Peter Zeihan

Although this book is only a few months old, world events seem to have raced ahead of its premise: that the disengagement of America will cause greater hardship to America’s allies and competitors than to America itself.

If you read headlines (and who doesn’t) you’d quickly learn that the opposite is true: America’s hegemony is threatened more by its own intransigence than by anything anybody could have dreamed up for it.

If anything, the current international public health emergency show more has demonstrated that the American republic was designed to fail from the beginning.

Why?

Because it valued liberty and the pursuit of happiness (Krispy Kreme Donuts?) over cooperation, consensus, and compromise.

This book gives “report cards” on America’s major competitors and the forecasts are pretty grim. China will implode. Russia will fizzle out. Germany has had its day and its green plans are a sham. In spite of its demographic cul de sac, Japan will assume its rightful place among the Asian tigers.

N. Korean, Iranian, Indian, Pakistani and Israeli nuclear programs? Shrug.

Nowhere in this global strategic analysis does one find the role of ocean acidification, ocean rise, the deterioration of the ice caps, the decline of the permafrost, or the seemingly unstoppable rises in CO-2 emissions.

The book reads more like a prep book for a presidential debate than a sober analysis of who wins, who loses, and why.

There is no analysis on the concentration of wealth, or the scale of international crime, the offshoring of wealth, or the grip of transnational corporations.

Don’t black lives matter? Not in this book.

Where in this equation are data and processing power and the integrity of electronic networks? And where do artificial intelligence and CRISPR fit in?

Nowhere in sight.

About a year ago I read Yuval Noah Harari’s Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. If you want to wake up frightened, that is a better place to start.

Before I read this book I was skeptical that nations standing alone will have a great impact on global trends. I am still of that opinion. show less

It's always a tough call as to how to rate these books which are unabashed jeremiads, and which claim to be unflinchingly looking into the abyss. One thing that you have to give Zeihan is his emphasis on how globalization became treated as a machine that would go of itself, when there is really no such thing, that it takes time to replace that which has been broken, and Zeihan doesn't believe that the time to adapt is really there. It's hard to disagree with that, particularly considering show more some of the breath-takingly stupid decisions that have been made in the last few years. Just look at the hash most of the governments of the world have made of COVID.

The guts of this book is the wave of famine that Zeihan sees sweeping over much of Eurasia and Africa, the return of chronic malnutrition, or simply lack of choice compared to the just-in-time system we've enjoyed. China is the big loser to Zeihan, with how big being the question. He's seeing full-tilt system failure and possible collapse of the CCP state. This would seem far-fetched until you consider the demographic disaster that Beijing has created for itself. Zeihan is not a great believer in muddling through, as he doesn't believe you can make something out of nothing if you don't have the inputs of production, and you can't procure those inputs for love nor money.

On the other hand, if you happen to live in the Western Hemisphere, pat yourself on the back, in that you're in the region most likely to get through the incipient bad times playing a strong hand. It's been noted that Zeihan really doesn't deal in ideology, but Globalization failed as an ideology in the United States because the benefits were delivered to too few people; that rebalancing act is now in process. It's just that, again, it takes time, and time will be against everyone for the next decade or so. Not a happy read, but even if Zeihan is only about 50% right, the prospects are daunting, even if governments respond with intelligence and responsibility, as opposed to wallowing in resentment, which has been the predominant trend; see Nadav Eyal's "Revolt" for that reality. show less

Since I discovered Peter Zeihan's from reading his blisteringly good The End of the World Is Just the Beginning (2022) I've been working my way backwards through his bibliography. ALL of them are excellent and I recommend them all, but if I had to crown a crème de la crème winner it would be this one, The Accidental Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global Disaster. So much has changed in the world in the 7 years since this book came out, but you'll be show more surprised by how many of the predictions argued here have come true or trending that way. And since 2020, since COVID began, these trends have in many cases accelerated.

But it's not The Accidental Superpower having many of its predictions come true that makes it one of the best. That's a part of it, for sure. It's also the way the arguments are laid out, by giving what's to come a historical context in a way that feels both succinct and full of details. And also I just love history, geography and politics, and this book has all that and more. show less

10 years ago I read The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. It's a examination of global trends which then concluded by saying things were likely to turn out okay for the people of Planet Earth. I like to think of Peter Zeihan's book as "The Rational Pessimist" only this time the obvious difference is I would give Ridley's book an Optimism rating of, let's say, 10 whereas I would give Zeihan's book a Pessimism rating of... uh... off the charts. This book might as well be called, "Get Ready For show more Some Pain."

The End of the World Is Just the Beginning is the most important book I've read in years. It's well-written, well-argued and is an utterly depressing look at the post-global world order. Helplessness is not a word I usually associate with great books but there's a silver lining simply being armed with the knowledge of what the near future may hold. I'm consistently losing sleep at night thinking about it.

Peter Zeihan's makes his case on the basis of two relatively immutable realities, political geography (i.e. natural resources) and demography (i.e. human resources). He also argues that the globalism boom of the last 70 years should be viewed as a lightning-in-a-bottle fluke and not as a new norm of modern life. One of the changing variables is America no longer has the incentive to patrol the world's oceans, and with the rise of other countries seeking their own influence and power the delicate trade balance seems poised to be disrupted in unknown ways. Add a diminishing world population, with each country disproportionately affected, and accelerate the timeline due to COVID, and the next 10 to 30 years is shaping up to be a rough ride. What a time to be alive, and I mean that in the best and worse sense of the phrase.

In the Epilogue, after all the doom and gloom and only the barest hint of possible solutions to our looming problems, the author makes his most incredulous claim yet. He says he's an optimist. And you know what? Despite having just read a thousand and one reasons to take up hard drinking, I think I understand what he means. And I'm somewhat in agreement.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger." - Friedrich Nietzsche show less