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Generational Divides of Other Countries

An elder woman plays basketball with a child

I’ve talked extensively about the generational divides in the US, but what about other countries? Let’s look at the unique demographic trends in Russia, China, and Iran.

We all know the US generations – Boomers to Zoomers – but that model can’t be applied everywhere. Russia is more so divided by major political events, like the Brezhnev era or the Putin era. In China, the primary divide is pre and post One-Child Policy, where instability and famine ruled before and economic boom occurred after (the younger gen now faces economic downturn, high costs, and Xi). In Iran, the main split is the 1979 Islamic Revolution, where those before and after have very different perceptions of the country, leaders, religion, and more.

The main takeaway is that each country has unique political and economic events that have shaped generational divides. While the US model helps breakdown domestic trends, we can’t use that framework for everyone.

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 to you from the southern headlands of the Wanganui Inlet on the northwest coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Today we are taking a question from the Patreon page on, demographic specifically, that I talk about Gen-X and the boomers, the millennials and all that of the United States quite a bit. What about the generational blocks for other countries, specifically Iran, China and Russia?

There’s a little bit of a danger here because all demographic lines are a bit artificial. So the ones I use for the United States, specifically people who were born between 1946 and 1964, in the United States. Those are my boomers. These are people who were, born in the post-World War Two boom years in very large numbers.

And as they went through their childhood and adult lives, they’ve basically remade American culture in their image after them. 1965 to 1979, roughly. You have, Gen X. That’s my generation. Birthrates dropped off precipitously. One of the reasons the boomers were so many is you still had some old gender norms. By the time you get to Gen X, their parents had become a little bit more, I mean, the female revolution happened in there.

Dropped the birthrate a little bit. The suburbs had already been largely populated, dropped the birthrate a little bit, raised cost of living. Drop the birthrate a little bit, a little bit. Energy prices, all that good stuff. So Gen X until recently, was the smallest generation in American history. After that, you got the millennials born roughly 1980 until 1999.

These are the kids who had never seen or remember seen a, circular phone and basically were the generation that made the transition to a digital world. And then the Zoomers, kids who were born since 2000 are the ones who were, doing penpal emails rather than written correspondence and have never looked back. All right. Like I said, it’s a little artificial.

Whenever you’re looking to another country, you need to look at the gross economic trends, and physical conflicts that have shaped their worlds, because oftentimes you’re not going to draw the lines in the same place. So, for example, if you’re going to look at Europe, there is a boomer generation in about the same window for about the same, reasons, but because the cost of living was so much higher and because Europe is so much more urbanized.

They didn’t have a lot of kids. So American boomers had the millennials, the European boomers did not. And so the demographics just kind of fall apart after the 1960s. So you got to be careful about how many trendlines. You try to extend. So, for example, in the case of the Russians, the really definitive break is pre and post Brezhnev for when your adult life was because if you were born and had a memory of Brezhnev years, you remember how bad central planning can be and you were probably a little bit more open things like perestroika and glasnost.

But then when you get into the post-Soviet system, you got an equally bad thing to compare to. So Brezhnev, stagnation, economic doldrums, post-Cold War collapse, democracy for you probably equals chaos. And so you’ve always known that there’s or always felt in your gut that there’s a choice between stagnancy but stability and opportunity, but free fall. And it’s not a pretty choice.

But if you were born just a little bit later, then you have no political memory of life under the Soviet Union. You may remember the free fall of the 1990s, but then for the next 25 years, Vladimir Putin, despite his many, many, many flaws, has been leader. And Russia has been relatively stable from an economic point of view for that entire time, and especially if your first adult memories are post 2000.

You don’t know a life without Vladimir Putin. And yet that’s everybody under age 40 in Russia today. So it’s not really a boomer or millennial zoomer kind of thing. It’s a Brezhnev issue. It’s a Putin issue. It’s a fall of the Soviet Union issue about where you draw the lines. Now, something to keep in mind is the freshness generation was the last one to really have kids in numbers.

We had a little blip during perestroika when people thought that the Soviet Union could be reformed, but it didn’t last. And since then, the birthrate has just been awful. So the generation that has been growing up since 2000, in Russia, you know, the the millennials and the the Zoomers of Russia, if you will, are really the last generation that is going to exist and significant enough number to make anything happen in Russia.

And so what they do from their small numbers will shape a large part of a continent for the rest of the century as they die out. All right. What else? China. Hu. Okay. China. It’s a little bit simpler. It’s pretty. And post one child policy. If you’re born before the one child policy kicked in, you know, famine, you know, a lack of electricity, you know, outdoor plumbing, and you know that the world can be a very nasty place.

You also know political leadership that is murderous and mercurial. And you yearn for something better if you were post one child, not only was there a floor put under the chaos, but the internationalization of the Chinese system after Mao, generated a degree of economic opportunity that had never existed. Now, part of this is indeed policy, because it was after Mao that you got things like roads and electricity and meaningful amounts of steel and high rises and health care and all the other things that go with modern life.

But having only one child means for grandparents support, two parent support, one grandchildren and those grandchildren. The people who were born in the later decades, you know, 1990 and after, they have no nothing but an economic boom because all of the wealth of the country has been focused on industrial expansion, and there has not been a large generation from below that needs to be clothed, fed and educated.

So all of the social spending that was done in China was spent on very few people, relatively speaking, and you were one of them. So for young Chinese, it’s been glorious until the system started to break about seven years ago. And now we’ve got all the worst aspects of capitalism, things like, conspiracy theories throughout the public space, massive amounts of shell games, real estate booms and that have not yet gone bust.

Putting the money into the wrong things over investment, but no longer investment that generates growth when you do investment on the front end, when you don’t have roads or power lines, you get roads and power lines, and that’s great. But if you start with roads and power lines and you do a lot of state investment, you’re just building more roads and power lines and you only need so many of those.

So the lesson that the Japanese learned in the 1990s and 2000, the Chinese have now learned it as well. And so the Chinese need to adapt to a new economic model, but they’re still dealing with the distortions of the old capitalized, over invested system. So if you’re a 20 something Chinese citizen today, you’re of a small generation.

You hear the stories from your parents about how good things got, how fast it got, how stable it was. But everything has too much money chasing too few goods within the country, and everything is too expensive. So your chances of ever starting a family are nil. Your chances of ever being able to afford an apartment, much less a house, are almost nonexistent.

And it’s a very different political view. And if you were to put a label on it, these would be the zoomers of the Chinese system. And they are the last generation that will grow up in a centralized China, and they will definitely have some visceral memories 20, 30 years from now about how the Chinese system crashed around them.

And no one could seem to do anything because the political system is too ossified to function. Those people are going to be making some very interesting political and personal decisions as the system fails. Because if there’s anything we know about Chinese history in the past, when the center breaks, people leave if they can and a country that has at least 800 million people, that’s like the low end for estimates and maybe as many as 1.2 billion, if only 5% of them get out.

You’re still talking about the greatest migrant surges in human history. All right. That just leaves Iran. And Iran’s is even simpler. Yet it all depends upon how old you were when the Shah fell. And the mullahs took over and close to the water here. We’re going to turn around. There we go. Okay. This is just a really cool pocket beach.

I found. You practically have to repel down to it. Okay. Iran. So if you were are old enough to remember Iran as an adult before 1979. So you’re in your 60s for this category. The boomers, if you will. You remember just how corrupt the Shah was, but how there was opportunity for anyone with an education up to and including women.

And then the Shah fell and the mullahs took over. Women were disenfranchized and the intelligentsia and the engineers and everybody with a set of skills who could left the country. The people who left the country tended to have the money, and they emptied out the inner cities. Sorry. Inner cities in Iran, not the same as inner cities.

And like Chicago, you’re they emptied out the wealthier parts of Iran’s cities, took their money, took their kids, took their skill set and left. And you had a 15 year period where Iran was basically drowning and an inability to function because it didn’t have the skill set anymore. It had lost most of its educated youth, and most of the efforts the Iranian government, past and present, had made to educate another generation left the country and instead they had eight years of a grinding war with Iraq.

