‘Russia Had No Choice but to Act’: Jiang Xueqin Speaks

Editor’s Note: The following article is based on excerpts adapted from an interview with Professor Jiang Xueqin conducted by Cyrus Janssen.

“I see geopolitics as a game among different players,” Professor Jiang Xueqin begins, his tone measured, analytical, almost professorial in the purest sense of the word. “These players have their own strategies, have their own interests, and they’re trying to optimize the outcome using their strategies.” For Jiang, the language of global power is not ideology or emotion, but the mathematics of choice and consequence. Through his fast-growing YouTube channel, he has emerged as one of the most intriguing interpreters of world politics, applying game theory to predict not only trends but outcomes — and, as his followers know well, he has already been right on some of the biggest events of recent years.

Jiang unpacks the interconnected crises shaping the modern world — the endless conflict in the Middle East, the grinding war in Ukraine, and the uneasy yet crucial relationship between the United States and China. Each theater, he argues, follows predictable logic once you understand the players’ incentives. “If you just look at the Middle East,” he says, “you’ve got Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, United States, Turkey — these are the major players. And each side is trying to seek leverage over the other side.” That search for leverage, he insists, explains why peace remains elusive. “The Middle East,” he continues, “has been at war for thousands of years,” because it remains “the hub of global trade,” a crossroads “where all the major trade routes run.”

Trade, oil, and faith — these are, in Jiang’s formulation, the three forces that guarantee the region’s turbulence. “The Middle East is going to be the center of global conflict for the next 10, 20 years,” he predicts, “because it’s the center of global trade, because of oil, and because of eschatology.” In his view, even the much-publicized “peace deals” announced by politicians — especially those declared with fanfare by Donald Trump — are fragile constructs built on shaky incentives. “Trump is known for overstatement,” Jiang says dryly. “He said that he’s achieved Middle East peace for the first time in 3,000 years.” The reality, Jiang explains, is that “Israel cannot afford a peace, especially Netanyahu,” whose political survival depends on keeping the conflict alive.

He points to the country’s internal fractures before the Gaza war — “protests involving hundreds of thousands of people calling for his overthrow,” “talk that if the war is stopped, Netanyahu will be charged with corruption, he’ll go to prison.” Peace, therefore, is not only unlikely but dangerous to those in power. “If you just look at game theory,” Jiang concludes, “there’s very little hope that this peace will last much longer.” The logic of incentives, in other words, makes conflict the rational choice.

The same logic, he insists, explains the war in Ukraine. “According to game theory,” he says bluntly, “Russia had no choice but to invade Ukraine in 2022.” His reasoning, controversial to many Western audiences, is rooted in what he calls NATO’s “relentless expansion.” “Ukraine was a red line,” he says. “Russia was extremely patient… but the final step was the 2014 Maidan coup.” The invasion, then, becomes in Jiang’s framing less an act of aggression than one of defense — “to defend ethnic Russians who were crying for help.” “Russia was really provoked into this war by NATO,” he continues. “Really, Russia’s been fighting NATO all this time.”

His argument widens into a critique of Western institutions. “The financing is NATO. The technology is NATO. Special Forces, NATO. Command and Control, NATO.” And, he adds, “Russia is winning this war. It’s showing that NATO is really a paper tiger.” In his reading, the war reveals a deeper decay in the Western system: “The empire is in debt. America has $37 trillion in debt… it can no longer finance these wars. So it wants NATO to fight these wars on its behalf.” His description of the U.S. as a “mafia empire” — “it extorts its allies” — is the kind of line that resonates widely online, both for its audacity and for how it inverts familiar narratives of Western virtue.

Jiang’s view of Europe’s future is equally grim. “These European countries are supposed to now foot the bill,” he says. “Eventually they’ll have to draft troops and send them off to Ukraine to die.” The result, he predicts, will be “tremendous political dissent within Europe,” perhaps even “major civil clashes throughout Europe.” Ukraine, he continues, “is finished as a nation.” Between “one and two million men” lost, “millions of refugees” gone for good, and a country divided between “historically Russian” east and “traditionally Polish” west, the war has, in his eyes, already determined Ukraine’s fate. “Ukraine, by choosing to fight Russia, has basically doomed itself as a nation.”

