US Power Will Decline Under Trump, Says Futurist Who Predicted Soviet Collapse
Galtung has also accurately predicted the 1978 Iranian revolution; the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989 in China; the economic crises of 1987, 2008 and 2011; and even the 9/11 attacks—among other events, according to the late Dietrich Fischer, academic director of the European University Center for Peace Studies.
Back in 2000, Galtung first set out his prediction that the “US empire” would collapse within 25 years. After the election of President Bush, though, he revised that forecast five years forward because, he argued, Bush’s policies of extreme militarism would be an accelerant.
…social contradictions encompassing the increasing gulf between the so-called ‘American Dream’, the belief that everyone can prosper in America through hard work, and the reality of American life (the fact that more and more people can’t).
Galtung’s 2000 prediction is looking wrong thus far, but it also depends on how one defines collapse. If by collapse, demographically and in terms of the decline of Christianity, yes, such collapse has begun a long time ago. If by collapse–as in government, influence, and power of America as a dominant military and economic force–then no. Certain part of America–California and Texas for example–demographically, bear less resemblance to how they were 30 years ago, due to immigration. Effectively, America was ‘conquered’–as in a new population with cultural, racial, and ethnic differences overtaking a preexisting population–but bloodlessly and by its own volition. It’s not so much that empires decline, as in vanish, but rather they are partitioned and existing peoples displaced. The split of the Roman Empire into the Eastern and Western parts could be analogous to America’s partisan divide between ‘left’ and ‘right’, but also ‘north’ and ‘south’–the so-called Mason-Dixon line–and the values and cultures that differentiate them. Another example could be the medieval religious wars in Europe between Protestants and Catholics, in which the kingdoms of Britain and France remained intact as global powers, but were divided within.
The narrative in 2016-2017 was that Trump represented/embodied a repudiation against elites. According to cartoonists, columnists, and Twitter, this ‘outsider’ was going to upend status quo, in much the same way the left in 2008 branded Obama as a reformer. Many on the right still hold on to this belief even though thus far it has been shown to be demonstrably wrong. Trump is no Otto Von Bismarck, but by that benchmark no U.S. politician is.
I disagree that U.S. power will decline under Trump…the evidence as shown by the surging stock market and strong GDP growth, but also the growing power of Silicon Valley and multinationals such as Boeing, is that the opposite is happening…America’s economic and multinational hegemony, as well as overall global influence, is strengthening or at least is not falling, and this is in spite of increasing ethno and cultural divisions within.
Some may cite America’s inability to win in the Middle East as evidence of the decline of the American empire, but such wars by design are unwinnable.If they are won, all the financial stimulus and resources that go into them is shut off. That’s a major part of the economy.
Using a single data point (the breakup of the Soviet Union) is not of much predictive value, similar to economists who in 2008-2009 used a single data point, the Great Depression, as being analogous to the 2008 crisis, when although despite similarities, the outcome was totally different.