The Americans Didn’t Vote With Their Wallets

Picture of a pen next to a voter ballot

Well, it looks like American politics got drunk at the holiday party and forgot who it was. Exit polls from the latest election show a significant shift in voting patterns.

People didn’t vote with their wallets, but instead focused on cultural issues. So, the traditional breakdown of wealthier individuals voting Republican and lower-income voters leaning Democrat has gone out the window.

With both parties weak and focused on issues that fail to resonate with voters, people are choosing the candidate they perceive to be the lesser of two evils. This voting dynamic should correct itself in the next few election cycles (political alignments based on income should re-emerge), but a new party system in the US is likely on the horizon.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan coming to you from New Zealand. And now that I’m safely in another country, I’ve got to do something about U.S. politics I thought I should share. We now have pretty good exit polling from all 50 states, and I can safely say that we’ve had a significant change, not just in voting patterns, but in organizational patterns for the US, politically. 

Traditionally, when we think about the last 70 years of our by party system, the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to vote Republican. It’s the party of business and wealth. And if you’re working class or poorer on the dole, you’re more likely to vote Democrat, which is the party of the working man and the minorities. 

Yeah, that fell apart completely in this election and this election, regardless of what your income was up to, once you got into the 1%, they don’t track you anymore. So basically half $1 million or less had no bearing whatsoever. Every individual income category was within an eight point spread, right? Clustered around 50%, for who voted for who. 

So for the first time in American history and only one of a very rare number of times in global history, economic mix and income don’t shape your political leanings. Now, this isn’t sustainable. It’s fun for an election and maybe two and, it means a couple things. Number one, it means that the culture war is a big determining factor in how people vote. But more importantly, the idea that business and unions and rich and poor don’t shape our politics is, of course, asinine. So how people redefine how their income matters to them politically is probably gonna determine how we get out of this political mess that we’re in right now. 

Because right now we’ve got two very small, very brittle parties, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party that are clustered around a very short list of issues that most of the country honestly doesn’t care about all that much. And we’ve been presented with a series of, voting for the lesser of two evils. Now, for me, as an independent, I’m comfortable with that. 

I’ve been doing that a long time. But for everybody else, it’s a shit show. So we’re going to see this shift over the next election cycle or two, and money will come back into it, for better or for worse income. We’ll come back to it. Identity. We’ll come back to it from an economic point of view. And then we get a fundamentally new party system. 

What will that look like? I have no idea. Literally, this has never happened before in American history. So we have no examples whatsoever to judge by. But I can guarantee you that we’re all going to find out together, and it’s going to be really uncomfortable.

Red Strings in Romania

Photo of far right candidate from Romanian election, Călin Georgescu

The most recent presidential election in Romania has been annulled, and surprise, surprise, it’s because of the Russians.

The Russians like to meddle about in everyone’s business, but some countries get the short end of the stick; Romania is one of them. Given its proximity to Ukraine and geographic access points, it provides a critical space that the Russians would love to control. By interfering with the elections, Russia can create divisions and weaken political resolve amongst the Romanians, with the hopes of then swooping up some Romanian territory.

Romania’s political environment isn’t squeaky clean to begin with, but the coalition of dominant parties would love to prevent Călin Georgescu from entering office. New elections will be held soon, and we’ll just have to wait and see how the Romanian people respond.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the crater of Mount Taranaki in Egmont National Park in New Zealand. And today we’re going to talk about Romania. Very, very short version. There’s this guy by the name of George Eskew who is a bit of a nationalist and kind of a dumbass. Really a no one, was in a couple of minor government, positions back in the 90s and really hasn’t done anything with his life since then. 

Anyway, he came in first in the first round of the presidential election that the, Romanians recently had. And, in recent days, the Electoral Commission of Romania has nullified that election. They’re going to hold it. And the reason is pretty straightforward. It’s flat out election interference by the Russians. And the Russians are trying different things in different places. 

They’re trying to see what sticks. And obviously not every culture is the same thing. So the playbook changes. But every once in a while they, like, bring everything together and push really, really, really hard to see if they can make a change. In the case of 

Romania, they pushed so hard it was really obvious. So something like 11,000 fake accounts were detected on social media with over, like, I think it was 17 million fake followers in a country with only 19 million people. 

So the interference was mad and it was obvious and it was found. And now we’re going to find out if the Romanians, once they realized the degree to which the Russians were trying to fuck around in their internal affairs, if they come up with a different opinion, there’s no guarantee that that’s how it’s going to go. 

Of course, people vote the way they vote. And when you tell people to go back to the polls so they can vote the right way, they tend to tend to get a little pissed off. Specifically, the leading Romanian parties have a reputation for corruption and being really cozy with one another, basically trading power back and forth. 

And they’ve recently joined forces to form a joint government to keep the presidency out of Georgia’s use hands. Or at least that’s the goal. Romania is generally considered one of the 2 or 3 most corrupt countries in the European Union. So the idea that there would be a robust protest vote makes a lot of sense. 

And it also makes sense that that protest vote would happen for the presidency. The Romanian system is a little bit like a flip of the French system. So in France is a very strong executive, a very strong president, but Parliament is elected separately. And if the Parliament and the presidency are from the same party, the president is in charge. 

The president picks the prime minister, the prime minister runs the government in Romania. It’s kind of the opposite, where the parliament, selects the prime minister, the president is elected separately. And if they’re from different parties, the president doesn’t have a lot of authority. Technically, he’s in charge of foreign affairs. Technically, he’s in charge of the military. 

But really, because they control the budget, the parliament still does that. So if you’re just you were to become president, he certainly wouldn’t control Parliament. And his room to maneuver would be somewhat limited. But for the Russians, this is enough, because Romania is one of the countries, after Ukraine that the Russians have shortlisted for the next wave of countries they want to invade. 

And anything that weakens the political resolve in Romania is something that can’t help but benefit the Russians in the long run. Now, specifically, the Russians are trying to weaken the resolve of the countries that border Romania to make it more difficult for the West in general to support Ukraine. And then, of course, the Russians ultimately want to make it to the Danube Delta, which would mean annexing somewhere between 20 and 30% of Romanian territory. 

Now, that’s a problem for another day. You can fault the Russians for being many things. But, planners, they’re always planners. 

So we’ll have a new first round elections pretty soon, and probably second round elections somewhere around the end of the year. 

And we will know what the Romanian people think of all of this before too long. 

Cover photo of Călin Georgescu by Wikimedia Commons

The Syrian Consequence: Iran Goes “Defensive”

Flag of Iran

Syria was critical for Iran’s influence in the Arab world. For 40 years the Iranians could project power via Syria and Hezbollah, but the collapse of the Assad regime means Syria’s role as buffer and distraction has ended. So, what’s next for Iran?

With Hezbollah in Lebanon severely weakened and Hamas constrained in Gaza, there’s not a whole lot of reliable proxies distracting regional powers. As eyes turn to Iran, it will need to shift its focus to threats that are closer to home. We’re talking Pakistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia.

As these regional adversaries begin putting pressure on the Iranians, they will likely respond more aggressively than we’ve seen in recent times. This could lead to heightened tensions and potential conflict with the likes of Saudi Arabia.

This marks a larger shift in the Middle East, as regional instability moves eastward toward Iran’s borders.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hello, everybody. I’m here coming to you from Okura Kuru in New Zealand. Today we’re going to talk about, more consequences of the Syrian civil war coming to an abrupt shift with the fall of the Assad regime. And today we’re going to talk specifically about Iran. Now, Iran’s primary method for intervening in affairs in the Arab world has been through Syria, because here you have a nominally Arab Sunni state in the middle of the region. 

Now, Syria has never been ruled by the Sunni Arabs in the modern age. It’s always been by the Assad family, who are a minority called Alawites, which are generally considered to be a heretical sect. But by influencing, affecting, emboldening and empowering the Assad dynasty, the Iranians were basically able to keep everyone on their toes and off balance. 

One of the things to keep in mind if you’re a country like Iran, which is basically a mountain fortress, is that, if everyone can concentrate on you, you don’t stand a chance. So the trick for successful management is to make sure people are occupied with other problems. And in a world where the dominant superpower is a naval power, the United States. 