And after that, a series of on again, off again confrontations with the United States. Now, if you fast forward a little bit to a break point of around whole 2008, 2010, you had a shift in government with, the rise of a guy by the name of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or a dog, as we used to call him at my old job, and a man at a job, was the first leader of Iran who was not a cleric since the fall of the Shah.

And he was deeply conservative, and he was deeply anti-American and anti-Western. But he wasn’t a man of the cloth. And he thought there should be room in public life for people who didn’t go to seminary, to be perfectly blunt. And so there’s now a split in Iranian society between the mullahs. On one hand, these conservatives who are, secular on the other hand, and then a wider disenfranchized group who has to basically take whatever’s on offer.

And that has made the country significantly more politically unstable. And in light of ongoing hostility with not just the United States, but the Western world in general, significantly less well off, because one of the mistakes that Ahmadinejad made is in order to get people over onto his side versus the clerics, he just bribed everybody. And so the state budget exploded, debt exploded, the currency crashed.

And then when a new round of sanctions came in and they could no longer underwrite everything, it all went to hell. Now we even have the strategic steps that the Iranians have taken to spawn paramilitary groups around the world falling apart. And so all of the money that Iran has spent on political consolidation, political evolution, education and increasingly strategic cost have all gone to nothing.

And so if you were 20, 15 years ago, for the last 15 years, your entire adult life, you have simply seen one state failure after another out of Tehran and you start to get a little pissed off. I’m not going to say anything simplistic like Iran is poised for a revolution or is ripe for change. What I’m saying is that the old pillars of stability that allow it to function don’t exist in the young adult generation, and that is a very nasty combination of factors.

Because remember when the old people who lived under the Shah left, they took the kids with them. We had a 20 year baby bust in Iran. So this younger generation is Disenfranchized is angry and is poor, relatively speaking, to Iran’s long history that that can turn violent very, very quickly, even if it doesn’t generate political change. So bottom line, there’s a generational story everywhere, but in before you can tell it, you have to really look at the local history and the economic trends that have shaped the people have grown in that areas.

It’s not going to be a cut and dried. It’s going to be different everywhere. But there is definitely lessons to learn. Okay. That’s it.

Russia After Russia

Building on yesterday’s video, we’ll be talking about the future of Russia following its collapse. So, what can we expect the Russia after Russia to look like?

Russia’s stockpile of weapons and tech is being drained in Ukraine and the leftovers won’t be of interest to other countries, so military tech in Russia is on its last leg. Most of the skilled labor would leave and it wouldn’t be surprising if security/intelligence personnel turned to crime. Disruptions to resource extraction and agriculture would likely cause an economic meltdown. Minority groups would make a push for independence. And of course, you should expect to see plenty of countries attempt to reclaim old land or try to command influence.

Regardless of how the Ukraine War plays out, Russia is on borrowed time. As the clock counts down, we will certainly see a reshaping of European geopolitics.

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 Bell Block. Today we’re taking an entry from the Ask Peter forum on the Patreon page. And specifically, what would I anticipate? The former Soviet space must be the Russian space to look like in the aftermath of a Russian collapse. Before I get into the details of that, let me emphasize that I don’t see this happening this year or next year or anytime this decade.

The Russian demographics are horrid, and the war in Ukraine is not going well. And I do certainly expect to see a Russian collapse in my lifetime. But that doesn’t mean it’s just around the corner. We have to see a political break in Russia where the Putin regime fails. And since Putin has basically gutted the system of anyone who is theoretically capable of replacing him, we will then have a leadership struggle and probably a civil conflict that ends in national collapse.

That’s not imminent. Barring a massive, military defeat in Ukraine in the near term. Anyway, with that said, here’s how it goes.

We are taking an entry from the Ask Peter forum on the Patreon page today. And it says With Russia and demographic collapse, what does the post Russian space look like? Are the countries moving in or are there things we need to worry about? And the short answer is yes, those things.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. When an empire dies, when a country dies, there are certain parts of it that live on in another form. That was certainly true of the Soviet Union. And that will be true of post-Soviet Russia as well. So, first of all, the technology, Russia has been a military power for quite some time.

During the Cold War, they were clearly the second most powerful military in the world. But as you’ve noticed in the Ukraine war, the shine has come off. And Russia’s ability to produce at scale, its own technology has been proven to be woefully lacking. They’re more advanced tanks that can only make one at a time. They’re more advanced jets.

They’ve only made a dozen in total in the last 15 years. So the capacity of that to be transferred to another power is very limited. We’ve discovered over the course of the past few years that the Chinese aren’t sophisticated enough to copy the more advanced stuff and all the countries that have the technical skills to do it.

Places like Poland or Ukraine or the Czech Republic or Hungary, would rather work with Western technology, which is more effective, advanced, has higher range and lethality rates and all that good stuff. So If it isn’t been built already, it’s not something that I really worry about because all of the industrial plant that the Russians have simply is wildly inefficient.

They can’t staff at themselves. And everyone who could staff it would rather work with something that’s better. So for most of the military hardware, this is just going to fade away pretty quickly. Also keep in mind that the Russians are burning through everything that they can make in the Ukraine war. So it’s not like there’s going to be a big stock of modern war, material that anyone else could pick up and run with.

Which brings us to the second point. The skilled labor. Even with a million men fleeing the country in, the aftermath at the beginning of the war and even with the Russians having lost somewhere between 300,000 and 800,000 men since then, you know, data varies wildly based on your propaganda story. There are still a lot of Russians that have technical skills.

Now, this is something we know exactly what to look for, because it’s already happened after the Soviet collapse. Somewhere around 10 million, Russians, most of them with more advanced degrees, left the country and never returned. And we’re probably going to see something like that again. But it won’t be nearly as dramatic as last time, because there are no longer 10 million people with advanced degrees left in the country.

The Russian educational system collapsed. Technical educational system collapsed, actually, before the Soviet Union collapsed. And there was never rebuilt. Post-Soviet. So we’re only talking about a low single digit million number of people who could even theoretically leave in the first place that have a skill sets are relevant. And since those skill sets, for the most part atrophied under the post Russian system, under Putin, they won’t have nearly the impulse for growth or activity, that the original one did 35 years ago.

So noticeable, but not huge. And that includes people from the intelligence services who might go into business for themselves. Now, if you guys remember back to the early 1990s, there were a lot of movies where the bad guys were former Russian intelligence agents, former Central European intelligence agents and former South African intelligence agents.

And that really did reflect reality, because you had these giant institutions that were built on domestic control with the personnel to go with them, that all absconded and went into crime for themselves. Around the world. Now that will definitely happen again. But just like with the more technically minded folks, the pool is a lot smaller. It’s going to be more akin to what’s happening with the Syrian dissolution.

It’s the people who maintain security in Russia today are not the FBI technocrats that existed 40 years ago. They’re more like the thugs of Syria. People who, in order to pursue their own power, have decided to take their skill set and go elsewhere. But they’re not good at signals intelligence. They don’t have the connections around the world. But the old Soviet operators or South African operators had.

So basically, you’re just going to get a bunch of sociopaths who are going to head out and try business for themselves. And to be perfectly blunt, if you were good at that, you would have done it in the 90s. And Putin’s system is not like the Soviet system, which was based more or less on meritocracy. It’s more based on a Trumpian sense of loyalty to a person, and that is not a particularly marketable skill once the ship goes down.

So that takes care of the stuff that can leave. What about the stuff that stays? Russia is arguably the most resource rich country in human history. It is an absolutely massive place. And even in the best of times, huge swaths of the territory are empty. And that is so much more true now than it was during the Soviet times.

