Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
stephen codkin his second time on the
podcast
stephen is one of the greatest
historians of all time specializing in
20th and 21st century history of russia
and eastern europe and he has written
what is widely considered to be the
definitive biography of stalin in three
volumes two of which have been published
and the third
focused on world war ii and the years
after he is in the midst of writing now
this conversation includes a response to
my previous podcast episode with oliver
stone that was focused on vladimir putin
and the war in ukraine
stephen provides a hard-hitting
criticism of putin and the russian
invasion of ukraine weighed and
contextualized deeply in the complex
geopolitics and history of our world
all with an intensity and rigor but also
wit and humor that makes stephen one of
my favorite human beings
please also allow me to mention
something that has been apparent and has
weighed heavy on my heart and mind
this conversation with stephen codkin
makes it more dangerous for me to travel
in russia
the previous conversation with oliver
stone
makes it more dangerous for me to travel
in ukraine
this makes me sad
but it is the way of the world
i will nevertheless travel to both
ukraine and russia
i need to once again see with my own
eyes
the land of my ancestors
where they suffered but flourished and
eventually gave birth
to see the old me
i need to hear directly the pain anger
and hope from both ukrainians and
russians
i won't give details to my travel plans
in terms of location and timing but the
trip is very soon
whatever happens
i'm truly grateful for every day i'm
alive
and i hope to spend each such day adding
a bit of love to the world
i love you all
this is the lex friedman podcast
and now
dear friends
here's steven
godkin
you are one of the great historians of
our time specializing in the man the
leader the historical figure of stalin
so let me ask a challenging question
if you can
perhaps
think about the echo of 80 years between
joseph stalin and vladimir putin what
are the similarities and differences
between the man and the historical
figure the historical trajectory of
stalin and putin
thank you alex it's very nice to be here
again with you
it's been a while good to see you good
to see you as well you're looking good
i see this
podcast stuff is doing you right yeah
so we can't really put very easily
vladimir putin in the same sentence with
joseph stahl
stalin
is a singular figure
and his category is really small
hitler mao
that's really about it
and even in that category stalin is the
dominant figure
both by how long he was in power
and also by the amount of power the
military military-industrial complex he
helped build and commanded
so putin can't be compared to that
however putin's in the same building
as stalin he uses some of the same
offices as stalin used
and some of those
the television broadcasts that we see of
putin at meetings and
putin inside the kremlin
stalin used to sit in those rooms and
hold meetings in those rooms that's the
imperial senate
built by catherine the great an 18th
century building
inside the kremlin
it's a domed building
and and you can see it on the panorama
the top of the building at least you can
see it on the panorama when you look
over the kremlin wall from many sites
inside moscow
so
if he's not comparable to stalin he
still works as i said in those same
buildings those same offices
partly and so therefore he's got some of
the problems that stalin had
which was managing russian power in the
world
from a position of weakness vis-a-vis
the west
but from a an ambition a grandiosity
in fact
and so this combination of weakness
and grandeur
right of of not being as strong as the
west but aspiring
to be as great or greater than the west
that's the dilemma
of russian history for the past many
centuries it was the dilemma for the
czars it was the dilemma for peter the
great it was the dilemma for alexander
it was the dilemma for stalin and it's
the dilemma for putin
russia is smaller now
compared to when stalin was in that
kremlin
it's got pushed back to borders
almost the time of peter the great
it's farther from the main european
capitals now than any time
since that 18th century
and it and the west has only grown
stronger in that period of time so the
dilemma is greater than ever
the irony of being in that position
of sitting in the kremlin trying to
manage russian power in the world trying
to be a providential power
a country with a special mission in the
world
a country which imagines itself to be a
whole civilization
and yet not having the capabilities to
meet those aspirations
and falling farther and farther behind
the west
the irony of all of that is the
attempted solutions
put russia in a worse place every single
time
so you try to manage the gap with the
west you try to realize these
aspirations
you try to raise your capabilities
and you build a strong state the quest
to build a strong state and use coercive
modernization
to try somehow if not to close the gap
with the west at least to manage it
and the result is
different versions of personalist rule
so they don't build a strong state
they build a personal dictatorship they
build an autocracy
and moreover that autocracy undertakes
measures which then worsen the very
geopolitical dilemma
that gave rise to this
personalist rule in the first place and
so i call this russia's perpetual
geopolitics i've been writing about this
for many many years
what's important about this analysis
is this is not a story
of eternal
russian
cultural proclivity to aggression
right it's not something that's in the
mother's milk it's not something that
can't be changed russia doesn't have
an innate cultural tendency to
aggression this is a choice it's a
strategic choice
to try to match the power of the west
which from russia's vantage point is
actually unmatchable but it's a choice
that's made again and again and putin
has made this choice just the stalin
made the choice right
stalin presided over the world war ii
victory
and then he lost the peace
after he died in 1953
there was of course
other rulers who succeeded him he was
still the most important person in the
country after he died
because they were trying to manage that
system that he built and more
importantly manage that growing gap with
the west
by the time the 90s rolled around
former soviet troops now russian troops
withdrew from all those advanced
positions
that they had achieved as a result of
the world war ii victory and it was
napoleon in reverse they went on the
same roads
but not from moscow back to paris but
instead from
warsaw and from east berlin and from
tallinn and riga
and all the other places of
former warsaw pact and former soviet
republics
in the baltic region
