School of War - Ep. 25: Waller Newell on Putin and Tyranny

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Waller Newell, Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Carleton University, joins the show to discuss tyranny and tyrants—and Vladimir Putin in particular.  Times 02:05 Introduction 03:43 Let's talk about Vladimir Putin 05:40 What is the Russian "Soul"? 07:19 Quote from "The Russian Idea" 08:40 Who was Nikolai Berdyaev? 09:54 Is Berdyaev an influence on Aleksandr Dugin? 11:05 The West has a hard time understanding non-economic motivations. Why? 13:06 Who is Aleksandr Dugin? 15:21 “Eurasian Nationalist Bolshevism”  16:55 Rehabilitating Stalin 18:40 Are we seeing a perpetuation of Tsarist Russia? 20:40 What is fascism? 22:35 The many types of tyranny 25:12 What kind of tyrant is Putin? 26:50 Why has millenarian tyranny appeared so relatively recently in history? 29:51 The relationship between liberalism and millenarian tyranny 31:25 The next ten years in Russia 34:00 Did Putin know what he was getting himself into in Ukraine? 35:36 The prospect of Russian and Chinese collaboration in the future 36:55 Who drives Chinese policy - Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party? 38:56 Staying sane while studying tyrants 42:10 What should we be reading to better recognize hostile actors for what they are?

What makes Vladimir Putin tick? Why doesn't he want to, quote, build back better for Russia as a Biden administration official suggested he should back in December? Is he really just a 19th century man trapped in the 21st century, as John Kerry and others have suggested? Or is he just, well, a tyrant? Before we get to today's interview, I'd like to share a word from our sponsor, The Spectator. As the longest-running magazine in the world, the Spectator excuse identity politics. in favor of intelligent conversation and thought.

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Plus, they're going to send you a free Spectator Hat. Just go to Spectatorworld.com slash special offer and use offer code SOWW. And you'll get access to their amazing contributors, including Christopher Buckley, Christopher Caldwell, and Douglas Murray. Sign up today to get three months of the Spectator and get your free hat at Spectatorworld.com slash special offer. Use offer code S-O-W at checkout. Back to the episode. It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infinite.

The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stale. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We will not see these buildings down. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. but you'll never have narenda. Hi, I'm Aaron McLean.

Thanks for joining the School of War. I'm delighted to be joined today by Waller Newell. Waller is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy, Carlton University, where he helped found and teaches in the College of the Humanities. Professor Newell, thank you so much for joining. It's nice to be with you. As I warned folks in the intro to the episode, we're going to take a slightly different approach today

than what we've done for the first couple dozen episodes of the podcast. You know, this podcast focuses on strategy and military history. And that's mostly what we've stuck to. We occasionally kind of brush up into the out of grand strategy and a little bit of discussion of why wars start. But we haven't really ever just talked politics and talked about why statesmen make the decisions they make at the highest level about how politics forms them and about the different kinds of politicians and statesmen that there are, which is really something that you

expert in. And I think it's not an overstatement to say that you are the world's leading expert in tyranny and tyrants. You may not say that about yourself, but I'm going to assert it. And I think that of all the libraries that are packed full of volumes of political science with, you know, numeric statistical analysis that this or that kind of regime and how authoritarian regimes can you know can predict do this or that done this or that sample he could just all of that and read tyranny a new interpretation tyrants power injustice and terror and the forthcoming tyranny and revolution rsoda he or all of which are professor new old's books so let's talk about vladimir putin who's kind of obviously the order of the day um what's his deal why can't he

just kind of behave and act like um a 21st century leader ought to act, why can't he, in the memorable phrase of an unnamed Biden administration official, look to help Russia build back better and achieve some level of economic prosperity rather than picking on his neighbors? I think because Putin is not a rational actor in our sense of the term, he certainly does want to in Russia's stare and popularity has been based on some success at doing so. But I think that his fundamental motivation is a kind of grand geopolitical strategy in which the Slavic peoples that he regards as part of the Russian soul are going to be gathered back into the fold of the motherland. And Ukraine is the first step in that process. But if you look at the kind of scenario that he and his advisors envision, it's very much.

an almost millinarian or utopian vision of the future. Now, I'm always, do you believe in this? How much does he actually think he'll bring this about? Those are open questions, but I'm certain that it is an important part of his motivation, that he's not going to be content simply with a bigger slice of the economic pie, as we tend to think leaders will be. I don't think, for instance, that he'll be bought off by being given a chunk of Ukraine. maybe for the time being, but I think in the long run, he'll continue to pursue this millenarian vision of a restored Russia.

