In 1930 there were a lot of people who would have predicted that communism would be a major threat to the western way of life (including the communist themselves who had this as an openly avowed goal). The first “red scares” date to shortly after World War I and never went away as a concern for the religious, the small farmers, and the business elite. This fear of the communists would lead many to embrace or at least tolerate fascism on the grounds that it was a useful counterweight to the communists. No one up to the time that World War II started would have thought that next world war would have been fought against the fascists by both communists and the Anglo-Saxon world. Such an alliance would have been inconceivable to those who knew the level of hate and distrust between the ruling classes in the Anglo-Saxon World and the Soviet Union.

The people who predicted that communism would be a major threat to the Anglo-Saxon world were right. But those who sole matrix for looking at the world was communism and the huge threat it presented were often the most blind to dangers posed by the Nazis. Churchill was a famous exception this rule, but even he did not start warning about the rise of Germany until 1933. And his supposed fellow conservative Neville Chamberlain would write “The real danger to this country is Winston. He is the warmonger, not Hitler.” What is often forgotten is that Chamberlain way of looking at the world was the rule on the right and Churchill was exception. Conservatives by and large were blind to the threat posed by the Nazis because they feared communism so much.

Fast forward to today and many are obsessed with demographics and with good reason. There is no more sure guide to the future available to mankind then the study of demographics. We might not know how many people will die in the next 20 years, but we can say with a high degree of confidence what the maximum number of 20 year old can exist in 20 years time because those people will have been born today. And those numbers are so horrific for many countries that those who are aware of the numbers can’t stop thinking about them or interpreting everything they see in the light of those numbers. But there are more things that can profoundly change our world then just a free fall in the numbers of babies being born as bad as that can be over the long term.

What spurred these reflections was to Peter Zeihan on a podcast the other day while lifting weights. As I was otherwise occupied, I did not give what he was saying my full attention. What I heard was mostly old hat for people who are familiar with both the numbers and Zeihan’s talking points. I did hear the standard lines about the collapse of the Chinese State and how many billions of people were going to disappear or otherwise starve to death. But what caught my attention is Zeihan blissful certainty that as a result of all these things, China posed little threat to the US as there was nothing they could do to stop their implosion.

What struck me most about this assumption was the idea that a nation with weapons of mass destruction would see the implosion of their state and deaths of millions to starvation without ever resorting to the only major tools they had left. What they would use them for I have no idea. Maybe conquest. Maybe just blind rage as disaster over took them. Or maybe they would never be used. But it seems silly to paint such a bleak future and not even consider what it might mean for weapons that could dramatically change the world even apart from the breakdown of globalization and population free fall.

Along those same lines, a striking aspect to the Russia/Ukraine war is how many people were willing to go on Russian TV and say variations on “if Russia does not get to exist, the world does not get to exist.” Now for sure this was mostly tough talk when Russia was being driven back by Ukraine. But all Russia was really in danger of at the time was getting thrown back to its own borders. If even such small stakes get people in Russia talking this way, what will the actual dissolution of their state cause people to say and do? Most people are all talk, but sometimes somebody comes along like Hitler who is not just talking and nobody can bring themselves to realize that until it is far too late.

This is a question that will be put to the test regardless of what we want. Regardless of what happens in the War in Ukraine, Russia has 20 years at most before its political system breaks down. What happens with all of Russian weapons of mass destruction then will matter a lot more to the world at large then the precise number of Russians still alive or how many babies they are having.

The point of this post is not to pick on Zeihan or even to harp on the dangers of weapons of mass destruction in the face of state collapse (even though that is a hobby horse of mine). My real point pertains to myself as much as anyone else. And that is you can correctly identify the problems that afflict the world surround you. History might even acknowledge that you are right. And yet, you can still be blind to the issues that will have the biggest impact on your world in your own time frame.

I happen to think that anyone who (correctly in my view) sees the coming demographic collapse as threatening national stability and yet fails to think about how weapons of mass destruction factors into this future is missing a major piece of the puzzle. But who knows what I am missing?

I know what I missed in the past. Zeihan is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame because he correctly predicted the current Russian invasion of Ukraine almost down to the year it happened in a book published in 2014 (read the last paragraph from this goodreads review written in 2017). As for myself, I did not think that Russia would be crazy enough to try to take over all of Ukraine until just before it happened. And I am sure that I will be surprised by many things to come that have nothing to do with demographics or or the unraveling of economic systems or weapons of mass destruction. The real question is how many of the things that I fear will come to pass.