The French are continuing to make their outrage over last week’s AUKUS submarine deal—and the subsequent cancellation of a pending Franco-Australian submarine supply deal—plain for all to see. IIn addition to withdrawing [...]

The United States and United Kingdom have shouldered out the French in a deal to supply submarines to Australia. And not just any submarines, potentially nuclear–powered submarines.  France was [...]

So, what keeps me up at night? The current global semiconductor supply chain. Distinct capabilities exist in separate supply chains and manufacturing bases—lower end supply from China, higher-end chips from places like [...]

Concerns are rising over Chinese dominance in the realm of rare earths metals processing. This is a problem that I spend a lot of time never worrying about.  Despite their name, rare earths aren’t all that [...]

Speculation over Afghanistan’s potential mineral wealth is just that–speculation. What we do know about the hard reality of the country’s geography, infrastructure and development profile [...]

The seven-day moving average for new COVID deaths in the United States is back up above 1,000 – a figure the Americans have not suffered since before COVID vaccines became widely available back in April. To that [...]

Hurricane Ida made landfall in southern Louisiana as a Category 4 storm on August 29. In its wake it left a trail of damage that Americans living on the Gulf and Atlantic coasts have found depressingly familiar. Total [...]

Some questions I’ve been asked about as of late have been on the topic of what technologies do I see that could move the needle on some of the more… dire forecasts that I’ve made. Some of the most impactful are [...]

The challenges of the United States’ Afghan withdrawal have caused many to question Washington’s commitments to its allies and others who have found themselves under the American security blanket. The issue of US [...]

I’ve been asked several times since my last dispatch whether or not I think FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine is going to move the needle for the anti-vax crowd. Unlikely. If you thought the COVID-19 vaccines were [...]

News arrives a little more slowly here in northern Iceland. But as the details of the horrific attack against US service members and Afghan nationals came in across my phone, so too did many arguments that these are [...]

Greetings from Iceland! With the FDA giving Pfizer’s Comirnaty (the two-shot regimen formerly known as the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine), it’s important to note what this does and does not mean for the [...]

The United States is likely to experience economic growth even as the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues its spread through unvaccinated populations. We should not overlook that qualifier; the vast majority of [...]

On New Years Eve, just minutes before the dawn of 1992, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time. Arguably the Cold War had been over for a few years already. Glasnost and perestroika had defanged [...]

The United States is seeing a second summer of rising COVID cases, though this year’s surge–and accompanying COVID-related deaths and hospitalizations–are largely avoidable. The US is in a near unheard [...]

The world that we’re entering is fundamentally different than where we’ve been. The modern period we live in began with Columbus. It has been one of “more:”–near unending growth (population, [...]

A combination of factors have workers feeling more confident in looking for better-paying jobs (or at least, less willing to work ones they don’t like for at-or-near minimum wage). While things may seem bleak now [...]

Mexicans went to the polls over the weekend. Preliminary results indicate that while incumbent president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s (better known as AMLO) MORENA coalition will maintain a majority in [...]

The United States has made remarkable progress in vaccinating large swathes of its population since the beginning of the year. Despite near walk-in availability of vaccines across the country, however, a significant [...]

I’m going to attempt the impossible with this one: making economics not necessarily fun, but painfully relevant to someone who cannot work an Excel document. Here goes: The United States is experiencing the fastest [...]

Bit by bit we are getting back to normal. Over half of the American adult population is now vaccinated, and vaccines will soon be available in most locations on a walk-in basis. At current rates, I have little doubt all [...]

On March 2 the Biden administration announced a vaccine manufacturing partnership between two of the largest and most successful drug manufacturers in the United States: Johnson & Johnson and Merck. Less than a week [...]

The United States approved a third COVID-19 vaccine—the latest from Johnson and Johnson—for use, offering up millions of more doses for Americans. As I stated in my video yesterday, vaccines should be available on demand [...]

Here’s some good news for a change: the US has approved its third vaccine option–Johnson and Johnson’s single-dose shot–even as total daily vaccinations with the two-shot Moderna and Pfizer [...]

In the wee hours of February 26, American military forces in the Middle East carried out a handful of air strikes against Iranian paramilitary forces in Syria. To my knowledge it represents the first such public strike [...]

I moved from Austin to Denver just under two years ago. Austin is a great city. Young, hip, great food, lots of outdoorsy stuff. But most of my free time is in the summer. So, I’d spend the fall, winter and spring [...]

I don’t see China the way most do. Where others see a rising naval power, I see a trapped coastal fleet incapable of projecting power, much less patrolling its far-flung economic interests. Where others [...]

The second major international issue facing the incoming Joe Biden administration is that never-ending joy, the problem that just keeps on giving: the Middle East. If there is one thing most Americans agree on in [...]

