America’s Cold War Missiles Return to Germany, Thanks to Russia

Picture of a Tomahawk cruise missile mid-flight

Well, it looks like the Germans are going to be celebrating Christmas in July. That’s due to the US and Germany’s decision made at the NATO conference to redeploy American mid-range weaponry to Germany. And yes, this hasn’t happened since the Cold War for…historic reasons.

Russia is the country to blame here. They’ve been violating arms treaties for the past 15 years, so the US got fed up and bailed on the INF treaty five years ago; this triggered the redeployment process. There are a whole boatload of reasons that this is happening, but defense against the Russians tops the list.

While the Russians may have opened this can of worms, the fallout isn’t going to be confined to them. Since the treaty that barred the US from taking actions globally is now kaput, the Chinese will be feeling some of the heat too. You can expect to see some intermediate-range American weapons in close proximity to China and throughout East Asia, which should help limit China’s global economic influence.

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

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Transcript

Hey everybody, Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks. It is Thursday, July 12th, and today we’re going to be talking about security in Europe. Specifically, the United States at the NATO conference has announced, with the Germans, that American mid-range weaponry is returning to Germany in a position that hasn’t been seen since the Cold War.

A combination of hypersonics, mid-range missiles, including the Tomahawk cruise missile system, is being deployed. The reason this is happening is because we had a series of Cold War and post-Cold War arms treaties between the United States, NATO, and the Soviet Union, like the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, or more specifically for this conversation, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF). The Russians started bit by bit either violating or withdrawing from those treaties as far as 15 years ago and even started developing weapons systems that are expressly barred by the treaty and then deploying them.

Under the Trump administration, five years ago, the United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty and has been moving bit by bit to redeploy these weapon systems ever since. The INF specifically bars weapons systems with a range of 500 to 5,500 km, roughly 300 miles to 3,000 miles, which basically covers the entirety of the hot zone now between NATO and Russia, including all of Ukraine.

The idea of these treaties, which dates back to Reagan and Gorbachev, was that if you take the weapons that are actually useful off the field, then you won’t have a tactical engagement or a tactical escalation. That just leaves the big strategic missiles, like the intercontinental ballistic missiles that are based in the United States. The desire to not use those is quite strong, so you take away the usable day-to-day missiles, and it forces both sides to basically come to the peace table. Well, the Russians have repeatedly moved away from that system, and now they’re going to find themselves facing weapons systems that, while maybe designed 50 years ago, are perfectly serviceable.

The United States is dusting off things like hypersonics that it developed back in the ’70s and ’80s but never deployed. Now they are being deployed. The balance of forces for the Russians across the entire theater is about to go from problematic to catastrophic. Keep in mind that one of the many reasons why the Cold War ended when it did is because NATO and, to a greater extent, the United States, defeated the Russians in an arms race. The Soviet Union simply couldn’t keep up with the economic power of the United States. While Russia today is significantly economically weaker than the Soviet Union ever was, the United States is significantly economically stronger than it was back in the ’70s and ’80s. So there’s really no contest here. The Russians have proven over and over again that while they can’t innovate, they can’t develop new weapons systems that are particularly capable, and they certainly can’t produce them at scale. Meanwhile, the United States, in many cases, is just literally dusting off things that have been in storage for 20-30 years and bringing them back online while also developing new systems.

The strategic picture for the Russians is a direct consequence of some very bad decisions they’ve made. A lot of the Russian position for the last 15 years has really been a bluff, and it worked until 2022 with the Ukraine war, which mobilized pretty much everyone in Europe. The Germans were the country that was most in support of the INF when it was negotiated because they were the ones in the crosshairs, and they were the country that was the most willing to overlook all of the Russian violations of the treaty because they lived in this kind of strategic nirvana that they didn’t want to end. Now, it’s the Germans who are actually arguing that the United States needs to deploy more and more weapon systems, not just to Europe, but to Germany specifically.

Okay, that’s kind of the big first piece. The second piece is the INF provided handcuffs on what the U.S. could do, not just in Europe, but globally. The country that has arguably benefited the most from the Americans refusing to deploy intermediate-range weapon systems isn’t Germany, it’s Russia. It’s China. If you look at a map of East Asia and consider all of the U.S. allies, especially Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, and Singapore, the distance from those countries to the Asian mainland is in that 500 km to 5,500 km range.

So for the entirety of the post-Cold War period, the United States has been barred from deploying appropriately ranged weapon systems to counter the Chinese rise. Well, not anymore. Over the course of the next 2-3 years, we’re going to see a mass deployment of American weapon systems off the Chinese coast that are perfect for boxing in the Chinese. The Chinese have always argued strategically that this was the goal of the United States all along, which, of course, is horse crap. But keep in mind that unlike the United States, China is a trading power, and not having these weapon systems has allowed the Chinese to, from a strategic and economic point of view, become a global economic player.

If these weapon systems are in place, everything that the Chinese do could literally be shut down within an hour. The capacity of the Chinese to import and export could be ended almost overnight. So while it may have been the Russians who were the ones who were messing around, it’s absolutely going to be the Chinese who are the ones who are going to find out.

Photo by U.S. Navyderivative work: The High Fin Sperm Whale – Tomahawk_Block_IV_cruise_missile.jpg, Public Domain, Link Wikimedia Commons

Why We Can’t Quit Russian Oil: The 10% That Holds the West Hostage

Despite most countries in the West wanting to rid themselves of any involvement with the Russians, the oil revenues continue to flow into Russian pockets. So why haven’t Western countries dropped the hammer on Russian oil exports?

