Sarah Paine — How Russia sabotaged China’s rise

Summary

In this lecture delivered as part of the Dwarkesh Patel podcast, military historian Sarah Paine delivers a sweeping account of how Russia — and specifically Stalin — systematically derailed China’s rise over more than a century. Drawing on her expertise in Russo-Chinese relations (her dissertation covered their border history), Paine outlines two fundamental “rules” of continental empire: avoid two-front wars, and destabilize rising neighbors while ingesting failing ones. She traces how Russia exploited China’s weakness during the Opium Wars to seize vast territories through the Treaty of Aigun and Treaty of Peking, how the Bolsheviks used the fraudulent Karakhan Manifesto to position themselves as China’s benefactors while never returning stolen lands, and how Stalin played both sides of China’s civil war to keep the country divided and weak.

The lecture’s most striking section covers the post-World War II period, when Russia swept into Manchuria in its “August Storm” operation, stripped 83% of electrical equipment and 86% of mining capacity, took 640,000 Japanese POWs as slave labor, and kept Outer Mongolia — territory larger than the US east of the Mississippi. Paine argues that Stalin deliberately prolonged the Korean War as a “low-risk, high-reward” strategy to weaken China while getting free breathing room to rebuild after WWII. She then traces how Mao eventually figured out Russia’s game, developed nuclear weapons to free China from Soviet bondage, and precipitated the Sino-Soviet split — which the US then exploited through Nixon’s opening to China.

The lecture concludes with contemporary implications, drawing parallels between historical patterns and Putin’s war in Ukraine. Paine argues that Putin, unlike Cold War-era Soviet leaders who were WWII veterans and understood war’s costs, has risen on a “diet of hot wars” and is making catastrophic strategic errors similar to Tsar Nicholas II before the Russian Revolution. She warns that the US must maintain its alliance system rather than pursue “gratuitous trade wars” against allies, invoking Pericles’ warning that empires are more often destroyed by their own blunders than by enemy action.

Highlights

”Russia stripped Manchuria’s entire industrial base”

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“They also take away Manchuria’s industrial base. They take 83% of the electrical power equipment, 86% of mining, 82% of cement production. Plus they take 640,000 Japanese POWs to be slave labor. China had been fighting Japan in one form or another since 1931. Russia comes in for the cameo at the end.” — Sarah Paine, 17:53

”The Karakhan Manifesto — the origin of the myth that Russia treated China nicely”

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“We’re Bolsheviks. We’ll return your lands from those unequal treaties and be your friends against the imperialist powers. We’re not like that anymore. The facts are they didn’t return these territories until the 1950s, after the Westerners had returned theirs. But from the Karakhan Manifesto is the origin of the myth that the Russians somehow treated the Chinese nicely.” — Sarah Paine, 9:35

”Stalin’s Korean War gambit — low risk, high reward”

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“From that moment on, Stalin sees a low-risk, high-reward strategy where he’s going to weaken China. So what’s not to love about fighting to the last Chinese? Stalin thinks this is great. Also because China is so isolated by this war, it’s going to tie China to Russia ever more tightly. It gives Russia space to rebuild after World War II while its rival bleeds.” — Sarah Paine, 22:40

”Putin has risen to power on a diet of hot wars”

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“Putin has risen to power on a diet of hot wars. Second Chechen War, where he levels the Chechen capital. He turns Chechnya into an environmental waste zone. Then he gets quite popular for his war with Georgia, taking South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia.” — Sarah Paine, 55:00

”Democracy and empire don’t mix”

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“Democracy and communism don’t mix and democracy and empire don’t mix. Elections are an incredibly powerful thing. This is where nationalism comes in.” — Sarah Paine, 52:00

”Territory stolen from China was larger than the US east of the Mississippi”

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“If you add up all the territory that the Russians took — from the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and 1860 Treaty of Peking, plus pulling Mongolia from the Chinese sphere of influence — it’s larger than all US territory east of the Mississippi.” — Sarah Paine, 19:35

Key Points

• Two rules of continental empire (3:03) - Rule 1: Avoid two-front wars. Rule 2: Destabilize the rising neighbor, ingest the failing one, and wait for the opportune moment to pounce
• Opium Wars exploitation (5:51) - While Europeans attacked China during the Opium Wars, Russia offered to help fight the British and French — but demanded China sign the Treaty of Peking, ceding Central Asia and the Pacific coastline
• First Sino-Japanese War double-cross (7:23) - Russia helped China push back Japan through the Triple Intervention, then took for themselves the very territory they had helped deny to Japan
• Karakhan Manifesto deception (9:35) - The Bolsheviks promised to return Chinese territory from unequal treaties but secretly revised the offer; Russia didn’t return territories until the 1950s, after Western powers had returned theirs
• Russia armed both sides of China’s civil war (11:46) - Russia provided aid, arms, and expertise to both Nationalists and Communists at the Whampoa Military Academy, forcing the United Front arrangement
• Stalin vs Trotsky determines China’s fate (13:10) - Stalin’s “socialism in one country” doctrine meant China’s communists were subordinated to Russian interests rather than supported for genuine revolution
• 1929 Manchuria railway invasion (14:54) - When China tried to reclaim its own railways in Manchuria, Stalin attacked with tanks, infantry, and airplanes, pounding the Chinese
• Stalin plays all sides against Japan (15:41) - In the 1930s Stalin played every China card to keep the Japanese and Chinese fighting each other, giving Russia space to avoid a two-front war
• August Storm industrial theft (17:53) - In the final weeks of WWII, Russia stripped 83% of Manchuria’s electrical equipment, 86% of mining, and 82% of cement production
• Stalin advised Mao to halt at the Yangtze (21:31) - Stalin wanted a divided China, telling Mao to stop his advance, which would have created a North/South split similar to Korea
• Korean War prolonged deliberately (22:40) - Once the Korean War stalemated, Stalin kept it going to weaken China, tie it to Russia, and give Russia rebuilding space
• Sino-Soviet split and nuclear independence (27:01) - China developed nuclear weapons specifically to free itself from Soviet bondage; the 1969 border clashes forced a strategic reshuffling
• Gorbachev’s fatal reforms (31:25) - Gorbachev’s attempt to save communism through reforms led to territorial collapse; China learned the lesson — deploy tanks, don’t allow democracy
• Russia measures strength in territory, not wealth (34:40) - Russians have always been poorer than Western neighbors but measure national power in territorial extent and ability to dominate others
• Third Rome ideology (44:18) - Russia’s imperial ideology cycled from “Third Rome” (Orthodox Christianity) to communism; Putin lacks a marketable ideology beyond nationalism
• China’s lessons from Soviet collapse (49:21) - Don’t hesitate to deploy tanks, focus on economic reforms, sinify minorities, and prioritize Communist Party control over efficiency
• Putin’s fatal pattern (55:00) - Unlike Cold War Soviet leaders who were WWII veterans and fought only proxy wars, Putin rose on hot wars and doesn’t understand their true costs
• NATO expansion explained (56:17) - Eastern European nations stampeded into NATO for excellent historical reasons; Russia’s claim of NATO provocation is “gaslighting”
• China’s water problem and Lake Baikal (1:17:20) - China has polluted its water sources and Lake Baikal holds 20% of Earth’s fresh water; China has nine times Russia’s population and GDP is converging

Mentions

Companies

• ASML - Referenced in passing context of technology
• Mercury (sponsor) - Banking platform sponsor

Products & Technologies

• Nuclear weapons (27:01) - China developed nukes to escape Soviet bondage
• Manchurian railways (14:54) - Russian and Japanese railway systems in Chinese territory that became flashpoints for conflict

People

• Sarah Paine (1:07) - Military historian, Naval War College professor, expert on Russo-Chinese relations
• Stalin (13:10) - Central antagonist; systematically played all sides to keep China weak and subordinate
• Mao Zedong (14:11) - Eventually figured out Russia’s game and developed nuclear weapons; ignored Stalin’s advice to halt at the Yangtze
• Chiang Kai-shek (11:58) - Nationalist leader who led the Northern Expedition; turned on Communists in Shanghai
• Trotsky (13:10) - Lost power struggle to Stalin; advocated world revolution over socialism in one country
• Khrushchev (24:19) - Refused to let Mao lead international communism; revoked atomic bomb plans after Taiwan crises
• Gorbachev (31:25) - Attempted reforms that led to Soviet collapse; China studied his failure carefully
• Putin (55:00) - Rose on hot wars; making same strategic errors as Nicholas II; leaving Siberia wide open
• Deng Xiaoping (29:47) - Abandoned communist economic management, launched double-digit GDP growth
• Xi Jinping (50:34) - Prioritizing Communist Party control over economic efficiency; has a Taiwan problem
• Nicholas II (1:19:24) - Fought a “recreational war” against Japan, poured resources into wrong priorities, was overthrown
• Nixon (29:29) - Cooperated with Mao to overextend Russia financially
• Brezhnev (30:13) - 18 years of stagnation; non-performing investments across the Third World
• Karakhan (9:35) - Deputy foreign minister who issued fraudulent manifesto to Chinese Foreign Ministry
• Pericles (1:22:07) - Invoked for his warning that empires are ruined by their own blunders more than enemy action
• Roosevelt (1:11:42) - Tried to treat China as a great power at the Cairo Conference despite British objections

Surprising Quotes

“If you play this game, you’re surrounding yourself with neighbors you’re either busy destabilizing or ingesting. You end up unlucky with all the very dysfunctional places on your border.” — 4:11

“There are no enduring alliances in continental politics. There’s also no counsel on when to stop expanding. So both Russia and China are known for periodic catastrophic overexpansion.” — 4:10

“What’s not to love about fighting to the last Chinese? Stalin thinks this is great.” — 22:53

“Russia’s problem is that neither communism nor Russian Orthodoxy are marketable ideologies. That’s where Putin’s little focus on nationalism is. But nationalism is a non-starter — he’s leaving Siberia wide open.” — 45:00

“We are more often destroyed by our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices.” — 1:22:07

Transcript

0:47 People are worried about whether there’s going to be a Russo-Chinese alliance. If you look at this picture, the relations are not between equals — one’s hauling on the arm of the big one. My expertise is on Russo-Chinese relations. My dissertation was a history of their border until Outer Mongolia was snatched and parked in the Russian sphere in the 1920s.

1:32 Before I get going, I’m going to use the word Russia to refer to all the regimes, the same way that you use France to describe all the different French regimes. The Bolsheviks thought they were special, special people: Soviet, Soviet Union. And Russia is the enduring thing. So that’s it — if we want to figure out what the future is going to look like, our only database is looking the second backwards, what people call history. That’s our database. So I’m going to look at the period from the mid-19th century to the mid-20th century, and then in the recent period when China and Russia discovered each other. It was the early part of their last millennium — fur, very lucrative in those days. But their relations are only episodic until we get to where the story’s going to begin.

2:56 China was strong, Russia was weak. Both empires followed the same two rules for continental empire. If you want to survive in a continental environment, you cannot have two-front wars. Any one of them can come in at any time. So you take on one at a time. You destabilize the rising powers on the borders, and that’s the fundamental problem with their relationship — a neighbor who’s a rising foe. That is truly problematic.

3:36 Well, you take on your neighbors sequentially. You destabilize the rising, ingest the failing, and wait for the opportune moment to pounce. But if you play this game, you’re surrounding yourself with neighbors you’re either busy destabilizing or ingesting. You end up unlucky with all the very dysfunctional places on your borders.

4:10 Also, there are no enduring alliances in continental empire — it turns out that the hegemonic power offers no benefits. There’s also no counsel on when to stop expanding. So both Russia and China are known for periodic catastrophic overexpansion. That may help explain some of their periodic collapses. Very high mortality rates. Before you dismiss this as ancient history, you can see it playing out in real time in Syria and Ukraine. It also explains why all of the great civilizations of Eurasia have been destroyed by this sort of warfare. It is ruinous.

4:58 I’m going to start my story in the mid-19th century. China is beset by a series of rebellions that just about wrecked them. Remember the second rule of continental empire — destabilize the rising neighbor. Russians repeatedly derail the rise of China, doing things that are remarkably detrimental to Chinese interests. It takes the Chinese a long time to figure it out. But they eventually figure it out by the 1960s. So I’m going to go through each of those episodes.

5:46 The big one is the Opium Wars. Europeans are coming at China in order to force trade. This corresponds with the two biggest internal rebellions — the Taiping and the Nian Rebellion. Here’s a big map showing all the rebellions that start in the late 18th century. Rebellion is happening everywhere — minority peoples who want out of the empire, others who want to overthrow the government in Beijing. The really big ones are in white. It’s got Europeans coming from all directions. In fact, the Chinese have so many fronts they can barely cope.

6:33 The Russians come to the Chinese and say, “We’ll take care of the British and French for you and solve that problem. However, we need to have you sign a couple pieces of paper — the Treaty of Aigun and the Treaty of Peking of 1860.” What do they do? They take the Pacific coastline and territory in Central Asia. The Chinese are beset by these other threats. They don’t think these pieces of paper are permanent things. But once the Chinese get their house in order, they’re going to come back for those territories.

7:15 Okay, the second example of ruinous Russian intervention. In the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan trounces China. Then the Japanese also want some territory on the Asian mainland. The Chinese go to the Russians to help them push back the Japanese from this Chinese territory. Russia orchestrates the so-called Triple Intervention — Japan looks at three great powers and says, “Okay, we’ll back off.” From the Chinese point of view, so far so good.

