Even if we transition to a multipolar world order and renewed great power competition, America will still be the strongest and most secure global power. It has hegemony in the western hemisphere through its enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine; it is protected by the two largest oceans; it has historical, linguistic, and cultural ties to two regional powers on both sides of the ocean (UK and Ireland in Europe, Australia and NZ in the Asia Pacific, Five Eyes, etc.); it is by far the leader in soft power (music, movies, TV, technology, English language, etc.); and most importantly, it has the strongest military by far. Despite strategic defeats in the Middle East and South Asia, US officers gained tons of battlefield experience and the ability to test its weaponry. So even if the US now has to deal with a hegemonic challenger in East Asia (China) and more assertive one in Europe (Russia), its geography and demography give it advantages no other great power has.
America will not collapse, it will become less relevant. The multipolar world is going to be more prominent going forward. Even France's Macron is talking about making EU independent of US influence. And with emerging country like India already having a DNA of non-alignment, it looks like the US will have a say in global world order but the influence will be far more limited than what it use to be.
The book "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail" by Ray Dalio compares the rise (and decline) of the American "world empire" to prior world empires. The two most recent are the U.K. and the Netherlands.<p>The same things that are happening now have happened before -- just not in our lifetimes. The history and his analysis is quite instructive.<p>The book was refreshing in its objectivity, lack of political bias, and clarity of writing. I've given copies to several friends.<p>It's pretty clear from his analysis and the data that the U.S. is in a decline of global influence.<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/dp/1982160276/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/...</a>
Ahh the early days of clickbait. I wonder if the author was hoping to stop the demise or just wanted to be able to scream "see I told you so!" as the world burns.
>After years of swelling deficits fed by incessant warfare in distant lands, in 2020, as long expected, the U.S. dollar finally loses its special status as the world's reserve currency. Suddenly, the cost of imports soars. Unable to pay for swelling deficits by selling now-devalued Treasury notes abroad, Washington is finally forced to slash its bloated military budget.<p>It's funny and interesting that the military budget is such a common punching bag. The defense budget is a pretty small percentage of the overall outlays. Yet people continue to act like it's the single line item that is holding America back.<p>Here's where the American federal government spent money in 2020.<p>* $1T on unemployment compensation and paycheck protection program<p>* $1.1T on social security<p>* $1.2T on medicare and medicaid<p>* $1T on "other" which includes federal employee retirements and welfare programs<p>* $900B on non-defense discretionary spending on thing such as housing assistance, transportation, and education.<p>...and then, finally, we get to defense spending at $700B.<p>The budget deficit for FY2020 was $3.1T. Maybe the military budget is so high it is causing a ripple in the multiverse that makes arithmetic different in this universe. Maybe if we cut $300B from the military budget in our universe it will even out to $3T because magic.
I lol'd at this oil analysis. The author had no idea what technological developments would be widely deployed in just the next couple years after they wrote this
This is particularly timely after the Taliban routed the US in Afghanistan in May to August of last year.<p>An interesting thing here is the central role played by energy in this analysis; this article was before the fracking boom (see <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#/media/File:US_Crude_Oil_Production_and_Imports.svg" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil#/media/File:US_Crude_...</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubbert_Upper-Bound_Peak_1956.png" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hubbert_Upper-Bound_Peak_...</a>, which shows the US fracking boom, though not the recent decline) and before the last factor of 8 or so decrease in the cost of solar panels made them cheaper than fossil fuels in much of the world. So it predicts Iran and Russia will be "energy kingpins" in 02025, which doesn't really seem to be in the cards.<p>Maybe China will be an "energy kingpin"—it could cover the Gobi with PV panels and run HVDC, which might be outside the state capacity of countries like Perú, Saudi, and Libya which control vast desert territories on paper. But, so far, despite installing more PV capacity than the entire rest of the world, China's PV capacity factor is a disappointing 13%, compared to 29% in California, so it's apparently making terrible choices about where to site its solar farms. (Still better than the 10% you get in Germany or the Netherlands.)<p>For the last 2500 years the "world's reserve currency" has been gold, except for the last 77 or so. That could easily happen again. Bitcoin was kind of gunning for that position, but China's thoroughgoing rejection of it forecloses that possibility for at least a generation, and Bitcoin could easily cease to exist in that time.<p>Although the knowledge of this article's author about computer security seems to come from Hollywood, the computer security situation is indeed extremely grave, and as more and more things become digital, any state that doesn't take it seriously and take effective measures to improve the situation is likely to be destroyed. Presently, that means every state in the world.<p>It's true that when financial and military collapse comes, they are likely to come very quickly.
America will not collapse, but American democracy likely will collapse.<p>At the end of 2022, GOP will win the mid-term elections and have the majority in the house and the senate.<p>They already have state legislatures effectively under control, and the supreme court is full of conservative judges.<p>In 2024 Ron De Santos, or another authoritarian candidate, will win the GOP nomination and
easily win the election because Mr. Biden is a total loser.<p>With the supermajority, the GOP will establish an autocracy for decades.
I believed it until China started scoring own goals kneecapping their tech industry and their best and brightest kept coming to the West... Someday though, my VEMAX investments will look like a good decision.
Why is the Hacker News title editorialized? I believe the convention is to use the original title of the linked article. Removing the "how" from the sentence changes the tone by quite a margin.
America won't collapse alone, the whole Western block will collapse with it, our civilization already died, the moment we decided stock market is more important than the education and health of our people<p>Greed, gluttony, spread of cancerous culture, lack of social justice and many more