COVID: What Really Happened in Wuhan?

In early 2020, reports of a virus sweeping across the globe hit the headlines. But where did it come from? How did it start? This week’s news is that the Department of Energy released a low-confidence statement that COVID originated from a lab leak within the Chinese System.

Was there a breakthrough in the evidence? Did they find the smoking gun everyone has been looking for? No. And much of the scientific community still believes this was a Mother Nature special and just jumped from a different species to humans.

So without any concrete evidence, why has a chest-thumping-contest broken out in the American political system over who hates China the most? Regardless of the origins of COVID, the Chinese knew there was a breakout in Wuhan. They shut down all domestic flights in and out of the region, but you know what they didn’t stop…International flights. They intentionally let the virus spread across the globe.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

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TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Hello from California. I just want to take a couple of minutes real quick to talk about the news this week. We’ve got a number of folks in the United States government who are taking a firmer stance on China, on COVID related history. Specifically, the Department of Energy is now saying with low confidence that it believes that COVID originated in a lab leak out of the Chinese system. And the director of the FBI concurred with the general statement that this is the bureau’s standing position.

Couple of things real quick. First, don’t blow it out of proportion. Low confidence means that there’s actually no smoking gun or firm evidence of any kind. It just means that this is the opinion of the agency and there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that points in that general direction. There’s no new breakthrough. There’s been no information brought to light that indicates that the lab leak is indeed where COVID came from. And as a rule, about two thirds of the American intelligence community officially is on the position that this is a 100% Mother Nature special, that jumped from one species to humans, somewhere in the Wuhan area. So there’s really no movement in terms of policy here or in terms of information.

I will outline two things. Number one, the Department of Energy in the FBI are as a rule, not known for medical expertise. So when they come out and say things like this, you should take it. Not so much with a grain of salt. Just put it in the context. Second, no one has any information or smoking gun or evidence pointing to it not being a lab leak. So while the general position of the scientific community is, it would probably jump from animal to human, that doesn’t mean that we know that that is what happened. It could be either way.

Now, a couple of things here. First of all, politics. There is now a competition across the American political spectrum as to who is going to be more anti-Chinese. And so there are resolution after law after amendment across Congress to prove that the Republicans or the Democrats happened to be the ones that hate China the most. Gone are the days that the business community was even part of this conversation, and now it’s all political and everyone is competing to see who can beat their chest the most. That should be your first big take away that relations with the Chinese. On the American side of the equation are breaking down because they no longer have a defender, they only have attackers. So whether you like Trump or Biden or hate Trump or Biden, everyone has decided that they don’t like the Chinese very much. That’s number one. What’s number two?

Oh, yeah. There’s plenty of reasons why we should still be mad about the Chinese, even if it’s not a lab leak. So the lab leak theory is based on the idea that either through carelessness, negligence or accident, it leaked out. So accidental being the key word there. And obviously, if the Chinese did allow it to escape from a lab and hushed up, that is bad. But that is ultimately accidental. What we know for sure, what there is no dispute of what have been the Chinese admit publicly is that for the two weeks after the Chinese realized they were dealing with a respiratory pathogen in Wuhan, they banned domestic flights to and from Wuhan, but they allowed international flights to continue to and spread the virus worldwide.

The lab leak would be embarrassing, but what we know for certain was that the Chinese intentionally allowed the virus to spread globally. And from my point of view, that means it’s perfectly reasonable for the Democrats and Republicans to compete as to who is more anti-Chinese these days. Alright. That’s it for me. Until next time.

Demographics Part 7: The Northeast Asian Crash

Today we’re talking about another region of the world competing for the title of “worst demographics” – and that, of course, is none other than Northeast Asia.

China is its own beast, and for those of you that have followed me for a while, you know where they stand…to summarize, yikes.

Japan is one of the few countries that has been able to look at this situation from a long-term view, allowing them to prepare for this (far) better than their neighbors.

South Korea is the poster child for all of the issues at hand, but if there’s a country that can somehow find a strategy to get itself out of this situation…it would be them. (and hopefully, they share it with the rest of us)

Taiwan has been able to delay the demographic problems that these other countries are facing, but that doesn’t mean they get off scot-free. They just have some time to think about what’s coming.

I know that was a lot of doom and gloom, but at least you have Southeast Asia to look forward to.

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

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The Fight for Ukraine – Global Alts 2023

At iConnections’ Global Alts cap intro event earlier this year, I had the pleasure of sitting alongside Daniel Bilak, a Ukrainian Volunteer Serviceman and Partner at Kinstellar, to discuss the status of Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

This video is roughly 30 minutes long, and we touch on key battlefield dynamics, current global repercussions and long-term implications for the world. I hope you enjoy it!

