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Language: en
In just the last 100 years, there have
been over 260 major wars and armed
conflicts worldwide, resulting in more
than 150 million deaths. That means on
average, humanity unleashes a major
conflict every 5 months. And every
single one was predictable. If you
understand the ruthless logic of real
politique, many people look at the world
and see it as they wish it were, but
remain blinded to how it actually is.
And in a moment marked by
hyperpolarization and global instability
like the one we're living in right now,
that is a blind spot that is far too
costly to have. To study history is to
be a student of the patterns that arise
out of the fact that humans have a
nature. If we were truly blank slates,
we wouldn't see such stark patterns in
history repeating themselves. But the
reality is in the last century alone,
nearly half of all existing nations have
either disappeared from the map entirely
or had their borders dramatically
redrawn by conquest, collapse, or
revolution. If history is our guide, no
country, including ours, is safe from
the ruthless calculus of power. And if
you're trying to build a world view that
will help you navigate this moment well,
you need to see the world as it is in
all of its beauty and horror. There's no
sense in looking away when the
equivalent of 75 tons of TNT was just
dropped on Iran by the US to stop them
from developing nuclear weapons. We live
in a world moderated by the cold
expression of power. History tells us
that humans are driven by knowable but
often ignoble impulses. And to
understand the world around you, you
have to stare nakedly at how physics and
human nature shaped by millions of years
of fighting for survival have created a
waring class of apex predators that have
spent millennia dominating and enslaving
each other. We are capable of startling
acts of kindness and beauty. But to make
those moments structurally possible, we
have to understand how nations find
balance through military, economic,
cultural, and cyber force. I don't want
to paint a bleak picture, but I have a
guiding principle in life. Never fight
against what's true. So, here's the
thesis that I'm going to attempt to
prove today. To thrive in a chaotic
world, you must accurately predict how
nations will act and how their actions
shape markets, freedoms, and your
personal safety. And the mental model
that most accurately maps the ruthless
logic of power, money, and human nature
is known as real politique. Real
politique is not popular, but that
doesn't mean that it's not true. And in
five easy parts, I'm going to walk you
through what it is, how it works, and
how you can use it to your advantage. My
goal is to help you lead a beautiful
life full of friends, family, health,
wealth, and safety. But to get us there,
we have to have the guts to look at how
an animal, as dangerous and wonderful as
humans actually are, creates a stable
world through kinetic, economic, and
cyber warfare that constantly changes
borders and world orders. Buckle up
because this one gets real. And make
sure that you do not skip part four.
That is the part that's full of hope and
beauty. But we've got to earn our way
there. So, welcome to part one. What is
real politique? Genghaskhan ushered in
Pax Mongolica, an era of relative
stability that saw massively increased
trade via the Silk Road. But he had to
kill roughly 40 million people to do it.
In fact, he killed and conquered so many
people that some scholars claim you can
see a reduction in the global carbon
emissions. While not everyone agrees
that the dip can be entirely attributed
to Gangghaskhan, DNA evidence proves
that.5% of Earth's entire population is
descended from him. This is somebody who
had a massive impact and he understood
what famous realist John Mirshimer has
said. In the anarctic world of
international politics, it is better to
be Godzilla than Bambi. As Khan would
approach a city, he would famously make
a simple offer. Surrender and prosper or
resist and be annihilated. In one
infamous siege, the city of Nishapur
refused the terms, killing one of Khan's
favorite generals. Khan's response, he
ordered the execution of every living
soul, man, woman, and child, stacking
their skulls into pyramids as a stark
warning to others. Gruesome though this
is, this is how the world works even
today. And don't worry, I'm gonna have
plenty of modern examples of just how
far some people will go to gain and
maintain power. In the West, since World
War II, we have grown confused about how
the politics of power plays out. And you
can see this all over the internet when
you look at what's going on between the
US and Iran. Under Pax Americana, things
have been good for some, but Pax
Americana is getting long in the tooth
and challengers are starting to rise.
most obviously China. More and more we
can expect to see the harsh realities of
real politique stepping into the global
spotlight. Whether in the form of
economic warfare, which we see in
spades, cyber warfare, which is coming
our way, cultural warfare, Tik Tok, I'm
looking at you, or outright kinetic
warfare. So, what exactly is real
politique? Simply said, real politique
is about how nation states actually with
each other, not what they say they're
going to do or how they posture, how
they actually act. It's the
unscentimental lens through which to
understand international dynamics
predicting actions based on power,
calculation, and pragmatic self-interest
rather than as the expression or
protection of moral or ideological
aspirations. Rial politique attempts to
describe international politics as it
is. It is a distinction between is and
ought that is incredibly important and
we'll go through it more in detail
later. Real politique forces you to
realize that before you can cheer for
the diplomatic solution to things like
the Cuban missile crisis that averted
nuclear war. You have to understand that
we only ended up there because 18 months
earlier the CIA botched a bloody attempt
at regime change in Cuba during the Bay
of Pigs incident. What real politique
attempts to make clear though is that
despite what people may tell you,
diplomacy is often the last resort when
great powers collide and is only tried
when naked aggression fails. The whole
world is a prison yard with no prison
guards and only the most powerful win.
