Peter Zeihan says the abysmal performance of the Russian Army is going to have a whole lot of ramifications around the world, many in Russia’s own near abroad. “It means that the image of the Russians as a regional power, much less a global one, is gone, and it’s not coming back.”
Some takeaways:
There’s a small secessionist republic there called Transnistra. It’s only 10 percent of the population of a country of like three and a half million people. There’s not much going on there, but the Russians intervened decisively right at the end of the Soviet collapse to basically make sure that Transnistra could be functionally independent under Russian sponsorship, but unlike the Georgian secessionist territories, which share a land border with Russia proper, Transnistra is on its own. The only way to supply it is through Ukraine, and that has obviously stopped. So the Moldovans and their sponsors in Romania have now a vested interest in ending this historical aberration, and I would expect to see that being wrapped up within a year or two.
The Russians have very publicly, unfortunately for them, relocated a lot of hardware from Syria to Ukraine, specifically air defense equipment to help them with their assaults. Which means that if you are Israel, the only thing that is standing in your way of going after the Syrian regime is someone from the Biden Administration saying “You know what? We really don’t want a nuclear event to erupt because there are Russian troops involved.” Well, the tone of the Biden Administration in the last 72 hours has kind of changed. Now it’s more of “You kids go have fun” sort of vibe, so I expect us to see some very interesting pyrotechnics between the Israelis and the Syrians in a very short period of time, followed by the Syrians suing for peace. Which means that we get to revisit the entire Syrian Civil War now without the Russians being players.
Two caveats from my viewpoint: 1. Given the history of Israeli striking Syria with impunity several times over the past decade, with possibly one Israeli plane hit during that period, I don’t think Russian anti-aircraft equipment have provided any significant deterrent to Israel doing whatever it wanted in Syria. I view it more likely that Israel views a weakened Assad continually beset by a grinding civil war against numerous enemies a preferable option to taking him out entirely. 2. Not sure where Zeihan is getting his information on a change in the Biden Administration’s messaging to Israeli, but I readily concede that he likely does have better sources than I do. It may also be that the most recent failure of the asinine Iran deal has changed the collective mind of whatever passes for a Biden brain trust.
Tags: Abkhazia, Alexander Lukashenko, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bashar Assad, Belarus, Cuba, Estonia, Foreign Policy, Georgia (nation), Iran, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Military, Moldova, North Ossetia, Peter Zeihan, Poland, Romania, Russia, Russo-Ukrainian War, Soviet Union, Sweden, Syria, Transnistra, Venezuela, video
Don’t get cocky.
I watched this video ealier today. Very interesting as is all of Peter’s videos.
One thing mentioned near the end of the video is that Zeihan mentioned that it might be time for the Biden administration to “deal” with Venezuela. I almost choked on that comment. I can’t see the commies in the Biden Regime wanting to end the commie regime in that country. They want to make the US more like Venezuela.
My pre-Rumanian forebears might shrug and ask “so what else is new, great grandson?”
I’ve been saying this since February 24th: We are witnessing the death ride of the Russian state as we know it. Putin is the absolute worst thing that ever happened to them, and the long-term effects of his leadership are going to reverberate throughout Eurasia for the next century.
Russia could have been a great nation in a few generations. All they had to do was pull their heads out of their asses, institute the rule of law, and crush corruption while concentrating on fixing the underlying causes of their demographic crash, while selling resources and investing in development and industry. Instead? They went for a continuation of more Tsar/Soviet style despotism with oligarchs and the “connected” taking everything. No young Russian today dreams of starting a new business or enterprise; they all dream of either rising to the top of the cesspool and becoming an oligarch, or getting out. What has Russia done in the last thirty years to improve itself, and I don’t mean “What new palaces have they built…?”
Schools are in lousy conditions, hospitals, all of it. The infrastructure everywhere outside Moscow is abysmal, and the average Russian citizen gets screwed at every turn, especially if they’re not a favored ethnicity.
My guess is Russia is a statelet by about 2030, with just the regions surrounding Moscow. And, that city isn’t going to be able to survive, without the ability to loot the entire continent of Eurasia. In a hundred years, it’ll likely be a wide spot on the road people look at and drive by, in wonder: “Moscow once stood here…”
The whole thing is self-inflicted, which is why I have zero pity for them. They wanted Russian Empire, while not having the wherewithal to even maintain a Muscovian Duchy. All this Ukraine mess is them finding out they don’t even have feet of clay–It’s more like quicksand.
I think China makes a move on Russian Siberia at some point.
Is there any nation in Eastern Europe that America is NOT obligated to defend, and not providing billions of US tax dollars too, besides Russia and Belarus? The list above reads like the neocon’s dreams from the 80’s, still marching East to take on the Russians. What does the US gain out of all this?
Culture always wins and the Russian culture is the same now as it has been since they emerged from Mongolian captivity. The corrupt autocracy is always the same whether from czar, central committee, or Putin.
The Chinese are in the same trap.
“Schools are in lousy conditions, hospitals, all of it. The infrastructure everywhere outside Moscow is abysmal, and the average Russian citizen gets screwed at every turn, especially if they’re not a favored ethnicity.”
Kirk: Substitute DC for Moscow and American for Russian and you pretty well describe the US today (everything except infrastructure) and infrastructure in ten years. And, as with Russia it is all self-inflicted.
“I think China makes a move on Russian Siberia at some point.”
Except China is going to tell you it is not Siberia. They will call it is Outer Manchuria.
s Archer : “… The corrupt autocracy is always the same whether from czar, central committee, or Putin.”
Oh, you like the IMPERIAL MIC-led US?UK/NATO???
That kind of CORRUPT AUTOCRACY/OLIGARCHY???
The eensy-weensy problem with saying the Russian army is performing abysmally is that the bulk of the fighting in Ukraine is not by Russians, but by the Donbas militias.
The lesson, old codger, is the same as the one in military affairs: It is not the best military that wins wars, because there are no such things as “best”. It is, instead, “the least f*cked up army that wins”.
Similarly, while we have our issues with corruption and malfeasance in governance, they’re a tiny fraction of that which condemns Russia and China to the scrapheaps of history. All we need to do is rid ourselves of the wannabe aristos of the oligarchic state, which really isn’t that large, and we’ll be fine. The underlying culture isn’t inherently corrupt. In Russia and China? Hoo boy… If you’ve ever worked with the people coming out of those societies, the vast majority are inherently and intrinsically on the make, looking for every opportunity to screw the system and everyone else. It’s a mentality that pervades the entire society, and I have no idea how to go about fixing it. Here in the US, you could, for example, nuke Washington DC. Boom, there goes the source of 90% of our corruption issues. Especially if someone were to do it while Congress was in session. After the fact, we’d just self-organize again and go on absent a lot of corruption. If you were to do that same thing in Russia or China…? Well, given what I’ve seen of the mentality for a lot of those folks, they’d just throw up another Putin or Stalin.
It’s not the perfect state that “wins”, it’s the least f*cked up one. Do note the final denouement of all those idiots who were saying that Japan, INC. was going to be ruling the world by now. Didn’t happen, did it? Instead, they’re locked into demographic decline coupled with a bunch of other problems stemming precisely from the attempt at centralized control of daily life and their economy… Which did what it always does, and blew up in their faces.
In other words, don’t go looking for “perfect” when “good enough” will do.