The CCP is always watching…and no, I’m not talking about spy balloons today. Under the law in China, any company must cooperate with the government. So if you’ve got TikTok on your phone, you may want to watch your back.
However, there is an even scarier company out there, and it’s called META. Both companies collect the same data, but Zuckerberg takes this a step further. Your data is bundled, segmented, and sold to scammers as “Likely to fall for XYZ scam.”
The potential restrictions on TikTok are only the beginning of what I see as a necessary move toward protecting our personal information and data.
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.
Hi Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Crown Point Overlook in New Zealand, just outside of Queenstown. The news that I’ve been following of late has to do with TikTok and everyone talking about how it is this government spy program and it needs to be banned. For those of you in what pretty for a while, you know, I’m a relatively laissez faire kind of guy for most things, but there are exceptions and this is absolutely one. Under law in China, any company, not an information company, not an Internet company, not a social media company, ANY company has to cooperate with their intelligence services for any reason at any time, in whatever way the Chinese government requires. So technically, every Chinese company is a security risk, especially one that you put on your phone. And with the technology as it currently exists with TikTok, even if you have the app closed, it’s recording everything you do, bank account information, your cell phone calls, everything. And what happens is the Chinese government, if they have an interest in you, they will go into tick tock and say, I want information about this person in this area, these keywords, that sort of thing.
They have to make a very specific request to go into the data and pull it and TikTok is legally required to cooperate and hand over all the information. So from a security point of view, absolutely TikTok is a threat, but there is a company out there that is at least an order of magnitude worse than TikTok and it is called Facebook because they collect data in exactly the same way. It’s just as invasive. But unlike TikTok, where the Chinese government has to then come in to go after you. Facebook does the work for them and they take all of their data from their billion plus users and they break them up into chunks of 10,000 based on what sort of fraud they think (Facebook thinks) you will fall for a religious scam, an anti-vaxxer or scam, a give money to the elderly scam, a save the children scam, whatever it happens to be. And then they take these packets of 10,000 and they go to a place in Vegas every year where the scammers get together for literal conventions and they market your data, they market your data to these entities. And of course, the Chinese government shows up for that. So does the Russian government. So the only way to be safe from these two apps is not simply to delete it off of your phone, but then to go through and do a full system reboot and purge. Because even if you have signed out of TikTok or Facebook, it is still collecting the data you actually have to delete the entire thing after signing out. Its the only way to get around it.
So the restrictions on TikTok, I think they’re a great idea and I think they’re only the beginning of what we need to do to get our social media space back. Alright. OOOP weather just turned. We got to go. You guys take care.
The advanced developing world is about to have its moment. We’re talking about India, Turkey, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Brazil. These countries were a little late to the global scene, but now it’s their time to shine, hopefully…
The path to globalization is well-traveled, but that doesn’t mean its obstacle-free. These countries will have to work hard to balance their shifting demographics with changes to their economic structures and movement along the value-add chain.
For a country like Brazil, their current trajectory could very likely send them into a crippling demographic situation with no way to pull themselves out. If a country like Turkey continues to move up the value-add chain steadily, I could see them flourishing in the coming years.
These countries are not facing a terminal demographic situation quite yet, but if history has taught us anything…now is the time for them to reconcile their declining demographics and prepare for what comes next.
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.
Hey Everybody. Peter Zeihan coming to you from Colorado. I am in training for my upcoming New Zealand trip and so I wanted to record a couple of videos that would last a little bit longer. So this is the most recent installment in our demographic series. And today we’re going to talk about the advanced developing world, a group of countries that includes India, Turkey, Indonesia, to a lesser degree Vietnam, certainly Brazil.
These countries have a lot of things in common, not just in terms of their demographic structure, but their economic history. So until World War Two, these were all either colonies or kind of isolated systems. And they had that traditional, pre developed world pyramidal structure that was very high consumption, high inflationary and relatively low value added. But even in the early decades of the post-World War Two era, they didn’t really join into the Bretton Woods free trade system, even though some of them, several of them were signatories to the pact. They kept their economies to themselves for nationalistic reasons. And to be perfectly blunt, there was a fair amount of the advanced world, most notably Europe, where even though global trade was available, they really didn’t globalized their supply chains. They were export products, but they tried to not become dependent upon anybody else in terms of the production cycle. Well, you play that forward until 1992. And what changed in 1992 is, of course, the Cold War ended. And that’s meant that a lot of the strictures that had made it difficult to do things went away. And these countries came in from the cold from a little bit a second in 1992, the Europeans signed the Treaty of Mashhad, which did away with a lot of the internal tariff and non-tariff barriers that existed within the European space. And that meant that the Europeans started to integrate and especially German supply chains started to link to the rest of Europe over the course of the next 20 years. That was extended first as economic links and later as full EU membership to all of the states of Central Europe, from Estonia down to Bulgaria, with Poland being the most important one. And that meant that the European space, or if you want to be honest, the German economy became suddenly this global powerhouse and started exporting products that were a lot more value added from a lot more product sectors. But most importantly, of course, 1979 was the year that the Chinese started to tiptoe into the international system and then really join in in the 1990s and 2000s, which meant that the Chinese were ravenous for raw commodities and would pay pretty much anything to get whatever they needed.
This all benefited the advanced countries of the developed world because they could get certain products from the Germans and the Chinese that they could make at home, and then they could work on either raw materials or manufacturing to fill in the niches that the bigger economies didn’t provide. So for most of this class of country, 1990 really was the break point where they started to urbanize and industrialize. It took the combination of not just the global trading system, but also a change in the way that other major economies viewed economics. In the case of Mexico. 1992 is when after was adopted and of course, the early 1990s when the WTO came into existence.
So what this means is that these countries started this rapid process not in the forties or fifties, like, say, the Koreans or the Japanese or the Europeans, but not until the 1990s. But by that point, the process of developing and industrializing and urbanizing was kind of old hat for a lot of the world. So these countries were able to proceed down that path a lot faster than the countries that have come before. So for the Brits, it took seven centuries. For the Germans, closer to five. For the Americans…America’s a special case, let’s leave them out. For the Spanish, it really only took 2 to 3. These countries have done it in really one, one and a half to two. And as a result, starting in the 1990s, their birthrates plummeted, in most cases dropping by half to two thirds. So if you look at the population structure of their demographics, it’s a pure a pyramid for people who are above about age 35 and then it goes straight down in a column. Now, this is hardly a disaster. By having fewer children, more money can be focused on education, on infrastructure, general business investment. And so all of these countries have been moving bit by bit up the value added scale. We’ll look at Mexico from a value add point of view, comparing the value of the inputs versus the value of the exports. It’s probably the most high value added economy in the world. So, you know, no slouches in any of these categories.