Here are the nine core tenants that make
up real politique. One, national
interest and sovereignty over
everything. Countries don't make
decisions based on morality, ethics, or
lofty ideals. Instead, every decision is
made with national interests at its
core. Specifically, interests focus on
security, wealth, and power. If ideals
and ethics align with those interests,
great. If they don't, they get pushed
aside without hesitation. Two, power is
the central focus. Power is the
lifeblood of international politics.
Everything nations do revolves around
acquiring, maintaining, and exercising
power. Countries constantly measure
themselves against their rivals. always
assessing who has more strength,
influence, and leverage. This ongoing
assessment dictates their strategic
choices because power isn't just a
means. It's the end goal in itself.
Three, rational self-interest is assumed
as a baseline. Realists typically put
forth that states and by extension their
leaders act rationally in pursuit of
national interests, usually again
security, wealth, and power. Rationality
does not imply flawless calculation, but
rather a broadly consistent logic of
self-interest. Realists deliberately
simplify things to achieve analytical
clarity. They know humans are complex,
but they argue that over time and spread
across the large groups required to run
a country, individual irrationalities
smooth out into largely predictable
patterns. Even a personalitydriven
leader like Kim Jong-un is constrained
by the realities of power. international
sanctions, deterrence by larger powers,
and internal regime survival concerns.
He may make dramatic decisions, but
systemic constraints limit how far
irrationality can carry him. While
realists simplify, they're well aware of
human cognitive biases, emotions, and
irrational tendencies. Some realists
like Morganthaw explicitly discussed
human nature's inherent irrationality.
However, the realist models suggest that
these quirks do not drastically
undermine the theory because the leaders
who repeatedly fail to adhere to
rational behavior are eventually
punished by the system. For instance,
war, economic collapse, or just plain
being overthrown. Over time, rational
actors and rational policies are going
to prevail because the country either
dies off or they discover that rational
behaviors enhance their survival and
power. Four, the world is in a state of
anarchy. Real Politique recognizes that
there's no global government to call
when things go wrong. If the US and
China collide, each state has to look
after itself, relying on its own
resources, military strength, and
diplomatic skill to survive. Alliances
happen, there's no doubt, but they're
always temporary, always strategic.
States are fundamentally on their own,
and cooperation only lasts as long as
allies have aligned interests. Five,
only force and power create balance.
This is known as balance of power. It is
a simple yet critical concept. States
take as much as they can until they
encounter meaningful resistance from
another great power or from an alliance
of other countries or they reach the
limits of their culturals's moral
bounding box. We're going to talk more
about that later. Power is constantly
shifting as alliances and advantages
change. These shifts can happen quickly
and the stark reality of this balancing
act keeps states in check ensuring no
single nation can dominate entirely and
certainly not without paying the high
cost of empire. Six real politique is
skeptical that people adhere to
international law and institutions.
These are viewed as tools rather than
constraints. Powerful countries, as I'm
sure you guys have noticed, often use
international laws and organizations to
further their own agendas, while weaker
states find these institutions easily
ignored or worked around. Compliance
with international agreements happen
only when it aligns with the country's
own interest, not because the country
feels a sense of moral or even legal
obligation. This is why five countries
are allowed to block UN resolutions
regardless of merit or majority vote.
Seven, realists accept human nature as
it truly is. Real politique doesn't
pretend humans are naturally peaceful or
altruistic. It recognizes that people
and therefore nations are inherently
competitive, self-interested, and
power-seeking. Leaders prioritize their
survival and advantage first and
foremost. And this realistic view of
human nature sets real politique apart
from basically every other idealistic
framework. Eight, pragmatism always
outweighs ideology. Real politique
dictates that states will always adapt
to circumstances. They're flexible,
changing strategies, partners, and even
beliefs if it serves their natural
interests. Ideological purity is not
useful if it compromises effectiveness
or power. This is why leaders seem to
contradict themselves all the time. If
you understand though what's actually
driving them, it all becomes
predictable. Pragmatic outcomes matter
far more than abstract principles. Nine,
military strength and deterrence are
paramount. A nation's military isn't
just about fighting wars. It's about
avoiding them. Military power creates a
credible threat, and credible threats
provide leverage. If your rivals know
you can hurt them, they are far less
likely to act against you. And this is
exactly why Trump bombed the life out of
the Iranian nuclear power plants. Real
politique emphasizes that military
strength is critical both to deter and
to coersse. These nine principles might
sound harsh, but they describe how
states actually behave, not how we wish
they would behave, what they actually
do. And understanding real politique
means recognizing this uncomfortable
truth and preparing ourselves
accordingly. So, welcome to part two,
real politique's predictive power in
history. Historian and political
scientist R.J. R.J. Raml clocked the
20th century death by government toll to
be somewhere in the neighborhood of 200
million, over 200 million actually by
his estimates. But even if he's off by
more than 50%, that's still over a 100
million deaths caused by governments in
a single century. As you build a mental
model of the world, remember this. The
ultimate test for any model is whether
or not it accurately predicts the past.
