Sarah Paine — Why Japan lost WWII (lecture & interview)

The fatal flaw in Japan's military culture that cost them WWII. This is the second in a trilogy: a lecture series by Professor Sarah Paine of the Naval War College. In this episode, Prof Paine dissects the ideas and economics behind Japanese imperialism. The oil shortage which caused the war; the culture of honor and death; the surprisingly chaotic chain of command. This is followed by a Q&A with me. Huge thanks to Substack for hosting this!

𝐄𝐏𝐈𝐒𝐎𝐃𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐍𝐊𝐒
Transcript: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/sarah...
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Spotify: http://spoti.fi/3APeQ3L

𝐒𝐏𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐎𝐑𝐒
Today’s episode is brought to you by Scale AI. Scale partners with the U.S. government to fuel America’s AI advantage through their data foundry. Scale recently introduced Defense Llama, Scale's latest solution available for military personnel. With Defense Llama, military personnel can harness the power of AI to plan military or intelligence operations and understand adversary vulnerabilities. If you’re interested in learning more on how Scale powers frontier AI capabilities, go to https://scale.com/dwarkesh.

To sponsor a future episode, go here: https://www.dwarkeshpatel.com/p/adver...

𝐒𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐇'𝐒 𝐁𝐎𝐎𝐊𝐒
"The Wars for Asia, 1911–1949" https://www.amazon.com/Wars-Asia-1911...

"The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War" https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Empir...

𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒
00:00:00 - Preview
00:00:45 - Lecture begins
00:07:43 - The code of the samurai
00:11:30 - Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism
00:17:37 - Bushido as bad strategy
00:24:19 - Military theorists
00:34:27 - Strategic sins of omission
00:38:55 - Crippled logistics
00:41:43 - the Kwantung Army
00:44:16 - Inter-service communication
00:52:00 - Shattering Japanese morale
00:58:20 - Q&A begins
01:05:47 - Unusual brutality of WWII
01:12:15 - Embargo caused the war
01:17:33 - The liberation of China
01:22:47 - Could US have prevented war?
01:26:15 - Counterfactuals in history
01:28:31 - Japanese optimism
01:31:31 - Tech change and social change
01:39:07 - Hamming questions
01:45:16 - Do sanctions work?
01:50:52 - Backloaded mass death
01:54:54 - demilitarizing Japan
01:58:15 - Post-war alliances
02:04:31 - Inter-service rivalry