they went back to russia in retreat and
so stalin in the fullness of time lost
the peace
and putin
in his own way
inheriting some of this
attempting to reverse it
when
as i said russia was smaller farther
away weaker the west was bigger and
stronger and and had absorbed
those former warsaw pact
uh countries and baltic states because
they voluntarily begged
to join the west the west didn't impose
itself on them it's a voluntary sphere
of influence that the west conducts
and so that dilemma is where you can put
putin and stalin in the same sentence
and the terrible outcome for russia
in the fullness of time
also has echoes but of course putin
hasn't murdered 18 to 20 million people
and the scale of his abilities to cause
grief
uh
with the nuclear weapons aside is
nothing like stalin's and so we have to
be careful right only mao
put bigger numbers on the board
from a tragic point of view than stalin
and numbers matter here
if we compare these singular figures
yeah mao killed more people than stalin
because mao had more people to kill
the most amazing thing about mao is he
watched stalin do it
he watched stalin collectivize
agriculture and famine result
he watched stalin impose this communist
monopoly
and all of those people sent to prison
or
given a bullet in the back of the neck
he watched all of that and then he did
it again himself in china do you think
he saw the human cost directly that that
when you say he saw do you think he was
focused on the policies
or was he also aware distinctly as a
human being of the
human costs in the lives of peasants and
in the lives of the working class and
lies at the poor
i think the prima facie evidence is that
he didn't value human life
otherwise i don't think after seeing the
amount of lives that were taken in the
soviet experiment he would have done
something similar after that
i think the answer lex is
it's very hard to get inside mal's head
and figure out what he was really
thinking
but if you just look at the results that
happened the policies that were
undertaken and the consequences of them
you would have to conclude that there
was
let's say no value or little value
placed on human life
unfortunately that's characteristic not
only of communist dictators right of
post-communist dictators as well but the
scale
of the horrors that they inflict
as horrific as they are
just can't compare
and so we're in a situation where
eurasia
that is to say
the ancient civilizations of eurasia
which would be russia iran
china
all have some version of non-democratic
you know illiberal autocratic regimes
and they're all pushing up against the
greater power of the west in some form
sometimes they coordinate their actions
and sometimes they don't
but this is a very long-standing
phenomenon lex that predates
of vladimir putin or xi jinping
or the latest incarnation of the supreme
leader in iran so we'll talk about this
uh
i think really powerful
framework of five dimensions
of authoritarian regimes that you've put
together uh but first
let's go to this napoleon and reverse
retreat from warsaw
back
putin is called
from the perspective of putin this
retreat this collapse of stalin is one
of the great tragedies
of
that region of russia
do you think
there's a sense where as putin sits now
in power for 22 plus years
he really dreams of a return
to uh
the power that influence
the
the land of stalin
so while you said that they're
not in the same place in terms of the
numbers of people
that suffer due to their regime
do you think he hopes to have the same
power
the same influence for a nation that was
in the 30s and the 40s and the 50s
of the 20th century under stalin
if he does lex he's deluding himself
we don't know for sure
very few people talk to him very few
people have access to him
a handful of
western leaders have met with him for
short periods of time
those inside russia barely meet with him
his own
minions in the regime barely have face
time with him
we don't know exactly what he thinks
it could be
that
he has delusions
of reconquering russian influence if not
direct control
over the territories that broke away
but it's not going to happen
let's talk a little bit about this guy
nikolai pottershev
nikolai patrashev is probably not well
known to your listeners
he's the head
of russia's security council
and so
you could probably call him the second
most important or second most powerful
man in russia
certainly inside the regime
arguably navalny is the second most
important person in the country and
we'll talk about that later i'm sure in
terms of influence yes but but
patrushev is
a version of putin's right hand man
and patrick chef
has been giving interviews in the press
you probably saw the interview with
nizarissamaya
not that long ago
he writes also his own blog like
interventions in the public sphere
using
the few channels that are left
and what's interesting about patrick
chef and and this
could well reflect similar thinking to
putin's which is why i'm bringing this
up
is that he's got this
conspiratorial theory
that the west has been on a
forever campaign
to destroy russia
just like it destroyed the soviet union
and that everything the west does
is meant to dismember russia
and that russia is fighting an
existential battle
against the west
and so for example the cia and the
american government wanted to bring down
the soviet union
never mind that the bush administration
the first bush the father
was trying desperately to hold the
soviet union together because they were
afraid of the chaos that might ensue and
the nukes that might get loose
as a result
of a soviet collapse and it was until
the very last moment
where bush decided his administration
decided
to back
those
republican leaders who were breaking
away from mikhail gorbachev and the
soviet union right
so never mind the empirics of it never
mind that bill clinton's administration
following george bush sent boatloads of
money
western taxpayer money to russia
we don't know exactly how much
because it came from different sources
people talk about how there was no
marshall plan it was tens of billions of
dollars
from various sources from the imf and
other sources
and lex it disappeared it's gone just
like the german money that went to
gorbachev for unification disappeared
even before the soviet collapse
the money disappeared but the west sent
the money so how was that a plot and
then you could go all the way to obama's
administration george bush trying to do
business deals and
reset the relations and obama
administration trying to reset the
relations and
and and doing nothing after the georgian
war and slapping
uh putin on the wrist
following
the seizure forcibly and you could go on
and you could go on all the way through
the trump administration telling putin
that he's right
trump believes putin and doesn't believe