8:08 But then the Russians take for themselves the very territory they had just helped deny to Japan. And the story gets worse. All the European powers then carve out big concession areas throughout China. China loses control over its territory for several generations. They get a concession area, they get foreigners everywhere.

8:42 The Bolsheviks come to power. When they do come to power, they’re very weak — they’re fighting a civil war. The Bolsheviks don’t win their civil war until 1922. So then as now, they relied on a really extraordinary capability for strategic communication. They understand other people’s emotional life and what motivates them. They know just how to serve out the propaganda.

9:22 Their propaganda is going to help the Chinese forget the Western powers’ smaller predations while Russia’s even greater predations are hidden. Enter Karakhan. He was a deputy foreign minister. He sends the Karakhan Manifesto to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. “We’re Bolsheviks. We’ll return your lands from those unequal treaties and be your friends against the imperialist powers. We’re not like that anymore.”

10:03 The Chinese think, “Wow, here are the Bolsheviks who’ve gotten rid of this rotten regime. They’re putting together their shattered land.” They think that they can do likewise — here’s a model to follow and a mentor who might help them. Except once the Bolsheviks start doing better in their civil war, they reverse the offer. The original was “tear up treaties, China gets everything back.” Under the new version of the Karakhan Manifesto — and the original one still exists as a telegram to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, I’ve seen it in the archives in Taiwan — they change it to “We’re willing to talk about these things.”

10:52 The facts are they didn’t return these territories until the 1950s, after the Westerners had returned their concessions. This is not trivial. When we think of concession areas in China, you think of British ones: Hong Kong. The reason you know about Hong Kong is it was one of the last ones to be returned. The Russian concessionaries were huge. The Russians had by far the largest concession areas. But from the Karakhan Manifesto is the origin of the myth that the Russians somehow treated the Chinese nicely. The Chinese Communists, who would’ve known better, adopted this line.

11:46 My fourth example of derailing China’s rise involves the civil war between the Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communist Party. Chiang Kai-shek was head of the Nationalists and also leader of its armies. He led the Northern Expedition, reunifying China by defeating or co-opting all those warlords. The map shows the colors of where the major warlords were. Every attempt to secede from China, one or the other, had failed until Russian involvement changes that. Russia provides aid, arms, and expertise to the Whampoa Military Academy, which is in Canton/Guangzhou.

12:40 Russia trains both Communist and Nationalists — not just their own advisors but some of their civil war-era officers. But the Russians had a price. They’d provide aid, but the Nationalists then have to let the Communists into the organization. That’s what the United Front is.

13:05 Meanwhile there’s a succession struggle in Russia. They really don’t do succession well. Instead you have Stalin and Trotsky going at it. Stalin is all about socialism in one country — Russia needs to focus on its own internal development. Trotsky wants to focus on world revolution because only through worldwide revolution can communism be secure. While this is all going on, the Chinese Communists are getting nervous about the United Front. Because it puts them in close proximity to the Nationalists. They’re getting worried whether they’re about to get destroyed. The Russians say “No, no, no, no, it’s good.”

13:59 Chiang Kai-shek goes roaring up China during the Northern Expedition. He gets to Shanghai, pauses, and he turns his guns on the Communists. This is when Mao has to think of a new strategy — the urban strategy is no longer feasible. Meanwhile, the Shanghai Massacre helps Stalin trounce Trotsky in the internal power struggle. “See? We need socialism in one country. It doesn’t work abroad.”

14:36 Another example where Russia derails China: There’s a railway system in Manchuria. After the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905, Japan took the southern Manchurian railways. Japan invests massively in railways and builds up the region. But the ruling warlord apparently wasn’t cooperative enough, so they assassinated him in 1928. The next year in 1929, China decides it wants its railways back — not following either version of the Karakhan Manifesto. The Russians come back with tanks, infantry, airplanes, the works, and just pound this Chinese force. If you want to delay the rise of China, this is how you do it.

15:38 But now for the first rule of continental empire: avoid the two-front war. You move fast-forward to the 1930s and Stalin is looking at potential two-front threats — Germans in the west and Japanese in the east. The Germans and Japanese have signed the Anti-Comintern Pact. Comintern is the Communist International — it is the Soviet outreach program. This alliance is against the Japanese and the Germans.

16:07 He plays every one of his China cards. If you want to disintegrate the neighbors in continental empire, you play all sides of their civil wars and any side in a foreign war. So he plays every card he’s got. He pressures the Nationalists to stop fighting the Communists. They’re willing to do this provided Stalin will restrain the Communists, but they think he’s also going to provide military aid against Japan. Instead, Russia stays out of this thing. The conflict between the Chinese and Japanese works beautifully for Stalin.

16:54 The Nationalists form a United Front with the Communists, going back to fighting Japan. This is when Japan does the massive invasion of China, which leads to overextension and the Pacific War. So this two-front Japanese-German problem is solved. Stalin was very successful — the Chinese are fighting the Japanese so the Russians don’t have to. The devastation of millions of refugees does indeed derail China’s rise.

17:28 Under the Yalta agreement, Russia finally gets into the war against Japan. In the very final weeks, in this August Storm operation — one of the largest military operations in history — they rapidly take Manchuria. They also take away Manchuria’s industrial base. They take 83% of the electrical power equipment, 86% of mining, 82% of cement production. Plus they take 640,000 Japanese POWs to be slave labor. And they also take the northern islands from Japan.

18:25 But if you think about it, China had been fighting Japan in one form or another since 1931. Russia comes in for the cameo at the end. So if there are indemnities to be paid for the war against Japan, China, not Russia, should have been the recipient. Not only does Stalin walk away with the industrial base, but he takes Outer Mongolia as well. The Yalta agreement says “the status quo shall be maintained in Mongolia.” Well, what was the status quo? Russian control in the north, Chinese continuing control in the south. All of Outer Mongolia had been part of the Qing Empire. Moreover, Stalin had already taken Tannu Tuva. It looks small on the map but it had lots of gold.

19:35 So if you add up all the territory that the Russians took — from the 1858 Treaty of Aigun and 1860 Treaty of Peking, pulling Mongolia from the Chinese sphere of influence — it’s bigger than all US territory east of the Mississippi. So talk about derailing China’s rise.

20:02 To be fair to the Russians, they did transfer Japanese military equipment in Manchuria to the Communists. They taught them how to use the equipment and also how to do conventional operations. The Chinese Communists, as a guerrilla movement, how would they know how to do these things? They learned the logistics of being able to move people around. This transforms them from a lightly armed guerrilla movement to a very heavily armed conventional force for the showdown phase of the Chinese Civil War. This is essential aid for the Communist victory.

