Geo-Strategy #9: Putin's War for the Soul of Russia

So this week Vladimir Putin, in a speech, said to his Russian people that all Russia must now prepare for Total War, even if you are fighting on the front lines in Ukraine, pretend you are. Because of the speech, there are many analysts who believe that Putin is preparing Russia for Total War. Total War means that every aspect of your society is geared towards winning a war, and we last had total war in World War II, okay, but not after that. So why is Putin doing this now?

There are some people who believe that it's because Russia is not doing so well in Ukraine. They lack manpower, and so they need to mobilize their society to fully win the war in Ukraine. Another explanation is that Putin knows that NATO is preparing to send reinforcements to Ukraine. Remember that because of last summer's offensive, Ukraine is desperately short of manpower. The average age of their soldiers right now is over 40. They have men in their 60s who are fighting on the front lines. Emmanuel Macron of France has publicly stated that he is considering sending French troops to Ukraine. The British themselves are thinking of conscription, drafting all young men into the Army.

The Americans, American politicians, have said that they're considering a new law that would give citizenship to illegal immigrants who join the Army. So it seems like NATO is only going to escalate the war in Ukraine, and so Russia is preparing for that. One more possibility is that Putin wants to expand the war. He knows he's winning in Ukraine, and he's thinking about attacking Moldova and possibly the Baltic states. These are all possibilities.

Today, this morning, what I want to do is argue another possibility, which is that Putin is mobilizing his society because he sees war as a tool, as a mechanism to reshape the people in Russia. So think of a metaphor. You're fat and you're like, okay, how do I get fit? How do I get trim? You go to the gym and you work out, and for Putin that's what war is. War is a workout for your society. When you enter war, you become a much more disciplined, unified and prosperous society. So that's what I want to argue today.

Why does Putin think like this? Well, let's look at the current state of Russia. Russia in many aspects is a broken society. Corruption: Russia is the most corrupt society in all of Europe.

The rich people steal and then they run off to Europe or the United States or Dubai. So corruption is a huge problem in Russia, and because of corruption the GDP of Russia is very low. South Korea, which has about a third of the population of Russia, has a higher GDP. The state of Texas, just one state in the United States, has a higher GDP than Russia. So Russia in many respects is a very poor country.

Second problem: alcoholism. One out of every six Russian males, about 16, 17% of the population, are alcoholics. It's a disease, they have the disease of alcoholism. One of every three deaths in Russia is because of drinking too much, and because of alcoholism the rate of young men dying is just increasing and increasing.

The third problem is fertility. Right now the fertility rate in Russia is 1.5. That is below the replacement level. Remember that the replacement level for a society is 2.1. Russia is 1.5. The problem is you have a lot of men dying because of alcoholism. So since the year 2000 the population in Russia has been steadily, and all this means is that if current trends continue, then Russia will cease to exist as a society.

The nation will die. So why is this happening? Well, the Western explanation is that this is happening because Russia is not democratic. If you had full democracy and you unleashed the human potential of your people, then Russia would prosper. But Vladimir Putin has an explanation. His explanation is that this is happening to Russia, corruption, alcoholism and low fertility, because Russians have been lied to, deceived and manipulated by Western civilization. Western civilization preaches the gospel of liberal democracy, of freedom, of human rights, of consumerism, and these are all lies. They're hypocrisies that have fooled the people and have corrupted the Russian soul and destroyed Russian civilization. Because Russians are abandoning their soul, their civilization, their nation, this is why this is happening. Does that make sense? That is Putin's argument.

So why does Putin believe this? Well, in the late 80s the Soviet Union had basically lost the Cold War, and they lost the Cold War because their elite basically gave up. They no longer believed in communism, they didn't believe in self-sacrifice for the nation, they felt that Western values, the Western lifestyle, was much better. So they gave up in the late 80s.

There was an American historian, he actually works for the American State Department, but his name is Francis Fukuyama, and he wrote an extremely influential essay called "The End of History," end of history, okay, with a question mark. He argued that the Soviet Union fell and America became triumphant because liberal democracy is the best idea to have ever been invented. To make his argument he uses the philosopher Friedrich Hegel. Now Friedrich Hegel had something called the theory of the dialectic. What Hegel argued is that history is determined by a war of ideas. The progress of history is determined by the movement of ideas, and how ideas work is that they have a pattern called the dialectic. So there's a thesis: a new idea comes into being, but then we recognize that this idea has problems, it's too extreme, it's too problematic, so we create an antithesis. But this antithesis itself is also too extreme, and this creates also problems. So then what happens is the thesis and the antithesis come together and create a more moderate, more efficient idea called the synthesis, and this is how history moves or progresses. So Fukuyama takes this idea and says, okay, well, this explains what's happening today, where at first you have a thesis called capitalism, and this creates the Industrial Revolution.

