Peter Zeihan, Author at Zeihan on Geopolitics

Poland, After America

This next country might surprise some of you, but deglobalization might give Poland its moment of fame. That’s if they play their cards right, and even then, it will be a fleeting moment, but a moment in the spotlight nonetheless.

Historically, Poland’s been vulnerable to major powers like Russia and Germany, so they’ve developed quite the arsenal for defense. Now, a window of opportunity might open as Germany and Russia face economic and demographic decline.

The time is coming for some strategic decisions to be made. Will a conflict between Russia and Poland unfold, or will Poland buddy up with Sweden? Either way, Poland’s surge to the spotlight will be short-lived but gripping.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the Eagle Nest Wilderness in central Colorado on top of Eccles Peak with a buffalo pass there below and behind me. Today, we’re going to go back into that post American series I’ve been doing every once in a while and specifically talking about one of the hot spots. And that will be Poland.

Now, Poland is one of those countries that we don’t think of very often as a major power because it has been so badly treated throughout history. It’s got major powers around it, specifically Sweden, Russia and Germany, and it tends to get gobbled up by them very easily. It’s coastline isn’t great and so the Swedes have always been able to protect upon them.

And then its land borders with both the Germans and the Russians are wide open. So there’s no chance of doing any sort of static defense. As such, the Polish military in modern times is heavy on air power with extended range fuel tanks, so that while they might not be able to stop a Russian invasion, they can reach Moscow and bomb it and at least make the Russians think twice.

That’s kind of the national strategy here. And then, of course, they’re never sure if they can rely upon the Germans, because every time the Germans have gone on the warpath, Poland is usually one of the first couple of stops. Things are going to change over the course of the next 20 years for a number of reasons. But really the biggest chunk is economics and demography.

The Germans and the Russians have two of the worst demographics structures on the planet. And while Sweden is an up and coming power again and it can definitely punch above its weight, this is not the 1600s. And Sweden today has under 10 million people. So even if it punches like triple its weight, Poland still has 40 million people.

Also, the Swedes these days are not looking to expand into empire. So, you know, there’s that anyway. What this means is that we’re seeing an opening window of opportunity for Poland as the German system fails because of demographic decline and economic collapse. Remember, this is a country that exports everything. So anything happens to globalization, they’re done. Also, they can’t maintain their workforce for more than another ten years.

Russia is only slightly behind that in terms of demographic decline. In fact, once you look at the health figures, it’s probably worse. Everyone in Germany at least is in decent health. You’ve got a lot of alcoholism and a lot of HIV and a lot of tuberculosis in Russia. You don’t have any of those in Poland, which means that for the Russians, things are going to go one of two directions.

Either number one, they’re going to win hand over fist in Ukraine, and then they’re going to come for Poland. And we’re going to have a knockdown, drag out fight at some point over the next 20 years, the Russian wave will crest and then it will fall back because they won’t be able to maintain their military structures. And we’ll have the poles being more and more and more aggressive, assuming they don’t fall completely and pushing into the former Russian space in order to break it up so nothing like that can ever happen again.

For those of you who don’t think that that can happen, it’s happened before. The Russians call it the time of troubles and that brings us to the second possibility that in Ukraine, that this is all that the Russians can do and this war will break them in the next few years. And then the Poles will push more and more aggressively into the Russian space to make sure that nothing like that ever happens again.

Remember, in the 1600s, 16 04i believe the Poles actually occupied Moscow and held it for a generation. Only this time the Russians would be in economic and demographic decline, if not outright collapse. So it might actually last a little bit longer. Now, for those of you who are Polish, don’t do too much chest beating. And a lot of things have to happen.

Poland, like Romania, really only does well when the country’s on its edges are weak. The problem you have in Poland is it’s just big enough to think that it can pull this off by itself, whereas the Romanians know that they have to partner with somebody. Now there are two paths for the Poles to take. Option number one is economic collapse and statist economy, followed by a military expansion.

That’s probably the most likely outcome. Remember that Poland, today’s economically wealthy because of its relationship with German manufacturing. If that goes away, option number two is the sweet step and become the new partner, both demographically, economically, strategically. And you get Polish land power with Swedish amphibious power. And that can be a very potent combination in the Baltic, sharing a lot of common values and maybe even having a vector of American assistance in their boats.

Kind of a the playbook, as I see it right now. And finally, before polls get too excited, keep in mind that Polish demographics are not all that much better than Russian or German. I mean, they’re better, but they’re aging just as fast, just from a younger base. So if we’re looking at an end to the German and the Russian systems over the next ten to 20 to 30 years, we’re also looking at a complete fabrication of the Polish system over the next 20 to 50 years.

So there’s going to be a window here where Poland becomes the most powerful land power in the region, and it is a moment in time. And what the Poles decide to do with that is going to reshape this region for at least the next century. All right, you guys later.

Why the Middle East Is So Aggravating (yet so difficult to leave)

The Middle East has been a thorn in the side for the US since day one, so why haven’t the Americans just abandoned ship? To understand why the US is still involved in the Middle East (and openly facing these potshot-esqe attacks), we need to breakdown this region…

The reason this is top of mind is the recent attacks on a US base in Syria carried out by Iranian-backed militants. Before I dive into these specific attacks, let’s look back at this region’s geopolitical history.

There’s a complicated history of trade routes and European colonization, but things got spicy when oil was discovered and geopolitical tensions flared up. This led to a lack of what I would call value-add governments, a spamming of militant groups, and eventually, post 9/11 involvement by the US.

So, the US stepped into a political and social nightmare and thought they could throw a bandage on it and be done; clearly that didn’t work. Fast forward to the present and the US is still involved in the region, clinging onto the ever-so-slight semblance of peace and order that’s been established…until now.

Despite years of trying to get to the bottom of this, the question remains – is continued U.S. presence necessary to prevent further instability or would withdrawal empower regional players to address security concerns independently?

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan just taking a walk after this guy dumped on us. The big news today, it’s February the fifth, is that overnight local time. Iranian backed militants in Syria attacked another U.S. base. It’s the first significant attack since those three American soldiers were killed early part of last week. And the United States launched a bunch of retaliatory strikes against Iranian backed militias throughout the region.

Anyway, this is the first significant action by them since. And again, it looks like a drone got through and hit the barracks again. This time it wasn’t American servicepeople who were killed, but a half a dozen Kurds that U.S. Special Forces were training. Let me explain how we got into the Middle East and why it’s difficult to get out.

And then we’ll put this into context. So I’m going back roughly very roughly a thousand years. The Middle East has not been a place that anyone wanted to be. It was on the way somewhere. So you had your more advanced somewhat very loosely using this term technocratic societies with little higher value add in their economic systems in the West.