Russian oil accounts for roughly 10% of the global energy supply. If you take that away, everyone in the world is going to feel the heat (or lack thereof). No leader, especially a US President, is willing to bite that inflation causing bullet.

This boils down to one thing, is the fallout worth it? If the US severs ties to global energy markets, that could cause a global crisis or depression, and even fracture the Western alliance. Not ideal. Enforcing a Russian oil ban could lead to escalation and military involvement…also, not ideal.

In a perfect world, ties to Russian oil would have been cut long ago. But we’re not learning our ABCs here, these are major decisions that could drastically change the trajectory of the world as we know it.

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

And then there’s you.

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Transcript

Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the French-Italian border on the Mediterranean. And today we’re going to take an entry from the Ask Peter forum, specifically, if the goal of the West in Ukraine is to ultimately, break the Russian military, then wouldn’t it make sense to simply go after the what are currently the legal oil revenues, put them under full sanction, actually interrupt the flows? 

right now, the official policy of the Western nations is to keep the oil flowing from Russia, but do so in a way that prevents the Russians from overly profiting from it. there are two ways that the Russians get their crude to market. Number one is in compliance with the sanctions, where other people provide insurance, other fraud shipping on the second is via something called the shadow fleet, which may be as many as 20% of the tankers that are out there now that are no longer registered to anyone. 

they simply shovel crude back and forth doing CTC transfers, taking them from Russian ports direct to third parties who don’t care about the sanctions very much, and allowing the Russians to circumvent things like price caps. it’s a reasonable question. And if, if, if this war is ever going to end in a way that actually breaks Russian power, Russian income has to be destroyed as part of that process. 

But to make that happen, there’s going to be a lot of collateral damage along the way. So a couple things to keep in mind. first of all, if you’re going to take this stuff offline, there’s a lot of it to go. Russia exports roughly 5.3 million barrels of crude per day and about 2.6 million barrels per day of refined product. 

Of that, only about 1 million barrels of crude is exported by pipe to China Direct, and maybe 300 to 400,000 barrels a day of refined product. Israel. That’s China. The rest of it has to hit a port somewhere and then be part of this shadow fleet or the sanctions regime system. So you’re talking about a disruption of at least 6 million barrels per day of oil and oil products. 

That’s huge. that is well over 10% of globally traded, energy product by volume. And for those of you guys who’ve forgotten your basic economics, oil demand and fuel oil demand is inelastic. So if you only have a disruption of, say, 5 to 10% in terms of output and production, you can get a price increase of 50 to 100% or more. 

Because if you don’t have the crude, if you don’t have the gasoline, you just can’t carry out normal economic activity. So your pay whatever you have to. That’s one of the reasons why the recessions in the 70s and the 80s were so severe, because everyone was dependent on this stuff, and when some of it not even very much went away, well, shit hit the fan. 

So if, if, if, if this were to happen, you would deal with a major price shock in the case of a populist government like Joe Biden’s here in the United States, that means inflation. And that means that his perception is that the political floor would fall out from under him. In any chance he had a reelection would go away. 

so this is something that has not been seriously considered in most Western capitals, most notably in the United States. there is one way you can get around that, and that is to use existing power that Congress has already granted the president to sever the United States from global energy markets. right now, actually for nine years now, ever since, I think it was the 2015 omnibus bill, Congress has granted the president the authority to end oil exports. 

And if you did that, since the U.S. is a net exporter now, you’d have a supersaturated oil market in North America, angle America specifically, while you would also have a removal of another 3 to 5 million barrels a day of crude and refined product from the rest of the world. So basically, you double down on the elasticity problem for the rest of the world and cause a massive global depression. 

At the same time, North America has a few problems with crude quality. This lady does on its own way. if if if that were to happen, you could probably kiss the Western Alliance largely goodbye, because the white House would have consciously chosen to favor its own domestic political issues and some economic issues, to be perfectly honest, against the security and economic needs in the long term, basically the entire alliance structure. 

Then there’s also the issue of enforcement. You can’t just, like, wave your hand and say, no, this stuff isn’t allowed. You have to do something about it. And your options are to go in and bomb Russian ports, which would trigger, let’s just say, other issues, or to go after the shadow Fleet itself to take those ships out of circulation. 

I mean, they’re all basically owned by the Russians at this point, but they’re shipping crude primarily to China and India. So if you basically declare or have an undeclared economic war against those two countries, that complicates a lot of things very, very quickly. Now, will we get there in the end? Yeah, probably. but that requires pulling out all the stops and a lot of strategic questions that, would occupy a great deal of political bandwidth for any government. 

In the end, if the United States really if the goal really is to break Russia, then there needs to be changes to military policy to make sure that the Ukrainians can strike logistical hubs within Russia. And it means an end to Russian energy exports at a large enough scale to break the income flows that are necessary to keep the Russian military machine running. 

We are not there yet. I’m not saying we’re not going to get there. In fact, I would argue we are. But that requires a significant change in the political and economic calculus of all the Western capitals, first and foremost, the United States. So good question. I’m not yet. 

Backfire: Putin’s North Korean Joyride

If there’s anything Putin’s good at, its pressing the West’s buttons…and his latest trip to North Korea is no exception. However, by signing a new defense pact with Kim Jong Un, Putin might inadvertanly gain Ukraine a new supporter.

