Peter Zeihan on Demographics in the Orthodox World

In a recently released YouTube video, Peter Zeihan talks about the demographics of the Orthodox Christian world which he defines as geographically containing Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia. Essentially, he is talking about the former communist states within the Orthodox Christian world. Zeihan observes that this part of the world is suffering from a large scale demographic collapse which he asserts is largely the result of three trends.

The first trend is the broad economic dislocation the Orthodox Christian world experience in the 20th century which negatively impacted their demographics. This economic dislocation resulted from the economic mismanagement under communist regimes which created a lower quality of life and prosperity in this area than it would have otherwise experienced. Poor people in an urbanized, industrialized world have less children because children make life more expensive. This is in contrast to an agrarian economy where children are economically advantageous as essentially free labor when they are young and a retirement plan for the parents when they grow old. The second trend is vast immigration from the Orthodox Christian World to Western Europe and North America. Many people who had the means to immigrate out of this economically dysfunctional area did so. Many women did so by entering the sex trade do to poor education. The third trend Zeihan talks about is the use of abortion as the primary method of birth control. Because of the long term impact of these three trends Zeihan asserts these countries will likely never repopulate themselves.

Zeihan observes Russians specifically experienced series of stacked political disasters that contributed to its current situation. World War I, World War II, the famine under Stalin, the economic mismanagement under Brezhnev and Khrushchev, and the post Cold War economic collapse all created economic dislocation and contributed to making the current generation the smallest one on record. As such, Zeihan asserts, the current war in Ukraine will be the last war that Russia will ever fight. Moreover, says Zeihan, even if the Ukrainians emerge victorious over the Russians, their ethnicity will vanish over the next 20 to 30 years followed by the Russian ethnicity 20 to 30 years after that.

All of this begs the question as to what are Vladimir Putin’s motives? Why would he seek territorial expansion in the face of this demographic collapse of ethnic Russians? If it is (as Zeihan has previously argued) to shore up the defense of the Russian geography, will he have the manpower to do conquer the land in the first place and to secure it in the second? Is it to add the population of Ukraine to Russia? If so, the would the loss of Ukrainians and Russians in the conflict not cancel out any gains in population? Perhaps it is the last gasp of a dying ethnicity, one that is not dying because of a NATO war on Russia, but rather because of mismanagement and misfortune.

Territorial Alteration

JMSmith of the Orthosphere points out in his OP “Bad Books: PLEZ Section 2,” that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion puts forth the idea that modern wars should not be wars of “territorial alteration.” That is, according to international law no country should annex the territory of another nation. Indeed, this international understanding has been the norm certainly since World War II. I take JMSmith’s point to be that the outlawing of the annexation of territory from a weak country by a stronger country is a “liberal” and therefore evil proposition and that it is right and just for a strong country to take the territory of a weak country. But I suppose for some reason, it is not right and just for an even stronger country to protect the weak country from the strong country.

Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan makes the argument that the reason Russia has invaded Ukraine to regain control of it’s natural defensive frontiers. That is, the invasion of Ukraine was to extend it’s boundaries to the Carpathian mountains and then plug up the invasion route between the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea with a military presence. To do this, would require Russia to conquer all of Ukraine, Moldova and part of Romania. This is only one of several invasion routes that would have to be regained. The others would require the annexation (or control of) essentially the entire former Soviet Union which would require the invasion of many other now independent nations. Certainly, Russia has a historical basis for this strategy, having been invaded throughout its history most notably by the Mongols, Sweden, France and Germany twice.

All these invasions took place prior to the modern liberal notion that it is against international law for a strong country to take and annex territory from a weaker country. Now, it has been argued that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is actually a result of NATO’s war on Russia and that (I suppose) Russia would never have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine did not seek alignment with the West. If we are to believe Peter Zeihan, Russia would have invaded Ukraine or sought to militarily and politically dominate it in any case. But if we are to believe the principle of international law (and I suppose, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion), that NATO (a defensive alliance) would not seek to invade Russia and annex its territory, then there would be no need for Russia to invade Ukraine.

So I suppose the question is, if the Protocols are true, then why would Russia (or those who believe in the authenticity of the Protocols) fear Ukrainian alignment with the West enough to justify a Russian invasion?

The Odd Couple

I imagine to anti-liberal living in a liberal society must feel a bit like Felix Unger living with Oscar Maddison in The Odd Couple. Oscar is disorganized and messy and believes both he and Felix should be free to do as they please. Felix, by contrast, wants to live in an ordered environment. But because Felix lives in Oscar’s apartment he has to live in Oscar’s environment. However, if Oscar moved into Felix’s apartment it would be the same thing in reverse if Felix chose to impose his values onto Oscar. That said, Oscar does not believe he is imposing his values onto Felix (because they are both free to do as they please) but he is, because in order for Felix to live the way he wants to he must clean up after Oscar.

Still, one philosophy must win out over the other and under that condition I choose liberalism. I choose liberalism (specifically moderate liberalism) because I believe in the values it stands for, most notably, (1) the rule of law, (2) equality before the law, (3) freedom of speech, (4) freedom of the press, (5) freedom of religion, and (6) a democratic process governed by free and fair elections. Of course, liberals and anti-liberals can go to extremes and when they do they seek to impose their values on others through shame and brute force. We see this in Marxist wokism and in right wing Fascism. Both of which have more in common each other than they do with moderate liberalism espousing the aforementioned six values.

Those extreme, shadow philosophies will argue that the six aforementioned values of moderate liberalism are a sham and do not actually operate as they are intended. They will say the rule of law is simply the strong imposing their will on the weak, that there is no true equality before the law, that freedom of speech is actually limited and allows the majority to oppress the minority, that the press is in fact biased and untrue, that freedom of religion creates a disorganized and immoral society and that the democratic process is fixed and a sham. There may be some truth to these criticisms on the margins but I believe them to be largely overblown. Furthermore, the driving force behind these criticisms is to undermine these values and are deceitful in that they are made to become a self-fulfilling prophesy.