Election Postmortem…

Well, that didn’t go the way I expected. Here’s what happened…

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Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from a hotel room. I forgot my microphone today. I was planning on doing this from the beach, but there’s a hurricane out there anyway, so it wouldn’t have worked. So, the federal elections did not go the way I was anticipating, so I thought it was worth doing a postmortem. I’m going to remind you how I got to my conclusion, and then we can pick apart what changed.

In the last 30 years, most elections, especially at the presidential level, have been decided by a group of Americans who self-identify as independents. It’s a much smaller set than the people who self-identify, though roughly 30% of the American population self-identifies as Democrats, roughly 30% as Republicans, and the 40% in the middle call themselves independents.

But over three-quarters of that group will vote for one party or the other almost all the time, more than 90% of the time. So it’s really only a thin little sliver of 5 to 10% that has been the balance of power within the American political system for decades. They put in Obama twice, they put in Trump twice, they put in Biden, and they kicked Trump out.

When I looked at what was happening with the American political system, I thought, okay, this is the nut. This is what matters. Watch that group. Focus your predictions on that group.

When we got to the 2022 midterms, Donald Trump had spent the last two years telling independents that their votes didn’t matter and that everything should be decided at the primary level rather than the general election level. The collective response of America’s true independents was, “Hold my beer.” All but one of the races that Donald Trump put his finger on, the Democrats won. What was supposed to be a red wave in the midterms turned into, at best, a red fizzle.

My thinking was: independents are fickle. They tend to switch sides every two or three elections. They get buyer’s remorse, and it took Donald Trump really pissing them off to their core to show up twice and vote the same way twice in a row. Since he didn’t change his rhetoric, my anticipation was that the independents would do what they had done in 2020 and 2022 again in 2024.

Look at these two maps.

This first one shows what happens if the independents split 50/50. You can see how, while it is an advantage to the Democrats, there are plenty of possible ways that the Republicans can pull it out of the fire. But if you get something like what happened in 2022 when the independents break very, very strongly, the second map shows a very different scenario—one that is very, very difficult for the Republicans to have any chance of success.

Some version of the second map is what I anticipated happening in 2024.

Now, we are not going to have final, comprehensive exit polling or political identification polling data until the Pew Research Group finishes their assessment. They started the day the election ended, and I doubt we’re going to get the full results of that study until probably the end of the first quarter of 2025.

But we do have expert-polled data, and we now have the final results from pretty much all of the states. Arizona and Nevada just reported, so we have some pretty good data to work with. At the onset, it appears that my prediction for the independents basically proved true. For three elections in a row, they broke very strongly against Trump.

The problem was that everyone else voted differently.

It’s like we’ve been in this lockstep for, especially the last 12 years, where you’ve got a hard-core group that’s MAGA leading a hard-core group that’s more elite-led. There hasn’t been a lot of movement in those groups. But what we saw in this federal election is a lot of bleed-over as the elite-led group just lost support over to Trump.

To give you an idea of how extreme it was:

The Democratic Alliance, as we understand it today, is based on three pillars of support. You’ve got coastal, primarily white, primarily college-educated elites; you’ve got minorities of all flavors; and then you have organized labor. What happened this time is that a lot of those pillars broke.

Women, especially unmarried women, are a big part of that alliance, but they switched to Trump by five points. Eighteen- to twenty-nine-year-olds—the youth, which almost always work for the Democrats—broke toward Trump by 6%. Black men went to Trump by 7% more than before. Nonwhite college graduates shifted by 9%. Asians shifted by 11%.

People who are in the lower income bracket, ages 30 to 49—people who you’d like to think of as “welfare queens” or whatever—broke 12% for Trump. But Latinos? Latinos shifted by 17%, with Latino men shifting 22%.

So, we saw a lot of these groups that we’ve always associated with being fairly tightly linked to the Democratic grouping break. That changes a lot.

For those of you who are on the left and are going through a lot of kicking yourself and soul-searching, I’ve seen a lot of hot takes in the last week. Just keep in mind that the voters are always right, especially when they don’t show up.

We’ve got three things going on here now that we need to keep an eye on.

Number One

We are in a period of political realignment, and party loyalties are obviously shifting. It’s very much in play. How much in play, unfortunately, is still unclear. The biggest difference we had—aside from the demographic breakdowns between 2020 and 2024—is that voter participation dropped by over 10%. Trump just doesn’t have the pull, for or against, that he once did. That makes drawing any conclusion a little fuzzy.

Number Two

With political factions in motion, a new party is being born. I can’t say right now if the current alignment that brought Trump to power for his second term is a permanent feature of MAGA—it is MAGA. This is not the Republican Alliance; it’s something new. But what I can say is that it is the end of what we think of as the Democratic Party.

Remember the Democratic pillars: minorities, organized labor, and educated white coastal elites. Well, organized labor is now, at best, a swing vote. Over half of them voted for Trump. But minorities are really where it’s at.

The fastest-growing demographic in the country, largely due to immigration, is Hispanics. People always seem to forget this: Hispanics are the group in the United States most opposed to migration in really any form. When Donald Trump made a lot of his pitch about the southern border, that really resonated with the people who, at one point, crossed. Losing those two legs—Hispanics and organized labor—out of the Democratic Alliance means that any places where those two pieces matter for local politics are, at best, up for grabs.

Without some significant soul-searching—and, more importantly, some significant alignment shifts—white, coastal, educated elites? That’s not a party. That’s a book club. It can’t win federal elections.

Number Three

We’re going to have a constitutional crisis in the next couple of years.

If you can put your personal political preferences and passions to the side for a moment and go back and look at pretty much any interview or rally speech that Donald Trump gave in the last three months, I think if you’re honest with yourself, you will see that the guy is failing.

Even if you can’t be honest with yourself, you have to admit that he is older now than Joe Biden was when Joe Biden became president four years ago. The chance of Donald Trump serving an entire term without losing his mind is vanishingly small.

Unlike Joe Biden, who has a group of peers, friends, and confidants who can tell him the truth and nudge him to make decisions—Donald Trump has no one like that. Donald Trump’s MAGA party is a cult of personality. He has purged it completely of anyone who might be able to challenge him.