For years, the US, China and Russia have worked together to contain North Korea’s weapons programs and illegal activities; Russia has clearly stepped away from that aggreement. In the process of antagonizing the West and partnering with North Korea, Putin likely pissed off South Korea.

The South Koreans have become one of the top five arms exporters globally, but until now they’ve limited exports to Ukraine. If South Korea’s position begins to shift – and it looks like we might be heading in that direction already – we should expect to see plenty more deals like their recent tank deal with Poland.

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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.

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

And then there’s you.

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

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Green Mountain, just above Boulder with the flat irons there behind me. Today we are going to talk about Vladimir Putin’s recent trip to North Korea. 

Basically, he went there, talked shit about the United States and, said he would sell weapons to North Korea, signed a defense pact and talked about how they are best buds. And he and Kim Jong un, that’s the premier of North Korea. He’s a really chubby guy. basically took turns, flattered each other and driving themselves around in a Russian made limo, which is, well, let’s just say it didn’t crash. 

And that’s kind of an achievement anyway. So, the purpose of this trip was basically to piss off the Western alliance, especially the United States. US diplomacy going back several presidents, at least to Clinton, have been working pretty aggressively to partner with the Chinese and the Russians to box in North Korea to tamp down their weapons program, the drug smuggling, their money laundering, all that good stuff. 

And in the last year, because the Russians are now finding themselves on the opposite side of everything from pretty much everybody, the Russians have actually been vetoing resolutions in the Security Council that would continue those sanctions programs on the North Koreans. which is something that the United States is really cheesed off about because the number one target of any missile launch is going to be Los Angeles or San Francisco. 

Well, let’s look at this from anyone else’s point of view for a moment. Just not Russia’s, not North Korea’s and not the United States’s, the other country that matters on the Korean peninsula is South Korea, an economy that’s roughly 15 to 20 times as large and as a technological leader, not just in things like semiconductors and manufacturing, but increasingly software and weapons technology. 

In the last five years, South Korea has emerged as one of the top five arms exporters in the world, specifically excelling in things like artillery and rocket systems and tanks. And if you start looking at this from the South Korean point of view, it is clear that Vladimir Putin made a colossal mistake, because until now, the South Koreans have limited their arms exports to Ukraine because they don’t want to get involved. 

But now that Putin has come to North Korea and bandied about how he and the North Koreans are best friends, the sky is the limit. And unlike German tanks or American tanks, things that are being made in limited volumes and so can’t be rushed to the Ukrainian front all that quickly, the South Koreans are the masters of making anything at quality and at scale very, very, very quickly. 

I mean, this is the country that back in the 1970s built what was then the world’s largest supertanker by building it in halves in two different dry docks and then welding it together at the end. And for those of you who built supertankers in your garage, you know, don’t do this at home. This is really dangerous. Anyway. It works. 

they’ve already sold 180 K-2 tanks to the poles. There’s another hundred and 80 on their way, and they’re going to be working with the poles on setting up domestic manufacturing. So it’s not just that the South Koreans can upset the balance of power in terms of the arms balance in Ukraine. By selling weapons directly, they can help various European countries establish their own production, and then they can have two, three, four different production sites basically working against the Russians. 

this isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve seen any country do in the last 20 years, but it definitely makes the top ten. All right, see you guys next time. 

Russians In Space…Well, Maybe Not Much Longer

Last week, I talked about how Ukraine has been targeting Russian air infrastructure to prepare for the arrival of their F-16s. Well, Ukraine launched a rocket attack on occupied Crimea and destroyed some air defenses and one of Russia’s deep space satellite communication stations.

The loss of that deep space satellite communication station is the focus for today. This isn’t great news for Russia’s already struggling civilian space program, given they’ve depleted their old ICBMs used for satellite launches. This will also reduce tracking and communication with Russia’s military satellites, which complicates things for any other nations relying on Russia for maintenance or launches. The final kicker is that Russia’s GLONASS system – their version of GPS used in precision-guided munitions like glide bombs – could be jeopardized or degraded.

This attack could significantly impact Russian capabilities, but we’ll have to wait for final reports to determine the full extent of the damage and impacts.

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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.

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

And then there’s you.

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

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zain here coming to you from Colorado. It’s the 24th of June. And as we’ve been discussing on and off for the last couple of weeks, the Ukrainians are hoping to take out as much of the Russian air defense network as possible before they get F-16 Mirage fighter jets over the summer. The idea is if they can establish local air superiority, even if just for an hour at a time, then ground forces can then advance without fear of massive artillery barrage is hitting them, and that helps them clear out, say, minefields and actually penetrate into, Russian lines. 

Anyway, over the weekend, we had a significant ly the largest rocket attack I’ve seen yet from Ukraine into occupied Crimea. And while we’re going to be looking at the damage reports from this for several days to figure out how much was destroyed, it looks like several air defense systems were taken out again. But the one I want to talk about today is the Russian deep space satellite communications network. 

You use a deep space system to basically keep track of all your satellites in orbit and communicate among them into the ground. And since satellites typically are, you know, you need several of these stations, around the world in order to provide good coverage. Now, the Russians have never had that, because the Russians have never had a series of allies that they can trust on a global basis. 

So they have four of these networks within the Russian Federation, and that’s it. And apparently one of them was completely destroyed within the last 36 hours. this has three implications. Number one, it pretty much is the end of the Russian civilian space program. And it was already floundering, wasn’t economically viable, especially with the advent of space-x, because the Russians used to use their old ICBMs as launch vehicles. 