But this has some consequences because if this continues, these countries are going to age at a much faster rate than the countries that preceded them. So, you know, we’re talking about these countries reaching a mass impact in really under 20 years. And in the case of the United States, as a point of comparison, the U.S. is going to be a younger country, demographically speaking, on average, than Brazil in the early 2040s in Mexico and Indonesia are going to pass by us in the early 2050s and probably even India by 2060.
Now there’s a lot of history to be written between here and there, but these countries all have a demographic moment and if they take advantage of it, to become developed by moving up the value added chain very, very rapidly, kind of like Mexico is, then by the time they get to these points, they will be developed enough to deal with those sort of demographic consequences. But if they become stuck in the middle, which is definitely what seems to be happening with Brazil, they’re going to have some real problems because they’ll have gotten old without becoming developed.
The case of Brazil is a special one and it’s almost entirely because of China. The Chinese came in under President Lula, his first term, and they signed a number of deals to build joint ventures for producing products in Brazil. But the Chinese basically lied and stole all the technology from all the Brazilian firms and then took it back home, produces in mass and basically drove all the Brazilian companies out of the global market. So the Brazilian industry now only basically services the Brazilian system. Indonesia has not fallen prey to that because they didn’t have the technological aptitude in the first place. They’re trying to move up the value added scale, getting out of raw commodities into processing and ultimately into things like battery assembly, which is overall a pretty good plan, inconvenient for the rest of the world, who is trying to go green quickly, but definitely in Indonesia’s best interests. Mexico is definitely the furthest along overall and moving up the value added scale. And in terms of labor productivity, I’d argue they’re above Canada already. Who am I leaving out? Turkey? The Europeans have integrated with Turkey to kind of be the Mexico for Europe. And Turkey began with a much more sophisticated labor force and infrastructure than the Mexicans had in the 1990s. They haven’t moved as fast, but you have a much deeper penetration of these technologies in these skills throughout the Turkish system than in any other countries in this class. So if the Europeans were to vanish tomorrow, the Turks would obviously feel it. But they definitely remain the most powerful country in the neighborhood, and their demographics are young enough and their neighbors are even younger that I could see a Turkish manufacturing system really taking off. Obviously, this isn’t Germany would be the same quality, quality of product, but would still be a pretty good result anyway.
Bottom line of all of this is that these countries all had a moment, the historical moment that is approximately as long as the one we’ve just completed with the hyper globalization of the post-World War Two era. But it is still only a moment, and they all need to really buckle up and get down to business if they want to do well in what comes next.
All right. That’s it for me today. See you guys next time.
Today’s video comes to you from the shores of Lake Hawea with the famed Dingle Burn arm behind me.
Anytime Russia and nukes are mentioned in the same sentence…the world pays attention. But does moving your nukes to a new place inherently change your military posture?
In the case of Belarus, the answer is no. Russia already has nukes in Kaliningrad (further west than Belarus), so this isn’t “expanding” Putin’s military reach. Additionally, the Belarusian infrastructure sucks, so these nukes will likely sit around and collect dust (unless they’re sold on the open market, but that’s an entirely different conversation).
So what does moving Russian nukes to Belarus accomplish? Putin gets to bang on his chest a little, rally up the domestic nationalism machine, and ensure the internal political situation is still propping him up. As for international security issues, this doesn’t move the needle…at least for now.
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.
Everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the shores of Lake Hawea with the famed Dingle Burn arm behind me. This is my favorite lake in New Zealand for the obvious reasons. And today we’re talking about Russia and nukes. So for those of you who have, you know, not been under a rock, the Russians have been threatening nuclear, this and that and everything since the Ukraine war started. But if you look back and look at the statements, you’ll know that sometime in mid-March of last year, Putin stopped making threats. And it was only in the last couple of weeks that the Russians have said they’re moving nukes up to a permanent station in Belarus, which is the first expansion of the Russian military footprint in terms of nuclear arms since the end of the Cold War. A lot of people are worried about that. But I think it’s best to look back before we look forward.
So if you remember back to February and early March, Putin was making nuclear threats against anyone who was willing to support the Ukrainians in any way. And then he just stopped. And the way it was explained to me the last time I was in Washington, went something like this this – the ambassador was dispatched to talk to Putin and to lay out a little bit of logic. And the idea was that if you look back to February and March, especially in January, when the Russians would have a super secret meeting with the National Security Council, the locked room, and then within hours, the transcript of those conversations would be published in Western media. The way the ambassador explained it to Putin was that the Americans have been listening to everything every phone call, every conversation, reading, every email, and in doing so, had a full picture of everything that Putin was personally considering and within his inner circle. And the idea was that, you know, a minor detail of this sort of espionage was that the United States knew at any given time physically where Putin was. So if he thought he could fling a nuke into the Western Hemisphere in the first couple, wouldn’t just come back and come right down his throat. He was kind of out of his mind. So he stopped making the threats and he left it to his henchmen to do it. This new development is kind of in the same vein.
Putting nukes in a place doesn’t in of itself change your military posture. And we know from some of the nuclear threats that the Russians made back in last March and April and May is that they didn’t actually change their readiness. They were just shouting. This is kind of like that. Because if you put a nuke in another country, you need a hardened facility, you need a command and control system, you need a night system that is absolutely hack proof. And putting that in Belarus, Belarus barely has electricity on a good day. It’s a horrible place for a nuclear race. So if the Russians did transfer nukes there, they basically would be sitting in crates surrounded by soldiers unable to be launched. So at this point and this specific issue, the nuclear threat coming out of Russia has not actually increased. The potential risk we have here is proliferation, because we know that the Russians don’t have the best security and we know that the military has become really corrupt, especially when it comes to hardware and funding. So taking secure nuclear materials and transferring them to a country that’s a kleptocracy like Belarus actually raises the chance that these things might get sold on the open market. It’s not that that’s a non risk, but it’s a very, very different risk from the idea of the Russians actually physically expanding their nuclear deployment footprint. But in terms of operational readiness, there’s really no change because the Russians already have a nuclear footprint in their little enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, which is west of Belarus.
So nothing has really changed here. The Russians are just looking for a little way to beat their chests and kind of feed the domestic nationalism machine that is keeping the government in power. This is about internal Russian politics, not international security issues, at least for now. Alright. That’s it for me. Talk to you guys later.
Today’s video is coming to you from Charteris Bay, New Zealand.
