The US is obviously on the decline and in some ways it has already collapsed, but I'm talking about the timeline for the end of the collapse, not the beginning. It's tempting to believe itll happen in my lifetime, but i fear that might just be cope on my part. I hope I'll be alive to witness the death of the thing I hate most in the world, but it feels a bit like millenarianism to confidently state "hell yeah, the final collapse is gonna happen during my lifetime," so I'm hesitant to hold out hope for it. Every time I've hoped for anything, it hasn't happened.
Do you think the US can resist balkanization and/or another form of the collapse of state power for 20 more years? 50? 100? What do you think will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and why? How do you think power will reorganize in the aftermath? Sound off in the comments below, and don't forget to like and subscribe.
Timelines are very difficult to predict. In particular, I think any downfall will be predicated on predictable coincidences - the US prepared itself to run 2 large wars simultaneously to get big-ass military budgets and fuck the world but will deplete its capacity to handle two hurricanes without society breaking down. When will those crises happen, what will they entail? Their material impact depends on the answer to those questions and we don't know what combo will be devastating, just that eventually one will be and that it becomes increasingly likely under the current economic regime.
Even worse, we don't really know how the state will respond to its death throes. A state with incredible military dominance getting hollowed out, facing decline: does it just Peter out, does it lash out to create new imperial endeavours that put the current ones to shame, does it start WWIII in a xenophobic scapegoating fury? These all seem plausible to me and I don't think I can differentiate between their likelihoods or timelines.
We should try to plan for resiliency against all of these things as well as their precursors so that we can plot a course that's a few years out at all times since going decades out is difficult.