[xcom86]

As I recall the crux of the argument is that the U.S. is well positioned to weather upcoming turbulence of the 2020s - 2030s. The exact amount of turbulence is where I'm less clear but as I recall it's: demographic (falling birth rates, aging societies); climatic (obviously); political (the book was written BEFORE Russia's invasion); and maybe a few others. One of the interesting bits is how weak China is with their aging society and diminishing view of technology.

Anyway, I think the book is _generally_ on target and personally I have a much more optimistic view of the U.S.'s prospects over the next century. But that being said there will be black swan events and potentially seismic shifts from processes and technologies already in the pipeline: AI and CRISPR being forefront in my mind.

[bnralt]

I think it's understated how well the current U.S. centered alliance has worked. I've never seen a name for it (G7 Alliance, maybe?), but it's broadly Western Europe, U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea. There's no one treaty uniting all the countries, but there are many overlapping treaties and alliances, and they tend to act in concert (if you look at which countries have sanctioned Russia during the recent war, it's almost entirely this group). This group also has a massive amount of people, wealth, knowledge and productive capacity. And though the U.S. is the linchpin and definitely the most powerful member, members are free to disagree and no one member calls the shots.

It's also interesting, because there doesn't seem to be any competing power block. People talk about things like BRICS, but that's little more than a conference between countries that don't share much in common and often are rivals as much as friends.

[ncmncm]

Probably the most stark fact within that group is how the US has very deliberately abandoned most of its population to all the storms blowing through. That the worst-abandoned reliably vote to be abandoned just tells us how effective systematic propaganda has become, and how thoroughly the 0.01% controls it.

Directing the attention of the rest of the world's underclass has been an afterthought, but that is changing.

[seydor]

It's the American alliance, one world bound by trade under the US navy and military. But now the pax americana is threatened by at least 2 adversaries

[WaxProlix]

> I've never seen a name for it

FWIW, this aligns pretty well with the OECD nations [1]. Might be a good starting point.

1 https://www.oecd.org/about/document/ratification-oecd-conven...

[SahAssar]

> if you look at which countries have sanctioned Russia during the recent war, it's almost entirely this group

I don't know how you define western europe, but the sanctioning countries includes basically all of europe besides Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovivina, Macedonia and Belarus (of course).

[Silverback_VII]

The alliance doesn't work for Europe. The original population in Western europe got irrevocably replaced by liberal politics. And now Europe is losing big with the Ukrainian conflict while being the main target in the case of a nuclear war.

The party winning is the Anglosphere. They have been doing well ever since keeping Europe dysfunctional.

[orwin]

The original population of europe wasn't "replaced" since the roman republic era, so i don't understand.

And i dislike the liberalist myth, but at least its a more functional and useful myth than the feodal, monarchist or fascist myth that seems to come back nowadays.

[avmich]

Wait till continental Europe get the new member, and European Slavyanosphere includes one of the most powerful parts of former Soviet empire.

[michaelwww]

Hey! A fellow optimist. There aren't many of us around as far as I can tell, except I think there a lot of closet optimists who don't speak up because the dominant paradigm is to shout "we're all going to die!" to wake people up so they will some action. This wears off when repeated too often, so I think it has the opposite effect. For those from other cultures who aren't very familiar with Western parables, there are two about this: "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and "Chicken Little"

[Aunche]

Modern day activism tunnel visions on "raising awareness" which why we end up with so much virtue signaling and doomposting rather than substantial action.

Look at Montgomery bus boycott. Everyone remembers Rosa Parks, but in reality the boycott required coordination of tens of thousands of individuals doing mundane work. You had taxi drivers willing to drive people at break even prices. You had dispatchers to coordinate carpooling. You had people willing to walk several miles a day in the Alabama sun just to deprive the bus system out of a few cents. All this effort was expended for the relatively minor problem of segregation on buses. However, this paved the way for more substantial forms of change. Imagine how much quicker we would reduce greenhouse gas emissions if we put a similar level of effort.