What we know so far about his new cabinet is that there are going to be no members of his old cabinet who ever told him “no” or “yes, but.” That includes people like Mike Pompeo or Nikki Haley.

So, how do you get rid of a president who has lost his mind? Do you have to wait for him to die?

This is a constitutional crisis for the country because we’ve never been in this situation before. It’s also a leadership crisis for MAGA because Trump is MAGA.

How we shake out of these general trends—a little degree of voter apathy, the demise of the Democratic coalition with no clear replacement, and the coming demise of Donald Trump with no clear replacement—it’s going to be a lively time.

I’m sure I’m going to have a lot to say in the next four years. So, stay tuned.

Remember When…

I’m sure this isn’t a shock, but a lot of folks have asked what I think of the incoming trump administrations cabinet nominations. Before I delve in Monday’s video into the simple and forgiving world of American domestic politics, I think it would be best to review where this all began. In this special weekend edition we reach into the way-back machine and go back to New Year’s 2021 when the world seemed so different, and so similar.

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My Favorite US President of All Time Is…

Many of you have asked who my favorite US President is, so I figured I would do a video covering that. And we don’t have to go too far back, just to number 41 – George H.W. Bush.

He had the right skills for the job (thanks to experience as a congressman, ambassador, CIA director, and VP) and he navigated a changing (and globalizing) world in a way that sustained American dominance, improved the human condition, and helped manage the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Since “Poppy” lost his re-election, we’ve seen a series of narcissistic presidents, leading the US down a more isolationist and protectionist path. The window to reshape the global order is closing for now, and it will be a few decades before the US and the wider world is ready to try it again.

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from D.C. That’s obviously the Washington Monument behind me, one of the handful of things not covered in scaffolding at the moment. Considering that the election is almost upon us, I decided to take a question from the Ask Peter forum on the Patreon page and answer: who is my favorite president and why?

And that’s a no-brainer. That’s George Herbert Walker Bush. If you consider he was president at the end of the Cold War and helped manage the decline of the Soviet Union without a shot being fired in our direction, isn’t that enough to make him a great president? But think about what it was he tried to get us to do.

He wanted us to have a conversation with ourselves about how we take the Cold War alliance, the globalized system, and play it forward for another generation of American preeminence, while also aiming to improve the human condition. And if you think about what he inherited, that was pretty bold, because the whole idea of globalization was that we needed a world full of allies to be on our side against the Soviet Union. To do that, we created the global structure and used our Navy to patrol the global ocean so anyone could trade with anyone else without even a military escort.

Basically, it would be like every single country won World War II all by themselves and could dictate the terms. Free commerce, and the U.S. allowed everyone to do that. Having those assets in play when the Soviet Union finally fell presented the ability to create a new human condition on a global basis, and he was the right person to do it. Not only had he just come from the White House—not just for two years as president, but eight years as vice president—he had served in Congress as an elected representative.

He’d been an ambassador to China, run the CIA, and was on a first-name basis with everyone in the world who mattered. He was the right person in the right place at the right time with the right Rolodex, asking the right question. So, of course, we voted against him, threw him out of office, and started down a parade of relatively or increasingly narcissistic leaders.

The six we’ve had since then include definitely four of the worst presidents we’ve ever had in American history. I’ll let you guys debate among yourselves who the two exceptions are. But it was a missed opportunity. And now, today, that opportunity has probably expired. The United States has not just simply turned sharply isolationist and protectionist on both sides of the political aisle, but the nature of the world has now changed to the point that doing any sort of broad reboot is not possible.

Thirty years on, we’re all 30 years older. Most countries have terminal demographics, and the moment we had to reshape everything has passed. So we’re going to have to wait another 20 or 30 years for all of this to shake out. Hopefully, at the end of that period, we will have another president similar to Herbert Walker Bush who is willing to ask us that question again.

And maybe this next time, we’ll choose to answer. 

America After the Election: Foreign Policy & Does Turkey Have the Power to Control Israel’s Future?

A 2020 electoral college map

America After the Election: Foreign Policy

Listen, I debated even entertaining an election video for today, but since this question was so good, I just had to record one.

The question is: what aspects of American foreign policy are going to stick with us regardless of who wins the presidential election? The answer is not as eloquent.

I’m sure that not one of you will like what I had to say and that’s fineeeee, because as long as I pissed off everyone, I should be in the clear…and I coincidentally planned an international trip, so enjoy! Muahahahah!

Prefer to read the transcript? Click here

 

Does Turkey Have the Power to Control Israel’s Future?

Israel has had a lot of eyes on it lately and many are starting to wonder what the future looks like for this small and arid country. Let’s break this down through the lens of deglobalization.

With US involvement and globalization set to decline, Israel could be losing a very valuable partner. Remember that the US has supported Israel with critical resources like food and energy, as well as on the security and military fronts. That leaves some pretty big shoes to fill.

I don’t want to discredit Israel entirely because they have established themselves as a technological power, but that can only take them so far. The main shortcomings being energy, food, and protection. Thankfully there are some viable options out there.

Saudi Arabia and Israel have already begun working together and I would expect that to continue. Turkey, who will take some convincing to enter into a partnership, would be a powerful addition to the team (Turkey is poised to be the regional leader moving forward, thanks to its military and economic power). And then we’ll throw in Egypt to round out the roster.

I don’t want to put too much stress on this, but if Israel can’t figure out its relationship with Turkey…the Israeli future could look bleak.

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Transcript #1

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here. Coming to you from Colorado, well we are two-thirds of the way through our first ten inches of snow for the season. Ooh. Happy election day to everyone. I had considered just letting this pass and just dealing with the crap that’s going to inevitably happen after. But I got a really good question from one of the Patreon crowd members.

So I figured I would take a shot at it, before I leave the country for a couple days. So, the question is this: what aspects of American foreign policy are going to stick with us regardless of who wins the presidential election? Great question. I do not have a great answer. In the world until roughly…

Oh, let’s call it 2012. We had something in the United States, when it came to foreign policy and strategic policy, called the bipartisan consensus. And the idea was that the Soviet Union was bad. Global communism was not a great idea. And the way for the United States to secure its security, as well as its economic well-being, was to build an alliance network that would span the world and pursue a free-trade world,

a globalized world with everyone so that most countries of consequence would have a vested interest in benefiting from participating in the American security agreements rather than going and doing something else. And that gave us NATO and the Japanese and the Korean, the Taiwanese alliances, and all of that, and built the nonaligned world into an economic powerhouse that wasn’t necessarily aligned with the United States, but really wasn’t aligned with anyone else either.