The week’s major news is that French President Macron is trying to bring Chinese President Xi to his senses. As Macron urges Xi to drop his support of Putin and the Russian war on Ukraine, we need to see why this conversation is even happening.
Russians like to blame the Americans for their shortcomings, and while this may have held some truth in the years following the Cold War, just about every country out there has an anti-Russian policy. The Chinese have jumped on the bandwagon and want to blame the US for their issues, but now most countries have developed their own anti-Chinese policies.
As the US steps back as the world’s police, these countries’ policies will play an even bigger part in the international space. While countries like the US and France may still operate as partners, each will put its own interests first. And countries like Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Australia, and India can even shape how China interacts with the rest of the world.
So what does all of this mean? China is simultaneously dealing with a multi-vectored opposition and mounting internal struggles. Between impending demographic collapse, single-pronged politics, and a crumbling financial system, the world can sit back and watch the Chinese system implode.
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.
Everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Charteris Bay on the South Island of New Zealand, just outside of Christchurch. This is going to be one of my last recordings from New Zealand, but these are all being released out of order based on current events. So you’re going to see a little bit more of this gem that I used to call home in the weeks to come.
Anyway, the big issue from this last week, from my opinion, was that French President Macron has been visiting China to have talks with chairman is using ping and to try to talk him out of some of his degree of support for what’s going on in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now, Chinese media has been blaring about what a wonderful summit this is and France’s idea of strategic independence, the idea that France, specifically in Europe in general, don’t have to follow the cue of the United States.
They’ve been really hitting that hard. And it kind of shows the degree of political disintegration within China has now even reached the diplomatic core. Let me unpack that a little bit. So one of the things that the Russians have always believed that the Chinese are now starting to say that they believe is that behind every plot and every downside and every setback that Moscow and Beijing have ever experienced is the American hand and that the Americans have been orchestrating and creating this alliance in order to contain and beat them back.
And during the Cold War, there was definitely something to that, because the policy really was containment. And in the aftermath of World War Two, all of the traditional powers that had bordered, the Soviets were broken in one way or the other. So the United States physically reconstructed them, provided them with economic aid, created a global system that allowed them to trade and access energy and markets.
And as a result, the United States received the authority to set their security policies. And while that certainly did contain and ultimately beat back the Soviet Union, it also gave the Soviets a lot of space. Because if you look at the time before 1945, the Soviets were dealing with a couple of dozen major countries, all of which had their own interests and all of them which viewed Russia as a mortal threat.
So whether it was Finland or Sweden or Norway or Denmark or Poland or Germany or France or Turkey or Japan, each of these independent countries had their own anti-Russia strategy. And one of the reasons why the Russians are so hosed now is a lot of these countries are coming back into their own because we are entering a post-American world.
Yes, the United States is, to a degree, riding a herd on what’s left of the alliance structure. But because the United States is a military structure has shifted now, because it’s now super carrier focused as opposed to having hundreds of ships, it can be everywhere at once. The United States just physically can’t be there at any given time.
And in the aftermath of the war on terror and the Iraq conflict, the United States isn’t going to be deploying land troops on a global basis for a very long time, if ever again. That leaves it to these independent countries to look after their own policy sets. And they have, historically speaking, been far more incisive, using far more invective and far more subtle and far more disruptive and far more subversive than anything the United States has ever done.
Yes, the United States is has been and will remain the single most powerful player, but it’s not the only one. And because of the nature of American foreign policy making, where you’ve got the president and the secretary of state and the national security adviser, and that’s about it. That’s the decision makers. The U.S. really has a hard time focusing on more than two or three things at a time, whereas if you’re in, say, France, you can focus on issues closer to the horizon with more intensive ness.
And so the Chinese inability to make this distinction means that they’re preparing for a world where the United States is riding herd in an alliance that doesn’t exist. And that means everything else is going to be able to come through the crap, because anyone who has studied French policy knows that the French are wildly creative at causing problems for countries they don’t like, for whatever reason.
So are the French and the Americans going to operate side by side with no light between them? No. The partners were friends to a degree. We’re even family, but we don’t always see the things through the same light. And yes, Washington does find that annoying from time to time as the French, from our point of view, go off.
But the French are doing things for the French and they’re not for certainly not doing it for the Chinese or the Russians. So that’s kind of piece. One piece to is look at the array of countries that are going to be doing this. The French are actually a minor power in the East Asian sphere. I would be far more concerned about countries like Japan, which has the world’s second largest blue water navy, who has the capacity of shutting down the sea lanes that go to and from China without help from the United States.
I’d be worried about the Taiwanese because, well, militarily, they’re not going to conquer the mainland anytime soon. They still have the intelligence apparatus operating within China already. This is the only thing that they care about because a significant amount of harm and disruption and of course, gather information for others and worry about Vietnam, which has a coastline on the South China Sea that’s over a thousand miles long.
But the Chinese have to sail down. The Vietnamese don’t even need a navy to disrupt Chinese commerce. I’d worry about Australia, which is in the process of building nuclear submarines and more importantly, mid-range air launched cruise missiles, which could disrupt everything the Chinese can do. I would worry about India, who doesn’t even have to leave home in order to completely wreck the Chinese economy.
None of these countries, with the possible exception of Australia, really operate as deputies of the United States. All of them are creative. All of them have their own capacities and all of them have their own reasons for tearing down the Chinese system in its current form. China is dealing with a multitude vectored opposition of countries that can think for themselves and act for themselves.
Now, why would the Chinese let them fall into this trap? I mean, this really is Soviet style groupthink in play here. Are the Chinese smart or don’t they think three steps ahead, aren’t they the chess players while the Americans are the checkers players? Yeah, that’s a bunch of bullshit. About seven or eight years ago, the cult of personality forming up in China reached the point of no return, and it started taking the official form of something called Jinping thought.
And that sounds a little bit groupthink ish. It’s because it is. The idea is not only do we have a party ideology, we have one dude who’s setting our goal, setting the process that we use to think and evaluate everything. And we need to all think like him. So in his first five years as Premier, she purged the party of everyone who was an alternate power center against him.
And in the second five years, he went against anyone who has any independent decision making at all. So there’s no one left. It’s just him and his little form of groupthink is now all that is left. So Chinese diplomacy, Chinese defense planning used to be multifactor. They used to have a good intelligence system. They used to have a good propaganda system.
But over the course of the last few years that has dissolved completely and all that is left is this monochromatic thought process that is fixated on a story that is wildly inaccurate, and that is what guides all Chinese decision making now. For those of you been following for me for a while, you know, I think that the demographic situation in China is far passed terminal.
