Peter Zeihan, Author at Zeihan on Geopolitics

Turkey, After America

Flag of Turkey overlooking the city of Istanbul

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

Today’s country shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Sure, Turkey has been relatively silent over the past 70 years, but as American guardianship of the global seas declines, Turkey will reemerge as a dominant power.

Much of Turkey’s significance stems from its very, very fortunate geography; it controls the Turkish Straits and several other key waterways. This means that if anyone wants to move anything in this region, guess who they have to work with – Bingo – Turkey.

That’s the driving factor here, but it leaves Turkey with some big decisions. Should it partner with Ukraine against Russia or expand its influence in the Caucasus? Should it try to dominate the Aegean or displace German power in the Balkans? Should it absorb Mesopotamia and become the determining power of the Persian Gulf or make a bid for control of the Eastern Mediterranean? Given Turkey’s limited power to pursue all options simultaneously, it has some hefty strategic decisions to make that will shape its future.

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.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado today. We’re doing the next in the Post American series and we are going to focus on Turkey. Now, the Turks have been a major power in the world going back to the date that they basically split off from the Mongol hordes back in the 1200s and eventually settled in the territory that we now know is Istanbul.

Well, subtle, wrong word conquered. Since then, they’ve been an indelible part of Middle Eastern and European politics. And the reason that I would say a lot of us don’t think of the Turks in that way is because they have been taking a little bit of a break from history. Their defeat at the end of World War One was so dramatic and shattered their political and economic orders that they basically pulled the welcome mat in and kind of fell in upon themselves.

For most of the last century, and it’s only with the rise of the current President Erdogan in recent decades that they’ve started to emerge and they’re kind of relearning the world around them and discovering is a lot messier than they remember. Most of the problems that you see in the Southern Balkans or the Levant in Mesopotamia can in some way be linked back to the disintegration of the sublime port in Istanbul from a century ago.

It wasn’t a pretty imperial collapse, and the region still shows the scars. Anyway, the Turks have been coming back into their own and they’re finding out that they have to make a lot of decisions. So one of the many, many, many, many, many reasons why the Turks are so important is the land that they occupy. Istanbul sits on the Golden Horn and it sits on the Turkish straits, which are the only source of water access between the Mediterranean.

Beyond that, the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean. And on the other side, the Black Sea. And through a series of navigable rivers that include the Dawn, the Dnieper in the eastern deep into the Ukraine and even into the the Russian interior, There’s a there’s a canal now that links the dawn to the Volga. So that goes all the way to Moscow.

And that means that by water, the Istanbul area has always been a linkage point. Then there’s, of course, by land, because if you go east into Anatolia, you’ll eventually hit Persia and beyond that, India and China. Or you can go to the Northwest through the Balkans and you get right up into Europe. Danube goes that way, too. So in any world where global trade is not a thing for whatever reason.

Istanbul is arguably the richest and most important city, economically, strategically on the planet. But that’s not where we’ve been living for the last 70 years when the Americans created the global order. The Turks had this great geography, but all of a sudden the Americans made it not matter because we made the global seas safe for everyone. And so all you had to do was get to a body of water and go anywhere, which is something that you could not do in the pre globalized era, because anyone who had a Navy would basically jealously guard their own commerce and shoot at everybody else’s.

So we had this flip in how commerce works, and the Turks went from having the best geography in the world to arguably among the worst. And so they disappeared. Well, that’s ending. The Americans are bit by bit removing their guardianship from the waterways, and the Turks are discovering that they’re becoming incrementally more important. They’re also discovering, as they re expand their influence back into all their old imperial territories, that a lot of these zones have developed opinions of their own about how things should run, but with very, very few exceptions.

The people who are developing those opinions aren’t particularly competent, and they’re certainly not very powerful. There is there’s not a country that is within arm’s reach of Turkey, with the possible exception of Iran, where they could stand up to the Iranians in any sort of meaningful fight economically, politically or militarily. And as long as that is the case, the Turks have this wonderful buffet of options in front of them.

But while the Turks here can go in any direction, they lack the power to go in, all of them at the same time. They’re going to have to do something that no one likes to do. They’re going to have to make some choices. So they just kind to go around the clock here and give you an idea of what’s in front of them.

In no particular order here, I’m just kind of picking a direction, going north into Ukraine. They’ve been there before. And by controlling the miles of the Dnieper in the East River, they were able to keep the Russian Empire at bay for a good century. They were also able to use their naval forces back in Istanbul. And any time the rivers would thaw, they’d sail up, they’d smash anything the Russians tried to build, and then they’d come back and, you know, be fine for the winter.

The Russians have a naval problem that they can’t really focus on any one particular direction. And so the Turks were kind enough to hit him with a hammer every time. So with the Ukraine, we’re going the Turks, while they’ve been politically on the fence and economically on the fence, strategically, they are cheering on the Ukrainians day by day and providing them with all the drones they can possibly use in order to fight the Russians.

Because the Turks know that with the exception of Ukraine, obviously, that if Ukraine wins this war, the Turks are the natural and largest beneficiary of a Russian defeat and disintegration. Working from that same theory. You go to the northeast, you hit the Caucasus, which is a place where empires often go to die. The Turks know this. Their empire kind of died there, too.

But that doesn’t mean the urge on opportunities, especially in the industrial age. You’ve got Azerbaijan, which is one of the world’s oil producers, kicks out about a million barrels a day, which flows through the Caucasus region and ultimately ends up in Turkey one way or another. There’s either a pipeline that crosses the land into Turkey to the super port of Jihan in the Mediterranean, or there is naval stuff that comes out of the Black Sea, which ultimately has to flow through Istanbul.

So no matter who wins in this area, it’s riches are going to be tapped. Turkey has to be a part of that conversation, which of course, begs the question whether the Turks will expand in this direction. There is one of the three Caucasus nations, Azerbaijan, who are ethnically Turkic and have as a rule, been allied with the Turks on and off for all of their independent period.

Since they emerged from the detritus of the Soviet Union. All of late in 2023. The Armenian military was basically destroyed. The Azerbaijanis conquered some territory that they lost to the Armenians 20, 25 years earlier and are now on the warpath. And the very future of the Armenian state is in question. And there’s really no one who could step in to broker a deal except Turkey.

