concern of mine, whether the change I see
link |
is just surface level or deep level.
link |
But it seems like we're in a new world,
link |
that something dramatic has shifted.
link |
That this power that's rooted,
link |
I mean, in your study of the 20th century,
link |
it's so deeply rooted in history,
link |
there's this power center of the world
link |
is now going to, has been shaken by this event.
link |
And how that changes the world is unclear.
link |
It's unclear what lesson China learns from watching this,
link |
what lesson India learns from watching this.
link |
Both nations, as far as you can get polls
link |
about Chinese population, but both nations
link |
are largely in support of Putin.
link |
So Russia, India, and China are still
link |
supporting of Putin quietly.
link |
I would maybe elaborate a little bit on that point, Lex.
link |
I think you're right, the feeling that we're
link |
in an inflection moment, an inflection point,
link |
I think that's widespread.
link |
And I think it's widespread for good reason, we might be.
link |
But I also share your, let's say, modesty
link |
about where it's going and how hard it is
link |
to predict where this might go.
link |
It's only an inflection point if the trends continue,
link |
right, if the trends endure.
link |
There are plenty of non inflection points.
link |
After 9 11, the whole world rallied
link |
around the United States after it was attacked,
link |
after the bombing of the towers here in New York City
link |
and the hitting of the Pentagon, and that didn't last.
link |
It was not really an inflection point, was it?
link |
It felt like it might be, but it wasn't.
link |
And so this is not a comparable moment
link |
in terms of what happened, but it has the feeling
link |
that it might be a watershed.
link |
And maybe we'll squander it the way we squandered
link |
the post 9 11, rallying around the United States.
link |
Maybe we'll actually consolidate it and it'll endure,
link |
or maybe it'll endure despite ourselves.
link |
And we can't tell and we can't know yet.
link |
And it depends in part on what we do and what we don't do.
link |
But here's a few things that we understand already.
link |
One, the idea that the West was in decline
link |
and that the rest of the world had risen
link |
and was more powerful and that we lived
link |
in a multipolar world, that turns out
link |
to be empirically false.
link |
I mean, it's just factually not true.
link |
There are no major important multinational institutions,
link |
organizations that are run on behalf of,
link |
or led by a South African, a Nigerian, person from India.
link |
Even the Chinese don't run these institutions.
link |
They would like to and they're trying, but they don't.
link |
And so whatever you pick, the IMF, the World Bank,
link |
the Federal Reserve, which is the most powerful
link |
multinational institution, which is actually
link |
only a domestic institution and doesn't have
link |
a legal mandate to act multilaterally, but does.
link |
It's got the most power of any institution in the world.
link |
NATO, the bilateral alliances that the US has
link |
up and down Asia, what organizations
link |
that have tremendous leverage on the international system,
link |
on the international order, are non Western.
link |
The UN is the most encompassing.
link |
And of course we know that it has five members
link |
of the Security Council with a veto,
link |
one of which is Russia, one of which is China,
link |
and the others are the US, Britain, and France,
link |
not India, not South Africa, not Indonesia,
link |
Indonesia, not all of these other countries
link |
where the people live, right?
link |
The bulk of the population of the world
link |
and where the population is growing
link |
like on the African continent.
link |
So it's not a multipolar world.
link |
We talked already about the international financial system.
link |
That's the Western, not multipolar.
link |
We talked about the US military and NATO,
link |
or we could talk about the Japanese military,
link |
which is just very formidable, enormous number of platforms.
link |
Even the Australian military
link |
we could talk about, Lex, right?
link |
And so it's a Western dominated world.
link |
And the West, remember, is not a geographic concept.
link |
It is an institutional and values club.
link |
The Japanese are not European, but they're Western.
link |
Just like Russia is European, but not Western.
link |
Because European is a cultural category
link |
and Western is an institutional category
link |
where you have rule of law and separation of powers
link |
and free and open public sphere
link |
and dynamic open market economy, okay.
link |
And then we have another thing which is pretty clear.
link |
The West is powerfully resented,
link |
powerfully envied and admired simultaneously.
link |
P.J. O Rourke, the comedian who died this year,
link |
fantastic, it was a big loss for the culture.
link |
He said, there are two things
link |
that are always characteristic
link |
of any American embassy abroad.
link |
One is a political protest outside
link |
and the other is the longest line you've ever seen for visas.
link |
And those things are true simultaneously.
link |
And that's the world we live in,
link |
meaning that non Western countries
link |
envy and admire the West,
link |
but they also resent the power of the West.
link |
Western hypocrisy, right?
link |
The West invades countries when it wants,
link |
but when others do that, it's illegal, right?
link |
The West arrests you for money laundering,
link |
but it's Western money laundering
link |
that is where you go when you need to launder money, right?
link |
So they see the hypocrisy,
link |
they see the excessive power that the West has
link |
and they resent it.
link |
And they say, who elected you to run the world?
link |
We have a billion plus people
link |
or we have a 200 plus million people
link |
and we don't have a say.
link |
You're the self appointed guardians of our world,
link |
And so it's incumbent on the West
link |
not only to remember the power that it has,
link |
but also to exercise that power legally and with restraint
link |
and also to think about how we can expand institutions
link |
to be more encompassing
link |
so that other parts of the world
link |
are not on the outside being dictated to,
link |
but instead are on the inside.
link |
Too often, right, Western power is not consultative
link |
in a decision making fashion.
link |
It's consultative after the fact.
link |
Okay, you know, we got together in the EU
link |
or we got together in NATO
link |
or we got together at the Federal Reserve
link |
and here's our decision and we're announcing it today.
link |
And so your economy gets destroyed
link |
because the Federal Reserve decides
link |
it has to raise interest rates
link |
or you now go into default.
link |
You can't pay your debt
link |
because Western banks lent you money
link |
and now the West has changed interest rates
link |
or other considerations and you're in big trouble now.
link |
And so this is something which we fail to address.
link |
It's very hard to address.
link |
It's very hard to reform international institutions.
link |
It's very hard to share power.
link |
It's very hard to acknowledge that you have too much power
link |
and that maybe having too much power is not good,
link |
not only for the rest of the world, but for yourself.
link |
And so it's great to rediscover the West
link |
and rediscover its values
link |
and rediscover its authority and credibility and power,
link |
but that's not sufficient.
link |
So we know this now.
link |
We know that the rest of the world
link |
is not necessarily jumping on the Western bandwagon
link |
to condemn Russia for its actions
link |
because the West can do things like
link |
sanction your central bank, take away your reserves,
link |
deny you technology.
link |
It pretty much can do whatever it wants
link |
and it can say that it's legal
link |
and it can go through various mechanisms
link |
and it can freeze your property.
link |
And you say to yourself,
link |
should anybody have that much power?
link |
And when do they come after me?
link |
Now there's a caveat here.
link |
And the caveat, Lex, is they don't like the West
link |
having all of that power
link |
and they didn't join in the condemnation of Russia,
link |
but they also didn't join in Russia's aggression.
link |
So Russia's domestic civilian aerospace,
link |
aircraft industry, civilian aircraft industry
link |
is in big trouble now
link |
because of the export controls on spare parts and software.
link |
Brazil is a major power in aircraft manufacturing.
link |
Did they rush in and say,
link |
you know, Vladimir Putin, we didn't condemn necessarily
link |
your actions in Ukraine, okay, that's one thing.
link |
And how about we give you all of our aircraft technology
link |
and we help you rebuild your domestic aircraft industry.
link |
And you can have the aviation at the West,
link |
did that happen, Lex?
link |
And you can look at India and you can look at China
link |
and you can look at South Africa
link |
and you can look at what they've done in practice
link |
and what they've done in practical terms.
link |
Yes, they haven't always joined
link |
in a full throated condemnation.
link |
Maybe they've been neutral
link |
or maybe they've been playing both sides of the fence
link |
like Turkey, for example.