u.s intelligence about russian efforts
to interfere in american domestic
politics so despite all the empirics of
it you have patricia and likely putin
talking about this
multi-decade western conspiracy to bring
russia down
at the same time as that's happening the
germans are voluntarily increasing their
dependence on russian energy
voluntarily increasing their dependence
on russia so here's the conspiracy to
bring russia down
the french
who've
fantasized about themselves as a
diplomatic superpower are constantly the
french leaders are constantly running to
the kremlin to ask what russia needs
what concessions from the west russia
needs to be filled to feel respected
again
the british
provide all manner of money laundering
and reputation laundering services for
the whole russian oligarchy including
the state officials
who are looting the state and using the
west british institutions to launder
their money so all of this is happening
and yet patrochev imagines
this conspiracy to bring russia down by
the west and so that's what we've got in
the kremlin again
stalin had that same conspiratorial
mentality of the west
everything that happened in the world
was part of a western conspiracy
directed against the soviet union and
now directed against russia even though
the west is trying to appease the west
is offering its services the west is
trying to change russia through
investment in a positive way but but but
instead the west is what's changing the
west is becoming more corrupt western
services are being corrupted by the
relationship with russia
so so you have to ask yourself who are
these people in power and the kremlin
who imagine
that while they're availing themselves
of every service
and every blandishment of the west while
they're availing themselves of this
that
they're fighting a conspiracy by the
west to bring them down
so this is what they call
the
abijania
right
in russian which is a term as you know
that means those who are
resentful or you might call them the
losers the losers in the transition
so when the soviet union fell and there
was a diminishment
of a very substantial diminution and
russian power and influence in the world
a lot of people lost out
they weren't able to steal the property
they weren't able to loot the state in
the 90s
and they were on the outside
they gradually came back in
they were the losers in the transition
domestically
and for them
right they wanted to reverse
being on the losing side and so they
began to expropriate to steal the money
steal the property
from those
first
thieves
who stole in the 90s
and the 2000s and on have been about
restealing taking
the losers in the transition taking the
money from the winners
and reversing
this resentment this loser status
those are your partnerships and your
putins
but at the same time this blows out
to
let's reverse the losses being on the
losing side the roiling resentment at
the decline of their power
internationally let's try to reverse
that too
so you have a profound psychological
a
whole generation of people who are on
the losing end domestically and reverse
that domestically that's what the putin
regime is about remember mikhail
khadarkovsky's
yukos
remember all the companies that are now
owned by putin cronies because they were
taken away from whoever stole them in
the first place
and now they're trying to do that on the
international scale
it's one thing to put domestic opponents
in jail
it's one thing to take away someone's
property domestically
but you're not going to reverse the
power of the west with the diminished
russia
that you have
and so that project
that patrick project
which we see him expressing again and
again
he speaks about it publicly it's not
something that we need to
uh go looking for
a quest the secret we can't find it what
are they thinking it's right there in
front of our face and putin has spoken
the same way for a long time people
point to the 2007
speech at the munich security conference
that putin delivered and certainly your
listeners could use
a snippet or two of that just like they
could use a couple of quotes
from potter chef to contextualize what
we're talking about but it predates the
2007 munich speech
the reaction to
ukraine's
uprising in 2004
attempt to
steal the election inside ukraine right
which the ukrainian people rose up
valiantly against and risked their lives
and overturned right so there were
public statements from putin already
back then the statements about harkowski
in 2003 when he was arrested and
expropriated
this is a long-standing
psychological
deeply psychological issue which is
about managing russian power in the
world as i was saying the gap with the
west but has this further dimension of
feeling like losers and wanting to
reverse that that's their life
experience
ibiza
so there's that resentment that fuels
uh this narrative uh fuels this
geopolitics and
uh internal policy but so resentment is
behind some of the worst things that
have ever been done in human history
hitler was probably fueled by resentment
so resentment is a really powerful force
yes uh just to
maybe
not push back but to give
fuller context on the west you said the
there's a narrative
uh from from putin's russia
that the west is somehow an enemy you
position everything against the west
but is there a degree and to what degree
is the west willing to feed that
narrative that it's also convenient for
the west to have an enemy it seems like
in the place in the span
it seems like in geopolitics
having an enemy
is uh
useful for forming a narrative
now having an enemy for the basic
respect of humanity is not good but in
terms of maintaining power if you're a
leader in a game of geopolitics it seems
to be good to have an enemy
uh it seems to be good to have something
like a cold war we can always point your
finger and says all our actions
are fighting this evil whatever that
evil is it could be like with george w
bush the war on terror
terrorism is this evil you can always
point in something so you've made it
seem that the west is trying there's a
lot of forces within the west that are
trying to reach out a friendly hand
trying to help sending money
uh sending compassion trying to sort of
trying to integrate russia into global
institutions exactly which was a
long-standing multi-decade effort across
multiple countries and multiple
administrations in those countries but
is there also war mongers on the west of
course lex of course you're right about
that but let's put it this way people
talk about the cold war
and they're usually looking to assign
blame for the cold war as if it's some
kind of mistake
a misunderstanding or a search for an
enemy that was convenient to rally
domestic politics
so alex
there's a coup in czechoslovakia and
somebody installs a communist regime in
february 1948.