Broadly worked. But then in 2012, we had eight years of a visceral disinterest in governing, by Barack Obama. And then we got Donald Trump and Joe Biden, who were two of the most economically populist presidents we’ve ever had. And over that 16-year period, the bipartisan consensus has withered away. And the party that was responsible for basically writing most of the real policies, the Republican Party, has now

found itself in a different place with the national security conservatives and the business conservatives not really even part of the party architecture any longer.

And there are some factions of the Republican Party that are finding themselves very strangely aligned on some issues with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. So, to say that security policy is no longer up for grabs in the United States is not paying attention to what’s really going on. What that means is the United States is in a period of flux, not just politically, internally, but internationally.

Now, this is the topic of a lot of my workings,

Starting with The Absent Superpower and The Accidental Superpower ten years ago. But what we’re seeing in the United States is also churning other things, which means that very few of the things that we consider to be normal national security and economic precepts are likely to survive because the institutions of the parties that formed them are themselves up for grabs.

And we’re seeing the leadership of both the Democratic and the Republican Party taking the institutions into a nonfunctional era. They will reform, and we will get to a situation where we can have a meaningful conversation about foreign policy again, but it’s probably not going to be for a few more years. So we’re stuck with what we have.

So let’s start with the Democrats and Kamala Harris. How can I say this without sounding like a complete prick? She’s an empty suit. Kamala Harris’s only job experience before she became vice president was being a prosecutor, which is, you know, better than the last three presidents, but it’s still not a lot. It’s a relatively minor view of anything.

And so when you look at anything she’s going to say about anything, she’s never actually implemented anything. And so you have to take everything with a big block of salt. In her first year as vice president, she was at Joe Biden’s side in every press conference, every summit, every meeting, and it got to the point that Biden’s staff decided that, no, we don’t want her around.

So they gave her a task that they knew she would fail at and gave her no power to carry it out. And that was going down to solve the border. And so, lo and behold, it was a failure. And then they were able to shovel her off to the side for the next two and a half years until it turns out she’s the presidential nominee.

So if you are voting for Kamala Harris, do not fool yourself. You are voting for an unknown, somebody with very limited experience, and who will come into the White House without a circle of people around her who are competent. They’re going to be people she’s picked up, people who are not loyal to her personally, most likely.

And so it really is a crapshoot. And then, of course, we’ve got the Republican side. And I’m going to put aside for the moment most of my feelings on Donald Trump on strategic issues. I would just ask you to look at really any of his interviews or rallies

in the last three weeks, especially the one that was in Michigan two days ago.

The degradation that I saw during the debate with Biden was in full swing, and this guy is just not all there anymore. So even if he does become president, he probably won’t be for very long. Keep in mind that he is older now than Joe Biden was when Joe Biden became president. And the mental fortitude required for the job is immense.

And Trump just doesn’t have it. So don’t kid yourself. If you’re voting for Trump, you’re actually voting for JD Vance. And JD Vance is even more of an empty suit than Kamala Harris. He’s also a bit of a chameleon, which I don’t know if it’s a plus or minus. He wrote a somewhat famous book,

Hillbilly Elegy, a few years ago, and since then, he’s partially repudiated what he said.

And then he said that Donald Trump was a horrible person, should never be president, and was a danger to democracy. And he’s obviously repudiated that. This is a guy who will say anything to get closer to power. And if Trump wins, he will be the next president. So we’ve got two candidates here who both seem to be fairly economically populist, both of which have no experience in the real world,

and no experience in government—very limited, anyway. And that’s what’s on the docket. So any sort of institutional loyalties are weak to none. Any sort of policy experience that might give us an idea of what they might prioritize is negligible. And so any sort of policies that might have consistency, from the last 20 years to the next four, it’s going to be a short list.

The issue with foreign policy in the United States is that most of it is a presidential prerogative, and it’s very rare that Congress has any say in any of it, at least in the formative stages. And so if we don’t know who, institutionally speaking, politically speaking, ethically speaking, the next president is going to be because there’s no track record,

we don’t know what they’re going to prioritize at all, and we don’t know how they would react to any hypothetical scenario because they’ve never had to do it before. The only policies that are an exception, then, are issues where the president has chosen to cede a degree of authority to Congress and lock something in with an act of Congress that limits the president’s room to maneuver. Those sorts of policies will probably stick because it would require an act of Congress to overthrow them.

In the case of the United States, that’s a very short list of things. And most are related to trade, of which by far the most important policy that falls into that bucket is NAFTA. Now

I’ve made no bones about my general dislike of Donald Trump on any number of issues, but what he did with NAFTA 2 renegotiation, I thought, was brilliant because it was the right thing at the right time with the right partner.

Mexico has become our number one trade partner. And if there is a future for the United States economically, outside of being locked into a very dangerous and unequal relationship with China, Mexico will be the core of whatever that happens to be. And so having the hard work done already, and having it be the isolationist right of the United States that did the negotiations, I thought was great.

So no matter who becomes president next, I think NAFTA is fine. And honestly, that is the single most important foreign policy priority the United States has. So at least when it comes to preparing for whatever is next in the world, as the Chinese become more belligerent and as they start to fall apart, as the Ukraine war crescendos and we face the Russian demographic dissolution as the European

fractures because the population there is making it very difficult for them to do anything else.

The most important single piece of our future was done by Donald Trump, and he deserves credit for that. And I don’t think that whoever his successor is—Harris or JD Vance—is going to have the political authority or interest in overturning that. So, you know, hurray. Now, with that said, I have now probably thoroughly pissed off everybody on both sides.

You should go vote. And you should know that by the time you’re seeing this video, I’m already out of the country, so have a good one.

