The Accidental Superpower

by Peter Zeihan

  Industrialization passed Persia by rather completely until very recently. Only with the discovery of commercially exploitable quantities of oil in the early twentieth century did the Iranians have sufficient capital even to consider partially industrializing. But it was and remains a poorly managed industry. Iran lacks the common culture to have a mass education system or the common infrastructure to have a single market or the common wealth to have a mass market. What industry Iran has developed falls into two categories: servicing the capital of Tehran, or servicing the energy sector.

  Yet Iran is still there and has been there in some form since antiquity. That requires an explanation. Iran’s secret lies in how it has dealt with its difficult geography. Each of Persia’s many mountain valleys is home to a different ethnicity, each of which has its own identity and history and language and customs. As was famously noted in the movie 300, there are a “thousand nations of Persia.” Over the centuries, a cluster of mountain valleys managed to merge to become the people we now call Persian. Add in another few millennia of ethnic cleansing and intermarriage and a kaleidoscope of peoples have been painstakingly fused into a more coherent nationality. It has been a long road, and even today nearly half of the people of Iran define themselves as not Persian.

  One of the ways the Persians have historically managed their system is to turn weakness into strength. Agriculture in mountains is difficult because rainfall from year to year varies greatly, generating cycles of feast and famine. In periods of feast, Persia’s population explodes. In periods of famine, it crashes. The Persian solution was to transform population surges into military excursions. If Persian forces came back with booty and food or managed to conquer another valley, that was wonderful. But the real goal was to have fewer mouths to feed back home. Such feast-driven expansions led the Persians on massive conquering campaigns when their climate-driven demographics forced the issue. And when the homeland starved, the tax burden upon the conquered territories sparked revolts that forced the empire to contract back to core Persian lands.

  This feast-expansion and famine-contraction cycle continued for two full millennia. But with the development of deepwater navigation and especially industrialization, the era of Persian empires faded into memory. While Persia was more than a match for any local power, deepwater navigation and industrialization allowed powers with a more stable food profile far removed from the Middle East to enter the regional power calculus at the times and places of their choosing. Against such qualitatively superior and far more mobile forces, the Persian hordes simply couldn’t compete. As the two technological packages spread and extraregional powers like the Turks, Russians, British, and French probed deeper and deeper into Persia’s Middle Eastern playground, the maximum limit of the Persian feast-expansions shrank and their famine-collapses accelerated, until by the sixteenth century Persian expansions were local and painfully brief. By the eighteenth century, the Persians became locked up in their mountain fastnesses in more or less the borders we know today.

  Which brings us to U.S. foreign policy.

  To say that there is bad blood between the two countries is an exercise in understatement, but consider the strategic context. Iran’s territory is mostly useless desert, but in the Zagros and Elburz Mountains there are highland valleys that lift their populations to high enough altitudes to glean some moisture out of the dry air and thus have agriculture. These highlands are where nearly all of Iran’s population resides. The rules of other mountain societies certainly apply here: People in one mountain valley do not necessarily identify with those in the next valley over, much less four over. Keeping all of these various groups under the same political authority requires a harsh system to induce cooperation, which is why modern Iran has a million-man army. Iran, in effect, occupies its own territory. The existence of a large army is not an option for Iran.

  Of course this particular tool of state formation has other uses, and therein lies the rub. Any army large and coherent enough to hold Iran together is more than large and coherent enough to conquer almost any of Iran’s neighbors, particularly the lightly populated and even more lightly defended Arab oil states of the Persian Gulf: Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Oman.

  That capability is the primary reason for the American-Iranian hostility of the past thirty-five years. Forget terrorism. Forget Israel. Forget the hostage crisis. In the Bretton Woods era, oil security is the foundation of everything from NATO to ANZUS; the United States uses energy to guarantee trade, and trade to guarantee its security alliance. If Iran were either to conquer the Arab oil states or close the Gulf, the free trade order would quite literally run out of fuel.

  But oil and trade won’t be central to the American strategic equation much longer, and that turns Iran from a perennial pain in the ass to perhaps the most valuable ally the United States could dream of—entirely because of where Iran is located.

  Iran easily meets the most exacting criteria for American allies: In the post–Bretton Woods world, Iran can never be a strategic threat to the United States. American power ultimately flows from its nearly unassailable position in controlling the bulk of the North American continent. The only way that power could be meaningfully threatened is if a power on another continent proved able to float a navy of sufficient strength and size to launch an assault on North America. That power could never be Iran. Iran is a mountain country. That means, among other things, that it has no navigable rivers, no tradition of watercraft, and lacks the facilities, expertise, and capital needed to float a navy. If against all odds it somehow could, the Iranian navy—and the entirety of the Iranian economy—would be bottled up in the Persian Gulf. It would be child’s play for U.S. naval forces to simply cap the Strait of Hormuz and destroy the entirety of the navy along with the Iranian economy. In the Bretton Woods era, Iran’s position on the Persian Gulf empowers it. In a world in which oil isn’t central to American planning, however, Iran’s position on the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz cripples it.

