Reminds me of the quote involving Macaulay - "I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything." Zeihan is everywhere online. I get cautious when forecasters need publicists.
I had the same impression... directionally right, but overstating the consequences. Human beings and societies are dynamic feedback systems. There is always a response and this is somewhat difficult to predict. Three observations about this predications:
1) Demographics: yes..in the traditional model, the reduction of "working" age population can be a disaster. However, useful life is increasing, aggregate wealth is higher, and technology leverage is pretty good. Thus, a "disaster" in an agrarian economy is ok in a modern society.
2) Globalization: a lot of this analysis is on hard goods (energy, food, etc). All very important. No doubt. A lot of the value in global trade is moving to "soft" goods (SW, entertainment) and "medium" goods (sophisticated machinery). These tend to have centers-of-competence which don't move easily.
I disagree. 1. Populations will decline 40% to 50% by 2100. Ecologically this may be good, but economically this means low or no growth. We may all end up like Japan, which only works as long as they can keep borrowing money (Debt is like 220% of GDP). This population decline is NOT OK in a modern society. Our only hope is innovation.
2. Most US international trade is goods based and is generally multi-nationals importing to the US from cheap labor sources where they exported factories to (this is some 66,000 factories and 4 million manufacturing jobs lost). These are not centers of competance. Taiwan is very good at chip manufacturing, but within ten years most of that will move back to the US. Soft goods are maybe 20% of US trade and AI is going to massively disrupt the service sectors.
Your point about LFP batteries is super. Far too much of what passes for "hard nosed assessments of what WILL be required" for green energy & electrification transitions makes exactly that mistake of conflating some current production method with an essential property.
Green (renewables) will not happen. Europe already shows that it increases energy costs 4X and still does not provide sufficent base power. Texas went 20% renewable and their grid collasped a few years ago. Germany produces some 50% of its electricity from coal. It might work with handling variable loads in areas with lots of sun and wind. As we innovate this performance can get better. The US has been talking green for 40 years and we reduced our use of fossil fuels by maybe 2%. Right now nuclear power looks like the best option (e.g., 4th Generation reactors).
I first read Zeihan as a teenager. I was about 15 or so, my first real geopolitics book. Then I read Tilly’s Coercion Capital and European States which I thought was great. I really (really) enjoyed the first 60 or so pages of The Accidental Superpower, his first book.
I don’t necessarily agree with him on his predictions, but he introduced me to Demographics and geography. And for that, I still reread the the first part of Accidental every once and a while. I’ve even recommended it to people.
I always say to people I agree with him on his mechanics, but not anything else.
Jul 24, 2023·edited Jul 24, 2023Liked by Noah Smith
Thanks for this, Noah. I finished the book a few months ago and, while I hadn't asked you to review it, was thrilled when I saw this. Zeihan is a hammer looking for nails unable to see all the other fasteners he's surrounded by.
The first 2 chapters of this book are absolutely worth reading though. They are a geographically-focused history of humanity (Zeihan's exact wheelhouse) and his style makes these real page turners. For example: why was agriculture developed first in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley in modern Iraq? There are lots of floodplains in the world, so why there and not elsewhere? Zeihan has a good theory about that. These 2 chapters describe the unnoticed fact that geography greatly affects outcomes over the med-long term. I'm having my kids read these two as well, since the perspective is so unique.
After that, once you've read one chapter, you've read them all: no US Navy = piracy = no transnational oil = abject poverty for most of humanity.
Natural gas is now the most important fossil fuel…and America is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Qatar is the second most important natural gas exporter and so we still must patrol the Strait of Hormuz. ;)
Btw, how come people believe anyone that says the Iraq War in 2003 was about oil is a conspiracy theorist…when the 1991 Gulf War was about oil??? Both were about oil.
Zeihan actually does talk about this quite a bit. His prognosis for America is actually quite rosy (compared to much of the rest of the world). His entire argument comes down to "long supply chains for critical materials / products are death." North America can handle a world like that that just fine... China or Japan or most of Europe (outside France), not so much.
I personally believe we hemorrhaged jobs to China from 2002-2009 in large part because we were in an energy crisis and only China was willing to poison its citizens with coal and diesel pollution AND displace millions with new hydro projects. Once fracking was proven economical in 2010 we started adding manufacturing jobs first devoted to fracking…then around 2014 global corporations actually started believing in the economics of fracking and that when new auto factories started being announced mostly in the southeast as ports in Savannah and Charleston are where the parts come in and then the executives can fly into Atlanta which is where several HQs are located. Cheap natural gas is what changed everything for us.