After sketching out what was intended to be the final installment of this series, I realized the world was in a lot more trouble than I had thought. So, the “Crisis List” installment is going to be a whole [...]

Much of current media coverage of the corona virus is focusing on the issue of variants of SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Here in the United States, we’re currently in a race against time in our attempts to [...]

Let’s begin with the bad news. The United States has not seen any meaningful expansion of coronavirus testing since the November 2020 fall-off (see the stall in the purple graph below). Such suggests the United [...]

My original plan (such as it was) for this series was to use Part V to break down the foreign crises the Biden administration will face in his freshman year. We’ll still get to that (stay tuned for Part VI), [...]

Normally when I give presentations, I arrange my material based on the audience’s cultural norms. Americans are manic-depressive, so I normally start with the good news to snap them away from obsessing about [...]

No political party of consequence in the United States has ever been single-issue. American electoral laws dictate that whoever gets one more vote than the next guy gets the seat, pushing political parties to throw as [...]

Starting within minutes of the January 6 riots, a variety of tech platforms began blocking posts by President Donald Trump. Within three days nearly all platforms – a list which includes Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, [...]

Let me start of by saying that in an advanced democracy like the United States, political violence must never be tolerated. We have institutions and courts and elections expressly to manage our differences and debates. [...]

COVID-19’s Thanksgiving surge is upon us. We’re now facing record cases, hospitalizations and deaths and will continue at least through the end of January 2021. But there is some very good news out there as [...]

It is a rare bit of good news we have to share in general, and especially in 2020, so we’re taking it! Less than a year after the broader world found out about an emerging new coronavirus epidemic in Wuhan we now [...]

Part I of this newsletter published a week ago, before we had enough U.S. states reporting election results to call the race. Now, barring something truly odd, Joe Biden has won a more than sufficient number of states to [...]

So…we had an election. It has gone down to the wire. At the time of this writing mid-day November 4 the votes are still being counted. America’s politics have significantly de-matured since the contested election [...]

In my latest dispatch, I discuss the resources I look at when analyzing the current snapshots of where we are in the corona pandemic, as well as where I think we’re headed this Fall and beyond. The current wave has [...]

The previous two dispatches touched on the best-case scenario and the “not good” scenario, and why both indicate the public health response and the economic recovery can’t even begin [...]

There are many reasons why we should not assume a vaccine will return life to normal. I discussed some of these in the first part of this dispatch on the best-case scenario. But it is more complicated than that. For part [...]

Even in the best case scenario, a coronavirus vaccine can’t be rolled out fully to the general American population until the second quarter of 2021. But that only marks the beginning of the end. If you enjoy our [...]

The pullout of US troops in the Middle East is likely to continue after November’s presidential election. We’re already seeing significant changes in how the Middle East works, including what sorts of antics [...]

The results of the November presidential election are unlikely to change the trajectory of US-Chinese relations over the past decade. But Beijing’s biggest challenges don’t lie with the US. As the Chinese [...]

Russia and Europe are tilting toward confrontation. The European defense posture for the past 70+ years has been predicated on NATO–a fancy acronym for “the United States is our security guarantor.”  [...]

Mountain living can be…challenging. In the first of a series of video dispatches this week, I make lemons from lemonade and discuss the looming international challenges facing the American presidency, no matter who [...]

I normally try to stay out of American politics. My work is in the wider world, the American system is remarkably stable and self-regulating, and if I’m to be completely honest, making domestic political forecasts [...]

Last week the American ambassador to China, Terry Branstad, attempted to publish an op-ed with his assessment of American-Chinese relations. The Chinese Communist Part summarily squashed it, banning the op-ed in all [...]

Thursday, August 13 the Trump administration released a series of breathless communiques proclaiming the onset of formal peace and diplomatic recognition between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. Shortly thereafter [...]

The coronavirus epidemic in the United States continues to accelerate. Much of the recent news has been about ongoing and unprecedented caseload increases in the large states of California, Texas and Florida. While I [...]

The coronavirus epidemic in the United States continues to accelerate. Much of the recent news has been about ongoing and unprecedented caseload increases in the large states of California, Texas and Florida, which [...]

Getting reliable oil data on any country outside the United States is very nearly an exercise in futility. Even a country with “good” data like the United States sources that data from a half dozen [...]

You can also read the State of the Pandemic series’ take on the United States, Latin America, the Persian Gulf, East Asia, Europe, and the BRICS.  The United States is in for a [...]

You can also read the State of the Pandemic series’ take on the United States, Latin America, the Persian Gulf, East Asia, and Europe.  Just a decade ago, the financial world was abuzz discussing the future of the [...]