20:51 The Nationalists complain about the Russian looting. The Communists probably traded that industry for Russian military aid. The Nationalists traded territory and also Outer Mongolia in a treaty with Stalin not to aid the Communists. So Mao starts to figure out what Russia is really doing. When he’s on a roll in his offensives, the real movement in the last phase, the post-1948 period — that year Mao just moves and takes everything.

21:31 He’s about to get to the Yangtze and Stalin tells him to take a break at the Yangtze, don’t exhaust your forces. Stalin might have wanted to keep a Nationalist government in southern China, yielding a divided China in keeping with the second rule of continental empire. Mao is not remotely interested in that.

21:58 If you look at the Korean War, the first year is very dramatic. It’s up and down, up and down the peninsula. But then it stalemates for the last two years. People ask, “Why don’t they settle the war sooner?” Here’s how it goes. Once China intervenes in the Korean War and pushes the UN forces back, both sides want to start peace talks. The Chinese do incredible defensive engineering and build an incredible tunnel system. The UN forces are never going to get anywhere through those tunnels.

22:40 From that moment on, Stalin sees a low-risk, high-reward strategy where he’s going to weaken China. So what’s not to love about fighting to the last Chinese? Stalin thinks this is great and it’s essentially free for Russia. Also because China is so isolated by this war, it’s going to tie China to Russia ever more tightly. And it gives Russia space to rebuild after World War II while its rival bleeds.

23:17 If you put it all together — Chinese Civil War, Stalin playing different sides in the civil war, his stripping of Manchuria’s industrial base, what happened with Outer Mongolia, Stalin’s advice to Mao to halt at the Yangtze, and prolonging Korea — this is all consistent with the second rule of continental empire. Destabilize the rising neighbor.

23:46 Once Stalin dies — finest day of his life for many people — by this time, Mao has figured out that Russia is not China’s friend. He has to bide his time for a while, but Mao has a growing list of gripes. Stalin’s tributary treatment, but also Mao wants to be the leader of international communism. The new Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, is like, “No way.” Mao has just put together a massive communist country. That’s not remotely what Khrushchev is interested in recognizing.

24:32 Mao also can’t stand either of Khrushchev’s domestic or foreign policies. Domestically, Khrushchev is de-Stalinizing. Mao doesn’t like that — he doesn’t want to do things like that. In foreign policy, Khrushchev advocates peaceful coexistence with the West, which is the antithesis of the Cultural Revolution, which is based on permanent revolution.

24:56 They’re also forever squabbling about who’s aiding North Vietnam and who gets to get credit for it. So all that’s going on. Now, Mao looks at the base situation. He looks around at the United States — basing all over the world. China has hardly any Russian bases, but Mao wants them back. Khrushchev can’t understand this.

25:28 Then there are the Taiwan Strait crises of 1954 and 1958, where Mao shells Nationalist-held islands that are very close to mainland shores. Mao hasn’t given Khrushchev any advance warning. This potentially triggers some of the security clauses of the Sino-Soviet alliance. Then while this is going on, Khrushchev proposes a joint submarine fleet. Mao says if we’re going to take all these risks, we need nuclear weapons. “No way.” Then Khrushchev has had enough and he rescinds the plans for the atomic bomb. The advisors all leave in 1960 with anger all around.

26:18 Throughout the 1960s they squabbled incessantly over the Vietnam War. North Vietnam was getting maximum aid from both, which it did. The Russians needed to ship things overland through China. The Chinese let that happen but the terms of that overland trade were onerous, and the squabbling just didn’t end.

26:48 So the story of the reversal, the story of China’s rise, arose from multiple factors. It is both a story of China’s strength and Russia’s weakness. Step one for China is getting its own nuclear weapons so that it can get itself free of Soviet bondage.

27:08 Mao goes, “Okay, there are too many items on my list.” The Russians took everything they could. He’s going to create a list of all stolen territory. “We want it back.” Russians’ jaws drop, panic. They can’t even conceive of giving up what they consider to be their territorial rights. And in particular this one island, Zhenbao, on the Ussuri River becomes the flashpoint.

27:42 Here’s how riverine borders work: Under international law, the border is the thalweg, the deepest channel of whatever the river is. But the Russians applied this principle for European borders, not with China. The Chinese are fed up with that and they provoke a clash. The Russians are furious and they come to the United States. “Can we nuke these people?” We’re like, “No.” The Russians scratch their heads and ask, “Well, would it be okay if we use conventional weapons on their nuclear facilities?” We go, “No, still not okay.” Mao gets it. The one thing the nuclear weapon provides is a guarantee of state survival.

28:30 So there’s a reshuffling of the great powers. Formerly the United States was the primary enemy of both China and Russia. That would be a reason for them to cooperate. Now the United States can play the swing role. For Russia it’s really devastating having China as an enemy because they have to deploy mechanized nuclear-armed forces along the entire Chinese border, Central Asia, the works. They’re already stretched thin with European borders and occupying Eastern Europe. Imagine if this country had to put military forces on the Canadian and Mexican borders. It’d be bankrupting.

29:29 But this breaking up of the earlier alliance opens up the US swing role. Then we cooperate. Both Nixon and Mao see the strategic logic of overextending Russia financially by overextending it militarily. In addition, what’s going on is China’s economic reform under Deng Xiaoping when he abandons communist economic management and gets a much more productive economy. So China’s running double-digit GDP growth rates with significant compounding effects.

30:07 Now for this dystopian alternate history of Russia. Here on the left is Leonid Brezhnev, who had a series of strokes that permanently impaired his thinking. He was replaced by Yuri Andropov, whose own health was terrible. Then Konstantin Chernenko barely lasted. It sort of sounds like recent American politics, but it’s worse.

30:47 If you look at Soviet growth statistics, they’re impressive right after WWII. They’re busy rebuilding. But when you get to the late Brezhnev period, growth collapses. When Gorbachev comes to power in 1985, Soviet economic growth was around zero for the preceding decade. The social indicators are pretty horrendous.

31:15 Leonid Brezhnev was in power for 18 long years. He accumulated non-performing investments across the Third World — that was apparently the go-to gift. But it’s expensive and he doesn’t get anything back. If you look at oil prices, they track the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of Vladimir Putin. Russia relied as much as 55% on oil or energy revenues. When oil prices drop, they aren’t doing very well.

31:59 Gorbachev says, “You know, we can’t live this way anymore.” He tries economic reforms to save communism, without really understanding what he was doing. There were massive territorial implications for what he did — the loss of Eastern Europe and also the loss of the ethnically-based Soviet republics.

32:27 I’m going to show you Russia’s territorial trajectory. So this is 1938, before the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact where they divide up Poland and parts of Eastern Europe. By the time you get to peak Soviet power, they’ve got the Baltic states, Kaliningrad, and then of course Eastern Europe. But after the collapse, they’re down to a much diminished rump state.