  If anything, that sounds better (for Americans) than it really is. Some three-quarters of Iran’s imports flow into a single port—Bandar Abbas—which happens to be at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, completely exposed to anyone with a ship. Within the Gulf, over 90 percent of its oil exports flow from another single point: Kharg Island. An American effort to remove Iran from play could be completed in a single afternoon, and since Kharg does not have a bridge or tunnel connecting it to the mainland, reentering energy markets would take years.

  But these vulnerabilities are only vulnerabilities against the maritime superpower. For anyone else in Iran’s broader neighborhood, Iran’s position is a nightmare. While mountain states are typically neither rich nor naval, they are also damnably difficult to invade. Each mountain ridge is a new defensive bulwark that has to be ground through. But such mountains do little to inhibit the offensive capabilities of the locals. A large mountain state like Iran can in one critical way act like a naval power: It can bide its time, secure in its mountain fastness, until it makes sense to boil out. In past spurts of activity, Persia has conquered lands from Egypt to Greece to Tajikistan to India.

  There are four regional power centers that would likely be the targets of Iranian expansionism, one of which has been somewhat pacified already.

  • The pacified target is directly to the west: ancient Mesopotamia, better known in contemporary times as Iraq. Iraq in any age is a riparian country that draws its strength from its ability to use the Tigris and Euphrates to generate massive, sustained agricultural surpluses and thus generate population booms as necessary. It has historically used those booms to extend its control not just up and down the river valleys, but south into Arabia, west into what is now Syria, and east into the Persian highlands. It has always been the geography that has generated the most difficulties and hardships for the Persians, and as such is typically the first territory that Persia absorbs in its own expansionary phases. At the time of this writing, the U
nited States’ war with Iraq is over, and Iran has taken advantage of the American withdrawal to install many of its allies into the Iraqi government, up to and including the prime minister. While it would be overly simplistic to say that Iran already controls Iraq, it is certainly more of a springboard for Iranian future ambitions than a sandbag.

  • To the southwest lies Saudi Arabia, the largest of the Gulf oil states and the world’s largest exporter of crude oil. Iran’s goal is nothing less than the subordination of Saudi Arabia, and the two countries’ religious differences—Saudi Arabia is the keeper of Sunni Islam while Iran is the protector of Shia Islam—only adds a layer of religious feuding to a contest that is already economic, political, and strategic. Iran is clearly the superior power, with nearly triple the population and a military that is actually used to shooting people while the Saudi military does not operate well outside of air-conditioning. But an Iranian victory would not be clean, easy, or quick. Saudi power comes from its oil money and its possession of the holy sites of Islam. Combined, these two features allow them to recruit Islamic fighters to do battle for them when and where they wish to project power, with the more (in)famous locations being Afghanistan, Russia (the northern Caucasus), Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They have nearly nudged Iraq back into civil war, and in the Syrian civil war these Saudi-backed militias now form the backbone of the revolutionary forces. Saudi initiatives in both theaters are merely the leading edge of Riyadh’s efforts to bring battle to the Iranians. As it becomes more obvious that the American withdrawal from the region is not temporary, the gloves will come off, and the Saudis will work to unleash hell not just in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and other places in which the Iranians have interests, but in Iran itself. Of particular importance will be Iran’s Arab minority, concentrated in the southeastern border province of Khuzestan. That just happens to be where most of Iran’s oil production takes place. In addition to more conventional tools (like an invasion), count on the Iranians to return the favor. Saudi Arabia’s Shia minority is concentrated in its own eastern oil-producing region.

  • To the north is the Caucasus, an excellent buffer between Iran and the lands of the Russians. Well, excellent for the Russians anyway. While the Russians no longer count the Caucasus as an internal region as it was during the Soviet period, they still have several thousand troops each in Armenia and Georgia,7 while Azerbaijan realizes that its ongoing existence as an independent power requires it to collaborate with Moscow on a host of issues. Iran’s problem is that 16 percent of its population is Azerbaijani. That places more Azerbaijanis in Iran than exist in the independent country of Azerbaijan. That makes the “buffer” not only directly adjacent to territories that house Russian troops, but introduces an irredentist threat hard up on Iran’s northwestern border. The only way that Iran’s northern flank can truly be secure would be if it occupied most of the Caucasus region itself. Unfortunately, the only way that Russia’s southern flank can be secure would be for Russia to do the same. For both Iran and Russia—to say nothing of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia—the Caucasus is a zero-sum game. While Russia is far from a pushover and attacking the Caucasus would be expensive and difficult, time is on the Iranians’ side. Iran has a young and rapidly growing population, while Armenia, Georgia, and Russia have three of the world’s oldest and most rapidly contracting.

  • Finally, to the northwest lies Turkey. Most of Turkey’s economic and political interests lie in the Black Sea and Danubian basins, but that is in a world in which free trade thrives. Once the Americans stop guaranteeing global energy supplies, the Turks will have to secure their own. The closest energy lies in northern Iraq, an area populated by Kurds whom the Turks have always feared will stir up problems among Turkey’s own Kurdish citizens. The only way to guarantee both the unity of the Turkish state and secure access to oil is to either conquer northern Iraq outright or to pack it so thoroughly with Turkish “advisers” that it would no longer be functionally independent. Either way, Iran will have an opinion on the issue. Iran also has a strong opinion on what unfolds in Syria. As long as the fighting there continues, the Turks must fret about developments along their entire southern periphery.