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

Inflation: The Gift that Keeps on…Taking

Over the past few years, every aspect of life has been trapped in a constant state of flux…thanks COVID. Unfortunately, the economy’s lack of stability forced inflation to skyrocket to 9%. The effect was devastating.

Supply chains catching up, a decrease in energy demands, and higher agricultural yields have ushered in a reduction in inflation rates. I suspect this trend will continue over the next few months, but it won’t last forever.

All this change and disruption (I’m talking electric infrastructure build-out, Ukraine War impacts, energy struggles in Germany and don’t even get me started on China) will gravely affect inflation rates.

Executive orders aren’t going to fix anything. We need sharp policy change. Without that, the low inflationary times of 22-23 will likely be the best we’ll see for a long time.

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

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Is India the Next China?

When I get the question – “Is India the next China?” – to the surprise of many, I respond with a resounding NO! And the Indians should be extremely happy about that. When most people look at India, they see a ton of people and cheap labor. But once you dive a little deeper, the stark differences between India and China start to appear.

Thanks to globalization, China became the manufacturing powerhouse it is today; India missed the globalization train. So India will probably be just fine when the rug gets pulled out from under the global system.

China’s economy owes much of its success to hyper-financialization due to the government flooding projects with loans and capital. Great for the appearance of economic growth, but wildly inefficient and unproductive. In India, capital availability is low, so the projects that get funding are actually productive.

And finally, my favorite topic, demographics. China is a mess; just go watch my videos on that. India is just now industrializing, so their demography has shifted into the chimney we often see (having the same amount of people in their 40s, 30s, 20s and so on). However, this has happened much later and is proceeding much slower than their peers.

On top of all that, India is geographically blessed with access to food and energy right around the corner. Don’t get me wrong, India has its own set of issues, but they are all on a magnitude lower than what China’s got going on.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the great golf course wilds of Ojai, California. Today, I wanted to do something that a lot of folks have been asking for a while and talk about India. So this is kind of like half in the demographic series, half on its own.

Lots of folks are always wondering if India is going to be the next China because it’s a big country. It has more people now. It has a faster growth rate. And, you know, it’s a legitimate question, but I have to give it a resounding no. And that is something the Indians should be very happy about. Chinese success to this point has been based on three factors. First of all, the strategic largesse of the United States in creating the globalized system, to allow the import and the export of everything on a global basis without having to first secure territory or sea lanes militarily. This came about as a result of not just the American globalization push after the Second World War, but when Nixon went to see Mao in China and to engineer the Soviet Sino split, which ultimately made China an ally of the United States in the later years of the Cold War. That is what created the manufacturing powerhouse that we know as China today.

Now, the United States have lost interest in that, and the United States sees China as a rival. So the continued existence of the Chinese economic model is dependent upon the ongoing strategic largesse of the United States, which is a very bad plan. And we’re seeing the United States hack out bit after bit after bit. It’s already happened in agriculture and energy, in manufacturing, especially in semiconductors. And the United States has the ability to kill any of this overnight if it should choose to. So the economic future of China is, one, without exports and imports and market access. And I don’t know how they can square that circle.

In the case of India. India never joined the system. India was pro-Soviet during the Cold War, and even when the Soviet system went away, the Indians kind of reflexively remained a degree pro-Russian in the years since. So their system is never internationalized. Now that means they missed out on the big growth push that the Chinese had in the eighties, 19, 20 and 2010s. And that’s why the Indian economy is so much smaller. But it also means that when the rug gets pulled out, India really doesn’t suffer all that much.

The second big piece of China’s success is hyper financialization. The idea that the state confiscates the bank deposits and the savings of the population and just floods would be projects without money, making sure that everybody has a bottomless supply of 0% loans so that everyone can have a job. Now you will get economic growth with this, but it will be wildly inefficient and in many cases flat out nonproductive. The closest comparison we have in the United States is Enron and subprime. We know how that went. Now, imagine doing that for every single economic subsector throughout the entire economic structure, which means when it goes down. And it will go down. You don’t just have a financial and a housing crisis. You have an everything crisis. And the economic sector that has been most exposed, that is most dependent to this capital is agriculture. So you can toss a famine on top of that. This isn’t a problem in India.

