Peter Zeihan - Dis-United Nations

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Koyfin. I've become very interested in the best software tools in investing, and when I asked Twitter for the best Bloomberg alternative, the overwhelming winner was an excellent new product called Koyfin. It's a web-based platform that lets you analyze stocks, ETFs, mutual funds, and other asset classes in one place. I've been using it every day to track what's going on in the market, and I think if you try it, you will too. Koyfin has a ton of high-quality data, powerful functionality, and a clean interface. The best part is that it's free. You can sign up at www.koyfin.com.
That's koyfin.com.
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:56)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions and the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:22)
My guest this week is Peter Zeihan, the author of the new book, The Dis-United Nations. Peter was an extremely popular guest on the show last year, and after reading his new book I knew we'd have a lot to discuss in round two. In this conversation, we discuss two ways of ruling the world, the coming American disinterest in global affairs, and which countries are poised to do well in the future. We explore military and non-military technologies, political changes, and up-and-coming alliances like that between the United States and Mexico.
As with last time, Peter packs more information into an hour than just about anybody. Please enjoy our conversation.
A little bit different from our first one, given you've got a new book out today called Dis-United Nations that goes into all sorts of interesting detail on countries around the world. I thought a fun place to start would be for you to bridge our last conversation and just describe again for the audience how you think about what makes for a successful country.

**Peter Zeihan** (2:16)
One of the things that I had to really focus on heavily in order to produce this book was talk about what makes things work, why things are the way they are, why we've become used to them in the way that they are, and what it means when that changes.
And in the post-Cold War era, the United States has basically created this global structure that has told everybody that they can play and that everyone can be successful. You don't have to worry about wars or invasions or supply routes or food or energy or anything. The global system will take care of it, and the US will make sure the global system works. Well, you remove the Americans from that system, and we go back to a world where countries more or less have to look out for themselves, and most of them don't have the capacity to do so. If you're going to have a chance of taking care of yourself, there's a few things you need. First of all, you've got to have a certain degree of territorial viability. Think of it kind of like the candy strategy, where you kind of want to gooey inside the crust and the crunchy exterior, so that you can do what you need to in your own territory. You want it to be easy to move around. Plains and rivers are kind of the perfect combination. But then you want a hard, crunchy exterior so people can't get to you. So mountains are great.
Oceans are better. It's great if you're in the temperate zone, because it means you can take care of your own agricultural supply, and it means you actually have a chance to develop with a reasonable cost. Because any money that you don't have to use for overcoming internal geographic problems, you can use for infrastructure, or education, or defense, which is a cost benefit. Second, if you can grow your own food, that is absolutely preferred. We've come to think of agriculture as remarkably unsexy in the modern era, because we're not used to having to fight for it. But if you go back throughout history, more, far more countries have collapsed because of food distribution and famine than have ever died because of disease or war. And once again, the temperate zone, flat areas, kind of what you're after.