Chris Blattman: War and Violence | Lex Fridman Podcast #273

what are your thoughts on the ongoing. war in ukraine how do you analyze it. within your framework about war. how far would they go to hang on to. power. when push came to shove. is i think the thing that worries me. the most and is plainly what worries. most people about the risk of nuclear. war like at what point does that uncheck. leadership. decide that this is worth it. especially if they can. emerge. from the rebels still on top.

the following is a conversation with. chris blattman professor at the. university of chicago studying the. causes and consequences of violence and. war. this he explores in his new book called. why we fight the roots of war and the. paths to peace. the book comes out on april 19th so you. should pre-order it to support chris and. his work. this is the lex friedman podcast to. support it please check out our sponsors. in the description and now dear friends.

here's chris. blattman. in your new book titled why we fight the. roots of war and the paths for peace. you're right quote let me be clear what. i mean when i say war. i don't just mean countries duking it. out i mean any kind of prolonged violent. struggle between groups that includes. villages clans gangs ethnic groups. religious sects political factions and. nations. wildly different as these may be their.

origins have much in common. we'll see that the northern irish. zealots colombian cartels european. tyrants liberian rebels greek oligarchs. chicago gangs indian mobs rwandan jenna. said dares a new word i learned thank. you to you. those are people who administer genocide. english soccer hooligans and american. invaders. so first let me ask what is war.

in saying that war is a prolonged. violent struggle between groups what do. the words prolonged groups and violent. mean. i sit at the sort of intersection of. economics and political science and i. i also dwell a little bit in psychology. but that's partly because i'm married to. psychologists sometimes do research with. her. all these things are really different so. if you're a political scientist you. spend a lot of time just classifying a. really narrow kind of conflict. and studying that and that's that's an.

important way to make progress uh as a. social scientist but i'm not trying to. make progress i'm trying to sort of help. everybody step back and say you know. what there's like some common things. that we know. from these disciplines. that uh relate to a really wide range. phenomenon basically we we can talk. about them in a very similar way and we. get really similar insights so i wanted. to. actually. bring them together but i still had to. like. say let's hold out individual violence. which has a lot in common but but.

individuals. choose to engage in violence for. more and sometimes different reasons so. let's just put that aside. so that we can focus a bit and let's. really put aside short incidents of. violence because those might have the. same kind of things explaining them but. actually there's a lot of other things. that can explain short violence short. violence can be really. uh. demonstrative like you can just i can. use it to communicate information. the thing that all of it has in common. is that it doesn't generally make sense.

it's not your best option most of the. time. and so i wanted to say let's take this. thing that should be puzzling we kind of. think it's normal we kind of think this. is what all humans do. but let's point out that it's not normal. and then figure out why and let's talk. about why and so that's so i was trying. to throw out the the short violence i. was trying to throw out the individual. violence i was also trying to throw out. all the. competition that happens that's not. violent that's that's the normal normal. competition i was trying to say let's.

talk about violent competition because. that's kind of the puzzle. so that's really interesting you said. usually. people try to find a narrow definition. and you said progress so you make. progress by finding a narrow definition. for example of military conflict. in a particular context yeah and. progress means. all right well how do we prevent this. particular kind of military conflict or. maybe if it's already happening how do. we de-escalate it and how do we solve it. so from a geopolitics perspective from.

an economics perspective and you're. looking for a definition of war that is. as broad as possible. but. not so broad that you cannot achieve a. deep level of understanding of why it. happens and how it can be avoided. right and a comment basically like. recognize that common principles govern. some kinds of behavior that look. pretty different like an indian ethnic. riot. is obviously pretty different than. invading a neighboring country right but.

uh and that's pretty different than two. villages or two gangs a lot of what i. work on is studying organized criminals. and gangs two gangs going to where you. think is really different and and of. course it is but. but there are some like common. principles you can just think about. conflict and the use of violence. and um. and not learn everything but just get a. lot just get really really far by sort. of seeing the commonalities rather than. just focusing on the differences so. again those words are prolonged groups. and violent can you maybe linger on each.

of those words what is prolonged mean. what's where's the line between short. and long what does groups mean. and what does violet mean so let me you. know i have a friend who um. someone has become a friend through the. process of my work and and writing this. book also uh who was. 20 30 years ago was a was gang leader in. chicago. so this guy named napoleon english or. nap. and i remember one time he was saying. well you know when i was young i used to. i was 15 16 and he'd go to the.

neighboring gangs territory says i'd go. gangbanging and i said well i didn't. know what that meant i said what does. that mean and he said oh that just meant. i'd shoot him up like i'd shoot at. buildings. i might shoot at people. i wasn't trying to kill he wasn't trying. to kill them he was just trying to sort. of. send a signal that he was a tough guy. and he was fearless and he was someone. who they should be careful with. and so i didn't want to call that war. right that was. that was. that's something different that was it.

was short it was kind of sporadic. and and he wasn't. and he was he was basically trying to. send them information and this is what. countries do all the time right we have. military parades. uh and we uh we might have border. skirmishes. and uh and and i wanted to sort of so is. it what's short is is it three-month. border skirmish a war i mean i don't i. don't try to get into those things i. don't want to but i want to point out. that like. these long grueling months and years of.

violence are like or the problem in the. puzzle and i just i didn't want to spend. a lot of time talking about um. the. international version of gang banging. it's a different phenomenon so what is. it about napoleon that doesn't nap let's. call him. not to add confusion yeah that doesn't. qualify for war is it the individual. aspect is it that violence is not. the. thing that is sought but the um.

communication of information is what is. sought. or is it the shortness of it. is it all of those com. it's a little bit i mean he was the head. of a group where he was becoming the. head of a group at that point um. and that group eventually did go to war. with those neighboring gangs which is to. say it was just long drawn out conflict. over months and months and months. but. i think one of the big insights from my. fields is that. you know you're constantly negotiating.

over something. right whether you're officially. negotiating or you're all posturing like. you're kind of you're bargaining over. something. and uh you should be able to. figure out a way to split that pie and. you could use violence. but violence is everybody's miserable. like if you're nap like if you start a. war one you know there's lots of risks. you could get killed that's not good. uh you could kill somebody else and go. to jail which is what happened to him. that's not good uh your soldiers get. killed no one's buying your drugs in the. middle of a gunfight so it interrupts.

your business and so on and on like it's. really miserable this is what we're. seeing right now you know as we're. recording you know the. russian invasion of ukraine is now its. fourth or fifth week everybody's. if it didn't dawn on them before it's. dawned on them now just how brutal and. costly this is. as you describe for everybody so. everybody is losing in this war yeah i. mean that's maybe the inside everybody. loses something from war. and. there was usually not always but this. the point is there was usually a way to.

get. what you wanted or be better off without. having to fight over it so there's this. it's just fighting is just. politics by other means and it's just. inefficient. costly brutal. devastating means and so that's like the. deep insight and so i kind of wanted to. say um so so i guess like what's not war. and i mean i don't i don't want i don't. try to belabor the definitions because. some some you know there's. reams and reams of political science. prof papers written on like what's a war. what's not award.

people disagree. uh. the. i just wanted to say war is the thing. that we shouldn't be doing or where's. the violence that doesn't make sense. there's a whole bunch of other violence. including. gang banging and skirmishes and things. that might make sense. uh precisely because they're cheap ways. of communicating or their their way. they're. they're not particularly costly where's. the thing that's just so costly we. should be trying to avoid is maybe like. the meta way i think about it. right uh nevertheless definitions are.

interesting so outside of the academic. bickering yeah every time you try to. define something i'm a big fan of it. the process illuminates. so the destination doesn't matter. because the moment you arrive at the. definition um you lose the power. yeah one of the interesting things i. mean so people you know if you want to. do you know some of what i do is just. quantitative analysis of conflict and. and if you want to do that if you want. to sort of run statistics on war then.

you have to code it all up and and then. lots of people have done that there's. four or five major data sets where. people or teams of people have over time. said we're going to code years of war. between these. groups or within a country and what's. interesting is how difficult these these. data sets don't often agree you have to. make all of these the decision gets. really complicated like when does the. war begin right does it does it begin. when a certain number of people have. been killed did it begin. did it what if there's like lots of.

skirmishing and sort of like little. terror attacks or a couple bombs lobbed. and then eventually turns into war do we. do we call that did do we back date it. to like when the first act of violence. started and then what do we do with all. the one the times when there was like. that low scale low intensity violence or. lob bombs lobbed and. do we do we call those wars but or maybe. only if they eventually get worse like. so you get it actually is really tricky. and the defense on the offensive aspect. so everybody.

uh hitler in world war ii. it seems like he never attacked anybody. he's always defending against the unjust. attack of everybody else as he's taking. over the world so that's like. information propaganda. that every side is trying to communicate. to the world so you can't listen to. necessarily information like self-report. data you have to kind of look past that. somehow maybe look especially in the. modern world as much as possible at the. data how many. bombs dropped.

how many people killed. how the number of the estimates of the. number of troops moved from one location. to another and that kind of thing and. then the other interesting thing is. there's um. quantitative analysis of war so for. example i was looking at just war index. or people trying to measure. trying to put a number. on what wars are seen as just and not oh. really i've never seen that. it's. there there's numbers behind it it's. great.

so it's great because again as you do an. extensive. quantification of justice. you start to think. what actually contributes to our. thought that for example world war ii is. a just war and other wars are not. um a lot of it is about intent and some. of the other factors like that you look. at which is prolonged the degree of. violence that is necessary. versus not necessary given.

the greater good some measure of the. greater good of people all those kinds. of things the then there's reasons for. war. you know looking. to free people or to. stop a genocide versus. uh conquering land all those kinds of. things and people tried to put a number. behind it and a lot based on i mean what. i'm trying to imagine is. i mean suppose i wake up and or is. whatever my suppose i think my god tells. me to do something. or or my my god thinks that uh or my.

moral sense thinks that something that. another group is doing is repugnant. i'm curious like are they evaluating. like the. validity of that claim or just the idea. that like well you said it was repugnant. you deeply believe that therefore it's. just i think uh now it could be. corrected on a lot of this but i think. this is always looking at wars after. they happened. so it's and trying to take a global. perspective from all. sort of a general survey of how people.

perceive so you're not weighing. disproportionately the opinions of the. people who waged the war yeah. i mean i i kind of ended up dodging that. because. i mean. one is to just point out that wars. actually most wars aren't necessary and. so. in the sense that there's there's. another way to. get what you wanted. um. and so on on one level there's no just. war now that that's not true because. take an example like the u.s invasion. afghanistan.

the united states has been attacked. uh there's a. culpable agent reliable evidence that. this is al-qaeda. they're being sheltered. by in afghanistan by the taliban. and then the taliban this is this is a. bit murky it seems that there was an. attempt to. say hand him over or else and and they. said no way. now you can make an argument that. invading and attacking is strategically. the right thing to do in terms of. sending signals to your future enemies.

or you just if you think it's important. to bring someone to justice. in this case al-qaeda then then you. maybe that's just war or that's a just. invasion. but it hinges on the fact that. the the other side just didn't do the. seemingly sensible thing which is say. okay we'll give them up. and uh and so so it was completely. avoidable. in one sense but if you believe and i. think it's probably true if you believe. that for their own.

ideological and other reasons. um. you know mulomar in particular and. taliban in general decided we're not. going to do this. uh then then now you're not left with. very many good choices. uh and now i. you know i didn't want to talk about is. that a just war is that what's justice. or not i just wanted to point out that. like it one side's intransigence if. that's indeed what happened one side's. intransigent sort of maybe compels you.

to. basically eliminates all of the. reasonable bargains that you could be. satisfied with and now you're left with. really no other strategic option but to. invade i think that's a slight. oversimplification but i think that. that's like. that's like one way to describe what. happened so your book is fascinating. your perspective on this is fascinating. i'll try to sort of play devil's. advocate at times to try to get a. clarity but the thesis is that. war is costly. usually costly for everybody so.

that's what you mean when you say nobody. wants war because you're going to. from a game theoretical perspective. uh nobody wins. and so. war. is essentially a breakdown of reason a. breakdown of negotiation of healthy. communication or healthy operation of. the world some kind of breakdown you. list all kinds of ways in which it. it breaks down but there's also.

there's also human beings in this mix. and there is ideas of justice so for. example i don't want to my memory. doesn't serve me well on which wars were. seen as justice very very few in the. 20th century of the many that have been. there. the the wars that were seen as just. first of all the most just war seen as. world war ii by far. um it's actually the only one. uh that goes above a threshold as seen. as just everything is seen as unjust.

it's it's uh less. it's like degrees of unjustness. and i i think the ones that are seen as. more just are the ones that are fast. that you have a very specific purpose. you communicate that purpose honestly. with the global community and you strike. hard fast and you pull out. uh to do sort of it's like rescue. missions it's almost like policing work. if there's somebody suffering you go in. and stop that suffering directly that's.

it. i think world war ii is seen in that way. that. there's an obvious aggressor. that is causing a lot of suffering in. the world and looking to expand the. scale of that suffering. and so you strike. i mean given the scale you strike car as. hard and as fast as possible to stop the. expansion of the suffering and so that's. kind of how they see i don't know if you. can kind of.

look with this. framework that you presented and look at. hitler and think. well. it's not in his interest. to attack. czechoslovakia poland. britain. france. russia. the soviet union. america the united states of america uh. same same with japan. what is it in their interest long-term.

interest i don't know i i it uh. so for me. who cares about alleviating human. suffering in the world. yes it's not it seems like almost. no war is just. but it also seems somehow deeply human. to fight. and i think your book makes the case no. it's not can you can you try to like get. at that because it seems that war there.

is some that. like drama of war seems to beat in all. human hearts like it's in there. somewhere maybe it's. maybe there's like a relic of the past. and we need to get rid of it it's deeply. irrational. okay so obviously we go to war and. obviously there's a lot of violence and. so. we have to explain something and and. some of that's going to be aspects of. our humanness so so i guess what i. wanted us to sort of start with. i think it was just useful to sort of. start and point out actually you know.

there's really really really really. strong incentives not to go to war. because it's going to be really costly. and so all of these other human or. strategic things all these things the. circumstantial things that will. eventually lead us go to war have to be. pretty. powerful before we go there and and most. of the time sorry to interrupt uh and. that's you why you also describe very. importantly that war throughout human. history is actually rare. we usually avoid it. you know most people don't know about.

the us invasion of haiti in 1994. i mean. a lot of people know about it but people. just don't pay attention to it we don't. we we're going to you know the history. books and school kids are going to learn. about the invasion afghanistan for. decades and decades and nobody is going. to put this one in the. in the history books and it's because it. it. didn't actually happen because. uh before the troops could land. the person who'd taken power in a coup. basically said fine. there's a famous story where where colin.

powell goes to haiti to this new. dictator who's refused to let a. democratic president take power. and um. and tries to convince him to step down. or else and he says no no and and then. he shows him a video and it's basically. troop planes and all these things taking. off. and he's like this is not live this is. two hours ago so. it's a and and basically he basically. gives up right there. so that was that's a powerful move yeah.

