The End of Global Order: A Conversation with Peter Zeihan and Ian Bremmer (Episode #288)

Key Takeaway

Run a personal or business dependency audit today. List the essentials you rely on—energy, food, key materials, suppliers, income sources, and investments—and identify which depend on long, fragile international supply chains. Then choose one practical redundancy: a second supplier, modest emergency inventory, lower concentration in a vulnerable exposure, or a plan for higher energy costs. The discussion’s core lesson is not to predict every shock, but to reduce reliance on systems whose stability can no longer be assumed.

Episode Overview

Sam Harris joins geopolitical strategist Peter Zeihan and Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer to examine Zeihan’s case that the postwar global order is weakening under deglobalization and demographic aging. They agree that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created major economic and strategic disruptions, while disagreeing over the speed, severity, and reversibility of the transition—especially for Germany, China, and global trade.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The End of Global Order: A Conversation with Peter Zeihan and Ian Bremmer (Episode #288) from Making Sense with Sam Harris. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Welcome to the Making Sense podcast. This is Sam Harris. I want to point out that if you are hearing this, you are not currently subscribed to our subscriber feed and will only listen to the first part of this conversation. To access full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, you need to subscribe to sam harris.org. There you will find our private RSS feed, which you can add to your favorite podcaster along with other subscriber-only content . We do not place advertisements on the podcast, so this is made possible solely through the support of our subscribers.

So, if you like what we do here, please consider becoming one of them. Okay, there's still a lot going on in the world . There's a lot of madness going on, and today's podcast will take a good portion of that madness and hopefully bring some order to it . Just a few household items. Uh, some interesting things are happening on Waking Up . To coincide with the start of summer, we launched an initiative called "100 Days of Charity." Every day, we will randomly select one person in the app to help us give away $10,000 to any of 10 high- impact charities.

This campaign is about 7 days old and will continue throughout the summer. So we're giving away a million dollars over 100 days. And Waking Up subscribers will help us with this. We donate to a wide range of causes: from the Malaria Consortium to the Clean Air Task Force, the International Rescue Committee, the Alzheimer's Foundation, the Animal Welfare Foundation, the Climate Change Foundation. All of these organizations, about which we received useful advice. And if you're subscribed to Waking Up, you'll see more information in the app. In any case, I'm very happy about it.

Also in Waking Up, we are launching a new content category called “life” to add to the theory and practice sections in the app. We've always described Waking Up as more than just another meditation app. And this is partly justified by how we approach the topic of meditation itself. It is not simply a means of calming down or increasing productivity, but rather a practice that can open the door to truly vital insights about a new way of being in the world. But living a fulfilling life is certainly about more than exploring the nature of one 's own mind directly through meditation.

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And finally, here on the podcast, we've released another podcast feed called "The Best of Making Sense," where we're reposting some of the older episodes that are truly evergreen. Instead of posting them in the Making Sense feed itself, we created a separate podcast, and you can find information about it by searching for " best of making sense." If you subscribe to a podcast, you need to get a private RSS link from my website, which you can now do quite easily on a mobile device. It's actually one touch.

And if you're not subscribed, you'll get half the episodes again. But it seemed like a way to make the archive more accessible to new listeners, because there are probably dozens, even scores, of episodes that new listeners have missed, and they're unlikely to go back and find them that are actually as good as the day I recorded them. In fact, as a proof of concept, I just listened to a conversation with Bartman about Christianity and forgot how much I enjoyed it, as it can be found as a recent addition in the " best of making sense." Okay, today we're talking about the end of the world as we know it.

This is really not a big exaggeration , because today I'm talking to Peter Zion and Ian Bremer. Um, we're focusing on Peter's new book called The End of the World is Just the Beginning, which is a rather depressing look at the consequences of deglobalization and demographic collapse. As I said at the beginning, I invited Ian to help co-host this episode, mainly because a lot of what Peter wrote about is just not in my wheelhouse. So I invited Ian to come ride with me, which he thankfully did.

Um, and I think it was a great conversation. We discussed a lot of what's in Peter's book, why deglobalization is happening, why he's so confident it will continue. Um, how this has different consequences for countries like China compared to countries like America. Um, and as you'll hear, in his opinion, there aren't that many countries like America . And there is a long discussion about the consequences of demography and demographic collapse, and what the relationship is between labor and consumption, investment and urbanization. What does a world with a shrinking population look like?

As you will hear, it is a heartening and rather disturbing picture of guaranteed disorder and scarcity. And, uh, there's also some discussion of the significance of the war in Ukraine and other recent events there. In any case, I find it fascinating. I hope you like it. Peter Zion is a geopolitical strategist and founder of the consulting firm Zion on Geopolitics. His clients include energy corporations, financial institutions, business associations, agricultural interests, universities, and the U.S. military. He is the author of The Accidental Superpower , The Absent Superpower, Nations Divided, and, most recently, The End of the World—This Is Only the Beginning.