Not so much natural gas, most of that is burned off and the Democrat party is blocking building the needed pipelines. With oil alone we were net energy independent under Trump. If we continue to allow fracking and building pipelines we are OK to 2100. Hopefully, we do a parallel transition to nuclear.
Trump bankrupted the energy industry in 2020…we are now energy dominant under Biden in large part because of replacing piped Russian natural gas with LNG from Louisiana.
You are delusional. The peak US oil production was in 2019 under Trump. Biden came into power and shut down all pipeline construction and ended Federal leases for Fracking. Most of the Natural Gas is burned off because the Democrats are blocking the construction of new pipelines to take the gas to market. See: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M
Based on that comment, you should probably read his book. You would find things to like and dislike (as I did and Noah did), but you have thought through these issues enough to gain something from the book.
Read the book. Or at least the first 4-5 chapters. After that' they're all the same.
Japan is a highly urban population on a very small island. If Zeihan is correct (and I don't think he is) they would have serious problems just feeding themselves. Of course, if the Japanese continue not having children, natural attrition may solve that problem for them. Then they will be a much smaller and poorer country on a very small island.
I agree, oil was the driver of our involvement in the Middle East. The Shale Revolution started in 2009, we now can be energy independent (not under Biden) so we care a lot less about the Middle East. The Strategic formulations of the US elites have been stupid for over thirty years.
I hated this book so much. It is so bad that it is one of the rare books that, like a Jordan Peterson book, makes me think less of anyone who recommends it.
There's not a single source or reference for any of his many, many claims. At points he stops pretending to even write a book and just lists bullet points.
I feel like the whole thing was written over the course of a drug fuelled weekend and not only never saw the hand of an editor, was never even proofread by Zeihan after this stream of consciousness braindump onto the page.
I could wish for more sourcing, but his graphics on things like debt, population, energy production are sourced (mainly from government sources). I think he is directionally correct. He is a little too in bed with the status quo elites, but I take well-thought out empirical arguments from all sources.
Good review! Also, if you are interested in more books that forecast the future, I would suggest you to read "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" written by George Friedman. Personally, I think what Friedman wrote is more prescient than whatever outlandish stuff Zeihan claims. Here's the Amazon link to that:
Thanks for this. I just read the Amazon blurb and apparently he predicted a major war with Russia in the early 2020's... in 2010! That alone makes the man worth reading. Thanks again.
I read about 30% of it 6 years go and then couldn't get past it. Some interesting ideas but the degree of conviction with which he makes extreme longterm predictions just gets really out of hand and I couldn't handle it.
In 1960 the US spent 10% of its GDP on the military; this was the foundation of the current international system. We are now in the 4% range. Poland has 41 Million people, and Turkey 85 million. Both are shrinking. Maybe their populations are shrinking less than the developed world, so they might have more relative power. War is the father of us all, while it is a foundation for existence, it is not a good source of economic growth. You can do what the old empires and Nazi Germany did, around 33% of the German economy after 1939 was based on forced labor and imports from conquered peoples.
Glad you gave it a read and thanks for writing the review. My own critiques are pretty close - the assumption that every system is so fragile and that nations and technology won't advance much are red flags.
In addition, I also question that the US would pull back so dramatically. You make a good point that the US could be replaced by a coalition of nations. It's hard to see this not happening given how much revenue the largest companies in each country are typically earning via ocean freight trade - are we just assuming that lobbying stops being effective?
Thanks for the review. Anything is possible, of course, but time is precious. It's probably not worth the opportunity cost to devote so much attention to pundits who spend so much time in the vicinity of black swans.
I tried this one and only made it about halfway through. Tried Quinn Slobodian's new one. I enjoyed "the American dream is not dead" and also Brad Delong's book.
What a great book review. I favor the expression attributed to George Box -- All models are wrong but some are useful. The book sounds like an entertaining read.
Before 1949 China was run by regional warlords. Each region shares a common written language, but each region has its own language that cannot be understood by the other regions. The coastal cities that trade could break-off and then the rest of China would separate along linguistic lines.
I mean, the different regions of China have spoken regionalects/languages that were different enough from each other to be considered different languages since the Song dynasty, yet since then, China has been united more often than not, with the Song, Ming, and Qing all uniting China for a long time each. Yes, there were some breakups (actually, more so foreign conquests), but it didn't take all that long for China to reunite back. If the CCP hadn't been able to reunite all of China, someone else would have. That's because geography and military might (and sometimes culture) matter more than what languages people speak. Just look at Russia. Or Spain. Or Canada. Or India.
