The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - A New American Imperialism? || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

American imperialism is not the same as European imperialism. The Europeans wanted power, prestige and economic gain, while the US was in it for security. So, what will this look like for the Americans moving forward?Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/a-new-american-imperialism

Hey, everyone, Peter Zion, coming to you from the Bay of Islands, and everyone is talking about conquering countries all of a sudden, so I figure it would be a good point to review American imperialism, and if there were to be a new chapter of the United States going in and grabbing territories, what sort of territories would we be interested in? Key thing to keep in mind, imperialism American style is not like imperialism European style. Other Europeans are relatively small countries compared to the United States, whereas the United States has a continental landmass that is some of the best lands in the world. So for the Brits and the French and the Germans and everybody else, going out to grab a chunk of territory in order to improve their own economic

prospects, that makes a certain amount of logical sense. For the United States, it never really has. When we were going through reconstruction, industrialization, we were still processing the best parts of one of the largest continents in the world. And now that we have a heavily driven service, economy that is the most productive on the planet, it's really hard to imagine the United States going out and occupying a pace of land in order to get X resource or X trade route. Instead, when the United States thinks about imperialism, it's about not about the money, it's about security. So we're not French. We're not after it just to get a big chunk of lands that looks good on a globe map. And we are not British, where we're looking to go out and grab economic nodes that we can

then profit from. We're looking for small chunks of very easily defendable land with low populations that don't generate security heartburn, but instead provide strategic opportunities or limit the strategic opportunities of our foes. And that is a very short list of countries, especially when you consider places that the US already controls. So, for example, if you're in the Pacific, you look at places like the Northern Marina Islands, which are not too far from Japan, or Guam, which is not too far from First Island chain, or American Samoa in the South Pacific.

These are chunks of territory that the United States gained from the last round of expansion in World War II and before that in the age of imperialism in the 1800s. And there's really nothing else in that area that we need. We already have what we need. If you're going to look further west, there are a few chunks of territory that I would find strategically interesting.

The most complicated of them would be a place called Sal Tome and Pritipé, which is a small African island nation in the Gulf of Guinea off the South. You know, well, you know how Africa kind of does that thing. It's in that part in the middle where that's west or southwest, I don't know. Anyway, you're talking about a country with a population of 200,000, or, you know, if you go just for Principae, a country with just a population that's about 10,000.

That is something that kind of fits the bill, would allow you to project power in the entire belt of territory from South Africa to Nigeria to Senegal with having a very small defense platform. Even better would be territories like the Canaries or the Azores. which allow the United States to block potential foes from coming in from the eastern hemisphere to the Western Hemisphere and project power to Europe as well. Now, if those last two, the Aeswords and the Canaries sound familiar, it's because we've already seized those at one point during World War II, and we gave them back because the countries who control those are Portugal and Spain who are NATO allies. One of the things that the United States excels at is convincing someone that we're an ally, and we take care of all the naval power issues

so you don't have to worry about it because it's expensive, if in exchange you give us security supremacy and specific footprints of land. That is absolutely our deal with the British when it comes to Diego Garcia, which is our preferred platform in the Western Indian Ocean. So American imperialism isn't like classic imperialism. In many ways, we don't even change the nameplate

on the chunk of territory so long as we can have physical access to it. So these are all the things that the United States it's for the most part already has whatever access it needs. And so there's no need to go out and physically grab the territory. The exception would be Saltona and Principi. The only reason you would do that is if you decide you really want to be a major power in Africa on a day-in, day-out basis.

No American administration has made that decision yet, so, you know, we haven't really gone for it. Oh, one more off Africa. And again, we would only do this if we felt that we really need to project power into Africa. There's an island called Sokotra. It's Yemenis. It's off the horn of Africa, a small little place. easy enough to build the infrastructure if you wanted to project power into the Persian Gulf, as well as the Red Sea and the entire east coast of the African continent.

Let's say you wanted to step it up and loosen your definition of what's a good idea and go after territory that still has good security parameters for projection, but it's going to be a lot heavier carry in terms of running it, because it either has a larger population or it has land borders. You'll notice everything that I've laid out so far. as an island. And you're really willing to put your back into a security-based empire in a semi-classical sense. This is where Donald Trump has plucked Panama and Greenland. Panama has a country, has a population of over 4 million and one of the biggest drug problems and human

smuggling problems in the world. So if we were to go into Panama just for the canal, we would very rapidly get caught up administrating a place that's kind of a basket case. And you would only do that if you felt that the canal was that important. Keep in mind, the United States already has unrestricted access to the canal. And while we do have to pay for transit because we are not paying for upkeep, that also means that whenever the U.S. military wants to go through, everyone else gets shoved to the back of the line. I'd argue we've got a pretty good deal there already. The second one, Greenland is, of course, all in the news these days. Trump has wanted to buy Greenland for quite some time. And yes, while you can project power from Greenland, no argument

there and we use it for space tracking. And yes, it has a population under 100,000 people. It's a huge chunk of territory, and the people who live there are extremely poor. And if the United States were to take it over, we would then be responsible for the entire territory. One of the beautiful things we have about this makeup right now is that Denmark is one of our fastest outlies. When it comes to doing things in Greenland, they have never once said no. And when it comes to doing things in the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, which are an order of magnitude more important, they have never said no. So if we were to go in and snag Greenland, obviously we could do it if we wanted to. It might cost us one of our strongest and most loyal allies in one of the most sensitive parts

in the world moving forward. I would say that's not the best plan. Iceland kind of falls into the same category. Population of under a million dominates the North Atlantic. It's an independent country, but if you wanted to project power to the Russian sphere, it is a fantastic platform, especially in collaboration with the United Kingdom. But we already do that. And the Icelanders take care of their own business and they have decided publicly to never field a military. They will just let the United States do it.

But the cost for that is the United States is allowed to do whatever it wants, whenever it wants. So we get all the benefits of occupying the territory without actually having to pay for occupying the territory. The final two that might meet this criteria are a pair of countries. Singapore and Cuba. Singapore dominates the straitland of Malacca and any American military presence there would allow us to empower or destroy any country depending on that route for trade. And that could be Russia, that could be Iran, that could be Saudi Arabia, that could be China. So, you know, that could be

handy. And Cuba, because it dominates the answers to the Gulf of Mexico, is a very near and dear issue to American strategic thinkers, because without it, it's very difficult to do any sort of maritime shipping between the Gulf Coast and the East Coast, and as we found out during the Cuban missile crisis, if the Cubans were to host some intermediate-range weapons systems, that would be a real problem for us as well. But in both of these cases, you know, these are big countries. Cuba has missed many people, whereas Singapore is about five million. Singapore is one of the most advanced countries on the planet. And Singapore has kind of made a deal with us very similar to say Denmark. So the United States actually has a dedicated aircraft carrier birth in Singapore that

the Singaporeans built. And whenever we've had a security issue going back to the time of the Vietnam War, the Singaporeans have always been extraordinarily helpful. So you get all the benefits of having the military footprint, but none of the costs of running or administering or occupying a country. Cuba, more problematic, of course, because of politics, if we were actually going to invade a country and occupy it with the intent of making a country, of making a country, at ours, I would say Cuba would be at the very top of that list. But we've tried that before in the 60s. It wasn't a lot of fun. We controlled this territory through most of the time between the Spanish-American War and then, basically ran it as a colony, generated gobs of bad will,

and we've discovered it's just easier to base things out of the continent of the United States or Puerto Rico rather than deal with a population that is pathologically hostile to you. So as long as in strategic issues, Cuba is neutered. We really don't have a problem with it. And ever since Castro died a few years ago, the Cuban government, while they've been prickly, has gone out of the way to make sure that we don't think that they're getting in bed with anyone we really don't like in any ways we really don't like. So they don't provoke an invasion. So where do we go? I would argue that the United States right now, from a security point of view, has all the benefits of a globe-spanning empire,

but without actually having to pay for it, if we actually go and start taking over territories, that changes. You have to occupy populations. You have to build infrastructure. The way we have it right now is most of these countries want to preserve their independence,

and they feel that the best way to do that is to have a deferential relationship with the United States security establishment. Going out there and taking the territory, turns that on its head. You don't just lose allies, the places that you are already projecting power from suddenly turn hostile on the inside.

And that is how empires ultimately fall apart.