Well, that was a sort of admirably efficient description of a very complex phenomenon. So I think I'll just take pieces of that and ask you, ask you what they mean. I mean, what is the Russian soul in Putin's view? I mean, it's a very grand kind of phrase, but what's its real content? I think we have to see this in the context, though, they very long divide within Russian culture, really going back to the 19th century or earlier. And I'm talking about those like Turgenyev who wanted to look to the West, who wanted to look to Europe, who saw Russia as a European country, and those like Dostoevsky, who wanted to look to the East, who saw Russia as a Slavic country and a deeply religious country, not primarily interested in Western prosperity. And that's a divide that has continued down to the present. We saw it during the era of Soviet dissidents.

If you think about somebody like Sakharov versus Solzhenitsyn, Sokhov was definitely the scientist. He was friendly to the Enlightenment. Sol Shulshinzen was all about the Russian soul. And similarly, today, we know Putin to be a deputy of this slavophilic and Eurasianist interpretation of Russia's destiny. And I think that it's very important to him. And it's his fundamental motivation.

You had a great piece in Tablet recently on this exact subject, and you cite a couple of influences for Putin, a contemporary one in a minute, Alec Erdogan. So I try to read everything you recommend or point to. And I've actually bought, and I'm holding here a reprint of the Russian idea by Bergeyev. And I want to read you and read our listeners just a couple of sentences. from the book i'll ask you to sort of explain who he is in a second but this is just from the first few pages there is that in the russian soul which corresponds to the immensity the vagueness the infinitude of the russian land spiritual geography corresponds with physical in the russian soul there is a sort of

immensity a vagueness a predilection for the infinite such as is suggested by the great prussia for this reason we'll have found difficulty in achieving mastery over these vast advances and in reducing a shape. It's a vast strength and the report will combine with a completely weak sense form, etc., etc. Now, in fairness, I've only had this for a few days. In fairness, I've not yet read the whole thing. Perhaps you will tell me that my takeaway from these early pages is unfair, but the nice way of describing analysis of that nature would be to say that it's sort of poetic and romantic.

The way I'm inclined to describe it sounds kind of like bullshit to me. Just in this sense of grand eloquent, but so general and vague as to not be all that. I'll stop prejudices and ask you, who was Nikolai Bergeyev? What does he mean for Putin? Well, Berdaiv was someone who began as a committed Marxist leninist. And then when the Bolsheviks came to power, he grew disillusioned. And instead, he turned to what you might call a kind of Christian existentialism that was very much focused on Russian religiosity. And the passages that you read out loud, I think, are apropos of Putin because passages do seem to evoke a kind of political romanticism or political existentialism.

that has no concrete outcome, but is more a kind of deep mood or deep impulse that somehow has to be translated into action in a way that's sort of disturbingly open-ended. And as we do know, that Putin is the idea of Prudyiv. And so talk about this vision of the Slav, and then let's bring present day, is Bredaib's an influence on Putin, is he also an influence on this? Goodman, we'll talk about here. I would imagine so. I think Dugan has more proximal interests, what influences rather like Heidegger.

But I think what you're catching from Bredaev is this notion, again, that the true Russian soul, which is an agrarian soul and is rooted to the land, is deep. deeply religious and spiritual in a way that means that the temptation of material riches from the West are just beneath its notice. And I think it's, again, it's a kind of politics of existential mood rather than a concrete agenda. And yet I do think that Putin is very infused with that feeling of Russia's destiny. Why is it so hard for those of us in the West, for Western leaders to say things like, what Putin really needs to do is build back better to take seriously the fact that there are these,

