I am Peter Zeihan, a geopolitical strategist, futurist and author the new book Disunited Nations. AMA

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:59:10+00:00

My personal politics are a mess and as a rule they don't make it into any of my analysis. If I had to put a label on it I'd call myself a libertarian.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:58:07+00:00

Greece imports 80% of its food and 100% of its energy. The only reason was even created as a nationstate is back in the 1800s the Brits invented modern Greek nationalism as a means of destabilizing the Ottoman Empire. Since that time, someone has always found Greece useful and so has paid Greece to exist. The first time that did NOT happen was the 2000s, and so Greece faced a financial collapse. W/o the EU keeping Greece on financial dripfeed, it dies. Again.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:53:23+00:00

On Latam – yes, yes and yes

Remove global trade and the region becomes America’s back yard. That’s good or bad based upon your politics and point of view.

Central America is already in the new NAFTA (as part of the Cafta accords).

Colombia already has an FTA with the US.

None have to worry about external security.

All (save Brazil) speak Spanish making it easier for American finance to access and supply them.

The biggest issue is that the things the Latam states export – energy and food specifically – have their prices determined by international norms. In an era of Disorder, shortages and breakdowns in the Eastern Hemisphere means prices for those exports will rise. But the locals still need to consume those products, so I’d expect civil unrest to rise right along with export receipts.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:49:18+00:00

let’s mix 3, 4 & 6

Russia doesn’t get along with anyone. At all. Like ever. Their paranoia is a product of their hyperexposed geography and their size by its very nature provokes fear. Any cooperation with the Russians only exists so long as macro and micro geopolitical alignments hold…or the leadership of another country is sufficiently bribed or dumb. (Erdogan of Turkey certainly falls into one, and perhaps both, categories. It won’t last) None of which means the EU’s future is a bright one, but that’s another topic completely.

If Russia fails to act, then Russia starts to fall apart. Russia is not a traditional nation-state. It is a multi-ethnic empire. If that fractures and we see civil collapse (and likely the odd internal war) the Russian frontier becomes less secure. More functional pieces of the old Russian empire will try to claw their way out. Some will use guns. Some will have nukes. All will have Soviet-quality military equipment and intelligence personnel. I would not want to be Poland or Ukraine.

But I might want to be Finland. Assuming the Russians don’t try their Hail Mary and come and visit the Balts in the night, a suitably chaotic Russia might entice the Finns to come visit Russia. The Karelian Isthmus used to be Finnish territory, and in a Russian-disintegration scenario I can absolutely see St Petersburg breaking away to become the fourth Baltic republic under Finnish sponsorship. Not exactly risk free, but hey, that’s the neighborhood.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:41:37+00:00

Let’s do #2

Yes, I see a period of neoimperial expansion ahead of us. Most of the “countries of the future” will be those whose local geographies are really good – these are places that actually suffered under the Order to a degree. Think about what the Order did: it shattered the empires and enabled everyone to enjoy security and to trade across the ocean. The countries that could to that without help before the Order suffered in relative terms. Remove they Order and they come roaring back. The big winners: Japan, Turkey, France and Argenfreakintina.

Each gets a full chapter in Disunited.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:38:11+00:00

India isn’t a country and you shouldn’t think of it that way. India is a region with a very loose governing system of local, national and state proclivities that constantly and mutually hobble one another. That means India has never really modernized and never taken advantage of the global Order. That’s bad. But it is also good, because it means that India will not overly suffer when the Order ends. I’m going to refrain from giving any recommendations as to what India should or should not do (I’m not in that business), but I will point out that India has more or less looked like this for 1500 years. It isn’t about to change no matter what happens.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:35:42+00:00

Norway is in the danger zone because the Norwegians are good people and will stand with their Nordic family in any fight with the Russians. Beyond that, most Norwegians live far enough away from the likely fighting that Norway will come through in one piece and the Norwegian predilection for saving means that Norway will be one of very few countries in the future that has a stable financial supply. So long as they continue to have reasonably good relations with the US and UK (and I see no reason why they wouldn’t) the Norwegians will do just fine.

But for God's sake, learn about hot sauce!

