Europe Archives - Zeihan on Geopolitics

The Revolution in Military Affairs: Europe’s Future

Last time we chatted about the misalignment between American weapons systems and European needs. So, what does the future of Europe’s military strategy look like?

A growing threat from Russia means European countries are rearming, and quickly. Between Polish conscription, Swedish and German defense budgets climbing, and everyone else preparing infrastructure at home, there’s a lot happening. The big question on everyone’s mind is who/what can replace the Americans and their weapons systems?

European jets are too limited in supply, so a different direction is being pursued. Think drones and jamming systems. After seeing success in Ukraine, the rest of the Europeans are treating these options as viable way of fighting wars and defending themselves. And they’ll get some tech and help from Ukraine.

While there are still capacity and infrastructure issues that will have to be dealt with, this is solid alternative to relying on the Americans. Obviously, there’s still a need for infantry, navy, and manned aircraft, but this is the first step in shifting Europe’s military future.

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. Today we’re going to continue our open ended series on the future of military technology. And we’re gonna look specifically at Europe. The Americans under the Trump administration have gone from being Europe’s security guarantor to perhaps even a security threat. And everyone in Europe is trying to figure out if there’s any pieces of the relationship that can be salvaged.

And in the meantime, laying the groundwork for whatever is next. The problem, of course, is the Europeans know in their bones that the Russians are coming for them. And if Ukraine falls within 2 to 3 years, they’re going to be fighting on European territory. So we already have the poles, which have basically reestablished something equivalent to the draft for all men of potential fighting age.

The European Union is encouraging its people to build basically prepper kits that allow them to deal for three days on their own minimum, without any sort of government services. The Swedes are announcing a tripling of their defense budget. The Germans are doing something similar. And on and on and on. But the common refrain and all of these things are two things.

Number one, the Russians are coming. We have to get ready now. And number two, the Americans can’t be relied upon. And that includes American equipment. Historically speaking, since World War two, about half of all European military procurement has come from American firms, and most Europeans are basically looking to drive that number down to zero as quickly as possible. This isn’t necessarily a political issue from the European issue. It’s a practicality issue.

Legacy systems like fighter aircraft can take decades to design, years to build out the industrial plant, and then you get only a certain flow through of production per year. So if you look at the options that are in front of the Europeans right now, there’s really only four. First is the American F-35, which is by far the best in terms of overall capabilities, but it has a couple giant, flaws in it.

Number one, it’s over $100 million in airframe and then triple that addition over the lifespan of the vehicle. So, you know, the Europeans just don’t have that kind of money. But the other options Europe has designed for themselves don’t look great.

The best one is probably Sweden’s Gripen. They can make about 25 of those a year. That’s great for Sweden, but it’s not enough for anyone else. The French have the rifle, which they can also do about 25 a year. Again, because the French have been maintaining an independent defense. Identity for decades. That might might be enough for just France, but there’s no more for anyone else.

And then you’ve got the Eurofighter Typhoon, which is kind of the European equivalent of the F-35, but older technology, which is of questionable use in a lot of situations. It’s designed the industrial plant is designed for 60 year, but it’s really never run more than 20. So the idea that you can spin this up is a question mark.

But the bottom line is, you know, if you’ve only got 2 to 3 years and you’re talking about needing about a thousand airframes, there’s just no version of traditional fighter jets that works for you at all. And so the Europeans have to turn the page on military technology and try something fundamentally new.

Consider the system in Germany, which is kind of emblematic of what’s going on and what will be going on. They’ve invested nowhere near enough for the defense industry to be self-sufficient on any stretch of the imagination. And me personally, the idea of a relatively unarmed Germany. I consider this a plus from a security point of view personally.

Anyway, now that the Americans are proving to be a little whacko, the Germans have to do their own thing. And so they’re looking at the legacy systems that they’ve invested in. After the Ukraine war began in 2022. The Germans decided to belatedly sign up to the F-35 program that the Americans run, on the condition that the manufacturing for the German airframes actually happen in Germany.

So the Americans basically worked with the Germans in 2023 and 2024 to build a facility that can handle the construction, but it’s not happening fast enough. I mean, the first plane began manufacture in 2024. It won’t be finished until 2026. First deliveries to the German Air Force won’t happen until 2027, and the 35 airframes that the Germans have ordered won’t be completely built into around 2040.

And it’s only 35 frames for a country the size of Germany, that is almost pointless. But the cost of these planes is, you know, 100 to $110 million in airframe. It’s a waste of money, especially for an airframe that is not appropriate for the German strategic needs. So why did the Germans do it at all?

Well, two reasons. First, that implicit security guarantee you get from the Americans because you know, you’re using their hardware. Trump administration has shown that that is absolutely worthless. So that logic has gone away. And second, they want to learn the technology. And so what’s going to happen in Germany is because what’s going to happen a lot of places, assuming they continue with the F-35 program at all, it’s just so that they can do it long enough to master the technologies involved.

Then they’ll, under the contract, walk away and use those technologies to build something that they actually have a use for. And at the moment, the only thing that looks sufficiently promising to replace ground strike air power, is a combination of air defense and drones. And in that the Europeans do have a couple things going for them. First is resources. Drones cost a lot less. The most advanced rocket drone that the Ukrainians have fielded so far only costs about $1 million, compared to a $110 million for an F-35. Smaller drones that are used on the battlefield to go after tanks are an order of magnitude less.

And the anti-personnel drones that the Ukrainians have been kicking out in the millions because two orders of magnitude less. There’s also a range advantage of the shaheen’s that come out of Iran, much less the Ukrainian and the Russian. Duplicates of those technologies have the same range as the J35, and you can send them out in the thousands if you want to, which means that any sort of forward positioned air facility is going to have to have great jamming, because if a few of those suckers get through, you’ve lost airframes that you simply can’t replace.

So the Europeans are terrified, and rightly so, because they have to turn the page on the technological book that they’re used to, but they have to do it because there’s no way they can build out the industrial plant that is necessary to generate what they need in time. There are only a very few countries in Europe that have been able to even try this, and it’s ones that started years ago, specifically mentioning the Swedes and the French, who have always had an independent defense identity and maybe mentioned poles, who have been working with the South Koreans to build out their capacity.

They brought in a couple hundred tanks. They’re building out construction facilities right now with the intent of starting mass production next year. But even that might not be soon enough. So it’s drones, drones, drones, drones, drums. And if you look at what the Europeans were planning on spending on the F-35 program, it was supposed to be about $80 billion for procurement and then about another 220 to 250 billion for, life cycle.

You know, that’s a lot of money that you can put in other things. And so the Europeans are going to be doing just that. So resources probably not going to be an issue because the technologies are much more appropriate to the needs the Europeans have than what the Americans would have sold them otherwise.

The second issue provides even some more, hope and that’s Ukraine. Ukraine, out of necessity, has become the world leader in drone based technologies. And it’s got everything from those small first person drones that have a range of a few kilometers to fiber optic drums that are immune to jamming, that have a range of upwards of 60km long range ones like their rocket drones and their version of Shaheed, which can go 600 to 1000km.

And increasingly, we’re seeing the manufacturing being more and more components that come from Ukraine itself right now. Probably, when they started, it was like 10 to 20% of the components were made in Ukraine. Now it’s closer to 70 to 80%. The biggest challenge of the Europeans are going to have is building out the industrial plant that’s necessary to build these parts.