If it doesn't reliably predict
historical events, it's worthless. Now,
much to my dismay, real politique
accurately predicts a past that is
absolutely soaked in blood. Because the
West has largely been internally
peaceful, though, we have lost sight of
just how brutal the world can be. Now,
if you're tempted to say that I'm over
dramatizing things or indulging in
fear-mongering, let's take a quick walk
through history to see if that's
actually true. Now, I'm sure you've all
heard of the famous quote attributed to
Alexander the Great. Alexander wept, for
there were no more worlds to conquer.
He didn't weep for the dead. head that
lay at his feet. He wept that there were
no more worlds to violently strip of
autonomy. There were no more enemies
left to slaughter. Now, admittedly, the
quote is almost certainly apocryphal,
but it captures the sentiment of the
balance of power. Nations will conquer
until some opposing force stops them. We
have this inherent drive. The people
that end up filling power vacuums are
the most ambitious, bloodthirsty,
aggressive people that you're going to
find. Take Napoleon. He harnessed the
madness of the French Revolution into a
lethal fighting force that in just 16
years conquered or defeated armies from
the Middle East to the Caribbean. I'm
talking Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain,
Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, the
Kingdom of Naples, the Papal States,
Bavaria, Netherlands, and Sweden. He
finally got checked at Waterlue after
being weakened by the Russians. But god
damn, that was someone who was not going
to stop because conquest isn't a nice
thing to do. Napoleon declared himself
emperor because he could and then he
went for absolute broke. If you ask real
politique, Alexander, Gangaskhan,
Napoleon, they're not the exception.
They're the rule. Take ancient Persia
under Cyrus the Great. He strategically
exploited rivalries and formed alliances
to rapidly dominate the Near East,
clearly prioritizing power and stability
over moralistic ideals. After taking the
city of Babylon, Cyrus ordered the
execution of Nabonitis, the last
Babylonian king, and systematically
eliminated the key members of the
Chaldian aristocracy, who posed a
potential threat to Persian control.
This act ensured the swift consolidation
of power by removing opposition,
securing Babylon, and actually making it
stable. His pragmatic approach allowed
him to build and maintain one of
history's first truly expansive empires.
And that is the horror that real
politique brings into clear focus. That
being pragmatic over ethical works. If
you want to be a little more modern, but
see the same idea, take a look at the
European colonial expansion. It
certainly wasn't a fun time to be
Mexican. Hernand Cortez slaughtered and
enslaved his way through modern-day
Mexico, forever changing North America.
And let's not forget, the Europeans did
something similar to the Native
Americans. What smallpox didn't get, the
settlers and later US government did.
And don't get me started on US President
Pulk, whose own brass condemned his
actions after he crushed the Mexican
military taking over half a million
square miles of territory. And of
course, all of that territory had been
taken from someone else before that.
History is a neverending string of
violent conquest and forced acquisition
of land and people as far and as long as
the eye can see. That is what humans do.
And that's why nation states when viewed
through the cold lens of historical
reality become predictable. Look at the
scramble for Africa driven by the thirst
for resource acquisition and economic
dominance. Who would have thought? Oh
wait, realist. Because real politique
understands ethics are often shoved
aside in favor of brutal actions such as
these when power and wealth can be
extracted. Still not convinced? Take Ma
China. Mao managed to reunify China
after nearly 40 years of bloody
division. But he also tried to kill his
opposition so hard they fled to
modern-day Taiwan. And to establish and
maintain power within his own party
during the Great Leap Forward and
Cultural Revolution, he killed at least
45 million people through murder and
famine. The Japanese are not blameless.
They also had their imperial expansion
preWorld War II. They aggressively ran
through China and much of Southeast
Asia, driven by a desire for more
resources and a hunger for better
strategic positioning in the region,
showcasing the exact kind of amoral,
ruthless decision-making that real
politique would predict. The only thing
that stopped Japan's expansion was a
miscalculation of power and resistance,
highlighting once again real Politique's
insights about the natural limits of the
expansion of power. It'll go, but it
eventually gets checked. All empires
eventually fall, usually because of debt
and the rise of a challenger. And if you
want to hear all about the role that
debt and money printing plays in the
realist saga, watch this video here.
Now, I could go on and on from polepot
and the killing fields of Cambodia and
the Vietnam War to the opium wars and
state sponsored terror. All of these
things have happened and will happen
because anarchy rules and only force can
create balance. If you really want to
freak yourself out, consider this. North
Korea, one of the most repressive
regimes on the planet, has nuclear
weapons that can strike the US. And the
only reason that they don't is because
of something called MAD, mutually
assured destruction. Think about that
for a second. The same is true for
Russia, China, India, Pakistan, a whole
bevy of countries that hate each other.
