Geo-Strategy #10: Putin's Strategic Imagination

Okay, so today we will discuss Putin's plan to destroy the American Empire. Last class we discussed that Putin loves his country, Russia, and he believes that Western consumerism has corrupted his nation, and he recognizes that the source of Western consumerism is the American Empire. So in order to completely free its people, he needs to destroy the Empire.

Historically, empires die when three things happen concurrently, together. The first is overextension, and this is the main reason why empires die: they fight too many wars at once. The reason why they're overextended is hubris, and what hubris is in military strategy is the idea of blindness. You are blind to the fact of your own limitations, you are blind to the strategy of your opponents, you are blind to the overall geopolitical picture. You're just blind. The example is American strategy nowadays, where America is fighting Russia in Ukraine, where it is fighting Hamas in Israel, and there's a threat of Iran on the horizon. But for whatever reason, most American policy makers believe that the real threat is China. We must prepare for China in a Taiwan Strait. Eventually China will invade Taiwan and we must be ready right now. This week America also announced massive tariffs on Chinese vehicles.

So America is engaged in all these wars at once. It's antagonizing Russia, Iran, China at the same time, and so that's just overextension because of hubris.

Second way to kill an empire: debt. The source of American power is the US dollar. Remember that in 1945 at Bretton Woods there was an agreement that the US dollar would become the reserve currency of the world. The phrase for that is "exorbitant privilege." Exorbitant privilege just means that America has the right to manufacture gold from nothing and the world has to buy it, because that's what underpins global trade. But when you can do that, what happens eventually is that your nation becomes fat, lazy and corrupt. When money just falls off the sky, you're just used to borrowing money. So all America does right now is print money and not make money. The problem with this is that eventually the world is not going to want to use US dollars anymore, because each time you use it you're being taxed by the Americans. And that's what BRICS Plus is. You may have heard of BRICS Plus. It is an organization established initially by Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa in order to create its own financial system to counter the US financial system.

But now there are more countries that have joined BRICS, most prominently Saudi Arabia and the UAE and Iran. These countries are important because they are the basis for the petrodollar. Remember that US dollars can be used to purchase oil, and that's why the US dollar is worth a lot of money. So if these countries go to BRICS and opt out of the US financial system, then basically this American mountain of debt, $35 trillion of debt, comes crashing down. That's the second way to kill an empire.

The third way is civil descent, or eternal discord, civil war basically. What we're seeing in America right now is growing political polarization between the left and the right. Why this happens is that people no longer believe the binding myths and stories that build a nation. Nowadays young people no longer believe that America is the source of good in this world. An example of why this is happening is, of course, that Israel right now is committing genocide in Gaza. Israel is attacking Rafah and they're killing a lot of children. Most people who are dying in this war are children, and America's not doing anything to stop this.

In fact, America is the one who's providing Israel with all the weapons. So young people are turning against the idea of America as the good empire. There's this amazing statistic that one quarter of young Americans now believe that Osama bin Laden was a good guy. When I grew up, Osama bin Laden was considered Satan because he was the one who was responsible for terrorism around the world and for the 9/11 attacks. But this just shows you that the ideas and the myths that bind the country together are falling apart, and that's what's causing the nation to fall apart.

So the more overcommitted America is, the more debt it creates and the more civil discord it creates. This is how you kill an empire. When all three things reach a tipping point, when it becomes too much, the empire dies. The most likely outcome for America is it goes into civil war. It descends into civil war, and that's something that I will discuss next class.

All right, so let's discuss how Putin is doing this. The first thing that Putin did was the Ukraine war.

In February 2022 Putin invaded Ukraine, and at that time America was confident that three things would happen. The first thing that would happen is that Ukraine would destroy the Russian army and perhaps even march to Moscow and overthrow Putin. That's what the news media was reporting at that time. The Ukraine media was so much stronger and more confident than the forces. The second thing was that the Russian economy would be destroyed. Why? Because America was putting sanctions on Russia. America controls the global financial system, the ability to trade. America just basically sanctioned Russia and said you are no longer allowed to sell your oil on the global market, and the belief was that this would cause Russia to collapse overnight. A lot of Western multinationals left Russia, and the United States froze 300 billion dollars in Russian assets in US banks. So the United States thought that these sanctions would destroy the Russian economy. That's the second thing that they thought would happen. And the third thing that they thought would happen was that it would make NATO much stronger and more united, and it would make Russia into a pariah state, meaning that no one would want to ever associate with Russia again.