Ian Bremer is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, a leading global research and consulting firm , and GZero Media, a company dedicated to providing intelligent and engaging coverage of international affairs. He currently teaches at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs. He has published 10 books, including the New York Times bestseller Us vs. Them: The Failure of Globalism. And his latest book is "The Power of Crisis: How Three Threats and Our Response Will Change the World." Ian is also a foreign affairs columnist and editor-in-chief of Time magazine.

Sorry for some of the audio, especially from Peter. Peter is currently on a book tour and we were unable to send him the materials we usually send to guests. So it's more like a phone call on his part, but his words are quite clear. And I present to you Peter Zion and Ian Bremer. I'm here with Peter Zion and Ian Bremer. Peter, Ian, thank you for joining me. It's great to be here. Nice to be with you guys. Peter, the reason for this conversation is because of your rather impressive new book, called "The End of the World is Only the Beginning," which I read last week, and, um, I knew I wanted to talk to you.

I also knew that I was, um, not fully qualified to, um, understand every aspect of your thesis. I mean, you cover so many topics that are really outside my purview. things like geography, manufacturing, agriculture, industrial materials, etc. So I invited Ian to be the co- pilot of the plane with me here and to be a bulwark against, um, some of my ignorance on, um, these issues, and Ian is a frequent guest on the podcast. So, um, great to chat with you both. I think before I just take a look, I'd like you to expand on your thesis that you'll present in the book at a fairly high level at the beginning.

I think I'll just start by reminding you that one of the most provocative and unambiguous things you say in the book, among many provocative and unambiguous things, is that the world of the last few decades is, quote, the best world it will ever be in our lifetime. And so, essentially, your statement, which runs through the entire book, is that the world as we knew it ended more or less in 2019, and there's no going back. And on a global scale, more or less everything that matters will get worse, and will be worse for the rest of our lives.

As we will hear, you argue that there will be islands of comparative advantage, and that America will achieve much better results than, for example, China; but, in essence, a huge burden really falls on you. So I'd like you to just step in and give us a first try at this argument. Of course. So, uh, let's start from the beginning. Before World War II, world trade as we imagine it today did not exist . There was no trade by producers, much less supply chains. Energy and agriculture tended to stay inside.

If you needed something, you went and took it, colonized it, expanded into an empire, and these empires clashed. These clashes brought us the devastation of world wars and the end of the imperial era. After the end of this conflict, the Americans proposed a new way of operating. Instead of everyone having their own isolated, protected, militarized convoy systems, the US would use its navy, which was the only one of its size to survive the war, and protect everyone's trade everywhere, at any time, no matter who you wanted to do business with, where you wanted to go, where you wanted to sell to.

In exchange, you would serve as cannon fodder in the Cold War. We bribed our allies. And it worked. But the Cold War ended 30 years ago, and we have been retreating ever since. And in every presidential election, we elected a more populist candidate. And I wouldn't exclude Biden from that statement. We are finished. And at the time the war in Ukraine began, we actually had fewer troops deployed abroad than at any time since Reconstruction. So the American commitment to that kind of structure, which has always been a security structure for us, is now gone.

Secondly, this structure has changed the way we live. In the pre-war, pre-urbanized, pre-industrial system, everyone lived on the farm, and children were free labor. So there were a lot of them. But when globalization happened, urbanization happened, and everyone took these industrial, service, and manufacturing jobs in the cities. And when you move into an apartment, children stop being free labor. They are just a very expensive headache. Adults are not stupid, that's why we have fewer of them. Fast forward 75 years, and it's not that we're running out of children.

This happened 40 years ago. The thing is , we are running out of adults , and we have no economic theory of what a world looks like where there are more retirees than children and adults. But we will now live in this without any restrictions. It's still nice because as you get older, if you're part of a global system, if you have a lot of people in their 40s and 50s, you know, people who have literally spent their entire lives pursuing their careers, well, they're very productive, but they have to export this product to make it work.

And in a globalized system, you can export from more developed economies to younger ones. But this only works until mass retirement. And at this point, you not only lack consumption, you lack production and investment. And this is the position that the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Italians, Belgians, Germans and others are approaching in the first half of this decade. And there is no system that we know of, even theoretically, where this works. So we are now at the end of the period of the greatest economic growth in human history.

And now we need to find out what happens next. So, there are two main elements here. There are claims about de-legitimization, and then there are claims about demographics. I don't know which one we should consider first. Each of them must have several assumptions built into it. Interesting, maybe let's take de-lobalization first. This seems like a very simple statement. Why is this happening? What if we, I mean, just imagine a case where you claim that America decided a long time ago to stop being the world's cop and step back, and I wonder what Ian thinks about that.

