Peter Zeihan, Author at Zeihan on Geopolitics

The Ukraine War & the Battle of Avdiivka

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.

Arguably the most brutal battle of the Ukraine War is now in its fourth month: the battle of Avdiivka. Let’s take a deep look at its strategic importance for both sides.

Avdiivka is located in southeastern Ukraine and offers access to vital Ukrainian logistical hubs – so both sides are intent on having control. The Russians have sent waves of troops, tanks and everything else they have into the meatgrinder of Avdiivka, suffering some 40,0000 battle casualties – a ratio of around 5 to 1 compared to the Ukrainian defenders.

As bad as that sounds (and it is, indeed, very bad), in terms of equipment, the Russians are suffering loss ratios twice that. And yet, for the Russians, this isn’t even remotely perceived as a defeat. Russia has always fought its wars as ones of attrition. For Moscow, there’s nothing new here. Russia has more men and gear than Ukraine, and the Kremlin’s bet is that even horrific loss ratios like what’s happening at Avdiivka are still a recipe for ultimate victory.

The Ukrainians need to shift the war to a style that suits their hand – one of movement and logistics, as opposed to sheer volume and numbers. To do this, NATO countries must ramp up materiel production, both for the Ukrainian front as well as for their own needs; otherwise, flows will stop and/or NATO’s capacity to defend itself will thin.

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. I’ve had a lot of people write in with questions about what’s going on in the Ukraine front, specifically what’s going on, and the battle of DPKO. This is a battle that’s been churning for a few months already, and it’s happened in a series of very discrete phases. Basically, this is a spot in southeastern Ukraine that the Russians are trying to capture from Ukraine, and it has some significant strategic implications.

If the if the Russians were able to capture it, they would be able to target a number of logistical hubs that the Ukrainians have been using very heavily in their counter offensives. So it’s not a nothing battle. It’s not an ego battle like we saw in Borehamwood last year with Russian mercenaries. This is this is a real fight.

And it’s it’s a bloody one. It’s happened in a number of phases. First, the Russians tried to use tanks to capture it. Then they sent human waves in which, you know, did as well against in place machine guns as it did back in World War One. In World War two. When that didn’t work, they sent hundreds of drones.

And now they’re trying these kind of combined armored infantry thrusts, lots of bodies. It has been the only place that the Russians have been attacking and reading between the lines of both Russian and government statements and private statements on both sides, as well as third party estimates, whether it’s from Turkey, China or Britain. It looks like the Ukrainians have been inflicting a 5 to 1 casualty ratio upon the Russians, which is just, you know, horrific.

But in terms of equipment, in terms of like tanks and APCs, it’s more like 10 to 1. Now, from the Russian point of view, this is not necessarily a disaster. This is kind of par for the course, not in terms of the numbers, but just kind of the impact of it. Ever since the Russians failed with that initial thunder run to Kiev at the beginning of the war.

The Russians have always known that this was going to be a battle of attrition for public support, for numbers of troops, for amount of equipment, and in that they definitely have the advantage, even giving the Ukrainians the most positive spin. Ukraine has less than one third the population of Russia and less than one eighth of the industrial plant.

And in terms of the order of battle that was inherited from the Soviet Union, it’s more like a 30 to 1 ratio. Russia was the primary successor state, and they got all the good stuff, so to speak. And so in any battle of numbers, the Ukrainians are going to have a very, very steep road to hoe here. But from the Russian point of view, this is kind of built in Russia is in control of information space.

So you don’t necessarily have to worry about public uprisings until you know, until you do. But we’re not there yet. And that means they can just keep pulling tanks out to refurbish them and sending them to the front without having to necessarily spin up their own military industrial plant to make new tanks. And they’re doing that, too. Now, there’s certainly burning through them five, ten times as fast as they can bring them online.

But they’re starting from a deep well of something like 16, 18,000 tanks at the beginning of the war. They’ve lost less than 2000 at this point. So they can keep this going for a very long time. In addition, the Russians have never, ever, ever claim to be the technological superpower in any age. They have always fought on the numbers and it has done them well against the against the Nazis.

There were oftentimes battles where they suffered four and five times as many casualties that they still won in the end, because they ultimately just had a much deeper bench of people. And so they’ve never focused on quality over quantity, because, as Stalin said, quantity is a quality all its own. And they’ve known this from the beginning. So when they see the bad numbers rolling in from places like a DEFCON, it’s kind of a shrug and they’re just, you know, throw in some more meat to the grinder.