During the Soviet times, you had your primary cities of Moscow and Petersburg, and then you had a wave of secondary cities, and then you had the countryside. What we have seen in the post-Soviet collapse is the countryside. People have left to go to the secondary cities. The secondary cities have become hollowed out to go to Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

And so instead of maybe having 15% of the country that has a reasonable population density, it’s really closer to 5%. Now, with two cities being larger than they’ve ever been in history. Well, everything else has shrunk into obscurity. You take that population pattern and you remove the structures that allow civilization to function. And we’re probably going to have large parts of the Russian space that currently grow crops.

Stop. What we have seen in Russian agriculture in the last 40 years is you can split the farms basically 4 to 1. Four is the old Soviet style. So roughly 80% very input intensive, wildly inefficient, using mostly local inputs. And the remaining 20% are more what they call enterprise farms, where they bring in Western equipment and technology and inputs.

And those Western oriented farms, are much more productive and generate a lot more income. And probably in terms of calories, generate actually more than the other 80% put together. The problem is, and they’re in the best land, the problem is that 20% is completely dependent upon those international allies supply chain systems, and very few of them are on the borders of the country.

So if Russia breaks down to the point that the 20% the enterprise farms cannot access the inputs they need, they’ll stop functioning or will go back to functioning like the other 80%. So we’re going to see a pretty significant drop in the ability of the Russian area to generate food product as the Russian system loses coherence. I don’t think that will lead to widespread famine or anything, but they’ll certainly be distribution issues, which has always been a Russian problem.

And it suggests that the ability of Russia to maintain a population that’s even less than it has now, might be somewhat constrained when that happens, the mineral output of Russia falls into very dire straits, because most of this stuff is nowhere near where the people live. The nickel, the Palladium, the platinum, the other platinum metals. They’re all up in the high Arctic, say the Cola peninsula or around Norilsk in north central Siberia.

All the gold is out. In eastern Siberia, the oil is in the permafrost, and the infrastructure that is necessary to access and extract out these materials really does require a lot of industrial age maintenance. And it’s maintenance that the Russians have had a hard time doing themselves. On the production side, the Russians have seen their educational system collapse to the point that you only really have a small number, just a few dozen of Russian nationals who were trained abroad over the last 20 years who are keeping this thing going.

And again, they need a lot of Western technology to keep it flowing. So what usually what happens is the Chinese buys, say, the drilling rigs, and then they sell it on to the Russians, a second hand materials. Anything happens to that, the stuff falls apart. So if there is going to be a play for Russian production, you’re talking about a foreign power having to come combine with capital, with technology, with security, and run basically a neo style colony in order to produce the stuff.

And some of the harshest operating environments in the world. And if that infrastructure is dependent on a link back to Russia proper, then the Russian government that remains whatever that looks like, will have a say in it. And so that probably won’t happen at all. So it’s only the stuff on the extremities that might be able to still function.

So you’re talking about the Russian high Arctic, say Sakhalin Island out in the, Far East theater and maybe some select things in East Siberia. Beyond that, it is really hard to see anyone making a mineral play here, because everything is just so far damn away. And if you were to do that, like, say, let’s say you wanted to go take over something in a gold mine in eastern Siberia, you’re talking and have to building a supply chain through an area that is really only supplied by air.

And the chances for everything to go wrong are robust. There is one other consideration.

That’s an ethnic angle to a breakup.

Russia’s population by Russia’s statistics, which are higher than reality would suggest and indicate that it’s a more cohesive nation state than the reality would suggest. Even then, they claim that 20% of their population is not ethnic Russian, with the single largest minority being Turkic minorities. These minorities are kind of concentrated in three general areas. Siberia. In the West, where you’ve got a lot of,

pockets of Germans and especially Ukrainians, and then down in the south where you’ve got, Tartars and bash queers and Chechens and English and the rest, if we’re going to see a meaningful break in the Russian system, a lot of these groups are likely to try to go their own way.

And the ones to watch the most are the ones that are either close to a border, or they may have a foreign sponsor or the ones that are on key pieces of infrastructure or transport corridors, which means that they could actually make a go of it themselves and actually extract, concessions from the ethnic Russians around them. And the second group, it’s the Tatars in the Basque year that are by far the ones you should watch the most.

They live in an area just to the northwest. Kazakhstan. And they sit on all the connecting infrastructure between Russia and Siberia. So if they were to break away, there goes all of Siberia. And they also have significant energy reserves, some cells that they broadly know how to produce and process themselves. Now, there’s still over a thousand miles away from any potential export market.

So that’s not a a clean fix. But if anyone from a technical point of view can make it a go of it, it’s these places. Because these places never saw their technical folks, flee after the Soviet system. They stayed home, the other groups are the ones that are really close to the external borders. And of course, the caucuses are at the top of that list.

And that’s where the Chechens are. And here the country to watch is Turkey, because all of these, almost all of these minorities are Turkic in nature. And the Turks were very active in sponsoring the first and the second Chechen wars in the caucuses, and the idea that central power in Moscow would crack, and they wouldn’t have an interest in expanding their sphere of influence into the caucuses, is kind of silly.

Also, keep in mind that if the Russian republics on the north side of the Caucasus mountains were to go their own way, then that would basically break Russia’s ability to control not just the Caucasus, but would really hurt Ukraine as well, because it’s all part of the same population. Band. So good for everyone except for Russia proper.

The final little piece to keep in mind is in the extreme northwest, where you have a number of, Turkic minorities. If you remember your recent history back in World War Two, the Finns were one of the first countries. Finland was one of the first countries that Russia attacked. And while it was never formally an ally, if anything, it cooperated more with the Nazis because it was in the same theater.

And at the end of the war, we saw the Soviets basically gobble up territory that at one point housed one quarter of the Finnish population. We like to think of the Finns as neutral. We like to think of the Swedes as, you know, attractive, but kind of in their own world. We forget that the Scandinavians got started as fucking Vikings.

And now that they’re no longer, strategically neutral, now that they’re active in the Western alliance, they’ve rapidly emerged as some of the most aggressive allies that the United States has ever had. And unlike countries in Central America whose militaries were defunct when they joined, these are countries that have a very robust military tradition that is very, very current.

So when and if the Russian state breaks, I can guarantee you that we’re going to see a new iteration of Scandinavian Vikings going back into the Russian space, in many cases just to get their land back. But I would be shocked if that’s all they did keep in mind that the original Vikings that went up the rivers are the ones who probably found in Kiev and certainly Moscow, and in the last great war that we saw in the region that involved Sweden.

The decisive conflict that broke the Swedish empire happened actually in Ukraine. So when the Russians started to invade Ukraine again, it started history moving in Stockholm and Helsinki and the rest in a way that I don’t think the rest of the West really appreciates.

And regardless of how the Ukraine war goes, we’re going to be seeing the next chapter of this little bit of history in the decades to come.

The Russian Depopulation

Photo of Russian dolls moving down in smaller size

Today we’ll be discussing Russian birth and death rates since we’ve got some new Russian demographic data to look at. So, go ahead and grab that truckload of salt.

Russian birth and death rates have fluctuated quite a bit due to major events. The most notable was the demographic “death cross” in the 1990s where deaths outnumbered births; this sent the Russians down a dark path of population decline. Despite some brief recoveries throughout the past few decades, new data out of Russia has confirmed things have worsened.

That recent Russian data is likely overly optimistic, so things are bad. Combine that bleak demographic outlook with no improvements to infrastructure, education, or public health, and you can do the math. Of course, the Ukraine War has accelerated this crisis, as the Russians have sent wave after wave into the meat grinder. That current strategy is unsustainable, but a victory in Ukraine could at least put a little bit of air into the Russians’ lungs. A loss or stagnation would suck even more air out.

Either way, Russia is quickly hacking away at its final opportunity at demographic recovery, which brings long-term viability as a functional state into question.

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 Bell Block, New Zealand. Today we are going to discuss the newest data that’s out from the Russians on their demographics. Russia stopped collecting, demographic data about 17, 18 years ago and have really just been making it up ever since. Now, if you look back through Russian history, there have been a lot of, dark chapters.