Now, the Indians system is capital poor, no navigable waterways of note, very high population per person capital availability in India is among the lowest in the world, lower than most of sub-Saharan Africa. But that means that the Indians actually treat capital like money. It’s an economic good as it should be, as opposed to a political good as it is in China, which can be thrown at whatever you want. So again, you don’t get the growth, but you also don’t get the instability.

The third big factor is demographics. Now, we’ve already talked about China at length in terms of just the hollowing out of the entire system. This simply hasn’t happened in India at all. Now, India has, like everybody else, started to industrialize. And so India has, like everyone else, slowly transition to kind of that chimney demography where they have as many people in their forties as the thirties of their twenties. Those are teens. But the process started a lot later than it did in China, and it’s proceeding a lot slower. And so while India is in the midst of rapid aging, it’s from a very late start, at a relatively slow speed compared to a lot of other countries in their peer group, much less the Chinese, which really are in a category all their own. Which means that India today has plenty of people under age 40 to do consuming and even still have kids. If they can find a way to reverse some of these trends. And that means in 10, 20, 30, 40 years, India is going to have a lot of people aged 40 to 65 who are going to be capital rich and high value add and in a system with one and a half billion people, even if that’s only 10% of the population, and it’s more, that’s still a whole lot going on.

Now, in the worst case scenario, where birthrates continue to shrink and the Indian population continues to age, we are still talking about it still being the world’s largest population for at least another half a century. And they won’t be in a European style crunch for their demographic within 40 years. So even if they do everything wrong, even if everything turns against them, the future of India looks pretty good. And they’ve got one other thing going for them that the Chinese don’t. They’re a lot closer to the things that they need. Australia is a much more friendly nation to the Indians than it is to China, and so there’s always going to be some extra food supply or mineral supply that’s available. And India, the subcontinent is the first stop out of the Persian Gulf.

So India is one of the last countries in the world that you should expect to ever have an energy crisis. Whereas China, is the last country on a very, very long easy to disrupt chain. So all of the normal issues that we think about when we think of India inefficiency, women’s rights issues, what that means for their economic growth, the fact that Pakistan is right there. Now, these are all relevant along with corruption. These are things we should worry about. But they’re an order of magnitude less than the problems that are plaguing China now, and they’re all survivable.

There are solutions that the Indians can come up, and even if they can’t, they can cope with these as they continue to grow. Whereas China, we are very close to the end. Alright. That’s it for me. See you guys next time.

The Ukraine War: Operational Updates

Today we’re diving into some operational updates from the Ukraine War. First and foremost, daytime temps this winter have rarely dropped below freezing; when they do, it has not been for long enough periods for the ground to freeze. So that means local forces will be rolling around in the pig-sty for at least a few more months.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the only viable way to stop the Russians is to start killing more of them…and if they can’t get their tanks mobile, that won’t be happening any time soon. These muddy conditions enabled the Russians to throw wave after wave of troops at targets (like in the Battle of Bakhmut) until they could win and move on.

This is, and always has been, Russia’s war to lose. Come May (or whenever the ground decides to firm up), we will see large-scale offensives from both sides that start to shift the tides of this war.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the San Diego waterfront. I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to give you a quick update on what’s going on in Ukraine. The most important factor is that the weather continues to be warm. Actually, today, the 7th of February is the first day in a month that it’s actually going to be below freezing in Kyiv during the day. It’s going to be chilly for the next few days, but not enough to freeze the ground. And then back by the time we’re into mid-next week, it will be above freezing again. So it is still muddy. As long as it’s muddy, the Ukrainians cannot maneuver, especially with tanks out in the fields. And that’s a real problem.

Any conflict with the Russians was always going to be heavy on numbers and the Ukrainians simply don’t have the population in order to face down the Russians man for man. So they need to inflict massively out of whack casualty ratios on the folks that are fighting. And I’m not talking 2 – 3 to 1 like we’ve seen so far. Like 8 – 10 to 1 is really kind of the minimum if they are going to walk away from this. The Russians see this war as a battle for their existential survival, their right. They’re not going to stop. And so the only way for Ukraine to emerge victorious is to kill so many Russian soldiers so quickly that the Russian front collapses and the military system within the Russian Federation requires years to recover. We are nowhere close to that. And the only way that the Ukrainians can pull that off is if they can outmaneuver the Russians. And that requires fields that are not mud.

