I just read Peter Zeihan’s amazing book The Accidental Superpower, which first came out ten years ago. The guy knows his stuff about geopolitics and how a country’s location impacts its power and influence.
The book argues that America became a superpower almost by accident because of its geography. Zeihan writes, “The United States has more practicable territory rimmed by controllable expanses of water than any other country on the planet.” He’s got a point; we’ve got these huge oceans on both sides protecting us, plus all these rivers and roads crisscrossing the country, making transportation and trade so easy. He writes, “The interior waterway system allows for approximately 15,000 miles of navigable rivers and channels linking the ‘interior empires’ along the Ohio, Missouri, and upper Mississippi systems to ports along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf coasts.”
I’ve never thought of America in this way, and Zeihan says we lucked out and could afford to be a bit lazy, while other countries like Germany had to be super industrious just to survive with opposing powers surrounding them.
It’s a fascinating read that breaks down what makes a country powerful—natural resources, the layout of the land, that kind of thing. Zeihan thinks people are wrong to predict America’s decline and that we might be just getting started as a superpower.
He points out that rising powers like Turkey and Russia will keep trying to increase their influence in the future.
Overall, it’s a thought-provoking look at geopolitics. Zeihan does a great job of engagingly breaking down complex concepts, which kept me reading. He’s recently updated it, and the new version is called The Accidental Superpower: 10 Years On.
It’s definitely worth reading, and it did what good books should do— kept me thinking about so many issues facing our world and our country even long after I put the book down.
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