i think powell might have been one of. his teachers in like a u.s military. college because a lot of these military. dictators are trained at some point so. they had some there was some personal. relationships at least between people in. the us government and this guy that they. were trying to use the the point is and. that that's that's like what should have. happened like that makes sense right. like yeah i'm. maybe i can mount an insurgency. and yeah i'm not going to bear a lot of. the cost of work because i'm the. dictator and maybe he's human and he. just wants to fight or gets angry or. it's just in his mind whatever he's. doing but at the end of the day he's. like this does not make sense.

um. and that's what happens most of the time. but we don't write so many books about. it. and uh. and and and now some political. scientists go and they count up all of. the nations that could fight because. they have some dispute and they're right. next to another one another or they look. at the ethnic groups that could fight. with one another because they have. there's some tension and they're right. next to one another and. and then whatever some number like 999. out of a thousand don't. don't fight. um because they just find some other way. they don't like each other but they they.

just loathe in peace because that's the. sensible thing to do. and that's what we all do we loathe in. peace uh and we loathe the soviet union. in relative peace for decades and india. uh loathes pakistan in peace i mean two. weeks into the russian invasion of. ukraine again. it was in the newspapers but most people. didn't i think take note india. accidentally launched a cruise missile. at pakistan. and. common suit so they were like yeah this. is. we do not want to go to war this will be.

bad. uh. we'll ex will be angry but we'll accept. your explanation that this was an. accident and so um so these things find. to the radar. until we overestimate i think how. likely it is sides are going to fight. but then of course things do happen like. russia did invade the ukraine and didn't. find some. negotiated deal and so. uh and so then the book is sort of about. past the book it's just sort of laying. out. actually like there's just different.

ways this breaks down and some of them. are human. some of them are this. i i actually don't think war beats in. our heart. it does a little bit but. we're actually very cooperative we're as. a species we're deeply deeply. cooperative we're really really good so. the thing we're not we're okay at. violence and we're okay and we're okay. getting angry and vengeance and. we have principles that will sometimes. lead us but we're actually really really. really good at cooperation. and and so that's again you know i i. don't i'm not trying to write some big.

optimistic book where everything's going. to be great and we're all happy and we. don't really fight it's more just to say. let's start let's be like a doctor as a. doctor we're going to focus on the sick. right i'm going to try i know there's. sick people but i'm going to recognize. that the normal state is health and that. most people are healthy and and that's. going to make me a better doctor and. that's i'm kind of saying the same thing. let's be better doctors of politics in. the world by recognizing that like. normal state is health and then we're. going to. identify like what are the diseases that. are causing this warfare so yeah the.

natural state of the human body with the. immune system and all the different. parts. uh wants to be healthy and is really. damn good at being healthy but sometimes. it breaks down let's understand how it. breaks down yeah exactly so what are the. five ways that you list. that are the roots of war. yeah so i mean they're kind of like. buckets like there's sort of things that. rhyme. right in the interval you know because. it's not all the same there's like lots. of reasons to go to where there's this. great line. you know there's a reason for every war. and a war for every reason. and that's true and it's kind of.

overwhelming right and and it's. overwhelming for a lot of people it was. overwhelming for me for a lot of time. and i think i think one of the gifts of. this of social sciences actually people. have started to organize this for us and. i just tried to organize it like a tiny. bit better buckets that rhyme buckets. yeah some economics before right. metaphors so so the idea was that like. that basic instead of like something. overrides these incentives and and i. guess i was saying there's five ways. there that they get overrided and three. are i'd call strategic like they're kind.

of logical there's circumstances. that um and and this is they're sort of. where strategic is the strategy is like. the. the game theory is you could use those. two things interchangeably but but game. theory is sort of making it sound more. complicated i think than it is it's. basically saying that there's times when. this is like. the optimal choice because of. circumstances and and and one of them is. when the people who are deciding don't. bear those costs so. that's or or maybe even have a private. incentive that's gonna that's that's uh.

if they don't if they're ignoring the. cost then maybe the costs of war are not. so material uh that's a contributing. factor another is just there's. uncertainty and we could talk about that. but there's just the absence of. information means that actually there's. circumstances where it's your best. choice to. attack there's this thing that political. economists call commitment problems. which are basically saying there's some. big power shift that you can avoid by. attacking now so it's like a dynamic. incentive it's sort of saying well in. order to keep something from happening. in the future. i can attack now and because of the.

structure of incentives it actually. makes sense for me even the awards in. theory. uh. really costly or it is really costly. nonetheless. and then there's these sort of human. things. one's a little bit like just war one. sort of thing there's like ideologies or. principles or things we value. that weigh against those costs. like. exterminating the heretical idea. or standing up for a principle. might be so valuable to me that i'm. willing to use violence even if it's.

costly. and there's nothing irrational about. that. and then the fifth bucket is is all of. the irrationalities all the passions and. all of the most importantly i think like. misperceptions the way we get like we. basically make wrong calculations about. whether or not war is the right decision. we get our we miss we misunderstand or. misjudge our enemy. or misjudge ourselves so if you put all. those things into buckets so how much. can it be modeled. in in a in a simple game theoretic way. and how much of it is a giant human mess.

so four of those five are really. on some level easy to. think strategically and model in a. simple way. um. in the sense that any of us can do it. right we do this all the time you know. think of like bargaining in a market for. a carpet or something or whatever you're. bargained for. um. you're thinking a few steps ahead about. what your opponent's going to do. and you stake out a high price like a.

low price and the seller stakes out a. high price. and you might both say oh i refuse to. like i could never accept that and. there's all this sort of cheap talk. um but you kind of understand where. you're going and it's efficient to like. find a deal and buy the market by the. carpet eventually. um so we all understand this like game. theory and the strategy i think. intuitively or maybe even a closer. example is like suppose. i don't know you have a tenant you need. to evict or anyone normal like kind of.

legal or not it's not yet a legal. dispute right like we just have a. dispute with a neighbor or somebody else. most of us don't end up going to court. going to court is like the war option. that's the costly thing that we just. ought to be able to avoid we ought to be. able to find something between ourselves. that doesn't you know require this. hiring lawyers and a long drawn out. trial and most of the time we do. right and so so we all understand that. incentives and then. for those five buckets.

so everything except all the irrational. and the misperceptions are really easy. to model then from a technical. standpoint it's actually pretty tricky. to model. the misperceptions and i'm not a game. theorist uh and so i'm more channeling. my colleagues who do this and and what i. know. um but but it's not rocket science i. mean i think that's what i that's kind. of. what i try to lay out in the book is. like there's this all this all these. ideas out there that that can actually. help us just make sense of all these. wars. um and just some bring some order to the.

more ass of real reasons well to push. back. a lot of things in one sentence so first. of all rocket science is actually pretty. simple. people i think i'll i'll defer to you. actually well i think it's because. unfortunately it's very like engineering. it's very well defined the problem is. well defined the problem with humanity. is it's actually complicated so it is. true it's not rocket science but it is. not true it's easy because it's not. rocket science but. the.

the the problem the the downside of of. game theory. is not that it helps us make sense of. the world it projects a simple model of. the world that brings us comfort in. thinking we understand yeah and. sometimes that simplification. is actually getting at the core. first principles on understanding of. something and sometimes it fools us into. thinking we understand so for example i. mean. mutually assured destruction is a very.

simple model and people argue all the. time whether that's actually a good. model or not but you know there's. empirical fact that we're still alive as. a human civilization and also. in the game theoretic sense do we model. individual leaders. and their relationships. do we. the staff the generals. uh or do we also. um have to model the culture the people. the. the the suffering of the people the. economic frustration or the anger the.

distrust you have to model all those. things do they come into play uh and. sometimes i mean again we could be. romanticizing. those things from a historical. perspective but when you look at history. and you look at the way wars start. it sometimes feels. like a little bit of a misunderstanding. escalates. escalates escalates. and. just builds on top of itself and all of. a sudden it's an all-out war.

it's the escalation with nobody hitting. the brakes. so. so i mean you're absolutely right and. like in the sense that it's totally. possible to oversimplify these things. and take the game theory too seriously. and and some and and people who. study those things and write those. models and. people like me who use them sometimes. make that mistake i think that's not the. mistake that most people make most often. and it's actually true is i think most. people we're actually really quick.

whether it's the the u.s invasion of. afghanistan or iraq we're really quick. to blame that on. the humanness and the culture and that. so we're really quick to say oh this was. george w bush's either desire for. revenge and vengeance or some private. agenda or blood for oil. um so we're really quick to blame it on. these things and then we're really. we tend to overlook the strategic. incentives. to. to attack which i think were probably.

dominant i think those things might have. been true to a degree but i don't think. they were enough to ever you know bring. those wars about just like i think. people are very quick to sort of in this. current invasion to sort of. talk about putin's. um grand. visions of being the next catherine the. great or. or or nationalist ideals or. and and the mistakes and the. miscalculations were really quick to. sort of say oh that that must be and. then kind of pause and start not. possible maybe even stop there and not.

see some of the strategic. incentives and so. so i i guess we have to do both um but. the strategic i guess i would say like. the. war is just such a big problem it's just. so costly. that the strategic. incentives and and the things that game. theory has given us are like really. important in understanding why. there was so little room for negotiation. in a bargain that things like a leader's. mistakes start to matter or leaders.

nationalist ideals or delusions or. vengeance actually matters because those. do matter but they only matter when the. capacity to find a deal is so. narrow because of the circumstances and. so let's not. let's it's sort of like saying um like. an elderly person who dies of pneumonia. right pneumonia killed them. obviously but that's not the reason. mnemonia was able to kill them all of. the fundamentals and the circumstances.

were like made them very fragile and. that's how i think all the strategic. forces. make that situation fragile. and then the miscalculations and the all. these things you just said which are so. important are kind of like the pneumonia. and let's sort of let's pay attention to. both. and you're saying that people don't. disproportionately pay attention to the. it's hard i mean it wasn't to the. leaders it took me a long time to learn. to recognize them and it takes many. people you know it took and it took. generations of social scientists.

um years and years to figure. figure some of this out and to sort of. help people understand it and clarify. concepts so it's not it's just not that. easy now it's not hard i think it's. possible to just as i was taught a lot. of the stuff i write in the book in. graduate school or from reading and i. it's possible to communicate and learn. this stuff but it's still really hard. and so so so. that's kind of what i was trying to do. is like close that gap and just make it. help people recognize.

these things in the wild before we zoom. back out let me. at a high level first ask what are your. thoughts on the ongoing war in ukraine. how do you analyze it within your. framework about war. a russian colleague of mine constantine. tells this story about a visiting. ukrainian professor. who's at the university and one night. he's walking down the street and he's. talking on two cell phones at once for. some reason. and a mugger stops him. and demands the phones. and it's sort of like deadpan way.

constantine says you know and because he. was ukrainian he decided to fight. and. and i think that's a little bit like. what happened most of us in that. situation would hand over our cell. phones. and um and and so in this situation. putin's like the mugger. and the ukrainian people are being asked. to hand over this thing and they're. saying no we're not going to hand this. over and and the fact is. um most people do. most people faced with a superpower or a.

tyrant or an autocrat or a. murderous warlord who says. hand this over they hand it over. and uh and that's why. that's why there are so many unequal. imperial relationships in the world. that's what empire is empire is. success of people saying fine we'll give. up our some degree of freedom or. sovereignty because you're too powerful. and the ukrainian said no way uh this is. just too precious and so i said one of. those buckets where that there are.

there's a set of values there's. sometimes there's something that we. value. that is so valuable to us and important. sometimes it's it's terrible sometimes. it's the extermination of a another. people but sometimes it's something. noble like liberty or refusal to part. with sovereignty. and and in those circumstances people. will decide i will endure the costs they. probably i mean i think i think i think. they knew what they were probably. risking. um and so to me that that's not to blame. the ukrainians any more than i would.

blame. americans for the american revolution. it's actually a very similar story you. had a tyrannical. militarily superior. pretty non-democratic entity come and. say. you're going to have partial sovereignty. and americans for ideological reasons. said no way. and that you know people like bernard. bailey and other historians that's like. the dominant story of the american. revolution it was in the ideological. origins this attachment this idea of.

liberty and so i start now there's lots. of other reasons i think why. this happened but i think for me it. starts with ukrainians failing to make. that. sensible quote-unquote. rational deal that says. we should we should relinquish some of. our sovereignty because russia is more. powerful than we are. so there's a very clinical look. at the war. meaning there is. a man and a country vladimir putin.

that has. makes a claim on a land. builds up troops. and invades yep. the way to avoid. suffering there and the way to avoid. death and a way to avoid war. is to. uh back down and basically let. you know there's a list of interests he. provides and you go along with that.

um that's when the goal is to avoid war. uh let's do some other calculus. let's think about britain so. france. fought hitler. but did not fight very hard portugal. there's a lot of stories of countries. like this. and there is. winston motherfucking churchill. he's one of the rare humans in history.

who had that we shall fight on the. beaches. it made no sense. hitler did not say he's going to destroy. britain he seemed to show respect for. britain he wanted to. keep the british empire he it made total. sense but it was obvious that britain. was going to lose if hitler goes all in. on britain as he seemed like he was. going to and yet winston churchill. said a big fu yeah. similar thing. zelensky and the ukrainian people.

said fu in that same kind of way. so i think i think we're saying the same. things i'm i'm being more clinical about. it well i'm trying to understand. and we won't know this. but which path minimizes human suffering. in the long term. well. on the eve of the war ukraine was poor. in a per person terms than it was in. 1990 the economy is just completely. stagnated. in russia meanwhile like many other.

parts of the region sort of boomed. to a degree i mean certainly because of. oil and gas but also for a variety of. other reasons and putin's consolidated. political control and. and from a very cold-blooded and. calculated point of view i think one way. putin and russia could look at this is. this look we were temporarily weak after. the ball. of the iron curtain. and the rest in the west basically took. advantage of that like bravo you pulled. it off you basically crept democracy and. capitalism all these things right up to.

our border. and now we have regained some of our. strength we've consolidated political. control we've cowed our people. we have a stronger economy and we. somehow got germany and other european. nations to give up energy independence. and actually just we've got an enormous. amount of leverage over you and now. we want to roll back some of your. success because we. we're powerful enough to demand it. and and you've been taking advantage of. the situation. which is.

maybe a fair. impartial analysis. and uh in the west but more specifically. ukraine said but that's a price too high. which i totally respect i would maybe. i'd like to think i'd make that same. decision but that is that's the answer. if the answer is why would they fight if. it's so costly why not find a deal it's. because they weren't willing to give. russia the thing that their power. said they quote unquote deserve just. like americans said to the briton yeah.

of course you you we ought to accept. semi-sovereignty. um but we are just we refuse. and we'd rather endure. a bloody fight that we might lose. than than take this and so. um so you need some of these other five. buckets you need them to understand the. situation you need to sort of. there are other things going on but i. but i do think it's fundamental that. there's just that this. it this noble. intransigence is like a big is a big.

part of it. well let me just say a few things if. it's okay yeah so your analysis is um. is clear and objective. my analysis. is neither clear nor objective. first. i've been going through a lot i'm a. different man over the past four or five. weeks than i was before. i. in general have come to.

there's anger. i've come to despise leaders in general. because leaders wage war and the people. pay the price for that. war let me just say. on this point of standing up to an. invader. that i am half ukrainian half russian. that i'm proud of the ukrainian people. whatever the sacrifice is whatever the. scale of pain.

standing up. there's something in me that's proud. maybe that's. maybe that's whatever the. fuck that is. maybe that blood runs in me. i love the ukrainian people love the. russian people. and whatever that fight is whatever that. suffering is the millions of refugees. whatever this war is the dictators. come to power and the their power falls. i just love that that spirit burns.

bright still. and i do. maybe i'm wrong in this to see ukrainian. and russian people as one people. in a way. that's not just cultural geopolitical. but just given the history. i think about. the same kind of fighting. when hitler with all of his forces. chose to invade the soviet union. operation barbarossa. when he went and that russian winter. and you know a lot of people and that.

pisses me off because if you if you know. your history. it's not the winter that stopped hitler. it's the red army it's the people that. refused to back down they fought proudly. that pride. that's something. that's the human spirit. that's in war you know war is hell. but it really pushes people to. to stand for the things they believe in.

it's the the william wallace speech from. braveheart i think about this a lot. that does not fit into your framework no. no i'm gonna disagree i i think it. totally fits in and it's it's this. there's nothing irrational about what we. believe. especially those principles which we. hold the most dear right i'm i'm merely. trying to say that there's a there's a. calculus there's one calculus over here. that says. russia is more powerful than it was. 20 years ago and even 10 years ago and.

ukraine is not. and it's asking for something. and and there's an incentive to give. that up. that's obvious like there's an incentive. to comply but my understanding is many. of these post-soviet republics. have appeased. right which is what we call compromise. when we disagree with it. they've. all of these other peoples in the. russian sphere of influence have. have not stood up. uh and russians. many russians have tried to stand up and. they've been beaten down.

and now. people have. we'll see but people have not been. standing up very much. and so. lots of people are cowed and lots of. people have a piece and lots of people. hear that speech and think i would like. to do that but but don't. and and so and my point is that. sadly we live in a world where a lot of. people. uh get stepped on by. tyrants and empire and whatnot and don't. rise up and so so i think we could.

admire especially. when they stand up for these reasons and. i think we can admire churchill for that. reason i think we could that's why we. admire the leaders the american. revolution and so on but doesn't always. happen and i i don't actually know why. but i don't think it's irrational i. think it's just it's it's something it's. about a set of values and it's hard to. predict. and it was hard for. hard i i. putin might not have been out of line. and thinking just like everybody else. in my share of influence they're gonna. roll over to.

and i should mention. because we haven't that a lot of this. calculation. from an objective point of view you have. to include united states and nato into. the pressure they apply into the region. that said. i care little about leaders. that do. cruel things onto the world. they lead to a lot of suffering but i. still believe that the russian people. and the ukrainian people are great. people that stand up and i admire people.

that stand up. and are willing to give their life and i. think. russian people are very much. um that. too especially when the enemy is. coming for your home over the hill yeah. sometimes standing up. to an authoritarian regime is difficult. because you don't know. it's not. a monster that's attacking your home. directly it's kind of like the boiling.

of a lobster or something like that it's. a slow. control of your mind and the population. and our minds get controlled even in the. west by the media by the narratives. it's very difficult to wake up one day. and to realize. uh sort of what people call. red pilled. is to see that they're. you know maybe the thing i've been told. all my life is not true and at every. level that's the thing very difficult to.

do in north korea. very in the more authoritarian the. regime the more difficult it is to see. maybe this idea that i believe. that i was willing to die for is. actually evil it's very difficult to do. for americans for russians for. ukrainians for chinese for indians for. pakistanis. for everybody i think thinking about. this. ukrainian whether you want to call it. nobility or intransigence or whatever. is is key i think um. the authoritarian-ness of russia and.

putin's control or the control of his. cabal is the other thing i would really. point to is what's going on here and if. i had to if you ask me like big picture. what do i think is the fundamental cause. of most violence in the world i think. it's unaccountable power i think in fact. for me an unaccountable power is the. source of underdevelopment it's the. source. of pain and suffering it's the source of. of warfare it's basically the root. source of most of our problems. and in this particular case. it's also one of our buckets in the.

sense that like why what is it that why. did russia ask these things like well it. was democracy in the uk in ukraine a. threat to an average russian. no was capitalism is nato is whatever. is this a threat to average russians no. it's a threat to. the. bullet apparatus of political control. and economic control that putin and. cronies and this sort of. group of people that that rule this.

elite in russia. um. it was a threat to them and so they had. to ask. the ukraine to be neutral or to give up. nato or to have a puppet government or. whatever they were seeking to achieve. and have been trying to achieve through. other means for. decades right they've been trying to. undermine these things without uh. invasion. and they've been doing that because it. threatens their interests and that's. like one of these other logics of war. it's not just that there's something. that i value so much that i'm willing to. injure the cost it's that there are.

people. not only do does this oligarchy or. whatever elite group that you want to. talk about in russia not. first of all they're not bearing. something they're bearing some costs of. war right they're very and they're. certainly bearing cost of sanctions. um but they are. they don't bear all the costs of war. obviously and so they're more they're. quick to use it but more importantly. like. in some sense it i think there's a. strong argument that they had a. political incentive to invade and or at. least to ask ukraine this sort of.

impossible to give up thing and then. invade despite ukrainian. nobility and transitions. because they were threatened. um and so. so that's extremely important i think. and so that's. those two things in concert make this a. very fragile situation that's i think. why we ended up. is go go not all the way but a long way. to understanding now you can layer on to. that. these intangible incentives these other.

things that are valued that are valued. on putin's side maybe there's a. nationalist ideal maybe. he. seeks status and glory like maybe those. things are all true and i'm sure they're. true to an extent. and and and that'll weigh against his. costs of war as well but fundamentally i. think he just saw his regime as. threatened that's what he cares about. and. and and so he asked he made he made this. cruel list of demands. i mean i would say i'm just one human. who the hell am i but i'm i just have a. lot of anger.

towards the elites in general. towards leaders in general. that failed the people. i would love. to hear and to celebrate. the beautiful russian people the. ukrainian people and anyone who silences. that beautiful voice of the people. anywhere in the world. is destroying the thing that. i value most about humanity leaders. don't matter they're supposed to serve.

the people. this nationalist idea. of a people of a country. is only makes any sense when you. celebrate when you give people. um the freedom. to show themselves. to celebrate themselves and the the. thing i imagine i care most about is. science. and. the silencing of voices in the. scientific community the silencing of. voices period.

fuck any leader that silences that. human spirit. um. there's something about this it's like. whenever i look at world war ii whenever. i look at wars. it does seem very irrational to fight. but man. does it. seem somehow deeply human when the. people stand up and fight and there's. something. uh. that if you know we talked about. progress.

that feels like how progress is made. the people that stand and fight so let. me read the churchill speech. it's such. i so proud that we humans can stand up. to evil when the time is right i guess. here's the thing though think of what's. happening in xinjiang in china we have. we've appeased china. we've basically said you can just. do. really really really horrible things in. this region and we're you're too. powerful for us to do anything about it.

and it's not worth it. and and there's nobody standing up and. making a churchill speech. or uh the braveheart speech about. standing up for people of of xinjiang. when when what's happening is um on you. know in that in that in that realm of. what was happening in europe. and and that's happening in a lot of. places. um and then when we when when there is a. willingness to stand up. people there's a lot of opposition to. those you know people you know so there. were a lot of reasons for the invasion.

of iraq. um for some it was humanitarian things. like. saddam hussein was one of the worst. tyrants of. the 20th century. he was just doing some really horrible. things you know he'd invaded kuwait he'd. you know committed domestic. attempted domestic genocide and all. sorts of repression and it was probably. a mistake to invade in spite so it's. important not just to select on the. cases where we stood up and to select on. the cases where that ended up working.

out. uh in the sense of victory. right it's important to sort of try to. judge not judge but just try to. understand these things in the context. of. all the times we didn't. give that speech or when we did and then. it just went sideways well that's why. it's powerful when you're willing to. give your life for your principles. because most of the time. you get neither the principles. nor the life you get you die that's what.

but that's why it's powerful we shall go. on to the end we shall fight in france. we shall fight on the seas and the. oceans we shall fight with growing. confidence and growing strength in the. air we shall defend our island whatever. the cost may be we shall fight on the. beaches we shall fight on the landing. grounds we shall fight in the fields and. in the streets. we shall fight in the hills which shall. never surrender. this is. before hitler had any major loss to.

anybody. that was a terrifying armada coming your. way we shall never surrender i just want. to give props. uh i want to give my respect as a human. being. uh to churchill to the british people. for standing. up to the ukrainian people for standing. up. and for um and to the russian people. these are great people. that throughout history have stood up to. evil.

let me ask you this because you quote. sun tzu in the art of war. there's no instance of a country having. benefited from prolonged warfare this is. the. main thesis. can we just linger on this. since leaders wage war and people pay. the price when we say that there's no. reason to do prolonged war. is it possible to have a reason for the. leaders if they disregard the price. sort of like. uh if they have a different objective.

function or utility function that. measures the price that's paid for war. is that one explanation. of why war happens is the leaders just. have a different calculus than other. humans. i mean i think this links us back to. what we were talking about earlier about. just war is in some sense just war. is saying. that in spite of the costs that there's. some. our enemy has done something our. opponent has refused to compromise on. something that we find essential.

and is demanding that we compromise in a. way that's completely repugnant. and. therefore we're going to go to war. despite these. material costs and these human costs so. that and and and that's and then and. then that principle that you go to war. on is in the eye of the beholder and i. mean i think liberty and and and. sovereignty i think we can understand. and sympathize with and maybe that's. just a universe maybe that's the. greatest cause of just war but other. people make that.

could go to war for something. considerably less a principle that's. considerably less noble right which is. what hitler was doing. um. that's an explanation so that's a whole. class of explanations. that helps us understand that the. compromise that was on the table given. the relative balance of power was just. repugnant at least to one side if not. there's something they're unwilling to. part with that's. and then. you get to the leaders well what happens. when what the leaders want. when what happens when the leaders are. detached from the interests of their. groups which has been true for basically.

most of human history there's a narrow. slice of societies. in the big scheme of things that have. been accountable to their people a lot. of them exist today. where to some degree they're channeling. the interests of their group. right so the ukrainian politicians. didn't concede to these cool russian. demands. because even if they had it would have. been political suicide because it seemed. i think i don't it seems that the. ukrainians would have just rejected this. so they were in some sense channeling.

the values of the broader population. even if they. i don't know what was going even and if. they didn't share those principles. they self-interestedly. followed them probably they shared them. but i'm just saying that even if they. didn't they wouldn't compromise. occasionally you get the reverse which. is where the leaders are not accountable. and now they have some value which could. be glory. i mean this is the story of the kings. and to some lesser extent the queens of. europe. for hundreds of years was it was.

basically a contest and it was this war. was the sport of kings and to some. extent they were just seeking status. through violent competition and they. paid a lot a big price out of the royal. purse but but. uh but they didn't bear most of the. suffering. um and and so they were too quick to go. to war. and so that's. i think that. detachment of leaders. combined with you know you mingle it. with this that one bucket that.

uncheckedness and you mingle that with. the fact that that leaders might have. one of these values noble or otherwise. that carry them to war combined to. explain. a good number of conflicts as well. and that's a good illustration of why i. think like autocracy and. unaccountable power. is. i could make that story for all of those. things all five buckets they're all. we're all more susceptible to these. things all five of these things when. leaders are not accountable to the.

people and their group. and uh and that's what makes it like the. meta. for me the metacause of of conflict in. all of human history and sadly today. does the world to power play into this. the desire for power. like that's a human thing again in the. calculation. that. shall we put that in the misperceptions. bucket. or is it. those misperceptions essentially. about interaction between humans and.

power is more about. the thing you feel in your heart when. you're alone as a as a leader. you know i said there were three. strategic reasons like the then check. leaders the commitment problems. uncertainty there are two sort of more. psychological and i call them intangible. incentives and misperceptions the way. that like a game theorist or the way. that a behavioral economist would think. about those two was just to say. preferences. and then. erroneous beliefs and mistakes it's like. so the pro our preferences are our. preferences yeah right and so utility.

functions whatever we want to call it. like there's not. that's why i wouldn't call them a. misperception or rationality. we want we like what we like yeah if we. like power if we like relative status if. we like. uh. if we like our racial purity if we like. our liberty if we like whatever it is. that we have convinced ourselves we. value maybe you fell in love with the. rival queen a king exactly when i said. it was a big bucket full of stuff that. rhymes like that's a pretty messy bucket.

like there's a lot of different stuff in. there and i'm just trying to say like. let's be clear. that. just about the law the shared logic of. these things is maybe just you know. they're really dissimilar but let's be. clear about the shared logic. uh and if it were true that deep down we. were aggressive people who just liked. violence and enjoyed the blood. or some percentage of us do that would. be there too. um. and so. i just want to say that's. but you know we're really quick to.

recognize those right when we diagnose a. war as an armchair analyst or as a. journalist or something. we really jump to those we don't need a. lot of help. to like see those happening. we so we probably put a little bit too. much emphasis on them is maybe the only. thing that i would caution. because we're the others are more subtle. and they're often there and they. contribute. so i just to look at something you said. before. would it be accurate to say when the. leaders become detached.

from um the opinion of the people. is that's more likely to lead to war. so. uh and mechanically it's just they're. gonna bear fewer costs so it's gonna. it's gonna basically narrow the set of. deals that they're going to be willing. to accept instead of violence at the. same time most of the time. it's not enough because the leaders. still bear a lot of costs of war you. could be deposed you could be killed you. could be tried.

and the public purse is going to be. empty that's like the one story. throughout history is at the end of the. day your regime is broke as a result of. war and so you still internalize that a. little bit. um if i had to say like you know in my. three buckets or through my bucket so. far i sort of started with like. ukrainian intransigence. and then i jumped and then i said the. essentially then you really have to. understand russian autocracy for just to. understand why they would ask. something so cool but i mean i think the.

uncertainty. is really. important here as well like if you think. about like think of all the things the. way this is played out and just in some. ways how many how in how many ways we've. been surprised we've been surprised by. the unity and the coherence of the west. and the sanctions that's sort of what's. happened is it was in the realm of. possibility but it was sort of like the. best case scenario from the. perspective of the west and the worst. case scenario for the russians. the second thing is just the pluckiness. and the effectiveness and the.

intransigence and the nobility of this. ukrainian resistance that's again was. within the realm of possibility but. wasn't necessarily the likely thing. right it was again maybe the worst. realization for russia the best. realization in some sense for. in terms of revealed strength and. resolve. um. and then the other thing that's been. revealed is just how. like the from the corruption and. ineptitude and problems on the russian. military side them again. within the realm of possibility maybe. people who really knew the russian.

military are less surprised than the. rest of us but but also. one of the worst possible draws for. russia and so. putin asking this. terrible price. and expecting. ukraine to roll over. or the west to roll over at least to a. degree. was. based on like a different set of. probably it was based on just expecting. something in the middle of the. probability distribution and not one of. all these different tail events and so. the fact that the world's so uncertain.

