The Chinese Cut Off Drone Exports

Image of a drone firing missiles

The Chinese Government has moved toward implementing an export ban on drones and drone components, with an eye toward making supply issues a particular headache for the United States and the Ukrainians.

In regard to the latter group, Kyiv has had particular success in utilizing drones in their war against Russia. From reconnaissance to swarm attacks to providing targeting data for UAVs, the Ukrainian war effort has been building and burning through thousands of drones.

While the design and rebuild activity is happening primarily within Ukraine, several key components: motors, flight controls, and especially the batteries and made in China. China’s massive supply of affordable parts is what drove the Ukrainians to make up for shortages within their arsenals with drones in the first place, and you can bet Moscow has been pushing China heavily to stop the flow of these parts to Ukraine.

As for the Americans, the Chinese are looking to respond to the bevy of tech export restrictions pushed through by the Biden administration, and Beijing is bracing for an onslaught of new Trump tariffs. Things like drone components are one of the few levers Beijing has in this fight.

But what will the ultimate outcomes be? This is an excellent opportunity for the United States and others in the West to start building out their own manufacturing capacity for these components—a win for both strategic and economic reasons. Even if the Chinese were everyone’s best buddies, the current Chinese system is dying. Literally. The Chinese government cannot hold back the impacts of the collapse of the population growth rate, and the Chinese economy is undeniably slowing down. The global economy’s reliance on Chinese overproduction is coming to an end, regardless of whether anyone wants it to or not.

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The Future of Singapore

Image of a city in Singapore

From humble beginnings to a global trading hub, Singapore has solidified itself as a key player in the region and beyond.

This success story is one of geographic fortune – plopped along major maritime routes between East Asia and Europe. Foreign involvement and relations helped promote further growth, via a British naval base and strong ties with the US during the Cold War.

As China’s growth exploded, Singapore jumped on its coattails, benefiting from the oil trade and industrial expansion. Using those trade revenues, they developed a skilled workforce and established themselves as a regional financial hub.

There’s a lot to look forward to for the Singaporeans, between the growth in regional trade and peaceful neighbors with complimentary economies. They’ll need to overcome the collapse of China and oil trade risks, but I would expect Singapore to do very well in the years to come.

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 the slopes of Mount Taranaki in New Zealand’s Egmont National Park. Today I am taking an entry from, the St Peter Forum on, the Patreon page. Specifically, it’s what do I think the future of Singapore is, strategically and economically. Okay. I taranaki’s peeking out. Mount can be a little shy. 

Anyway, broadly positive. So quick, let me dial back. You know, 200 years, there wasn’t a Singapore. It was a small fishing village and some marshy islands off the tip of the Malay Peninsula. But the Brits put a base there. And as the world became wealthier and there was more trade between east and west, most of it transported by water, because moving things by water is about 1/12, the cost of it by truck. 

And basically everything between Japan, Korea, Taiwan and China and Europe passed by. And so it emerged as the single most strategic piece of real estate on the planet. And so during the Cold War, the Americans pursued a very tight alliance with the Singaporeans and the Singaporeans because they couldn’t resist a land invasion from Malaysia, which kind of wanted to conquer them. 

Signed the deal and built a custom aircraft carrier berth for the American super carriers. Now, in the post-Cold War world, Singapore has continued to do well because this has been China’s time to shine. Basically, the Chinese between 1990 and 2020 had a huge number of people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, but no youth and no retirees. 

So all the money that you would normally spend on raising the next generation or retiring the previous one was spent on consumption and especially on industrial expansion. And the Singaporeans were able to cut out of all of that. And of course, the oil trade from Persian Gulf to Northeast Asia got them plenty of money on the other end, maintaining things like oil depots so that everyone could get whatever they needed, whenever they needed it. 

Now those days are rapidly coming to an end. The Chinese are dying out. The demographic movement that was through the 1990s to the 2020s, is over. And we’re now looking at the dissolution of China as a modern nation state over the next ten years, and the disappearance, probably of the Han ethnicity before the end of the century. 