It doesn’t mean there aren’t challenges, it doesn’t mean there aren’t complications. And this is absolutely why the Ukrainians are trying to turn this into a war of movement. In a war of logistics. But from the Russians point of view, this is a very comfortable place to fight a war, even with these sort of horrific numbers. The difference this time around, of course, is that this is the last time they can do this.

The bottom fell out of the Russian birthrate back in the 1990s, which means it’s already been 25 years since a large crop of people were born. And so they’re running out of people in their twenties. They started this war without 8 million men in the Russian started this war was about 8 million men in their twenties. 1 million have already been killed or removed from active combat roles because of injuries and another million have fled the country.

So at current pace, the Russians can maintain this for another four or five years, both in terms of equipment and manpower. And that’s when things get sketchy, whether or not Ukraine can last that long. You know, we’ll see. It does mean, however, that this is the last war that the Russians can fight of this scale. There’s just isn’t a replacement generation.

Now, whether this is good or bad for the Ukrainians, of course, depends upon how you want to look at the situation. The Ukrainians certainly don’t have as many men. They absolutely don’t have as much equipment. They’re absolutely dependent upon third countries, like most of the NATO forces, to supply them with the hardware that they need in a war of attrition.

That’s kind of a problem because NATO’s wasn’t designed to fight a war of attrition. It was designed to hold the line against the Soviets for just long enough for the Americans with their technological superiority to cross the Atlantic in force. Well, Ukraine’s not a NATO country, and so we’re nearing the bottom of the barrel for a lot of the tertiary countries across the Native Alliance.

And the Germans never had anything. So we’re starting to get into the stuff that really, really matters in a lot of these secondary countries like Poland or France and very soon, if NATO’s doesn’t like massively spin up their military industrial complex themselves, they’re going to have a choice between denuding their own stockpiles or supplying the Ukrainians, but probably settle for some version of both.

But again, as long as the Russians are fighting a war of attrition that they’re comfortable with, that’s a bit of a problem. But the real issue is the numbers. We talk about the thunder runs of the Russians going down to Kiev fairly, but what we’ve forgotten is that after a couple of amazing successes that Ukrainians had last year, the Ukrainians have not been able to return the favor.

If the Ukrainians cannot turn this into a war of movement and logistics, then it is by default a war of attrition. And if this is a war of attrition, that of DPKO is about the minimum level of success that the Ukrainians need to achieve. Five times as many men, ten times as much equipment they need to do that a hundred more times to defeat the Russians in a war of attrition.

And that is a extremely tall order.

Bombing in Iran at Soleimani’s Death Anniversary

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.

There’s been a bombing in Iran that targeted the gathering for the four-year anniversary of Qasem Soleimani’s death. The attack resulted in at least 100 deaths and another 100+ injuries.

Given the nature of the attack, I doubt there is any US or Israeli involvement; however, the more likely culprits are one of the local ethnic groups in the region. Rather than focusing on who carried out this specific attack, it’s a reminder of how vulnerable Iran is.

Iran has a highly complex ethnic composition, and individuals like Soleimani played a critical role in ‘putting out the little fires’ as they popped up throughout the country. Despite Iran’s broader importance and influence in the region, internal problems will continue to plague the country.

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. It is Wednesday, the 3rd of January. The news today is that there’s been a terror attack in Iran, specifically targeting a group of people who was commemorating the four year anniversary of the death of a guy by the name of Qassem Suleimani. Now, for those of you who don’t follow Iranian internal politics like it’s a soap opera.

Suleimani was a military commander, paramilitary commander that the Iranians would dispatch around the region for the last 20 years to basically not so much stir up trouble, but find sectarian groups that were unhappy with how things were going in their neighborhood and arm them, frightened with intelligence and guidance and maybe even a few irregular troops from the IRGC.

That’s the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in order to stir up trouble and foment revolutions. He was very, very successful throughout the entirety of the war on terror, because basically what the United States did is it went into the Middle East and knocked off and tried to prop up certain governments that were not necessarily popular. And so there was always some sort of disgruntled group who was willing to work with the Iranians.

And so Suleimani kind of became a celebrated personality, kind of a cross between an American general who’d be in charge of special forces and Norman Schwarzkopf. So he was very, very, very popular in Iran and very, very, very unpopular everywhere else. And is conservatively responsible personally for the death of hundreds of people. And in terms of his operations, tens of thousands of people.

