Peter Zeihan explained this at length in his geopolitical podcasts:
Here’s a scenario from the spring of last year:
Russian leadership is delusional, believes in fake Russian wonder weapons (Pantsir, S-400, T-14 Armata…) and the nonexistent might of the Russian Army
Ukraine folds without a fight in three days, Russia gains ownership over 40 mil people and natural resources
Delusional fascist euphoria intensifies both among the Russian elite and the general population - suddenly the Baltics, Poland and Alaska* are on the table
Russia invades the Baltics and/or Poland believing Tucker Carlson that the US Army consists of obese transgender snowflakes and that the senile Biden will hand over Europe on a platter like he did Kabul
Article 5 is triggered and NATO conventional forces destroy incompetent Russian troops in a matter of days
Blindsided by reality on the ground, Russian leadership faces a total meltdown and goes nuclear
I just learned about this guy on his JRE podcast and have checked some of his content out on youtube. He clearly has a lot of insight but how good has his track record of prediction and analysis been? I’m not sure about that but I am sure that his grim predictions and harrowing analyses are great for pulling people into his thought process, which conveniently enriches Peter Zeihan.
I suppose we’ll know in a decade if he was right about China collapsing. I’m generally skeptical of anyone who makes predictions about the future with the degree of confidence and certainty he projects.
The alternate history situation you described is somewhat plausible, but that’s not what happened. Joe Biden more or less invited Putin into Ukraine, as long as it was only a “minor incursion”. Now we’re here, and if you believe what Peter Zeihan says, here is just the beginning of a much longer, much larger war.
Perhaps, but have they slowed military production and procurement? Has their their military training and weapon-system priorities shifted to something other than building an invasion force to take Taiwan? I haven’t heard that it has.
Time will tell, but history illustrates an old truth. Have weapon, will hunt.
This planet has needed a cleansing for quite some time…
All hail our cockroach overlords.
On a real note - I was not aware the Russian leadership was delusional to that extent. But, based on that synopsis with their losing in Ukraine, why have they not gone nuclear yet?
They’re not that smart, and they’re into pseudoscience - numerology, auras, astral projections astrology, you name it. They even tried to read HRC’s mind using psychics back when she was Secretary of State. Minister of Defense Shoigu who’s part Tuvan has his own personal shaman who takes shrooms and dances around a campfire, reading into the future.
I know that in the West Putin is portrayed as an evil genius, but him and his coterie are mid level crooks who somehow made it big. Putin was a mid level KGB snoop who only made it from St. Petersburg to Moscow because his mentor Sobchak made it big with Yeltsin.
Zolotov, the head of the 400k strong paramilitary National Guard was Putin’s judo partner who in the 90ies as a hired goon went door to door and extorted protection rackets from small businesses in St. Petersburg
Prigozhin, arguably the second powerful man in Moscow did nine years for grand theft/sexual assault and afterwards ran a hot dog stand.
See above - they’re former mid level crooks that operate on a prison yard dynamic. They don’t want to die.
For example, Russian deputy minister of defense sent his pregnant daughter to Miami to give birth to an anchor baby. All of them have children living in the US or the UK, many have acquired citizenships.
Dmitry Medvedev, who regularly threatens with nuclear armageddon on Telegram is doing that because his son’s green card was revoked.
Hell, I’m pretty sure I recently heard that Russia is applying to be the United States’s 51st state due to its inability to care for itself and its general inferiority.
I’m going to keep saying this until I’m proven wrong…
The Chinese are terrible at war, they know it, they have a loooong history of being terrible at it. They are NOT going to start anything military. It’s all a bluff. Now, if you took the Japanese people and placed them in China, the world would already be turning Japanese-ah.
Traditional full contact Karate guys are nasty; kung phooey guys, maybe in the movies. Success leaves clues, random example from left field notwithstanding.
I understand that Xi was at least partially taken by Putin’s pitch from last year “let me show you how to overrun a country in three days”. After all, they spent five days together mere days before the invasion.
There’s nothing that pisses off cowards more than a brave man. Especially if his bravery, in trying circumstances, is unexpected and disconnected from fake macho signaling.
That’s why gravy seals, Donnie Jr, bitter middle aged authoritarians who’ve watched Taken too many times and of course assorted nazis hate the guy.
Actually, this observation is more relevant than one may think.
In the mind of Russians USSR equals Putin’s Russia but they’ve somehow forgot that most of the Soviet industrial capacity, and old school engineering knowledge, was in Ukraine.
Thank’s to this Soviet legacy most of the industrial plants are in Ukraine and that MacGuyvering engineering legacy lives on - they’re putting together some really weird stuff together on the fly.
Like that massive steel plant in the earlier days of this conflict that they spent days and countless munitions shelling trying to get a few citizens.
Russians are looking like about the dumbest fuckers I’ve ever seen. Waste munitions to destroy valuable infrastructure to get at a hand full of people, only a few of which were actual fighters.