The only reason they don't nuke each
other is because they're worried they'll
get nuked back. Ukraine gave up their
nukes. Russia invaded. Gaddafi gave up
his nukes and got sodomized to death
with a giant knife. True story, but
please don't look it up. It's
horrifying. Most pundits in the
chattering class moralize when they hear
this stuff. And I get it. My instinct is
to turn inward and just focus on the
beautiful things in my life. And trust
me, that's where I spend the vast
majority of my time. And I encourage you
to do the same. But history tells me
that this moment is uniquely tenuous.
Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, US, Iran,
all in some state or other of open
conflict or uneasy tension. And that's
not even to mention the ongoing cold war
between the US and China. The conflict
that is likely to dominate the next
decade. Each of these historical
episodes highlights real politique's
predictive strength, leaders and nations
consistently place pragmatic outcomes,
power, wealth, security above moral and
ethical considerations. Real politique
is not a lens born of cold-hearted or
evil men. Do not blame the people who
point out the truth. Not saying this is
what they want. They're just saying this
is how it is. This has the highest
predictive validity. It is simply a
hyper pragmatic lens designed to predict
what is coming based on how the world is
and not their projection of how the
world ought to be. Now, hopefully we can
all agree that the world ought to be a
friendly place where each country is
allowed to pursue their well-being of
its own citizens within the confines of
human freedom and dignity. But alas,
that's not how humans work. Just check
my YouTube comments. We won't even be
able to agree on what constitutes human
freedom and dignity. So, welcome to part
three. Real politique is rooted in human
nature. In 1973, OPEC choked off the
world's oil supply. Gas prices in
America quadrupled overnight. Car lines
went on for miles. Economies around the
world tanked and nations scrambled to
protect their citizens. Energy drives
the cost of everything. And when
everything becomes too expensive,
countries go to war. The world is a
chessboard on which nations fight over
scarce resources driven by the cold
logic of survival embedded in our brains
over millions of years of evolution.
Every war, every trade deal, every
border dispute boils down to one thing.
securing the resources a country needs
to maintain its way of life. When OPEC's
embargo slashed global fuel supplies,
the US didn't negotiate with kindness.
They bullied allies, courted enemies,
and rewrote trade deals to get the oil
flowing again. That's real politique in
action. Power over principle. Most
people get blindsided by geopolitical
events because they don't understand the
underlying principles of power. If you
want to see what's coming before it
happens, though, short form can help.
The foundation for predicting power
games is in one book, The Mchavelians by
James Burnham. Burnham analyzes five of
the most rigorous political thinkers in
history. Mchaveli, Paro, Moska,
Michelle, and Sorell. Together, they
reveal how power actually operates
beneath all the political rhetoric.
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subscription. And now, let's see how
these principles have predicted major
events in history. You don't have to
look any farther than human DNA to
understand why things play out this way.
In Tanzania's Gome Stream National Park,
Jane Goodall watched in horror as a
chimpanzeee tribe split into two
factions. What followed was not harmony
and peace talks, baby. It was a brutal
war. The stronger group hunted and
killed every member of the weaker ones,
smashing skulls, tearing them limb from
limb. This is the kind of environment
that humans came up in. We went up
against the most ferocious animals on
the planet and won. Nature is truly red
in tooth and claw. Do you think that we
came up through all of that bathed in
kindness? It's a gear we have. But baby,
it is not the only gear. We became the
most dominant apex predator the world
has ever seen by understanding how to
use both alliances and diplomacy with
extreme violence and aggression whenever
necessary. Just 40,000 years ago, we
faced a rival. Neanderthalss. Stronger,
possibly smarter. They ruled Europe.
Yet, we won. Why? Archaeological
evidence shows humans used projectile
weapons to kill from a distance.
Outplaying the Neanderthals's brute
strength and even potentially better
intelligence. Our social groups up to
150 people compared to their 20 to 30
let us coordinate in ways that also
allowed us to just overwhelm them. We
didn't just outlast the Neanderthalss.
We absorbed them. We outperformed,
conquered, and even interbred. DNA
evidence proves that 1 to 2% of our own
genes come from Neanderthalss. We don't
have a history of just erasing competing
countries. We have a history of erasing
entire competing species. Simply put,
humans have a nature built on two
dueling impulses, cooperation and
conquest. Brain architecture for raw
intelligence and abstract unifying
principles like religion give us the
ability to cooperate flexibly in large
groups. But it also lays the groundwork
for the concept of us versus them
in-group and outgroup. And God help
anyone that winds up in the out
groupoup. Take Tajfeld's minimum group
paradigm experiments from the 1970s.
Henry Tajfeld conducted a series of
experiments to explore how minimal
arbitrary group distinctions could lead
to in-group favoritism and outgroup
discrimination. In these experiments,
participants were divided into groups
based on trivial criteria. For instance,
preference for abstract art or actually
just being randomly assigned to a group.
They were then asked to allocate
resources or rewards to members of their
own group or the other group. Guess what
they found? Even with no prior
interaction or meaningful group
differences, participants consistently
favor their in-group, allocating more
resources to in-group members, and
discriminating against outgroup members.
I'm going to guess that feels so obvious
to you that you don't even question it.
