Much of the current focus on the Ukraine war is currently on the shelling of the major urban centers of Kharkiv and Kyiv. And from a political and humanitarian perspective, that certainly makes sense.
But there is a broader strategic and economic perspective that I feel as though some are missing when it comes to the Russian campaign along Ukraine’s southern coast, currently focused on the week-long bombardment of the southeastern port city of Mariupol. If (sadly, I think this is now more of a case of “when“) the port of Mariupol falls, there will be little to stop Russia from sending troops west from Russia proper, through the Ukraine separatist regions, to the Crimean peninsula, and onward to Ukraine’s primary commercial port of Odessa.
Given the considerable effort Russia will have expended to reach Odessa, there’s little reason to expect them to stop there…
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.
Few things in are more complex than energy logistics, and the world is about to get a masterclass.
Different crude grades with different chemical make-ups with different reliabilities lead to different refining dependencies. Some crudes are thick (heavy). Others thin (light). Still others are laden with impurities (sour), while others are pure (sweet). Small mismatches in crude quality can typically be managed with some creative blending.
That’s totally not what’s about to happen.
Cancelled ship insurance policies. Customers and shippers not wanting to be caught with potentially-sanctioned oil. Investor abandonments. War disruptions. Sabotage. The world’s single-largest crude grade by volume – Russia’s Urals blend – is vanishing from the market. Within weeks some 5% of global oil production will be gone. For years. At a minimum.
The result isn’t simply the biggest energy shock we have experienced since World War II, but one whose effects will vary wildly country to country. And one that will force a great many players to take action to secure their ongoing economic capacity. That will not go over will with others.
Join us TODAY – March 4 – for the Ukraine War: Energy Edition. It is the first in our open-ended series on the economic effects and aftereffects of the Russian invasion..
Can’t make it to the live webinar? No problem! All paid registrants will be sent a link to access the recording of the webinar and Q&A session, as well as a copy of presentation materials, after the live webinar concludes.
Russia’s abundance of flat, cool-temperate land doesn’t provide much in terms of defensible geography. But it is good for growing grain, particularly wheat. Russia’s place in global grain markets is also a great example of technology helping a country overcome geographic limitations. Moscow was not blessed with a country boasting an American or German level of navigable riverways, nor are its prime grain producing regions particularly close to any of its ports.
Enter rail.
The below graphic is an excerpt from my upcoming fourth book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Civilization. We can see that as Russia was able to install more railways, grain production and exports exploded by the mid-to-late 19th century. And the Russians have never really looked back. (Russian agricultural technology has not really advanced much since the introduction of rail cars and mechanical tractors and harvesters, but I digress…)
Now we are gearing up for the release of our newest project – The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. The new book breaks down the future shape of various economic sectors in a post-globalized world: finance, manufacturing, agriculture. Consider the above map. Every country that is not green or blue is a food importer. Keeping the global population alive requires global peace and global sRussia is often derided as a gas station masquerading as a country. As I have noted before, this is an oversimplification that belies the significant role Moscow plays in global agricultural markets. Russia and its wheat belt neighbors, particularly Ukraine, are significant agricultural exporters of grains and seed oils. But Russia is also leading global exporter of fertilizers and fertilizer components. Not only do Russian fertilizer exports help support agricultural production in Brazil, China, India and Europe, but they help provide necessary supply in a globalized market that is increasingly seeing farmers’ input costs rise.
The breaking of trade relationships, spasms in energy pricing, and most certainly the Ukraine War will limit sharply what is possible in the world of agriculture, and do so more quickly than I have ever feared. Join us March 11 for a seminar on the impact of the Ukraine War on global agriculture. We’ll dive deep into the product and input disruptions that will shape our world this year, and deep into the future.
Can’t make it to the live webinar? No problem! All paid registrants will be sent a link to access the recording of the webinar and Q&A session, as well as a copy of presentation materials, after the live webinar concludes.
Nowhere on earth boasts the sheer volume of cross-border hydrocarbon infrastructure as we see between Russia and its European neighbors. Or between Russia and the heart of the EU. Or between Russia and the bulk of NATO. A matter of perspective, I suppose.