Right now, a lot of this stuff just comes from the United States of China, off the shelf. They’re gonna have to build that themselves. But the Ukrainians have shown, with a relatively strict budget on a tight timetable while under air assault, you could actually make a lot happen. So if you start doing this in, say, Belgium, while you’re in a very different security situation with a lot more money, that you can throw these problems.

But perhaps the best advantage that you have of working with Ukraine? Well, there’s two of them. Number one. This is where the things are going to be used. And every drone that is used in Ukraine against the Russians is one that doesn’t have to be used in Germany, against the Russians. That provides you a lot more flexibility. Not to mention an amazing testbed.

But second. The Ukrainians have promised to fully share all of their drone technology with any country that is willing to put boots on the ground in Ukraine, either as part of a peace agreement, as for on training, or to fight the Russians directly, and for the Europeans who are watching the Americans exit stage right. That’s a really attractive offer.

Now, will this work? Revolutions and military affairs caused by changes in technology. These are tricky things. You don’t know what’s going to work until it comes up against its equivalent on the other side and up against legacy systems on the other side.

the determining technology that I have identified at the moment. And keep in mind that, you know, anyone who makes these guesses is just that.

It’s just a guess. It’s jamming. Because if you can prevent the drones from functioning, then they really can’t target anything. Now again, the Ukrainians have become the world leaders in electronic jamming technologies and the most expensive jammer they build right now is only $5 million. That’s like 1/20. The cost of what comes out of the United States. And the Ukrainian system is far, far, far superior.

The American systems really can’t jam drones at scale. So you basically get the Europeans looking to bankroll Ukraine’s military industry with the hope of copying and advancing as much of it as possible as part of Europe’s own defense matters. Now, this doesn’t solve everything. They’re still gonna have to figure out infantry. They’re still gonna have to decide if they’re even going to have a navy.

And at the end of the day, there are certain missions that you need manned aircraft for that drones can’t do. But that is today. If you had told me three years ago there’d be something called a rocket drone with a range of almost a thousand miles that was basically immune to jamming. I would have laughed at you. But necessity, invention, all that good stuff. The Europeans are operating under necessities lash.

The Future of Tourism: Part 2

We’re continuing our discussion on the future of tourism with a few new regions. Today we’ll be looking at some at-risk European countries, an unstable Middle East, and an uneven Southeast Asia.

Okay. Next is Europe. Europe faces two situations as well. The first is clearly demographic, with countries like Germany and Italy just aging into obsolescence. You’re looking at the complete collapse of their industrial model over the next decade, which will take the entire social model with it, because without people to pay for the welfare state, oh, angry Germans, who are willing to protest and get sketchy, of course they’re going to be really old.

So it’s not going to have the same connotations that it might have, say, 50 years ago. The other piece of the equation. Yes. So, you know, got steep wobbling, financial collapse, industrial collapse, employment collapse. And on the other side, you’ve got the Russians who are going to push until the day that they can’t, obviously, unless you are into adventure tourism.

Russia and Ukraine are already out of the tourist list. And if the Russians are successful in Ukraine, they will push further west. The whole line of states, going roughly from Estonia down to Bulgaria are in some degree of danger, which means that all of them, all of a sudden become only the type of tourist locations that very specific types of tourists go to.

So if there’s anywhere in Central Europe that you are interested in now is absolutely the time.

All right, let’s see. Next up, the Middle East. Who? Everyone in the Middle East basically falls into one of three categories. Either they rely on oil income directly. Number two, they rely on oil income indirectly from another state, or they are Israel. All three of these categories look kind of sketchy. Oil requires a significant trans national trans oceanic transport system.

In any system where globalization is no longer a thing and no one is providing security on the water that is in danger. So the only oil producers that will continue to be oil producers are those that both can maintain control at home. Short list there, as well as cut a deal with a local or regional security guarantor in order to keep everything running from the oil point of view.

To get to an end user that eliminates sales to places like Japan or Korea, Taiwan or China, which is kind of the bread and butter for most of the Persian Gulf countries right now. So this gets really dicey really fast. The North African say Algeria have a much better position because they just have to get over to Europe.

But for the countries that are on the dole, you know, whether you are Morocco or Jordan or Yemen, the money’s just going to stop coming. So you should really count on that going away. And that just leaves Israel. Now, Israel imports three quarters of food, imports 90% of its energy, and there is no version of economic transformation that Israel is capable of where those two things go away.

So the only way Israel continues to be a viable state, especially if it’s going to be a tourism destination, is if it manages to cut a deal with a new regional security guarantor. That will not be the United States. The U.S. won’t have the reach of the interest that will be Turkey. So watch Turkey very closely for the next decade.

It’s probably going to be one of the fastest growing, most successful, most powerful countries, not just in the region, but in the world for decades to come. And how Israel makes its bed with the Turks will determine everything about the sustainability of the Jewish state.

And finally, Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia is the part of the world that I expect to do the best. Is the world to globalize after, of course, a little adjustment period, because it can pick up anything that the Chinese drop and has the perfect mix of demographic structure, geographic accessibility, a history of basically not going to war with itself.

It’s going to be a manufacturing powerhouse and kind of a globalization in miniature that the ten countries that are in the area, but not everything is the same for everybody. Some countries are going to do better than others. And kind of like with India, when you change the economic profile of a country really dramatically, you have people who win more than others.

And that will be nowhere more extreme in terms of differences than in Southeast Asia. So what will be true for Luzon and Java and Bangkok and ho Chi Minh City and, Hanoi will not be true for Mindanao or Sumatra or Lao or other places that are a lot poorer. Basically, you have this huge split within the region, and then among the region between the countries and the locations that can do very, very well in this sort of environment.

And those it can’t. And so, you know, this is going to sound really strange, of course, but when you want to go to another country, you need to do your homework first. And in the future, Southeast Asia is going to offer both the best and the worst.

¡Ostia! Spain’s Economy Is Booming

The Spaniards have been on an economic hot streak as of late. So, what have they been doing right, and will this streak continue?

Spain has seen strong economic growth, a balanced budget, and business-friendly policies all contributing to the recent economic success. Actively seeking and welcoming immigrants has helped offset demographic decline, and the people entering the county have had an easier time integrating since they mostly hail from former Spanish colonies.

However, there’s a bulge in Spain’s demographics. This means that the economic boom they are seeing now will only last for another decade unless they can drive a million youths into the country each year. If Spain wants to secure its long-term future, it might have to start thinking about integrating with alternative systems, like NAFTA.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

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

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming from a chilly morning in Colorado. Today we’re talking about Spain a little bit. Spain is a country that has been in the news in a good way. That’s a nice change. For having relatively robust economic growth. Fairly good balance, getting this budget under control and a series of good, national policies that they’ve been put in place over the last 15 years that are actually serving it.

Well, economists kind of named it the country of the year, last year for the country that seemed to be doing the best. I don’t want to.

I don’t want to rain on the parade. But we need to put things in context. The two things that, the economist pointed out that the Spanish had done. Right. I broadly agree with number one. They’ve done a series of macroeconomic forms that have made it much easier to do business in Spain than it is in France or Italy or the United Kingdom or Germany.

And in doing so, it’s really unleashed the population to do more. And then second, they have a relatively open door immigration system. And so they’ve been able to, flush out their demographic structure in a very useful way. The country, based on whose statistics you’re using is somewhere around 15%, foreign born, with most of those people having moved in in the last 15 years.

