Russia launched a volley of missiles into Ukraine overnight, of which six were Kinzhals, aka Russia’s top-shelf hypersonic ballistic missiles. Reports coming out of Kyiv state that Ukraine was able to shoot down all the Kinzhals in the strike.
This is one of the most advanced weapons in Russia’s arsenal, and Ukrainian defenses were able to put them down with relative ease…talk about a shot to Putin’s ego.
For anyone with looming concerns about a war with Russia, their coffee probably tasted a little bit better this morning.
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.
The second question of the Q&A series is…if Russia is such a massive producer of oil and oil products, why are we wasting time discussing supply issues?
The Russian oil problems are best understood when compared to the American system. If you compare California and New York gas prices to those in Texas or Alabama…you might have a heart attack. Outside of the crazy taxes in CA and NY, this boils down to transportation.
Like CA or NY, most Russian oil is produced in one area, refined in another, and then needs to be shipped to its final destination. For the Russians, thousands of miles separate each of those steps. To complicate this supply chain even further, most of this stuff must be trucked into Ukraine since the Kerch Strait Bridge rail capabilities are gone.
The Ukrainians are fully aware of this shortcoming and are now focusing much of their firepower on oil transportation and infrastructure. Destroying refineries is easier said than done, so I would expect the main targets to be fuel tanks, fuel trains, and the occasional pipeline.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
So, you know, Russia is this massive producer of both oil and oil products. Why do I even talk about problems with them supplying the front when it comes to fuel supplies? I mean, isn’t there plenty? Well, let’s look at this first from the American point of view.
If you live in California or New York, you know, you know, the gasoline prices are significantly higher than they are in places like Alabama or Texas. And it’s not just about where the crude comes from. It’s also about where it’s processed. So, yes, California, New York, have higher taxes, but there’s also a transport component because the stuff is produced in one area, refined in a second area, and then it has to be shipped to the third area. In the case of Russia, most of the oil production, roughly 70% of the total, is in a corridor in southwestern Siberia, specifically Tatarstan and Bashkortatastan going north all the way up to the Arctic Sea. And with the exception of Tatarstan, there are very few refineries in this area. So you have to then ship the oil by pipe several thousand miles to another location where it is turned into refined product. And the refined product has to be shipped typically over a thousand miles in order to get to the Ukrainian front. There are refineries in places like Belgorod or near Rostov on Don, which is another reason why the Ukrainians have to take those two cities out of the equation. But they’re really along that entire western periphery because they used to supply the former Soviet satellite states of Central Europe, as well as a little bit of exports to the wider world.
Now, because the Russians have lost the Kerch Strait Bridge, they can’t rail fuel to the southern front at all. And so most of this stuff has to either rail into eastern Ukraine or go by truck to everywhere else, which is one of the many reasons why the Ukrainians have been going after the truck fleet and have destroyed most of the military truck fleet at this point. Another thing to keep in mind is that this is one of the many, many reasons why the Ukrainians are putting so much time and effort developing technologies in getting equipment from the West to target oil infrastructure. And in that, fuel tanks are absolutely the best thing to go after. And cargo trains are probably number two. And then, of course, trucks are number three.
Now, you can technically target refineries. The problem is one drone or one missile or one 2,000 pound bomb is only to do so much damage. Refineries are huge. Most refineries, once you include the standoff distance, are something like three square miles and they’re this forest of columns and pipes. And yeah, throwing some explosives into that is generally frowned upon. But when you have a noncommercial grade explosive like, say, diesel or gasoline or naphtha, when you hit it with fire, yes, it burns, but it only explodes under very specific conditions. And so if you want to blow up an entire refinery, it’s going to take you a huge amount of ammo to do so. And this is one of the reasons why I always found myself talking down threats to the oil sector back in the 2000s and 2010s, when groups like Hezbollah or the Iranians or al Qaeda or the Islamic State would try to target a refinery. There’s just not a place where you hit it with a pinprick and you trigger a chain reaction. This is not the Death Star. That means the Ukrainians have to follow by the same rules here if they really want to take a refinery offline. It’s a huge amount of effort. And if they are going to target a piece of energy infrastructure, that’s not a specific pipe or fuel cell or train, the one they’re going to go after is the city of Samarra in southern Russia.
Samarra serves as a junction point for multiple pipes coming in from northern Siberia, coming to and from eastern Siberia, coming up from the Caucasus and of course, going west. Roughly 40% of Russian crude is capable of going through this nexus in addition to its refineries. Now, the Ukrainians probably do have the capacity right now to throw a drone or two into it. But again, they’re going to do dozens, if not hundreds or a lot more sabotage.
So if you are going to see something a little deeper in Russia besides what we’ve seen so far, which is kind of been in a band around that part of occupied Ukraine, what you’re going to see is the Ukrainians probably going after the pipes themselves. They won’t take things offline for very long. Pipes are easy to replace, especially in segments. But if they hit them enough, they disrupt the flows the refineries shut down. How do we know? This happened in Chechnya during the 1990s. The Grozny region used to be the third largest refining center in the entirety of the former Soviet world, and it was a significant oil producer as well. Now that’s all gone to zero, but it gives you an idea of the long, grinding attritional fight that has to happen to really take this stuff offline for good.
