It’s Book Release Day!

Today’s the day! It’s book release day. Those of you who have pre-ordered your copy of The End of the World Is Just the Beginning you should start receiving them today! Ditto for the digital and eBook versions as well–the latter narrated by yours truly. 

If you’re familiar with my previous books there will be parts of the book that will be familiar: discussions of geography, history, economics. In short, geopolitics. For old friends and those who are new to ZoG, this book is a culmination of my entire career up to this point and looks toward what I believe will be the biggest fundamental shift in the global order since Bretton Woods. As with previous books, all maps, charts and graphics in The End of the World will be available online in a larger format on my website–click here.

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

The End of the (Developing) World?

In case you haven’t heard, my upcoming book The End of the World is Just the Beginning gets released this Tuesday, June 14. You can pre-order it here.

A lot of my work, and my books up to this point, have been about the rise of powerful nations and the global framework that got them there. This new book is a bit of a different creature. 

This book is about the end of that system–namely, globalization–and what that means for our collective future. Whether its agriculture or manufacturing or finance or energy, there’s a chapter for everyone on how the pillars of the developed economy will look on the backend of one of the largest upheavals of the global economy since the end of World War II.

Here’s a video paraphrasing several of the book’s themes, applying them to the raft countries that we today collectively know as “the developing 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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

Greentech and the End of the World

My fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization is scheduled for release on June 14. In coming weeks we will be sharing graphics and excerpts, along with info on how to preorder.

Much of the angst in geopolitics since 1950 has been about oil. The Americans promised their allies a safe, globalized economy. That required not only sourcing the oil, but then ensuring it could be transported to where it was consumed. And so the Americans by default had to guarantee both freedom of the seas and a degree of stability in the Middle East.
 
Looking back, the geopolitics of oil have proven to be surprisingly…straightforward. Oil exists in commercially accessible and viable volumes in only a few locations. We might not like the challenges of such locations, and those challenges may have absorbed an outsized chunk of everyone’s attention in the late-industrial and globalization eras, but at least we are familiar with them. You think that “moving on from oil” will put this issue to bed?
 
Just wait.
 
In “moving on from oil” we would be walking away from a complex and often-violent and always critical supply and transport system, only to replace it with at least ten more. A world in which we “electrify everything” requires an order of magnitude more copper and lithium and nickel and cobalt and graphite and chromium and zinc and rare earths and silicon and more. Take a peek at the graphic below from the industrial materials chapter of my upcoming book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning.
 
We won’t “simply” be dealing with Russia and Saudi Arabia and Iran; we will all need to engage regularly with Chile and Bolivia and Brazil and Japan and Italy and Peru and Mexico and Germany and the Philippines and Mozambique and South Africa and Guinea and Gabon and Indonesia and Australia and Congo and China and, oh yeah, still Russia.
 
The future is darker, and less green, than you think.

Agriculture At the End of the World

My fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization is scheduled for release on June 14. In coming weeks we will be sharing graphics and excerpts, along with info on how to preorder.

Is climate change important? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean we’ve cracked the code. Consider this excerpt from my upcoming book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning:
 
Our capacity to forecast climate impacts tends to be embarrassingly off. The best recent example is the United States in mid-2021. A high-pressure system locked some warm air over the Pacific Northwest. Some of that air then descended from the Cascades, triggering compression effects. The result? Normally cloudy, rainy, grungy locales mutated into open ovens for weeks. Portland, Oregon, repeatedly clocked temperatures above 120 degrees. I’ve seen many climate models that suggest the inevitability of hotter deserts or a hotter American South, but none have projected that Portland—freakin’ Portland—would end up being hotter than Las Vegas has ever been. The reason for such a fundamental miss is simple: we do not at present have good enough data to project climate change down to the zip code level.
 
We’ve obsessed somewhat narcissistically upon how climate shifts might impact cities, and our data simply isn’t good enough to generate reliable forecasts. Instead, we should focus on the far easier math of climate shifts upon continent-spanning climate bands. Not so useful for determining house insurance rates, but critical to understanding what we can grow.
 
Check out the below map from the agriculture chapter of The End of the World. We sometimes forget that most of the Earth’s land surface is unsuitable for growing crops, and even much of what is is not particularly great. It doesn’t take much of a climate nudge to push marginal lands into the “unsuitable” category. And nudging is certainly happening. For decades, shifts in wind currents have been tweaking regional weather patterns. Simply continuing such long-established patterns for another 30 years will have outsize impacts upon agriculture. Almost everywhere.

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

The End of the World: Colombia

My fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization is scheduled for release on June 14. In coming weeks we will be sharing graphics and excerpts, along with info on how to preorder.

Globalization peaked at some point in the 2010s, a decade when global populations were in balance, security for transport was a non-concern, and there was sufficient capital to finance anything and everything. But between COVID and a trio of populist American presidents and the Ukraine War and rapidly aging populations, the world is moving on. Or arguably, it is reverting to something similar to what existed before large-scale global trade.

