The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - America's Cold War Missiles Return to Germany, Thanks to Russia || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Well, it looks like the Germans are going to be celebrating Christmas in July. That's due to the US and Germany's decision made at the NATO conference to redeploy American mid-range weaponry to Germany. And yes, this hasn't happened since the Cold War for…historic reasons. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/americas-cold-war-missiles-return-to-germany-thanks-to-russia

Hey, everybody, Peter Zine here, coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks. It is Thursday, July 12th. And today we're going to be talking about security in Europe. Specifically, the United States at the NATO conference has announced with the Germans that American mid-range weaponry is returning to Germany in a position that hasn't been since the Cold War. A combination of hypersonics, mid-range missiles, including the Tomahawk cruise missile system. The reason that this is happening is because we had a series of Cold War and post-Cold War arms treaties between the United States and NATO and the Soviet Union. Things like the Conventional Forces of Europe Treaty or more specifically for this conversation, the intermediate nuclear forces treaty or INF.

The Russians started bit by bit either violating or withdrawing from those treaties as far as 15 years ago and even started developing weapons systems. that were expressly barred by the treaty and then deploying them. So under the Trump administration five years ago, the United States formally withdrew from the intermediate nuclear forces treaty and has been moving bit by bit to redeploy these weapon systems ever since. The INF specifically bars weapons systems with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, roughly 300 miles or 3,000 miles. And that basically is the entirety of the entirety of, 5,500 kilometers, roughly 3,000 miles.

of the hot zone now between NATO and Russia, including all of Ukraine. The idea of these treaties, which dates back to Reagan and Gorbachev, was that if you take the weapons that are actually useful off the field, then you won't have a tactical engagement or a tactical escalation. That just leaves the big strategic missiles, you know, like the Internet continental ballistic missiles that are, say, based in the United States. and obviously the desire to not use those is quite strong. So you take away the usable day-to-day missiles,

and it forces both sides to basically come to the peace table. Well, the Russians have repeatedly moved away from that system, and now they're going to find themselves facing weapon systems that maybe have designed 50 years ago but are perfectly serviceable, and the United States is dusting off things like hypersonics that have developed back in the 70s and the 80s, but never deployed, and now they are being deployed. So the balance of forces for the Russians

across the entire theater is about to go from problematic to catastrophic. Keep in mind that one of the many reasons why the Cold War ended when it did is because NATO into a greater extent to the United States defeated the Russians in an arms race. The Soviet Union simply couldn't keep up

with the economic power of the United States. Well, Russia today is significantly economically weaker than the Soviet Union ever was, and the United States is significantly economically stronger than it was back in the 70s in the 1980s. So there's really no contest here. The Russians have proven over and over again that while they can't innovate, they can't develop new weapons systems that are particularly capable, and they certainly can't produce them at scale,

whereas the United States, in many cases, just literally dusting off things that have been in storage for 20, 30 years and bringing them back online while also developing new systems. So the strategic picture for here for the Russians is a direct consequence of some very back, decisions they've made. A lot of the Russian position for the last 15 years has really been bluff and it worked until 2022 with the Ukraine war and which mobilized pretty much everyone in Europe. So the Germans were the country that A, was most in support of the INF when it was negotiated because they were the ones on the crosshairs and B, they were the country that was the most willing

to overlook all of the Russian violations of the treaty because they lived in this kind of strategic nirvana that they didn't want to end. And now it's the Germans who are actually arguing that the United States need to deploy more and more and more weapon systems, not just to Europe, but to Germany specifically. Okay. Not all of that is kind of the big first piece. The second piece is the INF provided handcuffs on what the U.S. could do, not just in

Europe, but globally. And the country that has arguably benefited the most from the Americans refusing to deploy intermediate range weapons systems isn't Germany, it isn't Russia, it's China. Because if you look at a map of East Asia and look at all of the U.S. allies, especially Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Indonesia, Singapore, the distance from those countries to the Asian mainland is in that 500 kilometer to 5,500 kilometer range. So for the entirety of the post-Cold War period, the United States has been barred from deploying appropriately ranged weapons systems to counter the Chinese rise.

Well, not anymore. And so over the course of the next two or three years, we're going to see a mass deployment of American weapon systems off the Chinese coast that are perfect for boxing the Chinese in. The Chinese have always argued strategically that this was the goal of the United States all along, which of course is horse crap. But keep in mind that unlike the United States, China is a trading power.

And so not having these weapon systems has allowed the Chinese too from a strategic and an economic point of view become a global economic player. But if these weapon systems are in place, everything that the Chinese do could literally be shut down within an hour and end the capacity of the Chinese to import and export, which would be the end of the system almost overnight. So while it may have been the Russians who were the ones who are fucking around, it's absolutely going to be the Chinese who are the ones who are going to find out.