no reaction to that that's just okay
there's a blockade of berlin
is that cool by you
where they try to
strangle west berlin so that they can
swallow west berlin and add it to east
berlin you cool with that
how about
korean war invasion of
north korea invasion of south korea by
north korea you cool with that
how about the murders and the show
trials up and down eastern europe
in the late 40s after the imposition of
the clone regimes you good with that
yeah it's very convenient to have an
enemy i agree with you but you know
there were some actions lex there were
some threats to people's freedom
there was some invasions there was some
aggression and violence on a mass scale
like collectivization of eastern europe
we could go on lex with the examples i'm
just given a few of them and so the cold
war was not a mistake
it was not a misunderstanding
we don't have to blame someone for the
cold war we have to give credit for the
cold war the truman administration
deserves credit for standing up to
stalin's regime for standing up to these
actions
for saying yeah
we're not just going to take this we're
not going to let this go on we're not
going to let this expand to further
territories we're going to create the
nato alliance and we're going to rally
democratic liberal regimes to stand up
to this illiberalism this violence and
this aggression and so yeah lex it it's
always convenient to have an enemy
but there was an enemy
nikolai leona who recently died he died
in april
2022 and he had a major funeral he was
the last
head analyst of the soviet kgb
and lyonna is one of the most important
figures for understanding the soviet
collapse and he has the best memoir on
the soviet collapse which is known in
russian as
yeah
you will understand that
and and and you'll help your
your podcast listeners understand
there's a singularity to that kind of
expression
leonardo just died but one of the things
he and in fact
the people who were supposedly arrested
by putin
as scapegoats for the ukraine war the
main one sergey biseyada
gave the eulogy at leona's funeral in
april 2022
showing that it's a lie that all of
these people have been arrested and
purged in another nonsense
in social media
but to get back to what leonov said and
get back to your enemy point
leonov said you know the west spent all
this time blackening the image of the
soviet union all these resources and
propaganda
and covert operations to blacken the
soviet image and they did lex the west
did do that and then leona wrote in the
next sentence
and you know what we gave them a lot of
material to work with to blacken our
image
yeah so the
you're saying a kind of sobering
reality which it is possible to some
degree to draw a line between the good
guys and the bad guys
freedom is better than unfreedom likes
it's a lot better than unfreedom and a
guy like you understands that really
well well so yes uh but those are all
you know there's wars like justice
freedom
um
what else
love you can use a lot of words that
hitler himself used to describe
why he is actually creating a better
world than those he's fighting so some
of it is propaganda the question is on
the ground what is actually increasing
the amount of freedom in the world
right we're not talking about propaganda
here when we use words like freedom
we're talking about rule of law
we're talking about protection of civil
liberties we're talking about protection
of private property
we're talking about an independent and
well-funded judiciary we're talking
about an impartial non-corrupt
competent civil service
we're talking about separation of powers
where the executive branch's power is
limited
usually by an elected parliament in fact
yes let's talk about elections
let's talk about freedom of speech and
freedom of the public sphere
we're not talking about freedom as a
slogan here we're talking about a huge
array of institutions and practices and
norms ultimately
right and if they exist
you know and you live under them and if
they don't exist you fully understand
that as well right
ukraine
was a flawed democracy
before russia invaded
it's utterly corrupt
many ways dysfunctional especially the
elites were dysfunctional
the gas industry in ukraine was
absolutely terrible because of the
corruption that it generated the
oligarch problem
a handful of people stealing the state
resources and yet ukraine had an open
public sphere and it had a parliament
that functioned
and so despite its flaws
it was still
a democracy the regime in moscow you
can't say that lex
it's not a comparable regime to ukraine
you could say oh well there are
oligarchs in ukraine and there are
oligarchs in russia there's corruption
in ukraine there's corruption in russia
so really what's the big difference and
the answer is well
ukraine had the open public sphere
ukraine had a real apartment can you
call russia's duma
a real parliament i don't think so
i don't think you can
can you say that there were any checks
whatsoever on the executive branch in
russia can you say that the russian
judiciary had any independence
or really
full level of competence
even compared to the ukrainian judiciary
which was nothing to brag about no you
can't say that lex
so we can differentiate
between
the very flawed corrupt oligarch
oligarchic democracy in ukraine
and the very corrupt oligarchic
autocracy in russia i think that's a
fair distinction yeah we should say that
russia and ukraine have the great honor
being the number one and the number two
most corrupt nations in europe by many
measures
but there is a fundamental difference as
you're highlighting
russia is a corrupt autocracy
ukraine who can say is a corrupt
democracy
and um to that level there's a there's a
fundamental difference
ukraine is not murdering
its own journalists
in systematic fashion if journalists are
killed in ukraine it's a tragedy if
journalists are killed in russia or
russian journalists are killed abroad