But what this demonstrates is that
mirror categorization into groups could
trigger biased behavior, laying the
groundwork for understanding out group
hostility. Wonder why the US is slapping
China with tariffs, or why the Chinese
are trying to build a global sphere of
influence through the Belt and Road
Initiative? Look no further. Another key
element baked into our DNA that drives
strife is inequality. But sadly, humans
are just built that way. From wild
swings in intelligence to levels of
aggression and discipline to the ability
to delay gratification and be strategic,
humans have so much variability across
traits that are extremely consequential.
There's just no way other than force and
brutality to even approximate equal
outcomes. And so even within a society
the dueling impulses of cooperation and
confiscation take hold driving both
internal and external conflict among
people and nations. Now given the
obviousness of this even inside of an
individual household let alone between
countries. It begs the question why are
people so resistant to the philosophy of
real politique? It seems to come down to
this deeply embedded aversion to
unfairness. Real politique hurts because
it forces us to face the ugly truth. The
world isn't fair and power trumps
kindness. Not that kindness isn't useful
in building alliances, but if an
alliance can't stop the stronger country
from running over them, the alliance
doesn't matter at all. So from an
evolutionary perspective, it's just not
going to be selected for. Take Russia.
They've been gobbling up former USSR
territory since 2008, and they would
have kept going had Ukraine not
sufficiently fought back. Ultimately,
we're all up against physics and human
nature. Resources are not yet unlimited.
So, people divide the world into
in-group and outroup. And then they
fight for and attempt to divvy up those
scarce resources in a way that
advantages their country. That's what
we're hardwired to do. But we are not
only hardwired for greed and resource
acquisition. We're also wired for love,
kindness, and sacrifice. So, welcome to
part four, the restraining force of
culture, aka the moral boundaries on
real politique. In the 1994 Rwanda
genocide, extremist hoous, including
government officials and members of the
military, hacked roughly 800,000
tootssis to death with machetes in just
100 days. But in those same blood soaked
streets, Hoou moderates risk their lives
to hide Tootsie families just as many
Germans hid Jews from the Nazis. Once
again proving humanity's capacity for
courage and compassion. Just as whatever
mental model you use to map the world
must explain the horrors we see
throughout history, it must also explain
the depth of kindness and compassion.
Once again, the pragmatic lens of real
politique explains this seeming
contradiction. Humans aren't just
predators. Evolution has given us an
internal governor that tempers our most
egregious impulses. The capacity for
genuine connection that helped us
cooperate in large groups and overcome
competitors like the Neanderthalss. And
the capacity for deep empathy and
compassion that we need for
self-sacrifice and the raising of
children gives us the ability to step
outside of ourselves and see even if
only temporarily how we are all
connected. Even just looking at the
world through an entirely pragmatic,
rational lens, the human propensity for
violence and aggression is bound to be
checked by these restraining influences.
It's how we've gotten as far as we've
gotten as a species. We need that level
of cooperation. For all of our flaws,
every time humanity has edged closer to
the brink of total annihilation,
somehow self-preservation has kicked in
and allowed us to back off. Picture
this. It's 1983. The Cold War is at its
peak and a Soviet officer gets a
chilling alert. Five US nuclear missiles
are headed straight for Moscow. This
actually happened. His orders were to
launch a counter-strike. One push of a
button, we have nuclear Armageddon. But
he refused. Asked years later why he
didn't follow orders, and he simply said
he didn't want to make a mistake. His
name was Stannislav Petrov and he was
willing to face charges of treason in a
country where people were routinely
whisked away in the dead of the night
simply for knowing someone who did
something wrong. He knew it could be a
personal death sentence, but he went
with his gut and reported it as a false
alarm. Listen, while it's true that as
Alfred Henry Lewis said, there's only
nine meals between mankind and anarchy,
when things are stable, we're creators,
dreamers, and philosophers who can
imagine a world better than this. And we
are often willing to then fight to make
that imagined world real. This is not
all abstract. This restraining mechanism
that keeps humanity in check is culture
itself. Culture is evolution's secret
weapon for making our species what it
is. Unlike effectively every other
animal that is born already knowing how
to do the vast majority of things that
it will ever do, humans are born
helpless. We have a prolonged
adolescence where our brains are still
developing. We are sponges soaking up
everything we will need to survive from
first our parents and then from culture
at large. Which means all of us have to
be imbued with this desire to help.
Culture is the medium through which
humans propagate our wisdom, our morals
and our values. It's how we define what
we celebrate and what we condemn. It's
how we learn from our mistakes and
attempt to correct course. And this
culture, this way of us connecting to
each other is the thing that comes to
our rescue. Culture provides the moral
bounding box that tempers our most
savage instincts and ensures that the
long arc of history does indeed bend
towards justice. Take slavery. Despite
its overwhelming economic advantages,
countless people have sacrificed both
blood and treasure to ensure its
eradication. While the absolute number
of slaves remains shockingly high, the
percentage of the population living as a
slave has plummeted. In ancient Rome,
somewhere between 10 and 20% of the
population was enslaved. In some African
and Middle Eastern countries, at the
peak of the slave trade, up to 50% of
the population was enslaved. Now,
globally, the number is only a little
over a half of a percent. Slavery hasn't
just been reduced, it's been nearly
eradicated. Again, there's no doubt
human nature is paradoxical. It gave us
both the Nazis and Oscar Schindler. It
gave us both world wars and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
But unlike other animals that will rape
without remorse or kill the children of
their new mates when they take over a
group so they can mate and ensure the
resources go to their children, humans
at least have a profound restraining
impulse that acts like a leash on our
most horrifying impulses. Now, despite
the complexities of human nature, real
politique still maps the downstream
patterns with a high degree of accuracy.
