Lex Fridman: evaluation

Transcript context

…Yes, it’s an interesting insight. It’s like the way in which there’s a force in nature which is that, if you amass an army, amassing it will pull you in to using it. Extremely hard to amass an army somewhere and then say let’s go back. Yes, you’re right, no, it’s one of many, many interesting aspects to warfare. I think the sad thing about successful wars, at least in the modern day, is it takes a great military leader which I would argue that Zelenskyy really unified Ukraine in this fight in the beginning of the war. You have to be that and, like you said, after you amass the army and have military success, to be able to step back and make peace. Those two just don’t often go hand in hand because, again, as a wartime leader, especially one who has seen the suffering first hand, walking away is tough. Especially, also combined with that, just the realities of war where there is probably corruption, that there is things, once the war ends, there has to be investigations. Because the war wasn’t won, you might not turn out to be, when the history looks at it, the good guy and a leader doesn’t want to … A leader always wants to be the good guy. So, there’s just all psychological complexities that are … And you look at this whole picture, in a basic sense, if you want Ukraine to flourish, if you want humanity to flourish, you just ask the question, okay, so what is the thing I would like to see. There’s so many historical analogies you can give but just surely not rewarding Putin’s actions in any way would be a good way to deter him and other dictators from trying to grab land in the future.…

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