Tony Blair says Hi

[Kane]

[Saz]

Interesting topic.

First of all I think Blair is right, but you have to remember he is looking at this from a European perspective. At every key inflection point for the last 100 years, the Europeans have lost ground and they will continue to do so as time goes on. Europe is going to get wrecked from the fallout of this war, the Euro falling to below parity with the dollar already shows the disastrous consequences. Notice how no one mentioned the "West" until the US became the premier superpower and the Europeans needed a nice set of coattails to ride. Maybe the US comes out of this one better than before, but Europe will not and so Blair is right this is a key inflection point and one that will not be kind to Europe.

I agree on a lot of the CHINA critiques, and find it odd that Zeihan has mad such a new name for himself lately. What are his credentials? No offense I like the guy he makes a lot of sense but strikes me more as an Ezra Klein of youtube, not sure he is swinging with the heavy hitters like Bremmer. Anyway that's a digression, point being China doesn't have to grow much to make multipolarity the way of the day. Even at aggregate GDP parity China has enough weight to make things multipolar enough that its a problem. Any given country will have a larger trade relationship with China than the US, they have weight on us in the Taiwan straights and south China sea. They could single handedly keep a belligerent Russia in business for a long time. Blair is not wrong, China will keep us up at night for the rest of OUR lives.

Tony Blair, in true Blair fashion, will be right but in all the wrong ways. Europe is going to be smacked and that's a good half of the "western" alliance. The US, regardless of its strength, does not have an effective way to deal with Russia (like North Korea before it). China, regardless of how it does economically in the near future, is at or near economic parity with the United States. The minions in Saudi, Turkey and the like are getting restless and are now playing games that will require a good deal of US effort and compromise to end. It's not a multipolar world yet, but its certainly a world experimenting with multipolarity. Don't let China's stumbles or Russia embarrassing itself throw you you off the scent of real structural change.

The one thing Zeihan does get right is looking at demographic trends. They will not be kind to just about anyone - every single major player is going to have to grapple with a much smaller (even shrinking) population compared to their recent expectations. I just don't see where the growth comes from. Rebuild Ukraine? Ukraine is demographically in ruins already, you aren't going to get "growth" out of a country with a population in freefall. Growth is less and less likely to come from China with wages skyrocketing and the demographic situation even worse than everyone expected. The US, Europe, low growth societies happy to squeeze our their 2% and call it a day. The countries with a demographic dividend, like Nigeria or India, seem intent on squandering it. The wise policy for the US would be to go full Canada - arrest the demographic decline with massive skilled immigration - several million a year at least. This is the structural foundation of future growth and prosperity, and is an immense strength that China, Japan, Russia, etc simply cannot match.