New Russian Tactics: Glide Bombs and Double-Tap

The Russians are employing some new tactics in Ukraine’s Eastern front that are adding to their ever-growing list of war crimes committed throughout this conflict. We’re looking at glide bombs targeting civilian infrastructure and Russia’s ‘double-tap’ method.

The intent behind the Russian glide bombs is to make specific regions in Ukraine uninhabitable. They are achieving this by targeting critical civilian infrastructure like water treatment plants and electricity facilities.

When the glide bombs don’t prove devastating enough, the Russians are also implementing a ‘double-tap’ method. This means they send an initial wave of attacks, wait until emergency services or repair crews can respond, and then send in another wave of attacks to wipe them out.

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First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey, everybody! Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado, where it’s 70 degrees and snowy because mountains. Today, we’re doing a quick update on what’s going on in Ukraine, specifically on the Eastern front, where the Russians are beginning to use a couple of new tactics at a large scale. They definitely fall into the category of war crimes, but so many things that the Russians do these days are. Just to remind everyone, there are over 10,000 documented war crimes committed by the Russians in the conflict so far.

We hit that number well over a year ago. And that’s kind of the number where I stopped paying attention because it’s clear that’s just war crimes for war crimes’ sake at this point. Anyway, these two new ones kind of fall into that category as well. The first one is the use of their new glide bombs, Fab 1500, Fab 1005, 2000.

Basically, weapons that have a metric ton or more of explosive power and sending multiples of them into specific pieces of civilian infrastructure like water treatment plants and electricity-generating facilities with the intent of simply reducing urban populations beyond the ability to have industrial-level technologies. If the Russians keep this up, and they certainly have the weaponry to do it, they will be able to make large, large sections of Ukraine uninhabitable for the population densities that are there now.

The populations around Kharkiv, which is the third-largest city in the country, are the ones most at risk. And where it’s where the Russians have kind of started this shift to just complete obliteration of civilian infrastructure. The second one is something called a double tap. And it’s basically you send your missiles into an area where, you know, there’s a civilian population, and then you wait 30 to 90 minutes and you send another wave of missiles to the same location.

So the first is designed to destroy civilian infrastructure and kill people, and the second is designed to target the repair crews and the emergency services personnel and the aid workers. The idea is, if you can destroy enough of the human capital that allows Ukraine to recover from attacks, then their ability to fight the war might evaporate.

Clearly, these are some pretty nasty attacks. The double taps are something that was inspired by Islamic Jihad and Hamas in years gone by. For those of you who are Middle East buffs, you will remember that there were a lot of suicide bombs that matched this double tap strategy back in the early 2000s. Not much to say about these, except that it’s really hard to fight back against them.

Really? You need to have air superiority and extraordinary air defense and anti-missile coverage if you’re going to prevent these sorts of attacks. And the Russians have proven that they can do these attacks at scale. So the degree to which Ukraine would need external support in order to resist these sorts of assaults is high.

Iran Attacks Israel, Sort Of…

In the early hours of April 14, Iran – both directly and through its many proxies – launched the largest missile and drone assault on the Israeli state since at least the 1973 Yom Kippur war. It was quite a show.

The keyword here is “show”. I have never seen a military assault more telegraphed, choreographed, or bristling with advanced specific notice to ensure that the script does not result in escalation.

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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The Limits of Russia’s War Machine

Recent events in the Ukrainian War have shed light on the state of Russia’s ability to resupply its war effort. Even elite Russian troops are being forced to rely on older, reserve equipment—including tanks built well over half a century ago. Moscow’s deep inventory of Cold War-era materiel has kept Russian troops in the fight, but not necessarily fighting: a recent attack by Ukrainian forces in Zaporizhzhia eliminated most of a Russian airborne division fighting in tanks likely older than their fathers.