[qwertygnu]

It feels wrong to be happy that me and my country are going to (maybe) be (relatively) ok when the shit (that we threw) hits the fan for many other people and countries.

[nscalf]

You should read Zeihan's book. One of the main premises is that the US allowed for international peace (known as Pax Americana) via enforcing peaceful international trade with a large navy. Zeihan's position is that this was largely done for security post WW2, not financial benefit. The Americans pay a very high price for this international trade security.

There seems to be an overwhelming assumption from Americans that the US is destroying the world, but in many ways we've enabled the greatest time in human history by allowing peaceful cooperation.

I'm assuming your country is the US, and they're who you believe threw the shit in question.

[SirSavary]

I'm not sure if Cambodia et al would agree with the sentiment of "peaceful cooperation".

[nscalf]

Peaceful cooperation amongst countries that are very important to world security. There was a peaceful cooperation amongst all major world powers, which is a drastic turning point from the prior few hundred years that bred indefinite wars amongst major world powers. Cambodia, and most other countries that have seen wars since the end of WW2, don't really matter on the world scale. Doesn't make the negative impacts on them any less real, but in general sweeping statements, the world did see peaceful cooperation.

[michaelwww]

> It feels wrong to be happy

I think this is a common problem. Some of us sometimes feel guilty for being happy.

> the shit (that we threw) hits the fan

I'm not sure anyone is to blame because no one created human civilizations except all of us. My view is aligned with the human potential movement. As I understand it, we need a lot more work to overcome our tendencies towards what Catholics call the Seven Deadly Sins: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride. We are over-coming our primitive animal nature to something more intelligent and refined. Buddhists among others have a lot to say about letting our troublesome thoughts and emotions go and focusing on our resting nature. I like the Kundalini model for a nice way to visualize our human potential.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kundalini

[throw0101c]

> I'm not sure anyone is to blame because no one created human civilizations except all of us.

The West generally, and US specifically, tends to release much more carbon into the atmosphere than the countries that will suffer the most from climate change. The US further uses a lot more energy per capita than just about anyone else (in the Top 5?) in day-to-day life.

Most other industrialized countries can achieve the same level of comfort and lifestyle as the US with much less energy use.

[WaxProlix]

> My view is aligned with the human potential movement

And yet, it's largely the global north, and America in specific - a small subset of humanity - who will escape the reaping, even though they did a disproportionate amount of sowing, to keep the Catholic thread going I guess.

> Some of us sometimes feel guilty for being happy

That's not what they said. They said they feel guilty for being happy that others will suffer immensely while they get to skate relatively unharmed. I agree that some folks do feel unnecessarily guilty sometimes, but I don't think that applies here.

[michaelwww]

> And yet, it's largely the global north, and America in specific

Are you blaming Americans for China's environmental destruction because we buy their products? Americans have created systems that protect the environment that China could take advantage of

> They said they feel guilty for being happy that others will suffer immensely while they get to skate relatively unharmed

I can't do anymore than I am doing to correct wrongs. I'm not mad at the English currently alive because their ancestors starved my Irish ancestors and I don't feel guilty that some of my ancestors might have owned slaves. I want to be happy, but weirdly some people don't and are always finding reasons to be unhappy.

“I have noticed that a man is usually about as happy as he has made up his mind to be.”

- Abraham Lincoln

[wbsss4412]

Look at the CO2 chart in the link above, China only recently became the biggest emitter and even then they make up maybe a quarter of CO2 emissions.

The vast majority of emissions and environmental destruction has been done by the global north, only recently has the rest of the world started to become the majority in this sense. You can’t just point the finger and forget all of history up to this point.

[throw0101c]

> Are you blaming Americans for China's environmental destruction because we buy their products? Americans have created systems that protect the environment that China could take advantage of

Some of the systems may make products expensive, and the whole point of offshoring production to China (from the US and other places), so to make them inexpensively. Are consumers willing to start paying the externalities of climate change in their products (regardless of where they are produced)?

