The future of the World and the March of History

The idea of this thread is to share your vision of the future history on whatever timescale you like. One idea that I would like to toss out to get things started is the March of History... the idea that some things are simply inevitable... not because of prophesy or anything like that... but because of basic primary forces... geography, demographics, climate change, and resource depletion etc.

In this regard we can look at Rome for instance. Many scholars now point to the fall of the Roman Empire as having mostly to do with resource depletion. The society grew too large and too complex for the network of production to support it. Rome struggled valiantly but vainly against the fall, and her troops committed many heinous acts in that struggle.

We can look at Brittannia... the resource depletion of wood resources would have been its fall except for the discovery of coking coal... thence the industrial revolution and the creation of the world's first true global superpower. But the colonies were too difficult to control and though Britain fought long and hard, she has slipped to a second-rate power on the world stage... supplanted by her own former colony. In the struggle to resist that "march of history" British troops committed many atrocities here in the America's and in India, South Africa, and elsewhere.

With those examples in mind, let's think about the future of the United States of America. We are now the sole global superpower... able to field forces in any part of the world within hours. But... while our resource base has become that entire world, we have become so addicted to the abundance of goods and food and energy that we squander them like the Caesars of ancient Rome. The demographics of world population and economic growth indicate that we will soon be swamped by the Chinese colossus. We have become so engorged on the profligate burning of oil that we have used up almost the last of our own resources and are now going to war to take by force what belongs to others.

I suggest that the march of history dooms the United States to dwindling influence in the world from here on forward. The saber rattling gunboat diplomacy of the Bushcheney Neocons is like the last gasp of the Britons trying to indimidate the Indians... or the Romans trying to stave off the Barbarians. It is doomed to failure. Our choice is whether to fade from prominence in a gracious controlled fashion, maintaining the support and friendship of other nations and leading the transition to a lower-energy sustainable world... or whether we want to go down in a blaze of thermonuclear fire, waving the stars and stripes as we drive our SUVs to the last drop of gas.

I think it's clear that the present course is unsustainable, and that the U.S. is NOT a leader in creating a more sustainable model of economic stability. We are, in fact, become the greatest roadblock to world progress. The future is difficult to tell... it could go several ways. Most of them are highly unpleasant... but there is hope.

 

Tom just on the point of my own country the UK I would point out that we had expanded most of our manpowere fighting two world wars this follewd by the utter failure of the post war Labour goverment to utilise the funds recieved from the Marshal plan had a lot to do with our demise as a superpower. It was not so much that we had difficulty holding on to the colonies as we lacked the political will to do so, the thought of further losses was rather repugnant and if you look at the histories of most of the colonies you will find we tried very hard to let them go quite peacfuly and not with any great struggle (Other than in those where there was comunist takeover threats). move on a few years and check out how we faired in Malasia and Borneo against the insergants then you see a bit of a different picture.
Did you also know that it was only last year that we made the last payments to the US & Canada on the lend lease loans? final payments of US$83.25 million and US$22.7 million respectively. Do you have any idea of the burden these loans have been on the British economy.

De Orc :kewl:

 

I would encourage anyone interested in this topic to read the following book:

Collapse - How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

Though it concentrates on societies in geographic isolation (Easter Island, the Norse in Greenland, the British in Australia), there is a great deal of insightful obvervation that can be applied to places like China or the US today.

My personal opinion is that the US is 'losing' its influence in the world primarily because it supplies only part of what people are looking for. What it cannot package for export is cultural identity. Well, it tries, but not so many people are interested any more. The growing perception is that its shallow to imitate US culture. Perhaps if the world had become rich on imitation it would have worked. But, in terms of global resources, not many more people ouside the US can live like people inside the US before the planet runs dry. It is an impossible model. For some, radical fundamentalism becomes an alternative. For others, joining in any movement that rebels against US interests is enough, even if it rings hypocritical given their lifestyle.

I've lived through two 'revolutions' against the US, one violent and communist, another relatively peaceful and socialist. They both contained valid reasoning along with meaningless propaganda and blatant hypocrisy. The first already failed, the second will probably fail. But they applied to questions that could not be satisfactorially answered by the US political and economic system.

And, personally, I feel it will not matter if the US retains a dominant role or not, if Iran gets the bomb, if Al-Qaeda siezes Saudi Arabia, if China's growth eclipses world markets, etc. The utterly overwhelming factors of population and resource depletion will dictate world politics and economics. Whoever utilizes a model that preserves some sort of functioning sustainability and cultural continuity to a society (and can also repel invasion/resource theft) will survive. I don't know of any present models that invoke true sustainability on a large enough scale.

 

Oh and nearly forgot um second rate power I belive you called us well it might suprise you to find that our little country is classed as the number 12 in the world GDP list with the USA at #7 and with only Ireland of oyr ex colonies been ranked above us.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/eco_gdp_percap-economy-gdp-nominal-per-capita

De Orc :kewl: