Navy Good, Future Unraveling

Review by Bill Doughty––

Geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan expresses high regard for the United States Navy as a global force for good. He says the U.S. is “primarily a naval power,” and it is America’s Navy that has protected sea lanes and global commons, allowing what could be the greatest period of peace and prosperity in the history of the world.

That peace was guaranteed after the Second World War and the defeat of Japanese and German imperialism and fascism, when the Americans “offered their wartime allies a deal.”

“The Americans would use their navy –– the only navy of size to survive the war –– to patrol the global ocean and protect the commerce of all. The Americans would open their market –– the only market of size to survive the war –– to allied experts so that all could export their way back to wealth. The Americans would extend a strategic blanket over all, so that no friend of America need ever fear invasion again.”

But in Zeihan’s now-dystopian view of the future, that era of peace and prosperity is over.

In “The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization” (HarperCollins, 2022) Zeihan presents extensive data, charts, and demographic analysis showing evidence of de-globalization, less world trade, and aging populations in many countries:

• This is the “best it will ever be in our lifetime.”
• “The world –– our world –– is breaking apart.”
• China is aging “into demographic obsolescence.”
• “We are entering a period of extreme transformation, with our strategic, political, economic, technological, demographic, and critical norms all in flux at the same time.”
• “Everything is going to change” and “the process will be the definition of traumatic.”
• “Living through history is messy.”

“De-globalization,” Zeihan writes, “doesn’t simply mean a darker, poorer world; it means something far worse. An unraveling.”

If he’s right, the United States will be able to weather the storm that will overcome other nations and territories, especially in Asia and Europe. Unlike those countries, America has the resources, relatively younger population, protective geography (including rivers and protected deep-water ports), and friendly next-door neighbors.

Justin Taschek, the Senior Maritime Projects Administrator for the Port of Oakland, California, gives a tour of the port to Chief of Navy Air Training Rear Adm. Daniel Dwyer, Feb. 12, 2020. Dwyer visited Oakland as part of a Navy Executive Engagement Visit designed to help educate the American public about the capability, importance and value of today's Navy to national security, global communication and trade. Oakland is a deep-water port. (MC1 Aaron Chase)

In “The End of the World…” Zeihan predicts countries are “likely to brawl over the shattered remnants of a collapsed economic system.” Just months after he wrote those lines and after the final manuscript of his book went to the publisher, Putin’s Russia launched a full invasion of  Ukraine. Zeihan and HarperCollins added a one-page note at the end of a chapter about the invasion. Perhaps his predictions –– although imperfect –– are already coming true.

He examines transportation, finance and currencies, energy, industrial materials, manufacturing, and agriculture, showing how each pillar of civilization has evolved over time and predicting the future based on current trends.

For example, he shows how Admiral (Commodore) Matthew C. Perry ignited the start of a global capital financial system when he opened Japan to trade, redefining the role of debt and unleashing “the Asian Financial Model.” In a section called “A Credit Compendium,” Zeihan gives diverse examples of “extravagances and exaggerations” and “excesses and eruptions” comparing Greece, Germany, UK, Hungary, Australia, Colombia, Indonesia, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India, Turkey, Russia, and China.

In the final, and one of the longest sections in the book, he examines agriculture and “the geopolitics of vulnerability,” including the challenges of feeding the world amid climate change, water shortages, and his prediction of reduced global trade. The thing that keeps him up at night the most, he says, is the threat of coming famine in the world.

Service members hold the national flags of participating nations during the opening ceremony for Exercise Saber Strike at the Pabrade Training Area, Lithuania, June 8, 2015. The exercise provides an opportunity for a multilateral force to conduct operations side by side. (USMC Sgt. Paul Peterson)

As the world changes and globalization ends, what is the role of the military, especially the Navy, with its power projection capabilities?

“Expect the Navy and Marines both to be assigned a set of secondary tasks that include aggressive sanctions enforcement. Perhaps the most jarring issue all countries and companies must adapt to is the Americans not simply giving up their role as the global guarantor of order, but transforming into active agents of disorder.”

Zeihen predicts more future disorder on the seas, including the return of piracy and militarized merchant marines.

Will the nations of the world be forced to become inward looking turtles? Head-in-the-sand ostriches? Will self-interest, self-aggrandizement, greed and authoritarianism win the day? Whether he is completely correct or not, Zeihan deserves to be read and heard in what could be an unraveling world. Perhaps the U.S. Navy, “forged by the sea,” will be even more relevant and necessary as a global force for good.

Above: Quartermaster 2nd Class Brandon Sassone, from Plainview, N.Y., plots ship position in the pilot house aboard the San Antonio-class amphibious transport dock ship USS Anchorage (LPD 23) during a scheduled deployment of the Essex Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU), Sept. 2, 2018. They were deployed to the 5th Fleet area of operations in support of naval operations to ensure maritime stability and security in the Central Region, connecting the Mediterranean and the Pacific through the western Indian Ocean and three strategic choke points. (MC3 Ryan M. Breeden)

Top photo: The Arleigh-Burke class guided-missile destroyer USS Michael Murphy (DDG 112) participated in Australia’s Kakadu exercise in August 2018 in Darwin to enhance maritime security skills with participating nations, which highlighted information sharing and multilateral coordination. (MC3 Morgan K. Nall)