So that was the argument back then, and today what we have seen is that the complete opposite has happened.

First of all, Russia has basically won the war, and it's won the war because of attrition. Ukraine has lost 500,000 men in this war, so they had no more manpower, and if you don't have manpower you're not going to be able to fight this war. So this war has basically been lost and Russia is dominant. Russia has basically achieved its main strategic objectives, which is basically the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

Secondly, not only has the Russian economy not been destroyed, but it's been doing extremely well. The reason why is that ultimately all economies, China, Europe, Africa, Middle East, they all need resources in order for their economies to work. You need oil, you need food, and Russia has a lot of oil and food, and that's why countries have been going to Russia and making side deals. Also, Russia has been transitioning to a war economy, so its manufacturing base has been increasing, so overall the economy has been doing a lot better. US sanctions have not been working.

Third of all, NATO has become more divided, less and less united.

Why? Because Germany, which is the most powerful country in Europe right now, is completely dependent on Russian resources to fuel its economy. That's how the German economy works. It's a manufacturing economy. It takes cheap Russian gas, manufactures it into cars and sells it to China. But the United States blew up the Nord Stream pipeline, which basically delivered gas from Russia to Germany, and it's imposing a trade war on China. So basically the German economy is about to collapse and Germans are very angry about this.

So the Ukraine war has been a tremendous success for Putin, and it's really shown that America is a paper tiger. It's also creating a lot of civil descent in America, because the majority of Americans are asking the question: why are we giving Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars when our people don't even have health insurance? Our people are suffering and we're giving Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars.

The other thing that this Ukraine war has exposed is that the American Empire is overextended. What I mean by that is that in order to give Ukraine weapons, what America is doing is basically taking weapon systems from Japan, from South Korea and other places and giving it to Ukraine.

So America is not manufacturing more weapons, it's just taking other weapon systems it has elsewhere and moving them to Ukraine. So America is badly overextended. And of course, by giving all this money to Ukraine, it's causing American debt to go up, and after Ukraine loses the war this debt will be gone, because Ukraine cannot pay it back.

After the Ukraine war, what happened next was, on October 7th of last year, remember that Hamas launched an attack on Israel that killed about a thousand people, and Israel responded by attacking Gaza. By doing this, this has helped Putin and has hurt the United States, mainly by, first of all, diminishing American prestige. America right now is helping Israel commit genocide, so the entire world is basically turning against America. Even the young people in America are turning against America. You know these college protests in America, they will only expand in the fall. The other problem is that America has shown it cannot control Israel. In fact, people say that Israel now controls America. And the third thing is that this war threatens to explode throughout the Middle East.

At any point Iran can enter the battle, Hezbollah can enter the battle from the north. So it's a powder keg, it's like a lake of gasoline about to be lit on fire. So America is badly extended. And you can make the argument that either Putin knew about the Hamas attack or even encouraged the attack, because the main winner of this Hamas attack is obviously Vladimir Putin and the loser is America. Does this make sense so far?

All right, so let's talk about the future, or predictions moving forward. If it is true that Putin's intention is to destroy the American Empire by focusing on these three fundamental weaknesses in the Empire, and if it is true that he started the Ukraine war to further the deterioration of the Empire, if he is the one who is abetting Hamas, then we can predict that Putin will continue to do certain things. The first thing that he will do is he will drag on the Ukraine war. He will not end it, he will not seek peace, he will not negotiate peace terms. He will continue to drag it on. Why would he do that? Why not just declare victory, or why not just negotiate peace?

Why would he want to drag it on? Yeah, the Russian people will be at war, but then the question is why would he drag it on and not expand it? He wants to drag it on but he doesn't want to expand it. Expand it means he attacks Poland. He doesn't want to do that, he just wants to drag it on. Why? Yeah. Okay, so the reason is Ukraine is turning out to be a black hole for NATO. NATO and the United States are pouring in all this money, weapons and manpower and it's just losing it all. In other words, Ukraine is a battlefield to increase American debt and create civil discord among NATO and America. Germany does not want to fight this war. Germany wants, you understand? So as long as this war keeps on going, it's going to create more friction between NATO and the United States, and that's what Putin wants. But if Putin attacks Poland, then all of NATO is forced to fight him. Does that make sense? So he does not want to expand the war, he just wants the war to maintain the status quo and for it to drag on.

