Claims

The Soviet Union was an involuntary union requiring force to hold together, while the European Union is voluntary and Ukrainians are fighting to join it, demonstrating preference for Western systems.

NATO, which was created after World War II as an institution to make the world safer, is now being torn down with the threat of American withdrawal, demonstrating that even institutions that have persisted for 70 years are vulnerable in the current turning.

Geopolitical shift: the center of gravity of the world has moved multiple times historically—from China/India to Europe (only after Industrial Revolution and discovery of America), back to the East as Asia rises. The Roman Empire shifted East because that's where the wealth was. Today, the East (China, India, Turkey, Iran) represents the future, not Europe.

China has a long history of brinksmanship—talking things up to a boiling point, then backing off; therefore, understanding China requires knowledge of its history of foreign invasion (Japan), civil war, Century of Humiliation, and current century-long grand strategy

The global South (7 billion people not in the G7) remembers colonialism and the West's regime-change adventures; being popular in the global South requires respecting their history and operating with good faith rather than imperial coercion

Geopolitical order is determined by winners of the last war who set the rules and control the system, but as rising powers challenge declining powers, the world order changes, shifting from unilateral US control to a multipolar system.

In the Accidental Superpower (2014), Zeihan pegged that by 2022 there would be a major geopolitical conflict like the Ukraine war, accurately predicting the timing of the current conflict.

Afghanistan has only been a functional country when every surrounding country (Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Iran) has been in breakdown; otherwise it reverts to non-functional state similar to the 1990s.

China's rise differs from all historical precedents—it doesn't resemble the German, Japanese, or US rises—and depends not just on China alone but critically on US choices and behavior.

Even business as usual—routine international relations without major policy changes—can trigger large-scale conflict during power transitions, as history demonstrates.