You want to keep them locked down with concerns on land somewhere else. And so that’s why the Iranians were always active in Syria. That’s why the Russians were active in Syria. It was just a distraction play more than anything else. Well, now that Syria has fallen, now that the Assads are gone, now that Syria is going to find a different course, Iran is discovering that everything that has worked for in the last 40 years is kind of falling apart all at once. 

Hezbollah, which is the militant faction in Lebanon that intervened in the Syrian civil war and has gone to war with Israel a couple times, has basically been beheaded. And the question is whether it can reform at all. And Hamas is now in a box. That’s the militant group in Gaza, and there’s really nothing left, which means that everyone can focus on Iranian issues that are closer to Iran proper, which is a real problem for the regime. 

Now, I don’t think that overthrowing Iran is even remotely realistic. This isn’t Russia, where it’s a cluster of people at the top. This isn’t China where it’s a one man show. This is not 

Syria where there’s a dynasty. Iran is a theocracy. And so there’s a class of over 10,000 mullahs that rule the country. 

And that would be a hell of an assassination program in order to overthrow the political system. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t threats. And that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways that Iran can be contained and contained. And mostly that’s going to have to do with local issues that have to do with naval prominence and energy policy. Keep in mind that the Persian Gulf is where half of all internationally traded oil is sourced from Iran, even in low times, is going to be a major oil producer and exporter. 

So as you crunch down the outer perimeter of where the Iranians have influence, and it moves from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq in the Persian Gulf, it is easier for external powers to pressure Iran right at home. In many ways, this is the worst of all worlds. And what we’re probably going to see in the next few years is Iran being forced to respond in kind within its own inner periphery. 

And so that’s less stuff going on in the Levant. That’s less stuff going far away in places like Yemen. And it means having to deal with opposition, both international and local, right around their inner perimeter. Expect to see more going on with Pakistan and the Baluchi rebels that are operate on both sides of the border. With now the Iranians more on the offensive and suffering from Baluchi attacks, rather than empowering them somewhere else. 

Expect to see Azerbaijan, which is majority Shia but secular, taking a more pro-American line to contain Iranian power to the north. Expect to see Iraq empowered, which, you know, Iraq is a majority Shia state, but they’re Arabs and not Persians. And in times when Iran tends to get, how should I say this? Insecure, they tend to be very active in what we think of as Mesopotamia, today’s Iraq. 

And I would expect that to become much more inflamed, especially as Turkey becomes more involved in the broader region. But the real issue, the real fight is going to be between Iran and Saudi Arabia, because they are the two biggest energy powers. They were the two largest economies in the Persian Gulf. And in any scenario where Iran is on the defensive. 

Saudi Arabia has a really big checkbook. And while Sunni militants have hit out at the United States and hit out at Israel and hit out Russia and everyone else, the ethnic group, the religious group that the Sunni Arab militants like okay, are most opposed to are Shia Persians. Most of these groups were originally founded with the intent of taking Iran or its predecessors down a notch or three. 

So expect to see a lot more violence as Saudi Arabia starts to write a lot of checks to hem in Iran on all possible points of the compass. And the only way that Iran can return the favor in any meaningful sense is to do a normal war. So, ironically, the end of Iran’s power in the western parts of the Middle East, in places like Syria, is probably going to lead to a more aggressive Iran. 

And from their point of view, a defensive Iran. And the only way that they can stop the attacks that are likely to increase upon them is to take the fight to a country like Saudi Arabia. That’s, to be perfectly honest, doesn’t have a functional military on its own. So the next chapter of Middle Eastern history isn’t going to be any more or less violent than the one that came before. 

It’s just the violence is going to be further east and closer to Iran’s borders.

The Syrian Consequence: Israel’s Opportunity

Photo of Israeli flag in from of some buildings

The Russians aren’t the only ones trying to figure out what to do following the chaos in Syria; Israel is also reassessing their regional positioning. However, while Israel’s regional strategy will need to be revamped, they have an opportunity to capitalize on this situation.

Syria previously limited Israel’s ability to find security in the region, but a window for change has been opened. With the Shia crescent and its influence on this region being disrupted, the threat that Iran and Hezbollah once posed to Israel has greatly diminished. And while Israel is a bit preoccupied with Gaza and Hamas, there’s not a real threat to Israeli statehood.

It would seem Israel could be ready for a new strategy, but regional relations will be critical in determining how that plays out. Between Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iran, there’s plenty of countries to keep an eye on; although, the most important places to watch will be Syria and Turkey.

As Syria builds back, we could see a Sunni Arab consolidation, which might cause bigger problems for Israel down the road. But Turkey will be the final boss here; depending on how Turkey approaches Israel, that will determine which strategic path Israel will be forced to go down.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Egmont National Park. That’s Mount Taranaki in the background. And I’m walking through the ahu Kawakawa swamp, which is nonstandard. Anyway, we’re gonna continue talking about the consequences of the fall of the Syrian government. And today we’re going to cover Israel. There’s an old adage going back to the late 70s, that says that there is no war without Egypt and no peace without Syria. 

The last major Israeli, Arab conflict was in 1973, and it was a surprise attack. That probably shouldn’t have happened, but it ended with a resounding Israeli victory. And after that, it set the stage for peace talks with the Egyptians, which concluded under Jimmy Carter in 1979. But Syria always stayed on the outside. And the whole concept of that phrase is that Israel is a vulnerable state, and until it has peace with all of its neighbors, it has peace with none of its neighbors, because there just isn’t any strategic depth. 

But now the situation has changed. And there is an opportunity here for Israel to do a few things differently, should it so choose, the border with Egypt is internationally monitored, and Egypt is as close to a friend as the Israelis have in the region. And that provides some strategic opportunities here, especially since now that the, northeastern border is open. 

So this is gonna take a few places. First of all, the Golan Heights, that’s a chunk of territory that the Israelis captured from the Syrians in a series of conflicts throughout, the 20th century. It hasn’t really been settled, because there’s always this idea that there was eventually going to be a land for peace deal. Well, that doesn’t have to happen now. 

So you should expect to see the Israelis make the most of what is actually some significantly fertile territory that, could help a country that imports over half of its foodstuffs. Second, the remaining security concerns are now somewhat limited. There’s this thing called the Shia Crescent that starts in Iran, goes through Iraq, through northern Syria and into Lebanon. 

And the idea is this is the area that the Iranians would use to project power. And one of the big fuck ups that the Americans did with the Iraq war is basically shatter what was an Arab Sunni power that ruled that area and allowed the Iranians to penetrate into the region very, very deeply. They don’t control Iraq, but they’re certainly the first power in the country. 

Well, now, with Syria broken. The Shia crescent has been cut in half, and the Iranians can no longer drive or even reliably fly equipment or arms or men, to the western part of the crescent, which means that Hezbollah, which is the militant group that the Iranians founded and sponsored, but the Syrians manage, that operates mostly in Lebanon. 

Is now, I don’t want to say dead. That’s maybe the wrong word, but certainly gutted. And it will have to do with its own resources and without the Syrians or the Iranians to manage them or reinforce them or provide them with weapons. That’s not a lot. And that’s before you consider that over the last couple of months, the Israelis have done a damn solid job of gutting the entire, Hezbollah leadership. 

So there’s still a lot of anger. There’s still plenty of people to recruit from. But as a functional organization, Hezbollah is functionally gone at this point. And with Syria now gone, there’s really no way to rehabilitate it very quickly. This is not the cold War. This is not a period of heavy globalization where freedom of the seas is sacrosanct. 

This is a world where if you want to get equipment from A to B, you have to basically get it there yourselves and provide the military escort that’s necessary. And Iran’s not a naval power. Okay. That just leaves where this all started. In recent days, Hamas in Gaza. Now, my assessment of what’s going on there really hasn’t changed. 

Hamas, rules Gaza. Gaza is occupied territory. As long as it’s occupied territory, there will be no end of people who are willing to fight the occupiers. And the occupiers are the Israelis. The only question is whether or not the organization that runs the place can get enough equipment and weapons, to fight back in a meaningful way like they did, a year ago, October, when they did that big assault that killed a thousand people. 