And then you had East Asia and to a lesser degree, Southeast Asia and South Asia that produced goods that you could not find in the West, things like spices and porcelains and silks. And so the trick was to figure out how you could link these two economic systems together. Despite the vast distances involved, and from roughly 1000 to roughly 1500 A.D., the solution was coastal vessels, camels, caravans.

The problem with all of those things is you had to go through any number of intermediaries, especially for the land routes. And since the Sea Rats weren’t safe, most people stuck with the land routes. This meant that the folks who lived in between in the middle to the east of the Western nations or go the name found themselves having to pay massive markups because you’d send your go east and you’d bring the cargo west.

And every few miles or a few dozen miles, there’d be another middleman who would take the cut. And so the cost of these products didn’t double or triple or quadruple, but typically went up in cost by a factor of a thousand or so. And so what became what were not necessarily everyday goods, but not exactly considered exotic goods out east became the the cream of the luxury goods in the West.

And so the trick was to how do you how do you avoid those markups? The solution was set upon by the Spanish and the Portuguese, who developed the technologies to sail farther from the sea excuse me, far from the shore with old coastal vessels. If you happen to anchor, which you had to do every night within sight of land, there is a reasonable chance that somebody who lived in the neighborhood was just going to come and take your ship and kill your people and take all your stuff.

So that’s one of the reasons why they tend to prefer the land routes. But with the Portuguese and the Spanish developing deep water navigation, they were able to do an end run around that entire thing, interface directly with the East. And so from roughly 1500 until roughly 1900, the Middle East just didn’t matter. It became a complete backwater and eventually the Western countries industrialize.

And when they came back to the Middle East, to an area that had not industrialized, you know, you bring a knife to a gunfight enough times and the locals pay attention. And so you basically had the Brits, the French and the rest divvy up the entire region into mandates and colonies. Now, why was the West able to pull that off when the Middle East just kind of stayed at the same technological level?

And to be perfectly blunt, the answer is rainfall throughout the Western countries. In Europe, it rains. Rain means that you can grow crops in any number of areas. And if that gives people an interest in pursuing their own economic destinies. Also, you had winter in most of those areas. So in the off season, farmers could be working on something else.

They weren’t exactly getting law degrees. But the point is the overall skill level of the population steadily creeped up. And when you’ve got a lot of people who are invested in stability in the system, even if it’s not a democracy, you get a degree of political stability, economic advancement, technological acumen that you just don’t get in the Middle East and the Middle East.

Very few places have rain where you do have water. It’s in a relatively narrow band either right on the coast or along a river that makes it very, very easy for a political authority to rise and dominate that specific geography. And in doing so, basically you reduce the entire population to slave status. That does not give people a lot of interest in pursuing stability for the system makes revolutionaries very popular.

But it also means that the power of the state is just almost total, making it very, very difficult for anyone to make something of themselves. So you will get centers of learning throughout the Middle East who did absolutely preserve the Western knowledge during the Dark Ages, but they never applied it themselves. They never disseminated it with her in their own cultures.

They were basically just libraries maintained by monks. Oversimplification. 100 years of history. I recognize that. But you can’t deny the economic trajectory of the Middle East versus the West. And then once the West cracked the code on industrial technologies and they started having gunpowder and cannon and the Middle East was left behind, there is no contest at all.

So now today, the economies of the Middle East matter more to the world today than they have for most of the last half millennia, largely because of oil, because there is an asset those industrial economies need in order to function. Now, this isn’t so much an American problem directly because North America is self-sufficient and not even self-sufficient in oil is a significant exporter of oil.

And if the Middle East were to vanish tomorrow, we’d have some adjustments on things like crude quality. But within a couple of years would be totally fine. However, the Europeans significantly less so specifically since the Russian crude is no longer part of their equation. Parker Now, where does that bring us? Well, it means that anyone who goes in the Middle East after about 1950 is faced in a very different environment from what was faced from 1008 to 1500 when it was just a place you had to push through or from 1500 until roughly 1950 when the West was industrialized.

But the Middle East wasn’t. Now, the Middle East is, and no one’s going to say that a group like ISIS in Syria is like the pinnacle of human technology, but it’s really easy for them to get explosives and AK 40 sevens. So it’s no longer a contest like we saw from 1919 50 between an industrialized Western imperial system and a completely non industrialized, almost tribal Middle Eastern system.

You’ve got a different makeup now. Now, the governing systems of the Middle East themselves are also in play and very much in flux, because before 1950, you basically had a series of what could be best called Fortress Political Systems, where by dint of geography, you know, maybe they had an oasis like Damascus, maybe they were surrounded by desert like Egypt, maybe they were a mountain fastness like Iran.

It’s a little difficult to get in and out. And some of these areas are a lot more difficult to conquer than others are around really being at the top of that list. But you introduce industrial technologies to this area and the post-colonial post-World War two environment, and all of a sudden they’re not just drilling for oil. They’re building roads.

They’re buying military hardware. And it makes for a very different mix. You get this incredibly brittle, top down, concentrated political system that is absolutely in hate bubble of providing the people with the level of technological progress that is possible elsewhere in the world, because there’s very little to work from aside from cash from oil. And you apply that in a world where society is weak as well.

And the result you get lots and lots and lots and lots of militant groups. And if you want to back one versus the other or one versus government, that’s fine. But even if you win and the militant group overthrows the government, well then what you’ve taken what little order exists in an area and it’s turned into chaos. You get a complete societal breakdown, as we’ve seen in places like Egypt and Iraq and Syria in recent years.

So enter the United States in the aftermath of the 911 attacks. The Bush administration felt that the best way to fight al-Qaida was to make sure that the countries that allowed okay to function would go after it. So after the Afghan operation, we discovered that al-Qaida scattered to the winds, and we found out that a lot of the recruits were coming from Syria because that was how the Syrians got rid of their own dissidents.

A lot of the troops, Taliban troops that were in Afghanistan fled through Iran to parts unknown because the Iranians were like, Well, we hate these guys, but we don’t want to deal with them, especially since they don’t like the Americans very much and then the Saudis necessarily the government itself. But a lot of elements within Saudi Arabia were part of the ideological and financial underpinning that made Al Qaida possible.

How do I know that? Because we allied with them back in the eighties to form the Mujahideen, which eventually became the Taliban. Anyway, so the U.S. is looking at this region, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iraq 12th partner. And any of them wouldn’t be fun conquering all three at the same time to get after a militant group just doesn’t seem like the right task.

And so the solution that was struck upon was to knock over Iraq and occupy it with armored tank brigades, which is not the way you pacify a population. You want ground infantry for that. The idea is Tehran and Damascus and Riyadh. None of them thought the U.S. was going to do this. And so when it did it with tanks and left the tanks there, they’re like, shit, There’s nothing to stop the United States from turning on us.

And while Iran was, to a degree protected by its mountains, they had a little bit more confidence would be able to put up a good fight. The other two had no such confidence and they knew that if the United States decided to come for them that their regimes were done because there was no civil support, there was no technical competence, there was no cohesion.