Because capitalism was too extreme, we move towards communism. Communism was created to counteract the extremes of capitalism, but communism itself is too extreme, so then we move towards the, which is the right idea, which is called democracy. So what is liberal democracy? Well, at the core of liberal democracy is the idea of consumerism, and the idea of consumerism is that we exist to buy things, and as long as we buy things there'll be world peace. Why? Because consumers have a need to buy and therefore nations have a need to produce, and nations produce the best when they're trading together as opposed to waging war against each other. So this is the argument that Francis Fukuyama makes in "The End of History."

I want to explain this argument further. What is he really saying? Throughout human history all societies have struggled with one problem, which is how do we optimize the workforce? How do we get each and every person to work as hard as possible for our society? If everyone did that, then our society would be strong, united and prosperous. So a fundamental problem of politics is how do you optimize workforce participation?

Traditionally, or historically, there have been three answers. The first is war, the second is religion, and the third is civilization. Now as you can understand, these three things work because they give meaning and purpose to our lives, and when we have structure, meaning and purpose, we are much more motivated to work hard. But as you can also see, there are actually lots of problems with all three. War: you kill people, that's bad. Religion is superstitious. But civilization itself is also problematic, because the logical extreme of civilization is racism, which is to say that we Russians are better than everyone else, we Chinese are better than everyone else, therefore we can do whatever we want. And this naturally leads to, we have a duty to go conquer other people to civilize them, something called the White Man's Burden, and this leads to fascism, where war and conquest are the ultimate good. So historically war, religion and civilization have given people structure, meaning and purpose, but they create a lot of problems. They create suffering and war and pain.

Over time what has happened is that all of them have become much more abstract, and the reason why they've become more abstract is in order to increase the population, in order to create mass society.

Let me give you an example of this. The earliest religions in humanity have been polytheistic, and the gods themselves were very much like humans. Think of the Greeks: Zeus, Athena, Hera. They were very much like humans. But over time this polytheism became monotheistic, it became abstract. The idea of God was so much removed from us, and the benefit of that is that you can have more people believing in one God and it motivates you to work harder, because it's such an abstract concept.

Because of abstraction we develop new ideas, for example money. Rather than have war, religion, civilization as the structure and center of our society, we want to make money the structure of our society, and this is what we call capitalism. Capitalism of course led to the Industrial Revolution, industrialism. Capitalism meant that societies were becoming wealthier and wealthier, more industrial and more industrialized. Does that make sense? All right. But there's a problem with capitalism. What's the problem with making capital or money the very heart of your society? Exactly. Okay, so the first major problem of capitalism is it's all consuming.

As Jack says, all capitalism cares about is the expansion and growth of capital regardless of its effect on society. Profit for the sake of growing profit. It's an all-consuming idea which can ultimately lead to the destruction of the planet. That's the first problem.

What's another problem with capitalism, or the idea of having money as the heart and center of your society? Anyone? What this means is that money likes to consolidate itself. The example is, let's just say that each of us had a million dollars. What's the fastest way for us to grow money? If we put it together, and then we can go invest it. So in other words, if you just let capitalism do whatever it wants to infinity, what happens is that you exactly have one person with all the money. Does that make sense? Because that's the fastest way to grow money, by consolidating it. So that's problematic.

What else is wrong with capitalism or money? Another problem is the idea of alienating or dehumanizing. What does this mean? Capital alienates and dehumanizes. What does that mean exactly?

You, as a person, cease to be human. To be a human is to be a complex individual who likes to create and love, but in capitalism you're only your production value, you're only the amount of money in your bank account. Does that make sense? All right, so for all these reasons capitalism is really bad. There are actually more reasons.

Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto points out all these problems of capitalism, and he proposes a solution, which is, rather than make money the heart and center of your industrial society, make the worker the heart and center of your society. He makes his argument, but what's very revolutionary or prescient about his argument is that this is a natural cycle. This is part of the Hegel cycle, where capitalism comes along and communism will be the natural evolution of capitalism. Why? Let's do a thought experiment. Your parents have died and now you're working in a factory in order to survive. How do you feel about this? Your parents have died, there's no one to support you, so at age 16, 17, 18 you have to go off to a factory to make money for yourself.

