Despite covering a multitude of nations, Peter Zeihan’s Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World is a US-centric book. The book consists of chapters on each the major nations of the world, including China, the US, the UK, Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, and Argentina. A report card is issued for each of the nations, with scores on how they stack up in the world, economically, politically, and militarily. The one central theme cutting through the entire book however, is the so-called “Order” that has been established by the US post-WWII.

Geography matters a great deal. This was true in the ancient times, where mountains made certain cities easier to defend against invaders, and access to fertile rivers gave huge agricultural advantages to regions. It is even more true in the modern era, where global trade is the key to a nation’s success, and trade routes are more or less geographically determined. One result of the globalization of the economy in the 20th century is that the vast majority of trade, both in terms of goods and energy (i.e. oil) takes place over the ocean.

With the rise of the Soviets after WWII as a global power diametrically opposed to the Americans, the US tried its hardest to gather allies against them. Starting with Bretton Woods and the Marshall Plan, America sought to build a global alliance network based on a massive shared economic system. With global trade mostly taking place over the ocean, the Americans, with their massive dominating navy, guaranteed, for free, the safety of sea trade routes for any nation willing to join them in this alliance network. The US essentially “bribed” nations around the world with the sweet nectar of capitalism to join them in the fight against the Soviets. This establishment is what Zeihan calls “The Order”, and it worked beautifully: America won the Cold War without any direct military conflict with the USSR.

Over the few decades since WWII, almost every country evaluated in the book have come to rely on this American Order. With the global trade routes guaranteed by the US, other nations didn’t have to invest in building large navies to defend themselves, and simply enjoyed the benefits for free. After the collapse of the USSR however, the goal that the US aimed for suddenly disappeared. The status of The Order became more ambiguous over the years since. Some of the countries that enjoyed great economic success thanks to The Order, such as China, also grew increasingly hostile. Over the last three decades, the US has been questioning whether it is still worth it to maintain this Order, at its own expense for the benefit of others, in a world without a clear antagonist.

Zeihan’s take is that the current US administration got the problem diagnosis right, that the costs of maintaining the Order needs to be looked at, but has the wrong solution. There is a huge risk in the US simply closing its doors and reducing its global influence with isolationist policies. Doing so not only puts much of the world in a bit of a disarray - since many countries have come to depend on the American Order, but also opens the door for other emerging threats - Russia and China in particular - to take over in the next few decades. This would be catastrophic for the long term strategic interest of the US, and of the western democratic societies in general. Instead, the author believes that the US must maintain The Order, use it as leverage to strengthen our alliances, build new ones wherever we can to reinforce democratic values, and to prepare for the potential conflict with rising authoritarian regimes.

Overall the book is a good overview of the modern history of the great nations of world today, and provides a look at how things can transpire in the near future. It is no doubt a very opinionated take - the author is very pro-America - but I don’t feel that the conclusions are obviously wrong (I generally agree with Zeihan). Even though it’s been over 30 years, we are still in the process of figuring out what a post-USSR world order looks like. As China and Russia begin to emerge as the counter-forces to America, what the US does now will shape the global geopolitical landscape for decades to come.