Transcript #2

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from the coast of South Carolina. Several of you have written in on our Patreon forum with questions about what the future of Israel will be, especially as the world de-globalizes. Well, a little background, and then we’ll go into it.

So, number one: Israel is not a big place. We’re talking about a country that’s roughly the size of New Jersey, in a large neighborhood that is pretty arid and not exactly full of friends. Yes, Israel has built a surprisingly dynamic society with an amazing level of technological acumen, but it didn’t do it alone. The question is whether it can sustain itself; it’s basically a de facto sponsorship of the United States from the beginning. And while, for example, its missile defenses are impressive, the real ones—the ones that intercept the ballistic missiles, the arrows—have never functioned without American participation in terms of targeting, tracking, and even, you know, firing.

So, by far the most capable state of the region, but the PA isn’t exactly high. Here’s a country that imports the vast majority—over 80%—of its energy. And despite all the talk, a kibbutz is something like three-quarters of its food as well. So it’s in kind of a pickle. It requires foreign sponsorship for security and it requires access to economies outside of the region for its energy and its food. You remove the United States as the security guarantor, or you remove globalization, and this should, in theory, be one of those countries that, without a radical change of affairs, is simply going to dry up and blow away.

Now, I don’t think that is Israel’s future because a few things are going to change, some of which already have. One of the things that so frustrates the United States about Israel is it acts on its own. It has agency. When you are so much more technically capable and have so much more reach than your neighbors, you have some options. And the Israelis often exercise that. They often engage in military and paramilitary operations that are directly opposed to U.S. interests. And because of that, the Israelis have this view that no ally is worth forever. If push comes to shove, you do what you feel you need to do. And if it happens to piss off the person who ensures you get fed and the lights come on and the missiles get shot down, well, that’s so be it.

They know that at some point down the road they’re going to have to do things differently. And while they probably can’t do it on their own, that doesn’t mean that they can’t find a new friend. So, the question is, who are the candidates?

Well, in terms of energy, I would argue that they’ve already found that one. Starting over 15 years ago, the Israelis basically built a de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia would provide them with some intel on Iran and some energy. And in exchange, the Israelis would provide the Saudis with backdoor access to American weapons systems that the Americans were willing to sell to Saudi Arabia, along with the training that was necessary so they could use them. In addition, anything that involves Iran, the two of them will operate pretty closely.

Now, this doesn’t mean they get along on everything. Obviously, when it comes to the Palestinians, there are still some fine details to work out. But the two of them get on pretty well behind the scenes and publicly spout a lot. But behind the scenes, they’re actually getting along great; they’re reasonable friends. Agriculture is easier. There are a lot more countries in the region that provide food surpluses, most notably in Europe. So it’s not like the Israelis need access to the globalized system to keep the food flowing.

But when it comes to security, that basically tells you where they’re going to get their food. Every country in the Middle East is in the process of wondering when the United States will pull back and, if so, who they should go to. And none of the options are particularly good if you’re an Arab. If you consider that the French and the Brits and the Turks have all had colonial empires in the region, no one really wants to go back to that day. But if you’re Israeli, you’ve got some options because the Israelis were never really a traditional colony; it was formed by the Zionist movement in the aftermath of World War II.

Partnering up with France, or Britain, or in my opinion, Turkey, is something that can be done with a minimum of cultural pain. Of the three, the most likely candidate will be Turkey—not because it’s the closest cultural cousin; it’s the opposite. But if Turkey is not a friend, then Turkey will most likely be an enemy. And having an alliance with someone against your local foe puts you really at the mercy of your ally. But if the Israelis can find a way to bury the hatchet with the Turks, then you take the largest economy and military in the area, with the most projection-based economy and military in the region, and you get a very powerful pairing.

That’s going to be pretty easy to justify joining. So I think the future of this region is likely to be Turkish-led, to a degree Israeli-managed, Saudi-fueled. And those three will have no problem bringing in Egypt as a big bulwark partner in North Africa. That quad is likely to be the power center for this region in a post-American system. And they have everything that all of them need—energy, security, naval access, food, and a really good network of intelligence systems.

I know a lot of you are going to say, “Wait a minute, doesn’t the Turkish government hate Israel right now?” Yes. I didn’t suggest any of this was going to be easy. The issue is that the Turkish government can protect Israel from, say, France or Britain, but France or Britain can’t really protect Israel from Turkey. So there’s really not a lot of strategic choice here. You know, if you’re Saudi Arabia, the idea of reaching out to a distant power like Japan or China makes a degree of sense. But for Israel, the potential foe is near and present. So if Israel cannot find a successful way to get along with Turkey, then Israel will vanish.

This is a region that is actually pretty easy for the Turks to get at. They’re not too far away. They only have to punch through Lebanon, and Lebanon is not really going to fight back. Not to mention you’re going to talk about a really meaningful blockade that would starve Israel of food and energy as well. Far better to find a way to get in bed with the Turks than the other way around.

So again, never said this would be easy. Never said there wasn’t a lot of work to do.

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Satellite photo of hurricane helene over Florida

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I know everyone wants constant updates on the upcoming US election, and if you haven’t figured this out by now, that’s not really my shtick. However, I will offer a couple factors that could influence the outcome of this election.

First, we’ve got the severe damage to infrastructure in the swing states of Georgia and western North Carolina caused by Hurricane Helene. While this might not seem like something that would impact the election, these highly Republican areas are sensitive to voter turnout, to the point where a few thousand votes could change the result.

The bigger factor to watch is organized labor and the business community. Neither of these factions are fully aligned with a major party, so that puts a lot of votes up in the air. Expect these factions to act as swing voters and introduce a hefty amount of volatility to the political landscape.

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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 free and we 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.

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Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming from Washington, D.C. That is the Rose Garden behind me at the White House. And of course, there’s a new layer of security that wasn’t here last time I was here, so you can’t see anything. So instead, we’re going to put the Treasury Department or ours. At least, it’s a, you know, pretty building.

Anyway, a lot of you have been asking me to give you an update on my assessment for the election, and I’m just not going to do that. I gave my assessment two years ago. It was based on structural factors, and those structural factors haven’t changed. And if you want a blow-by-blow of what’s going on precinct by precinct, I am not the guy to do the hot takes.