link |
But are they rushing in to join Russia,
link |
to join Russia's aggression, to supply?
link |
And the answer is no.
link |
And the answer is no for two reasons.
link |
One, they actually don't wanna be party to that.
link |
And two, they understand that Western power.
link |
And they don't wanna be on the receiving end
link |
by crossing the West and then getting caught up
link |
in a sanctions regime or worse.
link |
Can we go to the mind of Vladimir Putin
link |
because what you just said, China, India,
link |
they seem to sit back and say,
link |
we're not going to condemn the actions
link |
of Vladimir Putin in Russia,
link |
but we would really like for this war to be over.
link |
So there's that kind of energy
link |
of we don't just stop this
link |
because you're putting us in a very, very bad position.
link |
And yet Vladimir Putin is continuing the aggression.
link |
What is he thinking?
link |
What information is he getting?
link |
Is it the system that you've described
link |
of authoritarian regimes that corrupts
link |
your flow of information,
link |
your ability to make clearheaded decisions
link |
just as a human being when you go to sleep at night?
link |
Is he not able to see the world clearly
link |
or is this all deliberate systematic action
link |
that does have some reason behind it?
link |
We gotta talk a little bit about China too,
link |
but let's answer your Putin question directly.
link |
So on Twitter, you've lost the war.
link |
Or as they say, there are these two Russian soldiers
link |
having a smoke in Warsaw,
link |
and they're taking a break, having a smoke,
link |
and they're sitting there in Warsaw on top of their tank
link |
and one says to the other,
link |
yeah, we lost the information war.
link |
And there they are sitting in Warsaw
link |
having that smoke, right?
link |
So yeah, on Twitter, Russia has completely lost the war.
link |
In reality, they failed to take Kiev.
link |
They failed to capture Kiev.
link |
And they failed in phase two, as they called it,
link |
or plan B, which is to capture the entirety of the Donbass.
link |
We're three months into the war.
link |
If you had made a judgment about, let's say,
link |
the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union,
link |
a definitive judgment after three months,
link |
you might've got the outcome wrong there.
link |
If you had judged the Winter War,
link |
the 1939, 40 Soviet invasion of Finland after three months,
link |
you would've got that wrong too
link |
of what the outcome was gonna be.
link |
So we're early in the game here,
link |
and we have to be careful about any definitive judgments.
link |
But it is the case that so far, they failed to take Kiev
link |
and they failed to capture the entirety of the Donbass,
link |
Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, Eastern Ukraine,
link |
a part of Eastern Ukraine.
link |
And they've been driven out of Kharkiv
link |
and the area immediately surrounding Kharkiv.
link |
They never captured Kharkiv, but they came close,
link |
but now the Ukrainians drove them back to the Russian border
link |
in that very large and important region.
link |
So those look like battlefield losses
link |
that are impossible to explain away
link |
if you're the regime in Russia,
link |
except by suppression of information.
link |
And as you know from Russian history, Lex,
link |
leaders in Russia have an easier time
link |
with the state of siege and deprivation
link |
than they do with explaining a lost war.
link |
But let's look at some other facts
link |
that are important to take into account.
link |
One, the Russian army has penetrated farther
link |
into Ukrainian territory since February, 2022,
link |
including in Kherson region,
link |
the famous Mariupol siege that just ended.
link |
They have built a large presence
link |
in areas north of Crimea on the Sea of Azov,
link |
the Black Sea littoral ultimately
link |
that they didn't previously hold.
link |
They're still fighting in Luhansk for full control
link |
over at least half of the Donbass
link |
and Ukrainians are resisting fiercely.
link |
But nonetheless, you can say that they've been driven out
link |
on the contrary, farther penetration than the beginning.
link |
Ukraine doesn't have an economy anymore.
link |
They have somewhere between 33 and 50% unemployment.
link |
It's hard to measure unemployment in a war economy,
link |
but their metallurgical industry,
link |
that Azov style steel plant in Mariupol is a ruin now.
link |
And a lot of farmers are not planting the fields
link |
because the harvest from the previous year
link |
still hasn't been sent, sold abroad
link |
because the ports are blockaded or destroyed.
link |
And so you don't have an economy
link |
and you need 5 billion or 7 billion
link |
or $8 billion a month to meet your payroll,
link |
to feed your people, to keep your army in the field.
link |
That's a lot of money per month and that's indefinite.
link |
That's as long as this blockade lasts.
link |
And so you don't have an economy anymore, you're indigent.
link |
And even if you take the lower number, 5 billion,
link |
as opposed to Zelensky's ask for 7 billion,
link |
5 billion is 60 billion a year.
link |
That's 60 billion this year, that's 60 billion next year.
link |
And so who's got that kind of money?
link |
Which Western taxpayers are ready?
link |
And if you use the 7 or 8 billion,
link |
you get up to 100 billion a year.
link |
The Biden just signed, President Joe Biden just signed
link |
the bill making it law, $40 billion in aid to Ukraine.
link |
It's just an enormous sum.
link |
The economic piece of that is a month and a half,
link |
two months of Ukrainians covering Ukrainian expenditures.
link |
And they're asking the G7,
link |
they're asking everybody for this.
link |
So you have no economy and no prospect of an economy
link |
until you evict the Russians from your territory.
link |
And then you have a Western unity, Western resolve,
link |
it lasts or it doesn't last, Lex.
link |
So you're President Putin,
link |
and you've got more territory than before,
link |
and you've got a stranglehold over the Ukrainian economy,
link |
and you've got a lot of the world neutral,
link |
and you've got the Chinese propaganda
link |
supporting you to the hilt with those Oliver Stone
link |
and Mearsheimer lines about how this is really NATO's fault.
link |
And you've got Hungary dragging its feet
link |
on the oil embargo against Russia,
link |
and you've got Turkey dragging its feet
link |
on the recent applications of Sweden and Finland
link |
for NATO expansion, and you're saying to yourself,
link |
Lex, maybe I can ride this out.
link |
I got a lot of problems of my own,
link |
and we can go into the details
link |
on the Russian side's challenges,
link |
but he's on Ukrainian territory unless he's evicted,
link |
and he's got a stranglehold on their economy,
link |
and he's got the possibility that the West
link |
doesn't stay resolved and doesn't continue to pay
link |
for Ukraine's economy or supply those heavy weapons.
link |
And so you could argue that maybe he's deluded
link |
about all of this, and maybe he should go on Twitter.
link |
You know, I'm not on Twitter, but maybe Putin,
link |
who famously doesn't use the internet,
link |
should go on Twitter and see he's losing the war.
link |
Or you can argue that maybe he's calculating here
link |
that he's got a chance to still prevail.
link |
Wow, that is darkly insightful.
link |
If I could go to Henry Kissinger for a brief moment,
link |
and people should read this op ed he wrote
link |
in the Washington Post in March 5th, 2014,
link |
after the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine,
link |
but before Crimea was annexed.
link |
There's a lot of interesting historical description
link |
about the division within Ukraine,
link |
the corruption within Ukraine that will,
link |
if people read this article, will give context
link |
to how incredible it is, what Zelensky was able
link |
to accomplish in uniting the country.
link |
But I just want to comment because Henry Kissinger
link |
is an interesting figure in American history.
link |
He opens the article with, in my life,
link |
I have seen four wars begun with great enthusiasm
link |
and public support, all of which we did not know
link |
how to end, and from three of which
link |
we withdrew unilaterally.
link |
The test of policy is how it ends, not how it begins.
link |
So he's giving this cold, hard truth
link |
that we go into wars excited, are able to send $40 billion,
link |
financial aid, military aid, our own men and women,
link |
but the excitement fades, Twitter outrage fades,
link |
and then a country that's willing to wait patiently
link |
is willing to pay the cost of siege
link |
versus the cost of explaining to its own people
link |
that the war is lost, that country just might win, outlast.
link |
Let's hope not because the Ukrainians,
link |
resistance deserves to prevail here.