But let's put it this way, it's true, and it was true, and it's true now. That's something that can change, right? And that would overturn at least one key part of that thesis. What if everyone who mattered read your book next week and thought, “Oh, we have to stop this slide to the edge. We must ensure a globalized supply chain and make the world safe for trade.” Again , why couldn't this have happened? Well, let's start with why it can't happen, and then we can move on to why it won't happen.

First, it cannot. If you want to patrol the world's oceans, you need to make sure there is one overarching naval power that has the capabilities to do so, and no claimants to the throne who could potentially disrupt it. The US Navy is powerful, but it is designed to destroy countries, not protect trade. We have 11 supercarriers. Three more are on the way. Fantastic tools for projecting military power. But if you want to patrol the world's oceans, you need destroyers. I would say you probably need about 800 of them.

We have 70 of them, and half of them are designed to protect aircraft carriers. Also, this is not the 1960s anymore . The Soviet Union was never strong in naval matters, but now there is a wider range of middle powers, including China, that would like to have their own sphere of influence in terms of naval power. And that's just not what works in terms of unlimited trading activity. So even if the United States wanted to do it, we no longer have the ability to do so.

And there is no country or coalition of countries that has the naval power necessary to build some kind of global PAX system . We just walked past it, to be blunt , why wouldn't it happen. The United States is moving forward politically. And globalization worked partly because for Americans it was a security pact, not an economic one. Everyone else received economic benefits. We were given the opportunity to write a security policy for everyone. That was the deal. You do this for 70 years and the economy changes in your home country.

And so we've seen a gradual shift of production, for example, from the shores of America to the wider world. We have seen how countries that would normally not be able to build institutional or physical infrastructure or industrial enterprises have been able to do so thanks to global finance. And we've seen other players enter the market in terms of energy and agriculture that couldn't have done so in the imperial era except as colonies. Now they are all independent countries. And there is some outrage in the United States.

This is part of the rise of Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Part of the return of populism to the core of our political debate. The idea that the United States got a bad deal, even though we made the deal, even though we initiated it, and the idea that the United States was going to build a navy so it could lay waste to the situation and die so the Chinese could import raw materials and export manufactured goods, has always been questionable. And here we are at the end of the system.

So let me intervene. Yes. And let me say, first of all, what I think is appropriate is that we, well, actually, we should say that Peter and I agree on a lot more than we disagree on . We have known each other for a long time. Uh, I read the book a few months ago. Uh, I really liked her. Uh, so , uh, what we understand is this : I think it's going to be more about nuance and a deep conversation, uh, that clarifies rather than vehemently disagreeing with each other about anything.

I will say that to the extent that we disagree, we probably disagree more on de-localization and how far it goes than we do on demographics. So I would spend more time on this. I think demographics is one of the few areas where we can make very strong predictions with confidence about where we're going over the next 30 to 50 years, because most of it has already happened. It just didn't happen. This has not happened yet. As you know, as Peter said, these people are born, but we have n't seen what happens when they get older, and we 'll...

That's right. We know exactly how many 50- year-olds we will have in 20 years, because they are all 30 now. We know. Now, I don't think we necessarily agree on how many we need and what the implications of that are. And one issue where we'll have an interesting disagreement later is whether China will necessarily lose because of demographic problems. I'm not at all convinced by this, and I think it would be an interesting conversation. But that's not where we are yet. Where we are now is a big issue of de-lobalization.

I think one thing that's really interesting is the tension in this book, the tension with Peter's argument, saying, "We've just had the most amazing and extraordinary 50 years the world has ever had, and now it's over ." But at the same time, he said, part of the reason Americans aren't going to do it and don't want to do it is because so many Americans feel that globalization, this wonderful period, has been such a rough ride for them . And these things, I mean, I'm not trying to be too nice, but these things intersect, but they don't intersect perfectly.

So we need to recognize that globalization has actually been a huge benefit to a certain number of Americans, a huge economic benefit to a certain number of people, as well as to banks and multinational corporations, which mostly had shareholders in advanced industrial democracies. But the middle class and working class in those same countries have been largely disempowered, so globalization hasn't been such an amazing time for these people over the past 50 years. And Thomas Petty wrote about it; Many people have written about this, and that's why there's all this populism and anti-establishment sentiment in the US.

So there is, in part, an argument that can be made. The second argument that can be made is that delization is not a switch. Over the last 50 years, we've had an almost unlimited period of globalization, and I've been a tremendous enthusiast of it , and to be honest , Peter has been too, um, in the sense that we know we've created a global middle class, and we know there's been an unprecedented amount of human development and wealth. And Factfulness, and you can read this wonderful book by Hans Rosling, who just died a few years ago, and you can see all these numbers , which are wonderful, but we are not in the same period of deglobalization right now.

