The Daily Stoic - Robert Greene on the War in Ukraine

Episode Date: April 24, 2022

Bismark says that “Fools learn from experience. I prefer to learn from the experience of others.” The best way to understand the present is to study the past. That’s what makes Robert Greene’s work so great. He crystalizes the best historical lessons about war, strategy, and power that can help us make sense of the problems that we face in the modern world.In today’s episode Robert Greene brings you his take on the war that is taking place in Ukraine, seen through the lens of his book the 33 Strategies of War.Robert Greene is an American author known for his books on strategy, power, and seduction. He has written six international bestsellers: The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law, Mastery, and The Laws of Human Nature. His new book The Daily Laws: 366 Meditations on Power, Seduction, Mastery, Strategy, and Human Nature is a daily devotional designed to help you seize your destiny.Get signed copies of Robert Greene’s books at the Painted Porch Bookshop.Follow Robert Greene: Twitter, Instagram, Homepage, TikTok, YouTubeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most

importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan Holiday. Welcome to another weekend episode of the Daily Stoke Podcast. I said before that the way to understand what's happening in the present is almost always by studying the past. Because although they're great news reporters and news outlets out there, they are subject to the wicked incentives of their medium, which I talk about and trust me I'm lying. They have agendas that can be biased. They're also just dealing with an incomplete picture

and they're dealing with real-time information. And unless you're a hedge fund trader or you know directly involved in politics, you don't need real-time information. What you need is perspective. You need an understanding of the whole picture, not the micro elements of the small picture. And I think reading is the best way to do this almost always, but the other way is to talk to someone who has studied this topic and many other topics like it for their whole life.

They don't necessarily have to be a credentialed expert, but they should be a master of the subject. And when I'm trying to understand world events, geopolitical events, trying to understand wars, et cetera, one of the people I talk to is the great Robert Green. And as I was struggling to sort of understand the terrible events of Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Robert and I have both been active in donating the royalties from our Ukrainian and Russian editions to resistance fighters and aid workers in Ukraine, which I'll link to below. Anyways, I've had some long conversations with the one and only Robert Green about this.

And so I was very pleased when he called Brent, who works with me here at Daily Stoke, to ask if he'd come out to Robert's place in LA. So Robert could shoot like an in-depth video slash podcast episode about his understanding of what's happening in Ukraine, what we should take out of it, how we should understand it, what actions we should take because of it. And I know this isn't technically what we talk about here in Daily Sog. I think what we're after is truth, we're after

understanding, we're after being informed citizens. And so I wanted to share this deep dive into the subject matter that Robert Green put together. It's about 40 minutes, which I know isn't the shortest, but you're gonna take a lot out of it. And I think Robert's book, The 33 Striders of War, is one of the great books on strategy and politics and power ever written. It was a life-changing book for me.

And anyways, I won't belabor it. You don't need my introduction here, and politics empower ever written. It was a life-changing book for me. And anyways, I won't belabor it. You don't need my introduction here. But listen to Robert Green do a deep dive into what's taking place in Ukraine, seen through the lens of his book, The 33 Stragels of War. And look, if you haven't read the 40 laws of power, the artist's introduction, the 50th law, a master's of human nature, in his new book, The Daily Laws. Well, you're missing out and you absolutely should.

So I'll leave this here. Thank you to Robert Green for letting me share it and I hope you take a lot out of this. Hello everyone, this is Robert Green. I want to talk to you today about the war that's going on in Ukraine. My analysis of it through the lens of my book, The 33 Strategies of War. Okay, hello everyone. This is Robert Green, as you know. of my book, The 33 Strategies of War. Okay, hello everyone. This is Robert Greenis, you know. And today I wanted to talk to you about the Ukraine War.

