When Francis Fukuyama declared history to be at an end, he was speaking as a political scientist. But political science is bunk. Geopolitics and oil are what’s real. And now that Americans have begun to realize that North American energy independence has at last arrived, the postwar world order will collapse. It’s not just NATO. As Peter Zeihan points out in his marvelous The Accidental Superpower, the postwar world was created by the United States acting in its own self interest. That self interest was first and foremost devoted to fighting the Cold War. For that we needed allies around the world, and these allies needed a secure supply of energy, and access to the American market for exports.
25 years after it ended, we’re at last coming to grip with the fact that the world order we created to fight Communism is no longer in our self interest. Zeihan all but says it flat out: we don’t really need to be involved in most of the world. The world may need us, but we don’t need it.
If you like statistics read his book. We are not an export economy. Exclude what we export to Canada, Mexico, and Latin America, and it’s not that big a number. The world needs our market a lot more than we need its.
I haven’t finished the book, and I’m not sure what specific trade policy Zeihan recommends. But, no matter. I’m a free trader, but I want fair trade, and I think there’s a very good argument that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was designed to help big American business more than the American worker and consumer. It’s an extension of Bretton Woods, which was a 1944 gift to a war torn world by the American economic colossus. But the world has healed, and the burden is too heavy.
I highly recommend this book. He writes entertainingly, and knows a lot. He’s certainly an original thinker. He thinks Poland should seek an anti-Russian alliance with Sweden, and Sweden should go nuclear. Poland’s got to do something. We’re not going to fight the Russians for them, or anyone else.
The world of the future as Zeihan sees it is all hell breaking loose, all over the globe. Except the USA. We’re in the catbird seat.
Politically, the nice thing about all this is that the Libertarian candidates, Johnson and Weld, are both smart enough to understand this, and to explain it to the voters. If they make Zeihan’s analysis the center piece of their foreign policy it will have an impact. Trump doesn’t read books, and is ignorant, but the fact that he wants out of NATO means he has the right policy in his gut. But he isn’t smart enough to talk about it, and the Libertarians are.
People should understand geopolitics more. The United States is uniquely blessed by geopolitics. We have no enemies, everything we need, and two oceans for defense. My God, what more do you want? Why in the hell are we running all over the world getting into wars?
Germany is the tragedy of the 20th century. In 1914 she was in the catbird seat. She had everything she needed, and was so strong that no one wanted to fight her. She had absolutely nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by war. But to war she went, and from there it’s been one damn thing after another.
We’re in the same position the Germans were in in 1914. Why in the name of God would we ever go to war? We want to rule the waves, and control the sky, and own space. And we have legitimate interests and friends around the world. But none of that is worth an actual war.
Reagan Project Co-founder Darren has been to London on business, and has connections there that are important to him. We are the daughter of Great Britain. I think we should fight to protect Britain and the Anglosphere. They’re our cousins. And Israel, of course, if absolutely necessary. But that’s it. Everybody else is on their own.
It will be a libertarian world.
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