link |
Russia deserves to lose.
link |
No war of aggression like they've committed here
link |
against Ukraine should prevail
link |
if we can do anything about it.
link |
I support 1,000% the continued supply of heavy weapons,
link |
including offensive weapons, to the Ukrainians
link |
as long as they're willing to resist, and it's their choice.
link |
It's their choice when to negotiate.
link |
It's their choice how much to resist.
link |
It's their choice what kind of sacrifices to make,
link |
and it's our responsibility to meet their requests
link |
more quickly than we have so far and at greater scale.
link |
But ultimately, wars only have political ends.
link |
They never have military ends.
link |
You need a political solution here.
link |
So if the Ukrainians are able to conduct
link |
a successful counteroffensive at scale
link |
in July or August, whenever they launch,
link |
right now the heavy weapons are coming in
link |
and they're being moved to the battlefield
link |
and more are coming, you know, the dynamic.
link |
Russia bombs a school, Russia bombs a hospital.
link |
Americans and Europeans decide
link |
to send even more heavy weapons to Ukraine, right?
link |
That's the self defeating dynamic from the Russian side.
link |
They commit the atrocities, we send more heavy weapons.
link |
Once those heavy weapons are on the battle lines,
link |
we'll see if Ukrainians cannot just defend,
link |
which they've proven they're able to do
link |
in breathtaking fashion, not just conduct counterattacks
link |
where the enemy moves forward
link |
and you cut behind the enemy's lines
link |
and you counterattack and push the enemy back a little bit,
link |
but whether you can evict the Russians
link |
from your territory with a combined arms operation
link |
where you have a massive superiority
link |
in infantry and heavy weapons,
link |
but more importantly, you coordinate your air power,
link |
your tanks, your drones, your infantry at scale,
link |
which is something the Ukrainians have not done yet.
link |
It's something the Russians failed at in Ukraine
link |
and they come from the same place, the Soviet military.
link |
We hope this Ukrainian counter offensive at scale,
link |
this combined arms operation succeeds.
link |
And if it does succeed,
link |
there's the possibility of a battlefield victory.
link |
Whether that also includes Crimea,
link |
which as you know is not hostile on the contrary
link |
to the Russian military remains to be seen.
link |
But however much they regain territorially
link |
back towards the 1991 borders,
link |
which is their goal, their stated goal,
link |
and which we support them properly in trying to achieve,
link |
however much they achieve of that
link |
in this counter offensive that we're anticipating,
link |
that will set the stage for the next phase.
link |
And either Russia, which is to say one person,
link |
Vladimir Putin, will acknowledge that he's lost the war
link |
because the Ukrainians won it on the battlefield,
link |
or he'll try to announce a full scale mobilization,
link |
conscript the whole country, go back,
link |
and instead of acknowledging defeat,
link |
try to win with a different plan,
link |
recalibrate, remains to be seen.
link |
Will the Ukrainians negotiate any territory away
link |
or must they capture also Crimea,
link |
which puts a very high bar on the summer counter offensive
link |
that we're gonna see, which could last through the fall
link |
and into the winter as a result.
link |
We don't know the answers to that,
link |
nobody knows the answers to that.
link |
People are guessing, some people are better informed
link |
because they have inside intelligence.
link |
People are also worried about Russian escalation
link |
to nuclear weapons or chemical weapons
link |
if they begin to lose on the battlefield to Ukraine.
link |
Are you worried about nuclear war,
link |
the possibility of nuclear war?
link |
I think it's necessary to pay attention to that possibility.
link |
That possibility existed before the February 2022
link |
full blown invasion of Ukraine.
link |
The doomsday arsenal that Russia possesses
link |
is enough to destroy the world many times over,
link |
and that's been the case every year
link |
since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
link |
And so, of course, we're concerned about that.
link |
We do know, however, Lex,
link |
that they have a system known as dual key,
link |
dual key for their strategic nuclear weapons.
link |
Strategic nuclear weapons means the ones fired from silos,
link |
the missiles, the ones delivered from bombers,
link |
or the ones fired from submarines, right?
link |
And they're ready to go.
link |
They're intercontinental.
link |
We watch that very, very closely.
link |
We watch all the movement of that and the alerts, et cetera.
link |
We have tremendously, let's say,
link |
tremendous inside intelligence on that.
link |
But dual key means that President Putin alone
link |
He has one key, which he must insert,
link |
he must then insert the codes for a command to launch.
link |
That then goes to the head of the general staff,
link |
who must, he has his own key and separate codes,
link |
and must do the same,
link |
insert that key and codes for them to launch.
link |
And so will the general staff chief go along
link |
with the destruction of the world
link |
over a battlefield loss in Ukraine?
link |
I don't know the answer to that,
link |
and I don't know if anybody knows the answer to that.
link |
Will those people flying those bombers,
link |
if they get the order from,
link |
if the dual key system goes into action
link |
and both keys are used and all the codes are implemented,
link |
will those young guys flying those bombers
link |
let those bombs go?
link |
Will those at the missile silos decide to engage and fire?
link |
We don't know, but you can see that it's more than one man
link |
making the decision here
link |
in a system of strategic nuclear weapons.
link |
As far as the tactical, the so called low yield
link |
or battlefield nuclear weapons,
link |
we're not sure the system that they have in Russia these days
link |
for their implement, for their use
link |
of such tactical nuclear weapons.
link |
It could well be that Putin and just himself,
link |
himself, he alone can fire them or order them be fired.
link |
What you know, Lex, there's no tactical nuclear weapon
link |
fired at Ukraine that's not also fired simultaneously
link |
If the Kremlin is 600 miles from Ukraine
link |
and if the wind changes direction
link |
or the wind happens to be blowing east, northeast,
link |
the fallout hits your Kremlin, not just Ukraine.
link |
Moreover, you have all those border regions
link |
which are staging regions for the Russian offensive
link |
and they're a lot closer than 600 miles.
link |
They're actually right there.
link |
And so you fire that weapon on Ukrainian territory
link |
and you can get the fallout
link |
just like the Chernobyl fallout spread to Sweden
link |
which is how we got the Kremlin to finally,
link |
first they denied this at all.
link |
We don't know why there's a big nuclear cloud over Sweden.
link |
We don't know where that came from
link |
but eventually they admitted it.
link |
So Russia can actually use a nuclear weapon
link |
tactical battlefield one in Ukraine
link |
without also firing it at itself.
link |
And in addition, it's that same dynamic
link |
I alluded to earlier
link |
which is to say you bomb a hospital,
link |
you bomb a school, there's more heavy weapons
link |
going to Ukraine from the west.
link |
You can't get away with any of the,
link |
there's always going to be a response
link |
that's either proportional or greater than proportional.
link |
You could well have Europe signing on
link |
to NATO direct engagement,
link |
both Washington and Brussels direct engagement
link |
of the Russian army on the territory of Ukraine.
link |
You think that's possible to do that
link |
without dramatic escalation from the Russian side?
link |
Yes, I do think it's possible
link |
but it's very worrisome just like you're saying.
link |
But if Putin were to escalate like that,
link |
he's firing that weapon at himself
link |
and he's potentially provoking a direct clash
link |
with NATO's military,
link |
not just with the Ukrainian military.
link |
If you're sitting in the Kremlin
link |
looking at those charts, Lex, of NATO capabilities
link |
and you can't conquer Ukraine
link |
which didn't really have heavy weapons
link |
before February 2022 at scale
link |
and you're thinking, okay, now I'm gonna take on NATO,
link |
that would be a bold step on the part of a Russian leader.
link |
And let's also remember, Lex,
link |
that there's another variable here.
link |
You're a despot as long as everyone implements your orders.
link |
And so if people start to say quietly,
link |
not necessarily publicly, I may not implement that order
link |
because that's maybe a criminal order
link |
or my grandma is Ukrainian or my wife is Ukrainian
link |
or I don't wanna go to the hog.