34:40 Russians agree that their country always has been, is, and always will be a great power, but they don’t measure it in wealth. They’ve always been poorer than their Western neighbors. What they measure their strength in is territory, military power, and the ability to run roughshod over others. Also when they look at their security, they think “we need enormous territorial extent to be secure.” They’re always worried about other people threatening them, never asking “do we pose a threat to anybody else?”

35:33 Except Russia has posed existential threats to its neighbors throughout history. There are so many neighbors you have never heard of because they’ve been wiped from the pages of history, courtesy of the Russians. Russia starts out as the principality of Muscovy. Well, it wipes out the other principalities. Novgorod was a more progressive place. Then there are all the khanates of Central Asia. These are states — the Khanate of Crimea, Kazan, Astrakhan, Kokand, Bukhara. Then there’s been this repeated vivisecting of Poland, Lithuania, Sweden, and Finland.

36:32 You can see it going on today. This is what Russia does to other people. This is why at the end of the Cold War, Eastern Europeans stampede into NATO. It’s not some conspiracy, it’s just rational self-preservation.

36:43 Now I’m going to illustrate Poland’s experience — a country surrounded by rapacious continental empires. This is when Prussia, Austria, and Russia partition Poland. The Russians say, “But we didn’t take Polish territory, we took Lithuanian territory.” It’s a technicality. If you wonder why Poles have strong feelings about Russia, this is why.

37:10 It would also be the genocide-laced occupation that persisted for several generations after World War II. The Russians insisted on moving Poland’s borders westward. That is not the normal thing to do to a country. Poland has to eat a big part of Germany, and then you have to ethnically cleanse the whole place. Poles going to where the new Poland is, Ukrainians going to live in Ukraine. People are being moved all across Europe where there’s no way to take your things — hither and yon, and lots of them are dying.

37:53 Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Ukraine — all affected. Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia tried to revolt and keep some of their current gains.

38:15 If you compare it to what the West is doing — the United States has a Marshall Plan, you’ve heard of it. The West pays its allies to restore them after the war. They’ve won the war, so their troops are coming home. Meanwhile the Soviets are busy running show trials, executing or deporting anyone who disagrees with them. Then they redistribute everything through nationalization or collectivization. They impose this ruinous economic model on these people. Eastern Europeans aren’t thrilled about a repeat of this.

39:04 The people who made all this happen — Stalin sent some of the most toxic people from the Soviet Union. Vyshinsky was running the show trials, sending old Bolshevik leaders to summary execution. He appoints the Ministers of Justice, Information, Interior, and Agriculture. If you do that, you control everything. You can start expropriating property. You can start eliminating other parties.

39:40 Another toxic personality, Voroshilov. He’s another part of the A-list purge team who had been signing execution warrants alongside his military colleagues. He’s sent to Hungary, lucky people. In the elections of 1945 in Hungary, the people vote overwhelmingly — they aren’t Communists. He doesn’t care. Then he’s busily appointing Communist ministers, taking over the civil service, getting the propaganda up. They infiltrate and arrest all sorts of opposition, eventually running new elections, which of course the Communists win. 10% of the population faces tribunals. Think about that — 10% of your population hauled to tribunals because Russians are in town.

40:46 I’m giving the details because you get a sense of the template. The Russians looked at how the Allies handled Italy after its surrender — they basically just ran the show. The Russians figured: when we accept surrenders, we’ll run things our way. But the Russians want to take advantage of the chaos. Wars also often lead to war economies with heavy government control to run the war effort. Then they’ve got this big Red Army presence.

41:24 Here’s their template: They’re controlling Justice, Information, Interior, and Agriculture. If you control Justice and Information, you control the courts and the narrative. Then you control all the stories people hear. If you control Agriculture, particularly in those agricultural societies, you control livelihoods by redistributing other people’s lands — collaborators, aristocrats, the original elite that have been running rural areas.

42:02 It’s the big lie. Remember communism? What are we supposed to believe about why we can’t all live well? It’s the imperialists, the capitalists. But as I’ve just shown you, Russians were the greatest imperialists of them all. They’re doing this right as Western empires are decolonizing. Yet there’s this big lie, the big fiction that they’re using democratic forms. They don’t eliminate the country names — it’s still called Poland, but it’s a fiction. A fiction that they hold elections, but they’re all rigged. A dictatorship in reality. They’re just purging the opposition.

42:49 If you think Eastern Europeans don’t remember this, think again. Then there is a more regional dimension. I’ve already talked about ethnic cleansing. Poland moved to the west, Mongolia was taken. Then they want to take strategic choke points. That’s what Kaliningrad is all about. They put Russia on very important river systems. There’s Transnistria, which the Russians have held. They split places like Azerbaijan between Iran and the Soviet Union.

43:38 They do this splitting of Germany, Korea, Mongolia, and China — creating borders so that Russia can then set the terms. If it can take a piece, great; if it can take a whole thing, good for them. It’s all only about empire, territorial extent.

44:03 Every iteration of Russian government has an ideology that somehow justifies this territorial expansion. It’s a myth. Under the czars, the ideology was the Third Rome. The Third Rome was in Moscow. Let me explain how it works. There’s the Rome we all know about — Rome number one. The one where the Pope is. The second Rome has to do with the Byzantine Empire. That was the Eastern Roman Empire. When Constantinople falls, the Russians go, “Ta-da, it’s Moscow.” Our duty is to spread Russian Orthodoxy.

44:52 When the Communists get in, they’re not spreading Orthodoxy but communism. The problem for Putin is that neither communism nor Russian Orthodoxy are marketable ideologies. That’s where his little focus on nationalism is. Russia has a troubled history with wars. They lose quite often. The Mongol yoke — the 13th century when the Mongols just swept in and subjugated them. The Russians learned from the Mongols an extractive role that has endured. They extract from their own people, other peoples — it’s just resource extraction.

45:44 The Russians have also suffered devastating invasions — Napoleon, World War II — that just devastated Western Russia. Now Putin is dumping all of his ordnance on Ukraine, but that ordnance was designed to defend Western Russia against NATO. So if he keeps this up, he may find that his cupboard is bare and his nightmare of invasion will be there for him.

46:14 As for China’s ideology — it’s not religious ideas or empire in the Russian sense. Traditionally, the Chinese believe in the Mandate of Heaven. If you govern well, the people prosper and the territory would be theirs. It’s based on Confucianism. That worked for them for a couple thousand years. The idea of Chinese cultural superiority has endured, probably originating from this, but Confucianism itself is gone for the Communist Party.

46:48 That leaves the Communists with nationalism. That’s ongoing with territory incursions in the South China Sea and then all these gathering threats to Taiwan. The Communist Party wants to play the nationalism card. If you haven’t got anything else for you, play the nationalism card. Chinese youth seem to be particularly attentive to that one. The hope is that people won’t look at the ethical lapses of the Communist Party. But the old ideologies aren’t going anywhere anymore. They don’t have a marketable ideology anymore.