The Israelis are in the process of crunching that down. They’re building a cordon in the edge of Gaza, and then cutting it in half, basically splitting into tiny little cantons that they feel they can manage more directly. Now, this will guarantee that the population will always be hostile to them. But you’re talking about a low level simmering insurgency, as opposed to something that could generate the military organization that’s necessary to actually attack a state. 

So it’s ugly. It will continue to be ugly in fact, it will probably from a human rights point of view and a starvation point of you get uglier. But that doesn’t mean it’s a threat to the state of Israel. And that’s everybody, everyone around, Israel has now been clipped or befriended. Jordan is basically an economic satellite who’s indirectly sponsored by Israel and the United States. 

Egypt is relatively friendly. Lebanon, in a good day, is a failed state, and without Hezbollah, they might actually be able to make a go of being a semi ish kind of sort of normal state. And Iran lacks the ability to, dick around in Israeli affairs so long as there is no Syria. Now, there’s two things to keep in mind for a longer term. 

First of all, Syria itself. One of the reasons that the Israelis never got involved in the Syrian civil war is they felt that if the majority in Syria was able to take control, the Sunni Arabs, then they would be dealing with something like Gaza and Hamas, but on a much larger scale. And so they didn’t like Assad or Assad Syria, but they felt it was the least bad option. 

 

So as whatever post-assad Syria consolidates into a new form, the Israelis are going to be acting very, very cautiously. You’re going to be watching very, very closely. And they’re May based on the way politics evolves, maybe a strong, far stronger case for Israeli intervention in post civil war Syria than there was during civil war. 

Syria, of course, will probably have a second civil war. Now all the Sunni Arabs figure out who’s in charge. So as long as it hasn’t consolidated, Israel is fine. Once it starts to consolidate, Israel is going to be watching very closely because it might not like the form that it takes. What’s next? Second. And the bigger question, the longer term question and the question that ultimately is going to occupy, Israeli strategic thinkers for decades is the relationship with Turkey. 

Now, in the past, the Israel Jews got along with the Ottoman Empire. And during the Cold War, the Israelis got along with Cold War era Turkey. But that is not where we are right now. Turkey is in the process of redefining what it is to be Turkish, and based on how that definition goes. There may or may not be room for Israel in that definition. 

The issue is, is that Turkey is a major power and there is nothing that Israel could ever do to change that. And so Israel is stuck dealing with whatever the new Turkish identity happens to be. Now, me taking the arm chair, look, a a turkey that partners with Israel is one that de facto controls the entire eastern Mediterranean. 

Egypt would probably be brought along for the ride and becomes a major regional power in its own right. An Israel that doesn’t get along with Turkey is one that is locked down in a series of local conflicts. That greatly sap its power and its ability to project in any direction. So if the government of Turkey can decide that Jews are okay, then we go one direction. 

And for the powers of Europe, all of a sudden Turkey is a major player that they can’t be ignored. If the Turkish leadership decides that the Jews are the problem, then we have a very different situation with the European side, with the Israelis, to keep the Turks boxed up. Now that is a debate and a question and a time frame that would be decided years from now. 

But now that Syria has been broken, that is the next big thing on the Israeli and the Turkish agenda.

The Syrian Consequence: Russia’s Withdrawal

Guard of honor at the Eternal Flame on the Red Square in Moscow

Much has changed since I left for New Zealand a few days ago, and I’m sure everyone has already caught up on the Syrian unraveling. So, let’s dive into the history of Syria and the consequences that all this will have, specifically what this means for Russia.

Think of Syria as the runt of the litter. Post-World War I, all the big dogs in the region carved out the valuable territory and what was left..became Syria. No matter which way the cookie crumbles, the Syrian experience was never going to be pretty. The overthrow of the Assad regime is just another chapter in that rough history.

Russia fits into this picture as a decade-long supporter of Assad, which included military support and intervention via the Wagner Group. With Assad’s overthrow, Russia’s position in Syria is fading, and quick. Syria’s collapse means Russia’s influence in the Middle East and Africa will be threatened, since supply routes to these regions will be cut off.

In the coming days and weeks, I would expect to see a series of embarrassing strategic losses for Russia. We’re even seeing Turkey jumping on the opportunity to complicate Russia’s withdrawal from the region. This could even spell trouble for the Russian’s broader military presence.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter. Zain here. Coming to you from Egmont National Park in New Zealand, that’s Mount Taranaki, this is Holly Hutt. This is where I’m spending the night. A little chilly here today. Anyway, things are on fire in Syria. I apologize that, apparently the country fell, one was airborne. And that I wasn’t there to, like, tell you what it all meant. 

But we recorded a couple things before I got some of those already out. Some of them are coming. Today we’re gonna talk about consequences. We’re going to start with the country. That is really the only reason that Syria has lasted this long. Now, let’s dial it back. Okay. Series. An artificial construct. The territory that is now Syria hasn’t been a functional government in centuries. 

The only reason we are aware of this thing called Syria is because in the aftermath of the mandate period, that’s after World War one. The colonies were basically broken up. And independent states were allowed to rise, and everyone in the region basically took the good part. So Mesopotamia went one way, became a rock. Saudi Arabia found oil in its own way. 

Egypt got independence and picked a fight. Didn’t win it anyway, in the case of Syria, Syria was what was left over. The Turks wouldn’t took the chunks that they wanted, specifically the heart, which is the north east corner of the Mediterranean, which is like the only part of the region that gets reliable during fall. 

The French made Lebanon its own thing, and Syria was the rump. So the idea that anything can arise out of this is kind of a stretch. So we’re probably looking at a prolonged period of civil war, no man’s land as various groups vie for control. The group that ultimately took control of Syria ended up to be a group called the Alawites, who live on the coast. 

And they basically partnered up with every other minority in the country against the Sunni, Arab majority. And it’s the Sunni Arabs who have thrown this revolution and have now overthrown the Assad regime. The Assads were Alawites, by the way. So, getting something coherent out of this is, at best going to take a very long time anyway. 

This whole system would have come crashing down a decade ago if not for the Russian government. The Russians Soviets had always been relatively pro-Syrian because the Syrians were anti-Israeli and the Israelis were on the side of the United States. So it’s just a plain old cold word, tit for tat, using the regional politics as the backdrop. 

But, more recently, the Putin government, realizing that it needed to launch a series of ever more aggressive wars in its own periphery and eventually moving into the European space, they wanted a way that they could distract the Europeans and, to a lesser degree, the Americans, from anything they were doing in Syria was perfect. The civil war had already started without them. 

And so the Russians stepped in to protect the Assad government, transferring a lot of military assets, most notably aircraft and mercenaries, under the banner of something called Wagner. Now, you may have remember, Wagner was a group that through a brief coup, having already been out for a year relatively recently. 

That was, Putin’s preferred way of pulling the strings, saying that, oh, these aren’t actually Russians. 

But eventually they ended up sending, like, fighter bombers, and that was pretty obvious. So, the Russians have a substantial military footprint in theater with, thousands of troops and one of their most powerful task naval task forces. Now, the Russian Navy is not known for being competent or large, but if the ships can sail away from port, that’s usually the better ones. 

And so on the Levantine coast, especially in places like, Banias and Tartus. Tartarus, Tartarus, Tartus. Target this, you have Russian naval bases and Russian and naval attachés and staff and all that good stuff. Now, here’s the problem. Russia can’t project power on the seas unless everyone else along the way lets them do it. So ten years ago, when the Russians intervened forcefully in the Syrian 

Civil War, the Assad government was on its last legs at that point, under siege from all sides. But the Russians basically brought in more and more and more forces through these ports distributed into the country, didn’t go after ISIS at all. They primarily went after the secular, Sunni Arab opposition. 

And this is what led them to use several dozen artillery pieces in the vicinity of Aleppo, which is the second largest city, and basically just fire 

tens of thousands of shells into the city. Probably killing around 100,000 people. That was carried out over and over and over again throughout populated centers. 

So all of the war crimes style military operations that you’re seeing in Ukraine right now were, if not birth, certainly honed in the Syrian battle space. Well, that means that there aren’t a lot of Syrians who really want the Russians to do anything but die. But the Russians don’t have the airlift capacity to get their forces out of interior Syria. 