So this is, again, a very viable option. But let’s say you think that the Turks should take a little bit more bare knuckled approach. Well, I probably won’t be in the Caucasus. That would be in Iran. Go straight east. You hit what the Iranians call Iranian Azerbaijan, similar ethnic group to what is in Azerbaijan itself. The Iranians have always been nervous about an independent Azerbaijan on their doorstep because they’re actually more Azeris in Iran proper.

Well, they are again ethnic kin to Turkey. And if Turkey wanted to I’m not saying they’re going to, but if they wanted to, you could have a serious slam dunk fest where we would put the Turkish military, which is one of the best in the world, against the Iranian military, which is really just a bunch of barely trained infantry.

I have no doubt who would win that conflict in the long run. But the key word there is long run because this is a mountainous zone and every mountain crust is a new battlement. And so for the Turks to do that would be a serious commitment. They could probably do very little else. You go to the southeast, you’re hitting Mesopotamia and where the Kurds live, which are a minority that exists on both sides of the border.

Again, in Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria could soon meet those anymore. And again, oil and gas. Oil and gas. Oil and gas, a little bit of wheat, also access to the Persian Gulf, which would make the Turks a player in the world’s largest free energy market. In a time when global energy is no longer being protected by the Americans.

That would allow them to become a broker in any number of ways. They go straight south. They hit the Levant, which is where the Israelis are now, the Israelis and the Turks. During the first half of the Cold War going up to about 1979, were tight allies with the Iranians. And then when Iran, when its own way, they remained allies until Erdogan came on the scene.

And Erdogan doesn’t much care for the Israelis. It’s a very mutual feeling because everyone is drawing a page from Turkish history, not only who the Ottoman Turks, the economic and political military superpower of the region. They were also the religious leaders. And Islam itself was based in Istanbul for a while. Well, they see the idea of Jews primarily of Western European descent from their point of view, oppressing Palestinians who are Arabs and Muslim as a bit of a problem.

And so there is a possibility here of a fight. But to have a fight, the Turks would have to invade all of Syria, Lebanon first. God knows nobody wants that mess. So I think it’s more likely they’re going to glare each other, even though the smarter play would be to cooperate. Because if you can have the Turks and the Israelis more or less on the same page, they can easily keep other powers out of the region while at the same time projecting power themselves into Egypt to control the Suez Canal, which is, you know, many money, money, money, money.

All right. Continuing on clockwise now, looking to the southwest, the eastern Mediterranean, specifically Cyprus in Greece. Now, the economist in me is like there’s nothing there to be had. Don’t go that way. But unfortunately, the Aegean Sea is the first stop past Istanbul to the wider world if you’re using that vector. And so there needs to be some sort of rapprochement or understanding or occupation of these lands by the Turks in order to have access to the wider world.

Unfortunately, the Greeks and the Turks do not get along, and the Turks and the Cypriots hate each other so much. Also getting involved in these places means dealing with a mountainous country with a lot of naval frontage and a sea environment where the Turks are always going to be involved somewhere else. So it would make it easier for another naval power of the French to come in and muck things up seriously.

And then finally, the last direction is to the northwest, into the Southern Balkans, specifically the southeastern Balkans, Romania and Bulgaria, because here you’ve got the lowlands of the Danube system which punch up into northern Europe and you’ve got two of the more sophisticated ethnicities of all the countries that border Turkey. And so if you’re looking for general economic activity, energy reserves, food supplies, some solid choices.

In addition, those two countries are blocked off from the rest of the Europe by the Carpathian of the Balkan Mountains, making it a little easier to defend and a little bit more naturally in the Turkish sphere of influence. So those are the options. Turks can’t can’t even pretend to do them all, maybe two. Now, the the strategic genius in me would say that the two to choose are pretty straightforward.

You would, number one, want to go for the Balkan vector because the Bulgarians and the Romanians have warm to cool relationships with the Turks already, and all three of them see each other as relatively reliable economic and security partners. The bad blood that dates back to the late Ottoman period is for the most part behind them, and especially when it comes to the Romanians and the Bulgarians, they realize that there aren’t a lot of other options.

If the United States loses interest in this part of the world writ large, all they’ve got left are the Russians and that experience was as pleasant for the Romanians and the Bulgarians as the Cold War as it was for everybody else. The second route that I would go to is I’d find the deal a way to make a deal with the Israelis, because that allows you to do an end run to a certain degree around Greece, allows you block off Suez into your sphere, makes it more difficult for anyone else, whether it’s Britain, France or whoever else, to punch through from the western Mediterranean into the eastern.

But history has a way of doing things that don’t sound particularly wise from an economic point of view. And we’ve all played risk and we all know it can go any number of directions. So this is the challenge in front of them. It’s an embarrassing bit of opportunities and a lot of strength, but not enough strength to seize the day on every single possibility.

History can be hard and history forces us to be choosy, and in that the Turks are no exception whatsoever.

Northern Africa, After America

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

For our next installment in the ‘Post-American’ series, we’re looking at Northern Africa. This region only has a few countries that will turn out alright and a lot that will hurt for some time.

So, who’s topping the leaderboard? Countries like Morocco and Tunisia have a leg up thanks to their -somewhat- functional economies. On the flipside, countries like Algeria, Libya, and Egypt have an uphill battle ahead of them.

This region will be far from stagnant between military interventions, dependency on extra-regional powers, and a looming famine. But we’re only scratching the surface of this continent, so we’ll dive into Sub-Saharan Africa later in the series.

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.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, We’re going to do the most recent installment of our post-American series. We’re going to start talking about Africa, specifically North Africa. Now, so remember, from grade school, Africa is not just one place. Big continent larger than South America or Europe or Australia. Obviously gives North America a run for its size in every way that matters.

But it is split by the Sahara. So the population of North Africa has almost nothing to do with the population of sub-Saharan Africa. You’ve got a relatively thin coastal strip going from Morocco in the northwest into Algeria, and then it just stops. The Libyan part of North Africa is pretty dry. So once you get past Tunisia, there’s a little nub of territory by the Gulf of Sidra.