That is pretty significant for a European nation state. These are real things. These do have legs, but I need to put that in context so you understand that this is not a long term fix. Number one, the Spanish demography is based like everyone else is on when they started to industrialize, when you move off the farm and into town, kids go from being free labor to an expense and you have fewer of them.

Well, the Spanish really got serious about industrializing in the 70s. And so they’ve got this population bulge among people who are in their 40s, and then it drops off precipitously below that. Part of the reason that the Spanish opened their doors to immigration was try to round out that lower section as much as they could. It was the right call.

Also, there’s the issue about whether or not this is replicable, and it probably isn’t because Spain used to have a hemisphere spanning empire. And so there are Spanish speakers of Spanish descent living throughout the Western Hemisphere. And it’s fairly easy for the Spanish mainland. The Spanish government, Spain proper, to import people from these former colonies with a minimum of cultural fuss.

This isn’t like France, where they’re bringing in Arabs. It isn’t like the United States, where we’re bringing in Hispanics. They are Hispanics who are bringing in other Hispanics. And the cultural lift for that is a lot less. Just keep in mind that if the Spanish want to continue to repair or just maintain their demographic structure, they’re going to have to bring in just shy of a million people a year who are under the age of 30 from now on.

And you do that for 2030 years and you change the culture quite a bit. In Spain, you don’t change it as much as everyone else. So that’s kind of piece one. Piece two is the nature of that demographic bulge itself. As a country ages as its demographics get older. It’s not all bad. It used to be when you have a lot of people that were 0 to 25, all those young people, there was a lot of consumption from the raising of the children.

And that generated a lot of inflation. That’s not Spain’s problem. Spain’s bulge is now in the late 30s to early 50s. So these are people who are, for the most part, childless. And all the money that they would have spent on their children are instead being spent on consumption. And so you’re going through basically a 25 year consumption boom in Spain that’s going to last at least another decade.

And that is very real. And it feels great because you get industrial growth, you get production growth, and you get consumption growth, but it’s a one shot deal. If anything happens to that lower age bracket that is now fueled almost entirely by immigration. We’ve seen things like this before. It’s happened in China, it’s happened in Korea, it’s happened in Germany.

And if you can’t round out that bottom tier, it’s a one shot deal. Now it’s a one shot deal. The last 25 to 30 years in the Spanish are in the middle of it. They should enjoy it. But the trick for them will be preparing for what’s next. Now, like the United States, that is 18 much more slowly than the European countries.

We are going to be able to look at everybody else who is so much more advanced on this and learn from their mistakes and their successes moving forward, and the Spanish are in a decent place to do that. But at the end of the day, they’re part of a currency union and a political union that is demographically spent, and they will need to find another path forward, not just in terms of their economic model, but their economic grouping.

Luckily, there is a potential answer on Dec. The Mexicans, from time to time of flirted with the idea of Spain joining NAFTA, and I got to say it would be a pretty clean fit. The demographics line up, the industrial bases are complementary and having a foothold in mainland Europe would not be a bad idea for the NAFTA countries.

Going Nuclear + Live Q&A Announcement

Our next Live Q&A on Patreon is here! On April 9, Peter will join the Analyst members on Patreon for question time! In order to get in on the fun, join the ‘Analyst tier’ on Patreon before April 9.

You can join the Patreon page by clicking here

As the Trump administration shifts US foreign policy, several countries are taking notice of the rising global instability. It looks like the nuclear question is getting thrown around by quite a few of those countries.

The US cancelled defense talks with South Korea following the (Korean) president’s impeachment. As a result, the South Koreans are now revisiting policies that would allow them to develop nuclear weapons, quickly. However, Seoul isn’t the only place these discussions are happening.

Feeling the US can no longer be relied upon for protection, places like Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Romania, Japan, and Taiwan are all considering nuclear armament in varying degrees. This strays from the long-standing policy where the US would provide security in exchange for control over global defense policies.

With large scale nuclear proliferation now on the table, the risk of conflict (and use of these weapons) will grow. And more shiny, red buttons isn’t quite what the world needs right now.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

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

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the Home Office. Apologize for being inside, but there’s 70 mile an hour winds outside, and recording is just not possible. Today is the 17th of March, and the news is that American Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just canceled defense talks with the South Koreans. He had a really good reason for doing it.

The South Koreans functionally don’t have a government right now. The former president was impeached, currently out on bail, which just feels weird linking those words together. And they haven’t had new elections yet, so there really is no one of authority to speak to about really deep strategic issues. And there is a very deep strategic issue that needs to be discussed.

The South Koreans have been looking at what the Trump administration has been doing with Ukraine and the European allies and even badmouthing, the Japanese of late. And they are coming to the unfortunate conclusion that they are going to have to go it alone on their defense policy. Now, South Korean military forces have basically been under this American umbrella, not just in terms of actual security protection, but actually leadership since the Cold War.

If a War were to break out, and the North Koreans were to invade South Korea, technically the entire South Korean military is under American command, even though there’s only about 30, 35,000 American troops on the peninsula, compared to, you know, ten times that for South Koreans. In addition, the South Koreans are one of the few countries that by Donald Trump standards have actually met their defense procurement goals over the course of this last several decades, typically spending more than 3 to 3.5% on defense the entire time, which is kind of the range that Donald Trump until recently said we were supposed to be in.

And at the moment, the Trump administration hasn’t really bad mouth the South Koreans in any way, like they have the Germans or the Italians or the Brits or the French or the Ukrainians or the, you know, it’s a long list give you the point. Anyway, the South Koreans see the reading, writing on the wall because they realize they are not what you would call a major ally.

The South Koreans are not capable of deploying forces really outside of their theater. And so they are definitely in the category of defense consumer. Regardless of how much of the week they try to shoulder themselves. And their concern is if the Trump administration just turns his eyes to them. But it’s just a matter of time before the United States moves on.

And so they are dusting off the policies from the 60s, 70s and 80s that would allow them to do a sprint to a nuclear weapon. In a matter of weeks, if not decades. And this has earned them the labor by the United States of sensitive energy country, meaning that they are no longer a complete non concern when it comes to nuclear proliferation.

But now something where it’s on the radar and that’s exactly where they should be, and having a discussion at the very top level between the Americans and the South Koreans on what can and would and should happen under all these scenarios is exactly what needs to happen.

But there’s no one to have that conversation takes up at the moment. So delay, South Korea is hardly the only country that is going to be in this bucket. We have a number of other countries who are concerned about what the United States is doing, and realize that they need to, or coming to the conclusion that they need to come up with their own defense plans.

And one of the things you have to consider if you haven’t had a sufficiently strong conventional force for a while, you know, like South Korea has, building up this conventional forces takes years, if not decades. So can they be American general staff situation is 50 years in the making. Aircraft carriers, from the point that you decide that you want to do it, you go through the design, you go to the current, you go through manufacturing, and then finally field testing.

You know, you have the 20 to 25 year process. Considering the speed at which things are unraveling in Europe, most countries just don’t have that sort of time. And so countries who want to actually look out for themselves, they can’t really rely on conventional forces in the short or medium term, which raises the question of nuclear weapons. The country that is, of course, under the greatest pressure is Ukraine.

And we’re supposed to have a conversation very soon between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin of Russia, which will give some indication just how much Ukrainian territory, the Americans are willing to sacrifice in order to achieve a peace deal. But keep in mind that there are multiple nuclear power reactors in Ukraine. And Ukraine used to be where all the brains of the Soviet military industrial complex used to be on nuke issues, on aircraft issues, and on missile issues.