Basically, you use one of them and then it’s gone, and then you use another one, and you keep doing it until they’re all gone. And, well, they’re all gone now, unless they actually want to go into their active reserve. They were using the ones that were decommissioned after the end of the Cold War. So they’re no longer cost effective at all. 

And now they can’t even keep track of things as they orbit the planet. second, military satellites, most military satellites, most, like most civilian satellites, are whipping around the planet. And now the Russians have lost one quarter of what was left of their capacity to track and communicate with them. That’s going to provide a real problem for the Russians in terms of satellite communications. 

Not to mention anyone who was looking at getting the Russians to launch and maintain a military satellite for them now has to find someone who is not Russia to maintain it. And if your goal was to get away from the United States, there just aren’t a lot of options here because the Chinese don’t have a good network for this either. 

so basically, you’re down to Europe, with the Airbus consortium and EADS or the United States. Third, and perhaps most significant moving forward is with the loss of this. The Russians are losing the ability to not just keep tabs on their satellites, but, gets good telemetry for things like repairs. And if the Russians lose the capacity to do that, then their glossiness system, which is their equivalent of GPS, starts to fall off line. 

Now, there are already parts of the world that don’t have very good coverage all that often. But if you remove meaningful launch capability and modern capability and maintenance capability from the Russian system, you know, losing one more radar system would probably do that. Then you’re talking about the Russians losing the capacity to use precision guided munitions using geographic tags. 

that would be an end to things like, say, glide bombs, which are the newest military innovation that the Russians have used, basically dropping one to 2 to 3 ton bombs, from within Russian territory and then having them glide and hit targets. If you lose their ability for satellite communication, that goes away, too. So very significant outcome. 

we will still be tallying the damage from this weekend for several days. It’ll be interesting to see what else is now gone. 

Mr. Putin Goes to Hanoi

With Russian President Vladimir Putin heading to Vietnam, some American security experts are getting concerned about the future of the US-Vietnam relationship. To understand why the Vietnamese are working with Russia, we need to take a quick history lesson.

Every American remembers the Vietnam War…the French have an even worse history in Vietnam…but both of those histories pale in comparison to China’s two millennia of conflict with Vietnam. All that to say, the relationship we’re seeing between Russia and Vietnam is simply a materialization of the phrase – “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

Essentially, Vietnam is using Russia as a bit of a counter-balance to China; think of it as an extra layer of security for the Vietnamese peace of mind. Don’t let that fool you though, US-Vietnam interests are aligned against China and will continue to grow closer over the coming years.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

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Transcript

Hey, everybody, Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from the Turks Trail near Denver, Colorado. It is the 20th of June, and the news today is that Russian President Vladimir Putin is on a state visit to Vietnam. He landed in Hanoi last night. He’ll probably be seeing this tomorrow anyway, some American security folks are having a bit of a conniption fit because, they thought Vietnam was now firmly in the American camp. 

And that is not a very, nuanced understanding of why Vietnam and the United States are going to be good allies in the future. quick story. So there is a plaza, kind of an open air museum in Hanoi, near the Capitol complex where they commemorate basically all the conflicts of the past. And there’s this two foot tall structure, little obelisk to commemorate the U.S. Vietnamese military know was the Vietnam War. 

I was about 20 years. And right next to it, there’s another structure about ten feet tall to commemorate the France Vietnamese War, which lasted about two centuries. And next to that is the largest structure in the facility, which is about two stories tall, which is to commemorate the Chinese Vietnamese conflict, which lasted the better part of two millennia. 

you see, American and Vietnamese interests are converging because they are both concerned about China. And for Vietnam, this is typically their first and foremost, their their first or last, their only security concern because they’ve been conquered more than once. And if any number of military conflicts with a vastly superior power in terms of numbers, and they fought back just like they did and are now over and done pretty well for themselves anyway. 

Bottom line is that, will always see its security interest through that lens. And so if you go back to the Vietnam War, when we were on the other side, they saw it the same way. And so in the Vietnam War, you’re talking about things that happened after the Sino-Soviet split. And when you all of a sudden had Maoist China and Soviet Russia staring down one another, all of a sudden Vietnam came into play from the Russian point of view. 

So the Russians were back in Vietnam, not just because we were involved, but because the Chinese were involved. And so the Vietnamese became used to having the Russians as a counterweight to Beijing, not just Washington, and said, if you look at the relations that the Russians have with everyone around the world, they’ve gotten significantly worse with almost everyone with the West, with the United States, with the northeast, Asian countries like, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. 

That’s pretty straightforward. It’s straight up Ukraine war, but with other countries it has to do with military contracting. Russian weapons systems have proven to be not a lot advanced, especially when it comes to things like jets and air intake aircraft and missiles. And so countries like India that have literally soaked billions of dollars into the Russian military complex, only to discover that most of the money now was stolen. 

And most of the technologies that the Russians said they were developing just weren’t. And then, of course, there’s the weapon systems, the legacy weapon systems, billions of dollars of that going back years that don’t work as well as they thought they did. And the Russians are even combing the world for things like artillery shells and hoovering them up in order to have them in the war. 

This doesn’t really affect Vietnam. Vietnam doesn’t have an artillery army. It doesn’t use a lot of aircraft. It doesn’t use a lot of missiles. It doesn’t use a lot of armor. They want machine guns. They want RPGs. They want things that can be shoulder launched. They want anti-ship missiles. These are things that haven’t underperformed, in the Ukraine war to this point. 

