This time I look at scenarios for the United States and what that might mean for the world.
First of all, domestic situation and foreign policies are somewhat linked. As we saw with China’s case, domestic pressures can constrain foreign policy, and the same can be said for the United States. Following COVID-19, and following the disillusionment of foreign trade and entanglements in the Middle East, the American zeitgeist for global affairs is now even more ambivalent. Where once there was at least an interest to engage with the world, now there’s seemingly an increase distance from it. We don’t know how this might continue - will it view global engagement through a conflictual lens with China at the expense of everything else? Could different leadership and administration reinvigorate the American public to have at least a more neutral perspective on American engagement with the world?
Demographically, America has more advantages than the rest of the advanced world such as Europe (and UK) and Japan. Both powerhouses are ageing quickly, and both have developed a reluctance to immigration. America’s population is likely to be much younger than Europe and Japan will be a few decades later. This isn’t due to just immigration, which America has traditionally been better at as a melting pot, but just due to just having a larger younger population now. The immigrants today will also continue to contribute to the United States population growth - making the population younger overall than that of Japan and Europe. America then, is likely to have a younger population with more years of economic productivity ahead of them.
America’s diversity, well-developed markets, and a foundation of academic innovation will continue to put it in good stead in the years to come, although that will require the government to fund the groundbreaking basic research for fundamental breakthroughs, which are usually somewhat subsidised by the American military. The foundation of research innovation also requires a society that remains committed to immigration, which we can see, a commitment that ebbs and flows. Nonetheless, a basic openness to the world is likely to prevail, as America becomes more diverse, and remains open to diversity at a fundamental psychological level.
America’s commitment to competitive markets s cyclical. From time to time, there are large movements in business, usually propelled by ideological factors. The inequality from the Gilded Age led to the Great Depression and a commitment to state action to intervene in markets. These were overturned in the 1970s onwards with a commitment to market fundamentalism and the deregulation project in the pursuit of corporate growth. Perhaps the inequality and a failing state during this COVID-19 crises might lead to a reconsideration of the centrality of the role of the state and the recognition that corporates - as innovative as they are - cannot be the sole arbiters of economic power. This remains to be seen, however.
In the longer term, if the United States remains open to global flows, and able to maintain global stability there is a strong case that the United States will become the world’s pre-eminent power, able to see of the threat of a plateauing China. In fact, the United States might end up worrying more about China’s internal stability more than trying to undermine it. A moderately prosperous China would continue to be a sizeable market that could be provide immense business opportunities for the rest of the world, and especially perhaps, for the ageing population that might be financially comfortable in a few decades’ time, assuming it can resolve its own internal politico-socio-economic contradictions (as outlined in the previous section).
There is uncertainty about the extent to which America will continue to provide the security in regions of the world such as the Middle East or Africa in the way it has in these early decades of the century. As the world electrifies and relies on other sources of energy, the centrality of oil and gas might decline. Although fossil fuels are important as compact high-energy sources for trucks, ships and planes, there are various developments that can challenge that, except perhaps in the aviation sector. We can expect land transport electrification to happen in the next two decades, as automobile makers learn to make batteries and battery-replacement stations at scale, recharging them from renewable energy across the world through high-voltage transmission lines.
As centrality of fossil fuels decline, the centrality of the Middle East will decline as well. The kingdoms in the Middle East will have to figure out a path out of fossil-fuel dependence and build an economy that can thrive without it. This is the biggest geopolitical challenge for the Middle East, and they will have to figure out a path for themselves when major powers are no longer eager to support their regimes. They have a promising geo-strategic location nonetheless, as the crossroads of Europe, Russia, East Asia, South Asia and to North Africa. But that’s a different question to address. Without the need to provide the security umbrella in the Middle East, the US can reposition forces in the region to focus elsewhere, such as in Africa and South Asia, where the bulk of the world’s population will be and likely in a time where resources will become scarcer, prompting more geopolitical crises.
Without good governance, Africans will migrate across the world - north, to Europe, where they might face xenophobia; to the rest of Asia, where no culture has had the familiarity interacting with them, also creating risks of discrimination; to perhaps Latin America, and to North America - to the United States, which will have to undergo another generation of socio-cultural discourses on how to manage a new crest of foreign arrivals. But with good governance, and economic partnership with the advanced countries, the entire African continent can thrive - increasing the trade with each other, creating a continent-wide supply chain to rival that of China, and connect to the rest of the world through maritime flows. A broad, Confederation of Africa that could thrive together would be an economic juggernaut that could adjust the geopolitical lens of the United States. But I am getting ahead of myself again.
Are darker paths possible for the United States? Of course. Identity-based tensions could come to a head and create civil wars, from which the US will be unable to recover. Theocratic-populist leaders could become genuine presidents, and destroy the balance of powers in the American constitution. Could a new generation of young people instead become extremist in their ideologies, and strive to create a mono-ethnic American state? In the past half-century, the ideal of America as a multicultural melting pot has held firm. Even reaching back a hundred years, the basic idea of the separation of state institutions has held firm. We would have look through the whole history of the independent United States to encompass the Civil War. I expect the temperature of social tensions to increase, but not to the extent of causing armed insurrection within the United States. I might be overly optimistic about the United States, but from my perspective, it is not as easy to find a path towards political division of the United States. Contrast that with China, which has had a more violent century - the chaos of the Cultural Revolution; the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists, and even before that, the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Going by this record, we should expect China to be at risk of social upheaval, more so that the United States.