The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Russia: Threats, Deterrence, and the War of Numbers || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: September 30, 2024

Today, 9/30 is the last day before we officially launch the Patreon page! If you want to continue receiving timely videos and newsletters (as well as some exclusive extras) every weekday, then head on over and join the fun on Patreon. Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihan Russia has struggled to maintain a credible "red line" (referring to the point at which Putin will push the shiny red button) for quite a while now. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/russia-threats-deterrence-and-the-war-of-numbers

Hey everyone. Peter Zion here coming to you from the California coast. Today you're going to be seeing a video on Russian strategic nuclear policy. And it will be the final video that we do with our old subscription model. Tomorrow we make a transition to Patreon where you can subscribe and for a small fee, not just continue to get the videos as they come out, but also participate in community forums, have access to a daily news brief so you can see part of how I prepare my day. In addition to being able to grill me personally,

once a quarter in a public forum. So if you like to make me uncomfortable, that's definitely what you are after. Our first video will be basically taking a similar approach to today's video, but doing it for China and talking about technology and military policy all in one. Or, if you don't want to pay anything, you can still sign up, and there is a free option

where the videos will still come to you, but with a one-week delay. Or you could just join us for the party. See you soon. Hey, everybody. Peter Zine here, coming to you from, Kohler, Wisconsin. I love this place, except in the winter, man. Oh, my God. Anyway, back on the 26th, 26th, the 25th. Can't remember the exact date. Anyway, of September,

the Putin government, Putin himself, announced a new nuclear doctrine for the threshold for when they would actually hit the big candy-like red button. The Russians are having a problem, because they have established all kinds of red lines, dozens of them over the last two and a half years. And then whenever someone has crossed them, whether it is Ukraine in the war or weapon supplies by the United States or Germany or Britain or Turkey, the Russians have ignored their own red line. And so they're having a credibility problem with their deterrence policy. And Putin's announcement last couple days ago was about trying to reestablish that.

And he said that now any non-nuclear country who has an ally who is a nuclear country, should the non-nuclear country use a non-nuclear weapon against Russia, that is justified for a nuclear strike on the nuclear country that is the ally. Stupid, pointless press release kind of remind me of the Obama era because it's already been violated a few hundred times. The Russians have had a real problem establishing or reestablishing turrets because they keep saying stupid things like this, which are nonsensical and immediately the world goes on

and is shown to be a bluff. Now, the issue is that the Russian conventional military is not all that, and Ukraine, by the numbers, should have been gone a long time ago, but it's still punching well above its weight, and that's before you consider that most of the Western Alliance is providing the Ukrainians with ammo and weapons. So how do you establish, reestablished deterrence? Well, the first and the easiest, the most direct way, the most reliable way, is to have a fucking conversation, to basically call up the United States, establish a summit and talk about strategic issues

of which nuclear's are won. The Russians have firmly refused that option because if they do that, they have to talk about Ukraine. They have to talk about war crimes. They have to talk about mass kidnappings. They have to talk about the weaponization of sexual violence. They have to talk about encouraging migrants to go to Europe by breaking countries in Africa in the Middle East.

They have to talk about all the things that they've been doing over the last two or three years that they see as giving. them a little bit of leverage. And so, of course, the Europeans in the United States have acted. And so the Ukraine war is continuing on. Ukraine still exists. For the Russians to establish deterrence by negotiation, they have to put everything else on the table, and they are not willing to do that. And so we've had no meaningful summits in the last three years with anyone. What's the second thing you can do? You can do a demonstration nuclear test. The problem is, is that the Russian

nuclear force has degraded just as much as the Russian conventional force. And it was less than a week ago that the Russians tried to test out one of the new intercontinental ballistic missiles, and it blew up in the silo. Now, this is really bad, not just from an embarrassing point of view or a deterrence point of view, but most of the avionics for Russia's ICBM arsenal were built in Ukraine. And this new missile that the Russians were testing was their effort to build a domestic supply chain. It is now apparent that at least at the moment that is not possible. And it begs the question of just how reliable is the rest of the Russian nuclear arsenal. If they hit the big candy red button, will anything happen? And if countries aren't confident

that things will launch, deterrence can't happen. The third thing you can do is nuke someone. The problem here is while the Russians have bled away and pissed away their deterrence, the United States has not. The United States continues. used to test and fine tune and deploy its weapons, and it made very clear to the Russians in the early weeks of the Ukraine war that if Russia were to throw a nuke into Ukraine or anywhere else, the first thing the United States would do is use its conventional forces to destroy every Russian military and civilian assets shipping around the world, every single port that was in range of a conventional force, every single port the Russians have. And if, if that nuclear

weapon where to hit a NATO ally in not just Ukraine, the first few weapons that the United States would send back would target Putin personally. So that's not an option either. So what's left? What's left is nothing good. You get Obama-style pointless press releases and Trump-style bluster, and that is what passes for strategic policy in the Kremlin these days. Now, whether or not that is sustainable over the long run is really not the point. The question ultimately is how will the Ukraine war play out? Remember, Russia. is still a large country, and even on its back, it still has a huge amount of resources and manpower to throw at this situation. They're not bottomless anymore. This is not 1920 or 1980.

But the Russians still outnumber the Ukrainians at least three to one. They have an industrial plant that, while atrophied, is still an order of magnitude bigger than anything the Ukrainians have, and they have the Chinese providing huge amounts of components. Probably half of all the weapons systems that the Russians have built in the last two years are majority made with Chinese components and upwards of one quarter of the artillery shells that are being used by the Russians on the front are coming from North Korea and of course all the Shahi drones are coming from Iran. So there are very real flows here. It's ultimately a question of whether the Russians can put the numbers to play. And to that end, the Putin government, just before that disastrous failed nuclear

missile test announced that they were expanding the military to make it the second largest standing army in the world. If Russia is going to win, that is how, with numbers, by ignoring the casualties and just steamrolling. And if that sounds inhumane, this is how Russia has won every single war in its nearly thousand-year history. So far in this war, they haven't really put their weight into it. We might be seeing that to change now. And again, if the Russians are going to win, this is how it's going to go. It's not going to be because of nukes.