This isn’t the United States. This isn’t the global superpower that has all kinds of transport options. So if you think back to when the Biden administration ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, we now have that going in a multitude of places in Syria, but without the aircraft to move things around. So the Russians are having to basically make a run for the exits. 

But they can’t go south because they get into Jordan, which is a U.S. ally. They can’t go to the southwest because they get into Israel, which is U.S. ally. They can’t go east because they go get into Iraq, which there’s still remnants of ISIS running around. And even if they could get interactors, they would have to go to Iran and then to go to asset hunting there. 

Now they can’t go north because the Turks maybe then orchestrate this last big push by the militants. But they certainly greenlighted it and assisted it and empowered the militants to be successful. And the Turks are thrilled that the Russians are getting trashed. So their only option is to take a very narrow corridor, to the coast through the city of Homs, which is obviously one of the cities that the militants are after. 

In fact, by the time you get this, the military have it. But even if the Russian forces can get to the ports, that doesn’t solve the problem, because Russian ships suck and there’s only two places they can theoretically go. The first is they can go out through the Mediterranean, out the Strait of Gibraltar, around Iberia, by France, by Britain, by Scandinavian, to the port of Murmansk, above the Arctic Circle. 

If they do that, I’d be impressed, because I’m not sure any of their ships can make it that far. These are some of the best ships that the Russians have, but they can’t make port calls any more because there’s a war on in Ukraine. And the Europeans, if these ships were to dock, would just confiscate them. 

And I don’t think they can make that trip. I needed. The closer port is number of sea squishes in the eastern part of the Black Sea, but under something called the Treaty of Montrose, which the Turks manage and enforce. Warships aren’t allowed to transit the Turkish straits from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea and back. And while many of these ships that the Russians have are consider that their home base, it’s up to the Turks to decide what can go and when. 

So you’re more likely to have the ships stalled on the coast while the civil war in Syria moves into its next phase, as the Sunni Arab militants who hate Russia more than anyone else moved to consolidate control of the country. And as the factions start trading chips, control of those ports and the control of the Russian ships that are there are likely to be high up on the list, because there’s any number of countries that might be willing to aid the new Syrian government, whatever form that takes in exchange for certain considerations, and destroying the Russians most capable. 

That naval task force would be an amazing coup by anyone. Or the ships could try to sail all the way to Murmansk and sink along the way, which would also be delightful. So 

whatever you think of this war, and there’s a lot of things to think about. This is only the beginning of a series of strategic humiliations for the Russians. And regardless of how this is sorted out one way or the other, those ships, those ports, that is how the Russians get all of their equipment and the material and their troops into the African theater. 

So whether it’s in Burkina Faso or Niger or Sudan, wherever the Russians currently have a military footprint anywhere in Africa, Libya, that just got cut off because the Russians can no longer supply any of it. So we’re going to see this cascade of strategic collapses of the Russian position throughout the entire Middle Eastern theater, throughout the entire African theater. 

And it’s probably not going to take any more than a few weeks to months. So stay tuned. Get some popcorn. There’s going to be a show.

Can Mar-a-Lago Solve the Leadership Vacuum in Europe

Photo of Trump's residence in Mar-La-Go

The Europeans are having a bit of a leadership crisis at the moment, and it’s coming at an inopportune time…you know, with the Ukraine War raging on. Countries like France and Germany are facing the biggest hurdles, so let’s break those down.

President Macron of France saw his government collapse after a no-confidence vote, which left them with six months of gridlock and nothing to show for it. In Germany, Chancellor Scholz’s coalition has collapsed, and the elections that are likely coming could open the door for some unsavory characters to make their way into office.

When France and Germany struggle with leadership, so does the rest of Europe. And with Trump entering office across the pond, certain European nations are looking to get on his good side before he starts waving his policy wand.

There’s more than just a couple figureheads at stake here. This leadership vacuum risks undermining European cohesion, at a time when it is crucial that these countries lock arms and work together.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

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Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from tomorrow’s work. The wood pile. We need to talk about your, because we’re having the collapse in leadership at a really critical time, both in France and Germany. So first, let’s deal with France. France had, parliamentary elections about six months ago. That ended in a hung parliament, with no single party getting more than a third of the votes. 

In fact, we’ve got like a kaleidoscope of crazy from the hard right to the hard left. The President Macron, is in a difficult situation because under normal circumstances, the president and the parliament are controlled by the same party, or at least that’s the idea. And so you have a very strong president who appoints a prime minister, and then the prime minister forms the government, and all of it basically serves the interests of the party and is dictated by the president. 

But when the parliament is controlled by another party, you get something called cohabitation, which gets really awkward with the prime minister kind of taking the lead on domestic affairs when the president taking the lead on foreign affairs. But because power is split and prerogatives are split, it’s very difficult to get anything really substantial done. What’s going on right now is much worse than that. 

Because of that kaleidoscopic nature, no single alliance, much less no single party, controls the parliament. And so Macron had to cobble together a government out of disparate groups. And it only took three months to build, and it’s only lasted three months. And just a few days ago, we had a vote of no confidence, which destroyed the budget and the prime minister and the government. 

 

And they now have to start over. But starting over doesn’t allow them to go back and have fresh elections to try to get a better result, because there’s a clause in the French constitution that I call the can’t we all get along clause that says you can only call general elections once a year? So we have at least six more months of dysfunction in France, where the president has no mandate and where the parliament is incapable of making a government. 

 

And so the thing is just rolling over in a series of emergency measures, which is really unhealthy for any number of reasons. But if you’re looking to France for leadership at the moment, it’s just not going to be there anytime soon. Well, the situation in Germany isn’t any better. It’s just different. The German constitution prevents votes of no confidence. 

 

If you want to kick the government out, you have to provide from the seats that are in the current Bundestag. That’s their parliament. Just a different party makeup. And so when, Chancellor Schulz dismissed his finance minister and kicked one of the minor parties out of the governing coalition, he basically set the stage for fresh elections, which is something that doesn’t happen in Germany very often. 

 

We’ll probably have those in February. The problem is that in the post-Cold War environment, the German system is really fractured. And we’re seeing a lot of extremist groups getting into the political system. Traditionally, there are four parties in the German parliament, the SDP, which are the socialists, who are currently, controlling the government. That’s where all of Schultz is from. 

 

You’ve got the Greens who are just what they sound like, who control the Foreign Ministry are in the government as well. You’ve got the Free Democrats, which are kind of like a pro small business, libertarian group, which are also in the government. And they can until recently controlled the finance ministry and then in opposition, you’ve got the Christian Democrats, who at the moment are the most popular party. 

 

And if elections were held, they’d probably come in first. But all of that together, 

 

under current polling and actually polling, going back for the better part of a year suggests that those four main parties which have formed the entirety of every government we’ve seen in Germany since 1945, would only get about two thirds of the seats if elections were held today, yesterday, six months ago, a year ago, whatever, with the other third of the seats going to a grab bag of crackpot and crazy and radical and communist and Nazi and just generally nasty parties. 

 

The prohibition in Germany against, extremism is gone. And if we were to have elections, they’d gobble up a third of the seats. Now, the four main parties have all sworn left, right and center that they will never rule with groups like this, that, for example, don’t repudiate the Nazi past. But if you’re going to do that, if going to form a majority government where you need 51% of the seats when a third of the seats aren’t available, that means you’re going to have another three party coalition. 

 

One of the things we’ve seen under Olof Schultz, which I think the guy has done an okay job, considering that the restrictions he’s been under. Anyway, one of the thing is that whenever a decision has to be made, that wasn’t part of the original negotiation to form the government 3 or 4 years ago, everyone has to get together and hash it out. 

 

So whether that issue is labor policy or tax policy or budgetary policy or European policy or security policy, or Ukraine or Russian units, whatever happens to be, they all have to get back together and so here you’ve got the most powerful country in Europe economically, that can’t make a goddamn decision. And if we do have fresh elections in April, as expected, we’re going to get another three party coalition because there’s no way that two parties have enough seats to generate a majority government. 

