The Absent Superpower by Peter Zeihan

Peter Zeihan is great. Let’s get that said right at the outset. As I mentioned when I wrote about his first book -- The Accidental Superpower -- I’ve heard him speak and have had him speak at several of the events that my association organizes. In fact, in the intervening years since that first blog post, Zeihan has become a bit of a favorite at our Annual Conference - speaking there, at last count, for four or five years running.

In The Absent Superpower, Zeihan goes into greater depth on one of the themes he teased in The Accidental Superpower. In fact, it’s the subtitle of this book: “The Shale Revolution and a World Without America.” In short, it’s about geopolitics in a world where the United States, driven by its increasing energy independence, continues its retreat from the world stage.

It’s its simplest form, it’s a story told in three pictures, each showing the flow of oil around the world. Here’s the first, reflecting the reality of 2007.

Look at the countries the United States is importing oil from. Some from Canada and Mexico, and a bit from Venezuela, but the bulk from the Persian Gulf countries. Here’s the same picture eight years later, in 2015 (the year prior to Zeihan’s book’s publication).

Same four arrows coming into the United States, but look at how much thinner the arrow from the Gulf is (and look at all the subsequent Gulf oil going to China; and Russian oil going to Eastern Europe; there are some stories to tell there). Now let’s look five years into the then-future, 2020.

Now, only a single arrow from Canada is left, and all the oil producers are finding other markets for their products. As Zeihan well illustrates and describes in the book’s 400 pages, this is a world very different from the one we are used to, and his conclusions, like his charts, are both  indelible and undeniable.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.