I would argue that there are three distinct types of deglobalization happening now. They are different and limited. The first is Russia, and Russia is de-globalizing and separating itself from the developed world because they invaded Ukraine. If they hadn't done this, this wouldn't have happened, as we've seen with the example of the Europeans and their energy policies over the last 10-20 years. The second deglobalization is occurring between the United States and China, but it is relatively limited to areas considered critical to national security . They are defined differently in the United States and China.

And many other countries in the world, including Europeans and Asians, want none of this. So even the Japanese, who are deeply concerned about national security tensions with China, and we saw that with Abe, and of course we're now seeing that with Kashida, want to ensure that they can continue to do more and more business with the Chinese. The Chinese feel the same way . So there is a constraint here, just as you feel this constraint from much of the private sector in the United States. And finally, there is this "every nation for itself," America first, India first, Malaysia first, which is this knee-jerk reactionary populism about the global aspects of globalization that don't work for a portion of your population.

And it's absolutely everywhere, but it doesn't have much power. And as a result, vested interests with big money do their best to show only words, but do not actually advance the policy that far and that fast. So I guess what I'm saying is that I think the broad dynamic that Peter identifies is about this tipping point from unfettered globalization to something that seems much more complex. I agree with that, but I would...I'm much less critical of globalization than delocalization. I think it's more nuanced. Hmm, I think the transition will take longer, and it will also have different consequences in different parts of the world.

Finally, I would like to point out that I am less...I do not believe that we are in a cold war with the Chinese. I'm not saying Peter thinks so. He doesn't say that in the book. I also don't believe we're heading there. Just like between the Americans and the Soviet parties , we had this mutually assured destruction that kept us from going into a hot war. I think the incredible level of integration between the US and Chinese economies, let alone the Chinese economy and every other economy, the American economy and every other economy, actually creates very strong defensive barriers that really limit our ability to engage in a US -China cold war.

And ultimately, it makes me more optimistic. The fact that the Americans and the Chinese have very different political and economic systems that are incompatible, and they have military strategies on some issues that clearly have no amount of overlap with what their shared economic interests ultimately are, and their future shared interests on climate and even the spread of dangerous technologies, ultimately, makes me less pessimistic about the next 10-20 years geopolitically than Peter is from a global perspective, although not as much for the US in his book.

Right. Well, before I turn it back to you, Peter, more or less everything you just said about China and the lack of a Cold War risk is refuted by Peter's thesis, if he's right, because China will more or less cease to exist as we know it, pretty quickly. But we'll get to the specific statements about China in a moment. Peter, what is your response to Ian? I would say when Ian and I first met it was nine years ago, eight years ago. Yes. What he just laid out was one of my scenarios that, uh, this could happen quickly.

This can happen over a long period of time. There may be a transition period. Uh, the events of the last eight years, however, have changed my mind about that. I have seen significant shortsightedness in the foreign policy of the United States and Europe, but most of all in China. I have seen the collapse of China's institutional capacity to process information , leading to increasingly worse problems. And now we have slightly better demographic data from China, which is truly terrifying. Er, actually they've only been around since the book was published a month ago.

And now we see that China's population is less than half of what it is today, as early as 2050. And in such an environment, China is simply uncompetitive in anything. And this is provided that there are no interruptions in the flow of goods to China. So I lost count of the number of clients who came to me in a panic and wondered when everything would go back to 2019, whether it was because of Trump or because of China. And I really don't have much good news for them anymore.

And just in the last 48 hours, I've been very concerned about Germany's role. Now that Nord Stream is down, we don't know if it will start up again. The last of the four pillars supporting German industrialization, manufacturing, is in the process of collapse. We have become so vulnerable in the last 8 years and everything has become so bare and just the foundation that allows globalization to function. The idea that materials, energy, food, and industrial products , particularly intermediate products, could simply flow effortlessly, has all come to a standstill .

And when I look at a country with terminal demographics that doesn't control its energy or machine resources, it doesn't take much effort for me to disprove that. And I think that in the next three months we will see in real time how bad this can get for Germany very quickly. And if Germany and China find themselves under some economic pressure at about the same time, but for different reasons, I do n't see how we're going to get out of it . I would like to be wrong.

I wish there was a transition period where we could plan , but things have gone so far without any mitigation that, in my opinion, we have long passed the point of no return. OK. I'm definitely more optimistic about this. And listen, I agree that there are a lot of corporations that are a little bit unaware and a little bit unattached to things that have happened geopolitically in the world that they did n't think about, didn't expect. I also think that you, Peter, will be approached by even more people who say, “I’m panicking.

