Stetson's Reviews > Disunited Nations: Succeeding in a World Where No One Gets Along

Interestingly, Peter Zeihan teeters on the edge between unserious and serious geopolitical analysis. In fact, sometime we veer into what's nearly geopolitical fan fiction territory. He certainly doesn't shy away from bold claims - some of which will inevitably end up incorrect. Of course, this happens in the prediction business (would be cool to see what Zeihan's calibration would be if we converted his predictions into something probabilistic).

Nonetheless, Zeihan has an understandable model of national outcomes: geography, demographics, trade dependency, fiscal stability, and naval power. This model almost certainly has some predictive power but will be wrong in some important ways due to critical omissions and complex dynamics. The biggest issue I see is that his essentially linear extrapolations (a problem itself but largely unavoidable in this effort) ignore technological innovation and cultural and political institutions. I think these limitations will most dramatically effect his bearish predictions about China. I don't think China is charting a path to world hegemon, but I think it will fare better than he predicts.

Generally, Disunited Nations is yet another extension of Zeihan's usual geopolitical analysis. Instead of a focus on the U.S. like in the Accidental Superpower, the focus is on important regional players in the predicted de-globalization process - a hypothesis he details in a follow-up book called The End of the World is Just Beginning. In dramatic terms, de-globalization is the collapse of the post-WWII world order (Bretton Woods System). This prediction is not particularly outlandish as there are many analysts that see things in similar terms. Zeihan envisions them quite dramatically though. He is also very bullish about the American position, which I think is mostly true, while it has taken many analysts longer post-Iraq War and the first Trump presidency to come around to that position. And yes, there remains much doomsaying about America's fortunes too (e.g. Peter Turchin, #Resistance types, and degrowthers/green alarmists).

Zeihan sees the order coming apart for unavoidable and avoidable reasons. The unavoidable reasons appear to be a combination of demographic and fiscal constraints, while the avoidable reasons appears to be American disengagement with a system that provides them marginal direct benefit at significant cost. Zeihan sees Bretton Woods as an anomalous system that is prone to breakage and now it is finally setting in.

In the new emerging order, he sees many catastrophes. Some of these have come to pass in part with the invasion of Ukraine, instability in the Middle East, inflation, increase national populism, financial crises, etc. Some of these have already come and gone or see like somewhat temporary phenomena, e.g. populist election wins. His predictions of catastrophe extend well beyond this including gaming out a number of regional conflicts and collapses. Some of these scenarios are interesting in their counter-intuitiveness (e.g. bullishness about France as Europe's regional leader). It is also to see when morality enters into Zeihan's analysis. It seems to enter the scene at random and appear otherwise absent in other places. For instance, Zeihan is eager to tell us how bad Saudi Arabia is but less eager to tell us about how bad Iran is.

Altogether, the value of Disunited Nations is the closer look we get at the different regional players we may get in world without Pax Americana: Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, and Argentina. The commentary on Argentina was probably the most interesting stuff to me, especially in the context of Milei's recent election.