The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

by Peter Zeihan

Cloudy, short-summer Germany is hardly known for its rich agricultural system, but in the general melee that was pre-1945 Europe, the Germans had no choice but to wring out as much crappy food from their crappy land as was required for the survival of the state.

can't say it's not true

The world’s demographic structure passed the point of no return twenty to forty years ago. The 2020s are the decade when it all breaks apart.

What you and your parents (and in some cases, grandparents) assumed as the normal, good, and right way of living—that is, the past seven decades or so—is a historic anomaly for the human condition both in strategic and demographic terms. The period of 1980–2015 in particular has simply been a unique, isolated, blessed moment in time. A moment that has ended. A moment that will certainly not come again in our lifetimes. And that isn’t even the bad news.

The Europeans, in the most peaceful and wealthy period in their history, have proven incapable of coming together for a common cheese policy, a common banking policy, a common foreign policy, or a common refugee policy—much less a common strategic policy. Without globalization, nearly three generations of achievement will boil away. Perhaps the European response to the Ukraine War will prove me wrong. I hope so.