So from Vietnams point of view, it’s almost unique in the world of arms, absorbers importers that they haven’t been disappointed yet by the performance of what’s gone on in the war. And so for the Americans out there who are concerned about the ally of the future, maybe not being all that, don’t worry about it. For the issues that matter to the United States in the region, we’re actually on the same page. 

It’s trying to trying to trying and trying to China. Now, I don’t doubt if you fast forward a couple of years, failures in the Russian military complex means it won’t have the capacity to export arms to Vietnam any longer. And then that part of the conversation changes, too. We’re just not there yet. 

Russia and the Changing Nature of the Spy Game

If you ask a fifth grader what the key to being a good spy is, they would likely respond with some variation of being sneaky or concealing your identity. Well, on today’s episode of “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader”, we’re placing Russian Spies in the hot seat.

Since the start of the Ukraine War, Russian spies throughout Europe have been disappointing those 5th graders’ expectations. With most European nations collectively deciding to share information and expel Russian spies from their embassies, Russian intelligence operations in the West have been experiencing quite the disruption.

In places like Germany, the Russians are replacing their spies with bribes and payments to individuals for information. Obviously this isn’t a great strategy, but a little info is better than none. As for those spies who had their identities revealed, they’ll still be of use to Russian intelligence…just on domestic assignments from now on.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

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Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. today we’re doing a little spy addition. the news is that Thomas, all the wearing of the very fast on Schultz. No, very fast on Schultz for forcing Schultz. That’s basically the, German equivalent of the FBI responsible for domestic security. Anyway, he has said that, most Russian attempts to achieve espionage operations within, Germany in the last few months have been basically the Russians just paying people. 

there’s at any number of ways that intelligence service can get at their information. And paying people has always been a classic, but it’s usually less effective because then you’re reliant on the people, being continuing to give you good stuff. And if you pay them, they will come up with stuff to give you, even if it’s not good stuff. 

And if you stop paying them, there is a chance that they will turn you in. So it’s generally pretty far down the list in terms of reliability. a better way is just to have your own assets in place and the way that the Russians have normally done this, the way most countries do this is by taking their intelligence assets and giving them diplomatic cover. 

So you basically say this person is a diplomat when really they’re trying to steal industrial secrets. the Russians have always, always, always excelled at this and used it heavily because they don’t have the technical skills to maybe do something like electronic eavesdropping, like the United States tends to prefer, and they can’t attack it from a mass approach like the Chinese can, because they just don’t have the people. 

So you focus on a handful of highly trained people that you put into every single embassy you possibly can. That strategy worked very well for the Soviets and worked even better for the post-Soviet Russians until the Ukraine war, when the Europeans collectively decided that the Russians were persona non grata in Europe. They took some steps. Now, normally there’s this ongoing cat and mouse game among, the Russians and the western states and everyone else when it comes to diplomatic espionage. 

Basically, you’re always try to keep track of the personalities that are involved, the potential spies. And every once in a while, you do a little bit of purge, but you don’t purge everyone that, you know, making the other side wonder if their agent was really exposed or not. And it’s a grand old game. but one of the problems you have with the strategy is you don’t necessarily share your list of spies that you’ve uncovered with everybody else, because maybe you don’t trust their information control systems. 

And if it got out, that, you had identified one and not the other, then all of a sudden your counterintelligence operations are a bit bonk. Well, with the Ukraine war, basically, the Europeans decided all at the same time that all spies in all embassies everywhere would not only be determined to be persona non grata and sent home the list of everyone who fell into that category would be shared not just with the Europeans, but with everyone across the world. 

So basically, you had 25, almost 35 years of Russian efforts to infiltrate Western institutions and governments, and everyone was exposed all at the same time. And then there was list of everyone who was exposed went global. So in the past, if you were to purge 3 or 4, they would end up at someone else’s embassy within a year. 

Doesn’t work like that anymore. I mean, the Brazilians might not have hostile relations with the Russians, but when the Europeans and the Americans come with this list of 5000 diplomatic personnel who were actually spies, and then all of a sudden they all end up in the Brazilian embassy, the Brazilians get a little cheesed off, too. So what we’ve seen is the most effective way the Russians have of hacking into society, has been gutted. 

It’s not that these people can’t do anything, but if you’re training someone for covert operations in diplomacy, you can’t just turn around and turn them into assassins or analysts. there’s an extensive period of retraining, and the Russians aren’t as young as they used to. And one of the big reasons for the Ukraine war is the demographic collapse. 

And all that good stuff is all very relevant. the most likely use for most of these people moving forward is to back up the Intel system within Russia. Russia has far more spies operating within the Russian Federation than beyond, because Russia isn’t a nation state. It’s a multi-ethnic empire. And the way it holds, it’s everything together is by basically shooting through its own population with spies to make sure that there are no rebellions forming. 

So it’s not that the Russians have no use for these people. It just has no use for these people abroad. 

Ukraine: F-16s, Offensives, and Abject Humiliation

Ukraine is gearing up for one of its most important offensives to date, but what makes this one so different from the rest?

The main driver of this offensive is a delivery of F-16s from NATO, which was preceded by some large arms packages from Europe and the US. Now this is all very exciting, but we’re still a little ways out from this going down. In the meantime, Ukraine will be laying down the groundwork to help ensure that this offensive can successfully break through the stalemate that has defined much of the battlefield this year.