While Moscow has plenty of old equipment to churn through in its attempt to drag Kyiv back into its orbit, the same cannot be said for its ability to place more bodies on front lines. Russia’s post-soviet demography was already a mess before the war. Combined with hundreds of thousands of casualties due to the war, and estimates of up to a million fighting age men who have slipped out of the country, and Russia is facing a grim inversion of its WWII challenges: while it may have plenty of (aging, derelict) equipment with which to wage war on its neighbors, young men are becoming much harder to find and even harder to replace…

The result? Russia and its war machine have shifted strongly from expansion to maintenance—and all this narrowly balanced against competing Russian economic and political interests. While this does not mean that Russia’s war in limited to Ukraine, it does mean that the timeline for Russian action ends firmly well within the next decade. Does a shortened window of Russian capability mean a decreased likelihood of Russian aggression? Far from it, sadly. The bear’s back is against the wall, and they very much view the Ukraine War (and any follow-ons) as a fundamental war of survival.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. today we’re to talk about the reserves that the Russians are activating to keep fighting the war. at the end of March in Japanese province, the Ukrainians massacred a group of Russian forces that were part of the 76th Guards Air, assault Group. Now, the 76 has been fighting in the war for a while. 

they’ve been defeated a few times, but they’re generally considered some of the better Russian troops. they were part of the, the military formations before the war generally had the best equipment because they were some of the best troops. Well, when they came up against, Ukrainian forces this most recent time, they were fighting in t 55 tanks, which were tanks that were built right at the beginning of the Cold War back in the 50s. 

So these things have been considered by Russian standards, outdated by over a half a century. And yet here they are, being used by the elite forces. they don’t move as fast. They don’t shoot as far their armor’s thin compared to modern tanks. but most importantly, they require four people to operate instead of three. so, you know, much more manpower intensive for much less bang for the buck. 

the fact that these things are in use at all is a bit of an issue for the Russians. So, at the beginning of the war, the Russians had 12,000 tanks, of which about 2000 were in active service. the presence of the T 55 is in the hands of elite groups means that those original 20 tanks are now all, incapacitated or more likely, just flat out destroyed. 

Now, the Russians have very, very deep reserves. There’s another 10,000 to go. But as you dive into the reserves, you’re getting into older and older tanks. or that’s what it would logically seem, actually, they’re starting with the oldest ones first. The issue is that the T 50 fives had no optics. They predate optics. And so when you want to bring a new tank into service, you can throw some cheap optics and actually get it through the refurbishment process fairly quickly, where if you have a newer tanks, it’s 72 or something newer. 

Those had optics, but it’s been 30 years that they’ve been in storage, and so all the seals have gone and the wiring is bad. And so you need to replace something that was already there, as opposed to slap something aftermarket on it on the first place. that requires more advanced equipment, a lot of which the Russians don’t have anymore. 

And so the 270 twos and newer tanks take a lot more effort to refurbish. So the Russians are starting with the old, old, old tanks. but the bottom line here is that the entire pre-war tank, reserve is gone. And now everything that they put on is something that they’re having to update. the same goes true for soldiers, based on whose numbers you’re believing. 

That’s somewhere between 550,000 and 750,000 Russians have been killed or incapacitated by the conflict so far. Well, that is the entire pre-war army. And the Russians are having to put new people, recently drafted people into the field with minimal training. and this is now meaning that there is a problem with inflows. now, the Russians have not had a problem doing kind of a silent draft where anywhere between 15 and 45,000 people are, unofficially drafted every month. 

the Russians have flows of people to spare. but the source is not bottomless. At the beginning of the war, the Russians had about 8 million men in their 20s. Well, if you’ve killed roughly 600,000 or killed in capacity and 600,000 and another million of fled, you’re now down to about 6.5 million left. So if you look at the number of tanks that they’ve got in reserve, you look at the number of men in the 20s that they’ve got left. 

They can keep up this piece. They’ve been going for the last two years for probably another 5 to 8 years. And when that happens, they’re out of a gear. And they’re out of men. So that’s how long roughly the Russians have that they continue this war and any follow on wars. so we really are looking at the twilight of the Russian system here. 

But it also means that since there’s no longer resources that can be shuffled from other places in the Russian Federation, the Russians are now dependent upon this throughput for refurbishment, for training, for equipment coming from other countries in order to just to fight the war in the first place. So the situation in Ukraine for the Ukrainians isn’t great, but the Russians have now run out of stuff to reposition and they’re dependent upon that throughput. 

And that means economic and political factors, both in Russia and abroad, now massively affect the pipeline that allows Russia to keep men and equipment. And the front in the first place. So we need to watch the Russian space and the adjacent countries much more closely now than we have, because there’s no longer any depth to what the Russians can do. 