it's regime policy and the degree to
which a nation is authoritarian
means that it's suffocating its own
spirit its
capacity to flourish it's uh we're not
just talking about
um
sort of um the the freedom of the press
those kinds of things but basically all
industries uh get suffocated and you're
no longer being able to
yeah flourish as a nation grow the the
production the gdp the scientists the
art the culture all those kinds of
things yes lex you're absolutely right
and so
before the invasion the full-blown
invasion of february 2022 into ukraine
because as you know the war has been
going on for many years at a lower level
compared to what it is these days but
still a tragic war with many deaths
prior to february 2022
before this latest war we could have
said
that the greatest victims of the putin
regime are russian
domestic
that the the people who are suffering
the most from the putin regime
are not sitting here in new york city
but in fact they're sitting there in
russia
now of course with the invasion of
ukraine and and really
the
atrocities
that have been well documented
and more being investigated
uh
we can't easily say anymore that
russians are the greatest victims of the
putin regime
but in in ways other than bombing and
murdering civilians
children mothers
grandmothers grandfathers
after you include that
then of course the larger number of
victims of the putin regime are not
ukrainians but ultimately russians and
and there's how many of them now that
have fled
so
your powerful precise rigorous words
are uh stand in a
stark contrast i would say to my very
recent conversation with oliver stone
now i would love you to elaborate to
this agreement you have here
with his words and maybe words of people
like john
mearsheimer
the idea is that putin's hand in this
invasion of 2022 was forced
by the expansion of nato
the imperialist imperative
of the united states
and the the the nato forces
um
you disagree with this point
in terms of placing the blame
somehow on the invasion on
uh
forces larger than the particular two
nations involved but
more on the geopolitics of the world
that's driven by the most powerful
military nation in the world which is
the united states
yeah lex so let's imagine
that
um a tragedy has happened here in new
york and a woman got raped
we know the perpetrator
they go to trial
and oliver stone gets up and says you
know what
the woman was wearing a short skirt
and there was no option but for the
rapist to rape her
the woman was wearing lipstick
or the woman was applying for nato
membership and just had to be raped
there's i mean
didn't want a raper
but was compelled because of what she
was doing and what she looked like and
and the clothes she was wearing and the
alliances that she was under
international law
signed by moscow all the treaties
that sovereign countries get to choose
whatever alliance they belong to
are treaties that the u.n charter
signed by russia the soviet union
the
1975 helsinki
agreement
signed by the soviet union the 1990
charter of paris for a new europe signed
by the soviet union the 1997 nato russia
founding act
signed by the russian government the
post-soviet russia all of those
documents signed by
either the soviet regime or the russian
regime which is the legally recognized
international inheritor right successor
of the soviet state all of those
agreements are still in force and all of
them say
that countries
are sovereign and can freely choose
their foreign policy and what alliances
they want to join
let's even go farther than that i mean
you don't have to go farther than that
but let's go farther than that lex
is an autocratic repressive regime that
invades its neighbors in the name of its
own security something new in russian
history did we not see this before
is this
does this not predate nato expansion
does this not predate the existence of
nato would oliver stone sit here in this
chair and say to you you know
they had to impose serfdom in the 17th
century
because nato expanded they had no choice
their hands were tied they were
compelled
to treat their own population like
slaves because you know
nato expanded i mean i could go on
through the examples of russian history
that predate the existence let alone the
expansion of nato
where you have
behavior
policies actions
very similar to what we see now from the
kremlin and and you can't explain those
by nato expansion can you
and so that argument doesn't wash for me
because i have a pattern here that
predates nato expansion
i have international agreements founding
documents signed
by the kremlin over many many decades
acknowledging the freedom of countries
to choose their alliances
and then i have this problem where when
you rape somebody it's not because
they're wearing a short skirt it's
because you
have raped them
you've committed a criminal act lex
that's a i think there's a lot of people
listening to this
that will agree to the emotion the power
and the spirit of this metaphor i was
struggling to think
how to dance within this metaphor
because it feels like it wasn't
precisely the right one but i think this
it captures the spirit
i'm not suggesting lex that everything
the west has done
has been honorable or intelligent
fortunately we live in a democracy we
live in liberal regimes we live under
rule of law
liberal in the classical sense a rule of
law
not liberal in the leftist sense
we live in places like that and we can
criticize ourselves and we can criticize
the mistakes that we made or the policy
choices or the inactions that were taken
and there are a whole lot of things to
answer for
and and you can
now discuss the ones that are your
favorites
the dishonor or the mistakes
and and i could discuss mine and we
could spend the whole rest of our
meeting today
discussing the west's mistakes in
private and we won't end up in prison
for it
yeah alex and so that's i'm thankful for
