"People are worried about whether there's going to  be an enduring relationship with China and Russia.  If you look at this picture, the relations  look more glacial than cordial and the little   one's..."

"China and Russia discovered each  other late in their histories.  It was the early part of their last  dynasties when the Russians were after   fur, very lucrative in those days. That brings them out ..."

"series of rebellions that just about wrecked them. The Russians take advantage of all of this.  Remember the second rule of continental  empires? No great power neighbors. The   Russians repeatedly de..."

"So in the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan trounces  China, boots them from their tributary in Korea.  Then the Japanese also want some  territory on the Liaodong Peninsula.  The Chinese go to the Russi..."

"of strategic communication. The Russians really understand   other people's emotional life and what  sets them at odds with each other.  They know just how to serve out the propaganda  that sets peopl..."

"My fourth example of derailing China's rise  concerns the First United Front between the   Chinese Nationalists and Chinese Communist Party. Here's the leader of the Nationalist Party   and also leade..."

"There's a railway system in  Manchuria. We're going to talk rails.   The Russo-Japanese War of 1904 and 1905, Japan  wins it and gets from Russia, which built all   these things in Chinese territory, ..."

"millions of refugees, that does indeed derail  China's rise yet again. Next example. Per the   Yalta agreement, Russia finally gets  into the war in Asia. About time.   In the very final weeks, in thi..."

"So talk about derailing  somebody, that would do it.  To be fair to the Russians, they did, albeit  slowly, turn over all this Japanese-stockpiled   military equipment in Manchuria to the Communists. ..."

"So what's not to love about fighting  to the last Chinese in Korea?  Stalin thinks this is great and it's  going to retard Chinese development.  Also because China is so isolated by this war,  it has ..."

"Mao has a growing list of gripes. It's not only that he didn't like   Stalin's tributary treatment, but also Mao  thinks, with his resume, that he should become   the leader of international communism..."

"to get credit for it. So all that's going on. Now,  Khrushchev has his own gripes about the Chinese.  He looks around at the United States. The United States has got   basing all over the world. Its a..."

"Step one for China is getting its own  atomic weapon, which it does in 1964,   so that it can get itself free of Soviet bondage. In 1964, after they detonated that bomb,   Mao goes, "Okay, there are t..."

"Imagine if this country had to put those  kinds of forces on our long Canadian and   Mexican borders. It'd be bankrupting. Their  economy was and remains a fraction of ours.  But this breaking up of t..."

"Now for this dystopian alternate  universe of Russian decline.  Here on the left is Leonid Brezhnev,  who apparently had a stroke in 1976   that permanently impaired his thinking  and whose death in 1..."

"relied as much as 55% on oil or energy revenues. So piggy banks are going to shrink if oil prices   aren't doing very well. Gorbachev repeatedly said,   "You know, we can't live this way anymore." He ..."

"but they don't measure it in wealth. Their wealth has always been much less   than their Western neighbors, although they  often confiscate the wealth of other people.  What they measure their strengt..."

"The people who made all this  happen include this charmer, some   of the most toxic people from the Soviet Union. Andrey Vyshinsky goes to Romania, lucky Romanians.  He was running the show trials  th..."

"But the Russians want to take advantage  of the absolute turmoil that wars cause.  Wars also often lead to war economies  where you've got a lot of centralized   government control to run the war effo..."

"They're doing this right as Western  imperialists are giving up their colonies.  Yet there’s this big lie, the big fiction that  the Russians are somehow nice guys. They're   using democratic forms. T..."

"or if it can take a whole thing, good for them. So Russian national identity is not   only about empire, territorial extent. It also has some big ideas attached to it, an   ideology that somehow this ..."

"That's where his little focus is. Russia has a  nightmare scenario. They don't always win these   wars. They lose quite often. The Mongol yoke or  the Yellow Peril, their terminology, not mine,   is t..."

"So if he keeps the game up, he may  well wind up with a Chinese yoke,   and his nightmare will be there for him. The Chinese also have their own big ideas,   not religious ideas or empire,  but about ..."

"aren't going anywhere anymore. Good old Xi, he doesn't   have a marketable ideology anymore. What's really scary is that Confucianism had   just been this enduring feature of China—dynasties  came and..."

"economic theories on which communism is  based, how do you justify one-party rule?  The Communist Party has tried to  soldier on without solving that problem.  The Chinese have learned a great  deal f..."