Now, at the very end, I'll give you my emotional appeal because I'm obviously sympathetic to the Ukrainian side, what I think we can all do to support them. But first, I kind of wanted to look at the war through the lens of my book, the 33 Strategies of War, which also is really reflected through the lens of the three to me greatest strategists in history,

Sunsu, Nikolomaki of Ellie, and Karl von Klaus of its, who were kind of the guiding spirits of the 33 Strategies of War. So I want to first look at the person who is the complete architect of this war, which is obviously Vladimir Putin, and I want to go inside for a minute into his psychology, into his mindset, because I think in doing that we can figure out a lot of the puzzles of this war. And the person that put in mind to me most of in history is obviously Joseph Stalin. And in the loss of human nature, I have a chapter that I describe, I go into depth on Stalin called complete control, where Stalin's main objective in life, his main goal, his main ambition,

was to gain complete control of every aspect of the Soviet Union. And I describe a scene towards the end of his life where he has all of his top people in the Soviet Union. They would come over to his docks outside Moscow, you'd get them drunk, and then he would put on a record, and he would force them to dance with each other. These men, these middle-aged men, and it was completely humiliating for them, but they were like puppets that he so controlled in their minds, in their actions, that he could literally make them dance with each other. And so I feel that Putin is motivated by the same design for gaining complete control over everything around him. And so what is the opposite of control?

The opposite of control is chaos or unpredictability. And so whenever Putin encounters any slight bit of unpredictability or chaos, he makes these moves to gain control over it so that he never has to experience that again. And so slowly, bit by bit, over the 20 years of his reign, he has created this empire, this world, where one man controls every single aspect of Russian life, a country the largest country by far on our planet, an immensely complex society. One man governs this completely. And, you know, the way to do that is to create, is to work on psychology, to create a myth, an illusion of this power. It's because one person can't

control all of that. It depends on creating a lot of these kind of magical illusion-like effects. So let's go into that for a moment. The first layer of his control would be the oligarchs, the men who control the wealth of Russia largely through oil. And early on in his career, he saw that some of the oligarchs weren't really obeying, and they weren't really on the same page as he was, like Kodorovsky. So he made his moves to gain control over them. He eliminated any kind of laws that protected their wealth and see greater situation in their wealth

depended on completely on him? If for some reason he decided that they were turning against him, he would create laws and he would take their money their wealth away and give it to somebody else. Then there's also the silk, what is known as the silo-vicky, which in Russian means the men of force. These are the most powerful men around Putin in government who kind of have his ear. And he's made them complicit in the many crimes he's created and he's created a situation that if Vladimir Putin falls, they fall with them. Their power, their access to power completely depends on him.

So that's one incredibly critical layer of his control. The second layer would be the government itself, this vast bureaucracy. Early on in his career, it seemed that alternative parties, political parties could evolve that could perhaps challenge him. And a few people won governorships in other regions of Russia that were in opposition parties. As somebody who that needs control

he could not stand that sense of losing it. So he created new laws obviously, making these parties basically illegal, basically making some governors in Russia where something that he appointed no longer elections and elections are essentially a farce. And so as it's evolved, any the slightest opposition party is eliminated. And so to this day now, there's not even a trace of any kind of opposing political will left in Russia. So now it controls the oligarchs, the men of power,

and the government. And there's the media. Early on in his career, it seemed that there were some voices in television, etc. that were challenging him. So he basically bought all of the television stations. He could essentially control them. And then he spread it to all the various different forms of press Internet was allowed to kind of go on its own, but now he's completely crushed that So with now his fingers completely on every level of the media He controls the narrative of Russia for the Russian people. He's able to play on their greatest insecurities as You know Russia's being threatened by the

West, etc. He's able to dominate the story that people absorb in Russia. He's able to manufacture whatever truth he wants to spread. A lot of people support him for the reasons I've just mentioned because of this. Controlling because in some degrees they may be admire somebody who seems so strong. But then there are little pockets of opposition, little pockets of people who oppose him like Navalny etc. And so what somebody who's trying to gain and spread this complete control depends on is the use of fear, intimidation, and even terror. So if you oppose him, the consequences are going to be fears with the control that he has created

with what I call outsized effects because keep remembering, one man has this insane amount of power. Okay, so a key element is the military. And he has developed this military's put all the money and resources into technology, into weaponry, into missiles, into hypersonic missiles, into tanks, etc. Now war is an arena that's notoriously fickle. It's called the fog of war. So if Vladimir Putin, like Stalin,

cannot stand the slightest shred of chaos or unpredictability, how can you possibly have that in warfare the most unpredictable of all environments? Well, he has created his own kind of strategy based on what we've talked about, psychology, terror, fear, and intimidation. With all of the money that he has stolen basically from the people and invested in these weaponry, what he does is he bombs the hell at a place like he's done in Syria,

like he's done in Chechnya. And so within days he's created this terror, the sense of invincibility, right? He doesn't have to have complex organization of an army. If he literally destroys the infrastructure, if he terrorizes the civilians, if he makes anybody daring to oppose him quake in fear over the consequences, then he wins psychologically first and they surrender. If you bomb the hell out of cities, if you level them, then you control the dynamic completely. And he's used this brilliantly prior to these wars on the world stage. In 33 strategies of war, law number 15 is called control the dynamic, forcing strategies. And what it is, is it's the ultimate of an offensive warfare.