So how do you feel? Are you happy about this? How do you feel? Depressed and lonely, and yeah, exactly. You're bitter and you're depressed. You're alienated. So then what do you do? What can you do? Now you're bitter, you're angry, you're depressed, you're lonely, so what do you do? You start to think about why this is the case. You start to have a political consciousness, what Marx calls political consciousness. From this alienation of the worker, workers will start to develop a political consciousness. They're like, why is this happening? Why has the government abandoned me? Why has society abandoned me? What can I do about this? So then what happens? That's exactly right, you want change. And how do you change? Yes, you spread your ideas and you organize. And when you organize, what do you realize? What you recognize when you start to organize is that the capitalists need you to do the work. The capitalists own the capital and the factories, but you're the one who's actually doing the real work, so without you the factories can't run. So as As long as you stay united, you can enact whatever political demands you want.

Does that make sense? So for Marx this is just a natural evolution of capitalism. Capitalism leads to the alienation of the working class, which will lead to their political consciousness, which will lead to their solidarity, which will lead to a political revolution, and so you can make the worker the heart and center of your society. Does that make sense, guys? All right.

Now what's amazing about Marx is that today we say he's wrong. Communism happened in the Soviet Union, it happened in China, but it didn't happen in Europe and in the United States, where Marx said it would happen first because Germany was more industrialized than Russia or China. That's what we say. But if you think about it, Marx is right. After World War II every industrial society to some extent adopted the ideas of communism. We call it socialism and not communism, but basically it adhered to the thinking of Marx, which is to make the worker the heart and center of your society. And why do they do that after World War II? Exactly, because workers create value. Money doesn't create any value.

Money just creates more money. It's speculative, but the workers create value, they're productive, and therefore you have to treat your workers properly. So in America and in Europe workers became the heart and center of your society, and the workers through unions could demand political reforms, and so our society was geared towards making the lives of the middle class, the working class, better. That's why you had excellent healthcare, great schools, cheap universities. The 50s and 60s and 70s was basically the peak of society for the working class.

But in the 80s we start to change this. Why would we want to change the system? It's a great system. Marx is right: having the worker as the heart and center of your society, as the central organizing unit of society, makes a lot more sense than having money as the heart and center. But starting in the 80s we start to go back to money. Why? Who wants more? Yes, exactly. What happened in the 80s is something called the revolt of the elite. In other words, the problem with having a society based on the worker is it becomes too egalitarian, too equal.

But if you're the elite you don't want equality, you want difference, you want to have power and money in your hands. Does that make sense? So the revolt of the elite happened in the 80s, and this is what we call in the United States the Reagan Revolution, the beginning of neoliberalism, free market capitalism, and in Britain it was called Thatcherism, Margaret Thatcher, the Thatcher Revolution. And so now you need to transition away from the worker to something else, another ideology that allows the elite to amass power.

Just to show you how radical this revolution was: in the 1970s, if you were a CEO, the head of a company, you were making on average $1 million US a year. That's pretty good, right? That's really good money, and that $1 million was more than 20 times, and that's pretty reasonable. Today the average CEO in the United States makes $20 million a year, and that is 200 to 300 times more than the average worker in the company. Does that make sense? So in the 80s inequality starts to explode, and they're transitioning from the worker to a new organizing unit called the consumer. They needed to destroy the working class, the middle class, and the way they did it was by introducing a new concept called the consumer.

In the 50s, 60s and 70s the government promised you a good job if you were a member of a society, if you're a citizen. I promise you a good job that you would have for the rest of your life. In the 80s the government said, I promise you that you have low prices and a wide selection of goods. Does that make sense? All right.

So this sounds like a subtle shift, going from the worker to the consumer, but what this meant was a revolution in society, a revolution in politics. Remember, as an example, the worker has to have political consciousness in order to protect his or her rights, in order to organize and unify and push for favorable political reforms. That's what the worker must do. But now let's think about the mentality of the consumer, and to do this let's do another thought experiment. The thought experiment is this: everyone in the school, about 500 people, I decide to give everyone $1 million US. So everyone in the school has exactly $1 million US to spend. What happens now?