As soon as they get something, they throw it into the front, because if they don’t, the front gets empty. So it may feel that the Russians in the last month or so have had a bit of momentum. And they have, but they haven’t been able to capitalize on the breaking of the other Deka front. And in fact, the front has become static again. 

And so the Russians are doing attacks, like with the 76, to try to try to find a weak point, and the troops are just getting cut up and they just can’t maintain this pace forever. But we’re still looking at another 5 to 8 years. Okay, that’s it for me. Take care. 

Secretary Yellen Dumps Cold Water on Chinese Dumping

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is fresh from a trip to China, and she is fired up. Well, perhaps as fired up as one can surmise the Secretary gets.

But first: China.

As long-time subscribers and readers well know, China’s demographic situation is in shambles. The Chinese Communist Party even admits it, which should be an indicator of how bad things are given the CCP’s creative and liberal license with reality. One of the several negative impacts of a shrinking population is a correlated decline in consumption. For an economy as dependent on industrial overproduction to fuel growth as China’s, this presents a stark and simple reality: the Chinese population will never, ever be able to fully consume Chinese industrial output.

China’s only option is to start dumping more product overseas, as slowing down output causes myriad headaches at home: shrinking economic growth, higher unemployment, exposure of the CCP’s rising ineptitude, etc. Chinese overproduction has already dramatically restructured the world of manufactured goods since China signed onto globalization in the 1990s. The US, its European and Asian allies have simply had enough.

This is beyond simple trade protectionism and market competition. From Boston to Brussels to Busan, there is a rising awareness and unwillingness to endure the various economic, national security and environmental costs of allowing Beijing’s economic imperatives to run roughshod over the world’s industrialized and emerging economies.

Enter Big, Bad Janet Yellen.

Whatever policy disputes one might have with the Secretary notwithstanding, she has a well-documented support of limiting barriers to international trade and the flow of goods. Simply put: Secretary Yellen is a fan of free trade and the general global economic lift associated with globalization.

But Secretary Yellen is not a fan of Chinese economic bullying and product dumping. Even before she left China, there were reports of threats of US trade tariffs and other barriers. The Europeans are at work with several policies of their own, and the Chinese Communist Party? Well…

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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Can High Birth Rates Solve Demographic Problems for Young Countries?

I often talk about the importance of demographics for countries, but do high birth rates always equate to population growth?

In countries like Yemen and Nigeria, high birth rates can look promising, but we need to consider other factors before we start celebrating. The two big ones are infant mortality and life expectancy. As countries begin to industrialize, they start to reap the benefits of improved healthcare, driving up survival rates for children and adults alike. The story is all rainbows and butterflies so far.

However, if these advances in healthcare are heavily reliant on imported technologies, any disruption to international trade could prove devastating. The bottom line is that high and growing birth rates are great, but sustainable population growth requires a bit more work than just popping out some kids.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. We’re taking a and from lost a limb in the story. Anyway, we’re taking the entry from the Ask Peter Forum. It lets demographics. The question is I talk a lot about declining demographics and the impact that’s going to have. But what about countries that have sky high birthrates? Is this a good is this a bad? 

Is this another thing? The two that come to mind are Yemen and Nigeria, both of which have birth rates that are just ridiculously high. How sustainable is this? What’s the impact? Good question. I generally look at birth rates when I’m looking at more advanced economies where the industrial technologies have been in place for decades. When you’re talking about the younger economies were industrial is Asian is more recent. 

There’s a couple other statistics you need to look at. The first is infant mortality, and especially child mortality under five years of age. See, how likely is it that a child that who’s bored is going to make it to five? And then second is life expectancy overall. You see what happens when a country starts to industrialize is they don’t just get concrete and pavement and buildings and rebar and electricity. 

They also get vaccines and medical care. And this drastically decreases the death rate among the young and drastically increases the average age of mortality among the older folks. So what we’re seeing in Yemen and especially in Nigeria is a steady inroads of these new technologies into the population. So it’s not just that the birth rate is high. Oftentimes for these countries that are early in the early industrializing period, the growth rate is very high. 

The question is whether or not the children survive. And then the question is whether the adults survive. So take the example of China. From roughly 1985 until roughly 2015, the population doubled. But almost all of that population increase wasn’t from organic birth rate. It was because people lived longer. The lifespan basically doubled in that same period. Now, these gains are real. 