And so in the meantime, they go after fuel tanks. You go after fuel trains. Okay. Next question.
Question number one of the series is…what happened to the half million Russian soldiers I predicted would hit the battlefield by June?
This goes without saying, but the data we’re working with is shaky. The video could stop there…but it’s also worth noting that even [especially] Russian President Vladimir Putin is being lied to. I suppose you’re asking for it when your inner circle is comprised of only six people (of which only half are competent).
Now back to the 500,000 number. At least 300,000 soldiers have been injured or killed since the operation began, which is close to the total from the first Russian mobilization. Yikes.
The Russians will need to bring in more numbers with a second mobilization, which means low-skilled soldiers and weak points in the Russian line. Now we’re looking through a murky and convoluted lens, but this all sounds like an opportunity for Ukraine.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. We’ve done a quick series on the counteroffensive that the Ukrainians have planned for this spring and summer. And a lot of you had questions. We’re kind of turning in Q&A into a fourth video that features cloudy, Colorado. Haven’t seen the sun here in a few days. Probably aren’t going to hit for a few more.
So question number one, what happened to the half a million Russian soldiers that I was predicting three or four months ago were going to be on the field of battle by the time we got to June? Well, we’re talking about Russian data on Russian information here. So, you know, on the front end and now. But the best guess we have right now is that Putin was lied to.
We know that Putin is stacking his inner circle with sycophants for quite some time. There’s really only about six people we talked to at all. Only three of them are competent. And the other three, unfortunately, are in charge of the defense industry and especially the military plans in Ukraine. The two personalities that matter the most, the first one is the Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, who is arguably the most incompetent person in the Russian government right now.
And he’s obviously in charge of the broader battle plan and the entire defense industry. And we now know that Shoigu has probably Stalin personally, one third of the Russian budget that was appropriated for defense equipment manufacturer over the last several years, and probably one third of a second third was stolen by his underlings. So whenever you see the Russians just not having enough equipment to do anything meaningful, it’s probably his fault.
And he’s the one in charge of the battle plan, and he’s the one who indicated there were going to be a lot more weapons shipments. The second defense official, who arguably rivals Shoigu with his military incompetence, is the guy who runs the Wagner Group, Dmitry Rogozin. This guy was literally a caterer until a few years ago and then got a little bit of money from the Russian government in order to build up this parallel military group that we know as Wagner that would go around the world hiring itself as mercenaries and committing war crimes when the local governments didn’t want to.
That doesn’t mean he can’t run a paramilitary organization, but it means he has no experience either. Managing or leading or participating in a military operation himself. And he has been leading the military operation and parliament. Now, for those of you who have been following Ukrainian news, you know that the Russians have been throwing body after body after body after body against the bombing city for six months now.
And conservatively speaking, 20,000 Russians have died and 100,000 have been injured. The real numbers are probably significantly higher. How much higher? We don’t know. But that means this one battle, which is not particularly strategically significant, where they’ve lost huge numbers of forces taking a real bite out of any other conscription or mobilization programs that the Russian government has been instituting.
So back to that half a million number. Best guess is that the Russians have lost at least 100,000, maybe as many as 200,000 men since the operation began. In addition to the at least 100,000 that were injured in Baquba and probably another 100,000 everywhere else. So let’s add it up. When the Russians first came in, in February of 2022, they had about 100, 140,000 men.
They then did a partial mobilization that is confirmed as anything as we can get with Russian data that brought in another 300,000. But if you’re talking 100,000 injured throughout the war, 100,000 specifically in Barkman and another at least 100,000 dead. That’s the entire mobilization.
So we’re probably looking at a second partial mobilization, maybe 200, maybe 250,000. But that doesn’t leave Russian forces with all that many more troops than they started with. And these new troops aren’t going to be nearly as skilled, which argues that the Ukraine is going to have a relatively easy time of things. Most of these new recruits haven’t really been in battle.
They’ve been building anti-tank fortifications. And I don’t know about you guys, but I’ve never built an anti-tank fortification myself. And if you were mobilized over the course of the last 90 days to build tank fortifications, I would argue that maybe they’re not the best anti-tank for fortifications that could be built. All this would suggest that the Ukrainians are going to do really well in the next couple of months.
But fog of war and Russian data and people actively lying to the Russian government about the status of the war. So. Okay, onto the next question.
When a country views a conflict as existential, putting a timeline on it is nearly impossible. So no matter how well (or bad) this Ukrainian counter-offensive plays out, we are only at the beginning of a long, drawn-out war.
For the Russians, war doesn’t stop in Ukraine; it stops once they have captured enough land or territory deemed critical to their survival. So we’re no longer talking about Kyiv or Crimea…we’re talking about Russia moving west and trying to occupy former strategic positions the Soviets held, like Warsaw.
So what does that mean for the Ukrainians? If they are going to stop the Russians from waging war again, not only do they need to take back all of their lands…they need to take the fight to the Russians.
No matter how the Ukraine War plays out, we are looking at an extreme breakdown of the security order. Either Russia emerges victorious, and a confrontation with NATO is in the cards – OR – Ukraine comes out on top and sends the Russian State down a path of disintegration.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here today. We’re doing part three of our Ukrainian Counteroffensive series. In blast sections, we explain why we going have to wait a little bit longer to get rid of the mud and how the Russians are going to go after the food supply, as well as the most likely, you know, smart plan that the Ukrainians are likely to fall.