Think about this. What happens now? Use your imagination. What's the first thing you do? I've given you a million dollars, what do you do with it? Well, the first thing you do is buy something. What do you want to buy? $1 million is a lot of money. What do you want to buy? You buy a house, that's great, that's a great purchase. Then what do you do? Then what do you do? Okay, first thing is he buys a house, then what does he do? Buy furniture. Then what does he do? There's something that he must do that's very important. He buys the house, what does he want to do? He wants to take pictures and post on social media. So everyone sees on social media, then you see this person now has this huge house in Beijing with lots of fancy furniture. What do you do now? You also want to buy a house, but what kind of house? A bigger house. And then what do you do? You also post pictures. Then how do other people feel? You think this is funny, but this happens all the time.

So very quickly what happens in the school is you all spend your money and you all go into debt, because you're in competition with each other to buy the biggest thing. $1 million is a lot of money, but it's not enough to buy everything, so you go into debt, you borrow more money to buy more things. And then what happens? How do you guys feel about each other? Do you guys have lunch together? Do you guys have dinner together? Do you guys like to share homework together? You guys hate each other. At the end of the day what will happen is you all go into debt and you all hate each other. So that's consumerism. This is what consumerism is.

Consumerism creates a competition in society for prestige, to see who can post the nicest social media pictures. This leads to the individualization or the optimization of you. In other words, you are now unable to act together, you don't want to organize, you don't want to act in solidarity. And ultimately you develop economic logic. What is economic logic? It's to see the world only through the lens of capital. Does that make sense?

So when you see someone and you're like, okay, well, do I want to date this person, you don't ask, oh, is this person a nice person? You ask yourself how much money does this person have. Do you understand? You use economic logic in order to understand the world and to reason and analyze the world.

Now let me ask you this question. Today, is this how China works? Is this how the world works? The answer is yes. Are you like this? Yes, you are like this. You've been brainwashed into thinking that this is the only way to behave and to think. You in school, why are you in school? So you get a good job. Why? To make money and so you can buy things. You understand, that's how you all think. But there are different ways to think about school. You're like, I'm in school to learn, to open my mind, to have an imagination, to think critically about the world. That was the way we thought about school when the workers were dominant, but now that consumers are dominant, all we think about is how do I get a good job, how do I buy a bigger house because I want to post it on social media.

So if you think about this, what this really is is the perfection of slavery. Does it make sense? What does this phrase mean, the perfection of slavery? Yeah, he becomes a slave of the money. But why is this perfect? Yes. Okay, do you understand? If you're a slave you rebel, right? But if you don't know you're a slave and you like this, you choose this, then you will never rebel. So consumerism is the perfection of slavery, and that's why Francis Fukuyama thinks that consumerism is the end of history, because it is a system that achieves what the elites want, and the masses are unwilling and unable to protest and rebel. Does that make sense? It's a system.

But there are certain civilizations that rebel against slavery. Intrinsically it is in their nature to rebel against slavery, and one of those civilizations is the Russian civilization. So when you impose it on Russians, they become corrupt, they become alcoholics, and they refuse to have babies. That is why Russia is failing as a society, because slavery is being imposed on Russians by the Westerners, and the Russians refuse to be slaves, but because the system of consumerism is so perfect, Russian people lack an understanding of how to rebel against the system, and that's why Russia is falling apart.

That is Putin's argument. Does that make sense? In other words, consumerism has corrupted the Russian soul, and Russians have chosen to be corrupted by consumerism. So what Vladimir Putin must do is free his people even though they may enjoy prison. Even though Russians may enjoy slavery, Putin is still going to free his people, and he's going to do it by creating a new concept to combat consumerism.

So we've gone from the worker to the consumer, and Putin is going to introduce a new concept called the warrior. The consumer is a person, an individual who acts alone and does so to preserve his or her life. The consumer is a coward. The consumer lacks imagination. The consumer is alienated. The warrior is different. The warrior is an individual who sees that through his actions he or she can shape the direction of history. I can make my own reality through my courage and through my imagination and by acting with others. Does that make sense? All right, so let's do another thought experiment to understand the warrior concept. Let's just say that in the school I give everyone a million dollars and now you hate each other.

Then what happens is I put you on a plane and I take you all to an island, and you're on this island, and unfortunately on this island there are millions and millions of flesh-eating monkeys. They want to eat you, but you hate each other, you don't want to work together. What happens now? That's right, if you don't do anything everyone gets eaten by a monkey. But what are you going to do? How will you fight the monkeys? What's going to happen is that everyone is going to put aside the differences and work together to fight the monkeys. And how do you feel in this process? Are you going to be happy? Why? Exactly, you're all working towards the same goal. Structure, meaning and purpose. That's what war does. War gives you structure, meaning and purpose, so you feel happy about yourself.

Let's just say that during this war Selene dies. Now what does death do? Selene dies, she's a martyr, you all celebrate her, remember her, you give her a great funeral, and then what do you do?

You fight harder. Do you understand? Because the death gives you purpose. Her death makes your life much more valuable to you and to the others. Not only do you celebrate her life, but you celebrate your own life. All right, now let's just say that the monkeys are coming, and there's a bridge, and Jack is standing on this bridge and there are 10 of you on the other side. So Jack has a choice. He can either cut the bridge and kill himself and save the others, or he can run and possibly all get killed by the monkeys. What does Jack do? For sure he will do this. What will he do? He's going to sacrifice himself. Do you understand? We've seen this in war over and over. That's what war does to people. It gives you structure, meaning and purpose, and it makes you stronger, more disciplined. Does that make sense? Right, so that's the thought experiment.

So in theory, then, when Putin launched this military operation, it's called a special military operation, in Ukraine back in February 2022, then we should see improvements in Russian society.

Does that make sense? So what's happened in Russia since this war? Are people happier? Do you think people are happier now? I think they are. Do you think people are more unified? I think they are. One example of this is that the Russian economy is surviving US sanctions. In fact it's getting stronger and stronger. Why? Because people are fully participating in the economy now. An example of this is that every month Russia is producing 150,000 ammunition shells for the war. Every month Russia is producing more ammunition shells for the war, 150,000. Can you guys guess how much the United States produces every month in comparison? Guess the number. 100,000? 2,000? Okay, you understand.

So Russia is gearing towards a war economy. Its factories are producing more and more weapons, but that means more and more people are working, which means that they're drinking less. When you have structure and meaning and purpose in your society, all this goes down. Corruption goes down, alcoholism goes down, oh sorry, fertility goes up. All right, does that make sense?

So last year Putin made the statement. He was asked, okay, you have a lot of Russians dying on the battlefield, and he said, well, when they die on the battlefield we honor them.

They sacrificed themselves for their country, they'll always be remembered as heroes, their families will always love them. But if we just let them do whatever they want, all they're going to do is drink themselves to death. Okay, you understand? So I put it in a saying: what war is ultimately, it is a mechanism for society to rejuvenate itself. What war is, it's an opportunity for society to cut away the fat, to make itself more lean.

So for Putin this war is not really about conquering Ukraine or defending against NATO. It's really about saving Russian civilization, it's really about saving the Russian soul. If you don't fight this war and you let these trends continue, then Russia will eventually cease to exist as a nation. Does that make sense?

So what's going to happen is that over time a new concept will arise to challenge consumerism and liberal democracy, and we will call this concept Putinism. The idea of Putinism is really continuous war, that as a society you should be constantly fighting wars in order to unify your nation and make your people stronger and more prosperous. That is Putinism.

And I think this will be his defining legacy. Putinism is a direct response to liberal democracy. So we will shift as a society from one that is based on the consumer to one that is based on the warrior. Does that make sense, guys? Any questions?

Oh, so Selene asked, how is capitalism different from liberal democracy? That's a great question. Capitalism is only concerned about capital, so you can be a fascist country and be capitalistic. Capitalism, many people will say, leads to fascism. The Nazis were extremely capitalistic. They see communism, the Soviet Union, as a direct threat to its existence. The idea of a liberal democracy is the participation of everyone in the generation of capital. Does that make sense? So in other words, and this is one of the ironies of the 20th century, capitalism and democracy are opposing forces, and the idea of liberal democracy is to put the two together in a synthesis so as to explain away or ignore the contradictions. But capitalism and democracy are contradictions. Does that make sense? Any more questions?

Okay, so Jack makes a great point, which is that wars have before destroyed societies.