So the idea that the Ukrainians, when under pressure can’t go nuclear is silly. Next slide of countries in that are already publicly discussing who, where and how to get the nukes. Poland’s at the top of that list. They’ve actively asked the United States to deploy nuclear weapons to their soil, and that has gotten broadly rebuffed. And so now they’re discussing what they need to do to get their own, the road for Poland will be a little bit longer.

They don’t have a native nuclear industry, but their manufacturing capacity is robust. All they have to do is get the nuclear material and they’d be off to the races. It would probably take them 3 to 9 months in order to get a functional weapon, not an explosive device. They could probably do that in the weeks, but the actual deliverable weapon, probably within 3 to 9 months, the next country up is the one that I am, of course, most worried about.

That’s Germany. They’re having the discussion. Not should we get nukes? But how should we get nukes? Option one is to partner up with the French and pay money to the French, so that the French nuclear deterrent, which has existed since the 50s, also covers Germany. But at the end of the day, the French are the ones who would control that arsenal and whether or not it should be used or not.

And so the other option is for the Germans to get as close to the threshold as they possibly can get experience in doing the milling in order to make the warheads enriching uranium with the plutonium. And again, they have a nuclear industry so they can do this themselves, and the idea that the Germans could not put into the device into a deliverable weapon system.

The Germans have been arms manufacturers for a very long time. That would not be a challenge. In between, look to Sweden and Finland. Here are two countries that, like Ukraine, already have an indigenous nuclear civilian fleet. And the Swedes, like the Germans, already have an indigenous, robust military system, for contracting and manufacture. Both of them are openly discussing these options.

And if they do decide to pull the trigger, both of them would have a deliverable weapon in under a month. Rounding out the list in Europe, look to Romania. Like the Ukrainians, they have a nuclear industry. However, the weapon systems are subpar and pretty much all important. So they could get a device, use it as a failsafe.

But getting the deliverable system would be, probably a bridge too far. And anything less than a 12 month timeframe. But it’s a lot faster than doubling the size of your army. Over in East Asia, in addition to the Koreans, the two countries to watch, obviously, are Japan and Taiwan. Both have a arms industry. Both have the materials.

Both have plenty of scientists and engineers who have experience with both. You just have to marry the two together. It’s just a question of how many funds they decide to put behind it. And in the case of Taiwan, if they really did feel that the Americans were leaving, well, they really don’t have any option but to get nukes.

And while the Japanese Navy may be much more powerful in terms of reach in the Chinese Navy, the home islands are within range of a lot of Chinese weapons systems. And so if there was a war, I don’t doubt who would win in the end because the Japanese could choke off the Chinese mainland. But the damage could be extreme.

About the only way to mitigate the risk there is deterrence. And that means nukes. So they’re we’re talking about eight countries that are likely to pick up nukes in the not too distant future, based on how American policy unfolds in the next several weeks to months. Something the Trump administration is learning is something that every administration before it has learned it, including the first Trump administration, is that if you want to write everyone’s security policies, you have to give them something.

And during the Cold War, and until very recently, it was a guns for butter trade, the US would protect global sea lanes so that anyone could trade with anyone at any time. And in exchange, the allies allowed Washington to write their security policies. What the Trump administration is doing is not just breaking that deal, but saying that we’re not going to protect your trade.

You are on your own, but you’re also on your own for defense. And that forces all of these countries to take matters into their own hands. And if they do that, the United States loses the ability to say what can and cannot happen with weapons systems. And that leads to a world with a lot more nukes. And it a much, much, much higher likelihood of actually having a weapons exchange.

The Russian Reach: Why Leadership Doesn’t Matter…Until It Does

Despite the short-term emphasis placed on the title of president, chancellor, or prime minister, the reality is that leadership typically has minimal impact on the trajectory of a nation. The real movers are geography and demography; however, sometimes a leader can be the exception to that rule.

If you take the US, it’s clear that geographic security enabled a flexible and powerful military. If you look at German history, constant neighboring threats lead them down a different path. Demographic structures carry influence in all spheres of life. Younger demos can drive consumption and inflation, while an older, wealthier demo fuels investment and stability. Again, geography and demography are structural realities that are often “untouchable” by a singular leader.

And yet, there are pivotal moments when a leader (or single decision for that matter) can change the course of history. We’re talking about instances like Churchill’s stance during WWII or Zelensky’s defiance in the opening week of the Ukraine War. And now, Trump is pulling the US from its post-Cold War holding pattern and plunging it into a deglobalized system.

Trump’s leadership, coupled with his ability to appoint unqualified officials with little opposition, is a symptom of the disintegration of both major US political parties. Which means we’re entering a period where outside forces, like Russia, can weasel their way into American politics.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

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

Hey, everyone. Peter Zeihan here. Coming from Colorado. Today we’re launching into our new series on what the hell is going on in Washington. Over the last few weeks, The Donald Trump administration has taken a number of steps that I don’t think pushed the MAGA agenda at all. And can’t be explained away as incompetence or toddler syndrome or whatever you want to call it.

Something else is up. It seems like the actions were designed specifically to tear down American power over the long term. And so I want to start by talking about why normally leadership just doesn’t matter. All countries are shaped by two things, their physical environment, their geography and their population structure, their demography. You understand those two things.

You can understand the challenges, opportunities and tools in front of a country. So, for example, if you’re a country like the United States that is surrounded by oceans, you don’t have to spend a lot of resources on defending the homeland, especially not on land. And armies are expensive, both in terms of money and in terms of manpower.

So if you are freed up from that, you can then instead invest your people in doing something that will actually earn income and invest your military and naval forces, which, while not cheap, can be wherever you need them to be. And so you basically get a much more mobile military force, and you get to choose the time and the place of when a conflict happens, rather than the other way around.

Another good example are the Germans. They are surrounded by potential competitors the Dutch, the French, the Austrians, the poles, the Russians, the Swedes and off the coast, the Brits. And so no matter where the Germans look, they face a potential threat. And throughout all of German history, until very recently, the goal was always to consolidate as quickly as you can, develop as quickly as you can, just in a panic, and then eliminate one of the threats so you can focus on the others.

And this generated a very hostile, erratic, rapid German economic and security policy that eventually triggered a couple of wars. That ended the European order, as it was until World War Two. And it was only with the creation of the European Union and NATO where the Germans were no longer, viewed themselves as surrounded by enemies but surrounded by allies, that this finally changed, of course, that shaped their economy because they still have that built in.

And so they focused everything on industrial activity because that’s what they knew. And because the frantic miss in the culture never really went away. They just focused it differently, which was triggered some of the economic problems that the Europeans are having. Now. You can play this for any country. Open borders means you have to have an army and you’re going to be a little nervous if you’ve got a rampart between you and everyone else, like, say, the Chileans versus the rest of the world.

With, the Andes Mountains, you get a culture that can be very productive, a pretty laid back because you’re not facing any sort of threat on a regular basis. And then everybody in between. That’s for demographic structure. It’s a question of balance among people who were under the age of 18, roughly 18 to 45, 45 to 65, and retired that first category.

Those kids to expensive. And you have to house them, clothe them, feed them, educate them. And for most adults, raising your kids is the most expensive thing you will ever do. Certainly more expensive than purchasing a house, but it does generate a lot of consumption, which generates a lot of economic activity

Next group, 18 to roughly 45. These are your young workers. These are typically your parents. And just like with the kids, lots and lots of consumption because they’re buying homes, getting educated, and, buying cars. So we have a relatively low value added workforce, but still a lot of consumption and a lot of inflation, and you got people 45 to 65. The kids are moving out. The house has probably been paid for and they’re preparing for retirement. They’re also paying a lot of taxes because they’re experienced workers that are very productive with high incomes.