 

So you should expect the German situation to not really change. In terms of the real policy, security policy, the Ukraine war, relations with the United States, and just expect this, almost docility and inertia. This is a really bad time for Europe for this to all be happening. The Ukraine war is raging as hot as ever. 

 

And in the United States, Donald Trump is about to take over again. And if you don’t have France or Germany who are basically capable of raising their voices for really any reason, then it is up to someone else to decide what your policy is and that someone else is probably going to be Donald Trump, because the Brits are on the outside because of Brexit and there just isn’t another large country that is cohesive enough or powerful enough. 

 

I mean, the closest would be Italy, where Giorgia meloni is reasonably powerful and popular, but it has been a long, long time in Europe since anyone has followed the Italians lead. I mean, we basically have to go to what, Emperor Constantine in the fourth century? Yeah. No. Okay, so, 

 

whether this is good or bad, of course, depends upon your view of Europe and your view of the world and whatever Donald Trump is going to come up with. 

 

The downside is obvious. Donald Trump tends to enact policy based on whoever’s flattered him most recently that something that Vladimir Putin figured out in Donald Trump’s first term. But Zelensky of Ukraine is clearly figured out and was one of the first world leaders to call to congratulate Donald Trump on his crushing success. 

 

And it’s finally everyone can see what a wonderful leader is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, really impressed Trump. And so for several days, we had a lot of very pro-Ukrainian things come out of Mar a Lago. We’ll see if that lasts. We also have minor countries around Europe, whether it’s in the Low Countries or the bolts falling over themselves to call Trump to make their case because everyone is realized. 

 

This time around that it’s all about who speaks to him most recently that he favors, and everyone wants to be that person. It’s not a great way to run a country or a foreign policy or continent, but that’s the reality of where we are. The other issue, of course, is Ukraine, and that Donald Trump is saying that he has a plan to end the war within days of taking over, which, you know, if you can dissolve 500 years of Russian animosity in a week, that would be wonderful. 

 

But I didn’t believe it when he said the same thing about ISIS the first time around, or health care the first time around. So I really don’t believe it now. But hey, you know, stranger things have happened in the United States, in Europe in the last 70 years, so why not give it a shot anyway? That’s kind of the bad side. 

 

The good side is just because the Europeans get a voice doesn’t mean they always get it right. I mean, I realize that’s a huge thing to say in Europe, but, if you think back to the last time we had a significant strategic falling out between the Americans and the Europeans, it was over the Iraq War during the administration of George W Bush. 

 

And at that time, the president of France, Jacques Chirac, and the Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder and the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, formed what a lot of people called the axis of and suffer ability to oppose American policy. Now, there certainly were a number of good reasons to oppose America’s war in Iraq. However, Chirac and Schroeder basically allowed themselves to be propaganda props of the Russian government, something that even if those leaders never really regretted it, their people certainly did. 

 

Now, Chirac has since passed on, so I doubt we’re going to be a couple out of him. That’s particularly loud. But, Gerhard Schroeder is around still, and after he lost the chancellorship, he went to work for the Russian government, several state owned companies. And so his corruption came. Absolutely breathtaking. And we’re still cleaning up that mess. 

 

And by we, I mean German policymakers and French policymakers. And now we have to figure out how this all goes down with Trump being large in charge. So the future of Europe, the policies of Europe probably no longer are going to be flowing through Brussels or Paris or Berlin. They’re going to be flowing through more moral law grow. 

 

And I gotta admit, that’s going to be a hoot. 

The German Failure & Volkswagen

Photo of the Volkswagen logo

The Germans are on a steep uphill climb trying to figure all their s*** out. On the chopping block today is Germany’s automotive and industrial sectors (with Volkswagen being our guinea pig).

VW is struggling for several reasons…and no, it’s not because hot-boxing it in the Scooby-doo vans has gone out of fashion. VW could blame increasing energy costs, competition from China, or electric vehicle challenges…they could even blame it on my favorite scape goat – demographics. Germany has a shrinking workforce which makes things more expensive, but global car demand is also shrinking, so it’s a double whammy. A combination of all these factors has made doing just about anything in Germany hopeless.

This isn’t just a Volkswagen issue though; these are problems that plague the entire German system and infect everything within it. Without some serious change, the flocks of skilled German workers emigrating will only grow.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here come to you from the Witte Museum in San Antonio. And we’re going to talk today about what’s going on in Germany specifically. We have several thousand mechanics and machinists that are striking as part of a renegotiation and a cancellation program done by Volkswagen. The German automaker, very, very short version is Volkswagen has had a really tough time in the last several years. 

First, they lied about their emissions, then they lied about lying about their emissions. And then they started losing clients around the world. Demand for the cars are down sharply, and the company is trying to rightsize, which means closing several facilities. And so the people who work in those facilities are striking unless the facilities are kept open. If that sounds like a not particularly good plan, that’s because, this isn’t a particular good plan. 

The people are desperate because the company is going under. In fact, the entire German auto industry is in the process of dying, along with the bulk of the German industrial plants. And understand that, five big points. First of all, energy, the Germans used to get almost all of their natural gas and the stuff that they used to source the electricity system from Russia, prices that were probably be safe to consider at below the global average. 

With the Ukraine war, the Germans took a moral stance and decided to stop using that stuff, which drastically drove up not just the price of power, but of the price of the raw materials that they used to fuel their chemical system. And without a chemical system, it’s kind of hard to do any manufacturing down the stream. And so we actually see German chemical companies physically dismantling their infrastructure and shipping it over to places with better economics and cheaper energy, places like Louisiana. 

It makes it really hard to have downstream manufacturing if the core stuff isn’t even there. Second, China, the Germans have made a huge amount of money building industrial plant in the Chinese system. Well, you do that for long enough. And eventually the pork backwards country that you’re sending stuff to starts making stuff. And now the Chinese are making cars that are competing with the Germans on price around the world because, you know, Volkswagens are great vehicles, but not everyone can spend 50, $60,000 on a car. 

If you only have 20 or 30, a Chinese vehicle will do just fine. And so the entire bottom of the market has been taken over by the Chinese. And that leaves the Germans with a smaller pie, a third piece of technology. The Europeans thought that electric vehicles were the future, invested very heavily in it. Volkswagen is no exception to that. 

And it turns out it hasn’t really worked. Not only are consumer preferences going in a different direction, people are starting to do the math on the production and the full cycle cost of an EV, and they’re discovering in most cases, it’s at best a wash. And in places like Germany, where solar and wind are very poor sources of energy, you actually have increased your carbon footprint. 

So sales of those products are down, which has hit Volkswagen very, very hard. But the bigger issues have to do with demographics. The birthrate in any country tends to drop as you urbanize. And Germany was the first country in the world to urbanize over a century ago. Well, you fast forward to today. And it’s not that they’re running out of children that happened in the 70s and 80s. 

They’re now running out of people in their 50s. And we’re looking at a collapse in two ways. First of all, on the demand side for vehicles, some version of the German story is happening throughout the advanced world, most notably in Europe. And so demand for cars has gone down. If you’re a car company, you can see the problem. 

The other half is a collapse in workers worker supply, because we’re looking at a mass retirement of the German system in real time over the next several years. If you fast forward just about eight years from now, there’s not going to be a workforce left. So labor costs are skyrocketing in the interim. So if you’ve got fewer people buying your cars and fewer people available to make your cars labor costs go through the roof, the vehicles get more expensive, you become less competitive. 

We are looking at some version of this happening throughout, not just the German automotive sector. With companies like Mercedes in a very similar position. We’re looking at it throughout the entire German economic structure, which means the Germans are going to have to find another way to manage their system. That is not based on how we currently understand supply and demand and labor and capital, and they’re going to invent that before they can transition their system away from it. 

In the meantime, if you’re a highly skilled German worker and let’s be honest, the Germans are still among the best in the world at doing everything that they’re good at. Germany is not the place for you now. The last time the Germans had this level of dislocation politically and economically, we saw a massive outmigration of more than 5% of the population of the country, within just a few years, the single largest beneficiary of those highly skilled workers was the United States. 

It was the 1840s, 1850s. We took in over a million Germans and eventually settled the places that we currently call Wisconsin and Texas. So there is a amazing play here for the United States, which is already having crippling labor shortages, being able to extend an offer for Germans to make a new home. It’s a brilliant idea. 