Now having said all of that there is one
addition I would add to real politique.
It's an idea that lurks in the shadows
of the philosophy riding on the back of
human nature itself but I think it
warrants a distinction. It's James
Bernham's interpretation of
mchavelianism
like real politique. Burnham's analysis
is of how humans behave as a political
animal and it emphasizes realism and
pragmatism rejecting idealistic
interpretations of politics. But he goes
a little bit further, arguing that there
is an inevitability to how societies
form. They will always divide into
ruling elites and the masses they
govern. A division that remains constant
regardless of who's in charge or what
economic system they employ. Democratic
or authoritarian, capitalist or
communist, it really doesn't matter. You
will always have a small group of elites
that rule the country and then the
masses that just want to get on with
their lives. Bernham's focus on how
individuals rise to power inside of
their own countries is extremely useful
for trying to understand how the
dynamics of power work. Different kinds
of people will rise to power at
different times. And this is why regime
changes are so dangerous. The type of
person that comes to power in populist
moments or moments of extreme disorder
tend to be strong men who are gifted at
using force to get their way. Where real
politique diverges from classical
Mchavelianism is primarily in scope and
method. Mchavelli focused on individual
rulers and internal power struggles
whereas real politique expands this
thinking to the international stage
analyzing states and their interactions
through diplomacy alliances geopolitical
strategy and force. Mchavellianism on
the other hand fills in those gaps
showing what individuals are like inside
the game of politics. Real politique
then broadens these principles to global
power dynamics and systemic stability
across the globe, integrating diplomatic
nuance and the institutional frameworks
that govern a country's behaviors. But
you put them together, the nation state
level and the individual and the two
ideologies working together provide
insights at every level of analysis. And
to back up that claim, let's see if our
special brand of real politique combined
with Mchavelianism can explain the
global instability that we're all living
through right now. Welcome to part five.
Real politique explains the current
state of geopolitics. In 2008, Russia
struck Georgia, seizing the South in a
blitz of tanks and gunfire. A warning to
the West. Stay out of our sphere. But
they didn't listen. So in 2014, Russia
snatched up Crimea, grabbing it in a
lightning strike to secure a naval
stronghold and shove the West back.
Sensing Ukrainian weakness and a chance
to fortify their position, they then
took the Donbos and finally launched a
full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
While many seemed surprised, students of
real politique like John Merchimer saw
it as a predictable pattern from history
just repeating and repeating and
repeating. NATO's eastward creep lit a
fuse and Putin's aggression was the
inevitable explosion. Why? Because in an
anarchic world, only strength can check
strength. So Putin had to push back
against NATO's expansion. You don't need
to believe that Putin is an innocent
bystander in all of this, though.
Everyone wants to be the top dog. But
when you're playing a game of
thermonuclear chess, you better
understand that your adversary will
counter differently if you're attacking
their queen than they will if you're
attacking their pawn. No one on the
global chess board is playing in
isolation. Everything is move counter
move going back forever. That's why when
Tucker Carlson asked Putin why he
invaded Ukraine, his answer wasn't
simple. He started back in the 9th
century. For John Mirshimer, Russia's
aggressive actions from the 2008
invasion of Georgia through the ongoing
Ukraine conflict are just logical,
predictable consequences of Western,
particularly NATO, policies towards
Eastern Europe. His analysis grounded in
the realist concept of offensive realism
goes something like this. One, NATO
expansion is a provocation from the
West. In 2008, NATO announced at the
Bucharest summit, its intentions to
eventually admit Ukraine and Georgia
into NATO, which is designed
specifically to push Russia back. This,
according to Mirshimer, directly
threatened the Russian strategic
interests, and honestly, how could it
not? NATO is designed to keep Russia at
bay. Russia then responds by invading
Georgia later that year. For Russia,
this was meant to be punishment
essentially for the Western attempt to
move Georgia into NATO's sphere of
influence and away from Russia's.