So that's the first prediction. Second is that to control the situation in Ukraine he needs America to fight another war. He needs to distract America, and the distraction will be Iran. Remember how for the past few classes we've been discussing how America wants to attack Iran and Iran wants revenge against America. But for this to happen, what Putin needs to do is talk to Iran and guarantee that Iran will be protected by the Russian nuclear umbrella, which means that America will not be allowed to use nuclear weapons when it invades Iran, because Putin will respond with nuclear weapons of his own. Does that make sense? So as long as Putin comes to an agreement with Iran and says that I will use my nuclear weapons to protect you from US nuclear weapons, then Iran will take the initiative and start to provoke America into a wider war. Again, there are many ways Iran can do that. It can use Hezbollah to attack Israel, it can expand its nuclear program, it can disrupt Red Sea shipping. There are lots of ways that Iran can use to provoke America into a full-scale invasion, which is what Putin wants. All right, as the United States becomes distracted in Ukraine and Iran, North Korea can now take the initiative.

What North Korea can do is threaten to invade South Korea, and there are about 30,000 US troops in South Korea. So North Korea doesn't actually have to do anything, but the threat of North Korea will force America to divert resources to South Korea. Does that make sense? And this will probably even force South Korea and the United States to start to bribe North Korea. We can expect that North Korea does this because Putin has given North Korea his assurance that he will protect North Korea in the event of a war. Does that make sense?

Also BRICS. We will see BRICS continue to expand. We'll also see BRICS maybe formally announce a new currency or a new trading system to counteract the American Le system. Now what people have said is that BRICS is capable of replacing the US dollar, and that is true. But remember that BRICS doesn't actually have to replace the US dollar, it just has to threaten, because a lot of finance, a lot of money, it's just confidence. You have the US dollar because you're confident that it's valuable, but once you lose the confidence in the US dollar you will no longer want to use it.

Does that make sense?

And the last thing is to maintain a very close relationship with China. So Putin will come to China more often, and he and Xi Jinping will hug each other more. They might even kiss one day, who knows. But again, listen, the reality is if you look at game theory, there are lots of geopolitical differences between Russia and China, much more so than between China and the United States. But again, Putin doesn't actually need China to do anything. All Putin needs is for China not to work with the United States. Because in this situation, one way that the United States can survive or protect its empire is by working with China, to triangulate against Russia. Does that make sense? So as long as China remains neutral, then Russia and Putin can continue to exert pressure on the American Empire.

So over the next three to four years we should see all these things happen. First thing is the Ukrainian war does not end. Putin will find a way for it to drag on without actually expanding. That's the first thing. Second thing is Iran takes the initiative against the United States.

Third thing is North Korea starts becoming much more belligerent against South Korea and Japan, forcing America to focus more attention in East Asia. BRICS will continue to expand, and then Putin's relationship with CP will continue to blossom. Does that make sense? All right, any questions so far before I continue? Excuse me. Okay, that's a good question. So why would America want China's help? The first thing is you have an overextension problem. You don't want to be fighting too many wars at once, so you come to a peace with China, you don't have to worry about East Asia anymore, because the real threat from America's perspective is that China invades Taiwan. That's the first thing. Second thing is that China is a major buyer of US dollars because of its trade with America and because China buys a lot of oil. You want China to keep on buying US dollars so you can sustain the debt. Does that make sense? And third of all, there are a lot of geopolitical conflicts between Russia and China. If you think about it, Russia is more of a threat to China than the United States is. Does that make sense? Historically Russia and China fought many wars over the border.

So if you become friends with China, then Putin needs to take the defensive and focus more on protecting the Russia-China border. Does that make sense? Because right now Putin can just focus on the offensive, but if China is on the side of the United States, then Putin is forced on the defensive. Does that make sense?

Any more questions? Yeah, Peter Rec. That's right, that's right. So basically what's been happening is China is now no longer buying US dollars and it's transferring its US dollars into gold. So China is encouraging everyone to buy gold: don't buy any more US dollars, guys, buy gold. The reason why is because America's debt is a huge problem for America, and the only way for America to sustain its debt is if China continues to buy US debt. Does that make sense? But that's a great point, Peter.