So this is the tax base. This is the capital stock. This is the stock market. And then when you retire whatever assets you’ve accrued, you want to protect them. So you move out of things that are relatively risky, like say the stock market and go into things that aren’t like cash or property, and then you basically just whittle away at it until you pass on.

Every country has all of these categories. The question is the balance. If you have a lot of young people, you have a consumption led system that tends to be inflationary. It’s also easier to build an army. If you have a more mature system, you’re going to have a little bit more capital, a lot more industrial capacity. It might be easier to do a Navy.

It’s got an advanced population 45 plus. The capital you have is massive, and your ability to invest in technology and be making yourself a technocracy is a very real possibility. And usually countries that are in this stage have some amazing growth patterns. But it’s not from consumption, it’s from investment, it’s from technological breakthroughs. It’s from the application of those technologies.

And then eventually you retire and everything stops. What does all this have to do with leadership? Well, very little. You can’t leader your way out of your borders without a war. And while wars do happen, consolidate and whatever the territory on the other side is a multi-generational thing. And the consolidation usually matters more than the conquering.

So when you look back at, say, American history, as we expanded westward through the continent, we don’t remember the politicians like Paul King, those who came before that actually expanded the borders very well. We think of the politicians that successively turned the country into something else. On the other side of that, we think of Eisenhower. It’s a different sort of work.

It takes time, and it takes a lot longer than any one leader ever has. Even if you happen to be a despot who happens to be a genius and you take over at age 22 and you rule your entire life, this is the stuff not so much of decades, but of centuries. Same and population policy. Let’s say we had a really robust population policy that really encouraged large scale childcare to allow workers to both work and have kids.

Well, that’s not going to hit economic headlines for 25 years, because you have to wait for the kids to grow up and become adults themselves. Leaders just don’t change that. But every once in a while, we have a moment in history where the decisions that are made in the short term don’t just matter. But after everything. A great example is Churchill, during the Blitz, could have surrendered, cut a peace deal with the Nazis.

But no, he decided to make his country and unsinkable aircraft carrier and pray that the winds of time would be favorable. It was a gamble. It worked, and history would have turned out very, very differently had he, not me personally. I put Zelensky’s quote to Ukrainian president of, when the Chechen hit squads were closing in and the United States offered evacuation.

He says, I don’t need a ride. I need ammo. That changed the course of the war. And without that decision, this conflict in Ukraine not only would have been over a lot longer, we’d have a lot more dead Ukrainians than we have now, but we’d already probably be hit deep in a war on the plains of Poland.

We’ve been at one of these moments for arguably the longest window, in human history, for these last 35 years. Ever since the Cold War ended, the world has kind of been in this weird little transition period where the old globalized system of the US, built to build an alliance to fight the Cold War, was mostly maintained, and the structures of globalization on the economic side were mostly maintained.

But we’ve all been kind of a holding pattern to see what the United States was going to do. And most of my work, most notably my first book, The Accidental Superpower, is about this dichotomy and how it can’t last, and that sooner or later, the United States is going to move on to something else, whether it’s something internally, something regionally, the Western Hemisphere, or sees something shiny elsewhere.

And this whole system was going to end anyway. But no world leader, no American leader really took advantage of that moment to do something or take us in a different direction. Until now. And that person who is doing something is Donald Trump. But rather than translating American power of this moment into a new system that will last for decades, he seems to be tearing it down.

Which is why we’re doing the series. There’s something else to consider about why Trump has been so successful and is faced so few obstacles. And it’s more than just the fact that the United States military is more powerful than everyone of the allies combined. It has to do with what’s going on in the United States, because our political system is not stagnant.

It evolves, too. And every generation or so, the factions that make up our political parties move around. And in those periods and these windows of opportunity, in these transition moments and these interregnum politics become unstuck. So I would argue that what we’ve seen in the last 15 years is a complete disintegration of both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, other apparatus and loyalty system.

In that environment, MAGA was able to hijack and take over the Republican Party quite successfully, whereas the Democrats more or less just dissolved as an institution. We’re in the transition process here. We are not seeing anything close to what the end result will be for the next period of American history. But at this moment in time, the institutions which are based on the parties, which are based on the people are in flux.

And I think the best example I can highlight for that is what’s gone on in the US Senate. No American president has ever had all of his cabinet appointees approved. You have to get confirmed by the Senate with a majority except Donald Trump and phase two. And without a doubt, this is the least qualified cabinet we have ever seen in American history.

And every single one of them have gotten through. We’ve gotten a guy who pledged publicly to turn the FBI into a vindication engine, specifically to prosecute the president’s opponents, confirmed. We get a vaccine skeptic who’s a complete nut job confirmed. We get an agricultural secretary who’s never been on a farm, confirm, and we get a defense secretary whose military experience is limited and has absolutely no experience in policy.

Whatever confirmed all of them got through, all of them got through quickly. All of them got through easily. This is not my army. This is not the power of Trump’s charisma. This is an issue that we are in one of these moments where the institutions are in flux, most notably the political parties in this case. And until that firms back up, the Senate has basically abdicated responsibility and that provides opportunities for others who are much more organized, who are not going through this sort of flux to exercise their will.

Which will bring us to the Russians. And we’ll tackle them tomorrow.

What Trump Should Take on Instead…

Newspaper photo of President Donald Trump

The last few videos have covered all the things that Trump is focusing on (and doing wrong), and many of you have asked where he SHOULD be spending his time. So, today we’re discussing the things that should be prioritized.

The US has a unique global position, its economy is strong, it has a powerful military, and it’s largely self-sufficient when it comes to energy and food. With that in mind, here are the four main opportunities I see: Europe, the UK, Southeast Asia, and Cuba.

Each of these places offers the US something it could use in the decades coming. Whether that’s a foothold in reshaping European economics and diplomacy, adding the UK into NAFTA to strengthen economic ties, securing a future of industrial capacity in Southeast Asia, or adding a low cost manufacturing partner in Cuba.

Basically, I would stop spending my time antagonizing our allies and focus on strengthening our economic and strategic partnerships.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

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

Hey, all. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. We’ve been doing a number of pieces on how Donald Trump is, manipulating the world for various outcomes. A lot of you have written in and asked me, well, what should he be working on? And I’m going to assume that you’re asking that in a constructive way.

So here we go. Remember that we are in this weird moment in history where the United States is really the only country of size that has a positive demographic structure and so still has a consumption led economy. We’ve got military reach, around the world. We have navy that’s more powerful than the next eight put together, if not all of them self-sufficient, energy, self-sufficient in food.

We’re really holding the handle of the whip on everything that matters. The question is how we want to use it. And if you look around the world, the opportunities are just robust. Right now in the Middle East, Iran has suffered a generational blowback. It’s lost its allies and Hezbollah and, Syria and the time is here to completely remake the region, really, however we would want.

We’ve got something similar going on in China as it’s facing demographic, financial, transportation and strategic collapse. Ten years from now, China won’t exist. And by the end of this century, the Han of necessity won’t exist. Talk about just a wondrous opportunity to shape things in a different way. Donald Trump instead is, picking fights with all of the allies, specifically the allies that we’re going to need to help re fabricate the future, especially our own in terms of manufacturing.