So on the world stage, he's used the same thing that he has applied to the country of Russia, where he makes everybody react to him, or he completely controls the dynamic. So, he meddling in our elections, fiddling with Europe and European politics, invading Crimea, et cetera, continually putting other people on their heels and making them react to him, which is a form of control just like Stalin, control the men around it

and making them dance to his tune. He's making everybody in the world react and dance to what he creates. Okay, so war is hard to manage that, but he's created this method of warfare that allows him to have this complete control. But what it depends on, as it depends on Ukraine, That depends on Ukraine is very quickly creating the sense of terror, intimidation, and surrender through the bombing campaign, and then using local quizzlings. The word quizzling means people in a country who basically are going to support another country and betray their own nation out of money or etc. and they'll kind of become puppets of the invading army. Those are quizzlings.

He's very effective in using them in Syria, in Chechnya, in Georgia, etc. Okay. So it depends on the strategy of a very quick lightning strike with his missiles, his weaponry, his air force, creating terror, creating surrender, and using his puppets from within to gain control politically of the situation. Okay, so now we enter the Ukraine war and let's look at it now through this lens of Putin and his mindset of control. Think of this control as a kind of bubble that envelops him, where he controls everything around him. There's no holes in that bubble, right? There's nothing that can possibly threaten him. Okay, so when it comes to the Ukraine war, because

all of the people around him, the military leaders, lived in terror of him, a fear of him, of displeasing him, because they bought the myth of this incredibly powerful person's one man. Right? So when it comes to the planning stage of the invasion of Ukraine, they're definitely afraid of telling him the truth. He has this belief that what worked in Syria worked in Chichén, she might be a little more complicated in Ukraine, but it will definitely have the same effect. Ukraine will fold and collapse. Zelensky will flee. He'll put in his puppet.

The West will get a little bit upset in America and Europe, but they depend on his oil, they'll collapse as well. The generals, many of which have revealed this later on, know that that is not the truth. They know that the Ukrainian people are not going to collapse like that, that they don't want the Russians to liberate them and become part of the Russian totalitarian system. But they're definitely afraid of telling him. And so he creates a plan of war that already has a flaw in it because it's not based on reality. So if we think of that bubble, this is one little prick in that bubble, one little element of chaos that can now enter

because he has a false perception of the goals and the power and the effectiveness of his invasion. Okay, and the second little prick in that bubble comes in the following. In order to win in this kind of warfare with this lightning strike, you have very little logistics. You very light on logistics. Logistics means the support teams that go that every army needs, the teams of medical teams that will help the wounded soldiers, the food supplies, the spare parts for the tanks, the ammunition, etc. That's very costly and can weigh and slow down an army. But when you have this lightning quick strike, you don't need to put a lot of money and time into logistics.

All right? So this lightning quick strike, the bombing, the air, the controlling the air space, etc. It doesn't work. Ukraine doesn't collapse. Kiev doesn't fall within a couple days. And Ukraine is an enormous country. It's the size of France, basically. It would be the largest country on the European continent besides Russia.

So you have this army that's invaded, and the lines are immense, right, of tanks, military, et cetera, stretched out for miles upon miles, and they have very, very little logistics, very little logistical support. So things are breaking down. Tanks are falling apart. There's no spare parts for them. Food supplies, even food supplies are doing during. Oil and fuel for all of the vehicles, they're in short supply. And so more and more little bits of chaos are entering into the system, into the

perfect ideal of war that he's trying to create. He's losing control, is slipping away from him. The other element is, because he wants this complete control, the Russian military is structured in the most top down hierarchical manner, right? So normally it's an axiom of military warfare that you want unity of command, that you want essentially one general on top who oversees the whole thing. But oddly enough, there doesn't seem to be somebody like that in Russia. It seems to be actually all funneling up to perhaps the defense minister, or perhaps to Putin himself. We don't know. So what happens is orders come from on top down to the soldiers on the field. Tanks move here to point A, right? They never told why they're moving there. Just this

is where you go, this is what you do. And as they react to what's actually happening on the field, there's no way to communicate that to those on the top because the system doesn't allow it. Everything must come from the top down. Those on the field don't have any influence over the overall strategy of the brilliant person in tart and charge of all this. So essentially what that means is the army, the soldiers on the field, have no way of adapting to the changing circumstances in warfare.