Well, it worked. And those three, three countries went after al-Qaida for us and are the primary reasons The strategy is the primary reason why Al Qaida is, for all intents and purposes, no more problem is that we didn’t declare victory and went home. We tried to make Iraq look like Wisconsin with the results that you can imagine. Because, again, there’s nothing to build from in terms of society.

We overthrew what stable order there was and replace it with nothing. Now, fast forward to today. The Bush administration felt they had no choice but to go in. And, you know, we can debate whether it worked out well or not. First phase of the plan I think worked. Second phase, Obama changed nothing. Despite his rhetoric, Trump said he pulled out but left troops in places like Syria to fight ISIS because no one no one in the US political system wants to be blamed for being the guy who allowed that militant group to come back.

But here’s the problem. The countries in these areas are never going to have the foundation that’s necessary to form a country in the way that Americans or Westerners in general or even Asians see it. And so if your goal is to prevent the creation or the operation of the resurgence, the specific type of militancy, you will be there forever.

And that’s one of the reasons why we call them the Forever Wars, because we found ourselves going to war with a military tactic as opposed to any specific group. And while most of our troops are out of the region now, what happened earlier today in Syria is the best that we can hope for. Unless the strategy changes, we are never going to be able to turn these countries into something that we would normally recognize as a peer or is even someone in the same category as the nation states that we have in most of the rest of the world?

That’s not how these areas work. They never have. They don’t have the economic geography to try. And so we’re left with a fun little discussion. We have to have option A is stick it out forever, do what most of our forces have been doing in the region since the operation was slimmed down under Trump and hunker in your bases and watch and if something like oasis bubbles up again hit it with a hammer.

Go back to your bases and watch some more. And if you do that, you’ll be there forever. And while you’re there forever, other militant groups who have their own ideas of who should be in charge will take potshots at you. And that’s what we’ve been seen with the Iranians being the instigators. This is the new normal. This is the old normal.

This is just what the region look what’s option to leave from a casualty point of view. It’s easy. We’re never going to make this area look like something that we want. Danger if you leave. Is that a group that you specifically don’t like is going to boil up? Now, let me put that into context. Part of the reason that we’re still there is we find the tactics of ISIS beyond repute.

And we’ve seen that replicated in Hamas in the beginning of the Gaza war. We’re not going to be able to defeat a tactic. But the fear is, is if we leave, more of these groups will boil up in a shorter period of time and eventually start not just attacking the locals, but our interests in the region as well.

The problem with that theory is that it assumes that there’s something better that can happen if we stick around. Something to keep in mind, this is an area, a fortress cities. And historically speaking, when you don’t have an external power like the United States in those fortress cities, start to enforce their own writ on the area. Now, we have enabled Baghdad to recover from the Saddam and the occupation areas, and it’s doing a pretty good job of holding its own.

What we’re doing against groups like ISIS is basically taking some of the unknowns out of the equation for the other two major powers in this region, which are Damascus, Syria and Turkey. If the United States were to vanish overnight, they would have to deal with these unknowns themselves and we would have a much more aggressive effort from both countries to deal with groups like like ISIS.

That is more normal. And so we’re actually in this weird situation where U.S. forces that are remaining in the region, even if they’re just staying in their camps, are actually have become the single greatest reason why the government in Damascus still exists, because under normal circumstances, other regional powers would have moved in and smashed these groups that were patrolling out of existence.

And that means the Turks get more involved. That means the Syrians get more involved, and that means the Israelis get more involved. And in that sort of contest with Mesopotamia kind of acting as an anvil, we probably see the end of the Syrian government within five years. Of course, it would be bloody and horrible because this is a region that can barely grow food itself and it uses a lot of those energy imports or exports to buy food that it imports.

So the capacity here for an outright civilizational collapse is very, very real and agreed. The presence of U.S. forces is one of the few things holding the darkness at bay. Now, whether that is considered an American national interest or not, talk amongst yourselves.

East Asia, After America

Today, we’re looking at another region that the US will continue to keep tabs on – East Asia. This is one of those regions that will be plenty exciting in coming years, so let’s jump in.

Let’s start with the regional allies – Japan and Australia. Together with the US, these three countries have formed a trilateral alliance, which will help shape the power balance in the Pacific. Australia has been a close ally for decades and will continue to be just that. Japan is a more recent member of Washington’s inner circle and has joined for one big reason – China.

Japan, Australia and the US partnership has struck a strategic balance of power with Russia and China. This region’s future will depend upon where other regional powers decide to place their allegiance. Given China’s internal challenges and Russia’s apparent problems, it could (will?) turn chaotic very quickly.

We’ll be watching the dynamics unfold in East Asia over the coming years, and I expect no shortage of excitement.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, we are continuing our Post American series about what the world will look like, where the hotspots will be after the United States for trenches from its current position. Coming to you from the Eagle’s Nest wilderness just below Gore Lake. And today we are going to discuss the East Asian rim. This one is a little bit of an anomalous issue considering the series.

But whatever in that, this is an area that the Americans are going to remain very engaged in. Part of it, it’s about managing the Chinese decline, but in part it’s because the United States has a couple of very powerful, creative, capable allies that Americans appreciate. The first one is Australia, which is arguably the staunchest ally of the United States has, and it is always for two years at least served as a bit of a a deputy for American interest in Southeast Asia, which is a region that the United States is interested in, but has never really had the time to give the amount of attention that it deserves.

And that’s where the Australians come in. They’ve got excellent relations with most of the countries in the region, most notably Singapore and Indonesia. And then of course you’ve got New Zealand. There is a sidekick. Anyway, part of the reason that the United States has given nuclear powered submarines and a free trade deal to the Australians is because they’ve been so loyal and so long in areas that are out of theater.

They participated in Vietnam and Korea, they participate in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’ve always been there because they know at the end of the day, if they don’t have a partnership with the Americans, then they are on their own and they can read a map and they realize they’re wildly outnumbered in the region. So it is a strategy that they’ve been following for decades, the strategy that has borne a lot of fruit and is a strategy that will continue to serve them well into the future.

The other country is more of a newcomer, and that’s Japan. Now, throughout the Cold War, the Japanese were a bit combination of seething and shell shocked. They had been defeated soundly in World War Two. They had been nuked twice, which was something that didn’t happen to Nazi Germany. And the postwar settlements were, if anything, harsher on the Japanese than they were on the Germans.

And so there’s always this lingering nationalist ideal in Japan that wanted to move beyond the American Alliance network of the Cold War. But between the defeats, the occupation, American military force and the Soviets and the Chinese right there, they never really had that choice. Well, over the last 15 years, politics in Japan have evolved. It’s not that the nationalism has gone now, but the Chinese have become a much more clear and present danger than they thought the Chinese could ever be.