Today, I think it’s worth underlining that even if the Ukrainians are wildly successful or horribly unsuccessful, we are really only at the beginning of a very long, drawn out military conflict here because for the Russians they see this conflict as existential and only a step one. The problem is that Russian territory is really poor and it’s flat and it’s open and it can’t support a very high population density.
So the only strategy that the Russians have ever discussed, heard in the last 400 years that allows them a degree of security is for them to expand out beyond the territories they hold to absorb ethnic group after ethnic group, of which the Ukrainians are only one of many, and eventually expand until they reach a series of geographic barriers that are not flat and open.
And in the case of Ukraine, that means the Caucasus Mountains and the Carpathians and the Baltic Sea, which means that Ukraine is not the end here. The Russians are going to go until they reach a geographical crustal defense that they can man with their rapidly declining demographic structure. And that means even if the Ukrainians fall to a man, even if they’re wiped out completely, the Russians are not done.
They will then come for Romania and Poland and Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania and probably Finland as well. So the Russians minimum victory is in the territories they hold now. It’s not holding up the Crimea. It isn’t Kyiv, it isn’t the vault, it’s Warsaw. And that’s a different sort of conflict that people have been preparing for at this point.
But for the Russians, that is the minimum that will give them what they need, a physical security. Now, what about the Ukrainians? Now, the Ukrainians say they’re going to liberate every inch of territory, which includes the entirety of Lugansk, Donetsk and the Crimea. Only that doesn’t make them any more secure. It gives them a little bit better strategic depth.
It gives them some of their industrial heartland and some of their coal and steel industry back. But at the end of the day, that doesn’t stop the Russians, because for the Russians, this is a battle for their existential survival. And even if they are ejected from Ukraine, they will not stop. They will rearm. They will rest. They will recruit, and they will make another attempt.
So if the Ukrainians are to prevent the Russians from actually waging war, if they’re going to stop this from happening again after they get the Donbas and Crimea, they then need to cross into Russia proper and then neutralize to specific urban areas that serve as logistical hubs. The first is Belgorod, which is just north of Kharkiv, which serves as the primary artery for transporting materiel, men and fuel into the northern aspects of the front.
If Belgorod could be neutralized, if the rail and the roads could be taken out of, the industrial infrastructure could be destroyed. If the fuel centers could be removed, then the Russians would have to proceed on foot on that front, and that is not a feasible option in an industrial war. The second one is much more complicated. It’s further to the southeast.
It’s called Rostov on Don. It’s a it’s a port city on the Don River. And it serves as the only logistical hub for supplying the entirety of the southern front. Not only can you get into Donetsk and Luhansk from there, that’s the only way you can get into the Crimea. It’s the other side of the bridge, if you will.
Now, if, if, if, if if the Ukrainians were to take the war to this point, there would be more going on here than simply preventing the Russians from launching another assault. It would also be about crippling Russia’s ability to maintain its own territorial coherence. Rostov on Don also serves as the primary logistical point to connect the greater Moscow region, where most Russians live south through road and rail to Rostov on Don, and then further south to the Caucasus, which is one of those all important barrier points that the Russians feel they must control.
And for those of you who have been asleep for the last 30 years, there’s an ethnic group there called the Chechens at the very end of that chain of Chechnya in Pakistan. If if if the Ukrainians were to succeed in neutralizing Rostov on Don, you can bet your ass that the Chechens going to launch a third rebellion. And this time the Russians wouldn’t be able to easily reinforce force or assault the Chechens, meaning that this time it would probably be successful, especially when you consider that the Ukrainians have already soaked up a lot of the military equipment and ammo that the Russians had stockpiled since 1945.
So what we’re looking at here one way or another, is an extreme breakdown of the security order. Either the Russians win, which means Ukraine ceases to exist and we’re in a direct nuclear confrontation between NATO’s in Russia or the Ukrainians win and neutralize Russia’s ability to control large chunks of its own territory, likely heralding the disintegration of the Russian state itself, which also has nuclear connotations.
So a lot of countries in the West have, in my opinion, been doing the right thing in the right order and almost even at the right speed in order to fight the Russians back. But I don’t think a lot of brain power has been dedicated to what happens the next day if one side actually wins this round. Now, luckily, even in the most outsized Ukrainian success this year, this is not a problem for 2023. 2024 however….
Ukraine has done all the prep work to launch its counter-offensive against the Russians. Now they just need Mother Nature to do her part and let the ground firm up. So, I would expect the tanks to roll out at the end of May or June.
Preliminary attacks by the Ukrainians have helped weaken the Russian’s ability to move. Since Russia typically fights by rail, these attacks have focused on rail nodes and connections. As Russian strategy pivots to trucks and vehicles, Ukraine targeting will shift to fuel depots and supply lines.
The Ukrainians have seen success by punching through the Russian front, cutting off supply lines, and forcing a rout. We will likely see a similar strategy used as the Ukrainians push into the Donbas and eventually out to the Sea of Azov.
If you’ve followed me for a while, much of this will sound like my predictions for a Ukrainian counter-offensive in the winter. As we’ve learned, the weather always wins and the Ukrainians are pretty sneaky…so these predictions should be taken with a grain of salt. What I’m looking to do is outline the logical next steps that Ukraine will take to win this war.