Mirshimer's view is that this was not an
imperialistic move. It's a perfectly
rational and therefore predictable move
on the part of Russia because countries
will always do what they can to ensure
their security against perceived
threats. Then matters got worse when
Ukraine's 2014 Euromaiden revolution
ousted a pro-Russian government in Kev
and established a pro-western
orientation. According to Mirshimer,
there is no evidence of a direct US
conspiracy to topple the government in
Ukraine. But but nonetheless, they
encouraged Ukraine to embrace Western
influence and move away from Russian
influence. Russia responded predictably
by snatching up Crimea and supporting
separatist rebellions in eastern
Ukraine. If you're trying to encircle
them, they are going to push back. They
are going to move to increase their
margin of error. Mirshimer famously
criticized the West for leading Ukraine
down the primrose path, as he said,
saying that the West's push for
Ukrainian integration into NATO and the
EU provoked Russia into action. Now, you
can disagree with him, but it makes
sense that that's how they would see
these moves. According to Mirshimer,
Crimea's annexation was entirely
predictable as Russia was never going to
tolerate NATO advancing right up to its
borders. Imagine there's an organization
whose job it is to essentially use force
to keep you chill. Eventually, you're
going to have a problem as that
encroaches closer and closer and closer.
According to Mirshimer, you could watch
the buildup to the 2022 invasion of
Ukraine happening in real time. The West
continued to offer vocal support for
Ukraine's desire to join NATO. And by
offering military aid and training, NATO
only fueled Russia's insecurity. Rather
than sit back and take it, which is just
not what major powers do, Russia
launched their full-scale invasion in
February of 2022. Absolutely none of
that excuses Putin for invading Ukraine.
They're a sovereign nation. Something
can be both predictable and wrong. And
that's the key thing to understand about
real politique. It's not saying this is
how the world ought to be, as I have
hopefully said many times throughout
this thing. It is simply describing the
world the way that it is so that you can
predict how people are going to react.
And given that the US has just bombed
the life out of a sovereign nation that
we didn't want to get nuclear weapons, I
hope we can all see that if a nation is
strong enough, it will do whatever the
hell it wants in order to protect its
national interests. Real politique isn't
about mapping right and wrong. It's
about mapping cause and effect. Russia's
easy. What about Israel versus Hamas?
Real politique, I think, perfectly
explains what's going on there as well.
If Palestinians perceive Israel as
occupying land they believe is
rightfully theirs, imposing blockades,
maintaining what critics call an open
air prison, and perpetuating a glaring
inequality that is hyper vvisible to
anybody living along the border. The
groundwork for resentment is
unavoidable. Humans are wired to despise
extreme inequality. And I mean despise.
We cannot stand it when life isn't fair
and resentment is inevitably going to
follow. Given those circumstances, it
was pretty predictable, almost
inevitable that Hamas would eventually
strike with or without Iranian backing.
To be clear, understanding this
predictability does not justify the
horrific events of October 7th. It
merely highlights how power dynamics
play out logically in a deeply unequal
context. And once Hamas attacked on
October 7th, it became instantly
predictable that Israel would respond
forcefully with overwhelming military
superiority. There was virtually nothing
other than culture and international
opinion to even possibly restrain
Israel's response. In short, the fuse to
a perfect powder cake had been lit. Real
politique shows exactly how and why such
explosive conflicts emerge and escalate.
What about the US versus Iran? From a
realist perspective, Iran's actions stem
largely from its rational desire to
secure itself in a hostile neighborhood.
Iran sees the US's presence in the
Middle East, including military bases,
alliances with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and
Gulf States, as fundamentally
threatening. Thus, from Iran's
perspective, developing robust defense
capabilities, including possible nuclear
deterrence, makes rational strategic
sense. Iran support of proxy forces such
as Hezbollah, Houthies, and various
militias in Iraq and Syria represents
classic real politique balancing
behavior. Given his comparative weakness
against US and Israeli military might,
Iran leverages asymmetric warfare
tactics and alliances with non-state
actors to deter aggression and project
power regionally. America, on the other
hand, is in pursuit of hedgeimonyy.
America's goal in the region is to
maintain strategic dominance. Containing
Iran is important to ensuring we
continue to deepen our alliances through
mutual economic gain. We keep that oil
flowing, which keeps energy costs low.
And we prevent Iran from challenging
American and Israeli interests in the
region. And we stop a country who
screams death to America while burning
the American flag in parliament from
getting nuclear warheads and ballistic
missiles capable of eventually reaching
the US or any of our allies. For the US,
the ideal scenario under real politique
is ensuring Iran cannot become a
regional hedgeimon capable of
destabilizing American interests or
threatening our allies like Israel.
These conflicting goals made conflict
inevitable. It's sobering to look at
this exchange from both sides and see
the US Iran conflict as having emerged
naturally from different strategic
calculations rather than primarily from
different ideological stances. This
isn't about theocracy versus democracy,
even though I often find myself
overindexing on that. This is about how
countries desire power and control far
more than ideology. They want influence
and access to resources. They want to be
the king of the castle, at least in
their own region, if not the whole
world. Ideology plays a role, to be
sure, but it's more of a post hawk
rationalization than the core reason for
the conflict. Human nature tells us
ideology plays a role as the human
psyche is complex. But historical
patterns are much clearer when we
realize that people will justify just
about anything and I mean anything that
their culture allows and that aligns
with their strategic goals. This is why
religions evolve and modernize over
time. This is why alliances change as
the balance of power shifts. And this is
why the West has failed so miserably in
spreading democracy around the world.
