peter Zeihan 2020
- Thread starter Cherico
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Bassoe
Well-known member
Why would they hurry when during the fighting, their enemies are inflicting massive damage upon themselves? The benefits to Russia of simply bombing all resistance flat in a week and declaring Ukraine officially conquered are lesser than the benefits of dragging the war out as much as possible while Western Europe and the United States commit economic suicide and pro-Russian populist movements who’d prefer not to freeze to death this winter over their countries victory in an irrelevant proxy war proliferate.
And that's comming at the price of Russia being reduced from a global to a semi regional power and now a perminat junior partner to china at best.
Bassoe
Well-known member
They still have oil and are acquiring formerly ukrainian wheat. Those are valuable products.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Yes, but 'have some trade leverage' is a far cry from 'the generally recognized runner up to mightiest military in the world.'
So in other words they have an Iraq style economy. Wow such power. Much world influence.
sad thing is that they did it to themselves.
Russia like most countries is their own worst enemy.
History Learner
Well-known member
And this is based on what? Pro-Russian political parties have taken power in Montenegro and Bulgaria since the start of the war; 52% of Slovaks polled are supportive of Russia and the party that looks to be coming into power is likewise. Same in Italy and Romania, while the EU has forced Hungary into such a position. Protests in Czechia and Germany, meanwhile there's rumblings in Moldova.
For those keeping track, that's almost the entire old Warsaw Pact ironically. Outside of Europe, no one that is not in the U.S. sphere has joined sanctions.
Russia has a GDP PPP that puts it equal to Germany in economic size, it's industrial output is likewise equal in those terms. It produces more artillery shells in a single year than the United States does in 10, I'm not even joking. It's self sufficient in just about every raw material category unlike Iraq, too.
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History Learner
Well-known member
While recovering from surgery recently, I decided to give Peter Zeihan another chance out of boredom. To that end, I listened to all of his recent podcast interviews from August that were available on Spotify. I was left with the intense desire to bash my fucking head into a wall from the sheer stupidity of it. I initially found him a likeable guy but as it went on I just came to realize how much of a narcissist he is; all of the dramatic pauses for effect after points, and he made a big deal in the last podcast I listened to of how he was going camping in a national park and wouldn't be doing anything to clear his head. The fact he is, in fact, still posting videos from there now really just hammers home how full of it is he is in general, but also his grasping for any attention he can get it.
With that out of the way, let's dive into some choice bits that really struck me with just how comical they are with the least bit of thought and/or research:
With that out of the way, let's dive into some choice bits that really struck me with just how comical they are with the least bit of thought and/or research:
- China will not attack Japan or Taiwan because they "can go nuclear in a month", so instead the Chinese will turn attack Russia, the world's largest nuclear power. Why this makes any sense to him was not elaborated and even the host seemed a little off put by this.
- One of his key claims is that the world's oceans are about to become infested with pirates, strangling trade. He claims the U.S. no longer wants to keep the sea lanes open and even if they did, they would need 800 Destroyers. That the U.S. was able to keep the sealanes without even having 800 ships of all kinds since 1950 is swept under the rug.
- Also, it has to be destroyers; carriers can't be used for this purpose at all. That the U.S. cleared the sea lanes in the Atlantic by using airpower in the Battle of the Atlantic in WWII and swept the IJN out of the Pacific is not addressed. Seriously, Peter is thinking in WWI-era naval terms with this.
- The PLAN can't do this either and can't even send ships to the Indian Ocean apparently....despite the 33 missions to fight Somali pirates the PLAN has done and the fact the PLAN now has several bases it operates from in that region.
- If China were to invade Taiwan, it would have to send one million men in fishing boats. Why is never elaborated, given Peter proceeds to admit the PLAN has hundreds of ships now (It is actually the largest in numerical counts, and is at 60% of the USN in tonnage).
- Chinese destroyers are apparently short ranged, and because of this China can't project naval power past 1,000 nautical miles. That Taiwan is only ~100 miles from mainland China is apparently something Peter has never looked up.
- Remember the pirates from earlier? Apparently there is nothing anybody can do, because sanctions and bombings can't prevent it, with Peter citing the Ukraine War as evidence of this. That Peter believes the Russian economy is imploding and the Russian Federation will collapse thus seems odd, given it directly contradicts his thesis the aforementioned actions don't work.
Thing is with pete if its outside of geo politics its outside his wheelhouse.
And when dealing with stuff outside his wheelhouse he goes with standard news which leads to a garbage in garbage out situation because the news organizations are well currently incompetent and compromised.
And when dealing with stuff outside his wheelhouse he goes with standard news which leads to a garbage in garbage out situation because the news organizations are well currently incompetent and compromised.
History Learner
Well-known member
I did like and tend to agree with him on things outside geopolitics, I will admit. His prediction of only 750 million Chinese by 2050 is a bit odd, given the UN projections only show that by 2100, however.
The problem with news out of china is that communists lie, and they lie a lot.
At each level from the smallest to the biggest units of government the officials there fudge the numbers to make themselves look better so even bejinng cant trust the numbers their getting. What we do know is that there are more men then women, that each generation is purposefully smaller then the next and that smog, mismanagement, and bunch of other crisis's are heading their way.
If a major famine hists the 750 million number might be entirely accurate.
Everything listed above is geopolitics though? And it is ridiculous. Current population is 1.4 billion, deaths per year about 12 million. 2050 is 30 years from now, so your talking about 360 million dying over the next 30 years. So, taking that and zero births, children of men situation, the Chinese population only falls to 1 billion, not 750 million. And keep in mind China's population at this point is still growing: even if average births halve, that would still be 200 million births over the next 30 years.
If everyone over 50 was dead by 2050, that's only 331 million people. Compared to, as said a halving of births still is 200 million births, that's a net population change by 2050 of -130 million. Reducing Chinese population to "only" 1.27 billion, so a return to the disasterous population levels of . . . 2001.
His chinese demographic estimates generally seem to have little basis in fact, and require strange assumptions. A major famine reducing their population by 550 million more than expected, well, isn't particularly plausible. The great leap forward as a terrible famine killed 5-10% of china. That in the modern era is only about 130 million, and China is much richer and travel much easier today than back then.
If there is a famine that would kill 20% of chinamen, it makes more sense rather than let let 250 million starve, to export 250 million chinese to set up colonies and such.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
This fits somewhat well with the publicly available numbers, yes.
I think that he's probably trying to make educated guesses about what the real numbers are, but then that's just a guess on my part.
Something else to keep in mind is that the lying isn't just going to be about current population levels. It's also going to be about birth rates, death rates, life expectancy, etc.
An easy example of how their numbers must involve lying, is that if the average deaths per year figure is 12 million, in a population of 1.4 billion? That means that their average life expectancy would need to be around 115 years, or rapidly heading in that direction, because that's how long it takes for 1.4 billion people to die at that rate. Given we know they have a collapsing demography, that just isn't really possible.