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I knew that Zeihan would pop up before opening the article. Since the start of the 2022 Russian invasion, I've seen him and similar analysts rise in fame and it

I knew that Zeihan would pop up before opening the article. Since the start of the 2022 Russian invasion, I've seen him and similar analysts rise in fame and it doesn't sit well with me. It isn't the Stratfor origin, or the blazenly pro-American optimism per se that concern me. It is that these analyses feel like oversimplifications, to not say dumbing-downs -- talks of geographic predestinations. And they are taking some center stages in lobby circles. I fear that they [these types of analyses], however enticing and conforting to a Western ear they may be, might obfuscate realities. Them monopolizing the ears of politicians and business leaders alike can only bite us back.

spaceman_2020 4y ago
On the contrary, I'm surprised that geography and climate took so long to take center-stage in understanding and analyzing our world. The previous ignorance of something as fundamental as where we live and what climate we live in seems hubristic, if nothing else. Land and climate shape our access to food, shelter, clothing, and security. Food, shelter, clothing, security shape everything else.
- hikingsimulator 4y ago
  I disagree. These lines of reasoning have always been there. Logistic thinking, and thus geopolitics, has always [i.e. for at least the past century] taken terrain and climate into account. Selling the old as new is a basic marketing ploy. And geopolitics isn't immune to this. Clausewitz talked about logistics and terrain, Sir Lawrence Freedman has too, W. Gardner did, Robert E. Pape too (in the optic of air power).
  - mrleinad 4y ago
    Maybe the previous post meant widespread reasoning? I doubt any of those you mentioned are known by many people.
    - hikingsimulator 4y ago
      But that's the point in a sense. Zeihan sells a vision of geopolitics that is what popular science is to science. It is not bad, but it does shortcuts and simplifications to fit in a one-hour talk ala TedX where seats are sold for four or five figures. It was fine until Zeihan and co started getting the mic at institutions like the US military academies or some congress special interest groups. I'm unfavorable when popular [discipline] may swing around to influence what it was meant to cover.
    - samus 4y ago
      Clausewitz is a well-known military theorist, usually mentioned in the same sentence with Sun Tzu and Machiavelli.
  - pydry 4y ago
    >I disagree. These lines of reasoning have always been there. Due to America's geographical impenetrability the threat of military encroachment or invasion is virtually zero. As such it gets downplayed in political discourse to irrelevance. It's often almost impossible for Americans to see international politics through the prism of geographic threat because it has simply never affected them. Meanwhile the entirety of the Russian psyche is centered around it (along with many others). The west routinely writes this off as "oh, just propaganda". The lines of reasoning have been there forever but judging from the number of people who treat geography as a non entity when attempting to explain foreign behaviors, sentiments and attitudes it might as well be a fresh discovery.
recuter 4y ago
> It isn't the Stratfor origin, or the blazenly pro-American optimism per se that concern me Are you sure about that? Because all you've written is that Zeihan, who focuses on practical and immediate concerns of demographics, energy and agricultural markets - is obfuscating realities and monopolizing ears. Eh? As opposed to what or whom? Here is a three minute snippet from one of his talks from five years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkuhWA9GdCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkuhWA9GdCo What brilliant insights are being crowded out? What specifically is he wrong about?
- hikingsimulator 4y ago
  I somewhat answered your points with my two other answers in the thread, if you want to look them up first. I've also seen the video in the past. I've known Zeihan since 2016-2017(?) when Caspian Report started citing him. Trying not to repeat myself, I will go with an example. Intersperced with what looks like sound analysis, Zeihan often injects his own biases and hopes for a better, American, future. One telling example is his treatment of China -- about to collapse in a decade, and has been for the past seven years for Zeihan. I will wait. Same with some of his figures. He often repeats that Chinese demographic figures are overstated by a hundred millions (most likely girls), says him. It may not be a rabbit out of a hat, but it is unsourced or badly sourced or simply his opinion depending on the day. The excuse here is that the Chinese government is unreliable. Definitely. But it does not warrant such geopolical hand-slamming-the-table assertions. This is why, when it's being broadcast up to the highest echelons of the US government, I am not very happy with Zeihan and people who derive their geopolitical opinions mostly from him.
  - recuter 4y ago