And as we said, war is an incredibly unpredictable environment, what would cause it, it's called friction. And the Russian army can adapt to all of this friction, which is creating more and more of that chaos that we've been talking about. Another element is the Russian soldiers themselves, right? In the end, the war depends on their ability to fight on the field or in the airspace. Okay. The soldiers know that because there's no logistical support for them, we're very little support for them. Those in top don't really care about them. They're fought or thrown into this army. In fact, most of the soldiers from the Russian army are these 19 and 20-year-old conscripts from villages and outside of the major cities in Russia.

They're not even told that they're going to invade Ukraine until the last minute. And once they're from villages and outside of the major cities in Russia. They're not even told that they're going to invade Ukraine until the last minute. And once they're there, they're not even told why they're there, or they're given this idea that the Ukrainians will greet them as liberators. And so as they experience the actual terrors of the war, as opposed to Putin sitting up in his little bubble, in the Kremlin, they are seeing that things aren't going well. They are actually terrorists.

They're demoralized by what's happening, right? And so the morale is slipping and slipping, and the performance of the army is slipping, yet another little prick into that bubble that Putin has tried to create. And so we can exceed many examples of his inability for the Russian army to adapt, and the devastating effect it is having on morale. So look, for instance, at tanks, Putin has invested a lot of money into tanks, and they're kind of a symbol of who he is in a way.

Because the tank is this incredibly intimidating weapon, right? It looks so large and impressive. Who can resist a tank? And it looks great on the military squares when it's victory, parade day, and Moscow, all these hundreds of tanks rolling down the streets near Red Square, etc. It looks great and it has a psychological effect. But modern warfare, at least in the last 10 years, has revealed that tanks are essentially useless.

Because these very, very powerful anti-tank weaponry has evolved that can completely destroy a tank with one well-named missile. There are even drones that can do that. So tanks are actually a great show, but they're very ineffective. And the Ukrainian army has been brilliant at ambushing these tanks and hitting them with these missiles. And so the soldiers now who are having to deal with this, what do they do?

They're sitting ducks out there in these long lines while the Ukrainians are picking them off one by one with their mobile forces. Okay, we're going to go hide our tanks in forests and woods so they can't come up, sneak up on us, and ambush us. in woods so they can't come up sneak up on this and ambush us. And I saw one video that was really chilling and very interesting in which Ukrainian army has these drones that have thermal imagery on them, right? They're able to detect heat. And so the Russian soldiers are sitting in their tanks in these forests trying to hide because they're terrorized at any moment being

exploded in this machine, this claustrophobic machine that you can't escape. Is this thing all? Check one, two, one, two. There y'all! I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. Just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Keep a Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a Bag Love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started.

And there's so much I still want to do. So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad.

I want to know, so I asked my mom about it. These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer, no topic is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer whatever you get your podcast. Hey, prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Imagine for yourself the terror that would inflict knowing that any moment that could happen,

right? Okay, so it's freezing cold in Ukraine in the winter, so they have their engines on to kind of heat themselves in these woods that they're hiding in to kind of keep themselves warm during this frigid winter. And these drones are hovering over above the woods invisible to them, able to detect the heat that's coming out. And to the Ukrainian soldiers, these little bits of heat appear as white dots on the screen that they're using. And they're shooting at these white dots one by one, picking off these tanks, they're supposedly hiding in the woods, creating even more terror. How do you adapt to that?

How do you possibly react when nobody in your military has ever had to deal with it, has ever had to plan for this? Another element of incredible incompetence and ability to adapt is in the Russian system of communications. Now, keep in mind that Putin is fetishized his technology and high powered weaponry and the latest gadget that can, you know, they can invest his money in. So they invested millions of dollars

in this new era encrypted communication system. But when the Russian army invaded Ukraine, they knocked out all of the 3G towers so that the Ukrainians military could communicate. But the new era encrypted communication system depends on 3G towers, so they're completely useless, they're completely ineffective. So what you have is Russian commanders using their cell phones to communicate to their armies that they command now flung out on these incredibly long lines on cell phones Which the Ukrainians are able to listen in on and then kind of figure out exactly because they speak Russian What exactly is going on giving them yet another advantage?

