Russian Intelligence Capabilities in Decline

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

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.

Top Secret Pentagon Documents Leaked by a 21-Year-Old

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

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.

Okay. I think that’s it for me. Take care.

Where Are All the Russian Hackers?

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

Russia (Almost) Gets Military Supplies From Egypt

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

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.

Crumbling Infrastructure in the Russian Taiga

Today’s video comes to you from the Rockburn Track in New Zealand.

Terrain as you see in this video, doesn’t exist in many places, as it takes the right mix of altitude and humidity to form. However, this is very similar to the dominant vegetation in Russia’s northern Taiga.

This terrain makes it extremely difficult to build any form of solid infrastructure. In Russia, they wait until the ground freezes solid, then dig down to the permafrost and fill the hole with sand, gravel, or whatever else they have. This forms dikes or berms on which they can build roads, lay pipes, or install any other key infrastructure.

In a post-Ukraine War Russia, will this infrastructure come back online quickly? All of this infrastructure is old and barely hanging on, and now that the West won’t be involved anymore, I wouldn’t count on any of this coming back online for a decade (+).

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the Rockburn in New Zealand. And I just saw some vegetation that reminded me of something of significant import.

So behind me, you just have a normal tree stump, but it is covered in several inches of moss. You can see how my hiking pole really sinks into it. Terrain like this doesn’t exist in many parts of the world. You need just the right altitude and the right humidity in order for the stuff to grow in the first place. You’ve got it here in New Zealand, in the temperate rainforest. You’ve got it on Vancouver Island in northwest Canada. It exists in Manitoba, in what they call the Muskeg that is approaching the Arctic Ocean. And then it is also the dominant vegetation and some of the Taiga in northern Russia.

Oh, yeah, unstable ground. So it doesn’t really matter what the reason for a spongy ground, whether it’s moss or permafrost, happens to be, it’s very difficult to build artificial infrastructure. But if you want to do anything with the land, that’s what you’ve got to do. In the case of the Russian space, you’ve got that mushy, marshy top over what is ultimately permafrost, somewhere between five and 30 feet under the surface. And until you get to the permafrost, the frozen layer, everything is just goo. And so any infrastructure that you were to build in the summer would just sink into the swamp. So what they have to do is they wait for everything to freeze solid in the depths of the Siberian winter, and then they go and excavate it and then bring in rock and sand and gravel and aggregate and tar and everything else to build giant berms that go from the permafrost all the way up until you get these dikes that run over the landscape. Environmentally devastating, of course, but that’s never been something the Russians have really cared about. And then you can run roads and pipes and the such, over those berms.

So one of the things that people discuss, you know, in in a post Ukraine worst scenario, will we be going back into Russia in order to tap those resources again and, you know, even in the best case scenario where the government and the politics line up, you really should still count all the Russian stuff out for several decades because that’s how long it took to bring this stuff online. Western techs have been essential to maintaining output in the Russian oil and natural gas fields and their petrochemical center and their general industry since 1992. Because most of this raw infrastructure was built in the 1960s and it’s barely holding on by its fingernails now. And with the Western techs, the Western skills sets, the western capital gone. We’re seeing industrial accidents that are, let’s just say Soviet in scale.

So a lot of this stuff is going to have to be rebuilt and then you’re going to have to have a positive security environment that goes all the way from the point of production through hundreds, if not thousands of miles of permafrost to get to populated Russia and then finally to get out to the wider world. And that is not something you’re going to fix in three months or six months or nine months or ninety months. That’s a decade plus project minimum. And that’s a decade plus in which relations with Moscow have to be positive. So we should all kind of pencil in that materials coming out of the former Soviet space, specifically the Russian space, just aren’t going to be there for the foreseeable future. Until next time.

Russia Moves Nukes to Belarus

Today’s video comes to you from the shores of Lake Hawea with the famed Dingle Burn arm behind me.