Yes, this map is from November. But given the largely static nature of the war, neither side has made significant gains since then.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the Bluebird Trail, which is just above Ken Castle in Colorado. You got the dry red rocks in the Lockheed Martin research facility down there below me. Looks really cool. After sunset, it’s lit up. Looks like a spaceship setting down in the rocks. Anyway, this is part two of our ongoing series on the coming Ukrainian counteroffensive. Expect to see that starting probably either in the last week of May or some time in June. Once the ground has firmed up enough that it’s not muddy in tanks can actually maneuver.
We’ve already seen the Ukrainians do a significant amount of prep in terms of preliminary attacks to hobble the Russians ability to move. Now, for those of you who’ve been following me for a while, you know that the Russian system, the military is designed to fight by rail. It does not do well with trucks. They don’t have very many and they’ve lost most of what they have. They prefer to put their troops and their equipment on rail lines, rail them as close as possible, and then throw everything like a giant fist at their foes. That has been a problem in this conflict so far, because the Ukrainians managed to take out the Kerch Strait Bridge, which was the only reliable rail connection into the Crimea.
And they’ve gone after a number of rail connections and nodes in the eastern sections of Ukraine, an area known as the Donbas, which takes up the two provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. And that has made it more difficult for the Russians as well, though not nearly as bad as Crimea. What they’ve been doing of late, what the Ukrainians have been doing of late is using a mix of missiles, drones and other air craft to target fuel depots and fuel trains.
And they’ve hit some very close to the border of Belarus in the north. They’ve hit some near Rostov on Don, some near over a season on the Black Sea and then, of course, in Crimea themselves, because trucks use a lot, lot, lot, lot more fuel to move the same amount of cargo compared to trains. So if the Ukrainians can hobble the Russians ability to move about the battlefield, then the Ukrainians can use superior movement.
And this has always been a war of movement for the Ukrainians. The Russians are slow but powerful. So Ukrainian strategy has been to move quick, punch through the lines, get behind them, partially encircle the Russians and then force a route where the Russians just leave everything behind. And that’s what they did in Kharkiv province in the summer offensive and in their fall offensive in Kherson.
The hope that the Ukrainians have is they’re going to be able to do that again with their spring offensive. And it really breaks down into two major pieces. The first is going to be a series of eastward thrusts into the Donbass to hit those other rail connections, to break up Russian formations in the Donbass so they can’t maneuver to assist one another, allowing the Ukrainians to dice them up and take their stuff.
You know, reasonable strategy has worked a couple of times already. But the second the bigger push is going to be going on the east side of the Dnieper River and then punching straight south through the province of Japanese. Easier in order to get to the Sea of Azov, which is an inlet off of the Black Sea. And if they can do that, they not only cut whatever remaining light rail connections that might be partially available to the Russians for logistics right now.
They also cut every single land connection and basically take the entirety of the southwestern part of the front and all of the Crimea peninsula and put it in a box. Because once the Ukrainians can get to the Sea of Azov, they’ll be able to take out the rest of the Kerch Bridge and then not even military trucks will be able to get in to resupply.
And then you’ll have the best forces that the Russians have completely trapped, completely devoid of reinforcements. The Navy will have to withdraw because the Ukrainians can then hit anywhere or any of the Crimean ports with missiles that they have. And the beautiful thing from the Ukrainian point of view is these attacks that they’ve already used to cross into Russia proper that uses Ukrainian gear, American gear at the moment is not allowed to be used on Russian territory.
So with every inch that the Ukrainians close towards the border, more and more of their own stuff can do deep strike into Russia proper. Now, if some of this the Donbass campaign, the separatist campaign sounds a little bit familiar, that’s because I mentioned this before. I thought there was going to be a winter counter attack. And so back in November, I basically released a video more or less lining up about half of what I just did right now.
Which brings me to why you shouldn’t take what I’m taking too seriously. Number one, whether wins and if we get a wet meh, then this attack is going to be pushed back not just to June, but maybe into July and even in August. And there might not be enough time to do it at scale anyway. Second, the Ukrainians have proven themselves very adept at fooling people into thinking what their actual intentions are.
So for example, the Kharkiv offensive last year, which was the biggest victory for the Ukrainians of the war so far, they didn’t advertise that at all. They made everybody think they were going after Kherson first, and that attack did happen, but it was really just designed to draw Russian troops away from where the Ukrainians really wanted to go.
And in the end, they ended up getting them both. So obviously the Russians get a vote in this. Obviously, the Ukrainians can decide where they go. What I’m outlining are the logical steps and things that ultimately Ukraine is going to have to do if it’s going to win this war. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to do it on my timeframe.
All right. That’s it for me. You all take care. See you tomorrow.
The headlines of the week are all looking at the “Imminent Ukrainian Counterattack,” and while there are many reasons to expect action from both sides….let’s focus on the inevitables for today.