So you add up all of these layers here and you see more and more little bits of chaos entering the system, the fog of war, the unpredictability of war, creating a kind of a mess. Alright, so, it's an axiom in warfare that an army reflects the citizenry, the politics of the nation that it's supposed to represent, right? A democratic army has a particular feel, an authoritarian army has a much different feel. And so the government of Russia is based on one man in control of this vast, vast bureaucracy is extremely hierarchical, top-down. It doesn't value the creativity of those in government that are serving him. Everything is supposed to come from the top, right?

There's zero amount of engagement of the citizen's read of the people in the actual governance of the country. And that's how the military is structured. It's extremely rigid, just like the Russian government is extremely rigid and ossified. In military history, the army that to me most resembles that is the great Prussian armies of the 18th century led by Frederick the Great who created what was at the time the most devastating military power on the European continent. And the source of Frederick the Great's power of the Prussian army was the incredible discipline that he invested in

them. And so the Prussian soldier was like a robot, an automaton. They were so disciplined that they knew exactly how to behave. They were brilliant at marching and they would intimidate opponents by the sheer force and psychology that they would still fear in these disciplined, Prussian forces that were fearless marching on an enemy. And for decades, they were the preeminent military power on the continent of Europe, which is to be similar, very region army, similar to Putin's army, where control is everything, and that was sort of Frederick the Great's mantra. But then what happens in the 1790s, a young man that enters the scene named Napoleon Bonaparte, a product of

the French Revolution. And Napoleon Bonaparte is going to affect the greatest revolution in military history ever. So he's not weighed down by all these principles of warfare that govern Frederick the Great's army. He's completely free and loose and very young. And so he creates, first of all, a new form of army, a people's army filled with hundreds of thousands, millions of French citizens who believe they are fighting to spread the message of the French Revolution on the continent. Now, a lot of that is an illusion, created by Napoleon,

but it basically created incredibly motivated army. The second thing was Napoleon realized, and I remember we're saying that warfare is an arena of chaos, friction, and fog. Napoleon realized that instead of reacting against that friction, like Frederick the Great had, I'm going to use it. I'm going to use chaos to my advantage. I'm going to create deliberately create chaos on the battlefield, but the chaos is going to be more hitting more the enemy than me because I'm prepared for it and I'm going to react to the chaos faster than the enemy and whoever can react faster has the control. So I am going

to deliberately make more chaos on the battlefield. How did you do that? He loosened up the structure of the army. He created divisions and he would fling the Prussians would advance in this one line and Napoleon would throw four or five armies from all different directions, divisions, coming in these free-flowing matters. The enemy would go, what the hell, I don't know who's attacking from what side behind or whatever, and they would collapse. He would make these very rich impression generals react to this increasing chaos. And the key element of that was he would give his lieutenants on the field, incredible

leverage, incredible leeway. They could do what they want. They didn't have to wait for Napoleon's orders. They could see what was happening on the battlefield. They could adapt to it. They could change and they could create even more disturbance and more problems for the enemy in that way. So he let them kind of act on their own. Also, he had created these channels of communication. So the soldiers in the field would be able to communicate to Napoleon himself, the man in control of it, all the equivalent of a Putin, what exactly was happening on the field. In real time, before the era of telephones, before the era of telegraphs or anything, you know, they would march on their horses, they would say, pulling this is

what's happening on the field, so the soldiers' experience. Okay, let's change our strategy. So he had communication, he had a free-flowing method, and he dominated, absolutely for ten years, dominated European warfare in a way that has never been repeated since. And then slowly, he fell for the idea of trying to control things, and trying to overwhelm the enemy with firepower instead of mobility, and he himself fell apart, and he had 10 years of decay. But those 10 years of brilliance had completely revolutionized modern warfare to the idea of creating maneuver warfare and the value of mobility and communication.