And as Kurzgesagt points out in "Who Is Responsible For Climate Change? – Who Needs To Fix It?", while China as a whole releases the most, per capita each citizen is relatively low(er) emissions (especially compared to the US). Further, the country with highest cumulatively/historically released carbon to date—which has led us to the climate change problem in the first place—is the US:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipVxxxqwBQw

[frebord]

What is the shit we are throwing that you are talking about? Climate related?

[derbOac]

Yeah for me it's kind of an "optimistic for who?" question.

[michaelwww]

Well, if you're George Carlin you say "The planet will be fine. It's the people who are fkuced"

[toomuchtodo]

It’s okay to feel relief you can put your oxygen mask on before helping those nearby put theirs on.

[iforgotpassword]

...even if you're the one who made the plane crash in the first place.

[giraffe_lady]

It's going to be more like you put on the only oxygen mask in your seat row but you're the reason why there aren't more and also the reason why we need to use the masks in the first place.

[ben_w]

No single person — no single nation, even — bears quite that much responsibility for climate change, let alone the other things. Too many people did too much for too long, the blame is diffuse over all of us.

But yes, we are a bit short on metaphorical oxygen masks.

[giraffe_lady]

Of course no single person or single group bears all of the responsibility, I was leaning on the already established mask metaphor in this conversation.

But if you mean "all of us" as in all people in the world? No we are absolutely not all equally to blame for this. And it is true that, overall, in general, the ones who disproportionately caused this, and disproportionally benefitted from it, will also be disproportionally protected from its worst effects.

Focusing on the diffusion of blame or the weakness of the metaphor without acknowledging that dynamic is cowardly imo.

[hotpotamus]

Most of the optimism I see seems to be more along the lines of, "Well the science isn't totally perfect, so we might be OK if we just don't do anything". In the sense that I'm lazy and don't want to change any of my habits or do any work, then you could also call me an optimist. As far as what I believe is going to happen to the world in the near future - probably not.

[throwawaymaths]

The major political consideration of zeihan's is that us security overwatch is ending.

The thesis is that the economic-political relationship in the US empire of the late 20th c is reversed: most empires used military power to be economically extractive (inclusive of the US in the early 20th c); during the cold war the US empire flipped: it used economic power in the opposite direction to 'bribe' countries into a political alliance against the USSR (evidenced by how the US has the lowest international trade to GDP ratio in the alliance); note how the us didn't have a mercantilist relationship with any of the countries it invaded (Korea exploits the US, Vietnam, Serbia, even Iraqi oil goes to a French company)

If you believe this thesis then in the coming years, and you believe the US will decouples/is decoupling from internationalism (I have been convinced), then his prognostications seem reasonable. A lot of the arguments (demographics e.g.) are pretty hard to argue against.

[somenameforme]

I find there's a much simpler argument that, incidentally, leads to a similar conclusion but without the necessity of any conditionals (such as internationalism). Our power was primarily derived from our economic superiority. Even in cases of hard power, our military was and is little more than a reflection of our economy. We're much smaller than other nations such as China and India, but an overwhelming technological and developmental edge largely nullified that difference in the past.

But that technological edge has been shrinking for decades, and there's no need to think this trend won't continue indefinitely. And as technological differences shrink, economics starts to become more of just a function of population size. And 340 million will never be able to maintain a competitive balance against 1.4 billion. We can already see this happening in many ways today, most innocuously from "American" companies increasingly kowtowing [1] the line. Beyond the fun wordplay, the word has an appropriate etymology.

When the next great economy is already able to casually influence the backbone of our economy - the backbone of our power, it largely signals the end of one hegemonic influence and the unfortunately probable advent of another.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowtow

[ericmay]

Quantity is a quality all on its own.

But I would hesitate to draw such a simple conclusion that #of people a country has simply translates into more success because there are numerous factors at play.

[somenameforme]

I agree there are many other factors in play, but the question is how do those factors compare with population? We can answer this objectively, or at least as objectively as equating GDP with economy, allows us to do. This [1] is a list of countries by their GDP per capita. It's quite surprising how closely all countries tend to fall together. The difference between Greece and the US in terms of economic output per person is less than a factor of 4.

