The difference to my mind is the difference between:
Personal security and security as a regime.
And 1-epsilon security and 1 security.
I think the difference between the two of these would drive a lot of dictators actions.
I don’t know as much about China, but you can see the first dynamic pretty clearly in Putin’s actions. It’d be hard to argue that it’s good for Russian national security for the Gazprom retirement plan to be “Falling into artic waters in the middle of the night”, but it makes Putin like 0.001% safer.
On the other hand, if there was literally no benefit to doing so, I think Putin would be content and optimally happy retiring to a personal solar system sized dacha.
The difference to my mind is the difference between:
Personal security and security as a regime.
And 1-epsilon security and 1 security.
I think the difference between the two of these would drive a lot of dictators actions.
I don’t know as much about China, but you can see the first dynamic pretty clearly in Putin’s actions. It’d be hard to argue that it’s good for Russian national security for the Gazprom retirement plan to be “Falling into artic waters in the middle of the night”, but it makes Putin like 0.001% safer.
On the other hand, if there was literally no benefit to doing so, I think Putin would be content and optimally happy retiring to a personal solar system sized dacha.