And as a rule, when people are depressed, they don’t feel it’s a good idea to have a lot of kids. So these giant rises and dips in the Russian birth rate and death rate, based on what’s going on culturally and economically with the country. Now, the biggest ones, of course, are World War one, World War two. There was a time when Khrushchev tried to shove everyone into small apartments because he thought that was modern, less room for kids. And then, of course, the biggest one is the post-Soviet collapse, when the bottom two, a lot of the Soviet system and we had extended period about 20 years, where basically nothing got better.

You combine this with rampant heroin use and, alcoholism. That is just atrocious by most modern country. Measures, and you get something called a Death cross that happened in the 1990s. And that’s a point when the birth rate and the death rate crossed so that the death rate is higher. And even before you consider incremental mortality issues, you have population shrinkage. Now, a couple of things to keep in mind.

Number one, the Russians back in the mid 80s had this moment of opening and perestroika where we thought maybe, just maybe, we can save the Soviet system. And there absolutely was a little baby boom. And if you fast forward 25, 30 years to just a few years ago, the children of that baby boom, also had kids at a time when Russia was riding high on high energy prices under Vladimir Putin, in the late 2000.

I’m sorry, 20 tens. And so we got another little mini beanie boom. And so that death cross re crossed into a life cross very, very briefly for a very, very low cross. But it was successful and at least for a couple of years bringing the birthrate back up about the death rate. Well with the new data it is clear that that has now reversed.

And remember, this is new data provided by the Russian government is undoubtedly overly optimistic. But even by their own data, they’re now back in the negative territory. All right. So this takes us two places. Number one, none of the underlying issues that have plagued Russia for the last century have gone away. All of them are more intense.

The infrastructure of the Soviet period is still degrading. The Russians have still been unable to rebuild their educational system. Alcoholism is still arise. Drug use is still rife. I’ve run out of speech. Going to go the other way now. And so you shouldn’t expect any improvement because it’s going to be another 25, 30 years before now, the grandchildren of perestroika could be born.

And so you’re dealing more now with the aftereffects of World War one and World War two and oppression and the post-Soviet collapse. And it’s more likely that this period of death is going to be far more intense than what we’ve seen before, because all of the younger people are now older. You know, the boom that they had, say, in the 70s, and they’re just unable to have children now.

The next generation that will be able to have children will be doing it for another 20 years. And second, and far more intensely, is the Ukraine war. As you will notice from this most recent death across it began before the Ukraine war, before Ukraine, or before it began, before the Ukraine war, before Russia became a pariah again, before Russia was under the most extreme sanctions that any major country has ever been on before.

The Russians started seeing massive battlefield casualties. So we are again, in one of those moments in Russian history where people are unsure of their future and they’re not having kids. In addition to the fact that the demographic moment has already passed from the perestroika boom echo, we are already seeing on a daily basis for the last year and a half that more Russian men are dying on the fields of battle in Ukraine than, Russian boys are being born.

And we’ve even had a few days where more men have been dying in the fields of Ukraine than the total number of births – boys and girls.

So We are seeing the Russians waste their last chance to have positive demographic growth ever. And there’s no reason to expect that there’s anything in the Russian system that’s going to improve the, the birthrate or decrease the death rate anytime soon. One of the reasons why Russia has been a major power for so long is numbers.

They have a lot of hope, you know. We’ve had a large country with a lot of ethnic groups and disposing of surplus ethnic groups in the middle of war has long been a Russian strategy for managing their population. They’re doing that now. But you can only do that so long. And that always assumes that you have a robust birthrate, which the Russians don’t anymore.

So the Russians have never been really able to upgrade and update their military strategies in the post-Cold War era to reflect the changes in the demographic picture that just no longer exist and really haven’t existed for decades. So it’s all about lots and lots of artillery. It’s all about what they call meat assaults. It’s human wave tactics, and that works as long as you massively outnumber your foe.

And there are roughly four Russians for every Ukrainian. So it’s not a strategy that is stupid, but is a strategy that if you keep using it when you don’t have a bottomless supply of fighters, that you really eat into what allows your country to exist in the first place. Now, even with this going on, the Russians have more time on their demographic clock than a country like, say, China that has had a rock bottom birth rate now for 40 years.

But when you start burning more people in their 20s than you’re generating babies. You are definitely on a starvation diet. And the question in my mind has always been, when this century, does the Russian ethnicity lose sufficient coherence that it can’t even maintain a state? If they win the Ukraine war, they establish a better external buffer system.

I would say that that would probably be the 2070s or 2080s. But if they become stalled in Ukraine, if they get forced into a piece or a battlefield defeat, that means that they have expended all of the costs of fighting a major war without getting many of the benefits. Then you’re looking at this happening 20, 30, maybe even 40 years earlier.

So, believe it or not, we’re in this weird situation where as long as the Russians are doing this terrific meat assault, it’s really good for the rest of the world. Unless, of course, you happen to be the country that’s on the receiving end. That would be Ukraine. Because it brings forward the day where the Russians just can’t fight any longer at all.

The Two-Sided Coin of Russian Sanctions

*This video was recorded before Peter left on his New Zealand trip*

Western sanctions against Russia aim to restrict revenue flows by barring access to Western shipping, banking and insurance…but there’s one more step that could be taken to put the final sanction nail in the Russian coffin.

Russia has been operating in the shadows, using old, unsafe ships and creating state-owned insurance to bypass these sanctions. If Western forces began targeting the “Shadow Fleet” and cutting off access to the Black Sea and Baltic Sea, Russian exports would fall by two-thirds. Should the West choose to do that, we’d be looking at a slew of new issues that would pop up: the global market for oil, wheat, fertilizer, and more would all be disrupted. And then there’s the issue of how ships are registered, which no one is quite prepared to take on.

So, while there could be some more measures taken to ensure the sanctions against the Russians are being optimized, there would be some significant fallout to deal with.

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 Chihuahua City in Chihuahua, Mexico. Today we’re gonna take another entry from the Ask Computer forum on the Patreon page. And that specifically, if I was to redesign Russian sanctions, would you need to do in order to make them hit harder? And the answer to that is very simple.

You go after the Shadow Fleet. The Western sanctions against Russia are designed, or at least the intent is to limit, the Russian ability to generate income from their sales of natural gas and oil and fertilizer and everything else, but without actually impinging on supply. And that’s the problem. If you really want to hurt the Russians, you have to actually go after the supply itself.

Now the western areas are trying to have their cake and eat it too. By saying that you can’t use Western ships, you can’t use western banks, you can’t use Western insurance. And so what the Russians have done is to build up an alternative supply system and an alternative transport system using ships that were about to be decommissioned or already had been, as well as generating their own state owned insurance.

So the ships tend to be old, they tend to be leaky. And we’re just kind of lucky that there hasn’t been some sort of catastrophic accident thus far.

But if you were to, say, use Western naval assets to say, limit the ability of the Russians to leave the Black Sea or the Baltic Sea, then all of a sudden, roughly two thirds of what the, Russians send out would be shut off within a day.

Now, that has consequences. Obviously, you can’t just remove a few million barrels per day of crude from the market, can’t remove one of the largest supplies of wheat from the market, largest splitter, fertilizer and bauxite and all the other things from the market without massive outcomes. And that is the reason why the Europeans have chosen to not take that step.

Also, it is if you were going to go that route, you’re going to change the way the ship registries work in the world right now, there is absolutely no link between what is the owner of the vessel, what is the cargo of the vessel, what is the origin or the destination of the vessel and how it’s registered?

And so as a result, most ships are registered in places like Panama, Guinea-Bissau or something like that. Because it’s cheaper if you’re going to start going after shipping for whatever reason, you need to start linking where the ships are registered. The countries have actually have naval forces so that they can actually protect those ships.

And at this point in time in the world, there is no country, even the United States, that has the naval firepower and reach that is necessary to protect a substantial percentage of the world’s shipping. The world’s shipping has evolved over the last 80 years from the concept that the seas are free and anyone can use them at any time, for any reason.

