We are officially two months away from the release of my forthcoming fourth book The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Civilization. This book has been a long time coming. More than just a look at what’s coming up next in the world, it is a summation of more than a decade of my career.
For those of you who have read my previous books (more info here, here and here) – and I am eternally grateful for those of you who have! – they were all about the rise and fall of nations and the challenges facing different parts of the world. The upcoming work, The End of the World, steps back and looks at the challenges facing entire global systems.
The future of Agriculture. Energy. Manufacturing. Transport. Industrial materials. They’re all in there, and more. We cover the collapse of what has been a relatively short and prosperous aberration in human history, and what comes next.
The book will be released June 14 but you can order it now, from your favorite bookseller and in your preferred format: print, ebook, audiobook. I’m asking that those of you who are looking to purchase a physical copy of the book to do so through your favorite local bookseller. Unsure of your options? IndieBound is a service that will help connect you to local booksellers in your area, and you can even arrange shipping to your door. Simple as that.
In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing maps and graphs and excerpts from the book to give y’all an idea of what we’ve been working on, and hopefully you’ll join me in my excitement.
And for those of you who have been asking about signed copies, they will be available for order after the release date in June. We’ll be sure to update y’all on all the details as we get closer to that date.
Shanghai – China’s largest city and financial center – has been under a severe lockdown since April 1st as Beijing seeks to contain a runaway outbreak of the Omicron (and Omicron BA.2) variant. Beijing’s dogmatic promotion of the domestically produced Chinese COVID vaccine (and refusal to import foreign-made, more effective mRNA vaccines) has left the Chinese population poorly protected against the coronavirus as we head into the third year of the pandemic.
Incredibly strict lockdowns are the only tool available to Chinese leadership as they continue to pursue a “COVID Zero” policy, but with the most recent variant infections and deaths continue to rise as an overwhelmed health and security apparatus struggles to keep up.
The people of Shanghai, and Hong Kong, and likely soon Beijing are facing extraordinary pressures as hunger and surveillance and fear and censorship take their toll. And the cult of personality that Chinese President Xi Jinping has worked to build over the past decade is squarely in the crosshairs.
The war in Ukraine isn’t doing Xi any favors, either. Beijing is facing a world now where private companies and investors – both critical cogs in China’s economic systems – have been flexing their boycott muscles. Too draconian a response against potential protests risks triggering a massive global economic backlash. And for a country in desperate need of fuel and food imports, Russian supplies face a logistical blockade of limited infrastructure capacity, geographic challenges, and the constant spectre of international sanctions.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
The Biden Administration announced this morning that it was working with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make changes to the laws regarding E15 fuel, or gasoline containing up to 15% ethanol. Retailers are allowed to sell an E10 blend (with up to 10% ethanol) year round, but E15 is usually banned from June 1 through September 15–peak automobile travel months in the United States. This is due primarily to concerns over the fuel’s stability in higher temperatures and disputed data about E15’s increased emissions and deleterious impact on air quality.
The Biden administration’s primarily goal here is to help reverse the climb of fuel prices across the United States, a trend that has been exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The White House estimates that the mix of ethanol in the US fuel supply should knock a few cents off a gallon at the pump. No disputes there.
The issue comes that the US ethanol supply is made primarily from corn. (Some 40% of US corn production ultimately ends up as ethanol in E10 and E15 fuel blends.) We are currently seeing a global agricultural system that is facing serious increases in inputs from fuel to fertilizers, not to mention a global food crisis stemming from a war between two of the world’s largest grain exporters.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
The Russians are leaning on a tried and true mechanism of sanctioned economies: GOLD! I’ve heard from several corners that this somehow means the Russian ruble is now a gold-backed currency. This is simply not true. Nor does it mean that the Russian Central Bank – and, broadly speaking, the Russian economy – is not in a place of desperation.
Russia is a hoarder of gold. Russia is also a significant producer and exporter of gold ores and boullion. Russia has the gold to prop up its currency for the short term, but instead the central bank is engaged in a very different game: replacing the ruble with an untraceable medium of trade. To do that the RCB needs more gold. A lot more. And so the Bank is competing with Russia’s own citizens in buying gold and dumping the ruble.
The task facing Russian Central Bank Chief Elvira Nabiullina – who I am on the record saying is likely the smartest central banker currently working in the world – is not an easy one. While the ruble’s free fall was largely halted and corrected, Moscow must cover imports, fund its activities abroad, stabilize its currency, and find inventive ways to prop up strategic industries and secure whatever export income in can. All this in the face of the most comprehensive sanctions program in modern history.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
There has been a persistent argument made by Russia apologists – unwitting or otherwise – that Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine is the fault of the West. Or NATO. Or some combination, but with the United States ultimately bearing the brunt of responsibility. It isn’t particularly new, either; Russia and a whole constellation of international relations theorists and political scientists and peaceniks and Russia apologists have been making it for decades.
I’m not confused by whyit’s happening. It’s absolutely in Russia’s interest to try and make the international community see its actions as reasonable and justified. I’m just confused that anyone believes it.
At the crux of the argument is a belief that the violent party (in this instance, Russia) has to lash out, and that the victim, (here, Ukraine) has somehow been asking for it. If this kind of framing makes your skin crawl, it should: Russia is an expansionist imperial power looking to justify its state violence against its neighbors by making it their fault.