You can also read the State of the Pandemic series’ take on the United States, Latin America, the Persian Gulf, East Asia and the BRICS.  There is no such thing as “Europe.” Yes, there’s this [...]

You can also read the State of the Pandemic series’ take on the United States, Latin America, the Persian Gulf, East Asia, and the BRICS.  Some good news: Melissa Taylor (ZoG’s Director of Research) has [...]

You can also read the State of the Pandemic series’ take on the United States, Latin America, East Asia, Europe, and the BRICS. .  Outside of China, Iran was the world’s first significant coronavirus epicenter, and [...]

Let’s rile everyone up with an uncomfortable statement: Mexico should be a failed state. The issue isn’t cultural, political, or policy-driven, but rather, geographical. Most powers of significance share two geographic [...]

This is the second in a series of newsletters addressing the state of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Other articles in the series cover Latin America, the Persian Gulf, East Asia, Europe, and the BRICS.  Let me [...]

This is the first in a series of newsletters addressing the state of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world. Other articles in the series cover the United States, the Persian Gulf, East Asia, Europe, and the BRICS.  For [...]

The past few several weeks have been busy for the Europeans, easily generating more events of consequence than at any time since at least the 2007 financial crisis. There is no specific trigger event here that makes much [...]

Coronavirus is primarily a respiratory ailment primarily spread by exhaled droplets from coughs or simple breathing, which is why masks are so effective at preventing an infected individual from spreading it. This [...]

Thank you to all of you who attended yesterday’s webinar! We wanted to provide the rest of you with the opportunity to watch. Just click this link, provide a few details, and enjoy. In the coming months, my team [...]

Today’s U.S. coronavirus case update is full of good, and bad, news. First the good. American testing capacity continues to increase, having reached a sustainable level in excess of 300,000 per day. Having being stuck [...]

So, good news, we’ve surmounted some technical difficulties and have been able to substantially expand our seats at the upcoming May 19 videoconference. It will be a once-around-the world examination of where we stand in [...]

Read Part 1 and Part 2 The Chinese are intentionally torching their diplomatic relationships with the wider world. The question is why? The short version is that China’s spasming belligerency is a sign not of confidence [...]

Read Part 1 and Part 3 The propaganda out of China of late has been…notable. Beijing has accused the French of using their nursing homes as death camps, has blamed Italy for being the source of the coronavirus (at the [...]

Read Part 2 and Part 3 The past few weeks have been…eventful. I make my living anticipating and explaining and projecting change, with an unfortunate emphasis on destabilizing and disintegrative change. Pre-coronavirus [...]

In the past five weeks the United States has thrown $3 trillion in new government spending at coronavirus-related bailouts, relief and economic stimulus. In total the US has already spent more on [...]

Yesterday’s newsletter traced some of the issues that erupt when global transport gets wrecked. Today we’re going to cross that same initial problem into the world of agriculture. It isn’t so much that plummeting oil [...]

The novel coronavirus has gutted humanity’s ability to engage in that most basic of social and economic activities: the ability to move. That simple fact has touched off a cascade of consequences, all of which touch off [...]

Let’s start with the headline good news. Since our last update on April 19, it appears the COVID-19 epidemic may have plateaued in the United States with direct COVID-caused deaths peaking on April 21 at just under 2700 [...]

Let’s get the bad news out of the way first. Meatpacking is a messy business almost custom-designed to generate coronavirus outbreaks among the staff. When a cow or hog is brought into the slaughter facility, it is [...]

West Texas Intermediate, the oil grade most associated with American production, plunged down to -$40 April 20. You read the right. For a while yesterday, sellers had to pay people forty bucks to take a barrel of crude. [...]

Yowzas! That’s a lot of food! The United States is by far the world’s largest agricultural producer and exporter. For America’s food supply system to truly break down in the age of coronavirus, a whoooooole lot of [...]

My partner just got back from a grocery store stock-up. The trip-in has been part of our weekly ritual since this coronavirus thing got going. The post-shopping conversation has a similar ritualistic feel. Whoever stays [...]

After the better part of five days of marathon negotiations spearheaded by Saudi Arabia with the goal of eliminating coronavirus-induced overhang in oil supply, global oil producers hammered out April 12 an agreement to [...]

Recent data on the US’ fight against COVID-19 is sobering, albeit incomplete. Testing overall is dramatically insufficient. Labs are just now beginning to clear through a significant backlog of tests. Without a more [...]

Folks, coronavirus is going to be with us for awhile, and it isn’t going to hit every country the same. While all eyes are on New York City right now, it is only at the leading edge of the epidemic in the United States. [...]

Coronavirus has launched the greatest energy upheaval since the dawn of the petroleum age. In the short run, this means rock-bottom – even negative – prices for oil and a much-needed price break for the world’s [...]

