I recently started a book on a similar subject - "The End of the World is Just the Beginning" by Peter Zeihan. It mainly discusses the coming demographic bust most places in the world will see, and how that will lead to a breakdown of the author calls "The Order" - the American-backed protection of cheap and safe transport of materials across the oceans.
He sees a bright outlook for America, which can create all the energy it needs at home, and a bad outlook for places like China, which imports almost everything.
I recommend the book, but I do think he doesn't do a great job of making a solid argument that the demographic bust must lead to "the end of the world".
I’m reading the same book. I think what Peter misses with regards to energy is that roughly 40% of ocean shipments are moving fossil energy around [1]; if you move to renewables, a lot of shipping goes away. China currently generates more power from renewables than all of Europe [2], and the CCP seems to be aware of how foundational cheap, reliable energy is to their economic prospects. They have the will and government system to dictate their energy transformation.
Demographics will cause rapid economic growth deceleration in developed and almost developed countries (China’s TFR hit a low of 1.15 last year and continues to decline [3]), and “the order” will change as globalization somewhat reverses, but this is all opportunity imho (shipping declines but reshoring increases for security and resilience reasons, see manufacturing and semiconductors).
That does appear to be a blindspot of his... For all that he likes to write about transformational technology and other factors that can transcend geography, he doesn't like to include stuff like green energy or even climate change in general in his model.
Frankly, at this point, if anyone is prognosticating without reference to climate change, they’re indulging in alternate timelines that bear little relevance to the one we’re on.
Agree, I would say much of what he communicates isn't actionable, it's more history lessons than current geopolitics. Still a fun read regardless, worth the $20.
Over the past several months I read all his books. His previous book, Disunited Nations, is probably best for making the demographic argument. He devotes chapters to individual countries, covering their situations in detail, starting with several chapters on China.
(His first book, Accidental Empire, does a good job introducing his overall PoV, applying it to most of the great civilizations in history starting with ancient Egypt. This book predicted in 2014 that Russia would invade the rest of Ukraine by end of 2021. His next book, Absent Superpower, has the most on fossil fuels.)
What was his theorized motivation for Russian invasion, geopolitical or otherwise? Was it tied to Nato moving in, as others have advocated, or something different?
Over the course of history, Russia has been invaded 50 times, so they're pretty touchy about that regardless of how peaceful things look at the moment. With their current borders, they have no real geographic barriers. The Soviet Union had pretty good barriers (mountains and such), needing to guard just nine passes, which can be done with relatively limited troops. They currently control just one of those passes. Taking Ukraine restores their control over two more, and provides a base to go further.
Meanwhile, Russia has horrendous demographic problems. Their fertility rate dropped to something like 1.2 children per woman when the Iron Curtain fell, and hasn't recovered. So now their military-age population is aging out. They're not going to have the population to defend Russia with the borders they have now, and right about now is when they start losing the ability to invade countries like Ukraine to expand their borders.
Reiterating from memory of his lectures on YouTube:
- The Russians consider some nine-odd geographic boundaries of the former union to be crucial to defense (e.g. between mountains and deserts, certain ports). Without fortifying there, a lot of the Rus land area is open and hard to defend. Interestingly, Ukraine contains only one in Crimea (which they already had) but is on the way to ones in Romania, Poland, etc.
- With the fall of the union, there was not only a baby bust but also the collapse of technical training programs. The "demographic cliff" means that not only will the army half in size but, e.g. the rail lines and electric are also in danger.
- While Ukrainian resolve and EU unity were a surprise to even the US, he also sees a leadership failing not unlike the Chinese one - authoritarian that drives out opposition too harshly also drives out the people in the room that push back on bad ideas. FSB had intelligence that overwhelmingly, UA would accept occupation?
Thank you, I came here to mention Zeihan’s excellent book also. I am totally into studying geopolitical stuff while my wife generally hates these topics. I played this as an audiobook while driving for 5 hours yesterday and my wife loved it. My point is that he writes in a generally interesting style.
I am only half way through so I don’t yet know how good his ‘end of the world’ case is.
He does make a compelling case for the advantages that the US has in the potential for self sufficiency, but those advantages go away if we can’t control our political bigotry (i.e., democrats and republicans make sweeping generalizations against the other side with no interest in meaningful dialog - but to be fair, this is planned for easier control of the population).
Does he include the effects of climate change in his analysis? I found it sorely lacking in Accidental Superpower; he tacks it on in an appendix, but it seems a really disingenuous take.
He sees a bright outlook for America, which can create all the energy it needs at home, and a bad outlook for places like China, which imports almost everything.
I recommend the book, but I do think he doesn't do a great job of making a solid argument that the demographic bust must lead to "the end of the world".