Think of Athens and Sparta, and think of World War II and World War One. Societies become exhausted and destroyed. So the idea of continuous war is you fight small-scale wars so as to manage the size of the conflict, and it's important to do that. Why? Why don't you want a large-scale war? What might happen in a large-scale war? That's right. The problem is you have nuclear weapons in place now, so it's not smart to fight a large-scale war, because if you fight a large-scale war you can't really control the escalation, and eventually, say, the United States and Russia fight a ground war in Europe, eventually they'll be so angry at each other they might have to use nuclear weapons. That's why one of the major tenets of Putinism is you pick small, contained conflicts. So Ukraine is a small, contained conflict. An invasion of France or an invasion of Britain would lead to nuclear war. Does that make sense? And that's why the United States would also pick Iran, because Iran would be a small, contained conflict. Does that make sense? So this is Putinism. War is a mechanism to transform your society, whereas before we understood war as a mechanism to conquer others, as imperialism or the spreading of civilization.

Now the idea of Putinism is, no guys, we don't care about the other people, we care about ourselves. We're using war as basically a mechanism to discipline our bodies, just like the gym. Does that make sense?

The thing about global leaders, world leaders, is they're all insane but they're not stupid. You understand? They're happy to kill millions of people, they're not happy to blow up the. Okay, but Jack's other point is that Russia is not a very wealthy country. Eventually you're going to exhaust yourself, and that's why we think war is usually a pyramid scheme. What that means is, the example is Nazi Germany. When they were fighting these wars it was costing their economy a lot of money, so they were forced to fight even more wars. That's what eventually led to Germany's invasion of Russia, because they needed the resources and the manpower. And that's the same thing that will happen here, where Putin is spending a lot of money to fight this Ukraine war, but after he finishes the war in Ukraine, then he needs to go conquer more territory for their resources.

So in the long term this could lead to disaster, this could lead to a large-scale war, but in the short term it does work. Does that make sense? Any more questions?

Okay, so Selene asked a great question, which is that eventually people are going to get exhausted. What Putin believes is that the Russians are a warrior culture. Russians enjoy war, Russians are good at war, so Russians won't be exhausted by the war, they'll be galvanized and energized by war. That's a theory, and he's right. There are warrior cultures out there around the world that do enjoy fighting. You think of the German people. The Germans have been fighting wars for a thousand years and they've been really good at it. You think of Japanese. Japan is also a warrior culture that enjoys fighting wars. China is not a warrior culture. It's very hard to get Chinese to fight wars. I hate to say it, but China would probably lose most wars. It's not a warrior culture. So for Chinese civilization war would be exhausting, but for Russian civilization war can be energizing and rejuvenating.

Does that make sense? It depends on your civilization. Any more questions?

Okay, so what's going to happen? The answer is that warrior culture works right now, because warrior culture beats consumer culture easily. So you see in Ukraine, Russians are destroying the Ukrainians, and the Europeans are like, I'm too busy watching TV, I'm too busy buying things, I'm too busy on vacation. Consumers don't want to go to war. But eventually Russia is going to reach a point where it directly threatens Germany and France and Britain, and then they will start to transition into a war culture.So Putinism will become the dominant ideology for the next 50 years. Putinism can spread to other countries, so Japan can adopt Putinism, Germany can adopt it, Britain can adopt it. When this happens we call this world multipolar. The word we use is multipolar, or multipolarity, meaning that there are different centers of power throughout the world. Right now there's only the United States, a global hegemon, but over the next 10, 20 years we expect a multipolar world where each region has a different hegemon. Does that make sense? All right, any more questions?

Okay, so what happens to the United States? Next week we'll discuss the United States, but what I will show you is that if the United States fights this war in Iran, what it has to do is retreat back to its borders. It has to become isolationist, but I'll explain that to you next week. Any more questions? Sorry, sorry, go ahead.

So I think, can I interpret Putinism as another form of slavery, a bigger scale slavery? Okay, so that's a great question. We just said that consumer culture is the perfection of slavery, but it's war slavery, and you can make the argument that it's actually anti-slavery. Why? What can the warrior do that the consumer cannot do? What's the problem with having a war culture really? No, what can warriors do that consumers would never do, guys? Warriors can rebel. Warriors can mutiny. The army can be like, you guys are terrible, we're going to rebel against you. You understand? Does that make sense to you? Consumers don't do that. Consumers like, hm, I'm going to rebel, I'm going to stop buying things. No one's going to do that.

You'll never be like, I'm going to stop buying things because I think it's bad for the environment. You won't do that. Whereas warriors are like, you know what, I don't like this leader, let's march to Moscow and get rid of him. They can do that, and they do that all the time. That's why war culture is so destructive, and that's why war culture was so dominant before and then we got rid of it, because for political leaders war culture is a direct threat. Does that make sense?

