Zeihan is an entertainer, for sure, and his mannerisms are funny but potentially off-putting for some. The lanky figure sporting a greying beard and a pony-tail has the aura of a Russian-type mystic, or at least a charming con man.
But his goofiness is combined with encyclopedical knowledge. He rattles off technical, economical, geographical, demographical, historical, and energy security details with impressing ease. He offers strong opinions (supported by crisp and convincing-sounding arguments) on virtually everything, let it be the green revolution, Russia, Mexican cartels, nuclear energy, agriculture, global food security, demographics, cryptocurrencies, you name it.
Although pretended omniscience is a realiable sign of a looney, I involuntarily caught myself agreeing with quite of a lot of what he says. I found his quip about crypto especially endearing: "I'm not gonna say it was all a fraud. Some of it was a pyramid scheme".
Below I make an attempt to summarize what I gleaned Peter Zehain's idea of the world seems to be.
The world of yesterday and of tomorrow
The current world order was born at Breton Woods, after the Second World War. The USA, which at that time had an economy bigger than the rest of the world put together, decided that it will bribe the other countries. To make them its geopolitical allies and part of its security system against the Soviet Union (and China), it guaranteed the safety of global trade and encouraged everyone to participate in the liberal world order. The guarantor of safe trade was the US Navy. You could trade with anyone anywhere on the globe without paying the cost of security - a historically novel situation.
By this, the US put politics ahead of economy. From a purely economical perspective, with its vast territory, technological edge, and dynamic population, the US would have been better off in isolation. The real beneficiary of the Pax Americana was the rest of the world. Countries have continued getting richer every decade.
But this model reached its expiry date. The US has been visibly loosing appetite for being the world's policeman, and even it wanted to stay in the role, it is no longer capable of. The rest of the world have not only caught up with America, but as a mass, dwarfs it in economic power. The second foundation of the liberal world order is also wobbling. One of the basic assumptions of the economic model of the last seventy years is that there is a huge number of active workers and consumers who drive the economy and take care of the relatively small cadre of the elderly. This demographic pyramid is turning upside down as we speak due to the enormous advancements in prosperity, health care, and urbanization. People never lived as long as today and never had fewer children.
Zehain's conclusion is that the current world order will change drastically, for the worse for most. For America, due to its unique geographical advantages, its relatively dynamic demographics, and vibrant economy, this will be an opportunity. It will replace its the global trading partners with inter-US trade, transforming its supply chains cleaner, shorter, safer. And the gap between the US and the rest will grow. For sclerotic Europe, the changes are bad news. For Russia, catastrophic in the mid-term, and for China, catastrophy in this very decade.
China's fate is sealed for two reasons. One is the abysmal state of its demography. Even according to official Chinese data, which always come with cosmetic uplifts, continuing the trend, the population will halve by the end of the century. No country in history has ever had to face this challenge, and we don't know of any economic model that could manage it. Even if they make U-turn on child-raising policies, which they are doing, it's too late.
China's other fatal problem is the one-man leadership Xi Jinping has built up in the last 10 years. Never in history has been so many people controlled by the single leader, who has concentrated more power in his hands than even Mao. Even if Xi was a genius, he couldn't possibly alone successfully manage something such incomparably vast and complex as the Chinese state. And if his handling of COVID and foreign policy are any signals, he is not a genius. Moreover, he has a reputiation of shooting the messenger, which means by now he is entirely surrounded by yes-men and zealots who won't call out his bad decisions. Vladimir Putin is demonstrating real-time how successful that type of leadership is.
Is Zeihan right?
Zeihan certainly seems to be very informed, and most of his predictions are at least plausible. Some are pretty far-fetched. I think what conventional scholars of geopolitics would say about him is that he draws more often than not reasonable conclusions from facts that are more or less accepted, but does it with such a level of confidence that a real academic would never do.
Geopolitical predictions are such an elastic subject, anyway. When Zeihan claims that China will collapse in the next decade, what does he mean by it, and how can we verify in 2033 that he was right? Does 20% drop in GDP mean "collapse"? Or civil unrests involving let's say 10% of the population? Or should it be at least 30%? Or maybe we can say China has collapsed if its share of the global trade has dropped by half?
Zeihan also makes predictions about everything. Green technology, nuclear energy, Russia, the US, etc. If he turns out to be right in 70% of them in 10 years, that would be pretty impressive achievement, as much as global predictions fare.
But until then, the reliability of his predicting powers can only be judged by past predictions. Unfortunately, I haven't yet found anything on that.
In the absence of past records, I ususally look for signs of self-deprecating humor or admittance of failures. Zeihan certainly isn't lacking in humor, and recently called his initial assessment of the Ukrainian war, in which he predicted complete Russian victory in six months, "laughably wrong". Which is a good sign. He wasn't trying to explain away his error.
What to make of the Peter Zeihans of the world?
This question was the original reason of writing the post, but I still don't really know what I want to say. Something along the lines that even though charlatans make bombastic statements to impress the hoi polloi, not everyone who is bombastic is a charlatan.
If someone made the same predictons as Zeihan and published them in academic papers, no one would know about him, apart from other academics. The flair for theatre is mandatory to be a public personality.
And finally, even if Zeihan is style over substance, at least he is a refreshing exception in the long line of prophets presaging the end of the word. Instead of predicting that the West and especially the US is going to hell, he claims that everyone else will.
While we are waiting for the end of the decade to prove him right, I recommend subscribing to his podcast. Every 2-3 days he appears with a new, 3-10 minutes long episode, in which he shares his opinion of some current event, form Chinese balloons to American presidents.
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