Putin Does Not Want The Throne

The lecture opens on the photo-op that makes lazy analysis easy. Putin visits Beijing, the friendship looks intimate, and both states speak in the language of multipolarity. But Jiang insists the speeches do not actually say the same thing. Xi's language is procedural, U.N.-centered, and defensive. Putin's language is active. It treats Russia and China not merely as participants in a changing order but as the pair that should lead it Source trail 5:22 For President Putin, what's important is that China and Russia take the lead in leading the multipolar world. Okay? So these are two very different conceptions of how the world should be run. Where the Chinese system is... .

Xi's own anti-hegemonic framework also creates a problem for the friendship story. Jiang reads Xi as saying the winners of World War II are supposed to remain in charge together, which turns the United States, Russia, and China into a strange alliance memory rather than obvious civilizational enemies Source trail 7:39 back the spirits of fascism and militarism, jointly pushing for the building of a more just and reasonable global governance system. Okay? Alright, so this is a lot of words, but I will emphasize certain takeaways. Firs... . It also boomerangs back onto Moscow. If unilateral war and historical revisionism are wrong in principle, then Russia's move in Ukraine becomes hard to justify inside the same stated framework.

The first crack is infrastructural. If the China-Russia relationship were as seamless as the ceremony suggests, Power of Siberia II would move easily and China would throw itself into Russian energy dependence. Instead Beijing hesitates. It also refuses Russia's preferred tone on Iran. The route problem explains the hesitation. China fears American leverage at Malacca, so it wants the Russian north as insurance. But insurance is not the same as surrender. Beijing wants both doors open, not one Russian-controlled door replacing one American-controlled door Lens point strategy-material-test Chokepoint empire appears when reserve-currency power weakens and imperial strategy shifts from profiting through circulation to controlling access: bases, canals, straits, blockades, and naval attrition become the material gates through which trade must pass. Source trail 12:28 Okay? All right. So one area of cooperation between Russia and China is trade routes. All right? So as we discussed previously in this class, what the Americans want to do is they want to block China from accessing glob... .

The second crack is civilizational appetite. Russia exports raw materials and buys machinery back. Chinese investors still care more about Western sanctions, dollar access, and American markets than about building Russia up. Families still send children to the United States, not to Russia, because American degrees, English fluency, and dollar convertibility remain part of the elite strategy. In Jiang's compression, the alignment exists at the level of the state, but the social imagination of the Chinese elite is still aimed west Source trail 17:3818:55 Russia is very much a closed system. And it's very hard to do business in Russia. If you're in the United States and you put your money in the United States, you know you'll be protected legally and contractually. If th...Okay? Here's another chart where, yes, okay, as you can see, Chinese are going, more and more Chinese are going to Russia. Okay? All right. So right now, you have about 50,000 Chinese studying in Russia. But this does n... .

Jiang's historical reset begins after World War II. Source trail 20:2221:2422:3023:4524:5025:55 So what I want to look at today is why is this the case? Why is it that the Chinese want to go to America? And what can Putin do about it? And what will Putin do about it? Okay? So these are the two questions that we're...And now the war is over. So what are you going to do with these factories? You can't just tell everyone to go home and not work. Okay? So they make a deal with the Europeans and these Asians. Basically, the deal is this... America wins, has factories to keep busy, lends dollars to allies and vassals so they can buy American output, and ties the currency to gold to make the contract believable. The arrangement works while America is still the great manufacturer. It breaks when Europe and Japan recover, outcompete the United States, and turn the creditor into a debtor. Nixon's move off gold and the petrodollar arrangement with Gulf producers keep the game alive after the original honesty mechanism has already failed.

From there the lecture turns moral and mechanical at once. Reserve-currency privilege produces inflation management problems, open-capital vulnerability, and a shift from making things to financialization. Jiang strips the prestige off the word and calls it gambling Source trail 28:21 US dollars, because US dollars is so complex to manage, your economy shifts from manufacturing to financialization. Okay? Financialization just means gambling. Okay? So this has been terrible for America, the American e... . Easy money then becomes addictive. Expansion and war are no longer presented as wise strategy but as the behavior of a system protecting its next fix. China enters because the dollar lets its elites monetize domestic power, store it safely abroad, and socialize their children into the society where that stored value can be enjoyed.