But the Gulf of Sidra and areas east are completely barren. In most places, the coastal strip where you get a little bit of rain is less than ten miles. And then, of course, eventually you get on the other side of the desert and you get to Egypt, which has a very different hydrological and cultural and economic history. So women work from west and east.

The key thing to remember about all of these areas is they’re utterly incapable of projecting power. Most of these zones have never had trees, so they don’t have a maritime tradition that’s worthy of the name. And industrialization came very late to them after independence, after World War Two, for the most part. And even then, it’s been very uneven because there aren’t a lot of resources to generate income.

And so there’s not an opportunity to generate a lot of education. And since the areas are so dry, the population has never been very substantial. So let’s start from Morocco. It’s probably the most functional of the North African states because it does rain a little bit more there. The Atlas Mountains do generate a little bit more impulse for agriculture and even industry.

And so in terms of most of the measures that most people care about it in Tunisia, which has a somewhat similar setup, have always been the most advanced countries, But it’s not enough to look after their own needs. Like a lot of developing countries in the post-World War Two era, these countries were able to develop certain sorts of income from, say, phosphate mining in the case of Morocco and a little bit of oil in the case of Tunisia.

And they use that to provide services for their population and to most importantly, buy food. So the carrying capacity of these lands is arguably higher than what is capable. And if something happens to irrational trade, famine is kind of be one of the major concerns moving forward. What Tunisia and Morocco do have going for them, though, is a much more sophisticated population with higher educational levels and a better relationship with outside powers.

So everyone in North Africa lacks the capacity to look after their own needs. All of them need to partner with someone. But these are two countries that have pretty good relations with someone. So in the case of Morocco, there’s a free trade agreement with the United States. In the case of Tunisia, they have pretty good relations with most of the Europeans and have been among the more liberal politically countries of the Middle East.

Now, liberal not like Democrat versus Republican, liberal like women can show their faces. People can get an education. The government doesn’t shoot everyone that they disagree with. And so both of these countries are going to be able to maintain kind of a know what’s not semi-independent. That’s not it. But their definition of sovereignty or their own issues. There aren’t a lot of resources to go after and they have a more capable population.

So it argues for negotiations in their future about issues of security and trade as opposed to anything that’s more neo colonial Algeria. Not so much. Algeria’s got oil and it lacks the technical capacity to keep its oil fields operational, much less expand them. Now, the Algerians, if they were given the choice, would only deal with the United States.

That’s because they actually have a colonial master that’s real close and that is the French. Relations between the French and Algerians have never been good. The French tried to hang on to Algeria during the colonialization process of the 20th century, to the point that the United States and the United Kingdom felt it was necessary to write into the NATO’s charter that things like the security guarantees of NATO’s Article five did not apply to Algeria.

And so when the Algerians fought for their independence, it was a brutal, bloody war that lasted years. Now, the French do have the technical expertise. It’s necessary to maintain the Algerian oil fields. But the Algerians have said repeatedly that they would rather not produce oil at all and descend into poverty and famine and let the French back in.

And unless and it’s unlikely the Americans are willing to step in to mediate this or manage Algerian oil, odds are we’re going to have some sort of reprise of the conflict between the Algerians on the French. And that is going to get ugly. There’s no way around that. The future of Algeria will be determined by how willing Algiers and Paris are to have a conversation as opposed to shoot at one another.

And that is very much to be determined. Libya, on a good day, is a failed state. The only way that Libya ever was able to achieve anything is under the rules of globalization and the globalized order where countries were not allowed to invade one another. But Libya is absolutely incapable of looking after itself. It’s arguably one of the more incompetent oil producers out there.

And since you have a very thirsty continent just to the north of it, there will be a military invasion in some form of what is left of the Libyan state with the Italians being the most likely power and maybe the French in second place, although they might cooperate on this. The future for Southwest Europe is one where France is calling most of the shots, including in Rome.

And so I can see sort of a condominium in Libya there. But there is no room whatsoever in the future for an independent Libya period. And that leaves us with Egypt, which is a very, very special case. The Egyptians have been around for a few millennia, arguably the oldest ethnicity in the world. The problem here is that they industrialize to a degree.

And so they were able to produce cash crops like cotton or citrus, that massive Lee earn massively more money on international markets than wheat. And they then used that money to buy wheat. Now, this kept the population relative quiescent because bread is heavily, heavily, heavily subsidized. But it means that the population is probably now double with the carrying capacity of the Nile Valley would be if they switched everything back to wheat today.

So we are looking at a mass famine event of biblical proportions later this century in Egypt’s future. The only question is how bad and how soon. I’ll give you an idea of how it could get really bad really quickly. The number one source of wheat that they import is Ukraine, and that’s gone. The number two source is Russia, and that’s on borrowed time.

There is no capacity for the world to ship enough emergency wheat supplies in to save the tens of millions of people who are going to starve to death. And that assumes nothing worse goes wrong. Remember, every country in this world, Project Power, can barely look after themselves. And there’s a big shakeup coming to the eastern Mediterranean. And it all depends upon what the Turks do.

The Turks have to decide what they want to focus on. And from the Egyptian point of view, they would dream of the Turks focusing to the southwest and on Egypt and Suez and the valley, because if that happens, then the Turks have a vested interest of getting food into Egypt in collaboration to a certain degree with Israel. But for that to happen, the Turks and the Israelis have to get along.

And so the Egyptians best case scenario is that the Turks agree to work with the Israelis, even though they don’t much care for Zionism and then focus a lot of aid money on Egypt to keep it alive. And that is a wish built on a wish, and it might well work out. But if it doesn’t, we’re looking at half the Egyptian population being in food danger.

And that’s before you consider something like climate change. If we get a really mild sea level rise over the next few decades, the entire Nile Delta, where half the population lives, is looking at getting, if not drowned, salt inundated, which will crush the ability of Egypt to grow food for its own people. So no matter which scenario you look at, Egypt’s time is ending.

It’s not that anyone’s going to take them over or erase the ethnicity, but the ability of Egypt to function as a state with its current population, it’s almost laughably unlikely. And the only question is how does that story end? But the only good news I have is that there’s probably not going to be a mass migration event because there’s a book in the Bible about how hard it is to get out of Egypt.

