Peter Zeihan was for 12 years STRATFOR’s vice president
for analysis. His new book The Accidental
Superpower: The Next Generation of American Preeminence and the Coming Global
Disorder is a blockbuster, well worth reading and thinking about. In essence he argues that the past 70 years
of worldwide growth and (relative) stability was due to the Bretton Wood
agreements of 1944, and as America withdraws from these agreements (largely as a
result of our unexpected new energy independence from fracking) much of the
world will face a grim future while America and a few of its close allies will
ride out the storm relatively unscathed. Moreover, the predicted American success will
not come from any brilliance among our politicians, but from the simple dumb luck
of favorable demographics and geography.
His arguments are buttressed with an overwhelming
amount of supporting material about geography and demographics and trade figures
(I’ve had to reread the book several times to absorb it all). But his
conclusions are heavily based on highly predictable things, since geography doesn’t
change, nor do demographics change very quickly. This is an important book, particularly as it counters
the current Washington hysteria about threats from Russia and China, neither of
whom currently has the military or economic potential to be more than annoying,
and shortly will be in dire straits themselves.
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