Oil demand is relatively inelastic. That’s a fancy-schmancy economic term that means people and firms’ energy demand doesn’t vary very much from day-to-day or even year-to-year. Driving to work is perhaps the most [...]

Best practices for social distancing suggest a minimum separation distance of six feet in all directions. While such practices are inconvenient and annoying, most Americans can carry out social distancing should they [...]

As a rule I try to stay out of discussions about energy prices. Energy trading is a hectic business with a lot of stress, plagued by fleets of hot-headed issues that have nothing to do with supply or demand or [...]

As governments in Washington, DC and London and Paris took their time to push their respective populations to shelter in place, the novel coronavirus did what it does best: spread quickly and efficiently through dense [...]

Here is the accumulated data of all known cases of coronavirus in the United States, courtesy of The COVID Tracking Project. As you can see the situation is getting both worse and better. Worse in that deaths are [...]

Coronavirus: The Unmaking of the Global Economy The United States is extending its recommendation for citizens to stay home by another month, while President Trump has started referring to “only” 100,000 [...]

Before the coronavirus crisis, there were few underlying financial instabilities in the American economic system. There certainly were nothing like the massive bubbles in real estate markets in 2007. Nor was there the [...]

Throughout media of all forms, we are hungry for information on coronavirus. Some of this is a flat out are-we-doing-better-or-worse-than-they-are, but most of it is simply to try to put what we know into some sort of [...]

The British government announced March 27 that Prime Minister Boris Johnson tested positive for coronavirus, making him the first world leader to do so. As the United Kingdom is an advanced democracy, here at ZoG we are [...]

In the age of coronavirus, Europe’s near-term future is bleak. European headlines in coming weeks will be about coronavirus deaths. In large part the issue is demographic. Coronavirus is far more likely to kill [...]

Not all epidemics are created equal, even when everyone is battling the same pathogen. Let’s start with timing and intensity. The imminent coronavirus wave of cases about to hit the United States is going to hurt, [...]

Here at Zeihan on Geopolitics, our job is to help people make sense of the world. We have done so by blending the studies of military affairs, economics, culture, demographics, energy and tech. About two years ago we [...]

by Melissa Taylor and Peter Zeihan Note from Peter: Dealing with health issues that impact family structure is not my strong point either topically or mentally. The bulk of this newsletter is the product of one Melissa [...]

Today, I’m not going to go through all the country-by-country details of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. My team and I are working diligently – franticly – to assimilate a huge amount of ever-changing information. As [...]

We just had the second-biggest oil price drop on record as Asian markets opened March 8. For the past couple of weeks the Saudis have been attempting to cobble together an oil production cut of about 1.5 million barrels [...]

In the past couple of weeks coronavirus cases outside of China surged. Particularly worrisome clusters emerged in South Korea and Iran, countries which serve as transport hubs for their respective worlds. US President [...]

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 [...]

It is with great, nay, ecstatic enthusiasm that I present to you Disunited Nations! That’s right! It is finally here. Two years in production, the book is now in stock at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and every [...]

We are only five days out from the release of my third book, Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World. As a final tease, below are the chapter headings. As you can see this book is a full-on [...]

Allllmoooost Theeereeee We are now only six – SIX! – days away from final publish of Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World. The book is now in stock everywhere, with advance orders about to be [...]

I try to avoid US domestic politics in most of my work. In part because domestic politics are a loud and busy space, and it is easy to have your work get lost in the noise and rage. In part because – especially at the [...]

After three years of drama, on midnight Jan 31 the Brits finally left the European Union. The next piece of the Brexit drama will be a decidedly non-European affair, instead being between a family debate between London [...]

The Philippine government this week began the formal legal process of ejecting US forces from the country and ending the US-Philippine alliance. Chinese involvement in the decision isn’t so much suspected as assumed. The [...]

Four things have popped up in the past 48 hours that are worth a look. First, we now have enough preliminary data to say some general things about the virus and the news is good: the virus is neither as deadly nor as [...]

It isn’t every day you can say a missile strike means things are calming down, but hey, it’s the Middle East. The rules are different.

In the middle of the night January 3-4 an American air strike in Baghdad killed Qassem Soleimani, senior General of Iran's Qud's Force, arguably the second most important man in the Iranian state. The Americans blame [...]

by Melissa Taylor and Peter Zeihan This piece is part of the Cutting Room Files, portions of the upcoming Disunited Nations text that were cut for length and adapted for the newsletter. Disunited Nations [...]

This piece is part of the Cutting Room Files, portions of the upcoming Disunited Nations text that were cut for length. Disunited Nations is available for pre-Order now on IndieBound, Apple Books, Hudson [...]