Physical infrastructure linking the valley to the rest of the world is almost nonexistent. And that means Egypt was going to suffer and maybe even die more or less in silence.

India’s Assassination Program in North America

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

A US federal grand jury has voted to issue indictments against a handful of ethnic Indians (with alleged ties to the Indian government) who the US Department of Justices claims participated in an assassination program in North America.

This program has reportedly targeted individuals alleged to support Sikh separatist groups in India. As a result, one Canadian citizen has been killed, and the program has targeted an American resident with dual American-Canadian citizenship.

If there is any validity behind these claims, relations between India and North America will need some patching up.

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.

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from my bed because I’ve thrown out my back and I’m going to be here for a couple of days. The news aside from that is that there’s a lot afoot in relations between Canada, the United States and India. Recently, the United States has issued an indictment of a number of folks in India, many with ties to the government for an assassination program in North America, which, according to the Americans, has killed at least one Canadian citizen and targeted unsuccessfully someone with dual American Canadian citizenship.

Both these people are ethnic Indians, and as the indictment goes, there are factions within the Indian government who have used state resources to set up a murder program in North America and take out folks that they say are supporting separatism in India. Now, the reality of the situation on the ground in India is that separatism peaked probably back in the 1980s.

Not that it wasn’t serious then, it was, but now it’s really been talking about in any sort of meaningful way in the last 20 years, unless you happen to be an ultra nationalist and the BJP, which is the ruling party in India and is pretty much a shoo in at this point for reelection next year, has a severely ultranationalist faction.

And that means we got to pick this parliament. Okay. First of all, a lot of the negative stereotypes about India when it comes to things like government inefficiency are true. A lot of societies think of government as a cash cow where you get jobs, you don’t necessarily have to do anything. And there’s going to be some truth to that in any society.

But in India, it’s particularly robust because we do have the world’s largest administration and oftentimes it’s considered a minor miracle. If anything gets done, because there are so many clashing authorities, not just between the local, the state and the national government, but within the different bureaus of the national government. And the government is absolutely treated as a cash cow for whoever the ruling party or parties happen to be.

And in that sense, the BJP is no exception. But what that means is, as a rule, getting anything done within the Indian government, especially when it involves foreign security policy, is next to impossible because the institutions are just so lethargic and overpopulated and under supported. What that means is whoever did this, it’s entirely possible that it was done without the knowledge of the BJP leadership in general, the Prime Minister in particular, Modi.

The Prime Minister is certainly a nationalist in himself, but he’s not like advocating going out and killing someone else’s citizens on a different continent. But it’s perfectly reasonable to expect that there’s a faction of the BJP who is ultra nationalist, who has used their links to the state now to launch something like this independent of the federal government.

When Justin Trudeau first announced almost in passing that a Canadian citizen had been killed by Indian agents, you know, it sparked a bit of an uproar. But then the Canadians started releasing details about the people who did it and to be perfectly born, a lot of them were kind of chubby. And, you know, the world of international espionage is many things, but it doesn’t spend a lot of time at the buffet at Caesar’s Palace.

These are folks that have to be really pretty much geared up and goers and Trump are not known for being particularly agile assassins. So, you know, they got caught both in Canada and in the United States in particular. And now the question is, what is this going to mean for relations? Now, if this theory is correct, that this was just kind of a rogue faction within the political sphere as opposed to actual professional intelligence agents?

Then someone’s head can be put on a platter. When it was just Canada and maybe some countries quietly back in Canada, that was one thing. But when they moved into the United States and attempted to kill someone. my. Even at the height of the Cold War, the Soviets would have never even dreamed of that. Even with relations as bad as they have become with the Chinese, the Chinese would never even think about going after an American citizen in America.

But apparently there was someone in India. They thought they were exempt. And, you know, that’s a hard pause. Yes, you can suck up a lot in great power politics when it comes to the treatment of your allies. But if someone’s coming after your citizens, that’s a very different sort of picture and that generates broad spectrum retaliation. And if this is a proto ally like India may be to the United States, that pretty much sinks all statesmanship options between the two countries right there.

So I would guess, especially if this theory is correct, is over the course of the next few weeks, tensions are going to cool. The Canadians are already being fairly smug about saying that they’ve already cooled quite a bit and that the United States is directly involved. Canadians love to be smug and eventually someone will be. Carl pulled to the carpet, maybe not publicly, but in the eyes of the governments in the United States and Canada, we know that this is something that has drawn attention from the very top because the White House in the United States has now leaked that Joe Biden actually talked to Prime Minister Modi about it at the last big summit.

I think it was the G20 summit. So this is now a top tier issue. And if Modi is serious about wanting to have a partnership with the United States in order to get better defense equipment because they know no Russian equipment sucks or to have a friend against the Chinese should anything break down there. Well, you know, you don’t go to your potential allies homeland and start killing people.

I’m sorry. That’s just that’s just rude. So this is probably not going to exactly get swept up under the rug. We will prob ably have someone who has to pay and there will probably be an extradition before all is said and done. But that doesn’t mean that it has to be loud unless of course they try to kill someone else, in which case all bets are off.

Israel, After America

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

We’re diving a little deeper into Israel for the next video in our ‘Post-American’ series. We’ll discuss their transition into a world without the US around and what domestic and international challenges they might face.

Israel’s major domestic problem stems from the social support network offered to a chunk of their population; instead of working or serving in the military, they study the Torah and pop out kids. And as this group grows in size, it will drag the economy further down and limit the power that a future Israel ‘could’ have obtained. (The rising political power of this less-than-engaged portion of the Israeli population is a big piece of how Israel was so surprised by the Hamas assault in October 2023.)

Israel’s international problems are no cakewalk either. As the US pulls out, Israel must beef up their security or find another guarantor. The most viable candidates are Turkey and Saudi Arabia. The Turks could be a bit of a wild card, but the Saudis are already tightening relations. These new partnerships are a top priority as tensions rise between Iran and Israel.

As all this unfolds, the fight over the Persian Gulf is brewing in the background. The stage is set for this region of the world to get quite chaotic. The partnerships Israel is curating could prove critical in determining which of the major regional powers will emerge on top.

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.