That is why Putin's project is framed so starkly. If Russia cannot seduce the Chinese elite into a deeper civilizational alliance, it must attack the monetary architecture itself. Jiang's hottest image arrives here: America is a drug addict, and the only cure left is forced withdrawal Lens point power-alchemy Reserve privilege becomes addiction when a currency order turns foreign demand into easy money, elite wealth storage, and domestic default avoidance, so the issuer tries to preserve demand even through coercion or war. Source trail 34:15 So yeah, we don't want to be the world reserve currency. The problem though is that they're addicted to it because it's such easy money. So this is a contradiction. On one hand, the Americans know that the world reserve... . Destroy enough global demand for the dollar and the addict loses the privilege that has also been destroying it.

Jiang treats Putin as one of the few leaders still capable of long-range strategy. The immediate task is not to build a harmonious anti-American civilization but to gather the sanctioned and the resentful and use them to create pressure. North Korea becomes the sharpest example. The pact with Russia matters because Pyongyang can manufacture danger at low cost. Jiang's war theory here is brutally simple: poor societies can still win if they retain energy, openness, and cohesion Source trail 40:07 Okay? Why? Because in this class, what you're taught is game theory. And if you look at how wars are fought and who wins wars, societies that win wars have three characteristics. Okay? They have energy, they're open, an... , while richer societies become soft, individualistic, and afraid to die.

The Korean peninsula is then reduced to extortion geometry. North Korea does not need to out-produce South Korea. It only needs artillery close enough to Seoul to make fear profitable. Once that threat exists, Japan and the United States are dragged into another theater Lens point strategy-material-test Sanctioned states become a volatility machine when an anti-imperial strategist links them into low-cost theaters of pressure, making the policing empire divide attention, finance allies, defend debt demand, and spend military credibility across boards it cannot fully absorb. Source trail 42:32 It's going to have to bring in Japan as well. As well as the United States. Okay? So, now, Putin's defense pact with North Korea makes a lot of sense. Because if North Korea just creates a problem in the Korean Peninsul... at the very moment Washington is already stretched. The point of the alliance is therefore not prestige. It is friction.

Germany appears here not as a natural anti-Russian power but as a society being slowly damaged by the terms of the current war. Cheap Russian energy is gone, American LNG is expensive, immigration pressures keep rising, and right-wing parties gain from both war fatigue and identity stress. Putin's European play is not presented as a clean military conquest. It is attrition. Source trail 47:55 But he understands that there's a civil war brewing in Europe where these right -wing parties, like the AFD, they're surging in popularity because they oppose war and because they oppose immigrants. So, all Putin has to... Drag the war out, force deeper mobilization, and let internal political fracture do the rest.

Outside Europe, legitimacy runs through story as much as through force. Source trail 50:1651:2252:3953:5355:20 Okay? Now, the question is, wait a minute here. Russia invaded Ukraine, so why would people around the world support Russia? And the answer is because of narrative. Okay? From a Western perspective, Ukraine is this inno...Okay? So this is a level of cooperation between Russia and African countries. As you can see, there is a lot of trade going on. But at the same time, there's also military cooperation. There's nuclear power plant constr... Russia can look like an invader in the West and still look like the first state strong enough to stand up to the imperial bully in much of the Global South. Africa matters because Russia mixes trade, mercenaries, propaganda, and resource projects in one package. India matters because sanctioned oil and labor needs create a long relationship. Iran matters most because it sits at the trade hinge linking Russia to multiple regions, which is why Jiang treats Iran and Ukraine as the two decisive battlefronts and Israel as America's fortress against Russian influence in the region.