Any more questions before I continue? Okay, so Jack asked a great question. It makes sense for China and the United States to be friends, because China exports a lot of commodities to the United States. The United States is a huge market.

The United States also provides China with a lot of technology. And Jack asked a question: why would China want to be friends with Russia? The answer is because China right now feels threatened by the United States. The United States is launching an economic war against China, and if you look at a map, China is surrounded by US military bases. The problem is that China needs imports of oil and food to sustain its economy. Does that make sense? So if America ever launches an embargo against China, China collapses. In other words, China needs to open up new trade routes, and the best partner right now is Russia, because it has a lot of access to energy and oil.

So right now the situation in China is that Chinese policy makers know that the situation in China is terrible. The economy has collapsed, demographics have collapsed, China is completely dependent on the world for oil and food. China is extremely vulnerable right now. If America says to the world China is our enemy, then China has no choice but to find a new friend, and unfortunately the only friend that China has right now is Russia. Does that make sense?

Look, I mean the geopolitical situation for China is really, really bad. Any more questions before I continue? Okay, so Selen asked a great question: why does the United States think that China will attack Taiwan? The answer is that America is always looking to start new wars. It has something called the military-industrial complex, and America is always fighting wars, so to justify all this defense spending it needs to find new enemies, and it believes that the greatest threat to the American Empire right now is China, even though, by the way, there's no evidence this is the case. Right now the relationship between the United States and China is that China sends America a lot of cheap goods and the US gives China a lot of US dollars. So basically what's happening is that the Communist Party is storing the wealth of the Chinese people in American banks. This is a great deal for both America, Wall Street and the Chinese Communist Party. So there's no reason for these countries to be in conflict with each other, but unfortunately the American policy makers always need an enemy to justify the incredible amount of money they spend on defense. Does that make sense? Any more questions before I continue?

Excuse me, I didn't understand the question, can you repeat that? Oh, that's a great question. So what happens if China takes over Taiwan? What does America lose? The answer is, not that much. You make the argument that Taiwan has a semiconductor industry, but guess what, you can move that semiconductor industry elsewhere. For America it's just want to face, you understand? America doesn't really lose anything if China takes over Taiwan, but for America it's the Empire, it has hubris, and therefore it must save face. Does that make sense?

All right, so this is Putin's plan to destroy the American Empire. The question then is, well, this makes Putin a genius, so how is he able to do this? The argument I want to make to you today is that for many reasons Russian leaders have a strategic imagination. They just think differently and more strategically than anyone else. The example I want to use is Joseph Stalin, because we actually know a lot about Joseph Stalin. All right, so let's look at the world in 1939. In 1939 there are about six global powers. There's Russia, there's Soviet Union.

There's Japan, there's the United States, there's the UK, Britain, the British Empire, Germany and France. So this is the map of the world in 1939. Now let's talk about each country. The United States is far away and it's neutral. It does not like to get involved in the affairs of Europe, but it's suffering from the Great Depression. Its economy has collapsed. Japan, the Japanese empire, is a war machine, but the problem for Japan is that it is completely reliant on imports. It needs oil for its empire, its war machine, and there are only two sources of oil close by. There's the Soviet Union Far East and then there's Southeast Asia. Now Japan is getting most of its oil from the United States, but the United States is angry at Japan. Why is the United States angry at Japan, do you guys know exactly? Because Japan invaded China and the United States doesn't want that. So it's very likely that the United States will eventually cut off all exports to Japan, and so Japan has a choice. You can either invade here or you can invade here, those are your two choices. That's Japan. You can either invade the Soviet Union or Southeast Asia. The Soviet Union is a Communist country, and for the past 20, 30 years it's been trying extremely hard to industrialize, but it's hard to industrialize because, first of all, no one wants to trade with the Soviet Union.

So they can't get any. The Soviet Union is still very much an agricultural nation, and the Soviet Union doesn't really have that much technology and expertise. It doesn't really have that much human capital. So the Soviet Union is a huge country, it's the world's largest country, it's an empire, but in terms of manufacturing and technology it's behind the West.