With China having well over 4x the population of the US, this sets a more visual benchmark: should China achieve the aggregate output/capita of Greece, they will have overcome the US economy. Of course the catch is we're speaking in nominal terms. Looking at something like the GDP per capita, in PPP terms [2], can help indicate how difficult a journey this will entail. A country like South Korea has a low GDP but is likely hitting closer to the tail end of their rapid growth phase. In spite of having a very low nominal GDP, they have a very strong domestic economy with an output/capita rivaling the West, in terms of local spending power. There is less low hanging fruit, for them to pick, than their GDP would suggest.

But China is in a different bucket. Their economic output remains low per capita in both PPP and nominal terms. They have substantial room for rapid upward growth and continue to go in that direction. They will certainly overcome the US, and in the longer term picture they will likely end up with a larger economy than the US and EU combined. I'm anything but a cheerleader for this outcome, but I don't see any realistic scenario where this isn't the case.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...

[ericmay]

It’s similar to the idea that throwing more people at a problem gets it done faster. China will overtake the U.S. in terms of GDP as it continues to urbanize but it’s not going to 4x the US. In order to 4x the US they’d have to have, say, 4 Googles. 4 Apples. 4 Boeings. There just isn’t enough people or planet for that to occur.

Likewise the same logic would apply for a country like India.

[throwawaymaths]

China is slated to only have 2x the population of the US by 2050.

[mikem170]

Demographics are big. But Zeihan also evaluates countries based on their geography, taking into account things like energy supplies, food production, and navigable rivers.

[DennisP]

And in all those factors, the US has enormous advantages over basically everyone. The US has more navigable river than the rest of the world combined, no nearby threats, is self-sufficient in energy and food, has great ports on both oceans, and is better off demographically than most other advanced countries.

China on the other hand has horrible demographics, and imports 85% of its fuel and agricultural inputs. It has a large navy but only 10% of it is deepwater-capable, plus it's hemmed in by fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles. China has become a great economic power largely because the US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day.

[somenameforme]

Were China as intrinsically disadvantaged, or the US as advantaged, as you frame it - then this would be quite a strong argument further in favor of the view that as technologies equalize, economic output becomes dominated by population. The economic gap between the US and China per capita continues to shrink at an exponential rate. This is the US GDP/capita divided by the Chinese GDP/capita for the past 40 years in nominal terms:

1990 - 75x

2000 - 38x

2010 - 11x

2020 - 6x

As China has more than 4x the population of the US, 4x is the cutoff where they will also have a larger economy in nominal terms. They've of course long since greatly surpassed us in PPP terms.

US GDP/capita : https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/gdp-...

Chinese GDP/capita : https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CHN/china/gdp-per-capi...

[DennisP]

Yes but you're missing my point (or rather Zeihan's). China's disadvantages have not mattered, but only because the US protected global trade. Because of that, since WWII it hasn't mattered whether you had all the resources you needed, or a navy to protect your shipping lanes. If the US stops doing that, then China's disadvantages will suddenly matter a lot.

On the other hand, demographics hasn't been a problem for China in previous decades because their demographics were fine until recently. Now their population is retiring in large numbers and they don't have many kids growing up to replace them.

[ncmncm]

Most of China's production is on behalf of the US and other countries. It enriches the political elite and Americans, but does not directly benefit the rest much.

[dirtyid]

Zeihan stans regurgitating 101 Zeihan US strong PRC weak argument, and forget that in geoPOLITICS, the political component is as important as geography. Natural advantages can only do so much if they are squandered. Even Zeihan concedes this. Also some basic media literacy when evaluating his claims designed to sell expensive dinners to wealthy American exceptionalists. Rudimentary critical analysis like:

>US has more navigable river

Go do a search of country with most internal navigable water ways, it's PRC with more than 2x of US. This is basic tier fact check. US technically has a lot of exploitable waterways, but PRC has much more significant urban/manufacturing clusters linked via the waterways. Vs US waterways are primarily used for transport of bulky primary Ag goods... barge freight in US is massively underutilized because US is systemically bad at infra upkeep (drediging / maintenance etc). Politics > geography.

