The War Is Looking For A Purpose

Tom's first real question is operational: if you were advising the United States, how would you get out with the least damage, or actually win? Jiang does not offer a clever exit plan. He says the problem is that empires in decline lose the capacity for strategic planning Source trail 1:10 So a lot of the problem is that if you look at the empire's decline, they're no longer capable of strategic planning because there's a lethal and toxic combination of hubris and desperation. And so Washington, D.C. has... . Washington has become an insular bubble where bad facts are treated as disloyalty Source trail 2:03 Peter Hegstaff in his press conferences is just saying, like, you know, the problem with you guys is you don't talk about the good things, all you talk about is the bad things. Stop talking about the bad things, just fo... , and the official demand is to stop talking about the bad things.

When Tom asks whether Trump declares victory or gets sucked in, Jiang reaches for game theory. In the fog of war, he says, it is hard to know who is winning, but a losing gambler does not leave the casino Source trail 3:07 Right now there's a fog of war. So it's almost impossible for us to ascertain who's winning this war because the Israelis and Americans are doing tremendous damage to Iran. The Iranians are fighting back as well. So we... . If Trump quits, the loss becomes real. So he doubles down, takes Kark Island, tries to secure the oil, then faces the next requirement created by the first move.

Jiang says the nuclear story cannot be the real cause because, in his telling, Iran had already accepted zero enrichment before the strike. That leaves the war searching for a cause after it has begun Source trail 5:08 So we know the cause is not Iran's nuclear program because a few hours before the Israelis struck Tehran and killed the Al -Atala, the Omanian foreign minister, went on TV and said that the Iranians had already agreed t... . His deeper explanation is the old maritime fear: an island or sea empire must stop a unified Eurasian power Source trail 6:187:29 And maybe 100 years from now, historians will say, we can still argue over why this war started in the first place. So let's go over some possibilities. So the first possibility is that this war had to happen. And the r...to arise, that power would unify both Europe and Asia and connect the entire Eurasian continent through railways. And then absorb the Middle East and Africa and Southeast Asia into a kind of trading block that would neg... from moving trade onto land, rail, and continental blocs beyond naval choke points.

The surprising machinery is finance. Jiang makes the Bank of England more important than the navy because it transforms lending to a king into lending to a nation. The debt no longer dies with the monarch. Children and grandchildren become responsible, and once that war-credit machine Source trail 10:32 And in America, this became the federal reserve system. So, so in other words, all this wealth in Europe that was looking for stability all went to England, including the Dutch Republic, but also including the Habsburgs... starts, it has to keep fighting or lose everything.

America does not invent a new empire from nothing. Jiang reads it as inheriting Britain's position after two world wars exhausted Britain. Germany was the threat because German technology plus Russian resources Source trail 18:32 Again, the reason why is the Hartley -McKenneth thesis. You cannot allow a great power to emerge in the Eurasian continent. At that time, it seemed that Germany was ascendant. If you marry a German technology and logist... could have ruled the heartland. Bretton Woods then cements the peaceful transfer of imperial power into an American-led financial order.

Jiang's postwar story begins with a useful dollar contract: America finances European and Japanese reconstruction, buys their output, and pegs the dollar to gold. Then Vietnam, the space race, and the Great Society strain the contract. Nixon breaks gold convertibility and builds a new floor: Saudi oil sells in dollars Source trail 25:13 So the French famously sent a frigate, a ship to New York to pick up their gold and take it back to France. And after that, that led to something called the Nixon Shock in 1971, where Richard Nixon said that the US doll... , and China becomes the cheap-labor factory of the world Source trail 26:02 which people don't really know about, that he discussed is, he went to China, and he made a deal with China to become trading partners, where China would basically export its cheap labor, and in return, they would get U... .

The same order then decays through excess finance. Wall Street invents instruments to absorb foreign capital, 2008 should have collapsed the system, and China bails the world out Source trail 27:08 it had to create financial decos to absorb all this foreign capital, started to invent all these risky derivatives, such as the CDOs, collateral debt obligations. And this, of course, led to the 2008 subprime crisis. An... by turning printed money into infrastructure demand. But once China wants political voice and Russia's frozen assets reveal the dollar as a weapon, legitimacy breaks. Force has to substitute for trust Source trail 29:10 china was also not a heavy blow but the next heavy blow was of course the 2022 russian invasion of ukraine why because after that happened america started to use its financial weaponry to sanction russia right so it bas... .

Iran is the test because Hormuz, oil, Russia, and China meet there. Jiang says America hoped for a short decisive war that would control the choke point, prevent a Russia-Iran-China trading bloc, and remind everyone that the dollar remains the only reserve currency. Tom sharpens the point: it is not enough to have a big military Source trail 34:21 people of the power of the dollar or that we're strong or whatever i would say it slightly differently and this gets to why iran becomes so important like what actually happens in iran is it isn't enough to remind every... . You have to control the thing you claim to control.

