Nilesh Jasani's Reviews > The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization: The Collapse of Globalization and Its Aftermath

The End of the World reads like a political manifesto. Most of the book will resonate well if the reader is an American nationalist, particularly a MAGA-believing Trump supporter. Otherwise, a lot in the book would be so deeply offensive that most readers are unlikely to retain their objectivity enough to pick the good points in between.

It must be recorded that the author declares himself a democrat as well as an internationalist in the passing. He is definitely not a climate-damage denier. Some sections support the climate claims, although they too are used more to prove that those the author likes will gain and the others will perish, rather than for any other genuine purposes.

In summary, the author strongly believes that almost all non-Americans are people without resources, industry, innovativeness, and any good institutional structures. These folks - variously called lazy, without creativity, fractious, herd-like, but thankfully not identified as having wrong religions or skin colors - have benefited from America-sponsored, America-created globalization of the last few decades. American sacrifices - something he explicitly mentions - made it possible for the rest of the world to have decent economic existence. The rest of the world has grown as the US, as per the author, sacrificed some of its. The book's first conclusion is that this is coming to an end (although it often reads like he desires rather than predicts it).

To be clear, the author has a concise list of nations that he favors. Many are preferred because their populations are not falling, while others are because of positive relationships with the United States. His preference order starts with the favorites as France and Argentina, followed by Sweden, Japan, UK, Colombia, Canada, Mexico, Singapore, Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, India, and SE Asia/Australia as a region (I might have missed a couple). However, almost none of these are seen as able to survive independently but could be worthy protectorate candidates for America. The rest are so doomed that at a certain point, the author even predicts a billion or more (of course, from the places he dislikes, with the most intense dislike reserved for China) to perish.

The author can and does offend anyone who does not belong to his echo chamber (effectively people who believe in perpetual population growth, fossil fuels, Southern American values/beliefs/lifestyles, apart from the belief that no one except the US can truly innovate and grow). His tone on American Exceptionalism is designed to denigrate everyone else. The basic idea is to close the US economy because the US can not only survive easily without others but also do far better relying on its own resources and workers (particularly from the South, including Texas) with occasional help from Mexico and a handful of others. Such closing of the US will almost send the rest to doom because of their inherent inadequacies.

In terms of the content, the book is littered with errors, not just while demeaning every other economy's ability or promoting American supremacy/isolationism but also while making points on topics like demographics or the impracticality of green energy. There are multiple good observations on how little green energy has contributed, agricultural challenges, and changing demographics. Still, most points fail to make a good impression because of the quickly drawn and often-disconnected, extreme, biased conclusions.

With this book, Mr. Zeihan may have significantly boosted the chances of being invited for a senior government position when a nationalistic leader becomes the US president in the future. This work should not be ignored for its potential impact on policymaking despite all the flaws.