It’s not bad, and the numbers keep getting worse every time they release new data. But the oil trade’s probably in danger, too, because without the Americans keeping the Persian Gulf open, the likelihood of Saudi Arabia and Iran going at it is pretty robust. And that’s half of globally traded oil that all of a sudden is in some degree of danger. 

So the old methods that the Singaporeans have been using to generate their wealth are somewhat limited. But two things to keep in mind. First of all, Singapore hasn’t simply just been taking rent out of everyone passing buying in. You know, they have used all that income to train up one of the most sophisticated workforces in the world. 

  

And the most precision instruments that humans build typically come from Singapore. Very, very high end manufacturing that slots into what other people do. In addition, it’s a financial hub that serves not just itself, but all of Southeast Asia and to a lesser degree, a lot of East Asia as well. And those two sectors are going to be incredibly important moving forward, because as the Chinese literally die away and as international trade shrinks in a globalizing world, regional trade is going to be more important. 

And unlike the French and the Germans, which have duked it out a few times, or the Koreans in the Japanese or the Japanese in the Chinese or the Chinese, and really anyone, the countries of Southeast Asia have not gone to war with one another since the time of the Kuma Kingdoms centuries ago, and there’s certainly nothing in the post-colonial era. 

So you have a number of large states with a reasonably developed infrastructure, with above average educational levels for their socioeconomic status that are in close proximity. They don’t have a history of going to war with one another. And in addition, most of Southeast Asia is islands or peninsulas. There’s a lot of mountains and a lot of jungle, so these countries can’t go at each other in a conventional way if they have a fight. 

And so it’s all diplomatic. But the best part is because they can’t get to each other directly, they don’t have a lot of connecting infrastructure among them. So everything goes on the water. Well, if you’re trading between Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand on water, it’s harder to have a fight and it’s easier to build multi-step supply chains. 

And so that’s what we have seen over the last 30 years. 

And Singapore slots into this very nicely with the finance, the managerial skills and above all else the high end manufacturing to make it all work. So you basically get Singapore with the high end stuff and the finance, and then you have places like Thailand that do the middle Malaysia is rising up to try to be the next Thailand. 

At the lower level. You’ve got Vietnam who is desperate to skip stages of production, mostly out of its, pathological need to compete with China, and where 40% of all college grads are already Stem grads and they’re already moving into low end semiconductors. And then for the lower end work, like assembly, Indonesia and Myanmar look really good. 

So everything that the Southeast Asians need to succeed is right there at hand. And what they might also need things like resources and food. Australia and New Zealand are very close by. And if Singapore maintains its relationship with the United States, then there’s even, to a degree, an external security guarantor that the locals can call upon. 

Japan will probably come along for the party as well. So this is arguably after North America, the part of the world that I am most bullish on for the next 50 years. And I’m really curious to see what all the locals are going to make of it.

There Goes the Canadian Government

Photo of the Canadian Parliament building in winter

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to demote former Finance Minister and deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has triggered a new round of speculation over his political future.

Trudeau’s Liberal Party currently rules as a minority government. While this has emerged as the norm in Federal politics in recent decades, the left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP)’s decision to remove their support from Trudeau in September has made his position all the more precarious. While the NDP declined to move toward a vote of no confidence in the Fall, Freeland’s exit is equally unsettling as it is exciting for those within government.

It’s not just that Freeland is easily one of the most effective minister in Canada’s modern history; nor the fact that Freeland is one of the most intelligent members of any global government. She is. But Freeland has been part of a very loyal cabinet of an increasingly unpopular Prime Minister–until that loyalty was not returned.

On Monday the 16th, Freeland released a public letter not only announcing her resignation, but–in typical Canadian fashion–effectively calling her former boss an out-of-his-league idiot. But politely. Canadian-ly.

Those within the Liberal Party and without have smelled the blood in the water. Part of Trudeau’s ability to hold onto the reins of party leadership has been the lack of a clear and effective challenger. That may very well be changing.

As Canada faces a bevy of upcoming challenges, chief among them Trump’s tariff threats and USMCA/NAFTA2.0 renegotiation talks. Not having Freeland at the helm of managing both processes is terrifying for most serious folks within Canada’s political establishment, and it should be.

