An Occasional Reader asks me: “What will the world be like in 10 years?”
I answer: "I don’t know". [And wonder: why should I be asked? What do I know?]
Pressed, I do answer. Kind of. Quick and Dirty. TL;DR: Avoid “Suicidal Empathy”.
Europe and the U.K.:
I’m pessimistic about Europe and the UK.
There are two major themes here: one is that the governments of the European Union -- in which we must include the U.K. despite Brexit -- are stubbornly bureaucratic, given to winding red tape around every industry, hostile to innovation. Count the number of new world-class companies in America. It’s easy to name a dozen or more. Count the number of new world-class companies in Europe, that aren’t the likes of Siemens, Krupps or Airbus, and see how many you can come up with.
The second problem is that of uncontrolled immigration. And here the main issue is of Muslim immigration, because Muslims have -- by their own stated preferences -- the least tendency to integrate into the society they emigrate to, coupled with the most intense desire to get the rest of society to hew to Islam.
Islam is an openly, unabashedly supremacist religion, which makes no secret of its desire to see the ideology of Islam spread across the globe. And that brings Sharia law. And that brings all sorts of negative values into a society: misogyny, homophobia, intolerance of minorities, anti-free speech, anti-freedom of conscience, anti-freedom of religion. That’s not the agenda of a modern tolerant liberal.
Islam is a serious threat across Europe and the U.K. and it’s getting worse. Madame Merkel was largely responsible: in 2015 she said “Wir schaffen das” -- We can manage this. Turns out they couldn’t. Germany has become more unmanageable because of it, and so has the rest of Europe. In just ten years.
Together, the lack of vibrant economic growth, coupled with the incursions of a supremacist ideology are going to make Europe a worse place to live over the next ten years. At least to those of us who find the freedoms and tolerance of the west rather more bracing than the values of a medieval theocracy.
Russia/Ukraine:
More hope than prediction: in ten both are at peace. An armistice has been in place for 8 years. Whereby it was agreed in 2025 that Russia keeps occupied Donbas and Crimea and Ukraine committed to not joining NATO.
The alternative is the super scary scenario. That the United States has so provoked Putin that he launches tactical nukes. Then all bets are off, for the world. It doesn’t bear contemplating, but must be contemplated. We would be foolish to think Putin is bluffing.
Which of these scenarios depends a lot on the United States.
And if the worse, the latter, the nuke, scenario, it makes all other scenarios moot. Boom goes the moot.
United States:
I’m either way about the United States: could be great, could be a huge mess. It’s not a coin toss but a matter of choices. I hope they make the right ones, in which case it’s going to be “great”.
The big thing on America’s side is its sheer exuberance. Its passions. Its optimism. Its can-do attitude.
America has one huge advance over its main rival China. That is a very vibrant and deep civil society. But that I mean every type of non-government institution. The church, charities, societies, human rights bodies, hobby clubs, sports clubs.... You get the picture. Everything and anything is the go in the United States, and you’re allowed to pursue any wild and wacky idea you have.
That’s the genesis of an Elon Musk. Wanted to build Electric Vehicles. Wanted to launch rockets. That happened. It probably could only have happened in America.
There’s a huge future in AI, in robots, it driverless cars, in private space travel. All of that can be to the benefit of America.
The pessimistic side is what’s going on in academia -- the “long march through the institutions” by modern Marxism, aka neo-Marxism, aka cultural Marxism. That’s a real thing. We should not allow these that are infiltrating this into schools, to pretend -- as they do -- that there’s none of this happening in schools, in Universities, then out into the broader society. Because it most certainly is happening.
The panoply of TLAs -- three letter acronyms -- the DEI, the CRT, the ESG -- all of these are poisonous and harmful to broader society. I say this as someone who witnessed the end-game of this kind of Marxism in the late stage Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution of China in the 1970s, something that they were about to overthrow, because of how harmful it had been. That’s what’s going on in so many institutions in America. It could fatally wound the country.
The adherents to this neo-Marxist piffle, schools, Universities and woke companies, express contempt and hatred for America. They fly flags of Palestine and Pride, but burn the American flag. That hatred can only go on for so long before the wounds on the body politic -- on society, on the very nature of what it’s been to be “America”, the ideals of freedom and e pluribus unum -- become fatal injuries.
