It has been a long time coming, but we have arrived at the end of the world. Decades of demographic degradation are now manifesting as chronic shortages of labor and capital. Globalization isn’t simply past its peak, it is disintegrating with accelerating speed. A fleet of ends beckon: global energy, global agriculture, global manufacturing, integrated Europe. China. But an end to this world does not mean an end to the world, simply that the rules of the game and the lists of winners and losers are changing. As the environment rearranges it’ll be a (very) bumpy ride, but we stand at the launch of the greatest period of growth in North American history.

For the past decade, Peter has been discussing the nature, strength and weaknesses of the international system. How post-World War II institutions, geography and demographics have made our world our world…and how it was never going to last. Well, we are now at that world’s end. Any number of factors – the Ukraine War, the fall of China and Germany, energy breakdowns, supply chain collapses, workforce shrivelings, financial contractions, and so on – would independently be sufficient to break the international economy. And they are all happening at once. We were always going to get here, and here we are. So let’s discuss what happens next.

For the past three decades our world has known ever-rising volumes of money. Whether from Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, Europe or East Asia, this rising tide of capital at ever-cheaper rates has defined the post-Cold War era. It’s ending. Now. For reasons geopolitical and demographic, the globalization of finance is in its final months just as the overall inflows are dissolving for reasons demographic. This isn’t momentary. We will not return the capital structure of the 2000s and 2010s within our lifetimes. The questions now become how deep the crash will be, which sectors will suffer the most, and what islands will be able to weather the coming financial storm?

The concept of countries being able to buy and sell their wares openly on the international marketplace is inviolable. The freedom to sail one’s products around the world is a given. Everything from the transfer of money to the accessibility of energy is sacrosanct. Yet all this and more is artificial: an unintended — if happy — side effect of the American-led global Order. With that Order in its final days, all countries and all industries must learn to operate in a world as unstructured as it is dangerous. Join us as Peter Zeihan lays out how we got to where we are, and what the future holds for sectors as diverse as energy, agriculture, finance, manufacturing and transport.

Three pillars support modern China’s success: global trade, internal political unity, and easy money. With those three pillars, China has managed to shake 2000 years of war and occupation and remake itself as one of the world’s most powerful countries. Yet none of these three pillars can stand without American assistance, and that cooperation is ending. China’s “inevitable” rise isn’t simply over, it is about to go into screeching, unrelenting, dismembering reverse. But that’s hardly the end of history. When a country falls — particularly the world’s top manufacturing power — the ripples affect countries and industries near and far. Learn who benefits and who loses in a world without China.