These people are more productive. But you only get those sorts of gains once. And now that China has basically wrested all of the gains along Djibouti, it can’t out of the system because they’re coming against the upper level what humans are capable of today. There’s no one to replace them. So even if nothing goes wrong in the system, no financial crisis, no war, no agricultural crisis. 

You’re still looking at a population collapse because people can’t live any longer than they are. And for the last 50 years, people have not been having children. So that inverted funnel, the bottom just goes up and sucks away the entire population. Yemen and Nigeria at a much earlier stage of this process, there’s nothing to say that they’re condemned to the the Chinese end result. 

But keep in mind that in the case of these two countries in particular, most notably Yemen. But all of the technologies that allow them to live longer come from a different continent. And so if anything happens to international trade, you should expect infant mortality to shoot up and life expectancy to collapse. And then they just get sandwiched in between. 

It’s not merely as dark of a story as what we’ve got going on in China, but it’s not exactly a great one. If you’re going to have life expectancy and if you’re going to have infant mortality, be pause, have aspects of your society. You need to be able to be sure that you can produce the technologies that allow it to happen in the first place. 

Otherwise, you’re just as dependent on the rest of the world as if you imported 100% of your oil.

NGLs: Ohio’s Plastics Industry’s Juicy Secret

Since I’m here in Ohio, why not talk about what makes this region so unique. Today, we’ll be discussing how shale in Ohio has propelled economic growth in an unfamiliar way.

For most of America, the shale sector looks fairly similar – traditional oil production produces natural gas as a byproduct, which is flared off until infrastructure is put in place to harness it. However, the Marcellus and Utica fields in Ohio primarily produce natural gas that is used for fuel across the central and eastern US. This is a bigger deal than it seems. If the tri-state area of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania were a country, it would produce more natural gas than any countries save Russia and the United States itself.

But what truly sets the region apart isn’t simply the abundance of natural gas, but of natural gas liquids such as ethane, propane and butane. The local prevalence of these materials has enabled Ohio to become a world leader in high-end plastics manufacturing. Thanks to this, Ohio has seen boosts in industrial activity and the establishment of chemical facilities throughout the state.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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TranscripT

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from just outside historic Harbor Village, just across the river from Marietta, Ohio. And that is the Ohio River behind me. Today, we’re going to be talking about something that is an exception from the exception. So the big exception is the American shale sector, because it has a different economic structure and uses different technologies for most oil production in the rest of the world and as a result has very low production costs and produces a lot of natural gas as a byproduct of oil production. 

So when you’re in Texas, most notably, say, the Permian people are after the crude oil and then natural gas comes up as a byproduct and they have to flare that natural gas until the infrastructure can be built out to absorb it and bring it into, say, the chemical sector here in Ohio and moving into Pittsburgh, big area in Pennsylvania, you’ve got a different problem. 

The natural gas field is the Marcellus and the Utica, and they are dry gas fields where people are after the natural gas rather than the liquids, because they’re using it for fuel in every place from Chicago to Boston to Washington, D.C. And so they need it for electricity. But there are still liquids here, especially in the western parts of the play, which move into, say, Ohio. 

They’re you’re getting a fair percentage of something called natural gas liquids, which in layman’s terms means things like propane and butane. That means that in this part of the country, it’s not just that the natural gas is cheap because the production costs in the Marcellus are very low. But so many end girls come out of places like the Utica play that Ohio has become a world leader in things like high end plastics, because for them, it’s not the oil that’s the waste product, it’s the propane and such. 

That is a primary feedstock into chemicals specifically for things like plastics. And so we’re seeing dozens of chemical facilities that do secondary processing popping up in the more populated parts of Ohio, taking advantage of what is basically below global cost inputs of things like ethylene, propane, butane and the rest. So here we are in the middle of the continent and we’re suddenly seeing an explosion in industrial activity for something that we normally associate with the Chinese coast, the Persian Gulf or the Texas coast. 

Very different situation, very different geology, very different outcomes. 

Geopolitics of Terror Groups: ISIS and ISIS Khorasan

With the recent attack on Moscow, I received some requests to do a breakdown on the geopolitics of ISIS. First things first, there are two largely unaffiliated groups at play here – ISIS-Khorasan and the more widely known, ISIS.

The original ISIS (aka the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) primarily operates in the middle Fertile Crescent region. In recent years ISIS has not done well, losing control over all the territory it once controlled, being reduced to little more than a strategic nuisance.

ISIS-Khorasan has no specific region in which it operates, but rather targets Shia populations and engages in violent activities against secular governments it perceives as oppressing Muslims, such as Russia.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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TranscripT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Frigid Colorado. We’re taking a entry from the Ask Peter System today in the aftermath of attacks by the Islamic State of Khorasan on Iran and more recently on Russia. I was requested to do a geopolitics of ISIS video. So here we go. Couple of things to keep in mind. First of all, ISIS’s and ISIS Khorasan are two very different groups. 

So I can do a geopolitics of ISIS. ISIS’s core power is in the middle Fertile Crescent between western Syria and central Iraq. So basically, you’ve got the Euphrates Valley that goes from the Persian Gulf up through central Iraq into western Iraq. Northern Iraq then comes back down to the cities of harm, Hama and Aleppo or Aleppo, excuse me. 

Well, that is the zone that technology and people and ideas and trade are percolated back and forth through a lot of human history, especially the earlier days. And in that zone, the thing to remember is that the crescent is very, very, very thin. While you do have Mesopotamia in the east, where the Tigris comes into play, in the zone between the rivers, it is a major agricultural zone. 

And while you do have more rainfall in extreme western Syria, when the Lebanon mountains merge with the the highlands that eventually become Anatolia in the middle, you only have the Euphrates. And even in modern days with industrial level technology, in many cases, the green belt where you can grow food in the central Euphrates region is only a few miles from north to south. 

And because of that, they’ve never been able to develop kind of the dense population centers because there’s never enough food production. And the zones that you can do something with are very, very skinny and very, very worn, which makes it very difficult to patrol it. So think about this this way. If your city was a half a mile wide but 20 miles long and the proportions are much worse for Iraq, if you were of your police station is getting all the way down and all the way back would be difficult. 

You want something that’s spread out from a central point like, you know, say, a Chicago or Houston or Dallas or most of our cities. It just makes a civilizational penetration much more difficult and eventually hit hard. Does it do anything? So this is the zone that ISIS’s from water is limited. There’s only one source aside from the oases, and either you control it or you don’t. 

And so geopolitics, that region tend to be very visceral and very desperate. And this is part of the reason why ISIS is so violent, because it is a battle for survival among groups every single day. Now, it also means that groups like ISIS are not long for this world. If you look at the region from a broader perspective, if you go further west, you hit the Levant, which has powers like Israel and the core of Syria to go north. 

You get into Anatolia and the Turkish territories, and if you go east, you get into Mesopotamia, which is have been a cradle of civilization for quite some time. This zone in the middle can’t do anything. And the zone in the middle has never been powerful enough to penetrate into any of those other three zones. So the only time this zone in the middle matters at all is when all three of those major areas are off light at the same time. 

And if you go back to ISIS’s heyday ten, 15 years ago, that’s exactly where we were. Syria was in a civil war that the central government had almost lost. Iraq was reeling from the effects of the American occupation, was not able to patrol its own territory, much less things on its fringes. And the Turks had not yet reemerged from their century long self-imposed geopolitical sleep. 

It was a very different situation. And so ISIS was able to form, recruit, expand, dominate groups and basically go on a series of small genocides. It was pretty nasty. Now, that’s not our situation. The Syrian government has, for the most part, stabilized. Even if the civil war is not quite over. The Turks are back in the game and are crossing the border regularly. 

And Iraq is a power worthy of its name again. And so ISIS is basically fallen from controlling territory to just a few outposts that move around and a general insurgency in some of the least valuable property in the Middle East. So that’s icis. ISIS Khorasan is different. ISIS chorus on things that ISIS’s a bunch of wimps because they don’t kill enough people, specifically Shia, ISIS’s primarily Sunni. 

I Scorsone as well. And they see Shia as the worst apostates of all and so they are not interested in holding territory. They are interested in taking the battle wherever it may go and wherever there’s a secular government. And so that has taken them against the Taliban, which they think are a bunch of horses. Let’s take it up against the Iranians who are Shia. 