This has allowed the Russians to play to their strengths and just throw body after body after body into a few battles, most notably the battle of Bakhmut, which until now the main effort has been led by the Wagner Group for internal political reasons. But honestly, the internal political reasons don’t matter. As long as the Ukrainians can’t maneuver and as long as the Russians have superior numbers, it’s just an issue of throwing wave after wave of humans at them until the weather changes to a degree where the logistics shifts to a degree that the battles can move elsewhere. That’s unlikely to happen until May. Now, Wagner has been using almost exclusively convicts in their human wave tactics. And as to the number of people that have been lost, the estimates are in the process of being revised by everyone, because everyone is, you know, always changing these sort of things during a war. They’re starting to use more radio intercepts to guess how many Russians have been killed. The problem is, if you go with just visual confirmation, you’re going to wildly undercount because it doesn’t count people who are injured who then were taken away from the front and then die because the Russians’ triage system and medical system is beyond atrocious. And so probably for every person that is visually killed, there’s another half to a person that then wandered away and died. Anyway, we now know that the minimum deaths in the war so far on the Russian side is 120,000, and the estimates for Russian deaths in the battle of Bakhmut specifically are somewhere between ten and 40,000, just for one little strategically insignificant town.

Anyway, for the next couple of months, this is just where we are. It’s probably too late in the season at this point to hope for a really hard freeze. So we’re going to have to wait for things to dry out in May before the Ukrainians might be able to move. By the time we get to May, the Russians will really move a lot more troops into the front. They started the war with somewhere between 100 and 150,000. Today they probably have about 250,000. And with the second mobilization already deep underway, we’re probably going to be around 6 to 700,000 by the time we get to May and June. Now, they will be badly led and they will be badly equipped and will be badly supplied and they will have poor morale and they’ll be badly trained. And you know what you call troops like that, Russian. There is nothing about the conflict to this point that is atypical in Russian history. They rarely win on quality. They almost always went on numbers. And we’re almost to the point where we’re going to see just how well these new infusions of NATO equipment help the Ukrainians on the front line and just how many massive waves and assaults the Russians can sustain at the same time. And this is going to put the battle in a bit of a pickle for the Ukrainians because they’re going to be facing two or three major assaults from the Russians at different points of contact. And if they allow themselves to get bogged down, deflecting each and every one of those, they’re going to lose. They need to free this up into a war of movement and allow their tanks and artillery and the rockets to do an offensive in a place where the Russians either can’t resist or can’t maneuver or to counter them.

So by the time we get to May, we are going to be in a very fluid strategic environment, most likely with the Ukrainians just kind of backing off, putting the minimum forces they can in this or that front just to slow the Russians down. While they try to do lightning strikes and blitzkrieg style assault on some other point in the front in order to try to get behind the Russian formations, cut them off from logistical supply and then just dice them up. It’s a risky strategy, but considering the numbers of people and the volume of equipment that Ukrainians control, that’s really the only game in town at this point.

This is still, always has been Russia’s war to lose. And we’re getting close to the point where we’re going to see a strategic logjam break one way or another. And it’s just about three months away.

Okay. That’s it for me. Until next time.

Putin Announces Withdrawal From START Treaty

Most of us have come to expect that anytime Putin gives a speech, nothing good will come out of it…and his one-year war anniversary address to parliament was riddled with bad news.

Putin announced that Russia has formally withdrawn from the START Treaty, the original major strategic arms reduction treaty that served as the only legal and diplomatic basis for US & Russian relations to exist.

With that gone, we’re edging our way back to the early cold war days and we shouldn’t expect any meaningful conversations to occur until the military position in Ukraine shifts one way or another.

On top of Putin backing out of the START Treaty, he justified his war on Ukraine by saying he was reclaiming ancestral lands, which is basically rule #1 for why you SHOULDN’T go to war. For anyone in the western world who was still on the fence about Russia, they won’t be anymore.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. It is the 21st of February, Tuesday. You’ll be seeing this on the 22nd. The big news today is that Putin gave his one year war anniversary speech in front of the Russian Duma, which is the Russian parliament. Well, it was pretty obvious he was pretty cheesed off about a whole lot of things. But the two big takeaways.

Number one, Russia has now formally withdrawn from the START treaty. Now, the START treaty dates back to the very, very late days of the Soviet Union, the very early days of the post-Cold War system, based on how you draw the lines. I believe it was ratified in 1990, and it is the original major strategic arms reduction treaty. And it is the core of not just the entire disarmament and nonproliferation regime, in my opinion, but also the core of the entirety of the American – Russian diplomatic relationship. Because if you can’t agree that you can share a planet, then everything else is kind of the details. And, and so there was a start one and a start two and a start three and a start four and various agreements, not just in the nuclear field, but conventional weapons that had to do with the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty that regulated how many tanks each side could have. And all of them drew back to START. And the Russians have now withdrawn from every single one of them, with one exception, which was the intermediate range missile treaty, which the U.S. pulled out of. And so now the entire basis, legally and diplomatically for the entirety of the bilateral relationship is gone.

And we have not seen relations at this level of hostility since at least 1983, when we had a nuclear scare over Berlin. But honestly, we’re really edging back into the early Cold War days of the early 1950s, when Stalin was building up nuclear armaments at breakneck speed in order to try to achieve parity with the United States in the post-World War two environment and the early days of containment. So while Russia is at best a third rate military power, it is not a paper tiger. It is more like a rabid tiger with a really bad case of gangrene. And it can do a lot of damage on its way down.

But now all diplomatic relations are basically in the crapper. And there is no reason to expect the United States and the Russians to have any sort of meaningful discussions on anything until such time as the military position in Ukraine breaks very firmly one way or another. As you guys know, if you’ve been following me, the soonest that might happen is May and June, when we get a huge number of Russian conscripts come in facing off of a substantial amount of weaponry that has come in from the West. The balance of forces is very clearly with the Russians in that, but logistical supply is very clearly with the Ukrainians on that one. So it is in its own way a very, very fair fight. And until we have movement on the ground in a substantial way in Ukraine, we should not expect anything to come out of diplomacy between the United States and the Russians. Nor are the Europeans showing any sign of backing down either.

Over the last few days, we’ve had the Munich Security Conference, which brings together thinkers on defense issues throughout Europe and the wider world. And everything was all about the Ukraine war. And when the Europeans showed more spine and more resolve, especially from people in the European sphere that have a history of being pro-Russian or pacifists or anti-American. I mean, they were – whoo – no zealots like the converts – taking the firmest position where Ursula von der Leyen, the chief of the E.U., said she can’t even imagine a future where the Russians don’t pay for the entirety of the Ukrainian reconstruction. And the EU’s foreign policy chief came out and said that the entire EU needs to put funds, especially joint funds, towards the operation and the expansion of ammunition lines. And this is a guy who basically a few years ago said that NATO was a relic and just that we needed to move on. So everyone in the Western world is kind of on board here. While, the Russians have drawn some very clear lines about what sorts of conversations can even happen. And it doesn’t look like very much.

The second big thing that Putin said is he has no intention of backing down from the war because Russia is fighting very clearly for their, quote, ancestral lands. This is one of those things that pops up in all of the war crimes tribunals and all of the war crimes treaties as something you do not go to war for. Now, I think everyone in the world has already pretty much made up their mind about which side they’re on. I mean, we’ve literally had torture centers registered in the dozens with a few of them allegedly even for children. And so anyone who was going to make a moral stance on this already has. But having the Russian leader basically, quote, what is not allowed under international law as the primary justification for what he’s doing, it does kind of underline things and crystallize things, at least for the Western world. Not nearly as big as what’s going on with the START treaty, though, because, you know, getting nukes out of circulation, this is a good thing.

Alright. Well, hopefully I will have a little bit more cheery things to say in the future, but for now, that’s all I got. Talk to you guys later.

US Policy: Russia Gets Blacklisted 

Senator Lindsey Graham captured the essence of what today’s video is all about – “If you jump on the Putin train now, you’re dumber than dirt.”

Between President Biden’s visit to Ukraine and VP Harris’ comment on Russia’s crimes against humanity, it’s clear that the US has drawn a line in the sand, and Russia is on the other side. This means that Russia (or at least Putin’s government) is on the blacklist of world affairs.

According to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Chinese are considering providing lethal aid to the Russians, so that blacklist might be getting a little bigger. Unfortunately for the Chinese, any disruption to the already crumbling relations between the US and China could prove catastrophic.

The breaking point has been on the horizon for years now, and we all should have seen this coming. The ramifications will be huge, and a complete reordering of the global economic system is just the tip of the iceberg.

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

The Wagner Group: Russia’s Flunkies

There are very few instances when a prisoner would refuse a chance to get out of jail… In Russia, convicts have the opportunity to join the Wagner Group in exchange for a get-out-of-jail card.

If you’re not familiar with the Wagner Group, they’re the militant group that commits war crimes on behalf of the Russian government. Or, if you ask the Russian government, they’re an independent mercenary group that just so happens to support Russian national interests while having zero ties to the government. I’ll let you choose your preferred narrative.