I'll just say, non-economic, non-prosperity-oriented motivations, or at least motivations in addition to economic motivations. Because it does seem like we tend to dismiss this kind of stuff, kind of like me looking at that passage and rolling my eyes, I think it's kind of ridiculous. I also, for the record, have always found Dostoevsky to be kind of hardgoing. Well, I enjoy Tolstoy. So there's something essentially Western about it makes it hard for me to understand Putin. I enjoy a told story the most because I think he's a rather platonic figure who manages to surmount these contradictions. But I think it's the very success, relatively speaking, of liberal democracies that can blind us to the danger of these extremist ideologies. Because after

all, we're always told that liberal democracy is about the debate over. means, not the debate over ends. In other words, we're all agreed that we will benefit from being members of the social contract. We'll have rights as individuals. We'll have rights to elect our own governments. And there'll be a maximum net gain for everybody in peace and prosperity. and that tends to boil away appeals to fundamental and divisive sources of conflict like religion, like revolutionary ideology. And that's good because that makes our politics healthier and more beneficial. But it does come at the cost of a certain blindness about the fact that there are leaders and movements in the world who have a principled hatred of our way of. life. It's a conviction on their part. We're not just faking it. Yeah, of course, they're feathering

their own nests. We all know that. But I believe that people like Putin and Xi believe that they have a way of life that is fundamentally superior to ours. Tell us about Alexander Dugan. This is somebody who is with us today is widely reported as being influential in some manner with Putin and whose worldview seems influential at the moment. Yeah, I actually had a dinner with Alexander Dugan some years ago in Washington when I was a fellow at the Wilson Center, and he was not well-known at all at that time. But I found him rather interesting, and so I kept track of him.

He is the son of a Soviet general. He is a professor of philosophy at Moscow State University, and he did not really come to prominence under Yeltsin, but when Dugan succeeded Yeltsin, then, excuse me, when Putin succeeded Yeltsin, then Dugin's star began to rise. And for instance, he was commissioned by Putin to overhaul the entire Russian educational system to strip it of all references to Gorbachev era reforms like Glass Nost and Paris. to rehabilitate Stalin as a great wartime leader. And this was all wrapped up in Dugan's own ideology called Eurasianist National Bolshevism, which tried to recast Bolshevism as an agrarian peasant movement and to expel the Marxist Leninist ingredient as a sort of false rationalistic importation from Europe.

And I think that this has really given Putin the ideology he needs to lend his aggression a kind of higher spiritual purpose. And, you know, he started to become known in the West, I would say, first of all, around the time of Assetya, when Putin pounced on Georgia, then even more so when Putin took over Crimea. and now, of course, one sees his name everywhere. Yeah. And so how does Berja, I mean, so let's talk a little bit more about Eurasianist national Bolshevism, mouthful that it is. I guess one way to do it is there's three words there. What is the significance of Russia as a Eurasian, as opposed to, I suppose,

the alternatives being European or Asian or none of the above country? That in Dugan's view, Russia is a country whose soul is to the east. So Russia has to turn away from the West, from Europe, from the Enlightenment, and from Western rationalism in order to get in touch with its true roots. And then to turn Bolshevism into national Bolshevism. Which seems a bit, I mean, just to interject, I mean, a bit of a contradiction in terms, no? It is a contradiction in terms. But what he's trying to do there is strip Bolshevism of its universal. ideology. In other words, Marxist-Leninist-Scientific socialism. He wants to jettison that, again, as a false

importation from Western rationalism, and return Bolshevism to what he sees as its true impulse as a populist agrarian movement. So how on earth does one rehabilit? So here's a way of asking the question how is how on earth does one do that how does one rehabilitate a Stalin who i think fairly inappropriately in a way is known as a great communist dictator and a kind of devotee of something like marxism and leninism though perhaps you'll tell me that's a little too easy rehabilitate him while at the same time taking the heart out it seems to me in completely refashioning the ideology which she purported to govern in the name of. Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum because I agree with you.

I think Stalin was a devoted believer in Marxism-Lenin has been thought that he was faithfully carrying out Lenin's message to make Russia socialist. However, during World War II, when things initially were going so badly for Russia after the Nazi invasion, Stalin temporarily drew. brought that pose, and he took on the role of a great patriot. He began addressing the Russian people on radio as brothers and sisters. He began invoking the Orthodox Church. And this is the side of Stalin that Putin and Dugan have glommed onto, because they believe that Stalin can be rehabilitated as a great patriotic leader. Now, we should add, however, there were definite limits on how

par Putin would go to rehabilitate Soviet communism. He definitely does not want a return to Soviet communism. He's criticized it many times for its failings. So there's only a limited extent to which Stalin can be rehabilitated, but it can only go so far. And the vision, the sort of fascist-seeming vision, though maybe I should ask, A, I should ask you if you agree with that. And B, I should ask you, if so, give listeners a sense of what we mean by fascism technically. But this sort of fascist vision of Russia, is there a continuity between that vision and the sort of political religious vision of the Tsars? Or is it something truly new and sort of contemporary?

