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Sarah C. M. Paine

lines on the record: 162
first: 2023-10-04
most recent: 2023-10-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That system. And the Hitler territorial expansion is in a way, it's a real throwback to a pre-industrial revolution way of managing your national security. This is how traditional continental empires always did it. The Industrial Revolution with economic growth, compounding economic growth, offers a completely different alternative, which says we're going to do compounding wealth by having rules that we can all adhere to, and then we'll run our commercial transactions that way.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to flip this whole argument. So you're talking about people doing territorial conquests, right? And taking things and butchering enormous numbers of people to get it. You can watch this in real time in Ukraine. This is how it goes. You're butchering a lot of people. You're destroying wealth in an incredibly rapid clip. You can do that. But it's really wealth destroying. Since the Industrial Revolution in the West, There has been a growing consensus that that's probably not the way to do things. We are far better crafting international institutions, international laws, treaties that we sign on to, the parts that we want to, and then we adhere to them. And then that allows us to go all over the world running our little credit card transactions. No one kills us, and you can make a lot of wealth, right? Doing that. And that was the conclusion that if you look at since the Industrial Revolution, who's making all the money people who buy into it?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the problem with your question is that's not who Hitler was, right? He wrote in Mein Kampf exactly what he wanted to do and that what you're describing is not what he's about. If he were about combining with the West and taking parts of the Soviet Union, maybe, but that's not what he's about. He's about, has this whole genocidal program that goes with him? There's another issue is if you take too much, like if you're going to go kill off the Poles, the Poles never give up. They've gone through three partitions over their history. The Polish identity never disappeared. Then if you do that, it never goes away. You will never have stable borders. And then it's easy for others to fund insurgencies because you have this dominated population that hates being dominated. It's not stable.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A, I don't know, but B, I think he could make the ploy of I'm just a continuation of Bismarck. I'm finding these limited war. I'm uniting the German people. That one he could maybe be able to sell. That's why quit after Anschluss. The moment he's going into genocide against the Poles, because Poland's why Britain gets in the war, the once he's into Poland, we're off to a different race.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Turning his cars into tanks, and the people who built Liberty ships would it have been the same if you do not have scientists doing the Manhattan Project? Would it have been the same? And think about the enormous mobilization with the United States where Americans are all on board and in Britain and all over. So when you go, ah, Patton, Patton has a whole civilian architecture behind him. And so we tend to personify it as the general.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Initially, Hitler did incredibly well. I mean, his blitzkrieg incredible. And think about Hitler if he had stopped with the Anschluss or he gets Austria and he's going to take Czechoslovakia. And then he says, I'm uniting the German people. If he quit right there, he would have gotten away with it and probably be considered a brilliant leader by Germans. But then hubris, right? The Blitzkreed worked so well, his generals told him he couldn't do it, but of course it worked. And then he goes further and overextends, et cetera. When you look at what you think are great generals on the western side, they are great generals. But their success has to do with a whole lot of other people. Think about it. If we hadn't broken the codes, which is the British helped us do that and the Poles who brought out various Enigma machines and other things, would it have turned out the same? If you don't have Henry Ford, who's”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“NATO, all manner of things, that's a lot of it is coming off of World War I, the horrific war, and then doing a better job in World War II.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of it, and I think part of it's a different issue. If you think about who are the strategic leaders of World War II, they're the conscripts of World War I. When think about people slightly younger than you, maybe your age as well, if they survive to come off that front, then they come back and they want to start families. It's the Great Depression. It's terribly difficult. And then when they get to the age where they're going to be strategic leaders, they have the horror of sending their own children in. And so they thought deeply about what had gone wrong in World War I. This is in the West, particularly Britain and the United States. And their answer was institution building on a massive scale and integrating, it is all elements of national power. This is when you've had the National Security Act passed in the United States setting up all kinds of organizations, et cetera, National Security Council, among other things. And then you're setting up the United Nations.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's the individuals making their arguments for what they think the strategy should be. And I'll give you an excellent example of how the sausage is made. So I was using the Eisenhower Archives a number of years ago. So here's the Allied commander from World War II, then president of the United States. And what he would do is bring in all the relevant parties to whatever the decision is. He would have them recommend various courses of action and they would differ arguments and counter-arguments and then they would hash it out and come up with some kind of combination of all or choosing one of them. But yeah, there's going to be a big debate. People are going to have all kinds of different ideas. In fact, this is one of the great strengths of democracy is you have to listen to the counter argument or the counter argument is called you lose the election and the other party is in. But the notion that you're going to streamline it.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you look at countries that have not coordinated all instruments, for instance Japan in World War II versus Japan during the prior period of the Meiji Restoration, by the time the Japanese got into World War II, they're really prioritizing the army and the Navy too, but the military as their main instrument of national power, they are not coordinating with civilians, right? They assassinate those people, and they got into deep, dark trouble. They didn't listen to their finance minister who told them it was unaffordable. So yes, grand strategy is absolutely necessary. And the idea is you have national objectives. You want to increase security somewhere. You want to improve your own security. That would be your big objective. You want to improve trade, whatever. And then you need to think about all of these different instruments of national power and how you're going to coordinate. Those who don't coordinate get into deep, dark trouble.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Before I get going, I have to make an obligatory disclaimer, which is what I'm about to say or my views. They do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. government, let alone the U.S. Navy Department, and much less the place where I work, which is the U.S. Naval War College. Okay, so now that that's over on to grand strategy, yeah, it is useful. I'm going to define grand strategy as the integration of all relevant instruments of national power in the pursuit of national objectives. If you think about modern governments in the West, they have cabinets, right? And they sit before the president. Those cabinet portfolios represent the different instruments of national power. And can you imagine trying to run foreign policy without having those people at your table and coordinating?”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this notion that Stalin personally is responsible for these millions of deaths, there were millions of people pulling millions of triggers for all these deaths. Initially, Hitler did incredibly well. I mean, his Blitzkrieg incredible. If he had quit right there, he would have gotten away with it and probably be considered a brilliant leader by Germans. Putin, he's made a pivotal error. He has no backdown plan. He only has a double-down plan for the People's Republic to take Taiwan, I presume it's going to begin with an artillery barrage. I presume that's going to be leveling Taiwanese cities, right? Just watch how it goes in Ukraine. I can't imagine the Chinese being less brutal. You're going to say that's okay.”
2023-10-04 · Dwarkesh Podcast · Sarah C. M. Paine — Why dictators keep making the same fatal mistake · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source