- blackshaw 4y ago
  What about the things Zeihan said five years ago that don't stand out as noteworthy today? His book The Accidental Superpower has an entire chapter arguing that the province of Alberta is likely to secede from Canada and join the US, which hasn't happened yet. Just because some of your predictions come true, that doesn't mean you have a crystal ball.
mcculley 4y ago
> It isn't the Stratfor origin Is there something wrong with Stratfor’s analyses? Are there better intelligence outfits? I have long been disappointed at news organizations and their focus on advertisers over the needs of subscribers/readers. Are there useful paid intelligence services?
- hikingsimulator 4y ago
  CSIS on YouTube is okay-ish, atlantist so to take with some grain of salt sometimes. Personally, I liked the podcast of the Chair of War Studies at King's College: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/war-studies-podcast https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/war-studies-podcast (note: I've not listened to any potentially new episode for the past 2-3 years).
- LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
  They don't know Cyber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor#2011_hacking_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor#2011_hacking_incident Posers.
trompetenaccoun 4y ago
It's geopolitics for the masses or geopolitics for people who don't understand geopolitics and foreign powers. Of course it's extremely simplified but there isn't any indication that people with actual power listen to this. Also not that what he says is even fundamentally wrong. He's a political commentator like any other, only his focus is global politics while the majority of political commentators work on national news. And his audience is mainly random Twitter accounts anyway. There isn't an issue with people saying their opinion, that's called free speech. The problem is more that we live in an increasingly globalized world where nevertheless the average person has no idea about how socities outside of their bubble work. That isn't Zeihan's fault, if anything he helps getting people to think about these issues, however provocative or crude his takes may be. The issue lies with those people and groups that want to keep the populace dumb, that want them to look at the past instead of the present and future. Those who do not want you to travel and experience other cultures and political systems for yourself. Those who want the average person to regress to a state where they know nothing about what goes on in other parts of the world - all in their little bubble and isolated as commoners used to be. There are elites working towards this not just in authoritarian states but in democracies too.
SuoDuanDao 4y ago
I had an instant in a Zeihan lecture where I became convinced of the same thing. He was talking about millennials, and said that the primary millennial piece of fiction is Harry Potter. As a millennial, I had to nod along, that's a true and insightful thing to say about us. Then he described the titular character as, essentially, a special snowflake that doesn't have to work for anything or figure anything out. Which is just an incredibly bad take. Yes, Harry is a magical character that can do whatever he wants but with a handful of exceptions, so can everyone else in the setting. Harry isn't the protagonist because he can do whatever he wants, he's the protagonist because doing the right thing is scary and he does it anyway. This isn't a take requiring a college level course, that theme is repeated over and over throughout the series, Zeihan's analysis of Harry Potter would only be convincing to someone with the most cursory familiarity with the work. And it's not the kind of bad take one arrives at by skimming the work and not thinking hard enough about it. The likeliest way I see someone coming up with that take is already holding an animosity towards millennials and then coming up with a smart-sounding justification for it. And if that's Zeihan's understanding of Harry Potter, I can only assume his understanding of the CCP's thirty-year plan is comparable.
- recuter 4y ago
  > Then he described the titular character as, essentially, a special snowflake that doesn't have to work for anything or figure anything out. Harry literally has a scar marking him as the chosen one, abused by muggle caretakers and unjustly persecuted by his teachers only to triumph over unspeakable evil via hereditary magical powers.. > And if that's Zeihan's understanding of Harry Potter, I can only assume his understanding of the CCP's thirty-year plan is comparable. Hell heath no fury like a fandom scorned.
  - untech 4y ago
    You can argue that, but this would already be more deep analysis than described in your parent. I heard this take several times, and it’s basically “harry is a wizard, i. e. a superhero capable of anything, therefore, millenials want to gain everything without any effort, as if by magic”. The “chosen one” trope is different. You can argue that Harry-Potter-raised people think of themselves as chosen, but it’s an old trope. You can as well say that all christian world is raised on it :)