>has great ports on both oceans.

Has great port potential but poor quality ports due to inability to build infra and reliance on human labour. Go look at list of port rankings, PRC has 8 out of top 10. Like does it really matter US has deep water coasts to accomodate 10,000 world class ports when economics preferences consolidating large scale ports. Or that PRC infra capability can simply dredge out huge port projects at still fraction cost/time of US building on the most ideal site. Politics > geography.

>is self-sufficient in energy

Only on the most surface analysis. US is self-reliant in the sense it has resources in the ground that are economically exploitable. Versus PRC with massive imports to maintain production, implication being US can trivially choke PRC inputs via blockade/embargo (act of war)... by targetting shipping. Here is the reality, US is only as self sufficient as 130 vunerable refineries can process petro products which sustains everything including ag inputs. In event of war, which those musing US blockading PRC shipping forget actually will be, PRC can retaliate by compromising these refineries with cyber warfare, or in event of full escalation conventional hypersonics. There's a reason Biden told Putin/Xi that he considers cyber attacks on US infra comparable to initiating physical war. In age of vunerable networked infra nodes, during an actual shooting war, US is more vunerable and less self sufficient than EVER simply because adversaries like PRC has the capabilities to compromise critical CONUS infra. Like gunpower ended actual fortresses, network and conventional global strike capabilities ended Zeihan's fortress america. Politics (PRC indigenous defense drive) > geography.

>has horrible demographics

China actually significantly better off demographically TO COMPETE with US vs just about everyone else. Yes there's broad demographic decline, but S&T investements and academic reforms has massively grown the segment of educated / skilled talent. Huge population base effect = PRC generating something like 4.5M STEM talent with exploding pHDs, about all OECD combined. This is multitude more than US can generate domestically + immigration. PRC is only getting better demographically equipped to challenge US primarcy. Think of how JP/SKR/TW consistently moved up value chain, destroyed US lead in semi, even though most they had shit tier demographics but moved up value chain by converting new gen disproportionately into STEM. PRC is doing that with 20x more talent and will be going after every sector. What else does declining population imply? Less import dependancy and more strategic options. Politics (PRC investment in human capita) > demography. Granted does not negate, but there's demographic divident political hacks at PRC scale.

>large navy but only 10% ... >US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day

This is whoefully out of date, PRC has been building mid-tier sized European navy every year, hulls of surface combatants are all blue water capable. But ultimately PRC simply choose not to take on global commitments and freeloads off the US... because why would they not. Apart from courtesy anti piracy, and foreign port visits, PRC likes to stay within IndoPac and turn SCS into Chinese lake. With PRC ship building capacity, it would be trivial for PRC to build a replenishment fleet comparable to USN and replace US policing duties, which would open up global basing options for others who want to freeload off PRC. Ergo US has to fulfill commitments or else they lose hegemonic competition/perks to others who are willing. Now go look at USN readiness / retention decline and the sad state of the fleet due to massive over commitment / tasking and ask yourself why PRC would stop an adversary while making mistake. Or circle back the PRC global hypersonic developments and translate that to port strikes, the TLDR is USN naval assets are single deployment assets, less if replenishment fleet gets scrapped.

>fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles

Zeihan was wanking about surrounding PRC with AShMs at a time when US policy / wonk writings thought this was a great idea (it is), but when US foreign policy tried implement said 1st island chain plan last couple admins, they found very few takers. TLDR is majority of ASEAN/region is neutral and no one is really suicidal enough to be PRC missile sinks in a Sino-US war. Right now the only takers is Japan, TW, and maybe SKR. And bluntly, if you look at current/trending force balance differential in region and future PRC military aquistions, PRC doesn't even need a navy to completely destroy major US ally in the region, who are all islands and existentially vunerable to import disruptions. Not to mention these allies are more liability in actual war... because PRC attacking them will trigger security commitment in 1st Island Chain where US does not want to fight.