East Asia:
Will do pretty well, but depending on the United States. I don’t have much to say here, save that South Koreas seems in pretty good shape to me. That Japan seems to be able to keep on muddling through, although its population decline may come to bite its bum. The rest of ASEAN, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc.. they seem to be in their own worlds, and fine for them.
China:
I’m neutral on China. That is: I think it could go either way: recover and re-grow, or fall down badly.
It’s currently in a big funk. But shorting China over the last 40 years has been a losing bet. Still, they got huge problems. And seem to be looking inwards, looking to revive Marxism, which is always a loser, in my view. So: neutral bet on China in ten years. It’ll still be there. And somewhat richer. But maybe not so much. And maybe in an ongoing funk.
The big issue for China and the world is what happens to Taiwan. I’ve always thought the best thing, for all parties, is the status quo. Don’t do anything to change the perfectly fine relationship Taiwan has with the mainland, with cross Strait tourism and good economic exchanges. China may well try to take it back by force at some stage. Though I’d always be asking “why”? Just for pride? There can be not other reason, given that everything goes along fine as long as Taiwan doesn’t make the mistake of trying to become independent. It doesn’t need to be de jure independent, when it’s already de facto independent.
Australia:
it could go either way, a bit like the U.S. It’s a matter of choices. If Australia chooses to let ideology drive its immigration policy, for example, and keep the very high levels of the last few years, and to have big increases in Muslim immigration, then that’s not going to be good for the peace, stability, unity, comity, and economic development of the country. Already we have a new “Muslim Voice” party which threatens to make Australian politics more sectarian. Not good.
If Australia becomes a bit more robust, if we make better choices -- which, yet, includes having a more discrimination immigration policy -- it has everything it needs to be a huge ongoing success.
And, by the way, another matter of choice is now on the table: do we go nuclear or not for our caseload electricity. In my view we must. But many are against it. Mostly on the Left, amongst the Greens. This is a matter of choice. A good choice, a wise choice, or not.
So, toss up for Oz, like the U.S..
Middle East
I can’t think of much positive to say about the developments in the Middle East. Iran is moving ever closer to having a nuclear weapon. And when they have one, they may well use it in a war to extinguish Israel.
That would be the most catastrophic thing to happen in the region, but it could. And that would be the result of policy. Specifically of western (Barack Obama and Ben Rhodes) policy to try to buy Iranian niceness in return to cutting back on sanctions. Result: Iran has more money to pursue both the nuclear weapon policy and to fund its proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah.
Saudi will stumble along, I guess.
Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, all stumbling along, too, all still killing their own people while denouncing Israeli “genocide”, no matter there’s a war or not. And not at all improving the quality of life of their citizens, for their obsession with Jew hatred and the desire to obliterate Israel. Which may have happened via their friend and mentor, the Islamic Republic of Iran.
I guess one very different outcome might be that there’s a popular revolt in Iran, that overthrows the horrid theocratic government. There are a few straws flowing in the wind that could lead to that. A resurgence of Persia, of the non-Arab, non--Islamic republic of independent Persia, would be a game changer. The United States should be on the lookout for this, and not let the opportunity to slide by, as did Obama with the Iranian Green Movement of 2009-10
All up, for the Middle East, I guess it all comes down to how Iran acts, and that, to quite a degree, comes down to how the west treats it, and that in turn comes down to how the United States treats it. Being “nice” to Iran, the basis Obama strategy, pushed by his aide Ben Rhodes, has backfired. A be tough to Iran policy is in order.
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A Norwegian politician was once asked what accounted for the success of Norway. He answered: “Norway and Venezuela have the same amount of oil and gas. We are successful and Venezuela is not. The difference is we made better choices”.
Norway chose to use the money from oil and gas to establish a National Wealth Fund. Which is now the largest in the world. And is there to help with the retirements of its citizens. Venezuela chose to elect a Marxist to head the country -- Hugo Chavez -- who set about looting the country’s resource wealth. His successor Maduro has done the same. Result: penury.
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It’s all down to choices. We all have choices. Countries have choices. Those choices should be driven by self-interest. We need to have empathy for foreigners who want to migrate to successful western countries. But we also need to have justice for our citizens, the ones already living in our countries. If we have so much empathy for others that we lose our sense of justice for our own, we end up destroying our successful countries.
That’s “Suicidal Empathy”.