We’ve seen the Russians struggling to hit their targets thanks to upgrades to the Ukrainian defense capabilities. So we’ll likely see the Russians pivot from targeting power infrastructure to something new…
While not perfect, the Black Sea export initiative did have some successes. By the EU’s counting, some 23 mmt of grain—mostly corn and wheat—were exported, helping the Ukrainians clear the backlog of their bumper 2020/2021 harvest. But the good news ends there. Ukraine has lost at least 15% of its grain storage capacity to the war, and much of its sunflower-crushing facilities are either inaccessible due to occupation or loss of infrastructure or destroyed. This means Kyiv, when able, will likely have to focus on exporting bulk sunflower seeds rather than higher-value sunflower oil.
Unfortunately, the Black Sea grain export deal brokered by the UN and Turks expires May 18th and is unlikely to be revived anytime soon. Expect the Russians to switch their focus to agricultural infrastructure. Targets like this are much harder to defend, and this will likely mark the beginning of the end of any meaningful food exports coming out of Ukraine.
On the Ukrainian side, they have all the supplies and weaponry ready to launch a counter-offensive, but there’s still a few feet of mud keeping anything from happening. I wouldn’t expect a ton of action from either side this month, but it’s coming soon.
Tomorrow we’ll discuss the minimum victory cases for each side.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Hey, everybody. Peter Zeiha here coming to you from Colorado. It is the 9th of May and all talk is about the imminent attack…counterattack of the Ukrainians against Russian forces across the length and breadth of Ukraine. There are a lot of reasons to expect a lot of action, and we’re going to have to break this up into chunks today.
We’re going to do talk about the stuff that we know is inevitable. We’ve seen significant improvements in Ukrainian air defense to the point that over 90% of the missiles and drones that the Russians have been firing in have not been able to hit their targets, which is, you know, great if you are in Ukraine because they’ve been targeting the power grid.
However, once it becomes apparent that the Ukrainians are going to move and once it becomes apparent that the weather is warm enough that targeting the power sector isn’t going to kill any civilians in Ukraine, the Russians are going to switch their targets to facilities that are more difficult to defend, and that is the agricultural supply chain system. So on the 18th there is a a deal that lapses.
The Turks and the United Nations have brokered a deal between Ukraine and Russia that allows civilian bulk trade, shipping vessels to get into Ukrainian ports after being searched by the Russians, load up with Ukrainian corn, wheat, sunflower and other stuff, and they get re-inspected on their way out just to make sure that they’re not smuggling anything in such as, say, weapons.
The Russians have been warning for weeks, if not months, that they’re backing away from the deal and they’re definitely not going to be renewing it next week when it comes up for renewal because they need to switch targets sets. In the past, they’ve gone for the power grid because that’s how you kill people in Ukraine in the winter.
But once you get to summer, you have to starve them. And this is probably going to be the end of meaningful agricultural exports from Ukraine. They’re going to go for ships, going to go for port. The window for loading facilities are going to be for coal train systems. They’re going to go for silos and storage facilities. And of course, any place that builds or maintains agricultural equipment, this stuff is a lot more dispersed.
It’s a lot harder to defend. It’s not like just putting a bunch of air defense around a city and you to have a lot more target hits because of it. But that’s how this is going to go on the Ukrainian side. This doesn’t mean that you should expect an assault before the 18th. In fact, I really don’t think it’s going to happen this month.
And the problem is simply weather and not like abnormal weather, just how it normally is. The problem the Ukrainians face is that every phone, every spring, the country just gets deluged and the land is very flat and it doesn’t drain very well. So you get mud, not mud. That’s like three or four inches deep, but mud that can be 6 to 8 feet deep.
And until it dries out, you simply cannot move people, much less tanks unless they’re on a road. And if you have heavy equipment on a road, you’re just asking for it to get blown up. So while the Ukrainians appear to be nearly ready, they’ve brought in a lot of weaponry. All the battle tanks that nature was promised are there.
And they’ve even trained up on a few jets that have been donated. They can’t move yet. And so it’s probably going to be the last week of May or into June when things finally draw out. That’s just kind of traditionally when the spring mud season ends. So it’s coming. It’s close, but we’re not here yet. Now, in tomorrow’s session, we’re going to talk about what the goals are of the Ukrainian offensive.
But I’m going to warn you right now, the Ukrainians have done well because they have been unpredictable. And after that, we’ll start talking about minimum cases for victory for both sides. All right. That’s it for me. Talk to you guys tomorrow. Bye.
The Soviets once boasted the most intricate and prolific human intelligence network in the world, but things have taken a turn since the end of the Cold War. So why can’t Putin’s Russia keep pace with its predecessors?
If someone were tasked with designing the worst geographical region known to man, it would likely resemble the Soviet space. In a place like that, you must be able to conquer, convert, and control anyone in between you and the natural geographic barriers you need. So human intelligence wasn’t a nice-to-have; it was the only way to survive.
Once the Cold War ended, the Russians were left with the shell of a system; still operational but only a shadow of what it once was. Most with this specialized training moved into the private sector or more powerful government positions under Putin.
Now I’m never going to say that Russian Intelligence sucks, but it’s taken some blows that will require a long recovery. I’m mainly concerned about the misinformation-pushing-bots that litter the internet.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Everybody. Peter Zine here coming to you from Colorado. Yes, this is later in the day that we got a foot of snow. It’s crazy. Anyway, I wanted to close out the series on Russian intelligence with why the Russians seem to be significantly weaker than we would have expected them to be, because, after all, this was one of the countries that arguably had the best human intelligence collection system in the world.