But I will tell you two things: one on a micro fact that is likely to impact this election, and the second one is on the broader trend that will affect future elections. So first, the micro effect. When Hurricane Helene rushed in from the Gulf, it did something that most hurricanes didn’t do and maintained significant strength even when it was a couple hundred miles inland.

Normally, when you have a storm surge on the tornadoes and the wind and the rain, you devastate an area of the coast. Then, when it’s time to pick up the pieces and repair the damage, the first thing you do is get the interstate corridors back up and running and then move on to the secondary roads. Most coastal regions, particularly in the Gulf, are pretty flat, so that’s not too hard to do.

The devastation can be immense, but once you get the road arteries back up and running, things aren’t so bad. But when you move inland and start hitting the Appalachians, you’re in a different situation. It’s not flat, and you don’t have a grid network for roads where they’re all over. You have very specific roads following very specific corridors.

And if you dump two feet of rain in those zones, the rain washes off the mountains, gets into the streams, and river levels can rise by 20-30 feet or more and wash everything away. That is exactly what happened in northern Georgia and western North Carolina. Now, in both cases, we’re looking at years before the physical infrastructure is repaired and probably more than another month before we even get a reasonable damage assessment.

And why that matters to this election specifically is that northern Georgia and western North Carolina are among the reddest of the red areas in the country. Both North Carolina and Georgia are swing states this time around. So, the idea that you can have several million voters, and have a few hundred thousand, who, for whatever reason, can’t vote because of physical infrastructure conditions, in races where just 10,000 votes might separate the winner from the loser—you can see how that can tilt the election pretty easily.

The second thing that’s longer term is what’s going on with organized labor and the business community because right now, neither of those factions are part of either major party. Donald Trump pushed the business community out of his coalition for being, from his point of view, unnecessarily disloyal.

And the unions are kind of in flux between the Democrats and the Republicans. They’ve got kind of a foot in both camps but are not really committed one way or the other. If you remember, the Teamsters President—big union in the United States—actually endorsed Trump live on stage at the Republican National Convention. And in the most recent court strike, the Biden administration refused to take a trust-busting action against the unions.

In an attempt to draw the unions back into the Democratic coalition, both factions are very much in play. This has never happened before in human history because these two factions, their arguments, and their compromises, form American economic policy. And the idea that one wouldn’t be part of one coalition or the other is strange, but both at the same time? Not reasonable. Not sustainable.

If you look at either the Trump administration or the Biden administration and wonder why their economic policy seems batshit crazy, that’s why. The people who have traditionally done the math as part of economic policy formation are not in the room. Now, this is, like I said, not sustainable. Sooner or later, one or both of these factions are going to either rejoin one or both of these coalitions or form their own, and we will have a reorganization of American politics.

Now, there’s nothing about this that is odd. We’ve done this five times in American history already. This will be the sixth reorganization, and it will form what will be known as the seventh party structure. But until that happens, both of these factions, arguably historically the most powerful factions on both sides, are in play. The business community has always been the backbone of the Republican coalition, and organized labor has always been the backbone of the Democratic coalition, or at least since the last reorganization.

So this will not last. But until such time as these factions are back as part of the political process, they are functionally swing voters. And that makes this election a lot more volatile than it would have otherwise been.

Okay, that’s it for now.

Is the US Looking for a War?

*This video was recorded in May of 2024

The potential of dragging the US into a major conflict is top of mind for a lot of Americans, but what would it actually take to get us there?

The US isn’t just going to rush into a significant conflict, there has to be something major that occurs first. We’re talking a political leader with a strong international agenda or a major provocation (like Pearl Harbor). China (at least for now) knows better than to provoke the US due to Chinese reliance on maritime trade. Russia’s incompetence and aggressive actions in Ukraine pose a potential threat, but only if the conflict directly impacts US interests.

When looking at US military action within North America specifically, conflict with the Mexican drug cartels is top of mind. Although the situation in Mexico is dire, any action by the US without Mexico’s cooperation would be disastrous for the future of the US-Mexico trade relationship.

Prefer to read the transcript? 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.

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Transcript

Hi, thanks for joining us today. My name is Michael, and I’m your director of analysis here at Zeihan on Geopolitics. It’s my pleasure to have a conversation with Peter Simon about some of the questions you’ve sent us about what’s going on in the world. Let’s start with the big one: What would it take to pull the U.S. directly back into a major conflict or war?

Oh, wow. Okay, so the United States has not been in a major, major conflict since World War II. In terms of the conflicts we’ve had since then, they were either in the context of supporting the global order—basically bleeding for our allies so they would stay our allies, like in Korea and Vietnam—or it was our attempt to forge a new world post-Cold War, like Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

For us to get involved in anything on that scale would require one of two things. Number one, a political leader in the United States who sees international issues as the crucible in which a new identity could be forged. There’s no sign of that happening on either side of the political spectrum at the moment. Or, someone doing something really, really, really breathtakingly stupid and provoking the United States.

This has happened before. You could argue that Pearl Harbor, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Sputnik, and the Kuwait invasion all fit this description. But when I look around the world at the powers in play, I don’t think the Chinese are anywhere near dumb enough to do that.

At least a few years ago, Chairman Xi and the Politburo realized that if there were a fight with the United States, it would be a fight on the water, and China depends on freedom of the seas to keep its people alive. The entire economic model, the food imports, the energy imports—they would just stop, and they know that would be suicide.

So, the only country right now where that might be an issue would be Russia, and that’s because of Russian incompetence. We’ve learned over the last three years that Russia doesn’t have a classic army in the sense most people think of. They basically have a mob they put guns in the hands of and throw at things.

It’s not that this strategy has never worked for the Russians. The Russians have won half of the wars they’ve been in. But if the fight reaches a point where it’s hitting U.S. interests, that’s where you get the direct clash. As long as the United States is at least passively interested in NATO, should Ukraine fall, then we could be in a more direct fight.

But we’re not there now. Even if the Russians continue making the gains they’ve been making in the last year for the next five years, we will still not be there. The dynamism of this conflict is difficult to get your mind around because so many things are shaping both sides. I’m not suggesting for a moment that Russia is about to break through the lines in Ukraine and win. I’m just suggesting that it has to be something on that scale for the United States to consider getting involved, barring some idiot somewhere doing a direct attack on the United States. Remember, the United States has rested and recouped from the war on terror. Its military isn’t doing much from a military point of view right now.