This piece is part of the Cutting Room Files, portions of the upcoming Disunited Nations text that were cut for length. Disunited Nations is available for pre-Order now onAmazon.com, Harper Collins, [...]

by Peter Zeihan and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui  This piece is part of the Cutting Room Files, portions of the upcoming Disunited Nations text that were cut for length. Disunited Nations is available for [...]

by Peter Zeihan and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui This piece is part of the Cutting Room Files, portions of the upcoming Disunited Nations text that were cut for length. Disunited Nations is available for [...]

by Peter Zeihan and Melissa Taylor This piece is part of the Cutting Room Files, portions of the upcoming Disunited Nations text that were cut for length. Disunited Nations is available for pre-Order now [...]

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 [...]

This day was always going to happen. On October 7, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a partial withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria. Soon after, Turkish forces began moving south across the border to strike [...]

Bonds are sliding toward negative territory across the developed world.  Among the largest industrialized economies, only the United States is offering over 2% yields on 30-year bonds. And it’s not just the [...]

A few months back a South Korean court ruled Japanese firms needed to pay compensation to Korean laborers who worked in Japanese-run factories during the 1910-1945 Japanese occupation of Korea. A big piece of this [...]

Not one to collect moss, Donald Trump shot directly from the G20 summit to South Korea July 1 where he nearly skipped the pro-forma niceties with the South Koreans for a tete-a-tete with North Korean dictator Kim Jong [...]

Read Part I here Hong Kong has been one of the most important economic locations on the planet for over a century. China has always had problems holding together, but it has also always been a land of opportunity for [...]

Read Part II here I recently had the opportunity to be in New Zealand and Australia for a few days. Being on the opposite side of the planet is a bit magical – and I’m not talking about the people, culture, topography, [...]

by Peter Zeihan and Melissa Taylor President Donald Trump has a knack for making Prime Ministers and Presidents hope to remain unnoticed. It’s a stunning ability given that national leaders aren’t exactly wallflowers. [...]

I’m going to do something I loathe and quote something I read on Twitter June 24. In a pair of posts U.S. President Donald Trump asserted: Diction and statistical issues aside, these tweets comprise the 92 most important [...]

The New York Times dropped a fun piece last week asserting a coalition of like-minded national security and intelligence professionals are neck-deep in an offensive cyber operation against the Russian [...]

On May 15 the U.S. government put Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and nearly all its affiliates and subsidiaries on an export black list, which prohibits American firms from selling them high-tech products. Much has [...]

By Peter Zeihan and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui Local politics, even at the national level, are rarely a focus for students of geopolitics. Personalities play too big a role in the mishmash while local outcomes often play [...]

Early April 3 United Kingdom Prime Minister Theresa May met with the leader of the Labor opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, to discuss a common way forward on the UK’s impending divorce from the European Union. Drama ensued. [...]

I woke up Monday morning to find a bit of a debate on my Twitter feed over assessments of my ability (or lack thereof) to pontificate on trends in the energy sector. Specifically, Art Berman — @aeberman12 [...]

Of late, Venezuela has had a wretched time of things. As a rule I attempt to be judgement-free when it comes to evaluating governing systems. For the most part, governments—like economies and cultures—are products of [...]

The United Kingdom stands at the precipice of its greatest change since the collapse of empire. It will be just as painful. This week Britain got a new parliamentary grouping – the Independent [...]

Read Part I and Part II Geopolitics has two speeds. The first is glacial. The sort of huge, multi-generational trends that I spend most of my time studying and charting don’t shift easily or quickly. Whether [...]

It is always dangerous writing about unfolding events. With that in mind, Part I is just about where we are now. Part II is about the future. Assuming for the moment that Nicholas Maduro has indeed fallen [...]

To read Part II, click here So…there might have just been a military coup in Venezuela. Not hard to see the justification. The economic policies of the now-deceased Hugo Chavez largely destroyed what used to be the [...]

See Part 1: From Sears to Google and Part 2: From Order to Disorder… in America. So here’s where I get a bit nervous. One of the great truths in geopolitics between 1950 and 2015 is that American domestic politics barely [...]

See Part 1: From Sears to Google and Part 3: Beyond Democrats and Republicans. The American political system is in breakdown. It isn’t a bad thing. It is perfectly normal. Healthy even. Let’s lay it out: The United [...]

See Part 2: From Order to Disorder… in America and Part 3: Beyond Democrats and Republicans. Today’s story begins with the once-behemoth that is the American retail firm, Sears. In the last week of September Sears’ stock [...]

On Oct 1 the American, Canadian and Mexican governments announced their mutual agreement to a revised treaty text for the North American Free Trade Agreement. As it was at formation, NAFTA remains the most valuable trade [...]

