Say Goodbye to the Global Order || Peter Zeihan

TL;DR

Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure and a US naval seizure near Sri Lanka signal the permanent collapse of the global trade order.

Key Points

• 1.Ukrainian strikes have cut Russian oil exports by 1–1.5 million barrels per day. Russia lacks sufficient pipeline interlinking to reroute flows, so disabling the Baltic system forces production halts elsewhere, with roughly 500,000 barrels per day of production now offline.
• 2.Permanent Russian production losses are likely by end of May at current strike rates. Fields in the far north near Siberian permafrost freeze solid if shut down in winter and must be redrilled; Russia is currently absorbing cuts in the south (Bashkortostan, Tatarstan) but has only ~1 million barrels/day buffer remaining.
• 3.The US seized a 2-million-barrel-capacity tanker off Sri Lanka, 3,000–4,000 miles from the Persian Gulf. This marks a formal shift to privateering-style naval enforcement, signaling that no vessel is safe regardless of location if it violates a US-imposed blockade.
• 4.The global order underpinning free trade is effectively over. With major navies now enforcing their own interests, Zeihan warns that supply chains reliant on the Persian Gulf, China, the Black Sea, or the Baltic should be written off, collapsing global agriculture, energy, and manufacturing.