There are no occupations. There are no hot deployments. So, if somebody did pick that fight, God help them because no one else will. But you mentioned that the U.S. military isn’t doing much broadly, and most of the conflicts you described aren’t within North America. There’s nothing within North America that looks viable at the moment, something targeting a U.S. strategic interest to the point that would motivate the U.S. to enter conventional warfare.

Stepping back a little bit, are there regions within North America, perhaps, or concerns that American strategic leadership has within North America that the military could be used for, to bring some kind of resolution or achieve a strategic gain? Not at the moment. The only issue where that theoretically could arise would be dealing with Mexican drug cartels. Americans’ preoccupation with cocaine—their love of cocaine—has basically destroyed the capacity for rule of law to exist in large portions of Mexico. Add to that the general incompetence of the AMLO administration, and Mexico is in a much worse position now in terms of public safety, public health, and infrastructure than it was five years ago. There’s plenty of fault to spread around.

I will just underline that if anyone thinks the United States can impose a military solution on the cartel situation, you are batshit. Mexico is a huge place, and the cartel situation is far more complicated than anything we had to deal with in Pakistan or Afghanistan during the war on terror. If there is a military angle to be played there, it will have to be hand in glove with the Mexican administration, something like what we did with Colombia.

But at the moment, with the current administration in Mexico City, that is not even under a hair of consideration. If the U.S. were to try to impose a military solution without active participation from the Mexicans, you can kiss the trade relationship goodbye, and then the United States would fall into an economic depression as the single most important economic, human migration, and manufacturing and energy relationship in human history all break at the same time.

Don’t do that.

Of Course Biden Drops Out While I’m Deep in the Mountains…

The news of President Biden dropping out of the 2024 Presidential race managed to reach me in the mountains of Yosemite National Park; however, I won’t have strong enough service for the foreseeable future to give any kind of update. So, I’ve asked my team to send out an interview I did last week that covers the US political transition and all of its fun inner workings.

In this interview on Liberal Values Lab, we walk through geopolitical trends that affect America’s Political Transition, providing insight into America’s domestic turbulence, and the realignment of America’s political parties.

We discussed the changing dynamics of evolving American political alignments, including the flux of unions, the business community and national security coalitions, surprising new alliances, where they are finding a new home and with whom they are now partnering, the possibility of an open convention for the Democratic Party, the aftermath of the Trump shooting, changing global dynamics, China and Russia’s decline, increasing American isolationism, and when personalities matter.

I hope you enjoy and I look forward to releasing an update on all this when I return from my time in the mountains.

Some more info on the Institute for Liberal Values

The Institute for Liberal Values is a non-partisan and non-sectarian consortium focused on the promotion of individual freedom, rights, and liberty in everyday life. We provide the skills and support required to build community where there has been division, encourage free expression where there has been censorship, and foster optimism where there is fear.

Learn more

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.

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Official portrait of President Joe Biden courtesy of The White House

Stop Obsessing Over the Polls and Take a Hike Instead

Everyone wants to know if the assassination attempt on Donald Trump is going to impact the outcome of the election. I hate to break it to you, but no one knows. The only historical precedence is from 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt was shot, finished his speech, and then proceeded to get smoked in the elections

If you’re one of the nerds who is analyzing every poll that comes out to get a sense of how this election will play out, I feel it prudent to tell you to just stop – at least for another month or so. Most polls disregard the Independents’ influence, look at a national-level as opposed to state-level, and the role of third party candidates isn’t factored in. This goes without saying, but you should at least wait until the DNC wraps up in August.

Now, if you’re dying to look at some poll data, I would recommend using the site 270towin.com. It aggregates reliable poll information and allows you to manipulate how you view the data. Or you could just draw a name out of a hat…

Click the image to view 270towin.com
Prefer to read the transcript? 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.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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Transcript

Hey, everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. We have had a lot of you write in asking about how the attempted assassination of Donald Trump affects my forecast for the 2024 presidential elections. The answer is very simple: I have no idea.

I can only think of one instance in American history where somebody who was clearly going to get the nomination was the target of an assassination attempt. That one person is Teddy Roosevelt. Before those of you who are pro-Trumper say, “Yeah, yeah, compare Trump to Roosevelt,” it didn’t end well for Roosevelt. Number one, he finished his speech. Second, he went on to have one of the most catastrophic losses in American history to none other than Woodrow Wilson.

So, you know, careful what you wish for. That is not my prediction that this is how it’s going to go. What I’m saying is American experience with political violence at this level is very, very limited. Knowing the impact it’s going to have on the election, it’s not that it’s a non-factor. It’s something that we just don’t know how to predict.

At the moment, it’s kind of in the wind. What I can tell you is that you should absolutely not be paying any attention to the polls, especially now. There are three things in play. Number one, most polls basically interview 1,000 or 2,000 people. They have a margin of error. They say, “Do you want to vote for candidate A or candidate B?” Then they give you the results. That’s a horrible way to do the polling in the United States for three reasons.

Number one, independents, people who are only 10% of the electorate but who have decided most of the elections in the last 50 years, don’t pay any attention to the polls and don’t even answer them until after the political conventions are completed. Now, just this week, we have completed the Republican National Convention. But the Democratic one is not until, I believe, the 19th of August. So you shouldn’t be looking at any polls for any reason until you get to the first week of September.

Second, the way Americans do polling is very different from the way Americans vote for their candidates. It’s not like everybody goes into a single pool and whoever gets the most votes wins. No, no, no, no. You do it by state with the Electoral College. Each state has a certain number of electors. The way it works, by combination of law and tradition, is if a state registers that one candidate got one more vote than whoever came in second place, that candidate gets all of the electors.

For example, my home state of Iowa has seven electoral votes. I believe it’s been a while since I’ve been there. If you have 14 candidates running for president and one of them gets 20% and that’s more than everybody else, they get all seven of those electoral votes. Until you get to a situation where you’re looking at state polling as opposed to national polling, and you can look at it on a map, the polls are pointless.

