Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming from just above Sister Lake. That’s Volunteer Peak in the background.

I’m finishing my high country traverse from Rock Island Lake to Doe Lake to here, then back on the trail for, you know, an hour, then another traverse. Anyway, going through the Ask Peter forum, we got a question about what I think about all the Russians and the Chinese specifically doing in Africa.

It basically falls into three general categories. Let’s start with the Chinese. First, we have the old stuff, the One Belt, One Road initiative, where the Chinese basically came in and said, “We’re going to build this piece of infrastructure, or a building, or whatever it is for you, and it’s free. We just ask you to be our friends.”

Well, a few years later the Chinese came back. It was like, “Oh, when we said free, we really meant this is a loan, and you have to pay us back right now.” They were laughed out of the room in a lot of places. So a lot of these projects were things that the locals didn’t need or couldn’t operate themselves. Once the Chinese started demanding payment, a lot of these things just fell into disrepair.

I’m not really worried about that. There are a few exceptions here and there, but only a few.

How much did the Chinese waste on this? I don’t have a specific number for just Africa, but globally we’re talking about a trillion. It’s not the dumbest thing we’ve seen the Chinese government do, but it’s certainly one of the dumbest things they’ve done that’s made the rest of the world angry. Anyway, let’s see what happens next.

The second big thing is the mineral acquisitions that the Chinese are doing in Africa. These are all things that, from a technical point of view, are quite simple. For example, they are not doing deep offshore oil because they do not have the technology to do it themselves.

But these are much more real, if that’s the right term. The Chinese are getting manganese, cobalt, copper, and all the rest. A couple of things to keep in mind: It’s not that this isn’t real – this is very real – but when you see the Chinese spending $4 billion on something that’s only worth $1 billion, it’s not just about getting raw materials.

It’s capital flight. It means that someone in the Chinese bureaucracy has figured out a way to get a lot of money out of the country and disguise it as investment. So, this is real investment. It’s basically taking minerals and bringing them back to China. Whether it’s cost-effective has to be decided on a case-by-case basis.

I would say that in half of them that is not the case, but there is bribery and corruption here, and you cannot overlook that when you look at the rest.

The third problem is the Russians, who have a completely different strategy. What the Russians do is they send Wagner, their paramilitary group, in there and literally kick the anthills.

The goal here is not to provide stability; the goal is to have a regime change. And then, as a bonus, the new regime, whatever it is, usually gives the Russians a gold mine. They’re not interested in other kinds of mineral extraction because gold is just easier to smuggle. And that’s how the Russians get around sanctions these days.

They literally fly planeloads of gold to places to pay for things they can’t get otherwise. The place where the Russians have been most successful with this is the hellish area just south of the Sahara, just north of the wetter areas like Nigeria or Congo. So, you’re talking places like Mauritania, Niger, Chad—those kinds of places.

A number of them have had coups in recent years, particularly since the war in Ukraine began. This has driven out a lot of French influence and, to a much lesser extent, American influence. The Americans were there to fight the final chapter of the War on Terror. The French were there because they were their old colonial possessions.

Anyway, the area here is pretty much worthless. I mean, you’re talking about something that’s barely a step above desert, even before you take into account things like climate change, which suggests that the Sahara is going to move south here for a while. The problem, of course, is that when you take an area where the state was weak and you destroy it, you turn a whole chunk of Africa into a stateless zone.

The last time the world was a little bit obsessed with a stateless zone was in Afghanistan. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the next al-Qaeda is going to form here or that the next major terrorist attack is going to break out in this area, but it’s a similar set of circumstances. You have a weak population that can’t take care of itself, and you have warlords who are basically running amok and, with Russian help, overthrowing anyone who tries to bring some semblance of order to the area.

So of the three categories, this is probably the one with the lowest dollar amount, but probably the highest transcontinental significance. Three very different circumstances are playing out here, all with different outcomes.

Okay. See you next time.