The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - What Is the United States' Role in the (New) Global Order? || Ask Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

*This video was recorded in May of 2024. If you've read my book "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning" then you're well aware of the US stepping away from the Global Order. But what does life look for other countries once that happens? Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/what-is-the-united-states-role-in-the-new-global-order

Something we discuss amongst ourselves, Peter, is the shifting changing global order. What happens to small countries around the world, like New Zealand, as the U.S. strategic relationship with this post-old war global order starts to change and the global environment starts to change. I don't think New Zealand is the country to look to. I think Japan is the country to look to because Japan so far is the only country that's figured it out. A few governments ago, the Japanese realized that the Americans were losing interest in everything. And Japan, like a lot of countries, is dependent on international trade towards economic health, especially for its energy imports. And they realize that unless they can get into the American inner circle, give the Americans something that they want,

that there wasn't much of the future. And for smaller countries that are less capable than Japan, this is triply true. So what Japan did is it sought out a deal with the United States on America's terms. During the Cold War, when we needed everybody to be on our side to face down the Soviets, it was the United States that provided the economic and strategic concessions in order to build the alliance. That's not the world we're in anymore. Now, if you have a more disassociated America, you have to bring the case to them. You have to offer them something in order to keep them involved.

And in Japan, it was trade concessions and a security partnership. For smaller countries, you're going to have to be a lot more aggressive and a lot more giving in order to keep the Americans interested. Now, New Zealand, being off the edge of the earth, basically, doesn't face the security concerns that a lot of other people do. For them, their interest is going to primarily be economic because they produce a lot of agricultural products that the rest of the world really needs. That is an easier carry before you even consider the cultural connections between America and New Zealand. But for most of the rest of the world, that's a much taller order. the things that you have to offer the United States and in order to keep them engaged.

Now, there's not a lot of things that the U.S. is really interested in, and you're going to have to get really creative and dig. So with the U.S. re-evaluating its position globally and with the emergence of the largest land conflict in Europe since World War II with the Ukraine-Russia war underplace. We've seen some regional powers shipped how they behave with. in broader Europe. I'm thinking about France, Sweden, Turkey. What do we see between these three regional leaders, powers when it comes to their political, economic, military might, how they interact with each other? And what does that mean for the future of the EU, Europe, NATO overall? You've just put your finger on the three countries that are going to matter not just now in 10 years from now and 20 years from now and 30 years from now but for the remainder of this century.

For demographic reasons, we're going to lose at some point, Spain, Germany, Italy, and eventually Poland. But these countries have very healthy demographies and a geography that allows them a degree of freedom to act outside of the confines of just Europe. How they get along or don't is going to determine what is possible for NATO, for the EU, and for post-unified Europe. At the moment, the French are increasingly taking their talking points from the Swedish government. The Swedes have always been very big on energy security and manufacturing self-sufficiency and partnership with the countries immediately around them in opposition to Russia. And now that they're no longer neutral, the French are sounding a lot like the Swedes.

So the room for partnership there is very, very, very robust so long as ego doesn't get into the way. And I wouldn't even mention that if it wasn't for the fact that France was one of the two powers we're talking about here. It's going to be very interesting from my point of view to see how the two powers coordinate or step on each other's toes in Ukraine because that is going to set a really strong pattern for their bilateral relationship moving forward. At the moment, it looks pretty positive. They're not talking past each other at the moment. Turkey, of course, is from a radically different culture. Turkey is a very different economic, structure, even if it's still very healthy from my point of view. And they've got a foot in the

Middle East as well, which complicates things. But again, we're seeing a degree of cooperation that didn't exist 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. So I'm pretty hopeful there. But I don't think that's going to last for the long term. Turkey is too big of a power, too dominating in its own neighborhood. And if Russia loses the Ukraine war, Turkey is one of the powers that has the opportunity to do a massive geopolitical expansion, and that is something that is undoubtedly going to make other powers in the neighborhood a little uneasy, even if the Turks aren't taking any hostile actions to them. So we've got here a Swedish, German, French axis with the Germans being the junior partner and the fading worker, and Turkey trying to figure out just how much it can

grow. And this, to me, is starting to sound a lot. like the 1500s. You've written about and you speak quite a bit about the changing global order and the U.S. sort of stepping back from its near century of

keeping the world safe, managing global shipping, maintaining this global order. When we look at the Red Sea and U.S. Navy action against the U.S. is there a risk of the U.S. being pulled back in the Middle East from its current actions? And is the U.S.

attempt to help secure global shipping for the Red Sea, of which the U.S. is not a major participant, a sign of the U.S. stepping back into the previous role, it's trying to lead, or is this just sort of a, no, last stop out of the door? It feels a lot like a placeholder to me. It's become a testing ground in an unfortunate manner for American missile introduction. We're discovering that as easy it is to shoot down, an individual Shaheed drone or a missile, preventing a hostile group from launching any number

of weapon systems and any number of times is very difficult. We're talking about patrolling an area roughly the size of half of Texas, and it's stretching American naval interdiction capacities to the breaking point because the Navy wasn't designed for this. It was designed to interdict things shot at the Navy, not going off or through a wide swath of territory. And if a real country, not a Yemen, but a real country were to do this on a broader scale, it's pretty clear to U.S. naval commanders now that there's not a lot we can do about it.

So, you know, if someone else joined in, we'd have a real problem in this belief that the United States is still patrolling the global oceans, even if we wanted to. It would be pretty clear that we couldn't against some of the technologies that have evolved over the last 75 years. In terms of the idea the United States getting sucked back into the Middle East, I really don't think that. on deck. In fact, if anything, I think the Gaza conflict has underlined to the United States, how little we want to do with the region. And we're having a fun little conversation with the Israelis that feels a lot like the conversations that we were having with the French and the Germans a few years ago. We tried to convince them back in the 2010s that, you know, the Russians are going to

keep pushing. Look, they just invaded Georgia. They just invaded the Donbos in Ukraine. They just took the Crimea. Of course, they're going to do more. They're going to push and push and push. push and push until they can't. And the Germans and the French were like, no, it's a brave new world. In fact, Germany is going to put into place a defense minister whose job is to wind down the entirety of the German military because we don't need it anymore because we've entered a new era of peace. And then the Ukraine war happened. And all of a sudden, the French and the Germans and a lot of other allies of Europe are seeing a very different tune. In the case of the Middle East, we have been saying publicly to everyone who will listen.

At home and abroad, we went out of the Middle East already. And the Israelis have assumed what we meant is we want to double down on the alliance with Israel and turn against the Middle East. No, no, no. We want out. And so the Gaza war happens. And while we feel badly for what happened, it's horrible. What the Israelis have done in the months since we also don't feel all that hot for. And the idea that the United States is going to suck into another long-range conflict in the Middle East so that Gaza can go exactly the way that the Israeli government wants it to.

That's a dumb play. So what Gaza has done is kind of underlined the United States, just how distasteful we find the whole thing. And the discussions were seen recently between the Israeli government, the American government on arms transfers is really bringing home to, Israel, that they are not the golden child. They are not the special exception that is going to keep the United States involved reaching. And that is forcing some soul searching. Finally, Europe took a Russian invasion to change minds.

Here, it's taken a one-day-old arms in America. But there's a dawning revelation, one country at a time, one day at a country at a time, that the United States is not the same place it was 20 years ago. And that eventually is going to seep through many layers of incomprehension in many places. If you're an American strategist looking at this, you know, you've got to, it's kind of a little bit like the Nixon strategy of being unpredictable. But it's not that there's a master plan backing it all up. It's just the United States is looking to get out and become a free agent again. It's a different word.