It’s a country killer, you know that. I think the financial system is far passed terminal and that’s a country killer. And now we have a race with political incompetence as to what is actually going to kill the country first. Now and the long view of history. It doesn’t really matter if you’re killed by the car wreck falling off of a cliff or heart disease.
But for playing up the history in the here and now for the next several years, it really will matter. And if it’s policy incompetence that really leads China to its end. The impact on the Chinese population will be particular, really horrific because this is a country that is dependent upon international connections, not just for its economic wear for all, but for its energy and its food supplies.
And the last time we had that sort of break, it was another period where an individual on the Chinese system impressed his version of ideology into everyone’s thinking and that was Mao Zedong thought. And that led to the Cultural Revolution, the great leap forward and the death of tens of millions of his own countrymen from famine and political purges.
We are entering the situation where that’s one of the better scenarios for China for the next decade or two. All right. You all take care. See you next time.
Today’s rainbow is brought to you by Wanaka, New Zealand.
For those following Chinese relations, you’ve probably heard that Honduras just dropped its recognition of Taiwan to establish ties with mainland China. President Tsai responded with a trip to Central America to shore up diplomatic support, but will any of this determine the status of relations between Taiwan, China, and the rest of the world?
While all this makes for good theater, all that matters is where the money and weapons go. And the country to watch is the US.
Taiwan and US trade negotiations are already underway and will likely be wrapped up here soon. Once they’ve reached an agreement and Taiwan becomes a fully integrated trade partner, they’ll be treated as an independent country in every capacity but name.
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.
Hey Everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Wanaka, New Zealand, which is just a place too beautiful really for words. I mean, look at this. This is the full arch. It’s just stupid.
Anyway, for those of you who have been following Chinese relations, you know that the Chinese have been able to convince the country of Honduras to switch the recognition from Taiwan to Beijing. And as a result, the president of Taiwan, President Tsai, is on her way to do a Central American tour to try to shore up the diplomatic support for the remaining handful of countries that still recognize Taiwan as the rightful representative of the Chinese people. Ultimately, this is a lot of theater. Taiwan’s a small country. China is huge. And when it comes down to a battle of the pocketbooks, obviously Taiwan is going to lose.
But honestly, that is not what is going to decide the status of relations between the island of the mainland and the island in the rest of the world. That is dependent upon the actual policies as opposed to things like recognition, but actually where you’re putting your money and your weapons with much larger countries. And of course, the country that is always going to matter the most in that is the United States. And the United States has begun free trade negotiations with the Taiwanese. That will probably wrap up within a year, at which point treating Taiwan as an independent country will not simply be core to American bipartisan foreign policy, but a core to domestic economic and trade policy as well. And when that happens, it really doesn’t matter what the du jour system is for recognizing Taiwan as an independent country or not, because it will be a fully fledged integrated system in American law. And once that happens, the degree to which the United States can take action and promote military ties is going to be just like it will be for any other country. And we will have recognition by the United States of Taiwan as an independent country in everything that matters except for name. And undoing that is something that would require an American president to do something that is starkly against what has been the building bipartisan consensus now for 15 years.
So we’re getting to full recognition. We’re getting there very quickly, and we’re not doing it by paper. We’re doing it with the rubber hitting the road. Anyway, that’s it for me on that topic. I’ll see you guys again soon.
Today’s video comes to you from Doubtful Sound in Fiordland National Park.
The European space has historically been disconnected. Between geographical barriers, neutral countries, and bloody history, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Now that central and western Europe is forming a coalition against the Russians…Putin should be shaking in his boots.
Much of core Europe has already made its stance clear, with German, Portuguese, and Spanish tanks arriving throughout the month. With NATO votes coming up, historically neutral countries like Finland and Sweden are making their alliances clear. And even Turkey can no longer straddle the line and play both sides of this ordeal.
The real kicker here is that the Americans aren’t steering the ship. This is the Europeans doing what’s best for the Europeans. We haven’t seen a coalition this large united against a single power for centuries, and the Russians are in for a rude awakening.
*At 3:50 in the video, Peter mentions that the “French are contributing (to the Ukraine War effort) in a way they haven’t done since WWII” – it’s important to note that the French had boots on the ground in both Desert Storm and Desert Shield
*At the time of posting Finland has already been added to NATO
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.
Hey Everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Doubtful Sound in New Zealand’s Fiordland National Park. Anyway, a lot of things have gone down in the Ukraine space politically, not so much militarily. And I thought it was worth kind of looking at what the big picture is and to understand where we’re going forward, we have to go back. If you go to the world before 1945, the age of European competition, you had shifting alliances because the geography really prevented the area from coalescing into a single entity. So your northern plane, you’ve got the French, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Poles and the Germans who if you know, if there was ever going to be a zone where someone controlled everything, would be them. And so most chapters of history have been one of those powers trying to assert control over the others. You’ve got Scandinavian in the north with fjords and peninsulas and islands, so always fiercely independent and very naval oriented compared to everyone else. In the south you’ve got a more occluded coastline with very few navigable rivers of any type. And so you get regional powers who were relatively isolated from the others, but who could really punch above their weight economically because they’re all trade oriented, whether that’s in Spain or Portugal or Italy or the Balkans. It makes for a bit of a mess. And so for most of the half millennia leading up to 1945, it was kind of a war of all against all with shifting alliances here and there. Always changing texture, always changing sides. Then the Americans came in, in World War Two, and the Soviets rose during World War Two become major powers who injected themselves into this competition, encroaching into the rules of the game, because suddenly you had these two outside-ish powers who were determining all the major decisions. And we kind of forgot that Europe was the most blood soaked part of the planet until that point.
Now, with 1990 and the end of the Cold War, the Europeans have been living in a vacation from history where the security paradigms of the Cold War exist without the security threat of the Cold War. You combine that with the late globalization period and the time when pretty much all of the world was open for business and you got a very different sort of environment economically and especially politically. Well, the Russians now are kind of climbing back, clawing out of their post-Soviet hole and attempting to reassert themselves as a major regional power. Whether you believe they’re doing this out of stupid reasons or sane security reasons doesn’t really matter. They’re trying to change the nature of the system for their own long term benefit, and that is forcing countries to do something that they haven’t had to do for decades. Take a side, take a position and form an alliance to counter the Russians.
Now, from the Russian point of view, it’s all about the Americans all the time. And everything that’s going wrong for the Russian can be laid at the Americans feet. But that is to completely ignore the history of Europe, which is that of a series of independent and semi-independent primary secondary powers.