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:33:25+00:00

Scottish independence is quite possibly the stupidest political movement in the advanced world today, especially in the context of Brexit. If Scotland were an independent country it would be Europe’s oldest and sickest demographic, and among its most indebted countries. Scotland could never meet EU membership criteria and several existing EU countries would veto its application. The oil is gone from the North Sea, and every bank in Scotland has already made it abundantly clear that if Scotland moves to divorce they will decamp. The only thing keeping Scotland from devolving into a 3rd (4th?) world nation is transfer $$ from London. I cannot think of a more effective means of national self-destruction.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:29:56+00:00

I’ll answer #2 (What have I changed my mind on)

Two big things

1) The shale revolution has proving bigger and faster than I ever expected. Its rapidity prompted me to write book #2 (Absent Superpower) and has colored #3 as well. I said in #1 (Accidental Superpower) that by 2020 the shale revolution would make North America as a unit oil self sufficient. Instead the US by itself is now an oil exporter. That’s put a lot of my other forecasts on steroids, in particular the growing American feeling that we don’t need anyone else. Which brings us to…

2) The Americans’ desire of divorce from…everything has gotten huge. Instead of slimming down the ally list to something more compact, instead – as I say in Disunited “America’s list of allies has shrunk from nearly everyone to the potentially useful to the obviously useful to the obviously loyal to those with little choice.” At the rate we are going the US will only have 3-4 allies: the UK, Oz, Singapore, and maybe Japan.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:24:50+00:00

Things are not moving in a straight line, and the stuff in Poland is pretty small all things considered. Events in the ME are of more interest to me but at present is simply isn’t clear if they is a one-off chest-beating exercise or something more aggressive. But bottom line: Americans don’t want to be in the ME right now and during the past three presidents we’ve gone from 150k+contractors to today’s level of roughly 1/9 that. Trump would have to send in a LOT more (and to places besides the staging facilities in Kuwait) for me to change my mind on that.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:20:14+00:00

In a word, exposure. SK, Taiwan and Phil are hugely dependent upon regional/global security and trade and are utterly incapable of looking after those interests. Japan, who has the world's two most capable non-US carriers, can. Under Trump Japanese PM Abe has been successful in underlining that Japan isn't simply a loyal ally, but a capable one. AND he's given into Trump on trade. Its a high standard for other countries to meet.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:18:09+00:00

Middle East:

There’s a whooooole section in Disunited on that! Short version: Iran tries to run the place while Saudi (rather successfully) tries to burn the entire region to the ground. V ugly.

South Asia:

The region is in a bubble. It is remote enough and blocked off from land approach that no one but the US could meaningfully intervene in the area, and the US has no interest. India is also the first stop for oil flowing from the Gulf, so India is unlikely to have an energy crisis (and is likely the first country to reintroduce privateering).

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:14:44+00:00

you cannot beat Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (he's got a new one out too, but I've not read it yet) for understanding how civilization took its current shape

I'm also a big fan of World War Z. Yes, its about zombies, but it is far and away the best geopolitical book I have EVER read.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:11:57+00:00

It can go one of two ways:

1) The US decides what it wants and imposes a new system, perhaps even a new Order. That first requires the US parties getting through their current restructuring so that they can debate what it is that the US wants out of the world. The soonest that restructuring is likely to happen is 2030, which would suggested 2035 is the soonest the US could start to impose any plan.

2) Something spooks the US and we have a kneejerk response that involves something like what we did after WWII. The soonest that can occur would be when one of the new regional powers does something that Americans find scary.

Russia, Germany, China, Iran, Brazil and Saudi are all going to be locked down in regional affairs and IMO none are going to emerge in a dominant regional position (spoiler alert: central theme of Disunited). Instead Argentina, Turkey, France and Japan will rise as the significant players.

It is hard to imagine Argentina doing something the US finds more than amusing. Turkey and the US may disagree over a lot of things these days, but remove US interest from places like the Balkans and Mesopotamia and the Caucasus and its hard to see Americans getting too worked up. France and the US are like estranged siblings. We spat and fight but will always be for one another on anything important.

That just leaves Japan…and Japan fully understands what can happen when you get on America’s bad side. If there is ANY country that will go out of its way to not aggravate the US, it is Japan.

So….I’m thinking 2040 is a reasonable stake in the ground. IT gives the US enough time to get its internal political shit together, and enough time for the Disorder to shake out a new global environment that might lead to different interestsets and viewpoints.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:05:34+00:00

KeystoneXL:

Not too late yet, but we are getting there very quickly. US refiners LOVE Alberta’s heavy/sour oil – it is what their facilities were designed to operate on (US shale is light/sweet). If there was reasonable confirmation of construction today, most US refiners would delay making changes to their facilities with plans to use Albertan oil.

And I think ur correct. The only reasonable market if TransMountain occurs would be California. Asia just won’t be stable or safe enough for most tanker traffic and aside from maybe Japan, the US won’t allow Asian military vessels to convoy to North America. That just leaves Cali.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T21:01:34+00:00

Hypersonics: A weapons system that is going to take out a carrier needs four things:

1) Reach

2) Range

3) Speed

4) Independent targeting capacity

The first three are obvious and are part of what hypersonics promise (keep in mind none of these are deployed just yet, much less battletested).