Looks like both the author and the reviewer overlooked the single most ominous driver of collapse—the runaway global heating extinction emergency. We can be sure collapse of existing society structures will be drastic and widespread, if the particular sequence is not predictable. All the means—from beneficent to horrific—that humankind has at its disposal will come to bear as survival threatens everyone. No need to read any book today that “forgets” about this threat-multiplier, nor a reviewer who misses the biggest context at all while focused on details of the global supply chain.
Wow, you are not understanding how little is being done, and how many of the “solutions” will be impossible for reasons like “not enough minerals anywhere to switch everyone to EVs” just for starters. You should do some personal research and not rely on mainstream media to educate you.
Ive read the ISPC reports unlike most doomsayers and work to an extent on solutions. Noah answered the „not enough minerals for batteries“ argument in the piece by the way.
No he didn’t, he just kicked the most immediate mineral shortage problem down the road to another insurmountable mineral shortage problem. I’ve studied these problems to the end, if you haven’t done that, you’re not getting it. Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. He does mention that there’s only one planet, at least he got that right, but it’s more of a throwaway line than a true understanding. So nature and physics do what they do regardless of our ideas.
It’s the IPCC, by the way. And those reports are based on good and accepted science? But also have a political overlay, as the language must be agreed on by all 190 countries that review the latest numbers to formulate each report. The US in particular is often in charge of watering down the language to something “politically palatable.” When added to the delay built into the process, you should interpret the IPCC reports as conservative starting points: extreme weather and other consequences are likely to be 25-40% worse and happen much more quickly than estimated there.
Reminds me of the quote involving Macaulay - "I wish I was as sure of anything as he is of everything." Zeihan is everywhere online. I get cautious when forecasters need publicists.
I had the same impression... directionally right, but overstating the consequences. Human beings and societies are dynamic feedback systems. There is always a response and this is somewhat difficult to predict. Three observations about this predications:
1) Demographics: yes..in the traditional model, the reduction of "working" age population can be a disaster. However, useful life is increasing, aggregate wealth is higher, and technology leverage is pretty good. Thus, a "disaster" in an agrarian economy is ok in a modern society.
2) Globalization: a lot of this analysis is on hard goods (energy, food, etc). All very important. No doubt. A lot of the value in global trade is moving to "soft" goods (SW, entertainment) and "medium" goods (sophisticated machinery). These tend to have centers-of-competence which don't move easily.
I disagree. 1. Populations will decline 40% to 50% by 2100. Ecologically this may be good, but economically this means low or no growth. We may all end up like Japan, which only works as long as they can keep borrowing money (Debt is like 220% of GDP). This population decline is NOT OK in a modern society. Our only hope is innovation.
2. Most US international trade is goods based and is generally multi-nationals importing to the US from cheap labor sources where they exported factories to (this is some 66,000 factories and 4 million manufacturing jobs lost). These are not centers of competance. Taiwan is very good at chip manufacturing, but within ten years most of that will move back to the US. Soft goods are maybe 20% of US trade and AI is going to massively disrupt the service sectors.
Your point about LFP batteries is super. Far too much of what passes for "hard nosed assessments of what WILL be required" for green energy & electrification transitions makes exactly that mistake of conflating some current production method with an essential property.
Green (renewables) will not happen. Europe already shows that it increases energy costs 4X and still does not provide sufficent base power. Texas went 20% renewable and their grid collasped a few years ago. Germany produces some 50% of its electricity from coal. It might work with handling variable loads in areas with lots of sun and wind. As we innovate this performance can get better. The US has been talking green for 40 years and we reduced our use of fossil fuels by maybe 2%. Right now nuclear power looks like the best option (e.g., 4th Generation reactors).
I first read Zeihan as a teenager. I was about 15 or so, my first real geopolitics book. Then I read Tilly’s Coercion Capital and European States which I thought was great. I really (really) enjoyed the first 60 or so pages of The Accidental Superpower, his first book.
I don’t necessarily agree with him on his predictions, but he introduced me to Demographics and geography. And for that, I still reread the the first part of Accidental every once and a while. I’ve even recommended it to people.
I always say to people I agree with him on his mechanics, but not anything else.