that yes and i'm thankful that people
may disagree and that people make the
argument that nato expansion is to blame
but but you see i'm countering two
arguments here
i'm countering one argument
which is very deeply popular pervasive
about how russia has this cultural
tendency to aggression
and it can't help but invade its
neighbors and it does it again and again
and it's eternal russian imperialism
and you have to watch out for it this
very popular argument in the baltic
states it's really popular in warsaw
it's really popular with the liberal
interventionists and it's it's very very
popular with those who are part of the
iraq war squad that got us into that
mess
so i'm against that and the reason i'm
against it is because it's not true it's
empirically false there is no cultural
trait
inherent tendency for russia to be
aggressive it's a strategic choice that
they make every time is the choice made
it's not some kind of momentum every
time it's a choice that we should judge
for the choice that it is for the
decision and therefore they could make
different choices they could say we
don't have to stand up to the west
we don't have the capabilities to do
that we can still be a great country we
can still be a civilization unto itself
we can still be russia
we can still worship in orthodox
cathedrals or
we can still be ourselves
but we don't have to pursue this
chemical pursuit this elusive quest
to stand up to the west and be in the
first ranks of powers so i'm countering
that argument i'm saying it's a it's
perpetual geopolitics it's a
geopolitical choice rising out of this
dilemma of the mismatch between
aspirations and capabilities it's not
eternal russian imperialism and i'm also
countering the other argument here lex
which is to say that it's the west's
fault
it's western imperialism i'm very
popular on the left very popular with
realist scholars
very popular with some of the people
recently on your podcast
and so it's neither eternal russian
imperialism nor is it western
imperialism right the mere fact that the
west is stronger than russia is not a
crime on the part of the west
it's not a crime
that countries voluntarily want to join
the west that beg to get in
either the eu
or nato
or other bilateral alliances or other
trade agreements those are voluntarily
entered into and and that's not criminal
if the west sphere of influence which is
open an open sphere of influence
which as i say people voluntarily join
if that expands that's not a crime nor
is that a threat to russia ipso facto
right nato is a defensive alliance and
the countries are largely pacifists who
are members of nato
and nato doesn't attack it defends
members if they are attacked
and so the idea that ukraine which had
the legal right might want to join
nato and the eu
which was not going to happen in our
lifetimes and was not a direct threat to
the putin regime since it was
since
the
western countries that make up the eu
and nato
uh
decided that ukraine was not ready for
membership there was no consensus it was
not going to happen but it's ukraine's
free choice to is express that desire
and if your government is elected by
your people freely elected
meaning you can unelect that government
in the next election
and that government makes foreign policy
choices on the basis of its perceived
interests
that's not a crime lex that's not a
provocation
that's not something that compels the
leader of another country to invade you
right that is legal under international
law and it's also a realist fact of life
the realists like to tell you you know
that
russia here was was uh disrespected
russia's interests were not taken into
account etc etc but the real world works
in such a way that treaties matter
that international law matters that's
why people like me were not in favor of
the us 2003 invasion of iraq lex because
it wasn't legal in addition to the fact
that we thought it might backfire
but you know lex
like i said there are a lot of things
about the west that we ought to
criticize as citizens and we do
criticize
but but we have to be clear about where
responsibility lies
in in these events that we're talking
about today so you get into trouble it's
largely uh erroneous to think about both
the west or the united states from an
imperialist perspective and russia from
an imperialist perspective is better
clearer to think about each individual
aggressive decision on its own as a
choice that was made so let's talk about
the most recent choice
made by vladimir putin
the choice to invade ukraine or to
escalate the invasion of ukraine on
february 24th
now we're a few months removed
from that decision initial decision
why do you think he did it what are the
errors
in understanding the situation in
calculating the outcomes and
everything else about this decision in
your view
yeah lex when you don't when a war
doesn't go well
it looks like
lunacy to have launched it in the first
place does it ever go well
war never goes according to plan
all war is based upon miscalculation
but not everybody is punished for their
miscalculation
all aggressive war we're talking about
not defensive war
is based upon miscalculation
but you can adjust you can recalibrate
you know when when you're driving down
the road and that very annoying voice is
telling you in a thousand
feet make a right yeah and you fail to
make a right it recalibrates right yeah
it tells you okay now you know go uh
turn around or u-turn or make a left it
doesn't say you're an idiot and turn
around and make a u-turn but it does
recalibrate
so you can miscalculate and the problem
is not the miscalculation usually it's
the failure to do that adjustment
right
people i know who are hedge fund traders
they i asked them you know what's your
favorite trade and the line from them
all and this is a cliche is my favorite
trade is when i made a mistake
but i got out early
before all the carnage
so it's their favorite trade is not when