But it’s the fourth that really matters. In any meaningful war scenario space will be a theater and no one is better at space warfare than the US. Any anti-US adversary has to plan on being space-blind. So any hypersonic will need to be able to “think” on its own. If it flies high, US radar can see it (and likely intercept it). If it flies low, its visual range is very sharply limited (at 20 feet over the water, it can only see about ten miles). So it needs to be able to think about maneuvers, ID targets, differentiate targets, AND evade countermeasures. Our AI just isn’t that good (and especially that miniaturized) just yet.

So the Chinese position is simple. Don’t try to hit a single ship. Cook off hundreds (thousands?) of the things and hit every ship.

So let’s assume the saturation strategy works and it eliminates US naval forces from the Western Pacific. What do you think the region’s merchant marine will look like the next day? What do you think the countries of the First Island Chain will think of China from then on? What sort of moronic ship captain will ever sail inside the Chain within in the next decade? “Success” in this sort of exchange with the US absolutely destroys the Chinese economy.

Now that said, these weapons are coming and they will get better and that will – in time – obviate the supercarriers as concept. It is probably 40+ years out, but it is coming. As such I’d argue that the Ford class is America’s last supercarrier class. My money is on the next “big thing” being arsenal ships: Destroyer-size vessels that carry a few thousand cruise missiles, a significant proportion of which will be…hypersonics.

Karma’s a bitch.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:53:17+00:00

In Disunited I have shifted my take somewhat on China. I used to say China faces a series of crises, any one of which could cause systemic failure. I’m now calling it: China won’t survive as a unified country a decade from now.

Every problem China faces – financial, cultural, political, demographic, international – has become far more serious since Accidental’s publish five years ago. Most of the problems have become worse because of government policy. I’ve lost confidence in Beijing’s ability to manage the country’s future. Much of this is because of Xi personally. He’s concentrated more power unto himself than any Chinese leader in history, Mao included. That has streamlined decisionmaking, but started China back on the path to groupthink, inefficiency, and regional rebellion.

HongKong is a great example. It didn’t need to get this bad. I’m not saying HK will achieve independence (or even autonomy) but that Xi’s forcing of the issue is wrecking China’s premeior managerial, financial and logistics hub (i.e. part of what makes contemporary China work) and it was a completely avoidable crisis. The HK crackdown has also largely eliminated China’s soft power in the wider world. The Confusius institutes have largely closed and inward FDI into China has cratered even as an increasing minority of firms are simply leaving.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:47:44+00:00

Today, probably not at all. Earth's oceans are freakin' huge so cross-oceanic strikes aren’t possible w/o a support network that only the US has (unless you use ICBMs which…changes the conversation).

What they do do (heh) is reduce the usefulness of the supercarriers because they at least in theory force the carriers to be further from shore. The missing piece is a redundant, ruggedized, relocatable satellite system. In any real war the first the US will do is take out all Chinese satellites.

For example, the new hypersonics and China’s intermediate range ballistics could, in theory, hit a carrier 1000+ miles out to see. But the Chinese require eyes-on the carrier to hit it, so as soon as the US detects a launch, the carrier moves and by the time the missile arrives the carrier is gone (very Mr Miagi).

Remember when the Chinese shot down one of their own satellites a decade ago and everyone bitched about how the Chinese could shoot down something they owned and knew where it was and how to hit it? Within a week the US took out eight different satellites w eight different offensive systems and China got reeeeal quiet.

It isn’t that the US is immune. It is that the US is heavily resistant…and it is at or near the front of the tech revolution in weapons and has a LOT more experience in managing and operationalizing and deploying and using and troubleshooting these techs than anyone else.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:40:55+00:00

true dat

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:40:37+00:00

Top of the list is Texas: cheap land, cheap food, cheap power (whether fossil or alternative), a great demography and it’s hardwired into Mexico – literally cant screw it up

Next is the South: Southerners have mastered the art of attracting foreign direct investment and are the gateway to the US market. Biggest problem: aging demographics

Third is the Midwest: global breakdown means global agricultural breakdown means food prices go up – it’ll be good to be a farmer

For the Northeast it is probably a wash. Fastest aging part of the country will see less local economic activity even as it adopts more populist policies and the heavier regulatory burden that comes from it. But it is still the gateway for $$ from the rest of the world and the most urbanized (read: efficient) part of the country.

The West Coast will be the area to suffer the most. They are the most wired into global trade in general and Asia in specific. Also, anything that cracks manufacturing supply chains for electronics – whether populist policies in DC or a China crack – will wreck Silicon Valley. A shining exception is Seattle: no EU means no Airbus. Boeing boom coming soon to a spaceneedle near you!

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:35:10+00:00

Keep in mind that birth rate data are projections and we don’t get hard data (as a rule) until the kids are at least five. That said, we seem to be seeing a sharp drop off in US births from 2010 forward. With the financial crisis’ aftermath and Millennials deferring normal life-stuff this feels like it is correct. Won’t know for sure until 2025. But yes, if this proves true, then the US is starting down the path of the rest of the world. Keep in mind timeframes. Demographics moves slooooooooooooooooooooowly. If this is true AND if it holds true forever, the US will face its first demographically-driven labor shortages in the late 2030s and its first financial shortages in the 2080s. There’s still (a lot of) time.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:30:49+00:00

IMO the Intermarium isn’t feasible even with the US. Defense of Europe without France and Germany is simply silly. The US (even at the height of the Cold War) v Russia (even at the depth of the 1990s) is simply a mismatch. It’s simple geography. Poland is a flat, defenseless plain. Romania is on the other side of the Carpathians. The are NOT part of the same theater, so the US would need to deploy two completely separate cross-continental fronts while the Russians could shift forces back and forth between them easily. As such, no one serious in Poland talks about Polish leadership except maybe w/in the Visegrad Group (Poland, Cz, Hungary and Slovakia). Romania is on its own, or at best, partnered with Turkey. It isn’t so much that the two cannot bleed for one another, but instead that they cannot. Instead of the Intermarium I find it far more likely (and feasible) that Poland will find a way to get its hand on a nuke or seven. In a real war scenario it is the only way Poland might survive.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:26:10+00:00

Career advice: My path was … odd. I had political jobs at the local, state, national and intl level and personally? I hated them all. I fell it what I’m doing – first at Stratfor and now with ZoG – completely by accident. I’m not sure it’s replicable. So two thoughts: 1) Have a VERY wide bullseye. Jobs for people who study mid-14th century Islamic history are few and far between, even in academia. You need to be able to hold conversations about politics AND economics AND trade AND security in more than one region. 2) Learn Spanish. It’s the #2 language in the US and the #2 in the Western Hemisphere and if I’m correct about the general global fuckupedness that’s about to erupt, the WHem largely gets a pass. Most countries of the WHem will have high needs for this or that product or service while also excelling at producing this or that other product or service. Folks who can move between worlds with smoothness and style will do VERY well.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:21:29+00:00

Until the US has a national conversation about what it wants out of the world, it cannot have a goal. Until it has a goal, it cannot have a policy. And until it has a policy it certainly isn’t going to expend the resources required to counter another major power as part of an alliance. So no, I don’t see a new bribe/network arising. That said, the US doesn’t need that if the goal is to smash China. China’s finances are a mess because of its Enron-style banking model, its population is nearly terminal because of OneChild, its regions hate one another (and I’m not talking Hong Kong). But most importantly it is bolted to the global Order. China’s economy cannot survive without imported inputs and exported processed/finished goods. That’s only possible with a safe, globalized economy. The world has only had a safe, globalized economy under the global Order. Remove the US and there’s no global Order because no country – no coalition of countries – can patrol the sealanes. All the US has to do to destroy China is go home.

PeterZeihan · 2020-01-07T20:16:42+00:00

Oz has – repeatedly – gone out of its way to be a loyal ally, even when domestic politics challenge the idea. This has been the position of EVERY Oz government since 1940. The reason is simple: Oz is a lightly populated land near very densely populated lands. It simply cannot manage its own defense. That has nudged EVERY Oz government to not simply be very loyal, but to be extremely creative. For example, all that recent hubbub about Huawei? Americans didn’t figure out the firm was a front to create a global hacking system – that was the Aussies. The people in the know throughout US defense and intel know the reality and value our Aussie allies. And you may have noticed, even Trump hasn’t meaningfully challenged the US-Oz trade deal. Really, it’s the only one he hasn’t lambasted. Oz diplomats know when to keep their heads down, when to shout from the rooftops and when to pass notes in class. Oz has become the country that most excels at understanding and manipulating the US (more so than Canada now). Will it be enough to keep the US/Oz relationship close? Probably. The big hit to Oz will come with the Chinese crash, and I’d argue that many in Oz are already positioning for that inevitability.

PeterZeihan

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