Anytime Russia and nukes are mentioned in the same sentence…the world pays attention. But does moving your nukes to a new place inherently change your military posture?

In the case of Belarus, the answer is no. Russia already has nukes in Kaliningrad (further west than Belarus), so this isn’t “expanding” Putin’s military reach. Additionally, the Belarusian infrastructure sucks, so these nukes will likely sit around and collect dust (unless they’re sold on the open market, but that’s an entirely different conversation).

So what does moving Russian nukes to Belarus accomplish? Putin gets to bang on his chest a little, rally up the domestic nationalism machine, and ensure the internal political situation is still propping him up. As for international security issues, this doesn’t move the needle…at least for now.

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from the shores of Lake Hawea with the famed Dingle Burn arm behind me. This is my favorite lake in New Zealand for the obvious reasons. And today we’re talking about Russia and nukes. So for those of you who have, you know, not been under a rock, the Russians have been threatening nuclear, this and that and everything since the Ukraine war started. But if you look back and look at the statements, you’ll know that sometime in mid-March of last year, Putin stopped making threats. And it was only in the last couple of weeks that the Russians have said they’re moving nukes up to a permanent station in Belarus, which is the first expansion of the Russian military footprint in terms of nuclear arms since the end of the Cold War. A lot of people are worried about that. But I think it’s best to look back before we look forward.

So if you remember back to February and early March, Putin was making nuclear threats against anyone who was willing to support the Ukrainians in any way. And then he just stopped. And the way it was explained to me the last time I was in Washington, went something like this this – the ambassador was dispatched to talk to Putin and to lay out a little bit of logic. And the idea was that if you look back to February and March, especially in January, when the Russians would have a super secret meeting with the National Security Council, the locked room, and then within hours, the transcript of those conversations would be published in Western media. The way the ambassador explained it to Putin was that the Americans have been listening to everything every phone call, every conversation, reading, every email, and in doing so, had a full picture of everything that Putin was personally considering and within his inner circle. And the idea was that, you know, a minor detail of this sort of espionage was that the United States knew at any given time physically where Putin was. So if he thought he could fling a nuke into the Western Hemisphere in the first couple, wouldn’t just come back and come right down his throat. He was kind of out of his mind. So he stopped making the threats and he left it to his henchmen to do it. This new development is kind of in the same vein.

Putting nukes in a place doesn’t in of itself change your military posture. And we know from some of the nuclear threats that the Russians made back in last March and April and May is that they didn’t actually change their readiness. They were just shouting. This is kind of like that. Because if you put a nuke in another country, you need a hardened facility, you need a command and control system, you need a night system that is absolutely hack proof. And putting that in Belarus, Belarus barely has electricity on a good day. It’s a horrible place for a nuclear race. So if the Russians did transfer nukes there, they basically would be sitting in crates surrounded by soldiers unable to be launched. So at this point and this specific issue, the nuclear threat coming out of Russia has not actually increased. The potential risk we have here is proliferation, because we know that the Russians don’t have the best security and we know that the military has become really corrupt, especially when it comes to hardware and funding. So taking secure nuclear materials and transferring them to a country that’s a kleptocracy like Belarus actually raises the chance that these things might get sold on the open market. It’s not that that’s a non risk, but it’s a very, very different risk from the idea of the Russians actually physically expanding their nuclear deployment footprint. But in terms of operational readiness, there’s really no change because the Russians already have a nuclear footprint in their little enclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, which is west of Belarus.

So nothing has really changed here. The Russians are just looking for a little way to beat their chests and kind of feed the domestic nationalism machine that is keeping the government in power. This is about internal Russian politics, not international security issues, at least for now. Alright. That’s it for me. Talk to you guys later.

Building the Anti-Russian Alliance

NATO flag with a Russian pin and ammunition

Today’s video comes to you from Doubtful Sound in Fiordland National Park.

The European space has historically been disconnected. Between geographical barriers, neutral countries, and bloody history, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Now that central and western Europe is forming a coalition against the Russians…Putin should be shaking in his boots.