We will not return to 2019 precisely because you yourself are moving towards more terrible scenarios." So there will be some self-selection here regarding the people you are asked about, right? But let's talk about Nord Stream, because in my opinion, from the perspective of the German government and from talking to many people who are involved in this issue, and from our energy practice, the worst-case scenario is that if the Russians completely shut down Nord Stream, then after these 10 days, that is, July 21, there will be nothing left , then the Germans will be in a mild but not serious recession.

You're probably talking about a 2-3% reduction in GDP over one year compared to what they expect now. There will be significant consumer stress, requiring the Germans to pass on significant subsidies to corporations and/or benefits to the population, which violates their current fiscal rule. They have plans for how they will do it. Peter, I am amazed at how quickly the Germans are generally willing to move forward on every issue to diversify their supplies away from Russian fossil fuels. Either they're going to... they have mobile LNG terminals that should be ready by winter, end of the year, beginning of next year, maximum...they're taking a lot of measures to improve efficiency.

You know, there is diversification from the United States, from Qatar, from other countries. It shocks me how quickly, depending on who you talk to, they think that by the end of next year or at most the end of the next, they won't need any more exposure to Russian fossil fuels. No one in Germany would have said this on February 24, after the Russian invasion. I'm not saying it's not a big problem, but the scale of the problem, even in the worst case scenario where the Russians shut everything down, I think is manageable.

Secondly, I don't think the Russians are going to turn everything off. I think it's interesting that up until now the Russians, when they, you know, attacked the Germans, attacked the polling stations and attacked others, it was percentages, and it was also like they do with a lot of things, with false arguments as to why they have to do it, because they miss, you know, they have technical problems. And of course, we know that they don't actually have any technical problems, but why do they need to lie about it, why do they need to hide the facts.

And of course, that's because they realize that they want to get back into the markets over time. And they still believe, I think, that they will have that opportunity. They still think that after they take over Donbas, Ukrainians, who have become much more pessimistic in recent weeks, will be stuck in something resembling a frozen conflict , while Germans, Italians, and others will treat Russia differently than they do now. And besides, the United States in 2024, with Trump running, may treat Russia very differently than it does now.

And so Putin sees that he still has opportunities in the long-term game that make him unwilling to throw out the energy baby along with the Ukrainian water. And so I'm just again , I'm not saying you're solving the problem wrong. I think you identify a lot of things that, for me, are related to the geopolitical recession, to the Gzero global order that none of us like. But I am less critical. I'm closer to your more...I wouldn't say it's an optimistic scenario, but it's certainly a much broader scenario of confusion than what you're painting, or is it just a longer time horizon?

It's a longer time horizon, but also the fact that we are responding to crises. My last book was about these crises, which are also the very kick in the ass that many institutions, government leaders at the national level and at the non-national level need to start changing and reforming their institutions in a way that makes them more sustainable for the 21st century. Right. So, Peter, I would like you to answer that, but I guess I'll add another part, which is that there have been clearly events recently that have put a lot of pressure on the world order.

You know, the Soviet Union and the war in Ukraine are probably two main examples. And, in your opinion, all this only accelerates what was supposed to happen. Anyway , again, we'll get to the demographic part in a moment, but regarding this unfortunate trend towards deglobalization, why do you think it's actually happening? Is it inseparable from demographics, or is it a separate variable? I think it's a separate variable, but demographics are quite capable of destroying everything on their own. Either of these problems, from my perspective, are fatal blows , and having them both around the same time period is just very bad luck.

I would like to go back to what Ian said about the Russians. I'm not sure if they will turn Nord Stream back on or not. I don't know. This is an internal Russian political move, on which it is entirely possible that they have not yet made a decision. I am much more convinced that even if Nord Stream is shelved for now , all the pipes running through Barus and Ukraine are likely short-lived. Um, I find it hard to imagine Ukraine thinking it will lose the war to allow them to continue working.

And I think that one way or another we will see Russian energy fall out of the market for a significant period of time. I agree with that. And by significant, I mean decades. The last time the Russians, for some reason, had to stop oil production was in 1992, because their exports, their production of raw materials, were normal, but their domestic market collapsed. So, industrial demand disappeared. And this meant that the wells were closing in the permafrost. And when that happened, the wells would get damaged, and you would experience frost damage and water expansion up and down the pipes, and at the wellheads themselves.

And in the end , you have to rebuild most of the system. Last time it took him 30 years. So Nord Stream is a matter of today, literally now. But there are a half-dozen other things that are partly connected behind the scenes and are quite capable of giving any German hope for a return to some old normality or a transition to a new normality in a timeframe that they cannot control. And in this environment, I am very concerned about what is happening to German manufacturing. And I'm even more concerned about what this means for Germany's position in the Western world, because it seems to me that the Russians are giving the Germans a simple choice.

