A Critical Reading of The Absent Superpower by Peter Zeihan

Political forecasting almost always remains open to doubt, at least until events place it under the unforgiving test of reality. In the series Were They Right?, we take a retrospective path: returning to the analytical record of the past to examine what experts anticipated, then confronting those forecasts with the hard facts of the present in order to identify what truly endured.

Today, we place Peter Zeihan under close analytical scrutiny, measuring his forecasts against the strategic and military dynamics of the war now unfolding. The aim is not merely to ask whether he was broadly correct, but to determine with precision where his analysis captured the underlying trajectory of events, and where it ultimately failed to withstand reality.

Peter Zeihan is an American geopolitical analyst and strategic commentator whose professional trajectory has crossed several research and intelligence-oriented institutions. His career included work as a researcher at the Center for Political and Strategic Studies, followed by a senior leadership role as Vice President at Stratfor, a firm known for its focus on geopolitical intelligence. His analytical method rests on a structured reading of geography, demographic change, and energy resources as core variables through which state behaviour and strategic decision-making can be understood and interpreted.

His 2017 book, The Absent Superpower, published by Zeihan on Geopolitics, offers a forward-looking interpretation of the structural shifts reshaping the international order, both politically and economically. At the heart of the book lies a central proposition: that the existing global system is moving toward fragmentation under the pressure of two strategic forces. The first is the shale oil and gas revolution, which has given the United States a high degree of energy self-sufficiency, thereby weakening its geopolitical rationale for continuing to shoulder the security and economic costs of protecting global sea lanes and maritime trade.

The second determinant lies in adverse demographic change, particularly the shrinking youth population in major industrial powers such as China and Russia. The book argues that this demographic contraction will, over time, depress both production and consumption, thereby eroding the long-term viability of economic models built primarily on export dependence and external demand.

Against the backdrop of an anticipated American retrenchment, and the security vacuum likely to follow, the book’s final section argues that states will increasingly turn to military force to secure strategic access to resources and energy. Within that framework, Zeihan identifies several likely theatres of regional conflict, including Eastern Europe and the Pacific. He also devotes a dedicated chapter, The Next Gulf War, to a projected military confrontation in the Middle East centred on control over oil flows and the Strait of Hormuz. That chapter forms the principal analytical benchmark for evaluating how far his framework aligns with the unfolding dynamics of Operation Epic Fury.

Zeihan’s projections in The Next Gulf War anticipated several core features of the current conflict with notable clarity. Yet once those forecasts are tested against the operational and strategic trajectory of Operation Epic Fury, a more complex picture emerges: meaningful convergence in some strategic patterns, alongside equally clear divergence in others. It is precisely this overlap, and this gap, that allows for a more disciplined assessment of where the book’s forward-looking framework aligned with reality, and where it did not.

Several operational and strategic trajectories in the current conflict align closely with Zeihan’s forward-looking framework. Most notably:

Targeting energy infrastructure: Zeihan anticipated that one of the primary strategic objectives would be the systematic degradation of an adversary’s economic capacity through strikes on energy infrastructure, treating such assets as critical pressure points to disrupt financial flows and productive output. This pattern has materialised with striking clarity during Operation Epic Fury. Israel targeted Iran’s South Pars gas field, prompting a direct Iranian response against key regional installations, including the Ras Tanura oil processing facility in Saudi Arabia, the Habshan gas complex in the United Arab Emirates, and the Ras Laffan LNG export terminal in Qatar.

Complete disruption of the Strait of Hormuz: Relatedly, Zeihan’s assumptions regarding the immediate spillover of conflict into maritime security have also been borne out. Military operations have effectively brought commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz to a standstill. That de facto closure has disrupted supply chains and driven marine insurance costs to levels severe enough to constrain commercial navigation, reinforcing the extent to which global trade remains exposed when this strategic chokepoint comes under direct threat.

Expansion of the conflict beyond national borders: Zeihan argued that missiles would not respect political boundaries, and that forecast has largely held. Iran’s response did not remain confined to Israel, but extended to US and coalition command, support, and logistical nodes across the region. Iranian missile strikes reached Erbil in northern Iraq, as well as Jordan and the Gulf states, effectively collapsing the distinction between separate fronts and turning the wider region into a single theatre of operations.

Despite clear areas of convergence, several operational and strategic dynamics on the ground have diverged from Zeihan’s projections. Most notably:

A semiconductor crisis rather than an oil crisis: While Zeihan’s analysis centred on the prospect of a global economic shock driven primarily by oil disruption and price escalation, the current conflict has produced a more complex and technologically mediated form of economic dislocation. Strikes on gas infrastructure across the Gulf have generated acute shortages of specialised industrial gases essential to semiconductor and microchip production. The result has been near-paralysis across critical global technology supply chains, particularly those tied to AI server infrastructure, shifting the centre of gravity of the crisis beyond energy and into the core of advanced industrial production.

Remote missile warfare rather than ground invasion: At the military level, the character of operations has diverged sharply from expectations of a conventional war driven by ground incursions and cross-border armoured manoeuvre. Instead, Operation Epic Fury has unfolded almost entirely through long-range, high-intensity strike warfare. US and Israeli operations have relied on strategic bombers such as the B-2, fifth-generation stealth aircraft, precision-guided ballistic missiles, and dense drone formations. In effect, the conflict has confirmed airpower, stand-off strike capability, and technological overmatch as the dominant instruments of war, while rendering large-scale ground force deployment largely unnecessary.

The United States did not retreat into isolation: Zeihan’s central thesis rests on the proposition that the United States would gradually pull back from the Middle East once the shale revolution reduced its dependence on regional energy resources. Yet the trajectory of the current conflict points in the opposite direction. Rather than stepping back, Washington has assumed a central role in the design, coordination, and execution of Operation Epic Fury. This has been evident in the scale and depth of US military involvement, including operations aimed at systematically degrading Iran’s military infrastructure through strikes on nuclear facilities, naval bases, and defence-industrial complexes. Taken together, these actions suggest that American grand strategy remains shaped not only by energy calculations, but by a broader determination to preserve strategic primacy, uphold regional deterrence, and defend the architecture of its global influence.

The War is not a bilateral Saudi-Iranian conflict: Zeihan’s projections were anchored in the expectation of a direct and relatively contained confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Yet the current war does not fit that model. Although Riyadh has been drawn into the defensive dimension of the conflict and some of its installations have come under missile attack, the war itself cannot be meaningfully classified as a bilateral clash between neighbouring powers. Instead, its operational structure is defined by a coalition led by the United States and Israel, conducting pre-emptive and strategic strikes aimed at degrading Iranian capabilities. That configuration departs significantly from any framework that treats the conflict primarily as an extension of Saudi-Iranian regional rivalry.

A comparison between Peter Zeihan’s forecasts and the course of Operation Epic Fury reveals a mixed outcome. His analysis was notably accurate in anticipating the conflict’s geographic spread and its economic logic, particularly the centrality of infrastructure targeting. Yet it proved less precise in identifying the principal actors and the operational form the war would ultimately take. What the conflict demonstrates, above all, is the continued strategic centrality of the United States, alongside the growing importance of the semiconductor sector as a pressure point comparable to energy itself. Taken together, these developments underscore the need to continuously update forward-looking models in line with technological change and shifting strategic realities that are reshaping both geopolitics and warfare.