link |
I don't wanna spend the rest of my life in the hog
link |
or whatever it might be.
link |
At any point along the chain of command
link |
from the general staff all the way down, right,
link |
to the platoon, you're a despot
link |
provided they implement your orders.
link |
But who's to say that somewhere along the chain of command
link |
people start to say, I'm gonna ignore that order
link |
or I'm gonna sabotage that order
link |
or I'm gonna flee the battlefield
link |
or I'm gonna injure myself so that I don't have to fight
link |
or I'm gonna join the Ukrainian side.
link |
And so it could be that's what's left
link |
of the Russian army in the field begins to disintegrate.
link |
Even if the Ukrainians are not able to mount that
link |
counter offensive at scale, that combined arms operation,
link |
the Russian military in the field,
link |
which has taken horrendous casualties
link |
as far as we understand, something like a third
link |
of the original force, so you're talking about 50 to 60,000
link |
that includes both dead and wounded to the point
link |
of being unable to return to the battlefield.
link |
Those are big numbers.
link |
Those were a lot of families, a lot of families affected.
link |
Their sons or their husbands or their fathers
link |
are either missing in action or the regime won't tell them
link |
that they're dead, as you know from the sinking
link |
of that flagship, Moskva, right, by the Ukrainians.
link |
And so a disintegration of the Russian military
link |
because there are orders that they either can't implement
link |
or don't wanna implement is also not excluded.
link |
And so you have these two big variables,
link |
the Ukrainian army in the field and its ability
link |
to move from defense to offense at scale,
link |
and we're gonna test that soon.
link |
And then the Russian ability in the field to hold together
link |
in a war of conquest and aggression
link |
where they're conscripts or they're fed dog food
link |
or they don't have any weapons anymore
link |
because there's no resupply,
link |
so the disintegration of the army can't be excluded.
link |
And then, of course, all bets are off on the Putin regime.
link |
More long term, there are these technology export controls.
link |
We were talking about how the military industrial complex
link |
in Russia is dependent on foreign component parts
link |
and software, and so if you have export controls
link |
and you have firms voluntarily,
link |
even when they don't fall under export controls,
link |
leaving Russian business, refusing to do business
link |
with Russia, and we see this not just in the civilian sector
link |
like with McDonald's or many other companies,
link |
we see this in the key areas like the oil industry
link |
with the executives fleeing,
link |
that is the Western executives fleeing,
link |
giving up their positions.
link |
So Russia's ability to resupply its tanks,
link |
resupply its missiles, resupply its uniforms,
link |
resupply its food to its soldiers in the field
link |
and in their boots, we see a lot of stuff
link |
under tremendous stress, and in the long term,
link |
there's no obvious way they can rebuild
link |
the military industrial complex to produce those weapons
link |
because they're reliant on foreign parts
link |
that they can't get anymore,
link |
and there are no domestic substitutes
link |
on the immediate horizon.
link |
That's at the earliest a two year proposition
link |
to have domestic substitutes,
link |
and for some things like microelectronics,
link |
they've never had domestic substitutes
link |
going back to the Soviet times as you know well.
link |
And so there's that pressure on Russia
link |
from the technology export controls,
link |
which if you're in the security ministry
link |
or the defense ministry,
link |
if you're in that side of the regime,
link |
you're feeling that pain as we speak,
link |
and you're wondering about the strategy.
link |
Let me ask you about, again, the echoes of history,
link |
and it frustrates me in part
link |
when people draw these parallels,
link |
but maybe there is some deep insight about those parallels.
link |
So there's a song that goes,
link |
Dvata Teroviy Uniya Rovnovshchitya Chisa
link |
Kiev by Bitya Nama Bitya Shtanochilai Svaina.
link |
So Operation Barbarossa, the bombing of Kiev by Hitler,
link |
there is sort of an eerie parallel,
link |
and you have to be extremely careful
link |
drawing such parallels and such connections
link |
to this unexplainable war that is World War II.
link |
But is there elements of this that do echo
link |
in the actions of Vladimir Putin?
link |
And more specifically, do you think that Vladimir Putin
link |
is a war criminal?
link |
Can that label be assigned to the actions of this man?
link |
A war criminal is a legal determination,
link |
and it requires evidence and due process
link |
and the ability to defend oneself.
link |
We don't just decide in the Twittersphere
link |
or on a podcast that somebody is a war criminal.
link |
They can be a suspected war criminal,
link |
and we can gather evidence to try to prosecute that case.
link |
And then the issue for us, Alexis,
link |
which court does it go to?
link |
What's the appropriate place?
link |
Does it happen in Ukraine because they're the victims?
link |
Does it happen in the Hague
link |
because there's an international criminal court there?
link |
Does it happen inside Russia
link |
because there's regime change at some point?
link |
And some of these people become,
link |
let's say they get arrested by their own people
link |
So those are all important questions
link |
that have to be pursued with resources
link |
and with determination and by skilled people
link |
who are excellent at gathering that evidence.
link |
And that process is underway.
link |
And Ukraine has a trial underway now
link |
of one alleged war criminal who's pleaded guilty.
link |
And we'll see what the outcome of that trial
link |
inside Ukraine is of a lower level official,
link |
not obviously Vladimir Putin,
link |
but the commander of a tank group.
link |
So, yes, the names are eerily familiar.
link |
Izium, Kharkiv, Kiev, right?
link |
Those are the names we know from the Nazi invasion
link |
and the Nazi occupation of Ukraine.
link |
And it's very deeply troubling
link |
to think that this could happen again.
link |
And there's a bizarre sense that the Russians
link |
claiming as Putin says to deNazify Ukraine
link |
have invaded the same places that the Nazis invaded
link |
As somebody who's working on volume three
link |
of your work on Stalin going through this period,
link |
is it eerie to you?
link |
I've written the chapters of volume three.
link |
I've drafted the chapters on the war.
link |
And as I said, the place names
link |
are very evocative, unfortunately.
link |
But, you know, the Nazis failed ultimately.
link |
They captured Ukraine for a time,
link |
but they were evicted from Ukraine.
link |
There was massive partisan or guerrilla warfare resistance
link |
behind Nazi lines the whole time
link |
that they were allegedly in control of Ukraine.
link |
If you look at the maps on cable TV,
link |
they show you the sign of,
link |
they show you the coloring, Russian control.
link |
And they draw a line and then it's colored in.
link |
But the word control is misplaced.
link |
They don't actually control it.
link |
It's Russian claimed or extent
link |
of farthest Russian troop advancement.
link |
Because behind the Russian lines in Ukraine,
link |
Crimea accepted, you have insurgencies.
link |
You have the armed insurgency.
link |
In Melitopol, for example,
link |
which is a place that you know in Southeastern Ukraine,
link |
there is a guerrilla war now underway
link |
to hurt the Russians who are in occupation
link |
of that city and region.
link |
And we're gonna see that continue
link |
even if the war becomes a stalemate,
link |
even if it stalemates more or less
link |
at the lines we're at now,
link |
which would mean that anticipated
link |
Ukrainian counteroffensive at scale proves unsuccessful.
link |
The Russian army doesn't disintegrate.
link |
And you end up with a stalemate
link |
where there could be a ceasefire or not a ceasefire,
link |
but neither side is attempting an offensive
link |
for the time being.
link |
There will be resistance behind those Russian lines
link |
and it will be fierce resistance.
link |
The kind of resistance we saw to the Nazi occupation.
link |
Ultimately, it took the Red Army
link |
reinvading the territory of Ukraine
link |
and succeeding at combined arms operations at scale.
link |
A massive counteroffensive,
link |
much larger than anything we're talking about today.
link |
Ultimately, it required that
link |
to evict the Nazis from Ukraine.
link |
But in the meantime, they did not have an easy occupation
link |
Ukrainian partisans, Soviet partisans
link |
killed Nazi officials, Wehrmacht soldiers, Wehrmacht officers
link |
blew up the infrastructure they were using,
link |
made them pay a price for their occupation.