So what does that groundwork look like? You can expect to see Ukraine ramp up its strikes on Russian air defenses all throughout the occupied territory and even deep into Russia and Crimea. This will (hopefully) allow the Ukrainians to establish regional air superiority and use those F-16s to their full capabilities.

It doesn’t mean Ukraine will be flying into Moscow tomorrow and ending the war, but cutting off Russian logistics in Crimea and other areas could cause significant losses to Russia – and Putin’s ego. Expect further updates once all of this kicks off.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado. it appears that we’re about to see a major offensive by the Ukrainians. now, the next couple of days or anything like that. Probably going to be a couple months off. but they’re definitely preparing the ground. what’s going on is that the Ukrainians are preparing to receive a large, allotment of F-16s from NATO countries. 

and that’s right on the heels of a significant arms package, one from Europe, one from the United States, that is allowing the Ukrainians to start to shape the battlefield. What we’ve seen in the last few weeks is the Ukraine is becoming much more aggressive, not just turning the Russian assault on Kharkiv in the northeast into a killing ground for Russian troops. 

not only picking up the pace for some of the counter assaults south of the Dnieper River, where there have been some battles where the Russians have suffered 21 casualty ratios. those are actually the sideshow, the really big stuff in terms of, military strategy is using, middle range rockets and missiles to go after, Russian aviation assets deep within Russia, in some cases 500 miles from the border, and also throughout the Crimean Peninsula, going after anti-aircraft batteries, specifically, the S-300 is in the more advanced S-400s. 

the S-400s are considered the best in the world, and at least the last two weeks, the Ukrainians have taken out at least four batteries, one of which had only been up and running for a few days at the point where it was taken out. what the Ukrainians are doing are trying to deny the Russians as much air defense as possible before the F-16s arrive, because if the Ukrainians can establish regional air superiority or even just local, it is for moments, they can start using some of the training and some of the equipment that the NATO allies provided them a year and two years ago. 

if you remember back to the first wave of counter offenses we had in 2022 and into 2023, the Russians really hadn’t fortified anything. So the Ukrainians were able to punch in and take out a few specific nodes and then just chop up the Russians, inflicting massive casualties and cause massive, if not retreat routes from places like Kherson or near Kharkiv. 

but as the war moved on, the Russians started to take things a little bit more seriously and laid layer after layer after mines, building these multilayered defenses that the Ukrainians had had to punch through NATO training for a lot of Ukrainian forces taught them how to use combined arms, basically combined infantry with mounted infantry with tanks, with helicopters, with missiles, with aircraft. 

But but but the Ukrainians didn’t have the equipment to pull that off, most notably the airpower. So they’d launch this big assault, but they didn’t have air power. And so the Russians were able to call in artillery strikes because they had maybe not air superiority, but the ability to deny the Ukrainians, the skies. And that made these subsequent, counter-offensive basically bogged down in even after a lot of casualties and a lot of equipment and a lot of time, the Ukrainians only made minimal gains. 

Well, what the Ukrainians are attempting to do this time is to prepare the battlefield so they don’t have that air power problem again. So that the new aircraft, when they do arrive, can operate in a less contested environment. And if that happens, then the Ukrainians can return the favor. And any time the Russians try to concentrate forces, they get hit with Ukrainian artillery rather than the other way around. 

we have seen the Ukrainians basically get better and better at this without airpower over the last few weeks, taking out any number of strategic, radar systems deep within the Russian space. So if we get to the point in about a month when these F-16s start to arrive, the Ukrainians might actually have regional air superiority over most of the peninsula. 

And at that point, cutting the remainder of the infrastructure links from Russia proper into the southern front should be pretty easy, because there’s really only two links left. You’ve got the Kerch Bridge itself, which is already damaged, and then you’ve got a supplementary rail system that goes through occupied Ukraine on the southern coast, which is already within artillery range. 

What we’ve been waiting for to the war, this point is for the Ukrainians to use superior speed, innovation and reach in order to chop up the Russians logistical capacity at ease, and basically isolate large pockets of troops and generate the sort of political humiliation that in the past has triggered a Russian climbdown or maybe even a collapse of the government. 

I’m not saying that that’s what’s going to happen this summer. I’m saying that’s what the goal is. And with the way that they are preparing the battle space, it looks like we’re going to have some of these decisive conflicts later in this year. Assuming for the moment, of course, the Ukrainians proved to be as adept on the F-16s as they have been on everything else. 

Still a lot of moving parts, still a lot of unknowns. But we actually do see things building to at least, in Crimea, a bit of a head. that does not mean that the entirety of the war is over. I mean, hell, even if the Ukrainians were able to completely capture Crimea, Russian logistics going into the Donbas in eastern Ukraine are far more robust. 

This war is not over. But if you can trigger a global humiliation. In the past, about half of the Russian governments that have collapsed have been because of a major military defeat. And this is the first potential battle of this war that might fall into that category. 

Why Did Russia Choose Invasion Over Nukes? || Ask Peter

For years I’ve warned that a war between Russia and Ukraine was inevitable, but why didn’t Putin just play the nuke card? As an add-on, we’ll also be touching on some new Russian alliances that could rub the US the wrong way.

The Russians are no strangers to wars and territorial expansions, so despite having nukes, they still prefer their tried and true method of occupation. This may seem foolish given their nuclear capabilities, but the Russian goal is to establish a buffer they control easily, not a zone they have to patrol wearing hazmat gear.

The Ukraine War has also brought up conversations of Russian alliances with some unsavory characters, i.e. North Korea, Iran, and China. I’m really not too worried about these alliances either. The logistics alone make them all dealbreakers.