And a man came along named Carl von Klaus of it, who was a Prussian officer who realized the brilliance of the essence of Napoleonic warfare. And he adapted it for the Prussian army itself, the most rigid army that ever existed, right? He adapted the Napoleonic system. He created what's known as the Althod's Taktik, the mission statement, where you give your army an idea of the mission they're to accomplish, and you let them do it on their own and adapt to what's going on on the field. Okay, so Now let's look for a second at the Prussia at the Ukrainian army because I said

An army is a reflection of the country and the politics from which it comes. It's not just this sort of Ranch of power that exists on its own, it's a reflection of the form of government that it serves. Okay, so the Ukrainians had a series of revolutions starting in 2004, then starting with the orange revolution and the mide and revolution. They were trying to split off from Russia and create something different. But there were still very many remnants of the Russian system in Ukraine after the split up of the Soviet Union. There was a lot of corruption. There was a lot of power being held by oligarchs, etc. And then Zelensky

comes into power several years ago. And he came into power with the promise of reforming Ukraine and making it more democratic, making it more like the European country. And one of the most important things he did was to extend the reforms to the military. He and the defense minister that he hired, whose name I'm going to butcher, but it's basically Zagoroliyuk, who's sort of the equivalent of the Ukrainian von Klauzovitz. Decided, learning the lessons from the wars they had fought against Russia in Crimea, we're going to create an army that is incredibly free-flowing, mobile, adaptable, that's going to be able to communicate from top to bottom and adapt to the situation on the ground.

And I just want to read you a quote. There's a Ukrainian filmmaker who decided to fight with the military once this war started and he was interviewed by a reporter. And the reporter said, when I asked him his rank, Lieutenant Captain Major, he said he didn't have one. When I asked him his unit's designation, a platoon, a company, or even a battalion, he said they simply called themselves a squad. Rank and formal military terms weren't something they worried about. So, this is the polar opposite of the Russian army.

There's no worry about rank or formalities or who's in control, no sense of top down. These are soldiers who not only are able to be creative in a moment, and the Ukrainian army has revealed a hundred times more creativity than the Russian army. They are also supremely motivated, obviously because they are fighting for their own land, they are defending their own families, but also because they feel and completely engaged in the war. Their opinions, their realities, their seeing on the field matters. They're able to contribute to what is actually how they're actually fighting. And that increases their motivation, their morale, which is infinitely higher than the Russian morale.

So going back to our original point here about Vladimir Putin and his mindset, remember that we said that a lot of it depends on creating this myth, creating this illusion of control and power and intimidation. And it's gone to the point where he's been so affected at that that people in the West have even believed it. And so that when Putin even sneezes, people think there's some kind of ulterior motive going on, that he has some kind of plan behind it. And there, I've even read these incredibly idiotic articles by so-called commentators and experts in the Western media that saying, this current campaign is exactly going to help Putin plan it, right? He planned to basically just take a part of Ukraine,

and so everything is going exactly according to his plan, which just means that these idiots have fallen for the myth of this illusion of control. And so let's look for a moment underneath this idea of control and this myth that he's created. What really underlies it? What makes somebody want to gain such control?

What is the psychological profile of this type of person like a stall in or like Putin? Well, essentially what underlies it are deep layers of fear, right? Because life is inherently unpredictable. Life is inherently chaotic. You cannot control how human beings react to what you say. You cannot control how they respond to you. You cannot force them to follow your will. People are notoriously stubborn and fickle and willful.

So when you confront that, a certain type of person can't handle the chaos of life. They are deeply afraid of it. And it could stand from some kind of childhood trauma. I don't want to go into the particulars of that. But, underneath this facade of incredible power that Astalan or Putin radiates are at these deep, deep layers of insecurity. When Putin feels slightly threatened, as we said before, by opposition oligarchs, opposition politicians, people who disagree with him, revolutions going in other countries, he's quaking in his boots. He's deeply fearful that that could threaten him, right?