Third, third-party candidates. Right now, they’re really not included in the polling. If you go back to, say, the 2000 race between Gore and Bush, all the polls indicated that Al Gore was going to walk away with it because they ignored that Ralph Nader was on the ticket in a lot of states. Nader wasn’t a popular candidate, had no chance of winning, and really only got a few single digits of the national vote that was concentrated in enough states that it drew away support from Al Gore and then gave the election to George W. Bush by a relatively narrow margin.

We have a third-party candidate running this time by the name of RFK Jr., who is absolutely a batshit crazy conspiracy theorist. Donald Trump thought he had that part of the electorate courted already. Now, having RFK in the mix means that even in places where Donald Trump was expected to get a really strong win, all of a sudden there might be enough support bled off for RFK Jr. that Biden will get the state.

Anyway, none of this can be registered until such time as the polling changes. That won’t be until September. Let me give you a little hint as to what I look for. There is a website that does all the aggregation for you and only includes the polls that are of high quality. It’s called 270 to Win. It’s 270towin.com. It does it by state. The best part of this website is if you don’t think because you feel you know better for whatever reason, maybe you live there, maybe this is your job, you can go through and click through and change the alignment of each individual state to see how it shakes out.

This screenshot that you’re seeing right now, this is how it is on the 18th of July. This is my last day here. I head backpacking tomorrow, so you guys can all scream into the void if you don’t like what I have to say. Right now, the polls have registered the impact of Biden’s atrocious debate performance a few weeks ago. As you can see, it’s still kind of a hung race.

We have not yet seen the impact of the appointment of JD Vance as Donald Trump’s running mate. But again, if polls matter yet, wait until September. Look at this in September. Look at this especially after the Democratic convention concludes in late August. I would have normally done this video then, but I’m not going to be back by then.

So this is to give you guys something to chew on while I am doing anything but following American politics.

America’s Changing Republican Party

The Republican Party is undergoing some evolutions at the moment, moving away from many of its traditional stances. This is part of a broader cycle in which American political parties shift and realign every few decades. On issues as diverse as abortion, international involvement, and the balance between business and labor, what it means to “be a Republican” is changing in ways that would have seemed silly just a few years ago.

With the future of the party uncertain, just about every faction and big name is trying to twist the future of the conservative movement in their own preferred directions. Which version will emerge when the dust settle? Only time will tell.

Prefer to read the transcript? 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.

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Transcript

Hey everybody. Peter Zeihan here, coming to you from Colorado. It is the 17th of July, and it is the last day of the Republican National Convention, which I’ve been watching pretty closely because the Republican Party is in flux. For those of you who’ve been watching me for a while, you know that I’ve been saying for several years now that we’re in the late party structure for what is called the sixth party structure.

Basically, every generation or two, American politics goes into a period of flux where the factions that make up our parties move around. For the last few years, we’ve been in that process. It’s happening for both parties, but the Republicans are further along, so they’ve been the ones I’ve been following most closely. Donald Trump is obviously part of this process and has been accelerating it. Now with the convention, we’re starting to get a pretty good idea of what the next possible iteration of the Republicans will be.

Quick review. Most people associate the Republicans with a degree of social conservatism, international involvement, relatively hawkish positions on foreign affairs, especially military affairs, and a fairly pro-business outlook for businesses of all sizes. Every plank of that is now being challenged and rewritten by Team Trump as American society, demographics, trade, technology, and everything else evolve. It makes sense. Whether or not this new structure that’s evolving is the one that is going to stick remains to be seen, but we now have a pretty good idea of what the Trump Republican Party would be.

Three big changes. The first one is a bit of a surprise: a softer position on some social conservative issues like gay rights and abortion. Basically, the Trump Party is now saying that these are issues that should be decided by the states rather than at the national level. There are a lot of hardcore social conservatives who are pretty unhappy with that. But Donald Trump is betting that his cult of personality-like hold over the Republican Party is going to be sufficient, that no one can outflank him. Considering that he sailed to the nomination without even showing up at any of the primaries, that’s probably a safe bet, at least for this election cycle.

The second one, of course, is something that’s near and dear to my heart: a shift from international involvement to isolationism. The idea is that the problems over there are problems over there, and we should just stick to our own issues, but still arm ourselves to the teeth. We saw a lot of this in Trump’s first term, where he might talk tough on countries like Russia and China, but really on every major issue, whether it’s trade or security, he basically just let them do whatever they wanted. If it couldn’t be negotiated and stuck to in a single afternoon of talks, he really wasn’t interested. We saw that with Ukraine, and we’ve also seen it with trade policy with China, where we got this phase one trade deal, but then Trump couldn’t bother to enforce it. So the Chinese basically just walked all over the United States as regards trade. Things like that are definitely being codified into the Republican Party’s new platform.

The third change has to do with business versus labor. For the past several decades, really going back to the 1930s, the Republican Party has always sided with the business community over labor. But one of the highlight speakers of the convention this time was none other than a representative of the Teamsters Union, which is probably the most militant and throwback of America’s unions. He talked about the Chamber of Commerce basically being a welfare club for businesses. This was something that was on the stage of the Republican National Convention. For a while there, I was wondering if I was watching the right convention. These are issues that are usually trumpeted not just by the Democrats, but by the really leftist groups of Democrats, like, say, the Squad. Now it’s becoming core to the Republican Party platform.

In essence, we are entering a golden age for organized labor in the United States. The United States is in the process of doubling the size of its industrial plant. Most of those jobs are blue-collar, and so they’re very amenable to being organized into labor unions. The Teamsters, of course, are all for that. What the Trump Republican Party seems to be doing is basically ditching the entire business community and going whole hog towards organized labor. Among the new things in the Republican Party’s platform is the challenge to things like right-to-work laws in places like the American South and Texas that prevent or at least dissuade unions from forming in the first place. It’s now the official Republican Party platform that that’s a bad idea.