I think it’s worth first exploring why I say that the Russian geography is not like the American. So the United States has great coast, great waterways, great land. It’s easy to develop. It’s easy to expand. And so when we want to do human intelligence, you have to take somebody out of that environment and then put them in another one.
And since the United States is a very large country, even though we are multicultural, it’s not like we have a lot of experience in this is going to sound really horrible. Infiltrating and conquering other peoples. I mean. Yes, yes, yes. You can make the case for the Native Americans, you know, a century ago or more. But this isn’t something that’s kind of built into a society where as the Russian system is very, very different.
Moscow McAvoy originally was a relatively small chunk of land with not great capital generation or agricultural opportunities, and it had no natural barriers like the United States has with its border with Mexico or Canada, much less the rest of the world. And so they had to go out and conquer everyone that they border. And all that did was give them territory that they had to occupy and no borders that were decent.
So they went and conquered everyone around that group, too. And they kept expanding, expanding and expanding until they reached a series of geographic barriers like the Caucasus Mountains or the Baltic Sea that either halted their expansion or even better, provided a physical barrier for anyone else coming in and anyone who has been following me on Ukraine. You know, this is kind of my core reason why I think the Russians will never back down and why this war was always inevitable.
Anyway, this leaves the Russians with dozens of ethnicities that they have conquered and are literally using as cannon fodder. And since pretty much no one on the planet has grown up saying, Oh, I want to be cannon fodder later, you have to find a way to induce their cooperation. You can’t make them part of the leadership because they’re conquered people and you don’t want them going their own way.
So you basically shoot through the entire system with intelligence operatives. So the Russians, from the beginning, hundreds of years ago, have become experts at planting their people in other populations that may be hostile to Russian interests and collecting information and recruiting dissidents and basically turning the population against one another. And in doing that, they built up a skill set that dealt that served them very well in the Soviet period.
And the Soviets basically dusted off the Russian strategy and applied it to the world writ large, not just to the Soviet bloc countries or their occupied territories or folks within the Soviet Union itself. And that meant that by the time we got to 1989, the Soviet system had the richest human intelligence gathering network in human history. But then the Soviet system collapsed and just as everything else got weaker.
Same thing here. If you don’t pay your spies, they probably weren’t going to spy as well. There was also a problem with leadership, especially after the year 2000. There was also a big problem with the numbers that they had. So a lot of intelligence operatives after the Cold War ended went into business for themselves and got into drug running and worked for cartel cells and were for people smuggling or worked with the Taliban.
They basically forswear king country or czar in country and went into business and used their skill set for criminal enterprises. And they continued to be a problem today. Second, more importantly is that Putin drew a lot of his support from people who were part of the HUMINT network, specifically on the training and the leadership side, and brought them into his coalition to run the government after he became president in 2000.
Well, most of these people, like, you know, this is a wonderful opportunity to get rich. And so they got out of the business of manning the intel networks and got into the business of government. And these are the silver arcs, if you’re familiar with that term. The siloviki are the strong men, the military intelligence folks who run the system.
The oligarchs are the people who run business in the silver arcs of the people who have a foot in both worlds. Probably the most famous Eric is a guy by the name of Igor Sechin, who runs Rosneft, which is Russia’s national oil monopoly. Anyway, so the Russians have lost most of their operatives abroad because they stopped paying them in the nineties and they’ve lost most of their traders at home because they went into the business of government with Putin.
And that has left a bit of a shell of a system. Now they’re still good because that system to train these people still exist to a degree, but it had to become a lot more focused and they became very sensitive. The Russians became very sensitive to losing their operatives. They try to use them in places where they could have cover, that it was as dense as possible.
And as a rule, no matter what country you’re in, the most reliable cover for an operative is to say they’re a diplomat because that gives them an excuse to be in the country with a limited visa overwatch. They have diplomatic immunity. So if they get caught doing something and get sent home, you just send them to another country.
Well, that had worked for the Russians for a while until the Ukraine were started in. The Europeans decided to belly up to the bar and actually start looking after some of their own security interests. And so far in the war, well over 400, probably close to 500 now intelligent operatives who were registered as diplomats have been ejected. And the Europeans, rather than just sending them home and calling the day, have shared the identities of each and every one of them with every other country in the world.
So the Russians can never to deploy those operatives ever again in any sort of clandestine role with official government cover. And that means that the Russians have to reinvent a lot of their intelligence apparatus, give you an idea of the scale that the United States had to recreate its intelligence apparatus after 911 because we had the information. But we can process it fast enough.
20 years on, we’re still figuring out how to do that. This is not something that’s going to be shaped out by the time that this war is over. This is something that is going to be dogging the Russians for at least a decade. And that leaves me with one final point. There is another class of assets, deep cover assets, sometimes called the legal, sometimes called plants, where the people are assigned to go to another country, establish a false identity and live that false identity until such time as they’re called into action.
This is really the stuff of spy novels, but it does exist. And the Russians historically have been pretty good at it. What we have seen in the last year is at least a dozen instances of these plants, these illegals, these deep covert agents being unmasked, because as the Russians have realized, they can’t train at the same rate that they used to and they lost their entire diplomatic corps access to intelligence.