Jiang disagrees with Tom's assumption that control of Iran is the only logic. Trump wants optics Source trail 35:13 get control of if you want to win okay um i would disagree because they removed Maduro and that's where Rodriguez, the vice president, was very happy to play along. So it's basically a regime change that favored the Ame... , a quick victory, and leverage before a China negotiation. Israel and Saudi Arabia want Iran removed as a threat. Those interests overlap enough to push the war forward, but they do not point to the same end state.

Kark Island looks like the elegant move: take the oil export point, declare victory, and force Iran to bargain. Jiang says the move is less decisive than it appears Source trail 38:54 Japan to the Middle East, and we should expect them to arrive maybe in about a week. And there's about 2,500 of them, and they specialize in amphibious landing. So the idea is that they will bombard the coastline in Kar... . Iran has workarounds, Russia has reason to finance Iran, oil price spikes help Russia, and striking Iran's lifeline gives Iran reason to hit GCC oil infrastructure Source trail 42:49 of the gcc right because no matter how much economic damage you can do to iran they can do so much more to the gcc um and this would cause the oil the price of oil to spike remember iranians have said that their goal is... .

The military logic is the trap. Marines take an island; then drones and artillery require the coast; then the coast exposes them to the Zagros mountains; then missile facilities require a much larger force. Jiang's analogy is Vietnam: a small first deployment becomes hundreds of thousands because ground troops create a logic and momentum of their own Lens point strategy-material-test War gets its own logic when the material and political cost of stopping becomes larger than the next escalation: ceasefire threatens the order that funded the war, and a limited operation turns into a demand to hold geography, supply lines, and face. Source trail 44:48 was supposed to be it like five years later you're at 500,000 American soldiers right so once you send in ground troops then it creates a logic a momentum of its own and then you have mission creep and then some cause f... .

Tom adds the domestic fuse: Trump may experience losing power as prison Source trail 47:26 agree with your analysis i think a lot of his thinking is how does he stay in power because we know exactly what's going to happen if he leaves office the democrats are going to come to power and they're going to go aft... , so prolonging war can look rational to him. Jiang agrees, then gives the imperial version. If Trump simply leaves, Iran can pressure the GCC, Japan and Korea lose faith, Treasury buyers disappear, Europe questions why it is still fighting Russia, and America implodes back into the Western Hemisphere. That is why Jiang sees no real retreat path Lens point strategy-material-test War gets its own logic when the material and political cost of stopping becomes larger than the next escalation: ceasefire threatens the order that funded the war, and a limited operation turns into a demand to hold geography, supply lines, and face. Source trail 52:00 So now Russia becomes... Iran becomes the dominant power in Europe. And Iran becomes the dominant power in the Middle East. And America is imploding back in the Western Hemisphere. Is that a situation that the American... .

Tom's China version of the war is coherent: control Venezuela and the Western Hemisphere, control Iran and Hormuz, then choke China's food and oil inputs until Beijing accepts a dollar-saving deal. Jiang grants that this is the best rational explanation for Trump's movements. It might save the dollar. But he says using war to solve an economic problem Source trail 57:53 So from a rational perspective, this does hold, okay? But there are certain issues with this thesis. Okay? The first issue is that from an economic perspective, it's very risky to use military force to resolve an econom... is the dangerous and unnecessary route.

The deeper disagreement is Thucydides. Jiang says China and America are codependent: America offshored manufacturing to China, while China offshored elite selection and indoctrination to America Source trail 57:53 So from a rational perspective, this does hold, okay? But there are certain issues with this thesis. Okay? The first issue is that from an economic perspective, it's very risky to use military force to resolve an econom... . Chinese elites are American-trained and often pro-American. China wants sovereignty and trade routes more than hegemonic rule, and on pure economic interest America and China can be aligned Source trail 1:01:17 Scott Besant, the church secretary, has said that we're allowing this to happen to maintain stability in the global financial order. And both the Chinese and Americans are cooperating to maintain stability. And so, you... against Russia and Iran's attempt to break the order.

Jiang also rewrites the Thucydides lesson itself. Sparta and Athens were not naturally destined to collide because one rose and one ruled. Athens abused its allies; Sparta was dragged in. The modern danger, in his reading, is America bullying its own allies Source trail 1:08:11 So it's not as easy as Graham Ellison and Thucydides are making out to be. And there are parallels to our modern society where. It seems as though China and America are at war. They're in conflict because these are two... while trying to preserve a unipolar order. China and Russia may be dragged in later, but they are not the first mover in the analogy.

