This is a book that tries to predict the future based on what is happening currently. In summary, the future looks dire for everyone, but some are worse than others. In some areas, it is just a mild inconvenience, it could be not drinking Coke but drinking Pepsi instead. But in others, it is a total societal collapse, massive starvation, and a Mad Max-like environment where all institutions are gone and everyone is out for himself. There would be deglobalisation, leading to decivilisation in some areas. No electricity, a disjointed food supply, communication and everything that made modern living a luxury is gone or is made more expensive. But there is one exception: America, he says that America will survive, except for a few inconveniences, and this is because not only is it far from the rest of the world. Also, because it is vast, and the land is plentiful, it has almost all of the minerals and products that can be found within its borders it is also protected by two great oceans, the Atlantic and the Pacific, on both East and West. It is relatively friendly with its neighbours, Canada and Mexico, North and South. It has the population to sustain it and the relative infrastructure development to maintain it. And it has the military might to protect it, apart from having the strongest navy in world history, it has currently more ships than any other country.
Peter Henry Zeihan, a New York Times bestselling author born January 18, 1973, is an American researcher and writer with a decade-long background as a geopolitical intelligence analyst with Stratfor, whose books and other content focus on geopolitics and globalism. He is the author of The Absent Superpower (2017), Disunited Nations (2020), and The End of the World Is Just the Beginning (2022). Peter's main job is as an analyst, where he is called by big corporations for business advice, whether they should go into various business opportunities on a global scale.
Peter Zeihan's analysis of the world is based on the fact that throughout history, nations have been fighting one another for resources. The last 75 years have been relatively peaceful, thanks mainly to the US, and people should not assume this is normal in history. It is an aberration and abnormality in world history. This resulted from the fact world peace was kept and maintained by an agreement of the world powers and ensured by the US after World War II by the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. The arrangement was, help us contain the Soviets, and we'll give you access to the most dynamic economic system on Earth. This established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank to stabilize economies. It pegged the US currency to gold and established the US dollar as the world currency with the promise that any of the signatories could get their equivalent in gold on request, the French did this twice. This is the world of globalisation, which is being maintained by the presence of a strong US Navy and its allies across the seven seas. In this world, you can get whatever you want easily within a reasonable amount of time if you can afford it. It is usually relatively cheaper than at any time in previous history. There is a transport network with logistics that brings items from farther, faster, and cheaper. The ships are now bigger, run on less fuel, and run by fewer people. Another thing that has helped is the introduction of containers, and some of these ships can carry up to 24,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units). The container is a unit of transport, it is standardized, measuring 8 feet (2.44 m) wide, and of either 20 or 40 feet (6.10 or 12.19 m) standard length, as defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). These containers make moving anything easier and safer. They are safe and big and can contain anything from machine parts to food items. They can have inland ports which accept, clear, transport, inspect and monitor these containers. They can be closed and not opened to their final destination. The trains, ships, cranes, aeroplanes, lorries, etc, are made specifically to transport this. Imagine China had to put an embargo on countries exporting rubbish to China for recycling because the recycling was cheaper when done in China after being transported over the vast ocean in these super container ships.
Towards the end of World War II, the Americans developed an organisation system, and to gain entry into the system,m they had a set of policies: "no more empires" on paper, hate the Soviets, or at least give the impression of hating them, and develop a foreign policy friendly to the US. This was known as the Bretton Woods alliance old enemies joined Germany, Japan, Britain, France, Italy, and even resource-rich nations like Saudia Arabia, Iran, Iceland, Norway, and Turkey. This stopped the Soviet influence in their areas, but also Communist China joined in the 1970s. This economic system was why the USSR overextended itself and eventually collapsed in the 1980s. Now, with the Cold War won by the US and its allies, and the US lost its industrial base and manufacturing jobs, what is the motivator for keeping such arrangements. The US is less reluctant to keep the present frame as we know it, and we are seeing the US withdraw from the international scene and return to the wars we used to have. Resulting in widespread hunger and disease
What would the world look like without the US ensuring security? Part of this is already seen in Ukraine, Russia has always wanted to ensure its Western border. This has led to almost doubling in the price of some items. First of all, the shipping network, most things are transported by sea, and some countries cannot ensure food security if world transport shipping fails, this is the first thing that will go. As the US Navy ensures safe world shipping with the US becomes more insular, that will be the first thing gone. There would be an increase of pirates, privateers and country-sponsored racketing on the high seas. There would be famines and shortages, increased costs of some food products worldwide.
Then the next thing affected would be oil, oil is essential to the world as it ensures the transportation of energy and, hence, production. The fracking process has ensured that the US has more oil than it will ever need, making the US energy dependent. China imports 70% of the 14 million barrels of oil it consumes daily. Taiwan, the United States, and the United Kingdom are oil-producing countries. Things do not go well for China without energy, or at least with energy, as it imports a lot of it. The basics of China's industrialization is oil, and it goes through a critical area that it seems the Chinese Navy would find difficult to defend or protect in a world that the US Navy has withdrawn.
The world would return to the age before globalisation and we would be all the more poorer as a result. They would no longer possible economies of scale and every area would have to build their own services and manufacturing as transportation and travelling would be extremely dangerous and expensive. France will have to go to their Françafrique according to Peter Zeihan but this was before the coups in Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, etc. Now it seems some of these former African Francophone countries have been forced into other spheres of influence due to France's neocolonialism becoming more pro-Russian, pro-Chinese, or pro-Turkish. These countries are less interfering and offer better offers than the French.
Nigeria, is a different story due to its large oil reserve, relatively young population and an environment similar desert in the North to the rainy forest in the South it can grow almost anything and is blessed with natural resources. Nigeria seems will be able to enjoy some relative stability especially if all its 250 tribes can learn to tolerate one another. But the rest of the world will not.
The Soviet Union is gone, and the United States is energy independent. America isn't going to police the world anymore. Things are going to get worse for everyone from now according to Peter Zeihan's book.
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