And the Russians, with their weakness in the Ukraine war, are showing themselves to be wobbly, which means that the Japanese have become very thoughtful about what their possibilities might become, that some things may not be what they thought. Some might be harder. Some might be easier. And in that sort of mindset, when you’re dealing with a demographic that is in terminal decline, you realize you probably are not going to be able to go it alone.

So it’s best to look for partners who are going to see the world through a similar lens, and that has led them willingly back to the United States over the course of the last 15 years. The Japanese have built a pair of very large carriers, quite super carriers, but the aircraft that operate from them are the Joint Strike Fighter that is made in the United States and the Japanese getting closer and closer and closer and managed to strike a deal both with the Trump and with the Biden administration on the future of bilateral relations.

So it’s not that Japan is not capable. It’s the second most powerful navy in the world by most measures. It’s that Japan has chosen that rather than going it alone, it’s opening the door on a protracted partnership with the United States and with Australia, and that puts major American power at three points of the Pacific bracketing nicely where the Russians are and where the Chinese are.

So for the future of this region, it’s going to come down to how powers do or do not get along with the Trilateral Alliance. Some, like the Chinese, are destined to break not probably because of military confrontation, but because of their own internal issues, which means this is going to be a zone of chaos. Opportunity carpetbagging for those of you who bothered to learn Mandarin or something like that.

It’s going to be impossible to put troops on the ground and stabilize something the size of China, even if you wanted to. So it’s probably just going to be a security black hole for a good long time. And then there’s other powers like Taiwan or Korea that get along pretty well with the United States and to a lesser degree, the Japanese, but are going to have to decide just how hand-in-glove they want to work.

This is one of those things that popped up earlier this year when the Biden administration had the Japanese and the Koreans to Camp David to basically hammer out a peace deal that dates back not to World War Two, but to 1905 when the Japanese occupied and colonized the Koreans. If if if the Japanese and the Koreans can agree to get along, then we can have a mini globalization in East Asia, because Taiwan’s almost a rounding error at that point that also involves Southeast Asia.

But if the Koreans decide to go a different direction, then there’s a very big security problem because the Japanese will never be secure so long as the Koreans are a hostile power. So a lot of this remains a an act in progress. But we’re starting to see the outlines of a post Russia, post Chinese Asia already. And it speaks with an Australian in the Japanese accent.

All right. That’s it. By.

Romania, After America

Today’s discussion comes to you from Huron Peak. We’ll discuss one of the middle powers that’s been dealt a bad hand: Romania. At first glance, Romania’s geographic situation looks alright – a nice chunk of land near some water bracketed by the Carpathian Mountains – but zoom in, and you’ll find three very troubling access points.

These access points open up to areas that can support enormous powers, and Romania is just stuck in the middle. This means Romania is often first on the chopping block whenever those powers want to expand or branch out. So Romania is no stranger to being a cog in someone else’s empire.

Even if Romania could make peace with its extensive and mighty neighbors, a handful of smaller players are just as problematic…ahem, Hungary. So, the Romanians have been kept busy, to say the least.

Looking forward, Romania has some big decisions to make. They know Europe is in demographic decline, so there will be a power struggle for the region. They’ve seen Russia’s blunder in Ukraine, so there’s a chance they won’t have to roll over for Putin. So, a partnership with Turkey, one of the region’s emerging powers, could help carry Romania to the most significant chapter in its history.

That’s a bold statement, and yes, there are many caveats to it…but the potential to have a partner like Turkey that’s nearby (not directly adjacent) is a pretty good setup.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

The Collapse of Global Maritime Shipping

No matter how much bubble wrap and caution tape we slap onto global maritime shipping, the industry has found itself in quite a predicament.

Despite the Ukraine War, a drought impacting the Panama Canal, Houthi attacks in Yemen, widespread piracy, and mounting geopolitical tensions in the South China Sea (yes, that is a lot of disruptions), the maritime shipping system has not cracked yet. However, it is very, very, very fragile.

The main thing propping up shipping in these more problematic regions is the emergence of ‘ghost fleets’ with alternative insurance policies. This insurance system is untested and unreliable, and as soon as one of the dominos falls, the entirety of the shipping system will follow.

The looming threat of a shipping collapse should terrify you. In case you need a supply chain refresher, manufacturing and global shipping is more interconnected than ever…so if the global shipping system fails, we’re in for a world of hurt.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from a chilly day in Delray Beach, Florida, while chilly for Florida. It’s like 50. Today we’re going to talk about what’s going on in the world of maritime shipping and why we should be thankful that nothing has gone horribly wrong yet and why we should count on that. Continuing. Just a quick recap of what’s gone down in just the last couple of months.

We’ve got Ukraine taking accurate potshots at Russian energy facilities on the Baltic Sea at a place called Ust-Luga and on the Black Sea, a place called to Tuapse. And they’re reviewing up for an overseas hit. Now we’ve got a drought in Panama, which, based on goose numbers you’re using and whether you’re going by value or tonnage, has reduced the throughput of the Panama Canal by somewhere between one third and two thirds.

We’ve got Houthis in Yemen who are taking potshots at pretty much every other vessel that happens to go by them, which has reduced shipping through the Red Sea by about 10% for energy and cargo. we’ve got fresh piracy in places like Somalia. This really gone away in places like the Gulf of Guinea or the Strait of Malacca.

And we’ve got the Chinese making ever louder noises about wanting to change the security environment in their own neighborhood, even as the Russians are actively making roughly two thirds of the Black Sea a no go zone. It’s a long list. It’s getting longer by the day. But, but, but, but, but, but to this point, there has not been a meaningful break in the old system.

A big part of that is because of the insurance structure where every vessel who’s sailing anywhere has to get some sort of policy to insure both their whole and their cargo. And while with the ever tightening sanctions on the Russians because of Ukraine or to this point, that system has not been broken. It has been denied Russian shipping.

But Indian, Chinese and Russian state companies have stepped in to offer policies. And so far, none of the ships that have had problems anywhere have been under one of those policies. So what has happened is we’ve got this dual system where we have the the normal world where the Americans and especially the Europeans are providing the insurance for most of the shipping.

When you’ve got this ghost fleet that’s developed, mostly older vessels that were about to be decommissioned, that have been brought back and given a new lease on life as second rate cargo haulers, especially for liquids where they have a Chinese Indian or Russian insurance policy. This ghost fleet, based on whose numbers you’re using, that may be as much as 10% of the global tanker fleet.

And there’s also a few brokers and maybe, maybe, maybe even a few container ships that are kind of joining its ranks now to anything that the Russians can do to keep things under the table from the point of view of global record keeping and shipping. Now, what that means is that the risk has been deferred and absorbed by this shadow organization that has kind of popped up.

