Geo-Strategy #9: Putin's War for the Soul of Russia

This week, in a speech to the Russian people, Vladimir Putin said that all of Russia must now prepare for Total War. Even if you are not fighting on the front lines in Ukraine, pretend you are. Because of this speech, many analysts believe that Putin is preparing Russia for Total War, which means that every aspect of your society is geared towards winning a war. The last time we had total war was in World War II.

So why is Putin doing this now?

There are some people who believe it's because Russia is not doing so well in Ukraine; they lack manpower and need to mobilize their society to fully win the war. Another explanation is that Putin knows that NATO is preparing to send reinforcements to Ukraine. Remember that because of last summer's offensive, Ukraine is desperately short of manpower. The average age of their soldiers right now is over 40; they have men in their 60s fighting on the front lines.

Emmanuel Macron of France has publicly stated that he is considering sending French troops to Ukraine. The British themselves are thinking of conscription, drafting all young men into the army. American politicians have said that they're considering a new law that would give citizenship to illegal immigrants who join the army. It seems like NATO is only going to escalate the war in Ukraine, and so Russia is preparing for that.

One more possibility is that Putin wants to expand the war. He knows he's winning in Ukraine and is thinking about attacking Moldova and possibly the Baltic states. These are all possibilities.

Today, I want to argue for another possibility: Putin is mobilizing his society because he sees war as a tool, as a mechanism to radically reshape the people in Russia. Think of a metaphor: you're out of shape and you think, "How do I get fit? How do I get trim?" You go to the gym and you work out. For Putin, that's what war is. War is a workout for your society. When you enter war, you become a much more disciplined, unified, and prosperous society.

The Broken State of Modern Russia

Why does Putin think like this? Let's look at the current state of Russia. In many aspects, Russia is a broken society.

• Corruption: Russia is the most corrupt society in all of Europe. The rich people steal and then they run off to Europe, the United States, or Dubai. Because of corruption, the GDP of Russia is very low. South Korea, which has about a third of the population of Russia, has a higher GDP. The state of Texas, just one state in the United States, has a higher GDP than Russia. In many respects, Russia is a very poor country.
• Alcoholism: One out of every six Russian males, about 16-17% of the population, are alcoholics. It's a disease. One of every three deaths in Russia is because of drinking too much. Because of alcoholism, the rate of young men dying is just increasing.
• Fertility: Right now, the fertility rate in Russia is 1.5. That is below the replacement level, which is 2.1. You have a lot of men dying because of alcoholism. Since the year 2000, the population in Russia has been declining steadily.

All this means is that if current trends continue, Russia will cease to exist as a society. The nation will die.

The Western explanation is that this is happening because Russia is not democratic. If you had full democracy and you unleashed the human potential of your people, then Russia would prosper. But Vladimir Putin has a different explanation. His explanation is that this is happening to Russia—corruption, alcoholism, and low fertility—because Russians have been lied to, deceived, and manipulated by Western Civilization.

Western Civilization preaches the gospel of liberal democracy, of freedom, of human rights, of consumerism. And these are all lies. They're hypocrisies that have fooled the Russian people, corrupted the Russian soul, and destroyed Russian civilization. Because Russians are abandoning their soul, their civilization, their nation, this is why this is happening. That is Putin's argument.

The "End of History" and the Seduction of the West

In the late 80s, the Soviet Union had basically lost the Cold War because its elite gave up. They no longer believed in communism or in self-sacrifice for the nation. They felt that Western values and the Western lifestyle were much better.

Around that time, an American historian who worked for the State Department, Francis Fukuyama, wrote an extremely influential essay called "The End of History." He argued that the Soviet Union fell and America became triumphant because liberal democracy is the best idea to have ever been invented. To make his argument, he uses the philosopher Friedrich Hegel.

Hegel had something called the theory of the dialectic. Hegel argued that history is determined by a war of ideas. The progress of history is determined by the movement of ideas, and ideas work in a pattern called the dialectic.

1. There's a thesis, a new idea that comes into being.
2. But then we recognize that this idea has problems; it's too extreme, too problematic. So we create an antithesis.
3. But this antithesis itself is also too extreme and creates problems. So then what happens is the thesis and the antithesis come together and create a more moderate, more efficient idea called the synthesis.

This is how history moves or progresses. Fukuyama takes this idea and says this explains what's happening today. First, you have a thesis called capitalism, which created the Industrial Revolution. Because capitalism was too extreme, we moved towards communism, which was created to counteract the extremes of capitalism. But communism itself is too extreme, so then we move towards the synthesis, the right idea, which is called liberal democracy.

At the core of liberal democracy is the idea of consumerism. The idea of consumerism is that we exist to buy things, and as long as we buy things, there'll be world peace. Why? Because consumers have a need to buy, and therefore nations have a need to produce. And nations produce the best when they're trading together as opposed to warring against each other. This is the argument that Francis Fukuyama makes in "The End of History."

From Worker to Consumer: The Perfection of Slavery

Throughout human history, all societies have struggled with one problem: how do we optimize the workforce? How do we get each and every person to work as hard as possible for our society? If everyone did that, our society would be strong, united, and prosperous. Historically, there have been three answers: war, religion, and civilization. These three things work because they give structure, meaning, and purpose to our lives. When we have structure, meaning, and purpose, we are much more motivated to work hard.

But there are lots of problems with all three. War is killing people. Religion is superstitious. And civilization itself is problematic because its logical extreme is racism—the idea that "we Russians are better than everyone else" or "we Chinese are better than everyone else," therefore we can do whatever we want. This naturally leads to imperialism and fascism, where war and conquest are the ultimate good.

Over time, these concepts have become much more abstract in order to increase the population and create a mass society. For example, the earliest religions were polytheistic, with gods who were very much like humans. Over time, this polytheism became monotheistic and abstract. The idea of God was removed from us, and the benefit was that you could have more people believing in one God, motivating them to work harder.

Because of abstraction, we developed new ideas, for example, money. Rather than have war, religion, and civilization as the center of our society, we made money the structure of our society. This is what we call capitalism, and it led to the Industrial Revolution.

The Problems with Capitalism

But there's a problem with making capital or money the very heart of your society.

• It's all-consuming. Capitalism only cares about the expansion and growth of capital, regardless of its effect on society. Profit for the sake of growing profit is an all-consuming idea that can ultimately lead to the destruction of the planet.
• It consolidates. Money likes to consolidate itself. If you just let capitalism do whatever it wants to infinity, you will eventually have one person with all the money, because that's the fastest way to grow money.
• It alienates and dehumanizes. As a person, you cease to be human. To be a human is to be a complex, multifaceted individual who likes to create and love. But in capitalism, you're only your production value; you're only the amount of money in your bank account.

For all these reasons, Karl Marx, in his Communist Manifesto, points out the problems of capitalism and proposes a solution: rather than make money the heart of your industrial society, make the worker the heart and center of your society. What's very revolutionary or prescient about his argument is that he saw this as a natural cycle, part of the Hegelian cycle where communism will be the natural evolution of capitalism.

Why? Imagine you're 16, your parents have died, and you're working in a factory to survive. You feel bitter, depressed, lonely, and alienated. So what do you do? You start to think about why this is the case. You start to have what Marx calls political consciousness. From this alienation, workers will start to develop a political consciousness. They ask, "Why is this happening? Why has the government abandoned me? What can I do about this?"

You want change. You spread your ideas and you organize. When you organize, you realize that the capitalists need you to do the work. They own the capital and the factories, but you're the one doing the real work. Without you, the factories can't run. As long as you stay united, you can enact whatever political demands you want. For Marx, this is a natural evolution: capitalism leads to the alienation of the working class, which leads to their political consciousness, solidarity, and ultimately, a political revolution.

The Revolt of the Elite

After World War II, every industrial society, to some extent, adopted the ideas of communism. We call it socialism, but it basically adhered to the thinking of Marx: to make the worker the heart and center of society. Why? Because workers create value. Money doesn't create any value; it just creates more money. It's speculative. But workers are productive.

So, in America and in Europe, workers became the heart and center of society. Through unions, they could demand political reforms. Our society was geared towards making the lives of the middle class, the working class, better. That's why you had excellent healthcare, great public schools, and cheap universities. The 50s, 60s, and 70s were basically the peak of society for the working class.

But in the 80s, we started to change this system. This is something called the Revolt of the Elite. The problem with having a society based on the worker is it becomes too egalitarian, too equal. But if you're the elite, you don't want equality; you want difference. You want to have power and money in your hands. The Revolt of the Elite happened in the 80s, and this is what we call the Reagan Revolution in the United States—the beginning of neoliberalism and free-market capitalism. In Britain, it was called Thatcherism.

You needed to transition away from the worker to another ideology that allows the elite to amass power. To show you how radical this revolution was:

• In the 1970s, a CEO made, on average, $1 million a year, which was more than 20 times the average worker.
• Today, the average CEO in the United States makes $20 million a year, which is 200 to 300 times more than the average worker in the company.

In the 80s, inequality started to explode. They were transitioning from the worker to a new organizing unit: the consumer. They needed to destroy the working class, and the way they did it was by introducing this new concept.

• In the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the government promised you a good job for life.
• In the 80s, the government promised you low prices and a wide selection of goods.

This sounds like a subtle shift, but it meant a revolution in society. The worker has to have political consciousness to protect his or her rights, to organize and unify. But now, let's think about the mentality of the consumer.

Imagine I give everyone in this school $1 million. What happens? The first thing you do is buy something—a house, for example. Then you buy furniture. Then, you take pictures and post them on social media. When everyone else sees your huge house, what do they do? They also want to buy a house, but a bigger house. And they also post pictures.

Very quickly, everyone spends their money and goes into debt because you're in competition with each other to buy the biggest thing. You borrow more money to buy more things. And how do you feel about each other? You hate each other. At the end of the day, you all go into debt and you all hate each other.

That's consumerism. It creates a competition in society for prestige. This leads to the individualization or the atomization of you. In other words, you are now unable to act together. You don't want to organize; you don't want to act in solidarity. Ultimately, this means you develop economic logic, which is to see the world only through the lens of capital. When you consider dating someone, you don't ask, "Is this person a nice person?" You ask yourself, "How much money does this person have?"

This is how the world works today. You've been brainwashed into thinking that this is the only way to behave. You're in school to get a good job, to make money, so you can buy things. But there are different ways to think about school. You could be in school to learn, to open your mind, to have an imagination, to think critically about the world. That was the way we thought about school when the workers were dominant. But now that consumers are dominant, all we think about is how to get a good job and buy a bigger house to post on social media.

What this really is is the perfection of slavery. You become a slave to money, but you don't know you're a slave. You like this, you choose this, so you will never rebel. Consumerism is the perfection of slavery, and that's why Francis Fukuyama thinks it is the end of history. It is a system that achieves what the elites want, and the masses are unwilling and unable to protest. It's a perfect system.

Putin's Answer: The Rise of the Warrior

There are certain civilizations that rebel against slavery intrinsically. One of these is the Russian civilization. When you impose slavery on Russians, they become corrupt, they become alcoholics, and they refuse to have babies. That is why Russia is failing as a society—because slavery is being imposed on them by the West, and the Russians refuse to be slaves. But because the system of consumerism is so perfect, the Russian people lack an understanding of how to rebel.

That is the Putin argument. Consumerism has corrupted the Russian soul. So, what Vladimir Putin must do is free his people, even though they may enjoy prison. He's going to do it by creating a new concept to combat consumerism. We've gone from the worker to the consumer, and Putin is going to introduce a new concept called the warrior.

• The consumer is an individual who acts alone to preserve his or her life. The consumer is a coward, lacks imagination, and is alienated.
• The warrior is an individual who sees that through his or her actions, they can shape the direction of history. "I can make my own reality through my courage, my imagination, and by acting with others."

Let's do another thought experiment. I give everyone a million dollars, and now you hate each other. Then, I put you on a plane and take you to an island where there are millions of flesh-eating monkeys. You hate each other and don't want to work together. What happens? If you don't do anything, everyone gets eaten.

What's going to happen is that everyone is going to put aside their differences and work together to fight the monkeys. And how will you feel? You're going to be happy because you're all working towards the same goal. You have structure, meaning, and purpose. That's what war does.

Let's say that during this war, someone dies. What does death do? That person becomes a martyr. You all celebrate her, remember her, give her a great funeral, and then you fight harder. Her death gives you purpose and makes your life much more valuable.

Now, let's say the monkeys are coming, and there's a bridge. One person is standing on the bridge, and there are ten of you on the other side. He has a choice: he can either cut the bridge, kill himself, and save the others, or he can run, and possibly all of you get killed. What does he do? He's going to sacrifice himself. We've seen this in war over and over. That's what war does to people. It gives you structure, meaning, and purpose, and it makes you a stronger, more disciplined person.

Putinism in Practice

In theory, then, when Putin launched the special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, we should see improvements in Russian society. The Russian economy is surviving US sanctions; in fact, it's getting stronger. Why? Because people are fully participating in the economy now. For example, every month, Russia is producing 150,000 ammunition shells for the war. In comparison, the United States produces about 28,000.

Russia is gearing its factories towards a war economy, which means more and more people are employed, which means they're drinking less. When you have structure, meaning, and purpose in your society, corruption goes down, alcoholism goes down, and fertility goes up.

Last year, Putin was asked about the Russians dying on the battlefield. He said:

When they die on the battlefield, we honor them. They sacrificed themselves for their country. They'll always be remembered as heroes. Their families will always love them. But if we just let them do whatever they want, all they're going to do is drink themselves to death.

What Putin is saying is that war is ultimately a mechanism for society to rejuvenate itself, an opportunity for society to cut away the fat and make itself more lean. For Putin, this war is not really about conquering Ukraine or defending against NATO. It's really about saving Russian civilization. It's really about saving the Russian soul. If you don't fight this war and you let these trends continue, then Russia will eventually cease to exist as a nation.