>China has become a great economic power

This is peak US exceptionalism wank, China has become a great economic power because it exploited US failures in domestic and foreign policy. People want to think it's US benevolence when it's actually US incompetence that built modern PRC. There's a reason why US vs PRC competition is about systems and not just geographic blessings. It's not geography that's massively failing US, it's the politics. Whatever you think of PRC/CCP politics, so far it's closing the gap faster than US can contain.

[mikem170]

I've read all of Zeihan's books, and you may be emphasizing different points than those he focused on.

>US has more navigable river

You may be right. You quoted the poster, who said they quoted Zeihan. Are both countries blessed in this regard? I guess this affects transport, like you mentioned, and farming. I don't remember these particular details from the book, I'm sure he's written hundreds of words on the rivers in these two countries. Does China have enough fresh water, and farmland they can irrigate? If so, then this might not be as big a deal as other factors for these two countries.

>has great ports on both oceans.

You mentioned how many large ports China has. I assume that is because they have been exporting so many manufactured products to so much of the world over the last couple decades. Zeihan seems to make a case that this might not be true for long, due to demographics (there will be more Indian labor, Mexican labor local to the U.S., Columbians and Vietnamese working even cheaper, better Japanese robots, etc) and also due to changing circumstances of international shipping (if the U.S. stops securing shipping around Eurasia where does that leave China? Can they reach their trade partners? Import resources? Do they have capable enemies that they will have to deal with?)

>is self-sufficient in energy

Zeihan made a big deal out of the U.S. fracking developments over the last ten years. He didn't mention this is the context of war with China. He said that because of the end of the cold war and recent advances in fracking it is not longer in the interest of the U.S. to police the worlds oceans, secure the Middle East, etc. He said that would leave other countries, like China, India, Japan, countries in Europe, etc. in a position where they need to secure their own oil supplies, oil still being a very important energy source, and trade routes. All these other countries have enemies and friends. He's saying that the U.S. can withdraw as much as it wants, for the most part.

>has horrible demographics

Zeihan has talked about demographics a lot. Not just China but many other countries will be dealing with the consequences of lower birthrates - an aging and shrinking population. As countries become richer their birth rates go down, eventually below replacement rates. There won't be as much young labor, nor middle aged investors, and there will be more elderly people to take care of. How dependent are our systems on growth? What happens in various places when population and gdp are shrinking? He says that China will have it's hands full over the next ten years dealing with this, but that the U.S. has a large generation of 30-somethings that postpones our "decade of reckoning". Different countries are in different demographic situations. Japan is a rich country that is currently dealing with this situation. Russia is dealing with this also, but not doing so well.

>US has kept shipping lanes open, and China relies on that to this day

You mention that China now has a deep water navy. Based on my reading of Zeihan, I assume they will have a chance to put it to use eventually. Depending on how things go they may need to secure oil shipments from the Middle East, and they could be in competition with Japan and India for that and other resources.

>fairly hostile island nations with lots of antiship missiles

I just don't recall Zeihan talking much about the U.S. going to war with China, certainly not for world domination, like the cold war with Russia. He seems to be saying that there's no reason for the U.S. to start a confrontation with China, that long term it makes sense for the U.S. to continue the trend of withdrawing. I assume he's talked about a possible conflict around Taiwan, but it wasn't central to the trends he focuses on. I know that shortly after sanctions were imposed on Russia, after the Ukraine invasion, he talked about how similar sanctions might affect China, and how that may affect China's thinking on Taiwan in the near future.

He said the U.S. was most likely to approach future conflicts like the recent conflict in Ukraine, using sanctions, weapons, and intel to support allies when it is in our interest, but not sending troops.

>China has become a great economic power

I don't think anyone would deny that. The last few decades in China have been amazing! Unprecedented in history.

I agree with you that politics can be relevant. This is something Zeihan has talked a bit about. He's mentioned Argentina as being a country with a lot of potential, if they could get their politics together. He's talked a bit about internal China and U.S. politics. But he talked much more about the upcoming challenges, different for different countries, due to a changing world order, demographics, and geography. He said there were going to be a lot of failing countries in the next decade or two, more places like Sri Lanka. The world will not be as stable as it has been.

