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

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

We're talking about an area in northern Europe fractured by history - the Scandinavian region. What was once a series of powerful and interconnected Viking port cities has been a fairly sleepy backwater for the past 300 years...but it might be time for a family reunion.Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/scandinavia-after-america

Everyone, Peter Zeyn here coming to you from Doubtful Sound. And in this next in our series of regional geopolitics in a post-American world, I want to talk about Northern Europe, specifically the Scandinavian region. Now, this is an area that has been fractured by history. You've got islands, you've got peninsulas, you've got de facto city states. But while they have been powerful in the past, they've kind of been sleeping for the last 300 years. And during the Cold War and the post-Cold War era, it's been fractured into a

number of different governments. But I think the best way to think about this is not so much a collection of countries, but a family of Vikings who are getting to know each other again. The original Vikings were the Danes and Swedes who basically went off, raided and pillaged and founded little trading depots everywhere that they went. And some of those depots eventually rose to become significant countries in themselves. Think of Riga in Latvia or Oslo in Norway or Reykjavik in Iceland. But by the time we get to the modern era, they had been broken into different spheres of influence. In the post-Cold War environment, however, especially now with the Ukraine war happening,

we're seeing a changing and of fortunes as these countries are rediscovering each other. And we're already in an environment where a lot of them are considered themselves so familial that they already have a lot of joint embassies around the world. But if there's one thing they're all concerned about, it's Russia. Denmark is the last country approaching the Baltic Sea so that if the Russians ever make a bid to get in the open ocean, they go by them. The Norwegians control the northern coastline so they know the North Point is something they're responsible for. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania used to be Russian colonies under the Soviet period. And Sweden is a mid-sized power that was ultimately smashed by Russian power three centuries ago

and only recently has kind of emerged, whereas Finland was both a Swedish territory and a fit, a Russian territory based on which time frame you're looking at and only really became independent and traditional sense in the last decade or so as it's broken away from its phintillization programs, which were basically a way that the Soviets used to crush Finn's strategic autonomy. What we're seeing now is this whole cluster of countries coming back together all on the same side of the same geopolitical orientation, no longer fractured by other powers, with Sweden absolutely being the center weight of all of it. It's probably best to think of most of these countries, not so much as countries, but as cities that just happen to own another swath of territory.

So in the case of, say, Riga or Copenhagen or Oslo, over half, in fact, almost three quarters of the population is in that one city. And the rest of the territory just kind of hangs on. Sweden is the exception. I mean, yes, Stockholm is by far the largest. But it actually has a populated zone in the south that is agricultural. There are a number of cities going up and down the Baltic Sea coast. And so it is arguably as powerful, if not more powerful, than all of the others put together. And now that Sweden is emerging from its traditional neutrality and starting to write its own security policies, it is going to be a major force to be reckoned with.

A couple things about this region we keep in mind. Number one, it is very, very naval. because of the Baltic Sea, because of the Gulf of Bofania, this is a zone that if they're going to survive, they have to do so in the context of having a powerful Navy to keep potential rivals at bay. And that means number two, it's actually fairly easy for them to partner with other powers from out of region, assuming for the moment that those other powers are also naval. because if they were in a partner with, say, the French or the Germans who are primarily land powers, these countries would see themselves overwhelmed. They're just not big enough. Sweden doesn't even have 10 million people versus, say, France is roughly 60.

The whole region put together can't add up to a France, much less a Germany. But if you bring in the United Kingdom, you've got a very different sort of power dynamic. And the United Kingdom, like the Swedes, like the Danes, like the Estonians, really doesn't want to see a single, large, mega power emerge. in the Eurasian or the European space, because that would be a threat to their naval independence. And so the Brits have always gotten along spectacularly with all of the Scandinavians, and now that the Swedes and the Finns are ditching neutrality, the partnership between London and these places is very strong.

To a lesser degree, the United States is in the same place. Now, the United States overall is looking to slim down its security commitments moving forward, But it doesn't take a lot of cooperation between the Americans and, say, the Finns and the Swedes and the Norwegians in order to achieve some outside outcomes because all of the Scandinavians just want to remain independence, which means they're always going to be to a degree hostile to anything that happens in Moscow and to a lesser degree continental Europe. That means for a very small price, the United States can really achieve some outsized outcomes working through some very capable partners. So we should start to think of the relationship between the Americans and the Baltics and the Norwegians and the Scandinavians, however you wanted to find the cluster, as very similar to the American relationship with Australia. A powerful, creative ally that punches above its weight that's going to do its own thing for its own reason, but which dovetails with American power moving forward. All right, that's it for me. Catch you guys next time.