Canada, After America

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

Today, we’re looking at the Great White North. While they’re near the US, they still have plenty of issues to sort out before seeing a clear path to success in a deglobalized world.

The Canadians are having a bit of a demographic problem. While immigration has solved some of their problems – leveling out income levels and addressing demographic decline – it’s stirred up a handful of new ones. The most significant being heightened societal tensions and an increase in housing costs.

There’s another new issue on the horizon, and it’s one that will only worsen over the next few years. The US is becoming more protectionist, and the trade concessions the Canadians have known and loved for so long will no longer be around.

US-Canda relations will remain healthy, just a bit more direct and harsher than they once were. As long as Canada can get its ducks in a row, they’ll be just fine in the next chapter of the global story.

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.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming to you from Colorado. And on this chilly morning, I thought it would be a great time to talk about our neighbors to the Great White North, the Canadians specifically. This is an entry in our post American series about what happens in the world where the United States becomes less interested in really everything. Now, Canada today has three major problems.

The first one is immigration. Now, this is the most pro-immigration country in the world because they faced a German or an Italian or Korean style demographic decline and collapse as recently as 20 years ago. But unlike the Germans or the Italians or the Koreans, they decided to reach towards immigration as a way to address it. And so over the course of the next 15 years, they brought in something obscene, like 4 million migrants, more than 10% of the population, with most of them being under age 35.

So unlike the immigration debate they had been on before, everyone came in in the fifties and the retired and the Canadians never got more money out of them in taxes and than they paid in services for pensions. These are people who are going to pay into the system and contribute as workers and consumers for decades before they become a liability.

And that is changed the demographic of Canada because they’re bringing in people who have already been through primary and secondary education and are ready to work and spend and pay taxes. So it’s kind of the best of all deals from a demographic point of view. The complication, of course, is that these are people who are coming from places they don’t intend to return to, and so they have to have a place to live.

And if you have to have a place to live, you will pay whatever you have to do it. And that is driven up housing costs in all of the gateway cities in Canada that most notably Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto and is now even reached into the secondary cities, places like even Winnipeg. And that’s made a lot of social tension in Canada that didn’t exist before.

Nowhere near the nativist sentiments that we’re seeing a lot of the rest of the world because, you know, this is still Canada, but it is notable. The second problem is income imbalance. Now, this is something that is also gotten a little bit better. If you go back 15, 20 years, you will be in a situation where there was only one province, Alberta, that was, in effect, pain for everyone.

All the other provinces were aging towards mass retire amant with the chemical to the furthest along in the Ontarians not far behind that, And the whole compact that had allowed Canada to exist was basically that Ontario taxpayers would pay for Quebec to not succeed. Well, that only works until the Ontarians start to hit mass retirement, and that left it to the Albertans to pay for everything, and they were pretty cheesed off about it.

Well, because of that immigration surge, suddenly there are more people in British Columbia and Ontario, and to a lesser degree Quebec to pay for that compact and that’s bought the Canadian state a lot of wiggle room. But the third problem is one that’s definitely not going to get better, and that’s the United States. Now, Canada has always benefited from the fact that it is from population point of view, very small.

And has it posed a threat to the American mainland since the war of 1812? However, they have managed to wring concession after concession after concession out of Washington simply because they’re not all that important. So when the United States gets embroiled in like the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Berlin Wall fiasco or the Iraq war, whatever it happens to be, Canada can say, you know, we’re here, we will help you.

But that exchange, could we get a little concessions on auto parts that worked throughout the Cold War and into the post-Cold War period? But when you get into the post-9-11 period, and especially Trump and beyond, where the United States starts to equate trade issues with national security and more directly, all of a sudden Canada doesn’t have anywhere to run.

And as the United States steps back from maintaining the world, there are less things like the Berlin airlift that we hear about. And Canada goes from being like number 23 on the American watch list to like number three or four. And in that sort of situation, the Canadians have lost their wiggle room. So good for them. But Canadians have found a way to at least manage their immigration issue, and they’ve found a way to kind of deaden think of it like geopolitical novocaine, their internal imbalances.

But that’s coming at the cost of a much harsher, more direct, more bare knuckled relationship with the United States, because the United States that is really only concerned with North America must put more of its attention towards Canada. And since the Canadians have always been in a Confederacy where different provinces basically set different free policy, even that makes Canada as a whole one of the most protectionist countries that the United States deals with on a regular basis.

And now we’re paying attention to that. And we have a lot more lovers than they do in the relationship. All right. I don’t know who’s next. We’ll get back to you.

Germany Becomes (Terrifyingly) Normal

In a departure from its post-WWII stance, Germany plans to establish a permanent military deployment in Lithuania. Looks like it might be time to bust out the caution tape…

Germany’s willingness to participate in security matters signifies a shift in military capabilities and idealogy. With mounting concerns over Russia’s attack on Ukraine, Germany’s renewed military posture could spell trouble for Putin’s master plan.

I would expect to see more and more European countries taking independent actions as the US steps back as a regional power. So, while it may not be a comfortable experience, it’s time to get used to Germany being back in the game.

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.

Hey, everyone. Peter Ziehan here. Coming to you from Colorado. A short one today, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not really, really, really important. The news is that the Germans are making a permanent military deployment to Lithuania. This is not part of a U.N. mission. This is not a rotating program. This is roughly 5000 troops that are being deployed to Lithuania as part of their naval commitments on a permanent basis.

Why is this important? Well, you’ve all heard of World War Two. The world has gone out of its way. The last 75 years to make sure that the Germans do not have a deployment capable military. They’ve been enmeshed within the NATO’s system, and the United States is largely underwritten German physical security. And the Germans have been security consumers.

Now, this has been a financial drain on the United States and some of the other allies and some people from time to time bitch about that. But the advantage of having Germany without a functional military, I cannot underline enough why that is important. Germany’s borders are broadly indefensible and it is surrounded by a series of countries that, while they may be allies, now historically have never been.

So we’re in this one beneficial moment in time where the United States has forcibly rewritten the rules of European security, and that has helped keep Europe united and at peace now for 75 years, especially in the post-Cold War era. But underlining that is that the Germans have agreed to never have an opinion on security matters. That now seems to be going by the wayside.