We can keep the lights on for you, but that means you are leaving the coalition that supports Ukraine, which means the logistics that you have to support Ukraine are no longer working. Or you can do it without us, and good luck with that. I think there is no chance that the Germans would be willing to accept such a Russian deal. I think you're right, but it means it's hard for the Germans to keep everything in working order. I understand, and I've also seen how quickly some of them are switching from gas to oil in terms of their electricity needs.

And they...I'm not saying they don't have problems here. Double minus. They have huge problems here. But they are aware of them. They took this step. They realize that they have made themselves too vulnerable for too long. This was a strategic mistake, and Olaf Schulz's government, which is quite stable, and his coalition, which is quite stable, are wisely moving in this direction. So I also think that it was the Germans, opposing the French opposition , who made all the calls for Ukraine to receive candidate status for EU membership.

And part of the reason for this was that Europeans would, as a result, be committed to rebuilding the Ukrainian economy. And no, they won't join the EU for 10 or 15 years. But it also means that it gives them leverage to ensure that the Ukrainians don't actually shut down or blow up the pipelines. That they rely on Europe in the future for their own reconstruction, regardless of how much of Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea are actually controlled by the Russians. So after this Russian invasion of Ukraine, I see a very large number of stabilizing measures that were taken under very difficult conditions by the Europeans, the Germans, the Americans, and even the Ukrainians, which helps me feel that this transition period, if the Russians decide that they want to get into a very bad state, they will be fine.

And I would also just advise you to remember that Putin said that if Finland and Sweden join NATO, it will be hell. Diplomatic hell, economic hell, military aid. They went through this . They join. And the Russians are not done with it because they cannot withstand additional fighting with NATO, on top of the fact that 20-30% of their ground forces will be destroyed within the first five months of this war. Russia just doesn't...I don't believe that Russia has anything close to actual leverage that would imply the argument that they can actually stop the Germans.

I really hope you are right. I think many listening to this might be surprised why Russia and Germany, given that this conflict in Ukraine and its consequences for countries like Germany are important topics, but why does all of this have global implications? Why have we passed the point of no return on de-lobalization? And why is everything we've been focused on for the last few minutes related to this issue? Well, Ian, do you want to split this in half? I can take the, uh, economic side if you want to take the political and strategic side.

Of course. Good. So, economically, Russia is the source of the world's largest source of fertilizers and components necessary for fertilizer production, in particular 40% of potash. Russia is the world's second largest energy exporter in terms of oil. Number one for natural gas, which is used not only as a fuel, especially in Germany. It is used as an industrial resource. This is the basis of German heavy industry. This is probably one of the three main commodities that the Germans have in terms of ensuring the competitiveness of their industry on a global level.

And if something happens to it, we are talking about the loss of the third largest manufacturing base in the world. Energy that the Russians export in the form of oil. That's about five to eight percent, depending on who's doing the calculations, in terms of global energy supply, and the mechanics of supply and demand for oil are inelastic. So if you take away 5% of the world's energy, you can expect prices to roughly double . There is no way we can have globally accessible fossil fuels without the Russians as part of the system.

On the other hand, they are also major players in things like platinum, palladium, lithium, rhodium, nickel, and copper. You also can't have a green transition without Russians. So the Russians and the Germans, over and over again , generation after generation, have this strange dance where they are supposed to be each other's biggest economic partner, but they are also each other's biggest strategic rival . So they move together to try to avoid war. Conflict still happens. They are diverging. The result is economic shifts that the rest of the world knows as recessions or depressions.

And then they repeat it. They've been doing this for centuries. And in my opinion, this is probably the last time they do this, due to demographic constraints. So who wins (quote, without quotes) this time, that really matters. So this...I'm very happy with this economic explanation. And on the geopolitical side, the Russians, for reasons that , in my opinion, are very clear, still made an incredible strategic mistake when they decided to fully invade Ukraine. I mean, after 2008 in Georgia, after 2014 in Ukraine, they saw that they didn't have a strong and unified Western response against them.

After 2014, sanctions were quite limited. You had European heads of state coming to visit Putin when they hosted the World Cup a couple of years later. As if it wasn't such an important matter. And then, when Biden met with Putin a year ago in Switzerland, and that was Biden's agenda, he did n't even mention Ukraine. He just talks about the attack on the Colonial pipeline, the cyberattack, and said that Russia, if you guys don't work on this and stop this, you're going to pay a very high price.

