Dwarkesh Patel: evaluation

Transcript context

…Let’s not try because I don’t know anything about it either. On China and the Chinese Civil War, there was an understanding that it was a really big deal. That’s why Roosevelt—and the British are just thinking he’s laughable—keeps trying to treat China like a great power. The British are saying, “They’re not a great power, Franklin, not remotely.” But he wants to bring them into the Cairo Conference. He also wants them to be a veto-wielding member of the United Nations, which by China’s military status there’s just no way. But Roosevelt is looking, there’s no Japan out there, we want to have 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 outcome.” The thinking was — I think it was the Eisenhower archives — that if they lived together long enough, they would go at each other eventually. I want to zoom in on one particular episode during this period that I think is fascinating. In 1936, the Communists in China kidnapped Chiang Kai-shek, who’s the leader of the Nationalists, and they’re about to kill him. Stalin radios in over the Comintern. He says, “No, you can’t kill Chiang Kai-shek even though he’s your enemy, he’s been massacring you. You gotta let him go.” In exchange, Chiang Kai-shek has to promise to create a united front against the Japanese. There are 30,000 communist guerrillas when they’re fighting the Japanese at this period and there are 1.5–2 million nationalist troops. The communists get to claim the prestige of fighting the Japanese with a fraction of the effort. This just seems like a brilliant move on Stalin’s part in retrospect, because if they had killed Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalist forces might have dissolved. There would be a puppet government installed by Japan. It would be a terrible thing for Stalin. It just seems like Stalin makes a lot of right calls in the theater in Asia at this time. What is the understanding, big picture, that lets him? 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 other with great regularity. I would suspect—suspect, because how would I have the evidence—that many of these long-term dictators have EQs that are off the charts. When you come in the room, they just gut-feeling know whether they’re going to cap you or not. If they get a few extra people, so what? Just so they get rid of all the people who are going to cause them problems. Incredible abilities. Also what Stalin does—I think Saddam Hussein imitated him, but I could be wrong about that one—is have multiple security agencies with overlapping jurisdictions. No one quite knows who’s running the show and who’s in power, but they’re all funneling information to Stalin. So he has better information than anybody else. You can use one one day, another another day, which explains how all the heads of the equivalent of the KGB come and go. Most of the early heads of that wind up getting shot by their successors. You’d think they’d notice a pattern. They’re very good at staying in power. They’re really good at managing that problem. It does not bring prosperity. That comes from the world of maritime trade, of following international law instead of capping your trade partner. You’re not going to get a second trade deal if you do that. It’s just so much more wealth-creating, this alternate universe, but that’s not where these continentalists are.…

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