So what is kind of shaking out this week? Well, first and most importantly, the German leopard tanks, mainline battle tanks, have finally reached the war. And so now the Germans have fallen into this position of – we don’t want to be in a leadership position. We know what that has looked like in the past. We understand why everyone was nervous about it. Well, we don’t have a choice. We are the largest economic power in the northern European plain, the largest economic power in Europe. And historically speaking, we have also been the most powerful military force. We have to take a leadership position because if we don’t, this is all going to fall apart and we will be facing the Russians on the plains of Poland. And we know exactly where that leads. And we don’t want that.
This has a lot of depth because the Dutch also on the northern European plain are into the hilt. So are the Poles. The French are contributing in a way we haven’t seen the French contribute to multinational operations since World War Two and even further back technically off the plain in places like Spain and Portugal. Portugal tanks arrive with the German ones and the Spanish ones will be there within a month. So everyone in that kind of strip of what you think of as core Europe is already fully committed and back in the game. Scandinavia is a little bit different here. You’ve got mostly independent cities, states that masquerade as countries, and then Sweden, which has kind of been out of the game for three centuries. By the end of next week, Turkey will have voted on whether or not to let the Finns into NATO’s, and a vote on Sweden will probably go within a couple of months of that. And that means that these two traditionally neutral powers are going to be taking a leadership position in security policy in Europe. And the only issue they care about are the Russians. Now, the Swedes have been out of the game for three centuries after a massive military defeat in what is today’s Ukraine and in the aftermath of World War Two, the Finns were forced into a degree of neutrality where they could chart their own economic course. But on any sort of security decision making, the Soviets had full veto power. Well, that is now gone. And these two countries that have very strong militaries, relative to their size, economically or in terms of population, all of a sudden are the harbingers of the apocalypse when it comes to the Russian point of view of how European security should go, because they are extraordinarily anti-Russian. Every security question that they have ever faced has been framed in the context of what do we do the day the Russians invade? Everything else is around that, and now they’re about to be part of the decision making architecture. That also means that the Turks are coming in from the cold. They’ve been trying to kind of have their cake and eat it, too. But in the last few weeks, they’ve joined the sanctions regime relatively forthrightly and are now no longer an avenue that the Russians can use to evade the sanctions regime, especially when it comes to materials import things like semiconductors. And then finally, of course, there’s the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom was always going to be anti-Russian because it’s a naval power on an island. And any time it looks like a land power in Europe is going to become more potent. They get a little nervous and they want to make sure that the land powers are busy with land issues so they can’t float navies that can challenge London. Well, King Charles was just coronated in his first full state visit to Germany. If there are two countries in the European space that tend to be on opposite sides of all economic and security questions, it’s the United Kingdom and it’s Germany. And the fact that they’re, you know, within sight of one another is something that should turn anyone on the opposite side of that axis to turn the blood cold.
So what we’re seeing here for the first time, not in decades, but in centuries, is everyone in Central and Western Europe at the same time coming together to form a broad coalition against a single power. We haven’t had that since Napoleon, if you want to get technical, we haven’t had that since the Treaty of Westphalia. And the Americans, while they are a part of all of this, are not steering this part of the equation. This is the Europeans doing what makes sense to the Europeans. And if I were the Russians, I’d be very concerned about that.
Today’s video comes to you from Mt. Cook National Park in New Zealand.
Finland got the green light and has officially become NATO’s newest member. While the Finns are breathing a sigh of relief, we must consider how this could change the scope of the war.
Finland and Russia have some history together. From the Winter War to Finlandization, the resulting baggage of this intertwined past delayed the Finns from joining NATO. Finland could operate independently from Russia for years, with the caveat of Moscow running all security decisions. Making NATO a big no-no.
However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has signaled to the Finns that this is a war for survival, which puts a bright red target on Finland’s back. Finland might not have removed that target by joining NATO, but it’s not quite as red as before. Now it’s Sweden’s turn…
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.
By the time you see this, I’ll already be on the other side of the world, so I figured it was the perfect opportunity to talk politics…specifically, who will walk away with the 2024 US Presidency.
This will piss everyone off, but the only way I see this election playing out is with another Biden v. Trump showdown. The cult following that Trump has garnered practically locked him in as the Republican nominee. And there’s really no one else that the Democratic Party is willing to let replace Biden. So get ready for a 2020 rematch.
Issues like age and vice presidents won’t move the needle on this election. To understand how this will shake out, we need to break down the voting behaviors of the Republicans, Democrats, and Independents. Most Democrats and Republicans vote within party lines, and a large majority of Independents always vote one way or another.
So this election really comes down to 10% of Independent voters who actually give a s*** about who wins. And based on the midterm turnout, Biden has all the numbers stacking up in his favor. All he has to do is stay alive and keep from drooling on stage, and he’s going to win the office for another four years.
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.
Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the San Francisco airport where I am getting ready to be going on my first real big boy vacation since COVID started, they’ve all kind of stacked up. So I figured as long as I was leaving the country and you weren’t going to see this until after I was on the other side of the international dateline, now would be a good time to talk about American politics and tell you who’s going to win the next presidential election.
Now, the person to understand, if you want to see how this election is going to play out is Bernie Sanders. Because I think most people in America agree that he’s a bit cuckoo and his ideas are crazy. And if you sit down and actually force him to go through the math, how some people have done, he will admit that the math doesn’t make sense and he’ll just raise taxes until it does. And if that raises the marginal tax rate to the point that it destroys everything, he has no problem with that. And people who support Bernie Sanders, once you walk them through that, will come to the same general realization. But they will not change their minds because they are committed to the cause. Put another way, Bernie Sanders is not a political leader. He’s a religious leader, and he has a cult following as a result. And so does Donald Trump. Now, what that means is somewhere between one quarter and one third of people who self-identify as Republicans don’t care what Trump does or what he says. I mean, hell, he could livestream the abortion of his trans lover and they would still support him, which means that if only three other people run against him for the Republican nomination, he’s going to win the way the Republican Party works when it comes to delegates, as is in most of the races, as long as you get one more vote than whoever comes in in second place, you walk away with every single delegate. So it’s really easy for someone to come in from the outside, just like Donald Trump did, because by most metrics, he’s not a conservative in the American sense, certainly not the Republican sense. But he was able to mobilize a group of people who had been left to the outside of the populace and has catapulted not just to the presidency, but to control the Republican Party as a result. So in the environment that we’re in now, since we already have another three people have declared for the presidency, it doesn’t matter if someone like Florida Governor DeSantis runs at this point. The vote is already sufficiently split that Donald Trump will walk away with the Republican nomination. That’s pretty much hardwired in at this point. So that’s the Republicans.