Part of it is due to geography–flat land makes pipelines easier, and you have a captive, er, consumer population with underwhelming oil and gas reserves on one side of the border, and plentiful oil and gas on the other. Japan and China, try as they might, aren’t getting directly pipeline connectivity to the Persian Gulf.
Part of it is also strategic.
According to one’s perspective, Russia’s economy is wrapped up too intimately with that of its customers to threaten their stability. Ditto for the primary transit states carrying the bulk of Russian energy exports into Europe: Belarus, and Ukraine. As for the other side, well–how have the Europeans fared this past winter?
Anyone following global energy trends and pricing can see that what happens in Russia’s neighborhood, does not stay in Russia’s neighborhood. Oil’s the easy part, and pricing is reactionary. But what about refinery supplies? North American and global natural gas pricing differentials? The future of the European LNG market? Asian supply premiums? The demand for new infrastructure development?
Join us tomorrow, March 4, for our next seminar on the fate of Russian energy, and how its foibles will shake the global economy off its foundation.
Can’t make it to the live webinar? No problem! All paid registrants will be sent a link to access the recording of the webinar and Q&A session, as well as a copy of presentation materials, after the live webinar concludes.
This is a welcome and a bit of a (re-)introduction of who I am and what we do here at ZoG for the new followers and newsletter subscribers who have joined us over the past week since Russian began their invasion of Ukraine. As many of you can imagine, our services are in a bit of demand at the moment, but we’re trying to get content and explainers out as fast as possible.
For those who are new here, the best explainers of how we view the world–and more important, what we see coming down the pipeline–can be found in my books.
But most important, many of you have asked how to help those who are currently suffering in Ukraine. There are many aid groups doing laudable work, but one we are supporting is the Afya Foundation.
At the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we asked our readers who were so inclined and able to consider donating toward a cause we thought was important: Feeding America.
While we still believe strongly in their mission, with recent events in Ukraine we are asking our subscribers to consider supporting a charity focused on relief efforts there. There are many good ones to choose from, but one in particular we are supporting is the Afya Foundation.
They collect money and health supplies for underserved communities in the world, and have begun delivering non-combat support to refugees and population centers in Ukraine. We hope that those who can, join us.
The last time wheat exports from the former Soviet space were limited, it was due to a poor Siberian harvest in 2010. Within a few months wheat prices doubled globally, tripling in the markets heavily dependent upon Russia’s low-quality output. The region most affected was North Africa and the Middle East. That instability generated the series of coups, uprisings and wars we now know as the Arab Spring. Big deal? Yes. But by global standards the damage was limited to a single region.
Compared to the smoldering torch of the Arab Spring, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will trigger a global firestorm. In my new book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization, I use my trusty tools of demography and geopolitics to peer into the post-globalized future. In part due to American disinterest, in part due to Chinese instability, and most certainly in part due to the Ukraine War, we are getting a taste of what’s to come in global agricultural markets. And we are getting it right now.
Now we are gearing up for the release of our newest project – The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. The new book breaks down the future shape of various economic sectors in a post-globalized world: finance, manufacturing, agriculture. Consider the above map. Every country that is not green or blue is a food importer. Keeping the global population alive requires global peace and global supply chains. In the former Soviet world, that peace and those supply chains are gone forever. I’ve long said that we will never reach a global population of 9 billion. That future deglobalization will result in the death of a billion people by starvation. The future is here. The leading edge of the famines of tomorrow begin in 2022.
The breaking of trade relationships, spasms in energy pricing, and most certainly the Ukraine War will limit sharply what is possible in the world of agriculture, and do so more quickly than I have ever feared. Join us March 11 for a seminar on the impact of the Ukraine War on global agriculture. We’ll dive deep into the product and input disruptions that will shape our world this year, and deep into the future.
Can’t make it to the live webinar? No problem! All paid registrants will be sent a link to access the recording of the webinar and Q&A session, as well as a copy of presentation materials, after the live webinar concludes.
The ins and outs of the major oil and natural gas suppliers is a favorite topic of ours here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, and it forms a cornerstone of our expertise; my team and I have decades of combined experience on the issues facing global energy. Crack open any of my books and you’ll see that oil and gas are usually the topic of the longest chapters.