Thanks for this, Noah. I finished the book a few months ago and, while I hadn't asked you to review it, was thrilled when I saw this. Zeihan is a hammer looking for nails unable to see all the other fasteners he's surrounded by.
The first 2 chapters of this book are absolutely worth reading though. They are a geographically-focused history of humanity (Zeihan's exact wheelhouse) and his style makes these real page turners. For example: why was agriculture developed first in the Tigris-Euphrates river valley in modern Iraq? There are lots of floodplains in the world, so why there and not elsewhere? Zeihan has a good theory about that. These 2 chapters describe the unnoticed fact that geography greatly affects outcomes over the med-long term. I'm having my kids read these two as well, since the perspective is so unique.
After that, once you've read one chapter, you've read them all: no US Navy = piracy = no transnational oil = abject poverty for most of humanity.
Natural gas is now the most important fossil fuel…and America is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas. Qatar is the second most important natural gas exporter and so we still must patrol the Strait of Hormuz. ;)
Btw, how come people believe anyone that says the Iraq War in 2003 was about oil is a conspiracy theorist…when the 1991 Gulf War was about oil??? Both were about oil.
Zeihan actually does talk about this quite a bit. His prognosis for America is actually quite rosy (compared to much of the rest of the world). His entire argument comes down to "long supply chains for critical materials / products are death." North America can handle a world like that that just fine... China or Japan or most of Europe (outside France), not so much.
I personally believe we hemorrhaged jobs to China from 2002-2009 in large part because we were in an energy crisis and only China was willing to poison its citizens with coal and diesel pollution AND displace millions with new hydro projects. Once fracking was proven economical in 2010 we started adding manufacturing jobs first devoted to fracking…then around 2014 global corporations actually started believing in the economics of fracking and that when new auto factories started being announced mostly in the southeast as ports in Savannah and Charleston are where the parts come in and then the executives can fly into Atlanta which is where several HQs are located. Cheap natural gas is what changed everything for us.
Not so much natural gas, most of that is burned off and the Democrat party is blocking building the needed pipelines. With oil alone we were net energy independent under Trump. If we continue to allow fracking and building pipelines we are OK to 2100. Hopefully, we do a parallel transition to nuclear.
Trump bankrupted the energy industry in 2020…we are now energy dominant under Biden in large part because of replacing piped Russian natural gas with LNG from Louisiana.
You are delusional. The peak US oil production was in 2019 under Trump. Biden came into power and shut down all pipeline construction and ended Federal leases for Fracking. Most of the Natural Gas is burned off because the Democrats are blocking the construction of new pipelines to take the gas to market. See: https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M
Based on that comment, you should probably read his book. You would find things to like and dislike (as I did and Noah did), but you have thought through these issues enough to gain something from the book.
Japan has wedded itself to the US so their supply chains should be fine at least through 2100 as humanity figures this stuff out.
Read the book. Or at least the first 4-5 chapters. After that' they're all the same.
Japan is a highly urban population on a very small island. If Zeihan is correct (and I don't think he is) they would have serious problems just feeding themselves. Of course, if the Japanese continue not having children, natural attrition may solve that problem for them. Then they will be a much smaller and poorer country on a very small island.
I agree, oil was the driver of our involvement in the Middle East. The Shale Revolution started in 2009, we now can be energy independent (not under Biden) so we care a lot less about the Middle East. The Strategic formulations of the US elites have been stupid for over thirty years.
I hated this book so much. It is so bad that it is one of the rare books that, like a Jordan Peterson book, makes me think less of anyone who recommends it.
There's not a single source or reference for any of his many, many claims. At points he stops pretending to even write a book and just lists bullet points.
I feel like the whole thing was written over the course of a drug fuelled weekend and not only never saw the hand of an editor, was never even proofread by Zeihan after this stream of consciousness braindump onto the page.
Haha. I enjoyed it, even though I do find the "bullet point" book approach annoying.
I could wish for more sourcing, but his graphics on things like debt, population, energy production are sourced (mainly from government sources). I think he is directionally correct. He is a little too in bed with the status quo elites, but I take well-thought out empirical arguments from all sources.
Good review! Also, if you are interested in more books that forecast the future, I would suggest you to read "The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century" written by George Friedman. Personally, I think what Friedman wrote is more prescient than whatever outlandish stuff Zeihan claims. Here's the Amazon link to that:
https://www.amazon.com/Next-100-Years-Forecast-Century/dp/0767923057
Thanks for this. I just read the Amazon blurb and apparently he predicted a major war with Russia in the early 2020's... in 2010! That alone makes the man worth reading. Thanks again.