I think it's not a continuation or return to czarism. because I think that this new kind of national Bolshevism has been filtered through fascist ideology from Europe. For example, Martin Heidegger, Dugan is a great devotee of Heidgger. And a student of mine, a Russian speaker, once translated some of Dugan's writings about Heidegger, they're quite competent. I mean, he really understands Heidegger's thought. And so I think that what Dugan is propounded,

is indeed something much closer to a kind of fascism from the 1930s, which is to say a kind of collectivist politics of the right. And so that at bottom is what is motivating Putin as well, I believe. It's funny. I can remember distinctly in college reading Heidegger, what is that philosophy? And it's been a few years. So maybe for misremembering the details here, but I think it's a discussion of the Greek language and the specialness of Greek and its close contact with, with, you know, something like real nature as opposed to, you know, our contemporary languages, which are at a remove from something real and rolling my eyes with much the same feeling as I rolled my eyes with Borgave here and thinking, well, this is just this is demonstrably silly. Anyway, again, more evidence that I face roadblocks and understanding these kinds of ideologies. But let's zoom out a bit in this discussion of fascism is, I think, a good way to start.

You hear the word fascist a lot these days. It seems to include in American politics, the term is tossed around pretty liberally. Everyone that a certain kind of progressive doesn't like as a fascist. The same is true, kind of in the Russian context. Everyone who opposes Putin's policy in some ways is a fascist. Those two uses of the term don't seem entirely coherent. So what's with everyone using this word about the things they don't like? And what is its proper meaning? Well, there's no more tiresome Russian and earlier Soviet trait than branding anyone who disagrees with you a fascist. And I think it's because the Soviets were always aware of a very uncomfortable similarity between themselves and the fascists. But I think in order to understand fascism, I would say fascism is a collectivist philosophy for the return of the third.

people's destiny. And I think that Bolshevism and national socialism are simply two faces of that same impulse, what I call the millinarian drive for a kind of earthly utopia of collectivist bliss in which the individual is submerged in the collective and we're all free, equal, and happy forever. And that to me is the authentic meaning of fascism. Unfortunately, we've cheapened it by over-usage. And the tendency to call anyone we disagree with in politics of fascist really reduces its value as a term of moral appropriable. But that's how I understand fascism in the full-blooded meaning of the term.

Yeah, I'm just a kid from Burke, Virginia. So your description of this millinarian vision sounds kind of goofy to me, but it seems also to be pretty significant. So let's try to understand it a little better. And for you, and this is really, of course, you know, a theme, if not the theme of the major part of your work for some years now, these sort of categories of tyranny, which you have argued is a underrated force in our understanding of politics and international affairs in the 21st century. So millitarianism is the third one. What are the other two and how to, you know, give us some examples. What does tyranny look like out there in the world?

Sure. Well, first of all, is what I call. garden variety kleptocracy. And this is the oldest form of tyranny, going back to Hero of Syracuse, and you can find it today in the Syrian regime of the Salazar, the Somozo, basically these people run an entire country like a mafia dog, as if they were their own property, and they enriched themselves and their cronies. The second type is what I call the reforming tyrant. And these people are more complicated. I'm thinking of figures like Julius Caesar, the tutors, the so-called benevolent despots like Frederick the Great, Catherine the great,

Napoleon. These people are more complicated because, yes, they definitely want supreme glory and power and riches for themselves. But they genuinely see themselves as reformers. They often see themselves as reforming the lot of the common man of promoting the lower orders through meritocracy, great public works. And that's why, going back to Caesar, you had people who absolutely loathed him and despised him, the old senatorial aristocracy, but you also had people who worship the ground he walked on. And you could add others to that list like Ataturk. in some ways a genuine reformer and benefactor in other ways a dictator. The third kind, what I call millinery, unlike the other two that have always been around,