Ideology just isn't what drives things.
It's in the car, but it's not the
driver. What drives the world is power.
All right. Now that we understand the
nature of nation states and how
countries battle for power in an
anarchic world, let's talk about how we
use that knowledge to win. Welcome to
the conclusion. What do we do now?
Dracula was a real man. He was the 15th
century ruler known as Vlad the Impaler.
And he offers one of the most distilled
examples devoid of ideology that history
has ever seen. When staring down an
invasion from the far more powerful
Ottoman Empire, Vlad took 20,000
captured Ottoman soldiers that he had,
impaled them, all on grease spikes so
they would die more slowly, and lined
them up along the road to the city as a
warning to the invading army. The
gruesome message worked, and the Ottoman
Empire stopped, turned, and left. While
today's world may not feature literal
force of impaled enemies, nations still
operate according to the same ruthless
calculus of power and self-interest that
Vlad the Impaler so viscerally
understood. Real politique is not
ancient history. It is alive and well
and manifesting itself in trade wars,
cyber attacks, nuclear programs,
geopolitical conflicts, ethnic
cleansing, and economic sanctions.
Nations continue to project power and
pursue self-interest, often at the
expense of morality. This matters
because understanding how the world
works is necessary to position yourself
well to stay safe and even profit off
the madness. I made my money in part by
understanding how sugar impacts the body
and how the government subsidizing corn
of all things was impacting
manufacturing. Ray Dallio generated
historic returns through his hedge fund
Bridgewater largely by understanding the
cause and effect relationship between
debt and market movements. Cause and
effect is the name of the game. Cause
and effect is what you want to
understand in your own life. Your odds
of seeing things other people miss go up
dramatically when you understand just
how the world works. We live in a time
of instability and accelerating global
disruption and the next 1 to 5 years are
poised to reshape our entire world. Your
choices are going to matter and being
cleareyed about politics and using the
lens of real politique is going to help.
To keep this video from being an
international relations trauma dump,
here are concrete actions you can take
immediately. Number one, don't pick
political teams. Whether you're
registered under a party or not, track
the cause and effect of policies rather
than always siding with your team.
Identify the north star that you're
trying to move towards and only champion
policies that can prove that they're
actually moving us towards that goal in
a way that we can measure. Two, navigate
the is versus ought tension in your own
life. Map your value system. Write it
down. People rebel against real
politique so hard because they are
grossed out by the cold logical way that
it looks at the world. Just because the
world is amoral doesn't mean you have to
be amoral. Real politique simply
acknowledges a difficult truth. Nation
states don't act based on how the world
ought to be. They act based on how power
struggles in an anarchctic world work.
Don't allow politicians to artificially
limit your option set. Never lose sight
of the fact that politicians work for
the people, not the other way around. If
you don't know your own values or the
northstar that you're steering towards,
you're going to blow with the wind.
Resist cynicism. Politics is downstream
of culture. We are all part of the
larger culture. Spend most of your time
focused on the beautiful things in your
life, the people you love, the things
you're trying to create. Vote for
politicians that understand the world as
it actually is. And please learn the
lessons of history. History loops
because people refuse to learn the
obvious lessons. As I say, a fool never
learns. A smart man learns from his
mistakes. And a wise man learns from the
mistakes of others. Be wise. Apply the
realistic lens to economics as well.
Money is a man-made system, and it has
gotten very dysfunctional. Be ready to
fight for your freedoms. In a world
governed by power, yours will be
stripped away from you if you're not
strong enough to defend yourself. Read
John Mirshimer's The Tragedy of Great
Power Politics and James Burnham's The
Makavevelians, Defenders of Freedom. All
right. The key to navigating the world
well is to have a mental model that
accurately maps real world cause and
effect. And while I wish we lived in a
moral universe, the reality is that
trying to map outcomes by assuming
people are following clear ideology that
they're going to be consistent with is
going to leave you consistently
scratching your head. Now, as I hope
I've shown here, nations are driven by
the cold logic of self-interest, power
projection, and survival. Whether it's
economic warfare, cyber attacks, or
kinetic conflicts, the underlying
evolutionary forces that make humans the
way we are remain unchanged. Therefore,
looking at the world through the lens of
real politique will have the highest
predictive validity. It's not a crystal
ball, but it certainly removes all of
the distraction of what politicians say
and focuses everyone on what power and
self-interest tell you they will
actually do. Without the confusing layer
of morality, the behavior of nation
states becomes far easier to predict.
The patterns of history become far
easier to see. That's not an endorsement
of immoral behavior. It's merely an
observation with a lot of predictive
power. All right, guys. If you want to
watch me explore ideas like this live,
make sure you join me for my lives
Wednesday and Friday at 6 a.m. Until
then, my friends, be legendary. Take
care. Peace. If you like this
conversation, check out this episode to
learn more. Imagine this. You wake up,
normal day. You buy a cup of coffee on
the way to work, but by nightfall, you
can't afford bread. It's not just you.
It's your entire country. The banks are
suddenly padlocked to avoid riots. ATM