In the late hours of September 30 a small bevy of leaks indicated Canada and the United States agreed to terms that will allow Canada to remain in the newest iteration of both countries’ premier trade relationship: the [...]

American relations with Turkey got very interesting last week. An ongoing disagreement over the status of an American pastor, Andrew Craig Brunson, who thought it a good idea to proselytize in a country who officially, [...]

Donald Trump’s past week has been eventful, travelling to Brussels for a NATO summit, London for a meeting with the Queen and the UK prime minister, and Helsinki for a much-ballyhooed summit with his Russian counterpart, [...]

The economic conflict between the United States and China continues to ramp up. Earlier this week the Trump administration announced plans for tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese exports to the United States. [...]

It looks like the Brits are in trouble. In the past 48 hours two major UK government ministers resigned: Brexit Secretary David Davis, and Foreign Minister Boris Johnson. It’s not hard to see why they’re gone. Brexit is [...]

With a very strong showing Andrés Manuel López Obrador won Mexico’s presidential elections July 1. The best description of López Obrador would be to combine the worst traits of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie [...]

Jump to other parts of this series: Intro, France, Germany, UK, Italy, and Japan. Writing about Canada is a guilty pleasure for me. I find endless intellectual stimulation in delving into [...]

Jump to other parts of this series: Intro, France, Germany, UK, Italy, and Canada. Japan was a latecomer to the modern world. The Home Islands are rugged territory with few chunks of [...]

Jump to other parts of this series: Intro, France, Germany, UK, Japan, and Canada. In any discussion of foreign affairs the same list of powerful countries have been bubbling up for decades, [...]

Jump to other parts of this series: Intro, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Canada. The United Kingdom has been the United States’ firmest and most capable ally for over a half century. As [...]

Jump to other parts of this series: Intro, France, UK, Italy, Japan, and Canada. You may have noticed, but the Germans lost the world wars. Ever wonder why? The obvious answer is they [...]

Jump to other parts of this series: Intro, Germany, UK, Italy, Japan, and Canada. French President Emmanuel Macron is a bit aggravated these days. He went out of his way to court a personal [...]

Jump to other parts of this series: France, Germany, UK, Italy, Japan, and Canada. U.S. President Donald Trump made a… let’s call it a splash, at the G7 summit in Canada June 9. The G7 [...]

by Peter Zeihan, Melissa Taylor, and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui See Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV. Event 5: Trump Unleashed (in progress) The United States has never made foreign [...]

by Peter Zeihan, Melissa Taylor, and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui See Part I, Part II, and Part III. Event 4: The World Trade Organization Loses Its Grip (in progress) Before we talk about a life [...]

by Peter Zeihan, Melissa Taylor, and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui See Part I and Part II. Event 3 – The Chinese discover they have no clothes (May 18) The threat of American secondary [...]

by Peter Zeihan, Melissa Taylor, and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui Part I is available here. Event 2 – Europe Guts Itself (May 10) The way the Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Iran nuclear [...]

by Peter Zeihan, Melissa Taylor, and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui I like to say that I sell context. It’s all about how seemingly disparate things like age structures and trade patterns and political evolutions and [...]

The Israeli Air Force announced April 21 that it would scale back participation in the Red Flag exercises in Alaska. The joint Red Flag drills are regular events hosted by the United States, with the upcoming April [...]

I’m going to do something today that I normally try to avoid: commenting on a political statement that may well not turn into policy. It’s a big, busy world with a lot going on on even a slow day, and American President [...]

The United States and South Korea have agreed on an overhaul of their bilateral trade agreement this past week. In it, the Koreans caved on pretty much every issue of contention, most notably agreeing to improve American [...]

Thursday, March 22 was a big day, but before I get into the meat, there’s a couple of items I need to do a quick update/refresh on. On March 1st the Trump administration announced tariffs on imported [...]

After a particularly… volatile week in the White House of Donald Trump, the administration announced March 1 trade tariffs of 25% on steel and 10% on aluminum. Countries near and far almost immediately announced plans [...]

Thousands of Turkish troops poured into the northwestern Syrian province of Afrin in recent days. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan promised that the deployment was only the start of a broader effort that would see [...]

The administration of US President Donald Trump declared December 6 that from now on the U.S. government would recognize the city of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The result has been quite the political cacophony, [...]

The Saudi Arabian sky is falling… or at least that is the tone being set by the mainstream media. In a broad-scale “anti-corruption” action over the weekend Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) arrested 11 senior [...]

By Peter Zeihan and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui There are many things that geopolitics teaches us. One of the more important lessons is that personalities rarely matter. The fate of peoples and nations are largely [...]

By Peter Zeihan and Michael N. Nayebi-Oskoui The White House has been strongly hinting for two weeks that President Trump is unlikely to “re-certify” the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or as it’s better [...]

We’re about halfway through the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) talks and things…have taken a turn for the worse. Let me back up a bit. Wherever you land on the issue of trade and U.S. engagement with [...]

Urban violence has been a stable feature of the news and politics mash-up of the past year or so. Whether it’s the murder rate in Chicago, or the threat of immigrants and the call for a southern border wall, or the [...]

Trouble is (again) brewing in Iraq. The Middle East is a wild and wacky place. The core issue is geographic: basic resources – especially water – are in short supply and resource competition breeds violence. Cultural and [...]

I’m in the process of my annual reset. From time to time it is important to take a step back from the noise and splatter of the news cycle (and oh my has there been a lot of noise and splatter this year!) and [...]

In the past yearish, the Brits have voted themselves out of the Union, Italy’s banking system has started to melt down, the Russians are on the march, the French right and left more or less [...]

In the aftermath of North Korea’s Sept 3 nuclear test, a Donald Trump Twitterstorm delivered its greatest disdain not to North Korea, but instead South Korea. Trump accused Seoul of being overly pacifist in the [...]

The technical aspects of a fully-functioning nuclear weapons program are daunting. A warhead is useless unless it can reach your target. Intercontinental ballistic missiles must be accurate, durable enough to [...]

I’ve been in the foreign affairs, intelligence, analysis and context business for two decades now, and there are few things that annoy me more than North Korea. It is a small, perennially poor, backwards and deliberately [...]

Between 2000 and 2012 I worked at a place called Stratfor, which specializes in geopolitical forecasting. As I was one of the few members of the staff who had experience working in more than one region of the world, I [...]

I’m on a mid-term break in my annual Unplug&Recharge effort, and am taking stock of what’s changed while I was out of cell phone range, and therefore blissfully ignorant of everything from CNN to Fox to [...]

So, two things that happened in the past week that were of interest to me. First, Saudi Arabia issued its official demands that the Qatari government would need to meet for the Saudis and their allies to end their [...]

Elections are funny things. They are the culmination and distillation of forces economic, political, military, technocratic, social, racial, ethnic, linguistic and cultural. Elections are the small bites that the media [...]

Last week President Donald Trump announced a partial revocation of his predecessor’s diplomatic opening to Cuba, reinstating pieces of the decades-long embargo impacting financial transfers, trade and transport. As [...]

Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a full-court press against the government of Qatar, leading a coalition of countries as varied as Egypt, Bahrain, the UAE, Yemen and the Maldives. All these states and more have severed [...]

U.S. President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the 2016 Paris Climate Accord June 1. In the past 24 hours the media has been, in a word, lively. Trump’s decision was an appeal to a base that has [...]

For all intents and purposes, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization – the foundation for American security for the past seven decades – ceased existing on May 25, 2017. While attending a highly anticipated (some might [...]

A terror attack in the United Kingdom May 23 killed at least 22, and injured dozens more. As the attack targeted a youth pop concert, a high proportion of the deaths were among children and teenagers. United Kingdom [...]

The results are in: Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen of the National Front by 66% to 34%, making him the youngest president in French history. Many were worried about the implications of a Le Pen presidency as the [...]

Trump finally played a card with the Syria strike and it was a doozy – whether the messages were intended or not. The past week saw the rhetoric of President Trump’s campaign messages meet the reality of the office [...]

Trump has big foreign policy choices to make this week and they both have world changing consequences. It’s already been a big week for Trump. He just got his first pair of foreign policy crises. First, the one that he [...]

Trump is turning the government his own personal shade of orange and it may take decades to get the dye out. President Donald Trump formally signed off on the Keystone XL pipeline on March 24. While there will [...]

How Merkel and Trump get along (or don’t get along) will determine the world’s path for at least the next three decades. Here it comes. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will meet with U.S. President Donald Trump tomorrow [...]

In The Accidental Superpower I noted that while the Chechens will always be a thorn in Russia’s side, that a different Muslim ethnic group — the Tatars — are the ever-present dagger to Russia’s [...]

  So I was sitting having dinner on the Queenstown wharf last night, minding my own business, when New Zealand Prime Minister Bill English and Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull walked by. Like literally [...]

A data dump by the International Energy Agency this weekend indicates that OPEC is enjoying its best compliance showing at least since the 1970s, if not ever. Over 90% of pledged oil production reductions have already [...]

While the news focuses on the Flynn scandal, Mattis puts NATO – and the global system – on notice. So apparently whenever I go on vacation the rest of the world has a busy week. Let’s focus on the [...]

Some countries are adapting to Trump and some don’t know the rules of the global system have changed.  The Japanese government leaked a provisional policy document to Reuters late Jan 31 titled “U.S.-Japan [...]

