Dwarkesh Patel: belief

Transcript context

…I don't know the answer, but the Japanese… Talk about a culture that's about detail, about hard work, about service to the emperor. I've done in your earlier podcast series a whole series about bushido. They're imbued with service to the emperor and if you go fight wars, you win them. That's part of their culture. Russians also don't like being messed with when people invade them, but this time they're invading other people in an irrelevant part of the empire. It's at a time when Russia is trying to industrialize itself, but they haven't put enough money into their education system. So they have a bunch of illiterate troops running around. Let's face it, how can you read any of the manuals or do anything? Some of their generals, one of them didn't know what a howitzer was. One of the guys who's planning stuff, he can't read maps. The level of incompetence of having royal favorites in your officer corps, they make these decisions. Also, there's split command in the Russo-Japanese War. There's General Kuropatkin, who is the professional who actually had fought against the Ottomans. But those are colonial wars, and he'd won some of those. He's a professional. But then Admiral Alekseyev—who's the illegitimate son of, I can't remember which Tsar, and a favorite uncle, I believe, of Nicholas II—he's out there and no one knows who's actually in command, except the royal favorite is probably the better bet. So Kuropatkin wants to not engage the Japanese until they're way inland, because he wants to extend their lines and then clobber them. All these aristocrats who don't know what they're talking about say, “No, no, no, no, no, we're not going to let these racial inferiors do whatever. We're going to take them on immediately.” Okay, try that. Kuropatkin's strategy probably would have worked. Just bring them inland and let them enjoy it, like with Napoleon Bonaparte. You want to get to Moscow, have at it. Then try winter in Moscow. One really interesting takeaway from this lecture—and I'm curious if you agree with this—is that when we think about this period in history, we often think of Japan as the rising power in Asia. But it seems like the takeaway here is Russia was actually on the path to be the dominant power here. Their population is so much bigger. If the efforts to modernize had worked, they would have had a 4x bigger population. Then they could have had the modern industry Japan has. Were it not, later on obviously, for the Bolshevik Revolution and the Civil War and collectivization, Russia would be dominant. Japan, seeing this, acts early. I guess I didn't put it in those terms before I heard this lecture. Would you agree with that? I'm going to give you a tangential answer, then you tell me what I'm missing. The sorrow of Russia is that they have this incredible land, natural resources, and the works. They're really hung up on empire, having lots of territory. They live in a difficult neighborhood. Witte is telling Nicholas, forget about the Asian adventures. We need to build more railways in European Russia. He was right. Because if they could have mobilized better in World War I, you might get some different outcomes. Also, you might have avoided the food riots in St. Petersburg, which toppled the Romanov dynasty. If you'd actually provided enough food to St. Petersburg, maybe you don't have those riots because you have the railways running and things. So Russia is a story of misinvestment. Look at it today. If Putin had taken all of his oil money and invested it in the transportation grid… Believe it or not, Russia still just does things by train. Its road systems are appallingly bad. If Russia actually cleaned up its legal system, which under the tsars it hadn't done either, everything was always royal monopolies… If they had cleaned up these things to allow individuals to make their own investments and make money, it'd be a completely different story. But tsars couldn't stand merchants. Communists hated them even more. There are cultural differences. The Russians aren't known for being meticulous and hard working the way Japanese are. Russians are known to be hard drinkers. They're also known for being brutal.…

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