spaceman_2020 4y ago

On the contrary, I'm surprised that geography and climate took so long to take center-stage in understanding and analyzing our world. The previous ignorance of something as fundamental as where we live and what climate we live in seems hubristic, if nothing else. Land and climate shape our access to food, shelter, clothing, and security. Food, shelter, clothing, security shape everything else.

hikingsimulator 4y ago
I disagree. These lines of reasoning have always been there. Logistic thinking, and thus geopolitics, has always [i.e. for at least the past century] taken terrain and climate into account. Selling the old as new is a basic marketing ploy. And geopolitics isn't immune to this. Clausewitz talked about logistics and terrain, Sir Lawrence Freedman has too, W. Gardner did, Robert E. Pape too (in the optic of air power).
- mrleinad 4y ago
  Maybe the previous post meant widespread reasoning? I doubt any of those you mentioned are known by many people.
  - hikingsimulator 4y ago
    But that's the point in a sense. Zeihan sells a vision of geopolitics that is what popular science is to science. It is not bad, but it does shortcuts and simplifications to fit in a one-hour talk ala TedX where seats are sold for four or five figures. It was fine until Zeihan and co started getting the mic at institutions like the US military academies or some congress special interest groups. I'm unfavorable when popular [discipline] may swing around to influence what it was meant to cover.
  - samus 4y ago
    Clausewitz is a well-known military theorist, usually mentioned in the same sentence with Sun Tzu and Machiavelli.
- pydry 4y ago
  >I disagree. These lines of reasoning have always been there. Due to America's geographical impenetrability the threat of military encroachment or invasion is virtually zero. As such it gets downplayed in political discourse to irrelevance. It's often almost impossible for Americans to see international politics through the prism of geographic threat because it has simply never affected them. Meanwhile the entirety of the Russian psyche is centered around it (along with many others). The west routinely writes this off as "oh, just propaganda". The lines of reasoning have been there forever but judging from the number of people who treat geography as a non entity when attempting to explain foreign behaviors, sentiments and attitudes it might as well be a fresh discovery.

recuter 4y ago

> It isn't the Stratfor origin, or the blazenly pro-American optimism per se that concern me Are you sure about that? Because all you've written is that Zeihan, who focuses on practical and immediate concerns of demographics, energy and agricultural markets - is obfuscating realities and monopolizing ears. Eh? As opposed to what or whom? Here is a three minute snippet from one of his talks from five years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkuhWA9GdCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkuhWA9GdCo What brilliant insights are being crowded out? What specifically is he wrong about?

hikingsimulator 4y ago
I somewhat answered your points with my two other answers in the thread, if you want to look them up first. I've also seen the video in the past. I've known Zeihan since 2016-2017(?) when Caspian Report started citing him. Trying not to repeat myself, I will go with an example. Intersperced with what looks like sound analysis, Zeihan often injects his own biases and hopes for a better, American, future. One telling example is his treatment of China -- about to collapse in a decade, and has been for the past seven years for Zeihan. I will wait. Same with some of his figures. He often repeats that Chinese demographic figures are overstated by a hundred millions (most likely girls), says him. It may not be a rabbit out of a hat, but it is unsourced or badly sourced or simply his opinion depending on the day. The excuse here is that the Chinese government is unreliable. Definitely. But it does not warrant such geopolical hand-slamming-the-table assertions. This is why, when it's being broadcast up to the highest echelons of the US government, I am not very happy with Zeihan and people who derive their geopolitical opinions mostly from him.
- recuter 4y ago
blackshaw 4y ago
What about the things Zeihan said five years ago that don't stand out as noteworthy today? His book The Accidental Superpower has an entire chapter arguing that the province of Alberta is likely to secede from Canada and join the US, which hasn't happened yet. Just because some of your predictions come true, that doesn't mean you have a crystal ball.