Much of core Europe has already made its stance clear, with German, Portuguese, and Spanish tanks arriving throughout the month. With NATO votes coming up, historically neutral countries like Finland and Sweden are making their alliances clear. And even Turkey can no longer straddle the line and play both sides of this ordeal.

The real kicker here is that the Americans aren’t steering the ship. This is the Europeans doing what’s best for the Europeans. We haven’t seen a coalition this large united against a single power for centuries, and the Russians are in for a rude awakening.

*At 3:50 in the video, Peter mentions that the “French are contributing (to the Ukraine War effort) in a way they haven’t done since WWII” – it’s important to note that the French had boots on the ground in both Desert Storm and Desert Shield

*At the time of posting Finland has already been added to NATO

Prefer to read the transcript of the video? Click here

Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
 
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
 
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
 
And then there’s you.
 
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey Everyone. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Doubtful Sound in New Zealand’s Fiordland National Park. Anyway, a lot of things have gone down in the Ukraine space politically, not so much militarily. And I thought it was worth kind of looking at what the big picture is and to understand where we’re going forward, we have to go back. If you go to the world before 1945, the age of European competition, you had shifting alliances because the geography really prevented the area from coalescing into a single entity. So your northern plane, you’ve got the French, the Dutch, the Belgians, the Poles and the Germans who if you know, if there was ever going to be a zone where someone controlled everything, would be them. And so most chapters of history have been one of those powers trying to assert control over the others. You’ve got Scandinavian in the north with fjords and peninsulas and islands, so always fiercely independent and very naval oriented compared to everyone else. In the south you’ve got a more occluded coastline with very few navigable rivers of any type. And so you get regional powers who were relatively isolated from the others, but who could really punch above their weight economically because they’re all trade oriented, whether that’s in Spain or Portugal or Italy or the Balkans. It makes for a bit of a mess. And so for most of the half millennia leading up to 1945, it was kind of a war of all against all with shifting alliances here and there. Always changing texture, always changing sides. Then the Americans came in, in World War Two, and the Soviets rose during World War Two become major powers who injected themselves into this competition, encroaching into the rules of the game, because suddenly you had these two outside-ish powers who were determining all the major decisions. And we kind of forgot that Europe was the most blood soaked part of the planet until that point.

Now, with 1990 and the end of the Cold War, the Europeans have been living in a vacation from history where the security paradigms of the Cold War exist without the security threat of the Cold War. You combine that with the late globalization period and the time when pretty much all of the world was open for business and you got a very different sort of environment economically and especially politically. Well, the Russians now are kind of climbing back, clawing out of their post-Soviet hole and attempting to reassert themselves as a major regional power. Whether you believe they’re doing this out of stupid reasons or sane security reasons doesn’t really matter. They’re trying to change the nature of the system for their own long term benefit, and that is forcing countries to do something that they haven’t had to do for decades. Take a side, take a position and form an alliance to counter the Russians.

Now, from the Russian point of view, it’s all about the Americans all the time. And everything that’s going wrong for the Russian can be laid at the Americans feet. But that is to completely ignore the history of Europe, which is that of a series of independent and semi-independent primary secondary powers.

So what is kind of shaking out this week? Well, first and most importantly, the German leopard tanks, mainline battle tanks, have finally reached the war. And so now the Germans have fallen into this position of – we don’t want to be in a leadership position. We know what that has looked like in the past. We understand why everyone was nervous about it. Well, we don’t have a choice. We are the largest economic power in the northern European plain, the largest economic power in Europe. And historically speaking, we have also been the most powerful military force. We have to take a leadership position because if we don’t, this is all going to fall apart and we will be facing the Russians on the plains of Poland. And we know exactly where that leads. And we don’t want that.

