The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - The Syrian Consequence: Russia's Withdrawal || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

Much has changed since I left for New Zealand a few days ago, and I'm sure everyone has already caught up on the Syrian unraveling. So, let's dive into the history of Syria and the consequences that all this will have, specifically what this means for Russia.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/the-syrian-consequence-russias-withdrawal

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from Egmont National Park in New Zealand. That's Mount Taranaki. This is Holly Hut. This is where I'm spending the night. A little chilly here today. Anyway, things are on fire in Syria. I apologize that apparently the country fell while I was airborne and that I wasn't there to tell you what it all meant. But we recorded a couple things before I got. Some of those are already out. Some of them are coming. Today, we're going to talk about consequences. We're going to start with the country that is really the only reason that Syria has lasted this long. Now, let's dial it back.

Okay, Syria is an artificial construct. The territory that is now Syria hasn't been a functional government in centuries. The only reason we are aware of this thing called Syria is because in the aftermath of the mandate period, that's after World War I, the colonies were basically broken up and independent states were allowed to rise. and everyone in the region basically took the good part. So Mesopotamia went one way, became Iraq. Saudi Arabia found oil in its own way. Egypt got independence and the...

Picked a fight, didn't win it. Anyway, in the case of Syria, Syria was what was left over. The Turks took the chunks that they wanted, specifically the Hate, which is the northeast corner of the Mediterranean, which is like the only part of the region that gets reliable lary and fall. The French made Lebanon its own thing.

And Syria was the rump. So the idea that anything can arise out of this is kind of a stretch. So we're probably looking at a prolonged period of civil war, no man's land, as various groups vie for control. The group that ultimately took control of Syria ended up to be a group called the Alawites who live on the coast. And they basically partnered up with every other minority in the country against the Sunni Arab majority. And it's the Sunni Arabs who have thrown this revolution and have now overthrown the Assad regime, The Asads were Al-Oites, by the way. So getting something coherent out of this is at best going to take a very long time.

Anyway, this whole system would have come crashing down a decade ago, if not for the Russian government. The Russians, Soviets, had always been relatively pro-Syrian because the Syrians were anti-Israeli, and the Israelis were on the side of the United States. So it's just a plain old Cold War tit-for-tat using the regional politics as the backdrop. But more recently, the Putin government, realizing that it needed to launch a series of ever more aggressive wars in its own periphery and eventually moving into the European space, they wanted a way that they could distract the Europeans and to a lesser degree the Americans from anything they were doing. And Syria was perfect.

The civil war had already started without them, and so the Russians stepped in to protect the Assad government transferring a lot of military assets, most notably aircraft and mercenaries under the banner of something called Wagner. Now, you may have remember Wagner was a group through a brief coup. Guys, I'd already been over a year, relatively recently. That was Putin's preferred way of pulling the strings saying that, oh, these aren't actually Russians, but eventually they ended up sending, like, fighter bombers,

and then it was pretty obvious. So, the Russians have a substantial military footprint in theater with thousands of troops and one of their most powerful naval task forces. Now, the Russian Navy is not known for being competent or large, but if the ships can sail away from port, that's usually their better ones. And so on the Levantine coast, especially in places like Banias and Tartis, Tartarus, Tartarus, Tartarus, Tartarus, Tartis, Tartis, Tartis, Tartis, Tartis.

You have Russian naval bases and Russian naval ataches and staff and all that good stuff. Now, here's the problem. Russia can't project power on the seas unless everyone else along the way it lets them do it. So 10 years ago when the Russians intervened forcefully in the Syrian Civil War, the Assad government was on its last legs at that point, under siege from all sides, but the Russians basically brought in more and more and more forces through these ports, distributed them through the country, didn't go after ISIS at all. They primarily went after the secular Sunni Arab opposition, and this is what led them to use several dozen artillery pieces in the vicinity of Aleppo, which is the second largest city, and basically just fire

tens of thousands of shells into the city, probably killing around 100,000 people. That was carried out over and over and over again throughout populated centers. So all of the war crimes style military operations that you're seeing in Ukraine right now were, if not birth, certainly honed in the Syrian battle space. Well, that means that there aren't a lot of Syrians who really want the Russians to do anything but die. But the Russians don't have the airlift capacity to get their forces out of interior Syria. This isn't the United States. This isn't the global superpower that has all kinds of transport options.

So if you think back to when the Biden administration ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, we now have that going in a multitude of places in Syria, but without the aircraft to move things around. So the Russians are having to basically make a run for the exits, but they can't go south because they get into Jordan, which is a U.S. ally. They can't go to the southwest because they get into Israel, which is U.S. ally. They can't go east because they go get into Iraq, which they're still. remnants of ISIS running around. And even if they could get into Raqq, they would have to, what, go to Iran and then to go to Azerbaijan? No, no, no. They can't go north because the Turks maybe didn't orchestrate this last big push by the militants, but they certainly green lighted it and assisted it

and empowered the militants to be successful. And the Turks are thrilled that the Russians are getting trashed. So their only option is to take a very narrow corridor to the coast through the city of which is obviously one of the cities that the militants are after. In fact, by the time you get this, they may already have it. But even if the Russian forces can get to the ports, that doesn't solve their problem, because Russian ships suck. And there's only two places they can theoretically go. The first is they can go out through the Mediterranean, out the Strait of Gibraltar, around Iberia, by France, by Britain, by Scandinavian, to the port of Murmansk above the Arctic Circle. If they do that, I'd be impressed, because I'm not sure any of their ships can.

can make it that far. These are some of the best ships that the Russians have, but they can't make port calls anymore because there's a war on in Ukraine, and the Europeans, if these ships were to dock, would just confiscate them. And I don't think they can make that trip. Iinated.

The closer port is Nervosis, which is in the eastern part of the Black Sea, but under something called the Treaty of Montreux, which the Turks manage and enforce, war ships aren't allowed to transit the Turkish Straits from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. Black Seenbach. And while many of these ships that the Russians have are considered that their home base, it's up to the Turks to decide what can go and win. So you're more likely

to have the ships stalled on the coast while the Civil War in Syria moves into its next phase as the Sunni Arab militants who hate Russia more than anyone else move to consolidate control of the country. And as the factions start trading chips, control of those ports, and the control of the Russian ships that are there are likely to be high up on the list, because there's any number of countries that might be willing to aid the new Syrian government, whatever form that takes, in exchange for certain considerations. And destroying the Russians' most capable naval task force would be an amazing coup by anyone. Or the ships could try to sail all the way to Murmans can sink along the way,

which would also be delightful. So whatever you think of this war, and there's a lot of things to think, this is only the beginning of a series of strategic humiliations for the Russians and regardless of how this is sorted out one way or the other. Those ships, those ports, that is how the Russians get all of their equipment and the material and their troops into the African theater. So whether it's in Burkina Faso or Nijie or Sudan, wherever the Russians currently have a military footprint anywhere in Africa, Libya, that just got cut off.

because the Russians can no longer supply any of it. So we're going to see this cascade of strategic collapses of the Russian position throughout the entire Middle Eastern theater, throughout the entire African theater, and it's probably not going to take any more than a few weeks to months. So stay tuned, get some popcorn, there's going to be a show.