So I look for the low hanging fruit that is out there right now, of which there is an immense volume. Let’s start with Europe. Germany is in the midst of an election campaign. No matter who wins, it’s going to be a weak government with three parties. It’s going to be very difficult for to lead at home and impossible for it to lead on the European stage.

In France we have a hung parliament, and if we have elections again this year, that locks the French out of policymaking for at least six months, assuming they come up with a new government that’s actually cohesive, which is very unlikely. I mean, the France is kind of out to lunch.

Italy has a reasonably strong leader in the form of Giorgia meloni. But she too leads a coalition government, and she can only go so far. And then the Brits are gone because of Brexit. So there is no leadership in Europe. If you wanted to take control of the continent from an economic and a diplomatic point of view and reshape how it works for generations, now is the time. And instead we had JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference talking to the Europeans about how European cultural evolutions are a greater threat to the United States than either Russian nuclear weapons or Chinese predatory practices and cyber, attacks.

It was easily the most destructive speech that I could have come up with in terms of solidifying the alliance against the Russians, against the Chinese, to create a new world. And I’ve never seen so much diplomatic and political power by any country pissed away in 45 minutes. But that’s where we are. I don’t know if it’s too late to kind of pick up the pieces, but clearly keep Vance away from all of them.

That opportunity, unfortunately, may have been destroyed in a single hour. Second up, the Brits, the Brits voted themselves out of the European Union several years ago. And if you’re like me and you see the demographic changes coming that the European Union is going to have to re fabricate itself from its current state as an export union to something else, because if you don’t have enough workers, you don’t have enough taxpayers.

All of the economic models that we have right now just don’t make sense. So getting out of that before the break and starting on something new, that made a lot of sense to me, puts the Brits never got started on anything new. They’ve just kind of been in this netherworld in the seven years since, and we now have a newish government in London that is giving fresh insipidus to the term disorganized destruction.

They can’t seem to form a policy on anything. They’re completely rudderless. Well, as the world did, China fires, we’re going to need some partners to build an industrial plant that can replace what the Chinese are going to take away with them as they fall. The United Kingdom is a first world country with a highly technocratic system and phenomenal engineers.

I would love to see NAFTA expand to take in the United Kingdom. And since the Brits can’t make any decisions right now, having somebody of Trump’s, how should I say, this delicate nature impose a solution on them would be brilliant. And instead, the administration has basically just ignored the United Kingdom altogether. Third is Southeast Asia. This is home to about a billion people.

We already count Vietnam as one of our top ten trading partners, a position it’s just gained in the last few years. And it is the part of the world that is most likely to pick up pieces of the industrial plant that the Chinese can no longer operate. Also, most of the countries in Southeast Asia already have lower operating costs.

It’s a geographic feature. Most of Southeast Asia is jungle and islands and, peninsula and mountain. So it’s really hard for them to integrate in the traditional sense. And people flock to the cities because they don’t want to work in tropical agriculture. What that means is most of the, states interact by water for their trade. They have limited physical connection.

So they don’t have any of the bad blood, like what has existed historically in Europe or Northeast Asia. It’s very easy for them to make economic deals with one another. And they have also because people are crowded in the cities, there are workforce is cheaper on average than the skill points that there are compared to the global average.

So they’re very, very competitive in any number of things. And as China falls, this is the region that’s going to do the best. And so a tighter relationship between North America and Southeast Asia is really the smartest play that we could take in terms of our trade and our future security and economic relations. And Trump on China has done almost nothing so far.

And on Southeast Asia it’s been crickets. But with the Americans basically ignoring East Asia, the Chinese are doing everything they can to double down and triple down in Southeast Asia to hedge out the United States. So the opportunity is still there. We should seize it with both hands. And then fourth, and finally is something much closer to home.

And that’s Cuba. We’re in this weird little situation right now where Mexico has become so high value added that it needs a low cost manufacturing partner. And I would argue that the workforce in Cuba is roughly half the skills of the Mexicans for about one tenth of the cost. So if Cuba were to be opened up and were to join the North American trading family in some way, it would be a huge addition.

Now, obviously there are some political problems between here and there. The United States and Cuba have not gotten along ever since Castro’s rise in the early 60s. But I would argue that while I think Trump’s bare knuckle approach negotiations with the allies is perhaps not the best way to go, unleashing that kind of fire and fury on Cuba, I think would be highly entertaining.

And it could actually lead to some political shifts in Havana that we would like a great deal. It’s not just about the economic side of things there. Getting Cuba back into the American family of nations is something that would hugely boost our security and basically make it impossible for anyone from the Eastern hemisphere to punch into the Western Hemisphere, or at least are part of it.

So those are kind of my big four. I quit picking fights with the allies, especially the ones, you know, you’re going to need for economic issues and start picking fights with the countries that, are actually trying to hobble you, maybe. And in the meantime, solidify relations with the countries that are on the fringes who could really be part of a very bright future.

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

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

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

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

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

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No Shale for Europe

The US oil industry has seen a massive boost thanks to the shale revolution, but can the Europeans replicate the success the US has seen?

Unfortunately for Europe, there are a lot of things working against them. Problem one is that Europe just doesn’t have the right geology to make this work. They are also missing the decentralized network of small companies that helped build out the shale network in the US, they lack innovation, and they don’t have a rapid regulatory approval system. Aaand there is no financial incentives for landowners due to the legal barriers in place.

In the short term, this doesn’t look very plausible for the Europeans. They would need to buildout all the infrastructure, under perfect conditions, and even then it would take a decade to MAYBE get one million barrels per day. So, oil imports from the Middle East and US will continue.

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our chosen charity partner is MedShare. They provide emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it, so we can be sure that every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence.

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

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from a brisk Colorado. Today we’re going to take a entry from the Ask Peter forum. Specifically, what would it take for Europe to experience an American style shale revolution? The continent is a massive importer of oil and natural gas, and they don’t exactly have a lot of territory that is good for sun or wind either.

So their choices really are nuclear, which let’s just call that problematic in some places, or imported. And if you’re importing, then you’re at the mercy of whoever you’re buying the stuff from, as they discovered with the Ukraine war, when that is Russia, that’s a problem. And as I discovered in the 70s and 80s, when that’s the Middle East, that’s a problem.

And then, of course, most European countries don’t have a production base navy, so they can’t even patrol their own supply lines should someone in between decide to cut them off. So, you know, reasonable question. Well, there’s a couple things that they really can’t do much about. And then there’s a couple things that they can, but I doubt they will.

So let’s start with what they can’t fix. Geology. Yes yes, yes, 90% of known oil and natural gas is in unconventional rock formations like shale. But that doesn’t mean that all shale deposits are created equally. So if you consider the United States, we’ve got the Permian, which in some places has 20 different stacked layers, each with their own petroleum layer, little jumbled together, but for the most part, pretty easy to get to.

So you can drill down through one, do laterals go down to the next one, do laterals go down the next one? Do laterals and the whole thinking funnel up through a single point of extraction. It’s by far the best in the world of that geology, and it’s, as far as we know, the only one in the world, there are tiers.

The Marcellus, in the Pennsylvania area is still pretty good, but it’s mostly gas, whereas the Permian is mostly oil. You’ve got the Bakken in North Dakota. That’s somewhere between, and the Europeans just don’t have the type of deep sedimentary geology that the United States or that North America specifically has. So it’s not that there isn’t oil and gas to be had.