Now in Europe there are three nations: you have France, Germany and the UK. The UK is an empire, it has colonies all around the world. Germany lost World War I and so it has to pay all these reparations to the UK and France. Now Hitler is in power and Hitler is determined to reunite Germany, because Germany lost a lot of land because of World War I. So he wants to reunite greater Germany. That's his ambition. It's not to conquer the world, it's to reunite Germany. All right, and then you have France, which is the weakest of all these powers, but it still has an empire. So looking at a map in 1939, and we use game theory, what should be happening, or what should happen maybe five years from now, 1945?

Let's use game theory to map out what should be happening or what will happen given this map and given the individual players, the interests of these different nations. What do you expect to happen? Who does everyone hate? Who does everyone hate? Who does everyone want to go why, why does everyone want to invade Union? Okay, yes. First of all, it has a lot of resources and it's not that strong. That's the first reason. But there's actually a better reason why everyone wants to attack the Soviet Union. Why? What's happening internally in the United States right now, the Great Depression? What ideology is a threat to the American government? Communism. Do you understand? So there's a global communist movement in the 1930s that's very, very powerful. In fact, in the 1930s, and you guys don't know this, but America was on the brink of revolution. The Communists could have at any time taken over America if America failed to stop the economic bleeding that was happening. All right, so everyone was afraid of communism. Japan would have loved to invade the Soviet Union because Japan hates communism and the Soviet Union has all of oil.

So here comes Japan. Germany would love to destroy the Soviet Union, because who did the Nazis hate the most? Who did Nazis hate the most? Why did they hate Jews? What did Hitler believe about Jews? They control the word of cy, but there's actually a better reason why he hated Jews. What's the problem with Jews? You guys don't know this, but they're all Communists. Hitler thought that all Jews were Communists, so Hitler hated first and foremost communism. Nazism hated communism the most, so Hitler wanted to invade the Soviet Union. How about France and the UK? What did they want to do? Who do they hate? Russia, right, the Soviet Union. United States, sure, why not? Do you understand?

So in 1945, if we use game theory, we should have expected that the Soviet Union would have been partitioned into different countries. These powers would have invaded the country together and colonized the Soviet Union and destroyed the threat of global communism once and for all. It makes sense, but that's not going to happen. That's not what happened. What happened was that in 1939 Hitler invaded Poland.

The moment that Hitler invaded Poland, France and Britain declared war on Germany, and then Germany defeated France and Britain. Britain was forced to return to its island, but Churchill refused to seek peace with Hitler. In fact, Hitler tried to seek peace with Churchill seven times, and each time Churchill was like, go to hell, we're going to fight this war till the end. Why was Churchill so angry at Hitler? What happened? Because Germany destroyed the British army. It's a complete loss of face for the British Empire, so Churchill was very, very angry at Hitler and refused to ever negotiate with Hitler. In fact, Hitler sent this emissary called Rudolf Hess to Britain, to Scotland, to negotiate a truce, and Churchill just put him in prison.

But what's the irony of all this? Germany invades Poland. What made Germany invade Poland? Do you guys know, have you studied this history? It's because of something called the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. This was an agreement between the Soviet Union and Germany to partition Poland into two, do you understand? So Germany and the Soviet Union invaded Poland together. The Soviet Union attacked from the east and the Germans attacked from the west. But what happened was Britain and France declared war on Germany but not the Soviet Union.

That's pretty clever of Stalin, don't you think? In fact, you can make the argument that if this pact was not signed, Hitler would not have attacked Poland. The reason why is the other thing about this pact is that the Soviet Union agreed to give Germany resources for its war machine, oil and food and other inputs. Does that make sense? Because remember the Soviet Union has Ukraine, which produces a lot of food and oil. Does that make sense?

All right, next thing that happened was that in June 1941, Barbarossa. Hitler invades the Soviet Union, and if you read history, anyone will tell you that this Operation Barbarossa was a tremendous success for Germany and a strategic failure for the Soviet Union. It was a grave mistake, a strategic blunder for Stalin. What did Stalin do wrong? Well, first of all, he refused to defend the border. There were 4.5 million Soviet troops at the border defending the Soviet Union, but they were given direct orders not to provoke the Germans. You understand? The Germans fire, you don't fire back. And because of this order, the German army, which was about three to four million, was able to overrun the border and almost reach Moscow.

That was a grave mistake on the part of Stalin.