And that’s taken them against the Russians, who they see as oppressing their fellow Sunni followers. Because of this, you can’t do a geopolitics of ISIS Khorasan because they’re not interested in territory. They don’t have a home territory. They’re actually fairly egalitarian as to who they take into their ranks as long as you’re not a Shia. And in the case of the Russian space, there are a lot of subjugated Muslim populations with probably the Uzbeks being the most important that are willing to join violent groups. 

And so one of the things that it appears to be with ISIS course on is they’ve been recruiting pretty aggressively from within the former Soviet sphere. Uzbeks, Tajiks, some Kyrgyz, maybe some to some Turkmen, and hopefully not, but most likely. So Dagestan is Chechens about Kurds and Tatars. Those are all people who live within the Russian Federation today. 

So the danger here for the Russians is very, very real from a security point of view, an analogy, a logical point of view. But you can’t do a geopolitics of ISIS’s or ICE’s Kurdistan because they don’t have a core territory. They’re a splinter group that’s based entirely on ideology. So ISIS is not the sort of group that can expand much beyond its current footprint and certainly not beyond that part of the Middle Euphrates, where from time to time they can kind of expand its course on as a different sort of category. 

They are not constrained and it could very well be coming to a place near you. That was way more inflammatory than he deserved. While there have been certainly plots interrupted by ISIS because American interest, there’s no sign that the uproar in the United States for that yet.

Things I (Do) Worry About: A Post-Germany Europe

Germany has had a streak hotter than the ’96 Chicago Bulls. The German economic model has contributed to European political, economic, and industrial success, but problems are on the horizon.

Germany’s industrial success can be attributed to three trends: a high value-added economy focusing on skilled labor, access to cheap energy and inputs from Russia, and a global trade system facilitated by the US. Now take away all three of those things, mix in an aging population, workforce shortages, and swath of geopolitical challenges, and you’re left with a very scary picture for the Germans (and Europe).

Germany’s role as the hub of multinational manufacturing means that collapse could send ripple effects across Central Europe, with political, economic and strategic implications.

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Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

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TranscripT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from the Pacific. Today we’re adding another entry into things that I do and do not worry about, and this one is one that I mostly do worry about, and that’s what happens to Europe, is the German economic model fails. Well, for those of you who don’t live and breathe things German, you basically have three reinforcing trends that have made Germany an industrial superpower, especially for the last 30 years. 

The first one is an extraordinarily high value added economy that is focused on the ultra skilled labor and precision. The problem with that is the German population is aging out and over the next decade they’re going to lose the bulk of that workforce and the retirees are going to start drawing in pensions in health care, instead of paying taxes and providing the capital that’s necessary to keep that high end manufacturing base working. 

So the entire base within the German system is breaking. In addition, number two, relatively cheap, relatively bottomless supplies of energies and inputs from the Russian system, not only those obviously been constrained by sanctions in the Ukraine war, but it was the Germans who did a whole lot of the work in places like Siberia and keeping that production flowing. 

And since the Germans stopped doing that because of the war, we now know that there’s going to be maintenance issues in the Russian system, even if there’s no war damage, even if the sanctions allow the stuff to flow. Now, that’s a little bit loosey goosey. We don’t know how long it’s going to take for this up to go off line, but we know it’s coming. 

And then the third issue is the United States. The Americans have provided warble cover to the world. So that anyone can ship anything anywhere. And the Germans use this before 1990 to ship product primarily to the United States. And more recently, they’ve been using it to ship to China. Well, that’s another country that is facing demographic issues. And there’s a competition between Joe Biden and Donald Trump over who can be more economically protectionist. 

So the entire model is in danger. But the real reason I worry about this is not for Germany per say, but Germany is the hub of a multinational manufacturing system, of which it may be the central and most important part, but it’s hardly the only one. German technology, German training, German infrastructure in German manufacturing supply chains are not contained within Germany. 

They are arguably the single biggest piece of the manufacturing systems in Belgium, in Austria, in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, and probably a close second in places like the Netherlands and Denmark. So as the German system fails, even if everyone else demographically is okay and they are not, you’re still looking at the broad scale failure for the entirety of the Central European manufacturing system, and that is going to have any number of rattle on effects politically, economically and strategic. 