It’s just it’s probably not going to have the same bang for the buck, even if all else was equal. And of course, all else is not equal. The way the United States started its shale revolution was with hundreds, if not thousands of mom and pop companies. And so we developed the expertise as we went. But it started from kind of a baseline understanding, especially national lands in the United States.

Small mom, the pops are the wildcatters that basically drill or have rights to small chunks of acreage and drill whatever’s best in that acreage. And they’re constantly trying new things. And in doing so, eventually they crack the code on shale. In the last few years, that has evolved quite a bit. And now the super majors have taken everybody’s best practices and are now doing some really aggressive iterations using things like artificial intelligence.

And overall, since 2012, we’ve probably seen worker productivity in the area increased by 350 to 400%, which is by far the record for any subsector in any industry anywhere in the world. And that’s before you consider that, we’ve gotten much more efficient with the equipment. So we’re actually getting about two and a half times as much crude as we did ten years ago.

But with one third the number of drilling operators, if you’re going to do this in Europe, you basically have to create it from scratch. With the notable exception of the United Kingdom, there is no constellation, no environment of small and medium sized players. Get your big national players that are de facto monopolies, and that’s about it. And with the possible exception of France’s too Tall and to a lesser degree, BP and EA and I, you know, none of these guys or what I would consider at the technological edge.

So simply getting into shale in the first place would be a big leap. But at least that’s something you can do something about. The other issues are far more problematic, but luckily there is a little bit of hope here. The first one is proximity. One of the reasons why the U.S show revolution has been so successful is when the technologies were first pioneered, they were pioneered on the edges of projects that had already been in production places like the Marcellus in Pennsylvania or the Permian in Texas.

And so there was already significant takeaway capacity was just waiting to be used. All the legacy pipes from previous oil booms, we weren’t exactly dormant, but they were certainly had a lot of spare, space in the pipelines. And shale was able to flow right in there. And most of the expansion we’ve seen in the last eight years has been about expanding that takeaway capacity, because it’s all the old stuff been maxed out in Europe.

Their mature fields have been abandoned for decades. And so on the off chance that there is any infrastructure left, it’s probably going to have to be completely rehabilitated. In addition, a lot of the best geology we are aware of in Europe is directly under where people live. So, for example, we know there’s a good shale geology under the some of the lowest sections, lowest in elevation in the Netherlands.

But you know, if you get any land subsidence, you all of a sudden have lost part of your country. So the chances of drilling there are not very high. And the richest shale deposit we’re aware of is under Paris, specifically under the roof. So the idea that the jewel in the crown of French historical preservation is suddenly going to be an operating oil extraction site.

I don’t think so. This isn’t the United States where there’s still oil production on Wilshire Boulevard. They have a very different attitude towards things in Europe.

The final issue, which is arguably the single largest, obstacle is legal rights in the United States, unless something has been negotiated otherwise, under the land you live on or own our mineral rights that you also control.

So if somebody decides they want to come into your neighborhood and drill and they get your permission, you get a cut. Whereas there is no country in Europe where that is the case. So if somebody were to come in, they’d get permission of the National government, and then the national government would get not just the oil and gas, but all the money that would come from it.

And you get nothing. So you’ve set up a situation where you can guarantee very strong opposition from regional governments, local governments, landowners, renters, everybody, because they don’t see any of the immediate benefit, unlike how we have it here. Now, technically, that is a legal change that is up to the individual countries to shift, but doing so would be would be a bit of a heavy lift.

So even if in a perfect scenario, the Europeans could just wave a wand and change the legal structure without public opposition and all local landowners and adjacent interests were immediately on board. And if they started building out the infrastructure for takeaway capacity today, and if they retooled their entire educational system to generate the scads of workers, that they would need to do this at scale the soonest, that you would probably see a million barrels a day fresh output, from Europe as a whole, would probably be 8 to 10 years from now.

And to be perfectly blunt, I don’t have that kind of time. The only way that the Europeans are kind of holding things together right now is with imported oil from the Middle East, an imported natural gas from the United States, and liquefied form that is more stable than their previous import menu, which was Russia heavy. But to think that that has ten years to run, in an environment where so much geopolitically is so unstable and changing so quickly, they’re gonna have to figure out another way.

One more thing. Regulation. This is something that Europeans obviously can do something about. And I’m not talking about here about a relatively anti-business, pro-environment regulation. Obviously, if you’re going to have a robust energy sector. You have to make some compromises there. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about turnaround time. So the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the shale space in Texas, is famous for fast turnaround times.

They accept applications for drilling permits 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. And in Texas, people drill and Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter and all the rest. And most of the operations at most of the wells are operating at least 16 hours a day. They just rotate crews. The two examples I can give you of countries in Europe that have attempted, to try shale are the United Kingdom, Poland, the United Kingdom basically drowned everybody in paperwork.

Very British. And as a result, getting things approved wasn’t measured in days or weeks, but months. Because there was always one more form. It was like working for the U.S. Defense Department. And when they discovered that the geology in the United Kingdom, is, the oil bearing stuff is less dense, it’s in smaller deposits and it’s more spread out, and it’s a lot deeper.

Everyone pretty much walked away. The other country that tried Poland, had a little bit better geology, but you still had a problem with just permitting. You could file for your permit between 9 and 5 Monday through Thursday. And, God forbid, it was a holiday because, you know, the Europeans have a bunch of those. And this is an a country that actually has a strong national security interest in independent energy production.

But foreign companies just couldn’t get it to work. And Exxon, you know, that dainty, demure company that never gets its way ultimately just threw up its hands and walked home? So unless you have that change in government culture, it’s really difficult to imagine this moving

While U.S. shale operations now are getting more and more oil out of each individual, well, now measured in the tens of thousands of barrels a day, often, if you’re going to start new, with a new sector, with little expertise and especially without, say, the Permian geology, you’re probably only going to be getting a few hundred barrels per day. So the barriers between you and your operation that the government puts up needs to be very low for it to be worth that effort. And right now, the incentives in the United States versus Europe are just completely flipped. Okay. Now I’m done.

Europe Takes One Step Closer to Nukes…

Soviet OTR-21 Tochka missile photo by Wikimedia Commons

There’s some growing concern in Europe that a Trump victory in the US election could lead to a decrease in support for Ukraine. Without the US backing them, many European countries might reach for nukes to deter any potential conflicts.

There are a handful of countries with nuclear weapons already, but others might be jumping on the nuke train; these countries include places like Ukraine, Sweden, Romania, Germany (yikes), and Poland might even dip their toe in as well.

Conventional forces take time to build. Exhibit A: the Russians turning to North Korea for shells and ammunition due to production struggles. Nuclear weapons can be thrown together fairly quickly and for relatively cheap. Although, this could get dicey if the Russians want to call anyone’s bluff on this.

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Cover photo of Soviet OTR-21 Tochka missile by Wikimedia Commons

Yes, We Have to Follow Elections in Europe Too

*This video was recorded last week, prior to Peter departing on his backpacking trip (and prior to Biden leaving the race).

Today, we’ll be looking at the recent European Commission presidential election and its broader implications for the Europeans.

Former German Defense Minister, Ursula von der Leyen, will remain as president for the next term. She has been in office through the Ukraine War and has kept a tight grip on many policies coming out of the Commission.

The President serves as a crisis mediator among European countries and handles issues requiring unanimity and majority voting. Ursula von der Leyen has prioritized the Green New Deal, cyber defense, and a common EU air defense system (which is top of mind for everyone).

