The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Ask Peter Zeihan: Will Putin "Disappear" and Updates on Russian Demographics?

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

This is the first of the "Ask Peter" series, so I figured we'd kick it off with a two-parter. First, what's the likelihood of Putin getting assassinated? Second, how is Russia's demographic situation? Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/ask-peter-will-putin-disappear-and-updates-on-russian-demographics

Hey everyone, Peter Zion, coming to you from Drop Gulch. A little bit ago, I was stuck at an airport for a few hours, and I asked for video ideas. So we're going to do a whole series on basically what's an Ask Peter list. The first two questions are interrelated, so it's going to kick us off with a two-parter here. Question number one was, is it likely for Putin to be disappeared or assassinated or die, and what effect would that have on the war? and then second, can we get an update on Russia's demographic situation? So you have to start by looking why the Russians are in this war at the moment.

Russian territory, it's flat, it's open, it's difficult to defend, but where the Russians have shown that if you can expand beyond the flats and reach a series of geographical funnel points, where on either side you've got barriers you can't run a tank through, and in the middle you've got a flat area that you can concentrate troops on, the access points, plug the gaps, then you can defend your lands, possibly. The Soviets achieved this at the end of World War II, and they held it until 1992. And when the Soviet system collapsed completely, the Russians lost control of most of those access points, all but two, actually.

And so everything the Kremlin has been doing since 1992, not Putin, the Kremlin, this predates him, has been about reestablishing positions on or near those blocking points. This is the Transnistra occupation. This is the Georgian War, obviously Crimea, the Kazakh intervention, being involved in the Nagorno-Karabov conflict. All of this is towards the same goal of plugging those gaps. So that's kind of piece one. Piece two is demographic.

Now, for those of you guys have been watching for a while, you know that Russia has among the world's worst demographics. To argue it used to be the worst until the Ukraine War up, unfortunately, push Ukraine into a worse position, and then Chinese data changes mean that China's probably actually been worse for Russia for over a decade at this point. But anyway, there's these big gouges out of the side of the Russian demographic pyramid that represent periods of huge trauma in Russia's past. In some cases, that is a war. The world wars are obvious. In another spot, it's the effect of collectivization or the mismanagement of Khrushchev and especially

Bresnev, but the biggest one of all, sorry, it's a little muddy today, the biggest one of all by far is the post-Soviet collapse in the 1990s, when the death rate doubled and the birth rate have. Now, that's kind of the background for those of you who hadn't heard it before. What's been happening more recently is conservatively, Russian statistics indicate that 1.3 million Russians under age 35 have fled the country since the war began, with most of those trying, most of them being young men who were trying to the draft. So roughly two to three times the number of men fled the country as answered the draft summons, which is, you know, kind of embarrassing if you are a patriotic aggression. That's piece two. Piece three is where the two of these things

come together. Now, back in 1982, there was a coup in the Soviet Union and the intelligence services led by Urian drop-off took over. He died shortly there, after, we got Cherna Mirdin, who was part of that clique, and then he died, and we got Gorbachev, who was still part of that clique. And as you guys know, Putin is a former KGB agent. So he was part of that clique, just at a much lower level. What this means is we had a full purge of the Soviet decision-making apparatus of pretty much anyone from other factions if they weren't associated in some way with the intelligence apparatus. Now, these people took over because they were the only ones who had a fairly accurate view of how the Russian system worked, especially economically speaking.

They're the only ones who had all the information because one of the jobs of the intelligence bureaus was to limit the dissemination of information beyond the state. Anyway, they took over and ultimately the system collapsed on their watch, but they kept running the place after it fell. Now, why, how does this relate to the other two things? well remember we've had a demographic collapse and because the soviet system collapsed on its feet before the state actually broke apart back in 1986 is the last year that we had meaningful broad spectrum technical education above the high school level put that together it means two things number one the number of people who are under age 35 and who theoretically could be drafted is very limited. And even if the Russians have been honest about their statistics these past 20 years and right,

you're still talking about this being a much smaller pool for the Russians to draw upon than anything the Soviet Union had, and that's even before you consider that half of the associate population was not Russian. So from a timing point of view, if this war was ever going to happen, if the Russians were ever going to use military tactics in an attempt to reshape their world, it always had to happen about right now. If you want to go back and read the details, there's a bunch of that on accidental superpower in the Players chapter, and there's a whole fat section on this, on the war specifically in the absent superpower, and there's a big Germany section,

excuse me, there's a big Russia section in disunited nations. Ah, I'm a table. On my way to Golden Horn now. Anywho, this is the last generation of fighting men the Russians have. They only have about eight million men in their 20, they're between the war and the people fleeing they've already lost over a million of them i don't mean to say that that means the russians have to stop there's seven million to go uh but there is a limit and the russians are exploring where that is okay that's kind of piece one of that piece two the russian educational system collapsed before the soviet system did specifically in 1986 That means that the youngest cadre of people, broad people across the entire spectrum of society

that have technical training that's meaningful, turn 60 this year. Well, those are the people that maintain the railways and the nuclear missile fleet and the military and the energy complex. And what we've been seen over and over and over through this war, not just on the battlefield, but throughout the Russian space, who, up, is that the Russians are losing the capacity of maintaining their own economic system. Now this was hidden from us for several years, or at least mitigated, by the fact that the Russians are a commodities exporter that generates a lot of cash, and they've used that cash to bring in foreigners to do the work. So the bulk of the heavy

engineering that's been done in north-central Siberia, for example, especially when you're looking at places like the Yamal Peninsula, which is the world's largest natural gas field, the liquefied natural gas project there. everything at Sokland Island. This was all done by foreigners. Now the foreigners are gone and they're not coming back. And don't say that the Chinese can come in because the Chinese don't have the expertise. They don't know how to do deep offshore or arctic operations. So whether it's in two months or two decades, we know that all of this stuff is going away. Anyway, back to the point. Youngest cadre of people with the full suite of training is 60. There was a coup in 82, where the

intelligence services took over. And the demographic situation is a terminal decline. You put that together and the entire cadre that there were a survivor of that intelligence services system that were educated before 1986,

that's less than 130 people now. Simple mortality is wiping away the capacity of the Russian government to function even at the top levels, maybe especially at the top levels. Now, what does this have to do with an off ramp for the Russians. Well, they see this war as existential.

They believe if they cannot get control of those geographic gaps soon, they will lose the capacity to try, and it doesn't matter what happens, one decade, two decades, five decades from now. Russia will not have even theoretical capacity to fight off any future aggressor, no matter where it comes from,

and in that they are 100% right. It doesn't matter that no one's even considering an invasion, right now. They're planning for forever. And this is their last chance. And everyone who is in that 130 people see this the world through the same lens. They were all part of the click that through the coup. They were all part of Putin's inner circle. And Putin has had 23 years now to weed out anyone who might have a different view or be a challenge to him personally. So even if he were to accidentally duct tape himself to a lawn chair and go swimming,

You'd then have the other 129 basically trying to figure out how to carry on the general vision because they all believe it because it's true. If there is going to be a end of this war because of politics in Moscow, what it would probably take the form of is the Ukrainians so decisively defeat the Russian military and that its humiliation isn't global, it's local, that everyone in Moscow can see it. And if that happens, the odds of having a general uprising, not across Russia, just in Moscow, go up dramatically.

Now, keep in mind, for it to get to that point, the rest of Russia has probably already slipped the reins to a degree. Russia is held together by occupation, intelligence penetration, and fear. And if the military is shown to be toothless, or at least incompetent, then there will probably be a number of rebellions throughout the Russian system already. What happens in Moscow is what matters. And if you do have a rebellion there,

like you did after the Russo, Japanese war in 2005 when the Russians were humiliated, or like the end of World War I where they're just gutted, then you have people march on the Kremlin, and Putin is removed, along with his click. Now, that doesn't mean that the war ends. Even Nalvani, the guy who's like campaigning for democracy in Russia, has made it pretty clear that while he abhors the general incompetence and brutality of the Russian forces, he's broadly okay with the war. He sees Ukraine as his territory.

So even a democratic Russia could very much choose to continue to prosecute the conflict. But if we do have a catastrophic military defeat and we do have the top of the government fall, it is going to take years for any post-Puton government to fight its feet. And in that time, Russia's economic situation will deteriorate further, and their demographic situation will be completely irrecoverable. So if there is a peaceful way for this to end, that's roughly how it's going to go. Oh, one more thing I forgot. The idea of an off-ram for Putin and the Russian government,

is there a way that this war can end without? either side being completely defeated. And the answer is flat no. At this point, Russia has paid the price for major war, but got none of the benefits. And it's actually in a worse strategic position than it was when it started. So the Russians are all in. In addition, any meaningful peace would have to require a degree of reparations and admittance of guilt. And the entire Russian upper leadership could be implicated very easily. That's one of the downsides of, you know, having a secure system where you've purged all possible pretenders to the throne is that everything kind of stops with you. We have literally thousands of documented cases of war crimes. This isn't like the Yugoslav wars

where the Serbs actually tried to hide it. The Russians have celebrated it. In fact, you've got cabinet ministers celebrating the kidnapping of children or the execution of civilians. So the guilt is not in doubt. So even if the world was willing, even if Ukraine was willing, to settle for some sort of temporary peace without any sort of reckoning, the Russians would never be able to get the investment that they had pre-war back. And at this point, because of the demographic decay and the physical losses of the war, that is a blow from which the Russian system wouldn't recover. So Putin and the rest are in this to the end. The question is, is the end something that happens in the next few years, the next few decades? But it'll certainly be the century.

All right. That's it for round one. See you guys soon for the next one. Thank you.