And the Germans are finally developing capabilities. Now, 5000 troops in Lithuania is not the end of the world, but it does mean the rehabilitation of Germany as a more normal country that has military tactics and strategies as part of the toolkit. Just like any other country. And because of that, the Germans will start having opinions on security issues.

Now, in the short term, this is a broadly good thing for the European alliance, because the most of the concerns are around Russia and Ukraine and everyone’s more or less on the same page there. But the Russians starting to pick up guns and do things with guns that other countries do. This reminds me of the last seven major wars that the Germans were in.

There was a period of disarmament if they lost and then it ended and the Germans started using military tactics again and stuff got real really, really fast. So are the Germans our enemies? No, not today. Will the Germans start to see the world a little bit differently? Oh, yeah. And has that ever ended well? Oh, no. The two biggest losers from this sort of transformation.

The first one is Poland. Poland is in the process of a massive rearmament program to make sure that it will never fall to Germany or to Russia again. And part of that is predicated on the idea that the Germans don’t shoot. So all of a sudden they’re going to actually have to pay a little bit more attention to the western border.

Even though the German deployment in Lithuania cannot function without hand-in-glove cooperation with the Polish government, this is something that no matter who you are in Poland, what’s the part of the political spectrum you’re in? You’re going to be a little nervous about this because you know your history. But the far bigger loser here is Russia. The Soviet system in the post Soviet Russian system have benefited from something very clear.

The Americans have been in charge of regional security. So you never had to worry about Sweden or Finland. Germany or France basically going off on their own as long as you could have a working relationship with Washington. The rest of it would be kept under control by Washington. That’s no longer the case with the Ukraine war. Even though it’s brought the alliance closer together, it’s forced a lot of the regional powers to take some certain amount of matters into their own hands.

And while NATO’s is certainly all reading from the same book when it comes to countering the Russians, no one’s on the same page and everyone’s taking their own independent action in order to counter Russian influence. For the most part, this is all going in the same direction, but I don’t know if I’d exactly call it coordinated. And for Germany, the largest economy in Europe, to start to develop the tools that allow it to do things, that’s ultimately Russia’s worst nightmare, because the country that has always given it the biggest run for its money in the modern era is Germany.

And now they’ve got tanks again.

Western Europe, After America

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

Ahhh, Western Europe. A region with no shortage of history, but how will they move forward into a deglobalized world? Let’s just say Germany will soon be replaced as the dominant regional power.

Germany is approaching demographic collapse and major economic challenges, and its role in the EU will be greatly diminishing. So who will replace them? The most viable candidates are France and the United Kingdom, but only time will tell.

The US and Russia both have a heavy hand of influence in this region, so the power dynamics will continue to evolve as deglobalization sets in. Western Europe will continue drawing lots of attention in the coming years, so we’ll be revisiting this conversation soon.

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.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here coming you from the South Island of New Zealand. Today is going to be the latest in our series on regional power in a post-American world. I want to go through Western Europe here. Now, the dominant power in Europe since the industrial revolution has been German. It’s got the largest population, the most land to work with.

It’s got access to a huge chunk of the northern European plain. It’s littered with navigable rivers. And so it’s always been a capital and an industrial power. And dealing with German strength or German weakness has always been the issue that the rest of Europe has turned dogged. And we are now moving into not simply a period of extreme German weakness, but absolute long term national collapse.

And there is no way that Europe can navigate that without substantial changes to the security, economic and political order. We are dealing with one of the most dramatic demographic collapses ever recorded. We’ve got some of the best data on it. We know that they passed the point of no return back in the 1980s. So even if you include one off events like the civil war in Bosnia or the migrant move up from Syria, those collectively only gave the Germans about 5% of the population increases that they needed in order to stave off decline.

It is not politically possible for them to have events like that every single year from now on in order to prevent demographic collapse. So we’ve always know that the 2020s were going to be the final decade that the Germans could exist as the modern economy. And that’s the best case scenario because we’re also moving to a world where international connections are worse.

And the German economy, because it’s so old, because the average age of the population is in the mid fifties already, they can’t consume what they produce. They have to export it. And as international trade becomes more problematic, especially as the Americans and the Chinese both become more nationalistic on economic issues, the entire German model is facing collapse for geopolitical as well as demographic reasons.

So we need to start thinking of the German space differently, not as kind of a self moralizing, hypocritical position like they have for the Russians. The Chinese during the last couple of American administrations, certainly not as a military superpower that requires people, but instead as something that if you wanted to continue to exist, you have to pay for it.

Basically, Germany is devolving into a much larger version of Greece, and the cost is going to be necessary to maintain the German nation in the German state is an order of magnitude bigger than what the Europeans have paid for the Greeks to continue to exist at this point. And since it’s the Germans that have paid for the Greeks to exist, it is unclear who, if anyone, has the interest or most importantly, the capacity to pay Germany to continue to exist.

That is it. A city can only be made at the highest strategic decision points in Paris and London and in Washington. And I can tell you right now, none of them are really grappling with that issue at this moment. The most likely outcome in the short term, next five years, the Germans will no longer have the financial and economic capacity to pay for the European Union.

And they have been the single largest funder of the EU and its predecessors since the very beginning. And as Germany goes from a half country to have not country, the entire fundamental basis of the European Union crumbles in a day. We are in the final decade of not just the German economy, but the European Union as a whole, and that frees up everyone else in Europe to do something else, whether that’s good or bad, bad for them.

There are two powers worth considering in a post European Europe. The first one, of course, is France. It has the healthiest demography. It has the least complicated security issues as the strongest military. Its economy has not been integrated into Europe as a whole, much less the world. And so in a post globalized system, the French could enter a post German post global post U.S. competition with absolutely everything they need to be a very successful regional power.

Their first issue, of course, is going to be the management of the German decline and whatever the post German space looks like. But they’re going to have their fingers throughout the entire periphery of their interests. The second country that matters, of course, is the United Kingdom. The demographics are significantly better than Germany, although not as good as France.

And of course it’s an island. So just like the French, they never really integrated their economy into the European space. And in the post Brexit world, they are bit by bit, by bit by bit, trying to explore what it means to be an independent middle power. The end result for the Brits was always going to be the same.

Doesn’t matter what the politics and let them tell us it’s always going to be a partnership with North America and most notably with the United States. But until the Brits come to that conclusion publicly, they’re kind of in this limbo. And that buys that most precious of commodities for the French time because the Franco British competition for the last 300 years has obviously been intense.

And until such time as the Brits realized that they have to work hand in glove with the Americans from now on, with the Americans being the hand, they are going to be ceding incremental declines and the geopolitical position from now on. Now, one thing that the Brits have always had but allowed them to punch above their weight is their navy.

They’re an island nation. They have to have a Navy. That means they can choose the time and the place of the competition. That’s always served them well. And in the last few governments, because it’s it’s Britain, you can’t say the last two. It’s like the last 90 now would like Italian style government stability the last several governments have finished work on their Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers, which are two of the world’s 14 super carriers, are two of two, a 15.

The problem is, in order to get those out of drydock, they had to get the rest of the military. And so the Brits no longer have a strong enough navy to provide an escort ring for the super carriers. So the only way that their super carriers can sail as part of an American combat group and the Americans really don’t see the point and the Brits making a power play in northern Europe that’s going to constrain London’s room for maneuver, not to strategically versus the United States, but versus the French at a time when the French are riding high and are only going to be riding higher in the future.

Then, of course, the two countries on the outside of the matter the most. Russia doesn’t really directly impact the security of this region unless, of course, they win in Ukraine, which is all bets are off. Good as a motivator. That’s about it. And then the United States, which really hasn’t made up its mind yet, I find it unlikely that the Americans are going to try to subsidize the Germans over the long term.

I find it unlikely that the Americans and the French are going to find themselves on opposite sides of any serious discussion of anything other than cheese policy. The question, though, is whether the countries on the French periphery are going to chew moves to deal with someone other than France. In the case of Portugal, they have one of Europe’s longest standing treaties with the Brits in the case of Spain.

There’s already whispering on the edges of Madrid and Mexico City about the Mexicans sponsoring the Spanish for membership in NAFTA. In the case of Italy, you’ve got a fractured polity that has always gotten along very well with the United States. And then, of course, case of the Netherlands. They will every single time on security issues tied up with the Brits and the Americans over the French.

So there is kind of this competition for who will be the dominant regional power. It’s not that the Americans have an interest in dominating this region, but they certainly have an interest in no one else dominating the region. And that is going to make politics between France and the United States. This weird combination of friendly and rivalrous all at the same time.

For those of you who have been following French-American relations for the last two centuries, this could sound really familiar. It’s just the most recent iteration. All right. That’s it for me. Talk to you guys next time.

Shipping and the Red Sea

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

If any of the gifts you ordered have to go through the Red Sea, it might be time to buy a backup. If you haven’t heard, there has been a series of attacks carried out by Yemeni militants on commercial shipping.

Most of the major shipping companies have suspended operations in the region; no surprise there. However, if you’re not a shipping savant, these attacks in the Red Sea could disrupt nearly 30% of all global container traffic.

Some countries will feel the heat a bit more than the rest of us. Chinese exports to Europe will require longer routes, crude shipments from the Persian Gulf could be disrupted, and don’t get me started on Russian crude exports. This is a complex issue that, if left unattended, could have major consequences down the road.

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.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from chilly Colorado. And the news we have in the last few days is that militants within the militants in Yemen are launching a combination of low grade ballistic missiles and drones, commercial shipping in the Red Sea. And that’s led the ten major shipping companies of the world to basically suspend operations in that area and either tell their ships to wait at the openings to the Red Sea until the threat passes or simply sail around the Red Sea completely, which means going all the way around Africa for the Asia Europe run.

Now, first, let’s get the caveats out of the way. This is not a state making a determined effort to shut down shipping in the area. That is something that has happened before in the aftermath of the 1973 war between the Arab states and Israel, the Israelis found themselves occupying the eastern side of the Suez Canal. And so they did just that in order to destroy one of Egypt’s main sources of foreign currency and force them to the negotiating table.

That’s what it’s play here. We have basically a bunch of drug addled militants, some of the world’s least competent ones, operating from some of the world’s least valuable land in Yemen, probably at the instigation of the Iranians who are their primary supporter, because this is a little conflict that is a needle on the side of Saudi Arabia, cost them very little to do it.

They’re using some of the same weapons systems that they’re selling to the Russians. And it’s plausible deniability just causes a lot of heartburn. So this is not a formal shutting down of trade. This is more of a heavy annoyance that has the opportunity maybe get worse. But at the moment, the warheads in play here are, you know, no more than a few pounds to a few dozen pounds each.

Nothing that can take out a tanker, nothing that can take out a container ship. The reason everyone’s so touchy about it is the way insurance law works on the seas is if you sail into a zone where someone is shooting the commercial shipping, your insurance policy is null and void. And so if anything happens like you need a tow, you’re on your own, or God forbid, that you actually get a leak either from the attack or from something else, you’re on your own.

So out of an abundance of caution, everyone’s just avoiding the area altogether. Now, who gets affected by this? Three big things to keep an eye on. First of all, this is roughly 30% of all global containerized traffic. And the biggest single chunk of that is Chinese exports to the European Union. These routes now need to go around the bulk of the African continent, which, based on where this stuff is being sold to, increases the sailing distance by one third to two thirds.

And that means you need one third to two thirds more container ships to maintain the same flows. So we’re going to see a lot of pinches in the supply chains for finished goods. These aren’t intermediate products for the most part. These are finished goods coming from the Chinese, which is obviously going to hit their bottom line in an environment where consumption is basically seized up in China and all they have left are exports.

It’s also going to make it a little bit easier for the Europeans to put trade sanctions on the Chinese for product dumping, for example, on the eve space. The Europeans are always looking for protectionist methods to apply. And if the Chinese are proving unreliable in their deliveries, that’ll make that case that much easier. The second thing is crude oil coming from the Persian Gulf, mostly Saudi crude that is going the north through the Red Sea and Suez.

There are a couple of bypass pipelines for Suez that go through Egypt as well, which go into the Mediterranean basin and of course, Europe in the aftermath of the Ukraine war. This route has gotten a lot more traffic because the Europeans are no longer taking Russian crude. So the Persian Gulf has stepped in. This is about 12% of global energy shipments.

Now, if this proves to be any more than a momentary problem, what the Europeans are going to be forced to do, what the Saudis are going to be forced to do is to do what happened the last time this was closed down in 1973, the supertanker was developed. The traditional oil tanker only carries about 500,000 barrels, whereas a supertanker can carry a little bit over 2 million.

It takes a larger tanker to make the trip all the way around Africa economically viable. And of course, the Saudis know a few people who have supertankers. So expect to see larger and larger vessels plying this route, which is going to put pressure on anyone else who is trying to bring in crude from a longer distance. Which brings us to the third problem and where we’re probably going to see the most pain in the market, and that’s Russian crude exports.

Now, when the Ukraine war started, the Europeans basically stopped using Russian crude and then they gobbled up all of the crude that was available within arm’s reach. Some from the United States shale fields, some from North Africa, some from West Africa, and the rest from the Persian Gulf. That meant that because of a lack of infrastructure, Russian crude had to be exported through the same port points on the black and the Baltic Sea.

But it had to be then shipped through the Mediterranean, through Suez, through the Red Sea, across the Arabian Sea, to India, Southeast Asia and China. Well, that is barely an economically viable route now, which is one of the reasons why the Russians are typically selling their crude at a 20 to a $30 a barrel discount. But if Suez is closed, then they can no longer send these small tankers through it.

And these small tankers don’t have the reach to go all the way around Africa, in addition to all the way around Asia. So you’re looking at something like 1.5 to 2 million barrels a day of Russian crude that might finally actually be stranded if this isn’t solved pretty quickly. Now, the Russians do have one thing going for them here.

The insurance rules that I kind of laid out there are how insurance has been working since the 1980s. But since the Ukraine was started and Western insurers have been bypassing Russian ships completely. You have some Russian players, some Indian players and some Chinese players who have started to offer indemnification insurance. So we might get this really colorful situation where the real shipping companies would stop using Suez and the Red Sea.

But these shadow companies that have never had to pay out start using it. And then we get to find out what happens if an Iranian backed militant force hits a Chinese, Indian or Russian ship and goes down there. So this is an interesting little story. This is not the panic in shipping that I’m anticipating because there’s no real sovereign behind it.

No one’s actually trying to break the shipping routes, but it does raise some interesting mixes of motivations that are probably going to shake out in the next week or two. So stay tuned. I know I’ll be watching, but.

The Middle East, After America

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

To kick off our ‘Post-American’ series, we’ll be looking at the Middle East. The best way to break this down is into three chunks: the role of the US as it leaves, the role of regional powers as they rise, and the role extra-regional powers might play.

The US has been bopping around the Middle East for quite a while now, but why were they there? The US didn’t need the oil, but their friends did…so the US stuck around to keep the allies in the game. But with the US now a net oil exporter, American interest in the region writ large has dwindled. Additionally, the US isn’t looking to help China – the region’s primary export customer – grow, so most of what is keeping the US engaged are just those legacy anti-terror fights.

The US exit strategy will play a role in what regional powers step up…the options are a ditch and run, appointing a successor, or crafting a strategic balance of power that the Americans can manipulate from a distance. Once the US is out, Turkey is the one to watch. The only thing that might keep them from leading the Middle East is being too involved in other regions. Saudi Arabia and Iran are the other two players to keep an eye on (and Israel could play a role, too).

The external powers that could play a role here are quite limited. Outside of the US, the only real country that could (and would want to) project power in this area of the world is … Japan. And with the Japanese/American partnership, the US will empower them to do so.

The best part of all this movement and power transition is that the US just doesn’t give a f***.

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.

Forthcoming shortly…

Getting Ready for a Post-American World

With a new “10 years later” epilogue for every chapter, comes an eye-opening assessment of American power and deglobalization in the bestselling tradition of The World is Flat and The Next 100 Years.

The end of 2023 is approaching, and that means I owe you all a gift. Sorry to disappoint, but it’s not an all-expenses-paid vacation to BoraBora. Instead, I’ve thrown together a ‘Post-America’ series that breaks down what the world looks like as the US steps back as global protector.

Over the last 70 years, we’ve all reaped the benefits of a globalized world – but what’s been going on in the background? Fast forward to the present, and the demographics of most countries are critical, if not already terminal.

This series will explore these trends and how they impact countries and regions across the globe. If nothing else, I hope these unique dynamics of the post-American world will keep your holiday conversations interesting…

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.

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from beautifully chilly Colorado. And I have a holiday present for you. We’re going to be taking some time off here at the company and as a result, we have pre-loaded over the course of the last year a couple of dozen videos on the future of the world. We’re calling it the Post American Series.

Now, for those of you who are relatively new to my work, we’ve got two big things going on in the world. Number one, the United States is backing away from maintaining the structures of the global order, which allow for globalization and free trade to occur. And whether you’re China, Germany, Korea or somebody who has fabricated your entire system to take advantage of global access, this is obviously a problem.

Second, globalization over the last 70 years has encouraged not just industrialization, but urbanization everywhere. And when you move from the farm to the city, you have fewer kids. You play that for a few decades. And it’s not that countries are running out of kids. In many cases, that happened 30 or 40 years ago. They’re now running out of working aged adults.

And both of these trends combined this decade to end the old system and create something fundamentally new. And that will play out differently based on what country you are. And that is the entire point of this series. So in a post-American world, what are things like in Canada? What does it look like in Japan, in China, in Western Europe?

What does it look like in Africa or Egypt or Turkey? We’re going to go through a full bunch of places one at a time, one day over the course of the next three weeks. And hopefully you guys enjoy your Christmas present or your Hanukkah present for you for the present, or you’re happy Monday present, whatever happens to be.

So everybody have a great holiday season. Even though I’ll be taking off for a while, will still be content coming in. And I wish the best to you and yours. Take care.

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

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The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

FOR MORE ON THE FUTURE OF Turkey, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

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FOR MORE ON THE FUTURE OF NORTHERN AFRICA, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

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The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

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FOR MORE ON THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

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The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

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FOR MORE ON THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

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FOR MORE ON THE POST-AMERICAN WORLD, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

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