Will Venezuela Invade Guyana for Oil?

Photo of black oil barells

I’ve gotten a handful of questions regarding Venezuela invading the South American state of Guyana due to economic challenges and oil discoveries. The short answer is that I’m not worried about this, but here’s three reasons why.

This would be a difficult trek for the Venezuelans given the lack of infrastructure connecting the two countries. Venezuela also lacks a functional military that would be able to carry out this invasion. Lastly, the oil production in Guyana is predominantly offshore, so a land-based invasion is just impractical if the goal is to seize someone else’s oil projects. This one’s a nonstarter.

So, unless Venezuela magically fixes all of their military shortcomings, there’s no real concern of an invasion of Guyana. And that means the US can forget about this area and focus on the bigger fish for now.

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Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado, taking one from the Ask Peter List today. And is it do I worry about Venezuela invading the South American state of Guiana? For those of you unfamiliar with the backstory of Venezuela, until roughly 2000 was one of the world’s major oil producers kick it out somewhere between two and a half and four and a half million barrels a day based on the environment. 

Since then, a guy by the name of Hugo Chavez, who is a populist who is completely incapable of doing math, took over and ran the place for about 15 years before he died. And his successor, who was a poor quality bus driver, took over. No joke. And they’ve run the place into the ground. So total production now is no more than a million barrels per day. 

And even that’s a little touchy. And in fact, we’re probably going to see a new round of American sanctions go on it in a couple of weeks here, in which case even that low level is probably going to fall. And I can see a situation before the end of the decade where Venezuela actually becomes a net oil importer because of their inability to operate their own fields. 

So that’s the back story. Guyana is a another former colony or recent colony just to the east of the country with has a population of like three, even 3 million, just three. Anyway, they found oil offshore a few years ago. And so the American company, Exxon has been operating there ever since. And I think they’re supposed to add a million barrels per day this year. 

I’ll be back to you on that one. But it’s definitely over half a million barrels a day. It’s been the most promising new oil play in the world that is not in the U.S. shale patch. So the idea would be that Venezuela, to avoid a state collapse, which is a very real danger now, would pick up and move over to Guyana to take the oil and the income. 

No is the short version. I don’t worry about this. Three reasons. Number one, there is no infrastructure linking the two countries. The corner of northeastern Venezuela that abuts Guyana is full on jungle and there’s not even a single road of note. So the Venezuelans would have to use their Navy or the Air Force, and they don’t have either of those things. 

Which brings us to factor number two. They don’t really have an army either. When Chavez took over, the military was broadly opposed to him in the ongoing power struggle. And the way he solved that was by bribing the generals with the money that would have gone for equipment and training. Well, you asked for that over 20 years. You now have way too many generals in order to run the military and no functional military. 

So if the Venezuelan army was able to go get into one place, they would just kind of walk as a mob into the jungle and die. And any that did manage to cross over into Guyana could easily be defeated by the Marines at the U.S. embassy, all six of them. There’s just there’s not a military question here. And then the third issue is that I don’t think it’s going to happen because all of the oil production is offshore and Venezuela is in its heyday, even when it was well run, didn’t operate a single offshore project. 

So they would have to what, take over the country and rowboat out to the facilities, take them over, and then kindly ask Exxon to keep operating them, but to send all the income to Caracas. Yeah. No, not going to happen. So there’s no need for the U.S. to get involved here because there’s no danger whatsoever. Although I got to admit, it’d be hilarious to watch Venezuela try.

Apparently A Cessna and Elbow Grease Is All Ukraine Needs

The Ukrainians are getting creative and finding ways to launch longer-range attacks on Russian infrastructure. We’ve already seen strikes on pipeline nexuses and chemical complexes as deep as Samara and Tatarstan.

Attacks like these hold significant economic implications for the Russians, as any disruptions to these oil facilities could be devastating. The issue isn’t so much that Ukraine is poking holes in Russian air defense, but perhaps exposing that there…Isn’t any.

Attacks like these will likely prove to be a growing challenge for Russian security and economic stability as the conflict continues.

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Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:

First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.

Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.

And then there’s you.

Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TranscripT

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado, got a fresh dusting overnight because, you know, April, it’s April 2nd in the news in the last 3 or 4 days is that the Ukrainians have demonstrated a significantly longer range for weapons systems launched from Ukraine proper. specifically, the Ukrainians have been able to hit targets with their new drones that are in the, locations of Samara and Tartus stand.

now, these are more important than a lot of these in pieces of infrastructure that Ukrainians have been hitting with their drone campaign recently. Samara is a major pipeline nexus where a lot of the crude that comes in from southwestern, Siberia gets processed or redirected to European or Black Sea markets. And Tatarstan is even deeper within the Russian Federation, in Siberia proper.

and it is also a major chemicals and refining complex. So the significance here is pretty, pretty strong. the issue is throughput. The Russians don’t have a lot of storage. The country’s really big, and the most of these systems were built in the imperial age under the Soviets. So they were designed to supply the empire. Well, now that, the empire has gone its own way, and most of the former Soviet republics and, former Soviet satellite states are getting their crude and natural gas from somewhere else.

The Russians are completely dependent now for income on getting this crude out to the wider world. That means getting to the black on the Baltic Sea, because they can’t really use the pipes to go into Germany anymore. So when you think of that, and then you look at notes like some are in tartar, stand, we have a problem.

Because if these are interrupted, especially Samara, which is a nexus, then the crude has nowhere to go. There’s not a backup system when these clusters get taken offline, for whatever reason, pressure builds up in the pipe. Back to the wellhead. Now, this could be worse. the facilities that are in southwestern Siberia, especially places like Tarter stand in Bucharest on it, doesn’t get so cold there in the winter that the well heads freeze.

But now that the Ukrainians have demonstrated the ability to strike over 1000km from their border, it’s only a matter of time before they start aiming for targets that are north of Moscow instead of south of Moscow. And if those pipeline accesses go offline, then you’re talking about the well heads in northwestern Siberia actually freezing shut. And a lot of the stuff just goes offline forever because if the wellhead freezes shut, you have to drill it.

And you can only re drill in the Arctic summer. And that only lasts for about 3 or 4 months a year. So, that’s kind of piece one. Piece two is what’s going on in Totters on Thomaston because it is a combination of producing zone and chemical zone. A lot of these chemicals are what allows the Russian agricultural system to work.

 

And a lot of this stuff is exported to China. So what the Ukrainians are demonstrating is the capacity to identify targets that move up the value added chain, not just going after raw crude, not just going after refined product, but even downstream products, like chemicals manufacture. so the economic hit to the Russians from this continues to climb.

And now it’s really just an issue of whether or not the Russians have the capacity of getting meaningful air defense of the hundreds of facilities that they have across European and Western Siberia and Russia in order to stymie these attacks in the first place, because they’re clearly not moving fast enough on the front in order to disrupt these drones launching.

And this is a very, very cheap way to do it. These things cost more than, say, the Iranian Shi’ite drones. But you’re still talking about well, well, well, well under $1 million a pop. Whereas a refinery that handles 100,000 barrels a day is going to run, you know, $1 billion on a good day. So the disruption here is real.

It is getting bigger. And we’re getting to the point where it’s time to start thinking about what happens when Russian crude and materials processing goes offline in some form, because we’re only in the early days of this Ukrainian campaign. And now that they found a soft spot, you can guarantee they’re going to hit it over and over and over and over.

Quick addendum, there is very clear footage coming out of toddler son of a small passenger plane. Think of something like the size of a Cessna, maybe a little bit bigger, flying and ramming into, a munitions factory that builds drones for the Russian military. specifically the Shaheed type that have been causing the Ukrainians so many problems.

Now, it’s not so much the significance of this attack as attacking a factory floor with a 50 to 100 pound bomb. You know, let’s let’s call it huge, say 300 pounds, isn’t going to cause enough damage to really take anything off line. The issue is that it got there. It flew over 1000km through Russian airspace. that means one of two things.

Either number one, the Ukrainians now have kits that they can smuggle into Russia, modify a plane at an airfield within Russia and launch like that, which would be from an internal security point of view and a technical point of view, just a disaster for the Russians or the Russians have absolutely no anti-aircraft coverage in the core of the country, where most of the infrastructure is and most of the people live, no matter what the outcome here is, this is a disaster for the Russians, because there’s no doubt that the Ukrainians will be now be doing it at scale, because it’s clear the Russians can’t stop them.