So let’s talk about the Democrats. The Democrats select their candidates a little bit differently. They don’t have that winner take all mentality when it comes to the delegates. So if you get a number of strong candidates, they were going to break up the delegate count among them and it’s going to come down to the convention. And at the convention, there are a significant number of what they call superdelegates, which are people who are not representative of the primary, the caucus system, but instead represent kind of the party’s institution, which are primarily centrists. And the superdelegates came into play in the last presidential cycle when for a brief, shining, terrifying moment, it looked like Bernie Sanders might actually get the Democratic nominee. And since most centrist and center left Democrats were like, Oh, that would be disastrous by any number of manners. They all rallied together and used the party apparatus to make sure that Bernie did not get the nomination. And as a result, Biden was able to squeak through and then ultimately ran for president and ultimately gained the White House. Now, the centrists and the center left within the Democratic coalition have made the decision already that they’re not going through that again. And so if Bernie or more likely when Bernie decides to once again run for president, the centrists will swing into action to make sure it’s nipped in the bud as quickly as possible. In addition, the Democrats have always had a problem, I shouldn’t say always. The Democrats in the last 25 years have had a problem that it’s really hard for them to bring in fresh blood, because you’ve got these charismatic people at the top who are politically and maybe even economically powerful, who kind of suck all the oxygen out of the room and make it very difficult for young up and comers to make it into the system. Republicans don’t have that particular problem. And so you get a lot of people who are in their seventies, people like Biden, people like Pelosi, people like Schumer who dominate the scene. And there really isn’t a cadre of people below them. There is no deep bench. In that sort of environment, it’s really, really hard to get a primary system that runs on actual competitive candidates. You just get these freaks that come in from the outside, freaks like Bernie Sanders. Well, since the centrists have already decided what they’re going to do this time around, that means Biden is a shoo in to get the nomination, which puts us into a weird race. You get Republicans who are cult dedicated to Donald Trump and you’ve got Democrats who are willing to shut out everyone else so long as Biden doesn’t have a complete meltdown and start drooling effusively on stage, barring those two extreme events, we’re talking about a redux of the last election of Biden versus Trump.
And I don’t think that any of the things that people are talking about right now as having an impact on the election would really matter at all. So, for example, the age issue, I mean. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Biden is older than dirt by a wide margin and he would be the oldest president ever if he wins again. However, if Trump beats him, Trump would then be the oldest president ever. So the age issue is really a non condition for any voter who says it is. It may be a compacting factor, but since the runner up in this case is almost as old, it doesn’t play. And the same comes for replacing the vice presidency with somebody besides Kamala Harris. Has she risen to the occasion? No. Has she turned out to be a good VP, probably not by most measures. But replacing her isn’t going to really change anyone’s mind. Nobody votes for the vice president, so we’re left with Biden versus Trump. So the question then is who walks away with that? From my point of view, it’s pretty straightforward.
Roughly 20 to 25% of the electorate is either hardcore Republican or hardcore Democrat, and they might not like the candidate, but they’ll hold their nose and they’ll pull the lever on no vote for whoever their party’s candidate is. They are locked in. There’s no negotiating room there. Then you have another about 20% on each side that says they’re independent. But, like in 85% of races, they vote for either a Republican or a Democrat. So they’re really only independent. And they really they’re just subsidiaries of the left and the right in the American system. There’s not a lot of wiggle room there. There’s only 10% of the American electorate that is truly independent. And they’re wishy washy and they’re judgmental and they get buyer’s remorse. And the votes of this last 10% is the primary reason why in mid-terms, usually the party in power loses because they’re having buyer’s remorse. And I know this very, very clearly because I’m part of that 10%. We’re never happy with what we are and we’re not part of the decision making to determine what the candidates are. And so we get handed this pallet that we just don’t like but we have to make do with. And that usually manifests as us voting against whoever happens to be the guy in charge at the moment.
So that is how it normally runs. That’s how it’s always run. It’s how it ran until we got to the 2022 midterms, because in the 2022 midterms, almost exclusively, the independents were polled as not liking Joe Biden, particularly on economic affairs. They saw his continued governance as being against their own economic best interests, and yet they decisively sided with Democrats in all the races that really matter. And so for the most part, independents polled as not liking the Biden administration’s economic policies. And they saw a continuation of those policies as against their own personal economic interests, and yet they decisively voted against Republicans. Why? Well, it is not too hard to understand. A lot of this talk about what’s going on with the election system is real, but you have to look at it from the independents point of view to really understand if the Republican Party under Trump is able to change the electoral system in the way that they say they want to, then swing voters don’t matter anymore and independent voters don’t have a party. That’s the general election is the only way that they play in American democracy. And if you remove that, they are powerless. So the United States government under Democrats and Republicans has this interesting saying when it comes to democracy in the Middle East, we want one person, one vote, but not just one time. And if we go down the path of Donald Trump wants to, you know, that’s compromised. That and Donald Trump has made personal loyalty the predominant issue in any political system in which he touches, which brings us crap candidates like Oz or Walker who are very, very easy to vote against. And so from the point of view of the independents, the people who have decided the last seven general elections, there’s nothing to decide anymore.
And so it’s pretty safe to say that if the midterms were decided by independents who usually don’t even show up to midterms and they were willing to vote against what they see as their own economic best interests, you can bet your ass they’re going to show up in the general election in two years and vote against Trump and everything that he stands for. So for that purpose, primarily, I see this election as a shoo in for Biden. Round two. All he has to do is not die and he’s going to win.
Okay, in Queenstown now let’s see. What were we talking about…Biden and Trump? Oh yeah. Why it matters. Now, obviously, if you’re obsessed about who wins the US presidential election, it matters independently. But beyond that it raises the possibility that the United States is going to have the first extended period of agreement in its foreign policy across administrations. Now, let me explain that a little bit for Obama was infamous for never having conversations with anyone. So for seven of his eight years as president, we basically had no foreign policy at all. Then Donald Trump comes in and Donald Trump would tweet something bold and assume that that made it policy. But then nothing would ever be done with it because he could be bothered to have a constructive conversation with anyone in the government or the bureaucracy or Congress. In fact, at one point he said that his tweets were notification to Congress of certain policies, which clearly legally is not kosher. So for his four years, very little happened at the federal level. Biden has come in and Biden almost to a tee, shares Trump’s approach to foreign economic policy making. Extraordinarily populist, extraordinarily nationalist. But the difference between the two is that Joe Biden actually believes in the power of government. And can sit through a meeting in a way that Barack Obama could not. And so he is actually going back through Donald Trump’s tweets and turning them one after another into foreign economic policy and then embedding them into governance and into the American government bureaucracy. So if you are a Biden supporter, you should be furious because he’s taken all of his cues from Trump. And if you are a Trump supporter, you should be furious because Biden is getting all of the credit for Trump’s economic decision making and policy statements.