We’re now in a situation where we’re kind of in a holding pattern where we’re kind of waiting for like a real actual disruption to happen. But so far, no real country has targeted any sort of shipping. It’s not like the Japanese and the Chinese have started trying to block each other. The U.S. is still using its naval power to patrol the oceans where it can, and the biggest beneficiary of that system is none other than China.

And we don’t have the Russians or NAITO deliberately targeting each other’s commercial shipping yet. In fact, everyone is very will be closely sticking to the old structures. They’re just kind of trying to maneuver their own ways to get national and regional advantages. Now, this isn’t going to be long for the world. This is a very unstable sort of equilibrium that we have reached in early 2024.

And the that this is crazy that goes fleet is the reason why it’s all still working. It’s kind of a testament to the strategic inertia of the system. But now the buffer, the ghost lead is something that is largely documented, largely under the table. And if one of these ships gets into trouble, it’s an open question of whether or not the U.S. Navy will step in to help.

All of these are unknowns, which means as soon as that happens, a ghost fleet ship gets into trouble or a real country starts taking shots at another country’s shipping. We don’t just lose that buffer. We lose all of the insulation that we’ve managed to build up in the last two years, and we get a very quick breakdown much faster than we would have otherwise.

Now, based on what happens geopolitically, this could all go any number of directions. If the United States decides to take a shot at what the Iranians are doing in the Gulf, you know, that obviously takes us one direction. The Chinese decide to do something in the South China Sea that takes us another. If Ukraine accidentally hits an actual third party vessel in some of its anti-Russian operations and goes another, if the Russians are bored and captured, somebody go into a Ukrainian forward that takes another.

We’re on the edge. There’s a lot of guns aimed at our heads right now. And it honestly from my normal point of view, it doesn’t really matter which way this goes. It all leads to the same in place where long range shipping is simply no longer viable and shipping in general through dangerous areas is simply no longer viable.

And the two biggest places in the world that benefit from the current system are, ironically, Russian sanctions busting oil exports, which have to sail all the way around Eurasia and Chinese merchant US exports, who have to do the same thing. Those are the longest haul plays out there, all going through dangerous zones. So when this cracks, we see those two things get hurt first, but they will be far from alone.

Remember, East Asia is home to half of all manufacturing supply chain steps. There is no version of manufacturing in the world, especially when it comes to things like computing and electronics, where it works without that setup. And that requires global shipping to be safe. So we need to be prepared for the not too distant future when all of this just stops working.

And we have to figure out a fundamentally new model that’s probably going to be more based on regional trade rather than global. Okay, that’s plenty for the day. Take care.

The Chinese Housing Crisis: Evergrande’s Bankruptcy

Evergrande, formerly China’s largest property developer, has just declared bankruptcy and the fallout is going to be massive. Let’s look at how we got to this point and some potential paths forward.

The collapse of Evergrande is a consequence of the Chinese government’s hyper-financialization policy that floods the economy with citizens’ savings to ensure stability…clearly it didn’t work. However, years of this policy have contributed to a massive overbuild of real estate, which is where many Chinese citizens have parked their private savings.

So, the potential for economic turmoil to ensue is quite high. How can China prevent this from happening? They can follow a Western-style bankruptcy procedure, which could stir up a whole slew of problems, or the government could intervene and circumvent the court ruling, which could spark concern internationally and diminish the legal autonomy of Hong Kong.

Regardless of which path is chosen, there will be dire economic consequences and myriad of issues for China’s social stability.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan coming to you from Colorado. The big news over the weekend is that a Hong Kong court has ruled that China’s largest property development group, Evergrande, is bankrupt and needs to be broken up. This is something that the Chinese government has spent a lot of effort on the last two years. Not happening because. Well, let me give you a little back story.

So there’s two big things that dominate the Chinese economy. The first is something I call hyper financialization. The idea that the government both de facto confiscates the savings of the citizen population so it can only go into projects funded by Chinese state banks, as well as massively expanding the money supply to the tune of like almost triple what we have here in the United States in order to make sure that there is plenty of cash sloshing around in the system so that banks can loan anything in any amount at low terms to anyone at any time, because if they can do that, they can expand, expand, expand and hire, higher hire.

And people who have jobs don’t go on long walks in large groups together. It’s a public stability, political control approach to finance. It’s not about profit. It’s about throughput, because throughput requires a lot of bodies anyway. That’s the goal. In that sort of situation, you get two things. Number one, you get companies like Evergrande who gorge on all this bottomless supply of debt to build, build, build, build, build, even if there’s no demand.

Second, you get a population who knows that their private savings is almost worthless because the Chinese government is forcing them to keep it in the state banks and they want to put it into a hard asset that preferably the state can’t control. And if they can’t get their money out of the country, then the next best thing is a hard asset in the country, which typically is property.

So you get people pooling their private savings in order to buy condos, and each condo is typically owned by a different consortium of private individuals making untangling it. Also, you have somewhere probably in the vicinity of 1.5 billion units in the country that have never been lived and never will be lived in. So you’re talking about 100% overbuild conservatively.

Some estimates say it’s as high as 3 trillion, which is just so far beyond stupid. Anyway, Evergrande going down means that their debts aren’t going to be serviced anymore and the physical assets they have had to be parceled up. And foreign investors are going to come in and see what bits that they can get. None of these things are things that the Chinese Communist Party would normally allow to happen.

So there’s a couple of ways that this can go. None of them are good. Option number one is we follow a Western style bankruptcy and restitution program where this system is broken up and a lot of their assets are sold at pennies, maybe dimes on a dollar, and it just goes away. If that happens, we will have a very clear idea of just how much the oversupply in the market is.

And you can count on private citizens being up in arms probably. I mean, the best estimate I’ve seen out of China is that 70% of total private savings is wrapped up in real estate. And most of these assets are worth no more than $0.10 on the dollar. So if you have a fire sale of the single largest player, which controls one sixth of the market, holy shit, things are going to get real very, very, very quickly.

Option number two is that the Chinese step in and abrogate the Hong Kong ruling. Now, legally this cannot happen, but the Chinese Communist Party is not really big on legal details when it comes to Hong Kong in particular. And I have no doubt that they could stick their noses in that. If that happens, that Evergrande goes on some sort of state drip and everything with the system just kind of limps on with the understanding now that Hong Kong has no legal authority over its own holdings, which will start an exodus of what few international firms are still there, regardless how this goes.

Don’t expect anything in the market to get better. This is not like, say, the TARP program that the United States put into place back in 2008 at the bottom of the subprime crisis, which kind of froze the market and put a Florida things and allowed for reforms and economic growth to eventually heal the damage of the subprime crisis.

This is this is a one off decision that is not just holding back one rock from rolling down the hill. Evergrande may be the biggest player in this market, but it is by far not the only one has been doing stupid things like this building condos that have no demand or running that like a Ponzi scheme. Every development company in the country basically operates this way, and the second and third largest players in the industry are state owned.