And he knows the fall of a tyrant can be brutal and bloody, and he's afraid of it. So beneath this illusion of power and strength and intimidation are deep, deep levels of fear and insecurity. And it's kind of an axiom in warfare. And I also say it's an axiom in life that the more you try to control things in the end, the less control you have,

the more things kind of slip away from you, right? And I hate to compare, it seems almost obscene to compare what's going on the brutality of this war with daily life here in the United States, but in my consulting with people in business or who try to coach a team where every player has to respond exactly to how where they're supposed to be are the companies that do the poorest, right? They don't engage, the will, the energy and creativity of those people that are working for them. And if life is chaotic, our modern world is even more chaotic and unpredictable than ever, right? With all the technology involved with social media, etc. And so those who cannot respond to this with fluidity, with mobility, with flexibility,

with openness to the chaos, who learn the great lesson Napoleon, that instead of fighting chaos, you need to accept it and you need to use it to your advantage. Those are the ones that are going to succeed. And what happens with people who are these control freaks, who are these micro-managing types, is when chaos starts entering the system, like I believe it is entering to the system for Vladimir Putin. They do not know how to react. They become very emotional. They become erratic. And people who've seen Putin recently,

who know him well, like President Macron, or France, et cetera, have said something's changed and if something seems a little bit different, this is something completely new to him. He's never had to deal with this before. The losing control not only over the war but over Russia's economy and over Russia's geopolitical relationship to Europe with Germany now deciding to rearm etc. He's never had to face this before and people like that you know they can become dangerous and they can become erratic. So, the good news here right now is that Ukraine is winning this war, strangely enough,

despite once many people are reporting through their mobility, through their Napoleonic form of warfare. They are actually not only defending various points in Ukraine, they are actually counter-attacking and winning. And to me, this is incredibly inspiring. I compare this in some ways the war going on now to the Greco-Persian Wars of 5th century BC to the Greco-Persian Wars of 5th century BC between Greece and the Persian Empire, in which there were two invasions of Persian forces, first and didarius and then under exerxes, that were going to overwhelm the Greek democracies with incredible numbers, right?

A number is like a hundred to one of the size of the Persian army, right? Not all the city-states and Greece were democratic, but most of them were. We're gonna destroy this experiment of democracy. We're gonna get rid of these trouble-makers in Greece. And what happened was the army that was motivated, had higher morale, and then was much more fluid,

ended up defeating first at Marathon, one of the most amazing battles of all time that was motivated, had higher morale, and it was much more fluid. It ended up defeating first-it marathon, one of the most amazing battles of all time that we all know about. And then at the sea battle of the Battle of Saleness, even more brilliant, which I analyzed in the 33 strategies of war, they defeated this immensely much more powerful army, and they basically safeguarded Greek democracy, allowing for the golden era of Greece to emerge under parakelies and other leaders, the shining example throughout history of what a democracy can do of the icon of Athens because of this war.

So, it had a kind ofythic resonance throughout history. I'm not saying that this war is quite on that level. It's a little too early to say, but I think it could have immense ramifications because we've been seeing this kind of creeping authoritarianism on the planet. And this could be an example of just with Athens, the power that a democratic army can have facing this overwhelming

force, winning through mobility and motivation. Okay, so that's the good news and that's the positive element. But war is notoriously fickle. And at any moment, things could change. The Russian army can continue its planning of just bombing things into the ground, devastating the country, and claiming that as a victory in some form. Things can change. This is a turning point, a critical moment in this warfare, where we must, here in the West and the United States, do everything we can to support the Ukrainians so that we give them the power to inject more and more chaos to the Russian system and imbalance that man in

top of all of that American. So that means we need to give as much money as we can so that we help fund them, we tell our government, our political figures that this is not the time to be so fearful and so worried about escalation of this battle, because as we said before, Putin depends on he to be the one who intimidates, and he's the one that makes you afraid to these outsized effects. That's not far for that. That's realized that the man is on his heels. This is the time to send more planes, more tanks, more missiles, more weaponry into Ukraine itself, in addition to the humanitarian aid. This is not the time to fall for the myth of Russia and Putin and to be on our heels,

but instead to go on the offensive. So that's my message for you. And I just wanted to leave you. I hope it's not too hunky, but with a quote that I've always loved. It comes from Shakespeare. It comes from Henry the fourth part one. O gentleman, the time of life is short. To spend that shortness basically were too long. And if we live, we live to tread on the heads of tyrants. Now is the time to give all our support to Ukraine, and I'm going to have it the list at the end here of all the different places you can go to give your support. So humanitarian, how to send money for weapons for Ukraine and how to help fund the Ukrainian army itself, and addresses and links for writing your politicians and telling them that we must

do more for Ukraine at this critical moment. That will be at the end of all this. Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke Podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day, check it out dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoke early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts. Ah, the Bahamas.

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