| It's an interesting book and I think it's worth a read. The author, Peter Zeihan, does a good job of melding geography, demographics, energy, and food supply to come up with a deterministic approach to geo-politics. I have no clue how accurate it is, but it's a fun mental algorithm for simplifying complex and nuanced situations. His prediction, and I'm paraphrasing here, was that Russian Demographics are more or less in free fall. Every year after ~2020 the Russians have less and less fighting age men and their army will be weaker and weaker. Additionally, because most of populated Russia is a flat plane, they have no geographic barriers to protect their cities. Therefore they need to forward position their troops in order to feel secure. So his assertion, was that based on previous Russian military conflicts, Ukraine was the next most likely target, and that if Russia wanted to do anything, they'd have to do something sometime earlier on in this decade. Otherwise they can't field an army of significant size to forward position their troops. |
This is very weird argument that smells of taking russian propaganda on face value. There's no "geographical barrier" other than what, hundreds of kilometers of land? They don't need "forward position". Closest point from Ukraine to Moscow is barely less than from Latvia, and St Pete is pretty much on NATO border, yet somehow... land road to Crimea makes them feel "secure"?
The real answer is that there is no "feeling insecure" at all other than in propaganda, and invasion of Ukraine is purely for maintaining the empire. There can be no "russian world" country that is outside of russia and prospers.