  With America’s gradual withdrawal from the Persian Gulf, the strategic logjam that has existed for the past half century is breaking up, but it is not the victory that the Iranians had hoped for. The American departure means that Iran is being released to engage not one but four regional powers in a general melee. That melee is the unspoken goal of American foreign policy: to ensure that all of the world’s other major powers are preoccupied with each other rather than thinking of putting to sea. No matter what Iran prioritizes, no matter what Iran does, no matter if Iran wins or loses, its very existence keeps four other powers firmly nailed to local developments. And all the United States has to do is nothing.

  And Now Things Get a Bit Complicated

  Each of these countries, whether due to opportunity or desperation, will attempt to sculpt their neighborhood into something more to their liking. Their interactions will determine the specifics of the world of the future. But none of them will have a large-scale impact upon the top workings of the American government, much less upon how the Americans live their lives.

  In their splendid isolation, the Americans will have a very high bar for noticing what is unfolding elsewhere on the planet, and an even higher bar for jumping into the fray. What follows, the remainder of this book, will detail the five situations that are most likely to pass that bar.

  CHAPTER 11

  History Returns to Europe

  As hopefully was made clear from last chapter’s sections on Russia, Turkey, and Iran, few countries of the world exist in vacuums. Nearly all swim in large ponds, interacting constantly with other powers, smaller, larger, and peer. In that light the remaining country on the aggressives list gets a chapter all its own. Or perhaps more accurately, its crowded and busy pond gets a chapter all its own. The country is Germany. The pond is Europe. And what follows makes for a messy future indeed.

  The European Geography

  Europe is a land of contrasts. The majority of Europe’s population lives on the aptly if not particularly creatively named North European Plain (NEP). The portion of the coastal plain in Europe proper is one of the world’s narrowest, less than three hundred miles at its widest point in Germany, but it is also one of the world’s longest, stretching over fifteen hundred miles from the Pyrenees in southern France to the Belarusian border. And it doesn’t end there, but rather expands into the European Hordelands of Central Eurasia. A series of broken highlands and stark mountains back the entirety of the NEP’s southern border, which generate sufficient rainfall to make the NEP a lush agricultural zone and fuel a score of rivers that transect the plain—the Seine, Meuse, Rhine, Weser, Elbe, Oder, and Vistula in particular—many of which are navigable for most of their lengths. Between ample local food production, high capital-generation possibilities, and ease of movement, the NEP has had one of the world’s densest population footprints, densest local trade networks, and richest populations for nearly a millennium.

  But there is a dark side. There are no barriers between the various river valleys. The easily crossed nature of the plain condemns the people of Northern Europe to be constantly in each other’s faces. Every country’s heartland is their neighbors’ borderland. Civilization may come easily to Northern Europe, but so does competition. Success and security for one would mean want and instability for all others. The all-or-nothing nature of that simple fact has led to some of the world’s most infamous wars being fought among the NEP powers in their efforts to carve out some security for themselves.

  There is more to Europe, however, than just the NEP. Peninsulas and mountains riddle the lands around the plain. The Iberian Peninsula, home to Spain and Portugal, lies south and west of France across the Pyrenees. The Alps separate Germany and France from Italy’s Apennine Peninsula, and the Balkan Peninsula is on the far side of the Carpathians from Austria and P
oland. Most of Scandinavia is self-contained on its eponymous peninsula. In every case, the balance of transport proves true: Mountains inhibit movement and peninsulas limit lines of approach. The insulation that geography grants the peninsular states allows them to stay somewhat apart from the cultural, economic, and military crucible that is the NEP.

  That’s doubly true for Europe’s islands, two of which merit specific attention. Denmark’s island of Zealand has been home to half of the Danish population since its emergence as a force in the eighth century. The Danes are and always have been an island people who own a peninsula rather than the other way around. A more recognizable island people are of course the English who call Great Britain home. The peoples of both islands have long acted independently of the NEP. The strongest tie that binds the peninsulars and the islanders together is a fear that someone on the NEP might actually emerge victorious from their perennial competition. Should that ever happen, the richness and might and power of the plain would no longer be spent on local feuds, but instead be available to surmount the geographic barriers that have long protected the peninsular and island peoples.

  Europe Today

  A continent riven by war is hardly how most of us think of Europe, but that is because the Europe we know has been transformed utterly by Bretton Woods.

  With the imposition of Bretton Woods and the American alliance network, the Europeans no longer needed to struggle for iron ore or steel or oil or food or spices or markets or borders. Instead of battling to be the NEP colossus, France and (West) Germany could cooperate economically and focus on exporting to wider Europe and the wider world. Instead of being nervous about the NEP uniting, countries on the European periphery could, with some caution, participate in Bretton Woods’ legion trade opportunities. The Europeans were not only able to take a vacation from geopolitics, but a vacation from their own brutal history. The result—as elsewhere in the world—was seventy years of peace and prosperity, although in Europe the emphasis was definitely on the “peace” part.