The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Why Did Russia Choose Invasion Over Nukes? || Ask Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

For years I’ve warned that a war between Russia and Ukraine was inevitable, but why didn't Putin just play the nuke card? As an add-on, we'll also be touching on some new Russian alliances that could rub the US the wrong way. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/why-did-russia-choose-invasion-over-nukes

There's someone who has famously for a long time predicted and strived to warn people that not only is Russia's war with Ukraine inevitable, but Russian national security, national strategy doctrine dictates that the Russians are likely to expand their war westward from Ukraine. But given this framing of this conflict or this aggression as being from a national security standpoint, why does Russia need to do this if they have such a large nuclear arsenal? And I guess part of it. Maybe a tag along would be why is Russia enduring what it is in Ukraine if it has nukes? Isn't that sort of a faster way of evolving things?

The non-nuk approach has been the Russian strategy for a lot longer than we've had so there's always that little inertia thing in terms of people's minds. But one of the things that the Russians have discovered since 1990 is they thought, they thought, that they could do this on the cheap, that they could infiltrate societies, use disinformation, use plants, bribe people, and basically break the democratic processes and the strategic commitments of countries from Estonia to Bulgaria, to Azerbaijan, to Tajikistan. And what they've discovered is they've just pissed everyone off. The idea was that they could get all the strategic goodies that they thought they needed without

actually having to occupy the places. And that has fallen apart everywhere except for Belarus. And so the question then is, can we threaten people to not take strategic decisions that we don't like? So the United States, we're going to nuke you unless you give us an aircraft carrier. That doesn't fucking fly. And that's basically the strategy that you're recommending here, is that we, as they threaten countries between them and the Western world, in order for them to do exactly what Moscow wants. The Russians have discovered very, very clearly that the only way to make someone do what you want is to occupy them. And while we in the West might not see our way of life as threatening the existence of the Russian state, they obviously have a different opinion on that. the only time the Russians had ever, ever felt secure is after World War II when Stalin succeeded in conquering all the buffer states and conquering all of the access points into the Russian heartlands. That held until 1992. And the Russians are desperate to have that back. Unfortunately for them, the only way they can have that back is to buy occupying countries with a combined population of more than their own population. That's not going to fly in those countries. It's not going to fly in the West. It's not going to fly.

the United States. And so we have a war. Russia's invasion of Ukraine has pushed Moscow to seek some non-traditional material supply alliances or partnerships with some of the countries most antagonistic to American leadership of the world. I'm thinking about North Korea. It's, you know, in a tighter economic embrace with China, it's getting drones from Iran. Do we see the potential for an emergence of a Moscow-led counter-nado. And I think, you know, we've seen this once before. It was the U.S.

or, but do North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, let's look Cuba into the midst too on its Friday. Do Zee needs... I hesitate the Calvin Powers, but does this assembly of

from America's streak, the bad guys, together present a considerable, credible, worrisome threat to the American-led global order. Well, I mean, I don't think the American-led global order is doing that greater. It's going to last that much longer. But no, I don't think this is what's going to tear it down. Keep in mind that even at the height of the Cold War, the only Soviet ally that ever deployed troops outside of its own country was Cuba, and that was to Angola. You never had Polish troops in the remains. Romania troops in eastern Germany. And so even at the height of Soviet dominance, they were never able to pull this off. From a purely logistical point of view, forget political or economic.

So you might have places like North Korea and China and Russia and Iran and Cuba, not liking how things are going here or there in the world. But them deploying is in completely different situation. In addition, keep in mind that while Russia has figured out how to deploy small number of troops and things like Wagner, China has only ever had one deployment outside of its home country. That's in Djibouti. That barely counts. North Korea has never done it ever. Cuba is not nearly as powerful now as they were 30 years ago.

So the capacity just isn't there, much less the coordination, much less the deployment capacity. The dangers of the American-led order are primarily in the United States from disinterest. And I still, still, still see the biggest danger to that order will be when the United States wakes up one day and realizes that the countries that are benefiting most from its presence are the countries that it is most opposed to. Because without America providing global naval coverage for civilian shipping, there is no Russian energy industry. There is no Chinese manufacturing sector.

There is no Iranian trade. There is not even anything for Cuba. And if the U.S. starts to use its Navy to interfere with those flows instead of protecting those flows, we're in a very different world. the next day and the countries that the United States thinks of as the problems are gone the day after. Thank you very much for your time, Peter. I enjoyed a conversation and thank you for all our subscribers and followers for your questions.

Please continue to send them in and I look forward to having a conversation like this with you again. Thank you. Take care.