47:37 There’s just been this enduring feature of China — dynasties fall when people stop believing. China was unable to fend off Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War, unable to fend off Europeans in the Opium Wars. When enough Chinese cease believing in the Mandate of Heaven, you get the 1911 Revolution and the Qing Empire just vanishes as an institution. This is the total nightmare. One of the Chinese Communist Party’s fears is what happens when people cease believing in communism.

48:23 China has experienced these horrible periods of chaos. There’s a fear that China’s going to devolve into warlordism again. A second fear is that maybe the Soviet Union’s experience shows that these communist regimes can’t last forever. Plus the traditional fear of people invading. So the potential collapse of China gives them two different things to worry about. The Chinese know the economic theories on which communism is founded don’t work. The Communist Party has tried to adapt.

49:14 The Chinese have learned a great deal from what happens when communist regimes play around with big ideas. Gorbachev when he tries to fix communism, it just falls apart. The Chinese, I think, their takeaway is: don’t hesitate to deploy the tanks. When there’s a crisis, you just send tanks against civilians. Focus on economic reforms to the extent you can. You also really want to sinify your minorities.

49:56 The Soviets maintained this fiction that all these occupied minority peoples were actually happy. So they would sponsor all the nice folk dances and have a bunch of token minorities in traditional costumes. But basically they had no power. When the Soviet Union started cracking, there were plausible divisions along ethnic lines. That is how you get places like Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and so on seceding. China says “No way.” This helps explain the genocide against the Uyghurs. This is their rationale for doing it.

50:34 What you see Xi Jinping doing is prioritize Communist Party control over economic efficiency every single time. That helps explain some of Xi Jinping’s economic missteps. Because as Gorbachev discovered when he tried real reform — freedom of information and communism just don’t mix. If you allow free press, people find out about the regime’s incompetent economic management, and then they’re going to want multiple parties. Once all of that becomes known, the Party loses legitimacy.

51:15 Also, as Gorbachev discovered, when you give different minorities a real choice to leave or stay, they bolt. In China, the Han are the preponderant ethnic group. So they don’t care how many Tibetans move in because there are so many Han. They don’t care how many Mongols object. The Han want to keep the territory. Most Han Chinese survived the Cultural Revolution and do not ever want to go back to the chaos of the Mao era. That predisposes them to prioritize stability over liberty.

52:08 Democracy and communism don’t mix, and democracy and empire don’t mix. In a world that’s much more interconnected, how does a continental empire manage? Because elections are an incredibly powerful thing. This is where nationalism comes in. Russians likewise are trying to use jingoistic nationalism to deflect people from domestic problems. They aren’t the only country to do this — “It’s all the immigrants’ fault” or whatever.

52:56 When the Chinese did it in 1980, right after the Cultural Revolution, they decided to rewrite all the textbooks. The enemy was no longer going to be class enemies but national enemies. They’re going to focus on the evil Japanese, the evil Westerners. Well, the problem with nationalism is that if you imbibe too much, it clouds the judgment. It alienates minorities in your empire who are not interested in Han nationalism. And it also impedes the de-escalation of international disputes.

53:47 With Putin’s latest adventures, one can draw some real thoughts about what’s going on now. Here’s an addendum to the rules for continental empire. The interesting thing about Soviet rulers is they were all veterans of World War II. They understood that war is easy to get into and very hard to get out of. For them it was proxy wars. The United States got into hot wars — the Korean War, the Vietnam War. The Russians were delighted to see the United States just tied down. Great, great, great.

54:33 That’s when they make the one mistake. They go into Afghanistan and then all of a sudden it’s the Russians on the wrong end, with everyone on the other side inflicting costs on them. The decision to go into Afghanistan was actually opposed by Yuri Andropov, who was not a veteran. The military veterans said “Don’t go into Afghanistan.” But the politicians overruled it.

55:00 Putin has risen to power on a diet of hot wars. The Second Chechen War, where he levels the Chechen capital. He turns Chechnya into an environmental waste zone. Then he gets quite popular for his war with Georgia, taking South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia. He holds the Olympics in Abkhazia because he’s having such a good time. Then when he eliminates term limits for himself and popularity wanes, he solves that by going into Ukraine in 2014 and taking Crimea at very little cost. And Russians think that’s great!

56:04 This is the way continentalists look at it. You want to color in more territory. Putin wants to reverse all the losses. He wants the former Soviet territories and more — he wants to go all the way to Paris, like the Napoleonic Wars in reverse. He either doesn’t look at NATO or doesn’t respect it. There are two great expansions of NATO. One is in the early Cold War with all the smaller European nations that are smaller than Russia. They join to counterbalance. Then at the end of the Cold War, when these Soviet satellites are freed, they stampede into NATO for all the reasons I’ve explained.

56:57 Putin, when he invades Ukraine the second time, even Finland and Sweden decide neutrality’s not working anymore and join NATO. But when Putin looks at this, he goes, “NATO expansion caused all this.” This is ludicrous. Russia has posed an existential threat to all these countries. No one today wants to invade Russia — we don’t want millions of Russians. We want them to stay home.

57:24 The Russians like to gaslight everybody else, and they’re very effective at it. Lots of Americans will talk about NATO expansion causing the problem in Ukraine. He’s gaslighting us. The real problem for Russia is their totally dysfunctional domestic system. Instead of fixing that, they project their insecurity onto the rest of the world.

58:08 Back to the real problem: what are the scenarios for the Russo-Chinese relationship? Barring World War III, which would be the great disaster, there is one scenario where you might superglue these two together. If the West pushes them together — if Putin uses a nuclear weapon and we respond incorrectly — we had better get our diplomacy right because the costs for getting it wrong in this particular era are catastrophic. We’re dealing with a leadership that has not been tempered by World War I, the Great Depression, and World War II.

58:55 The generation that was tempered by those things did a superb job dealing with the early first Cold War. So if you look at the strategic picture: keep primary adversaries from becoming allies, because if they do, they’ll coordinate. Xi Jinping has got a Taiwan problem, Putin has his European problem. They’re on opposite ends of their two empires. Even in a world war, their primary theaters would not align — just as the Axis primary theaters did not align in WWII. They pull in different directions. But now there are a lot of people with nuclear weapons.

59:39 If the West and others manage things well, the historical legacy of fraught relations between Russia and China means these two will take care of each other. The strategy should be to not launch trade wars on each other but rather strengthen the alliance system so that we get stronger and stronger while they get relatively weaker.