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Israel’s Strategy for Iranian Nukes

Photo of Israeli Troops overlooking an area

With the Iranians eyeing nukes, why haven’t regional powers like the Israelis stepped in and squashed those dreams?

Targeting Iran’s nuclear capabilities isn’t so straightforward. Plutonium is a byproduct of civilian nuclear reactors (and they’re not going to target those), uranium is abundant and can be sourced fairly easily, and uranium enrichment centrifuges can be easily moved…so, targeting their nuclear infrastructure is impractical.

Israel has opted to disrupt Iran’s nuclear hopes in other ways. They eliminate key experts via assassination programs, launch cyberattacks and keep tactical airstrikes in their back pocket. And given Iran’s declining industrial capabilities, this nuclear program serves more as a bargaining chip than a serious attempt at weaponization.

Should Iran fly a little too close to the sun and get a nuke within arm’s reach, you should expect Israel and Saudi Arabia to quickly put them in their place.

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.

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Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from three sisters in Taranaki, New Zealand. And today we’re taking a question from the Patreon family. Specifically why Israel hasn’t struck at Iranian nuclear facilities in an attempt to prevent the Iranians from ever developing a bomb in the first place. And there’s a number of reasons for this. But the core issue is this. 

And there’s too much to go after to do it reliably. So let’s go through the materials of what you need to to make a meaningful bomb. First of all, you need the raw materials, either uranium or plutonium. Now, any civilian nuclear power reactor is going to generate a lot of plutonium as a byproduct. So we’ve got about a one gigawatt, power plant, which for a nuclear power plant is pretty much a run of the mill. 

You’re going to generate enough waste plutonium every year to make about a dozen plutonium bombs. So unless you’re going to take out the nuclear facilities, you’re not going to be able to remove that from their supply chain. And, bombing a civilian nuclear power plant obviously comes with a few consequences. As for uranium, uranium is one of the most common materials on Earth. 

And so it’s very easy to source. In the early Cold War days, when we thought it was rare, we, the United States, cut a deal with the Australians who at the time had most of the global production, basically cornered the market. But since then, it’s been discovered in all kinds of places. And the world’s largest producers are Canada, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia and China. 

So, you know, removing those countries from the mix. Yeah, I’m not going to happen. Even if you did. Ultimately, you only need a few tonnes of the ore to generate the yellowcake that you need, in order to generate the finished metal that you need for lutetium. So going after the raw materials really isn’t a play. Moving up the value added scale, however, you get some more options because, you know, these raw materials don’t do anything, by themselves. 

You need the system that’s necessary to purify and extract the plutonium from the waste material and then purified in the metal. There are a lot of chemicals you can go after there. But again, most of those are globally available under the civilian supply chain. So it’s a limited on the uranium front. 

If you have your raw uranium ore, you basically have to mix it with chlorine gas to make a material that you can then run through a centrifuge over and over and over and over to extract the specific type of uranium that is fissile, that can go into a bomb. Those centrifuges are definitely a weak point in the process that is restricted technology. 

And in order to have a weapons program of size, you also need a lot of them. Now, the problem here is it doesn’t matter where those things are. You could have a cluster of a few thousand in one place. You could disperse it. And whenever people talk about striking Iran’s weapons systems, the Iranians just move the centrifuges around because they can be easily individually loaded into trucks and move wherever they want. 

So, you know, you do a single round of airstrikes, you might get some of them. You’re certainly not going to get all of them. And you only need so much of this stuff in order to make a bomb. Then you’ve got the the metallurgy. There are different types of weapons systems, that use plutonium and uranium, and there’s different ways that you can combine them to make an explosive product. 

But this is an engineering question. And ultimately, this is where the Israelis have chosen to focus. Can’t go after the raw materials. You can’t go after the equipment. You go after the people with the experience of how to turn these processed materials into something that can go boom. And so Israel focuses on what it does well. Instead of surgical strikes, they have an assassination program. 

And whenever an Iranian nuclear scientist starts to get a little bit too productive, he tends to, fall down some stairs after getting shot in the back of the head with some bullets. So it’s not that the Israelis aren’t doing anything to contain this threat, it’s that they’re striking the weak point in the system, which is the personnel. 