They’re having to rely on their deep plants to do basic intelligence gathering. And that is not a skill that these people are. Well suited to. For one, you know, these are years, if not decades of investment in time. And they’re being asked to do basic intelligence gathering and HUMINT collection. Well, that’s like using a maserati to deliver newspapers.
I mean, yes, it’ll work, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to imagine something going wrong. And that has now gone wrong with a number of these agents. So I’m never going to say that Russian intelligence sucks, but why has it taken a series of structural body blows that are going to be very, very difficult and time consuming to recover from?
And in the meantime, anyone who’s looking to resist Russian influence, it’s gotten pretty simple. You just have to worry about the bot farm. Right now. Russian misinformation is still coming screaming into the system, but it’s no longer. What’s the word I’m looking for. It’s no longer part of a multi vectored approach. It’s really the only leg the Russians have to stand on.
And at some point I think it’s pretty safe to say that one of the major governments of the world was going to do something about the bot form, and then the Russians are going to have to come up with everything else from scratch. All right. That’s it for me to you all. Take care.
What happens when you give a 21-year-old access to TOP SECRET documents? They end up leaking those documents on a gaming chat platform…shocking.
Most of the information that was leaked pertains to the Ukraine War and how the U.S. has low confidence in the reports coming out of Ukraine. Nothing too far-fetched, but that doesn’t mean we should take everything in the public domain at face value. Let’s remember who is blasting this info around and how easy it is to tamper with.
Russia once boasted the largest human intelligence arm, but we haven’t seen much Russian interference since Snowden. This means they’ve gotten really good, or that capability has lapsed, and I lean toward the latter.
As the US faces another leak, the real question that must be asked is whether people like Snowden, Manning, and Teixeira should even have access to this stuff.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Hey everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado where spring has sprung and the frogs are chirping, which means, of course, later today we’re supposed to get a foot of snow. Anyway, I thought it would be worth me commenting on the recent intelligence leaks by airmen Teixeira. Let’s deal with the contents of what was leaked and then we can talk about espionage and leaks in general.
So most of the documents that were leaked relate to the war in Ukraine in some way and involve internal U.S. assessments of how the war is going and how the Ukrainians are doing. And they’re broadly less than fully complementary. Basic indication from the leak is that the Ukrainians have been suffering higher casualties than are reported and more importantly, that the confidence in the numbers provided by the Ukrainians is very low. So the U.S. really doesn’t have a good view. In addition, there’s concern that by engaging in a static defense in places like Bakhmut, the Ukrainians are losing their combat firepower, which is going to make it more difficult for them to launch future offensives. There’s nothing about either of those assessments that is particularly controversial. But before you say that everything that is now out there in the public domain is true, keep in mind that it has been the Russians now that have publicized this stuff far and wide, and they have undoubtedly changed a lot of the details in order to make their propaganda machine a little bit stronger than it otherwise would be.
But three things to come from this. First of all. Teixeira, the guy who did the leak – the U.S. airman – from all appearances, was not recruited by the Russians. And that’s something that’s kind of had me curious for a while now. Not since Edward Snowden in 2013 have we had any of our leakers have a very firm and obvious Russian connection. Snowden apologists, of course, are going to reject that out of hand. But, you know, screw them. The Russians used to maintain the world’s best human intelligence arm. And in the last decade, either they’ve gotten so good that no one has detected them functionally working really anywhere, or that capacity has languished along with everything else that we’ve seen in the Russian state services of late, whether it’s the military or their cyber capabilities or anything else. That’s probably really good news. Second, Teixeira himself and why people do things like this, it’s really an issue of foreign recruitment. Even if they’re not a foreigner involved. People are often motivated by the same factors, with the big three being ego, ideology and sex. And in the case of Teixeira, it looks like it was probably a combination of all three. He was on a gamer’s forum. He had these documents. He had access to these documents. He brought them home. He photocopied them. He took PDF photos of them, and then he published them on the gamers platform, Discord, like the whiny bitch he is.
In the case of a couple of previous big leaks, I’m thinking here of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Ideology was certainly part of it for Manning in terms of Edward Snowden clearly was paid by the Russians, clearly fled to Russia, clearly married a trophy bride as soon as he got there. So, you know, I’m sure it’s for love, but let’s be a little bit more honest here. And then ideology, of course, intertwines with Snowden as well. I think the criticism here, if there is one, is we’ve now had three leaks of significance in the last 13 years that get into the files that are top secret and above. And if you look at the three specific cases of Snowden, Manning and Teixeira, they all have something in common. They probably should have never had access to these documents in the first place. Snowden was a part time contractor, and yes, he was definitely a spy. And yes, he definitely hacked into the system. But somebody at his level should have never been near a terminal, and given access in the first place. Manning was a private at the time and definitely should have not had access to the high end stuff. And Teixeira was a 21 year old airman. Now I am not the sort of person who’s going to go in and pick apart American security policy when it comes to information. But there is a pattern here and probably something that should be addressed in the not too distant future. But the biggest bit of encouragement I had is how fast Teixeira was caught. I mean, it really only took a few days for the FBI to find them. At the same time, a bunch of independent journalists found him and then publicized his information. So at least on time, on target, we are getting better from the law enforcement side of this. But maybe we should work a little bit more in information security on the personnel side.
Today’s video was recorded in Wānaka, New Zealand, during my yearly backpacking trip.