So there’s plenty in this video for everyone to get pissed off at. Now, if you disagree with my assessments on where this election is going and who we should blame for why, that’s fine. That’s fine. Go ahead and reach out and contact me. You can reach me at [email protected]. That’s [email protected]. I’m going to be here in New Zealand for the next three or four weeks and I will be doing a number of videos and reporting back to you. It might not be on the most current of current events because for most of this I’m going to be backpacking and I’m not going to have information access, but I will be back in time and we’re going to do a lot of deep dive stuff while I am gone.
So everyone have a great month and I will see you near the end of April. Bye.
If you want to become a dictator one day, be sure to keep reading.
I’m coming to you from just outside Manapouri in New Zealand. The week’s big news is that the judicial reforms being pushed by Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, have been put on hold.
Dictatorship 101 states that the first step towards lifelong power is breaking the independence of the judicial branch. Once that is gone, nothing is preventing you from rising to power. Thankfully, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was able to prevent this from happening in Israel…at least for now.
Attacking the judiciary is no secret, and it can be highly effective when done correctly. Two failed attempts at this are Trump and Bolsonaro. Their attempts to challenge the electoral process were laughed off because they failed to disrupt the judicial branch effectively. For all intents and purposes, that’s probably for the best.
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.
Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from just outside of the southern New Zealand town of Manapouri. The big news that has happened in Israel today or earlier this week is that the judicial reforms that Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, had been trying to push through for a few weeks now, have been, at least temporarily halted.
Now, let’s say that you’re the leader of a country in the free world, and you decide you want it to be in the not so free world so that you can rule pretty much forever regardless of what your motivation is. The first the most important thing that you need to do if you want to hang on to power is to break the independence of the judiciary. Now, you already control the executive branch, at least in part, and the legislative branch that can ebb and flow based on public opinion and elections. But the judicial branch is always the block that prevents authoritarians from rising to power. If you can break that, then you can rule forever.
So in the case of a number of situations throughout recent history, especially in Latin America, in the 1970s and 1980s, local would be dictators would be authoritarians. Breaking the judicial branch was always the first thing to do. And in more recent times, folks like Erdogan in Turkey, that was the first thing you after Viktor Orban in Hungary, that was the first thing he went after. The Kaczynski twins in Poland, that was the first thing that they went after. And in doing so, they’ve basically ensconced themselves as the only power that matters, because once you break the judiciary, it’s just a matter of having some sort of break in public opinion or an election and then the broken judiciary will interpret things your way.
In the case of Netanyahu, he was under a series of corruption investigations. You can say that they were politically charged. You can say that they were real. Doesn’t really matter. With the judiciary intact, those investigations will ultimately go forward. And the only way he can retain immunity is to continue as being prime minister. But as you might have noticed, Israel is a bit of a national security state and the judicial reforms that Netanyahu was trying to do were so damaging to the fabric of the political system that his own defense minister, defense in Israel is a big thing, stood up and said that this has to stop. Netanyahu fired the dude earlier this week, which meant that the coalition that allows Netanyahu to even be prime minister in the first place was suddenly in danger. And so he had to back down, at least for now.
Now, there are other countries that are kind of in play with the same sort of factors. The two that are the most important are Brazil and the United States. In those cases, you’ve got Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and Donald Trump of the United States who have both attempted to subvert the electoral process in order to remain in power. But neither of them were capable or competent or whatever the word is you want to use to come up with the idea of breaking the judiciary first. So in every instance where some ally of Trump or Bolsonaro brought a legal case to court to attempt to challenge the electoral system, those cases were laughed out of court by none other than the judges, in many cases the judges appointed by these two men in the first place. So for those of you who are concerned about democracy in the United States and Brazil, I don’t mean to suggest it’s a non-issue. But as long as the courts hold firm and to this point, they seem fine. Even the courts whose judges were appointed by Donald Trump have stood firmly to a man against every single case that has been brought forward to challenge the last general election. We’re okay. And for those of you who are Trump supporters, think of it this way. We survived eight years of Obama and we’re fine. We can certainly survive four years of Donald Trump not being the president.
Despite the threat to Turkey’s national security that a Russian victory in the Ukraine War poses, the Turks are taking a far different approach to international affairs than Japan…and it makes a lot of sense when you take a broad look at Turkey’s geopolitical situation.
Unlike Japan, Turkey doesn’t need to buddy up with the US to ensure a bright future. Turkey has some of the strongest demographics in G20 — thanks to high birth rates and a young population. They are blessed geographically — a land invasion would be futile since they are located on a peninsula and they fall at the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia, so trade isn’t an issue.
Turkey’s main concern with the Ukraine War is that if Russia wins, they will likely head after the Bessarabian Gap next and jeopardize the Turkish Straits — a.k.a the heartline of the Turkish economy. This is one of the main reasons Turkey has stuck with NATO, as they are patrolling these areas.
Outside of the protections offered by NATO, Turkey is broadly self-sufficient. Even if they left NATO, they still have a massive army to protect themselves. Thanks to recent industrialization efforts, they are a high-value-add society, they produce much of the necessary foodstuffs to feed their population, and their energy needs can be imported from several different places.
While the Turks don’t want to see the Russians win, they know the value of keeping them around. Until recently, Turkey was profiting off Russia by providing them with a number of materials on the secondary markets and access to the US/EU financial markets. NATO has recently cracked down on this issue, but it shows that Turkey is navigating this situation with one goal in mind: to position itself as a significant world player for years to come.
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Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the tail end of the Routeburn Track on the way to the divide. Sorry, no scenic highway. It started raining last night and hasn’t let up and the view is well….white and trees. Anyway, yesterday we talked a little bit about how the Japanese have realized that they’re never going to be a singular great power again and so have found a way to partner up with the country that is most likely to either encourage them or dislodge them and that’s the United States. And today we’re going to talk about Turkey in kind of the same context.
