The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Romania, After America || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: February 2, 2024

Today's discussion comes to you from Huron Peak. We'll discuss one of the middle powers that's been dealt a bad hand: Romania. At first glance, Romania's geographic situation looks alright - a nice chunk of land near some water bracketed by the Carpathian Mountains - but zoom in, and you'll find three very troubling access points. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/romania-after-america

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here, coming to you from Huron Peak in central Colorado, and today we're going to talk about Romania. Romania is one of those middle powers that kind of has been dealt a bad hand. It's got a good chunk of land in the lower Danube, and it's bracketed by the Carpathian Mountains, but it's not quite big enough to kind of stand up to the neighbors. So it's got these two access, three access points, really. You've got the Vienna Gap to the northwest that allows access to the Northern European plane.

You've got the Bessarabian gap to the northeast, which allows access to what I call the Eurasian Hordlands. And then down south, you've got the Balkan Mountains that pinch off access to the Sea of Mara region. Now, the Northern European Plain, Hordlands, and Mara are all capable of supporting absolutely massive powers that have dominated history as long as has been recorded. And Romania is kind of stuck in the middle. It has access to all three of them, but could never generate the sort of military force that it has been recorded. necessarily to plunge out beyond those gaps and do anything meaningful. In fact, because it's proximate to all of these gaps, it is usually one of the first countries that gets conquered or amalgamated when one of those three mega regions decides that it wants to expand beyond their

natural borders. And in that sort of environment, Romania fates a double bind. Number one, whether it's coming from the Northern European Plain or Mamara or the Eurasian Hordlands, it's got to decide whether it's going to fight or whether it's going to to a seed, and if it chooses to a seed, and it is not in charge of its own destiny anymore, and it usually ends up being a cog in somebody else's empire. The second problem is that Romania, while being the most populous of the countries in this squeeze zone in between, is certainly not the only one, and there are others that might be a little bit more defensible and have a little bit richer geography, and Romania is in constant

competition with all of them. So even if it can make its peace with its larger neighbors, it then has to make peace with its smaller neighbors. Some like Bulgaria usually gets along with pretty well. Others like Serbia are touchy, but probably the biggest problem of all of them is Hungary. Two problems here. Number one, Hungary has a little bit more defensive of a geography than Romania, so it has a little bit longer history in terms of being an independent power, especially since it is up against that northern European plane gap. Bessarabia is a 50-mile gap. And it's really hard for a country the size of Romania to plug that. But the Vienna gap is only a couple miles wide, and most of that is the Danube River.

Make it fairly easy for even a small country like Hungary to hold the line. That means that Hungary and Romania are the two countries that tend to find themselves fighting more often than even the major powers that are in the lands beyond. And if you want to go just back to the Cold War, there were these delightful stories that came out at the end about how, yes, we were in a Cold War of the West versus a Soviet Empire, but within the Soviet Empire, the Hungarian and the Romanian intelligence services were duking it out behind the scenes while they were technically on the same side. Now, looking forward, the Romanians have some decisions to make. They know that the European system is of limited duration. They know that it's in demographic decline, and they know that there's going to be a fight

for the region once again, just like there has in every age of their history that has been recorded to this point. Until very recently, they were convinced that when the the Russians came again, they'd have to cut a deal, that they wouldn't have a choice. But the Russians are doing so poorly. In Ukraine, the Romanians are starting to entertain the possibility that there might not even be a major power on the other side of the best Arabian gap again. And that means that the other regional power that they would probably have to cut a deal

with Turkey becomes a lot more digestible. Turkey's an up-and-commonic power. The relations with the Romanians going back, centuries have been pretty good. They've been excellent since the Cold War. little cool, but certainly professional. And if the Romanians are entering a world where the Russians are no longer a strategic factor, but Turkey is, then that's a partnership. That's not vassaldom, and that could potentially spell the greatest chapter in Romanian history to date. There are plenty of caveats in that statement. Romania has among the world's worst demographies.

They are one of the top 10 countries in the world for using abortion as a birth control method, and they're among the worst demographic structures in Europe. They're going to have to find a new economic model, and they're going to have to figure out what happens post-EU and maybe even post-NATO. These are all big questions. But the fact that they've got a rising partner in Turkey right next door, but not directly adjacent Bulgaria is in the way. That's a pretty good setup.

All right, that's it. Take care.