and the fact that putin can come with a. different set of expectations than the. ukrainians in the west and all these. players can. just have a hard time agreeing on just. what the facts are because we live in an. uncertain world everyone's quick to say. oh we miscalculated well i'm not i don't. know if he miscalculated i think he just. he got a really bad draw. on in terms of the what the realized. outcomes are here and so that i mean. good for everybody else in some sense. except you know the fact that it's. involving a lot of violence is the. tragedy so uh well there's also economic.

pain yeah just for the russian people. and the ukrainian people but the whole. world the whole world yeah so it. you know. uh you could talk about. things that you we are surprised from an. analysis perspective of. small victories here or there but i. think it's universally true that. everybody loses once again. in this war right and so the question is. is like. when does it you know why did why did. russia choose to invade when ukraine.

didn't give this up well russia. anticipated that it would be able to. seize. what it wanted the the available bargain. that it deserved quote unquote based on. its power in the world it wasn't getting. and so it thought it could take that. and and the uncertainty around that made. it potentially more likely that he would. choose to do this but in particular one. of the other things that i think is. probably less important this context but. still plays a role but less important. than many wars is the is the fact that.

it's really hard to resolve that. uncertainty. right in theory. ukraine should be able to say look. this is exactly how resolved we are. we're super resolved. and your military is not as strong as. you think it is you mean before the. conference before the conference. everybody should be like you know on the. table here. no one wants yeah here's your cards. exactly like that's as a competitor in. this you can use that uncertainty to. your advantage i can try to convince you. i can bluff yeah all right and so anyone.

who's ever played poker and bluffed or. called a bluff. that's the inefficiency that's like. that's the analogy in some ways to war. it's not the perfect analogy but it the. the uncertainty in the circumstance you. don't have to miscalculate the fact that. you if you bluff and lose this wasn't. that you miscalculated you made an. optimal choice given the uncertainty of. the situation to take a gamble and that. was a wiser thing for you to do than to. not bluff. and just to fold or to just not. paying in that round and so the. uncertainty the situation gives both.

sides incentives to bluff gives neither. side an incentive to try to reveal the. truth and then at some point the other. side says you know what you say you're. resolved. you say you're not you're going to mount. an insurgency well guess what. every other. you know people on my border has folded. and you're gonna fold two the minute the. tanks roll in and the minute the air. force comes in i'm gambling that you're. bluffing. and uh and so we that. that inherent uncertainty of the.

situation just. causes a lot of. short wars actually. because. it's this sort of bluff and and call. dynamic that goes on and you know the. thing that's worth wrecking is we might. end up. at a place in a few months where. the thing that ukraine concedes. is not so far from what russia demanded. in the first place. russia wanted i want. a neutral. i mean who knows how it's not the.

ambitious thing the russians wanted but. if we end up in a place where ukraine is. is. effectively neutral never joins nato. is not being militarily supplied by the. by the west. uh and where. russia has de facto control over the. east and crimea if not fully recognized. probably who knows if they'll get ever. internationally and ukrainian recognized. but effectively controls. russia will have.

accomplished. what it asked for in the first place and. and both parties had to. get there through violence rather than. through negotiation and you wouldn't. need misperceptions and mistakes and you. wouldn't need. putin's. delusions of glory or whatever to get. there you would just need the. ingredients i've given so far which is. like a an unwillingness to do that. without fighting. on the part of the ukrainians. uh an autocratic leadership in russia.

who would make those demands because. it's in their self-interest and then. uncertainty leading them to. to fight. and. and and and that sadly is like the best. case that feels like the best case. scenario right now. which is the war is just five months. and not five years. given the current situation given the. current situation. because. the the suffering has already happened. it lost homes people moving.

you know. having to see. their um. their home in rubble and. millions of people refugees having to. escape the country. um. and. hate flourishes versus the common. humanity as as it does with war. and. on top of all of that if we talk from a. geopolitic geopolitical perspective. the war mongers.

all over the world. are sort of uh drooling. they now got narratives. and they got the whatever narratives you. can go shopping for the narratives the. united states has its narratives for. whatever geopolitical thing he wants to. do in that part of the world. um. that's another that's another little. malevolent interaction between two of. these buckets like those unchecked. leaders and those intangible incentives. those preferences. is that.

un unchecked leaders spent autocrats. whatever spend. enormous amounts of time trying to. manipulate the values and beliefs of. their population of their group yeah. right and they now sometimes they do it. nobly but that's what winston churchill. there was trying to it's not clear that. britons were like ready to stand up. there were a lot of americans and a lot. of britons who were like you know what. hitler not such a bad guy his ideas not. so terrible i never liked those jews. anyways they many were thinking right we. had political leaders in the u.s who.

were basically. not pro-nazi but were just not. anti-nazi. and churchill was just trying to instill. a different. resolve he was trying to create that. thing he was trying to create that value. and in the american revolution it was as. well like the founding fathers the. leaders of the revolution weren't it's. not that everybody just woke up one. morning in the united states and had. this ideology of liberty and freedom. some of that was true it was out there. in ether but they had to manufacture and. create it. you know in a way that i think they.

believed and was noble but. there's a lot of manufacturing and. creation of these values and principles. that is not noble and that is exactly. what hitler did so well. yeah. the anti-semitism was present throughout. the world. but the the more subtle thing that i. feel like may be. more generally applicable. is this kind of pacifism. that i think people in the united states. felt like it doesn't it's not my.

conflict why do i need to get involved. with it and i think uh churchill was. fighting. um that the general. apathy um it's like. it's the apathy. of rational calculus like uh. it's like what are we going to gain if. we fight back. like. hitler seems to be pretty reasonable. he's saying he's not going he's going to. stop the bombing that you're still going. to uh maintain your sovereignty.

as the great people of britain like why. why are we fighting again and that's the. thing that's hard to break because you. have to say well. you have to speak to principle you have. to speak at some greater sort of. long-term vision. of history so like. yes. now it may seem like it's a way to avoid. the fight. but you're actually just sort of putting. shackles on yourself you're destroying.

the very greatness of. of our people if we don't fight back and. to think about this with like the. current case with russia i mean some. people look at. putin's speeches. and papers he's written on. ukraine. historically being a part of russia and. trying to deny the. basically create all these nationalist. narratives and they think well putin. really believes and he might putin. really believes this and that's why he's. invading and that might also be true and. that would. contribute to.

just make a peaceful bargain even harder. to find but i i suspect what's at least. a minimum true is putin's trying to. manufacture. support for an invasion in the. population through propaganda. and um. and so he's doing. on some level the same thing that. winston churchill was doing in. mechanical terms which is to try to. manipulate people's. references and. but. doing it in a in a sinister malevolent.

evil self-serving way because it's. really in his interest whereas. this was anything but right in the. churchill example the dark human thing. is like. uh there's moments in. world war ii where hitler's propaganda. he began he began to believe his own. propaganda. it's like i think he probably always. believed i think he was a sincere. believer. well no no there's but there's a lot of. places. in um where there was uncertainty yeah.

and they decided to do propaganda. and that propaganda resolved the. uncertainty in his own mind. like so for example he believed until. very late that america is a weakling. militarily and as an economic power and. just the spirit of the people and like. that was part of the propaganda they're. producing and because of that propaganda. when he became the head of the army he. was making military actions he like. nonchalantly started war with america.

with the united states of america where. did he didn't need to at all he could. have avoided that completely but he. thought ah whatever doesn't they're easy. so that that's has i think that. propaganda first belief second and i. think as a as a. as a human being as a dictator when you. start to believe the lies. with which you're controlling the. populace you're not able to you become. detached from this person that's able to. resolve. in a. uh very human way the conflict in the. world i mean when i said the meta the.

the big common factor that causes warn. over and over and over again is. unaccountable power it's not just. because it's mechanically like one of my. five explanations to saying well if. you're unaccountable you don't bear the. cost of war you might have private. incentives so yes bargains are harder to. find but it leads to all these nasty. interactions so early i said there's. this interaction between the values. and the unchecked leaders because those. idiosyncratic values of your leader. become more important when they're. unchecked but the uncertainty point you. just made is like a deep point it's to.

say actually that like the fundamental. problem that all autocrats have is an. information problem because nobody wants. to give them the right information and. they they have very few ways to. aggregate information if they're not. popular right and so so there's a whole. cottage industry of political science. sort of talking about why do. like why autocrats love. fixed elections and why they love. twitter and why they actually like it in. a controlled way is it it solves an. information problem like that's your.

cruci if you're like xi jinping or or or. vladimir putin you need to solve an. information problem just to avoid having. rebellion on your hands in your own. country every day because. uncertainty kind of gets magnified and. you get all this distorted information. in this apparatus of control and so that. so that's like another nasty interaction. between uncertainty. and unchecked leaders is you end up. in this situation where you're getting. bad information and and you it's not. that you don't you believe your own lies.

it's just that you never you sort of. believe you're sort of averaging what. you believe over the available. information and you don't realize that. it's such a distorted and biased. information source. one of the other things about this time. there was a surprise to me in in the fog. of uncertainty. how. sort of seemingly. likely nuclear war. became.

not likely but. how it less unlikely than before exactly. that's a better way to say it it started. to. take a random. stroll away from zero percent. probability into this kind of land of. maybe like it's hard to know but it's. like oh wow we're actually normally. talking about this as if this is part of. the calculus part of the options but. before we talk about nuclear war because. i'm going to need a drink. do you need to go to the bathroom sure. i'll take a break.

so back to nuclear war. what do you think about this that people. were nonchalantly speaking about. nuclear wars if it doesn't lead to the. potential annihilation of the human. species. um. what are the chances that our world. descends into nuclear war within your. framework with you you wear many hats. yeah one is uh sort of. the. and now uh analyst right and then one is.

a human what do you think of the chances. we get to see nuclear war in this. century well you know the the doomsday. the official doomsday clock for nuclear. warfare sits in the lobby of my building. um the bulletin of atomic scientists. sort of shares a building with us so. it's it's always there every day can you. describe what the doomsday clock is the. bulletin of atomic scientists it's. something that this group of physicists. sort of said to sort of mark just how. close we are to nuclear catastrophe and. they started it decades ago and it's and. it's a clock and it's sort of how close. are we to midnight where midnight is.

nuclear armageddon and or the. destruction of humanity and and it's. been sitting i mean it's actually it. hasn't moved as close to it hasn't moved. as close to. midnight in the last few weeks as it. probably should have only because. it was already so close there's actually. limited room for it to move for a bunch. of other reasons i think it's there's a. whole political thing that once it's. really hard it's really easy to move it. closer. and it's really hard if you're the. person in charge of that clock to move. it away right because that's always very.

controversial so it always sits there. but it it forces you to think about it a. little bit every day. um. and i admit i was. nonchalant about it in till recently in. a way that many. many other people were. um i still think the risk is very low. but. um. kind of for the reasons we've talked. it's just so. you know unimaginably costly that nobody. wants to go that route so so it's like.

the it's like the extreme version of my. whole argument with why we most of the. time don't fight is because it's just so. damn costly and so this is that's that's. the incentive not to use this and and if. they do use it that's the incentive to. use it in a very restrained way. um. but that's not a lot of but but because. we know we do go to war and there's all. these things that interfere with it. including miscalculation and all these. human foibles. and and. several of those nuclear powers are not. accountable leaders.

i think we have to be a lot more worried. than many of us were very recently i. pointed out earlier like the whole. reason we're in this mess is because the. only people who have this private. interest in like having ukraine give up. its freedom is. this russian cabal an elite that. gets their. power and is preserved only and is. threatened by. ukrainian democracy. what would how far would they go to hang. on to power. when push came to shove. is i think the thing that worries me.

the most and is plainly what worries. most people about the risk of nuclear. war like at what point does that uncheck. leadership. decide that this is worth it. especially if they can. emerge. from the rubble still on top i don't. know so. um and i don't know that any of us. have really fully thought through. all of that calculus and what's going on. very recently around the anniversary of. january 6 there were a lot of questions. about it was the united states going to.

have another civil war. on the one hand i think it's almost. unimaginable sort of like in the same. way i think that a nuclear war and. complete armageddon is unimaginable but. i remember something that uh. i when both of those questions get asked. i remember something i. i was in the audience of listening to. some great economists speak about the 20. years ago about the risk of an. argentina-style financial meltdown of. the united states like what's the total. financial collapse.

and they said you know what the risk is. vanishingly small. but that's terrifying because until. recently the answer was zero. and so the fact that it's not zero. should deeply deeply scare us all and we. should devote a lot of energy. to making it zero again and that's how i. feel about the risk of a civil war in. the u.s and that's how i feel about the. risk of nuclear war is it's higher than. it used to be and that should terrify us. all. to me what terrifies me is that all this. kind of stuff seems to happen.

like overnight like super quick and it. escalates super quick when it happens so. it's not like. i don't know. i don't know what i imagined but it just. happens. like if a nuclear war happened. it would be. something like a plane. like in this case with ukraine a nato. plane shut down over some. piece of land. by the russian forces. or so the narrative would go but it.

doesn't even matter what's true or not. in order to spark the first. um. moment of escalation and then it just. goes it goes well i think that happens. sometimes i mean again it's this thing. that you know. what social scientists call it selection. on the dependent variable like there's. all these times when that didn't happen. when it stopped when it escalated one. step and then people paused or it. escalated two steps and people said whoa. whoa whoa whoa. um. and and so we remember the times when it.

went boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. and then the really terrible thing. happened but that fortunately that's not. you know i start off the book with an. example of a gang war that didn't happen. in in in medicine colombia which is. third that's my day job is actually. studying conflict and. gangs and violence and of these other. kinds of groups also very sinister. um and. and most of the time they don't fight. and that escalation doesn't happen so so. the escalation does happen quickly. sometimes except when it doesn't which. so we remember the ones when it does.

it's really important to think about all. that like um. i remember talking to i think elon musk. on his podcast is i was sort of like. talking about the horrors of war and so. on and then he said well you know like. most of. human history. because i think i said like most of. human history is um. had. been defined by. these horrible wars he's like no most of.

human history is just peaceful like. farming life. like war we kind of remember the wars. but most of human history is just you. know is life. yeah and most of the competition between. nations was like. blood. i would say blood thirsty without. drinking that blood in the sense that it. was intense it would loathe some. and so a lot of the rivalry and a lot of. the competition which is also can be. problematic in its own ways is not.

violent and most of human history is. about the oppression. of the majority by a few. and. the their moments when they rise up and. revolt and there's a revolution we. remember those but most of the time they. don't. and um and the story of political change. and transformation and freedom is is. there's a few revolutions that are. violent but most of it is actually. revolutions without that kind of violent. revolt revolt most of it is just the. peaceful concession of power by elites.

to a wider and wider group of people in. response to their increased economic. bargaining power their threat that. they're going to march so so even if we. want to understand something like. the march of freedom over human history. i think we can draw this same insight. that that actually we don't. most of the time we don't fight we. actually concede. power no you don't you don't. the elite doesn't sort of give power to. the masses right away they just co-opt. the few merchants who could threaten the.

whole thing and bring them into the. circle and then the circle gets a little. bit wider a little bit wider until the. circle is ever wide and maybe not ever. but encompasses most if not all. and that's like a hopeful and optimistic. trend. yeah if you look at the plot if you guys. could pull it up of the the wars. throughout history this so the rate of. wars throughout history just seemed to. be decreasing significantly with a few. spikes. and the the sort of the expansion.