But this question reveals a contradiction in Putinism. What is the ultimate problem in Putin turning his entire country into a war society? What's the problem with that? It's a huge problem for Russia, and this is why ultimately Russia will not triumph in a multipolar world. In fact it'll probably fall apart. Why? For a war culture to triumph, what does it need? Warriors fight best when what? When there's a king, guys. When there's a king. That's why we have kings. So what's the problem with Putin's Russia? What's going to happen to Russia, guys? Eventually Putin is going to die. You understand, eventually he's going to die, and then what's going to happen?

The country is going to fall apart, because it's a warrior culture and you have these different generals fighting each other for total control. It's going to be civil war. Putin right now is a strategic genius, he's the king, everyone admires him, so he unites everyone, he can direct all society into total war. When he dies this society is going to fall apart. That's why Putin's legacy will not be a strong Russia, it'll be Putinism, the idea of continuous war. Russia may not survive after Putin. And quite honestly, when you have a great leader like Putin it's impossible to replace him. No one would have his genius and authority and ruthlessness. Does that make sense? All right.

And David, you have a question. David asked a great question: how much of society agrees with Putin? The answer is like no one. Most people don't like to go to war, most people are scared by war, but ultimately society is determined by those who are willing to act on their beliefs. When we look at America, look at the Israel lobby. They're only a small faction, a small fraction of the American population, like less than 1%. But because they're willing to act, and they're organized and they're determined, they get their way.

Does that make sense? Same thing in Russia, where at most, I would say at most, you have 10% who are like, oh, Putinism is a great idea, let's go conquer the world. At most you have 10%. Most people are like, we want peace, we want to live our lives, I have children, I want my children to be safe, I don't want to send my children to war. But again, history is determined by those who are determined to act in unison, so it's usually the most extreme individuals who get their way. Does that make sense? Thanks for the question. Any more questions?

Okay, so Putin believes that Russia is first and foremost a great civilization, but as a great civilization it also has to fight wars to protect itself. You understand? So Putin's like, you know what, if America left us alone we would not fight wars. It's only because America insists on encircling us, insists on trying to destroy our culture, our civilization, that we must fight. Does that make sense? And so what people say is, listen, the war in Ukraine, it's ultimately caused by NATO encroachment into Russia.

NATO, after the Soviet Union fell, expanded five times, guys. NATO was set up as a defensive alliance against the Soviet Union. Well, if you don't have a Soviet Union you don't need NATO anymore, so why is NATO expanding? In fact NATO was going to expand into Ukraine. So Putin is like, we are fighting this war ultimately to defend our civilization. That's what matters, the defense of our civilization, and if it requires us to go to war then we will do so. It is this process that will create Putinism, or continuous war. Does that make sense? Any more questions? Yeah.

Okay, so even though only 10% agree with Putinism, I actually don't know the real number, but I think it's only a minority. What happens is that in war people become much more unified. The example is Ukraine, where actually about 50% of the people in Ukraine were Russian speakers, and there was a large group of people, at least a third, who were sympathetic towards Russia, but the moment that Putin invaded they all united under Zelensky. So that's what war does. War unifies people. So again, back to the island example.

You guys may hate each other when you land on the island, but hey, if there's a million flesh-eating monkeys that want to kill you, you guys are going to become a family. Does that make sense? Any more questions? Is this clear to you guys? You look as if you want to ask a question. Are you confused by something, Selene? Excuse me.

Okay, so again, Russia is a warrior culture. It enjoys war, it's good at fighting wars. But China is not a warrior culture, and the reason why is that throughout most of Chinese history China was the dominant power, the hegemon. Also China is surrounded by natural defenses. To the east you have the sea, to the south and to the west you have mountains, to the north you have the Great Wall. So China doesn't feel threatened by anyone, and therefore it doesn't have a war culture. Does that make sense? But Russia is a huge country that's been invaded multiple times, and all these invasions were traumatic for Russia. You look at the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, that killed 20 million people. Millions of Russians died in that war, and people still celebrate that war.

So China is not a warrior culture. Does that make sense? Any more questions?

Okay, so what we will do next week is we'll talk about Putin's strategic genius, and what I will show you, and this will be interesting, is that the way that Russians see the world is radically different from the way we see the world. So we'll discuss strategy moving forward next class. Does that make sense? All right, good.