My second book, The Absent Superpower, chronicles the many outcomes of the American shale revolution. Most notable: an America able to divorce itself from the wider world, and a major regional war in which Russia invades…Ukraine.
The rapidly-building Ukraine War obviates nothing in the new book (thankfully), but it certainly focuses the mind on the burning questions of the day. How badly will the war impact the world’s second-largest energy exporter? Which consuming markets will be most (and least) impacted? How will those markets adapt to the sudden loss of Russian exports? How long will those losses last?
Join us March 4 for our next seminar on the fate of Russian energy, and how its foibles will shake the global economy off its foundation.
Can’t make it to the live webinar? No problem! All paid registrants will be sent a link to access the recording of the webinar and Q&A session, as well as a copy of presentation materials, after the live webinar concludes.
I thought it would be helpful to collect our recent newsletters on the subject of Russia and Ukraine in a single place for easy reference. As a reminder, the Zeihan on Geopolitics newsletter is free, and a searchable archive of all past newsletters is available here on our website.
Our team at Zeihan on Geopolitics is uniquely positioned to help industry leaders safeguard their interests in a global system that seems increasingly headed toward chaos. Anyone with overseas investments, operations and personnel knows that the global landscape has only become more uncertain.
Leveraging nearly 40 years of combined experience in geopolitical analysis, research and intelligence our custom analytical products and keynote presentations help our clients avoid risk and maximize opportunities, with a special emphasis on the following regions and industries:
The United States as an International Player
China and Northeast Asia
Europe and the Former Soviet Union
The Middle East and North Africa
Canada, Mexico and the Americas
India and South Asia
The US Shale Revolution and Global Energy Markets
Agriculture
Global Transport and Supply Chains
Manufacturing
Finance
Industrial Commodities
To learn more about how Zeihan on Geopolitics can help your organization, or to book Peter to speak at your next event please click the link below.
If you enjoy our free newsletters, the team at Zeihan on Geopolitics asks you to consider donating to Feeding America.
The economic lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19 left many without jobs and additional tens of millions of people, including children, without reliable food. Feeding America works with food manufacturers and suppliers to provide meals for those in need and provides direct support to America’s food banks.
Food pantries are facing declining donations from grocery stores with stretched supply chains. At the same time, they are doing what they can to quickly scale their operations to meet demand. But they need donations – they need cash – to do so now.
Feeding America is a great way to help in difficult times.
The team at Zeihan on Geopolitics thanks you and hopes you continue to enjoy our work.
For those of you who have read my second book, The Absent Superpower, recent events in Ukraine should not come as a surprise. Chapter 6, The Twilight War, lays out how Russian geography and demographic realities would dictate Russian aggression in its immediate periphery. This is not a justification of Moscow’s aggression against its neighbor, but international watchers should not be feigning surprise. Nor should the current invasion of Ukraine be seen as a result of madness or a personal vendetta of Russian president Vladimir Putin; Russian leaders have viewed control of Ukraine, the Crimean Peninsula and access to the Black Sea as vital to the security of Russia and Russian interests for centuries.
I would not argue that geopolitics is determinative. But geography tells a story. Russia’s wide-open, flat geography has provided little in the way of resistance to would-be invaders as varied as the Mongols and Napoleon, and the horrors of both World Wars still weighs heavily on the minds of Russians and their leaders. Does Putin wish for a return of the “glory” of the Soviet Union? Maybe. I can’t (and don’t want to!) claim any particular insights into the inner workings of his mind. But Putin’s flexing of his military might – in Chechnya and Georgia, and most recently in Ukraine – would not only have been understandable to Catherine the Great and the tsars (not to mention Soviet premiers), but seen as necessary for Russian security.
But unlike his predecessors, Putin’s working with a terminal demography. Russia’s geography certainly hasn’t improved, but in the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 a collapsing healthcare sector, skyrocketing alcohol and substance abuse, falling birthrates, declining life expectancies, and the ravages of disease – including tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS – has left Moscow to secure vast territories with a shrunken, and shrinking, military. If Russian geography can help explain the why of recent aggression, Russian demography can help us understand the timing. It’s now or never, and for Russian leaders the latter isn’t an option.