mcculley 4y ago

> It isn't the Stratfor origin Is there something wrong with Stratfor’s analyses? Are there better intelligence outfits? I have long been disappointed at news organizations and their focus on advertisers over the needs of subscribers/readers. Are there useful paid intelligence services?

hikingsimulator 4y ago
CSIS on YouTube is okay-ish, atlantist so to take with some grain of salt sometimes. Personally, I liked the podcast of the Chair of War Studies at King's College: https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/war-studies-podcast https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/war-studies-podcast (note: I've not listened to any potentially new episode for the past 2-3 years).
LargoLasskhyfv 4y ago
They don't know Cyber. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor#2011_hacking_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratfor#2011_hacking_incident Posers.

trompetenaccoun 4y ago

It's geopolitics for the masses or geopolitics for people who don't understand geopolitics and foreign powers. Of course it's extremely simplified but there isn't any indication that people with actual power listen to this. Also not that what he says is even fundamentally wrong. He's a political commentator like any other, only his focus is global politics while the majority of political commentators work on national news. And his audience is mainly random Twitter accounts anyway. There isn't an issue with people saying their opinion, that's called free speech. The problem is more that we live in an increasingly globalized world where nevertheless the average person has no idea about how socities outside of their bubble work. That isn't Zeihan's fault, if anything he helps getting people to think about these issues, however provocative or crude his takes may be. The issue lies with those people and groups that want to keep the populace dumb, that want them to look at the past instead of the present and future. Those who do not want you to travel and experience other cultures and political systems for yourself. Those who want the average person to regress to a state where they know nothing about what goes on in other parts of the world - all in their little bubble and isolated as commoners used to be. There are elites working towards this not just in authoritarian states but in democracies too.

SuoDuanDao 4y ago

I had an instant in a Zeihan lecture where I became convinced of the same thing. He was talking about millennials, and said that the primary millennial piece of fiction is Harry Potter. As a millennial, I had to nod along, that's a true and insightful thing to say about us. Then he described the titular character as, essentially, a special snowflake that doesn't have to work for anything or figure anything out. Which is just an incredibly bad take. Yes, Harry is a magical character that can do whatever he wants but with a handful of exceptions, so can everyone else in the setting. Harry isn't the protagonist because he can do whatever he wants, he's the protagonist because doing the right thing is scary and he does it anyway. This isn't a take requiring a college level course, that theme is repeated over and over throughout the series, Zeihan's analysis of Harry Potter would only be convincing to someone with the most cursory familiarity with the work. And it's not the kind of bad take one arrives at by skimming the work and not thinking hard enough about it. The likeliest way I see someone coming up with that take is already holding an animosity towards millennials and then coming up with a smart-sounding justification for it. And if that's Zeihan's understanding of Harry Potter, I can only assume his understanding of the CCP's thirty-year plan is comparable.

recuter 4y ago
> Then he described the titular character as, essentially, a special snowflake that doesn't have to work for anything or figure anything out. Harry literally has a scar marking him as the chosen one, abused by muggle caretakers and unjustly persecuted by his teachers only to triumph over unspeakable evil via hereditary magical powers.. > And if that's Zeihan's understanding of Harry Potter, I can only assume his understanding of the CCP's thirty-year plan is comparable. Hell heath no fury like a fandom scorned.
- untech 4y ago
  You can argue that, but this would already be more deep analysis than described in your parent. I heard this take several times, and it’s basically “harry is a wizard, i. e. a superhero capable of anything, therefore, millenials want to gain everything without any effort, as if by magic”. The “chosen one” trope is different. You can argue that Harry-Potter-raised people think of themselves as chosen, but it’s an old trope. You can as well say that all christian world is raised on it :)