Which brings us to another inconvenient truth: those who decry NATO expansion, or are quick to believe Moscow’s propaganda – that allowing former Soviet states to pursue a the path of free market democracies is a prelude to US military expansion – ignore Russian history.
There is no conflict that Russian Vladimir Putin has participated in that doesn’t have a Soviet or Tsarist analogue. Russia has been in a near constant state of war or military expansionism since the 1500s. This is partly explained by the insecurity of the Russian core’s borders. NATO expansion didn’t provide the reason or excuse for Moscow’s current actions. But it does provide those in the way of Russian tanks the opportunity of collective self-defense.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Russia is a resource superpower. We normally discuss Russia’s outsides role in global oil and gas markets–a topic we discussed at length in a previous webinar, along with Russia and Ukraine’s role in global grain and agricultural export markets (links below).
Today we’re taking a look at Moscow’s role in supplying our globalized economy’s various industrial inputs. Iron. Steel. Aluminum. Things we recognize. And then all the parts we don’t, but are vital to our daily lives: palladium. Cobalt. Highly purified neon. As you can see from the map below, there are over a dozen commodities where Russia and Ukraine are a globally significant producer or processor. Many of these are also a product of a formerly cooperative relationship between Ukrainian and Russian companies, a legacy of Soviet-era infrastructure and and development.
To say that’s over is an understatement. The question now is not one of how much Russian and Ukranian exports are going to shrink by. Or how long until supplies come back online. Rather, to what extent has the global supply chain already shifted and how have countries and industries already shifted away? (And what of those who simply cannot?)
Please join us today for an in-depth, no-holds-barred presentation on the new realities of the global industrial materials market, followed by a Q&A section.
Having difficulty keeping up with the chaotic and quickly-changing landscape of Russia sanctions and commodities markets?
Our upcoming webinar will address how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the emerging global sanctions campaign against Russia will impact the world of industrial commodities–metals, minerals and their associated industries.
What happens when a country who is a top 5 supplier of over a dozen commodities finds itself squeezed out of a market already facing serious supply chain dislocations? What challenges and opportunities exist for manufacturers and suppliers across the globe?
Can’t make it to the live webinar? No problem! All paid registrants will be sent a link to access the recording of the webinar and Q&A session, as well as a copy of presentation materials, after the live webinar concludes.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister (and former Prime Minister) Jaroslaw Kaczynski caught my attention over the weekend when he mentioned that Poland would be open to hosting not only American forces, but also US nuclear weapons. Usually the statements of a country’s second banana would not show up on my radar, but Kaczynski’s statements are not to be dismissed.
In addition to being a former PM himself, he is the head of Poland’s Law and Justice party founded along side his late identical twin brother (himself former Polish President and former mayor of Poland’s capital and largest city, Warsaw). Considered by many within Poland and Europe to be the most authoritative politician in the country and one of the most powerful in Europe, Kaczynski’s right-wing, populist Law and Order party is the most popular in Poland.
So when he says that Poland is open to what is essentially a status of forces agreement, we can expect he has his finger on the pulse of Polish opinion. The Poles have paid a heavy price in almost all major European conflicts, but especially in both World Wars. As Russia continues its assault on neighboring Ukraine, Polish leadership understands that Moscow will soon have its eyes on the narrowest portion of the Northern European Plain: the Polish Gap, between the Carpathian Mountains and Masurian Lake District. Expect the Polish to do everything in their power to bring the full force of NATO and their strategic alliance with the Americans to help secure against Russian aggression.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
There has been much talk about how there are plenty of buyers for Russian oil – especially heavily discounted Russian oil – in absence of American and European buyers. The would-be buyers at the top of the list, India and China, certainly have been aggressive as of late in not only sending tankers to load up on Russian crude at Novorossiysk but in broadcasting to Western/NATO powers that they feel no shame in doing so.
And if we’re being entirely honest, it’s not like Brussels or Washington nor their respective allies have had much interest in pursuing an Iran-sanctions style punitive regime for Asian buyers of Russian crude. At least, not until now.
In light of the current and ongoing Russian bombardment of the critical Ukrainian port city of Odessa, and the first major salvo of alleged Russian war crimes evidence coming out of Ukraine, public support for harsher sanctions measures against Moscow isn’t going to abate anytime soon. If for some reason you had been betting/planning/hoping on Asian buyers to help keep the Russian energy industry (and buy extension, the Russian economy afloat), you might want to seriously rethink your position.
Here at Zeihan On Geopolitics we select a single charity to sponsor. We have two criteria:
First, we look across the world and use our skill sets to identify where the needs are most acute. Second, we look for an institution with preexisting networks for both materials gathering and aid distribution. That way we know every cent of our donation is not simply going directly to where help is needed most, but our donations serve as a force multiplier for a system already in existence. Then we give what we can.
Today, our chosen charity is a group called Medshare, which provides emergency medical services to communities in need, with a very heavy emphasis on locations facing acute crises. Medshare operates right in the thick of it. Until future notice, every cent we earn from every book we sell in every format through every retailer is going to Medshare’s Ukraine fund.
And then there’s you.
Our newsletters and videologues are not only free, they will always be free. We also will never share your contact information with anyone. All we ask is that if you find one of our releases in any way useful, that you make a donation to Medshare. Over one third of Ukraine’s pre-war population has either been forced from their homes, kidnapped and shipped to Russia, or is trying to survive in occupied lands. This is our way to help who we can. Please, join us.