1:00:08 Putin is just blowing through all of Russia’s resources in Ukraine. That’s how we fought and won the last Cold War. His nationalism is a non-starter. He’s leaving Siberia wide open. The Chinese were already moving in even before the Ukraine war. China is peeling away the former Russian sphere. Putin is doing this hot war gambit, making it particularly damaging. Why? Because China now needs and covets Russia’s resources. In particular they want water because they’ve polluted so much of their own. Lake Baikal has over 20% of the world’s fresh water. So if you want a quick fix, it’s the best one.

1:01:04 They’ve been damming the Mekong and other rivers downstream. Who knows what may be in Russia’s future? China has nine times the population, nine times the GDP, and the trajectories are converging. Not good news for Putin. The question is not whether the current arrangement lasts forever, but rather when it’s going to end.

1:05:42 What’s going on now illustrates the perils of continental empire. Nicholas II fought a recreational war against Japan in 1904-1905. He poured resources into that instead of putting them into the economic development Russia desperately needed to face off Germany, which was the real threat. He is overthrown in part because of the economic crisis this creates. His family winds up executed. It takes a decade to play out.

1:06:39 The parallels for Vladimir Putin are clear. Maybe he’ll survive, maybe he won’t. But if we get into a hot war, if the United States kills off its alliance system and starts a gratuitous trade war on our allies, then we have a problem. Japan tried this go-it-alone approach — trying to deal with China back in World War II. China now has a population that’s a fraction of what it was then, but it’s a multiple of ours. Why would you ever want to take them on alone?

1:07:37 Pericles was the leader of Athens at its height when it was building the Parthenon. Those ruins we admire were being built under his leadership. He warned that empires are more often destroyed by a succession of blunders than by the enemy’s devices. “We are more often destroyed by our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices.” Let’s not wreck all of us, ourselves included.

1:08:42 That’s what I have to say. Now for questions. First question: I want to understand the Sino-Soviet split better. These are the two major communist countries. They have this big ideological project — we’re going to spread communism around the world. But in the case of 1969, they’re literally fighting each other over a tiny island. There’s nothing super consequential at stake. Why do communist countries fight more than cooperate?

1:09:22 I gave you all these bad things that Russia did to China. Isn’t the problem with communism that it’s just a veneer? Fundamentally these two countries are continental empires that change out ideologies. The ideology of the tsars gave way to communism, China swapped out Confucianism for communism. But the underlying dynamic of who should be king of the roost hasn’t changed. Who’s going to run Asia and then Eurasia?

1:09:58 Also with communism, it’s supposed to be a classless society. But if you go on further and further, you have dictators who become more and more paranoid. There’s another piece where it’s the big lie. If you tell a lie big enough, long enough, people will believe you. And with communism, the lie is so preposterous that people just go with it.

1:10:45 There’s this whole fiction that the evil West oppressed China through these imperial powers. But if you look at the data I’ve shown you, it’s nonsense. Russia took far more Chinese territory than any Western power. Part of it is the Russian talent for propaganda, and part is China’s own discomfort with admitting that a fellow continental empire was the bigger threat.

1:11:18 But it’s also from being on the plains of Central Asia — when you’ve had people invading you for millennia, it creates a paradigm of how you deal with other people that’s deeply ingrained. I can’t totally answer the question because there are billions of Chinese and Russians whose decisions I can’t explain.

1:11:42 I want to understand Stalin’s decisions better. He simultaneously supports the Communists during the Chinese Civil War but also tries to split up China. We know from all his actions that Stalin does collectivization and almost destroys Russia’s agriculture. At the same time, communism says there has to be a worldwide revolution. If there is a worldwide revolution, there would be one leader. That’s implied in the nature of the ideology. But at the same time he doesn’t seem to be a true believer in communism. He cares more about real geopolitik.

1:12:43 His version of communism is “Marx invented it, Lenin operationalized it, we should run it forever.” Russia should always be the big communist country. As for whether Stalin believed that eventually communism would triumph globally — he thought that he personally should be the one running things. In his lifetime, he wanted communism on his borders because that’s what he controlled. As for the rest of the world, it takes time. Stalin wasn’t interested in, say, India because he had contempt for them. “How did they let themselves be colonized?” He dies in ‘53, not long after World War II.

1:13:27 His relationship with China, as far as he’s concerned, is going brilliantly. Mao goes to Moscow and kowtows. That’s Stalin’s experience until he dies. Would the Sino-Soviet split have still been inevitable without Khrushchev’s secret speech denouncing the cult of personality? Yes, the underlying territorial and strategic grievances would still exist. Dictators’ deaths profoundly weaken their regimes. It means you’re guaranteed a succession crisis. That’s what one waits for with Putin — there will be a cat-fight for power.

1:14:35 Stalin was pretty old when he died. His generation smoked and drank heavily. If he’d lasted longer, the split might have been delayed but not prevented. It’s really his death that ends the Korean War, too. Nobody quite knows what the implications would have been for Mao if Stalin had lived on.

1:15:00 One takeaway from this lecture is that maybe one of the most important events, if not the most important event of the 20th century, is the Chinese Civil War. We don’t typically think of it as a major event, especially since most Americans couldn’t even tell you who fought whom. But if you were living in 1948 or 1949, this was the main thing happening in the world. This is a really big country with a huge population, and you’d better pay attention to its internal political development.

1:15:52 The same lesson applies today, where there are other countries with huge populations that deserve our attention. India or Nigeria — we should be paying more attention to what’s happening. On China and the Chinese Civil War, there was a general consensus in the American military that China’s outcome was inevitable. That’s why Roosevelt and the British were trying to treat China like a great power at the Cairo Conference, even though Churchill said “they’re not a great power, Franklin, not remotely.”

1:16:36 Roosevelt made China a veto-wielding member of the United Nations because he was looking for something in Asia to counterbalance Japan. On the civil war itself, Americans who’d fought in China concluded “it is not feasible for us to alter this outcome.”

1:17:04 I want to zoom in on one particular episode. In 1936, the Communists in China kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek and they’re about to kill him. Stalin says, “No, you can’t kill Chiang Kai-shek — he’s the only one who can create a united front against the Japanese.” The Communists are furious because he’s been massacring them. But Stalin forces them to let him go to create a united front against the Japanese. This is brilliant on Stalin’s part, because when they’re fighting the Japanese, the Communists get to claim nationalist legitimacy against Japan with a fraction of the effort.

1:18:02 It was brilliant on Stalin’s part in retrospect, because if they had killed Chiang, the Nationalist forces might have dissolved. But it also could have led to a Japanese puppet government. It just seems like Stalin makes a lot of right calls. What is the understanding? There are dictators all over the world who are terrible at everything. Don’t dismiss their ability to stay in power. Successful dictators have emotional intelligence that’s off the charts. They can read people — they know whether someone is going to threaten them or not. They get rid of all the people who might.