I wasn't sure why you talked so much about a direct confrontation between China and the U.S. If anything Zeihan seems to be predicting that China has demographically and economically peaked, and that they are likely to implode in the next ten years.

I consider Zeihan to have an interesting perspective on all this. I take him as pessimistic food for thought.

[DubiousPusher]

> If you believe this thesis then in the coming years, and you believe the US will decouples/is decoupling from internationalism (I have been convinced),

This seems to be a popular notion but I don't see strong evidence for it. There is a visible anti-interventionist constituency in the US for the first time in decades but that doesn't mean it actually has any significant ability to sway foreign policy.

In fact, if American history is any suggestion, this constituency is unlikely to have its way as there have been much larger and better organized pluralities in the past who again and again were ultimately overcome by the interventionists.

[throwawaymaths]

Zeihan's argument is that the pinnacle of us engagement was Bush I. Clinton's international engagement was mostly superficial and the only deal he got done was NAFTA, which is regional, not internationalist. Bush II's major international engagement was fighting wars. Same with Obama (though a rapprochement with Russia was tried under HRC watch -- that is clearly out the window for the near term). Trump was definitely disengaged -- he spearheaded decoupling from China and withdrew from the military engagements of his predecessors. Biden is so far more or less continuing the trump foreign policy with the exceptions of Ukraine (duh) and returning to Kyoto -- though the US was well on its way to meeting Kyoto obligations organically, and much of Europe is very likely barely not going meet kyoto

[DubiousPusher]

To me this is an utterly superficial reading of American foreign policy. It's like saying Nixon was an isolationist because Vietnam ended on his watch. It's like saying McDonald's is going out of business when it closes one struggling location.

Trump nor Biden wound down U.S. involvement around the globe other than the two highly visible deccenial quagmires in the middle east. Neither pushed for reforming the FISA system which has created a legal parallel legal pipeline for spying. Neither have discussed winding down the blacksite network for rendering foreign nationals around the globe. Neither have renounced the drone programs. Neither even ultimately renounced any of the mutual protection treaties the U.S. maintains. Neither have renounced intelligence sharing. Neither have renounced arms sales. Neither have announced any significant foreign policy stance changes other than some doubling down on positions that already existed. It's a red hot garbage thesis which sees open war and nation building as the only two pillars of power projection that matter.

[windexh8er]

I recently read the book and have been rereading parts of it just to try to better grasp the big picture he describes. It's an impressively large number of moving parts that Zeihan tackles in the book. His latest was my first read of his, and going back to his older works - I now realize that the new book is not all new work. He talks about "the Order" (the security overwatch you refer to) that was a result of Bretton Woods system [0] in the mid-40s.

He does weave a very compelling story about how the United States, under this system, basically competed against itself to open up a freely operating world trade market. Since we opened up these global trade routes to have no impediments, we lost a lot of market opportunities in the low technology manufacturing sectors because we created a system that allowed those things to be made cheaper elsewhere due to the open availability and dependability of said routes. But Zeihan indirectly talks about in the book how the US, through "the Order", leveled up and pushed these less desirable manufacturing out and elsewhere in the world which allowed the US to level up in the process.

But the crux of the problem is that the last 60ish years, under this "Order" was only possible due to the US preserving this unimpeded open trade platform. And that the last 4+ Presidencies have mostly ignored the framework with which this financial golden age was built on - and now we're starting to see a number of things coalesce (aging / declining population, climate issues, resources availability, etc) which is giving us a glimpse of the system starting to falter - accelerated by the global pandemic.

It does appear that the US is decoupling from internationalism after you read his work and start to see the news through these context of the ideas presented. An example might be the push for chips to come back to the United States, as of recent. While there are only a few regions in the world that can make bleeding edge chips today - the fact that the US is not capable of producing these in quantity and relies on other countries creates risk is Zeihan's "post-Order" world.