But first, Americans have to get their politics in order and realize that their desire for fewer migrants doesn’t really match up with their labor needs. But, you know, one miracle at a time.

Korean Martial Law Starts (and Ends)

Photo from the protests in Seoul, South Korea during martial law

South Korea caught fire yesterday as President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law and deployed the military to shut down parliament. But that didn’t last long…the parliament summarily overturned that decision – unanimously no less. So where does that leave the Koreans?

South Korea has a history of rapid transformation, moving from poverty in the 50s to a major global economy today. Yoon had some foreign policy success with normalizing relations with Japan, but his domestic politics didn’t mirror that…clearly.

After martial law was overturned, Yoon admitted failure, signaling that his personal political collapse is imminent. And as the Koreans have shown, they like to move fast. So, Yoon’s presidency will likely be ended soon, and new elections would happen within the next few months to usher in a government with more stable policies. (Hopefully.)

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from New York’s Central Park. We have to talk about the Koreans today. So on Wednesday, things got a little weird. We had a declaration of martial law by the president, President Yoon, who asserted that North Koreans had infiltrated the country and were trying to trigger a drug induced orgy throughout the entire civilization that is today South Korea. 

Anyway, martial law. He deployed the military to shut down the parliament. We had, what can best be described as drunken protest. The Koreans know how to drink. And within a few hours, 190 of the 300 members of parliament, broke through the barricades, jumped through windows and everything, and had a unanimous vote to rescind the martial law declaration. 

And a couple of hours later, Yoon himself admitted that it had fallen apart. What’s going on here? Was basically, we had a little bit of a coup attempt by the state. Yoon is a bit of a political neophyte. I don’t think I want to say he’s incompetent or anything like that, but, he’s not a career politician by any stretch of the imagination. 

His background is in prosecution. He actually has put two of South Korea’s former leaders, military generals in prison. So he has some idea of what’s going on. But he kind of combines the worst political instincts of Donald Trump and Barack Obama. He expects to be able to say something that just happens, and he hates people and hates having meetings. 

So we basically got this incompetent policymaking going down where, he’s seen his control over domestic politics wither away. In midterm elections, his party got trounced and the opposition nearly has a two thirds majority now. Well, you fast forward this to now and we’re probably going to have impeachment proceedings. Declarations have already been filed in the Parliament, and he’ll probably be gone by the end of the year. 

The Koreans, when they do move, they move fast. And in many ways, the Koreans are a lot like the United States. The United States has, some great land. And the further the pioneers pushed in, the better it got. So for 150 years, everything just got better and better and better. And the United States. And, so when the world reaches out and punches us in the face, we kind of lose our mind. 

And then we use the whole strength of society in economics to reshape our environment, which means we reshape the world. The quintessential example, of course, is Sputnik, the beeping aluminum grapefruit that caused us to think that we had already lost the Cold War, even though we were ahead in rocketry and metallurgy and electronics, all the rest. And that, that overreaction triggered, I basically a scientific revolution at the primary and secondary school level that we’re still coasting on today. 

The Koreans have kind of the first half of that, the panic without the line, goodness, in the meantime, because they’re surrounded by some really huge powers China, Russia, Japan. And then there’s that little thing called North Korea. So when they do move, they move very, very quickly. And it almost always feels like they’re moving. So this is a country that went from one of the poorest countries in the world, back in 1955. 

At the end of the Korean War, when everything was devastated to one of the ten richest countries in the world right now, and very clearly a technocracy. Anyway, the Koreans will get through this, assuming there’s no court challenge, we will have new elections, 60 days after the impeachment is finalized. If there are talk challenges, it might take a couple more months. 

But we’re going to see a new government in South Korea. There’s really not a lot of debate in South Korea over what direction to take the country’s international affairs. There’s a general understanding that now that the Russians are actively helping the North Korean military complex, that the South Koreans have to take a more active stance and not just regional affairs, but global affairs, most notably the Ukraine war. 

And that that has to be done in league with the United States and especially Japan. And that is probably going to be the biggest piece of Yoon’s legacy, because it was Yoon who actually got the Koreans to admit that they have to have a constructive relationship with Japan. Japan was their colonial ruler, brutal occupation in the years leading up to World War two. 

And so by many ways that the two countries, South Korea and Japan, were still in a state of de-facto war, until very recently. And you can credit Yoon for the normalization. So if you’re looking for a legacy, that’s it. But if you’re looking for Yoon to be sticking around. You read that one wrong. Even his own party, voted to rescind his martial law, ruling. 

And the opposition only needs a handful of votes from his party in order to remove him for good.

Photo of protests during martial law from Wikimedia Commons

Why the Russians Need Georgia and the Caucasus

Photo of the city of Tbilisi, Georgia

Protesters have taken to the streets in Georgia after pro-Russian oligarch and head of the ruling Georgia Dream party, Bidzina Ivanishvili, announced that Tbilisi would be ending its bid to join the EU.

Many Georgians saw the EU bid as a way to distance themselves from Russian influence, but the current government—which has strong ties to Moscow—has chosen to prioritize its own power over Georgian independence.  Russia would love to keep Georgia under its thumb for a few reasons, but its geography is in the driver seat. Georgia and its geography act as a key barrier against invasions through the Caucasus, and a limiter to Chechen expansion.

If Georgia exited Moscow’s orbit, Russia’s southern flank would be exposed. If Tbilisi joined the EU, Brussels (and, perhaps, NATO) would play a bigger role in one of Russia’s most traditionally restive regions. Russia can ill-afford to divert attention away from its war in Ukraine, and with Syria heating up, public unrest in Georgia is a low-cost, high-reward move to push Moscow to divert resources away from other theaters.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide 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, so we can be sure that 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.

For those who would like to donate directly to MedShare or to learn more about their efforts, you can click this link.

Learn about medshare here

Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. It is the 3rd of December. 

Today we’re talking about something that happened in the former Soviet Union over the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. And that is, we seem to have the beginnings of an uprising in the former Soviet state of Georgia. 

Now, for those of you who follow this, Georgia, not Peach and Atlanta, Georgia, the one that’s in the Caucasus, uprisings here seem to be happening often. And the reason is that the Russians are getting a little nervous about political evolutions there. 

The Russians are far more sensitive of what’s going on in Georgia than they are in any, of the other former Soviet provinces, with the notable exception of Ukraine, which is, you know, where there’s a war. It has to do with the geography. It has to do with the ethnography, and it has to do with how the Russians manage their political system. 

So the specific trigger for the most recent protests, we’re talking about here, about a country with under 6 million people and over 100,000 people showed up to protest over the weekend. Is that the current government, which just cheated its way into a new term, had elections recently that were neither free Norfair, they announced that they are going to drop their bid to join the European Union specifically. 

And the Georgians have often thought of the EU as their only way from getting out from under the, Russian thumb. I’m not suggesting that that would work, but that’s certainly the plan. The idea is that NATO is a bridge too far. NATO is too far away. 

But if you go with, say, a European economic grouping, maybe that will work anyway, whether or not that would work or not. But outside the point, the current Georgian government is under Russia’s thumb. Russia is a multi-ethnic empire. The Soviet Union was as well. It has to do with geography. The core Russian territories around Moscow, are largely indefensible. 

Aside from a few fours and a couple chunks of swamp, there’s just nothing to hunker behind. And so, going back to the time of the early czars, the strategy has always been the same. You expand, you expand, you expand, you conquer everybody. You you neighbor, you turn them into cannon fodder, and then you conquer the next line out and you keep going and you keep going until you eventually you get to a geographic barrier that you can hunker behind the Carpathian Mountains, the Baltic Sea, the car come desert the tension mountains, whatever they happen to be. 

And in the cases of the, the Georgians, it’s the Caucasus Mountains, both the greater caucuses, which are immediately to Georgia’s north, and the lesser caucuses, which are part of Anatolia and Persia to the south. So the Georgians are on the frontier from the Russian point of view. And when the Russians conquer a people like they functionally have in Georgia now, they assign a local, who is a little bit creative in their loyalties. 