link |
We could well see if unfortunately
link |
this ends in a stalemate for the time being,
link |
we could well see that type of insurgency
link |
gain momentum behind Russian lines
link |
and try to evict the Russians that way
link |
and then remount the counteroffensive at scale
link |
later on in the future if the first one doesn't succeed.
link |
So that would be further echoes
link |
of the World War II experience.
link |
The scale once again is much smaller.
link |
The size of the armies here,
link |
they're not in the many 800,000, 700,000,
link |
a million two, a million four.
link |
That's not what we're talking about today.
link |
But the weapons, the cruise missiles, artillery fire.
link |
Artillery fire used to be very inaccurate
link |
and it was like saturation.
link |
You would just fire towards the enemy lines
link |
and if you hit something, you hit something
link |
and if you didn't, you just kept firing.
link |
Now you have drones, Lex.
link |
And so artillery fire is now sniper fire
link |
because you can coordinate the direction
link |
of the artillery fire with the drones.
link |
The drones can take a picture and show you
link |
where the enemy is precisely located
link |
and you can align that artillery to hit them
link |
instead of just indiscriminately bombing an area,
link |
And the NATO supplied artillery goes really far
link |
and you can fire into Russian positions
link |
and yourself not be exposed to Russian fire
link |
because your artillery fires farther than theirs.
link |
So that's coming and we're gonna see that in action.
link |
And so the scale is not the same,
link |
but the weapons, the precision of some of the weapons
link |
and some of the NATO.
link |
We're not sending all of our stuff,
link |
but as I said, the dynamic is Russia commits atrocities,
link |
Russia bombs schools, Russia bombs hospitals,
link |
Russia kills civilians and more and heavier
link |
and more lethal Western weapons go to Ukraine.
link |
Their willingness to risk their lives is really so impressive
link |
and the reason that it's our duty,
link |
we're obliged to supply those weapons.
link |
And so the Russians don't have that resupply
link |
and the Ukrainians do.
link |
And so the Russians are now digging in Lex.
link |
They're digging in deeply in the areas
link |
that they've penetrated
link |
and they're trying to build unassailable positions
link |
for when the Ukrainians transition
link |
from mostly defense to full scale offense.
link |
And we'll see if that now,
link |
I mean, they're digging everywhere,
link |
as they say, Kapayut, Kapayut, right?
link |
They're digging everywhere behind.
link |
Your Russian is beautiful.
link |
Digging in, I wish Lex, like yours.
link |
But so there are these things that we can't predict,
link |
but there are these things we're watching
link |
and watching closely.
link |
And on top of that, something that's not in World War II
link |
or for the most part is cyber attacks and cyber warfare,
link |
which is much less perhaps convertible into human words
link |
because it happens so quickly, it's such large scales,
link |
so difficult to trace and all those kinds of things.
link |
It's not bullets, it's electrical signals and that.
link |
Yeah, but those Ukrainian people, they're like you, Lex.
link |
They're young and they're technically really proficient.
link |
And they've been amazing.
link |
You know, they spent those teenage years in the basement
link |
playing video games.
link |
Turns out it's useful after all.
link |
It turns out it's more than useful.
link |
You can save your country that way.
link |
And so they're not alone, they're getting support
link |
and that support is important,
link |
but really predominantly it's Ukrainians
link |
on the cyber battlefield.
link |
And their skills have been very impressive
link |
and they've been preparing for this for a number of years.
link |
And they have a whole army of young people on the cyber side.
link |
It's their civilian population.
link |
These are not people conscripted into the military
link |
or volunteering wearing the uniform.
link |
And so even in cyber warfare,
link |
the Ukrainians have been extremely impressive.
link |
And so let's remember that all of these aspects of warfare,
link |
whether it's how far your cruise missiles go
link |
and how accurate they are,
link |
what size your cyber capabilities are.
link |
It's really ultimately about the people.
link |
It's about the human capital, right?
link |
It's about their willingness, their skill level,
link |
but also their willingness to fight
link |
and to put their lives on the line.
link |
And there's no substitute for that.
link |
And so what's called morale or courage or bravery or valor,
link |
that's really the ultimately decisive
link |
provided you have enough sufficient arms, right?
link |
To conduct the fight.
link |
And if you don't, you use a Molotov cocktail, right?
link |
Grandma calls in the coordinates of the Russian tank
link |
on her iPhone and you have a Molotov cocktail
link |
that the people who used to work in the cafeteria
link |
are now stuffing flammable liquid into bottles
link |
and you carry one right up to the tank
link |
and you smash it against the tank
link |
or you drop it in one of the hatches in the tank, right?
link |
There's no substitute for that kind of stuff,
link |
that level of resolve, willingness to die for your country.
link |
That's a really big lesson
link |
that we need to absorb in our own country.
link |
We've been going to war more frequently than we should.
link |
And like you said, without the justification all the time,
link |
and then like Henry Kissinger said,
link |
without understanding how this was gonna end.
link |
It's easy to start a war,
link |
it's very difficult to win a war, prevail in a war
link |
or end a war on terms that meet
link |
your original expectations, right?
link |
We've been fighting wars,
link |
but we haven't been fighting wars as societies.
link |
We've been fighting wars as a small sliver of our population.
link |
Something like 1% of our population
link |
is involved with the military
link |
because we have an all volunteer force.
link |
And that means that it's easier for our politicians
link |
to go to war because they don't face conscription,
link |
they don't have the draft,
link |
which affects every family in the country.
link |
And because the number of people in the volunteer force
link |
is such a narrow stratum of the population.
link |
And so they've been getting away with this
link |
because the professional army
link |
is much better than the conscript army.
link |
And an all volunteer force is much preferable
link |
from a military point of view.
link |
But from a societal point of view, it enables you
link |
to go to war too easily as a politician.
link |
And it doesn't engage the society the same way
link |
that the Ukrainian society is completely engaged
link |
from those young hackers all the way up
link |
to those grandmothers.
link |
Let me ask you, you're a scholar of history,
link |
a scholar of geopolitics, and you're also a human being.
link |
You're also a human being.
link |
That's kind of you, Lex.
link |
What's the value, what's the hope,
link |
what's the power of conversation here?
link |
If you could sit down with Vladimir Putin
link |
and have a conversation versus bullets,
link |
human exchange words, is there hope for those?
link |
And if so, what would you talk about?
link |
What would you ask him?
link |
Well, Henry Kissinger,
link |
you alluded to his op ed,
link |
he's had many private meetings with President Putin
link |
And President Biden,
link |
the previous presidents, secretaries of state,
link |
officials below secretary of state,
link |
the head of the CIA,
link |
evidently met with President Putin in the fall
link |
when he was massing the troops on the border
link |
before he invaded.
link |
And we sent the head of the CIA and Putin received him,
link |
somebody he evidently respects
link |
or was at least willing to meet,
link |
unlike other members of the administration.
link |
So a lot of people are talking to him
link |
in some form or another for the 22 years
link |
he's been in power.
link |
And I'm not sure it's had
link |
what I would call their desired effect.
link |
Well, the nature of the conversation is interesting too.
link |
And also the timing, which is post February 22nd,
link |
is a different time.
link |
And also another aspect,
link |
which Oliver Stone mentioned interestingly,
link |
that there's something about COVID and the pandemic
link |
that creates isolation, the distancing.
link |
It's such a silly little nuance thing,
link |
but maybe it's actually has a profound impact
link |
on the human being, the human mind of Vladimir Putin,
link |
that there is something about an in person meeting
link |
and not across a table that's far too large,
link |
but sort of the intimacy of one human to human
link |
in person conversation,
link |
that there's something distinctly powerful
link |
about that reminder that as Putin says
link |
in the narrative and the propaganda
link |
that we're all one people, there is truth to that,
link |
that this entirety of humanity is one people.
