hello everybody peter zion here uh it's time to do a fresh update on the ukraine war
largely because vladimir putin on june 9 gave one of his um slightly off the rocker speeches again
and in this one he was referring to the great northern war of 1700 to 1721 when russia was
part of a coalition that went to war to break swedish power in northern europe at the end
of the war the russians ended up with chunks of territory that include modern-day estonia and the
bulk of modern-day latvia anyway in the speech putin proclaimed that when this war happened it
wasn't that russia was seizing territory it was that russia was reclaiming territory that was
already russia's now this is an extraordinarily creative uh falsified view of european russian
history as well as the war in general uh these territories had never been russian before but
that's not the point the point is that strongmen when they go on wars of expansion generally try to
justify their tactics in order to generate popular support and a nationalist upwelling and in that
putin is not remotely unique at all so it's worth looking back not just at the great northern war
but at the war we're in right now in ukraine to understand what it is that the russians are
actually after because you're going to see more of these speeches moving on and they will give
us an idea of where the russians are prioritizing their offenses so the russian territories in the
greater moscow area going from eastern europe into western siberia they tend to be flat they
tend to be cold they tend to have short growing seasons the soil is not particularly fertile
and they don't get reliable rainfall all that adds up to relatively low output of agricultural
stuff per acre which means that the russians can't have a very dense population footprint
well that makes the territory almost impossible to defend because normally you would try to hunker
down between a couple of geographical barriers they don't have those or you would rely on the
density of your population to provide a resistance they don't have that either so russian strategy
from the beginning has been to expand beyond the core russian territories until they can reach a
series of geographic barriers that are difficult for invaders to cross the russians then plant
static forces in the gateways between these barriers to prevent invaders from hitting them
during the soviet union which was the height of the russian people's security the soviet system
controlled every single gap leading into the russian core well when the soviet union collapsed
they lost all but one of them and everything that the putin government has been doing with foreign
affairs since the year 2000 when he became president is to try to rebuild that forward
position now this is difficult for a number of reasons the single biggest one is if you add up
the populations of all the countries that control all of the territories between where russia's core
lands are and these gaps you're talking about a combined population that is significantly larger
than that of russia itself ukraine is not in control of any of those gaps but they are on
the road to the two biggest ones in north eastern romania known as the best arabian gap and then of
course the polish gap of eastern poland that's ultimately where the russians are trying to get
to and now with this new speech putin has made it very clear that the baltic coast is in play
as well because estonia and most of latvia were the territories that the russians seized or in
his words reclaimed in the great northern war of 1700 to 1721. so like i said creative call
but to give you an idea of how seriously the russians are going to take this that seizure
of estonia and latvia pre-dates russia's full assimilation of kiev by a half a century and putin
has had absolutely no problem selling his lies on ukraine to the wider russian population so he's
just right now working on the next lie in order to prepare the russian people for the next war okay
uh some just a couple general updates first of all the book comes out tomorrow june 14th so the
end of the world is almost here the title is the end of the world is just the beginning it talks
about all of the future economic sectors what they'll look like once globalization is gone how
everything is going to remake itself on the other side of the slide that it's already in progress
hey everyone it is june 14. you know what that means the new book's out yup should
have shipped last night if you pre-ordered it should be arriving in your boxes today also the
audio and the digital versions are available as well this project has been a long time coming
excuse me the original plan was for this to be the third book but the publisher
recommended that we do dis united nations third so in many ways the writing for this book has
been taking place in bits and pieces over the last six years it is the the sum total of really
most of my professional experience and taking geography and geopolitics and demography and
economic trends and blending them into a story and the story we're telling is from the point of view
of the economic sectors so there's a different chunk in the book for everything that people care
about and i just wanted to take this opportunity to give everyone a just a fast run through
we have our introductory chapters that talk about geography as a study and demography as
a study and how that shapes everything but then we dive right into transport
getting to everything from containerization to rail to pirates argh lots of pirates
from there we move into finance talk about the nature of money and how it's going to evolve
in a world where the baby boomers are no longer providing capital and whether you are a dollar
bull a dollar bear or you love fiat currency or you hate it you're gonna find something in
there to give you a nightmare or two i promise there's something for everyone in that chapter
uh from there we move on to energy which was originally my bread and butter so it's a good deep
look at everything from siberian crude to american shale to what can and cannot be done with the
green revolution next up is industrial materials everything from steel to iron ore to alumina and
aluminum and bauxite to malib to something begins with an m to zinc each one of them has their own
supply chain and each one of them is going to be challenged in different ways in this world
to come particularly as the chinese rise and then simply fall out of the system altogether
we close out with a pair of sectors that are going to probably make most of the rounds in
the united states first up there is manufacturing the american manufacturing model is one of those
that is relatively insulated from some of the shocks that are coming but it still faces a
small horde of challenges everything from a lack of manpower to problems with the supply lines that
bring in the components we're going to see a huge amount of overhaul in that system over the next
several years and finally we end with agriculture which is the fattest of the topics because it is
the most consequential moving forward your economy evolves in one way if you can't move
things around you can't get fuel but if you can't get food really none of the rest of it matters
so in all of these chapters we're going to go through a lot of the sub sectors and present
them from a geopolitical point of view which means you're going to find out how we got to where we
are how everything transforms at this height of globalization and then reforms on the back
side of the deglobalization wave there's a lot in the book this is definitely my biggest one ever
but i want to underline right now that whether you're getting the digital copy and so you're
looking at it in black and white or getting the auto copy and you have nothing to look at at all
all of the graphics for this and all of my other books are at the website just go up to
the books tab pick the one you want and go to the map room and every single graphic will be
there in full glorious color okay i will be talking to you guys soon from vegas because
that's apparently where people go if they want to celebrate writing a book uh also i'm there
for work so there's that too anyway everyone have a great day happy reading see you soon
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