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

by Peter Zeihan

The third incidental factor depressing birth rates can be laid at the feet of the Americans’ grand plan for their post–World War II international Order. The urbanization trend was already going full steam before the world wars blasted the old system apart, but with the onset of the free trade Order, the world’s most advanced economies—most notably Western Europe and Japan—were no longer burdened with a world of constant, high-velocity war. Countries could focus on what they did best (or at least, what they wanted to do best), and the security placidity of the Order enabled them to import food from half a world away. The very nature of the Bretton Woods globalization process depressed birth rates by squeezing the agricultural sector across the industrialized world. In the pre–free trade world, importing food en masse was rarely a viable, large-scale option. That drove government calculations both economic and strategic.