So you can count on the Chinese government not using this as an opportunity to break with the old model and put into place something sustainable. And even if all of a sudden this place were run by a bunch of Austrian economists, it’s too late. Housing demand, legitimate housing demand, housing demand for houses that people actually live in is dominated by people age 20 to 45.

People who are starting out well. 45 years ago, the Chinese government instituted the one child policy. You combine that with the most rapid urbanization program in human history and there are no longer enough people under age 45 to do anything that is consumption led, including home buying. So there is no path out of this that follows any pattern that we have established in a market environment which leads us to political and social outcomes, where the market economics are just atrocious and getting worse by the day with a government that is becoming ever more nervous about the state of the economy and the loyalty of its population.

I don’t want to say anything overly dramatic is like this is where it all starts to fall apart because we’ve had a lot of things like that go down in the last 18 months. But this cuts to the core of what enables the average citizen to actually support the government. And there’s no way we move forward from this without a lot of side damage.

The US and Iran: Deciding What to Bomb

Three US soldiers were killed in a drone attack carried out by an Iranian militia near the Jordan-Syria border. I expect a timely retaliation by the US, but what will that look like?

The Biden administration could choose to target Iranian-backed militias, Iranian military assets, or even Iran’s economy directly. Some of these are a bit more involved, but disrupting oil exports wouldn’t take much more than a fly-by of Iran’s primary export terminal on Kharg Island.

There will likely be global repercussions regardless of which option the US chooses; however, given the United States limited reliance on Middle Eastern energy, disrupting that system could prove beneficial for North American interests.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. It is the 29th of January and the news today is that in a rocket attack, a Iranian militia operating near the border of Jordan in Syria managed to get a missile into an American base and kill three people in the vicinity of one of the barracks. These are the first deaths of American military personnel since the Iranians started pushing groups like the Houthis to attack Americans and international commerce in a large volume.

And it’s probably going to merit a response. Something to keep in mind is when the United States couple of weeks ago decided to start taking military action against the Houthis in Yemen. It wasn’t because these Iranian backed groups were attacking commerce in general. It’s because they fired an anti-ship missile at a U.S. military vessel, and that’s what started it all off.

So working from that same logic, now that some Americans have actually died, you can expect the Biden administration to strike back. The question is how? There’s kind of three things to consider. None of the options are great. Option number one, you do a semi proportionate because the Americans always believe in overkill assault against the militias that Iran backs either in the area in question or somewhere in the broader Middle East.

The problem with this is it doesn’t solve the problem. The people who are doing the attacks aren’t Iranian. They’re just using Iranian equipment and sometimes a little bit of Iranian intel. And even if you were to wipe them all out, they come from sectarian groups who are opposed to their local geopolitical orders. And so they tend to oppose Sunni groups who tend to be in the majority, especially in places like Jordan or in the case of Iraq, where you have a pseudo democracy.

And in these cases, even if you take them all out, you just have an aggrieved minority that would, again, push people in that the Iranians would recruit. So it might make things calm down for a few weeks to months, but it’s certainly not any sort of lasting solution that’s going to change the logic in Tehran at all. The second option is to strike military assets in Iran proper.

The idea is you go after the personnel that are making these decisions. The problem here is that there’s a lot of them. Iran isn’t like most strongman autocracies. You’ve got a ruling elite of the religious, the class, the mullahs, who’s over 10,000 people. And even if you were to somehow magically carry out an assassination program and within 24 hours, kill the top thousand of them, I mean, sure, they’d have some reshuffling, but it actually wouldn’t disrupt the regime in any meaningful way.

In addition, Iran is a series of mountains. It’s basically a fortress. And if you wanted to go in there and knock the government out, you would need a force significantly larger than what the United States pushed into Iraq, which is ultimately a flat and somewhat desert community. And that means you’re going over a mountain range in mountain range and mountain range.

So the distances are far. The logistics would be hard. The geography plays to the defenders strength. And then even if you were successful, well, then what are you going to stick around and try to reconstruct Iran in the way that we did Iraq? I think I think the U.S. learned that that’s not an easy thing to do. So and again, this wouldn’t change any of the logic in Iran about what they’re doing in the broader reading, if anything, were to intensify it.

That leaves us with the third option, which is a military option against Iran’s economy. Now, Iran, while it is nowhere near the peak that it once was back in the seventies, is an oil producer. What it was exporting, more than 4 million barrels a day is still in the game and still exports about a million barrels a day.

And that income is the primary source of hard currency that the Iranians use to fund everything that they do from purchasing social stability, from their population at home to funding these rocket attacks against U.S. military targets throughout the broader region. And unfortunately for the Iranians, it all flows through a single point called Kharg Island, which is on the northeast shore of the Persian Gulf.

And it would be very, very, very easy for the United States just to destroy the loading facilities or maybe even the storage tanks and the pumping stations in Kharg. They could probably do it with a handful of sorties, would probably take less than an hour. Iranian missile defense is is not very good. Their air defense is not very good either in the U.S. obviously is very good at striking in those sorts of conditions, especially when you’re talking about something that is on the coast.

So you don’t have to fly over too many defensive layers to get to it. It’d be a cost to this, of course, should the United States decide to do this step. It would take the role of the erstwhile global guarantor of maritime security and have the United States taking very discrete shots at very specific parts of the global economy that have relied upon international security in order to function.

And that means that any vessels that are part of a long supply chain along sail going through a dangerous area, near a dangerous area, or have multiple supply chain stops, meaning that if you interrupt just one of them, all of them become defunct. All of that would be in danger. And that is the entire electronics supply chain in Southeast Asia and East Asia.

That is the entire oil supply chain which either is sourced from or passes through the Middle East. The consequences of that would be significant on a global basis. But if you want to take the American populist view, which is something that Biden and Trump agree on, is that a lot of that doesn’t really matter. And in fact, there’s something to be said for stalling those international systems because they favor North American solutions.

The United States doesn’t get energy from this region anymore. Canada doesn’t, Mexico doesn’t. So the economies that we care about the most are heavily insulated already. And the economy that we’re most dependent upon or the most concerned about is China. And they get all of their energy from Pittsburgh reach that well, not all, but like half. And so if the Biden administration does take this step, two things will very much be in motion very quickly.

US Congress Dysfunction: Blocking Aid to Ukraine

We are taking a question from the ‘Ask Peter’ forum today – am I worried about Ukraine’s dwindling weapon’s supplies in light of what’s going on with the US Congress? Yes, yes I am.

Ukraine’s supplies are running out and there’s a dozen or so Republican’s blocking anything from being passed in Congress, so that means no more ammo for Ukraine. However, this isn’t isolated to things involving Ukraine, these Republicans are blocking everything they disagree with. So, this is a problem for everything and everyone.

Sure, we’ve seen unproductive Congresses before, but in case you haven’t flipped on the news in a while – there’s plenty going on. The real kicker is that I don’t see this resolving itself anytime soon. I’m sure people will try to step across the aisle and work something out, but the extremes from both sides will be sure to stomp that out ASAP.

Unless we see some true bipartisan cooperation, the dysfunction we’re seeing in Congress will only get worse. Hopefully, we don’t have to wait for the November elections to sort this out, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Calais at the southern point of the island of Hawaii. Got the slopes up on a lower behind me, the larger volcano here. I am going to take something from our Ask Peter Forum. We’re going to put that link here at the end of the video too, in case you are sending your own questions.

And it’s am I worried about Ukraine in the light of what has become an American boycott on weapons supplies? Yes. Yes, I am. The Ukrainians are running out of ammo. There’s no way they could produce enough to support the war themselves. And the Russians are mustered. A fresh human wave. And, you know, human waves are very vulnerable to mass fire, but you have to have ammo for that to work.

So there are some concerns. We might be seeing a turning point in the war here in the next few weeks if something doesn’t change. But what is going on is we’ve got a dozen roughly Republicans on the right who are blocking anything from happening in Congress that they don’t agree with. And so this is not a Ukraine problem.

This is an everything problem. These few reps are blocking anything on any issue. So we’ve got programs that need to be addressed, not just Ukraine, but aid for Taiwan against China, aid for Israel, against Hamas, others issues with health care and business reform and criminal justice before the Senate, the defense system and the budget, every single thing has been dropped.

It’s not that these folks oppose Ukraine per se. It’s they oppose anything that isn’t exactly their way. So I call them the Greenpeace faction of the Republican Party because they just hate everyone. This means that this Congress has been the least productive in American history at this stage. And Congress a little bit more than halfway through their session.

We’ve only passed about 20% of the bills that the second the least productive Congress in history has passed. So this is an issue of big government versus small government. This is just an issue of dysfunction and it’s a problem for everybody. Now, I don’t think it’s going to get any better any soon. When the Republic ends didn’t do very well.

And last midterms, the hope of getting a big majority vanishes. They had a very slim minority beginning, and they have seen that minority shrink down in part, it’s because they’ve cannibalize their own. This faction of Republicans forced out the former Speaker McCarthy from California. And so he just quit. He left the House altogether, leaving that seat open. We’ve had another couple of resignations since.

And then the Republicans purged one of their own, a Republican, Santos of New York four. Let me make sure I get this right. Using campaign finance to purchase gay fetish foot Port Arthur can’t make a shit on any hill. What it means is not just that the margin that the Republicans have in the majority has gotten smaller and smaller.

Worse than it sounds. Because to pass something in Congress, you don’t need a majority of the votes. You need a majority of the seats. And so every empty seat kind of acts as a quasi vote against the majority. So they only have a Republican that only have a margin of two. They can only lose one vote if they still want to get things passed.

That makes each individual faction, including the Greenpeace faction, more powerful. So this is going to go one of two ways. Number one, they’re going to continue to stall everything. And this Congress will go down in history as the most pathetic ever until we have general elections a year from now, November and the new Congress would set in January, or the bulk of the Republicans reach across the aisle and start cutting deals with centrist Democrats.

Now, that’s not as easy as it sounds. There’s a lot of minutia, there’s a lot of politics, there’s a lot of noise. And in the environment that we’re in right now, anyone who reaches across the aisle is inviting a primary challenge from the freak wings of their parties, whether it’s the Greenpeace faction of the Republicans or the squad version of the Democrats.

So none of these are easy decisions, but they do suggest that drama in Congress is going to increase or rather than decrease in the months ahead. And that’s not just bad for Ukraine, that’s bad for everyone except for the Chinese who think this is fair test. All right. That’s it for me. Take care.

Finnish Presidential Elections and Anti-Russian Sentiment

Finnish politics are not something that often make the headlines, but with a marked shift away from “Finlandization” (when a smaller country remains neutral to appease a larger and more powerful neighboring country) comes some unfamiliar coverage.

Finland has become one of the largest and most assertive supporters of Ukraine, both materially and diplomatically. The most recent presidential elections reflect these anti-Russian sentiments, with candidates competing to take the strongest stance on large ticket items like security issues and more nuanced issues like revoking Finnish citizenship for Russian-Finnish citizens.

This election is just a glimpse at the complexities of Russian relations within Eastern European countries and a signal of what might be coming…

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the slopes of Mount Lower with Mauna Kea there in the background, surrounded by volcanic, you was going to go all the way up to the top, but apparently the volcano decided to destroy the road. So whatever. Anyway, that means you get a bonus video. The big news, it’s happening today. We were seeing this on Sunday, the 28th, is that there are presidential elections in Finland and for the first time ever, they matter.

So since the Ukraine war, we haven’t had a lot of electoral contests in Europe in the context of the change security environment. This is really the first one that matters. It matters for more than one reason. Finland. Well, there’s a term for it familiarization. The idea that you’re scared of your bigger neighbor. So you plot a neutral policy in order to make sure that they’re not aggravated.

And this is the position that Stalin forced upon the Finns back at the end of World War Two. And so presidential elections have always been about that debate of just how friendly can we be to the Russians so that they don’t decide to invade us. And that has been the case now for over a half century. And the outgoing president was known as the the Putin whisperer because she had a tight personal relationship.

But with the Ukraine war that has changed. And Finland is arguably of the of the real countries, the sizable countries that are assisting the Ukrainians, the one who has provided the most material support per person as well as leading the charge in terms of diplomatic efforts, and has also jumped on board NAITO, which is something that they assiduously avoided for the last 70 years in order to not aggravate the Russians.

Now, the presidential contest is a beauty contest about who can be the most anti-Russian, who will take the strongest position on any type of security issue. And so we’re kind of seeing the debate take place in three general arenas. The first is the Ukraine, where proper who’s going to promise more aid, who’s going to be more of a hawk?

The second one has to do with citizenship. There are a substantial number of dual citizens who are Russian and Finnish citizenship. And the debate at the presidential level now is whether or not to revoke their Finnish citizenship if they do not surrender their Russian citizenship. And that’s important enough as it is, but it also is carrying out into European foreign policy because Finland is not the country in Europe that has the largest percentage of ethnic Russians among its population.

That would be Latvia, with Estonia and Lithuania coming up in second and third place. So there’s always been a little bit of a quiet human rights debate within Europe about the position of the ethnic Russians in those countries. With Finland trying to take the position of the ethnic Russians in order to mollify Moscow. Well, that is not the case anymore.

The debate is whether or not these people should be kicked out, whether they should be forced to change languages, whether they should lose their European Union citizenship. The fact that the Finns have changed so much in two years is just a testament to just how brutal war in Ukraine is and how close it hits to home to countries in these regions.

Something to consider if you don’t live in Eastern Europe for anyone else in the world, the countries from Finland to Estonia to Latvia to Poland, to Romania and Bulgaria. Now these are the countries who have the most experience of living under Russian rule or fighting the Russians, and they’re the ones who have been basically training their military in order to support the Ukrainians in the conflict because they know what happens if they don’t.

Anyway, by the time you view this, the polls will have opened in Finland and we should have results in the not too distant future as Europe’s most neutral country becomes its most aggressive. A One more thing for those of you who are not fueled by issues of democracy versus repression and mass rapes and or how about illegal migrants?

Yeah, so the Russians have been flying people in from South Asia and the Middle East and herding them through the force of northern Russia and forcing them through the Finnish border. So that really has the Finns all cheesed off to.

Ukraine Attacks Russian Energy Terminal

Ukraine managed to sneak some drones by Russian air defenses and hit the Ust-Luga oil refinery and loading facility. The attack didn’t cause significant damage, but it disrupted production and shipping operations.

The successful attack has given us a glimpse at Ukraine’s capabilities and what might be in store for the future. The Russian’s response to the drone strike pokes glaring holes in the Russian system, specifically the lack of qualified workers and immense strain placed on the limited skilled personnel actively working.

This attack is a reminder of how the Russian oil industry can impact global oil supplies and the massive vulnerabilities within the system. Sanctions have also intensified in a weird sort of way following the attack, which has further impacted the flow of oil to Europe.

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Everybody. Peter Zine here coming to you from above the very active Kilauea volcano. That’s the crater that kicked off last year. Today we’re going to talk about an assault that happened last week. The Ukrainian sent a squad of drones north out of Ukraine over Russian airspace into the gulf of finland to attack the Ust-Luga…hope i pronounce that right.

Oil refinery and loading facility now north mali, this wouldn’t really matter because normally drones, as we’ve seen, can’t get through any sort of meaningful air defense. But the Russian air defense in this area appears to be just as crappy as it is everywhere else in the country. So a bunch of them got through. The other reason I would normally care about this is most refineries.

Everyone gets all you want on. They expect Hollywood explosions when a bomb goes off in a refinery, you know? Yeah. Keep in mind scale here, most refineries are over a square mile and this one’s no exception. There’s a lot of standoff distance among the different facilities. So if something does blow, it doesn’t blow up the whole thing. And crude oil at room temperature isn’t even flammable.

So the warheads that these bombs can carry, which are less than £100, probably with the models that were used probably under £20, it’s not that you can’t do damage, but you can’t do real damage. But this is not just a refinery. This is also a loading facility. And in a refinery, once you’ve made your fuels, fuel’s being more flammable than raw crude.

You then put them into a truck or a pipe and send it away With a port facility you put into a big giant tank and then a large vessel comes by and sucks off what it needs and goes on its merry way. And so the tanks themselves are the vulnerable points here. Now, judging from the size of the explosions and the fires that were started, the tanks were not hit.

That’s just something that you should have in the back of your mind when you evaluating. When somebody says a refinery, a certain piece of energy infrastructure was hit, you know what to look for. What’s interesting here are two things. Number one, it took the Russians more than three days to put out the fire and they put it out the wrong way, using water in, you know, the near Arctic winter, which caused a lot of water to freeze and then expand and break more infrastructure damage assessments are still underway.

We don’t know how bad it was. And it had this been a normal attack, we would have known within 24 hours whether or not anything substantial had been done. But here we are nearly a week out and we still really don’t have any more but the vaguest ideas and the facility is shut down. Now, there’s a lot of reasons why this matters.

Number one, while the Europeans have put sanctions on seaborne crude, seaborne oil product is in a loophole. So they were still taking stuff from this facility. And with its shut down, all of a sudden sanctions have gone up to a whole new level. And we’re going to have a very good idea of how the Europeans can absorb or not.

This newest change. Quick add on the Ukrainian attack on US. Luger was on Sunday, the 21st in less than 72 hours later. The Russians were able to begin shipping out again. However, what is being shipped out is primarily oil, almost exclusively oil and something called condensate, which is kind of a raw product somewhere between natural gas and oil.

The actual refining complex remains completely offline. There’s no naphtha, there’s no fuel, there’s no intermediate products that are coming out at all. And at present, the Russians are still completing their damage assessments. And at the pace they’re going, we probably won’t have any information on the level of damage until probably March. And then with their very, very thin remaining skin of skilled labor, they can start talking about repairs.

Second, this is the first significant Ukrainian attack against a significant economic asset of the Russian Federation. And at least on the surface, it looks like it was much more successful than they ever thought was possible. That means that the northern parts of the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland are suddenly in a danger zone that is well within the Ukrainians proven range of operation.

Now, the Ukrainians and the Russians haven’t really gone against civilian shipping right now, but I can’t think of a better target than an oil loading and refining platform such as what we’ve got. And it was ooyala. Again, apologies for the inaction. We’re just going to put the spelling right here so you can see what I’m having the trouble with.

Okay, So this is the sort of thing we should now watch for in the future, because this is not the only facility of this type which is within the Ukrainians reach. There are a number of facilities that no virus sees on the Black Sea and two ops on the Black Sea and closer to St Petersburg, also on the Gulf of Finland.

And now that the Ukrainians are proving that a few things can slip through, you can bet that they’re going to target all of them and all told, if you look at all of the infrastructure combined, it’s combined export and throughput capacity is in the vicinity of three and a half million barrels a day, which is about three and a half percent of global output.

So if you put a meaningful dent in the export infrastructure, it’s impossible for the Russians to shunt this stuff somewhere else. There’s nowhere else to go. And so it just backs up through the system. There’s also one other thing to look at the fact that the damage control crews proved to be so incompetent is something that we’re starting to see at the edges as the Russian economic system frays.

The Soviet educational system collapsed back in 1986, which means that the youngest people who are worthy of terms like engineer, turned 64 this year. And so when I think of fire suppression, I think of something that normally I could not just pick up the hose and go do it. You want someone with specialized training, and especially if you’re talking about petroleum, natural gas or refined product fires, you definitely want someone has some idea what they’re doing.

Russia is running out of those people. It’s not just that a million people have fled the country and a half a million have been drafted and committed to the war being killed. They don’t have much of a skilled labor pool left. And what they do have is being dedicated to the war itself. Air defense in the vicinity of the war, or the military industrial complex to keep the war going.

So we’re seeing some very serious phrase with the system. This this is not the sort of thing that they should have gotten wrong. That fire should have been put out very quickly with things like foam, and it wasn’t. And that suggests the Russians ability to maintain their overall system is starting to feel the strain of all of this.

And they don’t have a backup plan. There isn’t enough labor in the country to redirect from somewhere else, especially skilled labor. All right. That’s it for me. Take care.

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