Peter Zeihan: Globalization Was Always Going to Fail — Trump Just Sped It Up

Peter Zeihan argues that the biggest near-term risk is not financial contagion but geopolitical escalation, especially a nuclear device smuggled into a U.S. port. He says he is no longer dismissing that scenario because Iran’s leadership may see nuclear use as rational under pressure, and he points to ports like Houston or New York City as the most plausible delivery points.

He also argues that there is no obvious outside mediator for the war. In his view, Trump would not accept a broker he does not personally respect, China has too little reliable information to play that role well, and Putin is not a realistic option either. That leaves only weak offers of “good offices,” not anyone who can actually intervene.

On the broader economic and political picture, Zeihan says globalization was already destined to fail because demographics no longer supported it and the post-Cold War order lacked a common enemy. Trump is not the cause, he says, but the accelerant: he is compressing a breakdown Zeihan has expected for years. He tells businesses to assume China-linked supply chains are effectively gone, build in the Western Hemisphere, and prepare for extreme regulatory uncertainty in the United States. He is similarly pessimistic about both parties, saying the Republican Party has become Trump alone and the Democrats have lost key blocs of support.