If you start to impinge upon that, we go back to a system that predates World War Two, where all of a sudden military force is necessary to keep the your sea lanes open. And since the United States has a super carrier heavy fleet, we don’t have enough to protect the tens of thousands of ships that ply the world’s waters every day, or even the proportion that is going to or from American shores.

So if you pull the trigger on this, we are on a new world overnight, and most countries are not ready for that.

It’s time for an update on the war in Ukraine

Photo of Ukrainian soldier in front of flag

There are two primary trends that continue from this past summer: the Ukrainians are maintaining their offensive in the Russian region of Kursk, while Russian troops are continuing their slow slog toward the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk. Kyiv has also intensified its attacks against Russia’s oil industry—particularly refineries and storage depots, and by extension its broader petrochemical industry. The Biden administration’s resistance to directly targeting Russia’s export capacity seems to have vanished along with his chances at reelection.

Outside of Ukraine, the Americans and Europeans have announced further sanctions on Russian crude exports, targeting Russia’s fleet of shadow tankers. While Chinese and especially Indian refiners have indicated that they will be abiding by sanctions…at least for now.

Closer to the front line, NATO—led by the Northern European states—has intensified naval patrols in the Baltic Sea. Sweden and Finland are new members of the alliance but old hands at stymying Russian interests within their maritime neighborhood, and have already started taking Russian and Chinese ships to task.

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.

Russia Is Failing Not Failed

Photo of St Basil Cathedral in Red Square, Russia

Although Russia’s military performance in the Ukraine War has been underwhelming, that doesn’t mean we can write off the Russians quite yet. This conflict, and what could follow, should still be a top concern for the West.

Russia still has some gas in the tank. They haven’t fully mobilized yet and could still leverage allies like China should they need to, so if Western support in Ukraine waivers…the Russians could see significant gains. If Russia wins in Ukraine and reaches NATO borders, nuclear threats could come into play and that’s a spooky scenario. On top of all that, Russia’s decline means it doesn’t have anything to lose, so leadership may take extreme actions to cement themselves in the global sphere.

This means that the war in Ukraine should be a top priority for the West, as holding off the Russians in Ukraine is the best chance that NATO countries must avoid more catastrophic outcomes.

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 mid Tukey Tukey Valley in Mount Aspiring National Park in New Zealand. We’re pulling an entry from the Patreon page today, specifically if the Russian military is doing so creepily and it really is. Why do I still worry about what happens after the Ukraine war? Won’t they spend themselves in Ukraine and then Poland?

Romania and the rest of NATO will be fine.

Let me give you three reasons. Number one, miss worrying over. And just because the, Russians have not performed to what they would consider snuff and have definitely proven themselves to not be the second most powerful, military in the world. They’re not done. We have yet to have a general mobilization.

We have yet to see the Russians move up to a full war economy. And we have yet to seek outside countries like, say, the Chinese really put their thumb on the scale. I mean, yes, yes, yes, the Russians are going through barrels much faster. They can then they can replace them probably, 20 to 1 and the same with tanks.

And the Chinese are stepping in with replacements, especially with drones. But the Chinese have resisted any sort of meaningful sanctions on themselves in order to collaborate with Western countries. So there’s still a lot of things that could be put into the Russian column for force that, as of yet have not. So we unfortunately may well still be in the, the opening act of this conflict, especially if we see a withdrawal of any major countries support for Ukraine moving forward.

I mean, the Ukrainians have absolutely punch above their weight. They’re actually doing far better than anyone had any reason to expect. But they’re still the underdog by every measure, and they need a lot of outside help to stay in the game. So that’s one. Number two, it’s going to sound trite, but nukes, if we get to a position where one, two, three, four years from now, the Russians do prevail and they roll up to the NATO border.

Putin and his team are going to have absolutely no reason to expect that they can take on Poland to Romania in a conventional fight, if they’re backed up by the Germans, the French, the Brits, and especially the Americans. But there still that ace in the hole nuclear weapons. So the scenario that Western capitals are stressing about is that the Russians do prevail in Ukraine.

They roll up to the border of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania, and they basically bring in the French, British, German and Italian leaders on a conference call. Just say, just FYI, we’ve already targeted your capitals. The missiles will launch at noon tomorrow. We’re going to hit you with at least a couple dozen missiles each. So that missile defense really can’t play a major role or you could withdraw any support for Poland, Romania whatsoever and start a visible evacuation of all your forces in the area. And now I’m going to leave the conference call open and leave you guys to discuss. It’s really a scenario we don’t want to face. And then there’s the third issue that’s much more visceral. Russia’s dying demographically. This is their last century for sure.

And the question is whether they die fast or die slow. But make no mistake, the people at the top realize that death is now inevitable. The Russian ethnicity itself is fading away, and when a country feels it has nothing to lose at all. They’re going to be willing to do things that other countries normally wouldn’t, because they will live to fight another day.

So think back to all the brilliant Russian engineers who existed during the Soviet period, who pioneered things like computer science and space travel, nukes, chemical biological weapons, all of that can potentially come into play, based on the time frame of Russia breaking. So this war, unfortunately, absolutely needs to be fought.

And there are still many, many paths that it can follow, not a lot of which are overly positive. But what I can tell you is that every day that the Ukrainians manage to hold the line is a day that we don’t have to worry about those other scenarios, because a Russia that can’t conquer Ukraine is one that becomes strategically unmoored and is vulnerable at a thousand points.

The bad stuff happens if the Russians do succeed in gobbling up all of that territory and can press directly on the Western alliance. And that ultimately is what the Western countries are fighting for. Ukraine’s motivations are a lot simpler.

Trump 2.0 – Russia

As Trump enters his second term, there are going to be numerous challenges facing his administration. So, we’re launching a series touching on several of these issues and what to expect from President Trump. Our first video in the series covers Ukraine and Russia.

The Russians are running out of people (and time) to reach out and secure defensible boundaries, so the Ukraine War always had to happen now. How does President Trump factor into all of this?

Trump has suggested freezing the conflict along current lines and delaying Ukraine’s NATO membership for 20 years. Spoiler alert: that’s not going to work for the Russians. While the Russians knew how to manipulate Trump during his first term, it seems they’ve forgotten that winning strategy. On the other hand, the Ukrainians (and plenty of other countries) have already begun with the flattery and brown-nosing to get on Trump’s good side.

Regardless of who is in the US office, this war is just a step in Russia’s broader strategy to regain former Soviet territories. It’s likely that Trump’s proposals will fail since they go against Russian objectives.

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 comes to you from Cora Glen, New Zealand, about to relocate. We’re going to launch off a bit of an open ended series today, talking about the challenges that are going to be facing the incoming administration of president elect Trump. He’s actually President Trump, president elect. He’s both. Anyway, specifically today, we’re going to talk about what’s going on in Ukraine and Russia.

And before we go into the impact that Trump can or cannot have, I think it’s best to, revisit why the Russians are doing what they’re doing. They don’t feel they have a choice in this war. I would argue that they’re broadly correct with that, which doesn’t mean that there is a solution where everyone can just get along.

It’s part of the problem. You see the the core territories that the Russians are from Moscow and the territories to the north, south and southwest are open and they’re vulnerable, and there’s no natural barriers that prevent invasion. And so what the Russians have always done since the time of the early is ours, is to expand as much as they can, absorb culture after culture, people after people, conquer nation after nation, until they reach a series of geographical barriers that do block tanks and troops.

And those barriers are the Arctic Ocean, the Baltic Sea, the Carpathian Mountains, the Caucasus and the deserts and high mountains of Central Asia. Anyway, under the time of Stalin and during most of the Cold War, the Russians controlled all of these territories, and they were the most secure they’ve ever felt.

That is one of the many reasons why, during the Cold War, the primary concern was about a nuclear catastrophe rather than a conventional invasion. We are now in a different system. However, though, post-Soviet Russia lost control over almost all of those access points. And in the time since, the wall fell in 1989, the Russians have launched or participated in nine different military operations, of which the Ukraine war is only the most recent.