Such (d)evolutions will benefit and harm any number of countries. The NAFTA trio of Canada, the United States and Mexico will certainly do well. Collectively, the three check all the boxes: limited security concerns, ample energy and refining capacity, massive agricultural surpluses, in-place infrastructure, and the world’s most balanced demographics.

But perhaps the country that will benefit most in relative terms isn’t even in North America: Colombia. Energy self-sufficient? Check. Proximate to the North American market? Check. Broadly educated population? Check. Great labor cost-points? Check.

Colombia’s biggest weakness is its local geography. Most of the population lives on the slopes of its V-shaped mountain ranges. That necessitates significant infrastructure to push goods up and down the elevation bands. Check out the below graphic from the manufacturing chapter of my upcoming book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning.

Normally, such rugged topography would be a deal-killer, and indeed in the globalized era Colombia’s value-added manufacturing sector hasn’t been…great. But the global economic geography is changing. Traditional manufacturing centers like China are imploding, would-be replacements like India are a world unto themselves, while Mexicans have become so skilled that they are no longer competitive at the lower skilled work that once dominated the maquiladoras of the US-Mexican border. To put it bluntly, Mexico now needs a Mexico, and Colombia is by far the best candidate.

A Recording Studio Update…

My fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization is scheduled for release on June 14. In coming weeks we will be sharing graphics and excerpts, along with info on how to preorder.

Hello from the studio! I am in the midst of recording the audiobook version of my upcoming book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning. For those of you wondering – and asking – if I would be narrating the audiobook, the answer is yes. More important, given the increase in our subscriber base over the past couple of weeks I would like to remind everyone that we are currently donating all proceeds from all formats of all my books until June 1 to the Afya Foundation. The number of Ukrainian refugees who have fled the country is now in excess of 6 million people, as well as an additional 6 million internally displaced people. The Afya Foundation is an American non-profit organization working to link medical supplies with Ukrainian refugees in need.  More information on them and how to donate directly below.

And for those of you who are new, or are interested in our ongoing coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we’ve included a list of links of our coverage from the beginning of the Ukraine war to know under the video below as well. 

Thanks for joining us, we’re happy to have you!

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.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S UKRAINE FUND

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT MEDSHARE’S EFFORTS GLOBALLY

April 16, 2022:
SWEDEN AND FINLAND RECONSIDER NATO

April 15, 2022:
RUSSIA’S BLACK SEA BLUNDERS

April 12, 2022:
WHEN FOOD AND FUEL CRISES MEET

April 12, 2022:
RUSSIA, RUBLES AND GOLD

April 7, 2022:
THE MYTH OF JUSTIFIED RUSSIAN RETALIATION

April 4, 2022:
NUKES, MASSACRES, AND PREPARING FOR THE NEXT WAR

April 4, 2022:
ODESSA, AND THE UKRAINE WAR

March 29, 2022:
RUSSIA’S WAGNER GROUP AND THE UKRAINE WAR

March 24, 2022:
RUSSIA’S PIPELINE GAMBIT

March 23, 2022:
RUSSIAN REFINERIES’ REDUCED RUNS WRECK…EVERYTHING

March 23, 2022:
RUSSIAN OIL’S VANISHING ACT

March 18, 2022: 
THE END OF RUSSIAN OIL

March 18, 2022:
UKRAINE, AND NUKES

March 17, 2022: 
THE END OF RUSSIAN FINANCE

March 14, 2022:
DEMOGRAPHICS, AND THE UKRAINE WAR

March 09, 2022:
DEAL WITH THE DEVIL(S)

March 08, 2022: 
CHINA, OIL, AND THE UKRAINE WAR

March 08, 2022: 
RUSSIA SANCTIONS, AND NICKEL

March 07, 2022:
FRIDAY — THE UKRAINE WAR: AGRICULTURE EDITION

March 06, 2022: 
ODESSA, AND BEYOND

March 03, 2022: 
WELCOME, A BIT OF BACKGROUND, AND HOW TO HELP

February 24, 2022:
RUSSIA’S TWILIGHT WAR

February 24, 2022:
THE INVASION OF UKRAINE AND RUSSIAN PRODUCT EXPORTS

February 24, 2022:
UKRAINE, AND RUSSIAN INVASION PATHS

February 21, 2022:
UKRAINE: THE WAR AFTER THE WAR

February 14, 2022:
RUSSIA’S UKRAINE GAMBIT

January 31, 2022:
NATURAL GAS AND UKRAINE

January 6, 2022: 
KAZAKHS PROTEST, AND RUSSIA REACTS

December 29, 2021:
A UKRAINE WAR AND THE END OF RUSSIA

The End of the World: Civilization and Technology

My fourth book, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Civilization is scheduled for release on June 14. In coming weeks we will be sharing graphics and excerpts, along with info on how to preorder.

 We find ourselves at the tail end of a globalized world order. To visualize where we stand temporally, in relation to the vast course of human history, I have pulled this graphic from my upcoming book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning. Since the implementation of the Bretton Woods system post-World War II, countries have generally been capable of developing trade relationships the world over with security guaranteed by the US military. Over the past several years we have seen an acceleration of this system’s dissolution; supply shortages, inflation, and geopolitical instability do not bode well for the prosperity of a globalized economic system.