The conversation about the American-led global order being disrupted is less about Russia’s moves and more about how the Americans decide to proceed with their global strategies.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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Transcript

You’re someone who has famously for a long time predicted and tried to warn people that, not only is Russia’s war with Ukraine inevitable, but Russian national security, national strategy, doctrine dictates that the Russians are likely to expand their war westward from Ukraine. But given this framing of this conflict or this aggression as being from a national security standpoint, why does Russia need to do this if they have such a large nuclear, arsenal? 

And I guess part of it, maybe a tagalong would be, why is Russia enduring what it is in Ukraine if it has nukes, is that sort of a faster way for giving things? The, the non-UK approach has been the Russian strategy for a lot longer than we’ve had. So there’s always that little inertia thing in terms of people’s minds. 

But one of the things that the Russians have discovered since 1990 is they thought they thought that they could do this on the cheap, that they could infiltrate societies, use disinformation, use plants, bribe people, and basically break the democratic processes and the strategic commitments of countries from Estonia to Bulgaria, to Azerbaijan to to take a stand. And what they’ve discovered is they’ve just pissed everyone off. 

The idea was that they could get all the strategic goodies that they thought they needed without actually having to occupy the places, and that has fallen apart everywhere except for Belarus. And so the question then is, can we threaten people to not take strategic decisions that we don’t like? So the United States, we’re going to nuke you unless you give us an aircraft carrier that doesn’t fucking fly. 

And that’s basically the strategy that you’re recommending here, is that we, as they threaten countries between them and the Western world in order for them to do exactly what Moscow wants. the Russians have discovered very, very clearly that the only way to make someone do what you want is to occupy yourself. And while we in the West might not see our way of life as threatening the existence of the Russian state, they obviously have a different opinion on that. 

the only time the Russians have ever, ever felt secure is after World War Two, when Stalin succeeded in conquering all the buffer states and concrete, all of the access points into the Russian heartlands, and that held until 1992. And the Russians are desperate to have that back. Unfortunately for them, the only way they can have that back is to by occupying countries with a combined population of more than their own population, that’s not going to fly in those countries. 

It’s not going to fly in the West. It’s not going to fly in the United States. And so we have a war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed Moscow to seek some nontraditional, material supply, alliances or partnerships with some of the countries most antagonistic to American leadership. The role and think about North Korea. It’s, you know, in a tighter economic embrace with China. 

It’s getting drones from Iran. Do we see the potential for the emergence of a Moscow led kind of NATO? And I think, you know, we’ve seen this once before. It was the, the US saw it, but, the North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, lesser Cuba into the mix, too. it’s Friday. Do we need, these I hesitate to call them powers, but there’s this assembly of, foreign. 

America’s like the bad guys together, present a considerable credible, worrisome threat to, the American that global order. No. Well, I mean, I don’t think the American led world order is doing that great or is going to last that much longer. But no, I don’t think this is what’s going to tear it down. keep in mind that even at the height of the Cold War, the only Soviet ally that ever deployed troops out side of its own country was Cuba. 

And that was to Angola. You never had Polish troops in Romania, Romania, troops in eastern Germany. and so even at the height of Soviet dominance, they were never able to pull this off. From a purely logistical point of view, forget political or economic. So you might have places like North Korea and China and Russia and Iran and Cuba not liking how things are going if you’re there on the world, but them deploying is a completely different situation. 

In addition, keep in mind that while Russia has figured out how to deploy a small number of troops and things like Wagner, China has only ever had one deployment outside of its home country that’s in Djibouti. That barely counts. North Korea’s never done it, ever. Cuba is not nearly as powerful now as they were 30 years ago. 

So the capacity just isn’t there. Much less coordination, much less the deployment capacity. Now, the dangerous the American let order are primarily in the United States from interest. And I still still still see the biggest danger to that order will be when the United States wakes up one day and realizes that the countries that are benefiting most from its presence are the countries that it is most opposed to, because without America providing global naval coverage for civilian shipping, there is no Russian energy industry. 

There is no Chinese manufacturing sector, there is no Iranian trade. There’s not even anything for Cuba. And if the U.S. starts to use its navy to interfere with those flows, instead of protecting those flows, we’re in a very different world the next day. And the countries if the United States thinks of as the problems are gone the day after. 

Thank you very much for your time, Peter. I enjoyed the conversation and thank you for all our subscribers and followers for your questions. please continue to send them in and I’ll look forward to having conversation like this with you again. Thank you. Take care. 

Ukraine Opens Up on Belgorod

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Peter Zeihan’s Risk List: What Keeps a Geopolitical Strategist Up at Night

Please join Peter Zeihan for a webinar on June 5th at 12:00 PM EST on a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of the Zeihan on Geopolitics team: geopolitical risk. This webinar will feature Peter’s reasonable-fear list, focused on issues that in his opinion have the most potential to impact market outcomes.

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From the beginning of the Ukraine War, the Western nations have placed restrictions on how their weapons donations to Ukraine can be used. Specifically, Western nations have been concerned that if Ukraine targets Russian forces within Russia, escalation may be unavoidable. But recent events have forced a change of calculus in the West.

Less than 48 hours after NATO gave Ukraine the right to use those donated weapons against Russian targets within Russia, Ukrainians opened up on Russian military assets in and around the Russian city of Belgorod.

It’s too soon to assess damage, but the lack of Russian counterattack suggests Ukraine will soon be able to attack Russian forces wherever they can be reached. Regardless of the weapon systems Ukrainians are using.