Regardless of who is pulling the strings, the Wagner Group is working against the clock. They’ve depleted their supply of new recruits (ex-military and convicts being the two sources), and if they continue to incur such high casualties, they won’t be around for much longer.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Palm Beach. Today I wanted to take a minute to talk about Wagner. Now, Wagner is the Russian paramilitary group that is controlled by a guy named Prigozhin, and it has served the Russians in any number of ways in doing military things that they would rather not be officially associated with. And that has been the appeal from the Russian government’s point of view that this is not a state company, this is not a branch of the military. This is a dude who honestly was just a caterer who decided that he was going to form a militant group to serve Russian national interests. And in doing so, the Russians have had a lot of pseudo plausible deniability and its involved in a lot of war crime activities in Africa and in the Ukraine war. It’s been heavily involved in the battle of Bakhmut, which is where they’ve been basically throwing people after people after people into the grinder. Minimum of 10,000 deaths there, perhaps as many as 30 or 40,000, just obscene numbers of casualties.

Now, the Russians have used things like Wagner starting in the last Ukraine war in 2014. They said that Wagner, because it is not a Russian government, was actually acting on the interest of the local Russians in eastern Ukraine and therefore they were part of a rebellion against Ukraine as opposed to some sort of imperialistic war. Well, now, several years on, it’s obvious that Wagner is just an arm of the Russian state, but that doesn’t mean that we need to get used to it. And I’m not advocating for any sort of strike against Wagner. Wagner is taking care of this itself. You see, Wagner recruits its forces from two groups. The first are former military officers in Russia. But now that Russia is in an active war, there’s no such thing as a former military officer. Everyone is being re-upped and kept within the system because the Russians are going from having a hundred thousand men in Ukraine to 700,000 in the not too distant future and probably more they’re on. So there is no longer a pool of skilled military recruits for Prigozhin and Wagner to pull from because they’re all going to be in the military.

But the second big source of troops that they’ve had during Ukraine is prisons. You go to prison, say, for a six month stint, you will get out. But then they proceed to use the people like cannon fodder, and very few of them survive the next six months. So number one, Wagner has almost emptied the prisons of the people who might qualify. And two, the people who haven’t left are like, holy crap, six months serving Wagner as cannon fodder. I’ve got. I’ll take my chances in prison. Thank you very much.

So one way or another, this is probably the final campaign. Forget the final war or final campaign that Wagner will be part of. They’re just not going to be able to maintain their numbers. And so any talk of a palace coup with Prigozhin trying to get some official position within the government. Honestly, I think it’s kind of pointless because he’s not going to be able to replicate what he’s done.

Moving forward, the implications for the Ukraine War are limited because, you know, it’s still a war. The Russian military is fully engaged, but elsewhere in the world the implications are significant because the Kremlin has been using Wagner to send forces to do unsavory things and generate influence all around the world, most notably in Africa. And if Wagner cannot maintain its current staffing levels, much less expand in the future, it’s only a matter of time before one country somewhere decides that Wagner is more trouble than it’s worth and either sends it home or starts shooting at it. And when that happens, we’ll have a cascade of effects around the world as basically Wagner gets rolled up because they no longer have any recruitment capacity. They no longer have staff in reserve. They can’t surge anywhere, and they’re not an official arm of the Russian government. So they can be cleared out with minimal diplomatic fallout. So it’s been fun while it’s lasted. But this is Wagner’s last year. Until next time.

NYT Best Seller & MedShare Donations

Today is the day! Join me at 2:00 pm CST for the Webinar – Global Outlook: One Year Into the Ukraine War. You don’t want to miss this one!

The people have spoken, and apparently 17 hours of my voice is exactly what they want…

The audio version of my 4th book – The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization – is back on the NYT Best Seller List.

For the entire month of February, all sales of all of my books in all formats will be donated to MedShare. You can learn more about MedShare and their efforts at the link below.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Good morning, everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. And the news that you can use today is that my fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization – is back on the New York Times bestseller list. Specifically, the audio version, which is 17 hours of this.

Anyway, for the month of February, all sales of all books in all formats are going to MedShare, which is a charity that provides medical assistance to communities who lack the ability at the moment to provide it themselves. So, for example, if your neighbor is Russia and it’s throwing missiles into your electrical grid and the power goes out your hospital, MedShare helps with diesel and generators and medical equipment, all that. So buy a book and all the proceeds will be going to Medicare. Or you can just go directly to the link at the end of this email. And that goes directly to the Ukraine fund.

That’s it for me. Thanks for all the support and looking forward to doing more of these over the course of the next couple of months. Take care.