The era to come—the post-globalization era—will not be implemented by decree. Rather it will be a gradual transition, a transition we are currently undertaking. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will not cause deglobalization; it is a symptom of deglobalization. The path we are on is clear: globalized trade will be replaced with a handful of regional trade systems centered around a dominant power—the US, France, Japan, etc. Do not expect to wake up one day to the news that the world has deglobalized but recognize the events that push us closer to the inevitable. In The End of the World, I map out the impending collapse of our global economic system focusing on agriculture, energy, manufacturing, transport, and industrial materials.

The New Book Is Almost Here!

We are officially two months away from the release of my forthcoming fourth book The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Civilization. This book has been a long time coming. More than just a look at what’s coming up next in the world, it is a summation of more than a decade of my career. 

For those of you who have read my previous books (more info here, here and here) – and I am eternally grateful for those of you who have! – they were all about the rise and fall of nations and the challenges facing different parts of the world. The upcoming work, The End of the World, steps back and looks at the challenges facing entire global systems.

The future of Agriculture. Energy. Manufacturing. Transport. Industrial materials. They’re all in there, and more. We cover the collapse of what has been a relatively short and prosperous aberration in human history, and what comes next. 

The book will be released June 14 but you can order it now, from your favorite bookseller and in your preferred format: print, ebook, audiobook. I’m asking that those of you who are looking to purchase a physical copy of the book to do so through your favorite local bookseller. Unsure of your options? IndieBound is a service that will help connect you to local booksellers in your area, and you can even arrange shipping to your door. Simple as that.

In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing maps and graphs and excerpts from the book to give y’all an idea of what we’ve been working on, and hopefully you’ll join me in my excitement.

And for those of you who have been asking about signed copies, they will be available for order after the release date in June. We’ll be sure to update y’all on all the details as we get closer to that date.

Get Ready for Some Maps

Hey everybody,

I really appreciate the excitement and support for Disunited Nations. This has been a crazy project since Day One and there aren’t words to communicate how thrilled I am that it is finally not simply real, but available! Thanks to everyone for helping make it a reality!

I hope those of you who picked up your copy of Disunited Nations are thoroughly enjoying the experience. But there is one thing that I wish was different. Unfortunately, there isn’t a publisher out there that will let me give you the full color maps in all their glory. The Kindle and the audiobook versions don’t even get the graphics! And so, with each book, I make sure my readers have access to them on my website. The Map Archive is officially open! 

If you haven’t bought it, go check out my introduction (below). If you have friends that haven’t bought it, please do consider forwarding this email. And I do have one more hard ask: please submit a review wherever you bought a book… when you finish reading.

I’ll leave you, for now, with a graphic from the book. It’s the first graphic in Disunited Nations and one of my favorite graphics ever. It highlights just how much the world has benefited from the American-led Order. So much of it is not simply at risk, but about to violently unwind.

Thanks again, 

Peter Zeihan         

READ THE INTRODUCTION TO DISUNITED NATIONS

The CRF Files, Introduction

Read the other installments in this series:
 
CRF Files, Part I: The Future of Korea
The Cutting Room Files, Part 2: The Future of Mexico
The Cutting Room Files, Part 3: The Future of Canada
The Cutting Room Files, Part 4: The Future of Japan
The Cutting Room Files, Part 5: The Future of the United Kingdom
The Cutting Room Files, Part 6: The Future of China
The Cutting Room Files, Part 7: Europe
The Cutting Room Files, Part 8: American Politics

So…. it’s done!

The final text of my next book, Disunited Nations, is through copy edit and deep into proofing. Within a few weeks advance copies will be heading out for media review. Full publication is scheduled for the first week in March.

I’d like to thank everyone for their support, assistance and endless needling about when the damn thing will be finished. The world is a dynamic, ever-changing place, and nothing that I do happens in a vacuum. Everyone’s questions and comments and threats help shape what I know and what I look at. Please keep it up.

My goal with Disunited is less to sketch out the world as it is or as I would like to see it, and instead as it is about to be. Today’s world is dizzying in its complexity, but at its core it is a single integrated system underpinned by the Americans. This era is ending. Soon the world will fracture into a host of competing systems. Some purely national. Some regional.

My book contract said I would explain this world in 80,000 words. Heh. That didn’t happen. My first draft was 180,000. I was firmly, if politely, informed that wouldn’t happen either. We compromised with about 120,000. The rest ended up on the cutting room floor.

Anywho, as a partial thank you to all you who have directly and indirectly supported my efforts, and to perhaps keep some of those of you who are more intellectually ravenous at least partially sated, I’m happy to announce the launch of the Cutting Room Files. During the next couple of months we’ll be releasing an open-ended series of newsletters cobbled together from various bits that didn’t make it into the final version of Disunited Nations, as well as some embargoed not-quite-pieces of my previous books – The Accidental Superpower and The Absent Superpower – that have been waiting for release for some time.

Should you feel so inclined, you can click the following links to pre-order Disunited Nations on Amazon.com, Harper Collins, and IndieBound. Link options for Accidental and Absent can be found here and here, respectively.

But most of all, thank you all and happy reading!