So if there’s anything that we know about the Russians, it’s that this war was always going to happen and it was never going to be the last one. And any sort of peace deal or armistice simply buys the Russians time to recoup so that they can then go for the next thing. And if they do succeed in absorbing all of Ukraine, as soon as they are capable, they’ll go after the next line of countries in the west, which are Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Moldova, all of which Moldova are members of NATO.

So, we are not at the end of the story here. We’re in the middle of the story. That’s the why, the why now is even more simple. It’s demographics. The bottom fell out of the Russian birthrate back in the 1980s. We had something called a Death cross in the 1990s where the birthrate fell below the death rate at one point, twice as many people were dying every day in Russia as were being born.

There since been a bit of a recovery, but it’s since turned again. And that’s before you consider the war. So this was always going to be the final decade that the Russians could attempt to use their superior numbers to force a military solution to their what they see as their frontier problem. And if they had waited until 2030, there simply wouldn’t be enough men in their teens and 20s to even make a meaningful attempt.

So it was always going to happen, and it was always going to happen about right now and what happens in the rest of the world, from the Russian point of view, is a rounding error in considering how they prosecute conflict. And to Trump, Trump says he can stop the war in 24 hours. Trump says a lot of things that a lot of people don’t take seriously.

But let’s assume for the moment that there was a deal to be had. What has been floated from the Trump camp is an armistice along the current division line, with European troops coming in to monitor the cease fire and the, Ukrainians facing a 20 year pause before they can even consider applying for NATO membership. Now, from the Ukrainian point of view, this is obviously not a deal because it takes roughly a quarter of their population, excuse me, a quarter of their territory, and locks it more or less permanently under Russian control.

But moreover, this is a deal that the Russians would never accept because they don’t have 20 years and they don’t need just get Ukraine, they need to get the rest of the entire Western periphery. They need to get Georgia and Azerbaijan and Armenia and the bulk of Central Asia. If they wait 20 years, the demographic bomb will fully gone off.

And so the Russians have rejected this proposal posthaste. Now, let’s talk about a couple of the minor things going on. There are a lot of conspiracy theories going around right now. Oh, my God, there’s so many conspiracy theories going on right now. But let’s deal with the one that deals with the Ukraine war that the Russians only attack because they thought the Biden administration was weak.

Anything? No. The specific timing for the launching of Ukraine war was very straightforward.

Trump made it very clear four years ago that if he was reelected, he was going to withdraw from NATO fairly early in his second term.

This was something that was communicated to Putin. And so Putin was very clear that should that happen, Ukraine would basically be handed to him on a plate. And when that’s not how things unfolded, he felt that the only way to get what he needed was to launch a military attack, which was correct. So there is nothing there that is Trump related that caused or deferred the war in any meaningful sense.

Like I said, this was always going to happen. Now, that doesn’t mean that the Russians don’t have some opinions on Donald Trump. They find him to be an eminently, manipulable person. They were able to hire him off from all of his security personnel, including the Secret Service, in the first term, and to get him into a room alone with Putin and Putin’s senior staff.

That’s never happened throughout American history, at any summit anywhere, and where you’d have a president completely separated from anything. And what the Russians found out was that, Donald Trump really didn’t know a whole lot about what was going on. Unlike most presidents who rely on their cabinet members to keep them informed,

Donald Trump relies on his cabinet ministers, to keep him feeling good about himself. And so whenever somebody would tell him something that he didn’t know and make it very clear that he wasn’t the smartest person in the room and each and every topic, he generally fired them. And so the Putin government really liked the first Trump term, because nothing could really get done on the American side.

That wasn’t being done on Twitter. And they have high hopes for the second term, because a number of the people that are being appointed to, cabinet level positions, for example, the Trudeau defense secretary, has limited military experience. He’s a culture warrior. And it’s very clear that doesn’t actually have any plans in mind for the military aside from Woking.

It, as he says, and from the Russian point of view, this is brilliant, because if you can hobble the ability of the American military to function, the American intelligence community function because the coordinator of that is basically somebody who’s been working for the Russians for years. Then all of a sudden you have a free hand, or at least that’s what they think.

I think, as is typical with the Russians, they may have overthought this out and come to the wrong conclusion. If you go back through modern American Russian history, the Russians do this from time to time. They think they have an upper hand. They think they can play the American president, whether it’s in jet, whether it’s JFK, or Bill Clinton or someone else, and then they discover, no, that’s not really how it works.

This is still the most powerful country in the world. And regardless of what you think of the individual leader, there’s a lot of institutional heft there. Even if the individual leader has a problem with the institutions. In this specific case, though, it’s much more personal. They have already told Donald Trump flatly, no. And if you are a world leader in the current age and you want something out of the United States, we all learned in Trump term one that the way to do it is to flatter Donald Trump.

And for whatever reason, the Russians have forgotten that. And so,while Zelensky of Ukraine has already been on the phone with Donald Trump to talk, while the Canadian prime minister has already flown down to Mar and Allegro, while Sheinbaum of Mexico has already been on the phone, while several European leaders have already arranged for talks basically to kiss up to get what they want, the Russians seem to have forgotten that and they just said no.

And so if you take Donald Trump’s temperament and apply it to the situation, I think it’s pretty safe to say that the Russians are not going to get what they’re hoping to get. At the same time that Donald Trump has come up with this brilliant, the best, the awesome plan, of freezing the conflict for 20 years, which was something would be, anathema to Russian strategic plans in the short, medium and long term.

So regardless of what Trump said during the campaign, regardless of what JD Vance, who is a Russian apologist, said during the campaign, he really comes down to the emotions of one person right now on this issue. And the Russians have really gotten off to the wrong foot and put that foot directly in their mouths.

Playing Jenga with Maritime Shipping

In my books, I highlighted how even a minor, seemingly insignificant event could cripple global maritime shipping. Well, not only did one of those events just happen, three did. We’re talking about a Russian cargo ship sinking, Israel targeting the Houthis in Yemen, and Finland impounding a Russian ship.

A Russian cargo ship went down in the Mediterranean and some foul play could be involved. This ship was critical for Russia’s nuclear icebreaker fleet, as it carried equipment necessary for construction. This will delay (or even cancel) these construction timelines, which marks a significant blow to Russia’s merchant marine capabilities.

Israel expanded its operations against the Iranian-backed Houthis, with efforts to disrupt supply chains. This could even spill over into targeting ships transporting Iranian weapons.

Finland’s seizure of a Russian ship accused of severing subsea cables escalates tensions in the region. This ship was already under scrutiny for its unsafe condition, but its suspected involvement in sabotage activities was the final straw.

Global maritime shipping relies upon trust, insurance and the US securing the sea lanes. These three events that have unfolded in the past weeks are causing the pillars propping up maritime shipping to teeter. It’s only a matter of time before maritime shipping, and globalization along with it, come falling down.

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 Wynona Bay. Just outside of Carmel Town in north east New Zealand. Doing a lot of little things have happened in the last 48 hours that are threatened to boil up into, something very significant. So let me go through the three items in our time together. First of all, the Russians had a cargo ship that sank in the Mediterranean.

There’s some question as to whether sabotage was involved. What’s unique about this ship is, you know, the Russians don’t have much of a merchant marine at all. And this one was a roll off, roll on vehicle that can just accept vehicles from pretty much any sort of facility. Doesn’t even have to be a proper loading port or anything.

There were also a couple construction cranes on board and a lot of specialty equipment for the Russian icebreaker fleet, most notably its nuclear fleet. Anyway, without this ship, the Russians are going to have a hard time moving things around the Mediterranean, where they’re in the process of evacuating their forces from Syria. And in the longer term, there, icebreaker, nuclear or icebreaker, which is under construction, which was supposed to be operational already has been pushed back to 2027 and 2030, probably will never be built because the Russians can’t build, the sort of specialty parts that were on board, one of which is something as simple as hatches.

So we’re looking at the beginning of the end of the Russian merchant marine because they now can’t move the pieces around. Sanctions prevent them from moving or buying everything else that they need. Second, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, has announced the beginning of a much broader assault against the Houthis of Yemen. Now, the Houthis are a militant group, Islamic, that are sponsored by the Iranians.

And the Iranians have basically been supplying them with weapons over the last 20 years.

Yeah, it’s probably too much. It’s got 15 years, in order to destabilize all kinds of things in the country, because they see the Houthis as an eminently disposable ally or proxy, whatever the right word is. Because basically they’re a bunch of desert fighters who have never been able to hold anything together, completely incompetent at administration, and not very good at attacks either.

But they know how to operate a chunk of equipment that flings a weapon. So they’ve been used to attack population centers and oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. They have been used to take out some things in Israel. They’ve engaged in some, like piracy, and they’re just generally a strategic nuisance. The countries in the neighborhood that have tried to quell them, most notably Saudi Arabia, have done bombing campaigns in the on again off against sponsorship of other sides in the ongoing Yemeni civil war.

And but the terrain is very difficult. The Houthis are, if anything, persistent. And it has basically been impossible for anyone to bring Yemen to heel. And that is not something that this is the last ten, 15 years. That goes back centuries. It’s an unruly place with a difficult geography, and no one has really had a lot of fun operating there.

I don’t think that, the Israelis will be successful in rooting out the who? These. Fabulous. Put that to the side right now. But, the Israelis have definitely demonstrated some interesting out-of-the-box thinking over the last few months, and in doing so, have participated in the destruction of Syria as a conventional power had destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

And, well, their operations in Gaza against Hamas, are let’s just call that complicated. Hamas is definitely in a box and cannot strategically expand at all. So to say that, success against the Houthis is impossible is, of course, ignoring recent history. I’m more concerned with how they would interrupt the flow of the weapons systems that they have a problem with, because the Houthis have been doing long range drones and missiles and talking to Israel directly.

And to go after that sort of stuff, they would have to go after the ships that sail from Iran to supply the weapons systems. So that’s two third Finland just all over the place today. The Finns have, boarded and impounded the first ship of the Russian shadow fleet. One of the things we’ve been seeing over the last several months, really started about 18 months ago, but really accelerated recently is that the Russians have been either directly or through third parties, like the Chinese.

Getting ships operating in the Baltic Sea to drag their anchors to sever subsea physical infrastructure, within the northern Baltic, specifically places that transmit data or electricity among Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the ship that they have now impounded is accused of basically dragging its anchors and severing five different cables in a short period of time.

Now, in the past, what has happened is when the Russians have done this, they’ve done it to one at a time. They’ve done it through a third party vessel, most notably a Chinese vessel. And the ship has gone before anyone realized what was going on. But this time, two things have changed. Number one, the, all the Scandinavians, all the the Baltics, all the Nordics are more on to it.

And they’ve been watching a lot more closely. And the Russian vessel, did several in short order. And the vessel itself is part of the Shadow fleet, which means it’s old. It’s rusty. Probably couldn’t pass a safety inspection in Guatemala, much less in Finland. And so the Finns were already watching it. And so when these cables got snapped one after another in a short period of time, they really had no doubt as to what was in play.

Okay. That’s a lot. What’s going on here is we’re seeing a multi vector challenge to the naval order that allows international trade to happen. One of the things that we had in the world before World War two was unless you could provide naval security for your ships, you just didn’t sail somewhere. Or if you did, you did so without any insurance or confidence, that the ship could make it.

It was very, very risky business. One of the many, many things that globalization has been very successful about is about making it so that anyone can sail anywhere at any time and interface with any partner to access any commodity or any product. And that has engendered not just global trade as we know it now, but the expansion of various economic sectors in a way that just simply wasn’t possible before.

So, for example, today, over half of all internationally traded oil sales, long haul ships. And that means if you’re going from the Persian Gulf to the East Coast or Northeast Asia, wherever, you can do so without much fear that your cargo is going to be anything inopportune. And for that rare occurrence where something might go wrong, you can buy an insurance policy for your vessel and its cargo, which only costs about 1% of the cost of your ship every year.

Quite affordable. Same thing for food production. Roughly a third of all food production globally is shipped in a similar manner, with a similar insurance for fishermen. And the very existence of a manufacturing sector in the world is courtesy of this sort of security set up. Because if you’re looking at something like, say, a stereo, you know, there’s roughly 400 parts in that thing.

You’ve got 400 different producers for each part, some of which have their own supply chain stretching back several steps, and intermediate products are shuttled around. Well, especially in East Asia, almost all of that, well over 95% of that is done on the water. And none of this would be possible without a relatively peaceable international system. Well, now we’re seeing that system hit from a number of different angles.

You’ve got the Russians who are basically turned much of the Black Sea to no go zone. You’ve got the Ukrainians who have started to go after Russian shipping in that space. We now have the Baltic states and the Nordic states, Scandinavian states, sorry. Most notably Finland, that have just impounded one of the ships that is taking advantage of that order in order to evade sanctions.

And we now in the Middle East have a situation where the Israelis, on a little bit of a high after the fall of Hezbollah and the fall of Syria, are going after another strategic irritant, the Houthis, which means they have to go after the shipping in order to interrupt the weapons. All of this is happening at the same time.

And one of the things I hit very hard in my, my last book, The End of the world, is just the beginning. Talking about the end of globalization is that the maritime order is based on trust. The trust that your ship will get there, the trust that the Americans will enforce the sea lanes, the trust that no one will challenge that.

And all of that is now falling apart. And in the book, I mentioned that, you know, it doesn’t really matter, what it is that breaks the system of trust. I must admit, having Israel and the Houthis or the fins and the shadow fleet on the bingo card. Not specific things I predicted, but it doesn’t really matter what it is.

Because as soon as states, for whatever reasons, have a vested interest in going after the system, the trust is broken and the insurance system can’t handle it. And that’s when we get a rapid fire breakdown in all types of shipping, because it’s no longer profitable or safe manufacturing is definitely the sector where we will feel it. First, in the United States, for most of the rest of the world, it’s going to be a race between energy and agriculture.

So we are in the witching hour of this system right now. And based on how any of these issues unfold could get really rocky, really quick and never take your eyes off the Russians because they’ve just lost the ability to maintain their icebreaker fleet, which means the entire Arctic route is something that is no longer strategically viable for them.

And if that is the case, then the Russians have a vested interest or may perceive that they have a vested interest in challenging parts of the system itself. We’ve been in this weird little holding pattern globally for the last decade, roughly where it wasn’t apparent that the Americans had the will, the interest or the ability to maintain the global order.

And lots of countries that are American rivals started challenging the US and various points thinking that the future was the Americans will keep the world safe for everyone, but they can carve out whatever they want for themselves, and we’re about to see all of that blow up in everybody’s faces. The future on the other side of this, from my point of view, is pretty clear.

You basically have regional powers that can guarantee regional security for the waves. And so you can have regional trade systems or national trade systems, but the days of long haul multi continental shipping that have dominated manufacturing, agriculture,

And energy since 1950 were at the very end of that. And it’s going to be interesting to see whether it’s Finland or Israel or Russia that fires the shot that formally breaks the system.

But these are just three examples of how easy it would be for this whole thing to come unwound. And we may very well see this before I get back from New Zealand. Yikes.

One Ship Inspection Could Unravel Global Maritime Shipping

Photo of a ship in a port in Helsinki, Finland

The Nordic nations are teasing a new initiative of inspecting ships leaving Russia’s St. Petersburg port for insurance and environmental compliance. This may seem insignificant, but it could disrupt shipping on a global scale.

Russia has relied on its shadow fleet (uninsured and aging tankers) to export oil after the sanctions began; this new initiative aims to curb Russian income and disrupt funds for the war in Ukraine. But what happens when one of these countries completes an inspection and decides to confiscate or detain one of these ships? We’re talking about uncharted maritime territory…and it could get messy very quickly as countries start to take maritime security and trade into their own hands.