1:19:00 Also what Stalin does is have multiple security services competing against each other. No one quite knows who’s running what, but they’re all funneling information to Stalin. You can use one one day, another another day. That’s why so many dictators end up getting shot by their successors. They’re very good at staying in power. It does not bring prosperity. The whole system of free trade, of following international law — you’re not going to get that under a dictatorship. It’s just so much more wealth-creating.

1:19:24 There’s something a little under-explained here. Hitler’s another dictator. But Stalin’s decisions — “Don’t kill this kidnapped person” or declaring war at exactly the right time — these are extraordinary strategic calls. On the opposite end, he’s making crazy domestic decisions. It’s not just communism, it’s something else. You can always reverse-engineer something in retrospect and go “crazy genius.” But you can’t predict the future this way.

1:20:10 When you look at history, you think you can understand it, you can reverse-engineer something, at least a plausible story. It may not even be the right story. But how’s this thing going to end with Xi Jinping or Putin? You don’t know. There’s a Russian proverb: the soul of another person is darkness. You ultimately can’t know what’s in someone else’s mind. You make your guesses, but then they do unexpected things.

1:20:42 Russia also in 1850, especially 1900, Russia was a rising power. But if you look at Qing dynasty China at the same time, it looked like a declining power. It’s the same with Tsarist Russia before the revolution. It makes you think that at various points, the trajectory can change radically. China was technologically dominant over Europe for most of history, then there’s this period in the 18th and 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, which changes the whole world.

1:21:15 That shows how important it is to be at the technological frontier. Of course we’re in San Francisco, which is a crux-y time in the development of technology. The worst thing you could do is start canceling all the science research projects. You’re thinking of America’s great strength? Our great strength also used to be our alliance system. If we’re going to eliminate those things, we have a problem.

1:21:54 I want to ask about whether you think at some point China and Russia will finish each other off, which would be bad for both of them. They’re too big to be finished off, but they might finish all of themselves off in a nuclear exchange. The question is about the possibility of conflict between these two. China has a lot of people and a lot of wealth. Russia has a lot of territory and resources. These are complementary resources. The question is, will they attain these through trade or through conflict?

1:22:34 It seems very improbable to me that China would invade Russia. It can just pay for Russian resources at favorable terms. Why would it invade a nuclear-armed nation? It’s a question of how desperate Putin feels. We don’t really know the terms of their trade. Maybe the terms of trade are going to get worse and worse for Russia as Putin gets more desperate.

1:23:05 If you look at what happened to Gorbachev — he’s not going to war with anyone, but his economy is collapsing around him. He is desperate for loans and concessions, which is how the West got him to agree to German reunification and the withdrawal from Eastern Europe. Those were trades he never would have made from a position of strength.

1:23:35 In that case, the West pays him to back off — they pay him less and less for whatever he wants as he gets more desperate. These terms of trade will keep getting worse for Russia. Does that look like the bromance ending? Putin will be in a very desperate position.

1:23:55 But there’s no risk of China becoming to Russia what North Korea is to China, is there? No, it’s the other way around. North Korea relies heavily on China. Apparently certain Russians, when Putin had his isolation, were saying “that’s our future. It’s North Korea.” Russia will just keep pouring out its resources and getting worse and worse terms of trade for resources, becoming a junior partner under a Chinese yoke that Putin does not like.

1:24:42 In 1931, when Japan attacks Manchuria, Japan already had the southern Manchurian railways, which the Treaty of Portsmouth in 1905 said they could have. People in the Politburo are telling Stalin, “We should respond.” Stalin says, “Look, I don’t want to raise the stakes. Let’s just let this slide.” This is quite similar to what happened with Hitler, where in both theaters he makes this calculation: let things slide so that I don’t have to face a two-front war.

1:25:32 With Hitler, he’s trying to buy time. He thinks it’s going to work for him. Not remotely. He needed to read Mein Kampf to know that Hitler was eventually going to come for him. Stalin didn’t want to absorb the bad news. Putin wants not only all of Ukraine but to keep on going. This is profoundly stupid strategically. For Europeans at least, they’re going to have to rearm, which is something they don’t want to do. But the alternative is worse.

1:26:10 We don’t like the bad news either. You have to make nasty trade-offs. Stalin thought it was going to work and it almost wrecked him. When he’s getting information that the Germans are about to invade, he says, “This is British disinformation.” He just doesn’t want to believe it. Similarly, the idea that Japan is only going to take Manchuria and stop there — even though it was a mistake, it helps in the short term.

1:26:50 There’s another concept that’s useful: the correlation of forces. Don’t confuse this with the idea that the adversary always makes good decisions. Some countries are easy to script-write because they don’t have strong institutions. It is much easier to script-write a place that has been destabilized. With China, you’ve got multiple factions trying to cooperate, but from a Russian point of view, they’re manageable. Whereas with Hitler, Germany has industrial power, military tradition, all kinds of well-educated people. He’s a much more difficult adversary.

1:27:32 An interesting connection to make between World War II and today: the way that we used Russia — as this reservoir of manpower where they could do the dying for us — that’s similar to what China is doing with Russia now. Well, they’re not actually fighting during the current war, but at least during the Korean War it was exactly this. Interestingly, Russia is doing to Ukraine exactly what the US had Russia do during WWII. And China’s dribbling out aid to Russia the same way.

1:28:13 Russia’s got three times Ukraine’s population, but the suffering is really high. These are young men dying — only children from families with six children in the old days, not anymore. The longer this goes on, the worse for Russia and the better for China. China gets to sell Russia stuff at favorable prices while Russia gets more desperate for Chinese resources, equipment, and financial support.

1:28:52 At some point, the Russians will reassess and I don’t think they’ll like what they see. There’s a whole racist dimension to Russian attitudes about China that they won’t like. But meanwhile, we need to let them do whatever they’re going to do. You’re not going to solve the Russia problem. You’re not going to solve the China problem. What you can do is have a blast shield so that whatever fallout comes minimizes how it hits your friends and partners. Maximize the economic growth of your friends and partners. That’s the only effective way to deal with them.

1:29:28 Why would you ever take on a bully alone? Always gang up on them. You’d want to go in with lots of friends. The Marshall Plan — you could never get that passed today. Yet it passed overwhelmingly in Congress because people understood you need to invest real money so the European economies recover. It was a tremendous win-win.

1:29:56 In strategy, you want to create positive-sum outcomes rather than zero-sum things where “I invite you over but then humiliate you” and you’re mad forever. It’s pointless. Don’t humiliate people. Be generous. It’s a good callback because I’ve been asking some tough questions and Sarah has been very kind to not humiliate me.

1:30:25 It is so fun to be able to do this as a live event and not be trapped inside a dark studio room. We’re outdoors doing the lecture on the Russo-Chinese relationship. And next Tuesday is about why Russia lost the Russo-Japanese War.