Now, will this new trifecta stick? It’s way too soon to tell. The old Reaganite and Lincoln Republicans are not dead yet. There were some hilarious moments on stage from my point of view. Ron DeSantis, who ran for president and is, of course, governor of Florida, was just angry, and it was pretty obvious. But I would say that the highlight for awkwardness goes to Nikki Haley, who came in second in the primaries against Donald Trump. She still lost, of course. She came on stage to endorse Trump, and not only was she booed when she showed up, but her endorsement speech was really awkward. It was kind of like a woman being asked to toast her ex-husband who had an affair with the secretary and was now marrying her. It was that level of awkwardness.

Anyway, Nikki Haley has already joined a think tank to reimagine what the next version of conservatism looks like in the United States now that the old Republican Party is truly dead. Mike Pence has formed a think tank to do the same thing. Now, I’m not suggesting that one of these three visions—Pence, Haley, or Trump—is the one that’s ultimately going to stick. I’m just highlighting that right now for this election cycle, we have a very different Republican platform and a very different Republican Party. Everything is still in flux. This is not the final form. We won’t get that probably until the next presidential cycle. And there’s a lot of folks who have irons in the fire to try to figure out what that is going to be.

Assassination Attempt and A Changing World

Butler County Fairgrounds where the Assassination Attempt of Donald Trump occurred

On Saturday, July 13, there was an attempted assassination of Donald Trump. I’m not here to give you the play-by-play that you can get from the news, instead I want to put this incident into context of the broader political and economic shifts.

America is experiencing a political realignment where party coalitions are breaking up and new factions are emerging. Trump, who has sparked some of these shifts, has both benefited from and lost supporters because of this. I’ve talked extensively about the economic shifts happening, but the global order is collapsing and most economies will be in a flux for a while.

With all this change, you can expect increased political and economic volatility, both domestically and internationally. You can parallel the present day shifts to times like the 1930s or Reconstruction in the US. While these changes might ultimately benefit the US, the transitionary period will be no snoozer…as evidenced by the events on July 13.

Prefer to read the transcript? 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.

Support medshare's ukraine fund
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Transcript

Hey everybody, Peter Zeihan coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks. It is the 14th of July, and last night Donald Trump was lightly injured in an assassination attempt. I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow of what went down because the details are still very sketchy. It looks like it was a 20-year-old registered Republican who donated money to Democrats, which tells us absolutely nothing.

The Secret Service, of course, will be doing their own investigation in league with local law enforcement and the FBI. We will wait for more details to see where that takes us. But I wanted to put this all into context. There are a lot of things going on in the world right now that suggest we’re going to be in a more politically volatile period.

The first big thing is that America is going through its once-in-every-generation political rearrangement, something that Trump is part of. The Americans have a first-past-the-post, single-member district political system, which means that you vote for a single person who will then represent a very specific geography. You don’t vote for a party. In doing this, American parties tend to be fairly weak, and so they tend to be coalitions of coalitions. You get multiple political factions banding together around a single tent in order to get one more vote than whoever comes in second.

Today, for example, the Republican Party has traditionally been made up of people who are concerned with budget deficits, national security, business regulation, and social conservatives. As technology, demographics, and economic patterns evolve, the factions make less sense. The factions rise and fall within the coalitions, and if things get stressed enough, they end up falling out of the coalition altogether, maybe becoming swing voters or maybe going to the other side. What we’re seeing right now is that in spades for the Republican coalition. The business community, the national security community, and the fiscal community have all been basically ejected from the party, but Donald Trump has been successful in drawing other groups away from the Democratic coalition.

For example, union voters are no longer considered Democrats by their voting patterns, and Hispanics have shifted quite a bit. This is still very much a work in progress. Donald Trump is benefiting from this as much as he is losing from this. But if you think about what’s happened in the last 30 or 40 years, we’ve had the rise of hyper-globalization and now its fall. We’ve had the height of the baby boomers in the workforce and now their retirement. It’s not exactly a shock to think that we are going to manage our political system differently.

So that’s the first big piece: America politically is in movement. Second, the world economically is in movement. The whole point of the post-World War II global consensus was that the Americans would take care of the guns and keep everyone safe. The Americans would open the market and make the global sea safe for everyone’s commerce if, in exchange, you sided with the Americans in the Cold War. That provided the basis for everything from the alliance with Taiwan, Korea, and Japan to NATO. That’s created the world that we know. It’s also created the economic backdrop and the security backdrop that made the rise of China possible, because during the late Cold War, China was one of those allies.

Well, that whole system is breaking down. Two reasons: number one, the Americans can’t pay for it anymore and don’t want to. The Americans have refashioned their navy, so instead of hundreds of ships that can patrol the oceans, they have a few clusters of ships that are really good for fighting wars. So the ability to have that global coverage isn’t there. Americans politically are tired of paying the economic price of keeping the world open for everyone because it’s put everybody else at an advantage versus American workers. That just doesn’t fly in today’s populist era.

The second issue is that when you do economically develop, when you do industrialize, you also urbanize. After seven decades of urbanization, people are having fewer and fewer children around the world. Well, if you have fewer children for seven decades, it’s not that you’re running out of ten-year-olds and twenty-year-olds. You’re running out of fifty-year-olds and increasingly sixty-year-olds. This decade, the 2020s, was always going to be the decade that a lot of countries slipped away from having a workforce that can support the globalized system in the first place. After all, if you don’t have consumption, you don’t have trade.

So this whole system, the American political network, is evolving, and the global economic network is collapsing and reforming. What this all means is there’s a lot of change out there in the way we live, the way we work, who we service with our businesses, and where we get our goods. When things change, people with a vested interest in the system don’t always make it. People get scared, and people get angry. That is when you get violence. We’re going to get it at the state level with a series of military conflicts. The first of those is already happening in Ukraine. We’ll probably get one in China before long. In terms of political change in the United States, that’s when we get our domestic political violence.

It happened in the 1930s with the Great Depression and that political reorientation. It happened with Reconstruction, and it happened with the Civil War. So I don’t want to suggest that this is the beginning of more of the same. I’m saying that the factors that define our world are evolving, and we’re going to change with it. For the United States overall, this is a net gain in many, many ways. But going through the process of getting from where we’ve been and what we’re comfortable with to where we’re going, something that’s unknown, is unfortunately going to generate a lot of stresses along the way. We saw some of that last night.

Photo by Designism, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons