I am unabashedly a major Peter Zeihan fan. I usually don’t enjoy listening to or reading prognostications from those that are not practitioners of the field they are making predictions in, but Zeihan’s delivery is so concise and structured yet not overly engineered, that I find myself coming back to his work constantly. I’ve read all 4 of his books at this point, this one being my favorite.
The major piece of Zeihan’s work that might attract or repel people is that he discusses history almost like a game of Sid Meir’s Civilization. That is not to say that his books are not rich in history. They are, and they make connections across time that most I have read do not. However, his view of the world largely stems from two major forces: Geographic Determinsm and Demographics.
Zeihan views most nations, their history, and their futures, through the lens of geography (hence the Civilization comparison). He breaks every country down by it’s ability to defend itself, it’s ability to navigate within itself, and it’s ability to use resources. It is a fascinating lens through which to view history, and it is quite compelling. For example, I had never quite considered Germany’s geography before this book. But Zeihan clearly lays out how Germany is very traversable borders (easy to invade), it has an extremely navigable interior (a precursor to wealth creation and economic activity), and abundant natural resources, particularly for industrialization activities. As a result, it should come as no surprise that Germany has been one of the most war torn areas for its entire history, and is either always at feuding internally, or expanding outwardly to shore up its borders. And of course, this also explains that in the Post WWII era when war was eliminated from the region, it reached incredible prosperity.
Zeihan takes this lens through all of history, and you can see in the raw notes below how it impacts his description of each of the core nations he describes: Japan, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, Argentina, US.
The other tool Zeihan uses is that of demographic data. With China’s demography in rapid decline, it has become slightly more en vogue to discuss population health, but Zeihan has been sounding the alarm on demographics since his first book in 2014.
The best place to find his demographic data is here, or the maps for this other books. His overall point on demographics is that industrialization and urbanization leads to demographic decline, which means that populations reach a point where they will begin to shrink. This is an issue largely because our entire modern economy as we know it is built on population growth. When you are 0-20, you’re an economic drain. When you’re 20-45 you are spending, which is driving the economy. When you are 45-65 you are spending but mostly saving relative to your total wealth, and when you are 65+ you are again a drain on the economy, as you no longer contribute to the workforce and receive services from the government afforded by taxes on the rest of the population.
This sort of system is fine when each generation is larger than the last, or if at least each generation is the same size as the last. But what we’re seeing across the industrialized world is that it is inverted, where those heading into retirement are far larger than earlier generations. The US is one of the few large industrialized nations where Boomers and Millenials are the same size in population. For most of Europe, this is not the case. And interestingly, the faster you industrialize, the faster this imbalance happens. China is the key example here, whose population modernized and fell into terminal decline all within a generation.
Zeihan doesn’t necessarily believe that this population decline is the end of all history, but rather that our entire economic system is built upon it, and we don’t have a clear alternative right now. Economies that have inverted demographics must rely heavily on exports because their own domestic markets are not large enough to ingest their own production. Germany and China are large examples of this, but the reality is that most of the industrialized world at this point is, aside from France. This, of course, is not a problem when free trade is guaranteed and large markets are open, but Zeihan believes that that will soon be a relic of the past.
Foundational to Zeihan’s argument is that the post WWII world order is breaking into a less globalized, more regional world where trade is no longer guaranteed as it has been for the last 70 years.