Now, unlike the Japanese, who have admitted that they will never be the dominant naval power in the Pacific and never the economic power of the Pacific again. The Turks are nowhere near that stage and with good reason. Their geography is different. Their economic structure is different. Their demographics are different. Demographically, they are the youngest of the G20 countries. With the exception of Argentina. And they’ve got the highest birthrate again, aside from Argentina, which gives them a lot of opportunities moving forward. Meaning that if current aging and urbanization trends continue, they’re not going to face a German style situation within the next 50 years. So you know, they’ve got the most valuable of commodities…time. Second, they’re on a peninsula, so it is relatively difficult to attack the Turkish space by land and to make sure that no one tries. Turkey today maintains the second largest army in NATO. So unlike the Japanese, who were overwhelmed back in the forties by American naval power, there’s really no one even on the horizon who could potentially challenge the Turks at home. As to their neighborhood, Turkish interests are a lot more varied and there are a lot more questionable calls. I mean, the Japanese, they’re a series of islands with very few resources, so they have to go out and there’s certain things that they have to achieve in terms of security and economic control or at least influence in the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan, and the Chinese mainland and Southeast Asia and all the sea lanes going across the Pacific. They really have to have it all if they’re going to succeed, and they know they can only get that all hand-in-glove with the United States. Well, the Turkish situation requires a lot more thought, not because there’s “a” right answer, but because there’s many potential opportunities. They have interests in the Caucuses with Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. They have interests in northern Iraq and the Levant, which involves the Israelis, the eastern Mediterranean, which of course involves the Egyptians, the Aegean Sea with the Greeks, and most importantly, in my opinion, in the Eastern Balkans, with Bulgaria and Romania. And that’s where today’s conversation kind of takes us.
There are plenty of hot takes out there, including for myself, on how this war may or may not roll out. We’re talking about Ukraine now. But if the Russians are successful and honestly, still by the numbers, this is still Russia’s war to lose. Ukraine will in time fall. And the place that the Russians are most likely to turn to next is a zone of territory called the Bessarabian Gap, which makes up what is today’s Moldova and a northeastern slice of Romania. Roughly 20% of Romania’s territory. Because the Russians see the Bessarabian Gap as one of the primary invasion zones that access the Russian interior and they want to concentrate a military footprint in that zone to make sure that no one can try. Well, the Turks see it basically the same way just from the other side. A number of assaults that have come for Istanbul over the millennia have gone through that same gap. Right now, the Turks kind of have the best of both worlds. It’s NATO’s territory. And so it has NATO’s security guarantee, especially the Romanian chunk. But the Turks don’t have to plug it themselves. So they’re a big beneficiary, almost incidentally, from the current security order. But if the Russians were to take that, then the Turkish heartland, the Turkish capital, the Turkish Straits, would all be directly vulnerable to Russian power. And the Turks cannot tolerate that. So the primary reason that the Turks are still remaining engaged in the NATO alliance, at least for the moment, is because of that promise of a security block in that zone. And if, for whatever reason, the Americans back away from Ukraine, the Turks would have no choice but to step in directly and partner with Romania. And forward position military forces in the gap to make sure that the Russians can’t try anything cute.
But on the broader issue of power, Turkey is just in a better position than the Japanese are. We’ve already talked about demographics in terms of geography. It’s not like they’re kind of dangling at the end of Asia. So they need a globe spanning Navy to access raw materials and resources markets. They’re at the crossroads of Europe and Africa and Asia. So as long as there is trade, whether it is by water or by land, the Turks have some cards to play. In addition, whereas the Japanese have bit by bit deindustrialized and moved into services and high tech. Over the last 30 years, the Turks have been rapidly industrializing, in part to serve as a kind of a supply depot and a middle manufacturing zone for the Europeans, much in the way that Mexico does with the United States. And in terms of value add, if you compare the cost of the stuff that goes in versus the cost of the stuff that comes out, Turkey is one of the most high value added economies in the world already. Turkey is broadly self-sufficient in all the foodstuffs that it produces for itself and never kind of got into this craze that a lot of countries have, that they have to have organic avocados that are out of season. So even if global trade shut down tomorrow, the trade system would be broadly okay. And for energy, they may be a significant importer of everything but coal. But the places that they have the options of importing from are many. Today, they’re getting a lot of their natural gas and oil from Russia, but tomorrow could very easily be northern Iraq or Azerbaijan. In fact, several of those pipelines are already in place, and it’s only been some political squabbling that has kept them from running at full capacity. So nothing like a blackout to motivate.
And so what we’re seeing in terms of how the Turks versus the Japanese are dealing with the Ukraine war, the Japanese have signed on to the American led system. And so they are going in up to their armpits with helping out the Ukrainians. However, is appropriate for their own cultural MAU. The Turks have been a lot more circumspect. They definitely, definitely, definitely don’t want the Russians to win, but they see the advantage of not having this blow up and have the Russians just disappear altogether, especially if you think, like I do, that ultimately this is Russia’s war to win. Now, to that end, the Turks have been very active in not so much bypassing the sanctions that are on Russia, but providing the Russians with ways to get around them. So there are a lot of things that are under secondary sanction restriction like semiconductors that the Turks have been importing four or five times as much as they normally do, and then they’re just selling them on to the Russians. There’s a very strong mercantile culture in Turkey. If you’re familiar with Star Trek, this is basically a nation of Ferengi when it comes to trade. There’s also been a number of banks within the Turkish space that have helped the Russians access the dollar and the euro market because the Russians discovered early on in the conflict that Yuan aren’t worth the paper that they were printed on. Basically, if you buy Yuan assets, you’re stuck with Yuan because the Chinese don’t want it back. They find their own currency borderline useless. So that little mistake cost the Russians a few hundred billion dollars.
Anyway what’s changed in the last couple of weeks is that the two things, number one, pressure from Europe and the United States on the Turks to push stricter compliance with the secondary sanctions regime has been fairly successful and the Turkish government is now shutting down a lot of these middlemen that allow banned goods into the Russian space. We’ve already seen semiconductors from things like washing machines end up in Russian cruise missiles. So it’s clear that the Russians have been working to establish an alternate supply system, and anything that chokes that off is going to force them to start over. Second, the banking issue, the federal government in the United States has specifically warned the Turks, if they don’t cut that out, that they risk pulling under the sanctions themselves. And that didn’t require a lot of prodding from the Turkish government to the Turkish banks were like okay, message sent, you’re serious about this and they kind of shut down that window as it was.
The bottom line here is that the Turks have a little bit more wiggle room, despite the fact that they are more exposed to the security issues that are going on in Ukraine. And because they see themselves in the long run as having options to great power hood, which is an accurate assessment, they don’t want to just follow blindly in the way that the Japanese are willing to. This is a country that in the long term is unlikely to be part of the American Alliance Network because it’s going to lead its own. And who all gets involved in that will in many ways be dependent upon how the war in Ukraine proceeds from this point forward. Because if the Russians do prove to be successful, well, then Bulgaria and Romania are going to be the first countries to sign up willingly for a Turkish centric defense system.
Alright. That’s it for me. I’ll see you guys in drier weather.