One of the wild things about Iran is that their industrial base today is significantly less sophisticated than it was back in 1980. This is a country that has been in long term industrial decline for any number of reasons, sanctions of which are only one part of it. And that means the Israelis have found it actually pretty easy to pick off individual people who are involved in the weapon system in order to snarl the whole system. 

Now, that doesn’t mean that’s the only thing they do. They also engage in a degree of sabotage and cyber hacks. And if push came to shove, I have no doubt that they’re willing to do tactical airstrikes. But you’re talking about something that can be dispersed. You’re talking about something that once you do start going after it, the, receiving country, Iran in this case, has a vested interest in keeping the system as dispersed as possible and then accelerating the work. 

So until now, the Iranian nuclear program has mostly been a negotiating chip that they are willing to trade away in exchange for a broader deal specifically with the United States. And that’s one of the reasons why this technology, which was developed in the 40s, still hasn’t been replicated in the Persian Gulf. There’s also a strategic side to this. 

Israel is already a nuclear power. And if the Israelis ever really did feel that the Iranians were getting close, they’d probably use their own systems to make sure that Iran could never cross the threshold and they’d do a preemptive nuclear strike. The other side of the strategic question is Iran is not alone in the neighborhood. Closer to home. 

Just across the Persian Gulf are the Saudis and the Saudis and the Iranians don’t care for each other very much. And the big difference between these two is that Saudi Arabia has much deeper pockets. So if Push ever did really come to shove, and it did look like Iran was going to develop a functional weapon, not only would they be risking a preemptive Israeli nuclear strike, but the Saudis would probably just go out, write a check, and buy some nukes from another country, most notably Pakistan. 

So for Iran, the nuclear card is not nearly as valuable as most people seem to think it is, because they know if they even try to draw it from the deck, they’re gonna get hammered real hard. So this is something I worry about. Not really. And whenever there’s something in the Middle East that I don’t worry about, I call that a win. 

The Future of Syria and Turkey’s Role

Image of a line of Turkey Flags with kids riding on the back of a tram in Istanbul

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The fall of the Assad regime has left a fragmented and chaotic landscape in its wake. The punchline is that Syria’s future does not lie within its borders; a regional power from outside will need to step in and help.

Syria is highly fragmented and lacks a dominant force or unifying government. Between the Alawites, Christians, Kurds, ISIS, and multiple Arab factions, there’s not much cohesion going on. And then you mix in some foreign entities protecting their interests, like the US running some short-term operations in the region and the Israelis striking Syria’s military assets to prevent any future threat from a new regime.

Turkey is the power we want to watch most closely. Given their close ties to Syria and support for various Arab factions, deeper involvement could influence a settlement. Without Turkey as a security guarantor, Syria risks remaining a stateless zone; with all the different groups in Syria, fighting will only get worse from here (and it could get really ugly).

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.

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the slopes of Mount Taranaki in outside of Plymouth, New Zealand. Plymouth is right over there somewhere. Anyway, today we’re going to continue talking about the consequences of the fall of the Syrian government specifically. Now we’re going to talk about military operations that the Israelis and the Americans are carrying out. 

The Americans are doing something that’s fairly short term and probably is going to be short lived. They’re taking advantage of the fact that the Russians have evacuated all of their aircraft back to Russia, so that they can now operate in a completely uncontested airspace, and they’re hitting the remnants of the Islamic State as hard as they possibly can everywhere they possibly can, because the Americans know that before long, regardless of who president is in the United States, they’re going to be closing down their operations in Syria. 

Right now, there are fewer than a thousand operators, American special forces, primarily, that are operating in the country, primarily helping the Syrian Kurds defend themselves both against the regime, which is now defunct, against ISIS, which is still a problem, and against Turkey, who is an ally. In fact, the Turks have actually started carrying out more direct operations against the Syrian Kurds, who are actually under American protection. 

So, you know, messy, messy, messy situation. Anyway, what the Americans are going to do is basically close this down because there is no way that there can be an American operation in Syria, if the Turks absolutely refuse to help with logistics. So probably with over the course of the next year, the Americans will be gone completely. The Israelis of course, are here for the long haul. 