Second is that Stalin ignored intelligence. There was a lot of intelligence that said that Germany was going to invade the Soviet Union. How could you hide the fact that you have 4 million troops assembled to attack the Soviet Union? So there's a lot of intelligence going to Stalin telling Stalin, hey, the Germans are coming, and Stalin said nope, I refuse to believe this intelligence. In fact, you had German soldiers desert the German army, swim across the river to the Soviet side and tell the Soviets, hey, my comrades, the entire army is about to attack you, and the Soviets shot these German soldiers because they thought these German soldiers were spies. So Stalin ignored intelligence.

The third thing that Stalin did was, before the outbreak of war, he purged the Red Army, the Soviet army, of its leadership of generals. The top generals of the Soviet army, the Red Army, were all dead or in prison because Stalin got rid of them for not being politically loyal enough. But the fourth thing is, why did Stalin do this?

The answer is, what historians will tell you is that Stalin trusted Hitler. This was the ultimate mistake that Stalin made. Stalin believed Hitler was his friend, he believed that Hitler would never invade him. This is what you're taught in history class, when you go to the United States you'll be taught this, when you go on the internet you'll be taught this. This is completely wrong. This analysis is completely wrong.

All right, so we're going to use game theory to understand why this is wrong. Using game theory, let's look at four possible scenarios. Scenario A is the Soviets attack first and they encircle Berlin. Scenario B is the Soviets attack and they're stopped at the border. Scenario C is the Soviets attack, sorry, Germans attack and the Soviets stop them. And scenario D is Germans attack and they reach Moscow, which is actually what happened. These are four possible different scenarios that could have happened in June 1941. Remember that there were four to five million Soviet troops at the border. What were they doing there? They were about to attack Germany. The Soviets had a plan to attack Germany, but the Germans struck first. So let's look at these four possible scenarios and see what happens.

First scenario is the Soviets attack Germany first and they reach Berlin. What happens now? What do all the others do? Yes, do you understand? Stalin reaches Berlin, boom, Japan comes from the east, Russia, Britain comes to the aid of Germany, the United States comes to the aid of Britain, all the world unites against the Soviet Union. So what would happen in this war? The Soviet Union loses this war, do you understand?

Now let's look at B. The Soviets invade but the Germans stop them at the border. Now what happens? Yeah, so Japan still invades, and Britain starts to negotiate with Germany and seek a peace, because Britain cannot afford for the Soviet Union to overrun Germany, because then communism takes over Europe. Does that make sense? So in B we can't say that Chan would lose, but they would not win the war. You understand? So B is not that good either.

Now let's look at C. The Germans attack and the Soviets hold at the border. Now what happens? They just destroy each other. The United States, Britain, Japan, they're all laughing. They're like, oh, they're just killing each other, who cares, not our problem.

But now let's look at situation D, where the Germans attack and they are about to destroy the Soviet Union. What happens? The other countries have to come and help the Soviet Union. Why is it the United States and Britain must come to help the Soviet Union? What would happen if Germany takes over the Soviet Union? That's right, they take over the resources, therefore they take over the world, you understand? Because Germany has technology, it has military power, but it lacks resources. You combine the resources with the German military, they're invincible. Now the United States will be forever shut out of the world. Germany will not invade the United States, but the United States could never, ever attack Germany again. Does that make sense?

So what happens is, after the Germans invade and the Soviet army is destroyed, America immediately gives the Soviet Union a of aid. It's what we call Lend-Lease. From 1941 to 1945 America gave $200 billion to the Soviet Union for free. It gave weapons, resources, technology and food. Basically what America did was industrialize the Soviet Union, does that make sense? That's what America did.

The Soviet Union could not industrialize by itself, but America helped the Soviet Union to industrialize. Let's look at Lend-Lease. Weapons: America gave the Soviet Union one-third of all ammunition used in the war, one-third of all explosives, one half of all aircraft, airplanes, one half of all tanks, 13,000 tanks. Resources: America gave oil and food, 80% of all copper, 55% of aluminum and steel. Technology: America gave the Soviet Union radio technology, radio communications, railroad transportation, heavy industry, and lots and lots of food. In other words, America basically built the Soviet Union in heavy industry for it. Does that make sense? And also at the end of the day, what the Soviets can do is reverse engineer all this technology and build their own industry. Does that make sense? So really it turned the Soviet Union into a superpower, and Stalin could get all this for free because America could not afford for the Soviet Union to lose the war.