When Tom presses the gold corridor, Taiwan, Xi, and the Middle Kingdom, Jiang grants the hedge: China is building a BRICS/gold alternative. But the Middle Kingdom, for him, means internal stability first Source trail 1:13:181:14:16 I think that's a great analysis. And I think you're absolutely right in that China has been signaling its intention to replace the American financial order with a new BRICS system based on gold. And that's what's creati...And so rebellions against the government are very commonplace. And so your entire state apparatus is structured to ensure that local rebellions don't arise. And in the 1980s, there was a solution to this problem of loca... . Xi wants sovereignty, Taiwan, and a yuan-based order; the cultural reality is elite corruption, overseas capital, and a military whose recent purges show weak political will for foreign conflict.

Jiang says the present order is built on cheap energy. Oil is not only transport; it is fertilizer, food, and semiconductor processing. If Hormuz stays closed for years, the world loses the material condition that made globalized comfort normal. The next trends are de-urbanization, nationalism plus remilitarization, and mercantilist spheres that look more like the 1930s than the 1990s Source trail 1:22:18 And then in the Western Hemisphere, I think that America will come out okay. Because really, I mean, America is a superpower regardless. So America retreats from the rest of the world, but then it builds an economic sys... .

That is why he likes Japan's odds more than surface metrics would suggest. Japan is old, resource-poor, and deflationary, but Jiang sees a people that can transform when national existence is at stake. Mongol invasions, Meiji industrialization, and postwar manufacturing become evidence of a pattern: never bet against a cohesive people under pressure Source trail 1:24:58 Japan and Japan at this time was, you know, like feudal, uh, system, they came together as a people and we, and we, we post the Mongol invasion, not once, but twice. Okay. That's very impressive. And then you go, go to... .

The nationalism argument then turns domestic. Jiang says the postwar open society made sense as a way to dilute fascist fever, and he personally benefited from it. But when open borders and diversity become an official religion that treats belonging as backward, nations lose the common bond they need for sacrifice. His hard sentence is that people should have to stay and fight for their community Source trail 1:31:06 from Canada and there are a lot of Canadians who hate the liberal government of Canada because they're very authoritarian and I'm, I'm one of them. Okay. But you've just like, you just shouldn't be able to like pack you... .

Bureaucracy is the institutional form of that decay. Jiang's Kafka reference is not decorative: bureaucrats avoid hard criminals and punish compliant citizens Source trail 1:33:10 I want to jump in here. There's a very important point where DEI, multiculturalism, it's being used to justify the bureaucratization of society, right? So this is not so apparent in America, but if you go to Europe and... because compliant citizens are easier. DEI and multiculturalism, in his critique, become the moral language of an overclass that can feel virtuous while policing ordinary attachment to identity and place.

Tom finally brings forward the religious piece. Jiang defines eschatology as the study of the end, but also as a total answer to where humans come from, what they are doing here, and where they are going. That is why it motivates extremists: it satisfies the heart and gives action a cosmic place Source trail 1:35:41 Right. So eschatology comes from the Greek word eschaton, which means the end. So eschatology literally means the study of the end times. But what it really means is your understanding of how the world works, how the wo... .

Jiang's Christian Zionist account is not presented as neutral theology. It is a dated predictive claim about actors he thinks are embedded in American and Israeli political life: Israel reconstituted, Third Temple, return, Antichrist, millennium, Al-Aqsa, and a War of Gog and Magog. He treats even backlash as useful inside that script Source trail 1:41:16 It's all been planned out where destroying the mosque is very important. Because as you point out, it will galvanize the entire Muslim world against the Israelis. And two, and this is really important is that you will s... because backlash can force return, war, and world-against-Israel conditions.

Tom presses the exact credibility problem: is eschatology really equal to economics and history, or just fringe flavor? Jiang answers methodologically. He uses game theory, historical patterns, and eschatology when they converge. Eschatology matters because it is a script people can follow across centuries Source trail 1:43:20 When I do predictive modeling, I'm looking at different theories. And when these different theories converge together, I can make a pretty accurate prediction. So there are three major theories that I look at when I mak... , slowly building toward the pattern it names.

The final turn is the strangest and most important. Prophecy, Jiang says, is probably lost historical memory. Humans preserved patterns through stories before they preserved them through archives. He reconstructs eschatology from Persia, Byzantium, Jerusalem, Jewish exile, Muhammad, Medina, and the Caliphate, then accepts Tom's paraphrase: the religious language is also history spoken in allegory Source trail 1:52:181:53:15 And I'm reading between the lines though, because really what I'm trying to establish, as I'm sure you're aware, this is the part of your thesis that people are going to lean on and say, that's all crazy. That's conspir...Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So something to keep in mind is that for most of human history, we've kept history, the lessons of history, using allegories, right? Using stories, because we didn't have writing. You didn't actu... . That is why, for Jiang, game theory, historical patterns, and eschatology can align.