There’s lots of moving parts throughout Europe right now, so von der Leyen will have her hands full. Specifically, we should expect to see significant changes to the EU-NATO relationship and European security dynamics.

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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.

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Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. Today, we’re doing a video that’s a reminder that it’s not just elections in the United States that matter this year. We just had elections for the European Commission president. And I know, I know, I know, you’re like, really, the election of the chief bureaucrat in Europe? That’s what we’re going to talk about today.

But, hey, it matters. So, Ursula von der Leyen, a former defense minister of Germany, was elected to be the president of the Commission a few years ago. She’s now been reelected with a fairly strong majority. I would argue she’s done a decent job overall, considering that she’s been presiding over the European Union during the entirety of the Ukraine war and has emerged as a bit of a hawk on most policies.

The leader of the European Commission is basically responsible for two things. Number one is managing the bureaucracy that is in the European Union, which is very small by European standards, but technically it has legal authority over most of what happens in Europe. Second, to basically serve as a crisis mediator among the various European countries. There are a lot of issues in Europe that require unanimity.

And when you’ve got countries as small as Malta and as large as Germany all having functionally one vote, it requires a lot of proactive work on the part of the executive. Other issues in Europe are decided by something called qualified majority voting, in which it’s kind of a hybrid voting structure where states, based on their population size and their economic strength, have more of a say than others.

It still favors the small states a little bit like America’s electoral college, but it’s a lot more nuanced. And, of course, it’s done European style, so it’s more complicated than it needs to be, and someone has to ride herd over all of that. And that is von der Leyen’s job, and now will be for another few years. The reason I wanted to shortlist this topic specifically, though, is in her final pitch before the vote happened, she indicated what her priorities were going to be.

And, you know, a lot of it is the normal stuff: Green New Deal, cyber defense, all that good stuff. But one that really stuck out, both to me and to the members of Parliament, was her assertion that the EU now needed to create a common air defense space. Now, there are two institutions that have dominated Europe for the last 75 years.

The first is the European Union itself in its various forms, starting with the coal and steel community, turning into the European Community, and now the European Union. Its job has pretty much always been economic integration: the creation of a common trading bloc, the creation of a common market, eventually getting into banking and financial regulation, all that good stuff.

And in that, the European Union, in my opinion, has actually done a lot better than I thought it was going to do 25 years ago. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems. Oh, my God, there are so many problems. There’s so much drama. But it’s still there, and it’s still kicking, and they’ve been making more than incremental progress.

Especially since the financial crisis of the mid-2000s. So, you know, give credit where it’s due. The second big institution is NATO, which has always been American dominated. Or if you want to be really kind, American-British dominated, and it’s responsible for defense issues primarily, but not exclusively, versus the Soviet Union and now the Russians. Now, NATO was kind of on its back foot in the 2000s and 2010s, when most Europeans didn’t see any security problems anywhere. Even with the Russian invasion of Ukraine dating back to 2014, a lot of Europeans, the Germans most notably, just tried to pretend that didn’t happen.

And so NATO was fading because the Americans were getting frustrated. The Europeans weren’t taking European security seriously. And the Europeans didn’t think security was an issue at all. In fact, we got to a point just before the Ukraine war where the Germans were actually openly, publicly talking about dismantling their military completely, which would have been, you know, monumentally stupid, but anyway.

Von der Leyen’s discussion of an air defense space is really interesting. It’s not that it’s not necessary. It’s not that it’s not needed. The Europeans are looking at the Ukraine war and are getting a little pale. They realize that their system is much more integrated. It’s much more dependent upon energy and electricity than anything going on in Ukraine.

I mean, Ukraine, I don’t want to call it a failed state or anything like that, but on the technological scale, the industrial development scale, it is significantly below anyone in Europe. And so the Europeans know that if the sort of attacks that the Russians are doing daily against Ukrainian infrastructure would have happened somewhere else in Europe, the impact would be an order of magnitude bigger.

There’s just so many more important things in Europe that run on electricity than what you have in Ukraine. That the damage would be immense. And an air defense system, a missile defense system, is really the only way to make that happen. And if you have a Polish, a Slovak, a Latvian, and a Romanian system, that’s great.

But what you really need is integration, especially with things like radars. And since missiles, you know, from the point that they’re launched to the point that they hit, if it’s a few hundred kilometers away, you’re talking about, you know, single digits of minutes. Reaction time is really important. And that has to be all set up ahead of time.

What really stuck out in my mind, though, is that she wants this to be an EU prerogative.

And until now, we’ve only had a few little… well, let’s just call them temper tantrums. That’s what they were when a few countries decided they didn’t like what the United States was doing with its military, so they wanted to form a European answer to NATO.

The problem is that the resources were never there. And anything that you dedicate to a NATO project is automatically not available to be dedicated to an EU project. Well, with the Russians basically launching a genocidal war next door that is a combination of forward scorched earth and kidnapping and sexual assault, the Europeans have found themselves motivated to massively expand their defense spending.

So not only is this likely to help NATO quite a bit, but there actually could be the resources necessary for the European Union to do something in defense on its own. Whether it’s enough is an open question, which means that this is going to go one of two directions. Either number one, the Europeans are going to massively expand the defense spending.

And the worse Ukraine does in the war, the greater the push for that is going to be in order to build a kind of parallel capacity. Or number two, the European Union is going to sign a series of agreements with NATO that basically merge the two from a certain point of view. Now, most of the countries that are in the European Union are also in NATO and vice versa.

And the holdouts are countries like the United Kingdom, which isn’t going to leave NATO, but has a pretty strong position on European defense. The sticklers are going to be the four countries that are members of the EU, but are not members of the military alliance. One of these, Malta, doesn’t have a security concern aside from illegal migration from Africa.

So we can put that one to the side. Another one is Ireland, which kind of has a Canadian approach to defense or like, by the time anything gets to us, the world’s already ended. So we’re just going to free ride on this. The Irish hate me. I’m sure I’ll get that here in no time. But the other two matter a little bit more.

One is Austria, which has been a neutral country because everyone wants it to be neutral. The last time the Austrians started to get into security policy, we got Hitler. So, you know, it’s like the more they simmer down, the better. They’ve got a good relationship with NATO that will probably mean that they can just abstain on everything and let it sail through.

And then the last country that matters is Cyprus, which, you know, has very little to do with the Ukraine war. But if you’re going to have a European defense network, the idea is it’s going to protect against countries that are not in the European Union.

And while everyone’s eyes right now are on Russia, and that’s the whole thing that von der Leyen’s trying to get people agitated about, Cyprus’s primary security concern is Turkey. And so you have this one country that has under a million people who has deep, abiding cultural and military conflicts with a major trading partner of the EU, Turkey, but probably is going to have veto power over all of this.

So even if von der Leyen is able to get the Europeans to come up with the money, even if they can figure out a format in Europe that allows NATO and the European Union to do this side by side, we have one hell of a fly in the ointment here as regards the Cypriots. How will that be sorted out?

God knows. Keep in mind that the last time Cyprus really made the news from a global point of view, it was in the financial crisis of the late 2000s. And in that time, we had huge bailouts for Italy, for Spain, for Hungary, for Greece. There was one for Cyprus too. It was the smallest of all of them.

But because Cyprus is a money laundering center, it became very quickly the most controversial, the most complicated of all of them. And we’re going to see something like that in defense as well. So stay tuned.

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

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