Just days before the US launched an Iranian airstrike and killed their top commander, Peter Zeihan told our listeners that geopolitical and economic incentives are now shifting the US away from being a guarantor of global security to a cause of global insecurity, with oil being a major cause for this switch.
Many people are familiar with the idea of technological disruption, but Zeihan encouraged our listeners to think of such technology weaponized in the form of a fleet of supercarriers—of which no country comes close to in size or power—allowing the US to attack any target, anywhere, anytime.
If you've never heard of him before, Peter is one of the world’s leading geopolitical strategists and forecasters, and we spoke with him about his new book set to be released on March 3rd titled Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World where he makes a number of thought-provoking arguments and forecasts that everyone should consider.
For example, here's what he had to say about supercarrier-level disruption to the globe:
“With US shale now cheaper than not just the global average but edging down towards being cheaper than the cheapest Middle Eastern crude…it is already generating the fastest industrial build out we’ve seen since World War II. Play that out against what’s happening in the wider world. If you've got low cost, high quality energy here, and lower cost, higher quality production of other things here as a result, and you have higher cost, more geopolitically vulnerable production in the wider world, it does not take a big leap of logic to see the United States segue from being the guarantor of global security to a cause of global insecurity, because if you can disrupt trade patterns globally, and it has no effect at home, the price differential alone will generate an economic boom. And this is a sort of scene out of places like Russia or Iran where they threaten global stability in order to hook up oil prices. At home, all of a sudden, the United States can play that card. And we can do it with super carriers.”
Peter also made a series of fairly shocking predictions on China, Germany, global currencies like the US dollar, the euro, and more. Click here to listen or if you're not already a subscriber to our FS Insider podcast where we regularly interview book authors, strategists, and industry experts from across the globe on all things economics, finance, and markets, click here to subscribe!
Also, check out our review of Peter's first must-read book, Accidental Superpower, where he shows how geography alone destined America to become a global superpower and why this means the US is unlikely to lose that status anytime soon to China or others (see Why America Is Likely to Remain a Global Superpower for more).