link |
And you're kind of reminded by that
link |
when you're sitting together.
link |
People who have sat across the table from him,
link |
whether at 30 yards or at three,
link |
have remarked upon this feeling of isolation
link |
that has affected him, the pandemic.
link |
I think there must be something to that
link |
if several people who've been in the room with him
link |
are remarking on it.
link |
Everybody that I know and I've been able to talk to
link |
who's had a meeting with him in the past 10 years,
link |
including Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State,
link |
has said that Putin spends a lot of time
link |
enumerating his grievances.
link |
He goes through a monologue of his grievances
link |
and then the West did this,
link |
and then the West lied to us about that,
link |
and then the West cheated us on this.
link |
And so it's not the conversation
link |
that you're encouraging of common humanity.
link |
It's that roiling resentment volcano
link |
that's just exploding and exploding.
link |
And by the time he gets through the monologue
link |
of the grievances, the time of the meeting
link |
is expired or over time.
link |
That's a brilliant statement,
link |
but that's where the skill of conversation comes in.
link |
Like when you're facing a bull with a red cloth,
link |
you have to learn how to avoid the long list of grievances
link |
and get to the humanity.
link |
That's a really important skill.
link |
For sure it's a skill,
link |
and it's the highest level skill of a diplomat
link |
to be able to reach some type of common understanding
link |
when interests and worldviews clash so much.
link |
But here's your challenge, Lex.
link |
Your challenge is Russia wants to impose
link |
a closed sphere of influence on its neighbors.
link |
It wants to dictate what its neighbors can and can't do.
link |
It wants to exert influence,
link |
not by the power of its example,
link |
not by the freedom of its people,
link |
not by the dynamism of its diversified economy,
link |
but it wants to exert influence
link |
just because it deserves that,
link |
just because it's a great power,
link |
just because, and on and on and on.
link |
It's a civilization unto itself.
link |
And it wants that, and we can't give that.
link |
The reason that Russia was not integrated into the West
link |
was not for lack of trying.
link |
It was because Russia ultimately spurned the integration
link |
because it was about what terms
link |
the integration would come on.
link |
Would you come into the West and observe Western rules
link |
and be another country, meaning just another country?
link |
There's Poland, and there's Austria,
link |
and there's little tiny Monaco, and there's Russia.
link |
And you're just one of those countries.
link |
And Russia's answer to that was no,
link |
we're not just one of those countries.
link |
We need special rules.
link |
We need special conditions.
link |
We'll integrate, but only as a special country,
link |
meaning like at the UN, where all countries are sovereign,
link |
all countries are members,
link |
but Russia has a veto on what countries can and can't do.
link |
Those were the terms on which they were willing to integrate.
link |
And those were the terms that no leader of a Western country
link |
or the United States or the G7 or fill in the blank
link |
can grant to Russia.
link |
It's very well known that Vladimir Putin
link |
was one of the first, maybe the first person,
link |
first leader, foreign leader to call President Bush
link |
after the 9 11 tragedy.
link |
They didn't connect right away.
link |
President Bush was not in Washington,
link |
but eventually they did speak.
link |
He condemned the terrorist attack.
link |
He offered Russian support, which he delivered on
link |
the use of some Russian logistics
link |
for our Afghanistan operations.
link |
And a lot of people point to that and they say,
link |
Russia wanted to cooperate and did cooperate
link |
and we spurned them or we failed to appreciate
link |
Russia's cooperation.
link |
And so therefore Russia was cheated or Russia was lied to
link |
or Russia's grievances are legitimate.
link |
But here's the problem with that argument, Lex.
link |
In exchange for that support, Vladimir Putin asked
link |
in return from President Bush for a free hand
link |
in the former Soviet space,
link |
that closed hierarchical sphere of influence
link |
where Russia would exert influence coercively
link |
over countries that were sovereign.
link |
And no American president could grant that.
link |
And President Bush was right.
link |
And so the attempted cooperation blew up.
link |
But who's at fault there?
link |
Should there be a nonvoluntary sphere of influence?
link |
Should that be granted or should you face up
link |
to attempts to do that?
link |
You know, let's take a little detour here
link |
into China for a second.
link |
China had this brilliant grand strategy,
link |
which was sure, America is hostile
link |
because America is hegemonic.
link |
America wants to control the world.
link |
America will never let China rise.
link |
America will do everything it can to hold China down.
link |
So we're gonna have hostility from America.
link |
We don't wanna decouple because we need
link |
that high end technology transfer.
link |
Either we buy it or we steal it
link |
because America and the rest of the West
link |
has all the technology that we need.
link |
We have some of it domestically,
link |
more than before by a lot,
link |
but we're still dependent so we can't decouple.
link |
So we'll have the hostility,
link |
but there'll be a line we don't cross
link |
just so that we don't lose the technology transfer.
link |
Till Made in China 2035 is accomplished
link |
and we're self sufficient domestically
link |
in AI and every other area that's critical.
link |
But hostility from America.
link |
But we have an ace in the hole.
link |
Our ace in the hole is Europe.
link |
Europe hates conflict.
link |
They're all about trade.
link |
Doesn't matter how evil you are.
link |
They love to trade because Wandel durch Handel,
link |
change through trade.
link |
They have this illusion
link |
that you're gonna become a better country
link |
if they trade with you
link |
and you won't have conflict, war and hostilities
link |
And so we have this European ace in the hole.
link |
We're hostile with the Americans.
link |
We're still buying or stealing their technology.
link |
And better than that even,
link |
the Europeans are not hostile to us at all.
link |
They love to trade with us
link |
and they wanna trade more
link |
and they're our biggest trading partner already.
link |
And lo and behold,
link |
Xi Jinping sides with Vladimir Putin
link |
in the aggression in Ukraine.
link |
He doesn't side with him providing military equipment.
link |
He doesn't provide technology transfer
link |
but he provides public support
link |
and massive pro Russian propaganda
link |
to the whole Chinese population.
link |
And the Europeans say, wait a minute,
link |
this is an invasion of a sovereign country in Europe.
link |
You're not condemning Vladimir Putin's invasion.
link |
And so that wedge that the Chinese had,
link |
that was the basis of their grand strategy,
link |
that wedge between the US and Europe
link |
when it came to China policy,
link |
that wedge is gone now.
link |
Xi Jinping destroyed it.
link |
And the Europeans and the Americans
link |
are coming close together
link |
on Ukraine and Russia policy for sure,
link |
but also more and more on China policy.
link |
And so that was a pretty big sacrifice
link |
for the Chinese leader to make.
link |
And what did he get in return?
link |
He gets hydrocarbons from Russia at reduced prices.
link |
And the Chinese get hydrocarbons from a lot of countries.
link |
They have a completely diverse supply chain
link |
So what do you think Xi Jinping is thinking now?
link |
Was it a mistake or?
link |
I'd like to know, Lex.
link |
I'd like you to be able to sit down with him
link |
across from this table here on your podcast
link |
and pose that same question to him
link |
because we have no idea.
link |
There's a language barrier that's fascinating.
link |
By the way, you as a scholar of Stalin,
link |
do you think we'll ever break through
link |
the language barrier to China?
link |
Not ever, I apologize, in the next few years
link |
because there is a gigantic cultural and language barrier
link |
between the West and the Chinese.
link |
China's a great civilization.
link |
China predates the United States by millennia.
link |
China's accomplishments are breathtaking.
link |
But China's also led by, let's be honest,
link |
a Communist Party monopoly
link |
which engages in a lot of criminal behavior.
link |
Lex, Tibet is Ukraine.
link |
Xinjiang is Ukraine.
link |
Hong Kong is Ukraine,
link |
let alone support for Putin, Ukraine.
link |
This is before we've even discussed Taiwan.
