The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - My Dream Alliance for the US - Part 1 || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: January 14, 2025

When I picture my ideal US alliance system, I focus on stable, secure, and economically complementary countries. Part one of this two-part series focuses on the "safe" bets.Join the Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/PeterZeihanFull Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/my-dream-alliance-for-the-us-part-1

Everyone, Peter Zion here coming to you from the Brett's track in New Zealand. Almost done. Like 4K left. Anyway, question from the Patreon crowd. If you were to craft the perfect U.S. alliance system for the future, what would it be? Well, I would always start with the family. So what I like to call the Grand Honky Alliance, all the Anglo states. So that's the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

These are countries that share more than the common bond of English culture and history. They're all naval powers. What these are your candidate, which doesn't kind of count in that regard. And so they have the ability to defend themselves in a degree that's much simpler than it is for a land power. So security complications are quite limited. The economic growth is largely consumption driven, so it's going to be something that's really interesting and positive to have in a de-globalizing world where populations are aging out everywhere. it's less true for those countries. And we have a long track record with the Anglo's called the Five Eyes Alliance,

which is basically intelligence sharing throughout, basically whatever we find that isn't a complete individual national state secret is shared among the five. It makes the most powerful strategic decision-making apparatus that you could possibly have. So start there. Number two, you look for countries that are up-and-comers that have the potential to do very well in the world to come, At the very top of that list are two countries, Mexico and Vietnam. These are states that are already in the United States' top seven trading partners. Mexico is number one.

Vietnam's number seven. And they have the demographic to continue doing this for a very, very, very long time. There's security issues in the classical sense worrying about other countries are quite limited. Vietnam is backed up by mountains and jungles on all sides. And Vietnam's most insecure border is the one that has with the United States. So if I was to give any advice to presidents now, few or in the future, it's find a way to make relations with Mexico as wholesome and as well-rounded as possible. If you're only talking trade, if you're only talking drugs, if you're only talking

immigration, you're not really doing anyone a favor. This needs to be a broader conversation that involves not just security in the way that we've defined it on the border, but in the broader sense, it needs to involve culture and finance and transport and logistics and infrastructure and everything that is benefiting what has been the strongest bilateral economic relationship in human history already. Can you imagine if we actually put some effort into that? Okay. Next. Countries where the security issues are relatively limited and they could bring a lot to the table. France and Japan are at the very top of that list.

Japan, obviously, in archipelago, has two supercarriers, which are the only two outside of the Five Eyes Agreement. The others that are not American or British. Second, strongest Navy in human history, the Brits are third. And an economy that has already relatively globalized proofed it. It's still a massive importer of energy and raw materials. But this is not the Japan of the 1980s that was completely dependent on trade. Only trades for GDP about 15% of the total, which is very similar to the American number.

And so this is a country that while its demographics are bad, it is developing a series of technologies to cope with it, which is something that we will go running ourselves in the future. France, on the far western side of Europe, there sometimes are estranged sibling, but that simply underlines that they are family. The French and the Americans have always gotten along when it really matters, although we'd like to do things our own way.

They also have a positive demographic picture. They have a huge fleet of atomic power station, so they're not nearly as dependent on petroleum or natural gas imports as anyone else in Europe. and they have a military that's roughly right-sized to their needs. So you kind of group those together and you kind of get the dream team. Once you have that in place, I would look around for the low-hanging fruit. Places where there's technologies that are kind of concentrated, think Taiwan that would be very useful,

or places that don't have security concerns because they're isolated from everybody else. Spain and Portugal might fall into that category. But overall, this is the cluster. these are the countries going to do really well in the future. And then once you've got that, you can start thinking things a little bit more ambitious based on whatever your goals are, however you define them. I'm a little hesitant to put my stamp on anything beyond that list because the technologies in 10, 15 years may look significantly different,

and the gold posts will shift with that. But for now, these are the countries that I see as being relatively stable, relatively wealthy with a good growth trajectory and very little chance of anything knocking them off.