they made some brilliant choice
but it's when they miscalculated but
they reduced the consequences of their
miscalculation by recalibrating quickly
right
so let's talk about the calculation and
miscalculation of february
let's imagine lex that you've been
getting away with murder
i don't mean murder in a figurative
sense
i mean you've been murdering people
you've been murdering them domestically
and you've been murdering them all
across europe and you've been murdering
them not just with for example
a car accident a staged car accident or
using a handgun
you use novichok
or you use some other
internationally outlawed
chemical weapon
and let's imagine that you did it and
nothing happened to you
it wasn't like you were removed from
power
it wasn't like you paid a personal price
sure maybe there was some sanctions on
your economy but you didn't pay the
price of those sanctions
little people paid the price of those
sanctions
other people in your country paid the
prices let's imagine not only were you
murdering people literally
but you decided
to
entice the idiotic ruler of georgia
into a provocation
that you could then invade the country
and you invaded the country and you bit
off these
territories abkhazia and south ossetia
and what price did you pay for that
and then you decided you know i think
i'll now invade crimea and forcibly
annex crimea
and i'll
instigate an insurrection in the donbass
in eastern ukraine in luhansk let's
imagine you did all that and then you
had to stick out your wrist so that you
know
it could be slapped a couple of times
and you said you know i can pretty much
do what i want they're putting a
sanction here and there and they're
doing this and they're doing that and
and you know what they're more energy
dependent on me than before i got better
money laundering and reputation services
than anybody has maybe the middle east
and the chinese would disagree with you
that that you have better than them but
yours are pretty good and the panama
papers get released revealing
all of your offshoring and your
corruption and and what happened nothing
happens lex so the first and most
important consideration here is in your
own mind
you've been getting away with murder
literally
as well as figuratively and you think
you know i probably can do something
again and get away with it
and so the failure to respond at scale
in fact the indulgences
the further dependencies that are
introduced the illusion
that trade is the mechanism to manage
authoritarian regimes
you know that great
a german cliche
a van del dorjandel
right change through
trade or transformation through trade
one of angela merkel's favorite
expressions
right you're you're going to get the
other side
to be better
rather than confront them
in a cold war fashion where you stand up
to their aggressions and you punish them
severely in order to deter further
behavior so that's the first and most
important part of the calculation
miscalculation there are a lot of other
dimensions so can we pause on that
really
so this is kind of idea of it's okay to
crack a few eggs to make an omelette
um which is a more generous description
of what you're saying
that
uh you don't incorporate into the
calculation
the amount of human suffering that the
decisions cause
but instead you look at sort of
the success based on some kind of
measure for you personally
and for the nation
in not in terms of in the humanitarian
sense but in some kind of economic sense
and a power geopolitical power sense
yeah
you're not sentimental lex
you say to yourself
the cause of russian greatness
is greater than any individual life
russia being in the first rank of the
great powers
russia realizing its mission
to be
a special country with a special mission
in the world a civilization unto itself
the first rank of the great powers maybe
even the greatest power that's worth
the price
that we have to pay especially in other
people's lives right
we have a lot of literature on the putin
regime which talks about the kleptocracy
the places of kleptocracy and it is a
kleptocracy
we all can see that
and anybody in london live in the high
life
servicing this kleptocracy can testify
that it's a kleptocracy and not only in
london of course right here in the
united states in new york
but you know it's not only a kleptocracy
lex
that was the problem of the russian
studies literature
it wasn't just about stealing looting
the state
it was about russian greatness
you see those rituals in the kremlin
right in the grand kremlin palace
in the saint george's hall
some of the greatest interiors in the
world and you see awards ceremonies and
you see marking holidays and all of
these looters of the state have their
uniforms on with their medals
and someone's given a speech or singing
a ballad and their eyes are moist
their eyes are moist
because they're thieves and looters
no legs because they believe in russian
greatness
they have a deep and fundamental
passionate commitment to the greatness
of russia
which in unsentimental fashion they're
all sentimental to the max that's why
their
their eyes are moistening but they
imagine unsentimentally that any
sacrifice is okay a sacrifice of other
people's lives
a sacrifice of their conscripts in the
military a sacrifice of ukrainian women
and children and elderly that's a small
price to pay for those moist eyes about
russian greatness and russia's position
in the world well that human thing that
sentimentality is a thing that can get
us in trouble in the united states as
well and lead us to wars that illegal
wars and so on but the united states has
repercussions
for
breaking the law uh you're going to pay
for illegal wars in the end
you're saying that in authoritarian
regimes
this sentimentality can really get out
of hand and you can by charismatic
leaders they can take that to manipulate
the populace to make uh to that in in
