By Andrew Morrow

By now, you’ve probably heard that Tucker Carlson, recently of Fox News and now of his own independent “network,” interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin. He published the video on February 8 on Twitter.

If you haven’t taken the time to watch it, I highly recommend that you do. It’s long, breaking two hours, and it is dense. Putin is a man who says one thing and really means five things, and that doesn’t work well in our modern soundbite-and-headline news culture. Still, I urge you to take the time to listen. Putin is not going to convince you of anything — at least I doubt that he will — but I don’t think the point of the interview was to “convince” anyone. In this article, I want to lay out my thoughts on the interview, my thoughts on the wider Russia–Ukraine war and what it really means.

The title of this present article refers to Swedish video game developer Paradox Interactive. The company has made a name for itself publishing “grand strategy” games with titles like Crusader Kings and Europa Universalis. These are games where the player assumes control of a historical nation, people or dynasty and crafts the narrative and strategy of that nation, people or dynasty throughout history. I believe that this, in essence, is what Putin is doing now. He’s playing the grand narrative and grand strategy of the Rus’ people, and he’s playing to win.

If you’re aware of the video, you’re almost certainly aware of the various “fact checks” on Putin’s historical claims. Some of the more notable fact-checks on Putin’s historical claims come from reputable historians whom I greatly respect, like Tom Holland.

What I think most fact-checkers miss is that it doesn’t matter whether Putin’s historical claims are historically accurate. Putin is not writing a paper, giving a book report or making a slide deck presentation. He has no judge or teacher who will be giving out a grade. You cannot point out enough inconsistencies or inaccuracies or fabrications that will make Putin say “Drat, I’ve been found out” and order his armies to turn back in shame and go home. That’s not the point of Putin’s historical claims. Putin is establishing a narrative.

What do I mean by “narrative”? Quite simply, and quite directly, I mean that Putin is telling a story to himself, to his country and to us about why he has decided to go to war. A narrative is less about the past than it is about the present — it exists not to explain history but to justify policy. For this reason, a narrative is fundamentally incapable of being fact-checked or falsified.

The US has had its own fair share of narratives, most famously Manifest Destiny. Many other narratives have........

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