I used to work in the Pentagon, and while we never took Zeihan's talks without a grain of salt, directionally he tends to be very accurate. Nations like China which lack a culture of immigration have extremely predictable demographic booms and busts, and Zeihan is spot on with those. He also hits on the reality of how dependent most nations, especially China, are on imports that pass through oceanic shipping lanes they have no ability to control or secure without the US Navy.
To be fair the us navy hasn't completely detached in the way that he expects... Yet. Shipping harassment hasn't appreciably gone up... Yet. It's also possible that cargo ships will arm themselves against pirates, which will increase the cost of shipping but maybe not as much as the most dire predictions.
I suspect the point of "oceanic shipping lanes they have no ability to control or secure without the US Navy" is "shipping lanes they cannot secure FROM the US Navy".
There is no way for a cargo ship to arm itself against submarines.
I think the outcome of the US navy torpedoing civilian ships of a national adversary is highly unlikely, unless 1) we were actually at war with them or 2) they are doing something generally accepted to be illegal -- like Chinese fishing boats turning off transponders and fishing in us territory. or 3) sanctions running
The only way I see the landscape changing meaningfully in the direction you suggest (cargo ships going up against seafarers they are not able to defend themselves from) is if letters of marque were reinstated. At least one proposal has been floated -- and when we all stop laughing about it I grant that it might become a thing
Given today's low cargo crew counts, it isn't crazy to think about the calculus of sinking cargo ships vs fighting an actual war, in order to prove ones seriousness.
If the nations involved want it to be one, sure. There have been incidents of militaries shooting down passenger jets, which were all but swept under the rug.
@throwawaymaths basically answered the question how I would. Also, just to clarify my use of "swept under the rug", my implication is that when it's not politically convenient for the parties to make a big deal out of an incident, they simply choose not to use it as a media prop to push their agenda.
There's a list here that would be a reasonable starting point for any further digging you might wish to do:
Korean air lines flight over Russia, us shooting down Iranian jet in the gulf, Russia shooting down Malaysian air over Ukraine, Iran shooting down a Ukrainian jet over itself.
I presume gp means Not swept under the rug in terms of information suppression, swept under the rug in terms of very little diplomatic fallout
I'm a fan but he does get a little too blinded by America patriotism. His predictions about other countries start getting too comically apocalyptic to be taken seriously at times.
Well he does get credence for predicting invasion of Ukraine (which was also thought to be comically apocalyptic). Twice. He's been remarkably consistent in calling bad times for china and it's certainly gotten worse over there in the last year.
I think there are a few other things that have lined up, like Sri Lanka collapse being a bellwether for his forecasts.
After I got turned on to Petar Zeihan the first thing I did was went back and watched his older talks, after all plenty of people can make good sounding predictions, first you want to see what he was saying before to see his track record.
I found a talk form 2018 in which he said there are going to be 3 major bush wars of global import, Ukraine-Russia, Iran-Saudi Arabia, and China-Indian Ocean. So far Ukraine has panned out, he also predicted where the political parties are going right now in the US and why they seem so out of whack.
“While ever-shifting economic, political, and military pressure pries the Ukrainian state apart, the Russians will begin ... Once those areas are pacified the Russians will return to Ukraine, “rescuing” those in the Russified east and…”
I also predicted the invasion of Ukraine. So did the US intelligence service last summer. So did the state department when trump was trying to extort zelensky over military aid for a hunter Biden investigation. Not a hard prediction to make at all after no one gave a shit about crimea, especially given putins longstanding goal of Soviet reunification.