the span of history led to atrocities
and uh in today's world lead to
humanitarian crises it's not just a
kleptocracy it's a belief system it's
passion it's conviction
it's it's it's
you can call them illusions you can call
them fantasies
whatever you want to call them they're
real they're real for those people and
so yes they're looting that very state
that they're trying to make one of the
great powers in the world
and they resent
the fact that the west doesn't
acknowledge them as one of those great
powers and they resent that the west is
more powerful
people talk about how putin doesn't
understand
the world and that he gets really bad
information
lex if you're sitting there in that
kremlin
and you're trying to conduct business in
the world and you're getting reports
from your finance minister or your
central bank governor
your whole economy everything that
matters somehow all your trade is
denominated in dollars and euros
do you have any illusions about who
controls the international financial
system i don't think so lex
you looking over your
industrial plan for the next year
and you're looking over how many tanks
you're going to get and how many cruise
missiles you're going to get and how
many submarines you're going to get and
and fill in the blank
and you know what
it says right there in the paperwork
where the component parts come from
where the software comes from comes from
the west lex
your whole military-industrial complex
is dependent on high-end western
technology
and then and let's and let's say you're
in beijing not just in moscow
and you go to a meeting in your own
neighborhood
you're the leader of china
you go to a meeting with other asian
leaders
do they all speak in chinese with you
no lex they don't speak chinese
you go to an international meeting as
the leader of china and guess what
language is the main language of
intercourse
yes the same one you and i are speaking
right now
and so you live in that world you live
in the western world and it's very hard
to have illusions about what world you
live in
when you're under that you need those
western banks
you need that foreign currency right you
need that high-end western technology
that technology transfer
you're speaking or you're forced to
speak or your minions are forced to
speak at international gatherings in
english
and and i could go on all the indicators
that you live in and so putin lives in
that world he's no fool well to push
back isn't it possible that as you said
the minions
operate in that world
but can't you if you're the leader of
russia or the leader of china or the
leader of these different nations
um
still put up walls where actually when
you think in the privacy of your own
mind you exist not in the international
world
but in a world where there's this great
russian empire or this great chinese
empire yes and then you forget that
there's english you forget that there's
technology and iphones you forget that
there's all this
uh
us keeps popping up on all different
paperwork that just becomes the blurry
details that dissipate because what
matters is the greatness
of this dream empire that i have in my
mind as a dictator
i would put it this way lex
after you absorb
all of that
from your minions
and and it impresses upon your
consciousness
where you live
you live in a western dominated world
that the multi-polar world doesn't exist
your goal is to make that multipolar
world exist
your goal is to bring down the west
your goal is for the west to weaken
your goal is a currency other than the
dollar in the euro
your goal is an international financial
system that you dominate
your goal is technological
self-sufficiency
made in china 2035 right
your goal is a world that you dominate
not that the west dominates and you're
gonna do everything you can
to try to attain that world
which is a russian-centric world or a
chinese-centric world
or what we could call a eurasian-centric
world and it's not going to be easy lex
just for the reasons that where we
enumerated before
but maybe you're going to get a helping
hand
maybe the west is going to transfer
their best technology to you they're
going to sell you their best stuff
and then you're going to absorb it and
maybe copy it and reverse engineer it
and and if they won't sell it to you
maybe you'll just have to steal it
maybe the west is going to allow you to
bank even though
you violate many laws that would
prohibit the west from extending those
banking services to you
maybe the west is going to buy your
energy and your palladium and your
titanium and your rare metals like
lithium because
you're willing to have your poor people
mine that stuff
and die of disease at an early age but
western governments they don't want to
do that right they don't want to do that
dirty mining of those very important
rare earths
but you're willing to do that because
it's just people whose lives you don't
care about as an autocratic regime right
so that's the world you live in where
you're trying to get to this other world
you're
at the center of the other world you
dominate the other world but the only
way to get their lex
is the west has to weaken
divide itself
maybe even collapse
and so you're encouraging to the extent
possible
western divisions you know western
disunity
a western lack of resolve
uh western mistakes and west invasion of
the wrong country and and western
destruction of its credibility through
international financial crises and
one could go on so the if the west
weakens itself through its mistakes and
its own corruption
you're going to survive and maybe even
come out into that world
where you're the center and so russia's
entire grand strategy just like china's
grand strategy iran it's hard to say
they have a grand strategy because
they're so
so profoundly weak
but russia's grand strategy is we're a
mess
we don't invest in our human capital our
human capital flees or we actually drive
it out
it goes to