Everyone (sometimes secretely) hopes that everything will simply go back to Normality when the Republicans are defeated in the upcoming US midterm elections. Or at the very latest when Gavin Newsom becomes POTUS in 2028.
Maybe. But what if *nothing changes*? What if Trump´s "isolationist" or "multi-polar" orientation isn´t a temporary aberration, but an objective necessity? He is pursuing that course very erratically, to be sure, but what if the course itself is baked into the cake at this point?
After all, Biden´s administration had all kinds of conflicts even with America´s allies, including the UK and France. And when Russia attacked Ukraine, Biden urged caution. Or compare Biden´s debacle in Afghanistan (c/o Trump) with Trump´s debacle in the Persian Gulf. The Biden admin was confrontational with China, as had Trump Mark 1. They even promoted the Wuhan lab leak theory!
In the background, we have the national debt crisis in the United States. Or the BRICS anti-dollarization moves. And what if oil and gas prices won´t go back to normal?
What if the United States will prove incapable of shouldering the fiscal and military burdens of defending Europe against Russia or its East Asian allies against China? What if Democrats or Neo-Cons simply can´t restore the status quo before, say, 2016? Even if Russia is weakened by some kind of decisive setback in Ukraine, it´s still not obvious that this will strengthen the "rules-based liberal world order". Maybe it will simply strengthen China. I can see them (pro)claiming a Co-Prosperity Sphere in Siberia and the Russian Far East!
Add to this the enormous problems in building new nuclear power plants or sustaining the AI-related data centers. I would glady trade the latter for the former, but what if even that won´t work? And then there´s the creeping demographic crisis, problems surrounding migration, new pandemics, and so on.
Maybe the world around 2040 will look pretty much the same no matter which political factions takes over post-Trump: a Potemkin America, a Russian Time of Troubles, a French-dominated Euro-Canadian alliance, and a very shaky Beijing-centric "new world order". And underneath this, large masses of African migrants and refugees...and perhaps some crazy rich White men trying to "geo-engineer" the atmosphere.
In case you wonder why I´m not *that* optimistic about the next 15 years. But sure, I could be wrong. I mean, Paul Ehrlich couldn´t predict the cost of tungsten, right?