Peter Zeihan and George Friedman worked together at Stratfor along with Jacob Shapiro and Marko Papić.
I read about 30% of it 6 years go and then couldn't get past it. Some interesting ideas but the degree of conviction with which he makes extreme longterm predictions just gets really out of hand and I couldn't handle it.
In 1960 the US spent 10% of its GDP on the military; this was the foundation of the current international system. We are now in the 4% range. Poland has 41 Million people, and Turkey 85 million. Both are shrinking. Maybe their populations are shrinking less than the developed world, so they might have more relative power. War is the father of us all, while it is a foundation for existence, it is not a good source of economic growth. You can do what the old empires and Nazi Germany did, around 33% of the German economy after 1939 was based on forced labor and imports from conquered peoples.
Glad you gave it a read and thanks for writing the review. My own critiques are pretty close - the assumption that every system is so fragile and that nations and technology won't advance much are red flags.
In addition, I also question that the US would pull back so dramatically. You make a good point that the US could be replaced by a coalition of nations. It's hard to see this not happening given how much revenue the largest companies in each country are typically earning via ocean freight trade - are we just assuming that lobbying stops being effective?
Thanks for the review. Anything is possible, of course, but time is precious. It's probably not worth the opportunity cost to devote so much attention to pundits who spend so much time in the vicinity of black swans.
I tried this one and only made it about halfway through. Tried Quinn Slobodian's new one. I enjoyed "the American dream is not dead" and also Brad Delong's book.
Great review. The idea that it should be read more like it was Swift than Spengler or Nietzsche is very good.
Thanks , appreciate this
What a great book review. I favor the expression attributed to George Box -- All models are wrong but some are useful. The book sounds like an entertaining read.
Appreciate the heads up about the inaccuracies. I doubt I would have caught them but am intending to read the book.
Zeihan’s prediction of a China breakup and collapse is the most interesting to me. We will see.
Won't breakup for long, if at all, and honestly, it's hard to see how it could happen.
Before 1949 China was run by regional warlords. Each region shares a common written language, but each region has its own language that cannot be understood by the other regions. The coastal cities that trade could break-off and then the rest of China would separate along linguistic lines.
I mean, the different regions of China have spoken regionalects/languages that were different enough from each other to be considered different languages since the Song dynasty, yet since then, China has been united more often than not, with the Song, Ming, and Qing all uniting China for a long time each. Yes, there were some breakups (actually, more so foreign conquests), but it didn't take all that long for China to reunite back. If the CCP hadn't been able to reunite all of China, someone else would have. That's because geography and military might (and sometimes culture) matter more than what languages people speak. Just look at Russia. Or Spain. Or Canada. Or India.
Looks like both the author and the reviewer overlooked the single most ominous driver of collapse—the runaway global heating extinction emergency. We can be sure collapse of existing society structures will be drastic and widespread, if the particular sequence is not predictable. All the means—from beneficent to horrific—that humankind has at its disposal will come to bear as survival threatens everyone. No need to read any book today that “forgets” about this threat-multiplier, nor a reviewer who misses the biggest context at all while focused on details of the global supply chain.
A problem well on the way to being solved.
Wow, you are not understanding how little is being done, and how many of the “solutions” will be impossible for reasons like “not enough minerals anywhere to switch everyone to EVs” just for starters. You should do some personal research and not rely on mainstream media to educate you.
Ive read the ISPC reports unlike most doomsayers and work to an extent on solutions. Noah answered the „not enough minerals for batteries“ argument in the piece by the way.
No he didn’t, he just kicked the most immediate mineral shortage problem down the road to another insurmountable mineral shortage problem. I’ve studied these problems to the end, if you haven’t done that, you’re not getting it. Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. He does mention that there’s only one planet, at least he got that right, but it’s more of a throwaway line than a true understanding. So nature and physics do what they do regardless of our ideas.
The history of the last 300 years is doing more with less, innovation has driven over 80% of economic growth.
It’s the IPCC, by the way. And those reports are based on good and accepted science? But also have a political overlay, as the language must be agreed on by all 190 countries that review the latest numbers to formulate each report. The US in particular is often in charge of watering down the language to something “politically palatable.” When added to the delay built into the process, you should interpret the IPCC reports as conservative starting points: extreme weather and other consequences are likely to be 25-40% worse and happen much more quickly than estimated there.