While it's a fantastic read I don't think Zeihan, himself, thinks that he'll be right on all fronts - but the scary part is that he doesn't need to be to end up with very similar end results. This will mean many countries globally will end up in the horrible position of famine due to international trade and shipping being the core component that keeps some of these inhabited areas propped up.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bretton_Woods_system

[petercooper]

I enjoy his work, though I occasionally find contradictions. He says the US has favorable demographics through having plenty of millennials and suggested the UK was not so lucky, but they look roughly the same to me? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...

Germany and China, on the other hand, both do have a huge drop off from the baby boomer generation onward and I wonder how they'll cope with that.

[ncmncm]

To me what stood out most starkly was how few black and hispanic people are found in older cohorts. It seems to imply they die much younger.

[AtlasBarfed]

Chris rock on social security:

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=190928444840463

[ncmncm]

That doesn't play, for me. I tried to find it on YT, no luck.

[DanBC]

It's from this bit of one of his shows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq6Ez8oYDrU

[throwawaymaths]

Not that I have a perfectly photographic memory, but I can't recall him ever presenting the UK pyramid chart in any of his presos.

[toss1]

Supporting this was the one chart that caught my eye as I skimmed - Total Private Credit - at the very bottom row. The caption on the massive outlier line literally going off the chart at the top right is China: "No country has survived a credit build this large or fast. Ever.".

Perhaps a totalitarian society will allow them to do so, but saying "It's different this time..." has a very poor record

[seydor]

It's on target regarding the current events, but he doesnt seem to heed his own message: deglobalization and the return to national (or something new?) identities is bad news for america which is a global empire. It's also good news for cohesive, homogeneous states. We seem to have entered at the end of the current globalizing cycle quite fast with russia's invasion, and other wars will follow.

[DennisP]

The benefits the US gets from globalization come at significant cost: huge military expenditures plus a hollowing out of manufacturing and other local jobs, leading to a lot of social unrest. Globalization wasn't something the US did for its own sake, but as a way of bribing the world to help them contain the Soviets.

Nevertheless, the US will find the end of globalization somewhat unpleasant for a while. But unlike most of the world, the US is self-sufficient in food and energy, faces little direct military threat, and its largest trading partners are on its borders. In relative terms, the US stands to come out well ahead.

Being less homogenous is also an advantage. Almost every advanced country has terrible demographics. The less homogenous you are, the more you're able to attract immigrants to fix that. Despite periodic discontent, the US has long welcomed immigration and benefited by it. On top of that, US demographics aren't that terrible in the first place.

[seydor]

> to help them contain the Soviets.

Why would they want to contain the soviets if not to benefit from global trade? The benefits outweigh the costs very much, thats why they did it.

Surely the US stands to come out safe, it is a very safe country, but if it won't be richer anymore, it will also stop being an immigration hotspot. Immigration, globalization and empire building go hand in hand, and the past century was America's turn. But this construction seems to be dissolving.

[DennisP]

I think you're drastically underestimating how much the US feared an expansionist USSR during the Cold War, and the worries just after WWII that the Soviets might just roll across Europe.

If things play out as Zeihan expects, the US will be a bit less rich, but will be far better off than anyone else in the world.

[mc32]

Speaking of black swans. One decently sized meteor strike could cause lots of destruction. Imagine Tunguska in a populated region.

[ncmncm]

That is a lot like a hurricane or tsunami. The rest of the world seems able to ignore those. Unless of course it hit (e.g.) TSMC.

[thoughtstheseus]

The book focuses on strong US demographics, commodities, food, energy, security and supply. Few countries globally have this. Globalization meant you could relay on other countries for pieces you are missing. A reduction in globalization creates pressure in countries without “self-sufficient” capabilities.

[splintercell]

Your claim is incorrect that it was written before Russia's invasion. The publication date is in June 2022.

[DennisP]

That one, yes. But Zeihan's 2014 book predicted that Russia would invade Ukraine by the end of 2021. Missed it by two months.

[ZeroGravitas]

Didn't Russia invade Ukraine in early 2014?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...

[DennisP]

Yes, his 2014 prediction was that they would invade the rest of Ukraine by end of 2021.

[mooreds]

Here's the "about page" for the book these maps are drawn from: https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/