So not a nice guy unless you happen to be opposed to whatever the current order in your backyard happens to be. Anyway, someone set off a couple of bombs in the vicinity of these gatherings and killed at least 100 people with at least another 100 injured. I’m sure as information becomes more and more available in the days to come, it will turn out to be a lot worse than it sounds.

Let’s start with the the obvious suspects are probably not very likely and then talk about some of the underlying stuff. Everyone’s, of course, in Iran is pointing their fingers at the Israelis and the United States. If the United States is going to bomb someone, you’re going to know it because we’re going to use either a drone or an air explosive, which is going to kill a lot more people than the.

So definitely wasn’t the United States. As for the Israelis, they have demonstrated assassination capability that’s pretty robust. And to be perfectly blunt, they’re not going to target a crowd unless there is someone in it who is really important. And for all intents and purposes, it looks like that was not the case here. This is just a bunch of locals who happen to like somebody who is from their hometown.

It was in the town of Kerman specifically. Other more likely possibilities you’ve got the below cheese, which are an ethnic group in eastern Iran who have never been happy with Persian rule of their territories. You’ve got the Arabs in South western Iran who are probably the most put upon minority in Iran. And then you’ve got the Azeris. I think either submission is in the north who make up about a quarter of the population who from time to time get restive.

All of these are legitimate suspects. I’d say the blotches are probably the highest of that threat. But rather than pointing fingers and who done it, I think it’s more useful to talk about how this is just part of what Iran looks like. And it kind of belies not so much that Iran has feet of clay, but it has a vulnerability that most people don’t appreciate.

Now, the Persians are a Shia religious group in a sea of Arabs, ethnicity and Sunnis religion across the region. They’re definitely in the minority in both fronts, and that has in the past made them a relatively reliable American ally up until 1979, when they had a revolution. Because the United States has always tended to back the smaller group against the larger group, thinking that the smaller group is going to be more strategically dependent upon you, and they’re always going to be willing to bleed for the cause, because if they don’t, they’re just going to get swallowed up.

And until 1979, that was Iran. Now, after 1979, with the revolution, things have changed. We’ve had fractures across the Arab coalition that are only now beginning to heal, and that has allowed Iran to be the larger power. It also means that personalities like Suleimani have been very, very useful for the Persians, because while you do have a majority Sunni Arab group ruling most of the Middle East, there are all kinds of small groups here in there.

And folks like Suleimani were excellent at driving wedges between those groups and whoever the majority group happened to be. Now, the reason that somebody exists, the reason that he was good at this, the reason that Iran is good in this, is because back at home, Iran is not a monolith. It is made up of dozens of ethnic groups, each of which have controlled historically one or two specific valleys.

And it’s only after a literally millennia of conquering ethnic cleansing and intermarriage that the Persians are actually now 51% of the population of modern day Iran. It’s taken them that long to get to that low of a number. So Suleimani’s expertise exists because it is needed at home. The Iranians have a million man army and it basically is responsible for occupying its own territory.

And groups like Suleimani are responsible for detecting fissures within the political system at home and working to keep them under control. One of the reasons why the Iranians are so good at stirring up trouble beyond their borders is because they have to be aware of those exact sort of splits within their own country. So they basically cut their teeth on keeping the whole system under control, and then they go out into the broader region in order to stir up trouble with exactly the same skill set.

So it means they’re very, very, very, very good at driving those wedges between different chunks of society. But it also means that Iran as a state, is always going to be vulnerable to a degree because it has those same fissures at home which make up 49% of its population, which is a much higher percentage than what you’ve got in much of the rest of the Middle East.

So it makes them good at stirring up trouble, but it comes from a vulnerability at home that has taken them thousands of years to get to this point of stability. And we’re not going to get much further any time soon, at least certainly not in the next few decades.

Australia, 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 heading down under today, and we’re not here to f*** spiders. The Australians are one of the few countries that will stay under the United States’ wing as the Order collapses, but they have a few things to figure out first.

The Aussies have grown awfully close economically to the Chinese over the past few decades, so they’ll need to find some different customers. I’m sure the U.S. will make the list. Australia will also have to find a way to rapidly move up the value-add chain in terms of processing capabilities and capacity.

There’s also an Outback-sized sub-prime real estate issue that will trigger a financial crisis when it finally cracks…especially if all of these issues boil up at the same time.

Regardless, the Australians have got in good with the Americans, and they’re set to thrive in the deglobalized world. And the US isn’t mad about it either; they’re getting a creative and capable ally with plenty of the stuff that will be in high demand in the coming years.