And you know what? Putin is actually dragging these guys along. Not only is he telling them to stop cyberattacking America's critical infrastructure, but literally weeks before the invasion of Ukraine, he actually arrested a bunch of people who led the cyber group responsible for the Colonial attack, people no one talks about anymore. But the point is, from my point of view, Putin said to the Americans: " Okay, we will solve the issue that concerns you. The issue that concerns us, but does not concern you, is Ukraine." And in the meantime, he had, you know, Merkel , who was a strong, you know, kind of lawyer who interacted with Ukraine through the Minsk agreements.

Um, he has Macron saying that NATO is brain dead , and he talks about his own path to strategic autonomy. He caught the Americans off guard by this catastrophic withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, which the Americans carried out unilaterally, and which the allies are very unhappy with. He made Xi Jinping say that he was his best friend on the world stage. By the way, I think that if Putin had decided to just carry out the second phase of what he calls a special military operation , if he had just taken the "Donbos" and the land bridge, I think he could have gotten away with it completely.

That is, there would be no NATO expansion, Olaf Schulz's 2% GDP, and the disconnection of Europeans from everything. He could have done everything right, but he thought he had great power; that if he had taken over Ukraine and destroyed Zalinsky, he would have been able to recreate the Russian Empire, that he would be the new Peter the Great, that he would have achieved what Soljyan had spoken of and corrected the greatest humiliation of his life, which was the collapse of the Soviet Union, by uniting Belarus, Ukraine, and Russia under one Russian Empire; and it was too big a bridge.

The Ukrainians fought very skillfully, and the West united and responded extremely strongly. So, geopolitically, a situation has developed where not only have Russians separated themselves from the West, but even Asians, even Japan and South Korea, are very determined about this. And, frankly, the fact that the United States and its allies, even you remember, have frozen Russian assets outside their jurisdiction. No one thought it was even remotely likely. They were talking about maybe you would cut them off from Swift, and you saw the West doing a lot more to punish the Russians.

So, I mean, you take what Peter just said about the economic side and you add to that the fact that geopolitically and geostrategically the Russians are effectively cut off from the West forever, and I...as long as this regime exists, I don't see that changing, and of course they are also in a much worse strategic security position than they would have been if they hadn't invaded Ukraine back in February. So you want, that's why you're adding all this , you have this important component of deglobalization, where for the first time in history, the G20 economy has been effectively separated from the G7.

We've never done this before. OK. Well, I think it's time to consider the demographics variable, because, um, it even touches on some of the things you just said, Ian, because, as Peter said, part of what's on Putin's mind in his expansionist mood is the demographic collapse that Russia is suffering from and the implications of that for security purposes. So, um, first let me admit right off the bat that, as you know, after reading Peter's book, I was somewhat alarmed and disappointed by how little time I spent thinking about the meaning of demographics.

I mean, it's just not something I've been spending time on. And you hear Peter say that demography is, if not quite fate, then pretty close to fate. So, Peter, could you take a few minutes to talk about the meaning of demographics and talk about the relationship between population, labor, consumption, investment, and urbanization, how all this diabolical machinery works, and why things are going so badly in so many places right now? Well, it's just math, and math is a devilish thing. So I understand why most people don't understand this.

This also takes a lot of time. The changes being made to demographic factors today will not be fully apparent for a generation or two. The simple reason, the root cause of all this, is the mass urbanization and mass industrialization that occurred after World War II and then really intensified in the post-Cold War period. Imagine a demographic structure like a pyramid where all the babies are at the bottom, followed by toddlers, children, and then teenagers, and as you go up that pyramid, it gets narrower and narrower due to simple mortality.

Until about 1800, the whole world was a pyramid. Many children, very few pensioners. Everyone else huddled in the middle. However, with industrialization and urbanization, we got better healthcare systems , which meant lower infant mortality. But we also got urbanization, which means people had fewer children. So this lowest level, children, it narrowed in terms of fewer children, but then everyone lived two or three years longer. So the rest of the pyramid went straight up. You repeat this half a dozen times as urbanization technologies trickle down. We have hospitals, we have ambulances, we have electricity in rural areas , and both of these trends are continuing.

So you get narrower and narrower at the bottom, but the pyramid gets taller and taller. And so your birth rate is falling because you're now a city dweller, but your life expectancy is increasing. And China is probably the best example here. Since they began the process of industrialization in the late 1970s, birth rates have been steadily declining and life expectancy has been steadily increasing. And from about 1980 to about 2020, their population doubled, but every year there were fewer and fewer children. When the population rises in this age group, bulges occur .

And at first, everything is fine , because when you have a lot of people in their 20s and 30s, when the bulge occurs in that age group, those are the people who are doing the consuming. These are the people who perform most of the low- and medium-value-added work. And this is the story of the Chinese industrial boom that we know. But as you continue to age, this bulge moves from your 20s and 30s into your 40s and 50s. Meanwhile, this group below, the children, continues to narrow, narrower and narrower.