it's like half the world is under. authoritarian regimes. but that's been shrinking and shrinking. and shrinking stephen pinker's one. person one a famous scholar who brings. out this hypothesis i mean there's sort. of two ways there's actually two. separate kinds of violence that one. where i think he's completely right and. one where i think we're not sure. probably maybe not the where he's. completely right sort of interpersonal. violence homicides everyday violence has. been going down down down down down down. down that's just unambiguously and it's. mostly because we've created.

cultures and states and rules and things. that control that that violence now the. warfare between groups. is that less frequent well you know. it's not clear that he's right that. there's fewer wars. you might say that there's. there the wars are more rare because. they're more costly because their. weapons are so brutal. the costs of war go up as the costs of. war go up. not entirely but for the most part that. gives us an incentive not to have them. and um but then when they do happen.

they're doozies. so is pinker right i hope he's right but. i don't think that officially that trend. is there i think. that we might have you know the same. kind of. levels of intergroup. violence because. maybe those five fundamentals that lead. to war have not fundamentally changed. and thus. made us given us a more peaceful world. now than a couple hundred years ago. that's something to think about so. obviously looking at his hypothesis.

looking at his data and others like him. but i have noticed one thing which is. the amount of pushback he gets yeah that. there is this this is speaking to the. general point that you made which is. like we. over emphasize the anecdotal like the. and don't. look objectively at the aggregate data. as much there's a general cynicism about. the world and not i don't even mean. cynicism it's almost like cynicism porn. or something like that where people just. get.

for some reason they get a little bit. excited to talk about the destruction of. human civilization you know in a weird. way like they don't really mean it i. think if i were to. like psychoanalyze their geopolitical. analysis is i don't i think it's a kind. of um. i don't know maybe it relieves. the mind to think about death at a. global scale somehow and then you can go. have. lunch with your kids afterwards and feel. a little better about the world i don't.

know what it is but that it's not very. scientific it's very kind of personal. emotional. and so we shouldn't we should be careful. to look at the world in that way because. uh. the if you look broadly there is just. just like hey you highlight there's a. will for peace uh. among people yeah uh you mentioned. medellin by the way how do you pronounce. the medellin. both are fine i think the. there they say medellin because that's. kind of the accent is the.

on the double l but that's but medellin. is would be totally. fine as well what lessons do you draw. from the medellin cartel from the. different gang wars in colombia medellin. uh what's the. economics of peace and war between dark. drug cartels here's what was really. insightful for me so i live in chicago. and the chicago people are aware that. there's a violent problem in chicago. it's actually not the worst american. city by any stretch of the imagination. for shootings but it's pretty bad. um and.

medellin has these better much many more. and probably many better organized gangs. than. chicago. and yet the homicide rate is maybe half. and. now i mean there have been moments when. these gangs go to war in the last 30. years when medellin has become the most. violent place on the planet but for the. most part right now they're peaceful and. and so what's going on there. um. i mean one thing that is there's a.

there's a hierarchy of organizations. so that above these reasonably well. organized neighborhood gangs there's a. set of sort of more shadowy. organizations that. have different names some people call. them resonates some people would call. them bandas corinales criminal bands you. might just call them mafias. and they there's about 17 of them. depending on how you want to count. and they themselves. have a little operating board. called sometimes they call it the office. la fiscina sometimes they call it. um la mesa at the table well each.

individual one or as a group as a group. as a group so they meet and they don't. meet personally all the time sometimes. they meet but they consult. a lot of the leaders of these groups are. actually in prison and so and they're in. the same wings and prisons they have. represented oh they meet in prison well. they're whatever if if i'm on a cell. block with you i've beaten you anyways. right so actually imprisoning leaders. and putting them in the same cell block. but not putting them in you know if you. get arrested here in the united states. and your criminal leader and you get put.

in a super max prison you cannot run. your criminal empire it's just too. difficult it's impossible there it's. possible and you might think and they do. they still run their empire and you. might think that's a bad idea but. actually. cutting off the head of a criminal. organization leading it to a bunch. leaving it to a bunch of like hot-headed. young guys who are disorganized is not. always the path to peace so. having these guys all in the same prison. patios. is actually. it they it it reduces imperfect. information and uncertainty right it. provides a place for them to bargain.

they can talk and and so alphacena is. like a lot of these informal meetings. and so so you know and and they have. these tools that they use to control the. street gangs so instead of there being. like 400 gangs all sort of in this. anarchic situation of competing for. territory and constantly at war the. resonates are keeping them in line. and they will use sanctions. they will. where they'll sanction might be i will. put a bullet in your head if you. right if you don't a little more honest.

there's no more sanctions between. nations exactly but they will but they. they will sit them down they'll they'll. provide they'll help them negotiate they. will provide commitment i said there are. these things called commitment problems. where like there's some dynamic i have. some incentive to like exterminate you. but that's going to be costly for. everybody so i'm going to have what's. the solution well i'm going to provide. commitment i'm going to like enforce. this deal. and yeah you don't like this deal now. because you could take advantage of your. situation. and wage war but i'm going to give you a. counter incentive. and and and so they keep the peace and.

so. and it's a little bit so they're a. little bit like the u.n security council. and peacekeeping forces and sanctions. regimes it's like the same kinds of. tools the same parallels. and and they're imperfect they don't. always work that well and they're. unequal right because it's not like. they're pursuing this in the interests. of like. blah blah blah. um. but it kind of works. until it doesn't and and 10 years ago in. you know the mid-1990s there were wars. and this breaks down and i it kind of.

gave me this perspective on the. international institutions and all the. tools we've built that we do the same. things right sanctions. are designed to. make unchecked leaders face the cost of. war. it's a solution to one of the five. problems. right and. mediators are a solution to uncertainty. and international institutions that can. enforce a piece and agreement are a. solution to commitment problems and all. of these things can be solutions to. these intangible incentives like these.

preferences for whatever you value and. miss calculations because they will. punish you for your miscalculation or. they will get a mediator to help you. realize why you're misconceiting so so. they're doing all these things and it. made me realize that the comparison to. the u.n security council and our all our. tools is actually a pretty good one. because those are pretty unequal too. and those are pretty imperfect. like that's you know it's there's these. we have five nations with a veto on the. security council and. a lot of unequal power and they're.

manipulating this in their own. self-interest or their group's interests. um. so so anyway so it's actually the some. of the. things that work in medellin and why. they work help give me a lot of. perspective on what works in the. international arena and why we have some. of the problems we have is like so. there's not. in some deep way there's not a. fundamental difference between those 17. mafia groups. and security councils. [Laughter].

oh we're like funny descendant of apes. put on suits i'm sure there were. different they have different cultural. garbs that they wear yeah uh what do you. thought i mean that's the sense i got. from pablo escobar and jorge ochoa who. founded the car the medellin cartel. is. like uh having spoken with people on. this podcast talked to roger reeves who. was a drug uh transporter it seems like. there it seems like it was. um i don't know the right. term but it was very kind of.

professional and calm. it didn't have a sense of danger to it. like it's negotiating so like the danger. is always on the table as a threat as. part of the calculation but you're using. that threat in order to de-escalate in. order to fps everybody is interested in. peace. so something that happened last year we. were a little bit able to watch in real. time because we had a few contacts we've. been meeting and talking to a lot of. these leaders in prison and a bit. outside of prison. many of them will talk to us um.

and so. uh their. the homicide i mentioned homicide rate. and medellin's. maybe a two-thirds or half of the. chicago level it had been climbing. some of these street level gangs. were starting to fight. um. maybe at sort of the on some level it it. seems that like maybe some of those. horizon leaders were like saying well. let you know we're actually not sure how. strong these guys are let's let them. fight just to test it out let's have. these skirmishes right it wasn't. prolonged warfare it was like let's just.

sort of feel out how strong everybody is. because then we'll be able to. reapportion the drug corners and stuff. accordingly. so they're kind of feeling each other. out through fighting. and the homicide rate some doubled and. then it then it increased by the same. amount again and so is approaching. something that might get out of control. which wasn't in anybody's interest was. in the government's interest wasn't in. their interest and so then magically. um. all these leaders in these patios right. different prisons and they're spread out.

around a bunch of prisons everybody gets. transferred to a new prison on the same. day. which means they all get to be in the. same holding area for three days before. they're all moved elsewhere so the. government had a role in this. and then somebody who's like a trusted. mediator on the criminal side gets. himself arrested. happens to be put in the same spot. and uh. and a week later the homicide rate has. is 30 of what it was. uh it's back to its normal mode.

unfortunately not zero right but it's. back to where it was. uh because they. it didn't make sense to have a war and. everybody government. mafia leaders everybody sort of like. they figured out a way to sort of. bargain their way to peace. cancer is almost like a tangent but you. mentioned you got a chance potentially. to talk to a few folks someone in prison. somewhere or not. um is it productive.

is it interesting. maybe by way of advice do you have ideas. about talking to people who are actively. criminals yeah. it really depends on the situation so. like the first time i worked in a. conflicted place was in northern uganda. in the maybe the last couple years of a. long-running war so this would have been. 2004-2005 this is a small east african. country. and the north of the country had been. engulfed in. think of it as like a. a 20-year low level insurgency run by a.

um self-proclaimed messiah. who wasn't that popular and no one. joined his movement so he would kidnap. kids. and um and so the. i never. i could talk to people who are who'd. come back from being there i never once. if i'd wanted to i and i was writing. about that armed group i never talked to. anybody who's an active member that. armed group was quite rare it wouldn't. have been easy or safe. um.

and that's sometimes true i'm starting. to do some work in mexico probably and. i'm not going to be talking to any. criminal they'll kill people when you. say you're not going to talk to them and. they'll kill people. [Music]. which people. so i mean journalists are routinely. killed for knowing too much in mexico. there's no. there's no compunctions about killing. them and there's no consequences who do. you who kills a journalist it's not the. main. people. that though you spoke with it's their.

lackeys or is it rival. no so so um gangs this is true of a. chicago gang and this is true of. a medellin gang it's probably true of a. mexico gang is like you might have your. group of 30 people one or two of them. might be shooters. most people don't you most people don't. like to do that. or you don't even have any of those. people in your group because you're. trying to run a business you don't need. any shooters you can just hire. a killer. when you need them on contract and so.

if somebody's asking questions. and you don't want them to ask questions. or you think they know too much in a way. that threatens you. uh and it's cheap. for you. um and you have no personal compunctions. and you can. then you can put a contract out on them. and they'll be killed. uh that doesn't happen in colombia. um it doesn't happen in chicago. uh. pro there's no i don't know there's lots. of reasons for that i can't say exactly.

why i think one reason is like. they know what will happen is that there. will be consequences that that the. government will crack down and make them. pay. and so they don't do it. um and. that's not what happened in mexico you. they don't they won't kill like a d. agent they know that the us has made it. clear you kill one of our agents we will. make you pay and so they they're very. careful to minimize death of american. but but you kill journalists and nobody. comes after them or is able to come. after them and so they realize they can.

get away with this and that seems to be. the equilibrium there that's my my. that's my initial sense from. and but that's. we spent a lot of time before we started. talking to criminals. you know i we spent a year trying to. figure out what was safe before we. actually and failing we kept there lots. of safe things to do it was also really. hard to figure out how to talk to people. in these organizations and we failed 40. times before we figured out a way to. actually access people is it worth it. talking to them if you figure out. because it's not never going to be safe.

it's going to be. when you estimate that there's some low. level of risk. like what's the benefit as a researcher. as a as a as a scholar of humans yeah. so i actually don't think let's compare. it to something okay you know i'm in. austin for the first time and i'm. walking around and there's all these. people buzzing around on these scooters. without helmets. we need to definitely interview them and. say what the hell is wrong with you so. nothing i have ever done in my entire. career is riskier is as risky as that.

um that's a nice way to compare. journalism in a war zone and not well. scooters there are some yeah they're. journalists some war zones you know i. worked in northern uganda and i worked. in liberia and i work now in medellin. and i'm starting to work in mexico. and both the those particular places and. then the things i did in those places. where i spent a lot of time making sure. that what i was doing was not unduly. risky. todd could you pull up a picture of a. person on a scooter in austin so we can.

just. compare this absurd situation where i i. doubt it's the riskiest thing because. now we have to look at the data i. understand the point you're making but. um. wow so i'm not trying to say there's. zero i think there's like a calculated. risk and i think you become good at. you work at becoming good at. being able to assess these risks and. know who can help you assess these risks. yeah i i think um. there's another aspect to it too when. you're riding a scooter. you're.

once you're done with the scooter the. risk has disappeared yeah there's. something the lingering where you have. to look over your shoulder potentially. for the rest of your life as you. accumulate all these conversations yeah. i've chosen but i've also advised my. students and i wouldn't go and do this. with an armed group that would. would. think i knew too much and therefore some. people do that some journalists i think. are very brave and take risks and do. that and good for them and i'm happy. they do that i don't i don't personally.

i don't personally do that so. these guys are very i mean medellin is. the business they're just. they're selling local drugs. and they are. laundering money for the big cartels and. they are. um. shaking down businesses for money or. selling services in some cases and. they make a lot of money it's a business. and um. and they're in prison. so they. they can talk about most of what they. want to talk about because there's no. double jeopardy they've been.

incarcerated for it. uh and you're just they're just talking. you're just talking shop and they're. just you know you're so so it's worth it. i think because the risk is very low but. if you actually want to weaken these. organizations and they're extremely. powerful they're extremely big facet of. life in a lot of cities. in the americas in particular including. in some of the united some american. cities. uh if you want to understand how to. weaken these groups over time you have. to understand how their business works.

and we're like imagine you were made. like the. whatever the oils are of of of of of the. united states you're entire or maybe. you're in charge of the finance industry. yeah right you you're the regulator for. oil and energy or for finance and then. you get in the job and someone says um. and then you're like well how many firms. are there and what do they sell and what. are the prices and everyone's like well. you know we don't really know. you would not be a very good regulator. right and if you're a policeman or. you're someone who's in charge of.

counter-organized crime you're just a. regulator you're trying to regulate an. illicit industry you're regulating an. industry that happens to be illicit and. you have no information. and so that's kind of what we do we. figure out how the system works and like. what are the economic incentives and. what are the political incentives any. interviews and conversations help with. that they help a lot yeah yeah we do. that so we have i mean i don't do i do. some of those but i'm on the side my. spanish is okay. it's. not great and it's a translator usually.

if you ever go directly well if only. because i can't understand the street. vernacular like i'm just totally. hopeless nor could many people who speak. spanish as a second language it's. totally you go to prison you talk to. these guys and they're speaking in the. local. dialect and. it's tough. uh but more importantly like i just. don't need to be there and that's not my. i'm a quantitative scholar i'm the guy. who collects the data so we have people. we have people on our team and. colleagues and employees who are doing. full-time interviews so and then i just.

sometimes go with them so what about if. we you mentioned uganda yeah yeah joseph. coney the ugandan warlord um seeing here. he kidnapped. 591 children in three years between two. totally they must have kidnapped. i i had they probably kidnapped for at. least a short time like a few hours to a. day. more than 50 000 kids as a terror tactic. a little bit i mean um you know most of. those people they just let go after they.