"That helps explain some of Xi Jinping's  growth-depressing choices that he's making.  Gorbachev discovered when he tried  to reform communism that democracy   and communism just don't mix. If you give..."

"them to prioritize stability over liberty. This  brings a third problem. Democracy and communism   don't mix and democracy and empire don't mix. In an Internet cell phone age, where people   are much ..."

"It also impedes the de-escalation of  unforeseen international dust-ups or crises.  With Putin's latest adventures, one  would assume that the Chinese have   some real thoughts about what's going on n..."

"he has risen to power on a diet of hot wars. He comes to power in the early phase of the   Second Chechen War, where he levels the Chechen  capital of Grozny and leaves most of the rest of   Chechnya ..."

"Putin, when he works his magic the second time  around in Ukraine in 2022, this is when the   Finns and the Swedes decide neutrality's not  going to cut it and they’ve got to join NATO.  But when Puti..."

"with a leadership that has not been  chastened by surviving World War I,   the Great Depression, and World War II. Which were the grownups who did a very effective   job dealing with the early first C..."

"Putin is just blowing through all of  his assets in Ukraine to no purpose.  That's how we fought and won the last Cold War. Putin, he's trying to do empire in the age of   nationalism. It's a non-star..."

"desperately needed to face off Germany,  which it does within the decade and loses.  He is overthrown in part  because of bread riots in St.  Petersburg, because no foreign aid can get  in, because he..."

"Japan tried this go-it-alone,  my-way-or-the-highway strategy   with China back in World War II, when China  was a failed state, and it wrecked Japan.  China now has a population that's a  multiple of..."

"That's what I have to say  about Sino-Soviet things.  First question, I want to understand the  role of ideology in the Sino-Soviet split. "

"First question, I want to understand the  role of ideology in the Sino-Soviet split.  These are the two major  communist countries in the world.  They have this big ideological,  world-changing missio..."

"I gave you all these bad things that Russia  had done to China, which are not small things.  Then isn't the problem with communism that  the economics of it don't actually work?  Fundamentally these t..."

"There's another piece where it's  just amazing, about the big lie.  I don't know whether it was Stalin who  said it, that if the lie is big enough,   people will believe you. It's just so out there,  ..."

"I want to understand Stalin's decisions  in particular in the case of telling the   Communists during the Chinese Civil War that they  can't go below the Yangtze River, so that he can   split up the C..."

"But did Stalin as a communist think, "Okay at some  point the whole world is going to be communist."  He thought that he personally  would be managing the whole world?  Unclear. It's a long horizon. I..."

"or whatever happened to him that morning. If Stalin hadn't died, do you think a Sino-Soviet   split was still inevitable? Yes, there wouldn't have   been Khrushchev's secret speech. Obviously Stalin w..."

"as a major event, especially since  World War II had just happened.  If you were living in 1948 or 1949,  you wouldn't think of this as the   main thing happening in the world. But given that we know ..."

"something in Asia to counterbalance. But then when you get to the Chinese   Civil War, Americans who've fought some  big wars, they're looking at it saying,   "It is not feasible for us to alter this ..."

"There are dictators all over the world  who stay in power for a long time.  Do not dismiss their ability to stay in power. They're surfing quite a wave wherever they live,   of people who butcher each..."

"It's just so much more wealth-creating, this  alternate universe, but that's not where   these continentalists are. There's still something   a little under-explained about… Probably lots of things ar..."

"So you think you got it. But if you look at the future,   how's this thing going to end with Xi Jinping  and Putin? We don't know. Afterwards, you'll go,   "Oh, something is profoundly stupid based on..."

"They're too big to be finished off. Unless we do a nuclear war, then we   might finish all of ourselves off. But the idea that there will be some   sort of conflict between these two  countries… I agr..."

"Does that look like the bromance ending? North Korea has for decades been in a   very desperate position. That’s quite a bromance.  But there's no risk of North  Korea and China going to war.  North K..."

"Yeah, in Germany, he's trying  to run the same script.  He thinks it's going to work for him. That's what the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact is about.   Not remotely. He needed to read Mein Kampf to  underst..."

"and it just about wrecks him. But it works beautifully against Japan.  It's just interesting to see. It makes  sense why he thought it would work.  When he's getting information that the Germans are  ..."

"An interesting connection to make between World  War II and this Russo-Chinese relationship is   that the way that we used Russia—as this reservoir  of military men that we can just ship armaments   t..."