Most people would use the word traitor, to rule them indirectly so that the Russians can occupy themselves with other things, like conquering other people who are causing problems, like in this case, Ukraine. In the case of Georgia, that guy’s name is, let’s see if this is right. But Xena Ivanishvili even. Yeah. 

You have to have five syllables to be a good Georgian name. 

Anyway, he is an oligarch who made his money in the post-Soviet collapse. He is a former prime minister of Georgia, and now he is basically Russia’s front man. He sees himself in his position as linked to Russian power, which is how a good stooge works. And so he will do what the Russians want in order to protect himself. 

He believes that there’s a certain amount of power to be had in this country. And if he shares with anyone, that won’t work. And if the Europeans come in, they will have different ideas on regulation and democracy and everything else. And that would see a degradation of his personal position. So he is willing to fight to the last Georgian to maintain control, and in the end will have to be removed by force if Georgia is going to find a new way forward, because he will make sure that electionscan have the refused or fair, because that would not serve his interests. 

And the Russians, of course, are willing to supply intelligence and cash and disinformation to make that happen. 

Now, that’s kind of piece one, piece two. Why do the Russians care so much about Georgia? I mean, it’s not that powerful of a place. The issue again is geography. 

Not all Russian territories equally crappy. Some is less crappy than others. 

And if you go from the Russian wheat belt going west into Ukraine, you get some of the best possible land. Ukraine, by the way, is on the footsteps of, those two most important of those access points to the Russian space and Poland and Romania. And so the Russians really want to anchor in the Danube basin, the Polish gap, and ultimately the Carpathians. 

But no less important is the southern anchor, because if you follow the rainfall in Russia, it basically makes a crescent from Moscow west into Ukraine and Belarus, and then arcing south along the Black Sea into the caucuses, into Georgia, and to the north of the Greater Caucasus Mountains. You’ve got a smattering of peoples that hug the valleys, making them very difficult to dislodge. 

And this is where, for example, the Chechens are from. In the case of the southern side of the Carpathians, the land is much more open. And you’ve got this interesting little pocket with the Greater Caucasus to the north, the Lesser Caucasus to the south, the Black Sea to the west, and the Caspian Sea to the east. And you have three small states Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia in there. 

But Georgia controls most of the good land where you actually can have agriculture. Azerbaijan, of course, is an oil state, and Armenia is a mountain exclave. Now, when Armenia switched sides from being pro-Russian to exploring relations with the West over the course of the last couple of years, the Russians were of course upset. But the at the end of the day just kind of let it happen. 

And not just because they didn’t have the power to resist because they were locked down in Ukraine. Armenia is just not as important. It’s down in the southern Caucasus is the Lesser Caucasus, if you will, and it’s a mountainous state. So it’s really just one city, Yerevan, and then a chunk of territory. And then the Russians were never going to be able to project power down there if they were busy with more important things, like they are with Kiev. 

Georgia’s different. Georgia can support a larger population. Georgia has infrastructure. Georgia has agriculture. But most importantly, Georgia is opposite. The greater Caucasus from all those little micro states that the Russians have conquered, like the Chechens. So if Georgia were able to go its own way, not only would the Russians lose their primary foothold for their southern boundary, which is just as important to them as Ukraine when it comes to the West, they would also lose the ability to keep all of their little micro states, like the Chechens under lockdown, a Georgia that goes its own way in order to look out for its own interests, is going to have a vested interest in causing problems for the Russians north of the Greater Caucasus Mountains, so that the Russians never have a free hand to come south of the greater Caucasus Mountains. And so they’ve invested a lot of, hope and money and not a small number of political assassinations in the person of Ivanishvili, because they see him as the best guarantee for their position. 

And he, of course, sees the Russians as the best guarantee for his position. So next steps. The United States isn’t interested. Even in a day where the United States is really raring to go and expand NATO and have an internationalist footprint. Georgia is always kind of a bridge too far. And as the Russians have shown over and over and over again in the last 30 years, them invading Georgia is not hard. 

They sponsored two secessionist groups in there, one in place called Abkhazia, one in the place called South Ossetia, and in both cases they have appointed their own traitorous frontmen to run the place. They’ve got another frontman on the other side of the border in Chechnya. That’s, Kadyrov. He’s a psychopath. And so having the place kind of broken up like this serves the Russian interests, so long as there’s not a major power involved. 

The problem is, if you take the long view of history here. The Turks. Impressive industry, second largest army in NATO, demographically robust, clearly an up and coming country. Iran, despite the fact that is on Russia’s side at the moment, would really rather be the premier power in places like Azerbaijan and Armenia. And so with the Russians were to get knocked back a bit. 

All of a sudden the Persians get involved in a very interesting way. And while the Russians primarily are concerned about invasions from the West and Germany, they have been invaded from the south multiple times by the Turks and the Persians, both. So if this barrier fractures, things get really interesting. But it’s not going to be the United States that steps in to try to stir the pot or get the Georgians under the Western cloak or whatever it happens to be. 

The Americans just have bigger fish to fry in other places right now, and probably will for the remainder of the decade. So the question is whether the Europeans are going to rise. Now, if you had asked me this five years ago, so this is a really interesting ideological and hypothetical discussion because the Europeans just really haven’t been able to belly up to the bar when it comes to great powers. 

They don’t have the fiscal capacity, they don’t how to raise an army. They don’t have an army. They have a lot of individual states that think of their military as something that they protect. And, everyone is mostly interested in economic issues rather than strategic issues. They just kind of subcontract that out to the United States. That’s changing. 

The first big fiscal program that the Europeans did to raise a joint debt mechanism wasn’t used to do bailouts, wasn’t used to overhaul their economies for a more technocratic age. No, it was used to buy ammo to fight the Russians in Ukraine. We’re seeing more movement on things like military spending with everyone, even the laggard Germans now saying that 2% of GDP, which is kind of a NATO flaw, what they recommend is probably not enough. 

And we need to go up to three and maybe even 4% in a world where the Russians are on the warpath. And if you are European and you’re starting to admit that the European entity that is the EU or its individual states need to take more actions to protect themselves than causing problems, critical problems for the Russians, nowhere near Ukraine is a very low cost way to get a lot of benefit. 

So right now the Europeans are saying all the things they normally say about free market economics, socialism and democracy and how they’re outraged. What is going on in Georgia. But it doesn’t take a big jump for the Europeans to do something that’s a little bit more traditional in terms of state power. They can support the Georgian protesters with money. 

They can step in with intelligence. They can provide a little quiet assassination program if they want to get really back into old school. But the bottom line is this is a country, especially in league with the Turks, that is ripe for intervention. And any dollar or euro that is spent orienting the Georgians away from Russia is one that is going to spawn dozens of positive outcomes for the Europeans. 

And even if it all fails completely, it’s on the other side of the Black Sea. 

This is a very low risk, high reward series of operations that I would guess we’re going to see the European start in under a year. And if you happen to be the new Trump administration, they’re going to look at the Europeans actually getting involved. 

 And probably get a little thoughtful. 

It’s one thing if you’re an American and you tell the Europeans you want them to spend more on defense, if you want them to take care of themselves a little bit more, it’s a very different thing when the Europeans actually start doing it and developing independent capacity based on independent decision making. One of these looks great on paper. 

The other one, in the long term, gets a little complicated.

Syria Breakdown: What Led Them to This?

Photo of a bombed out Syrian city

A New Twist in the Syrian Civil War

Syria is back in the headlines as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (which is basically a rebranded Sunni militant group) has added some gasoline to the civil war fire by capturing the city of Aleppo.

Minority coalitions have historically ruled over Syria’s Sunni majority, including Assad’s Alawite-led regime. But that’s all changing. As external supporters like Russia and Iran get distracted, Assad’s exposure will dramatically increase. And if the US shifts policies to support opposition groups, we could see some changes coming down the pipe in Syria.

As Assad’s regime grows increasingly isolated, conflict in Syria will likely intensify and instability will grow. So buckle up…

 

Friday’s Update on Syria…

Conditions on the ground in Syria are shifting quickly, with rebels poised to advanced toward the critical regime-held city of Homs.