Consider the above map from The Absent Superpower. Pushing into and securing the Caucuses gives Russia a hard, mountainous border to the south of its critical access zones to the Black Sea (and through the Turkish Straits, the Mediterranean). After a couple of largely successful military campaigns in the mid-aughts, plus a friendly Armenia, there is precious little to impede Russia from imposing its will in the region. Russia’s western flank and its broad swathes of flat geography isn’t so easily secured.
The Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the Russian-backed breakaway region of Transnistria aren’t Russian by accident. They bookend the narrowest part of the European peninsula. Securing them is vital for Russian national security interests, and in Moscow’s view the land bridge between them – better known as the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, and Ukraine – exists to either link and secure Russia interests, or to threaten them.
Securing Ukraine is in no way the final step, but rather the necessary launching pad (along with Belarus) to securing the Baltic states and eastern Poland. I might have apologized for seeming alarmist before today’s events, but I think the last several weeks have shown the lack the lack of empathetic understanding on the West’s behalf of Russia and how it perceives its neighborhood and its future. The Russians do not see the Ukraine War as a war of aggression, or Putin’s egoistical quest for Soviet glory. Expect the Russians to fight as if their lives depend on the victory. In their minds, that’s precisely what’s on the line.
Our team at Zeihan on Geopolitics is uniquely positioned to help industry leaders safeguard their interests in a global system that seems increasingly headed toward chaos. Anyone with overseas investments, operations and personnel knows that the global landscape has only become more uncertain.
Leveraging nearly 40 years of combined experience in geopolitical analysis, research and intelligence our custom analytical products and keynote presentations help our clients avoid risk and maximize opportunities, with a special emphasis on the following regions and industries:
The United States as an International Player
China and Northeast Asia
Europe and the Former Soviet Union
The Middle East and North Africa
Canada, Mexico and the Americas
India and South Asia
The US Shale Revolution and Global Energy Markets
Agriculture
Global Transport and Supply Chains
Manufacturing
Finance
Industrial Commodities
If you enjoy our free newsletters, the team at Zeihan on Geopolitics asks you to consider donating to Feeding America.
The economic lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19 left many without jobs and additional tens of millions of people, including children, without reliable food. Feeding America works with food manufacturers and suppliers to provide meals for those in need and provides direct support to America’s food banks.
Food pantries are facing declining donations from grocery stores with stretched supply chains. At the same time, they are doing what they can to quickly scale their operations to meet demand. But they need donations – they need cash – to do so now.
Feeding America is a great way to help in difficult times.
The team at Zeihan on Geopolitics thanks you and hopes you continue to enjoy our work.
Russia’s months-long build up of troops along the Ukrainian border is starting Russia has followed through with its months-long threats of invasion of Now that the question of a Russian invasion of Ukraine has proven itself not to be a hypothetical, Western governments will be pushed to respond. The United States and its European allies are likely to pursue a sanctions campaign, but this is easier said than done. While it has been popular to deride Russia and its economy as a “gas station” masquerading as a country, the reality is that Russia is a significant–often the largest–exporter of several critical commodities. Russian exports directly feed and fuel (or enable the processes to do so) vast swathes of the world from South America to the Middle East and East Asia–in addition to lighting and heating European homes and supplying crude oil to US Gulf Coast refineries. For the latter scenario, Russian crude exports to the world’s largest oil producer picked up significantly in 2021 as a result of US sanctions against Venezuela, illustrating the double-edged nature of sanctions in the globalized economy.
If you enjoy our free newsletters, the team at Zeihan on Geopolitics asks you to consider donating to Feeding America.
The economic lockdowns in the wake of COVID-19 left many without jobs and additional tens of millions of people, including children, without reliable food. Feeding America works with food manufacturers and suppliers to provide meals for those in need and provides direct support to America’s food banks.
Food pantries are facing declining donations from grocery stores with stretched supply chains. At the same time, they are doing what they can to quickly scale their operations to meet demand. But they need donations – they need cash – to do so now.
Feeding America is a great way to help in difficult times.
The team at Zeihan on Geopolitics thanks you and hopes you continue to enjoy our work.