The Japan section ties energy dependency back to imperial memory. Source trail 56:4257:4458:441:00:02 Okay? Because for the longest time, the Japanese were a vassal to the Americans. And the Japanese made a lot of sacrifices to be the vassal state to America. Okay? But now you've created a situation where Japan has no c...Japan before World War II was getting 90 % of its oil from the United States. But Japan was becoming too powerful and so the United States started to embargo Japan. And then Japan had no choice but then to go invade Sou... Tokyo does not want to become fully dependent on American energy because the last time that happened the relationship ended in embargo and war. It therefore has to hedge toward Russia even while remaining inside the American security system. Treasury buying then appears as a colonial payment. Jiang's so-called carry trade story is that Japanese institutions borrow at almost nothing, buy higher-yielding U.S. Treasuries, and effectively recycle protection money back into the empire.

That arrangement becomes unsustainable as geopolitical stress rises. Japan will need to repatriate capital. America, meanwhile, needs other states to keep buying Treasuries so rates stay manageable and the debt machine keeps running. This is where Jiang folds Iran back in. The war is not only about the Middle East. It is also about controlling energy leverage strongly enough to force allies and semi-allies to keep financing the dollar order a little longer Source trail 1:00:021:01:101:02:42 Okay? Basically free money. So if you're a big Japanese corporation and you need money, you just go to the Japanese bank and they'll give you money at 0 % interest. What this means is you can take this money and then go...Okay? To really control the world's energy supply. And time is running out for America. Okay? The reason why is that as more and more people sell U.S. dollars, as more and more people refuse to buy U.S. Treasuries, cert... .

The first question asks what becomes of America if the addiction continues. Jiang's answer is that more printing means more debt, weaker confidence, higher Treasury yields, and a state that cannot default because its debt is bound up with domestic banks and domestic depositors. That is the hinge that pushes the lecture from finance into coercion. If domestic default means revolution, the only remaining move is external force Source trail 1:05:261:06:39 Does it matter? No, it doesn't matter. Who cares? Okay. The Federal Reserve is a different problem. Why? Because let's just say you owe the Federal Reserve $10 trillion. Okay. Where does this money come from? It comes f...Do you understand? Because you can't force them because you cannot default the debt domestically because everyone in America would lose all their money. Okay. So the only thing you can do is go overseas and force people... : go abroad and make people keep buying the currency.

Alan's next question forces Jiang to correct a common fantasy. Russia is not trying to become the next global boss. In his answer, being the world leader is stupid because the leader becomes the school bully who has to fight everyone Source trail 1:07:48 So we're assuming that anyone, someone wants to be the new leader. And the reality is that it's actually stupid to be the world reserve currency. It's silly to be the world leader because now you're just forced to spend... . Russia wants to remove the bully and gain room to move. China, by contrast, may dislike American dominance and still prefer it to a neighborhood where Russia or Japan becomes harder to manage. That is why the friendship turns into a temporary marriage with a divorce already waiting in the future Source trail 1:08:391:09:50 Russia is going to exert its power where it can, but it will have more freedom of movement. Okay. It sees America as its greatest threat. And so Russia wants to get rid of America. China's different. China appreciates t...Okay. So Putin's plan is just to remain good friends with China. He knows that China in the long term is going to side with more of America than with Russia. But in the short term, Putin can do as much as he can to make... .

The last exchange pushes the model down to bedrock. Why would American military power retreat just because the financial order is collapsing? Jiang answers that armies do not float in the air Lens point nation-god-machine Military power needs a host state when armies, bases, factories, financing, and soldiers cannot float above politics; if the original national body fractures, imperial forces must retreat inward or re-anchor themselves in another nation-state. Source trail 1:10:551:11:59 Okay. Look, the reality is that your military comes from your nation state, okay? Your military comes from your nation state. Why? Because it's your nation state that provides the weapons, the manufacture of the weapons...the case, the military would split off and form, help support three other nation states, which are Japan, Germany, and Israel. Okay? So in other words, different theaters of the American military would find a different... . They come from a nation-state that supplies weapons, factories, financing, and people. If the home state is in revolution, the military turns inward or finds another host. His closing speculation is extreme but revealing: East Asian forces gravitate toward Japan, European forces toward Germany, Middle Eastern forces toward Israel. Empire, in the end, still needs housing.