link |
And so now the Europeans are coming to see this
link |
and the Americans are coming to understand this,
link |
that maybe trading with a regime like that,
link |
morally, politically, criminally,
link |
Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong,
link |
how is that different from what Putin is doing in Ukraine?
link |
I'd be hard pressed to differentiate that ultimately,
link |
even though the analogies are not exact.
link |
And so the Chinese, it's like that guy Leonov,
link |
the author of Licheletia,
link |
the great memoir of the late Soviet period,
link |
the end of the Soviet Union.
link |
You know that they spend all this time
link |
and all these resources blackening our image,
link |
but we supply them with endless material
link |
to blacken our image.
link |
That's where Xi Jinping's regime is right now, Lex.
link |
And so they have a big dilemma on their side.
link |
It's a Western world
link |
and they've united the Western world
link |
and reawoken the Western world
link |
to the fact that China is a threat
link |
to the values, the institutions and values of the West.
link |
And that trade is not transforming China quite the opposite.
link |
We'll see if this endures.
link |
Maybe it doesn't endure.
link |
Maybe it's a fleeting moment.
link |
Maybe this is not an inflection point.
link |
Maybe the war in Ukraine ends more quickly than we think.
link |
And maybe like you said,
link |
the Chinese and the Indians and the rest of them,
link |
the leaders there, they get their wish that it ends
link |
and the world moves on and forgets
link |
or says, let's try again to resume
link |
our mutual understanding,
link |
our mutually beneficial trade and everything else.
link |
Maybe it's a passing phase.
link |
We can't exclude that.
link |
I'm very poor at predicting the future.
link |
But the moment is not a good one for the Chinese regime,
link |
let alone the fact that he's trying to impose
link |
an unprecedented in the modern era third term
link |
for himself as president in the fall
link |
at the next party Congress,
link |
becoming president for life de facto, a Mao like figure.
link |
And he's now got to do that within this environment
link |
where he has damaged Chinese grand strategy
link |
and damaged the reputation of China
link |
and its relationships across the world.
link |
Maybe not permanently, but significantly,
link |
in addition to the problems they have at home,
link |
demography, as you know, a middle income trap,
link |
and then the regulatory insanity of Chinese communist rule
link |
that we've seen with the tech companies that you know well,
link |
where they've destroyed all of that value
link |
with the blow up of their property sector
link |
because it was a massive bubble
link |
and that's still playing out.
link |
And this time it's the same,
link |
meaning this time it's not different.
link |
When it comes to a property blowout,
link |
it has enormous effects on middle class balance sheets
link |
and their ability to remain consumers
link |
and drive the economy,
link |
which is the model that they have to share.
link |
So he's got a litany of challenges independent even
link |
of the fact that he sided with his pal Vladimir Putin
link |
and their bromance is costing China
link |
very, very significantly.
link |
If you close your eyes.
link |
And a hundred years ago in 1922
link |
and you think about the future,
link |
I wonder if you can hear the drums of war
link |
predicting the 30s,
link |
predicting the great depression and the resentment
link |
that builds the economic resentment,
link |
the cultural resentment, the geopolitical resentment
link |
that builds and leads to World War II.
link |
At least to me, when I close my eyes,
link |
I can hear the drums of war that are still ahead of us.
link |
And it's possible that 2022 will materialize
link |
in a similar way as did 1922.
link |
I have my eyes closed, Lex.
link |
Do you hear anything?
link |
And I sure hope that that's not what happens.
link |
But I'm looking in 1922, it's an epoch I know well
link |
and I don't see the future that unfolds.
link |
I would not have predicted it had I been alive then.
link |
I see the war behind us.
link |
I see a prosperity on the horizon.
link |
Yes, inflation in Germany
link |
and some many other difficult issues,
link |
but there are more democracies now
link |
than there were before the war
link |
and the old empires are gone.
link |
And there's a cultural efflorescence
link |
and there's modernism in the arts
link |
and there's women entering the public sphere
link |
and there's all this fantastic new technology
link |
And I'm looking at the future from 1922
link |
and I'm not seeing the Great Depression
link |
and I'm not seeing World War II
link |
and I'm not seeing the Holocaust
link |
because I don't predict the future
link |
and nobody in 1922 could see that future,
link |
although I guess there were some clairvoyants
link |
who predicted it, but.
link |
But you're not one of them.
link |
I'm not one of them.
link |
But this is what I know, Lex, from studying history.
link |
What I know is stuff happens.
link |
In other words, in other words, Lex,
link |
we're watching Ukraine war right now
link |
and all of our attention is focused on that.
link |
And it's like the economists say in their textbooks
link |
when their powerful models are employed
link |
and there's this line that says
link |
all other factors held constant, comma,
link |
and then the model works.
link |
And you get this really great result.
link |
It's very powerful predictor and analysis, the model.
link |
And the whole game is all other factors held constant.
link |
So the Russia, Ukraine war that we've been discussing
link |
and this could happen and that could happen,
link |
but you know what stuff could happen, Lex.
link |
For example, the Israeli government
link |
could decide this summer that it's gonna bomb Iran
link |
because no Israeli government will tolerate Iran
link |
acquiring a nuclear weapon.
link |
And since President Trump exited,
link |
unilaterally exited from the multipower nuclear agreement,
link |
Iran is now much closer to the bomb than they were
link |
when they were still in,
link |
when the United States was still in that agreement.
link |
And you tell me the Israeli government that says,
link |
sure, it's fine, it's okay, Iran can get the bomb.
link |
And so maybe that happens.
link |
And maybe that happens as early as this summer
link |
as Iran gets closer and closer and closer to the bomb.
link |
Maybe that guy in North Korea decides it's his time
link |
just like his grandfather, right, in 1950 decided,
link |
you know, it's time, we're gonna quote reunify,
link |
unquote, the Korean peninsula, maybe, I don't know, Lex,
link |
fill in the blank, something's gonna happen.
link |
It's not gonna be what I predict.
link |
It's not gonna be what I'm watching.
link |
It's gonna be obvious only after it happens, not before.
link |
And then it's gonna upend the table.
link |
And all of a sudden.
link |
Everything changes.
link |
We're gonna be in a different environment,
link |
different circumstances, and is Ukraine still
link |
as central at that point as it seems to be right now?
link |
I don't know the answer to that question.
link |
Let me ask two rapid fire questions.
link |
You're only allowed to have one minute
link |
and it's about predicting the future.
link |
Okay, question one, Vladimir Putin,
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when will he no longer be in office?
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And will he step down or be overthrown?
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What's your prediction and a brief explanation
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of that prediction?
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Now, nobody can predict the future,
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but what's your sense now?
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Some people are saying the pressure is building.
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He's going to be overthrown or step down
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at the end of this year.
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And some people say surely he's going to last,
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outlast Stalin's rule of 30 plus years.
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No evidence of a coup yet, none whatsoever, yet.
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He's pretty much at life expectancy for a Russian male.
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Those are bad numbers.
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He's 69, gonna be 70.
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So he's lived the life of a Russian male already,
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but he's got better doctors than the majority
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of the Russian males in that, let's say comparison set.
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So he could live a very long time with good doctors.
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So there could be a coup at some point,
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but there's none today in evidence.
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He could go because he's reached the life expectancy
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or he could stay for a long time.
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The thing to watch about this
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is an organization that nobody pays attention to.
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The FSO, the Federalnaya Sluzhba Akhrani,
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which is the Praetorian Guard,
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the self standing bodyguard directorate,
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the only one, the only organization in Russia
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that has any access to him.
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We've seen no disloyalty, no breaking of ranks,
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no defections, nothing in the public realm and open sources
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about any divisions or problems in the FSO,
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in the Praetorian Guard.
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So if you can't break that, change that illicit defections
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there, you can't overturn him.
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Authoritarian regimes, Lex, they're terrible.
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They fail at everything.
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They can't feed their people.
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They have trouble achieving any goals.
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They only have to be good, however, at one thing.
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They only have to be good
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at the complete suppression of political alternatives.