I think is peculiar to the modern age. I think it begins with the Jacobins, robespier, the attempt to create, as I said, a kind of heaven on earth, a kind of secular apocalypse, whereby through the the destruction of a class enemy or later a racial enemy, mankind will be happy forever once that enemy is gotten rid of. And I think that's a pattern that then returns through Bolshevism, nationalism, Maoism, the Khmer Rouge. And it's, I think, there are important variations in their ideological visions, but I think at bottom it's driven by this urge to create the perfect collect him. So what kind of tyrant, assuming that it's fair to uncomplicatedly call him one,

seems so to me. What kind of tyrant is Putin? I characterize Putin as a kleptocrat and a reformer with a dash of the millinarian. The kleptocrat part's easy to see. He and his cronies are stupendously wealthy. The reforming part is genuine, because as I said, His early popularity was based on the fact that he stabilized the ruble, and he reversed some of the effects of the shock and awe strategy that Yeltsin embraced to introduce market norms into Russia overnight. But then as time has gone on, the millinarian side has become more prominent. And we've heard more and more about this Slavafilic Russian Empire of the future. So he's an interesting combination. He somehow got elements of all three. How is it possible that this third category of, it's a very significant category of ruler,

emerges so recently in human history? I mean, if it's fair to include under your, under the heading millinerian tyranny, you know, the regimes of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, you know, a few other smaller but quite nasty ones as well. as well, obvious one. It's also quite large. I mean, this is dominant. This dominates in some ways the history of the 20th century. But you're saying if it starts the Jacobins, then, you know, you're only a few hundred years old, but we've been around and governing ourselves and something that looks like politics for a lot longer than that. What's gone wrong here? The best answer I've been able to come up with is that it's a kind of perversion of religious

apocalypticism. In other words, there were millinarian communities in the Middle Ages, like the Cathars who wanted to live in their own little utopia in the south of France, but they merely wanted to be left alone. These pseudo-religious revolutions starting with Jacobins need fleets and armies because they have a vision they want to impose on everyone. I think it has something to do with a very deep and principled hatred of liberalism that begins with Rousseau. And, you know, Rosed Fier regarded himself as the true disciple of Jean-Jacques. He thought that Rousseau inspired what the Jacobins were trying to do. And I think a part of what's said the Jacobin Revolution was a kind of distaste for the extent to which Lachian liberalism

had begun to succeed in France. And they wanted to reverse its gains along with those of the Ancien regime. And that seemed to spin out into this fantasy of returning, as the Jacobsons put it, to the year one, to a kind of primordial golden age before property existed

and before inequality was introduced. So kind of elements of, of Rousseau that Roseve cherry picked, and then he wanted into this sort of comprehensive vision. And of course, that could only be accomplished through terrorists, because the classes standing in the way, the bourgeoisie, the aristos, the aristos, these all had to be eliminated so that mankind could finally enjoy its future bliss. And even the jaytman terror, given that they didn't possess the modern technology of industrialized murder, as it's been called, they still managed to kill about 250,000 people

across France in order to usher in this new Nirvana. So I can't really explain what there is in human nature that prompts this, but I do know that it's there, and I think it comes into being around that time of the Jacoboms. And as you said, since then, it's been a recurrent theme of our history all the way down to the present. Well, so in other words, it comes about when it comes about because it's downstream of liberalism, which we could date to, you know, sort of the start of modernity,

in certain respect, 16th, 17th century. And you can't have millinery and tyranny without liberalism. That's why I guess that, which is enormous form of begging the questions. Then we need to think about where does, what does liberalism come along when it comes along? Actually, I think that's a great, formulation, I've never quite put it to myself that way, but I think that's true because

the animus behind so much illiberal and revolutionary thinking of the 19th century, you know, Marx, Nietzsche, then Heidegger, is this detestation of liberalism and Lockhean materialism. So yes, I think you do probably have to have that irritant there. And then there's also, as it's frequently been noted, in revolutionary politics, there's a kind of misbegotten longing for nobility or a spiritual higher purpose. That may well be sincere in some instances, but is also a sanction for mass murder. Yeah. Well, back to the mass murderers of the present day. So if Putin is a kleptocrat in a reformer with, as you put it, a dash of millinarianism, I guess there's a way in which that's good news and bad news.

The good news is that, you know, the first category is actually quite rational. And the second category can get loopy, but has some constraints. If he's only a bit of the third category, he's still someone fundamentally who, you know, I hesitate to formulate whatever phrase comes next. you can deal with on some rational level, put it that way. But I guess the bad news then is, because at some other point in our conversation, you've said that the millinarianism seems to be increasing, seems to be expanding with age. So are you optimistic or pessimistic about the next 10 years in Putin and Russia? You know, you may have heard Condoleezer Rice say that she thought