This has a lot of depth because the Dutch also on the northern European plain are into the hilt. So are the Poles. The French are contributing in a way we haven’t seen the French contribute to multinational operations since World War Two and even further back technically off the plain in places like Spain and Portugal. Portugal tanks arrive with the German ones and the Spanish ones will be there within a month. So everyone in that kind of strip of what you think of as core Europe is already fully committed and back in the game. Scandinavia is a little bit different here. You’ve got mostly independent cities, states that masquerade as countries, and then Sweden, which has kind of been out of the game for three centuries. By the end of next week, Turkey will have voted on whether or not to let the Finns into NATO’s, and a vote on Sweden will probably go within a couple of months of that. And that means that these two traditionally neutral powers are going to be taking a leadership position in security policy in Europe. And the only issue they care about are the Russians. Now, the Swedes have been out of the game for three centuries after a massive military defeat in what is today’s Ukraine and in the aftermath of World War Two, the Finns were forced into a degree of neutrality where they could chart their own economic course. But on any sort of security decision making, the Soviets had full veto power. Well, that is now gone. And these two countries that have very strong militaries, relative to their size, economically or in terms of population, all of a sudden are the harbingers of the apocalypse when it comes to the Russian point of view of how European security should go, because they are extraordinarily anti-Russian. Every security question that they have ever faced has been framed in the context of what do we do the day the Russians invade? Everything else is around that, and now they’re about to be part of the decision making architecture. That also means that the Turks are coming in from the cold. They’ve been trying to kind of have their cake and eat it, too. But in the last few weeks, they’ve joined the sanctions regime relatively forthrightly and are now no longer an avenue that the Russians can use to evade the sanctions regime, especially when it comes to materials import things like semiconductors. And then finally, of course, there’s the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom was always going to be anti-Russian because it’s a naval power on an island. And any time it looks like a land power in Europe is going to become more potent. They get a little nervous and they want to make sure that the land powers are busy with land issues so they can’t float navies that can challenge London. Well, King Charles was just coronated in his first full state visit to Germany. If there are two countries in the European space that tend to be on opposite sides of all economic and security questions, it’s the United Kingdom and it’s Germany. And the fact that they’re, you know, within sight of one another is something that should turn anyone on the opposite side of that axis to turn the blood cold.

So what we’re seeing here for the first time, not in decades, but in centuries, is everyone in Central and Western Europe at the same time coming together to form a broad coalition against a single power. We haven’t had that since Napoleon, if you want to get technical, we haven’t had that since the Treaty of Westphalia. And the Americans, while they are a part of all of this, are not steering this part of the equation. This is the Europeans doing what makes sense to the Europeans. And if I were the Russians, I’d be very concerned about that.

The Russian & Chinese “Partnership”

Russia has long operated under the guise of “strategic partnerships” to keep its enemies within striking distance. Putin and Xi’s partnership is no different. However, only time will tell who will end up with the knife in their back.

For both sides, this is an alliance of convenience enabling them to get around some sanctions brought on by the war in Ukraine. But the Chinese might be looking to gain a little more from this relationship. Xi’s recent meeting with the leaders from Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan is indicative that a move on the Russian space could be in the cards.

One of Putin’s motivations for the war in Ukraine is to take control of the geographic access points used to launch assaults against the Russians. Can you guess where one of those access points just so happens to be? The Altai Gap…which connects Russia, Kazakhstan, and you guessed it, China.

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

Russia Targets the Ukraine Grain Deal

The changing situation with the Ukraine Grain Deal has given me plenty to ponder while tromping through Fjordland in New Zealand. Due to the war, Ukrainian agricultural exports were reduced to a fraction of their pre-war numbers. The grain deal brokered by the UN was a glimmer of hope that perhaps exports wouldn’t entirely fall off the map…

With winter on the way out and summer just around the corner, the Russians are revaluating their strategy. Targeting power infrastructure may have worked during the winter, but it doesn’t make much sense for the warmer months…it appears the new target will likely be Ukrainian agriculture.