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If you can suppress political alternatives,
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you can fail at everything else,
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but you can survive as an authoritarian regime.
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So you watch Navalny.
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Okay, Lex, you go for it.
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That's my second rapid fire question
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is what happens to Navalny?
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What are the possible conclusions of what you said
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quite possibly the second most influential,
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powerful figure in Russia?
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Is he going to die in jail?
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Will he become the next president of Russia?
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Well, what are the possible?
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I wish I knew, Lex.
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I've been surprised that he's still alive.
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I've been worried that he will be killed in prison
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in a staged fight, some security officer,
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prison guard puts on a prison outfit,
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takes a lead pipe, goes into the cell.
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They have a quote fight and Navalny is killed.
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I've been afraid of that, but he's still alive
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even though he's serving a long sentence.
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So that leads me to guess that people inside
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the Putin regime and maybe President Putin himself
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understand that Navalny is their ticket to lift sanctions.
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That Navalny is even more popular outside of Russia
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than he is inside of Russia.
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He's the leader in many ways of the political opposition
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in the country, even while still in prison,
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his organization's been destroyed,
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but he doesn't have majority support in the population
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by any stretch of the imagination,
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but he's a big figure in the West,
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including here in the US.
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And so Navalny could be their ticket.
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They're kind of get out of jail card,
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meaning they release him from prison.
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He gets appointed, I don't know,
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prime minister even by the Putin regime
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if he were willing to accept such a position.
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And I have my doubts about that.
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And then that's how they lobby
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to remove the sanctions against them.
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So he's a card that President Putin could play.
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And so maybe that's the reason he's still alive,
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or maybe there are other reasons that we don't know.
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And so some alternative to Putin is more likely to arise
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inside his gang, Putin's Shika, as they say, right?
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Inside his gang, where they tire of his mistakes,
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they tire of his self defeating actions.
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And they say, patriotically for Russia,
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we need to do something against, move against this guy
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because he's hurting our country
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and also because I could do better.
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I'm ambitious as well as patriotic.
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But once again, the problem there, Lex,
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is Putin is surrounded by this cocoon known as the FSO.
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He meets on Zoom, predominantly with the rest
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of the government, including with the defense
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and security officials.
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They don't have frequent access to his person.
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And as you were alluding earlier to the pandemic,
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they have to quarantine for two weeks
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before every meeting with him.
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And moreover, you know, Lex, they don't know where he is.
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You see, when they're on Zoom with him,
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and the room, it's the Valdai.
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His office in the Valdai region looks the same
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as his office in Sochi,
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or his office outside of Moscow in Novogorod.
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They're made up to look very similar on Zoom.
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And sure, some signs they're looking, where is it?
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But maybe they don't know.
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And so they're not sure.
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Maybe they don't know, and so you're gonna move on him,
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and you're gonna jump him in his Kremlin,
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his dacha outside Moscow.
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And it turns out he's in Sochi, or vice versa.
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And it turns out the FSO is loyal to him
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and won't let you anyway.
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So Lex, we don't know, but we watch this FSO really closely,
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and we think that the elites, if not Putin,
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but maybe Putin too, understand Navalny
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as a really big potential political card
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that they could play.
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And one last question, the biggest question.
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You studied some of the darkest aspects
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of human history, human nature.
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Let me ask the why question.
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What are we doing here?
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What's the meaning of our existence,
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our life here on Earth?
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What are we humans trying to get at here?
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I can't answer that question either,
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but I can say that having a purposeful life
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is actually not that hard.
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You can't, you're not Gandhi, right?
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You're not President Roosevelt.
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You're not gonna transform a country or a civilization
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or become immortal because of your courage
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and your insight and your genius at critical moments.
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But you live in an environment,
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you're in a school, you're in a workplace,
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you're somewhere where you can affect other people
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in a positive way.
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It can be not just about yourself,
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but it can be about them.
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And you can have a positive impact on other people's lives
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through the work that you do,
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whether that's your employment or your charity
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or your spare time or your work time.
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It can be by modeling proper behavior, right?
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Admitting your mistakes, hard to do, but necessary.
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Remembering that you don't know everything,
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you can't predict the future,
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but you don't even know everything
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in your areas of expertise.
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Painfully reminded of that humility at times,
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but remind yourself too.
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So you can lead a life that can show others
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what good values are,
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and you can lead a life that dedicates yourself
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not only to your own material wellbeing,
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but to the wellbeing
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and to the development of others around you.
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And it can be on a humble scale.
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It can be in a small classroom or a small workplace,
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a small work team, but it can be done.
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And you can be reminded that having a positive impact
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even on one other person
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gives far greater meaning to your own life.
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And it's profoundly satisfying,
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much more satisfying than the attention you might get,
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let's say on social media or awards you might receive.
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There's nothing wrong with pursuing those.
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People pursue them and it's a free society.
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But leading a purposeful life intentionally is possible.
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Even just one person, I love the expression,
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save one life, save the world.
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Just focusing on the local,
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on the tiny little difference you can make in the world
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can somehow ripple.
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If you think about that every single day,
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you're a better person.
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We're a better society.
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And maybe you get to add a bit of love to the world
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Steven, this is a huge honor for many reasons,
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one of which is I can just tell
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how much care you put into this conversation
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and how much, I use the word love a lot,
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but I just feel the love that,
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just even the respect you give me,
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which I can't tell you how energizing that is,
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how much that gives me strength
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for my own silly little pursuits.
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Thank you so much for doing that.
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Thank you for not just talking today,
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but giving me so much respect
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just with everything you're doing.
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I really appreciate that.
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It makes me feel special.
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So thank you so much for sitting down and talking today.
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Mutual, Lex, thank you as well
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and thank you for the respect that you've shown me.
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These are really difficult issues
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that don't have simple answers.
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But that doesn't mean we give up.
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We have to keep thinking and learning and trying
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and finding solutions in everything we do,
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including on these big global tragedies
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that we live through.
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And it's heartbreaking what's going on.
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It just breaks my heart every day.
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A person who studies this,
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I've been studying this for decades,
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and it keeps happening.
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And you think, again, and yes, it is again,
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but we still have to keep trying
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and we have to be inspired
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by those people who are more courageous than we are
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and sacrifice more than we sacrifice.
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For me, the Russian invasion of Ukraine,
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the war in Ukraine is experienced in my study at home
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and in my office at Princeton
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or my coming office at Stanford
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when I moved full time to Stanford in September.
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Or it's experienced far away in safety and in comfort.
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And we have to remember that too
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when we talk about these things,
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when we answer your questions, right?
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That as we speak and as we comment
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and think we're experts on these things
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from the comfort of our existence,
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that there are people in those tragedies right now.
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With no power, with no food,
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with no, with full uncertainty about the future
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of the health of their children.
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And I've also seen, because I have family in both places,
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homes that were home for,
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buildings that were homes for generations now in rubble.
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Yes, Lex, it just, it hurts.
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And it's, let's, it's Syria,
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where 350,000 at least by UN estimates died
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and Russia participated in that.
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And it's so many other places
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that don't have the same degree of attention
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that a European country like Ukraine has.
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But yeah, we have to remember also
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that in addition to Ukraine,
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and then there's things right home here in New York City
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where children are without food.
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Which is just inexcusable in a country this rich.
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So we shouldn't forget in our study of leaders
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and our study of geopolitics
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that ultimately it's about the humanity.
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It's about the human beings and.
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Thank you so much, Stephen.
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This is an amazing conversation.
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Talk to you again soon.
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Thanks for listening to this conversation
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with Stephen Kotkin.
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To support this podcast,
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please check out our sponsors in the description.
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And now let me leave you with some words
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from Mahatma Gandhi.
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When I despair, I remember that all through history,
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the way of truth and love have always won.
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There have been tyrants and murderers
link |
and for a time they can seem invincible,
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but in the end, they always fall.
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Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.