Putin was a changed man for the one she had met, that he was undergoing some kind of breakdown. I respect her knowledge, but I respect. suggest that he was always that. Even if he seemed like a kind of pragmatist and blunt dealer, I think that what we're seeing now, this new vision of his, was always lurking inside. It's like Hitler in the 1930s. When people like the British ambassador met Hitler, they all said how, in private, how polite he was, how soft-spoken, how thoroughly well-informed, they thought that he would drive a tough but that he would be a pragmatic negotiator. But we know from Mind Kloft, which came out in 1927, that he already had his full-blown vision

for the Holy War in Russia to exterminate Jewish Bolshevism. So I think that Putin has been binding his time, and I'll confess he went further than I thought he would do. I was surprised. I thought he would sort of like bite off those breakaway republics and then digest that meal and wait and say, this is, you know, my demands for now are satisfied. But no, he really showed this riverboat gambers instinct. Like he lunged right for the prize.

Yeah. And I think that's because he's, I think that's because he's older. There are rumors about his failing health. And I think he wants to leave his stamp on history now. And I think he's rolled the dice and he's willing to go with it. Yeah, I think all of us who have been paying attention to him had developed a real respect for a kind of prudence or judgment that he had. Because, you know, all of our, our complaints and misgivings, you know, duly noted, I mean, he's been successful in certain

straightforward, in a certain straightforward geopolitical sensing, gobbling up territory here and there, conducting these limited wars, concrete, positive results. And you have to be, I think, really caught up in your own, your own liberal prejudice is to see him as a failure up until now. I think, in obvious ways he's done a success on his own terms. So then to be so imprudent is really striking. Do you think, do you think he took the risk knowing it was a long shot? Or do you think that, do you think that he is, he fundamentally failed to understand what he was dealing with in Ukraine? You know, we've been having this whole conversation. We haven't talked for a minute about Ukrainian nationalism or the Ukrainian state.

As best as I can tell from what I read, I think he was misled by his advisors about the state of preparedness of the Russian military. I think that he originally thought he had a shot at taking Kiev and simply decapitating the government and installing the puppet regime. Now he's had to backtrack, but he's digging in. And while he may not be able to conquer Ukraine, it's a little hard for me to see how he can actually be expelled from where he is now. And so he may be there for years. I mean, the bright spot here, if there is one, is that although he's not a rational actor in our sense, he's not a Hitler or Ahmadinejad. He is not planning to go down with Russia in flames of the bunker.

He's a survivor. And so, you know, his ideological fervor has limits. There's a pragmatist that remains in him, I think. That is reassuring to me to hear you say that. I hope you're right. I hope you're right, too. What are the prospects for cooperation between Putin? Let's assume everything you've laid out for us is, you know, 100% accurate.

And if Vladimir joined us here in the program, he would heartily endorse it. What are the prospects for cooperation then between him and his vision and Xi Jinping and she's? also tyrannical but in content somewhat different vision of Eurasia in the world. It's a different vision. I was somewhat taken aback by the argument made by some opponents of American involvement that this would drive Putin into the arms of Xi. I think Putin and Xi have been in each other's arms for a number of years now. and they make up a part of what I call the 21st century anti-democracy league, along with Iran and North Korea.

I think China and Xi are master chess players in a way that exceeds even what Putin is capable of. And I think they will proceed very slowly and hedge their bets. I don't think they'll ever turn on Putin and Russia, but there may be limits to, their enthusiasm as they wait and see how this gamble actually turns out. I ask you a China question since I've got you. How much of Chinese aggressiveness and it's, you know, at this point sort of obvious bid for certainly regional hegemony and I would suggest a global hegemony beyond that in time. How much of that is Xi individually and how much of that is the Chinese Communist Party

as an entity which has been around for a lot longer than Xi. There seems to be a kind of interaction between the two, doesn't there? Whereby Xi has risen, the more he has propounded this vision of China as not only a great power, but the world's greatest power. And as he's focused himself on that goal, his own prestige seemed to build. so that he eventually became the top leader and was even endowed with the status of having his own teaching, like Chairman Mao. Now people say there are signs that he's having to retrench to a degree and that he now wants

to swing in a somewhat more popular direction of helping the lot of the average person. It's almost like Stalin for a while being allied with Bucharin, who was an economic reformer. So I think that's the state of where we are now with China. I don't think it's relaxed, its ambitions one bit. Xi's position seems to me to be as close to unassailable as it could be, although people say that there are dangers of a palace coup or something like that. Certainly one couldn't exclude that. but they remain a very formidable opponent. And, you know, they too, with this blend of Marxism,