carried goods they held on to they tried. to hold on to thousands the short story. listen if you're not popular if you're. running an arm movement and you need. troops. um. you can i and nobody wants to fight for. you you can either give up. or you can have a small clandestine. terror organization that tries to a. different set of tactics but if you want. a conventional army and you don't want. to give up then you have to conscript. and if you want to conscript and you. don't. you know here we can script and then we. say if you run away we'll shoot you and.

we control the whole territory so we'll. that's a credible promise. if you're a small insurgency. organization people can run away and. then you can't promise to shoot them. very easily because you don't control. all the territory and so what these. movements do is they try to brainwash. you. and i think what they figured out after. years of abducting children you know you. talk about evil. um. they figured out that you know we have. to. maybe like i don't know but say like. maybe one in a hundred will like buy the. rhetoric so we just have to.

conscript or abduct large number of kids. and then some small number of them will. not run away. and those will be our committed cadres. and those people can become commanders. and because they'll buy the propaganda. and they'll buy the messianic messages. but but because most people wise up we. have especially as they get older we. just have to abduct vast numbers of kids. in order to have a committed cadre and. so. so it has the other benefit of sort of. being terrifying for the population and. being a weapon in itself but i think for.

them was just primarily a way to solve. a recruitment problem. uh when you're. a totally. uh like. hopeless and. uh ideologically empty rebel movement so. in some sense it's. it's yeah so it that that's maybe the. short story was a real tragedy i heard. one interview of a dictator. uh where the journalist was basically. telling them like how could you be doing.

this. uh basically calling out all the. atrocities the person is committing. and the dictator was kind of laughing it. off and walked away yeah and like he cut. off the interview that feels like a very. unproductive thing to be doing. you're basically stating the thing that. everyone knows to his face maybe that's. pleasant to somebody. uh but that feels unproductive. it feels like the goal should be some. level of understanding yeah.

he's been super elusive. i mean why. yeah i mean why he's fought this. i don't know. you know it's not a great example of. that's an you know what the way i look. at that situation. is. it's a little bit particular the way. uganda works but um. most of the political leadership. for most of its post-independence. history came from the north of the. country.

that was like the power base. and and it was dictatorial and they were. so you've heard of like people like. eddie mean but people heard of like. milton a boat day and all these people. were all from the north. uh. and then you get the current president. who came to power in 1986 so he's been. around a long time he's coming 70 he um. he was from the south. and his he was fighting and he was. fighting against these dictators and he. was fighting for a freer and better. uganda and in many ways i mean he's he's. still a dictator himself but he did.

create a freer and better uganda. so he's better than these. he's a thug but he's better than thugs. before him. um and he came to power and he was like. and and and these. some of the northerners were like we. want to keep up the fight. and he was like you know what you guys. i'm gonna i'm strong enough to continue. to the north you guys go you want have. you want to have a crazy insurgency up. there and some kook. believes he's like. uh speaking. you know through the holy spirit's.

you know speaking through him and he's. going to totally disrupt the north i i. don't care that's great you guys just. fester and fight. and. that's going to totally destabilize this. power this traditional power base and. then that's just going to help me. consolidate control so he was an. autocrat he was an unchecked leader who. allowed a lunatic. to run around. and uh cause mayhem because it was in. his. political interest to do so.

and. there's no puzzle. it's it's it's in some ways it's that. simple and kind of tragic. there's little to understand. yeah it took me a lot well you know what. it's not so easy in the middle of it. i didn't understand that i don't think a. lot of people did and and i'm not i. think i could persuade most people who. study or work there now to like see it. that way i think people that would make. sense to people but it didn't make sense. in the moment you know in the moment. this is happening it's terrible and you.

kind of you know you don't realize how. avoidable it was that basically it was. the absence of effective police actions. that kept the lunatic from being. contained. um. and and that lunatic would never you. know he's not it's not that skillful of. our movement right they could have it. could have been shut down and that there. was just never any political will to. shut it down. the opposite that's what i meant like. that unchecked leader not only do you. not bear the cost but you might have a. private incentive as an autocrat to like. see that violence happen and in this.

case it was it was just keeping a. troublesome part of the country busy. if it's okay to look at a few other wars. so we talked about drug wars and. medellin. um are there other wars that stand out. to you as full of lessons we can jump. around a little bit maybe if we can. return briefly at world war ii. from your framework could world war two. have been. avoided this this one of the most. traumatic wars. global wars i mean one obvious driver of.

that war was. these. the things that hitler valued and. and and uh and then was able to use his. autocratic power to. either convince other people or. to suppress them. um and so some people stop there and say. that and then in the west basically. uh and then of course they were able you. know because they were such a economic.

and political powerhouse they were able. to sort of make demands of the rest of. europe that that um. that you can kind of see the full you. know letting nazis march into denmark. without a fight or france folding very. quickly you can kind of see as like an. appeasement or an acknowledgement of. their superiority and their ability to. bargain. without much of a fight and then you can. see the. the western response as a principled. stand i think that's and there's a lot. of truth to that. you know in terms of the strategic.

forces a lot of political scientists see. a version of a commitment problem. basically where germany says you know. what. we're strong now we're temporarily. strong we're not going to be the strong. forever. if we can. get this terrible bargain and get. everyone to capitulate. um. through violence if we strike now. and then solidify our power and keep. these. in world war one it was prevent the rise. of russia.

um and prevent the strengthening of. of of of russian alliances as well. um. and. we so we have an incentive to strike now. and there's a window of opportunity. that's closing and that they thought was. closing as soon as 1917 in world war one. and i i don't know that that story is as. persuasive in world war ii i think there. was an element of a closing window they. kept talking about a closing window yeah. they really thought there was a closing. window i think the nature of that. window's different.

uh in that. there was kind of pacifism. and it seems like if um. war broke out. most nations in the vicinity would not. be ready. by the. people the leaders that are in power. they weren't ready so the timing is. really right now but i wonder how often. that is the case with with leaders in. war it feels like the timing is now the. other commitment problem the other shift. that was happening that he wanted to. avert that has kind of wrapped up with.

his ideology is this idea of a. like a cultural and a demographic. window of opportunity that if he wanted. if conditional on. having these views of uh. you know germanic people and and and a. pure race and that that now is that he. had to he had to strike now before any. opportunity to sort of. establish that was possible i think. that's one. it's an incentive that requires his. ideology as well how to uh so to avoid.

it yeah within this framework would you. say is there. uh. that's. you kind of. provide an explanation but is is there a. way to avoid it is is violence the way. to avoid it because people kind of tried. rational. yeah. peace. peaceful kind of usual negotiation and. that led to this war is that unique to. this particular or let's say world war. one or world war ii so there's an extra. pressure from germany and both wars the.

to act okay so we've highlighted that is. there a way to alleviate that extra. pressure to act let me use world war one. as an example suppose. as many german generals. said at that time we have a window of. opportunity before russia. where we might not win a war with russia. like so the the probability that we can. win a war is going to change a lot in. the next decade or two. maybe even the next few years and so if. we we are in a much better bargaining. position now.

both to not use violence but to if. necessarily use violence. because otherwise russia is going to be. extremely powerful in the future and. they'll be able to use that power to to. change the bargaining with us and to. like hold keep us down. and. and the thing is is in principle russia. could say look. we don't want to get invaded right now. we know you could invade us we know. we're weak we know we'll be strong in. the future we promise to like not.

wield our and abuse our or just merely. just sort of take what we can get. in the future when we're strong we're. going to restrain ourselves in future or. we're going to hand over something that. makes us powerful because that's the. bargain that would make us all better. off and the reason. political economists call it a. commitment problem is because that's a. commitment that would solve the problem. and they can't make that commitment. because there's nobody who will hold. them accountable. so anything any international legal. architecture. any.

uh set of enforceable agreements any u.n. security council any world government. any anything that. would help you make that commitment is a. solution all right if that's the core. problem. um and so that's why you know in. medellin. you know the the the la fasina can do. that they can say listen yes. combo that's strong today is going to be. weak tomorrow. you have an incentive to eliminate this. combo over here but. because they're going to be strong but. guess what you're not going to do that.

and we're going to make sure we're going. to promise that when these guys do get. strong we're going to restrain what they. can do. most of our constitutions in most stable. countries have done precisely that right. there's a lot of complaining right now. in the united states about the way that. the constitution is apportioned power. between states. that was a deal. that was a commitment the constitution. was in the united states was a deal made. to a bunch of states that knew they were. going to be weak in future. because of economic and demographic.

trends or guests they might be and it. said listen you cooperate. and. will and and will commit not to. basically ignore your interests over the. long run and now you know 250. years later we're still honoring those. commitments. um. it was part of the deal that. that meant that there actually would be. a union and so we we do this all the. time so constitution is a good example. of how. um every country's constitution.

especially country who's writing a. constitution after a war that. constitution. and all the other institutions are. building are an attempt to like provide. commitment to groups who are worried. about future shifts in power and does. that help with avoid civil war so could. you speak to. um lessons you learned from civil wars. yeah perhaps the american civil war any. others. so lebanon. one of the ways. had tried for a long time to.

um preserve the interests of minority. groups. powerful minority groups who. were powerful at the time and knew that. the demographics were working against. them would guarantee. you know this. ethnic religious group gets the. presidency and this ethnic religious. group gets the prime ministership in. this ethno and will and a lot of a lot. of countries will apportion. seats in parliament to. ethno-religious groups. and that's an attempt to like. give.

a group that's temporarily powerful. some assurances that they're when. they're weak in the future that they'll. still have a say right just like we. portion sheets in the senate in a way. that's not. demographically representative but is. like unequal quote unquote in a sense to. help people be confident that there. won't be a tyranny of the majority. and now that just happens to have been. like a really unstable arrangement in. lebanon because eventually like the de. facto power on the ground just gets so.

out of line with this really rigid. system of the presidency goes to this. ethnic religious group and this prime. ministership was that that it didn't. last right so but you can think of every. post. conflict agreement and every. constitution is like a little bit of. humans. best effort to. find an agreement that's going to. protect the interests. of a group that's. temporarily has an interest in violence.

in order to. to to not be violent. yeah and so there's a lot of ingenuity. and it doesn't always work right. which actually from a perspective of the. group. threatening violence or actually doing. violence is one way to make progress for. your group we're talking about groups. bargaining over stuff right we're. talking about russians versus ukraine or. russians versus the west or maybe it's. managing gangs versus one another like. they're a lot of their bargaining power.

comes from their ability to burn the. house down. right and so if i want to have more. bargaining power i can just arm a lot. and i can threaten violence and so. the. strategically wise thing to do i mean. it's terrible it's a terrible. equilibrium for us to be forced into but. the strategically wise thing to do is to. build up lots of arms to threaten to use. them to credibly threaten to use them. but then. trust or hope that like your enemy is. going to see reason. and uh. and and avoid this really terrible.

inefficient thing which is fighting. but the thing that's going on the whole. time is both of you arming and spending. like 20 of gdp or whatever on arms. that's pretty inefficient yes. that's the tragedy we don't have war and. that's good but we have really limited. abilities to like incentivize our. enemies not to arm and to keep ourselves. from arming we'd love to agree to just. like both disarm but we can't and so the. the masses that we have to arm and then. we have to threaten all the time yeah.

yeah so the threat of violence is costly. nevertheless you've actually pulled up. uh that now disappeared a paper that. said. the big title called civil war and your. name is on it uh what's that about well. that was i mean when i was finishing. graduate school and this is a paper with. my advisor at ted miguel at berkeley um. most nations the paper opens have. experienced an internal armed conflict. since 1960. yet while that were you still in grad.

school on this or no last post maybe. last year or just just graduated yeah i. wish i was in a discipline that wrote. papers like this this is pretty badass. yet while civil is central to many. nations development it has stood. at the. periphery of economic research and. teaching so on and so forth and this is. looking at civil war broadly throughout. history or is it just particular civil. wars we were mostly looking at like the. late 20th century i mean i was trained. as a what's called development economist.

which is somebody who studies why some. places are poor and why some countries. are rich. um. and. i. like a number of people around that time. stumbled into violence i mean people. have been studying. the wealth and poverty nations basically. since the invention of economics. um. but there was a big blind spot. for. violence. now there isn't any more it's like a. flourishing area of study. but in economics but at the time it. wasn't and so there were people like me.

and ted who. were sort of part political scientists. because political scientists obviously. been studying this for a long time who. started bringing economic tools and. expertise. and like partnerships with political. scientists and adding to it and so we. wrote this so after like people have. been doing this for five or ten years in. our field we wrote a review article. telling economists like what was going. on and so this was like a summary for. economist so the book in some ways is a. lot in the same spirit of this article. this article i mean it's it's designed.

to be. not written as like a boring laundry. list of studies which is what that's. that's the purpose this article was. serviced it was for graduate students. and professors who wanted to think about. what to work on and what we knew. um this book is like now trying to like. not just say what economists are doing. but sort of say. what economist political scientists. psychologists sociologists. anthropologists like once what's how do. we bring some sense to this big project. and policymakers like what do we know. and what do we know about building peace.

given you know because. if you don't know what the reason for. wars are you're probably not going to. design the right cure. um and so so anyway so that was the but. but i started off studying civil wars. and and i because i stumbled into this. place in northern uganda basically by. accident it was a never no intention of. working in civil wars i'd never thought. about it and. and then you know uh. basically basically i followed a woman. there. and oh we'll talk about that.

and for people who are just watching. we're um we have an amazing team of. folks helping out pulling pulling. pictures and articles and so on mostly. so i can put pull up pictures on. instagram of animals fighting which is. what i do on my own time and then we. could discuss analyze maybe with george. st pierre that's what all he sends me. for people who are curious. uh but let me ask you one of the most. difficult things going on in the world. today israel palestine. will we ever see peace in this part of. the world and. sort of your book.

title. is the roots of war and the path for. peace or the subtitle why we fight. um. what's the path for peace will we ever. see peace yeah if we think about this. uh. uh conflict in the sense of like this. dispute this sort of contest this. contest that's been going on between. israelis and palestinians it's going on. for a century. and. there there were. really just.

10 or 15 years of. pretty serious violence in that. span of time most of it from 2000 to. 2009 and stretching up to like 2014. they're like sporadic incidents which. are really terrible i'm not trying to. diminish the human cost of these by the. way like i'm just trying to point out. that whatever is happening. as unpleasant and challenging and. difficult as it is is actually not war. and so it is at peace there's sort of an. uneasy stalemate the israelis and. palestinians are actually pretty good at. just sort of keeping this at a. relatively low scale of violence there's. a whole bunch of like low scale.

sporadic violence that can be. repression of civilians. it can be. terror bombings and terror actions can. be counter terror. violence it can be. mass arrests it can be repression it can. be denying people the vote it can be. rattling sabres all these things that. are happening right. and it can be sporadic three-week wars. or sporadic you know. very brief. episodes of intense violence before.

everybody sees sense and then settles. down to this uneasy that's not like we. we're right now to think of that as like. a piece and there's certainly no stable. agreement right. um so a stable agreement an amity and. any ability to move on from this. extreme hostility we're not there yet. and that's. maybe very far away. but. this is a good example of. two rivals who most of the time have. avoided really intense violence so.

you talked about this like most of the. time yeah rivals just like. avoiding violence and hating each other. in peace. so this is this what peace. so to answer my questions yeah sometimes. i mean that's what peace looks like not. always but i mean it's it's what it's. kind of my worry. to go back to like the russia ukraine. example like i kind of it's really hard. it's gonna be really hard to find an. agreement. that both sides can feel they can honor.

that they can be explicit about that. they'll hold to that will enable them to. move on yeah it feels like a first step. in a long journey towards greatness for. both nations and a peaceful time. flourishing. that kind of thing i mean you can think. of like what the the what's going on in. in israel palestine there's a stalemate. both. both of them are exhausted from the. violence that has occurred neither one. of them is quite willing to for various. reasons to create this sort of stable.

agreement there's a lot of really. difficult issues to resolve. and um. and maybe the sad thing maybe we'll end. up in the same situation with russia. ukraine this this is where you know if. every if they stop fighting one another. but russia holds the east of the country. and kumaya and nobody really. acknowledges their right to that. that that might within their there's. going to be a lot of tension and. skirmishing and violence but that never. really progresses to war for 30 years. that would be a sad but maybe possible.

outcome um. so that's kind of where israel-palestine. looks to me and so someone if we're. going to talk about why we fight then. the question we have to ask is like why. you know like the second intifada like. that was the most violent episode like. why did that happen and why did not and. and why did that last several years that. would be like we could uh analyze that. and we could say what was it about these. periods of violence that led there to be. prolonged intense violence because that. was nobody's interest that didn't need. to happen in part i don't talk about.

that in the book. i wanted to avoid really contemporary. conflicts for two reasons. one is i. things could change really quickly i. didn't want the book to be dated i. wanted this to be a book that had like. longevity and. that that would be relevant still in 10. years or 20 years maybe before someone. writes a better one. uh or before the human civilization ends. exactly. and circumstances can change really. quickly so i wanted it to be enduring. and meant partly just avoiding changing. things and changing these and avoiding.

these controversial ones but i of course. i think about them and so like a lot of. my time i decided actually last year to. teach a class where i'd take all these. contemporary conflicts i wasn't. working on the book and where i wasn't. really an expert whether it's india. pakistan china taiwan. israel-palestine mexican cartel state. drug wars. and a few others. and then teach a class on them with. students and we'd work through it we'd. read the book and then we'd say all. right none of us are experts how do we. make sense of these places.

and we focus in the israel-palestine. case of mostly trying to understand why. it got so violent. and spent a little bit of time on. what the prospects are for. something that's more enduring. it's hard to know that stuff now i mean. yeah it's easier to do the full analysis. when when looking back when it's over. well israel is in like a tough place. they have this attachment to being part. of the west they have this attachment to. liberal ideals they have an attachment. to democracy. and they have an attachment to a jewish. state. and that those things are not so easily.

compatible. because to recognize. the rights of non-jewish citizens. right or to. wrecking or to create or to have a. one-state solution to the current. conflict. undermines the long-term ability to have. a jewish state. um. and to do anything else and to deny that. denies. their.

liberal. democratic. ideals and. and that's a really hard. contest of priorities for to sort out. yeah it's complicated of course. everything you just said probably has. multiple perspectives on it from other. yeah that would phrase all the same. things but using different words yeah. well i'm trying to i try to analyze. these things in like a dispassionate way. but unfortunately just having enough. conversations even. your dispassionate description.

would be seen as a. as a as one that's already picked aside. and i'll say this because there's. holding these ideals i'll give you. another example united states. also has ideals of freedom and. and other like human rights. so it has those ideals. and yet it also sees itself as a. superpower and as a. deployer of those enforcer of those. ideas in the world and so the kind of.

actions from a perspective of a lot of. people in that world from children they. get to see drones drop bombs on their. house whether. their father is not. mother or dead. they have a very different view of this. uh well you're beginning to see why i. didn't i decide i wanted to i wanted to. write about those things and think about. those things but i wanted this. but i wanted this book to do something. different and i didn't want it to follow. along one of these polarizations my you. know in on a personal level because i. think i'm kind of a liberal democratic.

person at heart. my sympathies in that sense lie in many. ways with the palestinians despite the. way i i mean i i'm. i just the fact that people are they're. not represented and and they you know uh. and they got a very raw real politick. kind of deal like most people in history. have gotten like this raw real politic. kind of deal in their past right where. somebody took a summary of history by. the way. history is just full of raw deals. for regular people right and uh.

and both sides. are in a principled way refusing to make. the compromise. and and i'm not that's not like a both. sides or right kind of argument i'm just. sort of saying on a i just think it's a. factual statement that like neither one. wants to compromise on certain. principles. and and they're both. they both can construct and in some ways. have very. reasonable i want to have have. self-justifications for those principles. and that's why i'm not very hopeful as i. don't see a way.

and to. for them to resolve those things. speaking of compromise and war let me. ask you about one last one which may be. in the future. china and the united states yeah. how do we avoid an all-out hot war. with this other superpower. in the next decade 50 years a hundred. years because. sometimes when it's quiet at night i can. hear in the long distance the drums of.

war beating yeah. you know in the second part of the book. i talk about what i think have been like. these persistent like paths to peace and. one of them is increasing. interdependence and into relationships. and another one is. more checks and balances on power. i think there's more but those are. things too that are really fundamental. here because i think those two things. reduce the incentives for war in two. ways one is like right now remember when. we were talking about this really simple. strategic game where. i whether russian ukraine or or whatever. any two rivals.

i want more of the pie than you get and. and and uh. the costs of ward are deterrence. but only the cost of warf that i feel. right i don't care i do not care about. the costs of war to your side my rivals. i'm not even thinking of that that's. just worth zero to me i just don't care. in that simple game now in reality. uh. many groups do care about the well-being. of the other group at least a little bit. right we're in some sense to the degree. we first of all if our interests are.

intertwined like our economies are. intertwined. um. that. that's not a surefire. way for peace and we shouldn't get. complacent because we have a globally. integrated world but that's going to be. a disincentive and if we're socially. entwined because we have great social. relationships and linkages and family or. we're intermarriage or whatever this is. all these things will. will will will help and then if we're. ideologically intertwined maybe we share. a. notions of liberty or maybe we just. share a common notion of humanity so i.

think the fact that we're more. integrated than we've ever been on all. three fronts in the world but with china. is. is providing some installation which is. good so i would be more worried if we. started to shed some of that insulation. which i think has been happening a. little bit. us economic nationalism. um. whatever could be the fallout of these. sanctions or a closer chinese alliance. with russia all the things could happen. those would make me more worried because.

i think we've got a lot of cushion that. comes from all of this. economic social cultural interdependence. that the social one with the internet is. a big one so basically make friends with. the people from different nations yeah. fall in love. or you don't have to fall in love you. can just have lots of sex with people. from nature but also fall in love the. thing that also should comforts me about. china is that they. china's not as centralized or as. personalized regime as russia for. example and neither one of them is as.

centralized as personalized as like a as. some tin pot like purely personalized. dictatorship like you get in in some. countries the fact that china. the power is much more widely shared. is a big installation i think against. this war. will future war. um. the. the attempts by xi jinping to. personalize power over time and to make. china a more centralized and personal. ruled place which.

is he's successfully moved in that. direction also worries me so anything. anything that moves china in the other. direction not necessarily being. democratic but just like a wider and. wider group of people holding power like. all of the business leaders and all the. things that have been happening the last. few centuries have actually like widened. power but anything that's moving in the. other direction does worry me because. it's going to accentuate all these five. risks i am worried about a little bit of. the demonization so one of the things.

i. see with china as a problem for. americans for maybe i'm projecting maybe. it's just my own problem but you know. there seems to be a bigger cultural gap. than there is with other super powers. throughout history where. it's like it's almost like this own. world happening in china its own world. in the united states and there's this. gap of total cultural understanding like. we're it's not that. um. like we're not. competing superpowers they're almost. like doing their own thing.

there's that that feeling and i think. that means there's a lack of. understanding of culture of people and. we need to kind of bridge that. understanding i mean you know the. language barrier but also cultural. understanding making movies. that's. uh that you. use both and explore both cultures and. all that kind of stuff to where like. it's okay to compete. you know like rocky where um. uh. rocky balboa fought the russian. uh fact you know historically inaccurate. because obviously the russians win but.

you know we have to i'm just kidding as. a philly person i was of course rooting. for rocky but the the thing is those two. superpowers are in the movies china is. like its own. out their thing we need more rock rocky. seven. i do think there's a certain. inscrutability to the politics there and. an insularity to the politics such that. it's harder for westerners even if they. know even just to learn about it and. understand what's going on that i think. that's a problem and vice versa. um. so i think that's true but i at this.

at the same time we could point to all. sorts of things on the other side of the. ledger like the massive amounts of. chinese immigration into the united. states and the massive number of people. who are now like how many so many more. americans business people politicians. understand so much more about china now. than they did 34 years ago because we're. so intertwined so so i don't know where. where it balances out i think it. balances out on better understanding. than ever before. but you're right there was like a big. gulf there. that we haven't totally bridged.

yeah and uh like i said lots of. inter chinese in the united states. sexual intercourse no uh and love and. marriage and all that kind of social. social cohesion. so once again returning to love uh i. read in your acknowledgement and as you. mentioned earlier the acknowledgement. reads. quote i dedicate this book to a slow and. now defunct internet cafe in nairobi. because it set me on the path to meet.

work with and most importantly. mary. jenny and on gigianon genie. there's a lot a lot of beautiful letters. in this beautiful name this book have. been. impossible without her and that chance. encounter what's uh okay tell me. tell me chris how you fell in love and. how that changed the direction of your. life. i was in that internet cafe i think it. was 2004 i'd uh.

i was um i didn't know what i wanted to. do i i thought i might i thought you. know i was a good development economist. and i cared about. growth economic growth and i thought. firm like industrialization. is like the solution to poverty in. africa which is i think still still true. and therefore i need to go study firms. and industry. in africa and so i went and i and the. one of the most dynamic place for firms. in industry at the time still to some. extent now is was kenya and. all these firms are on nairobians and so.

i went and i got a and i went i got a. job with the world bank who was running. up they were running a firm survey and i. convinced them to like let me help run. the firm survey because. and so now i'm in nairobi and i'm. wearing my like suit and with the world. bank. for the summer. and my laptop gets stolen by two. enterprising con artists very charming. and so i find myself in an internet cafe. um with no laptop with no laptop and. just like you know. kenya didn't exactly can you didn't get. connected to the.

to the the sort of the big internet. cables until maybe 10 years later and so. it was just glacially slow so it would. take 10 minutes for every email to load. and so if there's this whole customer. norm if you just chat to the next person. in in beside you all the time it was it. was true all over anywhere i'd worked on. the continent. and um and i so i strategically sat next. to the attractive looking woman that. when i came in and um. and it turned out she was a psychologist. and a phd student but she was a. humanitarian worker and she'd been.

working in south sudan and northern. uganda and this. kids affected by this war all these kids. who were being conscripted. were coming back because they're all. running away after a day or 10 years and. needed help or to get back into school. she was working on things like that. and uh and i think she talked to me in. spite of the fact that i was wearing a. suit maybe because i knew a little bit. about the war which most people didn't. most people were totally ignorant and. then we we had a fling for that week. and then we didn't really we actually.

then we met up a little short while. later and then it was kind of then we. kind of drifted apart she was studying. in indiana and spending a lot of time in. um uganda and. and then one day uh. i was chatting with uh someone i knew. who worked on this. a young professor who was a friend of. mine but. and i said oh you know you work on. similar issues you should meet this. woman. i talked to because she like you guys. would have like you know professional. research interests overlap there's so. few sort of people looking at armed. groups yeah african civil wars at least.

at the time. and he said wow that's a fascinating. research. question and i thought and i walked out. of the building and i thought. that is a fascinating research question. and i phoned genie and i uh and i said. remember me and you know tell me more i. was just talking to someone about this. tell me more like i i started asking her. more questions but we ended up talking. for two or three hours. and over the course of those three hours. we hatched a very. ambitious kind of crazy.

and like plan we basically what it was. we were gonna like. find. the names and all the kids were born. like 20 or 30 years ago. in the region and we were going to track. a thousand of them down we're going to. randomly sample them and then we're. going to find them today and we're going. to track them and then we were going to. use like some variation and exposure to. violence and where the rebel group was. to actually like show what happens to. people when they're exposed to violence. and conscription we were gonna like tell. you know psychologically economically. we're gonna like answer questions. and that which would help you design.

better programs right and so we hatched. this plan which is totally cockamamie. soccer made me that when i pulled my. previous dissertation proposal from my. committee like the next week and gave. them a new one. they unanimously met without me to. decide that this was totally bonkers. and to advise me not to go and they. coordinated to read my old proposal so. that when i showed up for my defense. they said you actually think you're. defending but we're actually we want you. to only talk about this other thing you.

were going to do because this is like. you should not go. oh wow. i mean it is incredibly ambitious super. interesting though it actually worked. exactly according to plants the first. and last time in my entire career he. actually pulled off an ambition like a. gigantically crazy well all of my work. that's my shtick like my day-to-day. research job is not writing books about. why we fight my thing is like i go i. collect data on things that nobody else. thought you could collect data on and so. i always do pull it off but it never. turns out like i thought it was going to.

like it's always there's so many twists. and turns and always goes sideways in an. interesting way and it works but it's. all but this one actually we pulled off. in spite of ourselves and um as planned. and uh. and so ted miguel who i wrote that paper. with was actually the one person. of my advisors was like well. you know what he's he was sympathetic to. this he was like yeah why didn't you. just go for a couple months and like. check it out and then come back and work. on the other thing and that's and so i. followed jeannie there and went there. and then.

but and and i don't know what's this i. always remember. you know this movie speed the ken reeves. and. and sandra whatever these people are and. they they have this relationship in. these intense circumstances and they're. like well and i think at the end of the. movie they're sort of like this will. never work because these relationships. and intense circumstances never matter. which is what we assumed. and that turned out not to be true so. we've been married. 15 years and we have two kids and yeah. and that's when you fell in love with. psychology and learned to appreciate the. power of psychology exactly so that's.

the psychology in the book as well. because i and so we end up for most of. our work for the first five or ten years. was together actually. what's the hardest piece of data. that you've been chasing that you've. chased in your life like what are some. interesting things because you mentioned. like one of the things you you kind of. want to go somewhere in the world. and find evidence and data for things. that people just haven't really looked. to okay gain an understanding of human. nature maybe from an economics.

perspective what's uh what what what. kind of stuff either in your past or in. your future you've been thinking about. well i mean the hardest. there's hard in two cents the hardest. emotionally was interviewing all those. kids. in northern uganda that was just like a. gut punch every day. um. and just hearing the stories like that. was. the hardest but it wasn't hard because. it was you could the kids were. everywhere and everybody would talk to. you about it and they could talk about. it you could no one had gone and. interviewed.

kids that had gone through war in the. middle of an active war zone nobody was. going to displace all the things we did. no one had done that before so. now lots of people do it could you. actually speak to their. their stories what what's like the shape. of their suffering. what. what were common themes what. how did that those stories change you. i remember i said you could you like. your dispassion itself and your. passion itself i think i had to learn to.

create the dispassion itself i mean we. all have that capacity when we analyze. something that's far away and happens to. people different than us but you have to. i think i discovered and developed an. ability to like put those aside in order. to be able to study this so. um you get maybe harder. in a way that you have to be guarded. against so you have to try to remember. to put your human head on. it's really horrible like if i want to. conscript you. and i don't want you to run away. then i want to make you think you can.

never go back to your village. and the best way for me to do that is. for to make you force you to do. something really really really really. horrible that you could you almost. incredibly believe you can never really. go back and it might be like killing a. loved one and so and just having hearing. people tell you that story. in all of the different shapes and forms. to a point what was horrible about it is. they did this so routinely that you'd be. sitting there in an interview with. somebody.

and they'd be telling you the story and. it's like the most horrible thing that. could happen to you or anyone else. and and but there's some voice in the. back your mind saying okay. we really need to get to the other thing. you know we know that i know how this. goes like i've heard you know there's. this thing like okay okay i'm not. learning anything new here like there's. some part. you know deep evil terrible part of you. that's like yeah yeah yeah. like but let's get on to the other thing. but i know i have to go through this but. every day you have to go through that to. get to the because you're trying to.

actually understand how to help people. you're trying to understand how that. trauma has manifested how they either. some people get stronger as a result of. that some people get weaker and if you. want to know how to help people then you. need to get to that i wasn't trying to. get to something for my selfish purposes. really i was trying to figure out okay. we need to know what your symptoms are. now that's such a dark thing about us. so if you're surrounded by trauma. god that's voice in the back of your. head that you just go yeah i know. exactly how this conversation goes let's. skip ahead to the.

to the solutions to the next yeah yeah. and so that was that was yeah so that. was because you then you have to deal. with yourself so it's very helpful if. you like come home every night to. someone who's a gone through the same. thing and b is a professional and very. very very very good counseling. psychologist. um. the. the hardest thing i mean this the the. organized crime stuff has been the. hardest just figuring out how to get. that information it took us years. of just trial and error mostly error of. like just how to.

get people to talk to us or how to. collect data. in a way that's safe for me and safe for. my team and safe for people to answer a. survey like how do you get. how do you get. the information on. what. gangs are doing in the community or how. it's hurting or helping people like. you've got to run surveys and you've got. to talk to gang members all these things. and that nobody knows how to do that. yeah and so we had to sort of really. slowly not nobody there's a few other i. think there's other academics like me. who are doing this but there's a pretty. small group.

that's trying to like collect. systematic data and then there's a. slightly bigger. and much more experienced group that's. been talking to different armed groups. but every time you go to a new city and. there weren't that many people working. on this in medellin there were a few. you have to like discover a new like. it's it's really going to be unique to. that city and place. so there's not there's not like a. website for each of the 17 mafia groups. there's no facebook group there is now. we have a we've created like our own we. have a private wiki.

where we document everything and it's a. collaborative enterprise between lots of. researchers and journalists and things. so they now they can't see you can't go. online and see this that's that's. individual researchers it's not i mean. they're hiding by design some of them. have facebook pages and things of this. nature so they they do have public. profiles a little bit but not. not exp not so explicitly no so they're. clandestine here's an example so one of. the things that's really endemic in. medellin it's true in a lot of cities. it's true in american prisons is gangs. govern everybody's everyday life so if.

you have a. in an american prison particularly. illinois or california texas is another. big one. but also. in a city in medellin if you have a. problem. um a debt to collect or dispute with a. neighbor or something. you could go to the government and and. they do and you they can help you solve. it you go to the police or you can go to. the gang. and so and that's like a really everyday. phenomenon but then there's a question. like how do you actually. how do you actually figure out how what. services they're offering and how much. they pay for them and do you actually.

like those services and how do they how. do you comparison shop between the. police and the gang. um and what would get you to go from the. gang to the police and then how's the. gang strategically going to respond to. that. and what was the impact of previous. policies to like make state governing. better. and how did the gangs react and so. that's we had to sort of figure that out. and that that was um so that was just. hard in a different way but i don't do. the emotion emotionally punishing stuff. i couldn't do any longer. so that's much easier in that sense.

by the way on um. uh you know jorge ochoas some of these. folks are out of prison yeah have you. got a chance to talk to anybody by any. chance one of my collaborators on this. guy named gustavo duncan who's. who spent a lot of time interviewing. paramilitaries has written a book he's. talked to more of these people than i i. have um i haven't talked to. those and i. we haven't been talking to them about. this stuff but also they were they were. there in a different era yeah so it. doesn't the system was totally different. that's super interesting maybe one day.

we'll do that. yeah it's that was 30 years ago yeah and. the system over i mean la fascina pablo. escort created la fiscena he integrated. what's what the all these 17 resonates. and all these street gangs are the. fragmented former remnants of his more. unified empire which he gave the name la. fiscena i mean the. i think you know it's a little bit. apocryphal but the idea is you know i. think he said um. every doctor has an office so should we.

i still can't ima i i still love that. there's parallels between these uh mafia. groups and uh united nations yeah. security council this is just wonderful. it's so so so deeply human. uh let me ask you about yourself so. you've been thinking about war here in. part dispassionately. just analyze war and try to understand. the path for peace but you as a single. individual. that's going to die one day.

maybe talking to. um. the people that have gone through. suffering what. do you think about your immortality. do you. how has your view of your own finiteness. changed haven't thought about war. maybe the reason i can do this work is. because i don't think about it a lot. your own mortality or even like. mortality. yeah well i have to think about death a. lot so. but there's a way to think about death. like. numbers in a calculation when you're.

doing geopolitical negotiations and then. there's like. a dying child or a dying. mother yes yeah. i guess i know i'm in a place where. there's risk and so i. think a lot about. minimizing any risk such that i i think. i think about mortality enough that i. just. because i'm kind of an anxious person. like i'm kind of a worrywart like in a. way uh. and so i'm really obsessive about.

making sure anything that i do is low. risk you know so that gives you. something to focus on a number is the. the risk and you're trying to minimize. it. and yes there's still the existential. dread. your risk. minimization doesn't matter i yeah i've. never been in a life-threatening. situation. um yeah that's somebody who you know. what you sound like that's alex honnold. that that does the free climbing.

he doesn't see that. well that's that's but no but i well. that sounds exactly the same because you. just said i've never done anything as. dangerous as those people right right. scooter so i've i've actually been a. rock climber for like 25 years with a. long break in the between um but i'm the. same way you know actually rock climbing. is an extremely safe sport if you're. very careful it but he's free climbing. is the opposite of that but i mean like. if you're like you've got a road if. you've got a rope that's attached to you. that goes up is like attached to 18. trees and comes back down you're you're.

fine like this you know and you wear a. helmet. you're good you're totally fine yeah but. this is super safe too because. no free climbing no no no no no we're. watching freaking out. i mean because you're only gonna put. your hands and feet on sturdy rock and. and then you know the path and no no no. totally i i know i i know some p i. have some friends in college i've known. people who do some of these totally. wacky extreme sports and have paid the. price uh so i think it's totally.

totally different i think um. so even in that by the way this i can't. even watch those movies because those. freak me out too much because it's just. too risky like i can't i don't even yeah. so those things i i've i've never. watched like free solo or anything. there's just too much. um still not as dangerous as riding a. scooter and awesome yeah absolutely not. gonna let that go. uh. so but even in that it's a risk. minimization in the work that you do. versus. the sort of philosophical existentialist.

view of your immortality you know this. like this thing just ends. like what the hell is that about yeah i. have this amazing capacity not to think. about it which might just be a. self-defense mechanism you know my. father-in-law jeannie's father is a. evangelical pastor actually he's now. retired but um. and. this he would we would talk about when. we were getting married they were. terribly thrilled that she was. uh marrying a agnostic or atheist or. something like that.

we could love each other very much it's. fine now but i i only started discussing. this and some of the because that was. one of his questions for me like well. how can you possibly believe that. there's nothing afterwards. because that's just like too horrible to. imagine. and we we really never saw eye to eye on. this and my view was like listen like. i can't convince myself i believe like i. can't convince myself otherwise anything. else seems completely impossible to me. and for some reason i can't understand. i'm at peace with that like it's never. bothered me that one day it's over.

and and i unders the fact that people. have angst about that and that they. would seek answers. makes total sense to me. and and i can't explain why. that. doesn't consume me or doesn't bother me. um. but and yet you are at peace. yep maybe if i was worried but if i was. more worried about it maybe i wouldn't. be able to do. i don't know i don't know but then again. i don't take the risk i'm still like i. don't know but i minimize all sorts of. risks i'm like uh. i i i i.

yeah i minimize. uh you know i try to optimize like. groceries in the fridge too like i mean. i put a very economistic way to live i. would say uh that's probably why you're. good that might be true that might be. there's some selection into economics of. of these cold calculations chicken or. the egg we'll never know do you have. advice for young people. that want to do as ambitious as crazy as. amazing of work as you have done. in life so somebody who's in high school.

in college. either career advice on what to choose. how to execute on it or just life advice. how to meet some random stranger maybe a. dating advice. that part's easier you have to fly coach. and go to the internet cafes you can't. like uh all the development workers that. i know that fly business class and like. you'll never meet somebody and uh yeah. no the you know i i i actually spent a. lot of time writing advice on my blog. and i've got like pages and pages of. advice and one of the reasons is because.

i never got that like when i grew up i. went to like a really good state school. in canada called waterloo i loved it but. people didn't go on the trajectory that. i went on from there and i had some good. advisors there but but i never got the. kind of advice i needed to like pursue. this career so i. it's very. uh concentrated in elite colleges i. think sometimes in elite high schools so. i tried to democratize that that's like. that was one reason i started the blog. but a lot of that's really particular. because i every week like i have. students coming in my office wanting to.

know how to do international development. work and i just spent a lot of time. giving them advice and i think that's. what a lot of the posts are about. definitely very specific questions like. what is it the country by country kind. of specific questions or what the thing. that they're all trying to do that i. think is the right i don't have to give. them a really basic piece of advice. because they're already doing it like. they're trying to find a vocation they. they're really interested and what i. mean by that is it's like a career where. they find meaning where the work is. almost like superfluous because they. just they would do it for free. and they're passionate about and they.

really find meaning in the work. and and and then it becomes a little bit. all-consuming so scientists do that in. their own way i think international. development humanitarian workers people. who are doctors and nurses like we all. do our careers for other reasons right. but but they. they find like meaning in their career. and so the thing so i don't have to tell. them whatever you do find meaning. um and try to make it a vocation. something that you would do for free. amongst all of these many many many. options. uh. that's what i would tell but that's what.

i would tell high school students and. and young people in college. sometimes it's hard to find a thing and. hold on to it well that's the other it. took me a long time so i actually. started off as an accountant i was an. accountant with deloitte and touch for a. few years so i i did not that. did you wake up in the morning excited. to be alive i was miserable i got i. found it by accident which is another. different story but i landed in this job. and a degree where i study accounting.

and i was miserable i was totally. miserable and i hated it and i was. becoming a miserable person. um and so i. eventually just quit and i did something. but i was that still you know but then i. was working the private sector and i i. actually just needed trial and error i. actually had to try on like three or. four or five careers before i found like. this mixture of academia and activism. and research and and international. development and how did you know that. this was love. when you when you found this kind of. international development like it's. decade academic context too the key.

lesson was just trial and error which we. all have to engage until until it feels. right it's okay all right step one is. trial and error but until it feels right. because like it often feels right but. not perfect. yeah. that's true. right enough i mean i was really. intellectually engaged like i just loved. learning about it i wanted to read more. like it. in some sense like like i was doing i. was an account but i was reading about. like. world history and international. development in poor countries in my. spare time.

right and so it was like this hobby and. i was like wait a second i could. actually do that like just. i could like research those things and. even write the neck those books and. that's kind of what i did like 25 years. later that didn't occur to me right away. i didn't even know it was possible this. is the other thing people do people do. their nine-to-five job and then they. find meeting and everything else they do. they're volunteering and their family. and their hobbies and things and that. was my social media and um and that's a. great path too like i mean that's. because not all of us can just have a. vocation or we don't find it i think and. then you just circumscribe what you do.

in your work and then you go find. um and that's not entirely true because. everyone in my family does like their. job and get a lot of fulfillment out of. it but um but i think it's not. it's that's that's a different path in. some ways so it's good to take the leap. and keep trying stuff even when you. found like a little locum. local minima yeah the hardest part was. it got easy after a while it was was. quitting. but but now i take this to a lot of you. know and one of the people i think.

one of the reasons i discovered your. podcast or maybe tyler cowan yeah he's. amazing tyler takes this approach to. everything he takes this approach to. movie yeah he's like walk into the movie. theater. after half an hour if you don't like the. movie and um you know what kind of. person he probably is i don't know but. now that you say this he's probably. somebody that goes to a restaurant if if. the meals is not good i could see him. just walking away like paying for it and. just walking away yeah meal and to go. eat something better that's exactly. right and i thought that was kind of.

crazy and i never i was the person i. would never just put a book down halfway. and i would never um. stop watching a movie but then i and i. convinced my wife we lived in new york. when we were when we when we were single. initially and sorry not religion when we. were childless uh. and we lived in new york there's all. this culture and theater and stuff and i. just said let's go to more plays but. let's just walk out. after the first act if we don't like it. and she thought that was a bit crazy and. i was like no no here's the logic here's. what tyler says and then we started. doing it and it was so freeing and.

glorious we just go we take so many more. chances on things yeah and we would and. if we didn't like it we were walking out. of stuff all the time. um and so i i think i did that without. realizing that that's how i like to i. just kept quitting my jobs. yeah and trying to find something else. at like some risk because that's how. wars start without the commitment. you need the commitment otherwise uh no. that's a different kind of commitment. problem that's a different different. commitment problem so some of it i'm.

sure there's a balance because i mean. the same thing is happening with dating. and marriage and all those kinds of. things and there's some value just. sticking it out because some of the like. maybe. you know don't leave after the first act. because the good stuff might be coming. yeah yeah that's a good point i mean. that's yeah well. i i don't know so when i met jeannie. she was very wary of a relationship with. me because i explained to her um. i hadn't had a relationship longer than. two or three months and 11 years.

and so she thought this person's on. serious and what i said to her she tells. the story this is how she tells her she. says i didn't believe him when he said. that i just after two or three months. you kind of have a good sense. whether this is going somewhere and i. would just decide if it was over so and. i walk away so i took this approach to. dayton like as soon as i thought it. wasn't going to go somewhere. and and then i ha and then i decided. with her that this was it this was going. to work and then i like and then. neverland she didn't believe now she. believes me. i. finally got to be right because this is. an incredible conversation your work is.

so fascinating just in this um. big picture way looking at human. conflict and how we can achieve peace. especially in this time. of the ukraine war i really really. really appreciate that you would. calmly speak to me about some of these. difficult ideas and explain them and. that you sit down with me and have this. amazing conversation thank you it was an. amazing conversation thank you. thanks for listening to this. conversation with chris blattman to. support this podcast please check out. our sponsors in the description and now.

let me leave you some well known simple. words from albert einstein. i know not with what weapons world war. iii will be fought. but world war iv. will be fought with sticks and stones. thank you for listening and hope to see. you next time.