The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Red Strings in Romania

Episode Date: December 21, 2024

The most recent presidential election in Romania has been annulled, and surprise, surprise, it's because of the Russians.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/red-strings-in-romania

Hey, everybody, Peter Zine here, coming to you from the crater of Mount Taraniki in Egmont National Park in New Zealand. And today we're going to talk about Romania. Very, very short version. There's this guy by the name of Georgescu, who is a bit of a nationalist and kind of a dumbass. Really a no-one. Was in a couple of minor government positions back in the 90s and really hasn't done anything with his life since then. Anyway, he came in first in the first round of the presidential election that the remaining recently had. And in recent days, the Electoral Commission of Romania has nullified that election.

They're going to rehold it. And the reason is pretty straightforward. It's flat-out election interference by the Russians. And the Russians are trying different things in different places. They're trying to see what sticks. And obviously, not every culture is the same thing. So the playbook changes. But every once in a while, they bring everything together and push really, really, really hard to see if they can make a change. And in the case of Romania, they pushed so hard it was really obvious. So something like 11,000 fake accounts were detected on social media. with over, I think it was 17 million fake followers in a country with only 19 million people. So the interference was mad and it was obvious and was found.

And now we're going to find out if the Romanians, once they realized the degree to which the Russians were trying to fuck around in their internal affairs, if they come up with a different opinion. There's no guarantee that that's how it's going to go, of course. People vote the way they vote. And when you tell people to go back to the poll so they can vote the right way, they tend to get a little pissed off. specifically the leading Romanian parties have a reputation for corruption and being really cozy

with one another basically trading power back and forth. And they've recently joined forces to form a joint government to keep the presidency out of Georgia Scus' hands, or at least that's the goal. Romania is generally considered one of the two or three most corrupt countries in the European Union. So the idea that there would be a robust protest vote makes a lot of sense. And it also makes sense that that protest vote would happen for the presidency. The Romanian system is a little bit like a flip of the French system. So in France, there's a very strong executive, a very strong president, but parliament is elected separately.

And if the parliament and the presidency are from the same party, the president is in charge, the president picks the prime minister, the prime minister runs the government. In Romania, it's kind of the opposite, where the parliament selects the prime minister, the president is elected separately. And if they're from different parties, the president doesn't have a lot of authority.

Technically he's in charge of foreign affairs, technically he's in charge of the military, but really because they control the budget, the parliament still does that. So if Georgescu were to become president, he certainly wouldn't control parliament and his room to maneuver would be somewhat limited. But for the Russians, this is enough

because Romania is one of the countries after Ukraine that the Russians have shortlisted for the next wave of countries they want to invade, and anything that weakens the political resolve in Romania is something that can't help but benefit the Russians in the long run. Now specifically, the Russians are trying to weaken the resolve of the countries that border Romania to make it more difficult for the Western General to support Ukraine. And then, of course, the Russians ultimately want to make it to the Danube Delta,

which would mean annexing somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of Romanian territory. Now, that's a problem for another day. You can fault the Russians for being many things, but planners, they're always planners. So we'll have new first round elections pretty soon and probably second round elections somewhere around the end of the year. And we will know what the Romanian people think of all of this before too long.