The Western justification — that Ukraine’s fall would trigger a domino effect across Europe — Jiang dismisses as propaganda. “Let’s look at the facts,” he says. “When the Soviet Union fell… the Americans gave the Russians assurances that NATO won’t expand.” Those promises, he argues, were “broken multiple times.” Moreover, “Putin has made multiple overtures to join NATO,” but “was constantly rebuffed.” With “32 members” already, NATO’s “relentless expansion toward Russia’s sphere of influence” left Moscow “no choice but to act.” His conclusion is unambiguous: “Russia had to act.”

Even in victory, though, Jiang argues that Moscow’s progress will be deliberate. “The Russians fight it really slowly because they’re trying to minimize both civilian casualties as well as their own troop casualties,” he says. “They have to make this livable.” Russia’s goal, he predicts, is clear: “Odessa is the main goal of the Russians… Once they have Odessa, they have control of Eastern Ukraine.” That city, he says, will be “the final battle,” the moment when “the fate of Ukraine will be decided.” Yet he sees no quick resolution. “Because NATO is very stubborn,” he says, “this thing will last for a long time.”

If Jiang’s reading of Europe is pessimistic, his view of the U.S.–China relationship is surprisingly hopeful. “I think that both sides are committed to peace and prosperity,” he says. Despite describing America as “behaving like a mafia state,” he insists that “both Trump and President Xi are great friends.” He recalls their first meeting: “Trump introduced President Xi to his family and his grandchildren are learning Mandarin. They can recite poems.” Such personal gestures, Jiang believes, carry real weight in diplomacy. “This interpersonal relationship between Trump and President Xi — it’s very important,” he says. “Once the two meet and start being friends again, we will see a repulsement.”

He rejects the Western media narrative of inevitable conflict. “If you’re an American in China,” he insists, “Chinese people love Americans.” Despite rising tensions, “Chinese have a deep-seated respect for American innovation.” Millions of families “want to send their kids to America to experience the American dream.” Beneath the surface of political rivalry, he sees “genuine friendship and respect for each other.” Jiang and Janssen agree that people-to-people exchange is “the basis for any solid geopolitical relationship.” That, Jiang says, is what will ultimately sustain peace: “Partnerships to bring more Americans over to China and more Chinese over to America.”

As for the louder fears — of “China as the biggest threat to American democracy” or a coming invasion of Taiwan — Jiang remains both skeptical and strategic. “Just from a game theory perspective,” he says, “it’d be idiotic to go invade Taiwan.” His reasoning is, again, structural. “China is surrounded by nemesis — Japan, Russia, India are all geopolitical threats in the long term. America, at the end of the day, is far away in the Pacific. From a game theory perspective, you want the United States in East Asia in order to balance out the other threats.” War, in his analysis, would only destabilize that equilibrium.

The real threat, he argues, is not external but internal — the corrosion of governance and inequality within the United States. “Americans are suffering under tremendous wealth inequality,” he says. “The government doesn’t really work anymore for the American people.” Yet he insists that America’s fundamentals remain unmatched. “America has always been protected by two oceans. It’s a continental fortress. It has all the resources you could possibly need. The American people are extremely hardworking, extremely talented.” His prescription is simple: “If you unleash that entrepreneurial energy, remove that bureaucracy, remove that inequality, remove that corruption, America will be invincible. There’s no power in the world that can challenge American supremacy.”

Listening to Jiang, one hears the logic of a mathematician fused with the realism of a historian. His worldview is not driven by moral binaries but by calculation — who gains, who loses, and why. Yet his analysis is not devoid of hope. Even as he dissects empires and alliances, he holds faith in the ordinary bonds between people. “At the very top,” he reminds, “you have this strong relationship between President Trump and President Xi. But at the very bottom, among the American people and the Chinese people, there’s genuine friendship and respect.”