What's the other benefit of having the Germans attack first and almost destroy Moscow? What's the other benefit? And Stalin really needed this, this is actually more important than Lend-Lease, which is what? National unity. Right now all the Soviets were united in the fight against Germany. Before, communism was tearing the country apart.

There was a civil war, the rich people all fled the country. But now because the Germans were invading, the entire country was united against Germany. This is what they call the Great Patriotic War. They were fighting this war for the love of their country, the love of Mother Russia. What turned the war was the will. The Russians lost 26 million people in the war. That's a lot of people, but by losing this many people it made the entire nation refuse to surrender. They had the will to fight, much more so than the Germans. Does that make sense?

So in history you're taught that Operation Barbarossa proved that Stalin was not a genius, that he was played by Hitler. But if you just do game theory analysis, this was the best possible outcome for the Soviet Union. In 1939 the world should have united against the Soviet Union, but what happened was the world united against Nazi Germany and gave the Soviet Union the technology, the money and the resources to become a global superpower. Doesn't that make sense? And because the Soviet Union became a global superpower, it was able to turn China into a communist country. Does that make sense?

If the Soviet Union did not become a global superpower with all this industry, then China would not become a communist power. Mao would not have won the. So in other words, all this is telling us is that Stalin is a genius. He turned a losing war into a war.

So last thing I want to do is find out how was Stalin able to do this. What makes the Russian imagination different from the Western imagination? I would say three things. The first thing is just intuition, and intuition means that Putin and Stalin are able to read the political winds. They're able to sense the mood of the world. The German word for this is Zeitgeist, spirit of the times, but they're able to sense the mood of the world. Putin knows that the American Empire is about to die, and so he feels emboldened to act. So it's intuition. Second is imagination. Putin and Stalin both have a strategic imagination, which means they sense these winds but they can also imagine, hey, if I did this, how would these winds change? That's imagination, able to predict or imagine the future. And the last thing, which is the strangest of all, is multiple personalities, meaning that Putin and Stalin are such brilliant men that they embody multiple personalities in them, and that's why they're so unpredictable.

All right, so the example. Everyone says that Stalin trusted Hitler so Hitler played Stalin, but if you just analyze the game, then the conclusion is Stalin played Hitler, you understand? Hitler did everything that Stalin wanted him to do. Hitler invaded Poland, which caused France and Britain to declare war on him. Then Hitler attacked Soviet Russia, which brought America into the war and helped the Soviet Union become an empire, you understand? So Hitler was completely played by Stalin. And the question then is how, right? Because in June 1941 Hitler did not have to invade the Soviet Union. He could have waited for Stalin to invade him. Then the opposite would have happened. America would have joined the war on Hitler's behalf and they would have defeated the Soviet Union. So what convinced Hitler to do the most insane thing and invade Russia first? The answer is Hitler trusted Stalin. Does that make sense? All right, so imagine this: Hitler and Stalin, they're having drinks, they're both drunk and they're on the porch and they're staring at the mountains and the moon.

Stalin and Hitler are talking, and all Stalin has to do is say three words and then Hitler is like, I'm gonna come invade you. What are these three words? How can Stalin get Hitler to invade Russia? What are the three words that Stalin can say to Hitler? I trust you. I, Joseph Stalin, trust you, out of everyone. Hitler, I don't trust anyone, I don't trust my own mother, but I choice you, Hitler. Then why would Hitler invade? Exactly, because Hitler thinks now that Stalin is easy target. As Shaq says, Stalin is a sheep, I, Hitler, am a lion, I am a wolf, you are a sheep, therefore I eat you. You understand?

But Stalin could only do this if he had multiple personalities. Stalin had to be a sheep in front of Hitler, he couldn't pretend, he had to be. Does that make sense? So these three things are the Russian strategic imagination: the ability to feel the political winds of the moment, the ability to prophesize and predict, the ability to be multiple individuals at once. And that's how Stalin was able to win World War II.

And this is why Putin will be able to destroy the American Empire. Any questions? Okay, so S asked the most important question: why are the Russians different? All right, so the problem isn't Russia, the problem is us, the West. When we talk about the West, Western thinking comes from British thinking, and there are three distinct characteristics of British thinking that are different from Russian thinking. Let's look at British philosophy versus Russian philosophy.

The first major difference is that British philosophy tends to be narrow, whereas Russia tends to be broad. The reason why is Britain is an island, therefore it thinks very narrowly about the world, whereas Russia is a huge country, it's the world's largest country, therefore it thinks very broadly about the world. To understand the difference, what you do is you read British literature and compare it with Russian literature. In Russian literature you have Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace and Anna Karenina. These are very huge epics. And then in British literature you have Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy. They're great, but they're very narrow in their focus. So that's the first big difference.

Second big difference is British philosophy believes in the idea of empiricism. Empiricism is a philosophy developed by British philosophers like David Hume, and the idea is we can only know what we experience, we can only know what we see.

Another word for empiricism is the idea of skepticism: be skeptical of abstract philosophy, because we can never know it. For example, you can never really understand mathematics because mathematics is beyond your experience. You can only know what you experience. And it's true, but it limits your imagination. The Russians believe in mysticism. They're very spiritual, religious people, so there are forces we don't understand, there are individuals who are prophets who are sent to us by God, we can never know who they are, we can never know how they think, but we just have to believe that's the case. So the Russians are going to be much more mystical in their thinking than the British are.

And the last thing is the British believe in logic. It's like mathematics, you can go from one to two to three to four to five. Everything has to be logical, everything has to be connected together, whereas the Russians believe in intuition. You can jump, you can imagine things, you don't have to be logical, whereas the British say you have to be logical.

And these three ideas, narrowness, empiricism and logic, they created the Western mind of today. This is what dominates in academia, so when you go off to university they expect you to think in this way: narrow, empirical and logical. If you think about it, this is perfect if you want to build a bureaucracy. This is bureaucratic thinking, this is the bureaucratization of the imagination. You're not allowed to say things without evidence and logic and experience. The Russians don't have this, so they can do this.

All right, now there are obviously more good things about this system than about that system, but the problem with the British system is that no great man could ever arise from a Western society. Does that make sense? Because all this creates a process-oriented, systemized, bureaucratic style of thinking. So for example, I give this talk, I could never give this talk in America or Britain because they would all think I'm crazy. Does that make sense? They'd be like, what's your evidence for this? Wait, are you refuting decades of scholarship about World War II? Are you telling me that Stalin was a genius when no one thought he was a genius?

How dare you refute these thousands of scholars who have put all this work into World War II scholarship. Do you understand? All right, so in the British system no one like Putin can arise, but in the Russian system someone like Stalin and Putin can arise. The problem though is, what happens if you don't have Putin or Stalin? Well, then this system becomes very weak. Does that make sense? So the British system doesn't really need great leaders, but the Russian system you do need great leaders, and if you are a great leader then you're allowed to completely follow your intuition and imagination to do great things, like Joseph Stalin in World War II and what Putin is doing today. Does that make sense?

Any more questions? Oh, that's a great question. So last semester we said the Greeks are more like the Russians than they are like the British. So the Russian system, the Greek system, it's a much more natural human system, and the British system is basically trying to remove intuition and imagination from the decision-making process, from the intellectual process, because intuition and imagination are too mysterious.

So in other words, let's just say that I'm Joseph Stalin in World War II, 1939. For me to execute my plan I need to write a memo detailing my thinking. Now obviously I can't do that, because if I did that, first of all I couldn't execute my plan, but second it would confuse everyone. Like, what are you trying to do again? Do you understand? And so the Greeks believed in imagination and intuition as well, but not the British, and we live in the British system. All right, any more questions?

Okay, so Jack asked a good question: how much did the Greeks influence the British? The answer is not that much, because remember, after the Greeks came the Romans. The Romans were like this, and it was the Romans who influenced the British, who then influenced Americans. So we're living basically in a Roman world as opposed to a Greek world. Does that make sense? Any more questions? This is a really hard question: what influences Russia? Well, what the Russians will say is that they're a Christian nation, that they come from a Christian tradition, and the Christian tradition comes from a Greek tradition.

Does that make sense? So Christianity, they would say that Christianity is the main influence, and there are some Greek elements to Christianity. What the Russians say is that their Christianity is a more pure or more ancient form of Christianity. We remember when we study Christianity, Christianity changed over the centuries, right? So basically this is a pre-Augustine Christianity, before Augustine. Any more questions? Okay, great. So next class we do the American Civil War.