And as that narrow part starts to rise, you're not just running out of children, you're running out of people in their 20s and 30s . And that's exactly what China was like about 15 years ago. And in this environment, your frontline workers, people in their 40s and 50s , are extremely overworked. Their high-value advertising work compared to their economic skill set for the economy as a whole is showing great results, and they are starting to compete with everyone. And when you start getting closer to the early 60s, they also become capitalists because they have a lifetime of experience behind them and their children have left home.

So most of their big expenses disappeared. But what's happening now is that we're just moving on to the next step. This bottom, kids, has been narrowing for 60 years. This middle part, adults, has been narrowing for 40 years. And we're about to have a big explosion across the developed world, and right behind them in China, which is now moving into mass retirement. So what was good for consumption and then good for investment in production is now good for nothing because retirees are not adding value. They are liquidating their savings.

They go into very low-speed investments that are not actually used for industrial development at all. And you're left with an economy that we don't even know how to name. And we will see most of the rich countries of the world transition to this environment within the next few years. And China, if you believe the new data that seems to be leaking from their census just a few weeks ago, it looks like they're much further along than we ever thought. And they will also definitely age this decade if nothing else goes wrong.

And in such an environment, globalization becomes fundamentally impossible, because globalization is ultimately built on consumption. The European Union has worked for the last 25 years, even though it has terminal demographics, because they can sell to the wider world, but when too many countries cross that threshold, it is no longer possible. And that's why developing countries are underdeveloped and aging even faster than what we've seen in the rest of the world over the last 60 years. So, every link in the value chain and the trading system that we've become accustomed to in the context of globalization, most of them simply don't work anymore.

You can have some smaller regional systems where local geography and local demographics interact constructively, but a global system is not like that. Good. So let's compare the cases of China and America in terms of demographics and its consequences. Most people listening to this, who, like me, haven't thought about demographics, think that China is rightly praised for its economic growth , which has been low for the past few decades, and also for its authoritarian ability to simply do things the way we can't, right? So, you know, they can build a bridge in a matter of weeks that would take us 10 years to get approved , and another 10 years to build, or we can't build it.

And yet, this picture of an endless workforce and a free environment where ideas can simply be brought to life in a matter of minutes, all of that is disappearing as a result of this demographic collapse, and America has a very different fate in terms of demographics. Ian , feel free to chime in if you see the picture of China fundamentally differently, but then I just want to compare China and America. I mean, I will certainly tell you that I was very deeply concerned when I saw a recently published report, I think it was the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, that believed that China's population decline would start right now.

And they expect China's population to be less than 600 million by the end of the century. This is absolutely amazing. If true, it is significantly worse than the worst-case scenarios that the UN and others have anticipated for China's population. Even a year ago you were talking about a peak in 2027 and that the decline would be much more gradual. So yes, it's a huge problem. Don't get me wrong. Well, before we look at this snippet, because, again , I think it's counterintuitive to most people. Most people think they know that China had a huge overpopulation problem.

And that's why the one- child policy was introduced in the first place. So the goal should have been at least to stabilize the population, if not reduce it. So why is population decline a disaster? Explain what must be true if the population is declining so rapidly. Well, there's the question of who's working, and there's also the question of who's buying, and what's happening to China's economy? What is happening to his influence in the world? What happens to his ability to project force? One way to address this issue is to implement immigration policies that allow the vast numbers of people who can work in this workforce, young people and others, to come to China.

Historically, China has been very unhappy with such policies, hasn't it? I mean, this is not just a very bold step, but a very big and bold one. You need hundreds of millions. No, I know. But I mean, having said that, uh, you know, the Chinese exported a huge amount of surplus labor, you know, in past decades, to countries where, when they had nothing to do, people made sure they were given something. And in the past, the big problem that the Chinese faced was not the backlash that their loans were, you know, being converted into equity, but rather that they were taking jobs away from local Africans, Bahamians and others.

Well, nobody talks about it anymore. So, Peter, what would you say again to address this question, which bridge is supposed to reduce population, why is this bridge so terrible to cross, I think, even in the general case, but let's take the specific case of China. What? Let's say that's true, and the population will decline as you would expect based on just, you know, looking at the population pyramid. Except for the magical invention of an army of super-intelligent robots that can take care of everyone's needs when they start buying adult diapers.

I saw this movie. Uh, what do you expect from everyday existence in China? If the new data is correct, there are currently more Chinese people over 45 than younger ones. And this means that simply supporting the country's basic production potential has already passed the point of no return. And they are gone. If you want to continue listening to this conversation, you need to subscribe to sam harris.org. After that, you'll have access to all full episodes of the Making Sense podcast, as well as other subscriber-only content, including bonus episodes and AMAs, as well as conversations I've had on the Waking Up app.

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