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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Will the West Greenlight Strikes Inside Russia for Trigger Happy Ukraine?

WE’RE LESS THAN A WEEK AWAY FROM THE WEBINAR!

Peter Zeihan’s Risk List: What Keeps a Geopolitical Strategist Up at Night

Please join Peter Zeihan for a webinar on June 5th at 12:00 PM EST on a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of the Zeihan on Geopolitics team: geopolitical risk. This webinar will feature Peter’s reasonable-fear list, focused on issues that in his opinion have the most potential to impact market outcomes.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE WEBINAR

The Western world is beginning to entertain the conversation over the use of Western weapons targeting Russian systems within Russia. There are a handful of countries that have issued their support, but will it be enough?

Countries like Sweden, Poland and France are leading the charge, Germany has recently jumped on the train, and momentum is building. The initial rationale behind preventing Ukraine from using these weapons to strike within Russia was to prevent (or try to avoid) escalation. However, the mounting support in Europe has put the pressure on the Americans to make a decision, and soon.

Given the incompetence that has filtered its way into Putin’s inner circle, this could be a strategic window for the Western world to act – and the Ukrainians are getting a little trigger happy.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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

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

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

And then there’s you.

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

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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Transcript

Hello, everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you in Genoa. Piazza Villa Vittoria. the news today is that the Europeans, and to a lesser extent, the Americans, are debating how involved they want to give in the Ukraine war in terms of weapons and targeting. the idea what the Ukrainians have been asking for for some time and what the Scandinavians and the Central Europeans have picked up on, is as long as Russia is on the attack in places like Kharkiv and Luhansk and the nuts, that they should have the ability to use whatever weapons systems they can get their hands on to target Russian weapons systems and launchers within Russia if they’re part of an active conflict. The idea being that if you see that there is an air base just on the other side of the border where fighter bombers are taking off day in, day out and bombing civilian locations in Ukraine, then it’s silly to not use things like mid-range missiles to go after that air base to this point in order to contain the escalation threat. 

the West has pretty much put a blanket ban on that sort of weapon strikes from the Ukrainians, basically saying that if it comes from the United States or Germany or natural in general, then you can’t use it to strike targets within Russia proper that is now weakening. we got three things in play here. First, the countries in question number two, the personalities within Russia, and then three next steps. 

So first let’s talk about the countries, Sweden, Poland and the rest of the countries in northeastern and Central Europe have been advocating for this for some time. And so the countries that are most likely to bear some of the blowback being on board, you know, that it’s going to happen sooner or later. The question is how and when. 

the in the last couple of weeks, the country that has really stepped in started to argue from the Polish and the Swedish point of view is France. And, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, is saying that this is obviously a silly restriction and we need to release it. that just left the more conservative members of the coalition who are really, really concerned about what the blowback will be. 

But in the last week, all of Schultz, the chancellor of Germany, who has been consistently the most conservative voice in the alliance on pretty much everything regarding this war and said that, yeah, this is something that has to happen and that really puts pressure on the United States to act as well. Right now, the largest country that is saying flat out maybe no, no, but whoa, whoa whoa, let’s let’s think about this slowly. 

Is, the government here? Maloney of Italy has basically said it’s kind of funny. She basically called out the French for being French, for having seen some big things but not actually do anything, which is, you know, kind of cute. from my point of view, anyone who it takes the French just like that. But, the point is that this conversation is happening. 

It’s already happened at the EU level, and there’s not necessarily been a green light, but the conversation is building steam. And the real question, of course, is the United States is going to go along, since that’s where most weapons come from. But, but, but the fact that the Germans are on board, I mean, it’s probably only a matter of time now how this normally goes down is that one country will say, this weapon system can be used for this purpose, and they will be used and they will test the Russian red line. 

And if nothing happens, then everyone piles on. That’s what happened with the same artillery that’s happened with the Storm Sherman missiles. And that’s probably going to now happen for targeting things within Russia proper. That just leaves the personalities. How serious is what’s going on in Russia in terms of the counter threats? Is this a red line that starts a nuclear war? 

Well, you look at the people involved. The person who has been making most of the threats is Dmitry Medvedev, who is the former president of the country. Which makes you think that maybe he’s kind of important, but he’s not. He’s incompetent. He’s basically an intern. And Vladimir Putin only keeps him around because he looks Putin’s ass. Just so, and so when you see him making the threat, you know, it’s not all that serious. 

It would be serious if it was coming from someone, say, Nikola Patrushev, who is the guy who used to run the entire intelligence system. But in the last month, he’s basically been fired from his position and downgraded. So what Putin has discovered is the people that he has surrounded himself are really good at talking a good game, but not necessarily good at prosecuting a war. 

So he sacked his defense minister and brought him into a less dangerous position, put an economist and a bean counter in charge of the Defense Ministry, which in time, if it works, will make for a more competent defense industry, not because people will know how to fight, but because it won’t all be stolen. But then at the National Security Council, he basically just put his crony in there and fired the guy who can actually find Canada on a map. 

That’s Patrushev. So we’re in this flux when it comes to Russian foreign policy making, an especially strategic decision making, which I think the Europeans have picked up on and why they’re having this conversation now. Because right now, Putin’s inner circle is anything but competent. At a minimum, it needs more time to find its feet. After this most recent of a shakeup. 

And that’s a great time to up the ante in a way that the Russians are going to find very, very, very uncomfortable.