The Future is Putinism: A Multipolar World of Warriors

Over time, a new concept will arise to challenge consumerism and liberal democracy. We will call this concept Putinism, and the idea of Putinism is really continuous war. As a society, you should be constantly fighting wars in order to discipline and unify your nation and make your people stronger and more prosperous. That is Putinism, and I think this will be his defining legacy. Putinism is a direct response to liberal democracy. We will shift from a society based on the consumer to one that is based on the warrior.

How is capitalism different from liberal democracy?

Capitalism is only concerned about capital. You can be a fascist country and be capitalistic. Many people will say capitalism leads to fascism; the Nazis were extremely capitalistic and saw the Soviet Union as a direct threat. The idea of a liberal democracy is the participation of everyone in the generation of capital. One of the ironies of the 20th century is that capitalism and democracy are opposing forces. The idea of liberal democracy is to put the two together in a synthesis, to explain away or ignore the contradictions.

Why not a large-scale war?

The idea of continuous war is you fight small-scale wars so as to manage the size of the conflict. You don't want a large-scale war because of nuclear weapons. If the United States and Russia fight a ground war in Europe, eventually they'll be so angry at each other they might have to use nuclear weapons. That's why one of the major tenets of Putinism is you pick small, contained conflicts. Ukraine is a small, contained conflict. An invasion of France or Britain would lead to nuclear war.

Is this just a pyramid scheme?

Russia is not a very wealthy country, and eventually, it's going to exhaust itself. War is usually a pyramid scheme. For example, Nazi Germany was fighting wars that were costing their economy a lot of money, so they were forced to fight even more wars. That's what eventually led to Germany's invasion of Russia—they needed the resources and the manpower. The same thing could happen here. Putin is spending a lot of money to fight this war in Ukraine. After he finishes, he may need to go conquer more territory for their resources. In the long term, this could lead to disaster, but in the short term, it does work.

Why Russia is a "Warrior Culture"

Eventually, people are going to get exhausted. But Putin believes that the Russians are a warrior culture. They enjoy war, they are good at war, so they won't be exhausted by it—they'll be galvanized and energized by it. There are warrior cultures out there that do enjoy fighting. Think of the German people, who have been fighting wars for a thousand years and have been really good at it. Japan is also a warrior culture.

China is not a warrior culture. Throughout most of Chinese history, China was the dominant power, the hegemon. It is also surrounded by natural defenses: the sea to the east, mountains to the south and west, and the Great Wall to the north. China doesn't feel threatened by anyone and therefore doesn't have a warrior culture. But Russia is a huge country that's been invaded multiple times, and these invasions were traumatic. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 killed 20 million Russians, and people still celebrate that war. For Russian civilization, war can be energizing and rejuvenating.

Warrior culture works right now because it beats consumer culture easily. You see it in Ukraine, where Russians are destroying the Ukrainians, and the Europeans are too busy watching TV, buying things, and vacationing. Consumers don't want to go to war. But eventually, Russia is going to reach a point where it directly threatens Germany, France, and Britain, and then they will start to transition into a warrior culture.

Putinism will become the dominant ideology for the next 50 years, and it can spread to other countries. When this happens, we call this world multipolar, meaning there are different centers of power. Right now, there's only the United States, the global hegemon. But over the next 10-20 years, we expect a multipolar world where each region has a different hegemon.

The Ultimate Contradiction of Putinism

Is warrior culture just another form of slavery? You can make the argument that it's actually anti-slavery. What can the warrior do that the consumer cannot? Warriors can rebel. They can mutiny. The army can say, "You guys are terrible, we're going to rebel against you." Consumers don't do that. A consumer will never say, "I'm going to stop buying things because I think it's bad for the environment." But a warrior can say, "I don't like this leader, let's march to Moscow and get rid of him." They can do that, and they do that all the time. That's why warrior culture is so destructive and why political leaders see it as a direct threat.

This reveals a contradiction in Putinism. What is the ultimate problem in Putin turning his entire country into a warrior society? For a warrior culture to triumph, it needs a king. That's why we have kings. The problem with Putin's Russia is that eventually, Putin is going to die. And then what's going to happen? The country is going to fall apart because it's a warrior culture, and you'll have different generals fighting each other for total control. It's going to be a civil war.

Putin right now is a strategic genius. He's the king. Everyone admires him, so he unites everyone. He can direct all of society into Total War. When he dies, this society is going to fall apart. That's why Putin's legacy will not be a strong Russia; it'll be Putinism—the idea of continuous war. Russia may not survive without Putin. When you have a great leader like him, it's impossible to replace him. No one will have his genius, authority, and ruthlessness.