We’ve already seen the Russians change the renegotiation period of the grain deal from 120 days to 60 days, and I wouldn’t be surprised if March is the last time the Russians resign. So Ukrainian exports might fall off very soon, but can the rest of the world’s (already struggling) agriculture industry pick up the slack?

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

TRANSCIPT

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan coming to you from Ruby Baby in Fjordland in New Zealand. The big news that I’ve noticed is that the Russians are throwing a bit of a fit about the grain deal they have with the Ukrainians. Now Ukraine until very recently was one of the world’s five biggest agricultural exporters for wheat, number four in corn, number one in sunflower you know all important things that help prevent a lot of countries from starving to death. Well, the problem is that most of the stuff that comes out of Ukraine is shipped by water. It’s far easier to ship things by water than it is by land. In terms of rail versus water, about a 3 to 1 cost difference. And Ukraine is perfectly set up for that because they’ve got the Dnieper River that cuts right south to north through the middle of the country. And so everything just gets on a barge, goes out, eventually hits the sea cities Kherson and Odessa, then are put on the big altars and then taken out through the Black Sea, the Turkish Straits and the rest of the world. What has happened, however, is with the Russians first capturing Kherson and then putting Odessa under assault, this is all been disrupted. So the only way to move things out of Ukraine at present is by rail. And not only does Ukraine not have a well-developed rail system. It doesn’t use the same gauge as the European ports. So it’s been very, very difficult, to get much out. Really less than about one out of six vehicles that they used to ship, they can ship now.

Now, the Turks in league with the United Nations have convinced the Russians to sign on to a grain deal. And this grain deal allows ships to come into Odessa, get searched by the Russians on the way in to make sure they’re not carrying weapons and then load up with grain and they get searched on the way out to make sure that they’re not carrying anything that the Russians don’t want to get out. This has increased the volume to about 20 to 25% of the volume that the Ukrainians could do before the war. So still not great.

Now, if you’ve been following the war, you know that throughout the winter the Russians have been bombing the power grid with drones and missiles to try to kill as many Ukrainians as possible. They’ve been doing this in the winter, thinking that if you can freeze the country to death, many tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people will be injured or killed. And that might weaken the war effort. Once we get to summer that’s going to change. So what the Russians are facing here is the grain deal is normally renegotiated every 120 days they are  now insisting they only want a 60 day renewal. Well, if you fast forward from late March, 60 days, we’re getting into the beginning of summer. In the beginning of summer, the Russians won’t have a vested interest in destroying the power grid because no one’s going to freeze to death. So they’re going to go after the agricultural system, everything from fertilizer on the front end to the silos and the rail stations on the back end to try to kill as many people as possible that way.

So last year was probably the last year that Ukraine will be a significant agricultural exporter at all, and we should not expect to see the Green Deal renewed come late May. That’s just the situation we’re at. And if you throw in the problems with natural gas and nitrogen processing in Europe hitting the fertilizer market, the problems getting potash out of Belarus hitting the fertilizer market, the problems getting phosphate out of China, hitting the fertilizer market later this year is going to be really raw for a lot of places. Aright. That’s it for me. I’ll see you guys at the next spot. Take care.

The Jordan Harbinger Show

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Jordan Harbinger on “The Jordan Harbinger Show” (for the loyal followers, you’ll know this is my second appearance).

We discussed how the globalized world came to be, the factors contributing to its instability, and how the process of deglobalization is well underway. The chaos the world is about to face is nearly impossible to consolidate into an hour long podcast, but this is a good start!

Links to the podcasts, YouTube videos, and more can all be found below.

Geopolitical Strategist on China’s Upcoming Collapse JHS Ep. 781

Confronting a Geopolitical Strategist on Putin’s Big Plan Peter Zeihan Ep. 640

*This video is from my first appearance on The Jordan Harbinger Show

Did you miss out on the Global Outlook Webinar
Click the link below to purchase it:

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY