The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Can Mar-a-Lago Solve the Leadership Vacuum in Europe || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

The Europeans are having a bit of a leadership crisis at the moment, and it's coming at an inopportune time...Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/can-mar-a-lago-solve-the-leadership-vacuum-in-europe

Everybody, Peter Zine here coming to you from tomorrow's work at the woodbile. We need to talk about Europe because we're having the collapse in leadership at a really critical time, both in France and Germany. So first, let's deal with France. France had parliamentary elections about six months ago that ended in a hung parliament with no single party getting more than a third of the votes. In fact, we've got like a kaleidoscope of crazy from the hard right to the hard left. the president, McCrone, is in a difficult situation because under normal circumstances, the president and the parliament are controlled by the same party, or at least that's the idea. And so you have a very strong president who appoints a prime minister and then the prime minister forms the government and all of it basically serves the interests of the party and is dictated by the president. But when the parliament is controlled by another party, you get something called cohabitation.

They think it's really awkward. with the prime minister kind of taking the lead on domestic affairs, when the president taking the lead on foreign affairs, but because power is split and prerogatives are split, it's very difficult to get anything really substantial done. What's going on right now is much worse than that because of that kaleidoscopic nature. No single alliance, much less no single party controls the parliament. And so Macron had to cobble together a government out of disparate groups.

and it took three months to build and it's only lasted three months. And just a few days ago, we had a vote of no confidence which destroyed the budget and the prime minister and the government and they now have to start over. But starting over doesn't allow them to go back and have fresh elections to try to get a better result because there's a clause in the French constitution

that I call that can't we all get a long clause that says you can only call general elections once a year. So we have at least six more months of dysfunction in France where the president has no mandate and where the parliament is incapable of making the government, and so the thing is just rolling over in a series of emergency measures, which is really unhealthy for any number of reasons. But if you're looking to France for leadership at the moment, it's just not going to be there anytime soon. The situation

in Germany isn't any better. It's just different. The German constitution prevents votes of no confidence. If you want to kick the government out, you have to provide from the seats that are in the current Bundestag, that's their parliament, just a different party makeup. And so when Chancellor Schultz dismissed his finance minister and kicked one of the minor parties out of the governing coalition, he basically set the stage for fresh elections, which is something that doesn't happen in Germany very often. We'll probably have those in February. The problem is that in the post-Cold War environment, the German system is really fractured, and we're seeing a lot of extremist groups getting into the political system. Traditionally,

there are four parties in the German parliament. The SDP, which are the socialists who are currently controlling the government, that's where Olaf Schultz is from. You've got the Greens, who are just what they sound like, who control the foreign ministry, are in the government as well. You've got the free Democrats, which are kind of like a pro-small-business libertarian group, which are also in the government. And they until recently controlled the finance ministry. And then in opposition, you've got the Christian Democrats who at the moment are the most popular, party and if elections were held, they'd probably come in first. But all of that together, under current polling, and actually polling going back for the better part of a year, suggests that those

four main parties, which have formed the entirety of every government we've seen in Germany since 1945, would only get about two-thirds of the seats if elections were held today, yesterday, six months ago, a year ago, whatever. With the other third of the seats going to a grab bag of crackpot and crazy and radical and communist and Nazi and just generally nasty parties. The prohibition in Germany against extremism is gone, and if we were to have elections, they'd gobble up a third of the seats. Now, the four main parties have all sworn left, right in the center, that they will never rule with groups like this that, for example, don't repudiate the Nazi

past. But if you're going to do that, if you're going to form a majority, government where you need 51% of the seats, when the third of the seats aren't available, that means you're going to have another three-party coalition. One of the things we've seen under Olaf Schultz, which I think the guy has done an okay job considering the restrictions he's been under. Anyway, one of the thing is that whenever a decision has to be made that wasn't part of the original negotiation to form the government three, four years ago, everyone has to get together and hash it out. So whether that issue is labor policy or

tax policy or budgetary policy or Europe policy or security policy or Ukraine or Russia and the United States, whatever happens to be, they all have to get back together. And so here you've got the most powerful country in Europe economically that can't make a goddamn decision. And if we do have fresh elections in April as expected, we're going to get another three-party coalition because there's no way that two parties have enough seats to generate a majority government. So you should expect the German situation to not really change in terms of the real policy, security policy, the Ukraine war, relations with the United States, and just expect this almost docility and inertia. This is a really bad time for Europe for this to all be happening. The Ukraine war is raging as hot as

ever. And in the United States, Donald Trump is about to take over again. And if you don't have France or Germany who are basically capable of raising the voices for really any reason, then it is up to someone else to decide what Europe policy is and that someone else is probably going to be Donald Trump because the Brits are on the outside because of Brexit and there just isn't another large country that is cohesive enough or powerful enough. I mean, the closest would be Italy where Georgia Maloney is reasonably powerful and popular, but it has been a long time in Europe since anyone has followed the Italians leave. I mean, we basically have to go to what, to Emperor Constantine in the fourth

century? Yeah, no. Okay. So whether this is good or bad, of course, depends upon your view of Europe and your view of the world and whatever Donald Trump is going to come up with. The downside is obvious. Donald Trump tends to enact policy based on whoever's flattered him most recently. That's something that Vladimir Putin figured out in Donald Trump's first term. But Zelensky of Ukraine is clearly figured out and was one of the first world leaders to call to congratulate Donald Trump on his crushing success. And it's finally, everyone's can see what a wonderful leader is and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, really impressed Trump.

And so for several days, we had a lot of very pro-Ukrainian things come out of Mar-a-Lago. We'll see if that lasts. We also have minor countries around Europe, whether it's in the low countries or the Baltz falling over themselves to call Trump to make their case, because everyone has realized this time around that it's all about who speaks to him most recently that he favors. And everyone wants to be that person. It's not a great way to run a country or foreign policy or common.

continent, but that's the reality of where we are. The other issue, of course, is Ukraine, and that Donald Trump is saying that he has a plan to end the war within days of taking over, which, you know, if you can dissolve 500 years of Russian animosity in a week, that would be wonderful, but I didn't believe it when he said the same thing about ISIS the first time around or health care the first time around, so I really don't believe it now. But hey, you know, stranger things have happened in the United States in Europe in the last 70 years. So why not give it a show? shot. Anyway, that's kind of the bad side. The good side is just because the Europeans get a voice, doesn't mean they always get it right. I mean, I realize that's a little thing to say in Europe.

But if you think back to the last time, we had a significant strategic falling out between the Americans and the Europeans. It was over the Iraq war during the administration of George W. Bush. And at that time, the president of France, Jacques Chirac, and the Chancellor of Germany, Gerhard Schroeder, and the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, to what a lot of people called the axis of insufferability to oppose American policy. Now, there certainly were a number of good reasons to oppose America's war in Iraq. However, Sharak and Schroeder basically allowed themselves to be propaganda props of the Russian government, something that even if those leaders never really regretted it, their people certainly did.

Now, Sharak has since passed on, so I doubt we're going to get a Klob out of him that's particularly loud. but Gerhard Schroeder's around still and after he lost the chancellorship he went to work for the Russian government, several state-owned companies. And so his corruption became absolutely breathtaking. And we're still cleaning up that mess. And by we, I mean German policymakers and French policymakers. And now we have to figure out how this all goes down with Trump being large in charge. So the future of Europe, the policies of Europe probably no longer are going to be flowing through. Russell or Paris or Berlin.

They're going to be flowing through Mar-a-Lagro. And I got to admit, that's going to be a hoot.