The simple tariff being discussed in D.C. might spell the end for global trade and security as we know it. The Trump administration has requested that Congress focus on two major policies during the next few months. One [...]

EU’s institutions are rearranging the Titanic’s deck chairs during a Godzilla attack with a tsunami on the horizon. President Donald Trump entertained his first foreign dignitary Friday, January 27: UK Prime Minister [...]

  Trump’s method for non-enforcement of Obamacare has big implications and may tear apart Obama’s legacy in weeks.  I’ve spoken before of the danger of Obama choosing to not enforce laws that he did not [...]

It’s finally arrived! I’m happy to announce that The Absent Superpower: The Shale Revolution and a World Without America is finally in print and in stock. Here is a link to the purchase page on Zeihan.com. We [...]

The world got a harsh reminder last week that the European financial crisis, about to enter its eleventh year (that’s right, it started before the 2007 subprime meltdown) has yet to get truly serious. After failing [...]

Something happened yesterday with the Trump transition that worried me. By “worry” I mean it is great for me personally, but as I’m a bit of a purveyor of doom and gloom, everyone else should perhaps be [...]

Today, Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, Andrei Karlov, was giving a speech at the opening ceremony of a photo exhibit when an assailant, who has since been identified as a standing police officer, opened fire, [...]

Last week, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump shook the global diplomatic community to its bedrock by throwing the One China policy into doubt, specifically noting, “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a [...]

I try to avoid commenting on U.S. politics – anything I say tends to anger at least one-third of the room. But from time to time the United States takes a turn that elevates its internal issues to international import. [...]

I’ve been a worried about Europe. The Continent faces a whole host of challenges, but of late my rising concern has been the broad-spectrum breakdown of the attitudes that make the European Union possible. Brexit [...]

This isn’t a brag piece. Many have credited me with predicting the Trump rise. To be clear, I never predicted Trump’s entry into politics, or that he’d win the Republican party nomination or that [...]

Think November will bring an end to the shenanigans of the 2016 election cycle? Don’t hold your breath. If there is one thing that drives editors batty, it’s an author who can’t keep his grimy fingers out of the [...]

With 28 countries it is easy to get lost in the geopolitical maelstrom that is the European Union. Over the next few days (and couple of years) there will be literally thousands of stories to tell about the Britain-EU [...]

President Obama kicked off a trip to Asia with a visit to Vietnam, where he announced that the United States is fully lifting the arms embargo on Hanoi. In a joint press conference with Vietnamese president Tran Dai [...]

During post-presentation Q&A at an event last week, an acquaintance decided to have a bit of fun at my expense by slipping a question on Albertan separatism into the deck. Considering that the event was in Montreal [...]

Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bid Salman laid out part of his country’s strategic challenge in an April 25 interview. “We have a problem with military spending,” the prince told Al Arabiya. “When I enter a Saud military [...]

Outside of the political protestations regarding Obama’s visit to Cuba (it is a presidential election year, after all), the United States has a strong strategic interest in returning Havana to the American sphere of [...]

Chinese President Xi Jinping is already poised to be the most powerful man in Chinese history after Mao Zedong, and proposed reforms to the country’s paramilitary police force would all but guarantee that position [...]

Coordinated terror attacks rocked Brussels this morning, following a successful raid earlier this week that saw French and Belgian security forces capture the surviving would-be suicide bomber and participant in Paris’ [...]

On Jan 17 the IAEA gave the green-light to the Iranian nuclear industry – indicating that Tehran was implementing the U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal in both the spirit and letter. With that stamp of approval, some of the [...]

It has been quite the week-end in the Middle East, and things are just getting started.   On Jan 2nd, Saudi Arabia executed 47 Shia dissidents including cleric Nimr al-Nimr. Rhetoric from Shia-dominated Iran flowed [...]

The US Federal Reserve raised interest rates on Wednesday for the first time since 2006. After weeks of anticipation (or are we up to years already?) the U.S. Federal Reserve ended its zero-percent interest rate policy [...]

Rather than adjusting OPEC’s production ceiling in an attempt to raise prices, or even generate a common policy to coordinate output, OPEC instead launched a production free-for-all. No longer will there be a quota – any [...]

This is the first in a short series that discusses recent events as they relate to the analysis developed in The Accidental Superpower. Each of these developments — and dozens more — are symptoms of an [...]

The Iranian nuclear deal is moving forward as President Obama just recently secured the last vote necessary to prevent the US legislature from blocking the agreement. This agreement gives Iran some significant [...]

Financial sanctions; diplomatic isolation; peer pressure – these are the tools the West is using to convince the Putin government that it should abandon its “Ukraine adventure.” They are the wrong tools for the wrong [...]