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 above Ken Karl in Colorado today, we will do another session of the Post America series, specifically looking at all Australia. We’ve got four things going on with the Aussies as the world breaks down around it. Three are really a challenge and one is actually pretty impressive. So let’s start with the bad.

China trying to China is trying to. Trying to China. Australia is capable of a relatively two faced forward economic policy. They are tight, tight, tight allies with the United States. But at the same time they will ruthlessly exploit any economic opportunities that the American led security order has offered. And so all of the Western nations, Australia is absolutely the one that has gotten into bed the deepest with the Chinese economically.

Primarily as a raw commodities producer, whether it is bauxite or iron ore or natural gas, you name it, lithium. China has been far away. Their number one customer for most of these things for most of the last 40 years. And those numbers are only going up. And so when they have a spat with the Chinese, the Americans are like, you know, you’re our friend and we’re going to say nice things about you.

But, you know, when we said global economic order, what we we didn’t really mean for you to, like, go and just swallow everything that the Chinese put in your mouth. That’s going to be a problem moving forward, because a lot of the Chinese demand has never been economically viable. The Chinese have a hyper financialization system which basically prints money and confiscates bank deposits in order to fuel industrial development, even if it’s not something the Chinese are good at.

And something like that is fairly price insensitive and they will buy almost anything at any price if it furthers whatever the political goal is, which is usually to build infrastructure. An industrial plant in Australia has been arguably the single largest supplier to the Chinese this entire time. When that goes away and the Australians have to sell to more economically sane folks, it’s not like the market is going to collapse completely.

But this balls to the wall price insensitive expansion that they’ve seen in most of their spaces for the last few decades. That’s just not going to carry on. They will be able to replace the Chinese demand with demand elsewhere, especially as the U.S. industrialize is in the Southeast Asia. Kind of steps into some of those roles. But collectively, that will be nearly as big as what the Chinese have pulled from the Australian economy this whole time.

So that’s going to be a pretty harsh adjustment when it comes. The second problem is that the Australians never moved up the value added scale in the raw materials industry. They’ve always been a raw commodities provider, whether that has been the iron or they don’t produce steel or the lithium, they don’t produce batteries, the natural gas, they don’t produce chemicals, the wheat, they don’t produce flour.

And so basically the stuff is grown or pulled out of the earth and shipped off. And that’s the end of the story. And that industrial plant that the rest of the world has to build to replace China, some of that really needs to happen in Australia as well. And the time to start working on that was probably 1989.

They are so far behind. In fact, it’s only in the last year with the Inflation Reduction Act in the United States where the Australians have negotiated to kind of join the subsidies regime. So some American money will come into Australia to help build out the industrial plant for processing. But they should have been doing this in absolutely every product set that they produce decades ago.

And so when the processing capacity, which is concentrated in China goes offline, even if there is demand for the raw commodities, other place is going to have to build the processing capacity first. So that adjustment down in a post China environment is going to be a lot worse than it needs to be. The third problem is entirely homegrown.

You got to remember subprime. Well, the Australians had something that was much worse. The problem is they never fixed it. So you can say what you want about the American approach to subprime. We forced people who had made decisions whether they were banks or homeowners, to eat some of the losses in order to qualify for restitution funds from the Federal Government.

The Australians didn’t. They just guaranteed everyone’s loans. And so everything has just gotten deeper. It has festered for the last 15 years and arguably I think it’s conservatively, you could say that the subprime problem now is at least a factor of five in relative terms worse than what the United States went through. And so when that finally cracks.

And I would argue that a sharp d globalization shock or deep China ification would be more than enough to trigger a financial crisis in that sort of environment. They’re going to have something that’s at least a factor of five or worse than what the United States went through with subprime. And all three of these things, unfortunately, are probably going to hit them all at the same time.

So it’s not that Australia is looking at a recession, it’s that they’re looking at a depression that’s probably in the last a half a decade, and that’s going to be horrible. But let’s focus on the upside. This is the post-American series. This is what the world looks like when the United States steps back from maintaining sea lanes and gluts.

A lot of its alliances drop. Australia is not going to be dropped. Australia has always proven to be a creative and capable ally. They’ve formed international coalitions to unofficially achieve American policy. They were with us in Korea, they were with us in Vietnam. They were with us in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have always been among the first to belly up to the bar, realizing that the world that they live in and the security they have, the economy they have is only possible because of the strategic overwatch the United States has granted.

And that means Australia is also one of only very, very few countries who have ever gotten a free trade agreement with the United States. Not because we were sacrificing for security reasons. We granted them because they had been such a great friend for so long. And when we move into the post-American world, it’s not that the United States is going to do anything.

We are going to have some allies where the balance of commitment from us and the benefits of commitment from them make sense at the very, very, very, very top of that list is all struggling above Japan, above Singapore, above Canada, above Great Britain. Australia is first. And so no matter what shape the world takes as globalization ends, the Aussies know that we will have their backs because we know that they have ours.

And that means no matter how bad, the economic adjustment is going to be rooted in a free trade relationship. Now, with the United States. We know they will grow out of it because they have stuff that the world needs. They have stuff that we need. And I have no doubt that an ally as creative and capable as Australia is going to be able to apply that capability and that creativity to their own economic restructuring.

The question is, is whether they will start that process before the bottom falls out.

Argentina, 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.

Next up in our ‘Post-America’ series is Argentina. I’m pretty optimistic about Argentina’s future…they just need to get out of their own way.

Between its abundant arable land, large shale industry and lack of any real strategic threats, Argentina is poised to be a significant regional power. Given Brazil’s dependency on international markets and trade, Argentina may look even better if the rest of the neighborhood has a shake-up.

Sure, Argentina has some hurdles to jump over. The mounting levels of debt will have to be sorted out(or, more likely, magically disappear with little to no consequence), and the political system will need to be revamped. Despite all of that, I’m still expecting Argentina to emerge as a major power in South America as we enter a deglobalized world.

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 Zeihan here coming to you from just below Deming Peak in the Eagle’s Nest Wilderness. Today, we’re going to look at another one of our post-American series, What Parts of the World are gonna get really interesting when the United States really takes a big step back? And today we’re talking talk about the southern cone of South America, specifically Argentina.

Now, for those of you have read this, United Nations, you know that I’m pretty bullish on Argentina’s future. Grows all the food that it needs. It’s got arable land without irrigation. It’s got a fairly sizable shale industry, third largest in the world, if you can believe that. And despite their own ideological hang ups, it’s broadly functional in that regard.

No one’s going to starve in Argentina. No one’s going to run out of food. And because they’re at the southern end of South America, they really don’t have any military threats to speak of. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s the Falklands Island crap, which is just imperialism and anti-imperialism offshore doesn’t really affect the math in Argentina at all.

Also, the Brits right now can’t do anything without the United States, you know. Now, where was I? Oh, yeah. As the United States pulls back, trade is going to be a lot harder to come by as the global demographic, especially in the rich world, advances, capital is going to become harder to come by. And for Argentina, this is just a normal Tuesday.

Now, a country that is near them, Brazil is one that is absolutely dependent upon international trade, absolutely dependent on international technology and especially capital. So I can absolutely see Brazil’s fortunes tanking in the next couple of decades, not because they’ve done necessarily anything wrong, but because the environment that has allowed them to flourish these last 30 years is gone.

I mean, think about what we’ve had. We’ve had bottomless supplies of global capital. We’ve had a price insensitive Chinese who will buy up any commodity that is available. And in that environment, high cost producers like Brazil can do really well. But that’s not the normal state of affairs. The normal state of affairs is capital is hard to come by.

And trade is so much circumspect in that environment. Argentina is very, very well set up for the future. The question is what happens in Argentina’s neighborhood now, as Brazil falters? There are going to be splits within the Brazilian nation with some provinces realizing that as long as they’re attached to the poorer provinces, they can’t function. They’re at a detriment.

And Brazil, unlike the United States or Argentina, is more of a confederal political system, where the provinces have, in many cases, more power than the national government in Brasilia, which is a long way away and way up north in the rainforest. So I can see a circumstance in the not too distant future where a number of Brazil’s southern, more temperate provinces, which are more economically viable, which have more stable population structures and better infrastructure, find ways to loosen the ties that bind to the rest of Brazil.

The question is, what is Argentina do in those circumstances? Does it see this as an expansion opportunity? Does it see this as an opportunity to build a series of buffer states? Honestly, it will be up to the Argentineans as to what goes here, because the Brazilians are not going to have the military or cultural power to fight back.

Now, no one in Argentina is thinking along these lines at the moment, but as the world changes around Argentina, these thoughts are going to come to the surface. This is going to be a conversation they’re going to have to have. Not today, not tomorrow, but probably in the 2030s. And if you want to bring up the Falklands again, there is no circumstance.

I can imagine in the 2013 and 2040s where the Brits are able to independently project power that far south. This is not me telling Buenos Aires just to buy your time and you’re going to be able to take it. But it does suggest that when the environment changes, it all will. I can’t believe I talked about Argentina without bringing up the debt issue.

Okay, so Argentina is a very highly indebted country, not because it doesn’t have income, but because it can’t do math. The country regularly takes out huge loans. That has very little intention of repaying. And oftentimes as soon as you get a government shift, then they go into default. They’ve done this like 14 times, I think, in the last century and a half, and they are probably gonna do it again in the next decade.

And no, I don’t think that this is going to overall change my view of the trajectory of the country. Because in a world where international law breaks down and international debts aren’t going to be worth very much unless you can get there with a gunboat to enforce them. And no one can really do that for Argentina because it’s too far away.

So again, I’m not saying that the Argentineans should just default on everything, but in the time they’re going to default on everything, what does that mean for the political situation? The dominant political strain in Argentina is something called Peron ism, which was built by a guy named Peron, and it basically combines the dumbest, most economically nonfunctional, most politically divisive aspects of socialism with a very sloppy version of fascism.

Basically, you get a leader who castigates anyone who doesn’t believe what he thinks at any given time as an enemy of the state and use the tools of power of the state to prosecute them, while at the same time grabbing money from wherever he can to slap it servers politically useful to him. Now, if this sounds familiar to those United States, I basically just describe Trumpism.

If Trumpism becomes the dominant ideology of the United States, we’re not going to turn to the Nazi Germany. The Trump aren’t nearly that organized. We’ll turn into Argentina. Now, that doesn’t mean that the country will die or anything, but it will get economically wrecked. The Argentineans have been going down this path now for about a century, and at the time that Peron did his thing, Argentine there wasn’t that much less well-off than the United States.

In fact, right after World War One, Argentina, by in per capita terms, was the fourth richest country in the world. They’re still there. They’re still in the upper end of the developing world, but they’re nowhere near the leading light anymore. So for those of you who can do math or read maps, look at Argentina a little bit. Look at their history a little bit.

Look at their economics a little bit. And that is a potential future for the United States. Not what I’m recommending, but we’ve seen exactly how this sort of political system corrodes rule of law makes risk taking and entrepreneurship dangerous, and overall leads to instability politically and economically. It’s not a good mix, but you have to view things in their neighborhood.

So in the case of Argentina, even if they continue down this path and I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t, it’s still in a better position than Brazil and in the future that we’re going to. It’s all about what you look like in your neighborhood. Okay. That’s it for real this time. But.

India, 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.

Countries across the globe have all benefited from the global order, but what happens when it comes crashing down? Thankfully for India, they are one of the few countries that will avoid much of the suffering.

India gets their energy from the nearby Persian Gulf (so no energy crisis for them), Indian agriculture is largely self-sufficient, and India isn’t overly dependent on trade…so what does this seemingly bright Indian future look like?

India (along with the rest of the developing world) has been overrun by Chinese manufacturing, but with China collapsing, the Indians will have to reclaim their manufacturing industry. Thanks to India’s widely differentiated labor market, this should make for a reasonably smooth transition. In all likelihood, India will become a manufacturing world power, even if all it does is supply its domestic market.

If you look at the attached graphic, you’ll notice India has a pure demographic pyramid at the top and then, at age 35, a sheer drop-off. This is a result of industrialization, but it does mean they’re having a period of hypercharged economic growth. The question we need to ask is, when does their luck run out?

India is a pocket power, meaning they don’t have a ton of great “expansion” options, and their geography will limit economic and strategic expansion. However, the geography that keeps India in place also helps to keep others out.

For that reason, India is very pro-India…meaning they are only looking out for number one and are willing to go out and take something if they need to. Luckily for the Indians, there won’t be many people who could stop them, either. Luckily for everyone else, we’re not to that point quite yet…

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.

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.

Acceptable range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

Acceptable Range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

Acceptable range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

Acceptable Range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

Acceptable range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

Acceptable Range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

Acceptable range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited NAtions

The Absent Superpower

The accidental superpower

Acceptable Range (2027)

The End of the World is Just The Beginning

Disunited Nations

The Absent Superpower

The Absent Superpower

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

FOR MORE ON THE FUTURE OF Australia, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

FOR MORE ON THE FUTURE OF Argentina, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

FOR MORE ON THE FUTURE OF India, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

FOR MORE ON THE FUTURE OF Turkey, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

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

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

It's release day!

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

FOR MORE ON THE The future of israel, SEE DISUNITED NATIONS

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

The Accidental Superpower: Ten Years On

TranscripT

GEOPOLITICAL INSIGHT STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX