Published August 18th, 2009 by Future Atlas
Scenarios for the End of the US
Earlier this month Slate and the Global Business Network got together to think about how the United States might come to an end over the next 100 years.
They devised four scenarios:
- Collapse — A series of disasters fray and ultimately destroy American social cohesion. “The country could fall apart as our national creeds of freedom, democracy, and openness are gradually abandoned.”
- Friendly breakup — “The country dissolves peacefully because the overhead of running a large nation becomes unmanageable.” This includes an amicable version of the red-blue US disintegration scenario.
- Global governance — “The national government declines in importance relative to the world community,” in order “to head off the challenges of the ‘non-zero-sum,’ globalized world: climate change, biological weapons, pandemics.”
- Global conquest — The US and the rest of the world are conquered by force. Peter Schwartz of GBN sees this as the least likely.
The larger world would not fare well in the collapse or global conquest scenarios. Forces large enough to destroy the US would likely handle most other places severely as well. The friendly breakup scenario could be positive or negative: it might indicate that the world was integrated and peaceful, and thus safe for smaller states — the pattern now developing in Western Europe — but it could also leave a power vacuum if the US simply stepped away from its current role.
(Thanks for article tip to Kristin Nauth)
(Image courtesy aprilzosia, Flickr)