Since the onset of the Ukraine War, everyone’s been checking under their bed and looking in their closet for the boogeyman – a.k.a Russian Hackers – but they haven’t been there.
There are a few reasons why Russian cybercrime has been lying low. The Russians have been hitting NATO countries with cyber attacks for the past few years. Places like Estonia have learned a thing or two, enabling other NATO members to build robust cyber defenses over the past few years.
Additionally, much of Russian cybercrime is carried out by private crime syndicates, which makes going on the offense a bit easier. Unofficially, of course, the US was able to drop the hammer on many of these organizations, which limited their capabilities heading into the war.
I’m not saying everything is hunky dory, but we’re starting to see the true power of some offensive cyber tactics now on the table.
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.
Most countries put up their “no solicitors” signs when they see the Russians coming around to buy military supplies. However, a handful of countries will at least open the door to hear the pitch and Egypt just so happens to be one of those countries.
To sell military equipment to the Russians, you have to be able to check a couple of boxes. First, you can’t be worried about the political blowback from partnering with a genocidal, war-hungry country. Second, you either have a lot of extra supplies or are not worried about entering a war yourself.
Countries like China, India, Algeria, and Vietnam might entertain the conversation, but at the end of the day cannot check off both boxes. This leaves the Russians to deal with Egypt and North Korea.
Once the Americans caught wind that the Egyptians were considering making a deal with Russia, a quick cost-benefit analysis shut that deal down. That only leaves North Korea on the table. And if you want to pull out a sliver of good news from all this – that likely means North Korea won’t be entering any wars anytime soon.
This limited market is somewhat illuminating to the Russian predicament. While this remains Russia’s war to lose, if they can’t spin-up their military-industrial complex any quicker, this could be the war that ends Russia as an expansionary power.
Prefer to read the transcript of the video?Click here
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan coming to you from Colorado. One of the things that’s been in the news for the last couple of days or a couple of weeks has been that the Russians have been going out around the world trying to find military equipment that they can purchase. And one of the countries that almost nearly sold them some was none other than Egypt, a country that at least nominally is a U.S. ally. And that’s kind of caught a few people off guard. But if you look at the sort of decision making that goes into providing a country that is in a genocidal war of aggression against someone else, you can see that it actually makes a certain degree of sense to go to the Egyptians.
There are certain boxes you have to check if you are willing to supply weapons to Russia in its current environment. First of all, you have to not overtly be concerned with the political blowback from the United States. And second, you have to not really need that equipment yourself. And there are precious few countries of size with, you know, military equipment worth talking about that can actually scratch the itch for that. The single most important one that falls into both categories is North Korea, because the North Koreans have, you know, a million man army, a quarter of the population can be drafted any moment. They have been doing nothing but building military equipment now for decades. And apparently the Russians have gotten a lot of artillery shells from the North Koreans. And honestly, that tells me everything I need to know about the military posture of North Korea, because if they were concerned at all about the United States or South Korea, Japan launching a conventional military attack on them, they wouldn’t even consider selling their armaments to the Russians. So honestly, that puts North Korea not in the peacenik bucket by any stretch of the imagination. But it tells me that all the nuclear blustering is really just that, blustering. If they were concerned about a war, they would not be disarming by selling their weapons to someone else.
Other countries that the Russians have turned to that have been turned, the Russians down flat, China, India, Algeria, Vietnam. Now these are all countries that to a degree are either strategically or ideologically favorable to the Russians, but they either don’t want to antagonize the United States. That is the situation for Vietnam. Who is looking to have a firmer relationship with Washington in order to fend off China. That is the case for China, who is desperate to avoid a direct confrontation. They like stirring the pot. They like making everybody think that something is about to happen. But they know that if there was a military conflict, that would be the end of China as a modern, industrialized economy in a matter of months. So they’re certainly not going to cross that Rubicon. Algeria, if they don’t deal with the United States, they have to deal with their former colonial master, the French. And that is something they’re desperate to avoid. So from them, strategically, it’s just completely off the table. But for India, it’s different. India is always concerned that it could have another war with Pakistan tomorrow, and so they are absolutely unwilling to provide any military assistance at scale, regardless of what it might do to relations with the United States, because they think they might need that equipment themselves.
And that brings us back to Egypt. Egypt, aside from North Korea, is the only country in the world who might be willing to kind of stick it to the United States, because the strategic situation in Egypt has been stable for so long. There hasn’t been a military conflict with the Israelis since the seventies, and we now have a peace treaty that’s 40 years old. The Egyptians know there is not going to be a conventional war between Israel and Egypt or Libya in Egypt or Sudan and Egypt. So they actually have the equipment to spare, but they still have a very large military and a lot of gear they could potentially give away.
So it obviously didn’t work out. The Americans heard about it and, you know, put a little bit of a cost benefit analysis in front of Cairo that the Egyptians, you know, made the same choice. But it does kind of underline just how alone the Russians are. They have North Korea and that’s it. And if they can’t get their military industrial complex spinning up at a faster rate than what we’ve seen so far, this is the sort of war that could get them stem to stern and really end Russia as an expansionary power. Now, we’re not there yet, but this is still Russia’s war to lose. But wow are they trying.
Alright. That’s it for me. See you guys next time.