And their operation is designed to destroy all industrial level weaponry that the Syrians have. And they’ve already done just about a thousand airstrikes since the Assad government fell. They’ve destroyed the entire Syrian navy. They’ve destroyed the entire Syrian air Force, including transport aircraft. And now they’re going after ammo dumps whenever and wherever they can. And since Syria is a state that they’ve been in a de facto state of Cold War with, for decades, they’ve got very good Intel on where those depots are, and they’re hitting absolutely everything to make sure that whatever the next iteration of the Syrian government is, none of these weapons could ever be used against Israel. 

It’s a policy that’s going to be very, very successful, but it will come at a cost. I mean, yes, by completely destroying all the military materiel, Syria won’t be able to field a traditional conventional force. And no, nothing shy of that could really threaten the Israelis. Anyway, the problem is what happens with political and economic consolidation in the post Assad environment in Syria. 

Because if one side has a very significant military advantage, because they inherit the tanks and the jets and the missiles and the mortars and the artillery and all of that fun stuff, they could probably impose themselves as the de facto military authority over the bulk of the country in about a year. But if all of that equipment is gone, then we still just have a multi-sided civil war, just without the Syrian government being led by Assad. 

And if you look at the situation where we are today, it’s already pretty shattered. You’ve got the Alawites who used to be part of the old regime, who have pretty much decamped. Damascus enforced probably 80% of them have already fled back to their homeland on the coast. You’ve got the Christians in the mountains to the east of that. 

You’ve got the Druze in the south around their mountains. You’ve got different Arab groups. There’s one in Dara down in the south that is independent from the group that has done all the lightning attacks, and that group controls, Aleppo ham and Hamas. Hamas. Different thing. And then there’s a yet another group that is more directly sponsored by the Turkish government. 

Not to be confused. The Pts, which is a group sponsored by the Turkish government, controls and Aleppo, and then you’ve got, of course, ISIS out in the desert and the Kurds in the northeast. So this is still a multivariate, multi-sided, very dynamic situation. And by removing the military equipment from the conversation, the Israelis are making damn sure that no one faction can easily take over. 

So they’re going to try to do this diplomatically. The group, under Turkish sponsorship, with a little indirect nudging from the United States, is trying to get everybody around the table to have a common conversation about what a post-assad government might look like. The word elections is even being used, although I wouldn’t hold my breath. But this isn’t a rock. 

This isn’t a country where there’s an American military occupation to force a security deal. There isn’t a huge amount of oil waiting to be produced to grease the wheels, to. So that you can have an economic angle to the unification. This is a knock down, drag out civil war between various factions that have never gotten along and have only been under the same flag because the Assad government was so brutal and tortured and killed anyone who said otherwise. 

The chances of this working out well without a single security guarantor are thin. The one possible exception would be if the Turks get more directly involved after all, two of those Arab groups and the Arabs are 60, 65% of the population do ultimately get a lot of their equipment and funding from Turkey. So if the Turks wanted to impose something, then you’ve got 10% of the population that’s Christian, maybe 10 to 15%. 

  

That’s Alawite, maybe another 10 to 15%. That’s Kurdish. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe with Turkish good offices and a lot of cash, they could form this into something that they could tolerate. More likely it’s going to be split apart and never really re congeal into a single state. And if you’re looking for a stateless space to generate something like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, it will be perfect. 

Oh, yeah. One more thing. In a multi-sided civil war where no side has a technical, numerical or especially technological advantage over the others, once people realize they’re in kind of a stalemate, they start going after each other’s civilian populations and infrastructure. And this is in a country that’s already been in a civil war for over a decade, already has probably a half 1 million to 1 million dead, and already has about one third of its population displaced. 

The Turks are going to be looking to repatriate many of the refugees that they’re hosting. That’s at least a couple million people. And so when sides start to decide to go after the people, the potential for just gross damage here is immense. Keep in mind that Syria is desert to semi-arid. And so when you start going after the civilian infrastructure, especially things like power and water, you can generate a situation where a lot of people die very, very quickly. 

Such as we saw with the Russian siege of Aleppo a few years ago. So there’s not a lot here to look forward to. If, the Turks cannot find a way to make this into a form that they find useful.

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.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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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.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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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 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.

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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.

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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.