Alexandru's Reviews > Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World

This was actually the best of Zeihan's books. It is still very informative and it is recent enough to be relevant. But his quirky and informal style is a bit more restrained here and hence a lot less annoying.

Zeihan goes through the countries that he believes will be the most important in the world going forward and talks about their history, their geopolitics and their outlook. Whether his predictions will come true or not it is very hard to tell. However, we already seeing some of the international breakdowns that he predicted in his previous books which is a bit scary.

The countries discussed are:

- China - massive demographic problems, major problems in maintaining their trade connections open in case of war with the US or other powers
- Japan - already beyond being able to fix its demographic problems but has been preparing for a long time, uses the manpower of neighbouring countries to address this by relocating production there, is building a very powerful navy
- Russia - massive demographic problems, a crumbling power that has experienced brain drain and can not continue existing within the current borders, will attempt to expand or face collapse
- Brasil - experience huge economic growth however massive corruption and geographic barriers will prevent it from becoming a great power, will suffer the most from deglobalisation
- Argentina - experienced huge economic problems, however has the best geography for defense and also agriculture which could make it a rising star if it is able to take all of the opportunities
- France - has big ethnic problems brewing, did not go all in on the EU project or NATO, kept industries and everything separate and will benefit in the coming chaos as they are not as dependent, has powerful military outreach potential, colonial networks and strong population growth
- Germany - it already is beyond the point of demographic recovery, is dependent on export and on trade with Russia and China and will either be forced to re-militarise and potentially face Russia and come to an understanding with them, is also dependent on EU trade and will suffer if the union fails
- Turkey - the great rising power, very good demographics, will start taking Balkan countries under its sphere of influence, will have to decide whether to get more involved in the Middle East
- Iran - has a great geographical position, in the future will likely become less belligerent and even potentially end up in a partnership with the US
- Saudi Arabia - is in need of a new partner to defend it after the US retreat from the Middle East, the main rivalry with Iran is the core of its geopolitics, will potentially ally with Israel as the closest military power, other possibilities are China and Russia but they are both far and Iran stands between them
- USA - will retreat more and more from the world stage and will no longer defend global trade, has lowest value for trade as % of GDP out of all developed nations which means it is not dependent on external trade, will still maintain a powerful but more limited military which will allow it to intervene where needed but will no longer be continually present abroad