The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Ukraine War Q&A Series: Who Really Started This Whole Thing? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: May 19, 2023

The fifth question of the Q&A series is...who is the ultimate provocateur in the Ukraine War? And I really hope this answer doesn't surprise anyone.Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/ukraine-war-qa-series-5

All right. Next question is, whose fault is this really? Who really started this? Who is the ultimate provocateur? From my point of view, that's a pretty straightforward question, but let's look at it from the other side real quick, because we do have a number of people in the United States who are just parroting blindly and brainlessly Russian propaganda. The argument that the Ukrainians are led by a bunch of Nazi Jewish gay demons, we're going to put that to the side because that's as stupid as it sounds. and hopefully for most people, the fact that that is a leading threat in Russian propaganda is indicative of how much truth is behind the rest of what they say. But let's focus on something a little bit more substantive, the idea that NATO has been very aggressive with the Russians since the end of the Cold War, and it's ultimately NATO's fault, and specifically the United States's fault,

that Ukraine is in the position that it is today, and the Russians have to do this for defensive purposes. The very, very short version is that's utter bullshit, but let's pick it apart. The argument is that the United States is, States has been aggressively expanding NATO. And you know, you make an argument for that because we have seen roughly 20 countries join NATO since the Cold War ended in 1992. But you have to take a look at the NATO accession process because it is not just an issue of the United States waving a wand. What happens is the countries in question have either a vote or an act of their parliament where they

apply for NATO membership. And then every individual government that is in the alliance already has to sign off on that entrance. And then it's not like you wave a wand. Then starts the accession process, which involves military reform, civil reform, democratic transitions, moving away from a top-down cannon fodder style military strategy like the Russians favor in favor of something with better logistics and a lot more forethought. In order to help these countries not just defend themselves, but move along the path towards a democratic transition.

Or if they're already democracies, to consolidate that transition. Once all of that is done, once the report card is finished, the countries then formally apply, and there again have to have either an act of parliament or a vote of their general population or more likely both. And then once that is done, NATO gives it a rubber stamp, but that's not the end of the process either. Then the accession has to be signed off by each individual NATO country with a minimum of an act of parliament and in some cases an actual plebiscite. Only then can the countries join. This is not an issue of the United States just saying, hey, I want to expand NATO to Hungary,

and it just magically happens. Everyone has to be on board with every step of the process or there is no accession. Now, you also have to consider the list of countries that have joined NATO since the Cold War ended. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, the Slovak Republic, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia, or North Macedonia now, Albania, and future accession targets are potentially Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaijan.

With very few exceptions, these countries have all either been at war with or occupied by Russia. Oh, I forgot Finland, Finland too. Anyway, at war with or occupied by Russia. So from their point of view, the defensive argument that Russia is the one that's threatened by Latvia is just Ascent. So that's kind of piece one. Piece two is what actually happened in the early days of the war. Starting in 2020 and 2021, Vladimir Putin and the Russian government in general started talking about the Ukrainians as not really existing, that they were made up ethnicity designed by the Nazis or by the Americans simply to put a thorn in Russia's side.

And as such, it was Russia's manifest destiny to reclaim lands that were once it. And as the time went on, the number of territories that were traditional Russian territory, according to this propaganda, expanded to include most of the countries that have joined NATO since 1992. And then by the time we got to December of 2021, the Russians started moving tens of thousands of troops onto Ukraine's borders. And by the time we got to January and early February, we had over 100,000. And by the time we got to February 22nd, the day that troops crossed the border, we were at really about 130,000. On the 22nd, over 70,000 troops crossed from the Russian territories into the occupied Ukrainian territories.

And we all of a sudden had a mass mobilization in Belarus as well. And then on the 24th, forces crossed from Belarus south and from those occupied territories in the east, further west, into Ukraine proper. And never forget that this is not the first war between Russian Ukraine since 19, In 2014, the Russians flat out invaded the Donbos territory in the east and also captured Crimea in the south. So anytime somebody tells you that this war is someone's fault other than Russia, you can tell them to go screw themselves because you're smarter than that. Next question.