I’m re-reading Peter Zeihan’s new book Disunited Nations: The Scramble
for Power in an Ungoverned World. It takes several readings to really absorb
all the data, and the implications of that data, in this book. For those of you
who may not have read it yet, I strongly recommend it. His writing style is
easy to read, even fun, but his arguments are backed with masses of relevant data.
If you would prefer to watch him rather than read him, his hour-long presentations,
some available on YouTube, are a good introduction, though there is much, much
more supporting data in his books. Try his online presentation here, for example, or a more recent interview here.
What I am particularly aware of during this re-reading is
how sharply Zeihan differs from the “common wisdom” expressed in the media and
by most of the ubiquitous talking heads and political actors in both parties.
The so-called experts obsess over China’s rise - Zeihan argues, with masses of
supporting geographic, historical, military, geopolitical, demographic and
economic data that far from being a threat, China is on the verge of total
collapse, perhaps in a decade, perhaps next year (he admits timing is the
hardest part about predictions). The so-called experts obsess over Iran; Zeihan
argues, persuasively and with data, that we ought to be more worried about
Saudi Arabia. The so-called experts worry about America’s decline; Zeihan
argues, again persuasively and with masses of data, that America has another century
at least of pre-eminence, not because of any brilliance in our politicians
(indeed, despite the best efforts of our political system to screw it up), but
simply because of the luck of our geography.
So whom to believe? Since Zeihan bases his arguments on verifiable
facts, like demographics and geography and history and existing trade routes,
while others seem to have just emotional opinions, I find Zeihan’s arguments
more persuasive. And I notice that the other serious geopolitical writers I
follow (Robert Kaplan, John Mearsheimer, Stephan Walt, Richard Hass, George
Friedman, Stephan Kotkin, Ian Brenner, etc) seem to all more or less agree with
him, though there are minor differences in emphasis.
It reinforces Nassim Taleb’s argument that listening/reading
the daily news doesn’t make one smarter; it actually makes one dumber because
of all the unsupported opinions expressed authoritatively by people who really don’t
understand what is going on.
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