Leninism, plus Confucianism, they have this whole ideology of China as a superior way of life to ours. You sort of are to political philosophy, what like a cancer doctor would be to the profession of medicine. Your subject matter is just relentlessly dark and disturbing. How do you kind of keep a balance of for yourself in the midst of this. They'll have long walks on nice days, or what do you read and ingest to not just sort of despair at the situation of humanity? Oh, I don't think about this all the time. And I love art and literature, and I love teaching. And I actually don't do a lot about the theme of theory in my courses. It's just kind of like a great books approach. I just find it always have had, I always have found the subject of tyranny to be a

fascinating one, maybe even a grimly fascinating one, you know, really going back to reading Solzhenitsyn in conjunction with Leo Strauss, and I was just so fascinated by that whole debate about modern tyranny, is it different from ancient tyranny? I'm fascinated by the way in which great statesmen sometimes share some of the darker psychological traits of dictators. In a way, I think, great leaders have to have a kind of homeopathic taste of what their foe is like and what they really want. So it's been a fascinating issue for me or think of something like Plato's Republic, which is both about the best regime and the fullest description of tyranny. And I think part of what Plato is saying there is that it's bootless to speculate about having a just

society, if you haven't thought about how you can head these people off the past. So I guess if what I do has any civic value, it would be a warning that we have to know how to spot these people and head them off at the past. And in order to be able to do that, you have to know something about the history of tyranny. How do we help policymakers develop in a benign and, you know, in a way that doesn't drive them crazy, this homeopathic taste, besides reading your own books, which I, again, recommend to them. Because it does, we address this once already, but it just does seem to be a habitual failing of liberal leaders, you know, in their, in their prosperity, in the sort of successful internal

peacefulness of their own systems. They have limited experience of the sorts of soul that, you know, becomes a Putin or a she. And then as you've, as you've pointed out and argued extremely well, It's in the foundations of liberalism itself. The suppression of the notion that there are people like this or that the sorts of things that drive Putin and Xi are important is suppressed from the start of our way of life, if you like. So what should we be reading? How do we help people not fall into the traps that we,

and by people, I really mean policymakers and statesmen, fall into the traps that we keep falling into. I think you're talking a bit about people finding Hitler reasonable and of some reason that amazing scene in the novel and the movie, the remains of the day came to mind where the movie, the actors, Edward Fox, and he has them all over to the manor house, and they're going to do this sort of track two discussion to keep England and Germany from going to ward one another, and the Germans are shaking hands and everyone's finding very pleasant. And then they go off to the library by themselves. And they're pointing out the

books they're all going to steal and discussing how the house is going to be laid out when they take over the country. It's a great, it's a great moment. So this keeps happening to us in the West. We keep missing it. We keep not getting it. What should we be reading? What should we be doing to to see if we can fix it. Well, the negative side is that, unfortunately, it appears that things like Putin's invasion have to happen recurrently to snap us out of it. And then we're reminded again, who and what these people are. I did that piece for you some years ago on the next best books.

And I think the more that people were exposed to history and biography about these figures in these events, that would be a really important thing. If you want to take the glass half-full approach, however, I would say that in recent years in American political culture, there's at least been more of an awareness of the danger of tyranny in the world. And people now use the term tyrant quite frequently and quite openly. When I was younger, there used to be a kind of almost excessive delicacy about that, you know, that you shouldn't use such a value-laden term. You should call them authoritarian or maybe even dictator.

But now people on both the left and the right quite full-blooded use the term tyrant. And that's a step in the right direction. You know, the history of free sub-government has always been the history of it being endangered by tyranny. And, you know, going back to, you know, Salamis and Therlopoli, self-government has always prevailed so far. So that should be grounds for a cautious optimism

because I do think that our liberal democracies are simply not only a better way of life, but at bottom they're spiritually stronger too. And so if we're sufficiently vigilant, I'm not pessimistic in the long run that these tyrannies will prevail over us. Your books, and in particular tyranny, a new interpretation, that was, I think, probably the most significant book to me that I've read since college. It had a major impact on how I see the world, and it helped me organize in my mind things that I had already read, but not until that. point kind of connected together. I promise I don't say this kind of thing to all the guests. Oh, I appreciate it. But I'm genuinely grateful for your work, and I think it's important work,

and I'm genuinely grateful to you for joining us today. It was my pleasure. I enjoyed it very much. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.