Here’s what we’ll be watching for this weekend as the Assad regime mounts what could very well be its final major defensive position in Syria’s decade-plus long civil war.

 

Syria Updates on Sunday

Peter recorded this video on the morning of 12/6, as insurgent fighters were moving through Hama on their way to Homs.

Events have definitely taken a turn for the worst for Assad, whose regime has not been able to count on the critical Iranian, Russian and loyalist support necessary to push back Hayat Tahrir al-Sham’s offensive.

With that said, the last chapter of the Assad family’s control over Syria (or Damascus and its environs) just means the Levant is going to see another phase of fractious, sectarian fighting. We feel like this video and its explanation of the Syria’s geopolitical reality is still incredibly informative and beneficial in understanding the region’s future.

We will continue to update on events as they unfold—Peter when he is able, and the rest of the team as needed. -ZoG

Nothing in the Middle East is easy, and Syria is not exception.

Its fragmented dessert-and-mountain geography has allowed for roughly a dozen major ethnic and religious groups to carve out their own independent fiefdoms over the last few centuries, often times built up around a significant trade route, a vital water source or for the luckiest, both.

The Assad regime is facing the most significant threat to its already-tenuous hold on power in years, and we may very well be seeing the end of the Iranian-backed Alawite regime in Damascus.

But even if Assad and the Alawites lose, it will be difficult to determine who will actually win. If anything, we are most likely to see the beginning of a second Syrian Civil War, as the various tribal and religious groupings of the Sunni Arab majority vie for dominance amongst themselves, and seek to co-opt or crush the region’s many, many religious and ethnic minority groups.

 

Turkey’s Future and What to Focus On

Turkey has a lot of things going for it: a stable, or even strong, demographic profile, a burgeoning industrial base and an impressively unified political structure. Not too shabby for what was once the most coup-prone member of the wider US alliance structure.

It’s not all rosy for Ankara, though. Recent political decisions over monetary policy have led to some struggles with inflation, and being in the center of the world means you risk being surrounded by problems: Turkey not only borders Iran, but is also just a short hop across the Black Sea from the Ukraine war, and is sandwiched between both the Balkans and the Caucuses. To say nothing of the current… excitement happening in the Levant along its southern border.

In fact, Turkey’s biggest challenge in hefting its geopolitical weight will be having the strategic discipline and foresight to pick which arena it wants to play in. If we look to history, the Ottomans expanded into southeastern Europe—present day Greece, Romania and Bulgaria—before moving into the Levant and Middle East. (While many think of the Ottoman Empire as an Eastern empire because of the religious leanings of the ruling elite, the Ottoman Empire only made meaningful expansions beyond Turkey’s current borders in the latter half of its history. Its core territories were always the Bosporus and immediate surrounds, i.e., Europe.)

Turkey is a capable geopolitical player, and growing stronger every day. But it cannot project power everywhere along its borders at once. While many in Europe (and Russia, and the United States) might hope and expect Turkey to be a bigger regional player in the Middle East, the strategic gains there are ultimately limited. The Turks could very well see their greatest future successes where their Ottoman forebears did: the eastern borderlands of an [aging] European core

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. It is the 2nd of December. The big news in the Middle East over America’s holiday break for Thanksgiving was that an opposition group by the name of Harriet Tahrir al-Sham—and yes, if something happens in your corner of the world, you can look forward to me mispronouncing it—

Harriet Tahrir al-Sham has captured the city of Aleppo and is moving on towards the core of Syria. Let’s hit this from a geographic point of view and then from a policy point of view.

First, geographic. The bulk of the population in Syria is to the east of the Lebanon and Anti-Lebanon Mountains in a corridor that goes north-south from the Turkish border to Damascus. Basically, these are a combination of oasis cities and cities that are on rivers, so these are some of the very, very few parts of the country where you can actually grow food. Yes, yes, yes—you’ve got the Fertile Crescent and the Euphrates and all that.

But the Euphrates floodplain is very, very narrow, in some cases just a few miles end to end. So it’s never been an area that’s been able to generate a sustained civilizational impulse or create an empire. Whereas this corridor here has always been populated. In fact, it’s one of the most consistently populated areas on the planet going back to antiquity.

If you move to the west into Lebanon and the Syrian coast, you’re on the other side of the mountains, and so that’s where you get a lot more minorities, whether they be Druze, Shia, or Alawite. Anyway, this core has always been vastly, super-majority populated by Sunni Muslims. Usually, what happens in Syria is all the other groups gang up on the Sunni Muslims.

The current government of the Assads is an Alawite-led group. Basically, you’ve got a coalition of small minorities that have banded together to avoid being destroyed by the Sunni Muslims. When the civil war broke out in Syria—this was about 15 years ago now—you basically had the Sunni Muslims, who are the super-majority, rising up, rejecting minority rule, and trying to reestablish themselves.

The fact that Sunni Muslims form the backbone of most of what we would consider Islamic terror groups, such as ISIS, meant that the terror groups had a lot of willing collaborators throughout the majority population. What’s going on now is this new group is basically a rebranded old group and is making another go of it, way too soon if they’re going to be successful.

In addition to Aleppo, you’ve got Homs, Hama, and of course, Damascus itself. There’s a long way to go, but a few things have changed.

Number one, the only real reason why the Syrian government is still in play is because the Russians intervened forcefully over ten years ago and propped them up. Well, Russian support is not what it once was. The Russians are a little occupied over in the Ukraine situation, so it’s not clear that Syria is going to have the same degree of support that they once had.

The second degree of support is Iran, but with the Trump administration incoming, that’s probably going to be dialed back a little bit.

The third is, indirectly, the United States. After 9/11, the United States decided that we didn’t like Sunni Arab Muslim militant groups and went to town on them in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. The lingering American commitment to the Syrian civil war has been about breaking groups that are ISIS or ISIS-affiliated. This new group is just a rebranding of what used to be called the Al-Nusra Front—Nusra, Nusra, or something like that anyway.

Which brings us to policy.

The United States has a long history of backing the smaller group against the larger group, no matter who’s involved or where it is. The idea is that if regional powers are tied down with local affairs, they can’t consolidate, become bigger and bigger, become imperial, and eventually threaten the United States in the Western Hemisphere.

It’s something we’ve been doing at least since the early 1800s, from our on-again, off-again indirect interference with the Napoleonic Wars all the way up to the current day. Certainly, we did a lot of this during the Cold War.

Now, besides the fact that we have a changing of the guard in Washington, we also have a different situation in Syria. We certainly don’t like the Syrian government—it’s genocidal, dictatorial, all the things you’re not supposed to like—and it’s being backed by all the traditional powers that have been hostile to the United States.

There’s just one fly in the ointment: we now find ourselves against Russia, against Syria, against Iran, and against Islamic militants. If the United States were to change its mind on just one of those, all of a sudden, the game changes, especially when you consider how occupied the Russians and Iranians are about to be.

The group that is most likely to have a change in circumstance is going to be the Islamic militant groups—the former Al-Nusra group. The reason is pretty simple: the United States has a long history of backing Islamic militants against powers that we find more problematic.

We’ve done it for militant groups in the Iran space. We’ve done it in Afghanistan against the Soviets. We’ve done it with the Chechens in Russia proper. To think this is going to be the one exception where that’s convenient but isn’t going to happen is kind of a stretch.

The militants have already done us the favor of renaming themselves so they can be a fundamentally “new” group. If you think the US can’t or won’t do this, just keep in mind that we did it last time, and the time before, and the time before that, and the time before that.

One of the weird things we’ve seen in the last 15 years is that one of the strongest unofficial supporters of the Syrian government has been the United States, because we have removed from the equation the group that was most likely to overthrow Assad.

Expect to see a policy change—formally or informally—in the months ahead, and expect that to reignite the Syrian civil war in a very big way. This time, the Syrian government will mostly be fighting on its own.

It can’t rely on the Russians—they’re occupied elsewhere. It probably can’t rely on Iran or Iranian-backed militant groups in the region, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, because the Israelis have now gutted them.

All of the traditional pillars of support the Assad government has come to rely on during the entire civil war are snapping right now, and things are about to get lively.

So watch this space. I’ll keep an eye on it for you.