My Review of Zeihan

Peter Zeihan’s latest is titled The End of the World is Just the Beginning. The subtitle is “mapping the collapse of globalization.” I find the overall thesis highly speculative. But my review focuses on what Zeihan sees as the impact of de-globalization, should it take place.

Zeihan sees the fall of Communism as reducing America’s motivation to be the world’s policeman. With no policeman, he predicts trade will be more often disrupted by war and piracy. Violence will impose a large tax on transportation.

Participants in our Zoom discussion of the book pointed out the irony that China and Russia resent America, even though they have more to lose than we do in a world without peaceful free trade. If the world becomes more violent and the oceans become less safe, China would struggle with the need to import food and energy, while Russia would struggle with the need to import sophisticated technology, including what it needs to keep its oil wells working.

I also write,

Perhaps the most interesting chapters concern energy. Although Zeihan is a believer in the dangers of climate change, his analysis shows that “green energy” fails, even on its own terms. In order to generate, transmit, and store solar and wind power, we need to build solar panels, wind farms, batteries, and new transmission systems. The cost of doing so, including the carbon dioxide that will be released in that atmosphere in the process, is daunting.

He raises the transmission issue in ways that I had not seen elsewhere. Fossil fuels enable urbanization, because the density of energy in fossil fuels means that we know how to transport them at reasonable cost. We have railroads, trucks, and pipelines.

But we lack the means to get adequate wind and solar power to cities.