A return to localized maritime security enforcement and controls won’t look the same everywhere. The Western Hemisphere and the Nordic countries will experience some shortages but be mostly fine. The Mediterranean’s future would rely on cooperation between Italy, France and Turkey. Places that are heavily reliant on energy and food imports (i.e. East Asia) could face economic collapse or famine.

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

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand. We finally got a break in the weather, just in time for the emerald pools, which are, you know, volcanic and super stinky. Anyway, on the 17th, 18th, of December, representatives from all the Nordic nations, plus Poland and Britain. So that’s, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, basically got together and said that they’re going to start checking ships that are coming out of Saint Petersburg port in the Baltic Sea, for things like insurance and compliance with environmental regulations.

In order to disrupt the shuttle fleet, the shuttle fleet is how the Russians are getting their cruise to market since they canceled by pipeline, and they can’t use Western maritime insurance or navigation aids. They basically, have to get insurance from the Russian government, the Chinese government or the Indian government. And there’s a suspicion that no one is actually issuing policies that pieces are just sailing.

They get out of the port, regardless of whether or not they have a policy. Not the Indians, the Chinese and the Russians have never actually paid out on one before. So if there was an accident, the idea is that there would be no one there to help pay for the cleanup. But more to point, the Shadow fleet is how the Russians get their money.

They basically have uninsured or under-insured old aging tankers, that evade everything that the Europeans are trying to do to shut Russian oil out of their systems, and especially to deny, income to the Russians as they’re launching a war in Ukraine. Will it work? It all depends upon how the Nordics and the poles and the Brits decide to handle enforcement.

So if a ship doesn’t have anything, what does that mean? You confiscate it, you take it into port. That would be getting into some very interesting territory, that it would be uncharted in the modern age. The whole idea of globalization as created by and then guaranteed by the United States since World War two, is that anyone can sail anywhere at any time.

And you don’t necessarily have to have insurance, although that’s a really good idea. And if the Russians don’t have it, it’s then up to the Nordics to decide what to do. And if the ships are confiscated, because they don’t have something that is not technically illegal, or they haven’t complied with something that just someone said that they needed to do.

We enter into a new phase of naval maritime transport. If if, if, if we go down that road that there’s no reason for any country really in the world to not take a ship that they like the look of or don’t like the look of unless they fear the consequences of whoever happens to own the ship or whoever happens to, have the ship registry.

The registry is a joke. Those are countries like Guinea Bissau and Panama, basically places where you can basically file a web address for free, and officially register your ship if you’re going to replace the system with something that actually means something that has to be a country that has a navy that can actually protect the shipping and are only a handful of countries in the world that can even pretend to do that in a regional basis.

And only one U.S. that could do it on a global basis. And since the United States does not dependent on international transport for most of its economic strength, it’s a stretch to think that the United States would do that unless it was paid a whole lot of money. And so if the Nordics do this, it is the end of the globalized system as we know it.

Now, keep in mind that I think we’re going here anyway. There is too much shipping. There are too many powers or too many people wanting revisions, and the US has lost too much interest. And we’re probably going to a naval freefall in the not too distant future. I’m not saying that this is the trigger, but I think it’s time to start talking about what the next system looks like and what the consequences are.

For the United States, if it happened today, it would hurt. Most of the naval shipments that come into the United States are large container ships carrying manufactured goods from Asia. So we’d have to get by without things like phones and computers and all that. The more valuable stuff eventually would be flown. But for all the bulk stuff, you know, your stereos, your cars, you’re going to be having some problems until that manufacturing capacity is rebuilt in North America, something we’re working on, something that is unlikely to be finished before the end of the decade.

So, you know, timing matters here, too. For other countries, this would be an absolute disaster. Most of the countries of the world, especially in East Asia, import the vast majority of their energy and material inputs. Some of them are even dependent upon significant food inputs, or at least the inputs they need to grow their own food.

So if this happened to China, for example, we would easily have a deindustrialization, or collapse, complete with famine in a very short period of time measured in months, not even years.

What takes its place is probably regional groupings, where either the seas are safe or everyone’s on the same side, and agrees with the rules of the games are, that looks really good for the Western Hemisphere.

That looks pretty good for the Scandinavian bucket. And in the Mediterranean might get a little dicey based on how relations between or among the Italians, the French and the Turks go. If they agree that they can, work together. That looks great. And if they can’t, You get two different mediterranean’s that shoot at one another, which, if you know your history has happened many, many, many, many, oh, so many times.

So, I can’t wait until the first time that Sweden or Finland or Poland decide that a ship that’s sailing by their coast isn’t doing something right. I want to see what they do. This is one of those many things that could all fall apart in a day. If the stars are aligned.

So stay tuned. This is probably not something you’re gonna have to wait for me to comment on, because if it does go down, a lot of things are going to break real soon.

The Russian Navy Leaves Syria for Benghazi…

Photo of Russian Naval Infantrymen on a boat

There are reports stating the Russian naval fleet might have found a new home (since their last one in Syria is no longer available). This new location is Benghazi, Libya and boy oh boy would I love to see that happen.

Russia has used Syrian ports for decades, but since the new Syrian government is not so friendly to the Russians…they must leave. The only viable option the Russians have is to move the fleet over to Benghazi.

Benghazi doesn’t offer much, other than a place to park. So, no repairs would be done, no significant naval operations could be carried out, and resupplying would be a joke. Oh, and relocating to Libya places the Russian fleet within range of NATO forces.

So, the Russians can hide out in Benghazi for a bit and avoid embarrassment in Syria, but they shouldn’t stick around for too long… or maybe they should.

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, New Zealand, Tongariro Circuit, blah blah blah. This is a quick take. I just found out that, the scuttlebutt in the Middle East is that the Russians are going to relocate their fleet to Benghazi, Libya. Quick background. The Russians have been operating out of the ports of Banias and Tartus in, Syria for about a decade, and they’ve been using those as the primary supply points to participate in the Syrian civil War, where they are responsible for, among other things, carpet bombing civilians and probably killing, somewhere around 100,000 people in Aleppo specifically.

Anyway, the new government that is taking form is a group of militant groups that are opposed by the Russians. So the Russians are getting the hell out of Dodge because they’re not completely stupid. Anyway, I’m digging this Benghazi story. Let me explain. The fleet, the Russian fleet has to go somewhere. They can’t stay, in Syrian waters, for long.

And their options are limited. If they were to try to go through the Turkish straits to get to the black Sea, which would be for some of these ships, their home port, that is not allowed, because there is now a war on in the Black Sea. And under the treaty, of Montreal, that the Turks adjudicate and control.

No warships can come through without Turkish. Get go. And the Turks back. The militant groups that are kicking out the Syrian government and the Russians. So can’t go there. You can sail all the way around Europe, to where the Northern Fleet headquarters are in Murmansk and Archangel. But, the Russian ships don’t have much range, and it’s highly likely that most of the fleet wouldn’t be able to make it.

So they would have to dock to refuel and resupply and European ports, all of which are NATO and the, the likelihood of a NATO country just seizing the ships very high. So two humiliations that the Russians are trying to avoid. So that leaves Benghazi and Italy, where, again, the Russians are participating in the local civil war. Here’s the thing.

But Ghazi doesn’t have the necessary port facilities to do full resupply and certainly can’t do repairs. So the Russians would have to build that when they did it in Syria. It took several years and several billion dollars. So in the meantime, the Russian fleet would just sit in Libya, rusting while support facilities are built. And with the way things are going between NATO in Russia, the chances of there being a bit of a spark down the line pretty good, and the Russians will have repositioned their most capable naval assets within easy striking distance of the French Navy and the Italian Air Force.

So in order to avoid some significant embarrassment today, the Russians are arguably doing the most stupid thing that I could possibly come up with, and I really hope they do it.

Cover photo by Wikimedia Commons

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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